Month: August 2012

Teens Flock to YouTube for Music Consumption ⇥ 9to5mac.com

Élyse Betters writes for 9to5 Mac:

The majority of American teens prefer YouTube to iTunes, radio, online radio, and CDs when it comes to finding and listening to music. […]

YouTube snagged 64 percent of 13-to-17 year olds, while radio came in second at 56 percent. iTunes held 54 percent, with CDs and Pandora rounding the top five at 50- and- 35 percent respectively.

I find radio’s second place finish shockingly high. Nobody I know actively listens to the radio. YouTube’s first place finish is awfully disappointing, considering it uses 128 kbps encoding of what are likely already-compressed songs. I know a few people who also rip songs from the videos with those YouTube to MP3 tools, which further compresses the 128 kbps audio from the video. These songs are painful to listen to.

This jives with Jonathan Berger‘s annual findings:

Berger then said that he tests his incoming students each year in a similar way. He has them listen to a variety of recordings which use different formats from MP3 to ones of much higher quality. He described the results with some disappointment and frustration, as a music lover might, that each year the preference for music in MP3 format rises. In other words, students prefer the quality of that kind of sound over the sound of music of much higher quality. He said that they seemed to prefer “sizzle sounds” that MP3s bring to music. It is a sound they are familiar with.

The O’Reilly article above does a great job explaining Berger’s reaction, but this Gizmodo article explains the methodology better (emphasis mine):

Students were asked to judge the quality of a variety of compression methods randomly mixed with uncompressed 44.1 KHz audio. The music examples included both orchestral, jazz and rock music. When I first did this I was expecting to hear preferences for uncompressed audio and expecting to see MP3 (at 128, 160 and 192 bit rates) well below other methods (including a proprietary wavelet-based approach and AAC). To my surprise, in the rock examples the MP3 at 128 was preferred. I repeated the experiment over 6 years and found the preference for MP3 – particularly in music with high energy (cymbal crashes, brass hits, etc) rising over time.

This is so disappointing. I remember listening to 128 kbps MP3 files when Napster was still a thing, and even then, I recognized that they sound like crap. There’s so much pre-echo that any song sounds like it was recorded in a wind tunnel.

My preference, for what it’s worth, is V0 MP3 for almost everything. It’s a stellar balance between file size and quality, and it’s easily encodable with Blacktree’s iTunes LAME or XLD. The latter also makes it easy to encode FLAC or ALAC files, both lossless formats of which the latter plays perfectly with iTunes. 256 kbps AAC is also a great lossy encoder, and it’s iTunes’ default if you don’t want to diddle with other encoders.

Please stop listening to 128 kbps MP3s, though. The difference is obvious, and it sounds like crap.

Apple Rests its Case ⇥ theverge.com

There are a bunch of interesting numbers in Bryan Bishop’s article for The Verge. He has been doing an incredible job covering this trial. Let’s jump right in:

Apple finished up its case against Samsung today after calling a financial expert to the stand today who estimated that Cupertino may have lost 2 million iPhone and iPad sales due to the alleged infringement. […]

In putting together the total, Musika looked at three different buckets: the profits Samsung made with the accused products, reasonable royalty fees for the allegedly-infringed patents, and the profits Apple itself may have lost. Using demand and the presence of other products in the marketplace as a barometer, Musika estimated that Apple lost around 2 million mobile device sales, at a cost of $488.8 million.

It’s interesting that, while that’s a lot of money and a bunch of devices, it’s not a huge number. Hayley Tsukayama reports for the Washington Post:

Apple, meanwhile, has sold a total of 85 million iPhones in the U.S. since 2007 launch and 34 million iPads since 2010.

That’s a combined total of 119 million devices. Apple is arguing that they could have sold 121 million.

More big numbers from Bryan Bishop’s reporting:

All told, Musika presented a spread of between $2.5 billion and $2.75 billion in damages, depending on whether Apple’s lost profits are included.

Apple has paid Musika’s 20-person team around $1.75 million to reach the numbers he presented today.

I’m still wary of these numbers. Unlike market analysts, I don’t think Musika’s team has pulled these numbers out of their ass. But this argument is based on no more than calculated guesses, obviously.

After Apple wrapped up their argument, Samsung successfully negotiated dropping three devices from the trial, as they were all international variants which were never sold in the US.

