Yearly Archives: 2015

Samantha Bielefeld talking about The Verge:

What I would like to see is the author not afraid to bite the hand that feeds, to confront the real issue here…the problem isn’t with there being advertising on the web driven by page impressions. The issue is how awful they look, how invasive they can be (auto-play audio/video, yuck!), their attempts at deceiving your website’s audience, and tracking your every mouse click or tap around the web in order to serve their own needs while sacrificing the privacy of the customers they are seeking to gain.

Great read.

I’ve been asked about ad tracking on The Loop quite a bit since iOS 9 and its content blockers were released. I use The Deck to serve ads on the site, and have for the last few years. Jim Coudal, the owner of The Deck, and I share a philosophy that ads should be unobtrusive and respectful to the reader.

Here is The Deck’s official stance on ad tracking (spoiler: there is none):

Short version. We don’t track our readers in any way or allow any other behind-the-scenes shenanigans. We just serve useful, relevant ads in a simple, unobtrusive way to support independent publishers. Please white-list The Deck when using ad blocking software. Thanks.

We will never share your personal information obtained by tracking, either individually or in aggregate, with advertisers or any one else for one very good reason: we don’t have any.

I understand people are upset with being tracked and having ads all over the sites they want to visit, but that’s not what The Deck or The Loop is about. When you block the sites that do make you angry, remember to white-list the ones that treat you with respect.

Coudal also recently spoke with Fast Company about ad blocking.

Jeffrey Zeldman:

Advertisers don’t want to be ignored, and they are drunk on our data, which is what Google and other large networks are really selling. The ads are almost a by-product; what companies really want to know is what antiperspirant a woman of 25–34 is most likely to purchase after watching House of Cards. Which gets us into issues of privacy and spying and government intrusion and don’t ask.

And in this environment of sites so cluttered with misleading ads they are almost unnavigable, Apple looks heroic, riding to the consumer’s rescue by providing all the content from newspapers without the ads, and by blocking ugly advertising on websites. But if they succeed, will media companies and independent sites survive?

This issue is far from over. We have no idea how this is going to shake out, who will adapt and survive and who will fold. I do believe it is an issue ad publishers have largely brought on themselves. But it’s a shame there is and will continue to be a lot of collateral damage in this so-called Apple vs Google War.

Many people look at the “s” model of the iPhone as a less significant release than the years Apple does a full design change, but that’s just not the case. This year’s iPhone 6s and 6s Plus is full of new features and is probably the strongest “s” model iPhone Apple has ever released. I’ve been using the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus for about a week and a half, having received the devices from Apple two days after the September 9 keynote. […]

Huffington Post:

it really bums me out that The Man In the Machine makes little attempt to portray someone who was, by most accounts, a complex, iconic, but all-too-flawed man who, over the course of his career, could be both inventor and thief, monk and businessman, brat and sage, tyrant and beloved leader, and managed to use those conflicting traits to both change the world and create the most valuable, influential, and admired company on the planet.

Instead, The Man In the Machine is focused largely on the thesis that Jobs was always and only a jerk, that people who enjoy Apple products and admire Jobs are idiots and cult members, and that the computer revolution that was born of Jobs’ vision must inevitably contain the same ugly darkness Gibney feels is Jobs’ defining trait, despite any evidence to the contrary.

This review of the documentary tracks with how I felt about it. Not only was it simply inaccurate in places, it seemed to have its premise in place long before the facts were in evidence. It had Joe Nocera, a journalist who famously wrote “Apple hit pieces” for the New York Times, exclaim he didn’t understand the allure of the iPhone. “It’s just a phone!” That’s like not understanding the sex appeal of a Ferrari because it’s “just” a car. Overall, even though I had high hopes for the movie because of the director’s previous work,I was very disappointed in this documaentary.

Apple Inc. is accelerating efforts to build an electric car, designating it internally as a “committed project” and setting a target ship date for 2019, according to people familiar with the matter.

The go-ahead came after the company spent more than a year investigating the feasibility of an Apple-branded car, including meetings with two groups of government officials in California. Leaders of the project, code-named Titan , have been given permission to triple the 600-person team, the people familiar with the matter said.

This would be such a huge deal. Apple’s designers would undoubtedly come up with something great, and it fits with the company’s commitment to make the world a better place.

I picked up my Apple Watch with watchOS 2 from Apple in the days following the September 9 keynote presentation in San Francisco. I hadn’t installed any of the watch betas, so I was really looking forward to giving the … Continued

After a slight delay last week, Apple has released watchOS 2 to the public. You can download the update by going to the Watch app on your iPhone.

The new York Times:

We’ve chosen some of our best works or collections of works that have appeared since we began offering digital subscriptions in 2011.

While certainly not exhaustive, the list demonstrates the breadth, creativity and impact of The Times.

One of the things the NYT does really well is these long-form, investigative articles. “Punched Out: The Life and Death of a Hockey Enforcer” was a heartbreaking look into the life of a hockey player I was a big fan of during his playing days.

Apple Inc is stepping up aid to the thousands of migrants that are streaming into Europe from war-torn countries, Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook told employees in an internal message on Friday.