Eric Newcomer, Bloomberg:
\n\n\n\n\nAdjusted net revenue last quarter increased 61 percent to $2.22 billion from the same period in 2016. Meanwhile, the total value of fares grew to $11 billion that quarter. It was the first full quarter under Dara Khosrowshahi, who took over the troubled business in September.
\n \nDespite a turbulent year for the ride-hailing company, sales were $7.5 billion. But the company also posted a substantial loss of $4.5 billion. There are few historical precedents for the scale of its loss.
\n
In 2016, Pixel Envy earned $3 billion more than Uber, and I’m thrilled to report that the delta between me and Uber for 2017 was 50% greater.
\n\nA reminder that no taxi company could survive losses like those Uber has been posting; also, that the reason a fare with an Uber driver is cheaper is because it’s subsidized at below-market rates by venture capital firms; and that, despite some benefits for gig economy workers in the new tax code, Uber is among many gig-type companies that does not provide health coverage for their American drivers.
\n\n", "date_published": "2018-02-13T23:23:12+00:00", "date_modified": "2018-02-13T23:51:35+00:00", "author": { "name": "Nick Heer" } }, { "id": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/facebook-vpn-protect/", "url": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/facebook-vpn-protect/", "external_url": "https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/12/facebook-starts-pushing-its-data-tracking-onavo-vpn-within-its-main-mobile-app/", "title": "Under the Guise of Security, Facebook is Promoting Their VPN in Their iOS App", "content_html": "Sarah Perez, TechCrunch:
\n\n\n\n\nMarketing Onavo within Facebook itself could lead to a boost in users for the VPN app, which promises to warn users of malicious websites and keep information secure \u2013 like bank account and credit card numbers \u2013 as you browse. But Facebook didn\u2019t buy Onavo for its security protections.
\n \nInstead, Onavo\u2019s VPN allow Facebook to monitor user activity across apps, giving Facebook a big advantage in terms of spotting new trends across the larger mobile ecosystem. For example, Facebook gets an early heads up about apps that\u00a0are becoming breakout hits; it can tell which are seeing slowing user growth; it sees which apps\u2019 new features appear to be resonating with their users, and much more.
\n \nThis data has already helped Facebook in a number of ways, most notably in its battle with Snapchat. At The WSJ reported last August, Facebook could tell that Instagram\u2019s launch of Stories \u2013 a Snapchat-like feature \u2013 was working to slow Snapchat\u2019s user growth, before the company itself even publicly disclosed this fact.
\n
Think about that: Facebook has one of the largest platforms in the world, and is using that influence to promote a service that they control to spot and preemptively eliminate potential competitors. The reason they\u2019re able to do all of these things is because of their size and dominance.
\n\nI understand the reluctance by many regulators and industry observers to say that Facebook ought to be broken up into smaller, unaffiliated companies, but I\u2019m struggling to see many other ways to keep the company\u2019s influence in check. Largely ignoring it, as has been done so far, is bad for competition. Even if you ignore potential anticompetitive issues, there\u2019s still a question of whether users of Facebook\u2019s VPN are adequately aware of how the company accessed and uses their data.
\n\n", "date_published": "2018-02-13T14:05:20+00:00", "date_modified": "2018-02-13T14:33:10+00:00", "author": { "name": "Nick Heer" } }, { "id": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/amp-for-email/", "url": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/amp-for-email/", "external_url": "https://gsuite-developers.googleblog.com/2018/02/AMP-for-email-developer-preview.html?m=1", "title": "Google Announces AMP For Email Spec", "content_html": "Gmail engineer Raymond Wainman:
\n\n\n\n\nYou may have heard of the open-source framework, Accelerated Mobile Pages\u00a0(AMP). It\u2019s a framework for developers to create faster-loading mobile content on the web. Beyond simply loading pages faster, AMP now supports building a wide range of rich pages for the web. Today, we\u2019re announcing AMP for Email so that emails can be formatted and sent as AMP documents. As a part of this, we\u2019re also kicking off the Gmail Developer Preview of AMP for Email \u2014 so once you\u2019ve built your emails, you\u2019ll be able to test them in Gmail.
\n
Not content with bifurcating the web with the introduction of a proprietary HTML-like webpage format, Google is now trying to split email clients into Gmail and everybody else. Gmail is already an email-like product and has some of the worst CSS support of mainstream email clients.
\n\nOf course, there\u2019s a good chance the advanced capabilities of this format won\u2019t catch on because email clients are already pretty fragmented as things stand today. It\u2019s an area of the web where the lowest common denominators \u2014 HTML tables and old-school tags like <font> \u2014 are used with disturbing regularity, simply because it\u2019s the only markup that works well in all clients. It\u2019s frustrating enough to build emails as things are; I imagine many developers will reject this because it adds yet another layer of complexity to their workflow that may not be used by a large number of recipients.
