FEED Validator

for Atom and RSS and KML

Congratulations!

This is a valid Atom 1.0 feed.

Recommendations

This feed is valid, but interoperability with the widest range of feed readers could be improved by implementing the following recommendations.

line 13, column 66: Unregistered link relationship: shorturl (48 occurrences) [help]

	<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/q6h" />
                                                                  ^

Source: http://daringfireball.net/index.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
<title>Daring Fireball</title>
<subtitle>By John Gruber</subtitle>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/" />
<link rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" href="https://daringfireball.net/feeds/main" />
<id>https://daringfireball.net/feeds/main</id>
<updated>2017-07-26T00:27:31Z</updated><rights>Copyright © 2017, John Gruber</rights><entry>
<title>Trump Says Tim Cook Has Promised to Build Three Manufacturing Plants in U.S.</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://t.co/OyrNHIakbk" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/q6h" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/25/trump-cook-big-beautiful-plants" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2017:/linked//6.33929</id>
<published>2017-07-26T00:27:29Z</published>
<updated>2017-07-26T00:27:31Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
Tripp Mickle and Peter Nicholas, reporting for The Wall Street Journal:
<blockquote>
Mr. Trump, in a 45-minute interview with The Wall Street Journal,
said Mr. Cook promised him Apple would build “three big plants,
beautiful plants.” Mr. Trump didn’t elaborate on where those
plants would be located or when they would be built.
“I spoke to [Mr. Cook], he’s promised me three big plants — big,
big, big,” Mr. Trump said as part of a discussion about
business-tax reform and business investment. “I said you know,
Tim, unless you start building your plants in this country, I
won’t consider my administration an economic success. He called
me, and he said they are going forward.”
Apple declined to comment.
</blockquote>
This is odd in so many ways. If it’s true, this is a massive strategic shift for Apple, and it makes me wonder why Cook would share this news with Trump prior to Apple announcing it on their own terms. And if it’s not true, boy did Trump just send Cook a huge shit sandwich.
Apple’s most recent foray into U.S. assembly is <a href="https://www.macrumors.com/2014/06/06/cook-visits-mac-pro-factory/">a facility in Texas for the Mac Pro</a>. <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/watch/today/exclusive-brian-williams-interviews-apple-ceo-11421251878">There was quite a bit of publicity</a> about that, but until now it doesn’t seem to have led to anything else. And Apple doesn’t even own that plant — <a href="https://www.macrumors.com/2013/10/15/flextronics-hiring-1700-workers-in-austin-for-next-generation-desktop-computer-likely-new-mac-pro/">they partnered with a company named Flex</a>. <a href="http://twitter.com/vindugoel/status/889966217951416322">According to Vindu Goel</a>, Apple only owns one factory in the world — in Ireland.
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Trump Says Tim Cook Has Promised to Build Three Manufacturing Plants in U.S.’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/25/trump-cook-big-beautiful-plants"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>Adobe Announces End-of-Life for Flash</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://blogs.adobe.com/conversations/2017/07/adobe-flash-update.html" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/q6g" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/25/flash-end-of-life" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2017:/linked//6.33928</id>
<published>2017-07-25T22:33:56Z</published>
<updated>2017-07-25T22:34:50Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
Adobe:
<blockquote>
Today, most browser vendors are integrating capabilities once
provided by plugins directly into browsers and deprecating
plugins.
Given this progress, and in collaboration with several of our
technology partners — including <a href="https://webkit.org/blog/7839/adobe-announces-flash-distribution-and-updates-to-end/">Apple</a>, <a href="https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/2017/07/25/Games-Migration-to-Open-Web-Standards/">Facebook</a>, <a href="https://www.blog.google/products/chrome/saying-goodbye-flash-chrome/">Google</a>,
<a href="https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2017/07/25/flash-on-windows-timeline/">Microsoft</a> and <a href="https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2017/07/25/firefox-roadmap-flash-end-life/">Mozilla</a> — Adobe is planning to end-of-life Flash.
Specifically, we will stop updating and distributing the Flash
Player at the end of 2020 and encourage content creators to
migrate any existing Flash content to these new open formats.
</blockquote>
Apple’s key decision was never supporting Flash on iOS, and sticking with that decision even when they were under significant marketing pressure to do so. Steve Jobs’s famous “<a href="https://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/">Thoughts on Flash</a>” was not the cause of Flash’s demise — it was an explanation for why Flash was doomed.
iOS never supporting Flash, combined with the size and appealing demographics of iOS users, hastened the demise of Flash by several years. Web publishers switched to HTML5 technologies for video and interactive content sooner than they would have otherwise. But I think Flash was doomed regardless. The world was going mobile whether Apple led the way or not, and Flash was never a good fit for mobile computing.
This official “end of life” statement is an important step, but Adobe saw the writing on the wall six years ago <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2011/11/9/2549178/adobe-officially-kills-flash-player-for-mobile-says-html5-is-the-best/in/2313237">when they officially stopped developing Flash Player for Android</a>. Strategically, that was the death of Flash.
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Adobe Announces End-of-Life for Flash’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/25/flash-end-of-life"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>David Remnick Interviews Maggie Haberman</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/a-conversation-with-maggie-haberman-trumps-favorite-foe" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/q6f" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/25/remnick-haberman" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2017:/linked//6.33927</id>
<published>2017-07-25T20:09:43Z</published>
<updated>2017-07-25T20:09:45Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
The New Yorker’s David Remnick has a terrific interview with New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman. Much of what we know of the inner workings of the Trump White House, we know from Haberman.
<blockquote>
D.R.: What do you make out to be the ideology of Donald Trump? Or
is it purely situational? We saw him running as a new kind of
populist. At moments, he seems very right-wing; at other times he
undermines that kind of conservative ideology.
M.H.: I think he has no clear ideology. I think he has a couple of
base impulses he’s held onto since the nineteen-eighties, when he
was taking out those newspaper ads about how Japan is “ripping us
off.” A lot of the language that he used then is the same as what
he uses now, but it’s more of a feeling than an ideology. It’s a
sense that the United States is being taken advantage of. Can he
name by whom, accurately? Not necessarily. He ran as a Republican,
and he really appealed to this hard-right base that believes in
less government. But, in reality, this is a man who grew up in Ed
Koch’s New York City, and I think he has a very specific view of
the role that government is supposed to play in people’s lives.
</blockquote>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘David Remnick Interviews Maggie Haberman’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/25/remnick-haberman"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>The Verge: Bragi Dash Pro Wireless Earbuds</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/25/16017768/bragi-dash-pro-review-wireless-headphones-price" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/q6e" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/25/bragi-dash-pro" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2017:/linked//6.33926</id>
<published>2017-07-25T19:35:43Z</published>
<updated>2017-07-25T19:35:46Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
Sean O’Kane, writing for The Verge:
<blockquote>
Bragi hasn’t completely solved this problem with the Dash Pro, and
I still think its other, cheaper, wireless earbuds are a better
buy. But the company’s gotten much closer this time around. You
can put your phone in basically any pocket, or in a bag, and the
connection only hiccups about 10 percent of the time, maybe even
less depending on your height.
</blockquote>
I’m not saying my AirPods never suffer Bluetooth hiccups, but it happens very rarely. Apple is so far ahead of its competition on this front.
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘The Verge: Bragi Dash Pro Wireless Earbuds’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/25/bragi-dash-pro"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>Neuropathologist Examined the Brains of 111 NFL Players; 110 of Them Showed Signs of C.T.E.</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/07/25/sports/football/nfl-cte.html" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/q6d" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/25/nfl-brains" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2017:/linked//6.33925</id>
<published>2017-07-25T19:25:21Z</published>
<updated>2017-07-25T19:25:22Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
The New York Times:
<blockquote>
Dr. Ann McKee, a neuropathologist, has examined the brains of 202
deceased football players. A broad survey of her findings was
published on Tuesday in The Journal of the American Medical
Association.
Of the 202 players, 111 of them played in the N.F.L. — and 110 of
those were found to have chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or
C.T.E., the degenerative disease believed to be caused by repeated
blows to the head. […]
The set of players posthumously tested by Dr. McKee is far from
a random sample of N.F.L. retirees. “There’s a tremendous
selection bias,” she has cautioned, noting that many families
have donated brains specifically because the former player
showed symptoms of C.T.E.
But 110 positives remain significant scientific evidence of an
N.F.L. player’s risk of developing C.T.E., which can be diagnosed
only after death. About 1,300 former players have died since the
B.U. group began examining brains. So even if every one of the
other 1,200 players had tested negative — which even the
heartiest skeptics would agree could not possibly be the case —
the minimum C.T.E. prevalence would be close to 9 percent, vastly
higher than in the general population.
</blockquote>
I keep thinking change will come inevitably from the ground up — <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=fewer%20parents%20allow%20kids%20to%20play%20football">fewer and fewer parents are allowing their kids to play football each year</a>. But at the high school level, <a href="https://www.si.com/mmqb/2015/11/23/high-schools-dropping-and-adding-football-safety-concerns">participation only dropped by 2.5 percent from 2008 through 2015</a>.
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Neuropathologist Examined the Brains of 111 NFL Players; 110 of Them Showed Signs of C.T.E.’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/25/nfl-brains"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>The Talk Show: ‘Actually, You Can Buy a Better Coke’</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/2017/07/21/ep-196" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/q6c" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/21/the-talk-show-196" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2017:/linked//6.33924</id>
<published>2017-07-21T21:23:52Z</published>
<updated>2017-07-21T21:23:54Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
Rene Ritchie returns to the show to talk about the rumors and speculation regarding this year’s upcoming new iPhones.
Brought to you by these excellent sponsors:
<ul>
<li><a href="https://hullopillow.com/talkshow/">Hullo Pillow</a>: Sleep better with a new buckwheat pillow. It’ll be your favorite pillow, guaranteed.</li>
<li><a href="https://casper.com/thetalkshow">Casper</a>: An obsessively engineered mattress at a shockingly fair price. Use code thetalkshow for $50 toward your mattress.</li>
<li><a href="https://audible.com/talkshow">Audible.com</a>: With Audible, you’ll find what you’re looking for. Get a free 30-day trial.</li>
</ul>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘The Talk Show: ‘Actually, You Can Buy a Better Coke’’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/21/the-talk-show-196"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>In Urban China, Cash Is Rapidly Becoming Obsolete</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/16/business/china-cash-smartphone-payments.html" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/q6b" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/21/china-cash" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2017:/linked//6.33923</id>
<published>2017-07-21T16:04:37Z</published>
<updated>2017-07-21T16:04:39Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
Paul Mozur, writing for The New York Times:
<blockquote>
Almost everyone in major Chinese cities is using a smartphone to
pay for just about everything. At restaurants, a waiter will ask
if you want to use WeChat or Alipay — the two smartphone payment
options — before bringing up cash as a third, remote possibility.
Just as startling is how quickly the transition has happened. Only
three years ago there would be no question at all, because
everyone was still using cash.
