The Occasional Blargh

I just came from seeing the new Muppets movie titled simply The Muppets.  It's a good fun movie and I recommend it to anyone out there. The one thing that struck me wrong was a credit at the end stating that the film is based on "Disney's Muppet characters". This is technically true; Disney finally successfully bought the Muppet characters and trademarks in 2004 after several failed attempts and clashed egos. (Jim Henson had planned on selling the Muppets to Disney before he died, but he and then-CEO Michael Eisner did not get along.) But such a credit makes it appear Disney itself created the Muppets, as opposed to Jim Henson and company.

This is what comes to my mind when I see that MG Siegler wrote a post implying that Apple invented Siri, when in fact Apple bought Siri (credit to Raging Thunderbolt). Anyway, I thought the preferred narrative is that Apple refines and perfects the technology, not that they invented the tech. Or is this the stalking horse for later when we say Apple invented multitouch, built-in software repositories, iTunes, Objective-C and the graphical user interface?

✪ Measure Twice, Cut Once: The Extended Cut

I threw in an old report from the Steve Jobs biography about his initial suspicion that the iPhone 4 antenna problem reports were a whisper campaign by Google and Motorola as just an aside in a previous post. However, I just realized that the story shatters one of the premises behind an old, proud Applevere meme, Measure Twice, Cut Once. But with some reworking, we can bring back the scenes left on the cutting room floor and tell the story as it was meant to be told.

Apple’s response is another example that indicates a consistent pattern:

1. An Apple-related crisis or problem occurs.
2. There’s an immediate flurry of news coverage and speculation.
3. Steve Jobs at Apple, convinced that this crisis originated as a smear-campaign by rivals, gathers evidence to prove this or to discredit those rivals.
4. Steve Jobs lashes out at a customer who obviously got swept up into the smear-campaign, and now mistakenly believes the smear is a real problem.
5. ...thus precipitating a greater flurry of media coverage.
6. Tim Cook advises Steve Jobs that the story is spiralling out of control, and Apple has to do something lest they be tagged as arrogant, complacent and — perhaps the biggest of all insults — Microsoftian.
7. Apple hurries a response — which will be declared as “decisive” by the friendly Apple-punditry — and will allow Apple to reset the narrative of the story.
8. Apple releases the evidence gathered on rivals, now to transform the story from Apple-related crisis or problem to an industry-wide crisis or problem.
9. Months later, through the mysts of time, the Apple-related crisis is viewed as a myth, blow out of proportion by a tabloid press. Should someone bring it up in a non-skeptical way, the Apple-punditry should counter with sales stats as though it disproves the story.

To be fair, all of the above steps are only required in the worst-case scenarios where a problem cannot be spun away by the very capable Apple-punditry. Typically a stonewalling will suffice as most crises do not move beyond stage 2. Just silence, then if necessary an answer. Seems to be working out pretty well for them.

That said, it also makes me wonder about this story. Apple PR has been known to lie, and knowing now that Steve didn’t believe there was a significant problem with the antenna, I have to wonder if he did tell someone the problem was made-up. If he thought so, why would he tell someone else otherwise?

Many of the things that drives people to grief about Apple is that it lives for tomorrow without trying to make concessions for today. For example, if you want to add a reminder you can press and hold down the home button to activate Siri and tell "her" to remind you. But if Siri is down — "she" is beta software as M.G. Siegler will remind you — well, you're left with Reminder App, which is as intuitive as UIs in Linux as Aaron Pressman discovered.

That’s a minimum of 10 clicks and slides to set one reminder. And the biggest problems with making the app so unintuitive and hard to use is that, usually, you’re using the excellent Siri interface to set reminders. So you only have to wade into this morass occasionally and, when you do, you never quite remember all the different steps and tricks. Yuck.

I can easily see where I am not someplace where coverage is good and there are no wifi available, thus I'll be without Siri and will be stuck figuring out how to manually set it. This is hardly the first time people are forced to live in tomorrow at the expense of today.

Interesting usage data from ComScore. Check out the graph showing which devices are used at which hours of the day — “tablets” skew heavily toward morning coffee and after-dinner usage. And by “tablets” they mean the iPad.

— ✪, November 17, 2011.

...you know, the content creation hours.

