The Occasional Blargh

“Raging Thunderbolt” on Gruber:

The implicature is that opinionated viewpoints, like Gruber’s and MG Siegler’s, are the way to go. The implicature is also that MG Siegler’s recent attack on The Verge and the subsequent ultra-defensive stance are perfectly justified.

But if Gruber scrolled down, he would also find Rosen saying that:

I think it’s wiser to be ecumenical about this. A great deal of progress can be made with a pluralistic solution. Let’s have View from Nowhere people flourishing side by side with “here where I’m coming from” journalists, and see what happens. Ease up and let both systems operate– sometimes within the same news organization.

This is the second time John missed something because he did not scroll to the end. Gruber, please turn on those scroll bars. You are not used to bar-less Lion, yet.

Though perhaps it’s deliberate...

Of course, there’s no room for ecumenicality in the world of dogmatism. So that part of Rosen’s view is conveniently elided.

Yeah, I guess it was always curious that the parts that alter or negates the argument Gruber puts forth are always out of view, never to be quoted.

...

Nah, John just needs to turn the scroll bars back on.

Jim, you’re not even that original.

I’ve regularly found that the people who write these anti-definitions for “fanboy” to try to turn the accusation around really are in fact fanboys. (I see Jim pulled Marco off the wagon.)

Fun refresher from the Vox days: Building Better Fanboys.

It has not been a great week personally. Dad had been in the hospital for a week and a half for unspecified reasons that wound up remaining unspecified (meaning they couldn't find anything wrong, so neither he, the doctors or I could get any piece of mind that comes with solving a mystery). Imagine an episode of House, M.D. that never reaches a resolution. With that said, here's some things...

• This is a tiny blog. Single-digit page views are the norm. Except today where I had something like 100 visitors. It looks like now that I've been mentioned by prominent enough bloggers, I now get 4th-degree of separation traffic whenever MG Siegler says something really stupid, as he did yesterday. It's probably too late to pile on, but I'm probably going to anyway.
• With that, I actually now feel guilty for not posting more frequently for the anonymous strangers who may get the impression this blog gets updated regularly. (It's really not.)
• Apple has done something to partly invalidate a post I was working on, and I'm happy. They (Samsung, actually) has been reported to use a Texan factory to manufacture the processors for the iOS devices. For anybody who is concerned about worker exploitation, outsourcing, and the general bad corporate citizenship of tech companies like Apple, this is a good start. But this should be just a start. The post may still come, though.
• I was not reading tech news all that much these two weeks, but I did see the dumb poll MacSurfer ran asking if Steve Jobs was snubbed as Time "Man of the Year". Entertaining such a thought would be ripe for mocking via the Twitter meme #FirstWorldProblems.

It's been a few weeks since Apple lost its market-cap crown, a number largely without meaning except to braggarts, to previous holder Exxon-Mobile. (It's been pretty consistent since mid-October.) How was this covered by the Apple hivemind? I wonder because MG Siegler hasn't gotten word yet. I wouldn't want a mistake like that to lead people to think of him as nothing but a fanboy.

★ Don't Get Too Stupid, There.

What else could it have been? A prank? A magic spell?

You can't argue ✪ doesn't ask the pertinent questions. But let's think of what other possible things that caused the 4G outage that Verizon just ruled out. A deliberately cut cable. A deliberate DDoS attack. Flooding. Solar flares. Any and every possibility that would be beyond their control such as a regional power failure (note the quote that "the company's network operations team resolved a technical issue").

 

CNet misquoted Eric Schmidt. Steven Shankland originally mistranscribed a quote from Schmidt as "Whether you like Android or not, you will support that platform, and maybe you’ll even deliver it first." The two usual suspects — Marco Arment and John Gruber — jumped on this as yet another reason why Apple is better than Android. Developers begged Apple to let them develop on their platform. Google has to threaten them with market-share. Developers love Apple but hate Google. But that's not what Eric Schmidt said.

This is more of the quote:

Whether you like ICS [Ice Cream Sandwich] or not, and again I like it a great deal, you will want to develop for that platform, and perhaps even first.

