February 5, 2014
Verizon throttling FiOS service ∞
I really do hate these large companies and the shit they pull.
Clarity
When I look at Apple software and hardware, I’m amazed with the simplicity of what sits before me. It’s not simplicity that makes you wonder what to do with it and it’s not simple for the sake of being simple. It immediately makes sense. That sense of wonder is replaced by a need to touch it and interact with it.
Apple products offer a sense of clarity not found in most products on the market today. Clarity of design, clarity of purpose and clarity of function.
This is why a young child can sit down in front of an iPad and instantly know how it works. On the same device, an executive can parse data and make business decisions that affect thousands of employees. It’s clear to both of these groups—and many others—how it works.
New customers to Apple will often ask me how they find something in a Mac or iOS app, or how they do a certain task. My answer has been the same for years: “Think of the simplest way to do it. That’s the way Apple will do it.”
More often than not, I’m right. If you ask someone what they believe the simplest way to get something done is, they will usually find it. Ask them the same thing on a PC and they could be lost for days.
Consider the iPhone. It has one button. If you put an iPhone in front of someone that hasn’t used it before, they know instinctively what they should do. Pressing that one button opens up a whole new world. There is nothing else they can do, but to press on that button. It’s simple, it’s clear, and it works.
The most daunting task for any company is to make their product so intuitive that any person, anywhere, will be able to pick it up and start using it. Apple has been able to do that in a way that has shaped an entire industry.
Providing that clarity isn’t as easy as some may think. Microsoft, for example, tried to make Windows 8 simple—one operating system for every device. No Compromises. On the surface (no pun intended), this sounds like a noble goal. The mistake they made is trying to shoehorn a software product into a device that it wasn’t meant to fit in. The proverbial square peg in a round hole.
Microsoft did its best to convince people that having one OS was the best option for every aspect of your life. It wasn’t. Software that isn’t made for a touch-enabled device provides endless hours of frustration—you feel as though your on a desktop; the software is made for a desktop; but it wants you to tap like a tablet. Confusion and frustration ensues.
One of the triumphs for Apple over the last decade was providing users with powerful software with a very simple interface. iPhoto, iMovie, Keynote and others showed people that software didn’t have to be complicated to be useful. That’s not to say that Apple’s consumer-level software isn’t powerful, because it is.
GarageBand, for example, uses the same audio engine found in Logic Pro, Apple’s professional digital audio workstation, but GarageBand has allowed millions of musicians to record music easily.
Generally, people don’t care how something is executed once they click or tap on an application button. The fact that it’s done and the results are what they expected, is more than enough. Apple understood that and made it an integral part of its software strategy.
Clarity also extends to the product line itself. If you want an iPhone, you have two choices: the newest iPhone 5s or the iPhone 5c. Very clear and simple choices. The differences in these choices are also very clear—The iPhone 5s provides newer hardware features like Touch ID. If you want the latest and greatest, then that’s the phone for you.
Compare that to Samsung’s Galaxy S4. Even sites that regularly report on Samsung are frustrated with the over one dozen models available for sale.
Companies like Samsung throw out as many products as they can and see what sticks. To me, this shows a complete lack of confidence in what they are offering in their product line. When you add Android’s lack of upgrades for certain models, you end up with the complete opposite of everything Apple offers to its customers.
Knowing your future upgrade path, operating system support, app ecosystem, and indeed, what you can actually do with the device, provides something that everyone else is missing: Clarity.
Guess what these Google icons do ∞
I actually laughed out loud when I read this.
The dirt behind app bundles ∞
I hated it when people used to tell me I could write, not get paid, but I’d get exposure. Fuck you, exposure doesn’t feed my kids, asshole.
Steve Jobs, Sony, and Mac OS X running on the VAIO ∞
Last year, we heard the great anecdote about an Apple engineer porting Mac OS X to Intel-based hardware.
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2000 10:31:04 -0700 (PDT) From: John Kullmann jk@apple.com To: Joe Sokol Subject: intel
i’d like to discuss the possibility of me becoming responsible for an intel version of MacOS X.
whether that’s just as an engineer, or as a project/ technical lead with another person – whatever.
i’ve been working on the intel platform for the last week getting continuations working, i’ve found it interesting and enjoyable, and, if this (an intel version) is something that could be important to us i’d like to discuss working on it full-time.
jk
Follow the headline link to read about this from a different perspective, that of ex-Sony president Kunitake Ando.
