The strategy today is simple: In order to move fast, build what you can’t buy or risk losing control of your fate and becoming the next Palm, Motorola, or HTC. And if, in the process, you disrupt an Oracle or a Qualcomm? So be it.
This is really interesting. I had no idea Facebook built its own servers, but it makes a lot of sense—if the incumbents can’t do it, build it yourself.
What do you get when you take some of the best Apple dev authors, trainers, and speakers and combine them with the most passionate, engaged developers in a region? You get a learning and networking experience that will not soon be forgotten! You get CocoaConf!
CocoaConf is back this Spring and better than ever! We’ll be bringing the newest and best iOS and Mac developer technology training to five U.S. cities over the next few months:
| Chicago, IL | March 7-8 | (Sold Out) |
| Herndon, VA (DC) | March 28-29 | |
| Austin, TX | April 4-5 | (Sold Out) |
| San Jose, CA | April 25-26 | |
| Raleigh, NC | May 9-10 |
Since readers of The Loop are just the kind of attendees we’re looking for, we’re offering you a special discount. Register for any CocoaConf event and use the promotional code LOOP to save 20% on your ticket!
Don’t miss out on this exciting opportunity—tickets are going fast!
Note: This article first appeared in The Loop Magazine Issue 17.
867-5309. 911. And… that’s about it. Those two seemingly random strings of digits just so happen to be phone numbers.
One is the emergency line for U.S. citizens, established as a public service to be rung in times of utter distress. The other is best known for being the hook in a Tommy Tutone jam. For all of the technologies that have come, served their time, and went, the antediluvian phone number remains—clinging to life much like a zombie that refuses to remain planted in its grave. Unlike Sony’s MiniDisc, SanDisk’s slotRadio, and Palm’s webOS, the phone number has few meaningful supporters. In fact, it’s easily one of the most complicated and frustrating beacons of communication in the world today, but it’s hanging on for one primary reason: ubiquity.
As they say, old habits die hard, and well-rooted trees require the most effort to poison. The telephone number has served us well. Despite the need for country codes, phone numbers are generally universal, and can be used to connect humans in faraway lands (assuming they’re kosher with the roaming rates, which I’ll touch on in a bit). It’s a protocol that’s supported by every single phone, from dirt cheap to obscenely expensive, and it’s the only number that you can give someone without any doubt that they’ll understand how to use it to contact you. But let’s be honest: the phone number has done absolutely nothing for you lately.
In fact, it’s probably causing you all sorts of grief. What was once a universally accepted standard now feels tremendously limited. For starters, dialing any number outside of your own country involves fees—fees which seem thoroughly absurd in an age where the internet has enabled limitless communication without borders. The cost of making a simplistic voice call has been driven to zero by the likes of Google Voice, Skype, Apple’s FaceTime Audio, Facebook, Viber, and countless others. Even outfits notorious for bilking customers for all that they’re worth (yes, I’m looking your way, mobile carriers of the United States) have given up on the scheme—these days, you get unlimited calling if you pony up for a data plan.
The mere notion of paying to call someone now seems ludicrous. And yet, the phone number lives on.
The upside is that we’re making progress. Facebook’s own Messenger app is slowly but surely becoming one that’ll enable non-Facebook users to input a phone number and forget it, forever using a converted identifier and whatever data connection you can find in order to pass along snippets of text. I’d surmise that voice conversations won’t be far behind. The downside is that the default action for consumers—even technophiles such as myself—is to pass along one’s phone number first, followed by far more fluid tokens such as an email address, a Twitter handle, or a Facebook username. If ever we hope to fully kill the phone number, we’re going to have to make a concerted effort as a society to stop relying on it first and foremost.
My proposal is a simple one from a conceptual standpoint, but one that faces huge challenges due to the monolithic corporations who hold the power to make the necessary changes. When 5G (or whatever happens after LTE) is fully in place, there’s really no reason to not build the networks to transmit all voice calls over data. Today’s networks may not be fully capable of handling every single voice call in VoIP fashion, but bandwidth is going to be far less of an issue once LTE has been eclipsed. It’s already possible for me to ring a conventional phone number from my web browser thanks to a Google Voice plug-in; as far as the receiver of that call knows, I’m calling from a landline. Then also remember that you can use a virtual number for Whatsapp (see https://www.yourbusinessnumber.com/blog/how-can-i-get-a-virtual-number-for-whatsapp for more details) and that allows you to use two numbers on the one phone, so that can be very useful indeed for many users. The technology is already here, but unless mobile operators and network infrastructure outfits jointly decide to make the leap to VoIP for everything, we’re going to remain shackled to an ancient technology.
