The Angry Drunk » Posts

Sites That Trade in Apple Rumors Are Nothing More Than Gossip Rags

2012-05-23T15:34:01Z

Harry McCracken, while commenting on serial Apple product rumor shit-stirrer Digitime’s response to his earlier analysis of their shitty track record, makes a point that I’ve been trying to articulate for some time:

In a strange way, Digitimes also reminds me of the Dear Abby and Ann Landers of 1990s pseudonymous tech rumormongering, InfoWorld‘s Robert X. Cringely and PC Week‘s Spencer Katt. (Spencer Katt seems to have gone to the great litterbox in the sky, but yes, I know that there are still no less than two writers still plying the Cringely trade. Both of them are among the numerous Cringelys employed by InfoWorld when it was a dead-tree publication; neither of them, however, is a gossip columnist of the sort that Cringely once was.)

Back in the day, Cringely and Katt cheerfully repeated gossip they’d heard and didn’t deny that it was gossip. Here, for instance, is a Cringely — not either of the two current ones — in 1997, blithely reporting that sources at Sun say Apple will move the Mac to Intel processors. It didn’t happen — well, not for another eight years — but that was okay, since the tidbit began and ended in as a one-paragraph Cringely item. No other news source would have dreamed of putting the rumor on its front page based on Cringely’s word.

McCracken gets straight to the heart of my complaints about the current state of the Apple rumor mill.

Once upon a time speculating on Apple’s future plans and products was a fun little diversion for those of us who followed the company. In the end, though, we didn’t take the rumors any more seriously than we would stories about Bat Boy. Somewhere along the line that changed. Now even the most ludicrous Apple product rumors are bandied about with utter credulity as “reports” by a tech press that is increasingly desperate for page-views.

The thing is, when these rumors are treated with the same gravity as actual sourced reporting it causes demonstrable harm, both to Apple and to Apple’s customers. Apple is harmed, obviously, by the insane backlash from the blogoratti when a newly announced Apple product doesn’t live up to each and every bullshit rumor published about it (the iPhone 4S being the canonical example). Apple’s customers are harmed when they make purchasing decisions on “reports” based on nothing more than pure speculation and the wisdom of the Mystic Orient™.

Ultimately what I and many of my fellow travelers are advocating for isn’t the eradication of Apple product rumors. We’re simply asking that sites that do report rumor and speculation properly frame those stories as such. Speculating about new Apple products can be fun. Arguing over who has divined the exact pixel count of the next iPhone’s screen is a tedious bore.

Taxing My Patience

2012-05-01T16:31:46Z

Apparently The New York Times has decided to run with the Tellarite¹ inspired strategy of increasing traffic to articles about general corporate behavior by focusing on Apple. Thus we have “How Apple Sidesteps Billions in Taxes” a startling exposé on how Apple—and Apple alone—uses armies of ninja accountants and shadowy off-shore lairs to evade the taxes it rightfully owes to state and municipal governments.

Oh wait, the voices in my head are telling me that this article is actually just a report on the practices that pretty much every large corporation uses to “evade” taxation. Of course there’s no sizzle in a headline like “The U.S. Corporate Tax Code is Bollocks” So The Times needed to go in another direction.

But it’s really not The Times’ malfeasance that has me annoyed. What annoys me the most is one particular response to those who would point out that what Apple is doing is a) common and b) perfectly legal. It’s one of the same responses that was trotted out when (sane) people pointed out that pretty much all consumer electronics products are produced in China; mostly under conditions that make Apple’s Foxconn factories seem like a dream. The response goes something like this:

But is Apple not special‽ Should we not hold them to a higher standard than all others‽ Do they not have a greater responsibility to sacrifice on behalf of my middle-class entitled guilt‽

While there was some room for debate on those questions in regards to The Passion of Mike Daisey, there is little room to debate here. No, Apple is not under some moral obligation to avoid legal means of reducing their taxation rates. In fact, as a publicly held corporation Apple has a legal responsibility to maximize shareholder return. A duty that includes tactics such as reducing taxation expenses.

