Linked List: October 28, 2015

Wednesday, 28 October 2015

Speaking of quantifying the beverages consumed by James Bond, Futility Closet has an excerpt from Ben MacIntyre’s 2008 book, For Your Eyes Only: Ian Fleming and James Bond, listing all 46 drinks Bond consumed in Fleming’s 11th novel, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service:

According to one Bondologist, these include: unspecified quantities of Pouilly-Fuissé white wine, Taittinger champagne, Mouton Rothschild ’53 claret, calvados, Krug champagne, three bourbons with water, four vodka and tonics, two double brandy and ginger ales, two whisky and sodas, three double vodka martinis, two double bourbons on the rocks, at least one glass of neat whisky, a flask of Enzian schnapps, Marsala wine, the better part of a bottle of fiery Algerian wine (served by M), two more Scotch whiskies, half a pint of I.W. Harper bourbon, a Jack Daniel’s Tennessee whisky with water, on the rocks, a bottle of Riquewihr wine, four steins of Franziskaner beer, and a double Steinhäger gin.

James Bond by the Numbers ★

The Economist quantifies the 24 James Bond movies: everything from box office results to martinis consumed.

Daniel Craig on ‘Spectre’ and His Advice to Future Bonds ★

Another interview, this one with TimeOut:

Q: Do you care who plays Bond after you?

A: Look, I don’t give a fuck. Good luck to them! All I care about is that if I stop doing these things we’ve left it in a good place and people pick it up and make it better. Make it better, that’s all.

Q: You won’t be backseat-driving then?

A: Oh Christ, no. How fucking sad would that be? “Oh look, it’s Daniel Craig, he’s on set again!” No!

Q: If an actor was offered Bond and came to you looking for advice, what would you say to him — or her?

A: Literally I’d say two things. Firstly, it’s your decision. Don’t listen to anybody else. Well, do listen to everybody, but you have to make the choice at the end of the day. It’s your bed to lie on. And don’t be shit! Don’t be shit. You’ve got to step up. People do not make movies like this any more. This is really rare now. So don’t be shit.

It’s pretty clear that Craig does not relish the press tours that accompany the release of a new Bond movie, but I appreciate that he doesn’t just phone in his interviews with empty platitudes.

Daniel Craig on James Bond ★

Daniel Craig, in an interview with The Red Bulletin:

Q: Bond has actually become a bit more chivalrous in the most recent films, hasn’t he?

A: That’s because we’ve surrounded him with very strong women who have no problem putting him in his place.

Q: And this time you’ve gone one better, showing 007 succumbing to the charms of an older woman.

A: I think you mean the charms of a woman his own age. We’re talking about Monica Bellucci, for heaven’s sake. When someone like that wants to be a Bond girl, you just count yourself lucky!

Mashable: ‘Inside Apple’s Perfectionism Machine’ ★

Terrific behind-the-scenes piece by Lance Ulanoff, with extensive interviews with Phil Schiller and John Ternus (VP of Mac and iPad engineering):

As the cloud looms larger, will the hardware we use still matter? Schiller rejects this notion.

“No. 1, the importance and value of great hardware has not diminished in any way,” he said. “Across the board, our goal is to make the best in the categories we choose to compete in. It’s what we’re doing and it’s reflected in customers choosing our products over anyone else’s. So I do think people are showing with their choice that they do value quality and beauty of the hardware and that is not diminishing.”

“I have never heard anyone say, ‘Because I like to keep my stuff in the cloud, I will take a cheap piece of hardware and I want it to be ugly.’ All things being equal, of course, nobody wants that,” Schiller said.

It’s a blockbuster piece, truly a must-read. Here’s a bit with Ternus on fit-and-finish:

In fact, Apple is apparently taking the time to custom-fit all sorts of pieces in the MacBook through a process it calls “binning.” Since there can be minuscule variances that might make, for instance, the Force Touch trackpad not a perfect fit for the body or the super-thin Retina display not exactly a match for the top of the case, Apple finds matching parts from the production line. Even the thickness of the stainless steel Apple Logo, which replaced the backlit logo on previous MacBook models, can vary by a micron or so, meaning Apple needs to find a top with the right cutout depth. […]

The result is that every MacBook is, in a way, special and imperceptibly different. I joked that every MacBook is like a Cabbage Patch Kid. “Every one is unique,” I said. Ternus finished the thought: “all in an effort to make them the same.”

It’s an almost unprecedented attention to detail. And with each successive generation of Mac, Apple is getting better at it.