It doesn’t take an argonaut to understand the benefits of using a different identifier and an internet-based calling platform. Today, a U.S. citizen that travels to England can buy a SIM card in a vending machine upon landing, load it up with data, and effectively use their smartphone exactly as they would in the United States… save for the whole “calling and texting” thing. When you swap the SIM out, your phone number goes dead for the duration of your trip. But why? That new SIM is fully capable of channeling voice calls to your phone via data networks—the only thing we need is implementation.
Why shouldn’t you be able to complete a call using any device tethered to a data connection? A laptop or tablet with a set of headphones seems like a perfectly acceptable way to communicate, but as it stands, the phone number won’t have any of it.
Out society is too large, and far too set in their ways, for anyone to expect the masses to take meaningful action to change our dependence on the traditional phone number. But if we try, we might be able to pressure mobile carriers into considering a VoIP future that at least enables numbers to be ported amongst data-enabled devices.
As with practically everything related to the expansion of internet availability, one shouldn’t underestimate the economic impact that such a change could have. Roaming charges are hurdles for even the affluent amongst us; in a developing nation, they’re outright insurmountable. The thought of a world where every phone could call another, anywhere in the world, using a data network that pays no mind to long distance fees—that’s a thought that thrills me.
Darren Murph Bio:
Darren has roamed the consumer electronics landscape for nearly a decade, most recently serving as Engadget’s Managing Editor and now as SVP of Editorial Strategy for Weber Shandwick. He owns a Guinness World Record as the planet’s most prolific professional blogger, and believes that there’s no such thing as too much travel.
Missed the Oscars last night? Tivo on the fritz? Didn’t care enough to watch live? Well, here’s the TL;DR version of last night’s show.
Forbes posted its annual list of the world’s top net worth individuals. For all his philanthropy (and Gates gives vast amounts of his money and his time), Gates has found his way back to the top of the list. Wonder if he bought any Apple stock.
Interesting when you break it all down.
From Volvo integration of CarPlay announced this morning.
Oppenheimer will stay at Apple. His official Apple bio page is still up, though they have not added his new role. From his Goldman Sachs bio page:
Through his positions as CFO and Controller at Apple and Divisional CFO at ADP, Mr. Oppenheimer has significant experience in the preparation and review of financial statements as well as capital and risk management. He also brings to our Board experience in the oversight of technology and technology risks, which he has developed in connection with, among other things, his oversight of information systems at Apple. Through his service on the boards of directors of not-for profit entities and as CFO at Apple, Mr. Oppenheimer has developed experience in corporate governance and leadership.
Note that both the Apple bio page and the Goldman Sachs page list Oppenheimer’s Apple position as (2004-present).
This might seem like an obscure change in a small part of the Google universe, but it might just be signaling a sea change in Google’s stance on the apps and add-on approval process.
Google has been talking up the auto-removal of unsanctioned extensions since November, when the company characterized the policy as a security necessity, claiming that “bad actors” were using loopholes to continue installing malicious add-ons without user approval or knowledge.
This is an obvious problem that Apple addressed when it created the very first App Store. While the linked article focuses on the lockdown of Windows Chrome add-ons, the issue of “bad actors” affects both Chrome and Android across the board.
I think this is a good move on Google’s part. For their users’ sakes, I hope they broaden this move to include Android as well. Look at that malware list we posted last week, where all top 20 malware threats were Android based. The need is obvious.
Two direct reports to new Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella — EVP of business development and evangelism Tony Bates and EVP of marketing Tami Reller — are leaving the company, according to numerous sources close to the situation.
The shakeup begins. Standard stuff when a new CEO takes over, more a question of who will stay and who will go. Bates came to Microsoft when it bought Skype. Reller worked for the Windows unit, as both CMO and CFO.
Mike Macadaan writes about his experience creating a successful product both inside and outside Kickstarter. To be clear, this is not a judgment of Kickstarter as much as it is a story about entrepreneurship and lessons learned.
If you’ve ever considered pursuing a Kickstarter campaign or creating a physical product, give this a read.
Last week, we posted about Tim Cook’s angry response to a suggestion that some Apple efforts have lost focus on profitability, on return on investment (ROI):
the NCPPR representative asked Mr. Cook to commit right then and there to doing only those things that were profitable.
