Linked List: October 9, 2014

Thursday, 9 October 2014

Jony Ive Is Not Flattered by Xiaomi ★

Kyle Russell, writing for TechCrunch on Ive’s appearance on stage at Vanity Fair’s New Establishment Summit:

“Many years ago we made prototypes of phones with bigger screens. They were interesting features, having a bigger screen, but the end result was a lousy product, because they were big and clunky,” Ive noted when the panel’s moderator asked why it took so long for the iPhone to get bigger.

I’m pretty sure Russell just referred to Graydon Carter as simply “the panel’s moderator”.

When a member of the audience came up to ask a question about Xiaomi and their unofficial tagline of “the Apple of China,” Ive was very straightforward with his response: “I’ll stand a little bit harsh, I don’t see it as flattery. When you’re doing something for the first time, you don’t know it’s gonna work, you spend 7 or 8 years working on something, and then it’s copied. I think it is really straightforward. It is theft and it is lazy. I don’t think it is OK at all.”

Jony Ive on the Lessons He Learned From Steve Jobs ★

On stage with Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter at the magazine’s New Establishment Summit. Interesting and thoughtful. (Via The Tech Block.)

Pointless Polls ★

Sam Colt, writing for Business Insider, “Munster: Teens Aren’t Interested In The Apple Watch” (emphasis added):

Piper Jaffray conducted two surveys on the Apple Watch: one last spring and another this fall.

It found that 17% of teens were interested in “buying an iWatch for $350,” compared with 16% this fall. That’s a staggeringly low level of interest for an Apple product.

Munster notes that both surveys were conducted before the Apple Watch debuted — presumably more teens would be interested in purchasing the device now knowing what it looks like.

What’s the point of polling for interest in a product before it’s even unveiled? And for something like Apple Watch, and for a market like teenagers, before it’s been advertised?

‘Why Apple Pay Won’t Work’ ★

Matt Krantz, writing for USA Today:

Investors and consumers might think Apple Pay is a game changer for the cash register. But new research shows there’s plenty of reason why Apple’s effort to dominate payments may not be as magical as some believe.

Apple Pay contains a variety of major shortcomings that will likely limit its ability to be the dominant form of payment in the future, according to a UBS note released to clients this week by analyst Steven Milunovich, quoting payments expert Richard Crone at Crone Consulting. The problems with Apple Pay stem from technical shortcomings of the system relative to other alternatives and the large fees Apple plans to charge, which banks will be eager to escape, the report says.

Filed in the pantry for future claim chowder.

End of the Road for The Magazine ★

Glenn Fleishman:

Brittany Shoot, my managing editor, and I consider The Magazine a very successful experiment. As noted in our Kickstarter campaign, we’ve paid out over half a million dollars to contributors of all sorts over two years, and we have tens of thousands left to pay out this year. We’ve been profitable from the start, but ever less so. I’m a working stiff, and I can’t ride this all the way down. We’re going out happy with our work, delighted with our audience, and so ecstatic to have worked with so many terrific writers, artists, photographers, editors, designers, and others.

So, friends, this is the end. We will publish the next five issues, through Issue #58, and then say goodbye for now.

It was a good ride.

Bruce Schneier on iPhone Encryption and Law Enforcement ★

Bruce Schneier:

This is why the FBI’s scare stories tend to wither after public scrutiny. A former FBI assistant director wrote about a kidnapped man who would never have been found without the ability of the FBI to decrypt an iPhone, only to retract the point hours later because it wasn’t true.

We’ve seen this game before. During the crypto wars of the 1990s, FBI Director Louis Freeh and others would repeatedly use the example of mobster John Gotti to illustrate why the ability to tap telephones was so vital. But the Gotti evidence was collected using a room bug, not a telephone tap. And those same scary criminal tropes were trotted out then, too. Back then we called them the Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse: pedophiles, kidnappers, drug dealers, and terrorists. Nothing has changed.

The uproar from law enforcement officials brings to mind a line from Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil. Charlton Heston’s character, Mexican drug enforcement agent Miguel Vargas, says, “A policeman’s job is only easy in a police state.”

(A masterpiece of a film, by the way. If you’ve never seen it, watch it.)

More DF RSS Feed Sponsorship Openings ★

Speaking of revenue and pageviews, true story: I got an email yesterday from a sales rep at Taboola, pitching me on running their ads on DF. It included this line: “I see your site is not monetized at present, and I think there is room to do so in a non-intrusive manner that can still make you money.”

I don’t know what I love most about that. I think it’s that from the eyes of someone who sees Taboola ads as “non-intrusive”, what I’m doing at Daring Fireball doesn’t look like “monetization” at all. Needless to say, I find Taboola ads to be highly intrusive. (You may not be familiar with the “Taboola” name, but you’ve seen their ads. They look like this.)

DF’s weekly sponsorship system has worked wonderfully. I make a good living writing DF. Sponsors are happy with the results, and frequently return for subsequent sponsorships. And you, the readers, seem to be happy, with what are truly non-intrusive messages from sponsors who I think might truly be of interest to you. And it’s pretty cool that my model has paved the way for other small indie writers to do the same thing.

Not sure what’s going on with October, though. September sold out months in advance, and November is half-full already. But October remains wide open, including this current week, right now, today. With another Apple event next week, it’s going to be a busy month. If you’ve got a cool product or service you want to promote to the DF audience, get in touch and let’s make a deal.

Andrew Sullivan on Revenue for Journalism ★

Andrew Sullivan, in an interview with Capital New York:

I think the only future for journalism is reader revenue. Without it, you are in danger of becoming a public relations or advertising company disguised as journalism, like Buzzfeed and even The Guardian. Buzzfeed is really an ad agency with some journalistic window dressing. They’re not the future of journalism; they’re the marginalization of it. And The New York Times, alas, is following suit with merry abandon.

I think he’s right about Buzzfeed, but in a different way. It’s not that reader revenue is the only future for journalism. It’s that pageview-driven revenue is a corrupting force. Pageview models so dominate online advertising that many people treat them as synonymous. They’re not. There are ways to do advertising online that don’t lead to the dangerous incentives (in a word, clickbait) and reader-hostile experiences that pageviews do.

Let a thousand non-pageview-driven revenue models bloom. Direct reader contributions are working well for Sullivan’s The Dish, and that’s great. But it’s not the only way.

WSJ: ‘Apple, Others Surprised by GT’s Bankruptcy Filing’ ★

Daisuke Wakabayashi, reporting for the WSJ:

A hint of troubles at GT came last month, when Apple said it wouldn’t use sapphire screens in its new iPhones, contrary to what many observers expected. Apple added to GT’s financial pressures by not making a final $139 million prepayment loan because GT hadn’t met the technical milestones laid out by the company, the people familiar with the matter said. GT had said earlier that it expected Apple to make that payment by the end of October.

Sounds like my first take wasn’t far from the mark.

Samsung’s Woes: Saved by the Chips ★

The Economist on Samsung’s plunging profits:

Samsung seems to have a different plan, however. It is betting that its chip business, which has done well in the third quarter, will provide more of its growth. On October 6th the firm announced that it will spend nearly $15 billion on a new semiconductor plant in South Korea to meet the growing demand for processors in mobile devices. Although the decline of its smartphone business will not be an existential threat to Samsung, it remains to be seen whether making chips will replace all the profits it has lost.

Ironic in the way that Microsoft profits from Android, Samsung is a major component supplier for Apple, and thus profits from the sale of iPhones.