Tim Cook granted an interview to the Wall Street Journal:
[I]n most major regions of the world, we’re one or two [with the iPhone]. Would I like to be one in the places where we are two? You better believe it. If there is a way we can do that without changing where our line is on a great product, then we’re going to do it. But what we’re not going to do is we’re not going to make junk. We’re not going to put Apple’s brand on something someone else designed.
Disclaimer: I work for and with the Nuit Blanche Calgary organization, but they didn’t pay or ask me to post this. Similarly, these views are my own, and not necessarily theirs. It also doesn’t represent the views of the artists — I’m just a fan.
In 2012, a hard-working team made possible the very first Nuit Blanche festival to be held in Calgary. As Nuit Blanche is a nighttime event held outdoors, artists will approach creating works specifically for it in a different way than they would if the work were to be shown in a white cube gallery. It was with this in mind that Caitlind Brown and Wayne Garrett created Cloud.
Since its debut at Nuit Blanche Calgary 2012, this sculpture has gone on to tour the world, stopping in the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, and Russia. The artists were also asked to build a derivative work for the ceiling of Progress Bar in Chicago, though the pull strings were replaced with motion sensors.
With that in mind, it’s clearl that while Brown and Garrett don’t have Damien Hirst levels of art world fame, this work has been fairly successful for them. But with success comes those wishing to mimic it — in this case, Disney and IBM.
The top image is a screenshot from the Disney Institute homepage, a business strategy consultancy company which offers tips and advice based on the myriad companies Disney also owns. The bottom image is from a public greeting card which IBM released at the end of 2013. And I think it’s safe to say that both of these were inspired by Cloud.
Cloud is a distinctive sculpture. It’s comprised of a vast cluster of lightbulbs in a recognizable shape. Each bulb has an individual control string, and the sculpture is suspended above the viewers’ heads. The only remotely similar preceding work that I can find is the ceiling of the Terrace at Gramercy Park Hotel, but it lacks a recognizable shape and the individual controls of the drawstrings. It’s most similar to the Cloud Ceiling installation at Progress Bar.
These two ads imitate the critical qualities that make Cloud so distinctive: they’re clusters of lightbulbs in recognizable forms, suspended above the wondrous faces of observers with drawstrings for them to control the lights.
I’m fairly familiar with appropriating the works of others. It’s a core tenet of my practice, informed somewhat by my hesitance to contribute to the rapidly-multiplying mass of “stuff” we create. To appropriate ethically requires caution, discipline, and substantial research. It’s much more ethically robust to appropriate a work which is widely-known because it’s clearer who the original author is.
In my writings — as with the writings on many tech-centric weblogs in the past few years — I frequently touch on intellectual property issues. In the cases I usually cover, it’s between two giant companies fighting over what they perceive to be innovations which define their products. But this about two giant companies using the ideas of a distinctive artwork. And, while the original sculpture was fairly well-known and the artists well-renowned, it hasn’t approached the iconic, infamous nature of something like Damien Hirst’s “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living” — you know, the shark piece. Therefore, the ownership and authorship of the original artwork remains fragile in the public eye.
More worrying than that, though, is the impression that artists creating valuable, original concepts are susceptible to those concepts being ripped off by companies who should know better, and who have the means to license these works. It would be the moral thing to do.
Chris Turner also wrote about this for Hazlitt, and I highly recommend reading it. It’s a great piece which investigates similar issues, and which I only found while writing this one.
Absolutely 0% of the story was about turning on a computer and connecting to a Sochi network. 100% of the story was about visiting websites remotely. Thus, the claim of the story that you’ll get hacked immediately upon turning on your computers is fraudulent. The only thing that can be confirmed by the story is “don’t let Richard Engel borrow your phone”.
Following the primetime broadcast of the original report, NBC released a supplementary video on their website which more clearly explains how these attacks were carried out. A few things become perfectly clear:
As Graham points out, this story was filmed in Moscow, not Sochi. The cities are separated by over a thousand miles. It would be similar to a story claiming you’re more likely to be hacked at the 2014 Superbowl held in New Jersey, but filming the story in Chicago.
These attacks were in no way specific to Russia. Engel manually downloaded and installed suspicious software on three separate devices. That’s the story, in a nut.
