Linked List: July 23, 2022

Saturday, 23 July 2022

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Apple Silicon Is an Inconvenient Truth ★

Jack Wellborn, “A Burger Without Heinz” at Worms and Viruses:

Wirecutter’s exclusion of MacBooks from a category that is effectively “best laptop” is the latest bit of evidence in a recent trend I’ve noticed wherein reviewers have inexplicably stopped comparing Wintel laptops to Apple’s MacBooks. Compare ArsTechnica’s review of the Surface Laptop Go 2 from this month to their review of the Surface Book 2 from 2017. The current review only includes other Wintel laptops in benchmarks whereas the one from 2017 included that year’s MacBook.

If memory serves, including Macs in PC hardware comparisons was more or less the norm just a few years ago. I can’t fathom why some reviewers have recently stopped doing so. Is it that reviewers don’t think they could fairly compare x86 and ARM laptops? It seems easy enough to me. Are they afraid that constantly showing MacBooks outperforming Wintel laptops will give the impression that they are in the bag for Apple? I don’t see why. Facts are facts, and a lot of people need or want to buy a Windows laptop regardless.

I can’t help but wonder if, in the minds of many reviewers, MacBooks were PCs so long as they used Intel, and therefore they stopped being PCs once Apple switched to using their own silicon.

I feel quite certain Wellborn had it right the first time: reviewers at ostensibly neutral publications are afraid that reiterating the plain truth about x86 vs. Apple silicon — that Apple silicon wins handily in both performance and efficiency — is not going to be popular with a large segment of their audience. Apple silicon is a profoundly inconvenient truth for many computer enthusiasts who do not like Macs, so they’ve gone into denial, like Fox News cultists with regard to climate change. It’s that simple. There’s no other explanation for omitting MacBooks from comparisons like Ars Technica’s.

Solving a Problem People Don’t Want Solved ★

I really don’t mean to keep writing about Humane’s Change Everything teaser, but a DF reader emailed to say that the gist of it — that our collective addiction to our phones is a problem, and that Humane has struck upon a solution — reminded him of Microsoft’s ad campaign when they launched Windows Phone 7 in 2010.

I hadn’t thought about that in a while, but yes — yes it does. The first spot in Microsoft’s campaign has seemingly vanished from the internet, but the second spot in the campaign — which is very fun and exquisitely well-executed, replete with an excellent choice of song — is available on YouTube. I highly recommend giving this old ad a minute of your time for a rewatch. (Update: Here’s a copy of the first ad in the campaign — it’s just as funny as I remember. Worth watching! But a clever well-made short film is not a good ad if it doesn’t make people want to buy the product.)

The gist of Microsoft’s 2010 Windows Phone campaign was the same — everyone devotes too much attention to their phones and Microsoft has hit upon a solution. Here’s what I wrote then:

And do iPhone / Android / BlackBerry addicts really see this as a problem that needs to be solved? I feel like I spend so much time on my iPhone not because it’s inefficient, but because it’s so good. I’m never more than a few seconds away from something at least somewhat engaging.

I.e., Microsoft’s premise here is that WP7 has a dashboard and system-wide interface that’s optimized for getting you through a finite amount of “checking in” or “catching up” in significantly less time than other mobile systems. But I don’t think people are on their iPhones / Androids / BlackBerrys all the time because of inefficient UI design. I think it’s because we want to be on them. These devices are where our minds are drawn — like moths to a flame, perhaps — whenever we’re otherwise unoccupied.

Holds up.

Wirecutter’s ‘Best’ Laptop ★

My longstanding complaint about ~~The~~ Wirecutter is that they institutionally fetishize price over quality. That makes it all the more baffling that their recommended “Best Laptop” — not best Windows laptop, but best laptop, full stop — is a Dell XPS 13 that costs $1,340 but is slower and gets worse battery life (and has a lower-resolution display) than their “best Mac laptop”, the $1,000 M1 MacBook Air.

They do have a “Mac or Windows (or Something Else)?” preface to the whole comparison, but if you’re going to name a “best laptop”, putting aside OS preference, it’s incompetent not to conclude that MacBooks are both technically superior and better values for the dollar thanks to Apple’s exclusive silicon advantage.

The core of my discontent with Wirecutter is that they — like so many people — incorrectly conflate value with price. Value is nuanced and multivariate; price is simply one variable in the value equation. But what makes them look downright silly in this “Best Laptop” comparison is that their first knock against the MacBook Air is that “MacBooks are even more expensive than Windows ultrabooks” — even though their recommended Air configuration is well over $200 less than the Dell XPS they recommend.

‘No, Thank You for the Money Though’ ★

Molly White reports on an NFT “joke gone wrong” — but I read it as a joke gone right. Delicious.

CNN: ‘Why Bluetooth Remains an “Unusually Painful” Technology After Two Decades’ ★

Catherine Thorbecke, writing for CNN:

Despite its pervasiveness, the technology is still prone to headache-inducing issues, whether it’s the struggle to set up a new device to connect with, switching headphones between devices or simply being too far out of range to connect.

“I have a very love-hate relationship with Bluetooth,” said Chris Harrison, a professor of Human-Computer Interaction at Carnegie Melon University. “Because when it works, it’s amazing, and when it doesn’t, you want to rip your hair out. The promise was to make it as seamless and easy as possible. Bluetooth never quite got there, unfortunately.”

The good news is, Bluetooth is an open industry standard, governed by a consortium. Consortiums are a great way to develop and advance reliable technology — so agrees no less a body of technical expertise than the European Commission. So, next year, I bet, Bluetooth is finally going to get good.