Grubes on the economics of Android and Chrome:

Chrome makes no money at all on its own. It’s just a funnel for Google Search. Android maybe sort of kind of makes a little money for Google on its own, through the sale of Pixel devices, but it’s negligible. Like Chrome, Android really only exists as a funnel to keep users using Google search and within the broader Google digital ecosystem.

The best counterargument I could come up with was that both serve as first-party digital private investigators, which is likely worth something, though even that ultimately reduces to "broader Google ecosystem" which, itself, also seems to reduce down to search. Does Google sell its behavioral analytics data?

There's an interesting example of the power of this surveillence in The Trust Engineers podcast. Facebook had somewhat naively demonstrated that they had users [nearly everyone?] involved in several A/B style psychological tests at once, and were modifying feeds in ways that seemed to change those users' outlooks on life in general. Horrible ethical optics, and it sounds like potentially horrible ethical outcomes. Can you convince people to shop more? Spend more in specific categories? Give to charities less? Support fringe causes? Change political positions? Break family bonds? Etc.

I guess that's the power that Android and Chrome bring, though there is a bit of an underpants gnomes feel in here somewhere. Either this stuff is so effective I completely miss it or my inclination is accurate: They really don't know how to sell me music, books, goods that I actually like yet, even with all the extra information I've given them, intentionally or not. One day they might make a hard right into exploitation, but so far it doesn't really feel like they're even trying. I might have a profile they sell to companies who buy advertisements, but the advertisements aren't that much more effective than they were 20 years ago, and they should be waaaaay more effective by now!

Still, the point is a very interesting one: What's the long game for these culturally-central open source projects Google backs? Because it's certainly not as simple a profit-seeking setup as, say, selling lemonade on a hot day.

Labels: business, chrome, gruber, privacy

Ah, one quick Markdown lesson I learned recently.

If you've got Markdown inside of "real" block-level html tags, it's not supposed to be rendered.

<div>This is **some Markdown**.</div>

That shouldn't be bold. It renders as...

Unexpected, but (with a hat tip to this SO answer), apparently correct behavior according to The Grubes:

The only restrictions are that block-level HTML elements — e.g. <div>, <table>, <pre>, <p>, etc. — must be separated from surrounding content by blank lines, and the start and end tags of the block should not be indented with tabs or spaces. Markdown is smart enough not to add extra (unwanted) <p> tags around HTML block-level tags.

...

Note that Markdown formatting syntax is not processed within block-level HTML tags. E.g., you can’t use Markdown-style emphasis inside an HTML block.

Welcome to the land of unintended consequences. It looks like the deal was "stop adding all these danged <p> tags around my inline block-level html; it'd duping the breaks," and we got, "stop ALL markdown rendering in block tags" instead.

There is, however, a non-standard workaround, as described by Python-Markdown's docs:

The markdown attribute can be assigned one of three values: "1", "block", or "span".

Note: The expressions “block-level” and “span-level” as used in this document refer to an element’s designation according to the HTML specification. Whereas the "span" and "block" values assigned to the markdown attribute refer to the Markdown parser’s behavior.

markdown="1"

When the markdown attribute is set to "1", then the parser will use the default behavior for that specific tag.

So if you have

<div markdown="1">This is **some Markdown**.</div>

you should have

This is some Markdown.

... but I need to add that to MarkUpDown if I want to support it. And since it's not like someone is going to add that that doesn't want it, I guess I should!

Labels: gruber, html, markdown, markupdown

From Grubes:

Hugh Son, writing for CNBC:

Within the industry, the deal is widely perceived as one that’s risky for a bank to take on. Citigroup was in advanced negotiations with Apple for the card but pulled out amid doubts that it could earn an acceptable profit on the partnership, according to people with knowledge of the talks.

No [surprise] they’re going to make less money than cards that charge fees and higher interest rates. But they’re going to make money — I’ll eat my hat if Goldman and Apple don’t turn a profit on this card. CNBC’s headline — “A Goldman Sachs rival pulled out of the Apple Card deal on fears it will be a money loser” — makes it sound like they’re going to lose money, which is ludicrous. They’ll make money on each transaction and they’ll make money charging interest on any cardholder who carries a balance. Arguing that they won’t make enough money is just usurious greed.

I don’t use the word lightly, but it’s evil to argue against the software Apple is releasing to help cardholders avoid debt and pay down what debt they owe quickly.

Interesting take. More interesting is that Citigroup would pull out instead of submitting a proposal that wouldn’t be accepted. That is, it looks much worse now, imo, that they intentionally pulled out than it would’ve if they’d simply lost the bid.

Why worse? It’s not because they wouldn’t make money. I think Gruber misses the point. It’s because Citigroup can make more money per dollar invested doing something else. Their limiting reagent isn't "I've run out of activities that create more profit", but "I've run out of capital this fiscal year to spend on the highest profit activities we can find".

I might make money buying items from meh.com, waiting for them to arrive, packaging them back up, and selling them on eBay.

I bet I make more money per hour spent going to work as a software developer. I don't have the time to do both and stay sane. Therefore, I am a software developer. (Let’s ignore that the meh-resell business sounds like torture for the moment.)

That is, Citigroup felt it would make significantly less profit putting resources into Apple's card that it could make elsewhere.

And Apple’s own rates aren’t exactly low:

Variable APRs range from 13.24% to 24.24% based on creditworthiness.

