Monthly Archives: May 2015

Start up: costing Apple’s Watch, why Glass flopped, evaluating Fitbit, with Android’s permission?, and more

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“Yeah, I think my Fitbit fell out of my trousers during this, so I bought another…” Photo by betta design on Flickr.

A selection of 8 links for you. Use them wisely. I’m charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.

No, the Apple Watch does *not* cost $84 to make » Mobile Forward

Hristo Daniel Ushev:

Here are two examples. These firms looked at the (1) hardware and (2) manufacturing costs of the Apple Watch.

IHS’ estimate for the 38mm Sport version: $83.70.
TechInsights’ estimate for the 42mm Sport version: $138.50.
Can both be correct?  No. “But they looked at different-sized models” one might say. Nah; that’s almost irrelevant.

From my experience working with product and cost experts at a well-known mobile device company, I can tell you:  Apple Watch does not cost $84 in hardware and manufacturing. It costs meaningfully more. Probably more than 2X that. And I’ll tell you why. Maybe I’ll even give you my estimate.

(By the way congrats to the TechInsights crew for having a reasonable estimate, in my view.)

First, it’s not for the reasons you see in the comments on the articles that re-publish these estimates. In those articles, you’ll typically see well-intentioned commenters say that one needs to account for research and development, sales and marketing, corporate income taxes, etc. None of that is accurate.

(Ushev used to work at Motorola. He points out so many ways in which costs are higher that you begin to wonder how Apple makes such big gross margins.)

The debacle of Google Glass » Tech.pinions

Tim Bajarin:

the bottom line is most technology gets started and refined in what we call vertical markets well before they get perfected and priced low enough for consumers.
When Google introduced their Google Glass, this was the first thing that came to mind about this project. I wondered if Google even had a clue how tech adoption cycles develop. While it is true glasses had been used in vertical markets since 1998, even after all of this time, we saw no interest by consumers. Google’s decision to aim Glass at consumers first, yet price them as if they were going to vertical markets, stumped me. Even the folks who had spent decades making specialized glasses for use in manufacturing, government applications, and transportation were dumfounded by Google’s consumer focus with Google Glass, priced at $1500.
Apparently, Google found out the hard way how tech products get adopted…

…I was a Google Glass Explorer and the experience was horrible from the start. Google Glass now sits in my office museum of failed products. The UI was terrible, the connection unreliable, and the info it delivered had little use to me. It was the worst $1500 I have ever spent in my life. On the other hand, as a researcher, it was a great tool to help me understand what not to do when creating a product for the consumer.

Google’s go-to-market strategy with Glass always puzzled me. It obviously had, and has, applications in business (medical, etc). Yet as Bajarin says, the marketing suggested a consumer product. Result: failure.

LG Watch Urbane review: $350 buys you the nicest Android Wear watch yet, if that’s something you want » Android Police

David Ruddock:

For a lot of people, there’s probably going to be something at least remotely interesting about Wear.

For me, it’s managing emails and messages. Don’t want to read that work email while I’m in the middle of typing up an article or otherwise engaged? Quickly skim the subject on the watch, and dismiss or archive it. I’ve even started using the voice replies for SMS and Hangouts when I’m in my own home (frankly, it weirds me out voice messaging somebody on my watch in public for some reason???), because it’s less disruptive than pulling out my phone, unlocking it, opening the app, and typing out a reply. It’s also great for quick Google searches, turn-by-turn navigation (especially when you’re walking), music controls, and activity tracking.

Of course, our smartphones do most of this stuff, too, so I’m not about to claim there’s actually a compelling economic argument for smartwatches yet – there isn’t.

In places, Ruddock sounds bored beyond belief with the whole concept of a smartwatch. You’d certainly struggle to find any enthusiasm at all for it.

Thoughts on the Fitbit IPO filing » Beyond Devices

Jan Dawson digs into the numbers; he finds that the best model for usage is that on average, a Fitbit is used for about six months:

So, how important is this abandon rate information to our evaluation of Fitbit’s prospects going forward? Well, one could argue that at just 10 million sales per year, there’s tons of headroom, especially as Fitbit expands beyond the US (the source of around 75% of its revenues today). But in most consumer electronics categories, there’s a replacement rate for devices, which continues to drive sales over time even as penetration reaches saturation. The biggest worry in the data presented above is twofold: one, very few Fitbit buyers have yet bought a second device; and two, many don’t even use the first one they bought anymore. Once Fitbit maxes out its addressable market, it’s going to have a really tough time continuing to grow sales.

This may be a factor for all wearables, unless they can show some compelling reason to upgrade from the previous one.

Upon this wrist » Medium

Craig Mod, channelling Hemingway:

Oh, they are so downtrodden now, those who asked about the thing, the thing on the wrist. I am the harbinger of technodoom. Knower of useless celestialisms. And I can see in their eyes that they want to hear some accolades. Some uplifting remark. Nothing gibbous. And so I say a single word: Exercise. Like I am selling plastics in 1930. Exercise, I say. And I smile. That is what it does best. But I have to caveat, slumping back into my chair, my posture as the worst salesman ever — Well, I mean, it’s good, or, rather, it has potential. But presently it is very dumb.

LG G4: the best Android smartphone camera » WSJ

Nathan Olivarez-Giles:

My colleague Joanna Stern already covered the merits of Samsung’s Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge, and sung the praises of their 16-megapixel rear cameras. So I was surprised to find that LG’s new flagship phone has an even better camera.

After putting the Galaxy S6 Edge, the iPhone 6 Plus and the LG G4 through a series of photo tests, I found that not only did the G4 keep up in most conditions, it took better low-light and night photos. LG says one reason is the f/1.8 aperture lens on the G4’s 16-megapixel camera. It lets in more light than any other smartphone on the market. This camera system also bumps up the exposure, so that these low-light settings come off brighter than comparative shots — and even brighter than what the naked eye sees.

It’s all about the camera; the review barely touches any other topic.

The women working in NYC’s nail salons are treated more terribly than you can imagine » VICE

Allie Conti shows how the NYT exposé of treatment of workers in these salons got made. It’s impressive.

VICE: Did you ever just go from nail salon to nail salon, or was that too risky?
Sarah Maslin Nir: I started doing that toward the end, because it’s a very collusive industry. Everybody conspires. The experts I’ve spoken to say the owners teach each other the methods of how to exploit the workers and how to avoid prosecution. So I was afraid if I started going from salon to salon, an owner would catch me and tell all the others, and it would all get shut down. So only toward the end would I go to salons, and I’d actually go get a manicure and talk with the women, sometimes with a translator sitting next to me, and just have these quiet conversations.

One of the most interesting things about the story is I learned how to ask questions. At the beginning, I’d ask, “Where do you live?” And they’d say, “Oh, I live in a one-bedroom in Flushing, Queens.” And then I realized that when they live in a one-bedroom, they lived with six to eight other people. So my questions changed. I would say, “How many people do you live with?” and they’d say, “Oh, twelve.”

Amazing, detailed work about something that’s been sitting in front of people for ages.

Google said ready to give Android users more privacy controls » Bloomberg Business

Brian Womack and Lulu Yilun Chen:

Google is planning to give its mobile users more control over what information applications can access, people familiar with the matter said.
Google’s Android operating system is set to give users more detailed choices over what apps can access, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the matter remains private. That could include photos, contacts or location. An announcement of the change, which would put Android closer in line with Apple’s iOS, is expected for Google’s developer’s conference in San Francisco this month, one of the people said.

