Linked List: September 24, 2018

Monday, 24 September 2018

NYT: ‘Instagram’s Co-Founders Said to Step Down From Company’ ★

Mike Isaac, reporting for The New York Times:

Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, the co-founders of the photo-sharing app Instagram, have resigned and plan to leave the company in coming weeks, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter. The exits add to the challenges facing Instagram’s parent company, Facebook.

Mr. Systrom, Instagram’s chief executive, and Mr. Krieger, the chief technical officer, notified Instagram’s leadership team and Facebook on Monday of their decision to leave, said the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

Systrom has guided Instagram’s design and experience all along. This isn’t one of those cases where these two had mentally checked out long ago and are now just making it official — it’s a big deal for Instagram. Interesting, too, that they’re leaving together.

The Talk Show: ‘Flabbergasting’ ★

Nilay Patel returns to the show to talk about the iPhone XS and XS Max. We got so caught up talking about cameras, we never even mention headphone jacks.

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Austin Mann’s iPhone XS Camera Review: Zanzibar ★

Austin Mann:

Most of the time my expectations for camera upgrades on “S” years aren’t so high, but after shooting with the iPhone XS for a week, I can confidently say it’s a huge camera upgrade. There’s a lot of little improvements, but Smart HDR definitely takes the cake. This is a feature and technology that improves virtually everything you capture with your iPhone camera. I think you’ll be really thrilled when you experience the results yourself.

AirPower References in iOS 12.1 Code Suggest Continuing Development ★

Guilherme Rambo, writing for 9to5Mac:

However, new evidence from the iPhone XS and iOS 12.1 suggests that, while it may be delayed, development of AirPower continues. Looking into iOS 12.1, we noticed that the component of iOS responsible for managing the charging interface that appears when using AirPower has been updated, which means that Apple is still actively working on the project.

Furthermore, a picture of the “getting started guide” that comes packaged with the iPhone XS clearly mentions AirPower. “Place iPhone with screen facing up on AirPower or a Qi-certified wireless charger,” it reads. The image was shared on Twitter by Gavin Stephens.

If Apple was planning on cancelling the project altogether, then it would definitely not be mentioning it in the packaging of the brand new devices.

This is good news. Makes me wonder though, if AirPower is going to debut this year, when? It doesn’t make a lot of sense to announce it on stage at an October event for new MacBooks and iPads, because neither of those products will charge inductively. But I guess they could do it alongside the promised new AirPods case.

My other thought: maybe Apple has no plans to talk about AirPower on stage at any event, and they’re just going to release it for sale when it’s ready. They might not want to talk about it because they don’t want to acknowledge — or ignore — the fact that it’s so late.

‘By a Captain, He’s No Captain’ ★

Frederic Raphael, who co-wrote the screenplay for Eyes Wide Shut, responding to Nathan Abrams’s new book on Kubrick:

While conning Abrams’s volume, I discovered, not greatly to my chagrin, that I am the sole villain of the piece. Abrams calls me “self-serving” and “unreliable” in my accounts of my working and personal relationship with Stanley. He insinuates that I had less to do with Eyes Wide Shut than I pretend and that Stanley regretted my involvement. It is hard for him to deny (but convenient to omit) that, after trying for some 30 years to get a succession of writers to “crack” how to do Schnitzler’s Traumnovelle, Kubrick greeted my first draft with “I’m absolutely thrilled.” A source whose anonymity I respect told me that he had never seen Stanley so happy since the day he received his first royalty check (for $5 million) for 2001. No matter.

Colin Kaepernick Is Nike’s $6 Billion Man ★

Kate Gibson, writing for CBS MoneyWatch:

The heat Nike has taken over its controversial advertising campaign featuring former NFL star Colin Kaepernick seems to have had another effect: burnishing the iconic brand’s appeal to investors.

Nike shares have surged 36 percent on the year, making the company the top performer on the Dow’s index of 30 blue-chip stocks. The run-up includes a nearly 5 percent increase since Nike’s Labor Day announcement that Kaepernick would be featured in its campaign, adding nearly $6 billion to the company’s market value.

The stock continues to hover near an all-time high, which it reached in mid-September only weeks after some Nike customers publicly burned their shoes to express their displeasure at the new ad.

Apple and Salesforce Announce iOS Strategic Partnership ★

Apple Newsroom:

Apple and Salesforce today announced a strategic partnership that brings together the number one customer relationship management platform and iOS, the world’s most advanced mobile operating system, enabling powerful new mobile apps for business. Working with Apple, Salesforce is redesigning its app to embrace the native mobile platform with exclusive new features on iOS. The companies will also provide tools and resources for millions of Salesforce developers to build their own native apps with a new Salesforce Mobile SDK for iOS, and a new iOS app development course on Trailhead, Salesforce’s free, web-based learning platform.

I don’t really know what this means, to be honest, but I do remember being deeply skeptical back in 2008 when Apple announced a bunch of “enterprise” related features for the then-new iPhone 3G. “Apple” and “enterprise” were just words that didn’t go together — until they did. Back then Microsoft, IBM, and Intel more or less ruled the enterprise market unchallenged. Apple has inexorably grown into this market as mobile has taken over the device landscape.

See also: This Reuters interview with Tim Cook and Marc Benioff indicates that a large part of this partnership is about Siri integration, which is also interesting.

SiriusXM Is Buying Pandora in $3.5 Billion Deal ★

Seems like a lot of money to me.