Linked List: March 18, 2014

Tuesday, 18 March 2014

Jony Ive Interview With John Arlidge 

John Arlidge scored a rare interview with Jony Ive for the (London) Sunday Times Magazine; Time has a U.S. reprint. There are several illuminating remarks from Ive; he may be publicity-shy, but when he talks, he thinks. He does not phone it in. There’s a great anecdote about what it was like traveling with Steve Jobs, but I’d be remiss not to quote the following:

If that were true, if Apple could no longer make stuff that shreds, not pushes, the envelope, would Ive give up? “Yes. I’d stop. I’d make things for myself, for my friends at home instead. The bar needs to be high.” But, he adds: “I don’t think that will happen. We are at the beginning of a remarkable time, when a remarkable number of products will be developed. When you think about technology and what it has enabled us to do so far, and what it will enable us to do in future, we’re not even close to any kind of limit. It’s still so, so new.”

Occam’s Razor suggests it’s no coincidence that a lengthy, rare interview with Jony Ive appears just before Haunted Empire hits shelves. This is Ive’s way of saying Kane’s book is nonsense. He knows what’s coming.

Must Have Touched Something, That’s for Sure 

Recode has a response from Yukari Iwatani Kane regarding Tim Cook’s calling Haunted Empire “nonsense”:

“For Tim Cook to have such strong feelings about the book, it must have touched a nerve,” Kane said. “Even I was surprised by my conclusions, so I understand the sentiment. I’m happy to speak with him or anyone at Apple in public or private. My hope in writing this book was to be thought-provoking and to start a conversation which I’m glad it has.”

Somehow I doubt she was surprised by her conclusions. As for why Cook saw fit to comment, sure, it could be because her book hit painfully close to home. Or, it could be that it truly is nonsense. Reviews thus far clearly suggest the latter.

‘There Were Some Interesting Bits’ 

Seth Weintraub, reviewing Haunted Empire:

The book concludes exactly how it has been prepared to conclude (sorry, no surprise ending). Apple is in a free fall (increasing sales numbers notwithstanding). Employees are leaving for Google and other Valley startups as soon as their stocks vest, if they can wait that long. Behind the scenes, morale is low and people are scrambling to find that lost sense of purpose. There is no room to believe that Apple could, in fact, have “its most innovative years in front of it”, to use Steve Jobs’s resignation words.

All of that said, I didn’t hate this book like a lot of other Apple reviewers did. I believe it is good for folks like us who often bathe ourselves in pro-Apple news and opinion to get an alternate reality that perhaps the mainstream sees more often in the 24-hour news/entertainment cycle. There were some interesting bits and, if nothing else, Kane’s view of Apple is somehow both cautionary and entertaining.

Weintraub’s is the least negative review I’ve seen — the only one that isn’t downright scathing.

Rene Ritchie: ‘This Is a Bad Book’ 

Rene Ritchie on Haunted Empire:

To be clear, my opinion is both objective and subjective. I freely admit I dislike some works that are genius and absolutely love some that are trashy as hell. That isn’t the case here. This isn’t a great book I simply didn’t like. This is a bad book.

I was sent an advanced review copy a week ago and it was arduous to get through it. I don’t have anything against the premise, gloomy as it may be. No one can deny how important Steve Jobs was to Apple and the hole his death left in the company and everyone who worked with him. There’s certainly a case to be made that Apple post-Steve Jobs is no longer the company that shook the world with Mac and iPod + iTunes and iPhone. There is a case to be made that Apple is doomed. Kane just fails to make it. Worse, she doesn’t even try.

Looking forward to reading my copy.

Rumor Monger 

Harry Chesley, who worked in Apple’s Advanced Technology Group during the Jobs-in-exile years:

Rumor Monger was conceived as an experiment in distributed, light-weight communication, what today we would call peer-to-peer instant messaging with broadcast. The program sat in the background, continually exchanging messages with other machines. The user could, at any time, bring it to the front and enter a new message, which would then be distributed to every other instance of the program within the company-wide local area network. As an afterthought, I added the option to send messages anonymously. This was done sort of on principle, more than because I thought anyone would actually use it. The test population was Apple Computer employees.

To my surprise, Rumor Monger rapidly became very popular within the company. And even more to my surprise, 99% of all messages sent were sent anonymously. This changed it from an experiment in technology into an experiment in sociology.

Interesting precursor to Secret and its ilk — from 1990.

Jason Snell on ‘Haunted Empire’ 

Jason Snell:

If Yukari Iwatani Kane’s Haunted Empire teaches us anything, it’s that a dogged newspaper reporter who wants to write a book about Apple needs a narrative hook to hang the story on. In Kane’s case it’s right there in the title: Apple is an empire that’s haunted by its fallen emperor, Steve Jobs, an organization that just can’t make up for his loss and is falling apart right before our eyes.