</blockquote>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘In Urban China, Cash Is Rapidly Becoming Obsolete’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/21/china-cash"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>The iPhone Paradox</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://www.macworld.com/article/3209626/ios/insanely-gr8-the-iphone-8-paradox.html" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/q6a" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/21/macalope-paradox" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2017:/linked//6.33922</id>
<published>2017-07-21T15:36:31Z</published>
<updated>2017-07-21T15:38:53Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
The Macalope:
<blockquote>
Maybe it’s just the horny one, but if you have information that
shows the iPhone 8 is going to be a logical paradox — like a real
life M.C. Escher painting — that is somehow simultaneously too
expensive for anyone to want to buy and so wildly popular they
can’t make them fast enough, you should probably lead with that.
That would be big news, quantum mechanically speaking.
</blockquote>
It’s like the <a href="http://www.latimes.com/sports/sportsnow/la-sp-sn-yogi-berra-turns-90-quotes-20150512-story.html">Yogi-ism</a>: “Nobody goes there anymore, it’s too crowded.”
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘The iPhone Paradox’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/21/macalope-paradox"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>Called It</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2013/02/26/topolsky-glass" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/q69" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/19/called-it" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2017:/linked//6.33921</id>
<published>2017-07-20T00:18:24Z</published>
<updated>2017-07-21T16:04:57Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
Yours truly on Google Glass back in 2013:
<blockquote>
And the idea that people will wear things like this everywhere (as
opposed to special specific scenarios, such as workers in an
environment where their hands are otherwise occupied, like, say,
surgeons) strikes me as creepy as hell.
</blockquote>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Called It’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/19/called-it"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>Samsung Describes Its Male and Female Bixby Assistants With Sexist Descriptions</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://gizmodo.com/check-out-how-samsung-describes-its-male-and-female-bix-1797051987" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/q68" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/19/samsung-bixby" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2017:/linked//6.33920</id>
<published>2017-07-20T00:17:21Z</published>
<updated>2017-07-20T21:59:41Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
Alejandro Alba, writing for Gizmodo:
<blockquote>
After months of delays, Samsung’s much ballyhooed voice assistant
Bixby is here — and users on social media are already noticing
the company’s <a href="https://twitter.com/screwdestiny/status/883296520283594753">loaded</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/TheRackow/status/887644621064609794">sexist</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/wrongsideof21/status/887675131245539328?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fkinja.com%2Fajax%2Finset%2Fiframe%3Fid%3Dtwitter-887675131245539328%26autosize%3D1">characterizations</a> of its
female and male voices.
Inside Bixby’s “language and speaking style” menu, Samsung
describes its female voice as “chipper” and “cheerful,” while the
male voice is described as “confident” and “assertive.”
</blockquote>
<a href="https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/19/15998668/samsung-adds-removes-sexist-bixby-descriptor-tags">Not a new problem for Samsung</a>.
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Samsung Describes Its Male and Female Bixby Assistants With Sexist Descriptions’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/19/samsung-bixby"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/2017/07/you_should_not_force_quit_apps" />
<link rel="shorturl" href="http://df4.us/q67" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2017://1.33919</id>
<published>2017-07-19T22:47:17Z</published>
<updated>2017-07-21T17:05:23Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<summary type="text">The single biggest misconception about iOS is that it’s good digital hygiene to force quit apps that you aren’t using.</summary>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
The single biggest misconception about iOS is that it’s good digital hygiene to force quit apps that you aren’t using. The idea is that apps in the background are locking up unnecessary RAM and consuming unnecessary CPU cycles, thus hurting performance and wasting battery life.
That’s not how iOS works. The iOS system is designed so that none of the above justifications for force quitting are true. Apps in the background are effectively “frozen”, severely limiting what they can do in the background and freeing up the RAM they were using. iOS is really, really good at this. It is so good at this that unfreezing a frozen app takes up way less CPU (and energy) than relaunching an app that had been force quit. Not only does force quitting your apps not help, it actually hurts. Your battery life will be worse and it will take much longer to switch apps if you force quit apps in the background.
<a href="https://www.macrumors.com/2016/03/10/force-quitting-apps-doesnt-help-battery/">Here’s a short and sweet answer from Craig Federighi</a>, in response to an email from a customer asking if he force quits apps and whether doing so preserves battery life: “No and no.”
Here, from the official support document on forcing applications to close, is <a href="https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201330">Apple’s own advice on when to use this feature</a>:
<blockquote>
When you double-click the Home button, your recently used apps
appear. The apps aren’t open, but they’re in standby mode to help
you navigate and multitask. You should force an app to close only
when it’s unresponsive.
</blockquote>
Update: MacDailyNews quotes a 2010 email from Steve Jobs:
<blockquote>
Just use [iOS multitasking] as designed, and you’ll be happy. No
need to ever quit apps.
</blockquote>
Just in case you don’t believe Apple’s senior vice president for software, Apple’s own official support documentation, or Steve Jobs, here are some other articles pointing out how this habit is actually detrimental to iPhone battery life:
<ul>
<li>Fraser Speirs (back in 2012!): “<a href="http://www.speirs.org/blog/2012/1/2/misconceptions-about-ios-multitasking.html">Misconceptions About iOS Multitasking</a>”</li>
<li>Thorin Klosowski: “<a href="https://lifehacker.com/quitting-apps-in-ios-actually-worsens-battery-life-1560086834">Quitting All Your Apps in iOS Can Actually Worsen Battery Life</a>”</li>
<li>Kendall Baker: “<a href="https:[email protected]/stop-force-quitting-your-iphone-apps-eb13d86caaa5">Stop Force Quitting Your iPhone Apps</a>”</li>
<li>The Wirecutter: “<a href="http://thewirecutter.com/blog/what-you-should-and-shouldnt-do-to-extend-your-phones-battery-life/#myth-close-quit-unused-apps">What You Should (and Shouldn’t) Do to Extend Your Phone’s Battery Life</a>”</li>
<li>Kyle Richter: “<a href="http://martiancraft.com/blog/2016/02/force-quit-2/">The Force Quit Fallacy</a>”</li>
</ul>
This thing about force quitting apps in the background is such a pernicious myth that I’ve heard numerous stories from DF readers <a href="https://twitter.com/schwa/status/152425874581491712">about Apple Store Genius Bar staff recommending it to customers</a>. Those “geniuses” are anything but geniuses.
It occurs to me that some of the best examples proving that this notion is wrong (at least in terms of performance) are YouTube “speed test” benchmarks. There’s an entire genre of YouTube videos devoted to benchmarking new phones by running them through a series of apps and CPU-intensive tasks repeatedly, going through the loop twice. Once from a cold boot and the second time immediately after the first loop. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pn-2B82B1mg">Here’s a perfect example, pitting a Samsung Galaxy S8 against an iPhone 7 Plus</a>. Note that no apps are manually force quit on either device. The iPhone easily wins on the first loop, but where the iPhone really shines is on the second loop. The S8 has to relaunch all (or at least almost all) of the apps, because Android has forced them to quit while in the background to reclaim the RAM they were using. On the iPhone, all (or nearly all) of the apps re-animate almost instantly.
In fact, apps frozen in the background on iOS unfreeze so quickly that I think it actually helps perpetuate the myth that you should force quit them: if you’re worried that background apps are draining your battery and you see how quickly they load from the background, it’s a reasonable assumption to believe that they never stopped running. But they did. They really do get frozen, the RAM they were using really does get reclaimed by the system, and they really do unfreeze and come back to life that quickly.<a href="#fn1-2017-07-19">1</a>
An awful lot of very hard work went into making iOS work like this. It’s a huge technical advantage that iOS holds over Android. And every iPhone user in the world who habitually force quits background apps manually is wasting all of the effort that went into this while simultaneously wasting their own device’s battery life and making everything slower for themselves.
This pernicious myth is longstanding and seemingly will not die. <a href="https://daringfireball.net/2012/01/ios_multitasking">I wrote about it at length back in 2012</a>:
<blockquote>
Like with any voodoo, there are die-hard believers. I’m quite
certain that I am going to receive email from people who will
swear up-and-down that emptying this list of used applications
every hour or so keeps their iPhone running better than it would
otherwise. Nonsense.
<a href="http://www.speirs.org/blog/2012/1/2/misconceptions-about-ios-multitasking.html">As Fraser mentions</a>, yes, there are exceptional situations where an
app with background privileges can get stuck, and you need to kill
that app. The argument here is not that you should never have to
kill any app using the multitasking switcher — the argument is
that you don’t need to do it on a regular basis, and you’re not
making anything “better” by clearing the list. Shame on the
“geniuses” who are peddling this advice.
</blockquote>
And don’t even get me started on people who completely power down their iPhones while putting them back into their pockets or purses.
<div class="footnotes">
<hr />
<ol>
<li id="fn1-2017-07-19">
The other contributing factor to believing that force quitting is good for your iPhone are the handful of apps that have been found to be repeated abusers of loopholes in iOS, such that they really do continue running in the background, wasting battery life. Most infamously, Facebook was caught playing silent audio tracks in the background to take advantage of APIs that allow audio-playing apps to play audio from the background. <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2015/10/22/facebook-says-it-fixed-a-bug-that-caused-silent-audio-to-vampire-your-iphone-battery/">They called it a “bug”</a>. In those cases force-quitting the apps really did help, and I see no reason to trust Facebook. So if you want to keep force quitting Facebook, go right ahead. But don’t let one bad app spoil the whole barrel. The Battery section in the iOS Settings app can show you which apps are actually consuming energy in the background — tap the clock icon under “Battery Usage” and don’t force quit any app that isn’t a genuine culprit. <a href="#fnr1-2017-07-19" class="footnoteBackLink" title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.">↩︎</a>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
]]></content>
<title>★ Public Service Announcement: You Should Not Force Quit Apps on iOS</title></entry><entry>
<title>Apple Machine Learning Journal</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://machinelearning.apple.com/" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/q66" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/19/apple-machine-learning-journal" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2017:/linked//6.33918</id>
<published>2017-07-19T16:19:26Z</published>
<updated>2017-07-19T21:42:56Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
New publication from Apple, where Apple engineers can publish their work and research on machine learning. The writing is more accessible than a peer-reviewed technical journal, but alas (but unsurprisingly for Apple), the articles are un-bylined. The approachability without avoiding nitty-gritty technical details reminds me of Dr. Dobb’s Journal back in the day.
My assumption here is that this doesn’t replace <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2016/12/26/apple-ai-research-paper">publishing in established peer-reviewed journals</a>, but rather acts as a public-facing, more accessible filter for research that Apple engineers publish in peer-reviewed journals — perhaps along with original content at some point.
(Also: no RSS feed. Update: <a href="http://www.manton.org/2017/07/5463.html">There is an RSS feed</a> — <a href="https://machinelearning.apple.com/feed.xml">the URL</a> just isn’t published anywhere in the HTML. Update 2: The site now has a <code><link></code> tag with the URL for the feed so you can just point any feed reader at its home page to discover the feed. Nice.)