What ensued was the only time I can recall seeing Tim Cook angry, and he categorically rejected the worldview behind the NCPPR’s advocacy. He said that there are many things Apple does because they are right and just, and that a return on investment (ROI) was not the primary consideration on such issues.
“When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind,” he said, “I don’t consider the bloody ROI.” He said that the same thing about environmental issues, worker safety, and other areas where Apple is a leader.
Cook also said, “If you want me to do things only for ROI reasons, you should get out of this stock.”
There was a lot of public discussion about these comments. A number of analysts questioned Apple’s strategy in not valuing profitability above all else. Amidst all the noise, this post stood out.
Technology companies that last long-term are those that are willing to take risks, invest heavily in R&D (even at the expense of short-term profits), and are willing to venture out and explore into new areas, both adjacent to the company’s core cash cow(s) as well as ideas that are far out in left field.
Now, Cook would have been impressive enough if he were simply talking about potential R&D projects that end up not bearing fruit, but in this case, he was speaking more broadly, addressing – in one shot – environmental responsibility, accessibility of Apple’s products to the disabled, as well as the general notion that not everything Apple does is done solely to maximize ROI.
That, interestingly enough, is exactly the kind of attitude that is the mark of a CEO/management team that knows how to run a rich, profitable, and growing technology company for many years to come. Companies that fail to pursue opportunities and potentially disruptive technologies, and those that fail to want to make life better/easier for others, are those without long-term vision and are – in the long-haul – probably doomed to mediocrity.
Also:
Many of the criticisms levied against Mr. Cook is that he isn’t enough like the passionate Jobs, but it’s becoming clearer that Cook’s fairly calm public image fails to convey a potentially Jobsian passion for Apple, its products, and its future. This – coupled with an understanding of what Apple is all about – is what it takes to have a shot at filling the very large shoes that Jobs left behind.
And, while the story is far from over, Cook seems to have what it takes to guide Apple through the next generation of challenges and to capitalize on the next generation of opportunities. Steve Jobs appears to have made the right choice – yet again.
These comments just clicked for me. [From Seeking Alpha, free reg-wall]
Chris Coyier gives us some examples of how effects can be done in CSS.
Apple on Monday introduced CarPlay, a new way to use the iPhone in your car. CarPlay allows the user to access Maps, Messages, Music, and make phone calls with a touch of the screen in your car. You can even press the voice button in your car to activate Siri.
“CarPlay has been designed from the ground up to provide drivers with an incredible experience using their iPhone in the car,” said Greg Joswiak, Apple’s vice president of iPhone and iOS Product Marketing. “iPhone users always want their content at their fingertips and CarPlay lets drivers use their iPhone in the car with minimized distraction. We have an amazing lineup of auto partners rolling out CarPlay, and we’re thrilled it will make its debut this week in Geneva.”
Ferrari, Mercedes-Benz and Volvo will premiere CarPlay to their drivers this week at the Geneva International Motor Show. Additional manufacturers bringing CarPlay to their drivers down the road include BMW Group, Ford, General Motors, Honda, Hyundai, Jaguar Land Rover, Kia, Mitsubishi Motors, Nissan Motor Company, PSA Peugeot Citroën, Subaru, Suzuki and Toyota Motor Corp.
Apple CarPlay is available as an update to iOS 7 and works with Lightning-enabled iPhones, including iPhone 5s, iPhone 5c and iPhone 5. CarPlay will be available in select cars shipping in 2014.
The Guardian:
It sounds like the stuff of science fiction: seven keys, held by individuals from all over the world, that together control security at the core of the web. The reality is rather closer to The Office than The Matrix.
What a bizarre, convoluted system. But it seems to work.
Big hat tip to Nick Arnott for this terrific Reddit resource. Nick suggests the “Collapse all comments & just show parents” bookmarklet to hide the answers from the Reddit riddle page, posted earlier today.
Biblical delivers crushing riffs drenched in cinematic atmosphere.
Yeah, that caught my attention for sure. I previewed to the first couple of singles on iTunes and then pre-ordered the album.
Dave Etchells:
Try to imagine this scenario occurring in the US, or perhaps most any country other than Japan: You leave a camera bag with US$7,000+ of gear in it sitting in a train station. Station personnel may find it that night, or it more likely sits there till morning. The rail line people go looking for it, find it, & forward it to a more convenient location for you to pick it up the next day. When you retrieve & open it, everything is exactly as you left it, all US$7,000+ of gear undisturbed & still inside.
