The Occasional Blargh

So, should I place a cryptic link here that readers won’t understand unless they hire a private eye to make sense of things? Nah, that’s not me. It’s just that I just read an interesting story on how IBM has blocked Siri because they fear she’ll leak secrets to Apple, and now I have an excuse to post another Zatanna picture. Honestly, I’m surprised that this story is taken as a surprise.

Now, if I’ve somehow gathered new readers they may be wondering what is going on where I’m not writing all that frequently. To those readers, I must confess that sadly, those long sabbaticals between posts are the norm around here. That said, I am in the middle of a move, which may be followed by a second move (because I can’t do anything the easy way). So for this time, I do have a excuse for not posting. I haven’t burnt out yet.

Still, given how I always make the “I can retire” joke when I find any other blog or site that tries to cast a critical eye, I can see how others can be concerned if I will abandon this place, too. I joke about it, but I know the feeling that can come when it feels like the hope of improving the conversation has faded visible and that you’re just snarking into the aether. It does help to step away, not to do this every day. (It’s funny that the point of this blog wasn’t initially to be the tech press critic, but I just stumbled into it.) I guess the above picture fits this statement as well.

Often there are two ways to tell a story.

Dustin Rowles of Pajiba has this to say about the unlikely success of The Avengers.

A collection of second-tier superheroes from a comic-book brand that had been churning out mediocre efforts in a marketplace suffering from superhero fatigue directed by a guy with a series of low-rated mostly unsuccessful television series and only one feature film to his name, a $25 million grossing cult film. That’ll never work.

A commenter to that very article takes issue with the “unlikely” part of the equation.

I, too, am completely blown away that a massively-hyped culmination of years of movies and a marketing blitz that most franchises would kill for combined with a director and property that the entire internet has had sloppy nerd boners over for years made money.

That sure showed them!

 

You don’t really notice this, but most iconic representations of actions and objects are based on objects from ten, twenty, thirty years ago or more. Scott Hanselman noticed this.

One of the funnier things from John Gruber’s blog was his ongoing crusade against the floppy-disk icon used to denote the Save action, which concluded with this post promoting the idea of doing away with the icon and saving altogether. (Ironically, when he got his wish, he had trouble coping.) Apparantly lost on him was that even his dear iPhone, iPad and Macs (along with almost every other device) also used icons based on obsolete items.  The phone icon of an iPhone is a curved handset. Voice mail is represented by a spool of audio-cassette tape. Electronic mail, and maybe other types of instant messaging is represented by pictures of envelopes, postage stamps or even outdoor free-standing mailbox. You’ll see a Larry King Live or game-show host microphone to represent audio input of most stripes. There are no gears in an iPad, an iPhone or a laptop computer (aside for perhaps the mechnical hard drive in many of the latter), but that is Apple’s representation for altering the settings in a control panel.

And about control panels, what we call that stuff betray that these concepts predated the iPhone. With machines, there once was a whole panel where the major controls of the device resided. Or dialing a phone number, a phrase still used even though dials disappeared from phones in the 1970s or 80s. Speaking of dials, Tiny Toon Adventures exhorted people to not “touch that dial”, even though dials disappeared from televisions (and most radios for that matter) roughly around the same time.

Icongraphy and pictography are very much like languages and as such the pictures, like words in languages, can grow on and outlive the the initial physical object or idea that inspired it. We still refer to lunacy even though we really don’t think the moon drives people crazy. We don’t think this day of the week, Sunday, has any closer connection to the sun than the other days. Likewise, despite decades of women wearing jeans without controversy and the continued existance of Scotsmen in kilts, pictograms will still distinguish men and women by placing the woman in a skirt/dress and the man in pants. Or to be much more cryptic, Venus’ hand mirror (♀) and Mars’ shield and spear (♂) could be used instead, though fewer men will ever make use of a spear while many do make use of hand mirrors.

In other words, it’s not really that big of a deal we still save to floppy. We are writing commentary about it using pictures even older than that whose original physical world meaning has long been lost. I am, of course, referring to these letters which have been put together in the words that populate this post and the posts I have linked to.

