“It is a thing of beauty, though, when Apple fans and Microsoft fans can come together to laugh at the credulity of Google fans.”
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Quote of the Day: The Macalope
“It is a thing of beauty, though, when Apple fans and Microsoft fans can come together to laugh at the credulity of Google fans.” — The Macalope
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‘Google’s Motorola Files New Case Against Apple. Not Clear if It’s Filed Under “Hypocrisy”.’
MG Siegler calling Google out on their bullshit: >Google never uses their patents for offensive purposes. Except when they do. >This is the problem with these self-righteous stands. Time ends all promises, eventually. And the result is extreme hypocrisy even though you’re just doing what your rivals are doing. It’s not that Google shouldn’t be…
MG Siegler calling Google out on their bullshit:
>Google never uses their patents for offensive purposes. Except when they do.>This is the problem with these self-righteous stands. Time ends all promises, eventually. And the result is extreme hypocrisy even though you’re just doing what your rivals are doing.
It’s not that Google shouldn’t be allowed to file patent suits, it’s that they have vocally been against doing so for anything other than defensive measures — of which this lawsuit is not.
More interesting to me is what happens if Google successfully gets an import ban on Apple goods — doesn’t that open the door for anti-competitive practices and potentially sour Google in the eyes of every iOS user?
What if in September Apple takes the stage, announces a new iPhone and iPad — says it is available today — just so long as you aren’t in the U.S., because in the U.S. Google has stopped Apple from being able to sell these devices to you. I can’t see that being a winning scenario for Google at all.
It’s not likely to happen, but I always wonder with these lawsuits what would happen if people just called each others bluffs. Samsung tells Apple that they drop the suit, or Samsung stops selling Apple anything — how long would it take Apple to replace the parts that Samsung supplies?
It’s that side of the story that interests me the most.
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Deprecating @BenjaminBrooks
I posted on Twitter that I was going to “deprecate” my Twitter account and I also included a link to my App.net profile. ((I’d link to the Tweet, but Twitter’s new guidelines and all.)) The implication was that I was ditching Twitter for App.net, and screw everyone that followed me on Twitter. I then followed…
I posted on Twitter that I was going to “deprecate” my Twitter account and I also included a link to my App.net profile. ((I’d link to the Tweet, but Twitter’s new guidelines and all.)) The implication was that I was ditching Twitter for App.net, and screw everyone that followed me on Twitter.
I then followed up with another tweet to clarify that all “new” posts that I would normally make on Twitter, was what was going away — with me favoring App.net for those. I would and will, however, still respond to mentions and check my Twitter feed.
This actually caused quite a bit bigger stir than I had expected — I assumed everyone that follows me saw this coming, but that wasn’t the case. There’s a ton of reasons for this move, I’ll list out the smaller ones, but there is one in particular that I want to dive a little deeper into.
### Simple Reasons
– I like to pay for services with my money, rather than with my attention. (Meaning I don’t like ad-supported stuff.)
– It’s clear to me that Twitter doesn’t care about the developer landscape — many of whom are people I genuinely like.
– The SPAM on Twitter drives me nuts.
– It’s no longer a safe nerd zone — it’s crossed the threshold into mainstream use. That’s not bad, but it changes Twitter and chips away at what initially made me fall in love with Twitter.### Big Complex Reason
More than anything else though: Twitter has lost its way.
I outlined most all of what I mean [in this post on Twitter’s API changes](https://brooksreview.net/2012/08/twitter-bullshit/), but to summarize: Twitter has turned it’s back on the very users that not only made the service popular, but that came up with the very features that Twitter is now using to try and profit from. And that bugs me.
In my mind Twitter took the easy way out: venture capital and eventually paying that money back by slapping ads everywhere.
A more interesting route would have been to grow slower, have 20% of the members fund the site with pro-level accounts, and love your users. That’s not what happened, oh well.
Something interesting — something potentially better — *is* happening with App.net. I don’t know what App.net will be a month or even a year from now. What I do know is this:
1. I like where it is headed right now.
2. I trust Dalton more than anybody running Twitter. I need no further proof of his commitment than seeing how many of the users he responds to every day on App.net. ((Yes, it’s early — I know.))
3. I know their business model: I pay them and in exchange they give me a service that I can use.App.net isn’t perfect, but it *could* become perfect — whereas with Twitter I feel like it *was* perfect and stands no chance at getting back to that perfection.
To summarize: I am moving my short “posting” over to App.net because I can think of no better way to continue to support the App.net other than fully committing to using it and so that is what I am planning on doing.
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Free Doesn’t Pay the Bills
This is a sad tale of two developers that released a decent game, after two years of work, for free with in app purchase. They had the game download over 200,000 times and have barely made money. This is a good cautionary tale, well the real story, not the story Penny Arcade tries to spin.…
This is a sad tale of two developers that released a decent game, after two years of work, for free with in app purchase. They had the game download over 200,000 times and have barely made money.
