Linked List: February 11, 2015

Wednesday, 11 February 2015

Great photos and a fascinating how-he-did-it video from Alex Cornell.

Almost No One Is Buying Android Wear Watches ★

Rolfe Winkler, writing for the WSJ’s Digits:

It’s been a slow start for Google’s smartwatches. Research firm Canalys says just 720,000 smartwatches powered by Android Wear, Google’s operating system for wearable devices, shipped in the last six months of 2014.

Shocker.

By comparison, Apple sold roughly 114 million iPhones over the same period. That means Apple sold almost as many iPhones each day as makers of Android smartwaches sold over the six months.

Interesting for perspective, but not exactly a fair comparison. Let’s see how the Apple Watch does.

New Rumor du Jour: Apple Is Working on a Car ★

Bryan Chaffin, writing for The Mac Observer:

But what I learned is that Apple has been looking for — and acquiring — the kind of people from Tesla with expertise that is most suited to cars. So much so that I went from being a doubter to a believer almost instantly.

From another source who travels in more rarified circles than yours truly, I also learned that a lot of people at the top in Silicon Valley consider it a given that Apple is working on a car. This is circumstantial, at best, but if you’re going to crowd-source wisdom, you could do a lot worse than polling the C-suite.

I should add that when I asked one of my sources flat out to put a percentage chance on Apple working on an actual car — rather than some kind of car-related technology — I was told, “80 percent.”

I know nothing of any such project, and my first thought when Business Insider started this rumor was to roll my eyes. If you wanted me to bet, I’d bet against it. But, two thoughts:

Cars are a huge industry. As with phones, just a few percent market share can lead to enormous profits, especially with a higher-end product.
I know a lot of people at Apple, at all levels of the company, who love watches. I also know many who love cars.

Typeface Mechanics: 001 ★

Tobias Frere-Jones:

This new series of posts will explore what I call “typeface mechanics”, the behind-the-scenes work that makes typefaces visually functional. It is what placates the stubborn oddities of human perception, helps or hinders the user, and informs long-standing conventions of design.

Anti-Theft ‘Kill Switches’ in iPhones Are Working ★

Sharon Bernstein, reporting for Reuters:

Thefts involving smartphones have declined dramatically in three major cities since manufacturers began implementing “kill switches” that allow the phones to be turned off remotely if they are stolen, authorities said on Tuesday.

The number of stolen iPhones dropped by 40 percent in San Francisco and 25 percent in New York in the 12 months after Apple Inc added a kill switch to its devices in September 2013. In London, smartphone theft dropped by half, according to an announcement by officials in the three cities.

(Via Jim Dalrymple.)

Transferring Games From a Nintendo 3DS to a New 3DS XL Requires a Screwdriver ★

Get your shit together, Nintendo.

The Rise of RadioShack ★

Harry McCracken, writing for Fast Company:

I’ll be sorry to see RadioShack go. But the thing is, consumer electronics retailing is an inherently fragile business. With the exception (so far) of Best Buy, every major national electronics chain has eventually collapsed, and usually a lot more quickly than RadioShack did. Its 84-year run was remarkable, especially the period that began after its first near-death experience in the early 1960s. Once the pain of the bankruptcy is over, we can go back to remembering the chain as the idiosyncratic, only-in-America success story that it once was.

RadioShack and the Decline of Leisure Time ★

Christopher Mims, writing for the WSJ:

In 1963, the year his company bought a nine-store chain then known by the two-word name Radio Shack, Charles D. Tandy explained to the New York Times why it made perfect sense for a retailer of do-it-yourself leather handicrafts to buy an electronics distributor.

“Leisure time is opening markets to us,” he told the Times. “The shorter workweek, human curiosity, idle hands — all offer opportunities in this business. Everyone’s spare time is our challenge.”

What Mr. Tandy couldn’t know was that the real challenge his company would eventually face was the slow erosion of the very leisure time his company profited from by filling.

Tim Cook at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference ★

Caitlin McGarry has a good summary of Tim Cook’s remarks yesterday, including news of an $850 million solar farm in Monterey County intended to supply power for Apple’s new campus.

Update: Serenity Caldwell typed a full transcript of Cook’s remarks for iMore, and Apple is hosting a recording of the session.

‘So the Opposite of Addiction Is Not Sobriety. It Is Human Connection.’ ★

Compelling piece by Johann Hari, author of a new book on the war against drugs:

The experiment is simple. Put a rat in a cage, alone, with two water bottles. One is just water. The other is water laced with heroin or cocaine. Almost every time you run this experiment, the rat will become obsessed with the drugged water, and keep coming back for more and more, until it kills itself.

The advert explains: “Only one drug is so addictive, nine out of ten laboratory rats will use it. And use it. And use it. Until dead. It’s called cocaine. And it can do the same thing to you.”

But in the 1970s, a professor of Psychology in Vancouver called Bruce Alexander noticed something odd about this experiment. The rat is put in the cage all alone. It has nothing to do but take the drugs. What would happen, he wondered, if we tried this differently? So Professor Alexander built Rat Park. It is a lush cage where the rats would have colored balls and the best rat-food and tunnels to scamper down and plenty of friends: everything a rat about town could want. What, Alexander wanted to know, will happen then?

In Rat Park, all the rats obviously tried both water bottles, because they didn’t know what was in them. But what happened next was startling.

The rats with good lives didn’t like the drugged water. They mostly shunned it, consuming less than a quarter of the drugs the isolated rats used. None of them died. While all the rats who were alone and unhappy became heavy users, none of the rats who had a happy environment did.