Long overdue. Apple introduced it to iOS in September 2012. And it was actually included – against Google’s intent – in Android 4.3 in July 2013, though you had to download a separate app to enable it, but then removed three weeks later. Also, we know it will take years for any substantial proportion of people to get this if it’s included in Android ‘M’ (Marzipan?). Though there are some suggestions that this will only apply to Chrome, not across Android.

Start up: Pariser on the Facebook bubble, Android Wear’s Wi-Fi tweak, bitcoin economics, and more

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Is Facebook keeping you inside this? Photo by sramses177 on Flickr.

A selection of 9 links for you. Use them wisely. I’m charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.

Facebook published a big new study on the filter bubble. Here’s what it says. » Medium

Eli Pariser, author of The Filter Bubble:

Here’s the upshot: Yes, using Facebook means you’ll tend to see significantly more news that’s popular among people who share your political beliefs. And there is a real and scientifically significant “filter bubble effect” — the Facebook news feed algorithm in particular will tend to amplify news that your political compadres favor.

This effect is smaller than you might think (and smaller than I’d have guessed.) On average, you’re about 6% less likely to see content that the other political side favors. Who you’re friends with matters a good deal more than the algorithm.

You’re probably friends with people who share your beliefs, though. Pariser also has fun facts from the study, which is being torn apart by the wolves of Twitter in various places.

SSD storage: ignorance of technology is no excuse » KoreBlog

Kore stores data as evidence. So it has to be correct:

Digital evidence storage for legal matters is a common practice. As the use of Solid State Drives (SSD) in consumer and enterprise computers has increased, so too has the number of SSDs in storage increased. When most, if not all, of the drives in storage were mechanical, there was little chance of silent data corruption as long as the environment in the storage enclosure maintained reasonable thresholds. The same is not true for SSDs.

A stored SSD, without power, can start to lose data in as little as a single week on the shelf.

SSDs have a shelf life. They need consistent access to a power source in order for them to not lose data over time…

…What started this look into SSDs? An imaging job of a laptop SSD left in storage for well over the 3-month minimum retention period quoted by the manufacturer of the drive before it was turned over to us. This drive had a large number of bad sectors identified during the imaging period. Not knowing the history, I did not consider the possibility of data loss due to the drive being in storage. Later, I learned that the drive was functioning well when it had been placed into storage. When returned to its owner a couple of months after the imaging, the system would not even recognize the drive as a valid boot device. Fortunately, the user data and files were preserved in the drive image that had been taken, thus there was no net loss.

Now imagine a situation in which an SSD was stored in legal hold where the data was no longer available for imaging, much less use in court.

Bet you thought SSDs “store their data forever, no power needed”. Turns out it’s mag disks that do that.

Google can’t ignore the Android update problem any longer (op-ed) » Tom’s Hardware

Lucian Armasu:

For years, Apple has made fun of Android and its fragmented update system, and it will continue for years more. Microsoft has recently started doing the same. The update system on Android is something Google can ignore no longer, and it needs to do whatever it takes to fix it. Otherwise, it risks having users (slowly but surely) switch to more secure platforms that do give them updates in a timely manner. And if users want those platforms, OEMs will have no choice but to switch to them too, leaving Google with less and less Android adoption.

Google also can’t and shouldn’t leave the responsibility to OEMs and carriers anymore, because so far they’ve proven themselves to be quite irresponsible from this point of view. At best, we see flagship smartphones being updated for a year and a half, and even that is less than the time most people keep their phones.

Even worse, the highest volume phones (lower-end handsets) usually never get an update. If they do it’s only one update, and it comes about a year after Google released that update to other phones, giving malicious attackers plenty of time to take advantage of those users.

Google’s (or its fans’) argument is that updates to Play Services do most of this task. In which case, why have OS updates at all? Even so, there doesn’t seem to be any clear suggestion for how Google can do this. And there’s no real evidence that it turns users off. Chances of change: minimal.

Android Wear on Wi-Fi: Using a smartwatch without a phone nearby » Computerworld

JR Raphael:

The two devices don’t have to be on the same network or in the same physical location; your phone could be sitting in your car and you could be miles away in a building with Wi-Fi access. As long as the phone is getting some sort of data – be it via Wi-Fi or a mobile data network – and the watch is in a place with an accessible Wi-Fi network, you’re good to go.

I tested this by turning off my phone’s Wi-Fi and Bluetooth and heading out to the gym. Once I was inside the building (and thus in range of its Wi-Fi network), my watch showed itself as being online in less than 30 seconds. From that point forward, without my phone nearby or in any way connected, the Watch Urbane received notifications like new text messages, Hangouts messages, and emails. I could respond to those messages from the watch via voice. And I could send new messages by using the new Contacts list in the latest Wear update, which is accessible by swiping to the left twice from the main Wear home screen.

I could even use apps like Google Keep – viewing existing notes and lists and dictating new ones (which I confirmed showed up in my account almost instantly). I could give regular “Okay, Google” voice commands, too, but those worked somewhat sporadically; some of the time, the watch would time out and give me a “Disconnected” error instead of an answer. That was the only function that didn’t work consistently for me in this context.

This seems potentially useful, and like the sort of thing Apple might add too in a future update – perhaps next year? No point hurrying…

On the clothing of emperors: a rant about 21.co and the future of bitcoin mining » Medium

Bernie Rihn digs into the economics of bitcoin, and mining, and demolishes the idea that 21.co is going to sell “devices you’ll use in your home that will mine bitcoin and pay you back”:

We’ve established from the above (rant-warm-up) that 21 can’t (sustainably, with a straight face) sell anything that mines bitcoin in our house as a network-connected device masquerading as a “heater.”

They are clearly already in the mining business (their mining pool, pool34 was recently outed and is humming along nicely at 3–4 petahashes / second). They are clearly building an ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit, commonly called a “chip”). The question is, for what?

How Google keeps execs from leaving » Business Insider

The title on the page is “Google has a secret ‘bench’ program that keeps executives at the company even when they’re not leading anything”, which says it better. Alexei Oreskovic and Jillian D’Onfro explain:

The bench system is an effective but little-discussed strategic tactic in Google’s playbook as the company looks to expand into new markets and keep an edge over a growing crop of web challengers that are all desperate for seasoned internet business experts.

“It helps keep people off the market,” one former Google executive says. “It helps keep the institutional knowledge if you need them back for any reason. And it costs [Google] so little to retain these people rather than to have them leave and start the next Facebook.”

About one-third of Google’s first 100 hires still work at the company, according to “Work Rules!” a recent book by HR boss Laszlo Bock.

It’s more of an informal system than an established program, sources say. But the underlying intention and goals are clear and purposeful. “It’s very rational,” the former Google executive says. (Google declined to comment on this story.)

With its deep pockets and sundry internal projects, Google can offer its elites attractive incentives to hang around, even after they have moved on from, or been replaced in, their previous role. The company will often tell someone to take 18 months or 24 months to figure out what he or she wants to do next at the company, the former Googler says.

Keeping those smart people out of other companies, and keeping their institutional knowledge inside Google, is a really clever move.

RCS is still a zombie technology, “28 quarters later” » Disruptive Wireless

Dean Bubley:

In February 2008, a number of major telcos and technology vendors announced the “Rich Communications Suite Initiative” (see here).  I first saw the details a couple of months later, at the April 2008 IMS World Forum conference in Paris.

It is now 7 years, 2 billion smartphones, and 800m WhatsApp users later.