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Apple Machine Learning Journal’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/19/apple-machine-learning-journal"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>Acorn 6</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://flyingmeat.com/blog/archives/2017/7/acorn_6.html" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/q65" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/18/acorn-6" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2017:/linked//6.33917</id>
<published>2017-07-19T00:37:57Z</published>
<updated>2017-07-19T00:37:59Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
Gus Mueller, Flying Meat Software:
<blockquote>
What’s new and awesome?
For a number of years, text on a path has been our number one
feature request and we finally got to deliver it with version 6.
Acorn has always had great text support; it handles unicode
effortlessly, and you can have multiple font faces and weights in
a single text block. You can even have emoji as part of your text
block. All of these same features work perfectly with text on a
path. Inline editing, selection, etc- it just works. And it was a
ton of fun to code on as well. Buy me a beer someday and I’ll
spill the details on how I coded it.
We also implemented our number two feature request, clone tool
improvements. You can now select any layer as a clone source
(bitmap layers, a group of layers, even shape layers) and then
clone to any other layer, or even another image. We also added
stamping to the clone tool, which works by holding down the shift
key when you click on your image.
</blockquote>
Another excellent update to another one of my favorite and most-depended-upon apps. Compared to the old days of “Photoshop or bust”, we Mac users today have a veritable cornucopia of excellent image editing apps to choose from. Acorn just best fits my needs and my way of thinking about how a Mac image editor should look and work. On sale for just $15 — that’s 50 percent off — for a limited time.
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Acorn 6’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/18/acorn-6"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>Transmit 5</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://panic.com/blog/hello-transmit-5/" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/q64" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/18/transmit-5" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2017:/linked//6.33916</id>
<published>2017-07-19T00:31:29Z</published>
<updated>2017-07-19T00:32:39Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
Cabel Sasser:
<blockquote>
Seven years after the first release of Transmit 4, our well-loved
and widely-used macOS file transfer app, we sat down with an
incredibly exhaustive list of ideas, and — this’ll sound like I’m
exaggerating but I’m mostly sure I’m not — we did it all.
With one massive update we’ve brought everyone’s favorite
file-transferring truck into the future with more speed, more
servers, more features, more fixes, a better UI, and even Panic
Sync. Everything from the core file transfer engine to the “Get
Info” experience was rethought, overhauled, and improved.
</blockquote>
A tremendous update to one of my very favorite and most-depended-upon apps. Worth checking out just to see <a href="https://panic.com/transmit/">the 3D rotating truck icon on their website</a>. On sale for one week only for just $35.
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Transmit 5’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/18/transmit-5"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/2017/07/iphone_prelude" />
<link rel="shorturl" href="http://df4.us/q63" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2017://1.33915</id>
<published>2017-07-19T00:09:03Z</published>
<updated>2017-07-19T00:09:05Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<summary type="text">In a broad sense, that’s my idea for the iPhone Pro — a premium-priced product that offers us early access to technologies and components that will be (or even just might be) in all iPhones in another year or two.
</summary>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
Rene Ritchie, “<a href="https://www.imore.com/iphones-future-past">iPhones of Future Past: Understanding iPhone 8</a>”:
<blockquote>
iPhone 8 will simply let Apple impress in a different way — by
including technologies that don’t yet reach iPhone scale. In other
words, by bringing tomorrow’s iPhone to market today.
In terms of the business, it’s really no different than getting an
iPhone onto Verizon, onto China Mobile, with bigger and bigger
displays, or with smaller displays again — it’s about annexing
adjacent markets and maximizing the revenue potential for iPhone.
As it becomes harder to sell more iPhones — the population of
earth is now a limiting factor — selling more of an iPhone
becomes beneficial. It’s the same benefit Apple gets from selling
services revenue on top of iPhone, but in atoms, not bits.
</blockquote>
Ritchie is using the name “iPhone 8” to refer to what I’ve called the “iPhone Pro” — the high-end OLED-display model that I think might start at over $1000. Name aside, I think he’s got exactly the right idea on how Apple can position this: a future iPhone today.
Honda used to sell a car in the U.S. called the Prelude. <a href="https://www.edmunds.com/honda/prelude/history/">Edmunds’s description</a>:
<blockquote>
Honda established itself in America with the Civic and Accord —
both good, solid but basic cars. But big profits in the automotive
world don’t come from basic cars that sell for commodity prices.
Those profits come from cars that get consumers so excited that
they’ll pay a premium price just to have one. The Prelude was
Honda’s first attempt at an exciting car.
The Prelude was Honda’s technological leading edge. Features that
are now expected from Honda, like the double-wishbone suspension
under the Accord, fuel injection, and VTEC electronic variable
valve timing system showed up first on the Prelude before
migrating across the Honda line (though VTEC first showed up on
the 1990 Acura NSX). The Prelude was also a test bed for some
technologies that went nowhere, like four-wheel steering.
</blockquote>
In a broad sense, that’s my idea for the iPhone Pro — a premium-priced product that offers us early access to technologies and components that will be (or even just might be) in all iPhones in another year or two.
]]></content>
<title>★ iPhone Prelude</title></entry><entry>
<title>The Return of Google Glass</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-parent-alphabet-tries-again-with-eyeglass-mounted-device-1500398709" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/q62" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/18/google-glass-redux" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2017:/linked//6.33914</id>
<published>2017-07-18T18:36:57Z</published>
<updated>2017-07-18T18:36:58Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
Laura Stevens, reporting for The Wall Street Journal:
<blockquote>
Google parent Alphabet Inc. is relaunching Glass, its head-worn
computer, targeting corporate customers after its initial version
flopped because of privacy concerns.
Dubbed Glass Enterprise Edition, the product has been in testing
at about 50 companies, including Boeing Co., General Electric Co.
and Volkswagen AG, Alphabet said Tuesday.
The new device, which is designed to snap on eyeglass frames and
display information, videos and images in the line of a person’s
sight, allow workers to see instructional content. They can also
use the device to broadcast what they are viewing back to others
for real-time instruction.
</blockquote>
Still looks goofy (in fact, it pretty much looks the same), but I can see how it could prove popular in work environments so long as it’s useful. People ranging from mechanics to surgeons have long worn industrial-looking eyewear on the job.
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘The Return of Google Glass’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/18/google-glass-redux"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>Jonathan Chait: ‘Trumpcare Collapsed Because Republicans Cannot Govern’</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/07/trumpcare-collapsed-because-republicans-cannot-govern.html" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/q61" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/18/chait-trumpcare" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2017:/linked//6.33913</id>
<published>2017-07-18T17:28:59Z</published>
<updated>2017-07-18T17:29:00Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
Jonathan Chait:
<blockquote>
In truth, it was never possible to reconcile public standards for
a humane health-care system with conservative ideology. In a pure
market system, access to medical care will be unaffordable for a
huge share of the public. Giving them access to quality care means
mobilizing government power to redistribute resources, either
through direct tax and transfers or through regulations that raise
costs for the healthy and lower them for the sick. Obamacare uses
both methods, and both are utterly repugnant and unacceptable to
movement conservatives. That commitment to abstract
anti-government dogma, without any concern for the practical
impact, is the quality that makes the Republican Party unlike
right-of-center governing parties in any other democracy. In no
other country would a conservative party develop a plan for health
care that every major industry stakeholder calls completely
unworkable.
</blockquote>
The Republicans control the House, Senate, and White House, and cannot pass health insurance legislation. One can argue about why this is so, but I think Chait nails it: they can’t square their anti-government dogma with the need for the government to play a role in any humane health care system.
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Jonathan Chait: ‘Trumpcare Collapsed Because Republicans Cannot Govern’’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/18/chait-trumpcare"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>Garry Kasparov on Trump and Putin</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/donald-pravda-trump-apologists-spookily-echo-putin-article-1.3327575" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/q60" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/18/kasparov" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2017:/linked//6.33912</id>
<published>2017-07-18T16:53:59Z</published>
<updated>2017-07-18T16:54:55Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
Garry Kasparov, in a column for The New York Daily News:
<blockquote>
For autocrats, angry denial is the first phase of responding to
accurate charges against them. “No! Never! A complete
fabrication!”
As evidence accumulates, this shifts to feigning ignorance and
claiming misunderstanding, along with attempts to distract by
slandering the accusers, blaming others for similar sins and
discrediting the concept of knowable truth. “I didn’t know it was
wrong! The media is out to get me! Others have done worse! Who
knows what really happened?”
When even this proves insufficient, it’s time for the final step,
confession. Not the kind that is said to be good for the soul, but
the aggressive, defiant boasting of someone who is sure that they
won’t be punished in this life or the next for the crime they
denied for so long. “I did it, but so what? There’s nothing wrong
with it! What are you going to do about it?”
After many months of denials, lies and distractions in an effort
to dismiss the mounting evidence that the Trump campaign knowingly
worked with Russia to win the 2016 presidential election, the
Trump train is approaching the final station.
</blockquote>
It’s not like Kasparov knows anything about strategic thinking or Vladimir Putin.
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Garry Kasparov on Trump and Putin’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/18/kasparov"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>Only 45 Percent of Trump Voters Believe Don Jr. Met With the Russians, After Junior Admitted It</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://americablog.com/2017/07/45-trump-voters-believe-don-jr-met-russians-junior-admitted.html" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/q5z" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/18/don-jr" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2017:/linked//6.33911</id>
<published>2017-07-18T16:48:14Z</published>
<updated>2017-07-18T16:48:38Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
John Aravosis:
<blockquote>
Public Policy Polling has a <a href="http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2017/07/health-care-a-mine-field-for-republicans-many-trump-voters-in-denial-on-russia.html">new poll</a> out that’s depressing as
hell, and a sign of just how fact-deprived Trump voters truly are.
Among other findings, only 45% of Trump voters think Donald Trump
Jr. met with Russians last year to discuss their offer to help his
father win the election. And 32% say it didn’t happen at all.
This is after Donald Trump Jr. already admitted publicly that he
met with the Russians, and Donald Trump Sr. tweeted the fact
that his son met with the Russians. After all that, only 45%
believe it.
</blockquote>
He not only admitted it, <a href="https://twitter.com/DonaldJTrumpJr/status/884789839522140166">he publicly released the emails documenting it</a>. 
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Only 45 Percent of Trump Voters Believe Don Jr. Met With the Russians, After Junior Admitted It’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/18/don-jr"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>Dov Charney’s 2.0: Los Angeles Apparel</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-07-12/dov-charney-couldn-t-keep-american-apparel-so-he-restarted-it" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/q5y" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/18/charney-la-apparel" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2017:/linked//6.33910</id>
<published>2017-07-18T16:29:56Z</published>
<updated>2017-07-18T16:29:58Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
Matthew Townsend, reporting for Bloomberg:
<blockquote>
But American Apparel’s 2015 bankruptcy wiped out most of his net
worth, so where would he get the money? Didn’t his tawdry past of
sexual harassment allegations make him radioactive? And shouldn’t
American Apparel’s collapse prove that making clothes in the U.S.
is a fool’s errand?
Yet here he is, at 48, overseeing a startup with seamstresses
and fabric cutters and boxes of T-shirts waiting to be shipped
across the country. He’s on, he’s riffing, he’s explaining the
benefits of immigration, he’s envisioning a company that will
someday hit $1 billion in revenue. (American Apparel topped out
at $634 million in 2013.) “We’re building, grooving, growing,”
Charney says.
