Linked List: September 3, 2014

Wednesday, 3 September 2014

Beautiful piece by Craig Mod:

Thoughtful decisions concerned with details marginal or marginalized conspire to affect greatness. (Hairline spacing after em dashes in online editing software — for example.) The creative process around these decisions being equal parts humility and diligence. The humility to try again and again, and the diligence to suffer your folly enough times to find the right solution. […]

A book with proper margins says a number of things. It says, we care about the page. It says, we care about the words. We care so much that we’re going to ensure the words and the page fall into harmony. We’re not going to squish the text to save money. Oh, no, we will not not rush and tuck words too far into the gutter.

A book with proper margins says, We respect you, Dear Reader, and also you, Dear Author, and you, too, Dear Book.

Matthew Panzarino: ‘Apple Should Be More Transparent About Security’ ★

Matthew Panzarino, writing for TechCrunch:

The question I’ve been asking myself over the months since the SSL vulnerability debacle has been ‘why?’ Why is a company who is generally very well-rounded operationally, and like it or not, produces extremely well-liked and complex devices so bad at communicating about security?

The answer I’ve come up with, and this is just a personal theory, is that Apple thinks about security communications in the same way that it thinks about product communications. In other words, it plays its cards incredibly close to the chest at all times by default. These tactics have served it well in the consumer products arena, creating a frenzy of attention around the releases of new devices and services. And that’s great; I don’t mind a little mystery around products as a consumer, even though my job as a reporter is to figure out what Apple could do next and decide whether that’s important enough to talk about publicly.

But in security, this kind of ivory tower comms strategy is a losing game, especially as smartphones become an increasingly information-rich repository of our personal lives.

Good piece, and I largely agree. Apple’s messaging on security- and privacy- related issues ought to come across as honest and straightforward, but instead it often comes across as evasive.

On the Potential of iOS and Mac App Extensions ★

David Chartier:

With official, system-wide extensions on the way, the potential for Mac and especially iOS apps to work together expands immeasurably. Actually, it explodes in an invigorating display of colors, delightful sounds, and hope. Apps like 1Password can fill information directly into Safari forms and all the other apps that add support. We can archive webpages in Evernote and Stache. Afterlight — really, any photo app — can edit photos right in the Camera Roll. Even better, I’m just barely scratching the surface of this potential.

Part of the genius of these extensions is the way they’re bundled with the apps. So if you have the app installed, you’ll see its extension in other apps automatically. And if you don’t, you won’t. And if you want to get rid of an app, you don’t have to do anything extra to remove its extensions — they get removed when the app gets removed.

Feld & Volk ★

I’d never heard of these guys until they made the news last week with their purported video showing an assembled new iPhone, but they run a fascinating/ridiculous business. They take new iPhones and customize them with gaudy, exotic replacement parts (e.g. solid gold volume buttons and silence switch), then resell them for almost $10,000. Think: Vertu but for iOS.

Samsung Gear S ★

Samsung’s sixth — sixth! — smartwatch announced in the last year. (No shipping date or price on this device, either.) The curved screen helps, but it still looks like a small phone strapped to your wrist, not a watch. Like something you’d wear while working out, not something you’d wear all the time. One cool new feature: you can put a SIM card in it, letting it work as a standalone communicator rather than a tethered companion to a standalone phone.

Judging from the videos I’ve seen (see also: The Verge), Tizen, which the Gear S is running, is a bit of a turd in terms of animation fluidity and touch responsiveness.

The Galaxy Note Edge ★

Lots of new phones and watches are being pre-announced this week, for some reason. Here’s David Pierce at The Verge on the Samsung Galaxy Note Edge (which doesn’t even have pricing or a release date, which tells you all you need to know about how Samsung wanted to present this ahead of next week’s you-know-whats):

It’s an odd idea, turning this vertical rail into essentially an always-on secondary display. Is it best-suited as a ticker? A notification center? A quick-launch taskbar? Samsung doesn’t seem entirely sure, and in a few minutes of using the Galaxy Note Edge it was clear that while well-implemented and useful the whole idea isn’t necessarily fully formed.

Still, by releasing the Note Edge broadly — it’s coming to AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint — and giving both users and developers a chance to figure out what they want, Samsung could find itself with a truly unique smartphone feature that no other manufacturer can copy.

Yes, let the people spending hundreds of dollars for these things figure out what the (oddly right-handed-biased) curved side screen is useful for.

(Somewhere inside Xiaomi, there are people laughing heartily at that “feature that no other manufacturer can copy” line.)