Or to put it another way, 28 Quarters Later*. [Actually 29 but 28 since he discovered the details. Hence the asterisk.]

However, unlike Danny Boyle’s scary, fast-moving monsters in the 28 Days and 28 Weeks Later movies, RCS is not infected with the “Rage Virus”, but is more of a traditional zombie: dead, but still shambling slowly about and trying to eat your brains. It’s infected with bureaucracy, complexity and irrelevance.

To remind you: April 2008 was also a few months after the launch of the first iPhone, and a few months before the launch of the AppStore. It was also when Facebook Chat, now Messenger, was switched on in my browser for the first time – while I was waiting on the podium, to start chairing the IMS event. The world of mobile devices, apps and – above all – communications has moved on incredibly far since then.

But not for RCS.

Mobile operators never like to admit something’s dead.

Are social sharing buttons on mobile sites a waste of space? » Moovweb

Short answer: yes. Longer answer: still yes.

Just because sharing buttons have been popular on the desktop web does not mean they can be ported over with the same experience on the mobile web. And while .02% of mobile users clicking on a social sharing button is a minuscule figure, it does reflect the way social media usage on mobile has evolved: away from the web and toward apps.
Most mobile users access social networks via an app, so they are often not logged in to the corresponding social networks on the mobile web. Pinterest, for example, gets 75% of its traffic from apps.
The heart of the sharing problem is that users must be logged in in order to share. If you’re not logged in, sharing can be kind of a nightmare.

HIV and syphilis biomarkers: smartphone, finger prick, 15-minute diagnosis » ScienceDaily

A team of researchers, led by Samuel K. Sia, associate professor of biomedical engineering at Columbia Engineering, has developed a low-cost smartphone accessory that can perform a point-of-care test that simultaneously detects three infectious disease markers from a finger prick of blood in just 15 minutes. The device replicates, for the first time, all mechanical, optical, and electronic functions of a lab-based blood test. Specifically, it performs an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) without requiring any stored energy: all necessary power is drawn from the smartphone.

ELISA kit typically costs over $18,000; the dongle for this test about $34.

Start up: the customer service conundrum, Consumer Reports on Apple Watch, Daimler gets self-driving, and more

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Could I have that delivered by a hostage negotiator, please? Photo by The Eggplant on Flickr.

A selection of 9 links for you. Spread them all over. I’m charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.

Relying on product reviews? Knowing how a company treats its customers is just as valuable » NYTimes.com

Brian Chen:

As it stands, there is no one-stop website to see reliable ratings for customer service. In part, that is probably because customer service can be such a challenge to measure, said Matthew Dixon, an executive at CEB, a business advisory firm. His studies found that when people have positive customer service experiences, they tend not to share them.

“But when they’ve been wronged, they literally will tell anybody who will listen,” Mr. Dixon said.

Mr. Dixon’s studies found that customers stayed loyal to brands that offered hassle-free service interactions. His studies also found that customers were four times as likely to become disloyal to a brand after any service interaction at all — because so many service centers drag out people’s issues.

It seems like a no-brainer that consumers stick with brands offering solid customer service. Apple, which has more than $190bn in cash, is well known for its Genius Bar, the service stations at Apple stores where customers can seek help directly from the company’s trained technicians. Amazon, the largest online shopping site in the United States, is celebrated for its customer service.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could reliably research more companies with quality service, beyond relying on word of mouth?

Sure, but Apple’s cash isn’t the cause of its customer service – it’s the result.

Switching to Project Fi? You’re hanging up on Google Voice » ZDNet

Kevin Tofel:

The first batch of invites to Google’s phone service, known as Project Fi, are on the way. That’s the good news. Make sure you read all of the details before you accept an invite though: The bad news is that you’ll give up a few great features from Google Voice if you switch to Project Fi.

A Reddit member shared images of the Project Fi signup process after receiving an invite and this picture in particular illustrates what Google Voice features go away when you choose Google’s new phone service:

It doesn’t appear through the signup process that there’s a way to switch back from Project Fi to Google Voice either, although Google could have a provision for that in the future. The company is clear, however, that if you don’t migrate your Google Voice number to its new service, that number will be released.

“Making and receiving calls using Google Talk” seems a lot to give up if you like it.

Apple Watch tops Consumer Reports’ smartwatch reviews » Consumer Reports

Among other tests…

We submerge the watches, then check them for proper functionality immediately upon removal from the chamber, then again 24 hours later. The stainless-steel Apple Watch passed the test on the first try. The first aluminum Apple Watch Sport we put through our immersion test seemed fine when we took it out of the tank, but we experienced problems with it 24 hours later. We then tried two more samples, which showed no problems, so the Apple Watch Sport passed our water-resistance test.

The Sony SmartWatch 3 was the only watch that did not pass our water-resistance test. Two consecutive samples did not function properly after being submerged for 30 minutes at 3.3 feet. Because of its poor performance in this test, the Sony fell to the bottom of our rankings.

In the end, our top-rated smartwatch is the stainless-steel Apple Watch. Its performance on the scratch-resistance test and excellent scores for ease of pairing and ease of interaction make it our top choice. Not an iPhone user? Not to worry, several Android-compatible models and one multi-OS-compatible smartwatch got very good overall scores as well.

You have to be a subscriber to read it all, though.

Home Depot aiming to put Apple Pay in its 2,000 stores » Bloomberg Business

Matt Townsend:

Home Depot Inc. has the goal of offering Apple Inc.’s mobile-payment platform at its more than 2,000 stores, which would make it the largest retailer yet to accept Apple Pay.
“It’s something we’d like to do,” Steve Holmes, a spokesman for Atlanta-based Home Depot, said on Tuesday. However, a deal with Apple isn’t in place, so the plan isn’t final, he said. The chain, which currently accepts PayPal, also may add other kinds of mobile payment, he said.

1) “has the goal of offering”? Wouldn’t “wants to offer” serve as well, but more concisely?
2) America’s financial and payment system continues slouching into the 21st century.

LG G4: consumer reaction to G4 disappointing » BusinessKorea

Cho Jin-young with the super-earliest reaction to the G4:

the higher subsidies than the Galaxy S6 is not an attractive enough factor to promote its sales, based on customer response on the two days after release.

After the G4 was unveiled, there were also mixed views whether the model will be a big hit. There are some views that it will be difficult to accomplish the sales target of 12m units. Kim Hye-yong, an analyst from NH Investment & Securities, said, “The sales target of the G4 does not seem easy to accomplish. The competitors now have better products than they used to when the G3 was released. It seems there is no problem with performance and heating of the G4, but its high-end image could take a hit.”

On the other hand, some believe that the G4 will have better results than the G3. Park Kang-ho, an analyst at Daishin Securities, said, “The G4 will struggle at first with its weak brand status compared to the Galaxy S6 and the iPhone 6 and the limit of the product lineups. When reflecting the differentiated element of camera modules, however, the sales of the G4 this year will reach 7.7m units, surpassing the 5.8m units of the G3 in 2014.”

The G4’s camera module (from Sony?) is f/1.8 – faster (ie gathers more light) than the iPhone 6 or Samsung Galaxy S6. It also has a removable battery (remember them?) and SD storage. Whether LG can use those factors as a lever to win sales from Samsung and Apple remains to be seen. But at least they’re now USPs compared to most high-end flagships.