His new company, <a href="http://www.losangelesapparel-imprintable.net/">Los Angeles Apparel</a>, was launched late last
year as a wholesale business — just like American Apparel’s
origins in 1989 — selling blank basics such as T-shirts and
sweatshirts.
</blockquote>
Very similar brand aesthetic to American Apparel, too, but with Microgramma subbed in for Helvetica Neue as the company typeface.
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Dov Charney’s 2.0: Los Angeles Apparel’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/18/charney-la-apparel"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>Apple’s Risky Balancing Act With the Next iPhone</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://www.macworld.com/article/3207552/iphone-ipad/apples-risky-balancing-act-with-the-next-iphone.html" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/q5x" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/17/iphone-2017-snell" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2017:/linked//6.33909</id>
<published>2017-07-17T23:53:37Z</published>
<updated>2017-07-17T23:53:38Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
Jason Snell, in a terrific column for Macworld:
<blockquote>
This is one of those areas where Apple may be the victim of its
own success. The iPhone is so popular a product that Apple can’t
include any technology or source any part if it can’t be made more
than 200 million times a year. If the supplier of a cutting-edge
part Apple wants can only provide the company with 50 million per
year, it simply can’t be used in the iPhone. Apple sells too many,
too fast.
Contrast that to Apple’s competition. On the smaller end, former
Android chief Andy Rubin announced <a href="http://www.pcworld.com/article/3198676/android/andy-rubin-essential-phone.html">the Essential phone</a>, but even
Rubin admitted that he’d only be able to sell in thousands, not
millions. Same for the <a href="https://www.computerworld.com.au/article/621569/high-def-camera-maker-red-announces-3d-smartphone/">RED Hydrogen One</a> — groundbreaking phone,
hardly likely to sell in any volume. The Google Pixel looks like
it’s <a href="https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/06/google-sells-1-million-pixel-phones-in-eight-months/">in the one million range</a>. Apple’s biggest competitor,
Samsung, has to deal with a scale more similar to Apple’s — but
it’s still only expected to sell <a href="https://www.cnet.com/news/samsung-galaxy-s8-5-million-sales-report/">50 or 60 million units of the
flagship Galaxy S8</a>.
</blockquote>
As one DF reader (thanks, SH) put it in an email a few weeks ago:
<blockquote>
People commonly think that scale is an unambiguously good thing in
production, but the tremendous scale at which Apple operates shows
this not to be the case. Annual iPhone production is so large that
Apple is likely experiencing diseconomies of scale, a phenomenon
one doesn’t often hear about. What significant, break-through
technology can a company practically introduce to 300 million new
devices in a year? I’m not even sure it would be physically
possible to manufacture 300 million OLED screens in a single year,
for instance. Much less any more dramatic change, like new
materials or manufacturing processes.
</blockquote>
It’s not just this year that Apple has to pull off a risky balancing act regarding the features and components of the new flagship iPhone. It’s every year. I don’t think that balance is attainable without a change in strategy to add a new higher-priced lower-volume tier.
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Apple’s Risky Balancing Act With the Next iPhone’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/17/iphone-2017-snell"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>Jeet Heer: ‘We Are Living in the Coen Brothers’ Darkest Comedy’</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://newrepublic.com/article/143875/living-coen-brothers-darkest-comedy" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/q5v" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/17/heer-burn-after-reading" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2017:/linked//6.33907</id>
<published>2017-07-17T17:00:50Z</published>
<updated>2017-07-17T17:03:01Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
Jeet Heer, writing for The New Republic:
<blockquote>
Imagine a group of dunderheaded Americans who think they would benefit from a covert alliance with the Russian government. They make overtures to that country’s ambassador, blithely ignorant that they’ll be monitored by U.S. intelligence. A series of cascading mistakes ultimately brings disaster crashing down on their heads.
That might sound like a summary of the latest news about the White House, but it is also the plot of Burn After Reading, the 2008 film that stands as singularly prophetic of the Trump era. The Coen Brothers’ black comedy echoes this unique period in history not only because of the Trump campaign’s collusion with Russian operatives, but the wider culture of deceit that made Donald Trump’s rise possible. More than just a satire on espionage, the movie is a scathing critique of modern America as a superficial, post-political society where cheating of all sorts comes all too easily.
</blockquote>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Jeet Heer: ‘We Are Living in the Coen Brothers’ Darkest Comedy’’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/17/heer-burn-after-reading"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>Benedict Evans: ‘Creation and Consumption’</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2017/7/13/creation-and-consumption" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/q5u" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/17/evans-creation-consumption" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2017:/linked//6.33906</id>
<published>2017-07-17T16:55:08Z</published>
<updated>2017-07-17T16:57:25Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
Benedict Evans:
<blockquote>
It seems to me that when people talk about what you ‘can’t’ do on a device, there are actually two different meanings of ‘can’t’ in computing. There is ‘can’t’ as meaning the feature doesn’t exist, and there is ‘can’t’ as meaning you don’t know how to do it. If you don’t know how to do it, the feature might as well not be there. So, there is what an expert can’t do on a smartphone or tablet that they could do on a PC. But then there are all of the things that a normal person (the other 90% or 95%) can’t do on a PC but can do on a smartphone, because the step change in user interface abstraction and simplicity means that they know how to do it on a phone and didn’t know how to do it on a PC. That is, the step change in user interface models that comes with the shift from Windows and Mac to iOS and Android is really a shift in the accessibility of capability. A small proportion of people might temporarily go from can to can’t, but vastly more go from can’t to can.
</blockquote>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Benedict Evans: ‘Creation and Consumption’’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/17/evans-creation-consumption"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>Chaim Gartenberg: ‘The Future of the Smartwatch Should Be Smart Watch Bands’</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/7/16/15974000/smartwatch-smart-watch-bands-buckle-kickstarter-hybrid-mechanical-timepieces" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/q5t" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/17/gartenberg-watch-bands" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2017:/linked//6.33905</id>
<published>2017-07-17T15:59:07Z</published>
<updated>2017-07-17T16:11:46Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
Chaim Gartenberg, writing for The Verge:
<blockquote>
Despite the best efforts from Apple (with the Apple Watch), Google (with Android Wear), Samsung (with the Galaxy Gear), Pebble (with the, uh, Pebble), and dozens of other companies, the dream of the smartwatch hasn’t really taken off. Turns out that turning a smartphone into a wrist device isn’t really that appealing. Even if you can somehow get the right balance of battery life, device size, and developer support, people just aren’t really interested in getting anything more than notifications and fitness tracking from the devices they wear on their wrists.
</blockquote>
I disagree completely. I’m on my way home from a family vacation at Disney World. I saw Apple Watches everywhere. (I would estimate that over 95 percent of them were the aluminum models.) Apple Watch is a hit product.
I think notifications and fitness tracking simply are what people want from their smart watches.
I think smart bands for non-smart watches are a non-starter — and I say that as someone who packed two mechanical watches and no Apple Watch for this trip. The analog nature of mechanical watches is central to their appeal.
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Chaim Gartenberg: ‘The Future of the Smartwatch Should Be Smart Watch Bands’’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/17/gartenberg-watch-bands"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>Apple Previews New Emoji</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2017/07/apple-previews-new-emoji-coming-later-this-year/" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/q5s" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/17/apple-emoji" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2017:/linked//6.33904</id>
<published>2017-07-17T15:56:20Z</published>
<updated>2017-07-17T15:57:20Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
Apple:
<blockquote>
In celebration of World Emoji Day, Apple is sharing some of the new emoji coming to iOS, macOS and watchOS later this year.
</blockquote>
It’s crazy to me that there hasn’t been a sandwich emoji until now.
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Apple Previews New Emoji’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/17/apple-emoji"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>Thom Holwerda: ‘Android Is a Dead End’</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://www.osnews.com/story/29924/Android_is_a_dead_end" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/q5r" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/17/holwerda-android" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2017:/linked//6.33903</id>
<published>2017-07-17T15:34:56Z</published>
<updated>2017-07-17T15:34:59Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
Thom Holwerda, writing for OSNews:
<blockquote>
Android in its current form suffers from several key architectural
problems - it’s not nearly as resource-efficient as, say, iOS, has
consistent update problems, and despite hefty hardware, still
suffers from the occasional performance problems, among other
things - that Google clearly hasn’t been able to solve. It feels
like Android is in limbo, waiting for something, as if Google is
working on something else that will eventually succeed Android.
Is that something <a href="https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/">Fuchsia</a>? Is <a href="http://www.osnews.com/comments/29814">Project Treble</a> part of the
plan, to make it easier for Google to eventually replace Android’s
Linux base with something else? If Android as it exists today was
salvageable, why are some of the world’s greatest operating
systems engineers employed by Google not working on Android, <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/29343/Fuchsia_a_new_open_source_OS_by_Google_for_phones_PCs">but
on Fuchsia</a>? If Fuchsia is just a research operating system,
why did its developers recently add <a href="https://github.com/fuchsia-mirror/sysui/commit/9971dac93e402697c9462af7be2996cdd7225190">actual wallpapers to the
repository</a>? Why does every design choice for Fuchsia seem
specifically designed for and targeted at solving Android’s core
problems?
</blockquote>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Thom Holwerda: ‘Android Is a Dead End’’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/17/holwerda-android"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>Android Killed Windows Phone</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/14/15970082/google-killed-windows-phone-not-iphone" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/q5q" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/17/android-killed-windows-phone" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2017:/linked//6.33902</id>
<published>2017-07-17T15:26:32Z</published>
<updated>2017-07-17T18:24:47Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
Dieter Bohn, The Verge:
<blockquote>
So while Microsoft didn’t do itself any favors, I’d argue strongly
that all these machinations and flailings weren’t a response (or
weren’t only a response) to the iPhone. The real enemy was the
company that had set its sights on Microsoft’s phone ambitions
since before the iPhone was released.
That company was Google, of course, and it only tangentially
wanted to take on the iPhone. Google’s real target was always
Microsoft, and it hit the bullseye.
</blockquote>
This is so obvious to me I’m surprised Bohn even thought to write it, but judging by the response, it seems a lot of people haven’t really thought about this. Conceptually, the iPhone changed the industry by raising the bar for just how a modern phone should work. Android and Windows Phone were designed in the iPhone’s wake.
But business-wise, the iPhone is exactly like the Mac. It’s not something Apple licenses to other companies. So all other companies that want to make phones but can’t create their own OS need something to license. On the PC, that OS is Windows. For mobile, it’s Android. It’s hard to imagine how different the world would be today if Microsoft had created the Android of mobile.
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Android Killed Windows Phone’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/17/android-killed-windows-phone"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>Squarespace</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://bit.ly/2kRkz0S" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/q5p" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/15/squarespace" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2017:/linked//6.33901</id>
<published>2017-07-16T00:19:58Z</published>
<updated>2017-07-16T00:20:00Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
My thanks to Squarespace for once again sponsoring the DF RSS feed.