The iPhone Has Passed a Key Security Threshold ⇥ technologyreview.com

Simson Garfinkle (not to be confused with) writes for Technology Review:

In its efforts to make its devices more secure, Apple has crossed a significant threshold. Technologies the company has adopted protect Apple customers’ content so well that in many situations it’s impossible for law enforcement to perform forensic examinations of devices seized from criminals. Most significant is the increasing use of encryption, which is beginning to cause problems for law enforcement agencies when they encounter systems with encrypted drives.

This article examines the very deep levels to which the iPhone goes to encrypt local data. It’s perfectly legal in the United States for police to examine a cell phone’s contents without a warrant, and since we’re all putting more information on our phones than ever before, it’s best to own one that doesn’t put the user in a potentially incriminating situation without due process.

RIM’s phones have long been the benchmark for high security—indeed, it’s the phone that the President uses—but Android is catching up. However, this article notes that it’s not quite up to the encryption standards of either iOS or BlackBerry OS.

Apple Licensed Design Patents to Microsoft With Anti-Cloning Clause ⇥ thenextweb.com

If you’re wondering why Apple isn’t suing over Windows Phone devices, Matthew Panzarino has your answer:

For those who have said that Apple refuses to license its patents to other companies, this should be some interesting news. Apple apparently has licensed the design patents that it is currently fighting with Samsung over, and to one of its perennial rivals: Microsoft. […]

The patents were apparently licensed to Microsoft with an “anti-cloning agreement” in place in order to stop Microsoft from turning out copies of the iPhone and iPad.

The trial has also shown that Apple tried to license the patents in dispute:

Apple had made overtures in the past toward the electronics giant in the past in an effort to secure a licensing deal that would cover patents it believed were being infringed, noting that Samsung is a “strategic supplier.” In court documents released today, we now learn that Apple had a dollar figure in mind in an October 2010 meeting — it was proposing that Samsung pay a base rate of $30 per touchscreen phone (Android, Windows Phone, Symbian, and Bada alike) and $40 per tablet, decreasing to $30 over the course of two years.

Of course Apple would prefer to have Samsung license each patent, but they should have known the likely result. Samsung has a history of copying their competitors. It’s not the first time they’ve been sued, and it won’t be the last. I doubt Samsung will change.

Market Research is Full of Shit ⇥ online.wsj.com

It appears that I’ve begun a small pursuit in tracking down truly terrible research in technology. I previously noted how three studies of tablet market share were released in the same week, and showed significantly different results. This was further verified by the numbers reported in Apple v. Samsung.

Now, Suzanne Vranica and Jens Hansegard report for the Wall Street Journal (Google redirect to bypass the Journal‘s paywall):

The most valuable brand in the world, according to WPP PLC’s Millward Brown, is Apple Inc., worth $183 billion—nearly a third of the company’s market capitalization of $581 billion.

Omnicom Group Inc.’s Interbrand, however, judges Apple’s brand as worth only $33.5 billion, or eighth, behind such names as Microsoft Corp. ranked third at $59 billion, International Business Machines Corp. and Coca-Cola Co. (first at $71.9 billion). Interbrand notes its estimate of Apple’s brand value has risen.

Apple’s brand is therefore worth, according to these two research firms, somewhere between $33.5 and $183 billion. On a similar note, I weigh between 33.5 and 183 kilograms.

How could two companies working from all the data in the world come up with such wildly different estimates?

“The value of brand is both art and science,” says Allen Adamson, a managing director of Landor Associates, a branding firm owned by WPP.

Translation: “We are pulling these figures out of our collective ass.”

App.net Reaches $500,000 Funding Goal ⇥ theverge.com

Count me as one of the surprised ones. Remember: just five days ago, it wasn’t even 50% funded.

My biggest worry with App.net (apart from its very stark name) is that it lacks the social component of “social network”. It’s not just the $50 barrier to entry, because other sites had similar new user restrictions. Facebook was initially only available to the students of Harvard, followed by slow rollouts to various universities, high schools, and communities. But it was solving a problem: its focus on using real names improved its ability to connect communities (“networks”, in Facebook parlance). Google+, on the other hand, is just Facebook by another name. Its invite-only beginnings didn’t help it grow, but I doubt it hindered growth.