This is a good cautionary tale, well the real story, not the story Penny Arcade tries to spin. Every developer should read the story because it teaches one thing: testing is important.
The two developers had a really noble goal of not creating a greedy IAP, but they seemingly didn’t test the IAP function. Because even people that wanted to unlock the full game with it, couldn’t figure out how (since changed).
The real tale here should read:
1. Don’t expect free to pay the bills, even with IAP.
2. Test out the app and get feedback.
3. It’s not the amount of downloads or time spent that matters, it’s the amount of paying customers that matter.I think they screwed up offering a free game, but not because free with IAP is bad — because free with IAP and no sense of greed is bad. IAP only works if you nag or tell each user about it by locking them out of what they want. Otherwise people will make what they get for free work for them.
I’m not shocked these guys aren’t making money, but I am shocked that they are surprised by that.
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DON’T PANIC (WHEREBY I MEAN DON’T STOP BUYING OUR APP)
Interesting post, well linked to, from Tapbots which makes one of the most nerd-loved Twitter apps: Tweetbot. The post essentially says that every current user of their products will be fine with the Twitter API changes and that they shouldn’t hit a user cap for new users for a few years. To me the post…
Interesting post, well linked to, from Tapbots which makes one of the most nerd-loved Twitter apps: Tweetbot. The post essentially says that every current user of their products will be fine with the Twitter API changes and that they shouldn’t hit a user cap for new users for a few years.
To me the post is a a whole lot of fluff to try and convince users to not stop buying their apps. And they should post something like that, I would if I was them, but it’s also a bit of bullshit.
Here’s why: even if they can sustain user growth for three years, the product will effectively become nothing but an expense at that point. Which means Tapbots will either need to close down the app, or find a new way to make money — since they can no longer sell new copies to new users.
So either the app dies a slow death, or current users get pinched into paying more money.
If you’re a Tweetbot user, you have to think that those future changes aren’t going to be good. I’m not saying you should stop buying the app, but you’d be foolish to think Tapbots is immune to these changes and you need to keep that in mind.
Also, the notion that Twitter won’t enforce this against a popular client like Tweetbot is plain naive — Twitter only cares about Twitter.
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Quote of the Day: Harry Marks
“Call me an elitist. Call me an arrogant S-O-B, but I’m above the rat race for page views.” — Harry Marks
“Call me an elitist. Call me an arrogant S-O-B, but I’m above the rat race for page views.” -
“Balance”
A Bloomberg news report on AdAge has this quote from NBC Sports Chairman on why airing the Olympics live sucks balls (I assume those are his words): >”It’s undeniable we hurt our ratings by doing that,” Mr. Lazarus said in a phone interview. “We have to balance what we’re trying to do for viewers across…
A Bloomberg news report on AdAge has this quote from NBC Sports Chairman on why airing the Olympics live sucks balls (I assume those are his words):
>”It’s undeniable we hurt our ratings by doing that,” Mr. Lazarus said in a phone interview. “We have to balance what we’re trying to do for viewers across the country and our business model.”Holy crap. What exactly are you *trying* to do for your users? Milk them for more ad views and money? *Crickets*
The sick thing about cable television is that not only do users have to:
1. Pay for the service.
2. Put up with crappy cable companies.
3. Buy expensive TV hardware.But in addition to putting out all those expenses, users also have to watch ads. And if you get around the ads, you must then put up with ridiculously obvious product placement (ever seen a TV show character make a stupid comment about how awesome some lame Toyota is, makes me want to punch something). How is any of this doing anything for users — the entire cable TV industry is user hostile.
Here’s an idea: let me buy the TV shows a la carte on my Apple TV — the same day the show airs. I pay you for what I want, you get a clear indication of what TV shows are crap, no one pays Comcast.
Together we rid the world of the Kardashians, commercials, and product placement. Hell we may even make Comcast into a company that realizes their users *are* important ((Yeah, right.)) .
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Twitter’s API Changes
*(I am pushing this past the paywall, because I believe this to be one of the bigger news items we will see for a while and thus very important.)* The changes Twitter made to their API ([as broken down in this post by Marco Arment](http://www.marco.org/2012/08/16/twitter-api-changes)) are both predictable, significant, and dumb-foundingly stupid. Essentially, Twitter is…
*(I am pushing this past the paywall, because I believe this to be one of the bigger news items we will see for a while and thus very important.)*
The changes Twitter made to their API ([as broken down in this post by Marco Arment](http://www.marco.org/2012/08/16/twitter-api-changes)) are both predictable, significant, and dumb-foundingly stupid.