Create a beautiful portfolio website with Squarespace. You can showcase your work to the world with stunning galleries and project pages. Try Squarespace for free. When you’re ready to subscribe, <a href="http://bit.ly/2kRkz0S">get 10 percent off at squarespace.com</a> with offer code DARING17.
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Squarespace’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/15/squarespace"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/2017/07/iphone_silly_season" />
<link rel="shorturl" href="http://df4.us/q5o" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2017://1.33900</id>
<published>2017-07-14T00:01:51Z</published>
<updated>2017-07-18T00:03:14Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<summary type="text">Apple is months ahead of these rumors — what we hear now with reports like this are just echoes of decisions that have already been made.</summary>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
Yours truly, <a href="https://twitter.com/gruber/status/883479434560507905">in a tweet on July 7</a>:
<blockquote>
I’ve heard that inductive charging will (a) be sold separately,
and (b) might be late, waiting for iOS 11.1 (a la Portrait mode
last year).
<a href="https://twitter.com/ATP_Tipster1/status/883457889729425408">https://twitter.com/ATP_Tipster1/status/883457889729425408</a>
</blockquote>
On July 11, Mark Sullivan reported a piece for Fast Company under the headline “<a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/40439915/a-sense-of-panic-at-apple-as-the-next-flagship-iphones-software-problems-persist">Source: A ‘Sense of Panic’ at Apple as the Next Flagship iPhone’s Software Problems Persist</a>”:
<blockquote>
June was a tense month for the engineers and designers on Apple’s
iPhone team with “a sense of panic in the air,” a source with
knowledge of the situation tells me.
The company has been working feverishly to fix software problems
in its hotly anticipated 10th-anniversary iPhone that could
ultimately cause production and delivery delays, the source says.
If the software problems aren’t resolved quickly, the new flagship
iPhone could even launch with major features disabled. […]
One of those is wireless charging. The iPhone 8 — let’s call it
that for now — will reportedly use a type of inductive charging,
where the phone sits directly on a separate charging device. (Our
source believes Apple is using the Qi wireless charging standard,
or a variant of it.) The wireless charging components, which are
provided by chipmaker Broadcom Ltd., are not the key issue, the
source said; it’s the software that’s not ready for prime time.
</blockquote>
That sort of matches up with what I heard — that inductive charging might miss the September debut because the software isn’t ready. I have not heard anything about any sort of “panic”. Summers are crunch time for iOS engineers, and the deadline for iOS 11.0 is probably no more than a month away at this point. But if inductive charging has to wait until 11.1 in October or November, it’ll be a disappointment, but not much more so than having to wait for the iPhone 7 Plus’s Portrait Mode to come out of beta last fall.
<a href="http://www.computerworld.com/article/3207529/mobile-wireless/apple-hits-iphone-8-panic-mode-get-real.html">Jonny Evans, writing for Computerworld yesterday</a>:
<blockquote>
It’s the same thing every year these days. It’s incredibly
predictable.
It goes like this: Having reported every claimed product feature
people then switch to criticizing all those features, and — when
the shelf life on “anti-reports” of this kind time out, the
self-same sources swiftly shift to shuffling speculation saying
such-and-such features will apparently be “delayed”. Seriously!
All of this drama and Apple hasn’t even announced anything yet.
How can something that hasn’t been announced ever be delayed?
</blockquote>
“Apple engineers are panicking” is an exciting story. “Apple engineers are in crunch mode to finish iOS 11.0 just like they are every summer” is not.
It could be that things are in worse shape than usual, and there truly is a panic to get iOS 11’s support for new iPhone hardware finished on schedule. But everything I’ve heard suggests it’s the same as usual at this point in the summer: busy down to the wire, yes; frantic panic, no.
Today Sullivan has another report, <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/40440342/apple-is-working-hard-on-an-iphone-8-rear-facing-3d-laser-for-ar-and-autofocus-source">claiming Apple is trying to integrate laser sensors into the rear of the high-end new iPhone</a>:
<blockquote>
A source with knowledge of the situation tells Fast Company Apple
is working hard to add a rear-facing 3D laser system to the back
of one of the new iPhones to be announced this fall. […]
The source said the VSCEL laser system is probably intended for
the 10th anniversary iPhone (which may be called the iPhone 8 or
the iPhone Pro or, hopefully, the iPhone X). Whether the sensor
will be included in that phone, or a 2018 iPhone, depends on the
progress the Apple engineers make in integrating the laser system
into the phone, our source says.
</blockquote>
This sounds cool — and also sounds like the sort of feature that could justify <a href="https://daringfireball.net/2017/07/speculation_on_new_iphone_pricing">a significantly higher price for an iPhone Pro</a>.
But I think it’s bonkers to think that Apple is still working on hardware decisions like this in the middle of July. Apple is super-secretive about this stuff, but from what I’ve gathered over the years, by this state in the game the hardware design has long been decided. They’re in the late stages of <a href="https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-EVT-DVT-and-PVT-in-engineering-validation-tests">validation testing</a>, not designing.
<a href="https://twitter.com/gak_pdx/status/884950941849370624">Greg Koenig on Twitter two days ago</a>:
<blockquote>
For a volume Sep. launch, production tooling is being ground right
now. It’s been pencils down for a while.
If not? Huge shit show.
</blockquote>
With software Apple can (and does) play a bit fast and loose. iOS 11.0 won’t be baked until late August. But software can (and always is) patched. Hardware doesn’t work like that. Many of the decisions related to the hardware on this year’s new iPhones were made two years ago. (And there are decisions being made now for 2019’s new iPhones.)
Is there a 3D laser sensor on the back of the new iPhone? Is there a Touch ID sensor?<a href="#fn1-2017-07-13">1</a> I don’t know. But Apple knows, and has known for a while. Months, even.
If the hardware were still up in the air today, it’d be an impossible target for the software, never mind for Apple’s incredibly high-scale production ramp. I believe Apple is months ahead of these rumors — what we hear now with reports like this are just echoes of decisions that have already been made.
<div class="footnotes">
<hr />
<ol>
<li id="fn1-2017-07-13">
Might as well address this rumor here. A ton of readers have expressed deep skepticism regarding reports that the OLED iPhone doesn’t have a Touch ID sensor. “That’s impossible, Apple Pay relies on Touch ID” is the basic sentiment. I think it’s possible that there’s no Touch ID sensor on the OLED iPhone, but if that’s the case, then the new 3D face scanner has to be as good or better than Touch ID in every regard. It has to be just as fast, just as accurate, and just as trustworthy. It also would have to work from a wide range of angles. <a href="https://www.imore.com/dreaming-persistent-ambient-authentication-iphone-11">As Rene Ritchie has sagely written</a>, the end game is “persistent, ambient authentication” — fingerprints are not particularly magic.
But, if the new iPhone ships without a Touch ID sensor and there is no replacement authentication technology that is as good or better than Touch ID — that would be a dead canary in the coal mine. <a href="#fnr1-2017-07-13" class="footnoteBackLink" title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.">↩︎</a>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
]]></content>
<title>★ iPhone Silly Season</title></entry><entry>
<title>The Mac Mini Turns 1,000 Days Old Today</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.macobserver.com/news/mac-mini-turns-1000-days-old-today/" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/q5n" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/13/mac-mini-1000" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2017:/linked//6.33899</id>
<published>2017-07-14T00:01:01Z</published>
<updated>2017-07-14T00:01:04Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
“<a href="https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/06/transcript-phil-schiller-craig-federighi-and-john-ternus-on-the-state-of-apples-pro-macs/">The Mac Mini remains a product in our lineup</a>.”
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘The Mac Mini Turns 1,000 Days Old Today’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/13/mac-mini-1000"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>Font Choice Leads to Scandal Threatening the Pakistani PM</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/13/fontgate-microsoft-wikipedia-and-the-scandal-threatening-the-pakistani-pm" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/q5m" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/13/calibri-pakistan" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2017:/linked//6.33898</id>
<published>2017-07-13T19:10:35Z</published>
<updated>2017-07-13T19:23:33Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
Sune Engel Rasmussen and Pádraig Collins, reporting for The Guardian:
<blockquote>
The daughter of Pakistan’s prime minister has become subject of ridicule in her home country after forensic experts cast doubts on documents central to her defence against corruption allegations. […]
Documents claiming that Mariam Nawaz Sharif was only a trustee of the companies that bought the London flats, are dated February 2006, and appear to be typed in Microsoft Calibri.
But the font was only made commercially available in 2007, leading to suspicions that the documents are forged.
</blockquote>
The website Dawn <a href="https://www.dawn.com/news/1344685">reached out to Calibri designer Lucas de Groot for comment</a>:
<blockquote>
In a separate email, de Groot, the font designer himself, said that while in theory it would have been possible to create a document using Calibri in 2006, the font would have to be obtained from a beta operating system, “from the hands of computer nerds”.
“Why would anyone use a completely unknown font for an official document in 2006?” he went on to question.
</blockquote>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Font Choice Leads to Scandal Threatening the Pakistani PM’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/13/calibri-pakistan"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>The Internet Is Fucked (Again)</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/12/15715030/what-is-net-neutrality-fcc-ajit-pai-bill-rules-repealed" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/q5l" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/13/patel-net-neutrality" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2017:/linked//6.33897</id>
<published>2017-07-13T16:55:25Z</published>
<updated>2017-07-13T16:57:15Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
Nilay Patel, writing for The Verge:
<blockquote>
Most of these things are still true, even after the Obama-era FCC under Chairman Tom Wheeler reclassified internet access as a Title II telecommunications service and imposed strict net neutrality rules on wired and wireless internet providers. And most of these things will get even worse when Pai pushes through his plan to rescind Title II and those rules, despite widespread public outcry.
The lack of competition in the broadband access market is so acute that it doesn’t matter if <a href="http://247wallst.com/special-report/2017/01/10/americas-most-hated-companies-4/2/">Comcast is still the most-hated company in America</a>, or that Spectrum (formerly Time Warner Cable) has <a href="http://www.pcmag.com/news/350979/comcast-is-americas-most-hated-company">the worst customer service</a>: you don’t have a choice, so you just have to pay them anyway. Consumers and tech publications can review and argue and debate the merits of products from Apple, Google, and Microsoft, but you just have to take what you get from your ISP.
</blockquote>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘The Internet Is Fucked (Again)’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/13/patel-net-neutrality"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/2017/07/df_display_ads" />
<link rel="shorturl" href="http://df4.us/q5k" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2017://1.33896</id>
<published>2017-07-12T20:44:16Z</published>
<updated>2017-07-12T22:51:02Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<summary type="text">What I finally decided was the most obvious replacement possible: selling Deck-like ads on my own, directly to advertisers, much like I do with the weekly feed sponsorships.</summary>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<a href="https://daringfireball.net/2017/03/the_deck_adieu">After the Deck Network closed at the end of March</a>, I spent a long while thinking about what I could do to replace it. I’m a slow thinker.