Embarassing.

(David Foster Wallace would not be proud.)

Remember again that the fable of “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” ended with all of the sheep being slaughtered by the wolf. Still, the blame was lain at the feet of the boy, so obviously the ones at fault for this are the anti-virus companies who spent years trying to warn people that Macs don’t provide a magic cloak of protection from malware. Please don’t blame the charlitans who sold you on the magic cloak.

It’s telling that ∞ and ✪ has spent more time and words — many more words in ∞’s case — discussing ᔥ & ↬ than reports of the US DOJ looking to take antitrust action against Apple and various book publishers. That said, any discussion of economics, law and business from ∞ & ✪ should only be read for its comedic value.

ᔥ ✪
↬ ∞
↯ ↵

Yeah, that is total bullshit.

I am in a magnanimous mood, and in fairness, when someone does right he should be praised. It wouldn’t be fair to just attack, attack, attack. Siegler, is half-right here, even though he has to sneak in a compliment to Apple, though while Apple was “keeping it real”, they were working with AT&T to make it faux-G.

So, half a cookie for Siegler. It’d have been a whole cookie, but he couldn’t keep it real the whole way.

Today, you can get Microsoft Word 2010 — and just Microsoft Word 2010 — for $120 on Amazon.com. It’s not a great deal. For the same price, you can buy Office Home and Student. However, if you are a stickler for reading and following End User License Agreements to the the letter or the agreement, and you use Word (and just Word) for business or commercial use, this is the version you’d buy. If this is strange, you got to realize this is how Microsoft soaks up from companies their economic surplus. It is near impossible for anybody to buy massive quantities of Home and Student,  whereas enterprises get heavy discounts for buying huge site licenses with things like imaging and license management features. (Universities tend to also buy through site-licenses.) That would still cost them thousands of dollars, but it is still cheaper than retail and they don’t fear a BSA audit for trying to subvert EULA  by buying cheap home edition.  Sadly, for the one-man writing business, you’re stuck with the $120 Word-only edition.

Why did I spend the above paragraph explaining poorly how people buy MS Word or MS Office? Because MG Siegler has praised Amit Runchal at TechCrunch who spent 12 paragraphs telling everyone how Microsoft is doomed because their software is too expensive because people only want Word and Microsoft does not sell just Word. He wrote this without appearing to realize that Microsoft does sell just Word. Or understanding how Microsoft sells Office in general. How Microsoft might have to deal with pricing tablet applications that began from an accurate premise would have been a far more interesting piece to read. Of course, MG Siegler wouldn’t be able to recognise such an article, so he serves you more helpings of “Microsoft is going to die,” empty calories they may be.

This is no way to go through life, son.

AT&T and Verizon Keep Data Plan Pricing the Same for the New iPad

I’m happily surprised by this — I expected them to charge more for LTE than they do for 3G.

John, think about it for a minute. The plans are metered. They’re banking on the faster speed to cause you to use more data. The water company doesn’t worry about adding a surcharge when you buy a washing machine, because they’re sure you’ll end up using more water. Purchasing more water. In fact, charging more would likely cause people to police usage more closely.

Richard Gaywood’s iPhone is now lying to him*, and he doesn’t appreciate it.

4G was originally defined in 2009 by standard body ITU-R as “peak speed requirements for 4G service at 100 Mbit/s for high mobility communication (such as from trains and cars) and 1 Gbit/s for low mobility communication (such as pedestrians and stationary users)” (quote from wikipedia). Then the carriers got hold of it and started redefining any old thing they had as “4G” because it sold better that way. The latest trick is that even [absolutely]-just-3G-with-bells-on standards like HSDPA are “4G” too.

And now in iOS 5.1, the iPhone is telling anyone who will listen it is 4G, too — never mind it is no faster today than it was yesterday.

Don’t believe anyone who tells you that Apple stands firm against the worse excesses of the carriers. This is pure capitulation to AT&T’s marketing department.

