Peter Sims on Steve Jobs and collaboration:

As the three-year anniversary of Steve Jobs’ passing approaches in October, complete lessons from his life and legacy are still far from written or understood. Walter Isaacson’s biography Steve Jobs, published soon after Jobs’ death in 2011, provided a formidable starting point, yet we still have a great deal to learn and understand about what made Jobs such a unique innovator and leader.

In studying Jobs closely over the past several years, I’ve become convinced that the common narratives we’ve heard neglect a central aspect of Jobs’ of genius and success. And, it’s something that we can all learn from, which is this: Steve Jobs was a superb collaborator with the people who he respected and trusted.

Fascinating article.

When Dell and Blackberry scoffed at the Apple/IBM alliance announced a few weeks ago, it struck a chord for John Gruber, reminding him of something from long ago. He finally figured out what it was.

“We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone,” he said. “PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.”

Great read, less so for the quote, which was a good one, but for Gruber’s prescient take on something that wouldn’t be announced for more than 6 months.

Monday Note:

When Apple announced its 64-bit A7 processor, I dismissed the speculation that this could lead to a switch away from Intel chips for the Macintosh line for a homegrown “desktop-class” chip. I might have been wrong.

I don’t know enough about this end of the industry but it’s hard to argue with Gassee’s line of “Secondly, the Mac line is suspended, literally, by the late delivery of Intel’s Broadwell x86 processors.” The “end of MacIntel” is certainly a possibility to be on the look out for.

Engadget:

Hitchbot, the yellow glove- and Wellies-wearing robot, has started bumming rides across Canada, and by the looks of it, its hosts are having a blast ferrying it to its next drop-off point.

The machine with a perpetual LED smile began its journey in Halifax, and it’ll travel 4,000 miles until it reaches Victoria, British Columbia. People who pick up Hitchbot are pointed to a website where they can find instructions on how to handle it and where to drop it off. On the way, Hitchbot chats with its host, thanks to its speech recognition capability, or chatters away on its own in case its tablet-and-Arduino brain can’t parse what its companion’s saying. It also takes pictures every 30 minutes or so to send back to headquarters and upload to its social media accounts.

What a wonderfully odd experiment. I’m definitely following @hitchBOT on Twitter.

The New York Times:

A vaguely defined ecosystem seems to exist within the community, with subspecies divided by costume type: The Disney, Pixar and “Sesame Street” characters gravitate toward one another, and the superheroes hang out with other superheroes.

The cartoons, superheroes and other assorted characters are a bizarre, fascinating yet annoying as hell part of what Times Square has become.

FiveThirtyEight:

I analyzed the data to find out exactly what Ross, who died in 1995, painted for more than a decade on TV. The top-line results are to be expected — wouldn’t you know, he did paint a bunch of mountains, trees and lakes! — but then I put some numbers to Ross’s classic figures of speech. He didn’t paint oaks or spruces, he painted “happy trees.” He favored “almighty mountains” to peaks. Once he’d painted one tree, he didn’t paint another — he painted a “friend.”

I can’t paint a straight line with a ruler but watching Ross was absolutely mesmerizing. This analysis is interesting from a numbers point of view but it doesn’t capture or explain the wonderful presentation style Ross had.

The movie Boyhood was filmed using the same cast over 12 years, so you literally see the protagonist growing up before your eyes. A great concept, said to be a great movie, can’t wait to see it.

In a scene celebrating Mason Jr.’s 15th birthday, he receives a mix CD from his father, Mason Sr., played by Ethan Hawke. Called The Black Album, it’s a compilation of the best of John, Paul, George, and Ringo’s solo work, post-Beatles.

The CD comes with a set of liner notes in the form of a letter, cribbed from liner notes Ethan Hawke originally wrote for his daughter. Here’s the beginning of the letter.

I wanted to give you something for your birthday that money couldn’t buy, something that only a father could give a son, like a family heirloom. This is the best I could do. Apologies in advance.

I present to you: THE BEATLES’ BLACK ALBUM.

The only work I’ve ever been a part of that I feel any sense of pride for involves something born in a spirit of collaboration — not my idea or his or her idea, but some unforeseeable magic that happens in creativity when energies collide.