What I finally decided was the most obvious replacement possible: selling Deck-like ads on my own, directly to advertisers, much like I do with <a href="http://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors">the weekly feed sponsorships</a>. It started in June with spots from Field Notes and Rogue Amoeba. So far in July, I’ve added MailChimp and Jamf. These are all longtime supporters of Daring Fireball, and I thank them greatly for helping to get this new thing off the ground. (Rogue Amoeba deserves special thanks: they’ve been the first sponsor of every single ad opportunity I’ve experimented with at DF over the years, including <a href="https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/2007/07/rogue_amoeba_1">the debut week of the feed sponsorship</a>.)
So here’s the deal. I don’t know how best to sell this spot. For now, I’m going with the following:
<ul>
<li>A maximum of 5 sponsors per month. Each sponsor will get 20 percent of all page views on DF (including the very popular <a href="https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax">Markdown Syntax Documentation</a> and online <a href="https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/dingus">Dingus</a> pages).</li>
<li>If a sponsor wants to buy more than one spot, they can, and will get a discount for doing so. I.e. a sponsor could buy 2/5 spots to get 40 percent of all DF pages views in a given month, 3/5 for 60 percent, etc.</li>
<li>A sponsor can provide two different ads for the month if they want. Each of the two ads will get 10 percent of the month’s page views.</li>
</ul>
I think this ad format is a great opportunity for everyone: sponsors, me, and DF readers.
For sponsors, you get to be the only graphical ad on the page each time your ad is shown. And given DF’s visual style, most of the time the ad will be the only graphical element on the entire page other than the DF logo mark, and the only color on the page other than good old #4a525a slate gray. The ads are relatively small, but I am confident they are more noticeable in a non-objectionable way than ads on just about any other website in the world. The ads on Daring Fireball stand out without being the least bit obtrusive. That’s the sweet spot for ads, in my opinion.
For readers, these are ads that, again, are visually unobjectionable, and which offer the most privacy you could hope for. Not only is there no tracking involved, there is no JavaScript involved. They’re just images, text, and HTML links. (<a href="https://twitter.com/marcoarment/status/885255873760722945">The images are even served from daringfireball.net itself</a>.) You have my word that I will never allow tracking via these or any other ads on Daring Fireball without posting a big prominent “OK, DF Ads Are Now Tracking You” post on the site. I don’t expect ever to allow this.
If you’re a prospective sponsor, you might be thinking, “Wait a minute, ‘no tracking’ sounds good, but if they’re not tracked, how will I know how my ad performs?” Easy. Do what (for example) <a href="https://rogueamoeba.com/sentBy.php?DFLB1">Rogue Amoeba</a> did, and provide a custom URL for the ad. Then you can track your own hits to that URL and trace them to the ad on Daring Fireball. Or just look at your referral stats (but <a href="https://twitter.com/GlennF/status/885259651700334592">I highly recommend sponsors use a custom URL</a>). This is something that’s always baffled me about ad tracking — if you pay (say) Facebook for an ad, why in the world would you, the advertiser, trust Facebook’s numbers for how the ad performed? Measure the performance yourself, and you’ll know you’re getting the truth.
Likewise, if you’re simply a reader, do not click ads mindlessly thinking you’re helping. Sponsors do not pay per click, and even if they did, I wouldn’t want them paying for mindless clicks. If you want to support DF, just take a look at the ads, and when one genuinely seems interesting to you, check it out. That’s all I need.
For me, the ads can generate some money to make up for the revenue that was previously generated by The Deck (maybe more, depending on how it turns out — I really don’t know what to predict here), and I can sleep soundly at night because the ads (a) look good, (b) load super fast, and (c) respect the privacy of DF readers.
I have a few spots open for the remainder of July, and August is currently wide open. If you’re interested, get in touch via <a href="http://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors">the same email address I use for the RSS feed sponsorships</a>. (There are a couple of openings left for the weekly sponsorships this summer too, and they can be bundled with these new display ads at a discount. Get in touch.)
]]></content>
<title>★ New on Daring Fireball: Display Ads</title></entry><entry>
<title>Michael Tsai on Fantastical 2.4 for Mac</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://mjtsai.com/blog/2017/07/12/fantastical-2-4-for-mac/" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/q5j" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/12/tsai-fantastical" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2017:/linked//6.33895</id>
<published>2017-07-12T19:28:43Z</published>
<updated>2017-07-12T19:32:19Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
Michael Tsai on <a href="http://flexibits.com/blog/2017/07/fantastical-2-4-for-mac-midsummer-edition/">the latest update to Fantastical for Mac</a>:
<blockquote>
It’s like they read my mind and implemented my four most-wanted features. Great update.
</blockquote>
It really is a great update. I’m not even sure what to ask for at this point. No app is ever “done”, but at this point Fantastical feels feature complete.
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Michael Tsai on Fantastical 2.4 for Mac’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/12/tsai-fantastical"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>Kottke’s Buyer’s Guide for Next Month’s Solar Eclipse</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://kottke.org/17/07/how-to-safely-enjoy-the-2017-solar-eclipse-a-buyers-guide-for-normal-people" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/q5i" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/12/kottke-eclipse" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2017:/linked//6.33894</id>
<published>2017-07-12T17:56:16Z</published>
<updated>2017-07-12T17:59:42Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
Jason Kottke:
<blockquote>
On August 21, 2017 across the entire United States, the Moon will move in front of the Sun, partially blocking it from our view. For those on <a href="http://kottke.org/17/06/nasas-super-accurate-map-of-the-2017-eclipse">the path of totality</a>, the Moon will entirely block out the Sun for more than 2 minutes. I’ve been looking forward to seeing a total solar eclipse since I was a little kid, so I’ve been doing a lot of research on what to buy to enjoy the eclipse safely. Here’s what I’ve come up with.
</blockquote>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Kottke’s Buyer’s Guide for Next Month’s Solar Eclipse’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/12/kottke-eclipse"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>Google Pays Academics for Publishing Favorable Articles About Google</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://nymag.com/selectall/2017/07/google-pays-academics-for-writing-about-google.html" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/q5h" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/12/google-academics" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2017:/linked//6.33893</id>
<published>2017-07-12T16:34:29Z</published>
<updated>2017-07-12T16:41:21Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
Madison Malone Kircher, writing for New York Magazine:
<blockquote>
Over the last ten years, Google (er, um, Alphabet) has paid thousands of dollars to people in the academic community working on research that directly involves the company’s business, <a href="https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/paying-professors-inside-googles-academic-influence-campaign-1499785286">The Wall Street Journal reported earlier Tuesday</a>. Dollar amounts ranged from $5,000 to $400,000, and Google’s financial contributions to the research were often not disclosed in the finished products, the Journal also reported. A former Google employee said the company had assembled a list of research papers, complete with “working titles, abstracts and budgets,” Google wanted to see produced and then used that list to find academics willing to work with them on those projects. Around 100 such papers have been funded by Google since 2009.
</blockquote>
I love this bit from the Journal story:
<blockquote>
University of Illinois law professor Paul Heald pitched an idea on copyrights he thought would be useful to Google, and he received $18,830 to fund the work. <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2130008">The paper</a>, published in 2012, didn’t mention his sponsor. “Oh, wow. No, I didn’t. That’s really bad,” he said in an interview. “That’s purely oversight.”
</blockquote>
“Oh, wow”. He’s shocked — shocked — that he himself didn’t disclose this. <a href="https://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-UF222_0710GO_M_20170710130639.jpg">The Journal even got him to pose for a photograph</a> — he’s got exactly the deer-in-the-headlights “Why did I agree to this interview?” look on his face that you’d expect.
Don’t be ethical.
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Google Pays Academics for Publishing Favorable Articles About Google’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/12/google-academics"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>Android Police: ‘This Is the 2017 Google Pixel “XL”’</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://www.androidpolice.com/2017/07/11/exclusive-this-is-the-2017-google-pixel-xl-with-low-bezel-amoled-display-and-squeezable-frame/" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/q5g" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/11/google-pixel-xl" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2017:/linked//6.33892</id>
<published>2017-07-11T22:47:02Z</published>
<updated>2017-07-12T00:40:57Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
Looks great. If this is legit, they’ll sell thousands more of them than last year.
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Android Police: ‘This Is the 2017 Google Pixel “XL”’’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/11/google-pixel-xl"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>Apple Extends Free Repairs of First-Generation Apple Watches With Detached Back Covers</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.macrumors.com/2017/07/11/apple-watch-back-cover-service-policy/" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/q5f" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/11/apple-watch-unglued" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2017:/linked//6.33891</id>
<published>2017-07-11T21:01:13Z</published>
<updated>2017-07-11T21:13:04Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
It’s good that Apple is doing this, but the fact that these things are just glued together shows how different Apple Watches are from traditional mechanical watches. You can buy <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002SSUQFG/">a $60 watch from Seiko</a> with better assembly quality than an Apple Watch Edition.
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Apple Extends Free Repairs of First-Generation Apple Watches With Detached Back Covers’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/11/apple-watch-unglued"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://bit.ly/2kRkz0S" />
<link rel="shorturl" href="http://df4.us/q5e" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/2017/07/squarespace_14" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2017:/feeds/sponsors//11.33890</id>
<author><name>Daring Fireball Department of Commerce</name></author>
<published>2017-07-11T11:16:27-04:00</published>
<updated>2017-07-11T11:16:28-04:00</updated>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
Create a beautiful portfolio website with Squarespace. You can showcase your work to the world with stunning galleries and project pages. Try Squarespace for free. When you’re ready to subscribe, <a href="http://bit.ly/2kRkz0S">get 10 percent off at squarespace.com</a> with offer code DARING17.
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Squarespace’" href="https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/2017/07/squarespace_14"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
<title>[Sponsor] Squarespace</title></entry><entry>
<title>Max Boot: ‘Trump Has Picked America’s Enemies in Russia Over Its Friends in Europe’</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/07/09/trump-has-picked-americas-enemies-in-russia-over-its-friends-in-europe/" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/q5d" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/10/boot-trump" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2017:/linked//6.33889</id>
<published>2017-07-10T18:40:49Z</published>
<updated>2017-07-10T21:23:10Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
Max Boot, writing for Foreign Policy:
<blockquote>
His nutty behavior is bad enough at home; it’s even worse abroad when he is supposed to be representing not just his rabid base of “deplorables” but, rather, the whole country. That is something Trump simply does not know how to do.
Thus, in the course of this trip, he trashed his predecessor, the U.S. intelligence community, and the “fake news” media. Can you imagine Ronald Reagan in 1981 going abroad and attacking Jimmy Carter for not doing more to stand up to Soviet aggression? Or attacking the press for being hostile to him in the 1980 campaign (as they were) and the intelligence community for not predicting the Iranian revolution (as they did not)? It’s unimaginable, yet Trump somehow thinks that it’s appropriate.
</blockquote>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Max Boot: ‘Trump Has Picked America’s Enemies in Russia Over Its Friends in Europe’’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/10/boot-trump"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>FlightLogger</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.flightlogger.co/" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/q5c" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/09/flightlogger" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2017:/linked//6.33888</id>
<published>2017-07-09T15:01:10Z</published>
<updated>2017-07-09T15:01:12Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
My thanks to FlightLogger for sponsoring this week’s DF RSS feed. FlightLogger lets you search for and save flights, get up-to-date notifications on any changes, share your travel coordinates with friends and family, and much more — all from one easy-to-use app.