Developers shouldn\u2019t reject this on those grounds alone, however. Google\u2019s increasing demands to bend open formats with proprietary variations is a fantastic reason to avoid AMP in email messages.
\n\n", "date_published": "2018-02-13T12:14:16+00:00", "date_modified": "2018-02-13T12:21:35+00:00", "author": { "name": "Nick Heer" } }, { "id": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/gurman-apple-development-cycle/", "url": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/gurman-apple-development-cycle/", "external_url": "https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-12/how-apple-plans-to-root-out-bugs-revamp-iphone-software", "title": "Apple Reportedly Focusing Less on Monolithic Annual iOS Updates", "content_html": "Mark Gurman, Bloomberg:
\n\n\n\n\nApple’s annual software upgrade this fall will offer users plenty of new features: enabling a single set of apps to work across iPhones, iPads and Macs, a Digital Health tool to show parents how much time their children have been staring at their screen and improvements to Animojis, those cartoon characters controlled by the iPhone X’s facial recognition sensor.
\n \nBut just as important this year will be what Apple doesn’t introduce: redesigned home screens for the iPhone, iPad and CarPlay, and a revamped Photos app that can suggest which images to view.
\n \nThese features were delayed after Apple Inc. concluded it needed its own major upgrade in the way the company develops\u00a0and introduces new products. Instead of keeping engineers on a relentless annual schedule and cramming features into a single update, Apple will start focusing\u00a0on the next two years of updates\u00a0for its iPhone and iPad operating system, according to people familiar with the change.\u00a0The company will continue to update its software annually,\u00a0but internally engineers will have more discretion to push back features that aren’t as polished to the following year.\u00a0
\n
The biggest news here is that Apple is reportedly adjusting their internal processes to try to reduce the demands of an annual update. But I\u2019m not sure how much will change externally because this sounds a lot like the way they presently release iOS updates: still a focus on new features in the autumn, with some features debuting later in that major version\u2019s release cycle. Apple Pay Cash, for instance, was announced at WWDC in June with the implication that it would be release with iOS 11.0, but it wasn\u2019t launched until November with iOS 11.2.
\n\nIf the changes are as modest as this report makes them out to be, how much of an improvement can we realistically expect in software quality?
\n\n", "date_published": "2018-02-12T23:35:02+00:00", "date_modified": "2018-02-12T23:35:02+00:00", "author": { "name": "Nick Heer" } }, { "id": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/autocorrect-contacts-apps/", "url": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/autocorrect-contacts-apps/", "external_url": "https://twitter.com/wilshipley/status/960309688599375872", "title": "Autocorrect Based on Contacts and Apps", "content_html": "Wil Shipley:
\n\n\n\n\nImagine being in charge of an algorithm that hundreds of millions of users depend on every day and saying, \u201cHey, let\u2019s take any word that\u2019s capitalized in your contacts and just always capitalize it in text messages!\u201d
\n
It\u2019s not just contact names that inform the autocorrect dictionary: any capitalized word in a contact record will be fed into the dictionary, as will installed apps. So, if you know someone who works at, say, Apple, or you have the Transit app installed, you will find yourself regularly undoing the automatic capitalization of those words when talking about fruit or the very concept of public transit. Sometimes, autocorrect will fix its aggressive capitalization after it is given more context by typing several more words; but, frequently, it does not.
\n\n", "date_published": "2018-02-12T13:12:07+00:00", "date_modified": "2018-02-12T13:14:11+00:00", "author": { "name": "Nick Heer" } }, { "id": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/browsealoud-cryptojacking/", "url": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/browsealoud-cryptojacking/", "external_url": "https://scotthelme.co.uk/protect-site-from-cryptojacking-csp-sri/", "title": "A Third-Party Script Used by Government Websites Was Compromised to Mine Cryptocurrency", "content_html": "Scott Helme:
\n\n\n\n\nI had a friend of mine get in touch about his AV program throwing a warning when visiting the ICO website. The ICO bill themselves as:
\n \n\n\n \nThe UK\u2019s independent authority set up to uphold information rights in the public interest, promoting openness by public bodies and data privacy for individuals.
\nThey’re the people we complain to when companies do bad things with our data. It was pretty alarming to realise that they were running a crypto miner on their site, their whole site, every single page.
\n \nAt first the obvious thought is that the ICO were compromised so I immediately started digging into this after firing off a few emails to contact people who may be able to help me with disclosure. I quickly realised though that this script, whilst present on the ICO website, was not being hosted by the ICO, it was included by a 3rd party library they loaded.