But Citigroup does have credit cards! This shows you how absolutely essential to Citigroup’s bottom line fees are.

From the same page on the Apple Card:

We want to make it easier to pay down your balance, not harder. So Apple Card doesn’t have any fees.⁴ No annual, cash‑advance, over-the-limit, or late fees.⁵ No fees. Really.

⁴Variable APRs range from 13.24% to 24.24% based on creditworthiness. Rates as of March 2019.

⁵If you miss a payment, we won’t charge you a late fee or apply a new high-interest penalty rate. However, you will continue to accrue interest on your balance at your regular interest rate.

Insane. Apple wants to charge you interest on a loan, and they’ll stop at that. INSANE, I TELL YOU.

(Aside: I wonder what sort of return that really breaks down to on the "average" credit card. That is, you'll have defaults, and you have to pay for support staff, debt collectors, e/mailings, actually paying the merchants, etc. Is there an 100% markup on overhead, let's guess? I'd love to make 6.62-12.12% on my cash right now. The point being that Citigroup must be making mad cash elsewhere...)

The question becomes if it's fair to say, "Arguing that they won’t make enough money is just usurious greed." Is that right? Why don't we believe Citigroup is just trying to turn the highest profit, bless their hearts? That people knew what they're getting into and still opened the credit card? That if what Apple does is better for consumers, that people will use it?

This is perhaps the most interesting thought experiment -- how low a credit rating can you have and get this "above board" treatment? Can the Apple Card become the card of the masses, the card you see most in McDonald's and Wal-Mart? Because my guess is that it should.

I tend to agree with Gruber -- Is that a Citigroup logo (he said tongue in cheek… he hopes) on that title loan storefront?Does that make sense? If fees are what make credit cards most profitable, which means "what takes the most (or let's just say "significant") money out of consumers' pockets", and someone removes those fees, it's going to be significantly cheaper for those consumers to use that fee-free service.

At the same time, that's the country we live in. His line, ultimately, is a political one: Should we pass laws to restrict trade in the case of credit card fees so that we can better protect the consumer from themselves? Gruber's answer, whether he realizes it or not, is likely yes.

Or, if the market truly balances itself out, we’re going to see a crapload of Joe Six-Packs with an Apple Card in their wallet really soon.

Labels: apple, business, gruber

From the “comprehensive FAQ” John Gruber links to regarding "How ‘Sign In with Apple’ Works:

From a security perspective, Apple offers a better option for both users and developers alike compared with other social login systems which, in the past, have been afflicted by massive security and privacy breaches.

Why would we believe Apple, whose fails keep on giving, is going to do any better than any other option? I mean, privacy-wise, I’m excited to have this option. But anyone who thinks any sign-in provider is going to give you 100% hack-free protection has another thing coming.

The advantage here is that, if Apple’s smart, a successful hack will get at most an Apple ID. And even that ought to be hashed. There’s no reason to expose any additional personal information as part of this scheme.

Also, btw, this is just flat wrong:

6) If I let Apple make up a random email address for me, does Apple now have the ability to read my email?

No. For those who want a randomized email address, Apple offers a private email relay service. That means it’s only routing emails to your personal inbox. It’s not hosting them.

Um, yes, Apple they can read your email as a relay service. Unless the email is encrypted, how can’t they? If you believe they’re not storing it, great, attack vector greatly reduced. But Apple, along with ANYONE else relaying your email from sender to your box can potentially read the contents of unencrypted text. And that’s all email typically is: Unencrypted text.

Email is inherently insecure. If you’re using https to transfer it, that’s great, but even then, Apple’s going to be on the other end of that https train. They will have the ability to read it, but it’d kill their “privacy” based marketing claims, so I’ll assume they’re being more careful than most companies with those zeroes and ones.

But if some nefarious admin at Apple wanted to read your relayed emails, they certainly could.

Labels: apple, gruber

Daring Fireball has some thoughts on why iPad sales are down:

By 1987 or 1988, it was easy to argue that the Mac was, hands-down, the best platform the world had ever seen for graphic designers and visual artists. By 1991 — seven years after the original Mac — I think it was inarguable...

That’s just not true for iPad. The iPad is a terrific platform for casual use. I think it’s better than a MacBook for reading and watching video. It’s great for casual gaming. I know plenty of people who much prefer the iPad as a tool for writing. Not because iPad writing apps are more powerful, but rather because they’re simpler, less distracting, and easier to focus upon. None of those are compelling reasons to upgrade an older iPad for a newer more powerful one. In fact, those are all good explanations for why owners of older iPads (especially starting around 2012’s iPad 4) see no reason to upgrade. [emphasis mine -mfn]

This begs the question, "Why do we feel we need to upgrade our phones so much more often than our tablets?"

There are lots of "obvious" reasons.

• Your phone is the computer you always have with you.
• This also dovetails nicely with, "Our phones get more use".
• Better cameras
  • iPads, as annoying and obvious as folks are who do use them as cameras, aren't nearly as nice as point-and-shoot camera substitutes.
• Service provider upgrade subsidies
• iPhone 6 screen size, though that should have balanced by now.
• Status symbols.
  • iPhones are public. iPads are private.

But I wonder if there's an even simpler practical explanation: When we use our phones, we're in a hurry. A few hundred milliseconds is a much bigger delay for typical phone usage than when you're relaxing/consuming on your iPad.