App.net is very close to Twitter in functionality, so I can’t see the average person paying $50 to join. It therefore becomes a special club, like Twitter in 2006 and 2007 (remember when you could view a live stream of public tweets?).

App.net’s special club has two advantages. The first advantage is that it gets rid of trolls and spammers. This has worked well for Metafilter, which charges $5 for a new user account. The second is that it means users won’t have to be put at the mercy of advertisers and VCs who are looking for a return on their investment. App.net will be full of Twitter refugees, as it isn’t looking so rosy any more for us geek-types:

Between shutting down API access to Instagram users, and delivering a “consistent experience” (amongst other nudges in the direction of a vertical Twitter ecosystem), it’s not looking good for those who love the Twitter experience of yore.

Eight Inches

In June, I wrote at length regarding the possibility of a 7-inch iPad. But June is all of two months ago, and things have changed. As such, I should do a point-by-point rebuttal of my own analysis, as I would any other piece of writing I would consider egregiously wrong.

The first problem is the notion that Apple feels it necessary to compete against cheaper products. This is nonsense. It’s easy to build products that are cheap, and it’s easy to build products that are overpriced. What isn’t as simple is maintaining a high manufacturing quality and a great user experience while also bringing the price down.

My reasoning for this was based on the Amazon Kindle Fire. It has weak hardware, and consequently a poor user experience. However, shortly after I wrote this, Google released their own-brand Nexus 7 tablet, which has received rave reviews, like Marco Arment’s, for instance:

Most of my Android experience is on the Kindle Fire, which paired shitty hardware with shitty custom software to reach a bargain-basement price. The Nexus 7 seems to have combined mid-grade hardware with much better (and much newer) software for the same $200 price. It’s clearly a showcase of the best software experience and features that Google has to offer in Android today.

There is clearly a way to make a viable 7-inch tablet with a good user experience for $200: Google has stated that they’re selling the Nexus 7 at cost. Apple probably isn’t going to compete at the $200 price point for this very reason, but with their vast supply chain reach, I suspect they could make a decent profit at $249.

My original article also, incorrectly, cited the possibility of a Retina display at launch. I don’t think that’s the case any more. Rumours have noted the likelihood of it being an iPhone 3GS panel cut to a 7.85″ display size, but I don’t think that’s accurate either. I think it’s going to have the same pixel density as the iPhone 3GS, but it will be an IPS panel, not the TN panel of the phone.

Me, again:

While there may have been an iPod at every $50 price point, these products were launched for distinct purposes, not to fill a gap in the market. […]

How would a 7-inch iPad […] differ from [its] larger [sibling] in a meaningful way? The answer is pretty simple: [it] wouldn’t.

I’ve changed my mind on this for two reasons.

To clear this up: the reported 7.85″ display makes it effectively an 8″ iPad, not a 7″ one. Furthermore, the Nexus 7 and Kindle Fire both possess very tall, narrow displays, whereas the rumoured 8″ iPad will almost certainly carry forward the 4:3 ratio. This moves the user experience closer to that of today’s 10″ iPad.

But I was wrong that a two-inch smaller iPad wouldn’t differentiate the product enough. I think that’s just enough of a size delta to matter for things like reading eBooks in bed, or grasping it with one hand.

So, to summarize, the size difference is less than I originally considered, and that’s enough to differentiate the product. Cognitive dissonance, and such.

I do stand by the other main point of that original article, however, regarding the oft-rumoured iPhone nano:

The iPhone seems to be going in the opposite direction: it’s getting bigger, not smaller. The previous generation iPhones naturally become the smaller models.

I can’t see the point of a 2.5″ iPhone, but I now see the possibility of an 8″ iPad. If the latter is sold for $249, Apple will dominate the smaller tablet market. Consider the introduction of the iPod shuffle: every other flash-based low-capacity MP3 player became obsolete the moment it was announced. That’s the impact an 8″ iPad will have on the Android tablet market.

What Makes Paris Look like Paris? ⇥ graphics.cs.cmu.edu

Or, for that matter, what makes London, New York, or San Francisco look as iconic as they do? Carl Doersch et. al. analyzed tens of thousands of Google Street View images from different iconic cities to establish common architectural elements.

