Linked List: January 5, 2015

Monday, 5 January 2015

The Talk Show: Star Wars Holiday Spectacular 

A brief chat about the Star Wars movies, with special guests John Siracusa and Guy English.

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Brand Deposits 

Via Sean Doran, a good analogy for Apple’s recent software quality problems. Apple’s “it just works” bank account is far from bankrupt, but the balance has been moving in the wrong direction recently.

Daniel Jalkut on Apple and ‘The Functional High Ground’ 

Daniel Jalkut, with a healthy reminder that we’ve seldom been lacking for serious complaints regarding Apple’s software quality:

And now it’s 2015, and in the immortal words of Kurt Cobain: “Hey! Wait! I’ve got a new complaint.” Don’t we all. A company like Apple, moving at a breakneck speed, will undoubtedly continue to give us plenty to obsess about, both positively and negatively. I’ve been following the company closely since my hiring in 1996. Since that time, the company has consistently produced nothing short of the best hardware and software in the world, consistently marred by nothing short of the most infuriating, most embarrassing, most “worrisome for the company’s future” defects.

The Functional High Ground 

Marco Arment, “Apple Has Lost the Functional High Ground”:

Apple’s hardware today is amazing — it has never been better. But the software quality has taken such a nosedive in the last few years that I’m deeply concerned for its future. I’m typing this on a computer whose existence I didn’t even think would be possible yet, but it runs an OS riddled with embarrassing bugs and fundamental regressions. Just a few years ago, we would have relentlessly made fun of Windows users for these same bugs on their inferior OS, but we can’t talk anymore.

“It just works” was never completely true, but I don’t think the list of qualifiers and asterisks has ever been longer. We now need to treat Apple’s OS and application releases with the same extreme skepticism and trepidation that conservative Windows IT departments employ.

It’s a very astute piece, well-worth the attention it’s getting. But regarding the headline — if they’ve “lost the functional high ground”, who did they lose it to? I say no one. Marco’s cited example of Geoff Wozniak switching back to desktop Linux is an outlier, not part of any significant trend.

The second paragraph I quote above is more to the point. Apple hasn’t (yet) lost any ground in the market, but they’ve created an opportunity for that to happen, because they’ve squandered a lot of trust with their users. It’s not that Apple has lost the “it just works” crown to a competitor, but rather that they’ve seeded a perception that Apple’s stuff doesn’t work, either.

Update: “Had I known that it would go as far as it did, I never would have written it.”.

Huge Sensationalist Says Something Ignorant 

Dan Lyons, settling in at his new gig at Valleywag:

The main thing to know about passionate Apple bloggers and podcasters like Marco Arment is that Rule Number 1 is that you never say anything bad about Apple. That’s why today the world of Apple lovers has been shaken to the core — because Marco Arment has violated the prime directive, and declared that Apple’s software, well, kind of blows.

What planet is Dan Lyons from? Marco Arment complains about Apple all the fucking time. So do his ATP co-hosts, John Siracusa and Casey Liss. Siracusa complains so much that his previous (and much-beloved) podcast was named “Hypercritical”.

The difference is not between those who write critically of Apple and those who don’t. The difference is between those whose criticism of Apple is reasoned, thoughtful, and accurate, and those whose criticism of Apple is hyperbolic bullshit.

I don’t agree with Marco’s piece entirely — more on that later — but it’s resonating because he’s largely correct, and it’s an important argument. I think Lyons knows this, and he chose to frame it his way (“fanblogger”?) deliberately because trolling is his (and Valleywag’s) game. But that shows a deep disrespect for his readers. And if he doesn’t know this — if he honestly believes that “Rule Number 1 is that you never say anything bad about Apple” — man, he’s got rocks rolling around between his ears.