Author Archives: charlesarthur

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About charlesarthur

Freelance journalist - technology, science, and so on. Author of "Digital Wars: Apple, Google, Microsoft and the battle for the internet".

Putting iOS and Android apps on Windows 10 is a white flag to rivals – and a red flag for developers

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We just need some firmware in here and everything will be fine. Photo by 4nitsirk on Flickr.

Microsoft announced at its BUILD conference that it will be providing a way for iOS and Android developers to port – sorta kinda – their mobile apps to Windows 10, so they don’t have to rewrite them from scratch in its coding language.

As Peter Bright described it at Ars Technica:

[In “Project Islandwood] Microsoft has developed an Objective C toolchain and middleware layer that provide the operating system APIs that iOS apps expect. A select group of third parties have been using the Islandwood tools already, with King’s Candy Crush Saga for Windows Phone being one of the first apps built this way. King’s developers had to change only a “few percent” of the code in order to fully port it to Windows Phone.

For Android, there is Project Astoria. Rumors of Android apps on Windows have been floating around for some time, and in Windows 10 Microsoft is delivering on those rumors. Astoria will allow Android apps to run in Windows. Specifically, Windows Mobile (and yes, that’s now officially the name for Windows on phones and sub-8 inch tablets) will include an Android runtime layer that’ll let them run existing Android apps (both Java and C++) unmodified.

Bright then followed up on Monday last Friday (thanks Walt) with an analysis which goes much more deeply into the mechanics of how it will be done, but also points to two examples where companies have tried to make up for the lack of apps on their platform by enabling others effectively to run on them: IBM’s OS/2 platform, and BlackBerry’s BB10.

The point about OS/2 is well-remembered, delving back into PC history when Windows was young and IBM was trying to keep control of the burgeoning PC platform. It failed, because IBM couldn’t update OS/2 fast enough to keep compatibility with the fast-expanding Windows 3.x API base; but also, developers didn’t want to get distracted by having to look after more than one platform.

Indeed, when it comes to porting, Bright observes that “neither OS/2 nor BB10 has made a success of this capability”. He could also have added Amazon’s Android fork, and the Nokia X, which used AOSP (Android Open Source Platform) and tried to replace Google services with Microsoft ones.

We surrender to your platform

The trouble with “compatibility mode” is that it’s so evidently a white flag on the part of the company that enables it. In effect, the company is saying: we can’t attract enough developers to write natively for our platform, so we’ll try to piggyback on the more successful one.

But that’s also a giant red warning flag to developers on that platform. By effectively telling them that other platforms are more successful, it calls into question the future of the development tools on the platform, and the user base; it accepts that there are both more users and more developers elsewhere.

I don’t think Islandwood and Astoria will work. Not because they technically won’t work – Microsoft has scads of smart people who can do clever things with code – but because this is a technical solution to a business problem.

Even worse, it’s a technical solution that makes the business problem worse. If you subscribe to the idea of “moats and castles” (that businesses aim to surround themselves with an advantage that rivals can’t cross), then effectively dumping your own developer kit on mobile so that you can lure people from rival platforms strengthens the rivals’ moats – their loyal cohorts of third-party developers. Why would anyone write first for mobile on Windows, given these two projects?

The business problem

Microsoft’s user base for Windows Phone is around 70m-80m worldwide, out of a total smartphone user base of around 2 billion. Superficially this sounds like the late 1990s, when Apple was just about able to eke out an existence by having around 50m-60m out of 1.5bn PCs.

The crucial difference though is that Apple had the high-end users, who were willing to pay a premium for Apple’s qualities (principally in desktop publishing and graphic design, and lots of consumers in the US). Windows Phone occupies the low end. Its users don’t monetise well. That means developers don’t concentrate on them. A little experiment for you: today, when you see an ad for an app, notice how many mention availability on Windows Phone. If you get above zero, you’re lucky (or browsing a Windows site).

The category error

But, say the the Windows diehards, the access to 1.5 billion PCs and, ahem, Windows Phone will prove irresistible to all those developers currently writing for iOS and Android. All those PCs! Who wouldn’t want to be on those?

