Linked List: May 5, 2014

Monday, 5 May 2014

Ingrid Lunden, writing for AOL/TechCrunch:

Fred Wilson of New York’s Union Square Ventures, one of the top tech investors around, believes that by 2020, the biggest tech company in the world — Apple — will cease to be the most important, and won’t even be in the top three.

Speaking at today’s TC Disrupt conference in NYC, he predicted that the top three tech companies, instead, will be Google, Facebook “and one that we’ve never heard of.”

Why? Apple, he believes, is “too rooted to hardware,” with not enough tied into the cloud, and that will make it too much of a challenge for it to evolve going forward. “I think hardware is increasingly becoming a commodity,” he said. “Their stuff in the cloud is largely not good. I don’t think they think about data and the cloud.”

Anything could happen, especially if our measuring stick is stock price. Apple certainly won’t be the biggest tech company in the world forever.

But keep in mind, Fred Wilson is the guy who sold his Apple stock in 2009 for $91 per share (it closed at $601 today), and who started pushing for companies he invests in to develop for Android first back in 2010. His track record on Apple is rather spotty. And prognostications that hardware is becoming a commodity have been made for decades, and never seem to come true. There’s a big difference between a market that is largely commoditized and one that is entirely commoditized.

Heidi Roizen: ‘It’s Different for Girls’ ★

Former Apple executive Heidi Roizen:

Early in T/Maker’s life, I was working on a company-defining deal with a major PC manufacturer. We were on track to do about a million in revenue that year: This deal had the potential to bring in another quarter million, plus deliver millions of dollars in the years to come if it went well. It was huge.

The PC manufacturer’s senior vice president who had been instrumental in crafting the deal suggested he and I sign over dinner in San Francisco to celebrate. When I arrived at the restaurant, I found it a bit awkward to be seated at a table for four yet to be in two seats right next to each other, but it was a French restaurant and that seemed to be the style, so down I sat.

Wine was brought and toasts were made to our great future together. About halfway through the dinner he told me he had also brought me a present, but it was under the table, and would I please give him my hand so he could give it to me. I gave him my hand, and he placed it in his unzipped pants.

Galaxy S5 Explained: UX and Back Panel ★

From a post on Samsung’s official weblog:

Morever [sic], while in previous Galaxy flagships, the features in the settings were only shown in a list, in the Galaxy S5, they can be seen in three types of views such as a grid, list, and tab (category). Thus, with an easy-to-see icons and interface, you can clearly say that the Galaxy S5 is a trendy smartphone.

Clearly.

However, there is another reason the UI of the Galaxy S5 looks so clean and simple.

The Galaxy S5 has 40 applications only, which is much reduced compared to, for example, the Galaxy Note 3 having 51 apps. 40 applications in the 2 pages. That’s it. If wanted, other relatively less frequently used apps can be easily downloaded through Galaxy Essential and Galaxy Gift widget.

Sounds great.

The Great Smartphone War: Apple vs. Samsung ★

Kurt Eichenwald, in a well-reported feature for Vanity Fair:

One day in March 2011, cars carrying investigators from Korea’s anti-trust regulator pulled up outside a Samsung facility in Suwon, about 25 miles south of Seoul. They were there ready to raid the building, looking for evidence of possible collusion between the company and wireless operators to fix the prices of mobile phones.

Before the investigators could get inside, security guards approached and refused to let them through the door. A standoff ensued, and the investigators called the police, who finally got them inside after a 30-minute delay. Curious about what had been happening in the plant as they cooled their heels outside, the officials seized video from internal security cameras. What they saw was almost beyond belief.

Upon getting word that investigators were outside, employees at the plant began destroying documents and switching computers, replacing the ones that were being used — and might have damaging material on them — with others.

A year later, Korean newspapers reported that the government had fined Samsung for obstructing the investigation at the facility. At the time, a legal team representing Apple was in Seoul to take depositions in the Samsung case, and they read about the standoff. From what they heard, one of the Samsung employees there had even swallowed documents before the investigators were allowed in. That certainly didn’t bode well for Apple’s case; how, the Apple lawyers said half-jokingly among themselves, could they possibly compete in a legal forum with employees who were so loyal to the company that they were willing to eat incriminating evidence?

Eichenwald’s is the best overview of the Apple-Samsung rivalry I’ve seen; nothing else even comes close.