When I'm in a hurry, a faster processor/experience matters more.

In "patting your own back" news...

From Apple unlikely to develop an Echo-like standalone Siri speaker - report:

Apple doesn't appear interested in developing a standalone Amazon Echo-like speaker utilizing Siri, as the company's vision is instead linked to devices like the iPhone, Apple Watch and AirPods.

Apple has "no apparent interest" in replicating the Alexa family of devices, according to Time's Tim Bajarin. Citing discussions with unnamed Apple executives, the future goal of the technology is to utilize Siri as an "omnipresent AI assistant across devices" rather than have a central hub.

File that away in the annuals of, "I believe I had that."

Labels: alexa, business, gruber, iPad, iphone, siri, TKHadThat, W1 chip

Seems some of the blowback against the new MacBook Pros gets caught with the 16 gig RAM limit. That's a good place to start. I get sort of tired of the lumping Gruber does to work himself out of RAM being a problem.

From Daring Fireball: Baldur Bjarnason: 'The Downside of Believing in Apple':

Most of us, if given the choice between making compromises to our productivity and compromises to the battery life of the machines we buy, would choose a shorter battery life every time.

This is the nut of the argument against the new MacBook Pros. If the 16 GB RAM limit in the previous MacBook Pros was a limiting factor for your productivity, the new ones are no help at all. And I’m sure Bjarnason is correct that those people would gladly trade battery life for the ability to install 32 GB of RAM.

But that’s not most MacBook Pro users. Most MacBook Pro users will do just fine with 16 GB of RAM (in fact, most will do just fine with the 13-inch models’ default configuration of 8 GB). For most MacBook Pro users, Apple is right to prioritize battery life over the maximum RAM configuration. That is, if they’re only going to offer one lineup of “pro” notebooks — which is how they’ve done it for at least 15 years.

...

Because we’ve bought into Apple’s design myth, we are forced to come to one and only one conclusion:

Apple really, really doesn’t care about its professional Mac users.

I disagree with that conclusion. If your priority is the display, the new displays are brighter (500 nits) and offer wide color gamut. The new MacBook Pro SSDs offer industry-leading read and write performance, years ahead of the competition. The 15-inch MacBook Pro offers a quad-core i7 with speeds up to 3.8 GHz. For many demanding use cases, these are professional machines. Just not all professions.

A less punchy, but more accurate title for Bjarnason’s piece would be “The Downsides of Depending Upon a Company With a Relatively Sparse Product Lineup When Your Personal Needs Are Outside the Mainstream”.[highlighted emphasis mine -mfn]

I'm sighing just reading back through this.

1. Not only did Apple only make one line for pros (why the quotes, John?), they said one version of the MacBook Pro was their intended replacement for a consumer box. rly?
2. Web developers are not outside of the mainstream when it comes to pros using laptops.
   • If anything, web developers are archetypal.
   • (Not a majority, but representative.)
3. It's not a zero-sum game between battery and RAM.
   • Why not make the 15" 2mm taller? Who'd care short of Apple design?
   • Why are we so obsessed with thin and 10 hours of battery life?
4. Can Stephen King make a living writing books on a MacBook Pro? Sure. That doesn't make it a professional laptop.
   • We're starting to lose the meaning of the word professional.

But let's take a quick second to see what Baldur talked about. Does he really need 16 gigs of RAM today? Remember when we used to do fine with 4 megs? ;^)

From The downside of believing in Apple – Baldur Bjarnason:

I’m writing this on a fairly high spec 2015 13’ Macbook Pro with 16GB of RAM and that amount of RAM wasn’t enough even on the day I bought it. Since then the memory requirements of basic web development work has only increased:

• Most web developers now use VMs and Docker for server-side code because it’s much more reliable. It also consumes much more RAM than just using node.js on its own.
• Browsers have, if anything, increased their memory use over the past couple of years and web developers need to run several of them at a time.
• Some of those browser have to be run in their own VMs because they don’t run natively on the Mac.
• Having a test environment in a VM on your machine is also much more productive than always going to your test machine (which you should also have).
• The dominant web development IDEs are now built using browser tech (Electron/Chromium) and have much higher memory requirements than good old BBEdit. If you use TypeScript, you pretty much have to be using Visual Studio Code. If you use Flow, you pretty much have to be using Atom. Switching to a code editor with a more reasonable memory requirement means making workflow compromises.

That’s without getting into the graphics programs we use (a surprising amount of web work involves working with images). And if you’re a native app developer you have all of the above problems (VMs for testing earlier OS versions instead of browser versions) plus a need for fast compilation times.

We're really down to one reason -- VMs. If your developer box is used to host multiple boxes' worth of power, well, you do need more than one box worth of hardware. And Baldur, my man, why in the world do you have your production environment mirrored on your laptop?

But I agree with Bjarnason on the general point. If your laptop for pros is below state of the art for specs and you're charging beyond state of the art prices, well, you've screwed up. If you don't have too much battery life or RAM or CPU (to be clear, having too much should be your goal with a pro box) so that you can make your laptop thin and svelte, that's a problem. In two years, it'll hurt to use this MacBook Pro for VM based development, whether web or native, and that's a disservice from Apple when there's no obvious hardware to fill that gap for professionals. The 5k iMac is the closest, I suppose, but even that's over a year old now (415 days right now).

