Linked List: March 17, 2017

Friday, 17 March 2017

Netflix Is Ditching Five-Star Ratings in Favor of a Thumbs-Up 

Lauren Goode, reporting for The Verge:

Netflix will soon be changing its ratings system for the first time in several years, switching from a traditional five-star rating to a thumbs-up / thumbs-down system, Netflix vice president of product Todd Yellin said in a press briefing today.

“Five stars feels very yesterday now,” Yellin said. “We’re spending many billions of dollars on the titles we’re producing and licensing, and with these big catalogs, that just adds a challenge.” He added that “bubbling up the stuff people actually want to watch is super important.”

I give this change a thumbs-up. Everyone knows what “like” and “dislike” mean. People have very different opinions on 1-5 star ratings.

(A “meh” — neither like nor dislike, would be good too.)

The Curious State of Apple Product Pricing 

Another good column from Neil Cybart at Above Avalon:

It is very difficult to find a pair of wireless headphones priced lower than AirPods. In the run-up to Apple unveiling AirPods this past September, the wireless headphone market consisted of the following players:

  • Kanoa: $300
  • Bragi Dash: $299
  • Erato Apollo 7: $289
  • Skybuds: $279
  • Earin: $249
  • Motorola VerveOnes+: $249
  • Samsung Gear IconX: $199
  • Bragi Headphone: $149

Given the preceding list, a strong case could have been made for Apple to price its new wireless headphones at $249, or even $299. The fact that Samsung priced its Gear IconX at $199 seemed to suggest a sub-$200 retail price for AirPods was unlikely. Instead, Apple sent shockwaves pulsing through the market by pricing AirPods at only $159. The action instantly removed all available oxygen from the wireless headphone space. The idea of Apple coming out with a new product that would underprice nearly every other competitor was unimaginable ten years ago.

He makes a strong case that Apple Watch is underpriced compared to its competition, too.

AirPods are still showing a delivery estimate of “6 weeks”. Either demand remains unexpectedly strong or production remains unexpectedly difficult (or some combination of both).

Clickbait Headline of the Day: Wired 

Provocative headline on Brian Barrett’s piece for Wired on Alexa coming to the Amazon iOS app: “Siri’s Not Even the Best iPhone Assistant Anymore”:

What makes Alexa on iOS so intriguing isn’t just that it’s there, but where. There was already an Alexa app, a rudimentary utility that let users fiddle with the settings on their Amazon Echoes. And there have been a handful of third-party paid apps that brought some Alexa voice functionality to the iPhone. Now, though, Alexa will live inside the main iOS Amazon app, one of the most popular downloads in the entire App Store.

That puts iPhone and iPad owners just two taps away — one to open the Amazon app, the next to activate the microphone — from a voice assistant that doesn’t just rival Siri, but surpasses it in significant ways. Alexa’s popularity should already be giving Apple fits. Now it’s coming from inside the phone.

First, Alexa in the Amazon iOS app isn’t even rolled out to everyone yet. When I try it, the only voice commands I can issue are related to buying things from Amazon.

Second, it’s ridiculous to argue that Siri doesn’t have a nearly insurmountable convenience advantage. Alexa is only “two taps” away if your iPhone is already unlocked and you’re on the home screen where the Amazon app resides. From a locked iPhone, Siri can be invoked without even touching the phone (“Hey Siri…”) or with a single long-press on the home button. If you want to argue that Alexa is better overall than Siri, go ahead (and it seems clear that Alexa is better at some things), but on any given device, the only voice assistant that matters is the one that’s built into the system.

Alexandra Petri: ‘Trump’s Budget Makes Perfect Sense and Will Fix America, and I Will Tell You Why’ 

Alexandra Petri, writing for The Washington Post on Trump’s proposed budget cuts:

Environmental Protection Agency: We absolutely do not need this. Clean rivers and breathable air are making us SOFT and letting the Chinese and the Russians get the jump on us. We must go back to the America that was great, when the air was full of coal and danger and the way you could tell if the air was breathable was by carrying a canary around with you at all times, perched on your leathery, coal-dust-covered finger. Furthermore, we will cut funding to Superfund cleanup in the EPA because the only thing manlier than clean water is DIRTY water.

Funnier than the column itself is the fact that the White House itself promoted it, presumably because they only read the headline. (No idea why The Daily Beast brands the piece as “fake news”. Satire — no matter the fact that it sometimes sails over the heads of the humorless — is not fake news.)