Linked List: June 1, 2014

Sunday, 1 June 2014

In the real world, outside the technology sphere, Google is digging itself into a deep hole branding-wise. “Don’t be evil” is now a punchline.

The Trick That Makes Google’s Self-Driving Cars Work ★

Alexis Madrigal:

Google’s self-driving cars can tour you around the streets of Mountain View, California.

I know this. I rode in one this week. I saw the car’s human operator take his hands from the wheel and the computer assume control. “Autodriving,” said a woman’s voice, and just like that, the car was operating autonomously, changing lanes, obeying traffic lights, monitoring cyclists and pedestrians, making lefts. Even the way the car accelerated out of turns felt right. [...]

But there’s a catch.

Today, you could not take a Google car, set it down in Akron or Orlando or Oakland and expect it to perform as well as it does in Silicon Valley.

Here’s why: Google has created a virtual track out of Mountain View.

This is what I mean about these cars being a concept, not a real product. These cars are only real in the sense that a ride at Disney World is real. They’ve built a very clever Mountain View-size 25 MPH theme park attraction. Google could well be the company that eventually does make real self-driving cars, but they aren’t today. Who is to say that the cars they do have today are not to self-driving cars what the Microsoft Surface (the table-size one, not today’s tablets) was to touchscreen computing?

Show me something produced at mass market scale and price, which people can and want to buy.

Music Industry Analyst Bob Lefsetz on the Apple/Beats Deal ★

He’s not impressed:

And today Jimmy Iovine executed the best pivot in the history of the music business. He left it behind.

Huh?

That’s what a businessman wants to do, get out. Only musicians are lifers. Businessmen are all about the money. Clive Calder made more, but he had no second act, Jimmy Iovine’s got a second act. He’ll be the creative “genius” at Apple, because Tim Cook is creatively bankrupt, he’s Bob Morgado reincarnated, he doesn’t understand the fundamentals of the company, he believes it’s about efficiencies, supply chain management, profits and losses, whereas the real winners know it’s about personality. David Geffen. Irving Azoff. Steve Jobs.

They’re different from us. Whip smart, they’re willing to break rules, they see the new game emerging before the old one is history. Irving Azoff built the new MCA Records, upon which the present empire sits. David Geffen gave us not only DreamWorks, but Laura Nyro, Jackson Browne and “Dreamgirls.” And Steve Jobs gave us the Mac, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad.

What has Tim Cook given us?

A bunch of hot air. Bupkes.

Tell us what you really think, Bob.

Hail Mario ★

Kyle Starr, writing on his ~~new The State of Gaming site~~ rebranded site, Zero Counts:

Mario Kart 8 proves that Nintendo is deeply in tune with generational gaming gaps. As our Link to the Past lover so eloquently put it, the ease of entry to Mario Kart 8 iterates on the tried and true idiom “it’s like riding a bike” with an updated “it’s like playing Mario Kart.”

From the first race to the last, we would chuckle at my fiancée’s incessant need to comment on how gorgeous the levels looked. Funny at first, I couldn’t help but look closer at the imagery in the courses. It became evident that Nintendo is unabashedly gunning for Disney-level aesthetics; a tactic to win over most demographics.

We got our copy yesterday, and it’s so fun it made me not want to leave for WWDC today. (I’m worried my son is going to surpass me while I’m out of town.) The game is fun, familiar-yet-novel, and indeed beautiful. Oh, and the music is great.

Kara Swisher on Katie Cotton ★

Kara Swisher:

Was she vocal when she did not like something we did? And how. (So are Microsoft’s Frank Shaw and Google’s Rachel Whetstone, both of whom can throw a pretty decent uppercut when they are not happy with something we have written.)

So what?

That kind of hard driving is part and parcel to the business, even if she was harder driving and, because of that, more successful than most. As she once told me when we talked about her outsize reputation in the tech press: “I am not here to make friends with reporters, I am here to put a light on and sell Apple products.”

Right. Most of the complaints about Cotton from commentators boil down to Cotton having been really good at her job.

So let’s let her retire with some level of class, no matter how many bare-knuckled bouts were had. Ironically, Cotton leaves just ahead of Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, where there are likely to be some big announcements that she would have been central to carefully and meticulously rolling out.

Interesting. I’d been wondering whether WWDC would be her last hurrah.

A Decade’s Worth of WWDC Keynotes ★

Harry McCracken, on his newly-relaunched Technologizer:

Once a year, Apple kicks off its World Wide Developer Conference with a keynote presentation, such as the one coming up on Monday, which I’ll be covering for Technologizer. Many people seem to think they’re famous for involving Apple dazzling consumers with an array of new products, to the rapturous approval of everybody involved.

Which is weird, because that’s not the point at all.

Sure, consumers are watching, and Apple hopes that they’re dazzled. But WWDC keynotes are usually the least gadget-centric events which Apple holds, and even though people who covet new Apple products pay close attention, they’re not the primary audience.