So Grubes, come on, let's stop pretending that because Apple has a box with a 2.9GHz i7 for OMGWTFBBQ!1! an entry price of $2700 that we've got pros covered. That's not competitive for many developers, who only "need" Macs to test out Safari -- or to host Windows in VMware to code native apps. These developers have other, much more useful, efficient, and affordable options. Apple's failed them, and Bjarnason's conclusion, that, "Apple really, really doesn’t care about its [software developing] Mac users," isn't that far off the mark after all.

Labels: apple, gruber, macbook pro, truck

The MacBook Pro with Touch Bar review embargo is apparently over. From Review: Apple's late-2016 15" MacBook Pro with Touch Bar:

The 15 inch model has two base configurations: the first ($2399) using a 2.6 GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 Skylake (6700HQ) with 6MB shared L3 cache...

If that's right, and I'm a little surprised to see it, the $2400 entry-level 15" MacBook Pro has exactly the same processor my $850 Lenovo Y700 has.

Wow. I got 15" MacBook Pro internals over half a year earlier for a third of the price. Okay, okay, my battery life STINKS and the keyboard & trackpad aren't nearly as nice as the MBP's likely are, but wow. The Touch Bar & Force Trackpad simply aren't worth $1500 to me.

YMMV, of course.

<rant>But this is why I hate articles like this one that ended up on DaringFireball:

On the 27th October Apple unveiled their new line of MacBook Pros. Since then half of what I read online seems to be “Professionals” (those guys), telling me it’s not Pro at all, not Pro enough or not the right kind of Pro. How many of these people have even touched the new devices?

Very few.

I’ve been using the new 15” MacBook Pro (with Touch Bar) for the last week or so for actual work, so here’s my “Professional” opinion.

Oh, like I have to touch it to know it's really worth an extra $1500. (Even more ironic now that we know I've been using the MBP 15"'s processor for six months.) Or that fact that it works great today means that it's a good deal and well spec'd out. Would you rather buy a brand new box in two years and still have spent $700+ less than you would have buying a MBP today, or would you rather be stuck with something that's already debatably underspec'd for the next three or four years?

So what is he doing?

From co.uk:

I’m an editor at Trim Editing in London, where we cut high end commercials, music videos and films. We’re a small company and choose individually what we want to edit with. I happen to use Final Cut Pro X (If you’d like to debate with me endlessly about the Pro’ness of FCP X, you can do that here) So I’m in a good position to try out the new devices and see what they are/aren’t capable of.

Oh, oh good. Video editing. With Final Cut Pro. Yes, I'll readily admit the MacBook Pro is a better box for FCP users than a Windows box. /sigh

I understand that if money's no object (and nowhere does that review mention "price" or "$"), this is a great computer. Would I like my Lenovo to have a great keyboard, insanely great trackpad, more battery life, and a fancy function key replacement bar? Yes, yes I would. But I do worry about price. We all should. Heck, imagine the amorphous "good" you could do donating $1500 somewhere. If you have to use Final Cut Pro, well, there's no conversation to have. But FPC !== Pro, kk?

Or this...

From Daring Fireball:

MacRumors forum member, in the first comment after the announcement of new MacBook Pros:

Well, I’m sure I’ll be attacked for this, but I’m gonna say it anyway:

Tiny harddrive, barely enough RAM (and not upgradable to the “enough” level), no dedicated graphics, only dual-core processors. It certainly isn’t bad, but Apple just took the “pro” out of the 13-inch line. And come on - it’s freaking expensive. […]

The 13” is NOT a pro device in my opinion. It’s more like a beefed-up and slightly heavier MacBook Air. For that, it just costs way too much.

This isn’t a new comment. This was posted 4 years ago, in response to the last major MacBook Pro redesign. Déjà vu. (Via.)

Clever. Sooooo the reaction's been the same for two generations (at least) of MBP. As if that made the overall lack of Mac updates bearable. If anything, it just reminds me that the Mac Tax returned earlier than I gave it credit for. Why am I waiting years to get a new processor in a mini or Pro again?

Look, if you need macOS to do your work, I get it. This $2400 beast is your new laptop. If your work is OS agnostic, the chasm just keeps growing. Stick with Windows or Linux and enjoy your fat wallet.</rant>

Labels: business, gruber, hats of money, macbook pro

From Daring Fireball: Design to Bring About the Future:

Marco Arment, “Design for the Present”:

A pro laptop released today should definitely have USB-C ports — mostly USB-C ports, even — but it should also have at least one USB-A port.

Including a port that’s still in extremely widespread use isn’t an admission of failure or holding onto the past — it’s making a pragmatic tradeoff for customers’ real-world needs. I worry when Apple falls on the wrong side of decisions like that, because it’s putting form (and profitability) over function.

...

But this is not how Apple thinks about transitions like this. They design for the future, and in doing so, they bring the future here faster. In the alternate universe where the new MacBook Pros ship with one USB-A port, the transition to ubiquitous USB-C peripherals and cables will happen at least a little slower.

See? Gruber's usually right on the Apple-aesthetic money. (But isn't it "more slowly"?)

I was going to reply to Marco's post myself to say something similar. If there's one thing that Jobsian-Apple (so any time before Jobs left, and anytime, up to & including now, after he returned) does better than anyone, it's follow this advice from The Great One:

“I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.”

 --Wayne Gretzky

Marco's asking Apple to skate to where the puck has been. Bad advice.

