Linked List: June 7, 2019

Friday, 7 June 2019

Craig Federighi on Federico Viticci’s AppStories Podcast ★

Speaking of podcasts with Craig Federighi and Federico Viticci, here’s one more to add to your weekend listening queue.

Dialog: ‘Writing Online with John Gruber of Daring Fireball’ ★

Federico Viticci and John Voorhees from MacStories have launched a new podcast, and I was honored to be their first guest:

For part one of a two-part conversation, Federico and John are joined by John Gruber of Daring Fireball and The Talk Show to talk about how he got started, the role of luck, privilege, hard work, and talent in success, the toxicity of social media, building a business writing online, advertising, sponsorships, hairpieces, and more.

Part 2 should drop on Tuesday.

The Dalrymple Report: WWDC With John Gruber and Matt Drance ★

Jim Dalrymple:

John Gruber and Matt Drance joined me again this year to discuss WWDC and all of the announcements from the conference. From coding to the Mac Pro, we give our thoughts on what we saw at WWDC.

We three did the same two years ago, and I think it turned out great. Drance in particular has some keen insights into just how big a deal SwiftUI is going to be. (No Heinekens until after the show this year.)

The Talk Show: Live From WWDC 2019 With Craig Federighi and Greg Joswiak ★

Now available as a regular audio podcast, in addition to the video that went up Wednesday night. Watch the album art if you want to catch the gag early on.

The Clever Cryptography Behind Apple’s ‘Find My’ Feature ★

Andy Greenberg, writing for Wired:

When Apple executive Craig Federighi described a new location-tracking feature for Apple devices at the company’s Worldwide Developer Conference keynote on Monday, it sounded — to the sufficiently paranoid, at least — like both a physical security innovation and a potential privacy disaster. But while security experts immediately wondered whether Find My would also offer a new opportunity to track unwitting users, Apple says it built the feature on a unique encryption system carefully designed to prevent exactly that sort of tracking — even by Apple itself.

Just a brilliant feature.

Uber Chief Operating Officer, Chief Marketing Officer Stepping Down ★

Christine Wang and Deirdre Bosa, reporting for CNBC:

The executive shakeup comes about a month after the ride hailing company went public.

“There’s never really a right time to announce departures or changes like this, but with the IPO behind us, I felt this was a good moment to simplify our org and set us up for the future,” Khosrowshahi said.

Late on a Friday afternoon seems like exactly the right time.

If you want to know what’s going on, read this great piece by Hubert Huran in the current issue of American Affairs, “Uber’s Path of Destruction”:

An examination of Uber’s economics suggests that it has no hope of ever earning sustainable urban car service profits in competitive markets. Its costs are simply much higher than the market is willing to pay, as its nine years of massive losses indicate. Uber not only lacks powerful competitive advantages, but it is actually less efficient than the competitors it has been driving out of business. […]

These beliefs about Uber’s corporate value were created entirely out of thin air. This is not a case of a company with a reasonably sound operating business that has managed to inflate stock market expectations a bit. This is a case of a massive valuation that has no relationship to any economic fundamentals. Uber has no competitive efficiency advantages, operates in an industry with few barriers to entry, and has lost more than $14 billion in the previous four years. But its narratives convinced most people in the media, investment, and tech worlds that it is the most valuable transportation company on the planet and the second most valuable start-up IPO in U.S. history (after Facebook).

Uber is a pyramid scheme, a scam. If they charged enough to make a profit almost no one would use the service. If I worked at Uber I’d get out now too, before the investment world wakes up.