Just for yucks, let’s look at how AppleInsider covers this story:

Rumors first arose last October that AT&T wanted Apple to add a “4G” indicator to the iPhone 4S status bar. That’s because the iPhone 4S is capable of 4G-like speeds, even though HSDPA is not a “true” fourth-generation network.

The change will allow AT&T to further differentiate itself from competitors Verizon and Sprint, which run CDMA networks and do not offer HSDPA connectivity. However, “true” 4G remains exclusive to long-term evolution devices, like the third-generation iPad unveiled by Apple on Wednesday.

A redesigned antenna that allows for faster HSDPA connections is one of the major features of the new iPhone 4S that debuted last October. However, at the company’s keynote presentation, Apple executives did not outright declare that the iPhone 4S is a 4G phone.

U.S. carriers AT&T and T-Mobile have advertised their own HSPA+ networks as having “4G” speeds, even though they aren't true fourth-generation technology. AT&T is currently rolling out a true LTE 4G network in the U.S., and is available about 75 million people, while Verizon's LTE network reaches over 200 million people.

AI says that although HSPA+ on AT&T (and T-Mobile) aren’t true 4G networks, the iPhone 4S is capable of 4G-like speeds. Though you need to wonder why the iPhone 4 is now saying it is 4G, too? But also, let’s look at the chart posted by Gaywood at his weblog, “Action at a Distance”.

Those two little lines at the end? Those are iPhone speeds. Can you even see them? They’re now saying that they are 4G, too.

What? Can’t see them, still? Well, let’s zoom in...

Even at double zoom, those two iPhone lines are barely visible. This is what AppleInsider is telling you are “4G like speeds”. Yeah, and when I jog, I approach train-like speeds.

Specifically, the iPhone 4S maxes out at 14.4 Mbits/sec, and the iPhone at 7.2. The “relaxed” 4G standard is 60 Mbits/sec, while that big line I cropped out — stationary user’s 4G is 1Gbit/sec.

UPDATE: Gaywood’s iPhone wouldn’t actually say this because he’s in the UK and has a British iPhone, as I have learned today. None of the other carriers have yet to convince Apple to lie-grade their phones, but the rubicon has been crossed.

“Save” is a relic from a bygone era of computing.
    — ✪'s sentiment from this post on April 5th, 2011. (I will admit, I altered the meaning by clipping the quote as I did.)

I’ve been irritated by the new Duplicate thing, but I can’t tell if it’s because I actually prefer the old Save As workflow or simply that the new Duplicate workflow is going to take some time to get used to.
    — ✪, on November 29, 2011, struggling to let go of a bygone era.

Remind me I have to post my promised thoughts on filing systems and such. Why do I always overpromise and underdeliver?

It’s always good to have a fellow-traveler along on the “Forget Paris” campaign. John Welch catches “The ‘M’ Stands for ‘Mitt’” Siegler once again flip-flopping on a deeply held position:

Yesterday, March 1st, 2012, MG Siegler, on his vomitously titled “Paris LeMON” site wrote, in “Prompts” the following:

The New York Times apparently wants us to have smartphones that prompt you to make sure you want to turn them on, prompt you to make sure you want to open an app, prompt you to make sure you want to send a tweet, prompt you to make sure you want to jump from an app to a web page, prompt you to make sure you want to adjust the brightness (a stranger may be able to read your phone more easily over your shoulder!!).

We’re one step away from a call for apps that prompt you if you’d like a prompt about something. Excuse me while I go hide in a hut in the woods and write a manifesto.

Okay? So we’re clear, just adding prompts is not a solution, but a fucking pain in the ass that makes you hate using your device, right? This is bad, right?

Well, less than a fucking month ago, Siegler wrote, on 8 Feb. 2012, in his “Path, Not Pathological” idiocy:

Yes, it’s weird that Apple, which has the App Store approval process on lock-down and requires prompts for things like accessing location information doesn’t do the same for address book information. My understanding is that Apple has been looking at this issue and it will probably change in a future iOS update.

So prompts were good on February 8th, but twenty-two days later they were bad.

MG doesn’t quite have it down to the point where he can execute the flip in three and a half hours like Romney can, but he has the fundamental understanding that “IOKIYAA”.