Nevada approves autonomous Daimler trucks » FT.com

Robert Wright:

Daimler said it had brought the new self-driving technology to the desert, southwestern state after European governments were slower to approve regulations for autonomous trucks. Nevada was also one of the first states to allow autonomous passenger cars.
However, the company said it would require far more states to accept the technology before it could show its potential by handling road freight deliveries “from coast to coast”. The vehicle will be able to operate autonomously only in Nevada — when it crosses state lines the driver will have to take the wheel.
Wolfgang Bernhard, chief executive of Daimler’s bus and truck division, said autonomous driving would sharply reduce crashes from driver error. Driver error — often a result of fatigue or distraction — leads to about 90% of crashes involving trucks…

…The vehicle has already undergone tens of thousands of hours of testing on Nevada’s roads and will be immediately available for full commercial use, although Daimler will continue to monitor its performance.
“This is not a testing licence,” Mr Bernhard said. “This is a full operating licence. We believe that these vehicles and systems are ready.”

Not mentioned: the maps provider for Daimler. That’ll be Nokia’s HERE, currently up for sale, which vehicle makers including Daimler are considering bidding for.

Hostage saves herself via Pizza Hut app: “Please help. Get 911 to me.” » Ars Technica

Cyrus Farivar:

According to a Highlands County Sheriff’s Office press release, Cheryl Treadway, a woman from Avon Park, about 85 miles southeast of Tampa, had been arguing most of the day with her boyfriend, Ethan Nickerson, who carried “a large knife.”

As the agency wrote:

When Ms. Treadway attempted to leave the residence to pick up the children from school, Mr. Nickerson grabbed her and took her cell phone. He then accompanied Ms. Treadway to pick up the children. Upon returning home, Ms. Treadway eventually convinced Mr. Nickerson to let her use the cell phone to order a pizza which is when she sent the message to Pizza Hut. Immediately after the pizza order was placed, Mr. Nickerson took the cell phone back from her.

I’m going to download the Hostage app in case I need a pizza.

About Applebot » Apple Support

Applebot is the web crawler for Apple, used by products including Siri and Spotlight Suggestions. It respects customary robots.txt rules and robots meta tags. It originates in the 17.0.0.0 net block.
User-agent strings will contain “Applebot” together with additional agent information. For example:
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_10_1) AppleWebKit/600.2.5 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/8.0.2 Safari/600.2.5 (Applebot/0.1)

Well now. Ain’t that a thing. And where would all that indexing be going, hmm?

discoveryd clusterfuck » furbo.org

Craig Hockenberry is mad and he ain’t gonna take it no more:

I started reporting these issues early in the Yosemite beta release and provided tons of documentation to Apple engineering. It was frustrating to have a Mac that lost its network connection every few days because the network interfaces were disabled while waking from sleep (and there was no way to disable this new “feature”.)
Regardless of the many issues people were reporting with discoveryd, Apple went ahead and released it anyway. As a result, this piece of software is responsible for a large portion of the thousand cuts. Personally, I’ve wasted many hours just trying to keep my devices talking to each other. Macs that used to go months between restarts were being rebooted weekly. The situation is so bad that I actually feel good when I can just kill discoveryd and toggle the network interface to get back to work.
Only good thing that’s come of this whole situation is that we now have more empathy for the bullshit that folks using Windows have suffered with for years. It’s too bad that Apple only uses place names from California, because OS X Redmond would be a nice homage.

Well, he doesn’t like having to take it. The puzzle is why Apple replaced mDNSresponder (which worked fine, as far as most people can tell) with discoveryd, which doesn’t. I’ve seen discoveryd go runaway and eat up CPU, though killing it seems to solve the problem.

Start up: mobile app freight trains, mobile trumps desktop search, the switcher thing, and more

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A freight train. In mobile apps, don’t try to get in its way. Picture by Loco Steve on Flickr.

A selection of 6 links for you. No more, no less. I’m charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.

Why VOIP doesn’t work for emerging markets » The Big Almanack

Alan Knott Craig:

The recent annoucement of WhatsApp Calling got me thinking. If you are receiving a VOIP call you must pay for the data. In other words, unless you’re using an uncapped WiFi connection VOIP means both caller and called-party pays, unlike traditional voice for which only the caller pays.

The average data required for a voice call is about 0,5MB/minute and (in South Africa) prepaid data rates are about 10c/MB (USD). Like most emerging markets, South Africans do not have any options for uncapped mobile data.

All data is priced per MB, and most people use prepaid.

VOIP callers will therefore pay 5c/min for calls received.

This will not work. Poor South Africans do not have enough money to make calls, nevermind receive calls. The average South African living in a township or rural area uses his phone exclusively for incoming calls.

So many assumptions that are trivial in western countries just don’t work in emerging markets.

Well, We Failed. — Inside Wattage » Medium

Jeremy Bell:

The vision for Wattage was a future where anyone could manipulate matter. Where we needn’t settle for the generic, mass-produced things that currently line store shelves. A future where we can easily upgrade our old devices instead of throwing them away. Or reprogramming them to do entirely new and useful things.

We wanted to make it so creating and selling hardware was as easy as writing and publishing a blog post. You shouldn’t need to be an electrical engineer or an industrial designer to create electronic devices. Nor should you have to worry about supply chain or distribution if you wanted to sell them. We believed it was possible to eliminate all of that complexity, so the average person could easily create highly customized hardware without any electronics know-how, all within their browser.

Of course, things didn’t exactly play out that way. But why?

Because it was an impractical idea. Next, please.

Tablet market losing demand » Digitimes

Monica Chen and Joseph Tsai:

Asustek Computer is expected to ship only less than 4m tablets in the first half and is unlikely to achieve its one million unit target and most likely to stay flat from the 9.4m units from 2014 or slightly lower.

The sources pointed out that Apple’s iPad Air 2 and the iPad mini 3 both had unsatisfactory shipment performances, but the iPad mini 2, which received a price cut, had a rather strong demand, especially from China.

For the non-Apple tablet market, US$99-199 devices are the mainstream and models featuring phone function are even more popular. Although several first-tier vendors are planning to release new tablets shortly, they only placed small orders to avoid inventory build up.

Seeing tablets no longer enjoying demand as they used to, many vendors have turned to focus on developing Windows-based 2-in-1 devices or 2-in-1 Chromebooks.

Apple’s iPhone growth opportunities » Re/code

Tim Bajarin thinks there are three reasons why Apple’s iPhone sales will keep growing. The first is China (it’s big).

The second reason is due to what Apple calls “switchers.” During the recent analysts call, Apple CEO Tim Cook stated, at least five times, that demand for iPhones by those switching from other smartphone platforms are very strong. This is not a trivial fact. Our own research shows that Apple is luring millions of Android smartphone users over to the iPhone and iOS, and we have no reason to believe this will not continue for the near future. Many Android smartphone buyers opted for Android phones because of their larger screens, and that was a strong driver for Samsung and others who made phones with five-inch or 5.5-inch screens.

However, our research showed that if Apple had iPhones with larger screens, 40 percent of them would have preferred buying an iPhone over an Android smartphone. Consequently, pent-up demand by switchers has been key to Apple’s iPhone growth. As Android users move out of their two-year contracts, more and more of them will migrate to the iPhone platform. I see switchers continuing to help drive strong iPhone sales at least through early 2016.

Kantar will publish figures today (Weds) which it has hinted will have notable data about “switchers”.

Mobile design details: don’t divert the train » LukeW

Luke Wroblewski:

Polar is a fun way to collect and share opinions by making and voting on lots of photo polls. This is our freight train. We get over 40 votes per user on any given day. It’s where people spend the most time in the app and get immersed in the Polar experience.