Before I continue let’s get something completely clear. I am no pro corporate, anti-taxation advocate. I am a huge fan of taxes. I think they are the entry-fee for living in a civilized society and, if anything, I’d prefer to see Apple—and the rest of corporate America taxed at rates that would probably cause Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer to piss blood.

Nonetheless I cannot find fault with Apple for doing all that it can within the existing legal framework to pay as little as possible in taxes; any more than I would find fault with a factory worker for taking advantage of every possible tax exemption and deduction on their personal income tax. It is not the individual’s responsibility—whether they be corporation or pipe-fitter—to make up for the deficiencies in local, state and Federal tax codes.

This is where I find fault with the common responses to articles like this one. In their sad attempt to gin up page-views by inciting the Apple haters and loyalists they ignore the actual problem. In this case, I’m sure we’ll see at least one call for a boycott of Apple products and a pointless Change.org petition calling for Apple to mend its evil ways. What I’m certain we won’t see is a rational discussion of corporate tax policy.

I’ll conclude with this: If you read The New York Times article and found yourself outraged at Apple, take a step back and realize that being angry at Apple does nothing here. Instead focus that anger toward electing representatives—at all levels of government—who are not beholden to corporate interests. That’s where the real change will come from.

Note: I don’t intend for this to become a general debate about tax policy—corporate or otherwise. Comments that insist on doing so will be treated…harshly.

This is a reference to ZDNet’s David Gewirtz, who is famous for this tactic. Pageviews will not be granted. ↩

War on Work — Not So Much

2012-04-04T15:21:41Z

Chuq Von Rospach, who is unquestionably a smart guy, takes issue with the recent article in Mother Jones by Mac McClelland exposing the back-breaking and dehumanizing conditions in an unnamed 3rd party logistics warehouse. Reading Chuq’s comments I honestly have to question if he read the actual article rather than the summary at The Verge that he links to.

Chuq assumes, as does The Verge that McClelland is specifically referring to an Amazon fulfillment center:

The Mother Jones piece seems to be trying to demonize Amazon in a quiet way for how hard they work their warehouse people.

However, McClelland specifically states that she isn’t trying to demonize one specific company. She writes:

…I’d smudge identifying details of people and the company itself. Anyway, to do otherwise might give people the impression that these conditions apply only to one warehouse or one company. Which they don’t.

But that is really a minor quibble. It’s almost certain that, even if the warehouse McClelland worked in wasn’t contracting to Amazon, Amazon uses similar companies. My real issue with Chuq’s analysis is that is interprets the Mother Jones article as some sort of “war on work.” Chuq writes:

Are we as first worlders getting to the point where hard physical work is somehow evil? Maybe we need to get out from behind keyboards more often, then. Sit down and talk to your plumber, next time you hire them to root out a clogged sewer. Or your gardener, next time they come in to mow and blow your lawn. Or when you go to a restaurant, sit where you can watch the kitchen and see just how hard the wait staff and line cooks work — for a lot less money than they deserve. And don’t be stingy on the tip…

I’m really kind of confused by the Mother Jones piece. It seems to be demonizing — work. have there been abuses at some of Amazon’s warehouse facilities? yes. Well, guess what. abusive bosses exist. they exist in high tech as well, but here in Silicon valley, when you keep a sleeping bag under your desk, it is a badge of honor to some (hint: the company is still taking advantage of you).

There is no doubt that many — far too many — so-called “white-collar” workers look down on physical labor with disdain. That is a real problem and one that I agree needs to be stamped out. However, that absolutely not the take-away that I got from McClelland’s report. When I read passages such as:

They need you to work as fast as possible to push out as much as they can as fast as they can. So they’re gonna give you goals, and then you know what? If you make those goals, they’re gonna increase the goals. But they’ll be yelling at you all the time. It’s like the military. They have to break you down so they can turn you into what they want you to be. So they’re going to tell you, ‘You’re not good enough, you’re not good enough, you’re not good enough,’ to make you work harder. Don’t say, ‘This is the best I can do.’ Say, ‘I’ll try,’ even if you know you can’t do it. Because if you say, ‘This is the best I can do,’ they’ll let you go.

