June 9, 2012
Written by Shawn King
Apptentive:
We pinged Buzz Andersen (@buzz) for his thoughts on the topic. As a long-time WWDC attendee, former SF resident and established food and drink connoisseur we knew he’d have a great set of recommendations for us. We’re sad he won’t be making the trip this year but we’ll frequent a few of his favorite haunts in his honor.
If you are lucky enough to be attending WWDC, make time to explore one of the most beautiful cities in North America. It would be a shame to make the trip and not see at least some of the sites San Francisco has to offer. If you are a WWDC/San Francisco veteran, let us know your favorite spots and things to do in the comments.
Written by Jim Dalrymple
Thanks to Meechu for sponsoring this week’s RSS feed on The Loop.
Headed to WWDC next week? Leave your business cards at home for shimming tables. Take Meechu with you on your iPhone and connect to all the cool people you meet quickly and easily.
When you meet someone, open Meechu and tap the broadcast button. Anyone else running Meechu will automatically exchange information with you. There’s no ceremony, no extra services to sign up for. It’s quick, easy and simple.
Meechu is on sale for $1.99 in the App Store through the end of WWDC.
Matt Alexander is the owner and editor of ONE37.net, a writer, a technology enthusiast and a contributing writer for The Loop.
Last week, amidst the furor of competing announcements, Microsoft unveiled its latest innovation in the living room: Smart Glass. Sporting AirPlay-esque functionality, Smart Glass is a platform-agnostic app that is well-placed to further instantiate and solidify Microsoft’s position within the entertainment sphere. For all of the novelty demonstrated by Microsoft, however, an enormous number of journalists have chosen to forego a measured critique of Smart Glass in exchange for short-sighted treatises into the apparent conflict between Apple and Microsoft for the television market.
Even as the Microsoft keynote was still taking place, a cacophony of ignorance began to rain upon the unsuspecting reader. Out of no where, unsubstantiated claims of victory and success for Microsoft seeped from purportedly trustworthy media outlets. Regardless of any degree of success Microsoft may have with Smart Glass, such writing is endlessly disappointing, ignorant, and transparently uninformed. With no public plans for the television market beyond the current iteration of the Apple TV, any argument projecting conflict between Microsoft and Apple is premature at best.
Flimsy rumor and whispers echoing from the ubiquitous “people familiar with the matter” indicate that an Apple television may not be too far away from reality. The shape and form of this assault upon the television market has been subject to distinct and ever-worsening change. Dependent upon the day, rumors flitter between indications of an app-enabled update for the existing Apple TV, a full-blown television model, and any number of further conceptions. At this point, it’s fairly reasonable to assume that Apple has something planned for the television space, but any further speculation is steeped within the bounds of wishful thinking and poorly formed inferences.
Accordingly, the average reader is all-too-frequently bombarded with “news” skimmed from a thinning, festering pile of unsubstantiated rumor, analysis, and definably faulty reasoning. In turn, consumer opinions and expectations are honed and weathered into poorly considered and utterly unrealistic perceptions of the company or product toward which they arrogantly feel entitled to submit demands and pre-emptive feedback.
The problem stemming from this scenario is that the end-user is rendered restless and dissatisfied with virtually any level of innovation and iterative improvement. Laptops and tablets are cast aside due to one “missing” feature despite the fact that the product was never truly destined to boast such a characteristic. Pieces of software are deemed all manner of negative adjectives purely due to the smallest of imperfections as opposed to the grandiose achievement upon which the developers should feel an indefatigable sense of pride.
Such a state of affairs is not new, but that is certainly not to say that the dire misappropriation of rumor cannot be rectified. Some prominent publications pride themselves upon the limited re-distribution of rumor and speculation. Speaking with Federico Viticci of MacStories regarding this topic, he stated:
We re-post rumors only when we feel we can add something to the discussion, or find a pattern in previous speculation and “confirmed” news. Or when we can link to other people who have debunked/explained the rumor already. I also want MacStories to be about quality and facts, not the page views. If that means avoiding rumors 95% of the time, so be it.
Perhaps such a perspective goes somewhat against the current grain in the technology journalism arena, but it’s undoubtedly a welcome exception. Adding to the collective discussion based upon consistent and far-reaching patterns is certainly an acceptable and important endeavor. Conversely, happening upon unsubstantiated rumor and applying it toward the justification of a further conclusion provides for poorly constructed, ill-informed, and contextless logic.
A justified true belief is defined as knowledge. All else is merely a belief, and should not be repackaged otherwise.
Speculating and articulating subjective hopes for the future is an affable, entertaining, and important endeavor. Judging the status quo and intelligently discerning the potential for change and improvement is an exercise in useful creativity, and entertaining discussion. Having said that, the very moment such speculation begins to blur the line between casual discussion and poorly formed rumor is the very moment at which speculation becomes a dangerous agent of misinformation.
