Month: September 2012

Chrome Killed Support for UserScripts ⇥ browserfame.com

Google Chrome no longer allows the installation of extensions from sources other than the official Google extensions page, all of which are vetted and curated by the company. Sounds familiar. Gary Mark of BrowserFame writes:

Chrome team explains the reason for this policy change, “To help keep you safe on the web, we have started analyzing every extension that is uploaded to the Web Store and take down those we recognize to be malicious. Unfortunately, we don’t have the ability to take down malicious items promoted on other websites […]”. This change has affected all third-party extension galleries (including those launched even before Google’s Web Store) and UserScripts.org. I am specially mentioning UserScripts.org because this site is the biggest repository of userscripts.

Sounds open to me.

Rumours ⇥ pxlnv.com

The rumour mill was pretty accurate this time around, since a full iPhone 5 was able to be built out of the amount of parts that leaked. Nevertheless, there were the usual oddities.

Macotakara.jp thought that the iPod nano would have WiFi. The accompanying rendering is pretty accurate, but this aspect isn’t. Meanwhile, Ming-Chi Kuo of KGI thought that the iPod touch would gain a GPS chip.

Will “Chronic” Strafach thought that the iPhone would have NFC, despite well-connected beards saying otherwise. It’s possible that the hardware is in there, but nothing was announced regarding it, and the likelihood of it becoming active in the future is slim (the iPhone has had an FM tuner for a while now).

And, as usual, Rob Enderle was wrong.

iPhone 5 in Two Flavours ⇥ theverge.com

You’ve heard all the news already, but this is something that caught my eye. Apparently, due to the myriad of frequencies necessary for LTE worldwide, Apple’s had to resort to building two separate phone models again.

I’d be interested to know how they’re getting any reception at all with the aluminum back.

Analyst? More Like Anal Cyst ⇥ mobilenapps.com

The headline:

A Celebrity, Not Tim Cook, To Unveil The iPhone 5, Predicts Analyst

First of all, nobody was expecting Tim Cook to be the actual guy saying “here’s the new iPhone”. That’d be Phil Schiller.

So, Apple’s going to send out Alec Baldwin or Nicki Minaj to introduce the iPhone? This should be rich.

The story:

With the Apple press event only a day away, analysts are scrutinizing every detail. The latest prediction may take many iFans by surprise.

“iFans”? Hack writer, but maybe the details are okay.

According to a Digital Trends report, Rob Enderle, head of analyst firm Enderle Group, Apple will “likely” seek the help of a celebrity to introduce the iPhone 5.

Oh, you’re relying on Rob Enderle?

Go on.

“I don’t think Apple is going to have a flop, but it will have real difficulty creating the kind of magic that Jobs was able to summon up. For instance, we’ll likely see a celebrity trotted out at the launch event to help create the kind of on-stage presence that Steve Jobs once had, and Tim Cook lacks,” wrote Enderle.

So this hack writer for Mobile & Apps is going to quote Rob Enderle delivering his classic Steve Jobs magic bit, and present this as serious analysis?

Here’s what Enderle said about Mountain Lion just after the first previews were shown to journalists:

With Mountain Lion, Apple is doing the more traditional thing of just tossing the product out there. But without Steve Jobs selling the magic, folks are having a WTF moment. Instead of seeing the world through Steve’s reality distortion field, they are looking at the product critically and finding it lacking.

Apple says that it’s the most successful release of OS X ever, and it’s received rave reviews.

Just before the third-generation iPad launch, Rob Enderle exercised the same routine:

If Jobs were still around there is no doubt in my mind he’d wrap the iPad 3 and even a possible smaller sibling with enough magic to cause buyers to forget any shortcomings and be amazed. But as we have seen with the iPhone 4S and Mountain Lion, the Apple team just can’t do the magic and that suggests the market will view the iPad 3 as somewhat disappointing.

The third-generation iPad is the best-selling tablet, and therefore the best-selling iPad, of all time.

But the solid turd that is Rob Enderle’s analysis is revealed in an interview he did with Venture Outsource:

And so, without Steve Jobs, Apple has lost its primary product focus – kind of its quality core. Also, it has lost its principle pitchman because the other thing that Steve Jobs did is he could get up in front of an audience and he could convince us of something that we otherwise wouldn’t buy.

I mean, let’s take the iPhone, for instance. It’s basically a direct copy of the LG Prada. The LG Prada didn’t sell particularly well.

The iPhone, of course, has had all kinds of sale records. Almost an identical product, the iPhone was better crafted.

Enderle, in February of 2012, stated that the iPhone is “almost an identical product” to this phone. Why does this guy still get cited?