\n
Scary as it is, this is arguably relatively minor incident; imagine if it were a more malicious script \u2014 something like a keylogger. It would be wise for web developers reliant upon third-party scripts to treat them as though they will, at some point, carry malware.
\n\n", "date_published": "2018-02-12T13:06:34+00:00", "date_modified": "2018-02-12T13:06:34+00:00", "author": { "name": "Nick Heer" } }, { "id": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/equifax-lost-more-data/", "url": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/equifax-lost-more-data/", "external_url": "http://www.zdnet.com/article/hackers-stole-more-equifax-data-than-first-thought/", "title": "Equifax Continues to Be Useless and Terrible at Absolutely Everything", "content_html": "Zack Whittaker, ZDNet:
\n\n\n\n\nHackers stole more data from Equifax in a breach last year than initially thought.
\n \n[\u2026]
\n \nA letter published Friday by committee member Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) to acting Equifax chief executive Paulino do Rego Barros summarized the senator’s five-month investigation into the Equifax breach, which said tax identification numbers (TINs), email addresses, and additional license information \u2014 such as issue dates and by which state \u2014 were not originally disclosed.
\n
A reminder that Reuters reported earlier this month that the CFPB investigation into the Equifax breach is \u201con ice\u201d.
\n\n", "date_published": "2018-02-10T20:47:04+00:00", "date_modified": "2018-02-10T20:47:04+00:00", "author": { "name": "Nick Heer" } }, { "id": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/intern-iphone-source-code/", "url": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/intern-iphone-source-code/", "external_url": "https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/xw5yd7/how-iphone-iboot-source-code-leaked-on-github", "title": "An Apple Intern Reportedly Stole iOS Source Code and Leaked It to His Friends", "content_html": "Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai, Vice:
\n\n\n\n\nAccording to these sources, the person who stole the code didn\u2019t have an axe to grind with Apple. Instead, while working at Apple, friends of the employee encouraged the worker to leak internal Apple code. Those friends were in the jailbreaking community and wanted the source code for their security research.
\n \nThe person took the iBoot source code\u2014and additional code that has yet to be widely leaked\u2014and shared it with a small group of five people.
\n \n\u201cHe pulled everything, all sorts of Apple internal tools and whatnot,\u201d a friend of the intern told me. Motherboard saw screenshots of additional source code and file names that were not included in the GitHub leak and were dated from around the time of this first leak.
\n
Baseband code from the same time period has also been leaked publicly.
\n\n", "date_published": "2018-02-10T18:10:23+00:00", "date_modified": "2018-02-10T18:10:40+00:00", "author": { "name": "Nick Heer" } }, { "id": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/everything-easy-is-hard-again/", "url": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/everything-easy-is-hard-again/", "external_url": "https://frankchimero.com/writing/everything-easy-is-hard-again/", "title": "Everything Easy is Hard Again", "content_html": "Frank Chimero:
\n\n\n\n\nIf you go talk to a senior software developer, you\u2019ll probably hear them complain about spaghetti code. This is when code is overwrought, unorganized, opaque, and snarled with dependencies. I perked up when I heard the term used for the first time, because, while I can\u2019t identify spaghetti code as a designer, I sure as hell know about spaghetti workflows and spaghetti toolchains. It feels like we\u2019re there now on the web.
\n \n[\u2026]
\n \nI wonder what young designers think of this situation and how they are educating themselves in a complicated field. How do they learn if the code is illegible? Does it seem like more experienced people are pulling up the ladder of opportunity by doing this? Twenty years ago, I decided to make my own website, because I saw an example of HTML and I could read it. Many of my design peers are the same. We possess skills to make websites, but we stopped there. We stuck with markup and never progressed into full-on programming, because we were only willing to go as far as things were legible.
\n
This essay resonated deeply with me. I wrote my first line of HTML about twenty years ago. I remember editing the Yahoo homepage in Netscape Composer around that time, and building a Geocities website not that long after. It felt easy and approachable, even if <table> syntax was often inscrutable and unpredictable. A few years later, the CSS wave hit the web and I learned about why it was appropriate to separate presentational code from the page’s markup.1 CSS has become more complicated since then, but it continues to make sense to me, even though I need to look up the flexbox syntax every time I use it.
Over the last five years or so, even the most basic website stopped being treated as a collection of documents and started being thought of as software. Over the same period of time, I have gone from thinking that I know how to build a website quickly and efficiently to having absolutely no clue where to start learning about any of this stuff. I can’t imagine being eight years old again and being interested in the web as something anyone can contribute to.
\n\nSee Also: Chimero’s spoken, longer-form version of this essay, given as a talk at Mirror Conf.
