Comments:

1. Sue W on April 1st, 2012 at 17:14:

   Huh, new fangled technology…in my day we could type 15 wpm with only had _one_ key!

Comments:

1. Mykolas on April 1st, 2012 at 14:42:

   Sorry, too busy to comment because i am removing all rectangles in my life for fear of being sued.

2. Roland Hesz on April 2nd, 2012 at 0:59:

   I find it a bit awkward that you can’t really tell if it’s an April 1 joke or not…

Comments:

1. Jim on March 31st, 2012 at 22:15:

   One day early. Briljant still.

2. John Sinteur on April 1st, 2012 at 8:38:

   It was already past midnight in Japan

Comments:

1. Desiato on March 28th, 2012 at 20:05:

   Cute. I know a guy who has one and likes it.

2. Spaceman Spiff on March 28th, 2012 at 21:10:

   He draws, uses tech, dances, communicates. Definitely one smart critter. If he could type faster, we would hire him!

3. Paul Jay on March 29th, 2012 at 0:21:

   Lets hope he doesn’t need a condom.

4. Sue W on March 29th, 2012 at 1:23:

   He doesn’t look old enough to need one yet.

Comments:

1. Sue W on March 27th, 2012 at 15:37:

   Oh, aren’t all the left-column unchecked boxes failed RIM products? And their company name…

2. Desiato on March 27th, 2012 at 20:29:

   After the success of the i-pad with its feminine hygiene-derived name, wouldn’t you name your Android phone after a product for male private parts? What could be more… androidynous?

Comments:

1. Sue W on March 25th, 2012 at 17:29:

   Orkut, Wave, Google+, whatever. You’ll love it – it’s so … intuitive. (Clearly I’m a dolt.)

Comments:

1. Jim on March 16th, 2012 at 22:43:

   [quote]Some of the falsehoods found in Daisey’s monologue are small ones (…) Others are large. In his monologue he claims to have met a group of workers who were poisoned on an iPhone assembly line by a chemical called n-hexane. Apple’s audits of its suppliers show that an incident like this occurred in a factory in China, but the factory wasn’t located in Shenzhen, where Daisey visited. [/quote] – still haven’t figured out how to post quotes accurately here, sorry John.
   But seriously, a LARGE FALSEHOOD is when you bring up news about workers being poisoned, and you say you spoke to these people. The falsehood here being he didn’t speak to them, but AN INCIDENT LIKE THIS OCCURRED… I would say he got carried away, but that is still miles from ‘significant fabrications’. Later on the same thing happens in this article:
   [quote]Daisey’s interpreter Cathy also disputes two of the most dramatic moments in Daisey’s story: that he met underage workers at Foxconn, and (…)[/quote] of which it is said later [quote]those parts of his story were true, except for the underage workers, who are rare.[/quote]
   underage workers are rare. I did not read: non-existent, just rare. How rare is ‘rare’? Rare enough not to meet with them? Rare as compared to other Chinese factories?
   It’s virtually impossible to avoid buying things made in China, especially on the electronics front, so I’m not into bashing one company for it’s use of Chinese product lines. But the wrongs being played down here are not something to be ignored. Not by anyone.
   I wonder what sort of forces are in play here making the retraction so dramatical.

2. Karl on March 17th, 2012 at 2:02:

   I don’t find their retraction dramatic. News stories must not contain deliberate fabrications, regardless of how large or small you judge them to be.

3. SjG on March 17th, 2012 at 2:21:

   There are documented problems. Now we have Apple on the one hand, saying there have been minor problems and they’re working on fixing them. And we have Daisey on the other hand, saying there are significant and unaddressed problems.

   Now, by admitting that he fabricated elements of his story, Daisey has destroyed our trust in him. If the problems are as significant as he claims, he has enormously set back the cause of those he thought he was helping.

   Maybe Apple, or the Chinese Government, or other American corporations applied pressure. This doesn’t negate the fact that he has admitted to lying.

   For better or (more likely) for worse, the average person will now look at this situation and say “oh, yeah, I heard the guy who reported all the problems turned out to be a liar. It’s probably not that bad.”

