Linked List: July 2014

Thursday, 31 July 2014

On sale now through tomorrow.

Wednesday, 30 July 2014

The Best Argument Yet for Net Neutrality Comes From Major League Baseball ★

Quartz:

Earlier this month, BAM quietly submitted its own letter to the FCC, where it was equally scathing about internet fast lanes[...]. It’s a shame that BAM’s comments have been overlooked, because they amount to one of the most coherent arguments in favor of net neutrality we have come across.

‘To Hell With the Actual Numbers’ ★

Philip Elmer-Dewitt talks to a former IDC researcher regarding how they draw their market share figures.

Microsoft’s Long, Slow Decline ★

Yours truly, getting lucky five years ago:

Apple’s strong growth in this segment is a sign that the market is turning against Windows. If for no other reason than that Apple has never entered the low-cost computer market, it’s always been the case that the most budget-conscious computer buyers were Windows users. But the converse wasn’t true — not all Windows users were cheapies.

Today, though, Microsoft is increasingly left only with customers whose priority is price.

‘The Apple iTime Is Destined to Fail’ ★

If John C. Dvorak were still alive, we’d see more articles like this one.

Wait. What?

Apple’s Double Digit U.S. Mac Growth Contradicts IDC and Gartner Reports of a Mac Sales Slump ★

Shouldn’t IDC and Gartner report these things after PC makers report their results? They look like fools after this quarter.

Tuesday, 29 July 2014

App Store Top Lists and App Rot ★: Marco Arment:

Quality, sustainability, and updates are almost irrelevant to App Store success and usually aren’t rewarded as much as we think they should be, and that’s mostly the fault of Apple’s lazy reliance on top lists instead of more editorial selections and better search.

The best thing Apple could do to increase the quality of apps is remove every top list from the App Store.
Where Are the iOS Indie Developers? ★: Brent Simmons:

I think my point still stands — pure iOS indies are fairly rare. I can easily come up with a bigger list of pure Mac indies, even though iOS developers in general outnumber Mac developers.
A Candid Look at Unread’s First Year ★: Jared Sinclair:

Despite all of these circumstances, Unread still only earned $42K in sales ($21K after taxes and expenses) and is on a course that doesn’t promise much growth. I conclude from all this that anyone who wants to make a satisfying living as an independent app developer should seriously consider only building apps based on sustainable revenue models. I suspect this means through consumable in-app purchases, like those in Candy Crush Saga or Clash of Clans, or through recurring subscription charges, like those in WhatsApp. Furthermore, I have grave doubts that any solo developer would have the capacity to ship and maintain either kind of business working alone.
Apple TV Updated With CNBC and Fox Now Channels ★: One hole in these Apple TV “channels”: they each require you to authenticate through your cable provider separately. Seems like something a future Apple TV update should allow you to do once, at the system level, and then allow all these channels to just work.
MacBook Pro Speed Bumps and Minor Price Cuts ★: Minor updates, including a nice bump in the default RAM for the entry-level machines.

Monday, 28 July 2014

‘App: The Human Story’ — Kickstarter Final Stretch ★

Speaking of Jed Hurt and Jake Schumacher and their documentary, their Kickstarter campaign is coming down the wire. They’re close to their funding goal, with just under three days to go as I type this.

I can’t say enough about how good this movie looks so far, what a pleasure it was to participate in it, and how glad I am that they’re making it. As Craig Hockenberry wrote:

By funding this project, you’re also giving your future self a rare gift. [...] You’re going to look back at this time in your career fondly and wish you remembered more about it.”

It just feels like something that was meant to be. If you haven’t backed it yet, I really hope you do. If you’ve already backed it, consider increasing your pledge by a few bucks. They’ve added a few new reward tiers, so it’s worth taking another look. (Among the additional rewards are “cast commentary tracks”, of which I’ll be contributing one.) Or, just tell a few friends about the project and spread the word on Twitter.

Video: The Talk Show Live From WWDC 2014 ★

This is a fun story.

I thought last year’s live episode of The Talk Show From WWDC went really well and was a lot of fun. My only regret was that we hadn’t recorded video of the show, only audio. So this year we planned to record video. The venue, Mezzanine, has a built-in video system so that whatever is on stage is visible via closed circuit TV to attendees enjoying the show from upstairs on the, uh, mezzanine. I figured worst case, we could just tap into that feed and record it.

Ends up whatever system they have doesn’t support that. The technical details don’t matter, the gist of it is that with just two hours or so before the show was set to start, we had no way to record video of it. Damn.

Except: there were two guys waiting outside the door to Mezzanine all afternoon, Jed Hurt and Jake Schumacher. They had started work on their documentary App: The Human Story, and were hoping to meet me to see if I’d be interested in participating. They’d flown to San Francisco for the week to conduct a bunch of interviews with subjects who’d be in town for WWDC.

I invited them in, and we started talking. I noticed they had a lot of video gear with them. Lightbulb.

I told them I had a crazy proposition, something to the effect of, “I know this equipment you’re lugging around is intended for recording well-lit one-on-one interviews — not a live stage show in a dark theater — but would you guys give it a go anyway?” They jumped at the chance, and this is the result.

Is it the best recording of a live stage show I’ve ever seen? No. Is it the best recording of a live stage show that was filmed by two people who were only asked if they could do it about two hours before the show started? Quite possibly. I think it turned out great, and it gets better and better as the show goes on.

The Talk Show: ‘Jamming More RAM in for Free’ ★

Special guest John Moltz joins me on this week’s episode of The Talk Show.

Saturday, 26 July 2014

New Daring Fireball T-Shirts ★

Available only for the next week or so: Daring Fireball t-shirts, including two designs by the amazing Jon Contino. Last year was the first time these two prints were available, but this time we’re putting the baseball-themed one on the same athletic gray tri-blend shirt that we used for the “Est. 2002” design last time. As a long-time proponent of all-cotton t-shirts, I was skeptical of tri-blend, but damn if they aren’t comfortable. I got a slew of emails after the last run that these are the most comfortable shirts readers have ever worn.

(The classic design remains on an all-cotton shirt, of course. Tradition dictates.)

TopBrewer ★

My thanks to TopBrewer for sponsoring this week’s DF RSS feed. Designed in Denmark, TopBrewer is a revolutionary coffee system that dispenses espresso, coffee, cappuccino, latte, sparkling water, cold and hot filtered water, and other drinks on demand with just a tap on your iPhone or iPad. (Good coffee and fizzy water is just about all I need to work each day, and TopBrewer covers both.)

After their sponsored entry ran in the feed earlier this week, I heard from a few little birdies who work at places with a TopBrewer installed, and they called it “amazing”.

With a fully integrated under-counter design, all you’ll see is the graceful sweep of the beautiful, above-counter swan neck, stainless steel tap. And the TopBrewer’s commercial-grade components are perfect for home installations as well as small offices and commercial settings. It’s the perfect marriage of beautiful design, exquisite coffee, and the iOS user experience.

Friday, 25 July 2014

Continuity and Gratification ★

Mark Sigal on Apple’s Q3 results:

While others may see a company that can’t possibly keep selling more devices, quarter after quarter after quarter, I see a company that has continually avoided the gratification of going for market share and sales at all costs (i.e., at the price of margins, profits and cash flow).

This is no small task when one considers that investors, the media and virtually every pundit in the blogosphere is not so adept at delaying gratification.

Number Games ★

Jon Bell:

Which brings me to Chromecast. All Google will say is they’ve sold “millions” of the $35, (presumably) break-even device. But recently they announced 400 million “sessions”. Sounds impressive! A recent headline states “Chromecast turns one: why this small streaming stick became such a big deal” and the subheads are “So cheap, and so different”, “400 million cast sessions”, “Competitors are getting the streaming stick fever”, and “Why Chromecast continues to be disruptive”.

