Month: November 2012

Quote of the Day: Arithmetic Edition ⇥ curiousrat.com

Seeing as how the iPad mini retails for $329 and the standard iPad sells for $499 and math isn’t some voodoo magic invented by a witch doctor in rural Louisiana, yes, I’m pretty sure the iPad mini isn’t just a largish iPod Touch being sold at an iPad price. — Harry Marks

Fighting Mad ⇥ anthonybourdain.tumblr.com

Anthony Bourdain:

The network made a commercial, with me endorsing a product, and hadn’t even bothered to ask me. After the first airing of the commercial, I let the network know of my extreme displeasure. Fair warning one would think. They ran it again anyway.

An Omen ⇥ facebook.com

Six new tracks from How To Destroy Angels (oddly styled “How to destroy angels_”), for $5. I’ve listened through the record a few times already and it’s great. The included art is beautiful as well.

Deftones also have a new record out today, “Koi No Yokan“. The early reviews are very strong, though I haven’t had a chance to listen to it yet.

The Weeknd has released “Trilogy” (iTunes link), which is comprised of the three mixtapes he released last year, plus a few new tracks. It’s sublime.

Lastly, Soundgarden are releasing their first new record in over fifteen years. It’s called “King Animal” and it is really damn good. They played the album opener “Been Away Too Long” on Jools Holland last week, along with the classic “Rusty Cage“.

And, if you must, Green Day has a new record out today, which should make a nice coaster.

Success on the Side ⇥ american.com

Today’s “Blue Sky” news reminded me of this surprisingly good 2009 article by Ben Casnocha of the American Enterprise Institute:

3M implemented a groundbreaking policy called the 15-percent-time rule: regardless of their assignments, 3M technical employees were encouraged to devote 15 percent of their paid working hours to independent projects. “Most of the inventions that 3M depends upon today came out of that kind of individual initiative,” says Bill Coyne, retired senior vice president of research and development.

Steven Sinofsky Leaves Microsoft ⇥ theverge.com

Sam Byford notes this:

Sinofsky had a reputation as a brilliant yet controversial leader who could be difficult to work with, despite a strong record of shipping products on time.

Well, that certainly sounds familiar. Ben Brooks’ pet theory is shaping up. (That’s very tongue-in-cheek, as I’m sure you’re aware. Ballmer is probably next to go.)

US Q3 Handset Market ⇥ ben-evans.com

Benedict Evans rounds up the data:

The interesting analytical problem is that these figures are very different from those from surveys of the install base (by Comscore and others), which suggest that iPhone share is more like a third of US smartphones. Yet the iPhone has been at or around 50% of sales for almost 2 years. Either the surveys are wrong or the iPhone has a significantly higher replacement cycle – despite being on the same two-year contracts as Android.

The surveys are wrong, and market share “research” is full of shit. Via Gruber.

Rampant Abuse of Push Notifications Is Ruining Them for All Developers ⇥ blog.anylistapp.com

Jeff Hunter:

The abuse of push notifications is spreading across the App Store. As a result, users are starting to reflexively reject app requests to send push notifications.

I’d hate to say that I told you so, but I did (section five). I know that I tend to disallow push notifications for all apps, unless I realize what they will be used for (i.e. a Twitter app notifying of mentions is obvious, but allowing push notifications for Soundhound isn’t. The latter, of course, uses those notifications to spam users with ads.)

The New War for TV Is Just Beginning ⇥ theverge.com

Nilay Patel:

The answer is simple: the only killer app for TV is TV itself. Granted an almost exclusive monopoly over the most valuable content in the living room, cable and satellite companies have developed their products in a competitive vacuum, insulated from the pace and intensity of innovation that has transformed every other part of the tech industry. […]

So what is the right content? It’s a different mix for everyone, but the basic ingredients are simple: a mix of live event-based television, on-demand movies and shows, and — crucially — compelling content that is simply playing when you first flip on the TV.