I found it curious when the Daring No Balls site started redirecting to Droid Life. I originally thought maybe I had fallen for some viral astroturf campaign, but it appears he ran off when journalist Andy Baio tracked her ¹ down. I disagree with Andy Baio's suggestion that his blog was particularly nastier than other or that it was more-so because of anonymity. Jackasses are thrown around quite freely on John Gruber's Daring Fireball, for example. Still, it is disappointing that overreaction ruled every act in this episode, culminating in the erasure of the blog. There was no life-or-death issue at stake. This is just the inconsequential arguing over technology.

(Note: I started to write something about this several days ago when I saw the post go up at Thunderbolt, but I lost the post when I lost the Firefox session to a death by consumption. Firefox consumed massive amounts of RAM and virtual memory which essentially froze me out of my computer. Thank you very much Mozilla Firefox, Adobe Flash, Ubuntu Linux and especially you Typepad Micro for having no auto-save capabilities.)

_{1. I do not know the gender of the Daring No Balls author. Therefore, I alternated on the pronouns.}

Last month, Richard Gaywood noticed something...

Paul Thurrott, talking before the iPhone 4S announcement:

I have one prediction of my own. And that is that Apple will completely revamp the very much broken external antenna design that it saddled iPhone 4 users with.

John Gruber, commenting on Thurrott’s prediction after the 4S launch:

Good call — the 4S antenna looks totally different.

Jason Snell, reviewing the iPhone 4S for Macworld:

And so, finally, we come to the antennas. Apple says that the antennas on the iPhone 4 have been completely redesigned. The phone constantly assesses the quality of its connection to the cellular network and dynamically switches between two antennas, both embedded in its metallic outer ring.

Later, after recapping the entire “antennagate” (I hate this phrase but that’s what everyone insists on calling it so meh) brouhaha, Snell goes on to say:

Still, you’d figure that the criticism stung Apple enough for the company to make sure it wouldn’t be burned by this particular issue ever again. And you’d be right. The dynamic switching between two different antennas means that there’s no way you will be able to “death grip” the iPhone 4S unless you are trying to literally strangle your phone.

In all my tests, the old iPhone 4 “death grip” had no impact on the speed of cellular downloads on the iPhone 4S, nor did a reverse grip at the top of the phone. Only when I took both hands and performed a “death grip” that covered the entire phone (or at least touched all four corners of the phone simultaneously) did I see any signal attenuation.

Sounds to me like, despite Gruber’s sarcasm, Thurrott was more right that wrong.

— “Antennagate” rumbles ever onwards

I was following the controversy and how Apple and the pundit class (John Gruber mainly) was reacting to it in real time. Remember it was big enough problem that Apple went on a PR offensive, with which John Gruber in particular latched himself on to, where Apple posted numerous videos to argue every phone suffered the same issue, but eliding the complaint that the iPhone suffered it in a greater degree. Remember it was a big enough problem that Steve Jobs actually resorted to special pleading — Apple shouldn't be criticized because it was an old company. And remember Apple conceded that the antenna was flawed and that the signal strength indicator was programmed to give a reading more optimistic than AT&T's guidelines.

Now, I'm interested in how the history of Antennagate is now presented as something sensationalized by a tabloid technology press. Not just by Gruber above, but by the Apple press, generally. See Gene Steinberg argue twice that it was a myth, spread by Consumer Reports. I am debating over whether or not to go back through the real-time reporting on this to see how this story unfolded and evolved to get to the point that today Apple partisans believe that there was absolutely nothing wrong with the iPhone 4.

But here's an interesting aside, Steve Jobs originally thought Antennagate was nothing but a smear campaign launched by competitors. It took Tim Cook explaining to him the nature and magnitude of the problem. This probably explains the tardiness and the tone-deafness of the response by Apple.

I have never installed Silverlight on a single computer I own.

— ✪, November 9, 2011.

I see he takes pride in being able to say such a thing.

Let's replace Silverlight with other items in the above sentence and imagine what ✪ would write if he read such things.

"I have never installed OS X Lion on a single computer I own."

"I have never bought an iPhone."

"I have never used a single iOS device."

"I have never used or installed proprietary software."

I notice that the domain that formerly directs you to Daring No Balls now redirects to "Droid Life". Was No Balls a bit of internet astroturfing?

(Figures, that I can't retire.)