North Korea’s official OS bears a striking resemblance to Mac OS X ∞
This is like looking at a Mac through Alice and Wonderland glasses.
What machines can’t do ∞
Very interesting op-ed piece from the New York Times about the limits of technology and the human traits that will become valued in the coming decades.
Certain mental skills will become less valuable because computers will take over. Having a great memory will probably be less valuable. Being able to be a straight-A student will be less valuable — gathering masses of information and regurgitating it back on tests. So will being able to do any mental activity that involves following a set of rules.
But what human skills will be more valuable?
In the news business, some of those skills are already evident. Technology has rewarded sprinters (people who can recognize and alertly post a message on Twitter about some interesting immediate event) and marathoners (people who can write large conceptual stories), but it has hurt middle-distance runners (people who write 800-word summaries of yesterday’s news conference). Technology has rewarded graphic artists who can visualize data, but it has punished those who can’t turn written reporting into video presentations.
More generally, the age of brilliant machines seems to reward a few traits. First, it rewards enthusiasm. The amount of information in front of us is practically infinite; so is that amount of data that can be collected with new tools. The people who seem to do best possess a voracious explanatory drive, an almost obsessive need to follow their curiosity. Maybe they started with obsessive gaming sessions, or marathon all-night study sessions, but they are driven to perform extended bouts of concentration, diving into and trying to make sense of these bottomless information oceans.
Great read.
Turkish President courts Apple ∞
Tim Cook went to Turkey and met with Turkish President Abdullah Gül. Things must have gone well, because Gül went public with a request for Apple to set up shop and invest R&D money in Turkey.
When it was announced that Cook was in Turkey to visit Gül, it was speculated that the meeting would revolve around the initiative that could be worth between $3 billion to $4 billion.
FATIH is an aggressive high-tech educational plan that looks to put up to 15 million tablets into the hands of Turkey’s students. Apple VP of Education John Couch previously met with Gül to discuss the deal in 2013. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the man behind FATIH, subsequently visited Apple’s Cupertino headquarters to get a better understanding of the iPad in education technology.
Good business for both sides.
Microsoft as an old model car ∞
Interesting take from the Washington Post on Microsoft’s CEO choice.
While Google founder and CEO Larry Page boasts about his company taking “moon shots” and Zuckerberg promises to “move fast and break things,” Microsoft has fallen behind the technological curve after underestimating the importance of Internet search more than a decade ago and reacting too slowly to the rise of mobile devices during the past seven years. Meanwhile, the sales of personal computers running on Microsoft’s Windows software are shrinking.
and
Just as Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Apple Inc. founder Steve Jobs would never have considered working at IBM Corp. in the 1980s, today’s entrepreneurial whiz kids scoff at Microsoft’s overtures.
“Going to work at Microsoft could make it look like you are going back to the dark ages,” says Richard Metheny, a management coach for the executive search firm Witt/Kieffer in Chicago. “It’s a well-entrenched business that has had trouble lately figuring out how to play in this new world.”
and
Microsoft “is like a car that still has a full tank of gas, but it’s just an old model,” Carrey says. “There are a lot of great tech executives who yearn for that kind of challenge, especially with a bucket of cash to make acquisitions and do some really fun, cool stuff.”
I can’t imagine anyone thinking this about Apple. Apple is just a little younger than Microsoft, but has the forward-thinking DNA built deeply within its bones.
Clever locking system for Mac Pro ∞
When I first saw this design, I thought the brackets needed to be secured to the Mac Pro body somehow. A few emails back and forth with the MacLocks folks and I am convinced. The only way someone will walk off with your Mac Pro is if they cut the security cable. And even then, it will be difficult for a thief to ever get the lid off so they can use it. Granted, this will not stop a determined thief, but for a public area, this is better than no security.
As you can see by the video below, the brackets slide into place behind the cover. Next, the power cable is plugged into the Mac Pro, the brackets slide together to encompass the power cord and the lock locks the whole thing in place. Nice.
Flea’s soul searching response to RHCP miming guitars at SuperBowl ∞
The Red Hot Chili Peppers joined Bruno Mars during a brilliant, hectic Super Bowl half time performance of Give It Away. The RHCP instruments were not plugged in, and they have taken some heat for miming to a backing track, which they readily admit.
Follow the headline link for Flea’s heartfelt discussion of why the band took this step. Personally, I think they kicked ass and I thought the half-time show was one of the best I’ve ever seen. Red Hot Chili Peppers have been bringing it for more than 30 years and, in my opinion, owe us nothing, gave us everything they had.