This is the best of John, Paul, George, and Ringo’s solo work, post-BEATLES. Basically I’ve put the band back together for you. There’s this thing that happens when you listen to too much of the solo stuff separately — too much Lennon: suddenly there’s a little too much self-involvement in the room; too much Paul and it can become sentimental — let’s face it, borderline goofy; too much George: I mean, we all have our spiritual side but it’s only interesting for about six minutes, ya know? Ringo: He’s funny, irreverent, and cool, but he can’t sing — he had a bunch of hits in the ’70s (even more than Lennon) but you aren’t gonna go home and crank up a Ringo Starr album start to finish, you’re just not gonna do that. When you mix up their work, though, when you put them side by side and let them flow — they elevate each other, and you start to hear it: T H E B E A T L E S.

Just listen to the whole CD, OK?

Great concept, great letter, especially if you are a Beatles fan. If this struck a chord with you, follow the link and read the whole thing.

From Microsoft’s blog post:

As you may have seen, on Friday Microsoft filed legal action against Samsung in U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York. Today’s legal action is simply to enforce our contract with Samsung.

We don’t take lightly filing a legal action, especially against a company with which we’ve enjoyed a long and productive partnership. Unfortunately, even partners sometimes disagree. After spending months trying to resolve our disagreement, Samsung has made clear in a series of letters and discussions that we have a fundamental disagreement as to the meaning of our contract.

Samsung and Microsoft are both large and sophisticated companies. In 2011, after months of painstaking negotiation, Samsung voluntarily entered into a legally binding contract with Microsoft to cross-license IP – an agreement which has been extremely beneficial for both parties. Samsung had been complying with the contract and paying to use Microsoft’s IP.

So what changed? Since Samsung entered into the agreement, its smartphone sales have quadrupled and it is now the leading worldwide player in the smartphone market. Consider this: when Samsung entered into the agreement in 2011, it shipped 82 million Android smartphones. Just three years later, it shipped 314 million Android smartphones. [Source: IDC, WW Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker – 2014 Q1, Published: May 2014] Samsung predicted it would be successful, but no one imagined their Android smartphone sales would increase this much.

This was from a post by David Howard, Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President & Deputy General Counsel. In effect, the second in command of their legal team. Rare to see a public posting like this not come from someone in public relations. Certainly part of Microsoft’s legal strategy.

Is this Samsung simply using Microsoft’s Nokia acquisition to opt out of their cross-licensing pact, one that perhaps has become less financially attractive, given the surprising surge in their Android sales?

Elia Freedman:

Let’s say that together now: the dearth of many viable iOS indie dev businesses is not Apple’s problem.

It’s ours.

Whether we like it or not, the game has changed. Trials are out. They’ve been out for six years now and we have no idea if they are ever coming back. Upgrades are out, too. Again, we have no idea if they will ever come back. Ask yourself, do you really want to sit here and wait another 10 months to find out if we will get trials and upgrades, and then wait another three months after that to see it available? Hell, no. I need to make a living now.

It’s time for us to adapt.

We’ve seen quite a bit of writing regarding this issue over the past week. I’m just a user so I have no idea of the issues involved but it is good to hear from another side of the equation.

The Roosevelts:

It is being reported that Oscar-winning actor Jamie Foxx has agreed to portray Mike Tyson in an upcoming biopic that is written by Hollywood bad-ass Terence Winter.

There is no way a paring of Terence Winter and the fascinating story of Mike Tyson couldn’t be good so enjoy the following super cut compilation to show how vicious Mike Tyson really was in his prime.

I was a boxing fan during Tyson’s prime and for all of his failings, he was an absolute beast in the boxing ring. The sport is justifiably vilified now but this super cut might help to explain why seemingly rational, mostly non-violent people like myself loved to watch him turn people’s brains off.

Colossal:

To commemorate the centennial of Britain’s involvement in the First World War, ceramic artist Paul Cummins and stage designer Tom Piper conceived of a staggering installation of ceramic poppies planted in the famous dry moat around the Tower of London. Titled “Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red,” the final work will consist of 888,246 red ceramic flowers—each representing a British or Colonial military fatality—that flow through grounds around the tower.