This is wrong, for two reasons: context and support costs.
1) apps written for mobile do not, in the main, translate to the desktop/laptop. What would Snapchat on the desktop be like? Or Uber? Apps that rely on the camera or geolocation don’t make sense; others can in general be done in the browser (example: Facebook). John Kneeland pointed this out back in February, before we knew about these initiatives. What he wrote remains true:

The most interesting developers and companies today aren’t shrinking down desktop experiences. They are building entirely new experiences that wouldn’t make any sense — or even be possible — on a PC.

2) the cost of “writing” the app is only the start; after that you have support, updates and compatibility. Imagine an iOS developer who has written an app for iOS 8 (presently covering 81% of users) considering this.

If they’re sensible, they’ll look first at monetisation via Android – after all, it’s the far bigger market, which has a premium (= willing to pay) segment that rivals iOS in size. So they do that. And then clean up, perhaps, with the iPad market too.

Now – Windows Phone via compatibility mode or Android tablets? If they write for “Windows Phone compatibility” they’ll have a product that will need special tweaking on a new platform where because of the comparatively low number of users, a few bad reviews could spell doom. Even if they get it right, Apple will introduce iOS 9 in the autumn, which might or might not tweak or twerk the existing APIs, and will surely kill off some of the older ones. How long will it take Microsoft to update to those? One thing’s for sure – iOS new version adoption will run ahead of Microsoft’s ability to update. This means there are now two versions of the app, on slightly different APIs, not entirely compatible.

When iOS 9 comes out, the iOS developers’ attentions will be on bugfixing and customer support there. This means (because people are finite) less time to attend to the Windows Phone customers. Things don’t get fixed there, bad reviews get left, the app sinks down the store, and.. what was the point of writing for this thing again?

As for Android developers – if we assume that they haven’t already done an iOS version, then do you think they’d want to write something for a platform with over 500m mobile devices in use, or one with 1.5bn users… except that for almost all of those 1.5bn, their app will make no sense at all (if they’re even able to load it – for don’t forget that about half of those PCs are in businesses, and probably locked down)?

Again, this isn’t hard to figure out.

A good try, but doomed

Microsoft had to do something, and people who like clever technical solutions are delighted by this clever technical solution to the fact of developer indifference and incompatible software. But it doesn’t change the fundamental truth: Windows Phone (v10 or whatever) is too small to matter in platform terms on mobile.

Microsoft is surely interested in keeping the mobile side going, as much as anything because of all the lessons it teaches you about things like power management, chip integration, sensor management, and a multitude of other things that are important.

History tells us that software compatibility is a losers’ move. Far better to move the fight to a new battleground and win there – as Apple did, first with the iPod and then the iPhone and then the iPad and then (thus far) the Apple Watch. Seems like a working strategy.

Update: some responses on Twitter have been along the lines of “Oh, no, really, developers will love it!”

Why, I ask? “Azure! The developer environment! Access to Xbox! It’ll get people to switch to Windows!”

In order:
• developers don’t need Windows 10 to use Azure. Vesper, which is resolutely iOS-only, uses Azure, for instance.
• if there’s one thing developers likely don’t want to get accustomed to, it’s yet another developer environment if the payback is small. Also, is there any developer who hasn’t heard that Windows (desktop) has a lot of users? The point is that Windows 10 is not magically going to make those desktop users into mobile users, for the reasons discussed above. iOS and Android have 95% of pretty much any market that’s worth squeezing developer money from. If anyone wants to tell me which niches monetise better on Windows Phone than on iOS and/or Android, I’m all ears.

• Xbox access isn’t worth much. There are about as many Xbox users as Windows Phone users (of the order of 70-80m; Xbox One is replacing Xbox 360, and any new buyers are balanced out by those abandoning as they get older). Games are notoriously difficult to write well; developers need to write “close to the metal”. Porting mobile games to the Xbox isn’t a sensible strategy.

• people do switch to Windows Phone from other platforms. However, just as many (if not more) flow back to the other two platforms because they aren’t happy with the app situation. And if this works, then what’s the reason for switching to Windows? So that you can get the apps that you already had on the smartphone platform you were on before? That doesn’t make sense.

I’m happy to be proved wrong, of course – if those who say I’m going to be wrong are willing to put up some solid numbers here (in the comments) that we can refer back to in a year or so, such as forecast Lumia sales, or Lumia installed base, or forecast length in 2016 of the app gap between other platforms and Windows Phone/10.

