April 2012
51 posts
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Insanely Simple →
Your next book?
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Pathetic →
Only a company that truly knows its product is inferior and shitty would do this.
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The Rise Of A Total Apple Monopoly →
Burns:
I’m downright fed up with Android. Others must be with me. I’m ready to jump ship to the iPhone after being an Android user since the original Droid. Updates aren’t regular or useful and the vast fragmentation in hardware causes apps to be very inconsistent in quality. The only thing holding me back is Android’s workflow allowed by homescreen widgets. But the average consumer doesn’t care...
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Never, Ever Forget This. →
(I recommend clicking all the links in this post and reading them)
Combine the link above with the following:
This. And This. Oh, and this too:
Never, ever forget this. Android is a rip-off product. It was designed to beat BlackBerry and pivoted to challenge Apple. It’s still trying to catch up today. It still isn’t there. Why? Because the foundations are for a phone built...
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The Facebook Phone →
AKA The last phone in the world I would purchase.
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Nintendo's First Loss in 50 Years →
The saddest thing is knowing that the Wii U is going to tank and that this will just get worse.
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Softwar: An Intimate Portrait of Larry Ellison and... →
As Brooks notes:
It is a fascinating look at Ellison. What is so fascinating about this biography is the stipulation Ellison put on his cooperation:
Ellison agreed to cooperate with the project, but as part of the deal, he reserved the right to respond, which he does in a series of running footnotes.
No seriously. The book is massive and most of that is because Ellison is trying to put his...
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Have you ever wondered what an idiot sounds like? →
I’ll say no more.
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Google Drive →
Gruber:
Sure, I trust Google to index the contents of all my files. Why not?
Nails it.
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Apple's Numbers. Jesus Christ. →
What’s even more amazing about these already amazing numbers (38 million in a non-holiday quarter!) is that this is ONE phone that people consistently pit against a hundred others running multiple OSes.
And people call Android a threat? Remember: ONE device. ONE company. Beating 4 or so companies producing 10+ phones a year.
In any other situation, you’d call that kind of demand...
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The Two-Horse Smartphone Race →
Read it if you feel the need to tear your hair out.
Perhaps testament to the banality of this unnecessary, 27+ paragraph heap of guff is the fact that it manages to take itself seriously when it says “Their [Apple and Samsung’s] divergent paths are proof that vastly different models can prevail.”
Excuse me? Divergent Paths?
It works like this:
1. Apple design a great...
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The Flight from Conversation →
Lots of good and pertinent angles are raised here and woe betide the technologist that ignores them. It certainly highlights a growing trend and, personally speaking, it reminded me of why I first decided to give up my BlackBerry: it was making me a monstrously antisocial creature.
With so many amazing happenings concurrently enveloping us, never forget the value of personal connections: you...
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Working at Microsoft →
Max Zachariades:
Within my first year, I was awarded the venerable “Gold Star.” It read:
Congratulations! In recognition of your important contribution to our success, you have been selected to receive a special Gold Star Spot bonus award. I am pleased to inform you that you will receive an award of $1,000 less all applicable taxes and withholding. Since joining you’ve hit the ground running —...
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The Traditionalist →
Nolan on 3D:
I find stereoscopic imaging too small scale and intimate in its effect. 3-D is a misnomer. Films are 3-D. The whole point of photography is that it’s three-dimensional.
Compare to that to my earlier post on 3D with quotes from James Cameron.
Now consider which is the better director.
Case closed. I really don’t rate 3D.
A bit more for those interested (I recommend reading the...
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Goldman Sachs have faith in AAPL →
I take it back, maybe Goldman Sachs gets it.
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Time to Invent a New Future →
There’s too much good stuff in here for me to start making snarky, digestible quips. Read the whole thing, Alexis Madrigal gets it.
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Once your recruiting is done by HR, you’re dead. →
I’ve been saying this to friends for a while. So glad to hear it repeated elsewhere. Cheers, Dylan Collins.