This is a common story in Japan. It’s a generalization but you are more likely to get your gear back in Japan than you are in many other countries.
Lots to enjoy here, especially if you have kids. Some of these are pretty difficult. All are thoughtful.
Vanity Fair:
Just who are those unrecognizable Oscar audience members sandwiched between the stars this Sunday? To get a better understanding of the behind-the-scenes responsibilities of these glammed-up Oscar gophers, we tracked down a seat-filler from last year’s Seth MacFarlane-hosted ceremony.
I’ve read a lot of stories about these people and it always strikes me as so odd. Does anyone watching on TV really care if there’s an empty seat next to Jennifer Lawrence?
Quartz:
The suggestion to mask or obscure email addresses to avoid spam has been around for more than a decade. References to replacing the @ with (at) or .com with (dot) com to reduce spam can be found on online message boards and archives dating back to the 1990s.But there are two realities here.
Do you agree? Do you still bother to conceal your email address in this way?
The Wall Street Journal:
A competition that was expected to be humdrum turned into one of the most remarkable ever. This account of how that happened was pieced together through extensive interviews with the sailors, engineers and other team leaders.
As a Nova Scotianer, I’ve always been fascinated by any kind of sailing. The America’s Cup yachts are the highest expression of sailing and amazing pieces of technology. Throw in the unbelievable comeback of Oracle Team USA last year and the story just gets better. Make sure you check out the embedded videos on the page for some incredible video highlights.
Author Yukari Kane adapted a chapter from her new book for the Wall Street Journal. I think the excerpt is well written and it’s certainly interesting. My only gripe is that it seems a little one sided and one-dimensional. It dehumanizes Tim Cook, focuses on anecdotes that paint him as a harsh taskmaster, anecdotes that are not supported by personal account but as hearsay.
Apple under Jobs was a roller coaster, but Cook’s operations fief was orderly and disciplined. Cook knew every detail in every step of the operations processes. Weekly operations meetings could last five to six hours as he ground through every single item. His subordinates soon learned to plan for meetings with him as if they were cramming for an exam. Even a small miss of a couple of hundred units was examined closely. “Your numbers,” one planner recalled him saying flatly, “make me want to jump out that window over there.”
Cook had made a particular point of tackling Apple’s monstrous inventory, which he considered fundamentally evil. He called himself the “Attila the Hun of inventory.”
Meetings with Cook could be terrifying. He exuded a Zenlike calm and didn’t waste words. “Talk about your numbers. Put your spreadsheet up,” he’d say as he nursed a Mountain Dew. (Some staffers wondered why he wasn’t bouncing off the walls from the caffeine.) When Cook turned the spotlight on someone, he hammered them with questions until he was satisfied. “Why is that?” “What do you mean?” “I don’t understand. Why are you not making it clear?” He was known to ask the same exact question 10 times in a row.
I’m left with the feeling that these quotes were gathered in a back room in a hushed aside, a la Deep Throat, by people with an agenda. Could be me, but this does not feel balanced. That said, I’ll read the book. Certainly an interesting subject.
My thanks to Gestrument for sponsoring this week’s RSS feed on The Loop. Gestrument is a powerful tool for the professional musician but also an intuitive app for the beginner. Gestrument lets you delve into the “musical DNA” of a genre, artist or song. With full control over all musical parameters you can play and compose music with just the swipe of your finger.
Visit www.gestrument.com to see Gestrument perform music by Meshuggah, Richard Devine, Claude Debussy or see keyboard wizard Jordan Rudess from Dream Theater demo his own preset.
Apart from our artist we have videos and presets showing how to play for instance Dubstep, Cool Jazz, String Quartet and Indian Raga – all with just the swipe of your finger.
Gestrument is developed by contemporary classical composer Jesper Nordin and software developer Jonatan Liljedahl – Kymatica (the developer behind AudioShare, Sector, AUFX, NordBeat, BitWiz and many more iOS music apps).
Quartz:
Diet soda was supposed to save the soda industry in a world worried by sugar. Instead it’s only dragging it down.American consumption of fizzy drinks has dipped in each of the past five years, and by 30% since the turn of the century. By 2018, it is expected to have fallen by 40% since 2000.