It’s OK If You Are Apple. (Or in Siegler’s case, a company he has invested in.)

MG Siegler has half a thought on Windows 8.

Newsflash: “No compromises” is actually a huge compromise.

Actually, to most computer users, having access to the old as well as the new is not a compromise. It’s considered ... well, it’s considered having access to both the old and the new. It’s when one has to give up the old to use the new, that is when compromises have to be made.

For an example, let’s just look at how one computer user is coping with the removal of a command that has been integral to his workflow over the years:

I’ve been irritated by the new Duplicate thing, but I can’t tell if it’s because I actually prefer the old Save As workflow or simply that the new Duplicate workflow is going to take some time to get used to. I suspect it’s the latter, so I’m sticking with it for now.

Another user has to build a hack to comfortably use his computer again. MG Siegler, these are actual compromises. “I want to use the great new features provided by OS X Lion such as automatic versioning, but I have to contort my workflow around the removal of the Save As command — a staple of computer science for decades — or I have to develop a script that brings back said functionality; a script that I must maintain for as long as I am unable to grok the new Duplicate/Save a Version paradigm.”

Links come to me via Stu Parker’s piece on this.

Thunderbolt finds The Mighty Beard playing model number police amusing.

How dare they imitate Apple’s use of Arabic numerals! Even though iPhone 5 hasn’t come out yet, Apple should preemptively sue any other company that uses the number 5 in their product names.

There probably is an argument to be made that ViewSonic is trying to get some competitive notice by calling their phone model the 4S, but it’s no more revolting than a computer company riding the coattails of a popular heavy-duty server operating system by appending the letter associated with that server operating system to their operating system.

However, what I find funny is now the position is to defend the use of cryptic model numbers as the distinguishing name for a product. The Apple punditry usually argue the opposite; model number names are terrible. Here’s December’s entry to that oeuvre from Gene Steinberg, stating how model numbers are confusing and how can we distinguish from the A1297 from the A1286 and such. Although the no-model-numbers edict gave us such entertaining descriptions like “Summer 2001 (Northern Hemisphere)”.

It’s been a while since someone declared as broken a business model he didn’t like. Patrick Rhone uses the clever conceit of using his daughter to illustrate his argument which appears to be there should be an unlimited selection of immediately available entertainment, but that it shouldn’t be paid for through advertisement, nor should anything be advertised before it was immediately available at the moment. Now, his daughter does go about asking good questions, but Rhone does not really bother to answer his daughter’s question in a meaningful way. He’d rather imply that them executives are just being silly.

It’d be interesting to hear daughter’s questions when there is far less to watch on the iPad from Netflix, and how it could be so even if daddy is paying more to Netflix.

Speaking of theft, Lukas Mathis asks that Apple steal some features from WebOS.

He found that he uses the HP WebOS tablet more for work and the iPad for entertainment. This seems to be the case for most iPad owners, despite how much ✪ protests otherwise by presenting outlier after outlier. (It was funny how he missed the implication of this study). I really suspect two major things that keep the iPad from being much more than a consumption device (ignoring the noted outliers) is its still poor multitasking facilities and the lack of a file-system. iCloud and synching are two of the latest kludges to get around the fact that Steve Jobs was stubborn in his desire to kill the file-system. (He thought Spotlight could be an adequate substitute back for OS X before people convinced him otherwise.) I'll post thoughts on the file-system thing, later.

I’m back home.

Here’s a piece I find fascinating. Hopefully, you won’t think it is a fluff piece.

Jobs called Android a “stolen product,” but theft can be a tricky concept when talking about innovation. The iPhone didn’t emerge fully formed from Jobs’s head. Rather, it represented the culmination of incremental innovation over decades—much of which occurred outside of Cupertino. . .

If Google is guilty of using Apple’s ideas, Apple is equally guilty. Many researchers and companies invented technologies that predate the iPhone but made it possible. As Microsoft’s Buxton points out, Wayne Westerman (the multitouch researcher who sold his startup and became an Apple employee in 2005) cited the work of numerous early multitouch researchers in his 1999 PhD thesis. The iPhone incorporated key innovations pioneered by Bob Boie, IBM, Jazzmutant, Jeff Han, and others.