…and…

In the center of the room, a video plays loudly and continuously on a big screen. Even more than you are hurting the company, a voice-over intones as animated people do things like accidentally oversleep, you are hurting yourself when you are late because you will be penalized on a point system, and when you get too many points, you’re fired—unless you’re late at any point during your first week, in which case you are instantly fired. Also because when you’re late or sick you miss the opportunity to maximize your overtime pay. And working more than eight hours is mandatory.

…and…

“Well, what if I do start crying?” I ask the woman who warns me to keep it together no matter how awfully I’m treated. “Are they really going to fire me for that?“

“Yes,” she says. “There’s 16 other people who want your job. Why would they keep a person who gets emotional, especially in this economy?”

…and…

Inside Amalgamated, an employee’s first day is training day. Though we’re not paid to be here until 6, we have been informed that we need to arrive at 5. If we don’t show up in time to stand around while they sort out who we are and where they’ve put our ID badges, we could miss the beginning of training, which would mean termination.

…and…

The programs for our scanners are designed with the assumption that we disposable employees don’t know what we’re doing. Find a Rob Zombie Voodoo Doll in the blue section of the Rockies sector in the third bin of the A-level in row Z42, my scanner tells me. But if I punch into my scanner that it’s not there, I have to prove it by scanning every single other item in the bin, though I swear on my life there’s no Rob Zombie Voodoo Doll in this pile of 30 individually wrapped and bar-coded batteries that take me quite a while to beep one by one. It could be five minutes before I can move on to, and make it to, and find, my next item. That lapse is supposed to be mere seconds.

…and…

It’s brave of these women to keep their phones in the break room, where theft is so high—they can’t keep them in their cars if they want to use them during the day, because we aren’t supposed to leave the premises without permission, and they can’t take them onto the warehouse floor, because “nothing but the clothes on your backs” is allowed on the warehouse floor (anything on your person that Amalgamated sells can be confiscated—“And what does Amalgamated sell?” they asked us in training. “Everything!”)

…and…

Temporary staffers aren’t legally entitled to decent health care because they are just short-term “contractors” no matter how long they keep the same job. They aren’t entitled to raises, either, and they don’t get vacation and they’d have a hell of a time unionizing and they don’t have the privilege of knowing if they’ll have work on a particular day or for how long they’ll have a job. And that is how you slash prices and deliver products superfast and offer free shipping and still post profits in the millions or billions.

I don’t hear the whine of the privileged — afraid of a little physical labor. I hear a complete disregard for human dignity which, had the company been named “Apple” and the reporter been a bloated, self-absorbed stage actor, would have resulted in howls of slacktivist rage and at least one online petition. No, this is a portrait of an industry that treats human beings like automatons because it has realized that in this economy human beings are cheaper and more easily replaced than robots.

Pot, Kettle, Black

2012-02-13T17:50:07Z

Note: Links to the articles referenced in this post are omitted because I’m fucking sick and tired of feeding the link-bait monster.

Recently freshly-minted venture capitalist and occasional spewer of words M.G. Siegler crapped out a post on his ParisLemon blog decrying the shitty state of today’s technology journalism. Well, you would think that was what he was nattering about had you seen a link to his essay on any of the various blogs that have linked to it.

In reality Siegler, a partner in Michael “King of All New Media Douchebags” Arrington’s CrunchFund, takes Nick Bilton to task for Bilton’s column in the New York Times castigating the startup Path for misusing user data. Or rather, Siegler defers the actual taking-to-task to the aforementioned King of All New Media Douchebags himself. Of course, we’re expected to belive that Arrington and Siegler’s beneficence toward Path is prompted only by their deeply held sense of fair play and not, as a more cynical observer might think, because Path is funded by CrunchFund.

The real irony in this idiocy though is when you compare the ever so measured and rational stance we’re expected to take regarding the CrunchFund funded Path and Arrington’s hysterical claims at his former TechCrunch digs that Last.fm was funneling user data to the RIAA. I guess measured and rational is only a worthwhile goal when you have a stake in it.