Following on our previous story about America falling out of love with orange juice comes this one with the same issue regarding soda (or pop). While I still occasionally drink orange juice, I haven’t had a traditional soda pop in about ten years. Not out of any health concerns; I just “grew out of” drinking it.
One of the most important things that keeps me glued to Apple’s hardware and software ecosystem is the fact that, the vast majority of the time, things just work.
How many times did Steve Jobs get on stage at some event and say, “It just works”? So much so, that it became a clarion call for Apple, it became associated with the brand. And there’s good reason for that.
When I get a new printer, it just works with all my Macs. If there’s a struggle to print, it’s undoubtedly with my Windows machine. You get the idea.
This morning, Jim reminded me that we are once again temporarily mortal enemies as his Bruins take on my Caps in an important (to us, anyway) NHL matchup. I walked over to my Mac, typed a keystroke to bring up Reminders, clicked once to start a new reminder, then typed:
Mortal enemies Caps game 1pm
I then hit return. Two cool things happened. First, the Reminders application created a reminder set to remind me at 1pm, even though I had typed 1pm in the Reminder text itself. Reminders was smart enough to know that a time specified in a reminder was meant to schedule the reminder and not be part of the text. It just worked.
But the second cool thing was that the reminder also appeared on my iPhone and iPad reminder lists without any extra effort on my part. That single carriage return set Apple in motion on my behalf, working behind the scenes to make sure I got that “mortal enemies” reminder no matter what device I happened to be on.
To be fair, I don’t mean to imply that all Apple stuff will work all the time. There are plenty of people out there who have a pet peeve, some setup that doesn’t work for them. My point is that Apple’s products are designed to anticipate need, to make things as easy to use as possible. They are designed to just work. The little touches, like the Reminders example above, are what make these products work for me, what make the occasional hiccup worth working through.
Fabrizio Fracassi left Final Cut Pro when Apple made a left turn back in 2011 with the release of Version 10. Happily, Apple addressed the criticism it received from that release and Fabrizio is back in the fold.
Apple was quick at responding to the early criticism and making up leeway, and when I got involved in a project that required me to learn Media Composer, I kind of realized what Apple had achieved with their rework of Final Cut Pro. There is a segment in Disney’s Fantasia named the Firebird Suite (composed by Igor Stravinsky). It is the story of the spring sprite who accidentally awakes the firebird, a malevolent spirit in a nearby volcano. The firebird proceeds in destroying the forest, and seemingly the sprite. But the sprite survives and sets about restoring the forest to an even lusher state; an occurrence that can also be observed in nature. Volcanic eruptions cause much damage, but when magma cools, it breaks down to form some of the most fertile soils on earth. On a broader view, one can say that death is the greatest invention of life, because it leaves room for the next generation and enables animate beings to evolve. And that’s exactly what Apple has done with Final Cut Pro. It has dropped its legacy software and launched an entirely new set of tools that will carry the product line well into the next decade. It has recognized that, among other things, innovation stems from a willingness to fail, and for those reasons Final Cut Pro X is a great step forward.
Great analogy.
This is a truly fantastic idea for a community. Artists looking to develop their chops draw other Reddit users. Here’s a link to some examples. Note that they are shown in pairs, first a picture, then the Reddit drawn drawing, each accompanied by the artist’s Reddit handle.
If you want to join in, you might want to wait a bit. RedditGetsDrawn made it to the front page today, so they are likely to get overwhelmed with traffic for a while.
I don’t think there’s anything malicious going on here, but there does seem to be a trend, a trend in the wrong direction. First, some facts from the linked article:
Follow the headline link for a chart that brings this all into focus.
What’s going on here Google? This point has been made before. From an open letter to Google written by PhD student Ann Martin in 2011:
For years, I have watched Google Doodles contribute to the viewpoint that it is men who create the world we live in and innovate to improve it. I continued to hope that Google would recognize and address this obvious bias. Because you have not spoken up for the women in STEM, creativity, innovation, the arts, and the humanities, I am speaking up for us.
Again, this letter was published in 2011. Since then the numbers have gotten worse. You are better than this, Google.
With Samsung making the two OSes so closely resemble each other, some day it might be possible to quietly swap OSes in Samsung’s mainstream smartphone, just like it did with the Gear line. For the interface at least, the change-over seems like it would be pretty seamless.
I give Samsung credit, this is the smart way to transition to a new OS—make it seamless for the user. As noted in the article, apps remain the big problem. This is a nightmare for Google.