We knew this experience could be even better if the list contained polls from people you know. So we added a prominent action in the header that allowed you to find your friends on Polar when you tapped it.

But very few people did. As it turned out, we were trying to divert the train by requiring people to go to a different part of the application to do things like find and invite friends.

So we decided to use the forward momentum of our “train” instead of fighting it. Now when someone is voting, voting, voting… the 20th poll we show them asks “Would you like to find your friends on Polar?”

Wroblewski has so many fascinating insights; this is a site to keep mining.

It’s official: Google says more searches now on mobile than on desktop » Search Engine Land

Greg Sterling:

Last year we heard informal statements from several Google employees that mobile search queries would probably overtake desktop queries some time this year. Google just confirmed this has now happened.

The company says that “more Google searches take place on mobile devices than on computers in 10 countries including the US and Japan.” The company declined to elaborate further on what the other countries were, how recently this change happened or what the relative volumes of PC and mobile search queries are now.

Google did tell us that mobile queries include mobile browser-based searches and those coming from Google’s mobile search apps. The company didn’t break down the relative shares of each.

Google groups tablets with desktops. So this is just smartphones and does not include tablets.

According to Amir Efrati, mobile searches had outnumbered desktop for the past two years in the US at weekends.

Start up: over-smart stuff, is Apple squeezing free music?, distaff Tinder, Tidal disputes payouts, and more

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Soup: currently outside the “strategic horizon” of smart devices. Photo by Joi on Flickr.

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Dumb ‘smart’ gadgets: the bubble is set to burst » WSJ

Christopher Mims:

I believe I have identified the one thing in tech that is incontrovertibly in a bubble. To know whether a product or startup is in this category—which I’m confident will see a shakeout leaving few standing—just look for this phrase in their marketing materials: “The world’s first smart…”

The world’s first smart socks. The world’s first smart toothbrush. The world’s first smart plate, cup, fork, cutting board, stove knob, jump rope, shoes, shirt, aquarium, frying pan. The world’s first smart detector of the gas that we pass. [Yes, it’s real, though still a Kickstarter.]…

…Anthony Ortiz, the man behind the world’s first smart plate, insists that plates are just the beginning. What about fans of soup? I asked him. “If you’re going to make soup, that’s not what we do,” says Mr. Ortiz. “That would be something that goes in a bowl…. The bowl is something that could be on the strategic horizon for us.”

I bet you never knew crockery could have a strategic horizon.

Hacker implants NFC chip in his hand to bypass security scans and exploit Android phones » Forbes

Thomas Fox-Brewster:

For those who can bear the pain, biohacking, where computing devices are injected under the skin, provides a novel way to acquire real stealth to sneak through both physical and digital scans. That’s why US navy petty officer Seth Wahle, now an engineer at APA Wireless, implanted a chip in his hand, in between the thumb and the finger – the purlicue apparently – of his left hand. It has an NFC (Near Field Communications) antenna that pings Android phones, asking them to open a link. Once the user agrees to open that link and install a malicious file, their phone connects to a remote computer, the owner of which can carry out further exploits on that mobile device.

Filed for “when you need a character in a heist film who can somehow get past security scans”. Not filed under “things to worry about in the real world.”

Circa: what went wrong » Monday Note

Frederic Filloux fillets the news-aggregating failure that Twitter is reckoned to be picking up:

#3. Editorial uniqueness remains a key success factor. And Circa didn’t have it. Great packaging is one thing, but it can’t support itself without the help of original, specific, identifiable editorial. Since its inception, the web has been plagued by the commoditization of information. As social vastly amplifies that trend, being able to develop its own editorial identity remains critical for any media.

Well, Flipboard doesn’t have a “voice” (choice of stories with a consistent viewpoint) except the one you choose because it hoists on your Twitter/Facebook/etc feed). But lack of editorial “voice” is a common problem with the aggregation apps I see. I pick sites by voice. (It’s probably why you’re here.) No voice = no reason to come back.

The Dickonomics of Tinder » Medium

Alana Massey:

Some will read my gleeful rejections on the many faces I encounter on Tinder as evidence of a disturbing uptick in malevolent, anti-male sentiments among single straight women. It is not. It is evidence of us arriving nearer to gender equilibrium where men can no longer happily judge the clear and abundant photos and carefully crafted profiles of women but become incensed when they take the opportunity to do the same.

It was not always thus.

When I joined OKCupid six years ago, I dutifully created a well-rounded profile complete with accurate photos and thoughtful responses to the site’s profile prompts; though I was 23, I generously set my age limit for prospects at 40. For my efforts, I was immediately rewarded with an inbox full of messages that were mostly variations on “hey ☺” and “What up” from an army of blurry and sometimes headless mirror selfies who had either not read my profile or actively sought women with whom they’d share only mutual disdain.

Oh, this is such a wonderful piece. (Side note: published on Matter. Wasn’t that sorta a science reporting thing? No matter.) Should be obligatory reading for pretty much all males under 35.

Why energy storage is about to get big – and cheap » Ramez Naam

tl;dr: Storage of electricity in large quantities is reaching an inflection point, poised to give a big boost to renewables, to disrupt business models across the electrical industry, and to tap into a market that will eventually top many of tens of billions of dollars per year, and trillions of dollars cumulatively over the coming decades.

He things the Tesla Powerwall “is a big step towards disruption“.

Apple pushing music labels to kill free Spotify streaming ahead of Beats relaunch » The Verge

Micah Singleton:

Apple has been using its considerable power in the music industry to stop the music labels from renewing Spotify’s license to stream music through its free tier. Spotify currently has 60 million listeners, but only 15 million of them are paid users. Getting the music labels to kill the freemium tiers from Spotify and others could put Apple in prime position to grab a large swath of new users when it launches its own streaming service, which is widely expected to feature a considerable amount of exclusive content. “All the way up to Tim Cook, these guys are cutthroat,” one music industry source said.

Sources also indicated that Apple offered to pay YouTube’s music licensing fee to Universal Music Group if the label stopped allowing its songs on YouTube. Apple is seemingly trying to clear a path before its streaming service launches, which is expected to debut at WWDC in June. If Apple convinces the labels to stop licensing freemium services from Spotify and YouTube, it could take out a significant portion of business from its two largest music competitors.

As was pointed out, if someone in the music business calls you “cutthroat”, then wow. But would the labels really be able to keep free music off YouTube? They might like to, but it’s the elephant in the room in any music streaming question.

Tidal calls leaked royalty statement a fake » Digital Trends

Keith Nelson jr:

The leaked document suggests Tidal pays a weighted average of .0012 cents per stream and 70% of revenue to rights holder. That revenue share has since changed since Jay Z acquired parent company Aspiro as he proclaimed the service pays 75% to rights holders less than a week earlier.

The statement reads: “for the same period (March 2015) as this purported ‘leaked’ statement, Tidal paid an average royalty per stream of $0.024-0.028.” This would place its royalty payments at approximately four times higher than that of Spotify’s, which pays rights holders between $0.006 and $0.0084. DigitalMusicNews responded to Tidal’s statement clarifying the statement was “issued by a digital distributor servicing the independent label” but does not refute the authenticity of the statement.

Seems highly unlikely that the document would be fake to me. The only way really for Tidal to get this straight would be to publish more statements – probably not what it wants.