The book pounds that premise endlessly, wrapping up numerous chapters by describing photos of “the emperor” looking down on his former subjects at Cupertino. No, seriously. Apple’s foundation, she writes at one point, is “a cult built around a dead man.” When Apple Geniuses knock on your door and offer you literature describing how AppleCare can guarantee eternal life, you’ll have to admit she’s right.

Tim Cook Issues Statement on ‘Haunted Empire’ 

Tim Cook:

This nonsense belongs with some of the other books I’ve read about Apple. It fails to capture Apple, Steve, or anyone else in the company.

Tell us what you really think, Tim.

Horace Dediu Illustrates Apple and Samsung’s Domination of the Handset Industry 

Jaw dropping graphs, and this insightful conclusion:

To earn profit is hard, to do so in an outsized way is very hard and to do so with consistency shows a defensibility of market access that is rarest of all. The only cases where this typical is in a monopoly or protected market situation (aka cronyism.) Apple’s lack of market monopoly coupled with a (near-) monopoly in profits can only be explained by disproportionate value creation.

The mystery then is how is it possible to build a monopoly in value creation.

Apple Replaces iPad 2 With iPad 4 at Same Price 

Interesting mid-generation lineup move. $399 buys you a lot more iPad today than it did yesterday — retina display, A6X chip, better cameras, Siri, and more. This leaves the $299 iPad Mini as the last remaining non-retina iPad.

In other news: Apple today released an 8 GB iPhone 5C in a few non-U.S. countries. Not sure what the point of this is, given that it’s only about 8-9 percent cheaper than the 16 GB model.

Úll 2014 

Great lineup of speakers — including, once again, yours truly — and an intriguing venue in Kilkenny, Ireland from April 28–30. The first Úll was great; the second was even better; I can’t wait to see what’s in store this year. They just opened up a new round of tickets — if you’re interested (and you should be), act fast.

More on Android and SD Cards 

Jerry Hildenbrand, writing for Android Central:

It’s simple, really. Prior to Android 4.4 KitKat, applications — provided they had permission to access the SD card — could read and write to any area on removable storage, including the system folders like DCIM, Alarms, etc. That has all changed, and now third-party applications — as in ones you download from Google Play or elsewhere — can only write to files and folders that they have created or have taken ownership of.

This keeps things “tidy.” Apps aren’t dumping files everywhere on the card — something we’ve all encountered — and instead have one central location to put all their files. There also are some serious security concerns that were addressed by not letting an app write files just anywhere.

I’d venture to say this change is a lot more about security than it is “tidiness”.

Worth noting: 97.5 percent of active Google Play Android devices are using Android 4.3 or older.

Update: Also worth noting: with the READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE permission, apps on KitKat can still read the entirety of the SD card.

Reading the WhatsApp Message History on Android 

Ingrid Lunden, writing for AOL/TechCrunch:

WhatsApp — the popular messaging app with 465 million users acquired by Facebook for $19 billion last month — came under fire earlier this week after tech consultant Bas Bosschert published a blog post explaining how malicious developers can access your messages via the microSD card, and the post went viral (yes, we wrote about it, too).

Now, WhatsApp has responded — perhaps unsurprisingly, to refute the weight of the information. A spokesperson tells us the reports “have not painted an accurate picture and are overstated.” He also notes that the latest version in Google Play was updated with further security protection.

The original blog post (and follow-up) make for an interesting read. The gist of it, as I understand it, is that if WhatsApp is configured to store your message history on your phone, it uses the SD card (or, on devices without an SD card, the general file system). Any other app with access privileges to the file system can then read WhatsApp’s history database. The file is encrypted, but this Python script will decrypt it.

That any app with SD card access privileges can read anything on the SD card is not a bug — that’s how Android is designed to work. Android is more like Mac OS X or Windows in this regard than iOS (on iOS, all file storage is sandboxed, and apps can only read and write to their own sandbox). It seems like a problem, though, that WhatsApp’s encryption has been cracked.

Mac apps worked liked this for decades — all apps had complete access to any file owned by the current user. Today, apps from the Mac App Store are sandboxed by default, as a defense against just this sort of thing. But apps from outside the Mac App Store still have read/write access to your entire home folder.

Speaking of Sonos 

Todd Bishop, writing for GeekWire:

Marc Whitten, the longtime Xbox Live leader who has worked most recently as Xbox chief product officer, is leaving Microsoft to join Sonos as chief product officer.

‘Available for Android Today and iOS This Spring’ 

Only fair to point out when an app does ship Android-first — in this case, Sonos.

Update: Ah, this explains it: it’s a public beta, and public betas can’t be distributed on the iTunes App Store. Funny that The Verge doesn’t mention that.