Linked List: April 17, 2019

Wednesday, 17 April 2019

Flagship 5th Avenue Apple Store Battling Bed Bugs 

Not a great week for Apple, really.

Pete for America’s Design Toolkit 

South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg’s campaign for the Democratic nomination in 2020 has gotten a lot of attention in recent weeks. I’m not yet picking a favorite in the race, but he’s certainly a compelling candidate, and an openly gay major party candidate is a first worth celebrating.

What I seek to direct your attention to today, however, is unrelated to politics or policy. It’s this branding site put together by his campaign. This is strong identity work. Just check out these per-state graphics, each of them hand-lettered with full credit given to the artists. This work is distinctive, attractive, and strikes me as pitch-perfect for Buttigieg’s personality and tone. It fits, which is a very hard thing to get right.

‘Don’t Buy a 5G Smartphone’ 

This piece by Ron Amadeo at Ars Technica was published in December, but I think accurately captures the state of 5G for 2019:

For 5G mmWave in 2019, we’re going to get thicker, hotter, more complicated phones that use more energy and cost more money. With no commercial devices to look at, the exact extent of all of these downgrades is still up in the air, but it’s undeniable that first-gen 5G hardware is going to be inferior to more mature 4G designs. With 5G networks only in their infancy and a supposed $200-$300 premium for 5G-compatible phones, this really doesn’t seem worth it for consumers.

Amadeo’s illustration showing how many extra chips a 5G phone needs today is a real eye opener. Qualcomm is motivated to move things forward as fast as they can, but this makes me think we might not see good 5G phones until 2021.

Samsung Galaxy Fold Is the Homer Simpson Car 

Points to Patrick Thornton for calling this back in February:

Some people are calling this ambitious. That’s only something that someone who has never built products would say. The correct term for the Galaxy Fold is prototype.

Galaxy Fold Doesn’t Fold So Good 

Dieter Bohn’s review unit broke after just two days:

It’s a distressing thing to discover just two days after receiving my review unit. More distressing is that the bulge eventually pressed sharply enough into the screen to break it. You can see the telltale lines of a broken OLED converging on the spot where the bulge is.

Seems like a widespread problem. Steve Kovach’s unit broke after one day, and so did Mark Gurman’s. Gurman says it comes with a screen protector that he peeled off but apparently wasn’t supposed to. Looks like the sort of thing you’re supposed to peel off.

Marques Brownlee peeled his off too and the screen broke. Now I’m starting to wonder if anyone’s review unit has not broken.

The Galaxy Fold didn’t look like a real product when Samsung announced it, and it looks less like a real product now that it’s in reviewers’ hands. This thing is supposed to ship in a week, starting at $1,980. I’ll go out on a limb and predict that’s not going to happen.

9to5Mac: ‘Apple Revamping Find My Friends and Find My iPhone in Unified App’ 

Guilherme Rambo, writing for 9to5Mac:

Apple also wants users to be able to track any item — not just their Apple devices — using this new unified app. The company is working on a new hardware product, known only as “B389” by the people involved in its development.

This new product will be a tag that can be attached to any item — similar to other products like Tile. The tag will be paired to a user’s iCloud account by proximity to an iPhone, like AirPods. Users will be able to receive notifications when their device gets too far away from the tag, preventing them from forgetting the item the tag is attached to. Certain locations can be added to a list of ignored locations, so that the item can be left at those locations without the user being notified. The location of a tag can also be shared with friends or family.

Combining Find My Friends with Find My iPhone (really, Find My Devices) and adding support for Tile-like trackers sounds like a great idea.

Rambo is absolutely on fire lately with these leaks from Apple. Would love to know the backstory on how he’s scoring them.