The (very) big fight for the small screen » Fortune

Erin Griffith:

The secret to BuzzFeed’s success—the thing that Frank, Gaulthier, CEO Jonah Peretti, and his staff of more than 900 believe makes BuzzFeed different from other media companies—is its data-driven approach. The company employs 12 data scientists and 11 researchers to crunch the numbers on the approximately 500 posts it publishes each day. Every list, listicle, article, essay, photo, video, upvote, comment, Thumbs Up, Tweet, Like, Heart, Pin, Share, Reblog, Retweet, LOL, WTF, OMG, and Ew represents a data point to be scrutinized. From there, BuzzFeed tests hypotheses to determine what made the content successful, in hopes that each successive piece of content will be even more perfectly engineered for irresistibility. “You can’t just do what [you think people] want, because people like to be surprised and exposed to new things,” says Peretti.

Unlike a Hollywood studio, which might produce five films a year, BuzzFeed is churning out an average of 50 videos a week, and taking advantage of the opportunities to test everything from characters and actors to theories about human behavior.

I’m tempted to say “The secret to Buzzfeed’s success so far“. This is the internet, and things can change quite fast.

The truth about Android apps that secretly connect to user tracking and ad sites » MIT Technology Review

Luigi Vigneri and pals from Eurecom in France have …come up with an automated way to check the apps in Google Play and monitor the sites they connect to. And their results reveal the extraordinary scale of secret connections that many apps make without their owners being any the wiser.

Vigneri and co began by downloading over 2,000 free apps from all 25 categories on the Google Play store. They then launched each app on a Samsung Galaxy SIII running Android version 4.1.2 that was set up to channel all traffic through the team’s server. This recorded all the urls that each app attempted to contact.  

Next they compared the urls against a list of known ad-related sites from a database called EasyList and a database of user tracking sites called EasyPrivacy, both compiled for the open source AdBlock Plus project. Finally, they counted the number of matches on each list for every app

The results make for interesting reading. In total, the apps connect to a mind-boggling 250,000 different urls across almost 2,000 top level domains. And while most attempt to connect to just a handful of ad and tracking sites, some are much more prolific.

Vigneri and co give as an example “Music Volume Eq,” an app designed to control volume, a task that does not require a connection to any external urls. And yet the app makes many connections. “We find the app Music Volume EQ connects to almost 2,000 distinct URLs,” they say.

Their research is on ArXiv. We’ve seen this before, but not studied on this scale. (The original piece is headlined “smartphone apps”, but it’s clear this is only looking at Android, not iOS.)

Start up: bigger force-touch iPad?, a deafblind user on the Apple Watch, OpenSeaMap needs you!, and more

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Just going to check how many days this has been running since a reboot… Photo by peaceful-jp-scenery on Flickr.

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Apple’s 12.9″ iPad will feature Bluetooth stylus, Force Touch, NFC & more, source says » Apple Insider

Neil Hughes:

Offering more details on the anticipated accessory, an AppleInsider source said that Apple’s stylus will connect via Bluetooth, and that it will feature pressure-sensitive input.

The screen itself will also reportedly sense pressure from fingertips, as Apple is said to be planning to bring its Force Touch input to the 12.9-inch iPad. AppleInsider was first to report in February that Apple’s next-generation iPhone, referred to colloquially as the “iPhone 6s,” will also feature the Force Touch input that is currently available on the Apple Watch and latest MacBooks.

The source also said that Apple’s new, larger iPad will also feature a USB-C input, though they didn’t indicate whether it would be a new, second port option, or if USB-C would replace the Lightning connector found on current iPads.

Now this sounds like a real hybrid between the new MacBook and old iPad. But when? WWDC in June?

Why Google wants to kill SD cards, and what’s holding them back » PhoneArena

We know that some of you are addicted to your SD cards, but the reality is that expandable storage is quickly becoming an unnecessary feature, because that storage is being shifted to the cloud. Google has an amazing array of products in the cloud, and most of them reduce your need for large amounts of storage on your device. Music can now be stored and streamed from the newly released Google Music, documents from Google Docs, photos from Picasa, and more and more video comes through YouTube (although before YouTube really makes this leap, Google needs to add device syncing, so you can start a movie on a PC and continue on mobile or vice-versa.) Given all of these services, the vast majority of users won’t need more than 16 GB of storage. And, before you all start crying, please remember that many of you in our readership are not the “majority of users”.

OK, and now the date: this was written in November 2011. Things change slowly in Androidland.

My Apple Watch after 5 days! » Living with Usher Syndrome by Molly Watt

I was born deaf and registered blind when I was 14. The condition I have is Usher Syndrome Type 2a. I am severely deaf and have only a very small tunnel of vision in my right eye now so I was concerned not just about the face size but how busy it would appear to me and also if there would be an uncomfortable glare.
Curiosity got the better of me so I ordered one but I wasn’t excited, so not disappointed when informed I would not receive mine until mid June!
I should explain that I wear two digital hearing aids and communicate orally – not everybody with usher syndrome communicates orally and there are not two people with the condition the same, but there are similarities.

It hadn’t crossed my mind how useful the taptic engine would be for someone who is deafblind – but of course, it’s a prime accessibility element. Watt sounds like a fantastic, inspirational person. Her viewpoint really makes one reconsider how useful so many devices are.. or are not.

Boeing 787 Dreamliners contain a potentially catastrophic software bug » Ars Technica

Dan Goodin:

A software vulnerability in Boeing’s new 787 Dreamliner jet has the potential to cause pilots to lose control of the aircraft, possibly in mid-flight, Federal Aviation Administration officials warned airlines recently.

The bug — which is either a classic integer overflow or one very much resembling it — resides in one of the electrical systems responsible for generating power, according to memo the FAA issued last week…

…The memo doesn’t provide additional details about the underlying software bug. Informed speculation suggests it’s a signed 32-bit integer overflow that is triggered after 231 centiseconds (i.e. 248.55 days) of continuous operation.

Are smartphone-controlled locks worth putting on your house? » TIME

John Patrick Pullen:

I’m no handyman, and I’m certainly not a locksmith. But as a newish homeowner — and one who delights in tinkering with smart home gear of all stripes — I’ve gotten pretty adept at some things around the house. One of which is changing out locks.

In fact, the first thing I did when the previous owners handed us the keys was toss them in the trash. Then I pulled out a Phillips head screwdriver and installed some Kwikset SmartKey locks, so one key would open all my various entries.

Seems like no particular benefit, and lots more hassle than just putting a new lock.

HoloLens: still magical, but with the ugly taint of reality » Ars Technica

Peter Bright:

The picture quality and 3D effects remain stunning. The imagery (we still don’t really know if it’s true holograms, and I still assume it’s just stereoscopic imagery instead) is bright, the resolution seems sufficient, and the opacity of the image meant that it could substantially occlude things behind it.

Everything about the HoloLens experience is nailed. Except for one thing. The field of view was narrow. Very narrow. In both the horizontal and the vertical directions. You have this glorious 3D augmented reality experience… but only with your eyes looking straight ahead.

And it’s not just me; I talked to other journalists who’d been at the January preview, and they had the same experience. The January prototypes didn’t fill your entire field of view. The edges of the “screen” were visible. But they weren’t this tight. I could look around a bit and still see the holograms. This time around, I couldn’t.

I don’t know why. It’s possible that there are trade-offs being made to ensure performance is acceptable or that there’s enough peripheral vision even if the entire screen is obscured. It’s possible that my experience with the old device gave a wider field of view than it should have, due to the poor fit of the device; it was pressed close to my glasses, so probably seemed a little larger than it should have.