Get real-time flight tracking for updates on departure and arrival times, delays, cancellations, gate and baggage claim information.
Available on all your devices: Add your flights on your iPhone and your flight information will be automatically synced to your iPad and Apple Watch all with an easy-to-use and clutter-free interface.
<a href="http://www.appstore.com/FlightLoggerTrackYourFlights">Get FlightLogger as a free download on the App Store</a> today.
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘FlightLogger’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/09/flightlogger"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/2017/07/speculation_on_new_iphone_pricing" />
<link rel="shorturl" href="http://df4.us/q5b" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2017://1.33887</id>
<published>2017-07-07T21:26:03Z</published>
<updated>2017-07-11T00:19:30Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<summary type="text">In the same way it made sense for Honda and Toyota to create their Acura and Lexus divisions to sell higher-end cars without eroding the value or popularity of their best-selling Accords and Camrys, it makes sense for Apple to create a premium tier for the iPhone, the best-selling product the company has ever made and likely will ever make.</summary>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
I created <a href="https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/john-gruber-wants-the-iphone-x-to-start-at-1500.2054972/">a bit of a stir</a> the other day when <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/03/kuo-iphone-2017-touch-id">I suggested the OLED iPhone “Pro” could start at $1,500</a>.
Let’s take a serious look at this. $1,500 as a starting price is probably way too high. But I think $1,200 is quite likely as the starting price, with the high-end model at $1,300 or $1,400.
First, consider the problems Apple faces with any new iPhone. Here are the prices for the iPhone 7:
<ul>
<li>iPhone 7 32 GB: $649</li>
<li>iPhone 7 128 GB: $749</li>
<li>iPhone 7 256 GB: $849</li>
</ul>
And 7 Plus:
<ul>
<li>iPhone 7 Plus 32 GB: $769</li>
<li>iPhone 7 Plus 128 GB: $869</li>
<li>iPhone 7 Plus 256 GB: $969</li>
</ul>
These prices have remained unchanged ever since the “Plus” era began with the iPhone 6 models in 2014. [Update: Several astute readers have reminded me that the 6 Plus and 6S Plus were $749/849/949 — the prices went up by $20 with the 7 Plus, presumably due to the cost of the dual camera module, but perhaps also as a small test of the iPhone’s price elasticity.] Apple reports its company-wide profit margin each quarter, which tends to hover around 37 or 38 percent. Apple does not report margins per-device or per-product-line, but considering that the iPhone accounts for around 70 percent of all Apple revenue, the margins for new iPhones almost certainly are somewhere between 35–40 percent. The exact number doesn’t really matter for the sake of this argument, so let’s just say that any new iPhone must have a profit margin of at least 35 percent for Apple to maintain its company-wide profit margin, and let’s further assume that maintaining company-wide margins in the high 30s is non-negotiable for the company.
Based on reactions to my post earlier this week, I think many people assume that the only thinking that goes into iPhone pricing is how much it costs for Apple to produce each iPhone. In other words, that the specs for the iPhone 7 were decided by how much Apple could put into them with $649/749/849 retail prices while achieving a profit margin of at least 35 percent. And that the specs for this year’s new iPhones have been set by the same logic.
But that’s too simplistic. You can’t talk about iPhone specs and pricing without considering scale. It’s not enough for Apple to create a phone that can be sold for $649/749/849 with 35 percent profit margins. They have to create a phone that can be sold at those prices, with those margins, and which can be manufactured at scale. And for Apple that scale is massive: anything less than 60–70 million in the quarter in which it goes on sale is a failure — possibly a catastrophic failure.
In short, new iPhones aren’t defined by what Apple can build for a certain price, but by what Apple can make for a certain price at a certain incredibly high quantity.
The iPhone’s scale — particularly the incredible popularity of the new high-end models each year — is Apple’s biggest financial strength but simultaneously its biggest potential strategic weakness. It prevents Apple from using any components in new iPhones that can’t be produced at a rate of 20-25 million per month, or roughly a rate of 1 million per day. The differences between regular and Plus models complicate this a little — only the Plus models need the dual camera systems, for example — but to date, even considering the Plus models, it has been true that all new iPhones need to be able to be produced in sufficient quantity to meet massive demand.
Based on the rumor mill this year — particularly <a href="https://www.macrumors.com/2017/07/03/ming-chi-kuo-iphone-omit-touch-id/">reports from KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo</a> — it sounds like Apple is trying to expand the iPhone product line at the high end to get out of this trap. The best available iPhone should be, at least arguably, the best phone in the world. That might not be possible if all new iPhones must be capable of being manufactured in the same quantities as in recent years.
What Apple has traditionally done is make one new iPhone each year, priced at the same points as the previous year’s models. And the previous year’s models move down $100 each in the lineup, and the two-year-old models move down to the entry level. A lot of people seem to expect Apple to do the same this year, with the OLED minimal-bezel new iPhone starting out at the same or roughly the same prices as the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus. I think that’s why so many people are referring to this phone as the “iPhone 8”.
But that’s not what the rumors are saying at all. Ming-Chi Kuo’s overall record is a bit mixed, but his record on the iPhone (or perhaps better put, for Apple products assembled by Foxconn) is excellent. And <a href="https://www.macrumors.com/2017/07/03/ming-chi-kuo-iphone-omit-touch-id/">Kuo has been reporting all along</a> that Apple is creating three new phones for 2017:
<ul>
<li>A new 4.7-inch phone with an LCD display, same or similar form factor as iPhone 7.</li>
<li>A new 5.5-inch phone with an LCD display, same or similar form factor as iPhone 7 Plus.</li>
<li>An all-new form factor with a tall, skinny OLED display and new edge-to-edge bezel-less display.</li>
</ul>
In other words, marketing-wise, an iPhone 7S, iPhone 7S Plus, and an iPhone Deluxe. The iPhone 7S and 7S Plus sound like exactly what you’d expect from an S model year: same form factors as last year, with upgraded components and a new A-series system on a chip. There is no reason to expect these phones to cost less than today’s iPhone 7 and 7 Plus do. If Apple were going to sell the fancy new OLED iPhone Deluxe at the same prices as today’s iPhone 7 models, there would be no 7S or 7S Plus — they would just keep the existing 7 and 7 Plus and lower their prices by $100.
But that’s not what the rumors are saying.
Furthermore, Kuo has been saying all along that the fancy new OLED iPhone is going to be supply-constrained compared to previous new iPhone launches:
<blockquote>
We predict October-November & August-September as production ramp-up schedules of OLED iPhone & LCD iPhone, respectively. “For optimized promotional effect, we think Apple may unveil the three models simultaneously in September, though the launch date of the OLED version may trail that of LCD models, and supply tightness may not improve before 1H18.” 
We forecast shipments of the three new models in 2017F will be 80-85mn units, with an equal split between OLED & LCD versions.
</blockquote>
Apple’s 2017 financial year ends September 30, so I’m assuming that “2017F” means the fourth quarter of the 2017 calendar year. But I don’t see how an even split between LCD and OLED iPhones makes sense if the OLED model’s “supply tightness may not improve before 1H18”. If supply is tight for six months or longer, how can half of Apple’s iPhone sales be for the OLED model?
It sounds to me like the OLED iPhone is a phone which Apple can’t make 40 million of per quarter, at least not today. And if that’s true, that means it should be more expensive. Not should in any moral sense, but simply because that’s how the principle of supply and demand works. When supply is constrained and demand is high, prices go higher. The higher prices alleviate demand.
Intriguingly, regarding device storage, Kuo also says:
<blockquote>
Three new models will all come with 64GB and 256GB storage options
</blockquote>
Assuming that’s true and that Kuo means the phones will only come in 64 and 256 GB configurations, I can see two ways this plays out for the 7S and 7S Plus:
Scenario 1:
<ul>
<li>32 GB 7, no-S: $549</li>
<li>64 GB 7S: $649</li>
<li>256 GB 7S: $749</li>
<li>32 GB 7 Plus, no-S: $669</li>
<li>64 GB 7S Plus: $769</li>
<li>256 GB 7S Plus: $869</li>
</ul>
Scenario 2:
<ul>
<li>32 GB 7, no-S: $649</li>
<li>64 GB 7S: $749</li>
<li>256 GB 7S: $849</li>
<li>32 GB 7 Plus, no-S: $769</li>
<li>64 GB 7S Plus: $869</li>
<li>256 GB 7S Plus: $969</li>
</ul>
If it wasn’t for the fact that I’m basing this analysis on Ming-Chi Kuo’s reporting, I would expect 32/128/256 configurations of the 7S models, at the same prices as today’s 7 models. Apple was very slow to move beyond 16 GB base configurations; it seems odd to me that they’d be so quick to move beyond 32 GB base configurations. It also seems odd that Apple would move away from the successful good-better-best strategy of having three storage tiers. But that’s what Kuo is reporting.
So in my Scenario 2, where the 256 GB 7S and 7S Plus cost $849 and $969 respectively, the base model 64 GB OLED iPhone would have to cost at least $999, and I think more likely $1099, and the 256 GB model would cost at least $1099 or $1199.
But if Apple expects severe supply constraints on these iPhones, I think prices of $1199 (64 GB) and $1299 (256 GB) are more likely. I honestly don’t think something like $1249/1399 is out of the question.
The prices for these iPhones need to be high enough so that tens of millions of people still want to buy the iPhone 7S and 7S Plus. If the “iPhone Pro” or “iPhone Edition” or whatever it is that Apple is going to call this phone starts at $800 or even $900, who is going to buy an iPhone 7S or 7S Plus? Not enough people, that’s who. Apple needs tens of millions of people to buy the 7S and 7S Plus because they aren’t going to be able to produce the “Pro/Edition” model in sufficient quantity.
Think about it: if Apple thought they were going to be able to produce the iPhone Pro/Edition model in sufficient quantity (say, at least 50 or 60 million per quarter, starting this year) and could do so for a $700-800 starting price point, and maintain their desired profit margins, why would the 7S and 7S Plus even exist?
Conversely, if the iPhone Pro/Edition were something Apple suspected it could only manufacture at a quantity of, say, 10 million or so units per quarter (perhaps simply by maxing out the world’s OLED production capabilities), wouldn’t the rumor mill look exactly like it does today: with the Pro/Edition model looking like a new premium tier and the new 7S and 7S Plus models set to occupy the existing “regular” price points for new iPhones?
What many people want, obviously, is for the new OLED iPhone to simply be the “iPhone 8” and wow us with a new design at the same old prices. But what is Apple supposed to do if, say, Samsung can only produce 10 million OLED displays for Apple per quarter? Apple can’t magically produce whatever it wants in sufficient quantity at current prices.
Furthermore, why shouldn’t there be a deluxe “Pro” tier for phones? For many people, phones are every bit as much an essential professional tool as their laptops. For some people, even more so. And I’d bet my bottom dollar there are more people who consider their iPhone a “pro” tool (and are willing to pay “pro” prices) than who think so regarding their iPad, and we’ll have had iPad Pros for two years by the time new iPhones are announced in September. If there are iPad Pros and MacBook Pros, why not iPhone Pros?
