The Cult of Centricism

post from Daring Fireball on 26 July 2011 07:03:25 PM. © Daring Fireball

Paul Krugman:

We have a crisis in which the right is making insane demands,while the president and Democrats in Congress are bending overbackward to be accommodating — offering plans that are allspending cuts and no taxes, plans that are far to the right ofpublic opinion.
So what do most news reports say? They portray it as a situationin which both sides are equally partisan, equally intransigent —because news reports always do that. And we have influentialpundits calling out for a new centrist party, a new centristpresident, to get us away from the evils of partisanship.
The reality, of course, is that we already have a centristpresident — actually a moderate conservative president.

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Read The Full Article:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/26/the-cult-that-is-destroying-america/

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The Cult That of Centricism

post from Daring Fireball on 26 July 2011 06:04:17 PM. © Daring Fireball

Paul Krugman:

We have a crisis in which the right is making insane demands,while the president and Democrats in Congress are bending overbackward to be accommodating — offering plans that are allspending cuts and no taxes, plans that are far to the right ofpublic opinion.
So what do most news reports say? They portray it as a situationin which both sides are equally partisan, equally intransigent —because news reports always do that. And we have influentialpundits calling out for a new centrist party, a new centristpresident, to get us away from the evils of partisanship.
The reality, of course, is that we already have a centristpresident — actually a moderate conservative president.

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Read The Full Article:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/26/the-cult-that-is-destroying-america/

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Apples P/E Ratio

post from Daring Fireball on 26 July 2011 06:04:17 PM. © Daring Fireball

Matt Richman:

If a company?s P/E ratio is supposed to be indicative of itsgrowth prospects, then why is Netflix?s P/E ratio more than 4.5times higher than Apple?s when Apple is growing its bottom linemore than twice as fast as Netflix is?

I think it’s psychological. Wall Street, collectively, can’t wrap its head around just how big Apple has gotten and how fast it continues to grow. Ten years ago Apple traded at $10 a share; five years ago $65. That’s the Apple Wall Street remembers, and thus today’s Apple at $400 seems like it’s had a really nice run to reflect its last five years of success. The stock is weighed down by old impressions of Apple as a smaller company with niche appeal.

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Read The Full Article:
http://www.mattrichman.net/post/8095263459/apples-p-e-ratio

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Just a Ball Proves that Physics can be Fun

post from prMac on 26 July 2011 03:48:00 PM. © prMac

AngryOrange has introduced Just a Ball 1.0, their new physics based puzzle adventure for iOS devices. In Just a Ball, players use problem solving skills and sheer accuracy to get a soccer ball from its starting position into a box with a single shot. Featuring 21 sequentially more challenging levels, the game's interface is both intuitive and sleek, with an authentic physics engine to give its gameplay more life-like dynamics and a truly authentic feel.

Read The Full Article:
http://prmac.com/release-id-28573.htm

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The Kobo App Removes Its Store

post from Daring Fireball on 26 July 2011 03:05:47 PM. © Daring Fireball

Alan Quartermain, developer of the Kobo iOS app, on the changes they were forced to make to keep it in the App Store:

The store was removed because Apple rejected any updates whichincluded it, period. They also rejected any updates which statedthat Apple required its removal, or indeed any mention of?compliance with App Store guidelines?. It was furtherrejected for the cardinal sin of allowing users to create a Koboaccount within the app. Then it was rejected for providing a linkto let users create an account outside the app. Then it wasrejected for simply mentioning that it was possible to sign up,with no direction on where or how one could do that. Then it wasrejected for making any mention of the Kobo website. Then for anymention of ?our website? at all, in any language. Weadditionally cannot make any assertions that Kobo provides contentfor sale, however obliquely.

Capricious.

I should note, however, that the Borders app for the US wassubject to almost NONE of these restrictions. This is all the moreamusing since the Borders US app is built from the exact samesource code, with a different colour scheme and titles.

But it seems like Amazon is under the same restrictions with the Kindle app — not only does the latest version of the Kindle app not have a link to the Kindle Store, but there is no mention of the Kindle Store within the app, period. Maybe Borders got a pass because they’re going bankrupt? As it stands, this is very strange — you can create a Kobo account within the Borders iPhone app, but not within the Kobo iPhone app.