Apple Watch: the fashion verdict » The Guardian

Jess Carter-Morley is the Guardian’s fashion editor, and hers is actually the review I have been most looking forward to reading:

how the watch looks on your wrist is not the most important way it affects your style. The most significant change in your appearance is that you spend less time holding your iPhone in front of your face. That gauche, phone-zombie stance is fast becoming the pose that defines this decade. Appraising the functionality of the phone is not my remit – I’m all about Is It Cool; Do We Want One? – but the fact that it steers you away from looking at your phone will have an impact on how you look. Looking at your own wrist is different to looking at a standalone black box, partly because looking at a watch has a history that predates the digital era. You can’t write emails or tweets on the watch (there’s no keyboard) but you can read your inbox, send dictated or emoji responses to messages, even answer phone calls, all without getting your phone out of your bag. What’s more – and this was the most exciting part, for me – the watch distanced me from that modern comfort-blanket thing of endlessly twiddling with your phone.

Boom. And she has a view on the fashion thing too.

OpenSeaMap: FAQ » OpenSeaMap

Q: When will the chart cover the whole of the Earth’s surface?

A: A completely finished chart will probably never happen, because new things are always being discovered that can be mapped. However, over the next two months, we hope to render the entire Baltic Sea. Two months after that, we hope to have the whole of the North Sea rendered. The remaining oceans are planned to follow at similar intervals. However, it still wouldn’t be complete because we then need to add all the navigation aids. These will be collected by community members and then entered into the OpenStreetMap database. You are cordially invited to join in and help! We need every little contribution.

Love the idea. Dunno how practical it is. Then again, I thought OpenStreetMap was too ambitious, and that’s done pretty well.

Samsung admits the Galaxy S6 has a major problem » TechRadar

Matt Hanson:

With Android phones, the apps you use regularly will remain in RAM, while unused apps will be removed. It looks like the issue is that the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge are having trouble clearing the RAM, causing it to fill up.

Thankfully Samsung appears to be aware of the bug and is working on a number of ‘micro-updates’ to solve the problem.

Samsung Mobile UK posted on Facebook: “Micro-updates are in the process of being rolled out to correct issues relating to device performance and stability… Keep checking for these on your device via Settings > About device > Software update > Update now”.

1) So if this is to do with the RAM management on the phones, why did none of the reviews catch it? (A question those experiencing this are asking too.)
2) I began following this story at AndroidBeat, which cites the “source” as TechRadar, which cites TalkAndroid, which cites Android Community, which cites Phone Arena, which picked it up (before the Samsung response, which is why I’ve quoted TechRadar) on XDA forums. Why not just go back to the original source and build on that? This model of “journalism” (it isn’t) leads to Chinese whispers and errors.
3) Dunno if this counts as a “major” problem. Nor whether Samsung’s Facebook comment is actually related to this problem. I couldn’t find it.

EU to probe popular US sites over data use and search » FT.com

Duncan Robinson and Alex Barker:

In a draft plan for a “digital single market” encompassing everything from online shopping to telecoms regulation, the commission said it would probe how online platforms list search results and how they use customer data. The latest draft of the plan, seen by the FT, will be approved by the commission next week.
The plan could also bring in stricter rules for video-on-demand services such as Netflix and messaging apps like WhatsApp and Skype that have become big rivals to traditional European media and telecoms companies.
Companies such as Airbnb and Uber are also likely to be roped into any investigation into platforms, which will aim to determine whether they are abusing their market power in the so-called “sharing economy”.

Seems premature to be asking whether Airbnb and Uber are “abusing their market power”. How much market, how much power?

African phone sales soar, Chinese makers have 30% of market » Anhui news

Africa has a population of one billion, accounting for 15% of the world population. Most important is that the number of cell phone users has exceed 200 million; even during the 2009 financial crisis, the growth rate hit 14.8%. 

Nigeria, with the biggest population in Africa, currently has the most cell phone users, accounting for 16% of total users on the continent, followed by Egypt and South Africa. In the next five years, the most obvious growth will focused in Central and East Africa, among which growth in Ethiopia, Congo, Eritrea and Madagascar is expected to exceed 100%. 

The African smartphone market jumped 108% in 2014, Yan said, adding that Huawei’s shipment ranked No 2, just behind Samsung. Last year, Huawei devices soared more than 300% in the Middle East and Africa, followed by Asia and Latin America, 98%, and European 68%.

No mention of volume. BlackBerry is big in South Africa, but might have a problem soon.

Google’s paid ad-blocking service doesn’t block most ads » Advertising Age

Tim Peterson:

Originally Google had said people would pay $1 to $3 a month to check out participating sites without ads. At that point The Onion, Mashable, WikiHow, Urban Dictionary, ScienceDaily and photo-sharing site Imgur were among the initial publishers on board. Now Google claims that “millions of sites – everything from small blogs to large news sites” have signed on to not serve ads to Contributor subscribers.
However, as the pricing tiers describe, people who pay Contributor’s monthly fee will still see ads on participating publishers’ sites. A Google spokeswoman didn’t respond to an emailed question asking why not all ads would be blocked.
“We’re continuing to test Contributor and recently added some new testers from the waitlist. We’re happy with the trial so far but don’t have details to share,” the Google spokeswoman said in an emailed response.

I don’t like the thinking behind ad blocking – which runs “I’m not going to pay for this content because the way you monetise it annoys me, but I want the content so I’m going to use technical means to circumvent your monetisation strategy”. (Its corollary is “because people aren’t paying for your content you’re having to use ever more desperate methods to monetise it, and that annoys me, so I’m circumventing it”. Rinse and repeat.) But shouldn’t a paid ad-blocking service really.. block ads? The problem, of course, is that Google can’t in good conscience block ads served by others. Or if it does, it has to remunerate them, which reduces the value to it of a paid ad-blocking service

Start up: tablets sink further, Indiegogo’s vaporware campaigns, pricing Apple Watch, and more

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Available in Lego before it reached Windows Phone. Photo by Ochre Jelly on Flickr. (See their photostream for how they achieved this “impossible” shot.)

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Game of fear: the story behind GamerGate » Boston Magazine

Zachary Jason with a fabulously detailed yet clear recitation of what most of us know:

[Eron] Gjoni, a software engineer, had set out to construct a machine to destroy his ex. Every written word Quinn had ever entrusted with him—all of her flirtations, anxieties, professional grudges, and confessions about her family and sex life—would serve as his iron and ore. He scoured their entire text and email history, archiving and organizing Quinn’s private information on his laptop and cell phone. Then he typed it all in black and white — minus, of course, the tones in their voices, their laughter and tears, and any context whatsoever.

Of course, Gjoni could have just deleted the document, along with Quinn’s phone number and email address, and tried to woo one of the millions of other women on OkCupid or joined any of the roughly 5,000 other dating sites. He could have posted his thoughts on a blog and omitted her name. After several days, though, Gjoni decided to go through with it—after all, he was protected by the First Amendment, right?

Gjoni comes across as being somewhere on the autistic spectrum. Also, a real jerk.

For the second straight quarter the worldwide tablet market contracts amid competition from alternative devices » IDC

Apple still leads the overall market despite five consecutive quarters of negative annual shipment growth. Apple shipped 12.6m iPads in the first quarter, capturing 26.8% of the market in volume and declining -22.9% when compared to 1Q14. Samsung (19.1% share) maintained its second place in the market despite a -16.5% decline in shipments compared to the same period last year. Lenovo (5.3% share), Asus (3.8 %) and LG (3.1%) rounded out the top 5 positions. LG’s year-over-year growth was notable as it continues to benefit from US carriers’ strategy to bundle connected tablets with existing customers.

