Linked List: June 29, 2016

Wednesday, 29 June 2016

Facebook’s Unsettling Referendum on News ★

Charlie Warzel, writing for BuzzFeed:

This morning, Facebook VP of product management Adam Mosseri announced that the social network is tweaking its News Feed algorithm to show more stories from friends and family members — a move that indicates Facebook is worried professional publishers are crowding out the normal people in your life you care about. The decision, according to the post, is based on “research,” which is a way to say that Facebook has been listening to the myriad signals of the real people who use its platform each day.

Facebook doesn’t really care about the news industry. The idea that Facebook was going to “save” the news industry, or even that Facebook traffic is something that news organizations should bank on for the future, is just goofy. Facebook’s first goal is to keep users using Facebook — as many users as possible for as much time as possible. If videos of cats walking around on two legs are more popular than analyses of the United Kingdom’s vote to leave the EU, well, that’s what they’re going to prioritize. Secondarily, Facebook’s goal is to monetize the aggregate attention from priority one. That’s it. So, going forward, news organizations are going to have to pay more for worse placement in Facebook news feeds.

You can call this unsettling if you want. I’d call it unsurprising.

Elizabeth Warren Says Apple, Amazon and Google Are Trying to ‘Lock Out’ the Competition ★

Peter Kafka, reporting for Recode:

Warren had different beefs with Google, Apple and Amazon, but the common thread was that she accused each one of using its powerful platforms to “lock out smaller guys and newer guys,” including some that compete with Google, Apple and Amazon.

Google, she said, uses “its dominant search engine to harm rivals of its Google Plus user review feature;” Apple “has placed conditions on its rivals that make it difficult for them to offer competitive streaming services” that compete with Apple Music; and Amazon “uses its position as the dominant bookseller to steer consumers to books published by Amazon to the detriment of other publishers.”

Shockingly, Spotify agreed:

But Spotify, which has complained about the fee Apple charges music services — and other services — that sign up subscribers using its iOS platform, was happy to comment. Here’s Jonathan Prince, who runs communications and public policy for the streaming music company:

“Apple has long used its control of iOS to squash competition in music, driving up the prices of its competitors, inappropriately forbidding us from telling our customers about lower prices, and giving itself unfair advantages across its platform through everything from the lock screen to Siri. You know there’s something wrong when Apple makes more off a Spotify subscription than it does off an Apple Music subscription and doesn’t share any of that with the music industry. They want to have their cake and eat everyone else’s too.”

A few quick thoughts:

This is why America needs a sane, moderate, pro-business Republican Party. I love Elizabeth Warren, I really do, but as a staunch capitalist these remarks give me pause. These remarks sound more like something from a leader in the European Union, not the United States.
It’s hilarious that she cites Amazon’s dominance of the e-books market, but it’s Apple that is paying out a $400 million settlement. To me that’s a perfect example where government oversight power was turned into a political weapon.
How strange is it to the ears of anyone who lived through the 1990s that there’s a discussion of tech companies abusing their positions of power, and Microsoft is not even mentioned? Microsoft’s fall from dominance is evidence that competition works — it just takes a long time for big shifts to come into focus.

Tony Hawk Lands a 900 at Age 48 ★

Radical.

The Apple I/O Death Chart ★

Nilay Patel:

But how long does it really take Apple to kill legacy tech? We threw together a chart to map it out. (It would be fun to do this across the entire tech industry, but finding all that data seems virtually impossible. If you figure it out email me and we’ll run it!)

What I never realized is that most Apple I/O standards last about 15 years, give or take. Even the floppy, which seems like a monumental change when it was removed from the iMac, was only around for 15 years. We take the traditional USB connector for granted, but it’s also been around for about 18 years, and you can see how the new MacBook is ushering it out in favor of USB-C. It’s an interesting cycle.

Not listed in The Verge’s chart: ethernet. I feel like that’s a good precedent for this headphone jack thing. Ethernet is faster and more reliable than Wi-Fi, but Apple dropped it from the MacBook Air years ago, and now doesn’t even include an Ethernet port on the MacBook Pros.

The more I think about it, the more I realize the trend isn’t just toward eliminating ports on devices — it’s about reducing the number of cables you use. There probably will be Lightning headphones and Lightning for audio out on the upcoming iPhones, but I think Apple’s push is going to be toward wireless. Cables are inherently fiddly, and fiddliness is un-Apple-like. Update: Yes, you can still use Ethernet on a MacBook, using an Ethernet-to-USB adapter. I have one of those in my bag. When Apple obsoletes a port, they don’t forbid you from using it. They discourage you from using it by requiring an adapter. I think the same will be true of 3.5mm headphones. (Hell, I’m typing these very words on an ADB keyboard.)

(User-replaceable batteries don’t qualify as I/O, but that’s another bit of fiddliness that Apple eliminated in the face of criticism that doing so was user-hostile. And I’ll bet they were used in PowerBooks and MacBooks for about 15 years. Update: 18 years starting from the original PowerBook — or 20, if you count the Macintosh Portable.)

Apple Supplier Cirrus Logic Releases Kit for Creating Lightning-Based Headphones ★

Joe Rossignol, MacRumors:

Apple supplier Cirrus Logic has announced a new MFi Headset Development Kit, a reference platform that is designed to help “Made for iPhone/iPad/iPod” accessory makers quickly develop Lightning-based headphones.

The development kit, available through Apple’s MFi Program, includes a form factor reference design and other resources to help MFi licensees create Lightning-based headphones. A reference iOS app is also available.

The question is, are they just skating to where they think the puck is going to be, or do they know where the puck is going to be?

Amazon Will Start Subsidizing Android Phones With ‘Special Offer’ Ads on the Lock Screens ★

Lauren Goode, writing for The Verge:

Amazon today said it would begin offering Prime members significant discounts on select unlocked Android smartphones, in exchange for the ability to pre-install Amazon apps and show customers more ads on the phones.

Right now the deal only applies to two smartphones — the new Motorola Moto G and the BLU R1 HD — neither of which is available yet in the US, but are expected to ship on July 12th. The lock screen ads are not dissimilar from the ads that appear on Amazon’s Kindle e-readers and Kindle Fire tablets with “special offers,” as Amazon calls them.

Amazon’s Fire Phone was a dud (to say the least), but maybe this will work.