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Apple is a long-term goldmine. →
Farhad Manjoo:
Apple’s recent wins weren’t merely lucky. They were the result of a determined, unmatched strategy to create bestselling, profitable products in the most remunerative new market in tech, the business of mobile computing.
He gets it. Gruber gets it. MG gets it. Consumers get it. Analysts don’t get it. I’m still stunned by this.
In the dotcom bubble of ‘01, a lot...
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Path Will Never Go Anywhere →
Hamish McKenzie:
And then there’s the problem that there are just too many social media presences to maintain. I’ve split my personality between Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, About.me, Spotify, Pinterest, Quora, and Google+. (Just kidding about that last one.) Adding Path, a slightly more granular social network, to that list just seems indulgent, not to mention...
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Fred Wilson gets it. →
RIM’s demise among my kids’ generation had more to do wtih everyone leaving BBM than anything else. For as long as all of their friends were on BBM, they all wanted to be on it too.
Yes. The hardware problems came second. Geeks were obsessed over specs and missed what was really happening: iPhones became cool. It wasn’t about specs: it was about perception and what you could...
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James Cameron & 3D →
James Cameron:
So, I think where it’s ultimately got to end, is glasses free viewing in the home, on the big screen.
Until it’s there, 3D won’t be as big as these guys want it to be. It’s as simple as that. 3D is a pain in the ass.
I think there are a lot of opportunities in the 3D space, and I think that they have to believe that it’s inevitable. I believe 3D is inevitable...
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Nokia Down, Not Out →
I can say one thing without equivocation: Windows Phone is better than Android. WinPho is monolithic, there are no issues of branching or hardware compatibility, and UI familiarity will soon be bolstered by millions of Windows 8 installs around the world. Android is great if you’re a small manufacturer and you just want to dump a stack onto what would have once been called a feature phone....
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Al Gore on Tim Cook →
Cook’s chance has come. What a beginning!
Great to read and well-deserved. The Future is exciting.
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Facebook's "Social" Readers: More Spammy Bollocks. →
I don’t call them “Social Readers”, I call them “Spam Hoses”. They are the antithesis of Social: they are Antisocial, populating your News Feed with crap you don’t care about. Facebook is spectacularly good at doing that these days and I can feel a large, vitriolic post building on the subject. In fact, the OpenGraph is just SpamHose Rex: King of the Shit You...
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Android "Important, not Critical" →
Under questioning from Oracle’s lawyer, Page said Android was very important but disputed the notion that it was critical.
Android is shit because it’s half-arsed, and it’s half-arsed because even its CEO doesn’t view it as critical. Crap from the top-down.
Apple believes in iOS as the future of computing. Google believes in Android as an extra revenue stream.
No passion = shit...
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McNamee on Google
Must watch.
Nails it.
I am so glad this exists. Thank you, PandoDaily.
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Spotify's BIG Announcement
Why don’t they just keep quiet until the iPad app’s ready? It’s ridiculous now. We’re 3 generations into the post-PC revolution and the company claiming to revolutionise music have delivered… nothing.
via The Verge.
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"I don't know what Ringo did." →
Hilarious quips.
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The Lost Steve Jobs Tapes →
A well-written, fascinating and detailed piece by Brent Schlender. Excellent.
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On iTunes
The problem? It’s everything.
The solution? I won’t claim to have the answer, but the criticism from so many different angles is merited. Everyone wants change. iTunes needs to be rewritten as something lean, efficient, unbelievably rapid and beautiful.
Kinda like what Chrome did for Browsers…
…Now there’s an idea: Divide iTunes into 2 apps: iTunes (the music...
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So. Goddamn. Annoying.
Fuck. Off.
I will at some point calm my venom enough to write about just what is so wrong and infuriating about Google doing this, but right now I’m just too incensed. Everything on Google is just an ad for Google+ right now, and no one wants to use Google+.
