Linked List: February 1, 2018

Thursday, 1 February 2018

Is It a Problem That HomePod Only Works With Apple Products? ★

Michael Simon, writing at Macworld:

And in many ways, it is. If anyone rushed to Apple.com to buy a HomePod after seeing one of the Grammy ads, they might be in for a surprise after it arrives on February 9, especially if they missed the disclaimer at the end of the commercial: Requires compatible Apple device. More than any other Apple product on the market today, HomePod is indelibly tied to Apple’s iEcosystem, so if you have an Android phone, you’re out of luck, even if you happen to subscribe to Apple Music.

It all reminds me of the early days of the iPod: a high-priced device that only works with Apple products. But while the strategy might have worked back in 2001, it’s going to be a much harder sell now.

This was the knock on the Apple Watch as well — which didn’t just require “a compatible Apple device”. It required one specific (expensive) Apple product: the iPhone. I think it has done OK.

The Verge: ‘Surface Pro 4 Owners Are Putting Their Tablets in Freezers to Fix Screen Flickering Issues’ ★

Tom Warren, writing for The Verge:

Some owners have even started freezing their tablets to stop the screen flickering temporarily. “I get about half an hour’s use out of it after ten minutes in the freezer,” says one owner. Another user posted a video showing how the flickering stops as soon as the Surface Pro 4 is placed in a freezer. The Verge understands that the screen flickering problem is a hardware issue that Microsoft won’t be able to fix with a software update. It’s currently affecting less than 1 percent of all Surface Pro 4 devices.

This is not a “fix”.
This sounds like a bad idea even as a temporary salve. Condensation is a thing.

Rodney Dangerfield in Stanley Kubrick’s ‘The Killing’ ★

This is amazing. (Thanks to DF reader François Kahn for the tip.)

Apple Reports 2017 Holiday Quarter Results ★

Apple:

“We’re thrilled to report the biggest quarter in Apple’s history, with broad-based growth that included the highest revenue ever from a new iPhone lineup. iPhone X surpassed our expectations and has been our top-selling iPhone every week since it shipped in November,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO.

So that whole narrative about iPhone X being less popular than expected? Never mind.

Jason Snell has done his usual sorcery to get Apple’s numbers into charts. On the iPhone, unit sales were down about 1 percent year-over-year, but revenue was up about 6 percent. And this year’s holiday quarter was one week shorter than last years — and the much-anticipated iPhone X didn’t get into customers’ hands until November 3, over a month into the quarter. The average selling price for all iPhones went up $102 year-over-year. Seems like proof that the iPhone X strategy is working.

Wired: ‘Podcast Listeners Really Are the Holy Grail Advertisers Hoped They’d Be’ ★

Miranda Katz, reporting for Wired:

Apple’s Podcast Analytics feature finally became available last month, and Euceph — along with podcasters everywhere — breathed a sigh of relief. Though it’s still early days, the numbers podcasters are seeing are highly encouraging. Forget those worries that the podcast bubble would burst the minute anyone actually got a closer look: It seems like podcast listeners really are the hyper-engaged, super-supportive audiences that everyone hoped. […]

Across the podcast ecosystem, the results are similarly uplifting. At Panoply, home to podcasts like Slate’s Political Gabfest and Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History, CTO Jason Cox says that listeners are typically getting through 80-90 percent of content; the same is true at Headgum, the podcast network started by Jake Hurwitz and Amir Blumenfeld. Those numbers tend to be steady regardless of the length of the show — and according to Panoply, the few listeners who do skip ads continue to remain engaged with the episode, rather than dropping off at the first sign of an interruption. “I think people are overall very relieved to see that people are actually listening the way that we hoped,” says Headgum CTO Andrew Pile. “There are really audiences out there who listen to every word that comes out of [a host’s] mouth.”

Marco Arment:

The podcast business didn’t really need precise listener behavioral data. Who knew?

I don’t obsess over these iTunes Podcast analytics, but I’ve taken a look now that Apple is offering them, and the results for my show jibe with what’s being reported in this story: most people stick around to the end, and most people don’t skip the ads.

Lindy West: ‘I Quit Twitter and It Feels Great’ ★

Lindy West, writing for The New York Times:

I’m frequently approached by colleagues, usually women, who ask me about quitting Twitter with hushed titillation, as if I’ve escaped a cult or broken a particularly seductive taboo. Well, here’s what my new life is like: I don’t wake up with a pit in my stomach every day, dreading what horrors accrued in my phone overnight. I don’t get dragged into protracted, bad-faith arguments with teenage boys about whether poor people deserve medical care, or whether putting nice guys in the friend zone is a hate crime. I don’t spend hours every week blocking and reporting trolls and screen-grabbing abuse in case it someday escalates into a credible threat. I no longer feel like my brain is trapped in a centrifuge filled with swastikas and Alex Jones’s spittle. Time is finite, and now I have more of it.

