Linked List: September 29, 2015

Tuesday, 29 September 2015

Donate to St. Jude Memphis for Stephen Hackett ★

Stephen Hackett (of 512 Pixels fame):

St. Jude is a special place: The mission of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital is to advance cures, and means of prevention, for pediatric catastrophic diseases through research and treatment. Consistent with the vision of our founder Danny Thomas, no child is denied treatment based on race, religion or a family’s ability to pay.

Over the last six years, St. Jude has spent millions of dollars on our son, saving not only his life, but our family from financial ruin.

It’s a fantastic cause, and one that is near and dear to his family. He’s already hit his funding goal of $18,000, but it’d be great to see the total raised blow past that. Let’s make it happen.

‘The Point Is He Is Not So Much a Broken Clock as a Compass That Points South’ ★

The Macalope takes on a piece from Rob Enderle that is obviously wrong even by Enderle’s own standards — wherein he argues that Apple needs to abandon its custom A-series chips for mobile and use the ones everyone else does from Qualcomm. You know, the ones that are around three years behind in performance.

The State of JavaScript on Android in 2015 Is Poor ★

Jeff Atwood:

It seems the Android manufacturers are more interested in slapping n slow CPU cores on a die than they are in producing very fast CPU cores. And this is quite punishing when it comes to JavaScript.

This is becoming more and more of a systemic problem in the Android ecosystem, one that will not go away in the next few years, and it may affect the future of Discourse, since we bet heavily on near-desktop JavaScript performance on mobile devices. That is clearly happening on iOS but it is quite disastrously the opposite on Android.

Looking at a JavaScript benchmark, the fastest-known Android device today performed worse than an iPhone 5. That puts state-of-the-art Android performance three years behind iPhones.

It almost certainly is not because Chrome/Blink has worse JavaScript performance than Safari/WebKit — desktop benchmarks tend to show Chrome as being faster, if anything. I think the obvious answer is that the ARM chips used even in the highest-end Android phones are years behind Apple’s A-series chips in single-core performance. I don’t think it’s because Android manufacturers are cheaping out, as Atwood implies. I think it’s because Bob Mansfield’s team inside Apple is that far ahead of the rest of the industry.

What It Means to Be a Great Product ★

Horace Dediu:

This quandary came to mind when looking at the performance of the latest iPhone, the 6S. Observing it closely, we lose sight of it. We see only minute changes between versions; marginal changes which can’t be weighed. And yet these changes have a more important attribute: they are absorbable. A change that is ignored is not only valueless, it may actually destroy perception of value. It creates clutter and confusion. A change that is absorbable is valuable. It is meaningful.

Looking at new features like 3D Touch, Live Photos, and better cameras, one can observe how easily acceptable and desirable they are to those who first see them. As were Siri, FaceTime, Touch ID and iCloud, making something meaningfully better is a sign of sustaining innovation which does not over-serve.

Paradoxically, the improvements are not usually things that users ask for. Surveys always show that consumers want “better battery life” or a “bigger screen” but delivering something else entirely which nevertheless leads to mass adoption shows an uncanny insight into what really matters. Indeed, those who deliver only what customers ask for end up marginalized and bereft of profit.

Wonderfully astute, as usual.

Philly Without Cars ★

Gorgeous video by Cory J. Popp of the car-free streets of Philadelphia during last weekend’s shutdown for Pope Francis. (Thanks to Shawn Medero.)

Apple’s iPhone 6S Breaks Record as China Boosts Sales to 13M ★

Sam Thielman, reporting for The Guardian:

Enthusiasm in China drove sales of Apple’s latest iPhone to a record 13m units last weekend, topping last year’s record of 10m, when the manufacturer’s popular phone was held up in China by regulators. Analysts put sales in China at between 3m and 4m units, leaving sales elsewhere essentially flat year-over-year.

I had forgotten about the delay in China last year — that clearly explains a lot of the opening weekend bump. Worth noting though, that the iPhone 5S (and 5C) were available in China for opening weekend two years ago, and the total was “only” a then-record 9 million.

User Interface of the Week ★

“Maintenance mode” of a cash-for-used-phones machine, as spotted by Dave Addey. This is only the first tab. Obviously this is crazy, but in an odd way I find it beautiful, too.

Axel Springer Buys Business Insider ★

Peter Kafka, reporting for Recode:

Earlier this year, German publisher Axel Springer tried and failed to buy the Financial Times. Now it’s acquiring Business Insider.

This is the deal we told you about last week; Springer is announcing it today. The deal values Business Insider at $442 million — we had previously told you it would peg the site’s value at $560 million — but Springer already owned 9 percent of the company, and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who had previously put his own money into the company, will leave it in there. When factoring out the cash still on the books, the value comes down to $390 million. Springer will end up writing a check for $343 million when the deal closes; it says Business Insider has 76 million readers and 325 employees worldwide.

Pixar Artists Get Preview of iPad Pro and Apple Pencil ★

Pixar developer Michael B. “Dr. Wave” Johnson, in a follow-up tweet:

It has perfect palm rejection as far as we were able to see.

Palm detection was a big question after the announcement event this month, where it looked as though the demonstrators were trying to avoid placing their palms on screen. I think that was the result of trying not to obscure the camera’s view of the iPad Pro display, not the result of poor palm detection. In the hands-on area, palm detection seemed spot-on.

Remembering Alex King ★

Matt Mullenweg:

One of the original WordPress developers, Alex King, has passed from cancer at far too young an age. Alex actually got involved with b2 in 2002 and was active in the forums and the “hacks” community there.

Alex had a background as a designer before he learned development, and I think that really came through as he was one of those rare people who thought about the design and usability of his code, the opposite of most development that drifts toward entropy and complexity. One of my favorite things about Alex was how darn tasteful he was. He would think about every aspect of something he built, every place someone could click, every path they could do down, and gave a thoughtfulness to these paths that I still admire and envy today.

Heartbreaking news. Alex was just a great person: funny, clever, honest, diligent. Everyone who knew him liked him.

Another good remembrance, from Adam Tow.