iTunes changed the music industry because it was more convenient than stealing. Most people made the value judgment that ten bucks for a clean, legal digital album was worth the alternative of fishing around for files that may or may not be damaged or infected.
Hollywood continues to completely ignore that lesson. It continues to punish the people who play by the rules with an insufferable customer experience. This is the sole reason piracy is up and profits are down: because doing it right totally sucks. And that’s apparently how the studios want it.
Articles
It’s understandable that console gamers would be upset about having part of their way of life uprooted, if Microsoft actually did stop them from playing used games with the next Xbox. But other gamers got over this disadvantage and moved on long ago.
Steam, a massively popular digital game store for PCs, has never allowed reselling or otherwise transferring games. Apple’s App Store rolls the same way, though the capabilities and prices of its games are admittedly a bit lower than what you’ll get for $40-60 on a PC or Xbox. It’s a lot easier to stomach having to buy your own copy of every game when they cost just $1-3, or even $5 and $10.
The real problem here is that, if the rumors are true, Microsoft is seeking ways to actively prevent physical versions of used games from playing on a second Xbox. It would be like if the car industry prevented original owners from ever selling their car back to a dealership or another person.
37signals is really ratcheting up the hype for what sounds like a massive redesign of Basecamp. After Jason Fried published “Starting Over,” an editorial in Inc.com explaining the why, the company now has a video that shows off the iterative design process it went through. A piece like this from any company is a rare diamond, but even more valuable from a company like 37signals.
Something tells me Inside Apple by Adam Lashinsky might prove more interesting than Isaacson’s Steve Jobs. I just bought it, though I probably won’t be able to read it for a week or two.
If you want to support Wind on a Leaf, you can buy Inside Apple through this iBookstore link.
Apple had a great holiday quarter: $46 billion in revenue, $13 billion in profit, as compared to $26.7 billion and $6 billion in Q1 2011 a year ago.
The company sold 37 million iPhones (a 128 percent year-over-year increase), 15.4 million iPads (a 111 percent increase), and 5.2 million Macs (a 26 percent increase). However, as part for the course over the last couple years, iPod shipments slowed again to 15.4 million units, a 21 percent decline.
Jason Fried, president of 37signals, explains in his Get Real column at Inc.com why his company is starting over with Basecamp:
Think about a product’s life span. When something new is released to the public—and this is especially true of software—it’s hardly set in stone. You get feedback from customers and make modifications. You add features, refine existing ones, and make things better over time. If you really listen and do it right, the product earns its success.
But paradoxically, that success makes it harder to change. As time goes by, people get used to things the way they are. And the more someone is accustomed to doing something a certain way, the harder it is to ask him or her to change. When it comes to introducing ideas, the years have a way of boxing you in.
I love companies that aren’t afraid to rebuild their best products. But if you’re an existing Basecamp user and afraid of the carpet being yanked out from under your organization, fear not. David Heinemeier Hansson, a 37signals partner and the creator of Ruby on Rails, understands where you’re coming from:
One of the most distressing parts of paying for software as a service is if the software radically changes and you don’t like it.
— DHH (@dhh) January 24, 2012
If it wasn’t clear from the article, Basecamp Classic isn’t going anywhere. We’ll be supporting it for many years to come. Next is opt-in.
— DHH (@dhh) January 24, 2012
So “Basecamp Classic” isn’t going anywhere. Basecamp Next is opt-in, and they’re going to launch using an invitation system. You can request one at the Basecamp Next teaser page.
Eric Jackson, who seems in no way to have a chip on his shoulder about Google, for Forbes:
But let’s pause and take stock of what is going on right now at Google. It has perhaps the best core business that has ever existed in business for at least the last 100 years: AdSense. That business accounts for 96% of Google’s revenues (for a breakdown, see here). From that business, it’s stockpiled $44 billion in cash – up $10 billion from a year ago.
With this enviable cash, Google has been able to invest in a lot of new products and businesses, such as YouTube/display, mobile, Docs, Android, and Gmail. Although Google is eager to tell you how well each of those nascent businesses are doing on an annualized basis, they still account for 4% of Google’s overall revenues.
Kyle Wiens of of iFixit.com announces iFixit.org:
We have been traveling to developing countries in Asia and Africa, visiting e-waste scrapyards and small repair shops, meeting “fixers” who breathe new life into gadgets that the western world has tossed away, and photographing the journey. Part travelogue, part investigative reporting, part soapbox, iFixit.org promises only one thing: a clear-eyed, thoughtful look at global repair culture.
And in case there’s any confusion between the mission of these two sites:
iFixit.com teaches you how to fix things. iFixit.org will address the who and why of repair. We will profile repair gurus from around the world, investigate the motivations of people who do repair, and consider the larger ethical and philosophical issues surrounding repair.
via Minimal Mac
Writing Kit, my favorite iOS text editor, was just updated to version 2.5 today with some spiffy features. There are now 16 color themes to choose from and you have more granular control over which text editing features you toggle, such as auto-capitalization, spell checking, and TextExpander, another one of my favorite—nay, must-have—text editing and snippet utilities for iOS and OS X.
Interestingly, Writing Kit’s developer, Anh Quang Do, did the same thing with this update that we’re about to do with 1Password for iOS: focus support solely on iOS 5. I’m seeing more and more developers do this, largely because the rate of adoption is so high. Developing for one OS makes it much easier to clean up your code, keep the app nice and tidy, and polish new features more quickly.