Essentially, Twitter is making it so that it is nearly impossible to do anything with their service — including make Twitter apps — that Twitter doesn’t like or approve of. If Marco’s reading is correct, it further takes action against any site that doesn’t want to use the native Twitter embed when quoting a Tweet, which is pathetic.
I’ve worked all my “I told you sos” out on Twitter — I’d link to them but that would mean using their embed code which includes tracking bullshit that I don’t want to subject my readers to, so you’ll have to take my word for it — so now we need to talk about the future of Twitter.
The changes Twitter just announced remind me very much that Twitter has some massive problems, both at a service, and at a corporate level.
1. Twitter has stopped caring about the users that made the service popular, and started only to care about the users that can draw in more users.
2. Twitter has sold out. They not only don’t care about the original users, but they don’t even seem to care much for the current users — there’s a very real sense that Twitter needs to make money, and they need to make that money yesterday.
3. The people that really cared have moved on — either to new companies (Square and Medium) or simply moved on to something else.We like to make analogies to Apple in tech blogging circles, so here goes: this is the moment in Twitter’s life where they kicked Steve Jobs out of the company and told Sculley to run it.
Facebook works because Zuckerberg has always been in charge and never pretended to care about user privacy — that allows him to do whatever the hell he wants and users always swallow it. This doesn’t work with Twitter because Twitter’s main features were usually built by its main users, and now Twitter bitch-slapped those users that got the company off the ground.
Those features:
– Official Twitter iOS app started as a third-party app. In the same vein of those that Twitter now wants to kill.
– The now well known @reply that not only is prevalent on Twitter, but the generally accepted across the web, [not invented by Twitter](http://log.maniacalrage.net/post/26935842947/the-real-history-of-the-reply-on-twitter).
– Oh and those Twitter hashtags that, funny enough, Twitter is now using to monetize Twitter with? [Again, not invented by Twitter](http://gigaom.com/2010/04/30/the-short-and-illustrious-history-of-twitter-hashtags/).I could go on, but you get the point. Twitter was built as a community with users trying to improve the service the best they could for everyone’s benefit — and that is now gone. Chuck Skoda (on Twitter, so no link, [instead just subscribe to his blog, it’s great](http://chuckskoda.com/)) commented that he can’t remember the last time Twitter innovated — no one can — because the company has only been focused on two things for the last year:
1. Big media partnerships.
2. Making money.Wait, that actually is just *one* thing.
When you are focused on just making money you not only end up screwing people over, but you end up gutting your service. Twitter is gutting the soul from itself and that makes me sad.
I loved Twitter.
I hope that App.net can replace Twitter, because [I need a place to post stuff like this](https://alpha.app.net/benbrooks/post/77250):
>All Twitter will be in a few months is Spammers, people following Bieber, and Kardashians. Yuck.
If you like Twitter just the way it is today, you’re in luck, because that’s likely to be the norm from here on out — assuming that is that you don’t use a non-official Twitter client. If you loved the way Twitter was a year or two ago, you’re in luck, [that’s what App.net is *right now*](https://alpha.app.net/benbrooks).
Change happens, but the mistake made with Twitter is that we, as users, thought we had a say and thought Twitter had our backs. At least with Apple, we know we don’t have a say.
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Quote of the Day: John Gruber
“So Klout, which is utter vainglorious masturbatory nonsense, that’s OK.” — John Gruber
“So Klout, which is utter vainglorious masturbatory nonsense, that’s OK.” -
The Stench
Jim Dalrymple on the Apple retail cuts: >This has the stench of a man looking to make a name for himself, not someone that’s doing what’s best for Apple or more importantly, its customers. To take one of the most heralded retail experiences in the world and gut it, stripping it of everything that makes…
Jim Dalrymple on the Apple retail cuts:
>This has the stench of a man looking to make a name for himself, not someone that’s doing what’s best for Apple or more importantly, its customers. To take one of the most heralded retail experiences in the world and gut it, stripping it of everything that makes an Apple store what it is, just doesn’t make sense.I’m not to shocked that Browett tried to make a power play at Apple — there are no doubt holes that need to be filled and greedy bastards that want to fill them at all costs. The two things that I find most intriguing about this, are also most concerning in a more general sense.
1. First, how did Cook let this happen. Cook, as CEO, should have been in on any such decision — further Cook should have just as much awareness that this was a bad idea, given that he was trained by Jobs and saw first hand how powerful the retail stores are and how they gained such power.
2. It’s one thing to read that Browett ignored his entire staff, and another thing to think that (if Cook knew about this) Cook ignored the entire retail staff suggestions.In my mind Tim Cook needs to be taken to task over this. He’s damned if he knew and damned if he didn’t. Cook shouldn’t be fired (far from it), Browett should be ((He should be fired not because of one bad decision, but for showing a fundamental lack of understanding of what makes Apple retail so great. Also for completely ignoring a team of people that built the best retail operation on the planet.)) , but Cook needs to insert himself in every facet of the business. This is something that Jobs did and I worry that this is something that Cook isn’t used to doing. There’s people to be trusted, like Ive, but even with Ive, Cook should be reviewing designs with him — after all Cook is CEO.