So kudos to Google for an enormous number, and for getting great press from it. But, wait. We’re actually going to record “uses” of products now? Well, sure. Because it makes the number look bigger.

Bezos Alarms Amazon Investors With Spending Pace as Loss Widens ★

Bloomberg:

Jeff Bezos is testing the patience of investors after Amazon.com Inc. missed analysts’ estimates for a second straight quarter, sending the shares tumbling 11 percent.

The world’s largest online retailer yesterday reported a second-quarter loss of $126 million, more than double what was predicted, even as sales climbed 23 percent to $19.3 billion. Expenses jumped 24 percent to $19.4 billion. [...]

The loss in the latest period was the biggest since the third quarter of 2012, when Amazon posted a $274 million loss. Looking ahead, Amazon projected sales of $19.7 billion to $21.5 billion for the current quarter. Operating losses are projected to be $810 million to $410 million, Amazon said.

You can’t dig forever.

Another Xiaomi Shocker ★

Here’s a beautiful photograph of a young girl by Javi Inchusta Gonzalez, posted to Flickr. Note that it was taken with a Nikon D700 SLR, and that its licensing is set to “Copyright, All Rights Reserved”.

Now go back to our old friend, the Xiaomi Mi 3 “Features” page. Scroll down to where they show the Android photo gallery app, and look at the first image, labeled as a shot from the device’s camera roll. (Screenshot.)

So Xiaomi:

Ripped off a copyright photo. (I’ll eat my hat if they obtained permission to use this photo from Gonzalez.)
Is passing off photos taken with professional SLRs as shots from their phone’s camera.

I wouldn’t be surprised if most or even all the example photos in their gallery are similar ripoffs. (Hat tip.)

Update: Another. And three more. They even stole one from National Geographic. Like I said, they’re probably all rip-offs, and all misrepresentations of the Mi 3’s actual camera.

Putting IBM MobileFirst in (Apple’s Enterprise) Context ★

Andrew Laurence, writing for TidBITS:

Since the iPhone, Apple has developed a subtle enterprise strategy, so subtle that many pundits miss it. Instead of pursuing business sales directly, Apple has quietly worked to remove barriers that might impede usage of its products, including in enterprises. This approach enables Apple to pursue design and user experience while also making its devices more useful to business and fitting enterprise concerns better.

The Secret of Minecraft ★

Robin Sloan:

There are dangerous creatures lurking in this world, including but not limited to giant spiders and skeleton archers. But they only venture out at night, and they can be deterred by walls. The sun (a bright cube) sets fast, so your first task is always the same: Build a shelter.

The genius of Minecraft is that the game does not specify how this is done.

It’s almost impossible to overstate just how big a deal Minecraft is for my son and his friends.

Thursday, 24 July 2014

Executions Should Be by Firing Squad, Federal Appeals Court Judge Says ★

The LA Times:

“Using drugs meant for individuals with medical needs to carry out executions is a misguided effort to mask the brutality of executions by making them look serene and beautiful — like something any one of us might experience in our final moments,” U.S. 9th Circuit Court Chief Judge Alex Kozinski wrote in a dissent in the Arizona death penalty case of Joseph Rudolph Wood III.

“But executions are, in fact, brutal, savage events, and nothing the state tries to do can mask that reality. Nor should we. If we as a society want to carry out executions, we should be willing to face the fact that the state is committing a horrendous brutality on our behalf.”

Agreed.

Josh Topolsky Leaving The Verge for Bloomberg ★

A lot of musical chairs being played in tech journalism lately.

‘But Even the Home Screen Is Confusing’ ★

David Pierce, reviewing the Amazon Fire Phone for The Verge:

You can’t even see the time without tilting your phone just so. An errant buzz is your only indication that you have a notification, prompting you to cock your wrist or swipe down from the top bezel to open the notification windowshade. None of this is explained, none of it is intuitive. Dynamic Perspective makes everything look cleaner, but makes actually using your phone a lot harder. I don’t need my phone to be clever, or spartan. I need it to be obvious. The Fire Phone is anything but.

Rough.

Related: Josh Topolsky:

My quick personal take on the Fire Phone: it is functionally and aesthetically awful.

Wednesday, 23 July 2014

Farhad Manjoo on Amazon’s Fire Phone ★

Farhad Manjoo:

Other instances of Dynamic Perspective are downright annoying. Take Auto Scroll, which moves the text on your screen as you tilt the phone back and forth. Because Auto Scroll calibrates its scrolling speed according to how you’re holding the device when you first load up an article, your brain will struggle to find a set rule about how much to tilt to get the right speed. Often I’d scroll too fast or too slow.

Worse, if you put your phone down on a table while you’re in the middle of an article, the scrolling goes haywire and you lose your place. The best thing about Auto Scroll is that you can turn it off.

If Mayday is the phone’s best feature, they have a problem.

More Amazing Xiaomi/Apple Design Coincidences ★

Posit: Xiaomi (a.k.a. “Mi”) poses a serious threat to Samsung because:

Xiaomi is more shameless, more willing to blatantly copy Apple down to as many details as they’re able.
They’re better at it. Xiaomi copies with some degree of taste; Samsung has no taste.
Xiaomi operates only in countries with weak IP culture and laws, further enabling and protecting them re: points 1 and 2. (This third point was first brought to my attention by Ben Thompson, when he was my guest on The Talk Show a few weeks ago.)

Apple Q3 2014 Results ★

The most interesting numbers to me: iPad sales were down about 9 percent year-over-year, but Mac sales were up about 18 percent.

OS X Yosemite Public Beta Arrives Thursday ★

Jason Snell:

On Thursday, fall will come early for hundreds of thousands of Mac users when Apple releases its first public beta of OS X Yosemite. The public-beta program, announced during Apple’s annual developer conference in June, lets regular users download and test pre-release versions of OS X. Apple says the first million users to sign up at the OS X Beta Program website will be able to test Yosemite before the OS is released to the general public in the fall. [...]

When Yosemite is finished, users will be upgraded to the final version automatically, also via the Software Update feature within the App Store app.

Just as a reminder, OS X Yosemite is still software that is under development, so apps and services may not work as expected some (or all) of the time. It’s always wise to back up your Mac before installing, and you should seriously consider installing Yosemite on a Mac that you don’t use for day-to-day operations just in case something goes wrong.

Good advice. Judging by the developer betas, Yosemite is in good shape for a beta, but that is not the same thing as being in good shape for production use.

Making It Easy ★

Remember that phone call last week, where Veronica Belmont and Ryan Block simply could not get a Comcast “Retention professional” to cancel their account? Consumerist obtained an internal memo from Comcast COO Dave Watson, which reads in part (emphasis mine):

That said, it was painful to listen to this call, and I am not surprised that we have been criticized for it. Respecting our customers is fundamental, and we fell short in this instance. I know these Retention calls are tough, and I have tremendous admiration for our Retention professionals, who make it easy for customers to choose to stay with Comcast.

That is literally just another way of saying that their job is to make it difficult to leave Comcast. It’s somehow more obnoxious though, that he phrases it so euphemistically.

The History of Autocorrect ★

Gideon Lewis-Kraus, writing for Wired Gadget Lab:

On idiom, some of its calls seemed fairly clear-cut: gorilla warfare became guerrilla warfare, for example, even though a wildlife biologist might find that an inconvenient assumption. But some of the calls were quite tricky, and one of the trickiest involved the issue of obscenity. On one hand, Word didn’t want to seem priggish; on the other, it couldn’t very well go around recommending the correct spelling of mothrefukcer. Microsoft was sensitive to these issues. The solution lay in expanding one of spell-check’s most special lists, bearing the understated title: “Words which should neither be flagged nor suggested.”

