Linked List: September 23, 2015

Wednesday, 23 September 2015

More on Color Complications on the Utility Apple Watch Face ★

In addition to my complaint about the new color version of the activity complication on the Utility face, Ben Thompson observes that the alarm and timer complications are hard-coded as orange now. I missed that, because I use the light orange seconds hand — I assumed these tints always matched.

Apple really screwed the pooch on the Utility face in WatchOS 2.0. Did Alan Dye lose a bet? These complications all looked better before, in monochrome. They should have done what they did with the Modular face, and added a distinct “Multicolor” option to the color choices for the Utility face, for people who enjoy this sort of garishness.

Yogi Berra: One of a Kind ★

Rob Arthur, writing for FiveThirtyEight:

By quantity, he played in 13.2 percent of all of the Yankees games in history and more World Series games than any other single player. But more than the obvious accolades — the three Most Valuable Player awards, the 10 World Series wins — Berra was exceptional by virtue of his improbability.

Pebble Round ★

Nice bezel.

The Ad Industry’s Perspective ★

Randall Rothenberg, writing for Advertising Age, presents the ad industry’s take on ad blocking. Look past his histrionics equating ad-blocking with “robbery” and his advice to the industry is solid: they need to respect users and create ads that we don’t want to block.

Yogi Berra, 10-Time World Series Champ, 3-Time MVP, Beloved Class Act, Dies at 90 ★

Bruce Weber, the NYT:

Beyond the historic moments and individual accomplishments, what most distinguished Berra’s career was how often he won. From 1946 to 1985, as a player, coach and manager, Berra appeared in a remarkable 21 World Series. Playing on powerful Yankee teams with teammates like Rizzuto and Joe DiMaggio early on and then Whitey Ford and Mickey Mantle, Berra starred on World Series winners in 1947, ’49, ’50, ’51, ’52, ’53, ’56 and ’58. He was a backup catcher and part-time outfielder on the championship teams of 1961 and ’62. (He also played on World Series losers in 1955, ’57, ’60 and ’63.)

All told, his Yankee teams won the American League pennant 14 out of 17 years. He still holds Series records for games played, plate appearances, hits and doubles.

No other player has been a champion so often.

It’s almost unfathomable how successful the Yankees were with Yogi. He spanned the era from DiMaggio to Mantle, and caught Don Larsen’s perfect game in the World Series. A perfect game in the World Series. But beyond his on-field success, if you don’t follow the Yankees closely, you just can’t understand how beloved the man was. When he showed up in recent years for special events at Yankee Stadium, the place just erupted. No one got a response from the crowd like Yogi did.

Among his Yogi-isms:

“You can observe a lot just by watching,” he is reputed to have declared once, describing his strategy as a manager.

“If you can’t imitate him,” he advised a young player who was mimicking the batting stance of the great slugger Frank Robinson, “don’t copy him.”

“When you come to a fork in the road, take it,” he said, giving directions to his house. Either path, it turned out, got you there.

“Nobody goes there anymore,” he said of a popular restaurant. “It’s too crowded.”

NYT: ‘E-Book Sales Slip, and Print Is Far From Dead’ ★

Alexandra Alter, reporting for the NYT:

Now, there are signs that some e-book adopters are returning to print, or becoming hybrid readers, who juggle devices and paper. E-book sales fell by 10 percent in the first five months of this year, according to the Association of American Publishers, which collects data from nearly 1,200 publishers. Digital books accounted last year for around 20 percent of the market, roughly the same as they did a few years ago.

E-books’ declining popularity may signal that publishing, while not immune to technological upheaval, will weather the tidal wave of digital technology better than other forms of media, like music and television.

I read both, but for any book I truly care about, I prefer to get it in print.

Apple’s XcodeGhost FAQ ★

Apple:

We have no information to suggest that the malware has been used to do anything malicious or that this exploit would have delivered any personally identifiable information had it been used.

We’re not aware of personally identifiable customer data being impacted and the code also did not have the ability to request customer credentials to gain iCloud and other service passwords.

The Apple Bias ★

Vlad Savov, writing at The Verge:

That’s justified bias. That’s relevant context derived from history and experience. Without it, we’d be reciting facts and figures, but no meaning. Megabytes and millimeters matter only after they’ve been passed through the prism of human judgment, and we shouldn’t pretend that it can, or should, ever be unbiased.