I’m charlesarthur on Twitter. Say hi or leave a comment.

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.

A selection of 9 links for you. Go on, count them – don’t let a machine kill that job. I’m charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.

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.

A selection of 12 links for you. Free at the point of use. I’m charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.

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?

Start up: Argentina v bitcoin, Secret shuts, Cyanogen dumps OnePlus, Windows10 seeks devs, and more

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It’s like this for Secret. Photo by alex mertzanis on Flickr.

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Expect more Cyanogen phones from Chinese vendors » PCWorld

Michael Kan:

OnePlus’s flagship phone shipped close to 1 million phones at the end of last year.

“Without Cyanogen, OnePlus would have sold like one device in international markets,” [Cyanogen CEO Kirk] McMaster said in an interview. “Essentially they built their brand on the back of Cyanogen.”

The OnePlus success also showed other Chinese vendors that CyanogenMod could open doors to the global market. A number of these vendors are larger companies than OnePlus, but struggling in international markets to develop visible brands, and want help, he added.

It’s a good sign for Cyanogen, which also managed to bring on board Microsoft as a partner this month. But as for OnePlus, its ties with Cyanogen are probably ending.

Earlier this month OnePlus launched its own custom Android ROM, built with a simple interface that could replace the CyanogenMod. The change means that OnePlus can offer “faster, more meaningful updates”, according to the Chinese company. Cyanogen, however, will continue offering support to OnePlus phones still running its OS.

Cyanogen, plus Microsoft, is for me the most interesting thing happening in smartphones.

Can Bitcoin conquer Argentina? » NYTimes.com

Nathaniel Popper:

That afternoon, a plump 48-year-old musician was one of several customers to drop by the rented room. A German customer had paid the musician in Bitcoin for some freelance compositions, and the musician needed to turn them into dollars. Castiglione joked about the corruption of Argentine politics as he peeled off five $100 bills, which he was trading for a little more than 1.5 Bitcoins, and gave them to his client. The musician did not hand over anything in return; before showing up, he had transferred the Bitcoins — in essence, digital tokens that exist only as entries in a digital ledger — from his Bitcoin address to Castiglione’s. Had the German client instead sent euros to a bank in Argentina, the musician would have been required to fill out a form to receive payment and, as a result of the country’s currency controls, sacrificed roughly 30% of his earnings to change his euros into pesos. Bitcoin makes it easier to move money the other way too. The day before, the owner of a small manufacturing company bought $20,000 worth of Bitcoin from Castiglione in order to get his money to the United States, where he needed to pay a vendor, a transaction far easier and less expensive than moving funds through Argentine banks.

A new rule: any country under sustained currency pressure will see citizens increasingly turning to bitcoin to evade currency controls.

Sunset at the Secret den » Medium

David Byttow:

After a lot of thought and consultation with our board, I’ve decided to shut down Secret.

This has been the hardest decision of my life and one that saddens me deeply. Unfortunately, Secret does not represent the vision I had when starting the company, so I believe it’s the right decision for myself, our investors and our team.

I’m extremely proud of our team, which has built a product that was used by over 15 million people and pushed the boundaries of traditional social media. I believe in honest, open communication and creative expression, and anonymity is a great device to achieve it. But it’s also the ultimate double-edged sword, which must be wielded with great respect and care. I look forward to seeing what others in this space do over time.

The phrase “Secret does not represent the vision I had when starting the company” was highlighted by Ev Williams, Medium’s founder (and a Twitter co-founder). The final couple of sentences seem to be saying “Yeah, good luck with that, Whisper.”

Number of mobile-only internet users now exceeds desktop-only in the US » comScore, Inc

Mobile’s rise over the past few years has been well-documented as it continues to achieve major milestones illustrating its immense popularity, such as last year when app usage surpassed desktop usage and began accounting for half of all U.S. digital media consumption. But its latest milestone shows just how far this platform has come in overtaking desktop’s longstanding dominance as the primary gateway to the internet. For the first time in March, the number of mobile-only adult internet users exceeded the number of desktop-only internet users.

11.3% against 10.6% (the other 78.1% used both, of course). Tablets are counted as “mobile”; desktops still account for 87% of digital commerce. The latter number used to be 100%, of course.

