Kind of a Hater

I got one, of course. My Roku was acting out after three years: Loading shows became a drag, and sometimes, they wouldn’t load at all. It was fun to see Roku blame the content provider for the problem, even though the same provider loaded snappily enough on the Xbox. 

Time for a new streamer, and lo, an all new Apple TV. Got it, set it up, been using it. 

Apple TV is solid: Snappy interaction, things work as expected. The design of the user interaction is fine, if not inspired, and is about the same as any other streaming device I’ve played with. The “focus engine” bit is good stuff, and Airplay works better on this box than any other Apple product I’ve experienced. Some people are griping about the lack of 4K support, but this doesn’t bother me since I’m not swapping my TV out for a 4K display that won’t display 4K because hardly anyone is streaming 4K at this time. 

Anyway, onward: I don't get the design around the hardware. 

Generally, Apple aims to inspire through design. The current iMac, for instance, is a looker, inspiring imitators, ad nauseum. So why is the new 4th generation version a black box that is, due to its thickness, uglier than the previous one? Apple TV doesn’t feel like it was designed to the same degree Apple products usually are.

More bad design: The remote is a miss and a mess. Man alive. 

Why is it black, making it nearly invisible in a dark room? Why is it so symmetrical that I often find myself rubbing the other end of the remote as if it were the trackpad? And why is the track pad matte and the other end glossy when Apple has taught us that glossy means interactive? 

Then there's Siri. Newer devices out there seems to let you say something like, "Alexa, what time is it?" To use Siri (which works pretty well, it has to be said), you have to:

fumble around for the remote

press the mic button down as long as you speak into it

say something

Why can't I just say, "Hey Siri, what time is it"? Was there no room for a mic in that big-ass box? 

The Siri feature that I've used the most is the "What did she say?" function, which rewinds your movie 15 seconds and displays captions as the replay occurs (a sweet feature, but Roku has had similar functionality for awhile). By the time you've found the remote, figured out which end is up, remembered to keep the mic button depressed, 30-45 seconds have gone by. 

I know, sad trombone for the First World guy. But none of this was an issue with Roku -- similar functionality just worked, minus the effort. 

Apple execs often say they build products they want to use: "We hated our cellphones, so we built one." With Apple TV, I get the sense that they just don't watch much television. 

And Ive's design team (if it's still his team, who really knows) certainly didn't live with prototypes long enough. Or, if they did, they kept their remotes firmly in hand the entire time, thumb on the mic, ready to roll.

In any case, this is probably the streamer I need -- I’m knee deep in the Apple ecosystem and I suspect Apple TV will become an important platform with expanded capabilities in the near future. 

Called it. 

But that was an easy call.

On to another gripe: “Interim CEO,” Jack? Why not just go with “iCEO” like Steve Jobs -- the guy you emulate ultramaximum -- did when he first returned to Apple?

Respecting privacy preferences is becoming a major differentiator that separates Apple from Facebook and Google (too many links that describe how Google doesn’t like you to have a private moment).

Apple: That’s your preference regarding your privacy? Done.

Is this as bad as Apple imposing U2′s lame and sad album upon us? (It was lame and sad, U2 fans.)

No. I mean, Apple did misstep. What Microsoft is doing is desperate: Seeking relevance leads to embracing what you think is significant but is already beyond its five minutes. Like some old person wearing Z Cavaricci pants at a club full of young people two days after a divorce*. 

Microsoft is a beleaguered company hoping to be relevant by throwing in a game that’s already past its heyday – but hey, then again, so is Microsoft: A monkey typing, wishing there were 999 monkeys to help out. 

Always sad, whatever the case.

“Anthony Noto, best known for a direct-message fail, takes over from the company's head of product.”

Even if you don’t believe in the power of marketing, understand this: Financial people are not marketers -- they’re the opposite of marketers. They see the world differently. Years of working in corporate marketing departments is enough for me to assert this basic truth. 

Smart companies understand the difference between marketing and finance. As do you, probably, given that they’re completely different fields.

But, of course, this is Twitter we are talking about, perhaps the worst-run publicly traded Internet business today. 

So it makes sense for Twitter’s leadership to hand marketing efforts over to a numbers guy with zero marketing background. On top of that, if you know anything about Anthony Noto, you know he’s a bozo. The above article outlines his big-time mistakes and misjudgments.

According to our source… Mayer believes Yahoo’s advantage over Google, Apple, and Microsoft is that Yahoo has a much older relationship with its users.

You know how you have this old friend who’s still your “friend” and he’ll post HAPPY BDAY!! on your Facebook but, yeah, he’s not really a friend now? That’s Yahoo.

“Gmail users have only had their accounts for 10 years,” says our source. “Yahoo has many 20 year old accounts. Back then people used to email themselves a lot — store things. To surface that kind of data usefully is exciting." 

Sure, I stored things on Yahoo Mail, and promptly forgot all about them.

Last time Yahoo Mail was best in class? 2004, maybe 2005. Now, despite its many rebuilds, the service is barely tolerable. Most of us who still keep Yahoo Mail accounts – yes, I still have mine – use them to sign up for bullshit services and collect spam (which Yahoo Mail still doesn’t know how to filter after all these years). 

Mayer and her group have an interesting problem: How do you make Yahoo relevant again? Pivoting doesn’t appear possible – Yahoo is Yahoo is Yahoo, the first and last dinosaur in a world full of yapping monkeys chasing the slow bastard down with spears. It will continue to be a search engine… sorta. Or a portal… maybe. A content producer, if you know where to find the content, or that it even exists. A collection of services and products that other companies have created and still deliver on better.