I wrote a similar opinion earlier this year. This mix of content relies on partnerships that will be challenging to get in the US, let alone around the world. No doubt a massive shift is inevitable, but the question of “when?” is dependent on the question of “who is going to give?”

Too Little, Too Late ⇥ press.rim.com

Research In Motion announced today that it will hold its BlackBerry 10 launch event on January 30th, 2013. The event will happen simultaneously in multiple countries around the world.  This day will mark the official launch of its new platform – BlackBerry 10, as well as the unveiling of the first two BlackBerry 10 smartphones.

This is probably too little, and much, much too late. It’s a shame — BlackBerry 10 looks intriguing from both a hardware and software standpoint, but it simply isn’t going to gain third-party developers or end-user support, both of which it needs to be successful.

Tick Tock

The tick/tock product development cycle was pioneered by Intel in 2006. It consists of a die-shrunk CPU “tick”, followed by a new microarchitecture “tock” using the same process size. In layman’s terms, it means a new chip family one year, and then a related revision the following year. With the iPhone 3G, followed by the 3GS, and the iPhone 4 followed the next year by the 4S, it appears that Apple is using a similar product strategy.

I’m treading in dangerous waters with any assumptions about Apple’s future plans. The fact that they have, so far, used a tick/tock pattern with the iPhone could be purely coincidental. They don’t need to give a shit about the logic of their names; this is, after all, the same company that released OS X 10.4.11.

But assuming that they do use the tick/tock product cycle, and assuming that you have a US-standard two-year mobile contract, and assuming that you will likely upgrade to the newest generation of iPhone after your contract expires, is it better to be on the “tick” or the “tock”?

To sort this out, we first need to assess the order in which Apple is developing these. At first glance, the order should be this:

Accurate tick tock cycle

However, I think the following modification makes more sense:

Better tick tock cycle

It’s illogical to start on the “tock”, granted. But it feels right in this context because, with the exception of the original iPhone, the industrial design changes significantly every two years. The iPhone 3G shared the same tech specs as the original iPhone, just with the addition of 3G networking, so there is some technical sense behind it as well. And finally, the original iPhone didn’t have a two-year contract attached to it, whereas the followup models do.1

To their advantage, owners the “tick” cycle get a brand new industrial design every two years. With the iPhone 3G, they got faster networking and GPS. With the iPhone 4, they got first dibs on the retina display, a much better camera, and FaceTime. And with this year’s 5, they’re the first adopters of the 4” display and LTE on the iPhone.

Owners in the “tock” cycle don’t get to be first, but they get a more refined experience. The rear camera on both the 3GS and 4S was a significant improvement over its predecessor’s, gaining video and tap-to-focus on the former, and near point-and-shoot quality and 1080p video for the latter. The speed increases of the aptly-named “S” models are also huge, even compared to the speed increases from a “tock” model to a “tick” one. Finally, the “tock” cycle has gained additional storage space before the “tick” cycle models; the 3GS was first to 32 GB, and the 4S was first to 64 GB.2

So which is better? Well, that entirely depends on your preference of features. The “tick” cycle has novelty going for it. The “tock” cycle has refinement as its hallmark feature. The latter is less exciting, but provides a better user experience. I prefer it, even though it means that I get to wait an additional year for a brand new industrial design.

  1. I know you can buy an unlocked iPhone, but the vast majority of people buy them with a contract. The original one could not be purchased with the requirement of a contract, but the followup models almost always are. ↥︎

  2. I do wonder if we’ll see a 128 GB iPhone 5S. ↥︎

Coffee and Cataclysm at the Carlyle Hotel ⇥ sprudge.com

Alex Bernson for Sprudge:

But the $8 cappuccino is no myth. It is available to the public 7 days a week in the Bemelman’s Bar at The Carlyle hotel. It’s the least appealing cappuccino I’ve ever had. It is a heterotopic cappuccino. A symbolic cappuccino. A cappuccino without merits of its own, defined wholly by the place where it is found. New York City’s most expensive cappuccino — and also, its worst.