Read the letter. Well done, Flea.
February 4, 2014
The first “Paper” app and it’s not by FiftyThree or Facebook ∞
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.
We pointed these glitches out to Apple at WWDC 2012 and, well, the next day another “Paper” app, one which added other words after the name Paper so it could post in the US App Store, received an AWARD! We felt somewhat put upon. That other app was very well funded, money talks, and they had been out “breaking things” in our market for a while. There are Best Practices in the Developer world against, in Apple’s words, “confusingly similar” names. Why didn’t that matter for these guys? Why is this not only tolerated, but awarded? Which Rules do we follow; the posted rules, the rules others use, the rules which work, or the rules which we believe in? A conundrum in many areas of mobile today.
We approached the makers of that other Paper app on the floor of WWDC after they received their award, told them our story, and offer to discuss settling this. We even later sent a message to their CEO. Nothing. So we’ve been considering our options.
Now we see this other “Paper” app is upset that an even larger company has also chosen to name an app “Paper”, same trick, by adding more words to the end.
That’s the story of this app, welcome to the 1st, and what should be the only, Paper.
If true, this certainly makes FiftyThree’s complaints and demands seem hollow.
[Via DF]
Why do we still use Facebook? ∞
Maria Konnokova for The New Yorker:
While the reasons for joining and using Facebook were not entirely homogenous, one factor kept emerging as the strongest motivation for use: the desire to keep in touch with friends.
I think most people would agree with this.
At the University of Texas at Austin, Gosling and one of his graduate students, Gabriella Harari, have been examining why people decide to leave Facebook. They have found three broad themes: people see Facebook as pointless and unnecessary, they see it as a problematic distraction, and they are worried about privacy.
So, the first two reasons people quit Facebook is also the reason they joined in the first place. Interesting.
Amplified: Butt-Glazed ∞
Microsoft’s new CEO, Lenovo’s future, international markets, smartwatches, innovation you can’t see, Dan’s new iMacs, and more.
Sponsored by Squarespace (use code DANSENTME2 for 10% off), FreshBooks (enter AMPLIFIED in the “How Did You Hear About Us” section when you sign up for a chance to win a cake), Shutterstock (use code DANSENTME214 for 25% off), and HostGator (use code DANSENTME for 30% off).
Microsoft’s new CEO’s first stupid comment ∞
Satya Nadella in an email to Microsoft employees:
We are the only ones who can harness the power of software and deliver it through devices and services that truly empower every individual and every organization. We are the only company with history and continued focus in building platforms and ecosystems that create broad opportunity.
Sweet Jesus, it only took him a few hours to say something completely insane.
Begging For App Ratings
This story originally appeared in The Loop Magazine Issue 18
John Gruber recently suggested that users who are annoyed by “Please Rate This App” panes should leave one-star reviews.
While lots of users rightfully hate these panes, this incendiary suggestion naturally resulted in fallout from the developers I know. For those who make our living on the App Store, a one-star rating is an existential threat. The equivalent would be for someone like Justin Bieber to suggest that people bothered by seeing ads on tech blogs like Gruber’s boycott their advertisers.
Small OS X and iOS software companies live and die by their App Store ratings. If an app is rated one star, nobody will look at it or buy it. If it’s rated five stars, the company will make a decent living.
This system seems fair and good, but there are three big problems with the current rating system. The first is that Apple hasn’t built bug reporting into the App Stores, so customers use one-star ratings as a way of reporting bugs.
“One star: didn’t install for me.”
What can we do for this customer? Well, I can’t contact the people who post ratings, so there is no way for me to actually help the customer with the problem. No, “Okay, sir, I’m sorry you’re having an issue. Is there a chance it’s something with your setup?” just an unhappy customer who feels ignored.
The second problem is that people are much more likely to complain than to praise. If you have an app that crashes for 0.01% of your users, those users are generally not going to quietly ask Apple for their money back. They’re going to post a negative review on the App Store. However, the 99.99% of people for whom it works great are not going to post five-star ratings for the software working as expected. You don’t write a letter to Starbucks every time they don’t burn your coffee.