\n\nAnd, yet, the easiest way to make a few boxes side-by-side that have the same resulting height despite allowing a flexible amount of text in each remains display: table-cell. The same technique allows perhaps the easiest way to vertically centre an unpredictable amount of text. Like tables for layout purposes, it still isn’t semantically correct, but we use it anyway. ↩︎
There is something unique about deliberately contrarian-for-the-sake-of-being-contrarian positions that irks me so much, and I’m not sure what it is. I don’t know that it’s because these arguments are poor so much as it is that they’re easily shown to be poor. Maybe it’s the author’s optimism that convinces them that their piece is worth publishing, or maybe it’s just provocative for its own sake \u2014 the latter of which is even more irritating for me because I know that my frustration with the argument is entirely the author’s intention, and I’d rather not play into that. Whatever the case, it’s the sort of thing that rattles around inside my head.
\n\nWhich brings me to two pieces written by Joshua Topolsky last autumn. The first, \u201cApple is Really Bad at Design\u201d, posits that Apple’s recent products no longer represent the pinnacle of design in the industry. To be fair to Topolsky, he may sincerely believe that there’s value in challenging the assumption that these products are well-designed, and I think that’s completely reasonable. It’s that article’s companion piece, \u201cGoogle is Really Good at Design\u201d, that occasionally creeps up in my mind.
\n\nTopolsky:
\n\n\n\n\nThe concepts inherent in Material Design \u2014 a system of literal layers that evoke the tactility of a stack of paper, but offers the flexibility of digital spaces; a responsive layout concept that assumes no two devices may be exactly the same size or shape; a bold use of typography, motion, and color \u2014 showcase a decidedly different approach than Apple has taken. Where Jony Ive and company have produced a scattered, visually unmoored solution that seems to be solving small problems bite-by-bite, Google essentially blew up what had come before and reset. This radical rethink has spread into Google’s deep web pockets, meaning that a logical system of navigation and connectivity not only informs what you see on your phone when you interact with apps and services, but what you get on the web, on a laptop, or on a TV. Gmail is Gmail is Gmail, responding to whatever screen it\u2019s on. And sometimes, thanks to Google\u2019s deep machine learning and natural language chops, Gmail is also the disembodied voice you talk to while you\u2019re driving. In Google\u2019s universe, its voice-activated Assistant isn\u2019t middleware \u2014 it\u2019s everyware, tapping deeply and natively into all of the company\u2019s nodes.
\n
Topolsky is generally right in saying that Google’s approach to user interfaces is remarkably consistent across everything, but I would argue that it represents why their products are often so frustrating and cumbersome to use.
\n\nCase in point: their new YouTube app for tvOS. The last version didn’t represent a dramatic design statement or look particularly special \u2014 it was pretty much the same as any of the default tvOS apps \u2014 but it worked, for the most part. It was the only app I’ve used on my Apple TV that would regularly kick me back to the tvOS home screen instead of the last screen in the app when I pressed the remote’s menu button while watching a video, and it had stability problems when searching, but it wasn’t terrible.
\n\nThe new app, though, represents everything wrong with Google’s present UI design philosophy. It follows virtually none of the Apple TV platform conventions:
\n\nThere’s a sidebar on the left that looks like an Android action bar.
Swiping to the left on the touch pad from any of the app’s menu screens will open a main menu panel, with navigation options for your subscriptions, video history, and own video library.
There’s also a horizontal navigation element, similar to the type that you would find in a default tvOS app.
None of these elements behaves as you might expect, primarily because the YouTube app doesn’t interpret swipes and scrolls like any other app. There’s no audible blip whenever you select something, and swiping around manages to be both sluggish and jerky.
\n\nThe frustratingly slow scrolling is especially pronounced on the aforementioned horizontal navigation element because swiping just a little too far to the left will open the modal main menu panel that covers a third of the screen.
\n\nThe slow scrolling is also apparent in the main menu panel. The scrolling “friction”, for lack of a better term, is such that swiping down just a little is unlikely to have any effect, and swiping down just a little bit more will move the selector down two menu items. It can be very difficult to get it to move one menu item at a time.
There’s no sense of transition between screens or states. Instead of fading, screens simply change; instead of smoothly sliding left or right when scrolling across thumbnails, there will often be a sudden jump to load the new set of thumbnails.
Swiping horizontally across the remote while a video is playing will scrub the video. This is something Apple quickly changed after the fourth-generation Apple TV debuted because of how easy it was to accidentally invoke it.
Tapping on the remote’s touch pad to display onscreen controls automatically selects the play/pause button instead of the scrubber, as in other tvOS apps, and there are two levels of controls in the custom player.
