Linked List: September 1, 2016

Thursday, 1 September 2016

Reuters: Google Shitcans Project Ara ★

Julia Love, reporting for Reuters:

Alphabet Inc’s Google has suspended Project Ara, its ambitious effort to build what is known as a modular smartphone with interchangeable components, as part of a broader push to streamline the company’s hardware efforts, two people with knowledge of the matter said.

The move marks an about-face for the tech company, which announced a host of partners for Project Ara at its developer conference in May and said it would ship a developer edition of the product this autumn.

You say “ambitious”, I say “ridiculous boondoggle”. Pour one out for all the breathless coverage of this at The Verge.

Samsung Expected to Announce Recall of New Galaxy Note 7 Due to Exploding Batteries ★

Yonhap News Agency, South Korea:

Samsung Electronics Co. is expected to announce an unprecedented recall of all of its newest Galaxy Note 7 phablets sold at home and abroad in less than a week, a company official said Thursday, after reports that a few of the devices exploded while being charged.

The Samsung official told Yonhap News Agency that the cause of the reported explosions has been traced to the battery of the new phablet.

Yikes.

Industry watchers say Samsung will be able to take the likely recall as an opportunity to upgrade its credibility, as long as it takes prompt and convincing measures.

I would love to see the names of the “industry watchers” who think this fiasco will “upgrade Samsung’s credibility”.

Apple Is Going to Remove Abandoned Apps From the App Store ★

Romain Dillet, reporting for TechCrunch:

In addition to search ads and extensions in many different apps in iOS 10, Apple plans to remove all these useless apps that clutter the App Store search pages.

And Apple is not going to stop at abandoned apps. The company will also fight spammy app names. For instance, if you search for “Instagram” on the App Store, one of the first results is an app that is called “[app name] Photo Collage, Picture Editor, Pic Grid, F…” and then it gets cut off.

Better late than never, but this is how I expected Apple to manage the App Store all along.

Why Europe Is Ordering Apple to Pay Ireland $14.5 Billion in Taxes Ireland Doesn’t Want ★

Matt Yglesias:

But in recent years, Vestager and her competition commission have interpreted favorable corporate income tax deals as a form of illegal subsidy. She says that due to its arrangement with the Irish government, “Apple only paid an effective corporate tax rate that declined from 1% in 2003 to 0.005% in 2014 on the profits of Apple Sales International.”

This, she says, is “illegal under EU state aid rules, because it gives Apple a significant advantage over other businesses that are subject to the same national taxation rules.”

The best explanation I’ve seen about this story.

Why Old Android Phones Aren’t Getting an Upgrade to Nougat ★

Andrew Cunningham:

After doing some digging and talking to some people, we can say that it will be either very difficult if not completely impossible for any phone that uses Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 800 or 801 to get an official, Google-sanctioned Nougat update (including the Z3). And that’s a pretty big deal, since those two chips powered practically every single Android flagship sold from late 2013 until late 2014 and a few more recent devices to boot.

This situation has far-reaching implications for the Android ecosystem. And while it can be tempting to lay the blame at the feet of any one company — Google for creating this update mess in the first place, Qualcomm for failing to support older chipsets, and the phone makers for failing to keep up with new software — it’s really kind of everybody’s fault.

This is just how Android works. You shouldn’t expect your Android phone to ever get a major OS update. Instead, you get updates to Google Play Services. That sucks, but that’s just how it is, and almost certainly how it always will be.