“Although the tablet market is in decline, 2-in-1s are certainly a bright spot,” said Jitesh Ubrani, Senior Research Analyst, Worldwide Quarterly Tablet Tracker. “While 2-in-1, or detachables, still account for a small portion of the overall market, growth in this space has been stunning as vendors like Asus, Acer, and E-FUN have been able to offer products at a fantastic value; and vendors like Microsoft have been able to drive growth at the high end with devices like the Surface Pro 3.”

The smallest figure that IDC splits out is 1.4m, for LG, which implies that the Surface shipped fewer. Tablets took off fast; now they’re awaiting the replacement cycle.

Windows will win your heart by not caring » Remotely Mobile

Benjamin Robbins on Microsoft’s BUILD announcements:

In short, Microsoft has clearly shown it doesn’t care; but in a good way. They don’t care which apps you want to use, they’ll support them. They don’t care which operating system you want to develop on, they’ll support it. They don’t care if you are on a phone or a PC, they just seamlessly switch between the two experiences.This is huge for all of us end users. Why? Because in the end we don’t really care either. We just want to be able to use the apps and services we think are best to get the task done and move on. I don’t want to fight the OS, app, or device. I just want to do my work and be done with it. This is where mobility is ultimately pushing us and it’s great to finally have someone not care either.

New Apple Watch has lowest ratio of hardware costs to retail price, IHS teardown reveals » Business Wire

The much-anticipated new Apple Watch has the lowest hardware costs compared to retail price of any Apple product IHS Technology has researched, according to a preliminary estimate by IHS and its Teardown Mobile Handsets Intelligence Service. The teardown of the Apple Watch Sport by IHS Technology estimates that the actual hardware costs are only about 24 percent of the manufacturer’s suggested retail price (MSRP). Estimated hardware cost to MSRP ratios for other Apple products reviewed by IHS are in the range of 29 to 38%.

The teardown of the Apple Watch Sport 38 mm by IHS Technology shows a bill of materials of $81.20 with the cost of production rising to $83.70 when the $2.50 manufacturing expense is added. The retail price of the Apple Watch Sport 38 mm is $349.00. The IHS Technology analysis does not include logistics, amortized capital expenses, overhead, SG&A, R&D, software, IP licensing and other variables throughout the supply chain such as the EMS provider.

That’s some low manufacturing expense for what the Watch looks like. And of course even if it’s right, that’s just the gross margin. Look at what it doesn’t include too.

Play Monument Valley on your Windows Phone today » Windows blog

Monument Valley: a fantasy world of impossible architecture and a beautiful, silent princess awaits you! Today we’re excited to share that Monument Valley is available to download from the Windows Phone Store.

Originally released on iOS just over a year ago. I wonder how many Windows Phone users have not heard of or played this on a friend’s phone. Or an iPad?

China is rewriting the rules of the mobile game, and Apple is still winning » The Verge

Vlad Savov:

The recognition of China’s importance is evident everywhere in the mobile industry. HTC is, for the first time, introducing two flagship smartphones this year, with the One M9+ being tailored to the needs and preferences of the Chinese market. In February, around the turn of the Chinese New Year, Lenovo brought Motorola back to China, setting it up as a sort of exotic alternative to local offerings, one where user customization is paramount.

But no one has benefited from China’s growing appetite for smartphones more than Apple. Even as the developed world was becoming saturated with iPhones, Apple kept expanding its sales with the help of China. The iPhone first became available in China in 2009, relatively early in its now gloried history, and has kept growing in line with the country’s expansion in disposable income and smartphone demand. This past quarter, Apple sold more iPhones in China than in the United States, belying prognostications that the Chinese market wouldn’t be receptive to such a premium, high-margin device.

As I criticised The Verge yesterday for not seeking out points of view, I should point to this as exactly the opposite: Savov gets comments from analysts who know and understand the market to produce an insightful piece. (Though Nokia used to be HUGE in China, Vlad. Until Q1 of 2012, when its mobile revenue there halved, and halved again within a year.)

comScore ranks top UK digital media properties for March 2015 » comScore, Inc

More than 47.5 million UK unique visitors accessed the Internet in March 2015 across desktop and mobile (smartphone and tablet) platforms. 45.1 million visitors accessed the Internet via desktop while 36.4 million users browsed the web via mobile. 

According to comScore MMX Multi-Platform, which provides an unduplicated view of usage across desktop, smartphone and tablet, Google Sites ranked as the top property with nearly 46 million combined desktop and mobile Internet users. The majority of Google Sites’ audience visited from both desktop and mobile platforms (66%), while 28% visited exclusively from desktop and 5% were mobile-only users. BBC Sites was the second most popular online property with a multi-platform audience of 40.6 million, 36% of which were mobile-only.

There is so much to extract from the short table in the release. For instance: Google gets 96.7% of the total audience; Amazon gets 77% of it, and more people access Amazon mobile-only than desktop-only; Mail Online, Sky sites, Apple, Trinity Mirror, Twitter and LinkedIn get more visits via mobile-only (which is 5% of the total audience) than desktop; all the media groups get more visitors via mobile-only than desktop-only.

If you re-sort it by mobile-only, Sky actually comes top – and Google comes last.

One to really mull over. Can hardly accuse the news organisations of being behind the times.

[Update: Indiegogo Investigating] Indiegogo continues to have no standards, allows $50,000 flex-fund campaign for vaporware modular smartphone » Android Authority

David Ruddock:

While it has served as a legitimate platform for fans to support products and content they genuinely believe in and want to see become a reality, it is also ripe for scamming and incompetence. Case in point: Fonkraft, a $50,000 Indiegogo campaign that allegedly will culminate in the production of a Project Ara-style modular smartphone.

To date, the flex-funded (as in, even if it doesn’t reach the goal, the project still gets what money was raised) campaign has amassed over $25,000 from people who probably know no better, with over 130 phones funded by supporters. The team behind the campaign? Literally two people, neither of whom state where it is they previously worked (no LinkedIn profiles, either – or any easily locatable social media profiles – surprise!), what specific experience they have in the phone industry, or how they plan to build a phone with two people and $50,000…. or less, since it’s a flex-fund campaign. For the record, Ubuntu wouldn’t even build a regular phone for less than $32 million.

Also, these guys provide literally no insight on how their product would actually work in a technical sense. You just have to believe!

Incredible that IndieGoGo lets people keep money raised even if it doesn’t reach the goal. It’s an open invitation to those with absurd optimism or bad intent.

Apple iPhone captures 12% smartphone market share in China in Q1 2015 » Strategy Analytics

According to the latest research from Strategy Analytics’ Handset Country Share Tracker(HCST) service, China smartphone shipments grew 17% annually to reach 110m units in the first quarter of 2015. Xiaomi maintained first position, but Apple is rapidly closing the gap with 12% marketshare in second place.

China smartphone shipments grew 17% annually from 93.6m units in Q1 2014 to a 109.8m in Q1 2015. China smartphone growth on an annualized basis has slowed from 39% to 17% during the past year, due to increasing penetration maturity. This is the first quarter that China’s smartphone annual growth rate has been lower than the global average since 2010.

Xiaomi, Apple, Huawei are the top three. Notice the company that’s missing from that list. Seems Samsung sold below 11.2m smartphones in China in Q1. Is the S6 going to bring it back?