Mi 3 Product Page Rips Off Aperture Icon ★

Scroll down on the Mi 3 “features” page and you’ll see this image, named “detail-camera.jpg”. (Cached version, for when Mi pulls the original.) Take a good look at the camera in that image, then look at the app icon for the current version of Aperture. (Cached.) It’s a simple copy-paste-skew job of the lens, and not a very good one. Two panels down on the page, they use it again, horizontally flipped. (Shockingly, they cropped out the “Designed by Apple in California”.)

Now re-read this.

Digital Tattoo for Moto X ★

Is this a joke? This is a joke, right?

Hello? What.

Tuesday, 22 July 2014

Microsoft Misses on Earnings Due to Nokia ★

I don’t think anyone should be surprised by this — if the Nokia acquisition is going to work out well, it’s going to take a while. Still looking like a very big “if”, though.

Mi Too ★

Vlad Savov, The Verge:

Barra is only a year into his job as leader of Mi’s internationalization efforts, but he’s already “sick and tired” of hearing his company derided as an Apple copycat. He sees Mi as “an incredibly innovative company” that never stops trying to improve and refine its designs, and the allegations of it copying Apple are “sweeping sensationalist statements because they have nothing better to talk about.”

This was apparently said with a straight face by an executive from the company that put up this slide at the end of a product introduction event today.

Speaking of Beautiful Dented and Scratched Machines ★

Everyone is calling this “the new X-Wing”, but I’m not sure the wings open into an X. Looks cool though, and it’s great to see them going back to practical special effects.

Update: It’s definitely an X-Wing. Here’s a tweet illustrating how the S-foils open. Even better, this new X-Wing hews closely to Ralph McQuarrie’s original design. Awesome.

Matthew Panzarino on the ‘Stickers’ Ad ★

Matthew Panzarino:

Bangs and dents mean these things get used. It emphasizes the reliability of the MacBook Air by showing that some of them have scuffs and scrapes. It’s rare in that it shows Apple products in a non-retail-box condition. The only recent personalization example I can find is iPhones in cases, which are shown in its ‘Powerful’ ads — but those don’t show any actual ‘damage’. The way Apple products look after customization and ‘real world’ use isn’t often represented in Apple ads. As Jeff Carlson points out, these are likely someone’s real machines.

Scrollbar History ★

Speaking of the old six-color Apple logo, some interesting UI design history from Jack Wellborn at Worms and Viruses:

While watching the video, I couldn’t help but notice two snippets at the 7:36 mark from 1982 about scroll bars. First, an Apple engineer shows how scrolling works in the Lisa, followed immediately by a similar demo from Xerox. This juxtaposition immediately struck me as interesting because Apple detractors are quick to reference Xerox Parc when dismissing the graphical interface innovations of the Lisa and Macintosh. While there is no denying Xerox’s influence, these two snippets perfectly illustrate massive amounts of design and refinement championed by Apple during that era. Read for yourself.

People who think UI design is easy might think the differences here are trivial; those who know that UI design is difficult know otherwise.

New MacBook Air Commercial: ‘Stickers’ ★

Fun commercial, but the thing that really grabbed my attention is that this is the first time in recent memory — a decade? maybe longer? — that Apple has used their classic six-color logo, even if only briefly. Nice to see it.

People have been decorating their laptops with stickers and decals ever since they became consumer products. (You didn’t see many stickers on them when they cost $5,000.) And I don’t think we need to commission a demographic survey to state that younger people are more likely to do this than older people. It’s no coincidence this spot is debuting in back-to-school season.

In the old days Apple didn’t have to worry about conformance. Just owning a Mac made you stand out from the crowd. But what happens now, when everyone you know has a MacBook, and every MacBook looks the same? Something like this commercial is what happens. It’s all of a piece, along with Apple’s Beats acquisition and the market for iPhone cases: self-expression.

Monday, 21 July 2014

‘Count to Ten When a Plane Goes Down’ ★

John C. Beck:

Just a little under 31 years ago, I played a key role in a conspiracy theory that grew up around a passenger plane downed by a Russian missile. Trust me, I did not mean to be involved.

Great story.

Podcast Players: The New UI Design Playground ★

Nice post from Supertop, the duo behind the excellent Castro:

By making Overcast free with in app purchase, Marco has lowered the barrier to trying a third party app. From our perspective, a user trying any third party app is good for all third party apps. If a user is persuaded to download one alternative they should be more likely to consider others in the future, especially given the variety of apps that are available. Marco referred to this diversity in his Macstories interview:

With a podcast app […] there are tons of big and small design and priority decisions that each developer makes along the way. These decisions add up to radically different apps — I can’t point to any two podcast apps in the store today that are very similar to each other in actual use.

I encourage you to try Overcast. In fact, if you really love podcasts, I encourage you to try all the others too. If you spend hours listening to podcasts every week, it’s going to be worth your while to find the app that suits you best.

Back in 2009 I wrote a piece titled “Twitter Clients Are a UI Design Playground”:

There are several factors that make Twitter a nearly ideal playground for UI design. The obvious ones are the growing popularity of the service itself and the relatively small scope of a Twitter client. Twitter is such a simple service overall, but look at a few screenshots of these apps, especially the recent ones, and you will see some very different UI designs, not only in terms of visual style but in terms of layout, structure, and flow. I’m not saying it’s easy to write a good Twitter client. In fact, that’s the point — that it is not easy to write a good client for something as small in scope as Twitter hints at just how hard it is to write a good app for anything, let alone something truly complex.

Less obvious is the fact that different people seek very different things from a Twitter client. TweetDeck, for example, is clearly about showing more at once. Tweetie is about showing less. That I prefer apps like Tweetie and Twitterrific doesn’t mean I think they’re better. There is so much variety because various clients are trying to do very different things. Asking for the “best Twitter client” is like asking for the “best shirt”.

I think the same is true of podcast players today.

Mocast 1.0 ★

New $2.99 iPhone podcast player by Frank Krueger. By bizarre coincidence, it launched the same day as Overcast, so it might have gotten lost in the Overcast shuffle. It’s a different take. Krueger writes:

I wrote Mocast because I was unhappy with the iOS podcast app selection. While there are almost as many iPhone podcast players as there are weather apps, I find that they all have two fatal flaws.

First, they take downloads way too seriously. Most UIs differentiate downloaded vs. not downloaded episodes and bifurcate their interface along those lines. This is silly to us podcastistas who aren’t the greatest at planning ahead.

Second, they take new episodes too seriously. Whole apps seem built with only new episodes in mind as they hide away the back catalog. I don’t know why this is. My favorite podcast, The Incomparable has an amazingly rich back catalog of episodes that I love to listen to. It’s nice when a new episode arrives but there’s no need over-emphasize them at the cost of the full catalog.

Interesting technical note, too:

As with all my apps, I wrote Mocast in C# using Xamarin.iOS. She came out to be about 8,000 LOC with about 60% of that code lying in the UI layer.

George Orwell: ‘Politics and the English Language’ ★

One more follow-up regarding the connection between clear thinking and clear writing: Orwell’s famous essay, Politics and the English Language:

A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: What am I trying to say? What words will express it? What image or idiom will make it clearer? Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? And he will probably ask himself two more: Could I put it more shortly? Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly? But you are not obliged to go to all this trouble. You can shirk it by simply throwing your mind open and letting the ready-made phrases come crowding in. They will construct your sentences for you — even think your thoughts for you, to a certain extent — and at need they will perform the important service of partially concealing your meaning even from yourself. It is at this point that the special connection between politics and the debasement of language becomes clear.

I’ve read this essay numerous times, and it never gets old.

