Linked List: June 23, 2014

Monday, 23 June 2014

One Year, Two Years, What’s the Difference? ★

JR Raphael, writing for Computerworld:

When a company promises two years of free mobile data service with a device, you expect them to deliver. So what happens when a promise suddenly evaporates after you’ve purchased a product?

That’s the situation owners of Google’s LTE Chromebook Pixel are finding themselves facing right now. The LTE model of the Pixel went on sale from Google’s Play Store last April for $1450. At the time, the product was advertised as coming with a free two-year mobile broadband plan from Verizon — 100 MB per month, with the option to purchase more data on a pay-as-you-go basis as needed.

Fast-forward to one year later, and Pixel LTE owners are discovering their data plans have been disconnected. The option to pay for data remains, but the free 100 MB per month mysteriously vanished just one year into the promised two-year period.

Just a flat-out reneging.

That this story is only breaking in June, two months after it started affecting Chromebook Pixel owners, seems telling regarding the device’s popularity.

Customer Sat ★

John Moltz:

To hear Tim Cook talk about it, Apple takes customer satisfaction very seriously, far more seriously than its competitors. But that may not quite be it: The difference between Apple and its competitors is that Apple’s customers and end-users are one and the same.

Probably the single thing that most differentiates the iPhone from all its top competitors.

iWatch Thoughts ★

Jean-Louis Gassée:

The most ambitious rumors project 50 million iWatches sold in the first 12 months. I think that’s an unrealistic estimate, but if a $300 iWatch can sell at these numbers, that’s $15B for the year. This seems like a huge number until you compare it to a conservative estimate for the iPhone: 50 million iPhones at $650 generates $32B per quarter.

Diane Von Furstenberg-Designed Google Glass Frames Are Now on Sale ★

The frames look a bit weird without the Glass hardware in place. But then you look at them with the Glass hardware in place and you realize why they’re showing them without it.

‘What Worked for 500 Apps in 2008 Doesn’t Work for 1.2 Million in 2014.’ ★

Andy Baio wants Apple to get social with App Store recommendations:

Apple is using discovery methods from the age of brick-and-mortar bookstores and videogame shops — shelves of staff picks and bestseller lists are useful, but they’ll never be able to expose more than the very surface of what’s in the App Store.

The failure of Ping may have left Apple scared of taking this on, but that would be a mistake. Ping failed because of bad execution, and a failure to iterate, not because it was a bad idea.

Something like Twitter’s @MagicRecs for iOS apps would be great.

Myo: Gesture Control Armband by Thalmic Labs ★

A real product that seemingly inspired that Google Gesture concept armband. Neat. (Via Ken Ferry.)