Linked List: November 18, 2015

Wednesday, 18 November 2015

‘My White Neighbor Thought I Was Breaking Into My Own Apartment. Nineteen Cops Showed Up.’ ★

Harrowing story by Fay Wells, writing in The Washington Post:

I said it was only me and, hands still raised, slowly descended the stairs, focused on one officer’s eyes and on his pistol. I had never looked down the barrel of a gun or at the face of a man with a loaded weapon pointed at me. In his eyes, I saw fear and anger. I had no idea what was happening, but I saw how it would end: I would be dead in the stairwell outside my apartment, because something about me — a 5-foot-7, 125-pound black woman — frightened this man with a gun. I sat down, trying to look even less threatening, trying to de-escalate. I again asked what was going on. I confirmed there were no pets or people inside.

I told the officers I didn’t want them in my apartment. I said they had no right to be there. They entered anyway. One pulled me, hands behind my back, out to the street. The neighbors were watching. Only then did I notice the ocean of officers. I counted 16. They still hadn’t told me why they’d come.

Use the iPad Pro Like a Wacom Cintiq ★

Serenity Caldwell:

Using Astropad, I turned my iPad Pro and Apple Pencil into a Wacom Cintiq-like tablet for my Mac and Photoshop.

On the Size of the Speaker Cavities in the iPad Pro ★

From iFixit’s iPad Pro teardown:

It appears that the Pro’s self-balancing, four-speaker audio comes at the cost of battery capacity. Based on our measurements, the speaker enclosures occupy about half as much space as the battery.

That’s space that could have potentially been used for an extra 50% battery capacity. We’re sure Apple was very careful setting the balance between battery capacity, weight, and sound quality.

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, writing about iFixit’s teardown for ZDNet, takes this as the central theme of his article (headline: “iPad Pro: 4-Speaker System Takes Up a Huge Amount of Potential Battery Space”):

According to a teardown carried out by repair specialists at iFixit, the speaker enclosures take up about half as much space as the battery does. And the battery in the iPad isn’t small either, featuring a power capacity of 38.8Wh, which is 40 percent bigger than the one found inside the iPad Air 2, and a shade bigger than the 38.2Wh unit Microsoft uses in the Surface Pro 4.

But the speaker units — which consist of the speakers themselves and the volume chambers — take up about half the space that the batteries do. In other words, if Apple had put small speakers into the iPad Pro, it could have made the battery almost 50 percent bigger.

Kingsley-Hughes wasn’t alone. That was the main thrust of MacRumors’s and Macworld’s write-ups, too. I don’t get it. The iPad Pro gets excellent battery life. I could see making an argument about the relative merits of audio quality and battery life on a battery-constrained device like the iPhone 6S. And iFixit themselves wrote, “We’re sure Apple was very careful setting the balance between battery capacity, weight, and sound quality.”

This suggestion makes no sense. A heavier iPad Pro with worse sound quality from its speakers would be a worse device, no matter how much longer the battery would last. Lots of the trade-offs are very tricky — like how thick to make the overall device. This one was not a tricky trade-off.

Update: A few readers are complaining that I’m being too kind to these dopes. They’re right. Maybe I’m losing my edge. Here’s how stupid the idea is. If the iPad Pro had smaller speaker cavities and a larger battery, it would be an improvement in one way:

Longer battery life.

It would be objectively worse in these ways:

Weight.
Time to completely charge the battery.
Audio quality.

And people are already — reasonably — criticizing the iPad Pro for how heavy it is and how long it takes to fully charge. A bigger battery would make two of its weaknesses even worse, all in the name of further improving battery life, an aspect of the iPad Pro that no one is complaining about.

Instagram Pulls a Twitter, and Announces the End of Third-Party Clients ★

Russell Brandom, writing for The Verge:

Third-party Instagram developers just got some very bad news. Today, the service announced major revisions to its API policy, effectively killing off an entire class of Instagram-reader apps and instituting serious restrictions on any apps that remain. According to the announcement, the changes are being made “to improve people’s control over their content and set up a more sustainable environment built around authentic experiences on the platform.”

Paul Haddad:

I’m not surprised Instagram killed off API access to its feed. I’m surprised they had it in the first place.

I sure hope this means an iPad version of the official Instagram app is coming soon.

Apple Responds to Developers Regarding Expired Mac App Store Security Certificates ★

Husain Sumra, writing for MacRumors:

Last week some users and developers experienced an issue that displayed a “damaged” error when attempting to open select apps from the Mac App Store, including popular apps like 1Password, Tweetbot, and Byword. Today, Apple has sent an email to developers explaining what happened and how to fix their apps.

Put aside the argument about whether a fiasco like this should have ever happened in the first place. Why did it take six days for Apple to publicly respond and explain what happened?

An Interview With Tinder CEO Sean Rad ★

Charlotte Edwards, interviewing Tinder co-founder Sean Rad for The Evening Standard:

“She’s one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen but it doesn’t mean that I want to rip her clothes off and have sex with her. Attraction is nuanced. I’ve been attracted to women who are …” he pauses “… well, who my friends might think are ugly. I don’t care if someone is a model. Really. It sounds clichéd and almost totally unbelievable for a guy to say this, but it’s true. I need an intellectual challenge.”

He continues: “Apparently there’s a term for someone who gets turned on by intellectual stuff. You know, just talking. What’s the word?” His face creases the effort of trying to remember. “I want to say ‘sodomy’?”

Rosette shrieks: “That’s it! We’re going to be fired” and Rad looks confused. “What? Why?”

I tell him it means something else and he thumbs his phone for a definition. “What? No, not that. That’s definitely not me. Oh, my God.”

When he recovers he explains that Tinder is launching an education and workplace add-on that will helps users identify their intellectual equals.

Something tells me this guy doesn’t have to look hard to find his intellectual equals.