Richard Engel doesn’t know how to open a box like a human being (about 1:00 into the broadcast clip).
The security expert in the story, Kyle Wilhoit, is a respected researcher, and blames the NBC report on sloppy editing. He promises to release a full technical report to explain what unfolded, and I anticipate he will. He has not done so yet, though.
But, in advance of the NBC report, he published a preliminary writeup which, when combined with the supplement video on NBC’s website, offers a pretty clear picture of what transpired:
For this experiment a honeypot environment was created emulating a user in Russia performing basic tasks; such as browsing the Internet, checking email, and instant messaging. The primary purpose of this experiment was to gauge how quickly a compromise would occur on given devices, should the user perform normal activity while in Russia for the Sochi Olympics.
Then later in the post:
After creating a “profile” of Richard, I then performed the laborious task of generating what appeared to be his user presence on each of the devices. This was accomplished by creating fake contacts (Including name, phone number, email address, and title) to place into his fake email account I created. If a nefarious user compromised the machine, they would in fact think it was really used by Richard, which allows us to study their behavior in closer detail.
In addition to creating fake contacts, I also browsed the Internet, emulating Richards’s habits. I went to Olympic themed websites, as well as traditional news sites that he often checks – like nbcnews.com.
This second quote is largely irrelevant to the story. What Wilhoit did was create a user with a presence online. The fact that it was in Richard Engel’s name isn’t actually important, nor is the fact that he frequents nbcnews.com. If the user was called “Johnny Appleseed” or “Ginny Weasley” it would have resulted in a similar effect.
It’s also pretty clear that Engel’s actions — opening suspicious attachments and downloading sketchy software — are entirely what contributed to this attack. I — and, I’m sure, you — receive similar emails and see ads for phony antivirus software all the time.
And finally:
On all of the devices, there was no security software of any type installed. These devices merely had standard operational programs such as Java, Flash, Adobe PDF Reader, Microsoft Office 2007, and a few additional productivity programs.
Using a Windows computer with Java, Flash, Office, and Adobe Reader on it but without antivirus software is a recipe for disaster. You know this, I know this, and we’ve all drilled it into the heads of our parents, coworkers, and friends. NBC took three minutes to tell their viewers not to download sketchy shit on the internet. Bravo.
In fact, the NBC investigation didn’t really cover what I consider the scariest part of the story, which is what Maltego can uncover. If you’ve ever searched for your own name or handle with Pipl, or tried interesting keywords in Shodan, you probably have some idea of the power of an application like Maltego. Its ability to cross-reference multiple sources is wicked powerful, especially when you consider it in the wake of the past eight months of Snowden’s leaks.
When the tech-savviest people on the planet meet, how do they exchange contact info? The same people who hail taxis by app and pay back friends via email have a wild way of sharing details: They hand over paper business cards.
Stern looks at a bunch of apps which aim to bring the venerable business card into this century. A few of these apps are outright replacements, allowing for the transferring of contact information without a physical card; a couple of these are ways to make business card information easier to covert to a digital form.
Not one of these apps or hardware products has really caught on, though. I think there are loads of reasons why, which Stern addresses. But there’s a less tangible reason why business cards live on: a sort of subtle custom and ritual in the exchange of cards. A bump or tap feels less ritualistic, and somehow carries less importance despite accomplishing the same objective. Once the technical challenges get sorted, I think there will still be a place for business cards for this reason.
“There’s nothing that would keep Apple out of the Android market as a secondary phone market,” said Wozniak–who, it should be noted, is no longer involved in the day-to-day workings of the company. “We could compete very well. People like the precious looks of stylings and manufacturing that we do in our product compared to the other Android offerings. We could play in two arenas at the same time.”
On the other hand, this is pretty silly. Apple and all Android phone makers are already playing in the same arena: the mobile phone arena. There’s no reason for Apple to create a product which uses a competitor’s OS when they have their own fully-functional mobile OS. Why would they? What’s the justification?