4. Jim on March 17th, 2012 at 13:40:

   Both responses prove my point. By focussing on Daisy’s lies, we can go back to blissfully ignoring the truths of the story – the problems in the factories, the inhumane situations in which workers put together devices we so love and pay more than double the value for, none of which profits are used to make their situation better, although this could easily be done.
   Let’s say your kid comes home and says: my teacher raped me, beat me and called me names, Billy was there too. You ask Billy, and he says the teacher never called your kid any names. Would you then also focus on the lying part, or on the other parts of the story which could very well still be true?

5. John Sinteur on March 17th, 2012 at 13:46:

   Exactly. The problems are still real, and we need to pressure Acer, Amazon, Apple, Asus, Barnes & Noble, Cisco, Dell, Intel, IBM, Logitech, Microsof, Netgear, Nintendo, Nokia, Panasonic, Philips, Samsung, Toshiba, Vizio, and quite number of other electronics companies to start fixing this. Apple has said they will work on it, others have as well, and we cannot let up because of Daisey.

6. Desiato on March 17th, 2012 at 22:48:

   Jim, neither of the responses said that there are no problems or that we should ignore them, so I’m missing how they prove your point.

   The TAL crew is being “dramatic” about the retraction because they want to take responsibility for not having done their jobs to they extent they’d like to in producing high quality journalism, and want to be transparent about it so that they’re out in front of people who might otherwise bash them for blindly championing lefty causes. I think that’s all to be commended. I don’t think there’s anything in the retraction that belittles the issues.

   The retraction is getting a lot of air time largely because the story itself got a lot of attention (note it was the most downloaded version of a well known show, and was widely reported on in the media), and partly because the people who care about things like sweatshops are the kind of people who listen to This American Life and who would take note of an incident like this.

   Sorry Jim, seems like you’re barking up a non-existent tree here.

7. Sue W on March 18th, 2012 at 3:17:

   Well Jim’s point appears to be that we should consider the source of our news and the source of the incredibly cheap products that we can buy. Who gets the benefit when we close our eyes and open our wallets?

8. Desiato on March 18th, 2012 at 11:08:

   No, Jim isn’t saying we should consider the sources, he is saying we should focus on the most important story, i.e. ignore the lying in favor of the bigger picture and the truth about factories in China. That’s a reasonable position to take, and we should continue to care about working conditions there, but he’s distorting the reactions from others.

9. Jim on March 18th, 2012 at 14:31:

   I’m glad my point came across, and yes John, this is about *all* those companies, and about *all* their customers – so likely about just about everyone that posts comments here too.
   @ Desiato: I’d have to disagree on the ‘distorting the reactions’ part, both reactions put a lot of focus on something that is true (the lying part), and do not put it in perspective with the main issue. I do not condone the lies – it’s lame, dumb, and has backfired on his purpose – but I am worried the new focus being put on this news serves a purpose. Sue W said it well.

10. Desiato on March 18th, 2012 at 17:09:

    I’m going to beat the dead horse some more.

    Jim, you attacked the retraction for its wording. The retraction does not in fact minimize or deny the underlying issues. It *explicitly* confirms that some workers did in fact suffer poisoning and that there are sometimes underage workers in the factories.

    You then go on to imply in the end of your first comment (“I wonder what sort of forces are in play here”) that there’s more going on here than the TAL staff being pissed off that they were lied to and that the quality and trustworthiness of their journalism was compromised.

    So you’re accusing these people of distracting from important issues, which they aired in the first place, AND of having questionable motives to do so.

    You may be passionate about the factory workers’ issues, but this is not fair on your part. I say once again it’s you who is distorting things and blowing them out of proportion.

11. Desiato on March 18th, 2012 at 17:59:

    I just read the transcript of the retraction episode that most of the retraction quotes came from. It’s 25 pages, but a pretty quick read. I think it’s really worth reading to put all this in perspective.

    In the middle part, Mike Daisey admits that at one point he realized he should have told the TAL staff the truth but that he was scared to hurt his goal of getting this story about worker conditions out there:

    He wanted to explain the context for what he did, and he said the context was this: when he was in China in 2010, there was a lot of coverage of workers’ conditions at Foxconn because of a series of suicides there. And then he says, while he was there, the coverage stopped – in China, and internationally the coverage stopped, the news cycle moved on. And he says that made a strong impression on him, seeing the coverage vanish like that, seeing people suddenly not interested in the workers there anymore.
    And he wanted to make a monologue that would make people care. That was his goal.