The app is also an ugly sea of mid-tone greys.
It isn’t unheard-of for an Apple TV app from a major third party to fail to adhere to platform conventions. The Amazon Prime app doesn’t look or behave anything like a native app because it’s basically a web app. Hulu and Netflix also have some pretty crappy apps that don’t really function like a tvOS app ought to.
\n\nBut this also isn’t unlike Google, which has completely disregarded platform standards with their major iOS apps for years. There’s nothing wrong with making apps of a particular style \u2014 my favourite developers all have their unique quirks and styles that help identify their apps as theirs \u2014 but Google’s apps frequently feel less like they’re trying to create branded iOS apps and more like they want their Android apps to run on iOS.
\n\nThis isn’t a new argument, and Google has become a moderately better citizen on iOS over the past couple of years: their sharing glyph now looks like the system standard one instead of lazily copying the shape they use on Android, for example. This new YouTube app for tvOS is a step back, however. It feels like a half-assed port. When there’s no clear effort by a huge company like Google to even try to make their products fit a different platform, it indicates a lack of care and attention to detail. It also demonstrates that users’ expectations and learned behaviours are less important than self-promotion and branding.
\n\nWhat it shows, ultimately, is a lack of consideration for design.
\n", "date_published": "2018-02-08T00:14:37+00:00", "date_modified": "2018-02-08T10:24:41+00:00", "author": { "name": "Nick Heer" } }, { "id": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/facebook-flattening/", "url": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/facebook-flattening/", "external_url": "http://splitsider.com/2018/02/how-facebook-is-killing-comedy/", "title": "The Facebook Flattening", "content_html": "Matt Klinman of Funny or Die, in an interview with Sarah Aswell of Splitsider on the effect of Facebook\u2019s algorithmic timeline changes on independent media:
\n\n\n\n\nThis writer John Herrman writes about this a lot \u2014 he used to write for The Awl, rest in peace \u2014 he talks about how Facebook flattens everything out and makes it the same. That\u2019s how we have a Russian propaganda problem. An article from something like, I don\u2019t know, Rebel Patriot News written by a Macedonian teen or something looks exactly the same as a New York Times article. It\u2019s the same for comedy websites. There\u2019s a reason that Mad magazine looks different from Vanity Fair. They need to convey a different aesthetic and a different tone for their content to really pop. Facebook is the great de-contextualizer. There\u2019s no more feeling of jumping into a whole new world on the internet anymore \u2014 everything looks exactly the same.
\n
The premise of this piece is that \u201cFacebook is killing comedy\u201d \u2014 Funny or Die had to lay off a bunch of writers because of reduced traffic from Facebook. I\u2019ve written about that before because, while I think websites like Funny or Die should be less dependent on traffic from any one source, but Facebook is not entirely blameless either.
\n\nThis pullquote, though, is one of the best encapsulations I\u2019ve seen of the effects of Facebook\u2019s ecosystem, particularly its ability to erase context.
\n\n", "date_published": "2018-02-07T15:15:41+00:00", "date_modified": "2018-02-07T15:19:06+00:00", "author": { "name": "Nick Heer" } }, { "id": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/everyone-creates/", "url": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/everyone-creates/", "external_url": "https://www.everyonecreates.org/", "title": "On the Internet, Everyone is a Creator", "content_html": "A fantastic new site from the Copia Institute, with stories from artists empowered by the internet and reasonable intellectual property law.
\n\n", "date_published": "2018-02-07T10:49:56+00:00", "date_modified": "2018-02-07T11:00:21+00:00", "author": { "name": "Nick Heer" } }, { "id": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/fcc-verizon-jokes/", "url": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/fcc-verizon-jokes/", "external_url": "https://gizmodo.com/fcc-says-releasing-jokes-it-wrote-about-ajit-pai-collud-1822763256?utm_campaign=socialflow_gizmodo_twitter&utm_source=gizmodo_twitter&utm_medium=socialflow", "title": "FCC Says Releasing ‘Jokes’ It Wrote About Ajit Pai Colluding With Verizon Would ‘Harm’ Agency", "content_html": "Dell Cameron, Gizmodo:
\n\n\n\n\nAt its own discretion, the Federal Communications Commission has chosen to block the release of records related to a video produced last year in which FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and a Verizon executive joke about installing a \u201cVerizon puppet\u201d as head of the FCC.
\n \nIn a letter to Gizmodo last week, the agency said it was withholding the records from the public in order to prevent harm to the agency \u2014 an excuse experts say is a flagrant attempt to skirt federal transparency law.
\n
I\u2019m not certain internal records are required to damage the agency\u2019s reputation these days.