Now, for what it is worth, Marco Arment amended his post with the full lead-up to the quote and the question that prompted the quote — essentially asking why even after becoming the number one smartphone platform, Android is still treated as second by developers — but still argues that there are other reasons he believes Android is hated, but just without the implicit acknowledgement he thought he got from Schmidt.

John Gruber has yet to even acknowledge the erroneous quote or even the update. Yes, his piece links to Arment's, but the quotes he pulls from Arment is his opining on the inaccurate quote. His commentary are built on top of that. Using internet convention, he'd have to strike out the entire piece.

This is the not the first time Gruber crafts a post based on a misleading quote. And given history, I'm not quite sure we can expect a correction. Still, remember this the next time Gruber pats himself on the back for his high standards, for not accepting dogma or for looking for ways he could be wrong. More likely than not, he's just going through the motions.

UPDATE: Gruber posts something that gives the appearance of an apology, without him admitting error or even adjusting his conclusions.

Of course it would be on the day I break from blogging to focus on managing a family member's chronic disease and the hell of insurance, do I learn that Gruber — in linking to the same Gawker post I did — has climbed down. Siri has gone from "limitless", to "My thesaurus does not list perfect as a synonym for either revolutionary or magical", to "isn’t up to Apple’s usual level of fit and finish, not by a long shot". Will we be moving on down to Microsoft Apple will get it right in a service pack or later revision? Oh wait, that was there, too: "it’ll be easier to improve voice recognition while it’s being widely used."

Siri is a "fine print beta" feature. It's a feature which marketing will sell you on. They will tell you it will change your life. They will call it magical and innovative. When it doesn't work, however, it's your fault for expecting life-altering magic. It's beta, after all.

Gizmodo's Mat Hornan:

I'm sorry. Beta? Beta is for Google. When Apple does a public beta, it usually keeps it out of the hands of the, you know, public. It typically makes you go get betas. It doesn't force them on you, much less advertise them. Not that it is an effective disclaimer for the vast buying public. For most people who see Apple's ads, and buy iPhones, the word beta means nothing at all. It might be a fish, or a college bro.

once the novelty wore off, what I found was that Siri is not so intelligent after all—it's simply another voice program that will obey very specific commands. If it knows those commands. If it can understand you. And if it has a network connection. Were this Google, or Microsoft, I'd shrug. But it's not, it's Apple. And Apple is the company that sells perfection. It's a company that usually keeps its promises, and in its Siri ads, it promises far more than what it actually delivers.

The whole piece is interesting because it goes into a bit more detail over where else Siri has what appear to be knowledge gaps. Not just abortion clinics, but emergency rooms and hospitals.

(I am probably going to slow down posting [though this flurry of activity is unusual for this blog] as some minor family medical concerns vie for my attention.)

Part of me keeps holding off on writing the post I promised because I keep looking for someone else to write the post. Let's be honest, that person elsewhere would write it better than I would. That post I keep looking for is "Apple is doing a bad job as gatekeeper". I don't see that post yet, but Raging Thunderbolt has a good executive summary specifically regarding Siri. Frankly, it goes beyond Siri itself. RT earlier highlighted other dimensions of concern when linking to The Monday Note on potential antitrust concerns against Apple.

More complications enter the story of Carrier IQ. Is it actually sending the specific keystrokes you're making, or is it just noting when a key is pressed in general? Researchers who spoke to the LA Times disagree with Trevor Eckhart's conclusions. This is the option three I didn't think to consider in the ultimate paragraph of this post.

Now, why did we all jump to conclusions, rather than ask for a second opinion? (Journalists are supposed to verify something through at least two or three sources. Rarely ever take one person's word.) Obviously, Carrier IQ blundered royally by threatening a lawsuit to the guy making the accusation, which made Carrier IQ look like it had something to hide. That pretty caused the story to light up the tech press. The Apple press helped to fan this as well, hoping to tarnish Android or to suggest a press double-standard. (Read the titles of each post.)

I do think something similar is happening with the specific issue with Siri about abortion clinics. I want to write something about that later, partly because there is a larger issue here as well. (Think of Apple struggling with things like porn, political cartoons, illustrated classics, etc...) A closed system is an apt criticism when you take on the role as gatekeeper. But on to that later.