✪'s fantasy Adobe self-description:

Adobe is investing aggressively in Digital Media and Digital Marketing, two growing market areas. In Digital Media, the company is the industry leader in content authoring solutions, enabling customers to create, distribute and monetize digital content. In Digital Marketing, the company intends to be the leader in solutions to manage, measure and optimize digital marketing and advertising.

Apple's actual self-description:

Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and has recently introduced iPad 2 which is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices.

 

This is sad, even for ✪. On reading a press release from Adobe...

Here’s how the company describes itself:

Adobe is investing aggressively in Digital Media and Digital Marketing, two growing market areas. In Digital Media, the company is the industry leader in content authoring solutions, enabling customers to create, distribute and monetize digital content. In Digital Marketing, the company intends to be the leader in solutions to manage, measure and optimize digital marketing and advertising.

No, this is not how Adobe describes itself. This is Adobe describing how it is spending its money. I know this because companies don't typically place a "mission statement" under the first subhead of a press release; this subhead is titled: "Adobe Restructures to Align Business around Growth Opportunities". Companies put the mission statement at the end of the release.

In my ideal world, Adobe would describe itself instead as follows: “Adobe makes best-of-breed tools for creative professionals.”

Meanwhile, this is how Adobe actually describes itself.

About Adobe Systems Incorporated

Adobe is changing the world through digital experiences.

✪, you have to scroll down to the end of the press release. I guess you're still getting used to natural scrolling on OS X Lion.

I hate to snark on this because I respect John C. Welch a lot, and I think the charity criticism becomes unfair in some ways, but...

How much of this charity did Gates do before he stepped back from Microsoft vs. after he stepped back from Microsoft?

What does this have to do in the matter? That said, Gates started the William H. Gates Foundation (the predecessor to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation)  in 1994. (Yeah, as a commenter noted, after he got married, but did Jobs start one after he got married?) And the factsheet implies Gates was a giver before launching the foundation. I'd be inclined to believe it; his mother was the president of the local United Way, and served as chair in the national one. His father also supported charitable causes. Thus charity could have been on his mind for years.

Anyway, Steve Jobs does have the history of shutting down Apple's charitable efforts when he returned to the company. He's been silent on charitable actions up until he contracted cancer and required a liver transplant. Again, a lot of people are like this in requiring outside persuasion of events to consider charity. Especially CEOs who by their natures are single-focused on making their companies a success. His one known charity was launched after he was ousted from Apple; It was shut down when he founded NeXT, which again may be explained by being monofocused. Jobs also has stated he felt he could do the most good making those technology products at Apple. That can sound like a weak justification, but is it a justification when a teacher says that's how she helps the world.

I think this is one of those cases where we can just leave it as simply Jobs and Gates were different people.

(I also want to note Welch does praise Gates' charity work, so he wasn't posting it out of disgust of him.)

Daylight Saving Time screws up a lot of devices. My DVR still can't seem to get it completely right, and I still force a clock update on the flipphones at 15 minutes after changeover to make sure they do change. But this error by Siri is still sad — wrong by an entire day, and added insult by calling it Daylight Savings Time. Then again, iOS never seems to get daylight saving time right, and it can't excuse itself by claming beta status.

Magicians almost always gets showtime right.

MG Siegler, aka "Parislemon" on the GMail app for iOS:

When you release sub-par products, you look sub-par yourself. Customers don’t care what platform it’s on, and don’t care what politics are going on behind the scenes at the company. If you release shit, you look like shit. It’s much better to release nothing at all.

MG Siegler, aka "Parislemon" on Siri:

Yes, Siri has been wonky on and off for the past few days. God forbid that a service explicitly labeled as “beta” behave like a service still in beta.

Then again, MG Siegler, aka "Parislemon" is confused by a child in that same post from TechCrunch.

Also from MG Siegler, aka "Parislemon" in Techcrunch on Siri:

I understand that this is a bit of a tough concept to understand since companies like Google leave software in beta for the better part of a decade, thus castrating the term.

And making beta software the centerpiece of a campaign for selling the new iPhone doesn't castrate the term either.

Perhaps their only mistake was using the “beta” tag, which again, apparently means nothing anymore. And running a commercial touting the beta feature may not have been the best play right now either.

If only Apple had realized that in advertising a feature, they might lead people to think the feature should work as advertised.