Lots of things wrong with the Mac line-up. The desktops are fossils, and the new MacBook Pros are too expensive and easily argued to be underpowered, refusing to wholly make up for the desktop gaps. But in five years, when I might want 32 gigs of RAM, I'll definitely want USB-C ports. My current laptop doesn't have them, and that's already a pain when it comes to docking options.

Maybe we should take a second to consider what Apple expects you to connect to your ports:

1. Thunderbolt monitor 1 (includes power & ports)
2. Optional Thunderbolt monitor 2 (also includes ports)
3. A dock, if your monitors aren't enough -- or something they didn't think of.
4. Something else they didn't think of. (The "horn of a rabbit" port)

The third and fourth are really just favors Apple's paying to you already. You need a controller per monitor, and Apple's throwing in an extra port per controller.

External keyboard and mouse -- and headphones/AirPods -- are all supposed to be wireless in Apple-world now. If there's anything you're not attaching to your monitor or dock, what is it? If you're mobile, you don't need anything else (in Apple world) beyond the power supply. You have the best screen, keyboard, and trackpad available. USB-C thumb drives exist, and are often faster than the crap you're still shoving in your USB-A ports.

What are you missing?

There's really only one place you can ding them on ports, and that's that there's no USB-C to Lightning cable in the iPhone 7 box.

Every Mac user thought the end of ADB (and every PC user the parallel port!) was the end of the world. Anybody (other than Gruber -- no, really) using an ADB or parallel port device now?

(And does anyone really think Apple's doing USB-C for profit? What, are they making billions on adapters? Seriously, who is buying MBPs? Joe iPhone User? Probably not. And Jane Creative Pro knows Monoprice & friends has cheaper options. Plus, honestly, you know, I really don't mind the symmetry.)

EDIT: See, this is completely wrong:

From appleinsider.com:

OWC announces Thunderbolt 3 Dock with ports galore, returns functionality to new MacBook Pro

By AppleInsider Staff Wednesday, November 02, 2016, 06:15 pm PT (09:15 pm ET)

Capitalizing on Apple's decision to go all in on Thunderbolt 3 with its latest MacBook Pro, aftermarket Mac specialist OWC is taking preorders for a 13-port breakout dock that restores expansion options lost with the new laptop design. 

No, no it does not. These options weren't lost. Apple wants you to use a dock. This is what USB-C enables, for heaven's sake.

Do you need ethernet when you're away from your desk? How about digital audio out? Thunderbolt? DisplayPort? An additional USB-C port?

If you need a USB-A port, you can get a slick metal adapter for $10 shipped with Prime. Think of it as part of the device you're plugging in, and it doesn't seem as unwieldy.

If you use SD cards on the road to download images and you were considering a MBP, I feel for you. No, really. That does stink.

Otherwise, stop it. This is exactly what Apple intended.

Labels: apple, design, Gretzky, gruber, obsolescence

I like John Gruber a lot, but his reactions to the new MacBook Pro have been wildly off the mark.

When Tim says "P-C" you say, "Now also inclu-udes MacBooks"!

From Daring Fireball: Translation From Apple Lingo to English of Tim Cook's Year-Ago 'Why Would You Buy a PC Anymore?' Comment:

People are pointing to this as proof that Tim Cook doesn’t care about the Mac, because he thinks everybody should just switch to an iPad Pro. But here’s the thing, in Apple lingo, the Mac is not a “PC”. A “PC” is a personal computer that runs Windows or Linux or whatever. I’m not splitting hairs here — this is how people inside Apple talk. It’s right there in the opening lines of the years-long “Get a Mac” ad campaign (66 ads!) — “I’m a Mac…”, “… and I’m a PC.”

No, Gruber's just plain wrong. I thought I remembered Cook using "PC" to mean Mac and WinPC, and, after a little Googling, found I was right:

@gruber Cook *has* said PC to mean Mac. https://t.co/bq0eG0eIjj pic.twitter.com/3vYWU6bx7f

— Ruffin (@r_ffin) November 1, 2016

Here it is in context (this is a transcript of Cook talking to Goldman Sachs):

If we had a meeting today in this hotel and we invited everybody that’s working on the coolest PC apps to come to the meeting–you might not find anybody in the meeting! But if you did that same thing for iOS or that other operating system, and said everybody that’s working on this come, you couldn’t get everybody in [this?] hotel. You’d have somebody covering every square inch here. That’s where the innovation [is;?] here. That doesn’t mean the PC is going to die; I love the Mac! And the Mac is still growing, and I think it can still grow.

Sorry, man. Tim Cook uses "PC" to mean "anyone's PC".

I know Jobs didn't. Cook always has. Used to sound incongruous when he did it, but now that Windows is sort of a lesser beast, it makes some sense to stop with the Mac/PC dichotomy. Macs sell like mad [in the limited market which is Cook's PC]. Macs & other PCs makers are equals at worst. Calling them all PC manufacturers allows Apple to be one of the best of the breed.

Slow your horses, DF

Anyhow, just plain wrong on this one. What worries me is that we're skirting fanboy territory in Daring Fireball recently. Gruber is usually pretty measured in his comments about Apple. Don't get me wrong; his aesthetic so closely parallels Apple's that you do have to wonder how much is "his" and how much has been internalized from watching Apple so closely all these years. But wherever the aesthetic comes from (and I think it's predominantly his own), I think John does a great job letting Apple know when they've missed their own mark, so to speak. That's what keeps you from becoming a fanboy.