Further note: I’m not taking any stand on the ethics of what Path did or their response to the allegations. Attempts to direct any discussion in that direction will be handled with extreme prejudice.

Macworld | iWorld 2012

2012-01-31T17:10:57Z

Another Macworld has come and gone. More correctly, the first Macworld | iWorld has come and gone and now it’s time to sit back, reflect, and process our feelings.

I make the point that this as the first Macworld | iWorld because that is actually important. A lot of the commentary, both positive and negative, has underestimated the impact of that fact. While it has a rich history in the form of Macworld Conference & Expo, the radical shifts in the technology market in recent years have necessitated that Macworld | iWorld forge new ground.

The first, and most obvious change is the name itself. I know that many people in the Apple blogosphere dislike the name. The truth is that I’m not certain how I feel about the name. What I do know is this, with more than half of Apple’s revenue being generated by non-Mac devices, expecting the show to remain simply “Macworld” is foolish. Like it or not, iOS is part of the Apple ecosphere now and ignoring it is a recipe for disaster. A the same time, abandoning the Macworld name is also a non starter. I don’t envy the folks at IDG the challenge of coming up with a name that properly encompasses the evolving nature of the community. I know that I couldn’t have done any better.

The second major change this year was separating the former MacIT “track” into essentially its own conference, MacIT. I didn’t really pay much attention to the MacIT portion of the conference as the material is generally irrelevant to my work but the presenters and vendors that I did speak with seemed to be in agreement that moving the more IT focused products off the main Expo floor allowed them to focus on their enterprise customers instead of having to repeatedly explain to confused customers what their products are for.

On the “user conference” side of the house, the major changes were the addition of a Midway featuring music and art exhibitions and the changes in pricing for the Tech Talks.

The Midway was a fun, and very welcome addition to the show. The “user” portion of past shows has consisted basically of roaming the show floor and the formal conference presentations. The Midway was a pleasant way to sample some of the amazing things being done in the visual and musical arts using Mac and iOS devices without someone hawking a product at you or sitting through a 90 minute lecture.

Likewise, the changes in pricing for the Tech Talks was extremely welcome. At past shows, the User Conference content could run as much as $300 for the full conference or $100 for a single day. This year access to all the Tech Talk content was available for a mere $125 dollars, with even more in-depth training available for an additional fee. The Tech Talks that I attended were of the same high quality as presentations that I’ve seen at Macworld in years past.

There has been much noise this year over attendance figures for the show. IDG will release numbers today which will do exactly fuck-all to change anyone’s opinion. Those that have clambered aboard the Macworld is doomed bandwagon will either view the numbers as proof of their assertions or as unreliable and to be dismissed. All I know is that every time I toured the floor, from the opening minutes on Thursday to the end of the day on Saturday the floor traffic was consistently steady. Also, the vendors I spoke with were all very pleased with the amount of traffic they were getting at their booths.

In the end, my position hasn’t changed since I first wrote about this before attending my first expo three years ago. IDG is not a charity. If and when the day comes that IDG is no longer making money from the show the show will be canceled. People attempting to expose IDG’s deep dark secret of flagging attendance numbers are more pointless than a fucking sphere.

All that said, was Macworld | iWorld perfect? Of course not. To give an example that struck close to home, the inclusion of podcasts in the general Tech Talks curricula and locating us in the same presentation rooms tended to suck the energy out of the shows. This is something that a few of us have brought up with IDG and are working on improving for next year.

The bottom line is this: in my opinion IDG did a wonderful job with Macworld | iWorld, but there is always room for improvement. As I told Paul Kent, General Manager of Macworld, when we spoke on the crowded show floor Saturday afternoon; the first two years following Apple’s withdrawal from Macworld Expo were an inevitable transition period. This year it really felt as if Macworld | iWorld was hitting its stride and is poised for great things to come. I’m glad to be along for the ride.

The Answer Is in the Name

2012-05-24T18:04:57Z

Today Apple held their much-anticipated education announcement at the Guggenheim museum in New York. As you are probably aware, Apple announced three new products during the event: iBooks 2, iTunesU.app and iBooks Author. I’m not going to go into any deep analysis of the event. It’s been so long since I was even vaguely involved with the education market that I really can’t muster up any deep insight into Apple’s initiatives. As usual, though, the reaction to Apple’s announcements by the blogoratti does provide a rich and fertile ground of annoying stupidity which we can harvest.