I would occasionally spend an evening listening to a song on my new set of headphones and then on my old set, or with my new amplifier and then my old amplifier. I would make my wife listen to see if she heard a difference. Sometimes she did, sometimes she didn’t. Sometimes I didn’t. Every once in a while, I’d read a post on Head-fi about someone who was selling everything he’d bought because he realized he was listening to his equipment rather than music. I finally had the same realization and made the same decision. At the time, I felt like a recovering addict, or a victim of a con artist, reformed but slightly ashamed.
Microsoft named Satya Nadella as the successor to Steve Ballmer. Nadella is only the third CEO Microsoft has ever had. Most of the responses so far have been cautiously optimistic — in fact, I’m sure you’ve read most of the responses so far. I was busy with many exciting things, though, so I’m just catching up.
Microsoft would continue to drive much of its business through traditional software, Nadella explained, including the server operating systems and databases and virtualization software offered by his Server and Tools group, but the company also realized that the world was moving towards online services like Azure and Office 365, services that businesses could use in lieu of buying traditional software. Because Microsoft offered both services and software, the company was in “a good, unique place,” said Nadella, a thin, extremely fit man who typically wears dark-rimmed glasses and keeps his head close to clean shaven.
Today, Microsoft still trails Amazon in the cloud computing market — very much so — but under Nadella, the Server and Tools group has significantly changed the way it operates, and in doing so, it has expanded the influence of Azure and other modern services. According to Bill Hilf, Nadella was instrumental not only in shifting Microsoft towards the new, more rapid way of building online services, but in moving the group to a new licensing model that encouraged the sales staff to sell online services as well as traditional software.
John Gruber is of a similar opinion. If you read this site, I’m sure you read Gruber’s too, and have already read this piece. However, I wanted to highlight this one thing:
Successful companies tend to be true to themselves. The old Microsoft’s Windows and Office everywhere, on every device strategy was insanely ambitious, but also true to their culture. Apple has grown to eclipse Microsoft in financial size, but never set its sights on Microsoft-ian market share size. Google is unfocused at the edges, but it’s never tried to act like any company other than Google. Google makes operating systems and office applications, but in a decidedly Google-y way. The last thing Microsoft should do is attempt to be like Apple or Google.
This is a brilliant point. By picking someone from inside the company, Microsoft has affirmed their comfort with their own organization. If they had picked, for instance, Nokia’s Stephen Elop to run the joint, it would be an indication that they feel the need to reform the company to be more like another. Microsoft doesn’t — and probably shouldn’t — have the internal culture of any company other than Microsoft.
Yesterday, I was among many who noted that Facebook’s new app Paper has a name identical to an app by FiftyThree called Paper, released much earlier. I even called the latter “the original Paper app”. I was wrong — a little company called miSoft is, if anything, “the original Paper app” (description sic):
We followed Apple’s Rules, that is, we went into our Developer account and created the App “Paper”. The name Paper was assigned to us by Apple as NO ONE ELSE was using it.
While working on the app over many months, other apps named “Paper” came and went. How? Do to glitches in Apple’s system. A Developer can add other words to an un-available name, or open an account registered outside the US, create an app with the same name as an existing US app, get the app approved for sale outside the US, then set the app territories to make it available in the US! They can even change the name of an older, existing non-US app and enjoy what looks like an earlier first use.
That’s a pretty serious oversight on Apple’s part.
Then there’s this, from Jordan Crook of TechCrunch:
Yesterday, as Facebook launched its news reader app Paper, design-focused startup FiftyThree called out Facebook publicly for using their brand name. Facebook declined to change the name of their brand new reader app.
But FiftyThree has taken action to protect its brand name. FiftyThree’s trademark application for the term “Paper”, which was filed for on January 30 (the same day that Facebook announced Paper), surfaced today in the USPTO database.
FiftyThree now looks a bit shitty, especially when coupled with Chris Ashworth’s side:
Hi. My name’s Chris. Eight years ago, in 2006, I founded a company called Figure 53. We make tools for artists. We spend our days building products for OS X, iOS and the web. These products help creative people make beautiful things. Our flagship product is a tool for playing audio and video in live performance settings. It has, over the last eight years, become a de facto industry standard for Broadway, Off-Broadway, regional, community, and educational theater. Virtually anyone who’s seen a play in the United States in the last eight years has seen or heard our software at work.