In the weeks leading up to WWDC, the incessant nattering of rumor-mongers has grown to a level of truly immense proportions. With every passing day, a new rumor spews forth from a number of rumor sites — each offering artfully cropped images to hide the originating source’s watermarks. Although the rumors are tolerable in and of themselves, the trouble arises when such content is taken as a bridge toward disjointed conclusions. Outside the bounds of logic and reason, speculation is married with rumor, and the result is misleadingly reported as fact.
Next week, Apple will announce a great many things and, as is customary, technology enthusiasts across the world will emit self-entitled gasps of disappointment. Regardless of the most dazzling of improvements, there will be a rumor each individual has dearly held to their chest that has been “forgotten” by Apple. For the crime of an incorrect assumption on the part of the media, Apple will suffer a cascade of scorn and underwhelmed disenchantment.
In the final days leading up to the event — amidst the rising clamor of desperate, ill-informed expectations — it has sadly become too much to ask for a moment of respite. Even knowing that they carry themselves toward disappointment, these onlookers do so willingly and happily — blissfully oblivious to the implications and effects of their disproportioned expectations. Meanwhile, journalists are clattering away at their keyboards fueling the fire, and readying themselves to half-heartedly address the true nature of the competitive landscape when all has been revealed.
We are victims of our own insatiable consumerism, but the situation is woefully exacerbated by the self-entitled cries of the gullible and misinformed. With even the slightest semblance of contextual awareness, unreasonable negativity can be dismantled. Taking the most incidental of moments to pause and consider, the media can refrain from inciting such blind, impassioned ignorance.
Perhaps link bait is a short-term solution for advertising revenue and attention, but I daresay that treating readers with deserved respect is a much better avenue to a sustainable audience.
It’s hard to believe, but three years ago today I started The Loop. We’ve gone through a lot of changes since then, many of the biggest in the last year.
I suppose the most significant change the site has seen was moving from a cluttered ad-filled design to a clean, mostly text site. I removed 99 percent of the ads on the site and joined The Deck Network, which allowed the site to run with only one small ad.
Peter Cohen, my best friend and colleague of the last 20 years, has continued to help a great deal on the site with his writing and advice. I can’t thank him enough. This year we also added Your Mac Life’s Shawn King to The Loop, bringing a different perspective to the posts you see on the site everyday.
With the site design changes I also launched a membership option for readers. I know that $3 a month doesn’t sound like a lot, but it helped me buy new servers and have the site on one of the best content delivery networks in the world. These changes brought page load times down from over 10 seconds to 1 second in many parts of the world.
A membership doesn’t offer you fancy gifts or coupons, but it’s not about that. It’s about supporting independent writing. Thank you for your support.
My biggest thanks goes out to you, the reader. By helping to spread the word about what we do here at The Loop, traffic has increased, sponsorships from companies and independent developers have increased and we are successful.
Thank you.
Jim
Written by Jim Dalrymple
Dell’s Australian managing director Joe Kremer talking about the iPad:
“People might be attracted to some of these shiny devices but technology departments can’t afford to support them,” he told a media and analyst briefing in Sydney. “If you are giving a presentation and something fails on the software side it might take four days to get it up and running again. I don’t think this race has been run yet.”
Listen up Joe. You’re talking about using an iPad, not one of your shitty Dell computers. You shouldn’t talk about things you have no idea about. You just look stupid.
You look stupid Joe.
Written by Jim Dalrymple
Dave Caolo:
I recommend using a simple four-step process to get your electronic mailbox as close to empty as you can, every day.
I know what Dave says makes sense, but I work in exactly the opposite way. I have email in my inbox dating back many years and have no problem finding anything, at any time.
With the way search works in OS X and in Apple’s Mail app, I can search individual emails by just using a few keywords — that simple method has rarely let me down. I just mark messages I need to do something with as unread and move on with my day.
Granted, that’s probably not the most efficient way to do things, but I’ve tried to be more organized with email in the past and it took more time than it was worth.
The bonus is that I always know where all of my email is.
Written by Peter Cohen
Alan Duke for CNN:
Science fiction author Ray Bradbury, whose imagination yielded classic books such as “Fahrenheit 451,” “The Martian Chronicles” and “Something Wicked This Way Comes,” has died at 91, his publisher said Wednesday. Bradbury “died peacefully, last night, in Los Angeles, after a lengthy illness,” HarperCollins said in a written statement.
Very sad, albeit inevitable, news. Bradbury’s career spanned more than 70 years, and the prolific author wrote books, screenplays, teleplays and short stories. He was a huge influence on generations of science fiction writers – and will remain so for many years to come.
