Linked List: May 8, 2014

Thursday, 8 May 2014

‘Year of Luigi’ Generates $456 Million Loss for Nintendo 

John Teti:

Among the most notable fuckups that can be attributed to Luigi’s piss-poor leadership are dwindling sales of the Wii U — Nintendo sold 2.72 million of them, well behind the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One — and a dearth of quality non-Luigi-related Wii U games. But even Mario’s idiot brother couldn’t run the Nintendo 3DS into the ground, as Nintendo’s flagship portable continues to sell at a steady clip — 12.26 million of them were sold in the fiscal year.

Something’s gumming up the plumbing, poor Luigi’s in a bind.
Killer turtles out to get him, creepy crabs are right behind.
Fighter flies, jeepers cripes!
They’re all coming out the pipes!

“Mario, where are you?”

Here’s How Odd This ‘Apple Buys Beats’ Rumor Is 

So odd that it was an April Fool’s joke just five weeks ago in The Lefsetz Letter, the most popular music industry newsletter.

The Financial Times: ‘Apple in Talks to Buy Beats Electronics for $3.2B’ 

Matthew Garrahan and Tim Bradshaw:

Apple is closing in on its largest ever acquisition with the planned $3.2 billion purchase of Beats Electronics, the headphone maker and music streaming operator founded by music producer Jimmy Iovine and the hip-hop star Dr Dre.

The deal could be announced as early as next week, people familiar with the negotiations said, but they cautioned that some details had yet to be agreed and talks could still fall apart.

On the surface, this doesn’t make any sense to me. I can’t see Apple keeping the “Beats” brand around for headphones. If Apple wanted to sell expensive high-end headphones, they don’t need to spend $3 billion. The Beats streaming service is interesting, but can’t Apple do that on its own, as an expansion of the iTunes Music Store and iTunes Radio? And it’s not like Beats Music is even popular (at least yet) — Peter Kafka reports they only have 200,000 subscribers, most of them from a deal with AT&T.

Nothing from Beats looks like Apple. Not the brand, not the hardware. If this report is true, and Apple keeps the brand, how does that work? When is the last time Apple sold anything that wasn’t under its own brand? Filemaker is the only thing that comes to mind, and the origins of that arrangement are downright prehistoric. And if Apple doesn’t keep the Beats brand, what are they paying for?

I don’t get it.

Update: Numerous people are wondering if it’s all about streaming rights from the music labels — i.e. rights that Apple couldn’t get on its own (because the music labels have long resented iTunes’s dominance in digital music downloads), so they’re buying a company that negotiated those rights on their own. The problem with this theory is that those licenses (to my understanding) aren’t transferable in the event of an acquisition. Music label executives may be dumb, but they’re not that dumb.

The Formula 1 Steering Wheel 

Jordan Golson, writing for Wired:

The modern Formula 1 car is among the most amazing machines ever made. And when you’re going wheel-to-wheel with someone like four-time world champ Sebastian Vettel at 180 mph, you can’t take a hand off the wheel to do, well, anything. Every task a driver might need to do, every bit of information he might need to know, is quite literally at his fingertips.

The modern Formula 1 steering wheel is, therefore, the most amazing ever made. It is, in every way, the nerve center of the car.

Whatever Happened to the Apple HDTV? 

Harry McCracken:

Analysts, pundits and other assorted Apple watchers have been talking about such a TV for years. Sometimes, they’ve even said that factories were in the process of cranking up production so that TVs could reach Apple Stores in the immediate future, or issued forecasts of how many units the company would sell.

And yet, the Apple HDTV not only isn’t here yet, but feels like it’s slipping away. When people bring it up now, they assume it will debut in 2015, if they specify a date at all.

Interesting new document from Apple, outlining in detail how they cooperate with U.S. law enforcement agencies and what information they’re capable of providing. This part caught my eye:

Upon receipt of a valid search warrant, Apple can extract certain categories of active data from passcode locked iOS devices. Specifically, the user generated active files on an iOS device that are contained in Apple’s native apps and for which the data is not encrypted using the passcode (“user generated active files”), can be extracted and provided to law enforcement on external media. Apple can perform this data extraction process on iOS devices running iOS 4 or more recent versions of iOS. Please note the only categories of user generated active files that can be provided to law enforcement, pursuant to a valid search warrant, are: SMS, photos, videos, contacts, audio recording, and call history. Apple cannot provide: email, calendar entries, or any third-party App data.

Also:

Apple can intercept users’ email communications, upon receipt of a valid Wiretap Order. Apple cannot intercept users’ iMessage or FaceTime communications as these communications are end-to-end encrypted.

‘Threes a Magic Number’ 

Threes co-developer Greg Wohlwend is Glenn Fleishman’s guest on the latest episode of The New Disruptors.

How Things Change, Digital Camera Edition 

David Friedman:

Back in 2000, I was playing around with a Game Boy Camera, trying to use it to take color photos. (I finally got that to work.) When I first got the camera, I took a walk through midtown taking pictures. I just came across the images and thought I’d share them here for posterity (scaled up to 200% for visibility on our fancy modern displays).

I remember using a similar camera on my Handspring Visor around the same time.