One emerging theme annoys me in particular: the idea that Apple is exerting Draconian control over how you can sell content produced with iBooks Author.

The story goes like this. When you attempt to export your work from iBooks Author a dialog appears stating:

Note: Books can only be sold through the iBookstore. To publish your book on the iBookstore, choose File > Publish.

This is reinforced by language within the end-user license agreement (EULA) that reads:

IMPORTANT NOTE: If you charge a fee for any book or other work you generate using this software (a “Work”), you may only sell or distribute such Work through Apple (e.g., through the iBookstore) and such distribution will be subject to a separate agreement with Apple.

This, of course has raised the hackles of the punditocracy. The restriction is being called “unprecedented”, “audacious” and DRACONIAN. John Gruber even goes so far as to call it “…Apple at it’s worst.” People are shouting, “How dare Apple tell me what I can and can’t do with software I bought¹? No one else does this.”

The thing is, I’m fairly certain that those people didn’t see the same announcement that I did.

I’m going back over the live-blogs of the event, and looking on Apple’s iBooks Author product page and for the life of me I can’t find where Apple is positioning this product as a generic ePub editor. In fact, from what I gather from people who have done the research, the iBookstore format, while based on ePub, diverges pretty strongly from the standard.

The bottom line is, the answer is in the name — iBooks Author, not ePub Author, or Pages 2012. As much as people would like to think that iBooks Author is a general purpose book publishing tool, Apple clearly thinks otherwise.

I can sympathise with the frustration. I’ve been noodling on an article with the thesis that Apple needs to step up and provide both a professional level ePub authoring tool as well as a professional grade application for producing better Newsstand apps. But iBooks Author is obviously not that particular hippogriff. I honestly don’t find it unreasonable for Apple to expect that paid content produced within it’s free tool (designed and marketed as a tool to work with one specific storefront) should be sold via official channels. Hell, I’m actually amazed that Apple is putting no restrictions on unpaid content. You can export ibooks format files and scatter them to the four winds for all they care. Just as long as you don’t get any dosh for them.

Once again, the tech press and pundits would do much better if they would actually pay attention to what Apple announces instead of the announcement that they make up in their heads.

iBooks Author is free. ↩

Saddling the Unicorn

2012-05-24T17:58:39Z

It seems the “Apple HDTV” has reached the point in the life-cycle of an idiotic Apple product rumor where the blogtards really go off the rails and begin to spout “specifications” for the unicorn du jour. First we had the grandpappy of this misbegotten idea, Gene Munster, spouting off at some conference that he knew the price of the unicorn. Next some lackwit analyst declared that he knew what sizes the unicorn would come in. Unfortunately this stage of the rumor cycle is unavoidable. It’s also one of the most infuriating stages; mainly because of the mind-fuckingly stupid shit that these magoos come up with.

Which leads us to today’s unfortunately titled post from John Martellaro at the Mac Observer titled The Operational Details of the Apple HDTV.

To be fair to John, and to simultaneously condemn him to the deepest pits of Tartarus, the content of his post is not actually a statement of what he “knows” the unicorn to be like the above-mentioned claims. Instead the post is entry 2,753,916 in the category “Gee Whiz Wouldn’t It Be Wonderful if Apple Did This…” John begins:

A lot has been written about the viability of an Apple branded HDTV and how it must fail in the market. But most of that analysis is based on the idea that Apple’s offerings would be no better than any off the shelf equivalents from the current manufacturers. What if Apple’s HDTV worked differently?

No John, those of us arguing that an Apple HDTV is a stupid idea aren’t doing so because we think that Apple’s mythical offering would be “no better than any off the shelf equivalents from the current manufacturers.” We’re arguing that it’s a stupid idea because: a) the thing that needs “fixing” in the TV experience isn’t the thing pumping the photons into our eye holes and b) to date no one has offered a compelling argument why whatever magical shit they’re asking for can’t be accomplished via Apple’s existing $99 Apple TV.