Huge news: Windows 10 can run reworked Android and iOS apps » The Verge

Tom Warren:

After months of rumors, Microsoft is revealing its plans to get mobile apps on Windows 10 today. While the company has been investigating emulating Android apps, it has settled on a different solution, or set of solutions, that will allow developers to bring their existing code to Windows 10.

iOS and Android developers will be able to port their apps and games directly to Windows universal apps, and Microsoft is enabling this with two new software development kits. On the Android side, Microsoft is enabling developers to use Java and C++ code on Windows 10, and for iOS developers they’ll be able to take advantage of their existing Objective C code. “We want to enable developers to leverage their current code and current skills to start building those Windows applications in the Store, and to be able to extend those applications,” explained Microsoft’s Terry Myerson during an interview with The Verge this morning.

I have no idea why an iOS or Android developer would want to bother doing this. Putting an app onto a different platform involves immediate cost and future cost (in support). Can Windows 10 Phone (or whatever it is) really repay that?

Also, typical of The Verge’s approach, there’s no attempt to find any external comment on whether this is smart, stupid, or somewhere in between. Developers aren’t hard to find; nor are analysts. A comment from one or both groups would have informed readers. This falls short. (Contrast Mashable’s Christina Warren – no relation as far as I know – and Rene Ritchie of iMore. Sure, The Verge might have got the interview exclusively, but that’s still no reason not to make it even better by finding separate comment.)

For example, here’s a developer’s response to Ritchie:

The bot bubble: click farms have inflated social media currency » The New Republic

Doug Bock Clark:

Richard Braggs, Casipong’s boss, sits at a desk positioned behind his employees, occasionally glancing up from his double monitor to survey their screens. Even in the gloom, he wears Ray-Ban sunglasses to shield his eyes from the glare of his computer. (“Richard Braggs” is the alias he uses for business purposes; he uses a number of pseudonyms for various online activities.)

Casipong inserts earbuds, queues up dance music—Paramore and Avicii—and checks her client’s instructions. Their specifications are often quite pointed. A São Paulo gym might request 75 female Brazilian fitness fanatics, or a Castro-district bar might want 1,000 gay men living in San Francisco. Her current order is the most common: Facebook profiles of beautiful American women between the ages of 20 and 30. Once they’ve received the accounts, the client will probably use them to sell Facebook likes to customers looking for an illicit social media boost.

Most of the accounts Casipong creates are sold to these digital middlemen—“click farms” as they have come to be known.

It’s a full-time job. Where’s the government promise to create work like this in the UK, eh?

Apple warns of ‘material’ financial damage from Irish tax probe » FT.com

Tim Bradshaw and Christian Oliver:

Apple has warned investors that it could face “material” financial penalties from the European Commission’s investigation into its tax deals with Ireland — the first time it has disclosed the potential consequences of the probe.

Under US securities rules, a material event is usually defined as 5% of a company’s average pre-tax earnings for the past three years. For Apple, which reported the highest quarterly profit ever for a US company in January, that could exceed $2.5bn, according to FT calculations.

The warning came in Apple’s regular 10-Q filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday, a day after it reported first-quarter revenues of $58bn and net income of $13.6bn.

Forgotten what it’s about? Here’s some background.

Apple Watch: faulty Taptic Engine slows roll out » WSJ

Daisuke Wakabayashi and Lorraine Luk:

A key component of the Apple Watch made by one of two suppliers was found to be defective, prompting Apple Inc. to limit the availability of the highly anticipated new product, according to people familiar with the matter.

The part involved is the so-called taptic engine, designed by Apple to produce the sensation of being tapped on the wrist. After mass production began in February, reliability testing revealed that some taptic engines supplied by AAC Technologies Holdings of Shenzhen, China, started to break down over time, the people familiar with the matter said. One of those people said Apple scrapped some completed watches as a result.

Makes sense; some reviewers have complained about not getting anything noticeable “taps” in Watches they tried. Apple has moved to a different supplier, it seems, but is supply-constrained.

Engage Android users around the world » Jana

Over half of the top Google Play countries are emerging markets.

By download, that is, not revenue.

What if we are the microbiome of the silicon AI? » Edge.org

Tim O’Reilly, on the “website for thinkers”:

While all pundits allow that an AI may not be like us, and speculate about the risks implicit in those differences, they make one enormous assumption: the assumption of an individual self. The AI as imagined, is an individual consciousness.