    They spend a third of the retraction show talking with a NYTimes journalist about the actual conditions and problems at the factories, and Apple’s track record in reporting problems and the lack of change in the number of incidents.

    Jim, if you want to maintain that the retraction had the motivation to distract from the issues, you need to at least read that last section, pages 20 and onwards, or listen to the podcast it transcribes. I think you’ll find there was no such intent.

Comments:

1. Desiato on March 13th, 2012 at 21:23:

   a monochrome icon on the Mac was 16 x 16 pixels. It only took 32 bits of memory.

   *cough* Bill Atkinson must be some amazing compression wizard.

Comments:

1. Desiato on March 9th, 2012 at 13:55:

   Aside from the well-known “you ripped off the iPhone” spat, is this possibly also because Google has started charging for Google Maps pageviews?

2. Mr. n on March 11th, 2012 at 18:01:

   Please consider they dind’t just “opted for”. They STOLE the maps, removing the licensing informations and any link to OSM.

3. John Sinteur on March 11th, 2012 at 23:43:

   You’re quite a bit more harsh about this than OpenStreetMap themselves are:

   [Quote]:
   

   Yesterday Apple launched iPhoto, its photo management app, for the iPad and iPhone… and we’re rather pleased to find they’re the latest to switch to OpenStreetMap.

   [..]

   It’s also missing the necessary credit to OpenStreetMap’s contributors; we look forward to working with Apple to get that on there.

Comments:

1. Spaceman Spiff on March 9th, 2012 at 15:08:

   The link seems to be broken. It keeps getting timeouts (error 7).

2. Desiato on March 9th, 2012 at 15:44:

   Site’s overloaded. Took me 2 or 3 reloads.

Comments:

1. Mudak on March 8th, 2012 at 13:25:

   Not necessarily. One of the most telling things about yesteday’s AppleTV announcement was that users of the previous generation of set-top boxes would get a software update that gives it the same UI as the new generation. I say this because as long as there’ve been rumors of an Apple-branded tv set, I’ve been thinking they’d be foolish not to make most of the major features of such a set available in a standalone box, too. There’s a certain economics at play here that’s unlike anything going on with any of Apple’s other business units.

   Use me as an example. I have a flat-screen TV in my living room. I bought it a little over three years ago for about $2500. Yes, I know that some newer tv’s out there right now might offer more bells and whistles — even a larger screen size — for the same money I spent on the one I’m using. But I also know that I’m not buying a new TV unless and until this one actually breaks. I suspect I’m not unique among consumers and Apple would be foolish to completely ignore this block of potential buyers. The cost alone — which only the high-end Mac users are anywhere near — is reason enough not to offer some features (if the rumors are true, then the full TV will have Siri integration. How about leaving that off but whatever licensing is needed for watching everything else, that could find its way into a set-top box…)

2. Desiato on March 8th, 2012 at 13:54:

   Yeah, mostly agreed. The question is, if you’ve spent over $1,000 on your current TV, what’s cool enough to get you to replace it rather than just getting the add-on box? (That’s what I was speculating about here.)

   It’s also possible that Apple could do what they’re doing with the iPhone and iPad, corner the supply of a new high-end display technology and use that to create a better TV. It’s possible. I would note that I’m not sure the retina display is the big selling point for the iPhone, and that the iPad sold just fiiiiine even before it had a retina display. What’re you going to do on a TV with more pixels than HD needs? Gaming? Or…?

   If I had to bet money right now I’d bet against Apple releasing a TV-with-screen-included device, at least in 2012.

3. Desiato on March 8th, 2012 at 14:02:

   As for the iPad, I would have been more likely to shell out money for an iPad Air: same spec as the iPad2 but about half the weight.

4. John Sinteur on March 8th, 2012 at 14:55:

   Or the negotiations with the content providers aren’t done yet, and that’s why they are waiting with the TV..

5. Desiato on March 8th, 2012 at 16:04:

   I’m inclined to follow Gruber’s logic that Apple sticks to long-planned schedules and doesn’t release multiple versions in the same product category in short succession. Given that they updated the existing AppleTV now, it seems likely they’re not planning to release anything else for a while.