‘Mission Statement’ ★

As if right on cue given my aside last week on Satya Nadella’s business-jargon-laden company-wide memo, here’s a new song (and cool video) from Weird Al Yankovic.

(Another new song from Yankovic, “Word Crimes”, is also apt.)

Saturday, 19 July 2014

The Talk Show: ‘Cat Pictures’ ★

New double-sided LP episode of The Talk Show, with special guest Marco Arment. (You can get through the whole thing in a hour if you’re using Smart Speed in Overcast.)

Friday, 18 July 2014

DF RSS Feed Sponsorship Openings ★

Speaking of DF RSS feed sponsors, the next few weeks are open on the schedule. Get in touch if you have a cool product or service you want to promote to DF’s discerning audience.

Update, Sunday evening: This coming week is still open. If you can pull the trigger quickly, let’s make a deal.

Faded — Simply Beautiful Mobile Photography ★

My thanks to Vintage Noir for sponsoring this week’s DF RSS feed to promote Faded, their excellent all-in-one photo app for the iPhone. Faded includes gorgeous film-inspired effects and some of the most powerful iPhone editing tools currently available. Easy enough for amateurs, with simple but truly beautiful one-tap filters; powerful enough for serious photographers with detailed editing controls.

I know there’s a ton of photo apps for the iPhone, but Faded really does stand out. It’s been featured by Apple on the App Store as a “Best New App”, and Dan Rubin listed it in his list of ten best iPhone photo apps for The Guardian a few weeks ago.

Check out their website to see it in action, and download the app for just $0.99 — one buck! — on the App Store.

‘Looks by Dr. Dre’ ★

Khoi Vinh:

If you take a look at Beats’ headphones product catalog, it looks a lot closer to, say, the Nixon watches catalog than any catalog of technology products. Beats’ headphones, like Nixon’s watches, are oriented such that the primary selection criteria are looks and style; you’ve got to wade through those before you decide which model you want. By contrast, on Apple’s site, you’ve got to choose your model before you can choose your style — or, put another way, you choose what you want it do, first, and then you get to choose what you want it to look like.

These differences reflect fundamentally distinct ways of thinking about products, or more importantly, fundamentally distinct ways of thinking about what customers want.

Thursday, 17 July 2014

Taligent and the Ignominious History of Apple/IBM Alliances ★

It somehow slipped my mind yesterday, but Bill Campbell’s departure made me recall Taligent, the ill-fated “universal operating system” boldly promised and jointly developed by Apple and IBM back in the early 1990s. (Campbell had nothing to do with it; he re-joined Apple as a board member in 1997 after the NeXT reunification. Taligent was one of several pie-in-the-sky fiascos that left Apple in such desperate straits that they had to buy NeXT.) Wikipedia:

Pink was then spun off from Apple as a joint project known as Taligent. The original Apple team was expanded with the addition of a very small number of IBM engineers, as well as a new CEO from IBM, Joe Guglielmi (apparently to the distaste of many of the Apple people).

“In 1992, the earth shook: IBM and Apple clasped hands and pronounced themselves allies. From this union sprang Taligent, a small Cupertino, California, company that’s now developing nothing less than a universal operating system.” —Macworld, 1994

During its first year, IBM persuaded Taligent to replace its internally developed object-oriented microkernel, called Opus, with the microkernel that IBM was using as the base for IBM’s Workplace OS. The change in underlying technology had both positive and negative aspects. On the positive side, Pink would become a personality on top of the IBM Workplace OS. This would create easy migration paths between OS/2, AIX, Mac OS, and Pink by allowing any combination of operating system personalities to run simultaneously on a single computer. On the negative side, this created issues over how to integrate Taligent’s object-oriented device-driver model with Workplace OS’s procedural device-driver model.

The “positive side” was a total pipe dream.

The other previous Apple/IBM collaboration that springs to mind is the PowerPC platform. That was no fiasco, and even saw some good years, but ultimately ended badly. Just two years after Apple’s grand announcement of the G5 CPU, Apple announced it was switching to Intel processors.

Tim Cook Tells WSJ He Does 80 Percent of His Work on iPad ★

Daisuke Wakabayashi, reporting yesterday on the Apple/IBM team-up:

Apple Inc. Chief Executive Tim Cook says he does 80% of the work of running the world’s most valuable company on an iPad.

“There’s no reason why everyone shouldn’t be like that,” Mr. Cook said in an interview, explaining why Apple struck a partnership with International Business Machines Corp. to develop applications catered to big businesses, or enterprises. “Imagine enterprise apps being as simple as the consumer apps that we’ve all gotten used to. That’s the way it should be.”

I’m sure “80 percent” is a rough guess, perhaps even somewhat exaggerated in the iPad’s favor, but there’s a dogfooding aspect to Tim Cook being a heavy iPad user who uses it for actual work.

Here’s my question (prompted by this thread on Twitter): Does IBM CEO Ginni Rometty use an iPhone? I don’t think it’s a deal-breaker if she doesn’t, but I do think it matters if she does — it’s an “actions speak louder than words” thing. Commitment and vision start at the top.

Update: Perfect counterexample: Google chairman (and long-time CEO) Eric Schmidt admitting to still using a BlackBerry — a BlackBerry! — last year.

Update 2: Horace Dediu: “I received confirmation that she uses iPhone, iPad and Mac and has for several years.” So there we go: the CEO of IBM apparently uses iOS devices and a Mac.

Sue Wagner Joins Apple’s Board; Bill Campbell Retires ★

Apple PR:

“Sue is a pioneer in the financial industry and we are excited to welcome her to Apple’s board of directors,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “We believe her strong experience, especially in M&A and building a global business across both developed and emerging markets, will be extremely valuable as Apple continues to grow around the world.”

“We conducted an exhaustive search for someone who would further strengthen our board’s breadth of talent and background, and we are delighted to have identified such an outstanding individual,” said Art Levinson, Apple’s chairman. “I’m confident that Sue is going to make an important and positive impact on our company.”

Makes me wonder if the Beats deal is the start of a trend toward larger acquisitions by Apple.

Bill Campbell’s relationship with Apple dates back to 1983, when he joined the company as vice president of Marketing. Next to Apple co-founders Steve Jobs and Mike Markkula, Campbell is the longest-serving board member in the company’s history.

“Bill’s contributions to Apple are immeasurable and we owe him a huge debt of gratitude. On behalf of the board and the entire company, I want to thank him for being a leader, a mentor and a friend,” said Cook. “When Bill joined Apple’s board, the company was on the brink of collapse. He not only helped Apple survive, but he’s led us to a level of success that was simply unimaginable back in 1997.”

Apple share prices hovered around $0.80 (split-adjusted) in August 1997, when Campbell joined the board. They closed today at $93. Not a bad run for a board member.

Trip ‘Claim’ Chowdhry Prediction of the Week ★

Famed analyst Trip Chowdhry, two days ago:

IBM is only 2 days away from their earnings announcement, while AAPL is only 1.5 weeks away from their earnings announcement. The timing of this announcement makes us feel that IBM will very likely miss their revenue expectations and probably Apple may also miss their revenue expectations.

IBM’s actual results, today:

International Business Machines reported a second quarter boost in net income and revenue that topped Wall Street forecasts.

IBM reported non-GAAP diluted earnings per share of $4.32 off revenue of $24.4 billion. Both numbers beat analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg.

(Thanks to Brian Resac. Also, no surprise that Trip Chowdhry thinks Apple is going to report a miss this quarter: he’s on the record as predicting that they’re going “to disappear” because they didn’t release a wristwatch last month.)

