Disappointing to see that the Microsoft Band was discontinued today. It was always on my list of wearables I would look at if I was ever to buy a wearable.
App Development Perspective
Life and Death in the App Store
-By Casey Newton, The Verge
(Two things developers say would help their businesses become more sustainable: free trials and paid upgrades.)
This Whole Apple Thing
John Gruber of Daring Fireball is just killing it with his coverage of the FBI’s case with Apple. He is not doing any first hand reporting (though he does add insightful commentary), but what he is doing is culling all sources for the very best reporting on the subject. So rather than just call out each of his posts individually, I’ll create a list here:
- GOOGLE, FACEBOOK, TWITTER, AND MICROSOFT PLAN TO SUPPORT APPLE
APPLE’S MOTION TO VACATE FBI ORDER
“…in CALEA, Congress decided not to require electronic communication service providers, like Apple, to do what the government seeks here.” - THE DANGEROUS ALL WRITS ACT PRECEDENT IN THE APPLE ENCRYPTION CASE
- HIGH-PROFILE ATTORNEY TED OLSON JOINS APPLE’S FIGHT AGAINST FBI TERROR PROBE
- POLL SHOWS MORE SUPPORT FOR JUSTICE DEPARTMENT THAN FOR APPLE
- WSJ: ‘JUSTICE DEPARTMENT SEEKS TO FORCE APPLE TO EXTRACT DATA FROM ABOUT 12 OTHER IPHONES’
- MDM SOFTWARE WOULD HAVE UNLOCKED SAN BERNARDINO SHOOTER’S IPHONE
- FBI DIRECTOR JAMES COMEY PUBLISHES OP-ED ON APPLE/ENCRYPTION CASE
- On the San Bernardino Suspect’s Apple ID Password Reset
The Greater Good
There is nothing new in the realization that the Constitution sometimes insulates the criminality of a few in order to protect the privacy of us all.
-Justice Antonin Scalia
-via Daring Fireball
To Father a Monster
But according to Colbert, “sustainability concerns have probably had a dampening effect on growth” in the coffee capsule sector. Even John Sylvan, the inventor of the K-cup single-serving coffee pod, America’s biggest selling capsule, last year foreswore his invention. “I feel bad sometimes that I ever did it,” he told one journalist.
-BBC
I Can’t Help Myself
I can’t help myself, I like the Samsung Gear S. I know the common wisdom says that no one wants a phone on their wrist. But… well… I do. Or at least, I like the idea of it.
A smartwatch that needs to connect to the phone in my pocket has little interest for me. I don’t get why it’s a thing. They do so little. Maybe it’s because I still have a “small” iPhone 4 (3.5″ screen) that makes me think this way. Pulling a “small” phone like that out of my pocket is really pretty easy. And you know what? Once I have it out, I can use it one handed. Can’t do that with a smartwatch. Sound stupid? It’s not. Think about it. When you get a notification on you watch, you pull that arm up to look at the watch. If you want to do anything with that notification, you have to use your other hand to tap or swipe or whatever. Try to walk a dog, or hold a beverage, or carry a bag when doing that and let me know how it goes.
If I’m going to wear something on my wrist, it better do something useful and not get in my way. Like replace my phone, or at least give me the option to leave the phone behind once in a while. Try that with your Moto 360 or Apple Watch and see how far it gets you.
When I go hiking or running, I don’t need my phone, but I would still like to have GPS and have some level of communication.
From Head to Toe
The new Moto Hint (from Motorola) is a smart bluetooth headset that is smarter than it looks because it hints (sorry) at a real future of connected technologies worn on the body.
This will make me sound old, but here goes: Image you have a big smartphone in your pocket, a smartwatch on your wrist, and a smart bluetooth headset in your ear. Now imagine your phone rings (this is the part where I sound old – people using their phones to talk). You glance at your watch to see who is calling, you tap to accept the call, and you just start talking (into your headset). OK, so maybe you are young and you get a text on your watch and just want to send a quick voice message back. Rather than looking a little silly by talking into your watch, you can just use your headset to record the message. Granted, it might seem a little weird to people around you that you randomly say something like, “Pizza at 6 sounds great, see you then”, but nothing is perfect.
The Case
Honestly, then case looks a little goofy, but it makes a lot of sense, because:
- It charges the headset to keep you going all day
- It makes it big enough so you won’t loose it
The Wood
No. If you think hardwood dashboards look good, you are wrong. And stupid. They don’t. They look silly (at least in modern cars). Having LEDs and electronic buttons and knobs sticking out of a really over lacquered piece of wood in your car does not add luxury, it just looks dumb. One of the joys of buying a cheap Toyota is that I don’t have to have that shit in my car. Modern cars should be made with modern materials and not try and pretend like they are horseless carriages.
Oh yeah, so my point here is that the little wood panel on the Hint is embarrassing. The new Motorola has been doing a really fine job with design, but apparently, they still need someone on their team that can veto demonstrably silly ideas.
Duckodile Hunt Review
Don’t download Duckodile Hunt. It’s a terrible game from a bunch of spammers. Avoid all apps by Ozymandia. 0 out of 5 stars. Stay away. Don’t waste your time with this terrible game. Duckodile Hunt is boring and stupid. The developers are spammers.
Square Peg in Round Hole
That’s because what LG actually did last night was verify that round displays on smartwatches are real. They’re “a thing.” The Moto 360 isn’t a one-trick pony, a one-off; the industry has officially figured out how to deliver round wearables, and it’s going to do so on a measurable scale.
-The Verge
I grit my teeth every time I hear something like this, that smartwatches need to be round because watches are round. It doesn’t make any sense what so ever. Do people drag their cars around with horses because horses are the way transportation devices have always been dragged around?
The very term “smartwatch” is just as dumb and “horseless carriage”.
What digital information or interface is made better by being round?
It’s real simple: if the market isn’t ready for computers with rectilinear displays worn on the wrist, then the market isn’t ready for smartwatches.
Only a Woman
“[Whitney Wolfe’s] pitch was pretty genius. She would go to chapters of her sorority, do her presentation, and have all the girls* at the meetings install the app. Then she’d go to the corresponding brother fraternity—they’d open the app and see all these cute girls they knew.” Tinder had fewer than 5,000 users before Wolfe made her trip, Munoz says; when she returned, there were some 15,000. “At that point, I thought the avalanche had started,”
– Bloomberg Businessweek
What galls me most about the sexism in this case is that only a woman could have done that. Only a woman could have gotten Tinder off the ground. And yet it’s the woman that gets pushed out of her position as a co-founder and later it forced out of the company.
Stupid misogynist assholes are stupid misogynist assholes.
* “Girls”? What, were they like 12 years old or something? Can we call them young women instead of girls?
Future Archaic 