Linked List: January 3, 2018

Wednesday, 3 January 2018

Mac Innovation vis-à-vis Microsoft’s Surface Line ★

David Gewirtz, in a ZDNet piece headlined “Maybe It’s Time for Apple to Spin Off the Mac as a Separate Company”:

All that brings us back to the idea of spinning out the Macintosh business. I know, I know. There are lots of structural reasons why this might not be possible for Apple. The company has merged development groups, macOS and iOS are growing ever closer, yada, yada, yada. Let’s set all that aside and just brainstorm the idea for a few minutes.

Ask yourself a few questions. Would a stand-alone company on the verge of market dominance ever let its flagship top-end machine languish for five years? What about its most versatile (the Mac mini)? Would it let that machine languish, without even a processor bump, for three years? Apple went two years without updating the iMac, and that’s a top-seller.

The answer to these questions is “of course not.” Think about the Apple of the past, the one fully-focused on the Mac. Would it have allowed Microsoft to gain such innovation ground with the Surface Studio and Surface Book products? Would it have gone years without even processor-bumping its models?

The whole notion of spinning off the Mac into a separate company is so dumb it isn’t worth addressing. But the last paragraph quoted above is. I’ve seen this argument made multiple times recently — that Microsoft’s innovative and deservedly well-regarded Surface lineup was only enabled by Apple taking its collective eye off the ball in the PC space. I don’t buy that at all.

There are two Macs that have languished in recent years: the Mac Pro and Mac Mini. Microsoft’s Surface lineup doesn’t have an entry in either of those categories. The Surface lineup is composed of laptops and the iMac-esque Surface Studio.

Apple’s MacBook and iMac lineup lacks touchscreens not because Apple hasn’t paid attention to them but because Apple genuinely doesn’t think these machines should have touchscreens. Maybe Apple is wrong. Maybe Microsoft is onto the future of these form factors and Apple will have to play catch up. I don’t think so, but time will tell. But Apple has invested significant time and resources into the MacBook, MacBook Pro, iMac, and now iMac Pro as they are.

If Microsoft’s Surface lineup has taken advantage of complacency, it’s on the part of existing Windows PC makers, not Apple.

Trump’s 17-Tweet Bender Yesterday Was Based Entirely on What Was on Fox News ★

Matthew Yglesias, writing for Vox:

Trump skeptics probably shouldn’t waste their time sowing fear of nuclear conflict in Korea — Asian stock exchanges, including in Seoul, do not appear particularly alarmed about Trump’s social media antics — but his allies should take more seriously the notion that this is a terrible way to do the job of president of the United States. Even at its very best, cable news is not an ideal source of information about the world, and the Fox News shows that Trump prefers are not cable news at their very best.

Trump-era Fox has frequently been compared by its critics to a state broadcasting network in an authoritarian regime. But the Soviet Union’s top leaders were not relying on their own propaganda outlets for information about the world. For the president to govern effectively, actual problems need to be brought to his attention. But in the propaganda bubble that Trump prefers to inhabit, there is no endless darkness in Puerto Rico or falling life expectancy amid a growing opioid crisis.

This is uncharted territory. The propaganda isn’t being directed by the executive leadership, but rather, the leader is being manipulated by the propaganda. I would make the case that the most powerful person in the world isn’t Donald Trump, but Rupert Murdoch. Fox News controls what Trump thinks, and Murdoch controls Fox News.

If Fox News ever turns against Trump, he’ll be done.

Basecamp Doesn’t Employ Anyone in San Francisco, but Now Pays Everyone as Though They Did ★

David Heinemeier Hansson:

We don’t actually have anyone who lives in San Francisco, but now everyone is being paid as though they did. Whatever an employee pockets in the difference in cost of living between where they are and the sky-high prices in San Francisco is theirs to keep.

This is not how companies normally do their thing. I’ve been listening to Adam Smith’s 1776 classic The Wealth of Nations, and just passed through the chapter on how the market is set by masters trying to get away with paying the least possible, and workers trying to press for the maximum possible. An antagonistic struggle, surely.

It doesn’t need to be like that. Especially in software, which is a profitable business when run with restraint and sold to businesses.

Icicles Falling From Roof of New Chicago Apple Store Blamed on Faulty Heating System ★

Blair Kamin, writing for the Chicago Tribune:

Apple spokesman Nick Leahy on Friday said the building’s architects, London-based Foster + Partners, had designed the glass-walled store with winter in mind, but had been foiled by a technical malfunction.

“The roof has a warming system that’s built into it,” he said. “It needed some fine-tuning and it got re-programmed today. It’s hopefully a temporary problem.”

In addition, he said, the store was designed to drain water — not through conventional gutters, but through four internal support columns.

That makes a lot more sense than that Chicago winter weather wasn’t taken into consideration, but let’s see about that “hopefully”.

For months now, the famously secretive Cupertino, Calif.-based computer maker has refused to let architecture critics tour its spaceshiplike, ring-shaped new headquarters, also designed by Foster + Partners.

What, one wonders, does Apple have to hide?

Last week, Apple admitted to intentionally slowing down older iPhones without telling customers. This week, it apologized and cut $50 off its $79 price to install a new battery into old phones.

I have no idea what the battery/performance saga has to do with Apple’s secrecy regarding access to its new headquarters at Apple Park, but I do know this: this battery thing will be the gift that keeps on giving for years to come to lazy critics who want to make vague hand-wavy accusations that Apple’s culture of secrecy is based on the fact that the company has something unseemly to hide.