\n\n", "date_published": "2018-02-06T13:44:40+00:00", "date_modified": "2018-02-06T13:44:40+00:00", "author": { "name": "Nick Heer" } }, { "id": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/apple-music-long-game/", "url": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/apple-music-long-game/", "external_url": "https://www.kirkville.com/apple-music-now-has-36-million-subscribers-could-eclipse-spotify-in-united-states-this-year-mac-rumors/", "title": "The Apple Music Long Game", "content_html": "Kirk McElhearn:
\n\n\n\n\nAs streaming takes over from buying music, what\u2019s the endgame? If Apple rolls in a major video offering \u2013 either as part of the Apple Music service, or as an add-on \u2013 then will Spotify be bought out by, say, Netflix? Amazon already has both, and there probably won\u2019t be room for more than two or three players in that market.
\n
Netflix doesn\u2019t offer a free tier. Why would Apple offer one with a subscription to streaming music \u2014 and so far, at least \u2014 original video programming?
\n\n", "date_published": "2018-02-06T13:33:32+00:00", "date_modified": "2018-02-06T13:33:32+00:00", "author": { "name": "Nick Heer" } }, { "id": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/apple-search-engine/", "url": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/apple-search-engine/", "external_url": "https://www.appleworld.today/blog/2018/2/5/will-apple-ever-make-its-own-search-engine-apple-search-anyone", "title": "Apple\u2019s Mysterious Search Engine Already Exists", "content_html": "Something fishy is going on in the world of Apple-centric websites. Yesterday, I posted a link to a silly piece arguing that Apple Music needs a free tier. Today, Dennis Sellers of Apple World Today is surprised by the idea that Apple might be working on a search engine:
\n\n\n\n\nA couple of years ago, Apple posted a listing to its Jobs at Apple page describing an engineering project manager position for “Apple Search.” Could the company could be working on a full-fledged search engine for use on macOS and iOS platforms?
\n
This already exists. It\u2019s built into Spotlight on MacOS and the iOS search function that used to be called Spotlight. It\u2019s also baked into Safari and Siri, the latter of which Sellers notes in his article.
\n\nIt\u2019s almost like both of these pieces were written by people completely unfamiliar with Apple\u2019s ecosystem. Maybe I\u2019m wrong \u2014 maybe I\u2019m just being cocky, and Apple is working on a rival to Google.com. Maybe I\u2019m completely misguided here. But I don\u2019t think so; both of these articles seem pretty boneheaded.
\n\n", "date_published": "2018-02-06T13:21:21+00:00", "date_modified": "2018-02-06T13:21:39+00:00", "author": { "name": "Nick Heer" } }, { "id": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/homepod-review-roundup/", "url": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/homepod-review-roundup/", "external_url": "https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/06/a-four-sentence-homepod-review-with-appendices/", "title": "HomePod Review Roundup", "content_html": "Reviews of the HomePod are going live across the web this morning ahead of its release this Friday, and it seems like it’s living up to what was promised: a very good speaker with extraordinary audio engineering and limited Siri capabilities.
\n\nNicole Nguyen, Buzzfeed:
\n\n\n\n\n[Kate Bergeron, vice president of hardware engineering,] was speaking to a small group of tech bloggers, including myself, last Monday in Apple\u2019s Cupertino, CA-based audio lab, just minutes from the new Apple Park spaceship campus. About six years ago, according to Bergeron, the company began working on HomePod by attempting to answer this question: \u201cWhat if we decided to design a loudspeaker that we could put in any room, and it wouldn\u2019t affect the sound?\u201d
\n \nThis question is very different from the question the Amazon Echo and Google Home are trying to address. Those speakers\u2019 primary aim is to offer hands-free help, by way of turning on the lights in the living room, telling you what traffic to work is like, setting timers, and playing podcasts while you\u2019re busy cooking breakfast.
\n
Matthew Panzarino, TechCrunch:
\n\n\n\n\nThe sound that comes from the HomePod can best be described as precise. It\u2019s not as loud as some others like Google Home Max or as bright (and versatile) as the Sonos Play 1, but it destroys the muddy sound of less sophisticated options like the Amazon Echo. To genuinely fill a large room you need two but anyone in a small house or apartment will get great sound from one.
\n \n[\u2026]
\n \nWhile you can send texts and take notes and set reminders and handle phone calls begun on your iPhone, that\u2019s about all of the extracurriculars and they\u2019re all focused on single-user experiences. If you\u2019re logged in to your iCloud account, all of the messages and calls are yours and come from you. That\u2019s great if you\u2019re a single dude living alone, but it completely falls apart in a family environment. Apple allows you to toggle these options off as the iCloud account owner and I recommend you do before it all ends in tears. Unless you live alone in which case Mazel, it sounds peaceful.