But here, well, there's a segment of traditional Mac users that weren't served by the light at the end of the MacBook Pro upgrade tunnel. After waiting years to buy a new Mac, we get overpriced, underpowered, underspecced boxes. I tried to explain why we're disappointed, using expectations set by Steve Jobs. These aren't the trucks we were looking for.

And it's not because the only way to deliver was to make ugly boxes. That is, "nice" vs "well spec'd" isn't a zero sum game, which is nearly what Gruber argued yesterday when stumbling over a comparison of MBPs to System76 Linux laptops:

(I will add that the Oryx is ugly as sin, and doesn’t have a retina-resolution display. Here I am slamming it.)

But the price you pay for the MacBook Pro isn’t about the sum of the components. It’s about getting them into that sleek, lightweight form factor, too. In a word, Apple is optimizing the MacBook lineup for niceness. That’s frustrating — in some cases, downright angering — for people who want a notebook optimized for performance.

Perfect rebuttal? Look to this post, quoted on Michael Tsai's excellent roundup, New MacBook Pros and the State of the Mac:*

David Owens II:

To me, Thursday’s event signaled one thing for me, and maybe I’m completely wrong, but the Mac is officially over.

[…]

Apple, the MacBook Pro is not a pro-level computer. It’s simply not.

You want to see what a pro-level laptop looks like? Look at the Razer lineup. They are crushing it on terms of performance and style in hardware design.

You can shoot down System76 for making chunky Linux boxes. You can't say this about Razer. Small, "nice", fast, and fairly well priced. Maybe my Lenovo truck is ugly (it largely is), but the Razer isn't.

And, as David Owens rightly says, the MBP "is not a pro-level computer". The MBP isn't a "Pro" computer to the point that Schiller himself during the laptop roll-out suggested that the "professional" but entry level MBP was a replacement for the consumer MacBook Air. As I emailed Gruber this morning, "When you slot a MBP into the consumer half of the product grid, we've got a problem [with meeting past expectations, at least]." ^{(Note: I just added "meeting".)}

* Speaking of Tsai's roundup, it also included my earlier post -- wow. Lots of clicks from Tsai, but then another HUGE bump once Daring Fireball linked to him. So 4x Tsai clicks just from being grand-fireballed!

Labels: apple, cook, gruber, hardware, linux, macbook pro, windows

From FiveThirtyEight.com

But it seems fair to say that, if Trump loses the election, it will be because women voted against him.

I'm slowly starting to see what it feels like to be lumped into a demographic. Between this, "locker room talk", and "mansplaining", I'd really like us to find a less socially coercive version of the concept of "gentlemen" that we could use to split the monolithic "men" into at least two groups. Or whatever term you want. I'm probably a little biased here. "Unconventionally sensitive XYs." Whatever.

Let's look at Nate Silver's numbers:

For heaven's sake, Nate, there are three polls with men voting for Clinton ahead of Trump. Overall, it's a five point swing average. I guess that means Trump 40% and Clinton 35% or therebouts, with 25% undecided or 3rd partied, just to throw a dart at the wall.

That means 7/8^th as many men are voting for Clinton as Trump according to Silver's numbers. That's a crudload of XYs.

Further, it'd be in spite of 40% of women voting for a major party voting for Trump. (I'm trying to stay reasonably impartial in my presentation here, but wow. Just wow.)

In other words, If Trump loses the election, it's not because men voted for him. It's not because women voted against him. It's because the country voted against him, and he lost. And vice versa if Clinton loses.

If you wanted to say what Silver tried with more skill, it'd be to say, "If Trump loses the election, it's because his lead with men was larger than Clinton's lead with women."

Stop normalizing me, dang it. Every American without two X chromosomes isn't voting for Trump, and, strangely enough, everyone with isn't voting for Clinton.

Labels: gruber, Other Stuff, politics

From DaringFireball:

A new Rolex needs to look like a Rolex. A Leica needs to look like a Leica. A new Coca-Cola bottle needs to look like a Coca-Cola bottle.

I mean, I get the point that each is iconically designed, generally, but, um...

Put another way, Andy Warhol would've only included one of those in his pop-art series (mais quelle ironie, non?)

Labels: design, gruber

Gruber weighs in on the rumored iTunes reboot:

What do you see when you open the Spotify or Pandora apps? Just the streaming music you have access to. That makes them less complicated, by definition. “Everything you see is in the cloud, and you have access to it because you are a subscriber” is easy to understand. “Some of this is in the cloud, some of this you own” is more complicated.

He's joining a reasonably long list of Apple pundits with the request to split Apple Music into its own app, the most recent I can think of offhand was Jared Sinclair, whose step two of four ways to reorg Music was, "Bye, Bye, iPod - Break out all the legacy iPod features into another app."

The worst part is that, sort of like the Big Jennifer Null stuff I've mentioned recently, the iTunes confusion really was preventable.

Gruber leaves the door open on the preventable part, saying,

Maybe there’s a way to design “all your music in one app” that is completely clear, convenient, and obvious.