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Read The Full Article:
http://quatermain.tumblr.com/post/8045895465/my-review-of-the-kobo-app

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Eric Schmidt, BlackBerry User

post from Daring Fireball on 26 July 2011 03:05:47 PM. © Daring Fireball

Quips Beau Collins: “You have to carry a spare phone for when your Android dies.”

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Read The Full Article:
http://crackberry.com/caught-black-handed-google-chairman-eric-schmidt-photograph
ed-while-taking-photo-his-blackberry-agai

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Dan Frommer on the Removal of the Kindle Store
Link in the iOS Kindle App

post from Daring Fireball on 26 July 2011 02:05:07 PM. © Daring Fireball

Dan Frommer, arguing that Apple’s new “if it’s in the App Store, we get 30 percent of everything purchased through it” policy has forced Amazon and other e-book sellers to make their apps worse:

One argument I?ve heard is that Apple is, in theory, acting inthe customer?s best long-term interest here: iTunes is aneasier payment method than Amazon?s Kindle store, so Appleshould try to pressure companies to use iTunes for everything overthe long run. You know, starve the losers and feed the winners.
But that argument doesn?t hold up in reality. Amazon doesn?tset its prices for e-books — book publishers do. There?s norealistic room in its business to give Apple a 30% cut. Maybe 5%,but not 30%. Same goes for many other services. So using iTunes isa non-starter.

Pretty much spot-on. That the e-book market is set up in such a way that doesn’t allow for Apple’s 70/30 split is not Apple’s problem, however.

I think it’s reasonable for Apple not to allow App Store apps to sell content on their own, within the apps themselves. But I think a better compromise would be to allow linking to a store, so long as the links open in Safari rather than within the app itself. In the app: you play by Apple’s rules. On the web: anything goes.

(Worth noting: Frommer left Silicon Alley Insider a few weeks ago to strike out on his own with SplatF. I’m really enjoying it.)

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Read The Full Article:
http://www.splatf.com/2011/07/kindle-screenshots/

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The Campaign for Real Monopoly

Critical Miss Gaming Society on Monopoly:

Because it’s crap. It takes ages to play, suffering longaction-free periods in which the players endlessly circle theboard in search of the streets they need to complete a set, andlacks the interaction between players that we look for in a game.In short, it’s boring and lacks skill.
Except that it isn’t crap. Actually. You just have to play it theway it was designed to be played.
You just have to read the fucking rules.

I had no idea most people played without the auction rule. That’s the best part of the game. (Via Marco Arment, who has some good comments on the game.)

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Read The Full Article:
http://www.criticalmiss.com/issue10/CampaignRealMonopoly1.html

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Nathan Myhrvold, King of the Patent Trolls

Paul Kedrosky:

Myhrvold, however, is now regularly writing columns in praise ofthe glories of the U.S. patent system, about how technologycompanies once ignored patents, and how it?s now coming back tobite them. Myhrvold, a principal in a patent holding company,somehow gets treated deferentially, in a way that, say, a hedgefund manager talking about his largest position wouldn?t be. […]
What we have here, in short, is this: Myhrvold is happy to seepatent portfolios like Nortel?s being bid up because itincreases his own company?s value with its thousands of patents.This is an arms-dealer applauding the outbreak of hostilities,meanwhile pointing to people making war-like faces on thesidelines. (Whoa, watch out for those guys!) This is far, far froma disinterested observer of a fundamentally broken U.S. softwarepatent system. Let?s end the deference.

Nailed it.

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Read The Full Article:
http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2011/07/the-trouble-with-nathan-myrvold.html

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Lukas Mathis on the iPhones Home Button

The rare case where I strongly disagree with Lukas Mathis. I think Apple has done very well with the iPhone home button. Perhaps the difference for me is that I spend almost all my time on the first two or three screens of apps. Those three screens I keep meticulously organized, and I don’t use folders on them. The rest of my screens are barely organized at all — full of apps I use but rarely and which I typically launch through the search feature.

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Read The Full Article:
http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2011/07/14/the_iphones_home_button/

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