I don’t want to waste precious drinking time disassembling John’s entire Christmas list but one item in particular jumped out at me. John is predicting (speculating, wishing — at this point I have no idea what purpose these kinds of articles serve) that the mythical Apple HDTV will sport a higher resolution than existing sets.

Currently, makers of HDTVs try to minimize cost by making the resolution exactly the same as the HDTV standard: 1920h x 1080v. There’s a vast industry that cranks out panels of exactly that size. What if Apple were to go to, say, Sharp, and ask for special panels, say, 2200 x 1200? Because Apple would expect sales to be modest for starters, such an offbeat display would be expensive to make and pricey, but Apple customers are accustomed to that. Moreover, Sharp wouldn’t mind because the low volume, high profit display wouldn’t compete with their own offerings — at the start.

Ugh. No John, the HDTV makers don’t make screens with a resolution of 1920x1080¹ in order to “minimize cost.” They do it because that’s the fucking specification. If manufactures didn’t use a resolution that matches the spec. we’d be stuck in the wonderful world of scaling and all the suck that entails².

So, having said that, what does John propose the Apple HDTV do with all those extra pixels?

What would this achieve? The high definition video section would then be in a window of the larger display. Now we’re beginning to think like a Mac user. What doors would open?

Additional information could be displayed around the outside. Alerts, weather information, or even the corresponding data drawn from the IMDB. After all, from my reading, I’m not the only person who watches TV and movies with the IMDB page open on the iPad in my lap.

In a multi-tasking, social world, that extra space outside the high definition TV window is golden.

Oh fuck me.

There is so much wrong with this concept that it’s giving me indigestion.

First, as I’ve repeated until I’m blue in the face, real people buy television sets in different sizes for reasons that have fuck all to do with the way the average techie thinks. Sure, “bigger is better”, except when it’s not. Here’s a personal example. A few months ago I bought two HDTVs for my house, a 37 inch model and 42 inch model. Both sets cost essentially the same amount of money. Given that, why didn’t I buy two of the 42″ sets? Simple, they were going different places. The 37″ unit is in my office. A bigger screen would simply not fit there. The 42″ set is in the living room where there is more room.

With John’s mythical Apple HDTV I would be faced with the dilemma of either trying to cram a larger set into my office in order to maintain the same physical content size — or accepting an effective downgrade in picture size as a trade-off for some of that ol’ timey Apple Magic.

The second bit of lunacy here is the idea of using the extra space for widgets.

MOTHER FUCKING WIDGETS

This here is precisely why I say that the punditards pontificating about how Apple needs to “fix” television have no fucking clue how the other 99% actually use the fucking thing. The last thing most people want when sitting down to watch the boob tube is a bunch of googaws shitting up the sides of the screen and distracting from the content. Most people are unhappy with the crap the networks already litter the screen with. Fuck, imagine trying to watch a game on ESPN on one of these monstrosities. It would be like a Russian Nesting Doll of pointless shit surrounding the action. Fuck, if you want a secondary screen to pull info up on while you’re watching shit, Apple’s got you covered hombre.

These sort of articles really only do two things: serve as wish-fulfillment fantasy for nerds and demonstrate that the blogoratti have no fucking clue how average people use technology.

Actually he forgot one there. Poor 1280x720 always the bridesmaid, never the bride. Then there’s the whole matter of non-square pixels. ↩
Yes, I’m aware that all decent HDTVs do have a scaler built in, but the math is far simpler for the few standard resolutions covered by the existing specifications. ↩

Occupy My Nutsack!

2011-11-22T19:22:27Z

Warning: No actual political content ahead.

Woah there hippy…slow down…read past the headline…this post isn’t quite what you think it is. You see, I’m pretty much in agreement with the Occupy movement. Unfortunately there is a dark, insidious, and frankly evil thing that has come out of the Occupy movement that needs to be squashed like the fucking cockroach it is. I’m referring to the sudden fetish of shit-bag “journalists” and lame-ass “hacktivists” to slap the word “occupy” in front of every gods damned thing that happens to annoy them.

