Later, after NYT posted the dark sequel on Foxconn, Apple became the “world’s child abuser” for it accepted the “cruelties” within its own production chain. Finally now everybody not owning an iPhone or a Mac felt they have some sort of reason pointing the gun at Apple: even it may be legal from Chinese law perspective, it is totally against human rights to underpay kids work over-hours for Apple’s profit. They say.

Hypocrites.

Do you think the mouse you’re using as we speak, or the chair you’re sitting in, or the sneakers you’re wearing right now are made by anybody else but Chinese children working over-hours for somebody’s profit, for so many years?

Do you think China ever had different work conditions than these? Do you think $300 plus food and home for a young Chinese worker was ever less than “a very good reason to kill for”? Do you think these “blood-red” products are a minority?

Everything China produces is blood-red; it ever was. And China produces everything.

Facebook shows you what your friends are doing, reading or watching; that’s not bad either. But the way it does that, by capturing you in your own “relevant circle”, all over the web – that’s bad.

Being evil is not a full time job, but mainly a constant (wrong) way of doing things. Being stupid – likewise.

The secret solution for getting out of this vicious circle, where the user is captive in his own circle of relevant content (be it relevant for the user or just important for the ones keeping him locked in) is simply to let the user out.

A single query can be run in two instances, on two tables: one table can contain the data relevant to that person, the other one – the data relevant to humankind (or whatever you’d like to call a generic interest, like war news, politics, culture). Therefore, by simply splitting the screen, the user should be able to see both the search results that are relevant for himself and the results that are relevant “per se“. Somewhere between personal relevant results, relevant ads could be integrated as well and I’m guessing that would make them even more visible.

Imagine the left side of the screen page showing what your friends are saying about the subject you’re searching for, while the right side of the page / screen – what Times or “Some Important Opinion Maker” are saying about the same subject. (The two buttons that Google is showing in the upper right corner are not exactly it: you should not have to switch between personal and non-personal results, but to be able to see them both, distinctly, in the same time).

I believe people are able to follow two streams, although most marketing researches may show the opposite. We do not process the two data streams in parallel, that’s true, but we are doing serial processing so fast that it becomes more convenient to say that we can do parallel processing in short bursts.

On the other hand, splitting the results may just save the newspapers, that are right now unfairly fighting against your friends, for your attention; it just shouldn’t be the case for a search engine to ponder wether you should first read what the president is announcing or look at your friends’ new pictures. These two types of content belong to separate categories that are mixed together only by accident.

There should be no way mixing the results so badly that no one could tell what’s being pulled and what’s pushed; the two columns of your search page should be called “only for you” and “for everybody, including you“.

I see no strong argument against this split (besides some technical elbow grease), given the condition that no player wants the information to be truncated or misinterpreted.

Simplicity and elegance are said to be the optimal minimum, but not less than that. If showing only one feed that is the main stream of revenue and customers for so many people, generates so much discontent and disorientation, then it’s time for two feeds of results.

iBooks bookmark:

Ever heard of “don’t bend the pages, use a bookmark!” in your childhood?

This worries me a lot, much more than all Apple’s-textbooks-are-walled-gardened mumbo-jumbo.

Well, I guess smart manuals, learning as leisure and better teaching structure are not helping students…

I remember Steve Jobs’ response to a Cupertino counselor that was asking for free wi-fi in Cupertino, as Google did in Mountain View: “I think we [Apple] bring a lot more than free wi-fi”;

The same response is fit here: if you need cheaper iPads for students, it’s the schools that should develop such projects and offer discounts; Apple can do a lot more than discounts. Like a better learning curve.

On the second issue, regarding the ownership of the iBooks created with iBook Author, there’s no doubt it’s a false problem.

Apple has come up not only with a “strange” kind of textbooks, but with an entire new process of teaching & learning, that is, a new kind of teacher / student relation.

Now, the teacher can build books that can be distributed for free, just like the apps can; the teacher can also make some money out of these books one’s writing, just as in apps’ selling; on top of that, the teacher has the freedom to email the books, which is a bonus comparing to the apps distribution process. No DRM.

Where’s the problem? Apple’s textbooks are far less book-like than they are app-like. Did you find it unacceptable for Apple to limit apps distribution?

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I was talking to a friend about these two “mistakes” Apple has made, and his take was “Yes, Apple is the only company in the world that can possibly make such “mistakes”; the dead never make such mistakes, they can only copy the living and “correct” their mistakes.”

Ways to feel bitter about Apple…

You never actually see what’s going on, you can only “feel” the smoothness of the transition. One of the causes of this smoothness is this:

I guess Apple did it for money.