It’d be cooler if Gizmodo had this kind self-deprecating, whistling-past-the-graveyard humor, but we all know they’re not really that self-aware.
With Steve Jobs’ biography scheduled for release on the 24th, the internets have been abuzz with excerpts from the book. There’s a particularly scathing one about Jobs’s reaction to Android. According to an AP report:
“‘I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong,’ Jobs said. ‘I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this.’”
And remember that photo of Steve Jobs and Eric Schmidt sitting outside of a Palo Alto café? Well, looks like we found out what the topic was:
That explains the look on Jobs’s face (Dickhead: Just. Stop. It) and the Schmidt’s puppy-busted-destroying-his-master’s-$300-Bostonians posture of shame. If he had a tail, it’d be between his legs. I’m not entirely convinced he doesn’t.
I’ll open with something you may not have known: Android has an interface designer. His name is Matias Duarte. Not only does he exist, he thinks a lot of the work he’s done on Android’s 4.0 iteration, Ice Cream Sandwich. So much so that he used some of his words in an interview with This is My Next/The Verge to take a couple of shots at elements of Apple’s UI design. From electronista:
Right now if you look at all of these applications that are designed in this real-objecty, faux wood paneling, faux brushed metal, faux jelly button kind of thing,” Duarte said. “If you step back and you really look at them, they look kind of juvenile. They’re not photorealistic, they’re illustrations. If you look back at the web, people did the same thing. All these cartoony things hanging off a page. If you tried that today, people would be laughing, unless you were doing it in a kitsch, poking-fun-at-yourself, retro art way.”
You mean like this?
I can’t say I’m sold on iOS’s Find My Friends “ride ‘em cowboy” theme, but for Duarte to call out Apple’s UI against Android’s bacon strip of a mobile OS shows just how far Mountain View is from the grown-up’s table. As the Android team has shown us time and again, class isn’t their strong suit.
Oct 182011
So get this: Apple has beaten Wall Street estimates for earnings 14 quarters in a row. That’s over 3 years, which is insane. How did analysts manage to pull this “why do you keep hitting yourself?” routine for so long? Aside from hilariously underestimating the popularity of Apple’s offerings, they also pretty much ignored Apple’s product cycles, most notably for the iPhone and iPad. Question for all you high-paid Street analysts: what is going to happen to iPhone sales the last quarter before the introduction of a new model?
I’ll give you guys a minute…
They’re going to go down relative to the prior quarter, especially when that quarter is enjoying a bump from the introduction of a new carrier. Makes sense, right?
So why the freak-out when Apple missed the Street’s estimates of $7.22 per share (by $.17) and revenue of $29.5 billion (by $1.25 billion)? Because analysts picked this quarter to froth their loins over Apple with absolutely no good reason. After the catastrophic passing of Apple’s CEO (the Street’s sentiment up until the day it happened) and mere days before the release of the newest version of their flagship device, this is the quarter they choose to ignore Apple’s guidance and blow out their estimates?
Stupid.
Poor Samsung. Can’t a guy knock off a few patented features of a competitor’s product anymore? Remember the salad years? Windows 3.1? Those were the days! Now they’ve got these CEOs who refuse to license their stuff and these bands of lawyers to back them up! And to make matters worse, the courts are backing them up!
This week has been particularly miserable for Sammy. Not only has the parade of preliminary injunctions grown to include Australia (in addition to Germany and the Netherlands), a federal judge in California opined that Samsung does infringe on some of Apple’s patents in the U.S. and a Dutch court ruled that Samsung couldn’t use FRAND patents to force an injunction against Apple’s products. Rough week.
- “You keep him here!”
Apple doesn’t want to charge you a licensing fee, nor do they want to cross-license your bullshit, bought-from-another-company patents. Apple wants you to stop knocking off their innovation, even if your execution has been laughable. And they’ll go to the mat – and the courts – to shut you down. Maybe now they have your attention.
I can’t say I’m surprised: one of the most anticipated features of iOS 5, AirPlay mirroring, won’t work with apps like HBO Go and the Cinemax equivalent, Max Go. HBO’s app could be even better with mirroring – the “interactive viewing features” could run full screen on the iPad instead of along the right-hand border of the screen. Instead, your TV gives you some bullshit error message.