Well, he’s been torn apart since at least 2002:

Yesterday one of my favorite columnists, Cydney Gillis of the Eastside Journal ran a column about the departure of Linda Stone from Microsoft, using quotes from Rob Enderle of Giga Group, someone I think of as a quote mill, happy to give you a line about anything, including things he knows nothing about.

You can say that again, and again.

Nipplegate ⇥ newyorker.com

Like all publications, the New Yorker has a Facebook page, where they post their famous cartoons. One posted recently caused a problem with Facebook’s nudity rules because of the presence of female nipples in the cartoon. Really.

Robert Mankoff writes for the New Yorker‘s blog:

But kudos to Karen for handling the nipple problem so dexterously, shielding the innocent from those bits of both sexes, even though, as the guidelines say, “male nipples are ok.” It’s the “female nipple bulges” that are the problem.

These are not okay: • •

These are okay: . .

Hey Look, Everybody: There’s Drama on the Internet ⇥ joshuatopolsky.com

This morning, HP launched their Spectre One iMac-knockoff, and both Engadget and The Verge covered it. However, neither of those two stories mentioned “iMac”, or noted the obvious similarity, as Harry Marks noticed:

It’s a bit odd when something so obvious isn’t even mentioned in passing. I don’t believe it would be “trollish” to state that the Spectre One is, at the very least, influenced by Apple’s iMac all-in-one.

Marco Arment agreed with Marks, and speculated as to the reason why it wasn’t published by either Engadget or The Verge:

Big “gadget” blogs depend on maintaining very friendly relationships with the companies whose products they cover so they can continue to get exclusives, interviews, press badges to events, and early access to products. Maintaining these relationships while retaining credibility isn’t always an easy choice for many sites, and many choose poorly.

John Gruber chose to speculate differently:

My theory is that it’s not about access; it’s about not pissing off the vocal anti-Apple contingent of their readerships.

Well, Joshua Topolsky (editor-in-chief of The Verge, formerly of Engadget) didn’t take too kindly to those implications:

To be crystal clear, they are suggesting that we are covering products which look like an Apple product, but avoid mentioning that they look like an Apple product on purpose. They’re suggesting we have ulterior and possibly nefarious motives. […]

Do we write posts about products that look like Apple products and sometimes not mention it? Yes. Is it by some kind of design or a part of a conspiracy? No. The truth is, after a while (years and years now), you just begin to focus on other things, and save that stuff for the review. Obviously people rip off Apple. It is not news.

Arment calls this a straw man argument. I don’t think that’s the case. I think this is closer to Hanlon’s razor, if anything:

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

Replace “stupidity” with “forgetfulness”, and I think that adequately covers the lack of an iMac reference.

If either publication neglects to mention it in the final review, I think it’s a different story. But, for now, both pieces of coverage played it straight.

The Cola Wars

The competition between Coca-Cola and Pepsi is a legendary marketing story. From 1975’s Pepsi Challenge to the New Coke disaster, it’s a classic story of rivalry. Aaron Sorkin couldn’t have written it better.

Since both companies sell a similar cola product, their marketing departments have to get creative. Since Coca-Cola has been red since the beginning, Pepsi went with blue. Coca-Cola chose polar bears as their mascot, so Pepsi chose Britney Spears. Even the bottles are different. Both products are similar, but they are marketed to be as different from each other as possible. Nobody at Pepsi wants their product sales to go to Coca-Cola because of customer confusion.

In the digital world, it’s almost the opposite. Some brands go to great lengths to confuse the customer into believing that their product is essentially the same as another. Samsung v. Apple was entirely about this—Samsung liked the way Apple designed their user interface, products, and packaging, and attempted to duplicate it. That strategy failed in the US, with the patent and trade dress trial decided almost entirely in Apple’s favour1.

Even though it didn’t work for Samsung, HP is trying a similar strategy. They introduced their new Spectre One desktop which, down to the keyboard, mouse, and trackpad, looks like a knockoff iMac.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that it’s just others copying Apple. The Notification Centre feature of iOS 5 is very similar to the notification drawer on Android phones.

Setting aside the moral and legal implications of knockoff products, all of these ripoffs share a common thread: they’re missed opportunities. I don’t protest against ripoffs from a lawyerly perspective (that’s Nilay Patel’s job), or even an art student’s perspective. It’s a simple fact that one cannot produce a better product by copying a current one.

It’s an admittedly selfish position to take. All I want are the best products that are possible. But by copying the notification drawer, Apple missed an opportunity to implement a more successful notification feature. Similarly, by copying the iMac, HP lost their chance to produce a better all-in-one PC. I don’t know what that would be, but assuming that the iMac is the best solution for an all-in-one computer is incredibly short-sighted. Design is an iterative process, and companies that produce derivative drivel will only understand this when they begin investing seriously in their design departments.

