Linked List: April 21, 2020

Tuesday, 21 April 2020

Epic Games Begrudgingly Launches Fortnite on the Google Play Store ★

Lucas Matney, writing for TechCrunch:

“Google puts software downloadable outside of Google Play at a disadvantage, through technical and business measures such as scary, repetitive security pop-ups for downloaded and updated software, restrictive manufacturer and carrier agreements and dealings, Google public relations characterizing third party software sources as malware, and new efforts such as Google Play Protect to outright block software obtained outside the Google Play store,” an Epic Games spokesperson said in a statement. “Because of this, we’ve launched Fortnite for Android on the Google Play Store.” […]

“We hope that Google will revise its policies and business dealings in the near future, so that all developers are free to reach and engage in commerce with customers on Android and in the Play Store through open services, including payment services, that can compete on a level playing field,” Epic Game’s statement further read.

Andy Rubin should re-up his 10-year-old tweet on openness, a mantra we don’t hear as much about as we used to from Google. “Open always beats closed”, etc.

Apple’s Standalone Kit to Add Wheels to Mac Pro Costs $700 ★

Juli Clover, reporting for MacRumors last Wednesday:

Apple today introduced a Mac Pro Wheels kit designed for the Mac Pro, which adds wheels to the machine after purchase. The kit is priced at $699.

When adding wheels to the Mac Pro when making an initial purchase, Apple charges $400, but the standalone kit to be used after purchase is $300 more because the pre-purchase price includes the price of removing the $300 feet.

I don’t know if they’re over-engineered or overpriced, but until this week, I was under the impression that they cost $400 on their own, not $400 after subtracting $300 for the feet. I joked about it at my show at WWDC, when the price still hadn’t been announced, but no matter how great they are, $700 sure seems like a lot of money for four wheels to put on a computer. Even with the niche stature of the Mac Pro, this has to a be a good third-party opportunity.

Federico Viticci on the iPad Magic Keyboard ★

Federico Viticci, writing for MacStories:

The Magic Keyboard turns an iPad Pro into a laptop, but it does so in a way that isn’t definitive — the transformation can always be reversed by the simple act of pulling the “computing core” away from it. This is also where the Magic Keyboard differs from competing accessories such as the Brydge keyboard: aside from Brydge’s poor trackpad implementation, I always found their design discouraged a constant alternation of roles — from laptop to tablet, and vice versa. It could be done, but carefully putting the iPad inside the Brydge’s keyboard clips and pulling it out was a chore. As a result, I found myself leaving the iPad Pro inside the Brydge keyboard at all times and never using it as a tablet. The Magic Keyboard feels like it was designed with the opposite principle in mind: it enables a laptop mode for the iPad, but you can always undo it and return to the iPad’s pure tablet form in two seconds. And when you’re done using the iPad as a tablet, you can just as easily re-align it with the Magic Keyboard (thanks to magnets in the case) and go back to using the physical keyboard and trackpad.

I’ve never owned a Brydge product, but Jason Snell let me use his for a quick kick-the-tires test drive at a keynote event a while back. You can see just by looking at one that they’re (a) pretty clever for Bluetooth iPad-as-laptop accessories, but (b) not as clever as Apple’s Magic Keyboard. Part of that is the Magic Keyboard’s reliance on Apple’s proprietary Smart Connector instead of Bluetooth. I’ve been using desktop Bluetooth keyboards with my iPads for years, and it adds a slight inconvenience whenever you walk away from the keyboard with the iPad in tow, but remain within Bluetooth range of the keyboard — you need to toggle Bluetooth off/on to get the iPad to switch to its on-screen keyboard. Not a huge deal, for sure. But however minor a chore, it’s still a chore — every single time you take the iPad away from the keyboard.

