Linked List: December 29, 2014

Monday, 29 December 2014

Leaked Image of Xiaomi’s First Laptop Is a Shocker 

One of the keyboard buttons is orange, see, so it’s original.

Update: Maybe it’s a hoax?

Daring Fireball RSS Feed Sponsorship Openings 

The 2015 sponsorship schedule is pretty open at the moment. Get in touch if you have a cool product or service you want to promote to DF’s discerning audience. Check out the list of previous sponsors, and look at how many have returned for repeat sponsorships.

In fact, this current week — the one starting today — remains open. If you can pull the trigger quickly, let’s make a deal.
Headline of the Week 

BGR: “Apple Finally Decides to Stand Up to Sony Hackers, Releases ‘The Interview’ on iTunes”.

Yes, finally.

(What I’ve heard: iTunes Store content — apps, movies, music, everything — gets locked down days before Christmas and doesn’t get unlocked until iTunes Connect opens back up a few days before the new year. Part of this is to let content propagate through Akamai and whatever other CDNs Apple uses around the world, and part of this is to allow iTunes employees to take the week off and relax. Yes, Apple could have gotten The Interview on iTunes on short notice, but it would have been non-trivial and simply wasn’t deemed worth the effort.)

A Dozen Things Tren Griffin Learned From Steve Jobs About Business 

From a collection of great Steve Jobs quotes, collected and commented on by Tren Griffin:

“The difference between the best worker on computer hardware and the average may be 2 to 1, if you’re lucky. With automobiles, maybe 2 to 1. But in software, it’s at least 25 to 1. The difference between the average programmer and a great one is at least that. The secret of my success is that we have gone to exceptional lengths to hire the best people in the world. And when you’re in a field where the dynamic range is 25 to 1, boy, does it pay off.”

Update: DF reader Scott Manders emailed with a trenchant observation:

The most striking thing to me about the linked article is how the tortured Microsoftian doublespeak in the author’s comments dilutes away the purity and simplicity of the wisdom conveyed in Job’s words. In a way it’s a perfectly encapsulated example of the differences between Apple and Microsoft. All you have to do is read the article to understand the most important differences between the two companies.

I.e., one thing Griffin seemingly didn’t learn from Steve Jobs is how to write/speak with plain, clear, crisp words.