Comments:

1. Paul Jay on February 29th, 2012 at 21:00:

   If 0.5% of the users have issues with a certain product, then 0.5% of the users complain about it online.

2. John Sinteur on February 29th, 2012 at 21:13:

   I have personal experience with emailing the Apple CEO with a problem like this.

   Apple will fix it very fast.

3. Jim on February 29th, 2012 at 21:58:

   I know Apple fanboyism is a strong faith, but believing in the help of a dead CEO is stretching it a bit…

4. Desiato on February 29th, 2012 at 22:17:

   @John: I would like to have confidence that Apple would fix such issues, but note two things: (1) it was the Apple CSR who told the customer in the first place that he now had 2 strikes against him and that a third would lock his account; (2) it doesn’t address my point that we’re putting the continued use of products and tools we’ve fully paid for under someone else’s control. No amount of issues with my account with Apple should revoke my access to products I’ve already fully paid for.

5. itspast on March 1st, 2012 at 2:33:

   Chase made me contact Customer service because I updated my browser and they didn’t recognize the PC. Customer service was out of India or something like that. I’m sure they’ll respect my financial information and passwords. Why don’t they just base Customer service in Kenya, once they have access to my financial information they can stop sending me email about winning the lottery?

Comments:

1. Sue W on February 27th, 2012 at 23:27:

   Octal as well.

Comments:

1. Sue W on February 24th, 2012 at 23:08:

   Bet y’all try them though.

Comments:

1. Sue W on February 19th, 2012 at 16:21:

   IMO, the biggest mistake was in making their customers feel cheated. Every time. For decades.

2. Roland Hesz on February 19th, 2012 at 20:07:

   I’m still struggling to create a spreadsheet on the tiny screen of the iPhone.
   I mean a real spreadsheet, not a toy one.
   Or write a document.

   Must be me, but I like to be able to type fast and see what I do – I think Office on the iPhone is not really a good thing.
   But you can have office on the iPad. Yes, for real. It’s called Office 365. Very cloud. Very up to date.

   Nice article. Unfortunately, people still need Excel and Word (or the OpenOffice or the iWork version of that.)
   But at least it was a long article.

Comments:

1. matt w. on February 17th, 2012 at 16:44:

   The FLA looks to be a industry hack group. Look at their board of directors…nike, adidas, hanes execs. VPs of universities.

Comments:

1. Desiato on February 16th, 2012 at 21:16:

   High order bit: they’re not calling it OS X Maru. Aw.

   (The next one can’t be Maru either, cos what would you do after that?)

Comments:

1. Mudak on February 15th, 2012 at 1:27:

   Here are my thoughts:

   Something comparable to the Retina Display, like what’s in the iPhone today. Current rumors estimate that the next iPad will have something akin to a retina display, thereby giving the next iPad better resolution than a good LCD TV. This, then, will enable the placement of true HD video quality on the iTunes store.

   Many existing networks already have apps on the App Store, including premium channels like HBO, Showtime, and Cinemax. I suspect a direct subscription model through Apple, not unlike what’s currently in the offing for Newsstand on other iOS devices, will likely be the order of the day for those networks. Throw in a novel advertising method and the standard networks will get on board too.

   As far as controlling the TV, I envision Siri and dedicated apps on the different iOS devices.

   The big wild card is convincing movie studios to allow for a model like what already exists for music with iTunes in the Cloud and iTunes Match.

2. John Sinteur on February 15th, 2012 at 7:52:

   CEO Cook at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference this week:

   “We should only go into markets where we can make a significant contribution to society, not just sell a lot of products.”

   Since the Apple TV box already does a lot of the things mentioned above, it will be at least a new input/interaction model. Just slapping a screen to the Apple TV would be counter to Apple culture.

3. Desiato on February 15th, 2012 at 11:04:

   MacRumors says that Cook also said:
   

   - Apple TV: Cook reported that Apple still considers the Apple TV to be a “hobby”, in the sense that it shouldn’t be thought of as a major pillar of Apple’s business. That said, Apple has always felt that if it kept “pulling the string”, there would be something there. Consumer satisfaction is reportedly off the charts and sales are growing quickly.

   That seems to downplay the likelyhood that something is coming soon.

4. John Sinteur on February 15th, 2012 at 14:20:

   Or that they will soon cancel the hobby because of the release of an iTV…