The four sets of Apple Music

Well, the idea Apple had was bang on. It shouldn't matter where your music lives, you should be able to sync it all. There are really only four sets of music files from iTunes' perspective:

1. Files that you brought to Apple music (no DRM)
2. Files Apple thinks it's matched from 1.) on another of your devices (no DRM)
3. Files Apple didn't match from 1.) and allows you to copy to your other devices via their cloud (no DRM)
   • This is really another version of 1, just copied to a new device.
4. Files you've only ever gotten from an Apple Music subscription (DRM)

Apple should keep 1.) around like those files are gold. Never let the user whack those without going through some sort of "locked button with cover" removal process. As Jason Snell points out, there's a real UI issue here, but also a serious functional one. "Remove download" should never throw your original files in the trash. Warn that those are files that you brought to Apple Music, and that deleting them will irrevocably remove the originals. And even then, after they're deleted, make sure users can redownload matched versions at the worst, if they were matched, without DRM, until their subscription lapses. Better is to immediately create a backup of that original file, though I realize there are cases where the user might really rather that original disappear immediately.

Files from 2.) should similarly always be downloaded without DRM. There should also be the possibility of saying, "That's a bad match; give me my original file." Maybe in version two you let the user pick from other possible matches, and then you cloud source the right matches after you get a better idea what goes where.

Files from 3.) are pretty simple. You didn't match 'em, so you let folks copy them anywhere they are logged into iTunes. It's pretty much what Dropbox does.

For the fourth, well, the only real gotcha is when they really do match something from 1.), and Apple mismatched it. But then you've already got both files. If someone tries to delete their original because it's now "duplicated", you should send them through that "locked button cover" process, and possibly have a, "duplicate match" reason there. Then you should delete the file from 4, not 1.

Note that there's another category that we're going to ignore to make things simpler -- things that should be matches that aren't matched. I'd provide a mechanism to say when something's mismatched, but if there isn't a match found and should've been, having the original file from 1.) on another machine isn't too bad. That is, there's Category 5: Things Apple should've matched with AACs they have on file and didn't. Instead of providing a way to say so in order that you get more 2.), just leave them in Category 3 until you get everything else straight. That often happens now, and it's fine.

When your Apple Music subscription lapses, you should probably also be given a final download session (that could take weeks to finish), possibly even on more than one device. "Your Apple Music subscription has ended. Would you like to download your matched and/or original files that are currently missing on this Mac/PC?"

Notice that the first three categories make up iTunes Match.

iTunes Match should've let Apple know that they weren't doing a great job of providing its eponymous function -- matching -- and they really needed to make sure they could get 1.), 2.), & 3.) right before going whole hog into a unified Apple Music. But it's still just a database management problem. They "simply" should have been much more defensive with Apple Music for when matching failed. If your user doesn't have a file three places, don't delete it.

But as long as you have a space for a flag on each file to say which it is -- an unDRM'd original*, an unDRM'd "likely match", or a DRM'd file that's never been matched -- you don't have this trouble.

It takes some great QA, but it's a straightforward, at worst tedious, process. I could make such a system without the issues Apple's seen in, let's say, six months, and I could recommend a good five or so folks that could as well.

• "UnDRM'd" could also included files purchased before iTunes removed DRM.

Labels: apple fail, Apple Music, coding, fail, gruber, iTunes, qa, rdbms

Was listening to The Talk Show with Jason Snell talking about the latest Apple event, and heard them talking a good deal about why, say, the SE had top of the line hardware and why the iPad Pro 9.7" had some new stuff but not everything the larger Pro has (it has True Tone, but not USB 3).

I think the Apple strategy when designing new consumer products is pretty simple: Use whatever's best today.

We first saw this with the new iPod touch. The iPod touch surprisingly had the same stuff inside, give or take, as an iPhone 6, then the Apple flagship, but without a price increase over the previous generation. Wait, what? For a while, it the iPod touch was the best iOS deal going. (Where was Ben Thompson's "cannibalizing" argument then? Apple's cards were already down.)

Same thing happened with the iPhone SE. They're redesigning an iOS device, and they grab the state of the art off that's already on the shelf -- and if some dates and chip serial numbers (?) are to be believed, many of the SE's chips were made well before the SE was.

And this makes good sense if you want to maximize your users' experience. I'm going to bet that the marginal cost of making a million more A9's is essentially the same as making a million A8's. And if that's true, what do you use on your SE? For your users' sake, you use A9's. Apple had the A9 in hand, was making a new motherboard, and poof, it's an easy design to use your design dollars to make that mobo hook up to the A9.*

The only reason to use an A8 would be so you're not competing with yourself. It's not a cost thing. It's not a supply-side concern. The only reason to make more A8s instead of more A9s would be so that the SE doesn't undermine your iPhone 6s.

Apple's telling us, I think, that's it's not doing that any more.

This is sorta what Ben Thompson's been saying, though he doesn't (surprisingly for him) do a good job explaining it yet -- Apple is giving maximum customer experience even though it'll cannibalize its own flagship sales. No SE? I know I would've jumped once the 7 came out. But once you put aside the temptation to undercut your own product, you release better ones. And ones that you can sell longer.

But this is not the same as a Celeron. This is not crippled hardware going downmarket. This is the best existing hardware without compromise.

Aside: And with the price cut, Thompson has completely whiffed. Decent retrospective save, but absolutely no warning from him this might happen. I really meant to email him before the SE to ask what price we'd have to go to before he would 100% talk the over.