I won't hold my fucking breath
Not all apps are AirPlay ignorant, but their implementation is spotty. Apps like Netflix make nice use of the dual screen layout, leaving the controls on the pad while the content streams. The ABC player works, but the content is shrunk considerably. The PBS app doesn’t have this problem; its content is in glorious HD.
The bottom line is that the best content is still being held back by the puny minds who want to dictate how you enjoy the shit you already pay for.
Oct 112011
Personally, I don’t have any use for WikiLeaks. I think the megalomaniacal personality of their founder is far too imprinted on its membership, creating an organization that has neither the capacity nor the desire for discretion. Being supremely open isn’t a justification for posting information that endangers other people. But that’s me.
I have even less use for organizations that trade off the backs of peoples’ privacy, only to grab their ankles when the government asks them to. That’s what Google is likely doing to Jacob Appelbaum, who according to NBC Bay Area, is the target of the Fed’s investigation of the WikiLeaks volunteer. The government wants Google and the ISP Applebaum used, Sonic.net, to turn over of his all email accounts. So how does the largest provider of email react when questioned about the responsibility of maintaining its users’ privacy?
Google declined comment when asked but Sonic.net said it tried to fight the order but could not afford to keep up the legal battle.
No comment. You have got to be fucking kidding me. Your users want to know if you’re a service – a service that’s integral to your billions of dollars in advertising revenue every quarter – that’s going to stand up for them or one that’s going to knuckle under when the Man comes knocking.
Google: are you turning over the emails or are you defending the rights your users have to their privacy? Easy fucking question, guys. I mean, easy if you’re not turning them over, I guess.
Taken in his home in 1982, you see how little surrounded him. The one luxury he afforded himself was music.
There is such a dearth of true creativity in the world that when you find it, its effects are magical. Steve Jobs did more creating in his years with Apple, NeXT and Pixar that just about anyone. I started TMA because of Jobs – because of the joy I felt using Apple’s products – the products for which he was so heavily responsible. His passing has blown a hole in the creative world. He will be remembered as one of the greatest conductors of the symphony of design and technology who ever lived. His products, services and experiences improved the lives of billions of people. He will be missed.
I think the dissection of everything Apple prior to their product announcements has finally bitten them a little. Leading up to today’s announcement, people (present company included) got wrapped up in case designs, mock-ups and, most egregiously, extrapolations of the iPhone 4′s current feature set – and we projected these fantasies onto a phantom device that became known as the iPhone 5.
In addition to all this iPhone cosplay, a second device emerged: the “iPhone 4S”. It was hypothesized that the 4S would attack the low-end market, would share some traits of current iPhone 4, but would also be “enhanced” – something I dismissed as ridiculous. The 4S was viewed as sort of like the 3GS – a phone that in retrospect got a bad rap – mostly because it looked the same. Even though it was markedly faster and had a better camera than the 3G, because it didn’t look different, it didn’t represent a significant improvement over the iPhone 3G.
Now that the announcement is over, we know that the 4S is it. There is no iPhone 5. But why am I getting such a whiff of disappointment? Let’s think about what the iPhone 4S turned out to be from a hardware perspective:
- A5 processor
- 8MP camera
- Intelligent switching antennae
- Siri intelligent personal assistant
Now what isn’t it?
- A wider, (maybe) higher-ppi screen
- A new case design
So what was the iPhone 5, really? It was an over-piling of the least plausible, least corroborated rumors about the 4S piled onto some mythical device. So why all the hate (AAPL is down 3.75% as of 3:00 EST)? Because we bought into 2 things: a device called the 4S that would be a “bargain device” – a fucking ridiculous premise to begin with – and the fact that Apple “had” to do something radical over and above it – whatever that something radical was. What we got was a cheaper iPhone 4 to chip at the low-end market (which I, and a lot of other people, called) and almost all of the predicted device improvements included in the new 4S (and at least one no one called – the smart antennae).
I expect the hate to flow into the comment sections of Gizmodo and Engadget articles on the 4S like the Dark Side through Anakin. I may have spent some time in the fantasyland of the iPhone 5 as well, but I have no one but my irrational self to blame for it.
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