But back to Writing Kit. If you’re looking for a fantastic iOS text editor with a built-in browser, research and quoting tools, Markdown, clever multi-touch gestures, support for Instapaper, Markdown, exporting in a variety of formats, AirPrint, and more, you can’t go wrong with Writing Kit for just $5.
Well that’s one way to boost Google+ signup numbers: simply force it on all your new users.
RIM has needed to shake up its management for a long time. But even if we set aside the debate over whether this is too little and far too late, I’m not optimistic about the move. The previous co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie are out, and one of its co-COOs, Thorsten Heins, will pick up the torch.
Sidenote: in addition to co-CEOs, RIM has had three COOs until as recently as April 2011.
The problem is: that torch analogy is way too fitting, and not in a good way. Lazaridis and Balsillie have run RIM for 20 years, and Lazaridis founded it. They had a fantastic burst out of the smartphone gate but turned their blinders up to 11 when they started falling behind in 2007. Now, their denial and inaction over the last few years is largely responsible for the company’s sliding market share and stale product introductions. But as criticism of their recent non-accomplishments mounted, they’ve been congratulating and praising each other on earnings calls and proclaiming how great everything is. Lazaridis walked out of a BBC interview in April. In December, two RIM executives got so drunk and belligerent on a flight to China as to force the plane to turn around.
A number of things are very, very wrong at RIM.
But Heins says he’s happy to pick up the torch. Everything is just great. He has ‘big shoes to fill’ and doesn’t plan to deviate much from the vision Lazaridis and Balsillie laid out for the near future. If I were invested in RIM, I would be even more concerned that the company believes the solution to its problems is to toss a new guy in to pick up right where the last two left off.
The iPad is still a very new device, and in the iBooks textbooks promotional video, Apple made some interesting choices in portraying how people use it. I started noticing enough nuggets to warrant a post, so here we go:
- There are plenty of shots featuring swipe, tap, and pinch gestures. But there isn’t a single double-tap or tap-hold in the entire video [Update: Eagle-eyed John Wenn notes in the comments that there is indeed a brief tap-hold gesture at 2:45, when a user is highlighting text to make a note. Still, I think it's safe to say there is a general deemphasis on arguably hard-to-discover gestures like double-tap and tap-hold]
- One girl in the foreground at 6:52 is typing quickly without looking on her iPad, just as you would on a traditional notebook (other kids are shown in the background typing fairly quickly while looking). Her iPad is also laying flat and does not have any kind of case or protective cover. The shot, which is just noticeably longer than most others in the video, feels like a deliberate but subtle scoff of the ‘you can’t type on it’ argument
- There is a lot of one-handed use. The user typically holds the iPad with the left hand while tapping with their right. On one level, this was probably done to maintain a comfortable uniformity to the over-the-shoulder iPad closeups. On another level, it also feels like a rebuking of the ‘iPad is too heavy’ complaint. Have you held a textbook in the last decade?
- You see lots of one-handed typing of bite-sized information, like finishing the last word or two of a sentence, or finishing the second word of a proper name
- I see only two instances of typing in portrait mode: 4:14 and 5:39
- Lots of iPads have Smart Covers or other prop-up cases, though they are rarely used that way. The iPad is usually held, laying flat on a table, or, in a couple of rare instances, resting on a lap
- At 3:26, Eddy Cue starts shaking a huge, invisible watermelon
- None of the interviewed publishers from McGraw Hill or Pearson, or school administrative staff for that matter, are shown using, looking at, or anywhere near an iPad. Only students and, to a much lesser extent, teachers are seen holding or using an iPad
- The Mac makes only three brief appearances throughout the entire seven-minute video: 1) Students in a lecture hall open a bunch of Macs at 1:09, 2) A teacher demos iBooks Author at 3:16 (using a Magic Mouse, not a Magic Trackpad), 3) A Mac is shown on a teacher’s desk near a projector at 6:34
If you design or develop anything, Iconfactory’s xScope is a set of invaluable tools for measuring everything on your display. You can see the width of any window or the content inside, show dimension guides and frames while you work, inspect on-screen colors down to the pixel, and much more. I’ve owned a license for years and I’m re-buying in the Mac App Store for the license convenience. It’s that good.
xScope 3.0 has a boatload of new features, including Mirror which allows you to display any window on you iPhone or iPad in realtime, even if you move the window on your Mac. You’ll need the new and free xScope Mirror companion for Mirror. Also new in xScope 3.0: it can properly measure patterns like textures and Apple’s new “linen” in iOS and OS X, snap to edges of on-screen content, and it has new and updated platform templates organized by platform like iOS, Android, Mac, Windows, and TV.
To celebrate the launch, Iconfactory knocked 30% off xScope 3.0′s price. It’s just $20 in the Mac App Store.
DC Entertainment has unveiled a clever rebranding and a new, evocative logo.
Good news, everyone. Come Sunday, AT&T will offer boosted data plans across the board. Each plan costs $5 more, but you get much more data and a better per-MB price. I’ll definitely upgrade both mine and my wife’s iPhone and iPad to their respective equivalents, and I might finally sign up for tethering with my iPhone.