Reading List ⇥ pxlnv.com

A prerequisite for writing a website like this, or so it seems, is to maintain a list of the author’s recommended reading to get a taste of what the writing is like on this website. In that spirit, I’ve created an assemblage of pieces by myself which I consider representative of this website, along with some favourite pieces by others.

The reading list will be updated occasionally, as I find great content. Updates will be posted to the home page stream, so you won’t miss a great read.

Capital-M Modern ⇥ theverge.com

Yesterday, Mary Jo Foley wrote for ZDNet that Microsoft would be using the term “Windows 8 UI” for the interface formerly known as Metro. I thought the new brand was terrible:

That’s so weak. “Windows 8 with Windows 8 UI” is redundant, and “Windows Phone 8 with Windows 8 UI” is just weird. It should appeal to the executives at Microsoft who want Windows in everything, though.

The Verge is now reporting that Microsoft has rebranded it (again?):

Microsoft employees have started using “Modern UI Style” to refer to the new Windows 8 Start Screen and “Modern UI” design in reference to Windows 8 apps. The software giant has used modern, immersive, fast, and fluid to describe its Windows 8 operating system previously — in the early stages of its development — but the common name was always Metro style. In a step that’s bound to confuse developers and consumers, several listings for upcoming events about Windows Azure, Bing Maps, and Windows 8, reference a Modern UI design language and principles, Modern UI Style apps, and even a Modern UI-Style UI.

“Modern” still seems weak. The word has become so diluted as to have lost all its original meaning. It’s not a brand, it’s just some word.

Maybe they should have pulled a Prince and named it “ª¬”. Now that’s a brand.

Open Books ⇥ allthingsd.com

The Apple v. Samsung trial has forced both of the companies to divulge their US-specific sales, something which neither company breaks down in their quarterly financial calls. There are a lot of stories about this, and I’ve skimmed the best analysis. First up is Ina Fried, writing for AllThingsD:

Documents filed by Samsung lawyers on Thursday reveal that, from June 2010 through June 2012, Samsung sold 21.25 million phones, generating $7.5 billion in revenue. On the tablet side, the company sold 1.4 million Galaxy Tab and Galaxy Tab 10.1 devices, producing $644 million in revenue.

Everyone knows Android tablets aren’t selling nearly as well as the iPad. Over the course of two years, Samsung has sold 1.4 million Galaxy tablets. As Philip Elmer-Dewitt noted, the numbers that analysts have been estimating are grossly exaggerated.

Samsung sells a tonne of phones, however. If you look at the chart that Ina Fried posted, it’s incredibly confusing, as there are multiple models of broadly similar devices, each for a different carrier. Horace Dediu has provided his usual high standard of analysis to these numbers:

Samsung’s pattern is not unusual. I’ve seen similar pattern for almost all Nokia products. Prices drop. It’s a standard industry phenomenon.

Therefore the question is not perhaps what is Samsung’s basis of competition: it’s the same as the overall phone industry. The question is what is the basis of competition for the iPhone.

Samsung’s numbers, according to Dediu’s analysis, are broadly in line with industry trends, whereas Apple’s numbers paint a different picture. I wonder what the graphs would look like if Apple’s iPhone numbers were compared to that of, say, iPod sales from 2003-2008.

Apple’s numbers, as posted by Brian Bishop at The Verge, show that their US sales are between about 25 and 45% of worldwide sales, presumably dependent on when the product launches in different regions.

Jacqui Cheng over at ArsTechnica also notes that this is the first time we’ve seen a breakdown of iPhone and iPod touch sales:

Even the weakest link of the iOS family—the iPod touch—is selling faster than a large chunk of Samsung’s portfolio.

That’s the effect of selling three focused devices instead of dozens of different models. It’s also the benefit of updating those products on an annual basis, instead of staggering a myriad of new products throughout the year. Apple gets to experience one quarter annually where their iPhone sales slow down a bit, with many consumers waiting for the new model.

Samsung’s data is hard to analyze in the same way because their quarters are full of questions. What if they only had two or three new phones every year? It looks like they’re trying to do that, but they need to compromise too much with carriers to be able to pull it off successfully, or entirely.

Great Exaggerations ⇥ tech.fortune.cnn.com

Philip Elmer-Dewitt reports for Fortune:

If Samsung really sold 2.4 million tablets last quarter, as IDC estimates, 1.5% were sold in the U.S. and 98.5% overseas. That’s pretty hard to believe.

