Linked List: May 20, 2014

Tuesday, 20 May 2014

Christina Warren on the Missing Surface Mini ★

Christina Warren, writing for Mashable:

Last week, Mashable Chief Correspondent Lance Ulanoff urged Microsoft not to release a Surface Mini unless it was every bit as good as the iPad mini. Go big (or in this case, “small”) or go home. Good enough doesn’t cut it.

It looks like Microsoft had the same thought process. The Surface Pro 3 event was clearly targeted at laptop buyers — not at tablet owners. Most tablet owners, Microsoft noted, also own a laptop.

So rather than trying to go after the consumer tablet market, where it sits in no man’s land, Microsoft is smartly pivoting and going after the laptop space.

Federal Judge Strikes Down Pennsylvania Gay Marriage Ban ★

Amy Worden and Angela Couloumbis, reporting for The Philadelphia Inquirer:

The decision by U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III marked the first and most significant to date in a series of court challenges to the state’s 1996 ban.

“We are a better people than what these laws represent, and it is time to discard them onto the ash heap of history,” Jones wrote in the 39-page opinion. “By virtue of this, ruling, same-sex couples who seek to marry in Pennsylvania may do so, and already married same-sex couples will be recognized as such in the Commonwealth.”

Finally.

Interesting, too, that Jones was a Bush appointee, and cited an argument by Antonin Scalia.

Android Fragmentation, Gyroscope Edition ★

Game Oven, announcing the postponement of the Android version of a new game:

In the Vine above are 7 devices all running the same compass app (ironically named Steady Compass) on Android. Yet, all compasses indicate that North is somewhere else. Unfortunately, this has nothing to do with electromagnetic fields confusing the compass; it has everything to do with the diversity of hardware inside these devices.

We have been developing Bounden for Android alongside its development on iOS, and have tested the game on a number of devices. It was only a week ago that we started expanding our list of test devices, after we quickly discovered that:

(a) some devices had ‘broken’ gyroscopes that didn’t work on all axis,
(b) that some devices were faking gyroscopes by mixing and matching the accelerometer data with compass data, or
(c) that some devices did not have a gyroscope at all.

Curious, I grabbed a handful of iOS devices laying around my house — iPad Mini and iPad Mini with Retina Display; iPhones 3GS, 4, 4S, 5, and 5S — and tried a similar comparison.

About That Heathrow/Samsung Terminal 5 ‘Rebranding’ ★

Rene Ritchie followed up with Heathrow officials regarding Samsung’s claimed rebranding of Terminal 5:

“Heathrow Terminal 5’s signage and passenger wayfinding has not changed,” a Heathrow spokesperson told iMore. “Samsung have rented advertising space in Terminal 5 with a tongue-in-cheek campaign using the line: ‘Terminal Samsung Galaxy S5’.”

Samsung hasn’t taken over any signage or branding at Terminal 5 but are simply renting existing advertising placements in the terminal, those that are available to anyone.

Great copywriting too.

Microsoft Announces Surface Pro 3 ★

Lots of comparisons to the MacBook Air during their announcement event. A decade ago, it was Apple that was comparing the Mac to the PC (in the long-running John Hodgman/Justin Long “Get a Mac” campaign) — now the tables are turned.

From everything I’ve read today (including Microsoft’s own blog announcement), they’ve designed the Surface more as a competitor to a Mac or PC laptop than as a competitor to the iPad. (In fact, they didn’t even announce an ARM-based smaller Surface, as was rumored.)

Swallowing the Spider ★

Jon Bell, on the rumor that Apple is adding split-screen multitasking to the iPad in iOS 8:

But while you can debate the worth of the feature, or whether Apple will implement it, some things are beyond debate. It’s an immovable law of design physics — adding functionality adds complexity. You can’t get around it. All you can do is try to add functionality that people really want, and do it carefully enough that the increased complexity is worth it. There are no shortcuts or magic bullets.

Or to put it in Rands-ian terms: When you say “I wish I could run two apps side-by-side on the iPad,” I hear, “I wish the iPad were more complicated.”