Now, if an app has 100,000 users, and even 0.01% of them have a problem, the app ends up with ten one-star reviews. Is ten a big deal? Yes, it turns out, because of the third problem: the App Stores only show the ratings given to the latest version of an app. Every time a minor update is released, the app’s ratings history is effectively wiped out. If you look at the reviews of Delicious Library 2 right now, you can see that our latest version has four one-star and one two-star reviews. Since Apple resets the rating of apps with every minor version, our composite rating is now one and a half stars.
One and a half stars means starvation for us developers.
The total number of users who’ve rated this particular version is only six. Never mind that 113 people have rated our app before—if you look at the “all versions” rating, our rating is a much more acceptable four stars. But the “all versions” rating is hidden below the “current version” one. The “all versions” rating isn’t the one shown in the results matrix when you search the App Store. Nobody is ever going to click through to an app that’s showing one and a half stars to discover that its real rating is four stars.
Five ratings can be death for a company.
The App Store’s version of Delicious Library 2 did indeed have a crasher we introduced as we tried to make it sandbox-compliant. So three of those reviews appear to be on the money. Again, it only happens for a handful of people, we’ve fixed it, and the new version has been submitted to Apple and is currently on our website.
But those one-star reviews aren’t going anywhere.
And what if the review is just wrong? If you look at the topmost review on the Delicious Library 2 page (as of right now), you can see we didn’t cause the crasher—our customer put his SQLite database file in Dropbox and eventually it got corrupted. Of course he’s upset. But this is the number one review, and it’s not actually our fault. We recommend against sharing our data files because it’s a crapshoot—sharing a database that you are actively modifying without any locking protocol sometimes works, but sometimes leads to file corruption. You have to have some technical knowledge to even get Delicious Library 2 to look in the Dropbox folder. Unfortunately, when it went wrong this user blamed us.
And we get one star.
Further, we can’t contact the user to tell him that he’s corrupted his file, and he needs to go to his backup, because the Mac App Store doesn’t allow us to respond to reviews.
We have a “contact us” menu item under our Help menu, but if users decide to post reviews instead, we cannot provide any tech support. So we also can’t tell the other four people that their crashers should be fixed now, and they should update to the version on our website (or wait for the App Store approval). Apple’s customers are Apple’s customers, except we’re supposed to support them, but we aren’t provided the tools by Apple to do so.
From four stars to one and a half stars because of five users whose problems we really want to fix (or have already fixed).
But we can’t contact them.
Luckily for us, Delicious Library 2 isn’t where we’re making most of our money —we launched Delicious Library 3 this year. Except: when we first released it, it had the same rating problems. Our earliest customers were unsurprisingly the users of version 2, and a percentage of them liked the look of 2 better. Now it’s no insult to me if you like my old work better. But several of these customers bought Delicious Library 3 without trying the free version that’s on our website. This was easy to do, since we aren’t allowed to have trial versions directly on the App Store.
Then, after buying from the App Store, these customers wanted to go back to version 2. Which would be fine if they’d bought directly from us, or if they’d used the trial version. In the App Store case, we’re in an awkward situation. While we happily refund customers’ money—in this case we only made $17 from the $25 they spent. If we refund $25 directly to the customer, we’re actually losing $8. Furthermore, since Apple’s customers are Apple’s, we don’t have a list of who has actually bought our software; we have no way of knowing if someone complaining is actually our customer, or just someone who heard he can get $25 from us by writing us saying, “I want to go back to version 2.”
 / [Shutterstock.com](http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-135897425/stock-photo-a-vending-machine-with-the-words-buy-apps-here-and-many-app-tiles-and-icons-ready-to-be-bought-and.html?src=ez8LA49rjpFt5xHmuEiZdQ-1-1)*](https://www.loopinsight.com/wp-content/uploads/app_vending-420x353.jpg)
Photo: Tupungato / Shutterstock.com
Many of these customers don’t even talk to us, or ask the App Store for a refund. They just post one-star reviews: “I don’t like the look, preferred version 2.” We ended up with a rating that was around three and a quarter stars. We were losing money.
In desperation, I stuck in a rating pane when we did version 3.1. It reads:
Ok, we hate these stupid “Please rate our app” panels as much as you do, but since we’re in the Mac App Store we live and die by your ratings, and of course you can’t rate an app the moment you buy it, since you don’t know what it’s like yet.
So, in the politest way possible, we’d like to ask—just this once—that if you like our app you go back and rate it, so we can stay in business and continue making cool software.
The panel only kicks in for people who’ve been using Delicious Library 3 for a while and have scanned a number of items. It defaults to never showing itself again if you dismiss it, and (because it’s on OS X) it doesn’t have to quit Library to open the App Store if you do say yes.