Time and time again, Yahoo reinvents things that startups delivered years ago, throws that god-awful purple all over it, and calls it good. Methinks you’re reinventing yourself into irrelevance, Mayer – create new stuff, why don’t you? 

Seriously: What the fuck is Index? In a world with Siri and Google Now and Amazon Echo, who needs another personal digital assistant? Supported by advertising, no less. 

"Apple has managed to sell more Apple Watches in a single day than the number of Android Wear smartwatches sold in an entire year.”

Had Apple released a revved-up version of Apple TV a couple years ago -- one that had an app store and games and the hardware to support such a thing -- there probably would be no room for Roku today. Such a device would have crippled the launches of major game consoles such Xbox One and Playstation 4. 

An advanced streaming device was such low-hanging fruit, easy to pluck: The hardware was relatively simple, the digital infrastructure was already built, the customer base was massive. 

You hear it said that Apple makes the products its leaders want -- they hated their phones, so they created their own. Easy to see why. 

Perhaps Apple’s leadership just doesn't like moving pictures with sounds tacked on, some of which you can control with a magic clicker box. 

Actually, the above is now titled “The Health Concerns in Wearable Tech” -- I chose to revert to the original because fuck pussy New York Times editors who are too squeamish to stand by their writers.

The writer, Nick Bilton, has been destroyed by tech dorks who apparently don’t want to entertain the possibility that their smartphones are cancer sticks radiating amazing energies as they ride alongside people’s testicles. Note, for instance, John Gruber’s reactionary take to Bilton’s piece. 

NICK BILTON SHITS THE BED WITH PSEUDOSCIENCE-LADEN ‘COULD WEARABLE COMPUTERS BE AS HARMFUL AS CIGARETTES?’ NEW YORK TIMES COLUMN

Colorful and ill-considered. Cellphones are not benign. They are powerful receivers and transmitters of frequencies and energy. We don’t know how they affect our bodies, mostly because the companies that make these devices don’t want us to know. 

Except ... Apple does know, and recommends keeping your iPhone away from your body. 

In the little handbook that comes with every iPhone (the one that gets discarded almost immediately because, it’s a cell phone, we all know what to do with those, right?) Apple also explicitly states that the phone is not supposed to touch your body much, if at all. 

In fact, in the manual for the iPhone 5, Apple says users should carry their iPhones a full 10 millimeters (or .39 inches) away from their bodies at all times. That means, if the device is in the pocket of your jeans, it’s much too close.

Previous manuals were more explicit. The iPhone 3G safety manual warns that radiation exposure may exceed government standards during “body-worn operation” if the phone is “positioned less than 15 millimeters (5/8 inch) from the body (e.g., when carrying iPhone in your pocket).” The iPhone, Apple says, should always be worn in a belt clip or holster.

That’s right, belt or holster. Ugh. 

But there’s good news for people like Gruber:

The only quoted source in Bilton’s article -- “Dr. Joseph Mercola, a physician who focuses on alternative alternative medicine and has written extensively about the potential harmful effects of cellphones on the human body” -- said not to worry too much because the Apple Watch will have Blue Tooth and WiFi, but not 3G antennas. 

“The radiation really comes from the 3G connection on a cellphone, so devices like the Jawbone Up and Apple Watch should be O.K.,” Dr. Mercola said in a phone interview. “But if you’re buying a watch with a cellular chip built in, then you’ve got a cellphone attached to your wrist.” And that, he said, is a bad idea.

But it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that future Apple Watches will have 3G. And that’s what the Grubers of the world will eventually want -- a hunk of radiating material baking their wrists and balls all day long. 

In response to the backlash, and the pussies at the New York Times, Bilton stated:

“The reality is, we still don’t know definitively the causes of cellphones and cancer, but I can tell you one thing, as a technology enthusiast myself, I approached this piece thinking all the research was bogus. But, as I noted in my column, after doing my own reporting on this topic, I’m no longer going to talk on my cellphone for long periods of time without a headset. And I will likely also keep my soon-to-be-born son away from cellphone use until his brain develops, as erring on the side of caution, until more research is done, seems to me to be the smart and intelligent approach to this issue.”

Sounds reasonable to me. Yet Gruber, in a recent podcast (which is much too long to scan to get the exact quote), has no such health concerns for his son -- he’s considering getting him an Apple Watch for Christmas or some such thing. 

Should be fine, according to Bilton’s piece. 

But no one paid attention to that, including Gruber. So in his reaction to Bilton’s piece, he’s a bit oblivious, a bit ignorant, perhaps a bit shocked by a dawning realization that the rare earths and intense energies that bathe his balls in a sickly green glow may not exactly be good for him or his son. 

"Does Google have a conviction to offer lower prices? interviewer Brad Stone asked. This is, after all, one of the biggest issues with mobile services for consumers: they are very expensive, and are ripe for disruption on this front. “It’s a bit different than this,” Pichai said. “We are thinking about how WiFi and cell networks work together and how to make that seamless.”

Short answer: Nope, that's not us.

Google has a historic lack of convictions to stand by consumers -- probably starting with its abandonment of its one-time motto, "Don't be evil."

Subpar products and services, the delivery of ads and Google properties above true Web search results, the repeated disregard for privacy protections... it adds up: Google's not there for us -- it's there for them and their ad buyers.

Google's going to offer some sort of cell service. If the trend holds up, Google won't offer something that actually sets it apart from other cell services... until Apple steps in and shows Google how it's done. Then Google will scramble to offer yet another me-to product. 

"We hope that other TV makers will also use it and help build an ecosystem that will help the platform grow."

Naive and myopic.