  1. Robert Scoble thinks that Samsung prevailed despite the jury’s decision. The Macalope has a smart rebuttal to that notion. ↥︎

Company Says It, Not F.B.I, Was Hacking Victim ⇥ nytimes.com

Nicole Perlroth writes for the New York Times:

An Orlando company said on Monday that it — not the F.B.I. — was the source of a file hackers posted online last week that contained a million identification numbers for Apple mobile devices.

The company, BlueToad, which works with thousands of publishers to translate printed content into digital and mobile formats, said hackers had breached its systems more than a week ago and stolen the file. A few days after the file appeared online, the company realized it matched the stolen information, said Paul DeHart, BlueToad’s chief executive.

For their part, Apple is depreciating the use of UDIDs in iOS 6, which should prevent this sort of thing happening in the future. It’s another sobering reminder of the access developers can have, if they want it, and the decision of us as users to avoid giving over this information in the first place.

Product Treadmills ⇥ markosavic.ca

Glenn Fleishman for TidBITS writes about Amazon’s update treadmill (hat-tip to DF), quoting Jeff Bezos:

We don’t need you to be on the upgrade treadmill. If we made our money when people bought the device, we’d be rolling out programs left and right to try to get you to upgrade. In fact, we’re happy that people are still using Kindle Ones that are five years old. They’re still reading on them, and every time they buy a book, that’s good for us. […]

To the first point, the upgrade treadmill, that hits home much more closely to the Android ecosystem, which has multiple manufacturers producing new models seemingly monthly, even though the new models often run older versions of Android that lack marquee features, and older models are often incapable of being upgraded after even a single version release.

Spot-on analysis. But it does raise the question: how does this differ from Apple’s strategy? Or, more to the point, what is Apple’s strategy? Horace Dediu analyzes the uniqueness of the iPhone brand:

However, when we look at the iPhone and the iPad, the nomenclature has been distinctly different. Both products have been using generational naming conventions. This implies no sub-branding as the iPhone and iPad are the only identifiers of brand and hence the only meaning being imparted to the buyer. You either get an iPhone or and old iPhone.

Dediu explains that these are not sub-brands in the same way that the iPod nano is, for example. Apple doesn’t need to update the iPhone 3GS, but they do need to update the iPod nano.

Marko Savic disagrees with Dediu, though, and thinks that the generational branding is the sub-brand itself:

The iPhone generational naming is creating sub-brands. 3GS, 4, 4S are used colloquially as much as nano, shuffle and touch. As long as there is only one new device on offer per year this naming convention works. The meaning of each iPhone sub-brand changes over time from premium, to mid-market, to low-end, moving back up to premium in the pre-paid market.

It’s a different strategy from even Apple’s own product structures. I agree with Savic—the sub-branding’s significance remains the same on the iPhone line, despite it being generational. If Apple’s still selling it, it’s still a current product.

How Google Builds Its Maps ⇥ theatlantic.com

Alexis Madrigal writes for The Atlantic:

I came away convinced that the geographic data Google has assembled is not likely to be matched by any other company. The secret to this success isn’t, as you might expect, Google’s facility with data, but rather its willingness to commit humans to combining and cleaning data about the physical world. Google’s map offerings build in the human intelligence on the front end, and that’s what allows its computers to tell you the best route from San Francisco to Boston.

After seven years, Google’s digital cartography skills are still unbeatable. I think Apple knows this as they build their competitive product, but it isn’t easy, as Madrigal’s story makes clear. Via Dave Pell.

Twitter for Mac is Dead (Obviously) ⇥ 9to5mac.com

MG Siegler apparently got the scoop that Twitter is ending their Mac app:

Word is that Twitter made the call today: Twitter for Mac is done. They won’t kill it outright, but no further updates. Goodbye, old friend.

This isn’t a big surprise to most people. The app doesn’t support the new Retina MacBook Pro, and it’s lacking standard Twitter functionality introduced over the past year. What’s strange is that Apple partnered with the company to offer these services on the Mac, but Twitter is changing their own strategy at the same time. These goals could produce conflicts as Twitter seeks increased profitability.

Update: Gruber sez:

Worst part is, they may even have a retina-ready update ready to release — but they’re just going to keep it in their pocket out of spite. They want people to use the website.

Dick move, Twitter.

eBay Acquires Svpply ⇥ blog.svpply.com

We created Svpply three years ago with the goal of creating a unified online retail shopping experience by bringing shoppers, tastemakers and merchants onto a single site. Today, we couldn’t be happier to announce that we’ve been acquired by eBay Inc.

There’s no way that this will have negative implications for users. Not at all.