Our rating shot up to five stars within a week of releasing this version. They’ve now settled at a very respectable four and a half stars. We’re making money, and we’ve started work on our next app.
None of this is to say I like being bothered to rate an app—I resent it strongly when it feels like coercion. But, as Daring Fireball itself noted in followups, a lot of this is in how you ask, not that you are asking.
Part of the problem is that once developers get it in their head they should ask users for ratings, they lose perspective on what’s polite.
Some ask specifically for five star ratings, which I think is incredibly presumptuous. Some ask multiple times, and have confusing (or missing) options to opt out of them asking again. And some ask even after you’ve rated the app. For iOS apps, all of them require that you leave the app to rate it, which is kind of a pain. You obviously launched the app because you want to, like, actually use it. All of this creates enmity in the users, and, yes, makes us want to rate their apps with one star just to shut them up.
I assume, by and large, developers have never been waiters. They don’t know that if they go to a table and say, “Hey, I’d really appreciate it if you guys would tip me 20%, but, also, you can’t do it here—can you stop eating for a minute, come out back, and give me a tip now, before your meal is over?” they’re just going to end up with customers that resent them. If they keep doing it, every time they bring another course? If, after the customer has paid the check, they still do it? Well, they’re fired.
So good sense is required here. Part of the problem is that Apple hasn’t provided developers with any APIs to tell if users have rated our apps, or to make it possible for users to rate apps inside the app itself. This would obviously make it less intrusive for users.
Since Apple resets apps’ ratings with every tiny release, developers find themselves wanting to ask users over and over for ratings, since they get wiped out all the time. But no customer should be asked to rate an app twice—it’s like that clueless waiter asking a customer to tip twice.
With the App Stores, Apple has created a micro-economy where ratings are king. However, as with any tightly controlled economy, tiny flaws can blossom into huge problems. With App Store ratings getting reset on every minor version, we are actively discouraged from updating our apps once they have good ratings. I’ve just submitted a new version of Delicious Library 3, and I’m scared out of my head that the first two or three people who review it won’t like it, which will tank it to the extent where nobody discovers it any more, so there won’t be any positive reviews to balance them out.
This system also sucks for customers, who put the time into reviewing an app that—as soon as a new minor version comes out—is thrown away. Only the people who rate the very latest version of any app have their vote count.
Both the Mac App Store and iOS App Store need to allow secondary links to trial versions, show the “All versions” rating on search results, give us a way to engage customers who are having problems (even if it’s totally anonymously), and make it clear how customers can get refunds on software so we don’t get one-star ratings instead. For the iOS App Store, Apple also needs to provide a standard way for users to rate an app without leaving the app, and let developers know if their app has been rated so they won’t bug the user again.
In the meantime, developers need to treat their customers with respect: ask for a rating only once, don’t suggest that five stars are good (I mean, duh?), apologize for being gauche, and don’t ask until the user has used the app enough to get a feel for it.
Wil is the Chief Monster at Delicious Monster, creators of Delicious Library. He started programming when he was 12, taking college courses in BASIC and Pascal and generally making himself unpopular with the undergrads. He founded The Omni Group while a student at the University of Washington, and helped design and write OmniWeb, OmniPDF, and OmniGraffle among others. Under his leadership Omni’s products won a record five Apple Design Awards, and Delicious Monster has won another three.
Two bears: Apple and Samsung ∞
Such a great article from Ben Thompson. It’s worth taking the time to read.
Time Inc. layoffs ∞
I hate seeing people lose their jobs. Last week several Macworld staffers lost their jobs in layoffs and now Time Inc. I’ve been through this and it’s not easy.
Úll 2014 Speakers and conference format change ∞
I can’t tell you how excited I am to be speaking at Úll again this year. You can also check out the format change for the conference this year.
HP accuses Autonomy of inflating profits by 81 percent ∞
Hewlett Packard said Autonomy, the software firm it bought in 2011, overstated profits at one of its main British units by 81 percent in the year before it was sold in Britain’s biggest ever technology deal.
Little over a year after the $11.7 billion acquisition, the Silicon Valley company wrote down the value of Autonomy by $8.8 billion, accusing the management of accounting irregularities.
The former owner of Autonomy continues to deny that he overstated the profits, but it seems pretty clear cut.