‘Hello There’ ★

Amir Mizroch, writing for the WSJ:

While layoffs at Microsoft were expected for some time, the size of the job cuts announced Thursday took some by surprise. Another surprise: the salutation of an email to all staff from Microsoft Executive Vice President Stephen Elop, outlining the rationale for the cuts.

“Hello There,” started Elop’s email to employees.

Hello there? Critics on social media seized on the opening as tone deaf.

Anyone else feel like maybe Stephen Elop should be one of the 18,000 layoffs?

Blogger Fined by French Court Because Negative Restaurant Review Was Too Prominent in Google ★

Greg Sterling, writing for Search Engine Land:

Doudet could appeal the decision but has decided not to because she did “not want to relive weeks of anguish,” according to the BBC.

There are two contexts in which this story can be analyzed: 1) the futility of trying to use the courts to attack or quash negative reviews and 2) European courts’ increasingly bold attempts to blunt the impact of or censor specific search results that are perceived to cause harm (whether or not the information at issue is truthful or factual).

On the first point the restaurant has gained much more unwanted attention for itself through the action and subsequent coverage. I wouldn’t be surprised now if it went out of business. However, the food and service appear to be mediocre; so perhaps it’s inevitable anyway.

To my American ears, this sounds absolutely crazy.

Mini-Microsoft: ‘Cut Once, Cut Deep, Cut Quickly’ ★

Mini-Microsoft on today’s Microsoft layoff announcement:

That’s why I hope that Cut Quickly happens. Without it, we’re back to our first layoff experience. If anything broke the back of this blog, it was the first big Microsoft layoff back in 2009. How? How could the realization of a step towards Mini-Microsoft do that? Because it was implemented so poorly, with constant worries and concerns and doubts about engaging in new ideas due to expectations those would be the easiest to trim during ongoing cut-backs. When was it over? When was the “all clear” signal given?

So if this truly drags on for a year: we need a new leader. This needs to be wrapped up by the end of July. 2014.

Charity: Waterworld ★

Mike Monteiro:

Did you know that almost a billion people on the planet don’t have access to clean drinking water? Every day, 5,000 kids die from water-related illnesses before they reach their fifth birthday. Which is bullshit. There are simple solutions like drilled wells, spring protections and BioSand filters that help provide clean water to communities around the world.

And the good people at charity: water are helping to make those solutions happen.

He’s trying to raise $10,000 for a truly great cause. I’m in.

The Last Hurrah for ‘At the Movies’ ★

Great piece by Ignatiy Vishnevetsky for The A.V. Club on co-hosting the final run of At the Movies, including an astute analysis of what made Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert so good at it.

Microsoft to Cut 18,000 Jobs, Including 12,500 From Nokia ★

Satya Nadella, in a company-wide memo (emphasis mine):

Of that total, our work toward synergies and strategic alignment on Nokia Devices and Services is expected to account for about 12,500 jobs, comprising both professional and factory workers. [...]

Our workforce reductions are mainly driven by two outcomes: work simplification as well as Nokia Devices and Services integration synergies and strategic alignment. [...]

We will realize the synergies to which we committed when we announced the acquisition last September. [...]

Seems like a lot of “synergies”. This style of communication is like reading a foreign language to me — I don’t understand what most of it means.

Update: Classic 30 Rock sketch on “synergy”. (Via Pavan Rajam.)

Wednesday, 16 July 2014

Making Sense of Apple and IBM ★

John Moltz:

An Apple and IBM partnership makes sense in the same way Apple selling its products through Walmart makes sense. Apple defended selling through Walmart by saying “Their stores are where ours aren’t.” The kinds of large enterprises where IBM has a presence are the places where Apple has the least penetration.

Overcast 1.0 ★

Marco Arment’s new podcast player for iPhone. Free to try, $4.99 to unlock all features. I’ve been using it for months in beta, and it’s really good. Looks great too, with Matthew Butterick’s Concourse as the custom UI font. See also:

Marco Arment’s post on Overcast’s creation.
Jason Snell’s review for Macworld.
Federico Viticci’s review for MacStories.
Update: Rene Ritchie’s review for iMore.

There are a bunch of existing podcast players for iOS, many of them quite popular. But like Marco, I was never quite satisfied with how any of them worked. Podcasts are a simple medium, but creating a good player is surprisingly difficult. (That’s usually the story for any type of app.)

Tim Cook and IBM CEO Ginny Rometty on Their Enterprise Partnership ★

Arik Hesseldahl, interviewing Cook and Rometty in Cupertino:

“If you were building a puzzle, they would fit nicely together with no overlap,” Cook said of the relationship. “We do not compete on anything. And when you do that you end up with something better than either of you could produce yourself.”

Calling Apple the “gold standard for consumers,” Rometty said the team-up will allow the two giants to address significant opportunities facing large businesses. “We will get to remake professions and unlock value that companies don’t yet have,” she said. “We’re addressing serious issues that before this had been inhibiting deployment of wireless in the enterprise.”

I’ve been trying to understand why Apple is treating this as such a big deal, and I’ve come away with two things:

iOS devices are being used in 98 percent of Fortune 500 companies, but Cook’s comments suggest strongly that Apple could be selling a lot more of them. That the threshold for being counted as part of that 98 percent is low, and now that Apple has a foot in the door, they trust IBM to open the floodgates. The first step was getting iOS into a large percentage of big corporations; the next step is getting a higher percentage of the mobile devices in those companies to be iOS devices.
It’s easy to focus on the iPhone, because the iPhone accounts for over half of Apple’s revenue and profit. But if this IBM/enterprise initiative works out, I suspect it will be at least as much about the iPad. iPhones will come along for the ride, but the shift could be about enterprises switching from Windows PCs to iPads — not for every employees, and maybe not even for most. But it’s about finding those places where a touchscreen tablet is a better form factor than a clamshell notebook.

Ryan Block and Veronica Belmont Attempt to Cancel Comcast Internet Service ★

Truly Comcastic customer service. Almost surreal.

Update: Today’s daily cartoon at The New Yorker is apt.

Tuesday, 15 July 2014

Apple and IBM Announce Enterprise Partnership ★

I’d be more excited about this if they’d included this photo in the press release.

Update: Leave it to Darth.

‘Now Batting for the Yankees, Number 2, Derek Jeter. Number 2.’ ★

This whole spot from Nike is just terrific, but opening it with Bob Sheppard’s player intro for Jeter is just perfect. Nice tribute site here, too.

Monday, 14 July 2014

Always Take the Cosine ★: John Moltz on analyst projections for “iWatch” sales.
Decoded ★: Greg Cox:

I was very excited when I read Satya Nadella’s recent public email message about his direction for Microsoft. I left the company in early 2010, frustrated with its direction. The email seemed to confirm what I had hoped about his appointment as CEO.

Then I saw Jean-Louis Gassée’s critique of the message and realized that I had read Satya’s words through Microsoft goggles. Having lived the internal corporate process that takes a few strong, simple ideas and makes them into thousands of words of compromised language, I had subconsciously decoded his message.
Microsoft’s New CEO Needs an Editor ★: Jean-Louis Gassée:

Tortured statements from CEOs, politicians, coworkers, spouses, or suppliers, in no hierarchical order, mean one thing: I have something to hide, but I want to be able to say I told you the facts.

Saturday, 12 July 2014

Manything ★

My thanks to Manything for sponsoring this week’s DF RSS feed. Manything is a free app that turns your iPad, iPod Touch, or old iPhone into a cloud-enabled video monitoring camera.

Manything offers continuous cloud recording and instant setup. You can watch live streams remotely and have motion-activated alerts, with advanced motion detection thresholds and zones. They’ve even added IFTTT integration, which allows you to trigger recording automatically when you leave home and a whole lot more.

