Linked List: September 24, 2015

Thursday, 24 September 2015

How Graphics Worked on the Commodore 64 and Nintendo Entertainment System ★

Great video from The iBookGuy. (Via Jim Coudal.)

Apple:

App slicing is currently unavailable for iOS 9 apps due to an issue affecting iCloud backups created from iOS 9 where some apps from the App Store would only restore to the same model of iOS device.

Matthew Panzarino on the iPhones 6S ★

I’m still working my way through all the reviews of the new iPhones this week, but my favorite so far is Matthew Panzarino’s for TechCrunch. It’s a good complement to mine, too — he goes way deeper on the camera improvements and Live Photos than I did, and he was primarily using the Plus, not the regular 6S.

At the start, Panzarino writes:

By the way, given that the vast majority of folks will restore their phones from an iCloud backup, I ditched the whole “let’s pretend this is a new iPhone” testing methodology. I think it’s silly to test phones in a vacuum. So I loaded up my iCloud backup with all of my normal apps — nothing too crazy, not a lot of beta software, just a healthy mix of productivity, games, sports apps and the tools I need to run TechCrunch like Slack, Convo, Notefile, email accounts and messaging clients.

By “cloning” my current iPhone, I’m able to see how they both perform on an equal real-world footing, not as lab test dummies. It’s not the only method, but it’s the only one that makes sense to me.

I’ve been doing this for years. I treat my review units like I would if they were my own new iPhone, and with my new iPhones, I always restore them from a backup of my previous iPhone. Otherwise it’s too big a hassle restoring everything I need to feel at home — and in my experience, there’s no downside.

Starting with the 5S/5C two years ago, though, Apple has provided reviewers with two new phones. Last year and this year we got one in each size. What I’ve done with these is pick one to use thoroughly, as my “real” everyday iPhone. The other — the 5C in 2013, and the Plus models last year and this year — I do set up as a “new phone”, just so I can see what the defaults are like.

Anyway, for all of you expecting new iPhones to arrive tomorrow, I wouldn’t hesitate to set them as clones of your old iPhone.

iPhone 6s vs. iPhone 6s Plus: Digital and Optical Image Stabilization at 4K ★

Interesting side-by-side comparison of 4K video shot with the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus, clearly demonstrating the benefits of optical image stabilization on the Plus.

The Fake Traffic Schemes That Are Rotting the Internet ★

Terrific piece for Bloomberg by Ben Elgin, Michael Riley, David Kocieniewski, and Joshua Brustein:

“I can think of nothing that has done more harm to the Internet than ad tech,” says Bob Hoffman, a veteran ad executive, industry critic, and author of the blog the Ad Contrarian. “It interferes with everything we try to do on the Web. It has cheapened and debased advertising and spawned criminal empires.” Most ridiculous of all, he adds, is that advertisers are further away than ever from solving the old which-part-of-my-budget-is-working problem. “Nobody knows the exact number,” Hoffman says, “but probably about 50 percent of what you’re spending online is being stolen from you.”

Throughout history, the ad industry craved data. TV didn’t supply data. Print didn’t supply data. But online — online they got data. Tons of data. More data than they know what to do with. The catch is that online traffic is easily spoofed by fraudulent bots.

When you charge advertisers by the impression, and there’s no marginal cost to creating fraudulent impressions, large-scale fraud and click-bait content are inevitable consequences.

Upton Sinclair: ‘It Is Difficult to Get a Man to Understand Something When His Salary Depends on His Not Understanding It’ ★

I’ve mentioned this quote from Upton Sinclair a few times over the years, but it’s certainly apt once again with the current debate over ad blocking. A few readers have asked, in light of yesterday’s link to Randall Rothenberg’s AdAge op-ed advising the industry to start making better and less-user-hostile ads, why it took so long for the industry to wake up to this. Why did they wait until after ad-blockers came to iOS to start thinking about how to respond?

The answer is that they should have seen this coming years ago, but remained blind or in denial because the entire mainstream online ad industry depends upon all this “programmatic advertising” crap, and programmatic advertising is a fundamentally flawed idea.

David Smith: ‘16 GB Is a Bad User Experience’ ★

I linked to this piece in my iPhone 6S review, but it’s worth calling out on its own. David Smith:

For a long time I’ve used the usage data from my Audiobooks app as a indication of what typical iOS usage looks like. It is an old enough app with a wide enough userbase that its data has generally been pretty reflective of what I see reported overall. So while not perfect they should give a good general idea of what customer choices. […]

So amongst customers with 16 GB devices 37% of them have less than 1 GB of space available, compared to just 1% with 64 GB [devices].

I’d say it is pretty fair to say that if you have less than 1GB of data available on your iPhone you are in imminent danger of running out and ruining your day. Taking the 43% of customers with these devices and the 37% of them who fall in that range we have 17% of customers walking around each day with a damoclean sword dangling over their heads.

Apple surely has better data, but according to Smith’s numbers, one out of six iPhone 6 users have less than 1 GB of free space.

Yogi, the Elder Statesman ★

One more on Yogi Berra — the story of how he humanized George Steinbrenner. No one else could have done it but Yogi.

VW Not the Only Carmaker Cheating on Emissions Tests? ★

CNBC:

Shares of German auto maker BMW dropped sharply on Thursday after a German newspaper claimed its diesel engines were “significantly” exceeding regulatory limits.

Auto Bild — a publication owned by Axel Springer — said Thursday in an exclusive report that BMW engines were emitting nitrogen oxide levels that were 11 times more than the current limit set by the European Union.

Citing road tests by the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT), it said that a model of the BMW X3 was emitting more poisonous gases than the Volkswagen car that is currently at the center of the emissions scandal.

“All measured data suggest that this is not a VW-specific issue,” Peter Mock, the Europe Managing Director at the ICCT, told the publication.

U.S. Drops to 55th in 4G LTE Speeds ★

Stephen Lawson, reporting for IDG:

The U.S. has fallen to No. 55 in LTE performance as speeds rise rapidly in countries that have leapfrogged some early adopters of the popular cellular system.

The average download speed on U.S. 4G networks inched up to 10Mbps (bits per second) in the June-August quarter, according to research company OpenSignal. That was an improvement from 9Mbps in the previous quarter, but the country’s global ranking fell from 43rd as users in other countries enjoyed much larger gains.

The great thing about carrier competition in the US is how it spurs innovation and improvement.