Case in point, two recent “movements” Occupy Flash and Occupy HTML (links both courtesy of Daring Fireball). Look, I don’t care what your position is on Flash or HTML “purity” (hint, Flash sucks crusty hobo dick). Something that all right-thinking people can agree on is that neither one of them needs to be fucking “occupied”.

Come on people, we lost the war over “-gate”. Now we have to endure shitty headline after shitty headline about “Glassgate” and “Antennagate” and “My-Chalupa-Didn’t-Have-Enough-Fucking-Meat-In-It-Fucking-Gate”. It’s time we said enough is enough. Let’s take a stand and let these shit-birds know that we’re not going to take this lazy bullshit anymore!

What do we want? Creative thinking!

When do we want it? Last fucking week!

Fuck You Google

2012-05-24T18:53:28Z

Yesterday Google posted an article on their blog with the wonderfully Orwellian title Greater choice for wireless access point owners. Addressing the persistent concerns over Google’s practice of gathering data on publicly accessible WiFi routers in order to bolster their location database Google has proposed a solution. Of course this being Google it’s an opt-out solution that 99% of the consumers purchasing a router will never know about. Worse yet, the “solution” is positively insulting to those who do know about it:

We’re introducing a method that lets you opt out of having your wireless access point included in the Google Location Server. To opt out, visit your access point’s settings and change the wireless network name (or SSID) so that it ends with “_nomap.” For example, if your SSID is “Network,” you’d need to change it to “Network_nomap.”

That’s right, in order to protect the privacy of our personal networks Google wants us to modify the network name to conform to their arbitrary standards. I think that tonight I’ll be changing my network’s SSID to “Fuck you Google you arrogant assholes”.

Um…Ok?

2012-05-24T18:55:09Z

In his latest piece, Apps Are the New Channels Gruber ponders the idea of standalone apps replacing television channels as a distribution model. Referring to apps like the HBO Go iPad app (which I love, by the way) he writes:

Why not the same thing for TV sized displays? Imagine watching a baseball game on a TV where ESPN is a smart app, not a dumb channel. When you’re watching a game, you could tell the TV to show you the career statistics for the current batter. You could ask the HBO app which other movies this actress has been in. Point is: it’d be better for both viewers and the networks if a TV “channel” were an interactive app rather than a mere single stream of video.

Ok take that as a given, but it still doesn’t answer my question about the supposed Apple HDTV: How does Apple producing and marketing a HDTV meet that goal, as well as the needs of the majority of Apple’s customers, in any way that is demonstrably better than the existing AppleTV product? Keep in mind that I will only accept answers to that question that take into account the issues regarding additional content types I enumerated previously.

This is my whole problem with the growing chorus of people claiming that Apple will, nay must produce an HDTV. Every time I ask what the rationale behind such a device I get nothing back but wild-eyed speculation of all the cool shit Apple could do with a television; backed by people constantly chanting “DISRUPTION” like some sort of TechCrunch obsessed Dalek.

I get it, “television” sucks. The problem is that “television” isn’t some neatly packaged product like “personal digital media player” or “smartphone” or “tablet shaped personal computing device whose market we’re essentially inventing from whole cloth.”

“Television” is a vast, amorphous entity consisting of channel based programing streams, pre-packaged standalone media entities, gaming and personal content display to name just a few things. “Television” is also a market that has, in one form or another, existed for half a century.

Compounding this, the television itself is merely the endpoint of all this content, and arguably the component least responsible for the current state of affairs. Arguing that replacing the television addresses the problems with “television” makes as much sense as saying that the answer to my congested morning commute is to replace my truck.

All that said, there is one thing I want to make clear. Now that we’re getting to the point where the claim chowder will be served I want to explain that I am not arguing that Apple won’t attempt to produce this thing. It is not the place of mortal drunkard to know the mind of Tim Cook. For the record, my claim is this: If Apple does produce an Apple HDTV that is anything like what the current spate of rumors has suggested, it will not succeed in the market in the long run.

There, put that in your chowder pots and simmer it.