Manything is a really clever way to repurpose an old iOS device (or even a new one, like the updated $199 iPod Touch that now has dual cameras). Watch the video on their website to learn more, or just go ahead and download the free app from the App Store to see for yourself.

Friday, 11 July 2014

The Talk Show: ‘Free Alcoholic Beverages’ ★: The week’s episode of my podcast, with special guest Ben Thompson. Topics include Samsung, Xiaomi, wearables, and more.
More Regarding National Federation of the Blind and Apple ★: Mark A. Riccobono, president of the National Federation of the Blind:

I thought the chatter around the resolution would fade away until some media reports made inaccurate assertions about the resolution, its content, and what actions the NFB will take to carry it out. Many of these inaccurate assertions have been fueled by a provocative and poorly reported article from the Reuters news service, linked here only for reference. [...]

Let me start by laying out some background for the resolution. In the wake of its commitment to making iTunes and iTunes U accessible to blind users, Apple has gone far beyond the scope of that original agreement and made the vast majority of its products accessible to the blind. It has done so by incorporating VoiceOver, a powerful screen reader, into the majority of its products, including its Mac computers, the Apple iPhone and iPad, and Apple TV. The native apps on these devices are accessible, and Apple has set forth developer guidelines that allow third-party apps to be made accessible. Many of the 1.2 million (and counting) apps available in the iOS app store have a high degree of accessibility for blind users. Many more, however, are not. In addition, a recurring problem is that when apps are updated to new versions, blind users find that accessibility has been compromised, either deliberately or accidentally. With no way to revert to a previous version of the app, the blind user must simply hope that the developer rectifies the problem quickly. No one seriously disputes that these problems cause blind iPhone users a great deal of frustration, and that they sometimes result in real threats to a blind person’s education, productivity, or employment. Smartphones, tablets, and other portable devices are increasingly replacing desktop computers in educational and employment settings, making access to apps intended for such devices not merely convenient but often essential.
Swift Blog ★: More signs that Apple is loosening up: they’ve started a blog for Swift and they’ve made the Xcode 6 beta a free download for anyone — no paid developer account required.

Thursday, 10 July 2014

Pinboard Turns Five ★

Maciej Ceglowski:

Perspective does not make you immune to burnout. It just makes burnout less scary. I’ve gone through a few episodes since starting Pinboard, and I’m sure there will be more to come. People have been very understanding about my occasional need to flee the Internet. I find that the longer I run the site, the more resistant I become to the idea of ever giving it up, even if I need to take the occasional break. It is pleasant to work on something that people draw benefit from. It is especially pleasant to work on something lasting. And I enjoy the looking-glass aspect of our industry, where running a mildly profitable small business makes me a crazy maverick not afraid to break all the rules.

Android, iOS, and Accessibility ★

Chris Hofstader, back in September:

If a blind person, like me for instance, wants what Apple is selling, he can purchase an iOS device and find that, out-of-the-box, there are zero accessibility failures. A blind person who purchases an iOS device, can make his own decisions as to which features he wants to use as Apple provides accessibility to 100% of the features available to people who do not self identify as having a disability.

After posting the article yesterday, I received a lot of tweets and a couple of emails from blind Android enthusiasts. These people told me all of the cool things they can do with their Android devices, including launching accessibility out-of-the-box on some android units, something I had thought impossible when I wrote the article yesterday. If a blind person, let’s say me, wants what Google is selling, he will get a subset of the features available to our sighted friends. To me, if the OS vendor does not make 100% of its features accessible in the same way that Apple has with iOS 7, it may be usable but it’s not accessible. At the same time, I completely reject Google for having the hubris to decide what blind people do and do not want.

According to Reuters, Apple is the one “feeling the most heat” from accessibility advocates.

The Power of Selective Quoting ★

Christina Farr, reporting for Reuters, “Advocates for Blind, Deaf Want More From Apple”, the gist of which is that the National Federation of the Blind is considering litigation to force Apple to require all apps in the App Store to be fully accessible:

Still, advocates of the disabled want the problem solved by the company at the center of the app world — Apple. Rival Google Inc, whose Android operating system drives more phones than Apple, is also under pressure, but as the creator of the modern smartphone and a long-time champion for the blind, Apple is feeling the most heat.

A few things in this article stuck out to me as oddly slanted. First, in what world does the above paragraph make sense? Why should Apple be “feeling more heat” than Google on the accessibility front? Where does the article state that iOS is far ahead of Android in terms of out-of-the-box accessibility for the vision impaired? (It doesn’t.)

Then there’s this quote from Tim Cook:

Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook in a 2013 speech at Auburn University described people with disabilities “in a struggle to have their human dignity acknowledged.” He said, “They’re frequently left in the shadows of technological advancements that are a source of empowerment and attainment for others.”

That sounds odd. Jim Dalrymple transcribed the full quote from Cook’s speech (video), emphasis mine:

“People with disabilities often find themselves in a struggle to have their human dignity acknowledged, they frequently are left in the shadows of technological advancements that are a source of empowerment and attainment for others, but Apple’s engineers push back against this unacceptable reality, they go to extraordinary lengths to make our products accessible to people with various disabilities from blindness and deafness to various muscular disorders.”

Reuters’s truncation completely changes the meaning of Cook’s words.

‘Speaking Up Every. Fucking. Time.’ ★

Elizabeth Spiers profiles (sort of) Shanley Kane, founder/editor of Model View Culture.

Wednesday, 9 July 2014

Joanna Stern Reviews the LG and Samsung Android Wear Watches ★

Joanna Stern:

I just wish the software were as smart about notifications. Android Wear is designed to transmit all your phone’s notifications to your watch. For someone like me, who gets a lot of mail, tweets and Facebook comments, that’s a lot of wrist buzzing.

When it comes to this topic, there are two types of people, Google’s director of Android engineering, David Singleton, told me. There are those who “love to have exactly the same content on their phone and watch because it gives them the comfort that they don’t need to pull out their phones,” he said. Then there are those, including me, who want a watch to report just what’s important.

For that second user, there’s simply not enough customization yet. Either I get buzzed every time someone emails me, or I don’t get any email alerts at all. Sure, the watch helps me look at my phone less, but I’d prefer a middle ground, where my wrist vibrates only when my editor or fiancée emails me.

There’s clearly a lot of potential with Google Now and wearable devices. That plays to Google’s strengths in voice input and ambient knowledge. But the notification system and overall UI navigation seems like a half-baked mess, and the hardware is clunky and needs daily charging. These strike me as devices that have been rushed to market.

(Don’t miss the video, which includes footage of Stern trying to wear the Galaxy Gear to her best friend’s wedding.)

Tuesday, 8 July 2014

Apple Hires Sales Executive From Tag Heuer ★

Vanessa Friedman, reporting for the NYT:

Just as the couture shows really get underway in Paris, an executive from LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, a.k.a. the biggest French luxury group (and, for that matter, the biggest luxury group in the world), has been lured away from the fashion capital to the technology capital of Silicon Valley. Patrick Pruniaux, until last week sales vice president for Tag Heuer, one of LVMH’s most successful watch brands, is this week joining Apple in an unspecified role. [...]

Certainly Mr. Pruniaux’s appointment solidifies the theory that Apple is looking to the luxury market for strategic and aesthetic know-how. He becomes the third luxury executive to jump sectors since last year, after Paul Deneve of YSL and Angela Ahrendts of Burberry (now Apple’s head of retail and online stores).

I’d include Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre in that group — not because I think Beats is a “luxury” brand, but because I don’t think luxury is the right word to explain these hires. It’s about taste, style, and branding. In one word: fashion.

The iPhone is nothing like Vertu, and whatever new products Apple is coming out with won’t be either. (Beats isn’t like Vertu either — I see people wearing Beats on the street every day. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone using a Vertu phone.)