Scathing. Then again, if you’re paying novelty prices in a novelty environment, you shouldn’t expect the product to be defined by taste. The best cappuccino I’ve ever had was in Vancouver at 49th Parallel’s shop on fourth avenue. A close second is the cappuccino served by Phil & Sebastian here in Calgary. Both are less than $4.

Hunting for the Best Mirrorless Camera ⇥ shawnblanc.net

Shawn Blanc is trying to find a decent camera:

Ultimately what’s most important to me is a camera that I will want to use and which while produce images I’m proud of. Friction (or rather, a lack thereof) is just as important as image quality because a $2,000 camera that takes jaw-dropping photos won’t do me any good if I leave it in the bag.

A couple of nights ago, I was at the midnight (0:07) premiere of “Skyfall” (it was great, thanks). The movie ended at nearly 3:00 and, while walking out to the car, I noticed the spectacular mood created by the empty parking lot. I snapped a few photos with my iPhone. Looking back, I wish I had my DSLR on me. But, at the same time, that’s a lot of weight and size to lug around, which is why it tends to stay at home unless the occasion calls for it.

These mirrorless cameras look like the solution to that. Blanc has a great selection, though I’m surprised he didn’t look into the FujiFilm X-E1.

AT&T Continues Their Pursuit to Lose All Remaining Subscribers ⇥ attpublicpolicy.com

Hey, remember how AT&T wasn’t letting people with iPhones use FaceTime over their cell network unless subscribers bought a more expensive plan? Good news! AT&T is remaining remarkably consistent in their dickishness. Jim Cicconi:

AT&T has by far more iPhones on our network than any other carrier.

For now.

We’re proud of this fact and the confidence our customers have in us.

Hah! “Confidence”. Good one.

In this instance, with the FaceTime app already preloaded on tens of millions of AT&T customers’ iPhones, there was no way for our engineers to effectively model usage, and thus to assess network impact.

Bullshit. AT&T knows how many iPhone and iPad models are on their network, yet Skype was allowed over the cellular network, an app which is not preloaded and therefore no assumption as to the number of downloads can be made.

To do otherwise might have risked an adverse impact on the services our customers expect – voice quality in particular – if usage of FaceTime exceeded expectations.

I didn’t realize AT&T’s call quality could further be degraded.

In the meantime, we are announcing today that we will support FaceTime, not only on our Mobile Share plans, but also on all of our tiered data plans with an LTE device.

Some good news. If you have an iPhone 5 or iPad model from 2012, you can use FaceTime over AT&T. But if you have an iPhone 4 or 4S, you’re out of luck. They’ll probably support that at the same time they fully drop their EDGE network.

AT&T has all of the power of a utility company, yet none of the responsibility.

My Advice for Writers ⇥ loopinsight.com

Jim Dalrymple:

I certainly don’t expect everyone will agree with the opinions that I write on The Loop and that’s okay. In fact, it’s great. What a boring world we would live in if everyone agreed with me, all the time.

Pardon me for being, as Dalrymple put it, boring, but this is a damn good piece about the value of honesty. I agree with all of it. Shit.

The Effects of C-11 ⇥ michaelgeist.ca

Reforms of Canadian copyright law have been proposed for the better part of the past decade, and most were absurdly restrictive to users. While they made explicit educational and satirical uses, these proposed bills made a number of logical, reasonable incidents of copying a felony. Even back to January of this year, the C-11 bill, as it was known, required termination of internet access by ISPs when a complaint was made against a user. In an email to my Member of Parliament, I raised my concerns with the proposed bill, and urged a revision.

I’d like to think that similar complaints from Canadians caused the bill to be extensively modified because, on Monday, a version of C-11 took effect which is vastly improved. It’s not perfect but, as Michael Geist explains, it provides some of the most expansive end-user rights of any copyright law in the world.