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Google Drive →
It’s not been the best kept secret, and now it’s an even worse kept secret.
Sounds promising: I imagine document handling on the web version is second-to-none and that it will have some nifty sharing features through Gmail, Google-bloody-plus and the like…but is it enough to topple Dropbox?
One thing that does interest me: is Google Drive part of the “open” web,...
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A CEO that knows what he’s doing. →
Here’s a better idea — how about hiring designers or a CEO that knows what he’s doing.
Boom.
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The World's Ugliest iPad App →
Jesus Christ.
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More on the 4-inch iPhone →
Dan Provost highlights the other possibility: making the theoretical iPhone 5 wider. I think this is a bad choice (although his thoughts are well-presented) and says that all the other manufacturers making gargantuan, monstrous devices were right. They are wrong, and I don’t think Dan presents a convincing enough argument for the 9:5 ratio screen being the wrong size. I do think that...
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The Guardian's "Battle for the Internet" series. →
*Should* (I hope) be worth following.
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Spotify for iPad, part deux. →
I preferred the unofficial one, but there’s good news to come from this kerfuffle: it’s definitely coming.
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Sergey Brin whines about threats to Google,... →
Gruber nails it:
The assumption here is that the only way to search is through Google, and that the “open Internet” is only what Google can index and sell ads against.
Brin gets one thing right:
He said the Sopa and Pipa bills championed by the film and music industries would have led to the US using the same technology and approach it criticised China and Iran for using. The entertainment...
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No comment. →
Techwhat?
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Unofficial Spotify iPad App →
About time. Where is that god damn app? It still stuns me that Spotify have failed to provide this thus far.
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starck+apple →
Perhaps a lesson in not blabbing about anything when dealing with the most secretive corporation in the Valley.
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Pebble. →
I’m too self-conscious to ever be caught dead wearing one, but this is the first one of these that looks absolutely usable in the real world. I like the eInk display.
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Google+ is Google's "Social Spine" →
Page said, Google+ is now what connects all of Google’s products. He also stressed that there are two aspects to Google+: the social spine (which now has about 170 million users) and the social destination site. Google, for a while now, has refused to release any numbers about the actual number of people who regularly bist the Google+ homepage and how engaged they are. While quite a few pundits...
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The 4-inch iPhone →
I know I’m late to this, but: awesome.
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iOS Needs a Fresh Start →
This has been my favourite topic of conversation for a while now. We need a “Snow Leopard” release for iOS.
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On Wavii, News Feeds and Content Aggregation
Personalised news stream Wavii (pronounced “wave-y” and yes, it’s a shit name) has launched amidst a small burst of fanfare, primarily because it seems that everyone and their dog has decided this can somehow be compared to the $1 billion Instagram acquisition…and it can and it can’t. The BBC puts it interestingly: they could be bought by Facebook. Yeah. So could...
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A Stolen Phone Database →
As someone who has been mugged twice, the UK could do with this.
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"I don’t want to appear churlish or ungrateful." →
I’m sorry, but you do. I’m noticing an increasingly venomous streak emanating from the editing rooms of The Kernel, and whilst I was thrilled to hear about its creation, its reason for being and what it hoped to cover, there are too many articles that simply dig at the established blogging universe at large for petty, pithy reasons. I’m sorry your venture didn’t get the...
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On the Death of 'Big Media' →
Hamish McKenzie at PandoDaily counters a previous post on the death of big media.
I have been very guilty in the past of beating the ‘kill the music industry’ drum in the wake of Internet distribution, Soundcloud and Spotify, but McKenzie makes a very valid point: deep pockets, good intentions and wide reach. A world without BBC News, CNN and the like is not a better world: it is a...
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Google+ gets a redesign. →
If a tree falls in a forest and no one’s there to hear it, does it make a sound?
Elsewhere: lipstick put on pigs, turds polished.