Lettersapp.com Domain Name Auction for App Camp for Girls ★

A good domain name (R.I.P.) and a great cause.

Smart Devices/Dumb Cloud vs. Dumb Devices/Smart Cloud ★

Benedict Evans:

I’ve said before that Apple’s approach is about a dumb cloud enabling rich apps while Google’s is about devices as dumb glass that are endpoints of cloud services. That’s going to lead to rather different experiences, and to ever more complex discussions within companies as to what sort of features they create across the two platforms and where they place their priorities. It also changes somewhat the character of the narrative that the generic shift of computing from local devices to the cloud is a structural problem for Apple, since what we mean, exactly, when we say ‘cloud’ on smartphones needs to be unpicked rather more.

Nailed it. My only quibble is that Evans addresses the future of smartphones specifically, whereas I think this applies to all computing devices, regardless of size.

Ben Thompson: ‘Smartphone Truths and Samsung’s Inevitable Decline’ ★

Great piece by Ben Thompson:

Ultimately, though, Samsung’s fundamental problem is that they have no software-based differentiation, which means in the long run all they can do is compete on price. Perhaps they should ask HP or Dell how that goes.

Actually, it’s even worse than that. Samsung does offer its own software: TouchWiz, etc. But the overwhelming consensus from reviewers is that Samsung’s add-ons to Android make the system worse, not better. Samsung sees the need for software differentiation, but to date they’ve proven incapable of doing it well.

In fact, it turns out that smartphones really are just like PCs: it’s the hardware maker with its own operating system that is dominating profits, while everyone else eats themselves alive to the benefit of their software master.

Relevant piece from the DF archive, circa 2009: “Herd Mentality”.

Monday, 7 July 2014

Bloomberg: ‘Samsung Sees Phone Rebound After Earnings Miss Estimates’ ★

That’s the current headline from Bloomberg. Look at the URL slug to see the original: “Samsung Profit Misses Estimates as Cheap Phones Struggle”.

Tim Cook Damned if He Does, Damned if He Doesn’t ★

From a mostly pointless Daisuke Wakabayashi piece on Tim Cook in today’s WSJ:

Mr. Cook has pledged that Apple will enter a new product category later this year. People familiar with the company’s plans say that Apple is working on a smartwatch with advanced sensors to track a user’s fitness and health. Apple is expected to introduce the new device, as well as a larger iPhone, in the fall, these people said.

One challenge facing Mr. Cook is what Wall Street calls the law of large numbers: even a successful new product may barely move the needle for Apple, which generated $171 billion in revenue in the fiscal year ended last September. A flop could underscore that Apple’s product heydays are tied to the late Mr. Jobs. [...]

Mr. Jobs’s repudiations bruised feelings while making sure the company stayed focused on a few projects. Under Mr. Cook, current and former employees say Apple may be spreading itself too thin, pursuing too many ideas and compromising the “laser focus” that Mr. Jobs used to create the iMac, iPhone and iPad.

Last year Apple desperately needed new products and Tim Cook was failing as CEO because Apple wasn’t delivering them. Now that they seem poised to deliver new products, Cook is “spreading the company too thin” and even a successful product won’t affect the bottom line so why even bother, right?

Look for that refrain to be repeated; it seems to be the new Apple narrative.

Marques Brownlee: ‘This Is the Sapphire Crystal Display From the iPhone 6’ ★

Purported iPhone 6 component leak shows incredible scratch resistance and durability.

Update, 8 July 2014: Question that occurred to me about this today: This certainly looks like an iPhone component (if it’s not, it’s a preposterously elaborate hoax) — but how do we know this is sapphire, not Gorilla Glass? Gorilla Glass is scratch resistant and surprisingly flexible too (see 0:22 in this video).

New TSA Restrictions on Uncharged Devices on International Flights ★

NBC News:

The Transportation Security Administration will not allow cellphones or other electronic devices on U.S.-bound planes at some overseas airports if the devices are not charged up, the agency said on Sunday.

The new measure is part of the TSA’s effort announced last week to boost security amid concerns that Yemen-based al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and the Islamist Nusra Front, al Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria, are plotting to blow up an airliner, U.S. officials said.

Shouldn’t that second paragraph be unnecessary? Isn’t the entire point of the TSA that we assume there are people trying to blow up commercial airliners? And the airport is a common place for travelers to have their phones run out of power.

And isn’t the whole notion predicated on the assumption that a would-be terrorist couldn’t just pack the explosives into a laptop or other device that can still turn on the display?

The Paradox of Civilization ★

Alan Jacobs quotes a beautiful, thought-provoking passage from Claude Lévi-Strauss’s Tristes Tropiques. (Via Nicholas Carr.)

Recode: Google to Expand Shopping Express ★

Jason Del Ray, reporting for Recode:

Though Google over the years had experimented with letting consumers buy goods with the help of services such as Google Wallet and Google Checkout, it accelerated this strategy in 2013 with Shopping Express. The service lets shoppers buy things from local retail stores through Google, which then delivers them to consumers from the physical retail store on the same or next day.

A source familiar with the company’s plans says senior Google execs have set aside as much as $500 million to expand the service nationwide. Google declined to comment on the size of the investment but made no secret of its ambition.

The most striking thing about Google to me is that they’re taking on almost every single consumer-focused major company in tech. Every one. Android against iOS. Chrome and Docs against Windows and Office. Google Plus against Facebook. Google has no allies or partners for anything other than the manufacturing of Android and Chrome OS devices, but even there, they have a contentious relationship with Samsung, the one hardware company that’s making any actual money from Android.

Grand ambition or hubris? — that’s the question.

Saturday, 5 July 2014

Bellroy ★

My thanks to Bellroy for once again sponsoring the DF RSS feed. Bellroy is a new company that specializes in creating slim, stylish, functional wallets.

I’ve been using their Slim Sleeve model (in Cocoa) for the past few months, and it’s the best wallet I’ve ever used: looks great, feels great, and it’s very functional, with quick access to my most-used cards and room for a few more. All of our devices are getting thinner and thinner — why not get a slimmer wallet, too? Visit Bellroy’s online shop and see for yourself.

Fireworks 2014 ★

Cabel Sasser:

It’s my job — no, it’s my thrill — to find the weirdest, awkwardest, worst, clip-artiest, mis-translatediest, shoots-flaming-ballsiest fireworks packaging.

Welcome back, my friends. Happy 4th of July.

Thursday, 3 July 2014

‘Maybe Smartness Isn’t Enough’ ★

Avery Pennarun:

But I think Impostor Syndrome is valuable. The people with Impostor Syndrome are the people who aren’t sure that a logical proof of their smartness is sufficient. They’re looking around them and finding something wrong, an intuitive sense that around here, logic does not always agree with reality, and the obviously right solution does not lead to obviously happy customers, and it’s unsettling because maybe smartness isn’t enough, and maybe if we don’t feel like we know what we’re doing, it’s because we don’t.

Impostor Syndrome is that voice inside you saying that not everything is as it seems, and it could all be lost in a moment. The people with the problem are the people who can’t hear that voice.

I think this piece explains a lot.

xScope 4.0 ★

Ton of new features in this major update to The Iconfactory’s excellent Mac utility for “measuring, inspecting, and testing on-screen graphics and layouts”. Indispensable.

The Dark Side of .io ★

David Meyer, writing for GigaOm:

The .io country code top-level domain is pretty popular right now, particularly among tech startups that want to take advantage of the snappy input/output reference and the relative availability of names — Fusion.io, Wise.io and Import.io are just a few examples. But who benefits from the sale of .io domains? Sadly, not the people who ultimately should.

