Linked List: September 3, 2016

Saturday, 3 September 2016

14 Excerpts From the FBI’s Report on Hillary Clinton’s Email ★

Kevin Drum, after reading the entire FBI report on Hillary Clinton’s email:

That said, this report is pretty much an almost complete exoneration of Hillary Clinton. She wasn’t prohibited from using a personal device or a personal email account, and others at state did it routinely. She’s told the truth all along about why she did it. Colin Powell did indeed advise her about using personal email shortly after she took office, but she chose to follow the rules rather than skirt them, as Powell did. She didn’t take her BlackBerry into her office. She communicated with only a very select group of 13 people. She took no part in deciding which emails were personal before handing them over to State. She had nothing to do with erasing information on the PRN server. That was a screw-up on PRN’s end. She and her staff all believed at the time that they were careful not to conduct sensitive conversations over unclassified email systems. And there’s no evidence that her server was ever hacked.

There’s remarkably little here. If you nonetheless believe that it’s enough to disqualify Hillary from the presidency, that’s fine. I have no quarrel with you. But if the FBI is to be believed, it’s all pretty small beer.

The Future of the MacBook Air ★

Benjamin Thomas, on Twitter:

What makes you think Airs are sunsetted? To my knowledge they’re the most used Macs on the planet. Why would Apple kill a cash cow?

He’s right that the MacBook Airs are Apple’s best-selling Macs. On The Talk Show a few weeks ago, Jason Snell speculated that the MacBook Pro might be Apple’s best-selling Mac lineup. I disagreed, but thought perhaps the MacBook Pros might be Apple’s biggest money maker — lower quantities but higher prices.

I got a few emails from listeners who work in Apple retail. The gist is that price is everything. The lower-priced MacBook Airs vastly outsell the more expensive MacBooks and MacBook Pros. By any measure, the MacBook Airs are Apple’s bestselling laptops.

What I wrote in July still stands:

Something unusual is certainly going on. We have to get updated MacBook Pros and Mac Pros soon (September?), right?

I don’t think, though, that the MacBook Air will ever get another update. I think it only exists to occupy the sub-$1000 price range until Apple can sell a year-old MacBook for $899. I wouldn’t be shocked if they rolled out a minor speed-bump update to the MacBook Airs, but I don’t expect them to. The future is just MacBooks and MacBook Pros.

We might be getting that speed bump update (along with USB-C ports), but I would be very surprised if we get a major update with retina displays. I still think the future is just MacBooks and MacBook Pros.

Claim Chowder: Project Ara ★

My favorite Project Ara puff piece is this one, by David Pierce for Wired, back in May. The claim chowder starts right in the headline: “Project Ara Lives: Google’s Modular Phone Is Ready for You Now”.

After years of failed demos, public sputters, and worrisome silence, Ara works. About 30 people within ATAP are using Ara as their primary phone. Camargo actually has the luxury of worrying about things like aesthetics, rather than whether it’ll turn on. “Please pay no attention to how it looks,” he tells me, flipping the blocky smartphone over in his hands, “because it’s a prototype.” It’s not a concept, not an idea, not a YouTube video. It’s a prototype. Developer kits for Ara will be shipping later this year, and a consumer version is coming in 2017.

As I wrote in May:

In what universe does this qualify as “ready for us now”? It’s not ready at all, and nothing in this story makes it sound like a good idea. It’s nonsense.

Three months later, and the plug has been pulled.

Samsung Is Recalling the Galaxy Note 7 Worldwide Over Battery Problem ★

Jethro Mullen and K.J. Kwon, reporting for CNN Money:

The massive recall of one of Samsung’s flagship devices is an embarrassing setback for the world’s biggest selling smartphone maker. The Note 7 was unveiled just a month ago, and big rival Apple is expected to show off its new smartphone next week.

Samsung said Friday it had found a problem with the battery in some of the phones and was halting sales in 10 countries, including South Korea and the U.S. It will offer customers a new product for free in the coming weeks to replace the 2.5 million Galaxy Note 7s that have been sold.

That’s a multi-billion dollar mistake.

Will the New iPhones Support Apple Pencil? ★

From an interview with NDTV’s Vikram Chandra back in May:

NDTV: Has that voice never come to you? For example when you launched the pencil and you know what Steve said,’ if you see a stylus they blew it’, when you launched that pencil?

Tim Cook: Well we launched a pencil not a stylus, first of all, and there’s a big difference and the things that people are doing with this pencil, I think that Steve would have loved. He loved to help people create. And if you’ve ever seen what can be created on an iPhone or an iPad with that pencil is really unbelievable. You should really show some of these to your audience.

One way or the other, Cook clearly misspoke there. Either he was just plain wrong about the iPhone supporting Apple Pencil, or he slipped and gave away a feature in this year’s new iPhones. (Thanks to Stephane Rangaya.)

Update: If you watch the video, what Cook actually said is slightly different from the transcript, and suggests even more strongly that the pencil works with iPhone. Starting around the 29:10 mark, he says, “If you’ve ever seen what can be created with that pencil on an iPad or an iPhone, it’s really unbelievable.” (Thanks to Troy Gaul for catching this.)

Satirical Political Apps in the App Store ★

Douglas Ernst, writing for The Washington Times:

The conservative website Heat Street reported Friday that “Hide it Hillary,” which is now available on Google Play for Android devices, does not condone violence or even feature the former secretary of state’s image. Instead, users are tasked with putting documents into a “laptop, server, shredder, or closet.”

“I absolutely believe there’s a double standard with Apple in the sense that they have defamatory and mean-spirited Trump games available for download but none for Hillary,” developers Ansem Omega Solutions told the website. “I can’t imagine we are the first developers to experience this type of bias. In fact, one of the main reasons we chose to develop a Hillary app is because there were no Hillary apps whatsoever in the store 6 months ago when we began developing.”

I have no idea why some of these apps get rejected and others get through, but it’s absolutely false that there are no anti-Hillary Clinton apps in the App Store. Just search for “Hillary”, and you’ll see a bunch, including several of the “Never Hillary” variety.

Lenovo Yoga Book ★

This device is like nothing else I’ve ever seen. Sort of a half-tablet/half-laptop, running either Android or Windows 10.