Linked List: January 5, 2022

Wednesday, 5 January 2022

Apple’s Dueling iPhone OS Projects ★

Re: the previous item on Facebook purportedly scrapping their ground-up new OS for AR/VR in favor of continuing with the forked version of Android that currently powers Oculus headsets, NBC News has a non-paywalled archive of Businessweek’s 2011 profile of Scott Forstall (“The Sorcerer’s Apprentice at Apple”) by Adam Satariano, Peter Burrows, and Brad Stone:

Around 2005, Jobs faced a crucial decision. Should he give the task of developing the device’s software to the team that built the iPod, which wanted to build a Linux-based system? Or should he entrust the project to the engineers who had revitalized the software foundation of the Macintosh? In other words, should he shrink the Mac, which would be an epic feat of engineering, or enlarge the iPod? Jobs preferred the former option, since he would then have a mobile operating system he could customize for the many gizmos then on Apple’s drawing board. Rather than pick an approach right away, however, Jobs pitted the teams against each other in a bake-off.

Forstall led the Mac-centric approach. He commanded a team of fewer than 15 engineers who went to work stripping down Apple’s OS X operating system to see if it would work on a device with considerably less power and battery life than a regular computer. Leading the other group was Fadell, who helped create the iPod. Another boy wonder, Fadell in 2005 had become one of Apple’s youngest-ever senior vice-presidents at 36. The competition, according to former Apple employees, turned explosive, with Fadell and Forstall arguing over talent, resources, attention and credit.

Update, 25 February 2022: “On the Origin of the iPhone” explains, in some detail, why Tony Fadell shouldn’t be described as having led the embedded Linux phone OS project.

The Information: ‘Meta Platforms Halts VR and AR Operating System Project’ ★

Sylvia Varnham O’Regan, reporting for The Information:

Facebook parent company Meta Platforms has stopped development of a new software operating system to power its virtual reality devices and upcoming augmented reality glasses, according to two people familiar with the decision. [...]

Meta uses an open-source version of Google’s Android operating system to power Meta’s existing Oculus Quest VR devices. But Meta wanted to create an OS from scratch to power them and future devices, a project that became known internally as XROS. XR is a catch-all term for VR, AR, and mixed reality. In MR, the wearer of a headset could view and use real-world objects, such as a keyboard, to do work or play games in a VR-like app.

Instead, the company has told some staff it would continue to modify an open-source version of Android, which Google developed for smartphones but which other companies have used to power various devices, the people familiar with the matter said. Meta’s modified version of Android, known internally as VROS, powers existing Oculus VR headsets.

Hard to say what this means. Operating systems are hard — there are only a handful of successful ones in the world.

I wonder if this is sort of like the early days of Apple’s iPhone efforts, when there were two competing OS teams inside Apple: a Scott Forstall/Bertrand Serlet-led team trying to shrink Mac OS X down to run on a phone, and a ~~Tony Fadell~~/Jon Rubinstein/Steve Sakoman-led team trying to scale the iPod’s embedded Linux OS up to serve as a phone OS. [Update, 25 February 2022: “On the Origin of the iPhone” explains, in some detail, why Tony Fadell’s name is struck-through above.]

Maybe what happened at Facebook isn’t so much “We give up on our own new OS, let’s just use Android”, but more like “Our effort to build our own OS atop Android is working better, let’s go with that one”. Facebook’s Oculus device OS as it stands today doesn’t resemble Google’s Android that runs on phones and tablets. It’s their own fork of Android. I don’t think they’re dependent on Google in any way with this.

Update: Also interesting is that Mark Lucovsky, the leader of Facebook’s XROS team, left the company in November, apparently because he only just then realized that Facebook is a spectacularly shitty company:

Contacted by The Information, Lucovsky said in a text message: “I made my decision to leave Facebook after the 60 Minutes interview [with Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen] on 10/4, subsequent readings of the material supplied to the SEC, and the company’s new metaverse-centric focus.”

Facebook cancelled the XROS project shortly after Lucovsky quit.

(Via 9to5 Mac.)

Brik Font: Creating Type With Lego ★

Jason Kottke, linking to the beautiful work of Craig Ward on Instagram:

There is just something so satisfying about meticulously rendering digital artifacts in a physical medium like Lego.

Amen to that.

Mayo Clinic Fires 700 Unvaccinated Employees, About 1 Percent of Its Workforce ★

CBS Minnesota:

The dismissed employees make up about 1% of Mayo’s 73,000 workforce. Officials say while it’s sad to lose valuable employees, it’s essential to keep patients, the workforce, visitors and communities safe.

People released Tuesday can return to Mayo Clinic for future job openings if they get vaccinated.

More like this, please.

Wordle ★

Fun little profile of Josh Wardle, creator of the web-based word game Wordle, by Daniel Victor for The New York Times:

“I think people kind of appreciate that there’s this thing online that’s just fun,” Mr. Wardle said in an interview on Monday. “It’s not trying to do anything shady with your data or your eyeballs. It’s just a game that’s fun.” [...]

The breakthrough, he said, was limiting players to one game per day. That enforced a sense of scarcity, which he said was partially inspired by the Spelling Bee, which leaves people wanting more, he said. [...]

While other games send notifications to your phone hoping you’ll come back throughout the day, Wordle doesn’t want an intense relationship. “It’s something that encourages you to spend three minutes a day,” he said. “And that’s it. Like, it doesn’t want any more of your time than that.”

I’ve been playing Wordle most days for the past month. It’s nice to see it explode in popularity. It’s fun and simple, and the fact that you can do one and only one puzzle per day is a huge part of the charm. It’s a habit, not an addiction, and feels like a wee bit of mental calisthenics to start the day. (I’ve long done the NYT’s “Mini” crossword for the same reason.)

Media Columnist Ben Smith Leaves the NYT to Start New Publication With Bloomberg CEO Justin Smith ★

David Gelles, reporting for The New York Times:

Ben Smith, the media columnist for The New York Times, is leaving the media outlet to start a new global news organization with Justin Smith, who is stepping down as chief executive of Bloomberg Media.

Ben Smith said in an interview that they planned to build a global newsroom that broke news and experimented with new formats of storytelling. He did not provide details on what beats or regions would be covered, how much money they planned to raise or when the new organization would start.

“There are 200 million people who are college educated, who read in English, but who no one is really treating like an audience, but who talk to each other and talk to us,” said Ben Smith, who is not related to Justin Smith. “That’s who we see as our audience.”

I’ve enjoyed Smith’s stint as the Times media columnist; it’s the first time that column has been good since David Carr died in 2015. Not sure what Smith is angling for with his idea that targeting college-educated readers is somehow novel, though. That’s exactly the demographic who reads the Times.

See also: Clare Malone’s brief interview with Ben Smith yesterday, for The New Yorker.