Linked List: May 26, 2015

Tuesday, 26 May 2015

Vox Media Acquires Recode in All-Stock Deal 

Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher, announcing the deal:

We are thrilled to announce that Re/code’s parent company, Revere Digital, is being wholly acquired by the highly respected digital-native media company Vox Media. This is the next big step in our mission to bring you quality tech journalism, because our work will now be amplified and enhanced by Vox Media’s deep and broad skill set.

We want to assure you that this combination is designed to bolster and enrich Re/code, and that we will continue to publish under the same name and leadership, with editorial independence. We will also continue to hold our signature Code conferences, and even add new ones, again with the same core team and the same philosophy.

Not sure what to make of this. Feel like I’ve felt that way about a lot of news the past few days.

This bit from the NYT report on the acquisition surprised me:

ReCode said it had 44 full-time employees and three contract employees. They were expected to join Vox, though Vox would not elaborate on potential staffing changes.

44 full-time employees sounds crazy for Recode.

Apple Drops discoveryd in Latest OS X Beta 

Benjamin Mayo, writing for 9to5Mac:

Looking at Activity Monitor on OS X 10.10 seed 4, discoveryd is no longer loaded by the system — instead relying on mDNSResponder. The ‘new’ process is really the one Apple used to use pre-Yosemite and did not have these problems.

It is still unclear why the change in the networking stack was ever made given that the old process worked so well and the new process had so many issues. There has been some speculation that the new stack is related to AirDrop and Handoff functionality although testing showed that these features still worked when the system was reverted back to the old process.

The saga of discoveryd is baffling to me. I would love to hear the backstory on how it shipped. And I still haven’t heard a plausible theory on what Apple was hoping to accomplish with it in the first place. What was the point of it?

And now to go back and abandon it after all this time? Someone at Apple is eating a lot of crow.

Filling the Green Circle 

Marco Arment:

Ever since getting the Apple Watch, not only have I been getting more consistent exercise, but I’m pushing myself further. I take more walks, and I walk faster and further than ever before. I’ve been walking Hops around the same streets for four years, but now I’ve been discovering new streets and paths just to extend our walking distance and try to beat my previous walks.

I’ve never cared before, but now, I care.

Seth Weintraub on Jony Ive’s Move to Chief Design Officer 

Good take from Seth Weintraub:

New position. Get two subordinates to handle the day-to-day operations and pack your bags? Not quite that easy. If Ive left Apple, he’d be betraying Steve Jobs and abandoning his power as the most influential designer in the world. But he also can’t run the iOS UI and hardware design teams over FaceTime. You simply can’t just ‘call in’ such an important role.

So there’s this compromise. Ive gets two subordinates to run his two incredibly important programs, then gets to spend a reasonable amount of time in the UK with his kids who then aren’t forced to grow up talking like Americans and pronouncing ‘aluminum’ like animals.

The Reverse Crown 

Craig Hockenberry:

Luckily, I had spent some time digging around in the settings in the Apple Watch app and remembered seeing some odd settings in General > Watch Orientation. The wrist selection is obvious enough, but being able to change the position of the digital crown had no obvious benefit. That is, until I tried it.

I like the default position of the crown, but I can see why Craig (and others) prefer it reversed.

Recode: ‘Twitter Has Held Talks to Acquire Flipboard’ 

Not sure how this acquisition would help either company — sounds like a deal just for the sake of making a deal.

Update: Here’s a loose theory, formed after reading a few very thoughtful emails from readers that were all along the same lines. Facebook is killing it — they’re thriving in every way that anyone would want them to. Twitter is measured against Facebook, and they come up (far) short both financially and in terms of active users. Twitter feels compelled to “do something, anything” over and over to ignite growth. And so blowing a billion dollars on the world’s best-looking, slickest-designed RSS aggregator is their next “something”.