At the same time, I know this conversation is more complicated than that. I’ve lost a large platform to self-promote and make professional connections, which isn’t something many writers can afford to give up (less established writers and marginalized writers most of all — in a horrid irony, the same writers disproportionately abused on Twitter). I get my news on a slight delay. I seethe at the perception that I ceded any ground to trolls trying to push me out. I will probably never persuade RuPaul to be my friend. Also, I loved Twitter. Twitter is funny and smart and validating and cathartic. It feels, when you are embroiled in it, like the place where everything is happening. (Scoff if you like, but the president of the United States makes major policy announcements there. This is the world now.)

I really hope Jack Dorsey reads West’s piece and takes it to heart. She’s the last sort of person Twitter should want to leave the platform.

Instagram Is Turning Into Facebook ★

Katherine Bindley, writing for the WSJ:

I understand why Instagram is adopting Facebook features: They work. But for years I logged into Instagram and enjoyed it more than Facebook. I fear a day when I wake up, open my phone and can no longer tell the difference between the two.

Regarding ads:

I can now make it through three new posts on Instagram before seeing an ad. After that, I get one every six to eight posts.

Instagram’s spokeswoman confirmed ad load is up: “We’ve been able to do this by improving the quality and the relevance of the ads.”

I really do enjoy using Instagram less these days, and it’s precisely for the same reasons I never signed up for Facebook. My biggest complaint is the algorithmic timeline — I truly miss the old timeline where I just saw photos from the people I follow in the order in which they were posted. I’m sure Instagram has detailed metrics showing that the new timeline increases “engagement”, but I’m equally certain that it’s led me to check the app less frequently.

But I still don’t see ads in my Instagram feed. Literally none. This might be because I don’t have a Facebook account, or might be because my Instagram account is flagged in some sort of hidden way because of my prominence from here at Daring Fireball, or might be a bug. This has been a years-long mystery to me (that I probably shouldn’t complain about).

The Publisher of Newsweek and the International Business Times Has Been Buying Traffic and Engaging in Ad Fraud ★

Speaking of good reporting from BuzzFeed, here’s a report from Craig Silverman on publications that are pretty much doing the opposite:

The publisher of Newsweek and the International Business Times has been engaging in fraudulent online traffic practices that helped it secure a major ad buy from a US government agency, according to a new report released today by independent ad fraud researchers.

IBTimes.com, the publisher’s US business site, last year won a significant portion of a large video and display advertising campaign for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a federal agency. Social Puncher, a consulting firm that investigates online ad fraud, alleges in its report that the ads were displayed to an audience on IBTimes.com that includes a significant amount of “cheap junk traffic with a share of bots.”

BuzzFeed News in Talks for Investment From Laurene Powell Jobs’s Company ★

Matthew Garrahan and Shannon Bond, reporting for The Financial Times (paywall, alas, which you can sometimes poke through via Google News):

The editor of BuzzFeed has had discussions with the company started by Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of the late Steve Jobs, about investing in the digital media company’s news division, according to two people with knowledge of the talks.

Discussions between Ms Powell Jobs’ company, the Emerson Collective, which last year took a majority stake in The Atlantic magazine, and Buzzfeed’s editor, Ben Smith, are at a preliminary stage and people close to the talks cautioned that a deal may not materialise.

BuzzFeed is doing great work, so I’m not surprised Powell Jobs would be interested.

Apple in 2017: The Six Colors Report Card ★

Jason Snell:

It’s time for our annual look back on Apple’s performance during the past year, as seen through the eyes of writers, editors, developers, podcasters, and other people who spend an awful lot of time thinking about Apple.

This is the third year that I’ve presented this survey to a hand-selected group. They were prompted with 11 different Apple-related subjects, and asked to rate them on a scale from 1 to 5, as well as optionally provide text commentary on their vote. I received 50 replies, with the average results as shown below.

If you’re curious why there aren’t any quotes from me, that’s because, dummy that I am, I forgot to fill out the form. But with 50 well-chosen panelists, it wouldn’t have made much difference to the consensus.

The biggest year-over-year changes were iPad (up 0.7 on a scale of 1-5) and software quality (down 0.7). The highest rated product is the iPhone, at 4.4. Those numbers all sound about right.

Apple Confirms That HomePod Works With iCloud Music Library ★

Apple updated the specs page for HomePod, with the full list of supported audio sources:

Apple Music
iTunes Music Purchases
iCloud Music Library with an Apple Music or iTunes Match subscription
Beats 1 Live Radio
Podcasts
AirPlay other content to HomePod from iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Apple TV, and Mac

iCloud Music Library support was the one that left a lot of us scratching our heads last week. Good to know it’s officially supported. This means any music in your personal library is available through HomePod, even if they are tracks that aren’t available in Apple Music or the iTunes Store.