The other difference is Brydge’s use of clip connectors compared to the Magic Keyboard’s reliance solely upon magnets. You might think, Well, of course Apple has pulled off an accessory that makes better use of the magnets in the iPad Pro — they designed the iPad Pro. Apple’s peripherals can be designed while the products they pair with are being designed. But the 2018 iPad Pros have the exact same magnets. As I reported in my review, the 2018 iPad Pros connect to the Magic Keyboard every bit as securely as the new 2020 models. Third-party accessory makers have had one and a half years to make an iPad Pro keyboard case that magnetically snaps into place like the Magic Keyboard. I know that the Smart Connector requires a licensing deal with Apple, but there has been nothing in the way to stop a Bluetooth iPad-as-laptop keyboard accessory from being as magnetically and structurally clever as the Magic Keyboard.

Apple has a first-party advantage, for sure, but they’re also really good at designing accessories.

What Is the Market for Smaller Than 4.7-Inch Phones? ★

Samuel Axon, writing at Ars Technica:

All that is to say that while some smartphone buyers might say they want a small smartphone, a big chunk of those who say that might change their tune when told that means worse battery life and poorer-quality photos.

It doesn’t necessarily mean that, though. The way Apple’s iPhone lineup has shaken out over the years, device size has correlated to camera quality to some degree. Maybe better said as camera capabilities, rather than quality — recall that in the 6/6S/7/8 era, the Plus-sized models had additional lenses and image stabilization features the non-Plus models lacked. And battery life — I think that argument is off base. Yes, bigger phones have bigger batteries, but they also have bigger displays and the display is the biggest consumer of energy. On the iPhone side of the fence at least, smaller phones have not had worse battery life.

Companies like Apple do market research and adapt their product lineups accordingly. This isn’t something former CEO Steve Jobs was known for, but Apple’s current lineup seems to suggest Tim Cook is not so averse to that approach to product development. And market research is probably telling smartphone makers that the great majority of consumers want big phones — either because they want big screens, or because other desires like longer battery life are easier to deliver in larger devices.

There is surely still a niche audience for small phones, though, and it’s not being served very well. Part of that may be because supply lines can only produce so many components in a given time frame, and it may make sense in many cases for Apple and its partners to focus those supply lines on products that have the widest possible appeal.

This is a profound misunderstanding of Jobs-era Apple decision making, or at the very least a conflation of market research (what people are buying) and focus group research (asking people what they think they want to buy). Jobs was famously averse to focus group testing, but I don’t think that’s changed. Focus groups would not have told Apple to remove the home button and Touch ID. Focus groups would have thrown chairs at the two-way glass if asked about removing headphone jacks.

But Apple has always done fanatically detailed market research. They don’t talk about it because by any company’s standards for trade secrecy, market research is a trade secret, and Apple is, we all know, more secretive than most companies. I think what makes truly small phones — let’s say iPhone 5S-sized phones — hard to gauge the demand for is that no one has even tried making a good one since the original iPhone SE 4 years ago.

COVID-19 Pandemic Euphemism of the Day: ‘An Unapproved Manner’ ★

The Philadelphia Inquirer:

The horror of the coronavirus pandemic took an especially macabre turn on Sunday afternoon when a Ford pickup truck pulled up behind the Philadelphia Medical Examiner’s Office with five or six bagged bodies stacked in its open cargo bed.

The driver got out, spoke briefly to a medical examiner’s employee who seemed unnerved by the delivery, and then climbed onto the cargo bed, walking on bodies that initially had been covered by mats, according to an Inquirer photographer who was working near the site in University City. He pulled the bodies by their feet to the edge of the truck bed. The remains were offloaded one at a time onto gurneys and wheeled up a ramp into a refrigerated trailer. The unidentified driver wore torn jeans, a blue jacket, and a dark blue cap.

The Medical Examiner’s Office confirmed that a transfer of human remains from a local hospital had arrived in “an unapproved manner.”

This is one where the pictures tell more than a thousand words. Horrific. These aren’t bad people. No one wants to see dead bodies piled in the back of a pickup like bags of sand. This is the result of a system that is overwhelmed by the pandemic’s death toll.