Instead of predicting Apple's SE price drop, I'd say he'd at least implied the opposite would happen. At what point is there a "middle market" that he says currently doesn't exist with smartphones? That is, if this is a broadening of the high end, give me a price at which the high is no longer high.S

The iPad Pro is interesting in that it does get bleeding edge state of the art with True Tone. But it's a "Pro" device. It should be chasing and integrating the state of the art. But it's the Tiny Pro... which means we can sacrifice features to get the right size inside. Though I would be curious to know how much it was developed in parallel with vs. orthogonal to the Giant Pro. Did the Pro have extra space that allowed USB 3? Did Apple decide that USB 3 wasn't important?

Guess when the next iPod touch refresh is going to happen? We're probably still a couple of years out. Would you be surprised if it got top of the line stuff when it is refreshed, though? I wonder how closely the iPod touch refresh will mirror the SE's.

* It makes a lot of sense that they didn't use an A10 in the SE, btw. When you have the mobo chasing the processor, you've got a much more difficult game. And if you're not ramping up production lines on the A10 yet, well... The SE needed to use the best parts on hand, the best known knowns, I guess. So you see all recycled parts. You don't create a new 4" case; you use the assembly line that you've already got running. You don't add a new processor; you grab the best you're already producing in bulk. Your only new part is the motherboard.

Labels: apple, business, gruber, iphone, ipod, stratechery

Daring Fireball, quoting the NY Post:

Master keys for every elevator in the city, major construction sites, subways and skyscrapers are being freely sold online, despite a city law that makes it illegal for unauthorized persons to possess them.

A New Jersey-based lock company is peddling an unlimited supply of New York City’s “1620” fire service keys on eBay at $15.50 for two.

Access to the Big Apple keys is sharply restricted. It’s unlawful for anyone other than firefighters, law-enforcement personnel, elevator contractors or inspectors and building owners to have them.

But a Post reporter bought two keys to the city with no questions asked from UltimateSecurityDevices.com, an online arm of Northeast Lock Corp. in Clifton, NJ.

Gruber's response:

This is, effectively, what the Department of Justice wants for the iPhone.

Here's the part that I think is widely underreported/argued/claimed, and it's painful to see Gruber skip over it: Networked devices aren't like physical ones in that there's not absolute geographical protection. If you want to break into my elevator, you at also have to be there. If you want to break into Director Comey's car trunk, you have to be beside his car. And I bet there's at least one camera on you.

I can't break into a NY elevator or Directory Comey's car trunk from overseas. But folks can break into your PC or phone more easily overseas than they can in your driveway.

Your "back door", if you have one, is accessible to anyone on the network, not just the guys who drive to your neighborhood. Joel Spolsky talks about barriers to entry. Actually having to get there is one of the biggest.

This is why I wrote, "A better neighborhood for our personal data". We have one small street, geographically speaking, with a billion-plus people all living there, their personal data exposed to any other unscrupulous schmoe living on our single street. A locksmith once told me that a lock keeps an honest man honest. A billion men aren't all going to be honest, man.

PS Google: Beetee Dub, I didn't write about better neighborhoods for our data in 2002, okay? Why can't Google index blogspot correctly? I've consistently seen search issues (or items that would pop up in blogger's interface when searching, but not on Google) with my blog. I mean, it is at least marginally in Google's own interest to support blogspot well, right? Right? /sheesh

Labels: encryption, gruber, networking, safety

John Gruber on Om Malik on ads in Instagram:

UPDATE: My best guess, and a few readers have made the same guess, is that I don’t see ads on Instagram because I don’t have a Facebook account.

Strikes me as an odd missed use case, unless it's more happy-path-only QA testing we've unfortunately come to expect from Apple too often lately.

I mean, honestly, picture viewing can be used are just like any other set of data points. If he's viewed pictures by anyone else who is Facebooked in, you've got a good starting place. If he's in his own Facebookless circle of schmoes, just drop in adverts for Coke or something similarly universal-ish.

Weird. Can you really inhabit a set for which Facebook has no targeted ads? Did they really not have any concept of untargeted ads to serve up for the null set? Hard to believe.

Labels: business, facebook, gruber, instagram, qa

Apple "Announcement"
That sure as [heck] can’t be a reference to bigger iPhones, and it doesn’t sound like a watch that counts your steps and shows you notifications as they come in.

The market shows that one size does not fit all. I don’t know that they should have done it sooner, but it certainly feels like the time for multiple iPhone sizes has come.

Labels: apple, gruber, hats of money, iphone, iTV

Each of these passages has faults of its own, but, quite apart from avoidable ugliness, two qualities are common to all of them. The first is staleness of imagery; the other is lack of precision. The writer either has a meaning and cannot express it, or he inadvertently says something else, or he is almost indifferent as to whether his words mean anything or not.

This mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence is the most marked characteristic of modern English prose, and especially of any kind of political writing. As soon as certain topics are raised, the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed; prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated hen-house.

Labels: gruber, language, meaning

And yesterday we were reminded, again, that people like indie software. Even with all the changes over the years — App Stores, iPhones, iPads, etc. — people still like supporting the village toymaker.

Labels: coding, gruber, indie

Labels: apple, gruber

We looked through photographs of luxury watches, thinking about how they used orange as a pop color for branding or second hands. I offered opinions, but John tracked hex codes along with impressions in a Field Notes notebook. We aren’t afraid to sweat the details.

Labels: apple, gruber