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‘Penny Arcade Sells Out’
As you probably heard, Penny Arcade started a KickStarter to help fund the site by bringing back and adding new features while removing ads, but what you probably don’t know is that I seriously considered this route (for this site) before I launched the paywall. I was essentially going to start a campaign to fund…
As you probably heard, Penny Arcade started a KickStarter to help fund the site by bringing back and adding new features while removing ads, but what you probably don’t know is that I seriously considered this route (for this site) before I launched the paywall. I was essentially going to start a campaign to fund this site, ad free with perks, for an entire year of my full time writing.
However, two things held me back:
1. I believed such a campaign to be against the ToS for a KickStarter campaign — Penny Arcade proves me wrong there.
2. I didn’t think it would be successful given the size of this site — and seeing how Penny Arcade struggled to get to $500k, I think I was right (I would have needed over $100k).
3. Future revenue.What’s interesting to me is just how many people were willing to pay Penny Arcade to essentially do, well, nothing.
[As Marco Arment notes](http://www.marco.org/2012/08/15/penny-arcade-kickstarter-ends):
>Most of the original-content goals were not reached, and they’ll have ads on other pages on the site, just not the front page.
I really feel like this type of a KickStarter should not have been allowed. This is a “fund my life” type of campaign and if you don’t think that, at the very least you have to agree that it is very much a “start a new business campaign” — both not in compliance with KickStarter, but again they let it through so oh well.
(What’s funny is that almost every KickStarter campaign is a “start a new business” campaign even though that is prohibited.)
Honestly I don’t think this should have been allowed because backers get next to nothing for their money — I am strongly in the camp that it should have been all or nothing: remove all ads, or none. This “remove ads on the homepage” is deceptive, and I bet a lot of backers didn’t know it was only for the homepage.
Beyond all that, though, what the hell happens next year?
That’s the third reason I held back from KickStarting this site — what happens when the money is gone and I need to find someway to make money again? Penny Arcade will have to either run another campaign in a year, or they will have to put the ads back. If I was a backer that would piss me off. Which is exactly why I avoided such a scenario on this site. I had planned to say that with every ~$100k above the funding goal, I would write the site full-time for another year.
However, if you consider that I had roughly 8,300 RSS subscribers at the time, to fund the site for two years would have meant that every subscriber would have needed to back the site at a price of at least $25 — that’s without getting any extra perks. That’s highly unlikely to happen for a site like mine — this isn’t a complaint, but I share this data as an eye opener of what things really cost.
The Penny Arcade campaign feels to me like a bad solution to a tough problem. I have no doubt that Penny Arcade has the best intentions, but I also have no doubt that there are going to be a lot of disappointed backers — now and a year from now.
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‘Welcome to the New Internet’
John Herman commenting on new content platforms like Svbtle, Branch, Medium, and App.net thinks that these service are out to *fix* the Internet. Herman: >So this is one, if not the, vision for the future of the internet, and a lot of people are dedicated to making it catch on. It’s an internet where every…
John Herman commenting on new content platforms like Svbtle, Branch, Medium, and App.net thinks that these service are out to *fix* the Internet. Herman:
>So this is one, if not the, vision for the future of the internet, and a lot of people are dedicated to making it catch on. It’s an internet where every blog is Daring Fireball, where every post looks like Instapaper, where every discussion is led by its rightful leaders, and where ads are considered no better than spam. It’s barren but design-forward, and, at least at the moment, kind of elitist. It’s not clear how it’ll make money. Maybe it won’t! Maybe that’s part of the idea.I like every word I hear in that passage. I also think it is pretty damn clear how these sites will make money, by being user supported. It seems to me that Herman has pointed out the most powerful trend on the web right now: ads are evil.
This is more than just being about blogging too — ads are easy to strip out of blogs and newspaper websites. Step back and think about what such an anti-ad movement means to, oh let’s say, Google. That’s not only a direct threat to ads on Google.com properties, but it’s a direct threat to Android’s developers — many of whom rely heavily on ads. It’s a direct threat to iOS apps too.
In all the sites mentioned above I see a few common themes, themes that give me great hope for change:
1. Content is being created by users, not “curated” or some other bullshit.
2. Ads are seen as not only in poor taste, but seem morally evil to many of the services.
3. Each are being championed and pushed forward by some of the “tech elite.”You can disagree with whether or not these services will succeed — they have an uphill battle — but I think it is pretty hard to argue that they don’t encompass the wishes and ideas of many of the top content providers on the web today.
And I think that gives all of those services a fighting chance.