Volunteers began placing the poppies several weeks ago and the process will continue through the summer until a final flower is symbolically planted on November 11th.

The poppy flower is very symbolic to me as a Canadian and the proud son of a Canadian Navy veteran. I’d love to be able to see this installation in London.

There’s a buzz going around the net about ice cream sandwiches not melting. It started with a woman in Cincinnati who accidentally left a Walmart ice cream sandwich out in the sun for a bit and noticed that it was not behaving the way “real” ice cream behaved.

Was this true? Watch the embedded video, but then read on for the science.

The key to the lack of melting is the guar gum added to the ice cream.

Many online comment threads are full of people decrying the use of preservatives in food, but that’s not really what’s going on here. If you look at the list of ingredients for the ice cream portion of a Walmart brand ice cream sandwich, you’ll notice some differences between that and regular ice cream you scoop out of a container. In these products (and most other ice cream sandwiches on the market) you’ll find guar gum, calcium sulfate, and cellulose gum. These compounds are the main cause of an ice cream sandwich’s startling stability.

Guar gum is a polysaccharide (a molecule made of multiple sugars) extracted from the guar bean. It’s a plain white powder that is obtained by milling the matured beans. If “natural” food is a concern for you, guar gum is about as natural as it gets. It acts as an emulsifier, which means it thickens in water and stabilizes thawing. So, of course, it’s used in many foods.

Go here to read more. Science!

David Smith:

This past week has seen an explosion of writing and discussion about the business of making software for sale on the iOS App Store. Personally I love it when these little bubbles of discussion appear. If you’ve listened to me for any period of time you’ll know that one of the things I really like is being a student of the App Store. These discussions provide the opportunity and motivation for all sorts of anecdotes which help expand my view on where things stand.

This post is a trifecta. There’s a link to the Developing Perspective podcast, where David Smith lays all this out verbally. There’s the post itself (which really clicked for me). And there’s the wealth of related links at the end of the post.

If you are a developer, go to it. Even if you are not a developer, but have even a passing interest in the App Store, this is worth a read. [Via iOS Dev Weekly]

Bloomberg:

Apple Inc. won preliminary approval of a settlement in which it could pay $450 million to resolve claims by U.S. states and consumers that it led a conspiracy to fix prices on electronic books.U.S. District Judge Denise Cote in Manhattan said today that there’s “probable cause to find that the proposed settlement agreement is within the range of those that may be approved as fair and reasonable.”

I wonder if Amazon is rubbing their hands in glee?

The game begins with 16 triangles of primary colors. You combine them to make regular polygons with more sides. Squares, pentagons, hexagons, etc.

This could be another one of those addictive games.

Charvel guitars are so nice to play.

Apple:

Today we are excited to officially welcome Beats Music and Beats Electronics to the Apple family. Music has always held a special place in our hearts, and we’re thrilled to join forces with a group of people who love it as much as we do. Beats cofounders Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre have created beautiful products that have helped millions of people deepen their connection to music. We’re delighted to be working with the team to elevate that experience even further.

It’s going to be interesting to see how this goes.

Priceonomics:

The rarity and temporality of truffles have made them — at €4,400 to €11,000 per pound for Italy’s prized white truffles — the most expensive food in the world. In 2007, a Macau casino owner set a record by paying $330,000 for a 3.3 pound truffle unearthed in Tuscany.

The combination of these two trends — the desire for a convenient, ever-ready supply of an ingredient and a hunger for the traditional, the rare, and “real food” — led to what would seem to be a remarkably successful scam on foodie culture: truffle oil.

While in Italy, I had truffle very sparingly sprinkled over pasta. Sublime.

An unscientific survey, but interesting nonetheless.

One of the sellers that was willing to give me more detailed information was Benjamin Clark from The Decal Guru. They saw a quadrupling of orders for MacBook decals since the airing of Apple’s ad. In terms of unique visitors they saw an increase from a steady 500 per day (prior to the ad) to 4,500 at its highest last week.

If you haven’t seen the ad, here ya go.

There’s plenty here to like, but the ability to send a Word and Excel files as PDFs is a real boon for me, personally.

Nice to see Microsoft so dedicated to the iOS Office suite.