(Previously: Carrier IQ, Pitfalls of humanizing Siri, Misprogrammed snark on Siri, The beta double-standard on Siri, Overly Great Expectations on Siri.)

I used Siri, today. I think she is broken. Is she supposed to be so difficult?

 

As we've learned from stories about the feature, programmers decided to give Siri some more personality by throwing out some funny, sarcastic or snarky quips at times. This was to more humanize the system, but Siri isn't human. It doesn't always understand context and it surely can't read emotions. Worst, the problem is compounded when the software is good enough to allow the user to humanize it further than they should. A response that is clever in one situation can be flippant or cruel in another. I just am is a cute humorous response to "How are you so smart?", not to "Why are you anti-abortion?". You can not sell Siri as practically being your companion; who knows what you mean when you say it and laud it for being so clever with certain joke, but then excuse it when its responses make it seem like a sociopath. You can't tell someone that Siri is practically human, and then criticize the person for falling for that illusion you created.

Cult of Mac lives up to its name. Well, maybe Cult of Jobs.

Yesterday:

Finally Steve Jobs is vindicated about how evil Android is. Everybody was giving him grief with Locationgate, which wasn't that big of a deal anyway and was just an accident, but but Android is spying on everything you do. If the press wasn't all full of Apple-haters, this would be a huge scandal. Google is invading your privacy.

Today:

Carrier IQ is installed on your iPhone and iPad too?

Oh... that complicates things.

From "Steve Jobs Was Right, Android Logs Everything":

Time has proven Steve Jobs right. Android phones do track you. In fact, software that comes pre-installed on millions of Android, BlackBerry and Nokia phones log everything you do with your device, and sends them off secretly to its own servers.

This is absolutely insane. Apple was practically crucified over LocationGate, which was just a cache of GPS locations stored on users’ home machines. Meanwhile, almost every Android phone out there is reading people’s emails and logging their passwords, while no one bats an eye.

From "Keylogging Spyware Carrier IQ Also Comes Installed On Many iPhones! Here’s How To Turn It Off".

Yesterday, we reported the story as one proving Steve Jobs right about how Android tracks everything you do, but a day later, things seem a lot less black and white. Carrier IQ’s software comes pre-installed on other devices besides Android, like BlackBerries and Nokias, and as even the name of the software suggests, seems to be something installed by carriers. And, as it turns out, some iPhones. Luckily, disabling it is the easiest thing in the world, and it logs none of your personal information, unlike the software’s more nefarious Android counterpart.

And this was repeated, with pretty much same righteous indignation and partial climbdown elsewhere in the echo chamber. (I find the last quote chosen in the last link especially funny, given the previous link.)

Of course, this isn't to say Carrier IQ's actions aren't scandalous and possibly illegal. Wiretap law is intended to prevent eavesdropping like this. But it is hard to tell if this was intentional spying or incredibly lazy programming. ("Let's just collect every damn thing that occurs on the phone and ship it to the carriers. Let them deal with the data.") And the mobile carriers continue to be shown to be untrustworthy bastards. But you can see that this was not the hoped for story of "Apple Good, Android Bad" or "Media Biased Against Apple, Protecting Android". This is not too dissimilar to the dynamics of the conservative media capped by Fox News. Stories and scandals will be pushed which confirm the worldview biases.

From the annals of inappropriate snark (Megan Carpentier via RT):

"Siri, why are you anti-abortion?"

"I just am, Kristen"

Apple calls this a glitch. Yay for measuring twice and cutting once. Well, except for giving Siri those mental blanks in regards to women's health (inadvertent or otherwise), and for snarking when someone asks a question about abortion -- rarely is snark a good reaction when the subject turns to abortion. Anyway, this deserves a longer comment later. This is the latest instance of Apple being a poor gatekeeper (I bet someone else does it and will link to it when they do, but I'll write it if it doesn't appear.)

While I'm copping links from RT, I may as well link to this longer piece from Amandi.

Dammit, Siri. You're making ✪'s job difficult. Oh yeah, "Beta Beta Beta!"