A few anti-Apple-fanboy blogs have either sprung up or crossed my radar recently. Daring No Balls is a witless and charmless troll attempt, and not deserving of your time. But Raging Thunderbolt and the older The Occasional Blargh very much are. Even if you don’t agree with everything they say, even if you count yourself as an Apple true believer, the fact remains: they both routinely raise valid points that are worthy of consideration and debate. What more could you ask for in a weblog?

— Dr. Richard Gaywood, Action at a Distance

This is the best bit of praise I've gotten since the Googlebot said this blog was "easy to index, and doesn't push pills".

Ironic that in the following day the two of us post the same post.  Actually, it was probably inevitable. The original post that spurred the criticisms was especially foolish.

Earlier today, ✪ reads this piece by Sascha Segan in PC Magazine...

[I]t’s relatively easy for Apple to know its servers are overloaded and issue some sort of quick statement, for instance: “The tremendous popularity of Siri has led to stress on our servers. We are adding capacity to resolve the problem, but for now, be aware the service is in beta.”

and retorts...

How would that make anything better for iPhone 4S users? What practical difference would it have made in anyone’s life if Apple had released a statement like that yesterday?

You know, other than to let people know that the malfunctions in Siri are not the result of a malfunction on your phone or is the result of something the user did, right?

But anyway, hours later, ✪ writes...

Apple should include Siri availability on the iCloud status page. Just a simple way to check whether an outage is on Apple’s end, before you start troubleshooting on your end.

I'm guessing a lot of people beat him with various clue sticks while I was out at dinner.

My thesaurus does not list perfect as a synonym for either revolutionary or magical.

— ✪ in shifting the blame for great expectations from Apple to journalists and pundits in a post titled "Promises"... which, if you think about it, would include ✪.

 

I tried the same things Scott Forstall demoed on stage. They all worked, as promised.

— ✪, linked above.

 

 

 

 

 

I feel sorry for ✪ as he appears to always wind up that those magic shows where the tricks don't work, where the curtains fall away at the wrong time and you see when they switch the people in and out. Generally when a trick breaks down, it loses its wonder and magic. It's just not a good magic trick if it doesn't work.

What ✪ is doing here is itself a bit of a magic trick; he's trying to divorce the connotations of the PR words like magical and revolutionary from its denotation — the literal meaning — and then defending Apple as though he was a contract lawyer. Though I doubt anyone would win a case arguing "But your honor, I didn't promise perfection. I only promised magic." Anyway, if you were to look up magical in the thesaurus or dictionary, you see it is surrounded by positive words. One definition is "giving a feeling of enchantment". If you want to look up the definition of enchanting, it is "to attract and move deeply or rouse to ecstatic admiration".

I don't think you can move someone deeply or rouse to ecstatic admiration with something that is broken. Which Siri was for a couple of hours yesterday.

Update: Apparantly the Appleverse has its own set of reference books to govern language. Maybe I just don't speak Apple. Also, this shows why we've tied for first in the Apple-hivemind Fact-Correcting Championships.

Just when I thought I could retire, I find that I may have to expand my hunting grounds.

I should just go and apply Betteridge's Law to this headline and article from Darrell Etherington — Does the Siri outage reveal its success?

Then AT&T must have been one of the most successful mobile phone carrier in history between 2007 and 2011.

At this point, I should just let Joe Wilcox take over, as I found the piece from him and he does a fine rebuttal. He also notes Siri's Achilles' heel of requiring a data connection for even local tasks, like finding appointments in your calendar. (The iPhone is not yet powerful enough to understand your speech well enough to figure out what you want to do.)

Siri goes down for the second time. It's actually more interesting when technology falls back to earth, as it cements it to the here and now. Every magic trick after all is a trick.

Apple says they've solved the mystery of the rapidly draining battery.

I love how these statements always use vague but minimizing qualifiers like "small number" and "few bugs". Maybe they'll go into detail on what these bugs are when the update is released in "a few weeks".

Still, I hope this shows some people that measuring twice and cutting once does not preclude Apple from telling people that they are, in fact, busy measuring twice.

I see ✪ is getting himself worked up over some video he thinks rehashes too much of Minority Report or 2001 or Star Trek or who-knows whatever flick he played on the Apple TV last night. I can't work up any opinion on this because I don't really care for inside-baseball. But I will note the egregious lack of evidence presented for his claim that "Apple doesn't produce such videos". As they say, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Same goes for his claim that he'd apply the same criticism of Apple 1987, which he didn't mention until after being called out on the apparent inconsistency (also known as the Instapundit dodge).