Samsung has a strong presence in international markets, but I doubt it reduces the United States sales to a statistical margin of error. Market share “research” is still full of shit.

Poster Cred ⇥ workofwaves.com

Joseph King, artist and designer, tackles a tired designer cliché:

A commentary on a popular style of poster presentation in contemporary design, and the implicit credibility it seems to suggest. Sticker installations explore new subjects as worthy to be presented.

This is very clever. I was one of the installation participants (you can see mine about tenth from the top of the page). I did not view any of the other participants’ installations prior to seeing this, and it’s truly delightful.

Trust in Baskerville ⇥ opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com

Esteemed film director Errol Morris ran a brief survey in the New York Times on July 9. Ostensibly, he was asking if readers were optimistic or pessimistic regarding the possibility of an asteroid hitting the Earth. This being Errol Morris, he had a hidden agenda:

We all know that we are influenced in many, many ways — many of which we remain blissfully unaware of. Could fonts be one of them? Could the mere selection of a font influence us to believe one thing rather than another? Could fonts work some unseen magic? Or malefaction?

Good question. This website’s paragraph text is set in Crimson. Would you trust it more or less if it were set in Helvetica Neue? What about Trebuchet, or Avenir, or even Times? To what degree? Morris explains his methodology:

Each Times participant read the passage in one of six randomly assigned fonts — Baskerville, Computer Modern, Georgia, Helvetica, Comic Sans and Trebuchet. The questions, ostensibly about optimism or pessimism, provided data about the influence of fonts on our beliefs.

The results of this aren’t shocking—all design students are taught that serif faces convey a sense of trust and establishment, and everyone knows that anything set in Comic Sans is ripe to be ridiculed—but the degree to which font choice affects our opinion of something is astonishing.

Morris also cites the case of CERN using Comic Sans in its presentation announcing the discovery of a Higgs Boson-like particle. Why would one of the most respected research organizations in the world make the biggest announcement in particle physics with one of the worst fonts ever created?

Lisa Randall, a Harvard physicist, kindly e-mailed Fabiola Gianotti on my behalf. Gianotti, the coordinator of the CERN program to find the Higgs boson, provided a compelling rationale for why she had used Comic Sans. When asked, she said, “Because I like it.”

There is, in fact, a much more interesting history to CERN’s use of Comic Sans, stretching back even before Gianotti committed this offence in December 2011. A physicist friend of mine assures me that this is a long-running inside joke amongst scientists in general. Important presentations get typeset in Comic Sans because irony is hilarious, or something to that effect.

From the Department of Redundancy Department ⇥ zdnet.com

Last week, The Verge reported that Microsoft would be forced to drop their “Metro” brand for their flat UI style:

Microsoft reveals that “discussions with an important European partner” led to the decision to “discontinue the use” of the Metro branding for Windows 8 and other Microsoft products — one that employees must adhere to immediately.

That “important European partner” was apparently Metro A.G., a retail giant based in Germany, but with locations all over the world. I was disappointed when I heard this news—Metro was one of the best brands Microsoft has created in the past decade or so.

Today, Mary Jo Foley reports for ZDNet that Microsoft has settled on a new name:

Anything currently/formerly known as a “Metro-Style application” (with or without a hyphen) will now be known officially as a “Windows 8 application.” References to the “Metro user interface” will now be replaced by “Windows 8 user interface.” And instead of saying “Metro design,” the Softies and those adhering to their official guidelines will be using the words “Windows 8 design.”

That’s so weak. “Windows 8 with Windows 8 UI” is redundant, and “Windows Phone 8 with Windows 8 UI” is just weird. It should appeal to the executives at Microsoft who want Windows in everything, though.

Why Does the Curiosity Rover Have Such Low-Res Cameras On Board? ⇥ dpreview.com

Mike Ravine of Malin Space Science Systems explains for Digital Photography Review:

“There’s a popular belief that projects like this are going to be very advanced but there are things that mitigate against that. These designs were proposed in 2004, and you don’t get to propose one specification and then go off and develop something else. 2MP with 8GB of flash [memory] didn’t sound too bad in 2004. But it doesn’t compare well to what you get in an iPhone today.”