It’s not just the name “Figure 53” that FiftyThree conflicts with, but the way they handled Figure 53’s trademark:
We had one big thing going for us: we already had a registered trademark, and the USPTO agreed that FiftyThree’s application, as given at that time, conflicted with our mark.
In a final effort to be neighborly but also fair, we said: “Look, we still stand by our first idea: if FiftyThree stays focused on the kinds of things you’re doing now, that’s fine. But that doesn’t mean we think anything you do is fine, and we sure as heck aren’t giving permission to do anything at all.”
After that, we waited. And I did my best to forget about it, and focus on our work, and sometimes I’d eat TUMS at night.
We didn’t hear back, but we did see that they changed their trademark application, which followed the spirit of my original proposal of focusing on the kind of work they’re currently doing.
While Facebook may have chosen the name “Paper”, it was not just ripped from FiftyThree’s app, but also from miSoft’s. FiftyThree now wants a trademark on “Paper” for software purposes, but the way FiftyThree handled the trademark of another brand suggests that they don’t entirely value others’ intellectual property protection.
Facebook’s release of Paper yesterday on the App Store breaks a string of uninspired releases outside of Instagram, and has many believing it’s a glimpse into the future of mobile interaction.
But there’s one problem: if this is the future, it’s going to hurt. And I mean physically.
I’m skeptical of this kind of faux-scientific diagramming, but Hurff has a point: the lower 20% of a phone’s touch screen display is awkward to use unless the hand is positioned for typing. In casual “skimming” position, it’s not a comfortable interaction area.
Jared Sinclair just released Unread (affiliate link), an RSS app with some unique design decisions. There are loads of great decisions in this app, but I really dig this:
The last word of a sentence is the most _______. That’s why Unread’s article summaries aren’t truncated at an arbitrary number of lines using elipses. Summaries are composed of whole sentences. Each summary is about the length of an App.net post, give or take a few sentences. If you subscribe to good writers who don’t bury their ledes too deeply, you’ll find that the summaries give you a good idea of what each article is like.
I’m not usually a fan of RSS readers on my iPhone, but I think this app has a great focus on what matters most when you’re on the go.
After watching all 319 hours of the show (or the equivalent of about two straight months watching 40-hours a week, though that is not how I consumed it), I think Law & Order is an even more interesting cultural artifact than I could have ever expected. The show forms a unique database of images and speech, and one that reflects the fascinations, fears, and biases of its time. Law & Order’s long run and its “ripped from the headlines” content makes it a useful lens through which to look at a period of great political and economic change in the United States. In particular, the show coincides with a major cultural shift: the rise and eventual ubiquity of computers and networked technologies over a crucial 20-year period in technological history.
It’s a shame that companies have to choose between reporting more precise numbers about their combined FISA and NSL requests, or reporting more coarsely in those individual categories.
I also find it bizarre that the NSA considers these numbers so confidential. Would it be such a national security nightmare if any of these companies were able to report the precise number of requests they’ve received?
I reported this as a bug in the third beta of Mavericks and it was closed as a duplicate. I’m surprised it wasn’t fixed by the time the OS shipped, nor in 10.9.1. I hope this gets fixed in 10.9.2 because this workaround is idiotic.
Georg Petschnigg of FiftyThree, creators of the original Paper app, isn’t too happy that Facebook also called their app “Paper”:
There’s a simple fix here. We think Facebook can apply the same degree of thought they put into the app into building a brand name of their own. An app about stories shouldn’t start with someone else’s story. Facebook should stop using our brand name.
Duh.
This is a pretty brash move from Facebook, who are clearly demonstrating their power by naming their app “Paper”. Mind you, maybe FiftyThree could release a personal book-making app called “Facebook”.
What this ad makes clear is what Apple considers to be the lineage of the Mac which has descended through everything they make. What that means going forward, I have no idea; what it means now carries a depth and weight.
To illustrate that lineage, Apple pieced together a team of old and new to create this ad. Lee Clow — mastermind of the “1984” Superbowl spot — and Jake Scott — son of Ridley Scott, who directed “1984” — collaborated with editor Angus Wall — who you know from his work on many of David Fincher’s films — and a huge team of unit crews. If you go ahead and just hit “play”, there’s a great punchline at the end of the video.