While Android clearly adapted some important iPhone innovations, Google’s engineers also added refinements of their own where they felt Apple’s approach lacked them. For example, the early iPhone notification system left much to be desired. . .

Google came up with a more flexible notification scheme. Rather than presenting them in a modal dialog box requiring immediate input before a user could proceed, Android displayed notifications briefly at the top of the screen, then added an icon atop the screen to signal existing notifications. When a user was ready to respond, she simply pulled down the notification bar to see a list of all pending notifications.

The picture above inadvertantly summarized Armin Vit’s review of the Windows 8 logo: “I don’t like Windows.”

Gearing for its latest OS release — after a couple of lackluster and user panned versions in Windows Vista and Windows XP (and continued mockery from OS X users) — Microsoft has been slowly releasing previews and developer versions of Windows 8, a complete rethinking of one of the most frightening computer-using experiences. . .

By the end of February, Microsoft will release a consumer preview (don’t call it Beta) of Windows 8. . .

Moving away from the more flag-like icon seems like abandoning two decades of equity — crappy equity, but equity nonetheless.

Unlike the complaints by Gene Steinberg on Consumer Reports, this review of the Windows 8 logomark by Armin Vit at Brand New really is biased. He can’t put aside his dislike for Windows to not pepper his review on the logo with insults about the operating system (with one blatant inaccuracy) – irrelevant to a review about a logo. That he throws in those jabs and the inaccuracy (being that Windows XP was panned by users) makes it very hard to view the review as impartial. Of course to add insult to injury, it turns out the logo was not the true Windows 8 logomark. (The logo text had too thick a stroke, as though the text was set to bold erroneously.)

For what was a mythological problem, Apple is offering actual hard cash to deal with it, albeit not very much. If you bought an iPhone 4 before Friday, you can soon again request a free bumper or ask for $15. It's more of a moral victory for the claimants than anything else. Anyway, I do have an ulterior motive for bringing up this bit of news. Some in the Apple press has since converged on a version of the tale where the big bad media blew up a common and minor defect into a huge scandal to bully Apple, possibly out of an anti-Apple bias. In other words, Gene Steinberg is still mad at Consumer Reports. What’s the story as of last week, Morning Glory? (Emphasis mine)

A notable example is the curious way in which they handled the alleged “Antennagate” scandal, involving the original iPhone 4 and the possibility that you could kill reception with what became known as a “death grip.” Despite all the visual evidence that a similar phenomenon could be easily duplicated on other phones when held in somewhat different ways, CR decided that only the iPhone 4 was at fault and, despite getting the highest numeric rating in a smartphone feature, still wouldn’t recommend the product.

Well, I guess the statement can be considered technically accurate, as practically strangling other phones is a somewhat different way to hold a phone as compared to the way Apple illustrated to people as to how to hold the iPhone 4.

Erik Wemple finds it curious that The New York Times’ invitation to Apple for Mountain Lion seems to have gotten lost in the mail.

An exclusive, of course, cuts two ways. Payoff for the recipient and pain for the shunned. Heading up the latter camp is the New York Times, arguably the most aggressive pursuer of Apple-related news on the planet. The paper has a hulking tech pod to evaluate its products and has dug deeply into the business of Apple via its iEconomy series.

And in the process, the paper has come up with a shovelful of human suffering. This story on an Apple facility in China includes this explosive graph:

Employees work excessive overtime, in some cases seven days a week, and live in crowded dorms. Some say they stand so long that their legs swell until they can hardly walk. Under-age workers have helped build Apple’s products, and the company’s suppliers have improperly disposed of hazardous waste and falsified records, according to company reports and advocacy groups that, within China, are often considered reliable, independent monitors.

Hard-edged reporting of that sort carries a price when it comes to a company like Apple. You may not be on the short­list the next time the company debuts one of its products.

He notes that The Daily ✪ still has its preferred access.