Linked List: September 3, 2015

Thursday, 3 September 2015

Peter Kafka: Apple Discussed Podcast Deal With Bill Simmons 

Peter Kafka, writing for Recode:

And more recently, Apple showed interest in signing up former ESPN star Bill Simmons to an exclusive audio podcast deal. Apple media boss Eddy Cue discussed the idea a couple of times with Simmons this summer, say people familiar with the talks, who say that they were preliminary at best.

In July, Simmons ended up signing a “major exclusive multi-year, multi-platform agreement” with HBO; an HBO rep says that deal includes a podcast that should debut in October. It’s reasonable to assume that those podcasts will be available on Apple’s iTunes platform, as well as other outlets.

Interesting idea, but I wonder how the exclusivity would have worked? Would listeners have to use Apple’s Podcast app? Would they use DRM on the audio? If they didn’t, what would keep people from listening to the show using non-Apple devices? Podcasts have always been like websites — something anyone can consume using any app on any device. The complete opposite of “exclusive”.

SiriusXM has exclusive audio shows (most famously, Howard Stern), but to listen to them on your phone, you have to use their app, and their app is absolutely terrible. Update: Maybe that’s what Apple was thinking with Simmons — it wouldn’t be a “podcast” really, but a show you can listen to on Apple Music?

A Ruling for Tom Brady Ignores the Biggest Question 

William C. Rhoden, writing for the NYT:

The ruling clearly is a victory for the New England Patriots, for Brady, for the N.F.L. Players Association and for critics who argue Goodell has too often acted arbitrarily and hypocritically and even hamhandedly in administering discipline. But the decision did not address — because it was not asked to — the more important issue of sportsmanship that was at the heart of the suspension, and of what Brady knew about a supposed plan to deflate the footballs he used in last seasons A.F.C. championship game.

What a weird saga this whole deflate-gate thing is. Feels more like a storyline from pro wrestling than from a real sport.

Samsung’s Tizen-Based Gear S2 

Dan Seifert, writing for The Verge after some hands-on time with Samsung’s upcoming new watch:

The impressive things with the Gear S2 don’t end with its new design: Samsung’s actually figured out a really smart interaction model for smartwatches that I’m shocked no one else has done yet. There’s the touchscreen, yes, just like most other smartwatches, and the Gear S2 has a couple buttons on its side for home and back. But its real trick is in the rotating bezel, which lets you quickly and easily scroll through lists, apps, watch faces, and whatever else you might be looking at on the screen. It’s more predictable and intuitive than the Apple Watch’s Digital Crown and is a joy to use.

It does seem clever, and it’s a design that embraces the circular watch face.

The S2’s screen is colorful, sharp, and bright, and looked great in the few minutes I got to spend with the watch. It has an always on ambient mode — like many Android Wear watches — that makes it easy to quickly check the time. But this isn’t an Android Wear watch: it’s running Samsung’s proprietary Tizen platform. In the past, that was a huge red warning flag, but Samsung’s cleaned up its act, and the software on the Gear S2 is fast and intuitive. There are lots of different watch faces to choose from, including new “dynamic” faces that can update with various bits of information, and you can see all of your phone’s notifications and reply to incoming messages with canned responses, emoji, or text dictated by voice.

Some quick thoughts:

  • Using Tizen is huge. It separates Samsung from everyone using Android Wear, and gives them what Apple has: complete control over everything. I’d still bet against them switching to Tizen on the phones — even if they can pull it off technically, it’d be so hard for them to get iOS/Android levels of third-party developer support.

  • They’ve gotten the size down to something reasonable. I still think these look like men’s watches though, both because of their size and their design cues.

  • From what I’ve seen in the videos and photos, it looks like Samsung is using black backgrounds for most of the UI, like Apple Watch does. Android Wear’s use of white and primary-colored backgrounds just doesn’t look good on a watch.