In addition, Ravine cites the data transfer rate from Mars and familiarity with similar systems in the past as contributing factors to the choice. It’s quite incredible to think that space craft are thought to be some of the most advanced objects ever created, but they really need to be simplified as much as possible. It’s a whole different world on Mars.

Linkblog Cancer ⇥ behindcompanies.com

Yesterday, Marcelo Somers wrote a piece critical of the surge of link blogs in the past few years:

The problem is, we can’t all be Daring Fireball – we can’t get away with posting a witty headline and a blockquote 5-10 times a day. We’ve adopted John’s concept of linking, but not the idea that we need to tell a bigger story on our sites.

Our job as independent writers isn’t to be first or even to get the most pageviews. It’s to answer the question of “so what?”. Taken as a whole, our sites should tell a unique story that no one else can, with storylines that develop over time that help bring order to the chaos of what we cover.

This article generated, ironically enough, a fair few links to it. Stephen Hackett, for instance, wants people to put some effort into linking:

A link is my way of saying to you, the reader, that I think the article is worth your time and attention, and here on the Internet, those are everyone’s two most important possessions.

Kyle Baxter linked to Somers’ post, adding:

There’s no reason to link to something unless it’s something readers probably haven’t come across already or you can provide a unique perspective on it. Only link to something when you’re adding some value.

Marco Arment seems to agree with Somers’ premise, but takes issue with how he approached his criticism:

Blaming the format itself for link-blog overload is like blaming Canon for the deluge of mediocre SLR photography over the last decade. […]

We don’t need more Daring Fireballs. We have Daring Fireball already. People who read it have little reason to read anyone else’s minimally differentiated clone.

I agree entirely with Arment, and therefore partially disagree with Baxter. I don’t think it’s necessary to link to unique things, but to use links as a way to express a personal opinion, or another angle that may not be covered. It doesn’t matter that everyone already wrote about how App.net isn’t even close to its funding goal. I want you to care about what I think of Dalton Caldwell’s article.

Arment explains that he uses a link post when he wants to add only a couple of paragraphs of commentary, instead of writing an entire article. This makes sense to me. My goal for linked posts, in case you’re interested, is to provide stacks of references. I like Gruber’s work, but I’m also a fan of Metafilter. Most posts there consist of plenty of contextual links, surrounding a broader point. You’ll find that a lot on my site, too. You know that Mat Honan’s online accounts were hacked recently, but if you follow my commentary regularly, you also know the aftermath, and my thoughts.

I want to point you in the direction of where the link goes, because I believe it will be valuable to you. But I also want my commentary to stand on its own. Even if you don’t click any of the links above, you should still get a clear understanding of what I think. If you read this blog regularly, I trust that’s valuable to you as well.

It’s A Bit Chilly in Hell ⇥ culturedcode.com

Today we are happy to announce the release of Things 2 for Mac, iPad, and iPhone – a free update for all existing users. And we are introducing a new service, Things Cloud, which keeps your to-dos updated across all your devices – also for free.

Finally.

In similar news, TextMate 2 has gone open source.

Walt Wawra Feels Unsafe in Canada Without Gun ⇥ huffingtonpost.ca

If it’s related to Calgary and it’s utterly ridiculous, you know I’m all over that. Seema Dhawan writes for the HuffPo:

Walt Wawra, a U.S. police officer, is encountering ridicule online after writing a letter lamenting not having his gun during a visit to Calgary.

In a message to the Calgary Herald, Wawra, of Kalamazoo, Mich., describes what he felt was a dangerous confrontation with two men in Calgary’s Nose Hill Park — for which he wished he had had his firearm.

Walking with his wife, the men approached Wawra and asked if the couple had been to the Stampede. After receiving no response, they asked Wawra again. He told them “Gentle-men, I have no need to talk with you, goodbye.” The men looked “bewildered,” he writes in the letter and likely had bad intentions indicated by their “aggressive, disrespectful and menacing manner.”

“Small talk? Should’a had my gun for that.”

Why did he think he needed a gun to protect himself against small talk in Nose Hill park? CBC News reports:

“What concerned me is two young men just approached us and stopped us, stopping us by being in our path, and [began] talking to us without even being welcome to talk to us. They just took it upon themselves to yell at us.”

Of course, he’s become the butt of jokes on Twitter, and outside our local restaurants (via Reddit user WyldeKat).