\n
Joanna Stern, Wall Street Journal:
\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThere are other problems I won\u2019t shut up about: Many people will put a HomePod in the kitchen, yet it can\u2019t set two simultaneous cooking timers. It can\u2019t wake me up to \u201cWake Me Up Before You Go-Go,\u201d either. Echo and Google Home can do both. Apple says it is improving Siri all the time.
\n \n[\u2026]
\n \nSiri turns out to be quite a good butler. Through the Home app, you can set up various HomeKit-compatible smart-home devices, and the voice prompts to control them. With Philips Hue lightbulbs and three iHome smart plugs, I was quickly commanding Siri to change my nightlight to a fuchsia hue, make tea via my electric kettle and turn on the humidifier.
\n
\n\n\nMost bizarre thing about HomePod: It didn\u2019t play music relevant to my listening history or prefs when asked \u201cHey Siri, Play some music.\u201d
\n \nSiri should be better on HomePod because it\u2019s the primary way to control it. But yeah, it\u2019s worse.
\n
I don’t think it’s a mistake to question whether Siri’s lacklustre abilities will be a hindrance to the success of the HomePod. Apple may be positioning it as a great speaker first and a smart speaker second, and the market will get to tell them whether that’s a reasonable way to judge the product. And, perhaps, people will love it for a speaker alone \u2014 it’s clearly a very good one. The more damning thing to consider about Siri is not that it is poor on the HomePod, but that it is poor everywhere. Fortunately, software can be updated, so that just means that we need to see some commitment from Apple that Siri is a high priority.
\n\n", "date_published": "2018-02-06T07:44:08+00:00", "date_modified": "2018-02-06T07:44:22+00:00", "author": { "name": "Nick Heer" } }, { "id": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/pai-cites-obama-broadband-investments/", "url": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/pai-cites-obama-broadband-investments/", "external_url": "https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/02/heres-ajit-pais-proof-that-killing-net-neutrality-created-more-broadband/", "title": "Ajit Pai\u2019s FCC Cites Obama-Era Broadband Investments", "content_html": "Stop me if you\u2019ve heard this one before, but an assessment made based on the actions of the current American administration has been undermined by their complete lack of scruples.
\n\nCrazy, I know.
\n\nEarlier this year, the FCC voted to retain a faster definition of broadband established by the previous administration. As far as I could tell, the defeated proposal was simply a way to broaden the definition of broadband and give the impression in reports that access to broadband had improved for Americans without doing the work of actually, you know, investing in better networks. After it was voted down, I figured that this FCC administration would, at least, avoid resorting to ridiculous tactics to gain the impression of a policy win without any actually good policy. But I should have known better.
\n\nJon Brodkin, Ars Technica:
\n\n\n\n\nAnyone who is familiar with the FCC chairman’s rhetoric over the past few years could make two safe predictions about this report. The report would conclude that broadband deployment in the US is going just fine and that the repeal of net neutrality rules is largely responsible for any new broadband deployment.
\n \nBut the FCC’s actual data\u2014based on the extensive Form 477 data submissions Internet service providers must make on a regular basis\u2014only covers broadband deployments through December 2016. Pai wasn’t elevated from commissioner to chairman until January 2017, and he didn’t lead the vote to repeal the net neutrality rules until December 2017. And, technically, those rules are still on the books because the repeal won’t take effect for at least another two months.
\n \nThe timing means that it would be impossible for Pai to present evidence today that broadband deployment is increasing as a result of the net neutrality repeal. But the report claims that’s exactly what happened anyway and says that future data will bear that out. To support its argument, the report claims that broadband deployment projects that were started during the Obama administration were somehow caused by Pai’s deregulatory policies.
\n
Not only are they counting Obama-era \u2014 and net neutrality-era \u2014 investment plans as evidence of improved broadband deployment thanks to rules friendly to giant ISPs, they’re also citing past investments that have since been curtailed due to policies implemented by this FCC administration. That’s some bullshit anti-consumer behaviour.
\n\n", "date_published": "2018-02-05T23:01:36+00:00", "date_modified": "2018-02-05T23:02:19+00:00", "author": { "name": "Nick Heer" } }, { "id": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/apple-music-growing-faster-than-spotify/", "url": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/apple-music-growing-faster-than-spotify/", "external_url": "https://www.macworld.com/article/3252780/streaming-services/apple-music-overtaking-spotify-in-the-u-s-shows-why-it-needs-a-free-tier-more-than-ever.html", "title": "In the U.S., Apple Music is Growing Faster Than Spotify in Paid Users", "content_html": "Michael Simon, Macworld:
\n\n\n\n\nAccording to The Wall Street Journal, Apple is on track to overtake Spotify in U.S. paid subscribers, a sign that the three-year-old music service is making serious inroads in a highly competitive landscape. The report states that Apple Music has been gaining U.S. subscribers at a 3 percent higher clip than Spotify, a trend that would give Apple’s music service a higher subscriber rate by the summer, assuming it continues.