What if, instead, an AI were more like a multicellular organism, a eukaryote evolution beyond our prokaryote selves? What’s more, what if we were not even the cells of such an organism, but its microbiome? And what if the intelligence of that eukaryote today was like the intelligence of Grypania spiralis, not yet self-aware as a human is aware, but still irrevocably on the evolutionary path that led to today’s humans.

This notion is at best a metaphor, but I believe it is a useful one.

Perhaps humans are the microbiome living in the guts of an AI that is only now being born! It is now recognized that without our microbiome, we would cease to live. Perhaps the global AI has the same characteristics—not an independent entity, but a symbiosis with the human consciousnesses living within it.

Oo, interesting idea.

Start up: EC v Android, Galaxy S6 top camera, how Google woke up to trouble, and more

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3D TV. Are we sure this was a good idea? Photo by Jen’s Art & Soul on Flickr.

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Google faces huge forces in fight over Android’s future » WIRED

Cade Metz:

The EU’s search case is closer to completion. After five years of investigation and a formal statement of objections, the commission could issue a remedy by the end of the year. But according to Paul Lugard, a Brussels-based antitrust lawyer with the multi-national firm Baker Botts, who has no connection to the many companies involves in this legal melee, the Android case may be the greater threat to Google. “The competitive harm is a little bit easier to establish than in the search case,” he says. “The Android case is more conventional.”

American regulators haven’t pursued action against Google in this area, but as Lugard says, the burden of proof in such cases isn’t as high in Europe as in the U.S. “The process in Europe is more formalistic and less economics-effects driven than in the U.S,” he says. In other words, the EU doesn’t have to work as hard to show that consumers and competitors have been harmed…

…If the commission does crack down on Android, we may see a large fine against the company, Logan says. Or we may see a dissolution of those Google contracts with handset makers. That may be the biggest threat to Google. Googles doesn’t make money from Android. It makes money from the ad-driven services that run atop the OS. And with Oracle, Microsoft, and so many others pushing so hard, those services may lose at least part of their foothold.

I still find the Android complaint far less persuasive than the search one. Lots of Americans see it the other way round.

Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge camera review: top-ranking smartphone has the edge » DxOMark

Paul Carroll:

Achieving outstanding scores in DxOMark Mobile industry standard tests, the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge becomes the new top-ranked device in our database. In fact, Samsung now occupies the top two spots for Mobile image quality with the Galaxy Note 4 also posting impressive results. We are publishing both the S6 Edge and Note 4 results simultaneously, so let’s start by analyzing the photographic strengths of Samsung’s flagship Smartphone.

Displaces the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus at the top. There’s a fairly constant game of leapfrog going on. Also, DXOMark is going to hit the 100 some time in the next couple of years, which might be a problem for its marking scheme.

LG’s new G4 is a powerhouse phone wrapped in leather » The Verge

Dan Seifert:

while the overall design of the G4 is very similar to the G3, LG is offering the new phone with leather backs in a handful of colors that bring the all-plastic phone up a few notches in terms of look and feel. The company says it spends an inordinate amount of time (three months) making each leather back, and the materials and processes used to do so are the same as luxury handbags. The leather options are certainly an improvement over the gross, glossy plastic used on other LG phones, but it feels more like the phone is in a leather case than actually being a handcrafted artifact…

…Other highlight specs include a Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 processor, 3GB of RAM, 32GB of internal storage, a 3,000mAh removable battery (but no Qualcomm QuickCharge support or built-in wireless charging), and a Micro SD card slot. LG also says that the GPS navigation and location services on the G4 are twice as accurate as other phones.

Very much want to see how the SD card/removable battery gambit plays out. This will test whether all those people saying it’s a dealbreaker not having them on the Samsung are just posturing. Or, maybe, whether there just aren’t that many of those people.

(Also: the leather back indeed looks like a case.)

YouTube to fund premium content, signs film deal » Reuters

Rama Venkat Raman:

Google’s YouTube will directly invest in new shows to be launched in partnerships with its four top content creators, it said in a blog on Tuesday.

The world’s No. 1 online video website also said it entered into an agreement with DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc unit AwesomenessTV to release feature films over the next two years.