This is a fun little game, a puzzle challenge that requires you to move squares around on your screen using a simple set of rules, getting them to rest on a preset position.

The game is web-based, it’s free, and it runs just find on my iPhone. [Hat tip to Patrick Bisenius]

Quartz:

When you install an app on an Android smartphone or tablet, it asks for access to data such as your location or address book. If you say no, you can’t install the app.

Apple handles things differently. On its mobile operating system, iOS, apps don’t ask permission when they’re installed. Instead, iOS takes some permissions as a given—internet access for instance—but for more sensitive data, such as your photos or location, the app has to ask for access when you use it. That more closely relates the decision to grant access to the reason for asking for it.

That there should be a difference between Android and iOS, which between them control 96.3% of the smartphone market, isn’t surprising. They have different overarching philosophies: Android is free for any smartphone maker to use while iOS is for iPhones only. Developers can freely upload their apps to the Google Play Store while Apple has tight gatekeeping. Android is easily customized; iOS is not.

But both Apple and Google are making big changes to the nuts and bolts of how permissions work, and they’re moving in opposite directions: While Apple is making it harder for apps to get access to your data, Google is making it easier. Most users may not notice; compared to the design, functionality, choice of apps, and price, privacy often comes last in people’s decisions about which phone to use. But these little-noticed details will have a profound impact on how widely your data are shared with other companies.

I’m a longtime fan of Apple products. But I am not immune to change. Three things keep me from experimenting with Android. First, there’s simple aesthetics. Apple keeps making products I like, so I’ve got no reason to drift.

Second, there’s the approach to privacy that’s the center of the linked article. It’s a small thing, perhaps, but I prefer Apple’s more granular approach.

And last, but certainly not least, there’s the issue of malware. Even the most neutral of security blogs make the case that device fragmentation is a security issue for Android. Apple controlling the hardware and software makes all the difference.

The primary issue faced by most US consumers is a lack of competition. The pie is very large and there is little opportunity for customers to protest poor service with their wallets. There’s just nowhere to run.

Community fiber is typically run by a local power utility, one with customer service infrastructure already built in.

Fiber is fast. Really fast. Chattanooga’s local power utility operates a fiber optic Internet service that currently offers a 1 Gigabit speed package (1,000 Mbps) for just $69.99/month. For most of us that would be a 50x speed increase or better. Many fiber services are also symmetrical, offering the same upload speed as download speed.

Cable companies will no doubt fight this tooth and nail. I’d imagine just the threat of an emerging local alternative will force a change in Big Cable’s heinous customer service policies.

FiveThirtyEight:

In the long and varied history of sports heroes — from Pheidippides to Johnny Football — none has signed his name more often, nor more energetically and whimsically, than Pete Rose. Signing for dollars has been at the core of Rose’s livelihood, and lifeblood, since he was banned from baseball 25 years ago.

For years now he has appeared four days a week, in five-hour shifts, at a memorabilia shop in a Las Vegas mall. The crowds don’t swarm, but they do come, steadily. An autographed ball costs $99, a bat $200, a jersey $40. Items are also bundled and sold in packages. It’s not unusual for Rose to move more than $10,000 worth of merchandise in a day.

Regardless of your feelings about Rose, his story, in particular the last 25 years, has been a fascinating one.

That’s the takeaway from findings security researchers Karsten Nohl and Jakob Lell plan to present next week, demonstrating a collection of proof-of-concept malicious software that highlights how the security of USB devices has long been fundamentally broken. The malware they created, called BadUSB, can be installed on a USB device to completely take over a PC, invisibly alter files installed from the memory stick, or even redirect the user’s internet traffic. Because BadUSB resides not in the flash memory storage of USB devices, but in the firmware that controls their basic functions, the attack code can remain hidden long after the contents of the device’s memory would appear to the average user to be deleted. And the two researchers say there’s no easy fix: The kind of compromise they’re demonstrating is nearly impossible to counter without banning the sharing of USB devices or filling your port with superglue.

Frightening.

Publishers Adam and Tonya Engst have put out another great ebook written by Joe Kissell called “Take Control of FileVault.” This should answer any question you have about using Apple’s FileVault feature.