Linked List: October 8, 2015

Thursday, 8 October 2015

Apple Says Battery Performance of New iPhones’ A9 Chips Vary Only 2-3 Percent ★

Apple, in a statement to TechCrunch on the allegations that Samsung-made A9s get worse battery life than TSMC-made ones:

Certain manufactured lab tests which run the processors with a continuous heavy workload until the battery depletes are not representative of real-world usage, since they spend an unrealistic amount of time at the highest CPU performance state. It’s a misleading way to measure real-world battery life. Our testing and customer data show the actual battery life of the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus, even taking into account variable component differences, vary within just 2-3% of each other.

Real-world testing seems to bear that out.

Matthew Panzarino:

The 2-3% difference Apple is saying it sees between the battery life of the two processors is well within its manufacturing tolerances for any device, even two iPhones with the same exact processor. In other words, your iPhone and someone else’s iPhone with the same guts likely vary as much as 3%, regardless of who made them.

Basically, if you can tell the difference in real-world usage between the two processors, you should take a Voight-Kampff test.

Bloomberg on Apple’s Utter Dominance of Phone Market ★

Ashlee Vance, writing for Bloomberg:

Apple’s utter dominance of the money-making end of the industry stems from its business model and unique brand. Since stumbling in 2013 with the slightly down-market iPhone 5C, the company has redoubled its focus on an annual, highly desired flagship phone at a high price, turning its back on cheaper models for the masses. With the iPhone as its main profit center, the world’s biggest company has been able to invest in developing its own speedy, power-efficient chips and sturdy, lightweight materials, as well as continuing to refine its software.

The 5C wasn’t a stumble. It’s fair to say it wasn’t a hit, but it didn’t hurt their overall business at all. The alternative would have been for Apple to keep selling the then-year-old iPhone 5 for another year at the same price points the 5C debuted at — and margins on the 5S were lower. Apple’s 2013 “stumble” was that they still didn’t have larger displays in the then-new top-of-the-line 5S. Which in turn means the real stumble was back in 2010, when they began planning for the form factors for the iPhone 5/5S form factor.

Other large companies, including China’s Lenovo, have a tougher time rationalizing their phone businesses. Lenovo bought Motorola from Google last year for $2.9 billion, hoping to boost its fortunes by expanding beyond PCs. No such luck: In its last quarter, Lenovo’s mobility unit posted a $292 million loss that just about wiped out its PC business profits. The company says it can fix things by paring back the number of devices it sells, combined with a “faster, leaner business model.”

Remember when Google bought Motorola for $12.5 billion back in 2011? Good times.

Important Domain Name Registration ★

Elliot Silver:

Whois records show that Google is now the owner of abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz.com. Prior to the acquisition, the domain name was privately owned and appears to have been parked. At the time of publication, abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz.com does not resolve, although it would seem wise for the company to forward it to the Alphabet website.

Enhanced Editions of Harry Potter Series Now Available Exclusively on iBooks ★

Apple:

Apple today announced that enhanced editions of all seven books in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series are now available exclusively on the iBooks Store for readers around the world to enjoy on their iPhone, iPad, iPod touch and Mac. Customers can download individual books featuring full original text, interactive animations and elaborate artwork bringing these beloved stories to life in a unique way. Harry Potter fans will also find annotations throughout their literary journey, written by the author herself.

“I’m thrilled to see the Harry Potter books so beautifully realised on iBooks for the digital world; the artwork and animations in these enhanced editions bring the stories alive in a delightful new way,” said J.K. Rowling. […]

Until now, the Harry Potter digital books have only been available for readers to purchase through the Pottermore Shop. Starting today, iBooks users can experience the books with all new exclusive custom covers for each title, and typography including the custom Harry Potter typefaces and new section headers and drop caps.

I’m intrigued about the strategic implications of an exclusive like this. But as a book reader, somehow it feels wrong for books to be “exclusive” to a proprietary software platform.

Microsoft Lumia 950 ★

Why put that glaring, obnoxious “Microsoft” on the front face? Nobody wants to see that. Nobody. This is one of the things Apple does that everyone should copy but few do.

How Will Twitter Break the 140-Character Limit? ★

Dave Winer:

I had a few minutes to spare this morning and decided it would be worth it to see what a Fat Tweet might look like, one that has room for more than 140 chars, that doesn’t force you to click a link to see the rest.

Dave’s idea is that you could type as much text as you want for the tweet, but your timeline would only show the first 140 characters (preserving the scrollability of your timeline), and you’d click or tap “See More” to expand the whole thing.

I think Twitter will do something different. I think they’ll preserve the 140-character limit for the tweet itself, but add “text” or maybe something richer, like “story”, as an attachment type. So in the same way that you can now attach an image to a tweet, you could attach a chunk of text. You’d see a preview/thumbnail of the text attachment in the timeline, and you’d click/tap on it to see the whole thing.

It’d be pretty cool if they used Markdown for formatting, but that might be too nerdy for mass market use.

iPulse 3 ★

Iconfactory’s iPulse epitomizes the indie Mac developer ethos. It’s such a nerdy utility — it displays system stats and status for your Mac — but it’s absolutely gorgeous. And really, really tweakable. It warms my heart to see something like this near the top of the Mac App Store chart.