While .tv brings in millions of dollars each year for the tiny South Pacific island nation of Tuvalu, and .me benefits Montenegro, the people of the British Indian Ocean Territory, or the Chagos Islands, have no such luck. Indeed, profits from the sale of each .io domain flow to the very force that expelled the Chagossian or Ilois people from their equatorial land just a generation or two ago: the British government.

‘Lionel Messi Is Impossible’ ★

That’s the actual headline for this piece by Benjamin Morris for FiveThirtyEight. I saw it yesterday on Twitter, and skipped it, because of the hyperbolic absurdity. Lionel Messi is not impossible; he exists. I’d have clicked if the headline had even been something like “Lionel Messi Is Seemingly Impossible”.

I read it today, though, after Kottke linked it. Kottke I trust. But if he hadn’t linked it, I wouldn’t have read it, because when I saw it yesterday, I figured it was a bullshit article because of its headline. And I’m glad I read it, because it’s a fascinating and extraordinarily well-researched piece on the man who is very clearly the best soccer player in the world today.

There’s a boy-who-cried-wolf aspect to the modern art of click-bait headline writing. There are certain patterns that emerge, which I’m sure are statistically shown to work. For example, listicles typically no longer use round numbers like 5, 10, 15, 20 — instead, you see things like “17 Gay Celebs Who Pretend to Be Straight on TV” and “17 Facts That Will Forever Change the Way You Look at These Famous People”. (I didn’t make those up, I saw both of those today in the scammy Taboola links beneath an article on TPM.) I’m sure these tricks work, that there’s all sorts of analytics data that shows it — but no trick works forever. People inevitably catch on.

Apple Patent Application for Intelligent Location-Based Security ★

I typically don’t pay much attention to patent applications, and my advice has long been that we should not assume that everything Apple tries to patent will eventually come to market as shipping features. Apple, like most major tech companies, patents anything patentable. Apple decidedly does not ship everything shippable.

But this one is worthy of an exception. Location-based security for iOS has long been a hobby horse of mine. This patent describes a system that sounds exactly like what I’ve longed for: the ability to have my iOS devices turn on without a passcode while inside my home, but require a passcode or TouchID anywhere else.

Update: “Personal Unlocking”, a new feature coming in Android L, enables this same sort of thing.

Wednesday, 2 July 2014

75th Anniversary of Lou Gehrig’s Retirement Speech ★

75 years ago, Lou Gehrig — a man who played in 2,130 consecutive games, won six World Series titles, batted a career .340/.447/.632 (and batted .361/.477/.731 in his 34 World Series games) — was only 36 years old and dying from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

He stood in front of over 61,000 fans in Yankee Stadium and delivered this speech.

From the DF Archive: ‘Why Windows 8 Is Fundamentally Flawed as a Response to the iPad’ ★

Yours truly, three years ago:

Apple’s radical notion is that touchscreen personal computers should make severely different tradeoffs than traditional computers — and that you can’t design one system that does it all. Windows 8 is trying to have it all, and I don’t think that can be done. You can’t make something conceptually lightweight if it’s carrying 25 years of Windows baggage.

I hate* to say I told you so.

* Where by “hate” I mean “do so very much love”.

Windows ‘Threshold’ to Refocus on Desktop Users ★

John Moltz:

I know we’ve been over this again and again, but in addition to the conceptual flaw of trying to make one operating system for desktop and mobile, there’s a marketing problem as well. Apple was able to make iOS palatable to its existing customers (as well as others) by detaching it from OS X. If Apple had also forced its desktop operating system clients to a Springboard UI, everyone would still be on Tiger.

‘This Isn’t Just Adding Insult to Injury; It’s Adding Injury to Injury’ ★

Nick Summers, writing for Businessweek on Whitney Wolfe’s sexual harassment lawsuit against Tinder:

This conduct would be abhorrent directed at anyone. What gives these allegations even greater sting is Wolfe’s contention that she was not just any employee but a Tinder co-founder — and was stripped of the designation as a result of the treatment she endured. This isn’t just adding insult to injury; it’s adding injury to injury, since a co-founder of a hot startup can be expected to attract better career opportunities than someone who was a mere early employee.

Was Whitney Wolfe a co-founder of Tinder? I think the answer exposes a different, quieter, but no less punishing form of the sexism that is pervasive in the startup world.

Later:

None of the many men I spoke to had mentioned her name. In my notes is a single reference to “Whitney” — from a preliminary phone call with Rosette Pambakian, Tinder’s PR rep, who described her as one of five company co-founders. (Take note, Wolfe and IAC legal teams.)

Don’t miss the second and third pages of Summers’s story, which contain screenshots of blatantly racist and sexist posts from Justin Mateen’s now-private Instagram account.

Update: Look at the timeline, and consider just how long this situation was tolerated within Tinder. Tinder is not unique.

Tinder Co-Founder Files Sexual Harassment Lawsuit ★

Mary Emily O’Hara, reporting for Vice News:

At one point, Whitney Wolfe was promoted as Tinder’s “inventor” and co-founder in fashion magazines like Harper’s Bazaar. She named the app, and her marketing savvy was often cited as the reason it found an audience among young women. Her role in the company was widely touted as an exception to male-dominated startup culture.

According to the lawsuit, [Justin] Mateen told Wolfe, who was 24 years old at the time, that “he was taking away her ‘Co-Founder’ title because having a young female co-founder ‘makes the company seem like a joke’ and ‘devalues’ the company.” Mateen had also been designated a co-founder of the company despite joining after the fact, and argued that Wolfe’s title undermined him.

The suit says that Mateen spewed constant invective at Wolfe, often in front of colleagues, calling her (among other things) “disgusting,” a “desperate loser,” a “slut,” and a “whore.” It includes damning text messages from Mateen that further berated her. When Wolfe complained to Sean Rad, Tinder’s CEO, her concerns were ignored. She alleges that Rad eventually forced her out of the company because of the abusive situation with Mateen.

Read the original complaint filed by Wolfe’s attorney.

Apple Launches $49 Mac Pro Security Lock Adapter ★

New product categories in 2014: done.

Death Near for Plasma TVs ★

Nilay Patel:

The death of plasma is an incredible success story for LCD technology, but it’s also a sad reminder that disruption doesn’t always meant the best products win: no LCD TV has ever looked as good as the best plasma TVs. Just go down the list: Pioneer’s Kuro plasmas were so amazing that CNET still uses them as a review reference years after they were discontinued in 2008. Pioneer couldn’t make any money and sold the Kuro technology to Panasonic, whose high-end plasmas were widely considered the best until late last year, when the company stopped making them in favor of LCDs. (The remaining stock is in high demand; used 55-inch sets are selling for $3,000 and up on Amazon six months later.)

Sad news for anyone who cares about image quality. I’ve got a Pioneer from 2008, and love it. I’m generally appalled when I see LCD TVs, and never impressed.

Tuesday, 1 July 2014

Sharing in iOS 8 Explained ★

Rene Ritchie:

You no longer have to wait for or worry about Apple making — or not making — a specific partnership and integrating a specific service. Any service with an app on the app store can now get in on the sharing, and so can we.

Great layman’s explanation.

‘App: The Human Story’ ★

Kickstarter project for a terrific documentary feature film, from directors Jake Schumacher and Jedidiah Hurt:

App creation has become the new art form for our generation. This is the story of the cultural phenomenon that touches all our lives.

I sat for an interview with them while I was in San Francisco for WWDC last month, but I’m not promoting their Kickstarter because I’m in the cast. I sat for the interview because Jake and Jed are making a great movie, and I’m promoting their Kickstarter because I want this to be a huge success for them.

If you have any interest in apps as an art form and a new mass market medium of pop culture, you should back this film. I think it’s going to be great.