Apple pledges $100 million to Obama’s ConnectED ∞
Claiming progress in his campaign to get American schools wired for the future, President Barack Obama is announcing commitments from U.S. companies totaling about $750 million to connect more students to high-speed Internet.
Apple is pledging $100 million in iPads, computers and other tools. AT&T and Sprint are contributing free Internet service through their wireless networks. Verizon is pitching in up to $100 million in cash and in-kind contributions. And Microsoft is making Windows available at discounted prices and offering 12 million free copies of Microsoft Office software.
Microsoft names Nadella as next CEO ∞
Nadella was in charge of Enterprise and cloud for Microsoft, so to me, having him being named CEO seems like more of the same. I was kind of hoping for something different from Microsoft—a visionary, somebody that could really change things for them. Microsoft needs to move quickly and confidently in the mobile space to make up for what they’ve already lost.
Seinfeld Super Bowl reunion, the real one ∞
If you watched the Super Bowl commercials, you might have caught an odd, abbreviated Seinfeld reunion, bringing together Jerry, George, and Newman, with a shoutout to Seinfeld co-creator Larry David.
Follow the headline link to read the LA Times story about the reunion.
But follow this link to watch the full version (almost 7 minutes long, vs the 1 minute Super Bowl version).
Hey, it’s not Seinfeld, but its the closest thing we’ve got.
BiteMyApple.co: Buy Kickstarter products for iPhone and iPad [Sponsor] ∞
Online retailer BiteMyApple.co has an impressive lineup of more than 60 successful Kickstarter products currently on sale. The retail site offers a wide range of accessories for the iPad, iPhone and other Apple devices.
Trouble brewing for Apple’s A7 chip ∞
Patent lawsuits are nothing new, but this one comes with a troublesome wrinkle.
Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) is the target of another patent-related lawsuit, this time from the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, or WARF. The lawsuit alleges that Apple’s A7 processor chip directly infringes a patent held by the University of Wisconsin – Madison, U.S. Patent No. 5,781,752.
Both the Apple patent and the Wisconsin patent deal with branch prediction, a technique for predicting the flow of chip instructions to make execution more efficient.
The question of infringement is one issue, but another, more important issue is the possibility that the litigation may target Apple trade secrets.
Regardless of whether or not WARF wins its lawsuit against Apple Inc. the legal action may have profound ramifications for the Cupertino-based technology firm. In the process of defending itself, Apple will likely be forced to reveal proprietary details about its A7 chip, which until now has been a closely guarded company secret. Indeed, there is already speculation in some quarters that the main purpose of the litigation is to force Apple Inc. to reveal some or all of the A7′s engineering.
As I understand it, a company can declare trade secrets to get a protective order that keeps such secrets under wraps. Don’t know how effective this is in practice.
The making of Apple’s 1.24.14 film ∞
This is a behind-the-scenes video that tells the story of the making of Apple’s beautiful film, a film celebrating 30 years of Macintosh and 30 years of people doing amazing things with Apple technology.
The logistics of this film were mind-boggling. Shot in a single day, using 15 camera crews, spanning 5 continents, all captured using the iPhone 5s. Incredible.
Paper the app vs Facebook Paper ∞
A company named FiftyThree makes an iPad sketching app called Paper. Imagine their surprise last week when Facebook announced their new app, Paper.
They were surprised (Facebook made no effort to let them know), their users were surprised, even the press was surprised.
Follow the headline link to read FiftyThree’s take on all this.
EU’s plan to add remote kill switch to all cars ∞
The idea of this tech is to prevent high speed chases. Noble idea. What could go wrong?
Hacking, for one. I’d really rather not make it easy for someone to stop my car. No matter how well thought out this technology is, it won’t be long before the bad guys master a workaround.
Not a fan.
February 3, 2014
The man for whom they made the three million mile badge ∞
The Truth About Cars:
That first weekend, Irv rolled 1,500 miles, returning to the dealership on Monday for his car’s first checkup. He hadn’t planned to drive through the weekend, but he says he was having too much fun to stop—up to Boston, down to Philly, and all over in between before returning to his home on Long Island. He’s been driving the P1800 enthusiastically ever since. On September 24th of last year, he hit 3 million miles.
I don’t think I’ve travelled three million miles in my lifetime, let alone in one car.
Image lightbox, responsive and touch‑friendly ∞
I think this is really well done. Most Lightbox overlays are busy and take a while to load, but the demo at the bottom of the page gives you a number of options to keep things small and only show the information you need.