The Brooks Review

Month: September 2012

  • Samsung’s Identity

    Choe Sang-Hun in a long piece for The New York Times about Samsung, perfectly encapsulates what Samsung is, was, and will continue to be:
    >Although the name Samsung is synonymous with sophistication among South Koreans, the company has never created a product so innovative that it has defined an era in consumer culture, like the Sony Walkman or the Apple iPhone.

    Samsung has done an amazing job, as the article points out, at reacting quickly and moving fast when another companies idea catches a spark.

    >“Look what has happened to companies like Nokia, Motorola and BlackBerry, which didn’t do as Samsung did,” Mr. Song added, referring to competitors whose failures to adapt quickly to the smartphone boom driven by iPhones have drastically reduced their market shares. “Samsung may lack in innovation, but right now, no one can beat Samsung in playing catch-up.”

    What Samsung does in consumer electronics it does very well, but what happens to Samsung when they don’t have someone to follow? I’d argue the same thing happens that happened to Microsoft when Apple was faltering and wasn’t innovating OS features — you get Windows XP for a decade. ((Yes, OS X came out alongside XP, but OS X so caught Microsoft off guard that they had to re-tool in order to move to compete.))

  • ‘Rhino Is the First Native iOS Client for App.net to Charge Into the App Store’

    Christine Chan reviews the first App.net client to hit Apple’s App Store:
    >Rhino still has a long way to go before it can replace the beta software that I’ve been using on my iPhone, but I guess it’s a start for ADN users who haven’t gotten into a beta.

    I’d agree with her assessment of the app, it’s a nice app, but it has a long ways to go. There are tons of beta ADN apps floating around and many have many more features than Rhino currently offers. What’s most intriguing to me is that the app is free — why be first if you have no way to make money?

    Regardless, if you use App.net (and you should) and don’t have any beta iOS apps to use — Rhino is leagues better than using web apps.

  • ‘Bluetooth Update’

    [At the beginning of August Fred Wilson posted about the absurd notion that AirPlay is bad in comparison to Bluetooth](https://brooksreview.net/2012/08/bluetooth-v-airplay/). Now he has an update about his Bluetooth stereo setup, in which he says:

    >Bottom line. It’s fucking fantastic.

    He’s elated that he can replicate his car stereo in his home. ((Also he notes “I got some super high end RCA cables”, which actually explains a lot about his illusions of grandeur.)) And then Wilson gets to the negatives:

    >First, it can only pair with one device.

    Yeah, my wife is also dumbfounded why our car can only pair with one cellphone at a time to use the handsfree setup — I bet she’d love it if I brought that “experience” into our home.

    >Also, bluetooth has limited range so the phone has to be in the same room as the Logitech Adapter to play music.

    I mean, if I want to listen to music with a setup that can stream the audio to any room in my house, there’s no way I would want to carry my phone with me to change the song. I mean mix tapes are great, never need to skip a song on them.

    But still, “fucking fantastic”.

    I needed to charge my laptop the other day and out of sheer laziness I didn’t want to move it from my home office to the living room, but still I wanted to AirPlay over a video I was streaming from a website — I mean it still worked just fine in my office — I’m just telling you that I was lazy and didn’t want my computer tethered to one room to make ancient technology work.

    That’s all I’m saying.