\n
That\u2019s terrific news for Apple Music, especially considering that it is only available as a paid service. I wouldn\u2019t be surprised if many users are paying more for music now than they have for a long time. You might think \u2014 quite reasonably, I believe \u2014 that this indicates that Apple\u2019s strategy is working well.
\n\nBut not Simon:
\n\n\n\n\nWith a free Apple Music tier, Apple would not only get music fans to flock to its service in droves, it could also use it as a way to advertise HomePod as the best way to listen to Apple Music at home and AirPods as the ultimate on-the-go solution. With quick ads between songs, it would be speaking directly to a captive audience who shares a love for music. Simply put, there’s no better way to advertise.
\n
Without trying to predict the future, I don\u2019t think this fits the existing Apple Music strategy. The HomePod\u2019s integration is clearly best with Apple Music, but I\u2019m not sure that\u2019s a reason to provide a free tier; the free trial more aptly demonstrates the advantages of subscribing to Apple Music.
\n\nMore than anything, I think Simon falls into the same trap many others do: Apple isn\u2019t setting out to build the biggest user base, but a large paying user base. A free trial accomplishes that goal; a free tier does not.
\n\n", "date_published": "2018-02-05T13:45:07+00:00", "date_modified": "2018-02-05T14:28:42+00:00", "author": { "name": "Nick Heer" } }, { "id": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/cfpb-equifax-investigation-on-ice/", "url": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/cfpb-equifax-investigation-on-ice/", "external_url": "https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-equifax-cfpb/exclusive-u-s-consumer-protection-official-puts-equifax-probe-on-ice-sources-idUSKBN1FP0IZ", "title": "Reuters: CFPB Investigation Into Equifax \u2018Put on Ice\u2019", "content_html": "Patrick Rucker, Reuters:
\n\n\n\n\nThe CFPB has the tools to examine a data breach like Equifax, said John Czwartacki, a spokesman, but the agency is not permitted to acknowledge an open investigation. \u201cThe bureau has the desire, expertise, and know-how\u00a0in-house to vigorously pursue hypothetical matters such as these,\u201d he said.
\n \nThree sources say, though, Mulvaney, the new CFPB chief, has not ordered subpoenas against Equifax or sought sworn testimony from executives, routine steps when launching a full-scale probe. Meanwhile the CFPB has shelved plans for on-the-ground tests of how Equifax protects data, an idea backed by Cordray.
\n \nThe CFPB also recently rebuffed bank regulators at the Federal Reserve, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency when they offered to help with on-site exams of credit bureaus, said two sources familiar with the matter.
\n
An investigation of this size and scope will, of course, take lots of time and may not always take a linear direction, but there should never be a question about whether it is proceeding at all. Consumers should never have to wonder whether the Bureau is operating in their best interests, especially given the impact of the Equifax breach on virtually every American adult with a credit card, mortgage, or car.
\n\n", "date_published": "2018-02-05T13:21:41+00:00", "date_modified": "2018-02-10T20:44:24+00:00", "author": { "name": "Nick Heer" } }, { "id": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/publishers-abandoning-instant-articles/", "url": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/publishers-abandoning-instant-articles/", "external_url": "https://www.cjr.org/tow_center/are-facebook-instant-articles-worth-it.php", "title": "Major Publishers Are Turning Away From Facebook Instant Articles", "content_html": "Pete Brown, Columbia Journalism Review:
\n\n\n\n\nOf 72 publishers that Facebook identified as original partners in May and October 2015, our analysis of 2,308 links posted to their Facebook pages on January 17, 2018, finds that 38 publications did not post a single Instant Article \u2014 the platform\u2019s fast-loading, native format. In the meantime, Facebook has continued to tout Instant Articles as a success among its journalism efforts. Instant Articles enjoyed rapid expansion in 2017, it says. But if many of the largest reputable outlets are falling out, which publications are driving that growth?
\n
Do we think Facebook admits that Google AMP is winning the incredibly dumb race for proprietary news article format, that they keep trying to make Instant Articles work, or that they just give up on news altogether?
\n\n", "date_published": "2018-02-02T12:30:55+00:00", "date_modified": "2018-02-02T12:30:55+00:00", "author": { "name": "Nick Heer" } } ] }