Amy Wang:
Though the phrase was coined in English, that particular way of sitting — legs splayed apart, with little regard for the personal space of others nearby — is a worldwide phenomenon.
It really is rampant, and disrespectful. I personally take it as an invitation to rub my leg against another. Since I never miss a chance to do that, I can tell you that this oddly stops men from doing it.
Sadly, this is not even remotely the same tale for women.
Dharmendra Bhammu:
With the Geekbench single core, the 2017er iPad Pro is about 30 percent higher than its predecessor. In the multi-core test it is 80 percent faster.
Holy shit, they were already fast.
Peter Kafka:
A new version of Apple’s podcast app will provide basic analytics to podcast creators, giving them the ability to see when podcast listeners play individual episodes, and — crucially — what part of individual episodes they listen to, which parts they skip over, and when they bail out of an episode.
I wonder if this will make podcasters push listeners to Apple’s app so they can get robust data, or if it will force third-party apps to add this kind of analytics as well.
John Paczkowski:
“The 10.5 crosses this really interesting threshold,” Federighi says. “By trimming down the bezels, we were able to maintain a size that’s great to hold in bed while reading, but it’s also got a full-sized keyboard. It’s deceiving to the eye, but when you put your hands down and start typing you immediately feel ‘oh yeah, now I can type just like on my Mac.’”
I can’t wait.
Joe Cieplinski:
Currently, App Store is an app you only use when you already want to buy something, not a destination unto itself. This new design aims to change that. Only time will tell if it works, but I think Monika Gromek and her team have done a tremendous job with it. I’m sure they will adjust and refine the design over time as it gets out into the wild.
I remember having the habit of checking the App Store multiple times per day. I bet this takes me back to at least daily.
Nanette Byrnes:
Cook says the fact that the press doesn’t always give Apple credit for its AI may be due to the fact that Apple only likes to talk about the features of products it is ready to ship, while many others “sell futures.” Says Cook: “We are not going to go through things we’re going to do in 2019, ’20, ’21. It’s not because we don’t know that. It’s because we don’t want to talk about that.”
This is exactly why people believe Apple is behind in AI, because Apple doesn’t tell them what they work on. Does make you wonder, why do people trust what other companies say so much?
Johnny Lin:
So, aside from the obvious moral wrongs of exploiting the vulnerable for profit, it’s extremely disheartening to know that some developers are becoming financially successful the easy and unethical way — by making bogus apps that take a few hours to code, and whose functionality is purely to steal from the less well-informed.
It frustrates me to no end when I see stuff like this, this is the very stuff the App Store was built to protect you from.
A little while ago my wife, Erin, had a chance to shoot a wedding and I think she crushed it. The pictures speak for themselves.
Jonathan Goodman:
It is open to question, however, whether flights operating on a buffered schedule arrive ‘on time’ in the sense that ordinary people use the term. If a flight is scheduled for 2.5 hours and takes, on average, only 1.5 hours to reach its destination, then is any flight that arrives at its scheduled time really on time? Or have the airlines merely redefined the term ‘on time’ to generate more favourable statistics?
I often tell people that statistics are not to be trusted. Then a statistician gets really mad, because statistics actually don’t lie. However, as shown in the example above, they can be gathered in a manner which distorts the truth.
Thus, statistics are not to be inherently trusted.
Bardi Golriz:
Microsoft’s apparent reluctance to make any meaningful improvements to Windows’ tablet mode suggest offering a first-class tablet experience is no longer as important as ensuring users have nothing to learn (or as little as possible) when they switch to it.
Donny Reynolds:
Not being forced to own a car is an empowering privilege, and it’s going to be more and more common. After all, it gives us financial flexibility, time, and freedom of choice. People should not feel afraid, but empowered to have more options to get around.
One of my favorite aspects of traveling is not having to worry about my car. Cleaning it, fueling it, parking it, or hell — even whether it is the right car for the situation.
I’m not sure how this is solved in the suburbs, where I live, but in a city — I doubt I would own a car.
It’s not just the financial impact either. Going somewhere nice, a date perhaps? Get a premium car. Have a lot of people, get a large car. So convenient, even if you factor in the wait.
Pat Dryburgh:
Many of the friends I have made online have moved the vast majority of their publishing to social media. While the immediacy of social media is great, it’s an art form of brevity.
I was wondering about something like this the other day. Neat idea for impromptu meet ups when a large group of people is around each other. I’ll be giving it a go during WWDC.
Joe Cieplinski:
Look, I get that I’m the nut who doesn’t want to use Facebook. I’m not even saying don’t post your stuff to Facebook. But if Facebook is the only place you are posting something, know that you are shutting out people like me for no good reason. Go ahead and post to Facebook, but post it somewhere else, too. Especially if you’re running a business.
I’m not sure there is a blog post I’ve agreed with more.
Another thought that strikes me: this seems like exactly the type of problem which Micro.blog is setup to “fix” in a way. Dead simple publishing, with crossposting. If Micro.blog were to add crossposting into a Facebook account/page (not sure if that is possible or not) I think there’s a strong case for everyone and every business to use Micro.blog as their centralized system. It could go to all your “socials” and to your website blog. You cover all the bases, with one click on a platform that actually respects you, your readers, and the web in general. Perfection.
Bruce Schneier:
The password-manager 1Password has just implemented a travel mode that tries to protect users while crossing borders. It doesn’t make much sense.
Some good points from him — I am glad I don’t have any international travel booked, because I am not sure what/how I would do it at this point.
John Gruber:
A hardware keyboard with a trackpad could have just as good an interface for moving the insertion point and selecting text as the software keyboard. Even better, really, since you wouldn’t have to use two fingers or start it with a 3D Touch force press. And, a trackpad would make this feature discoverable. An awful lot of iPad owners — most of them, probably — don’t know about the two-finger drag feature on the on-screen keyboard.
It would be a shame if Apple was thinking this limited about non-direct-input controls for iOS. For one, either of the proposed solutions in this post fail if you are not using an Apple branded keyboard. Additionally, even if it worked with an external trackpad like device — now you’ve significantly increased the complexity of the device.
I don’t have a better solution to propose here, but I will say it’s a problem which needs addressing. I just hope there is a better solution from Apple, than what Gruber proposed here.
Fantastic post. Worth the read.
Nelson Schwartz:
Five years ago, American Airlines factored in on-time arrivals, lost baggage and consumer complaints to help calculate annual incentive payments for top management. Today, these bonuses are based exclusively on the company’s pretax income and cost savings.
And then:
“The response isn’t to Wall Street. It’s to customer behavior,” said Alex Dichter, a senior partner at McKinsey who works with major airlines. “About 35 percent of customers are choosing on price, and price alone, and another 35 percent choose mostly on price.”
So the argument by analysts is basically that executive bonuses are based on profit because focusing on profit focuses on what customers care about most: price. But I call bullshit. When all things are equal, then price matters. Show people something better, and price is no longer the deciding factor.
In otherwords, make the flying experience not suck balls, and you can charge a little more.
Good thoughts, I’d just take an option for everything to be in iCloud and not on device. Above and beyond the optimize storage option.
Walt Mossberg in his final weekly column:
Microsoft is still trying to find a way to meld its formidable software and cloud expertise with a significant hardware business. The ad-based business models of Facebook and Google, now so dominant, could prove fickle. And Amazon has only had one really giant hardware hit — the Kindle — in its existence.
The entire article is excellent and worth a read. But this passage is fantastic, the setup leading to that last line about Amazon is perfect. I had never thought about the Kindle in that context, but once I read that — it is so clearly true that it amazed me a bit in the realization.