The partnerships would help YouTube, which completed 10 years last week, secure higher quality advertising as it transitions from a repository of grainy home videos to a site with more polished content.

YouTube has been trying to lure more premium video advertising to boost margins as overall prices for Google’s ads have been declining.

The website, which attracts more than 1 billion unique visitors a month, far surpassing those of Netflix Inc and Amazon Inc, did not disclose how much it was investing or how the partnerships would be structured.

Making films is not a trivial process; I think Google is going to discover how low returns can be when you just put something online.

3D TV is pretty much over: Sky 3D to close in favour of on-demand only » Digital Spy

Jamie Harris:

The move is no surprise, as viewers never warmed to 3D from their living rooms, despite a heavy push to make it the next big thing.

On the flip side, on-demand television is booming according to Sky’s brand director Luke Bradley-Jones, which is why it has decided to shift its 3D content.

“Since its launch in 2010, Sky 3D has led the industry, becoming the home of incredible 3D content – from Sir David Attenborough’s award-winning documentaries like Flying Monsters, to the biggest Hollywood blockbusters like Avatar,” he explained.

“From June Sky 3D is going fully on-demand. From the latest 3D movie premieres like Guardians of the Galaxy, X-Men: Days of Future Past and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, to the very best in natural history with documentaries like Natural History Museum Alive, it will all be ready and waiting for our customers to view whenever it suits them.”

Yeah, that would be “never”. 3D TV is dead; stick a fork in it.

Google turns on the charm in Europe » FT.com

Richard Waters:

Google privately woke up to the fact that it needed to change the way it was operating in Europe last summer, according to Carlo D’Asaro Biondo, the French-Italian executive leading the group’s new charm offensive.
“We realised in the last years we had a problem,” he says.
In Mr D’Asaro Biondo’s analysis, Google should have offered a helping hand to all kinds of European industries as the digital world put increasing pressure on their business models. That did not happen.
“In Europe we were not organised to value [partnerships],” he says. “We were more organised to sell advertising.”
That neglect has exacted a high price. A series of running battles with the media and entertainment industries over copyright issues has expanded into wider competition complaints, resulting in this month’s action in Brussels.

In case you wondered why Google would be lobbing €150m to various news organisations in Europe.

A day in the life of a stolen healthcare record » Krebs on Security

Brian Krebs:

When your credit card gets stolen because a merchant you did business with got hacked, it’s often quite easy for investigators to figure out which company was victimized. The process of divining the provenance of stolen healthcare records, however, is far trickier because these records typically are processed or handled by a gauntlet of third party firms, most of which have no direct relationship with the patient or customer ultimately harmed by the breach.

I was reminded of this last month, after receiving a tip from a source at a cyber intelligence firm based in California who asked to remain anonymous. My source had discovered a seller on the darknet marketplace AlphaBay who was posting stolen healthcare data into a subsection of the market called “Random DB ripoffs,” (“DB,” of course, is short for “database”)…

…Health records are huge targets for fraudsters because they typically contain all of the information thieves would need to conduct mischief in the victim’s name — from fraudulently opening new lines of credit to filing phony tax refund requests with the Internal Revenue Service. Last year, a great many physicians in multiple states came forward to say they’d been apparently targeted by tax refund fraudsters, but could not figure out the source of the leaked data. Chances are, the scammers stole it from hacked medical providers like PST Services and others.

More sterling work by Krebs.

Tencent challenges Google, Alibaba with own smartphone software » Bloomberg Business

Tencent Holdings Ltd. released an operating system for smartphones and smartwatches Tuesday as it tries to win more of the 557 million Chinese accessing the Internet through mobile devices.
The software, called TOS+, provides voice recognition and includes payment systems, Chief Operating Officer Mark Ren said during the Global Mobile Internet Conference in Beijing.
Tencent follows domestic rival Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. in creating its own operating system for a country where more than nine out of 10 smartphones use Google Inc.’s Android. TOS+ seeks to tap Tencent’s stronghold in online gaming by including virtual reality and supporting play on televisions.

Tencent owns WeChat and QQ – which together have more than a billion users. Are people going to replace their mobile phones for this? Are handset makers going to use it? Feels ambitious but hard to make work at the scale of mobile.