If you want to argue that Apple should never create an iPhone with a higher starting price than what we have today, you’re implicitly arguing that Apple should never put any components into a new iPhone that can’t be made at iPhone 7 scale. I think that’s dangerous strategically, leaving Apple open to attack from competitors making premium phones with components (cameras, displays, new sensors, new battery technologies, etc.) that can only be produced in single-digit millions per quarter.
On the other hand, without question, this “new premium tier” strategy that I’m suggesting poses its own significant risk for Apple. The mere existence of the new edge-to-edge OLED iPhone could dampen excitement for the iPhone 7S and 7S Plus, leading to a decrease in overall sales. “I don’t want a 7S because it’s boring, but I don’t want to spend $1,200 on an iPhone Pro/Edition because that’s too much for a phone, no matter how nice it is.” That sentiment could be trouble for Apple.
Personally, I think this strategy makes sense, and arguably is overdue. In the same way it made sense for Honda and Toyota to create their Acura and Lexus divisions to sell higher-end cars without eroding the value or popularity of their best-selling Accords and Camrys, it makes sense for Apple to create a premium tier for the iPhone, the best-selling product the company has ever made and likely will ever make. But Apple won’t have the luxury (pardon the pun) of doing so under an Acura- or Lexus-like new brand. They’ll have to do it as Apple.
]]></content>
<title>★ Speculation Regarding the Pricing of and Strategy Behind This Year’s New iPhones</title></entry><entry>
<title>Justin Williams Got Hacked and All He Got Was This New SIM Card</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://carpeaqua.com/2017/07/07/hack-the-planet/" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/q5a" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/07/williams-att-hack" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2017:/linked//6.33886</id>
<published>2017-07-07T17:29:32Z</published>
<updated>2017-07-07T17:32:16Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
Justin Williams:
<blockquote>
I like to think I take an above average amount of steps to secure myself online: I use a password manager, unique passwords as complex as the site will allow, and turn on 2-factor authentication when possible. A true security expert will likely find some sort of flaw in my setup, but I’ll argue that I am doing more than 95% of the planet.
So how did I, someone who is reasonably secure, have his cell phone disabled, his PayPal account compromised, and a few hundred dollars withdrawn from his bank account?
</blockquote>
Two-factor authentication using your cell number is only as secure as your wireless carrier’s protection against social engineering — which, alas, might be terrible.
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Justin Williams Got Hacked and All He Got Was This New SIM Card’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/07/williams-att-hack"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>Apple’s Bad Beta Decision on Em and En Dashes in iOS 11</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://glog.glennf.com/blog/2017/7/6/dash-dash-it-all" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/q59" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/07/dash-dash" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2017:/linked//6.33885</id>
<published>2017-07-07T16:29:10Z</published>
<updated>2017-07-07T20:44:17Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
Glenn Fleishman:
<blockquote>
Terrible news. Apple is replacing the long-running convention of typing two hyphens to obtain an em dash or “long dash.” That is, if you type “<code>--</code>”, many places in the interface in which autocorrection is enabled or third-party software takes advantage of autocorrection, it’s turned into —. […]
Why is this terrible news? Some have argued with me on Twitter that it’s more logical: “<code>-</code>” for hyphen, “<code>--</code>” for the longer en dash, and “<code>---</code>” for the longest em dash. You type more hyphens to get a longer dash.
My rejoinder is twofold. First, most people rarely use an en dash, although I’d like to increase that number. Second, a billion people have learned that typing “<code>--</code>” leads to a long dash. I may be exaggerating the number, but given that Microsoft Word, Pages, and other desktop software performs this substitution silently, it’s a widespread convention being overturned.
</blockquote>
I really hope this gets changed before iOS 11 ships.
Also, I’m not sure why dash conversion is part of “smart punctuation”. Converting simple hyphens to en- and em-dashes could be handled by iOS’s text substitutions. By default, for example, iOS has long had a substitution to change “(c)” to “©”. If en- and em-dashes were handled there, everyone could be happy because they could change it.
The only punctuation marks that needs to be “smart” are quotes. Right now in the iOS 11 betas, “smart” punctuation is all-or-nothing — to get smart quotes you have to accept smart dashes too.
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Apple’s Bad Beta Decision on Em and En Dashes in iOS 11’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/07/dash-dash"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>Jon Bois: ‘What Football Will Look Like in the Future’</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.sbnation.com/a/17776-football" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/q58" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/06/football-future" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2017:/linked//6.33884</id>
<published>2017-07-06T22:36:27Z</published>
<updated>2017-07-06T22:38:20Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
I implore you to drop everything and read this now, regardless if you care about or even understand the rules of the game.
Trust me.
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Jon Bois: ‘What Football Will Look Like in the Future’’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/06/football-future"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>Speaking of $1,200–1,600 Phones</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/7/6/15929212/red-hydrogen-one-smartphone-price-specs-release" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/q57" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/06/red-hydrogen-one" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2017:/linked//6.33883</id>
<published>2017-07-06T17:55:45Z</published>
<updated>2017-07-06T18:01:25Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
Red has announced (and is accepting pre-orders for) a 2018 high-end Android phone with a “holographic display”. $1,200 for aluminum, $1,600 for titanium. (<a href="https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/7/6/15929212/red-hydrogen-one-smartphone-price-specs-release">Via The Verge</a>.)
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Speaking of $1,200–1,600 Phones’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/06/red-hydrogen-one"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.flightlogger.co/" />
<link rel="shorturl" href="http://df4.us/q52" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/2017/07/flightlogger" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2017:/feeds/sponsors//11.33878</id>
<author><name>Daring Fireball Department of Commerce</name></author>
<published>2017-07-03T21:26:45-04:00</published>
<updated>2017-07-03T21:26:46-04:00</updated>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
Traveling has never been this easy. Now, you can search and save your flights, get up-to-date notifications on any changes, share your travel coordinates with friends and family, and much more — all from one easy-to-use app.
Get real-time flight tracking for updates on departure and arrival times, delays, cancellations, gate and baggage claim information.
Available on all your devices: Add your flights on your iPhone and your flight information will be automatically synced to your iPad and Apple Watch all with an easy-to-use and clutter-free interface.
<a href="http://www.appstore.com/FlightLoggerTrackYourFlights">Get FlightLogger as a free download on the App Store</a> today.
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘FlightLogger’" href="https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/2017/07/flightlogger"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
<title>[Sponsor] FlightLogger</title></entry><entry>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/2017/06/perfect_ten" />
<link rel="shorturl" href="http://df4.us/q4s" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2017://1.33868</id>
<published>2017-06-29T22:00:00Z</published>
<updated>2017-06-30T00:57:27Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<summary type="text">Apple had amazing product introductions before the iPhone, and it’s had a few good ones after. But the iPhone was the only product introduction that felt *impossible*.</summary>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
In January 2007, 26 minutes into his Macworld Expo keynote address, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vN4U5FqrOdQ">Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone</a> with his justly-famous “three revolutionary products” framing:
<blockquote>
This is a day I’ve been looking forward to for
two-and-a-half years.
Every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that
changes everything. … One’s very fortunate if you get to work on
just one of these in your career.
Apple’s been very fortunate. It’s been able to introduce a few of
these into the world. In 1984, we introduced the Macintosh. It
didn’t just change Apple, it changed the whole computer industry.
In 2001, we introduced the first iPod, and it didn’t just change
the way we all listen to music, it changed the entire music
industry.
Well, today, we’re introducing three revolutionary products of
this class.
The first one is a widescreen iPod with touch controls.
The second is a revolutionary mobile phone.
And the third is a breakthrough Internet communications device.
So, three things: a widescreen iPod with touch controls; a
revolutionary mobile phone; and a breakthrough Internet
communications device. An iPod, a phone, and an Internet
communicator. An iPod, a phone … are you getting it?
These are not three separate devices, this is one device, and we
are calling it iPhone.
</blockquote>
Ten years ago today, the iPhone went on sale.
I almost never watch an Apple keynote event after it has faded from being new. But I’ve watched the iPhone introduction at least half a dozen times over the years. I still get excited. The words Jobs used, as quoted above, are perfect. But you really have to watch it, to listen to his voice, to feel his conviction. He knew then what we all know now: this was it. This was the keynote we had all been waiting for. This was the reason why people lined up overnight for Apple keynotes — in the hopes of an announcement like this one. The iPhone was the product Apple had been founded to create — the epitome of everything both of Apple’s founding Steves stood for and obsessed about. The home run of all home runs.
With hindsight, though, I think even Jobs himself underestimated what the iPhone was.
The Apple I, the Apple II, the Macintosh, the iPod — yes, these were all industry-changing products. The iPhone never would have happened without each of them. But the iPhone wasn’t merely industry-changing. It wasn’t merely multi-industry-changing. It wasn’t merely many-industry-changing.
The iPhone changed the world.
There is no way to overstate it. The iPhone was the inflection point where “personal computing” truly became personal. Apple had amazing product introductions before the iPhone, and it’s had a few good ones after. But the iPhone was the only product introduction I’ve ever experienced that felt impossible. Apple couldn’t have shrunk Mac OS X — a Unix-based workstation OS, including the Cocoa frameworks — to a point where it could run on a cell phone. Scrolling couldn’t be that smooth and fluid. A touchscreen — especially one in a phone — couldn’t be so responsive. Apple couldn’t possibly have gotten a major carrier to cede them control over every aspect of the device, both hardware and software. I can recall sitting in the hall at Moscone West, watching the keynote unfold, 90 percent excited as hell, 10 percent concerned that I was losing my goddamn mind. Literally mind-blowing.
For nearly six interminable months we waited. And then even once I had my own iPhone in my hands on the evening of Friday, 29 June 2007, I kept thinking, I can’t believe this.
The iPhone’s potential was obviously deep, but it was so deep as to be unfathomable at the time. The original iPhone didn’t even shoot video; today the iPhone and iPhone-like Android phones have largely killed the point-and-shoot camera industry. It has obviated portable music players, audio recorders, paper maps, GPS devices, flashlights, walkie-talkies, music radio (with streaming music), talk radio (with podcasts), and more. Ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft wouldn’t even make sense pre-iPhone. Social media is mobile-first, and in some cases mobile-only. More people read Daring Fireball on iPhones than on desktop computers.
In just a handful of years, Nokia and BlackBerry, both seemingly impregnable in 2006, were utterly obliterated. <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2016/09/30/blackberry-vs-iphone-revisited">The makers of ever-more-computer-like gadgets were simply unable to compete with ever-more-gadget-like computers</a>.
Ten years in and the full potential of the iPhone still <a href="http://www.madewitharkit.com/">hasn’t been fully tapped</a>. No product in the computing age compares to the iPhone in terms of societal or financial impact. Few products in the history of the world compare. We may never see anything like it again — from Apple or from anyone else.
]]></content>
<title>★ Perfect Ten</title></entry></feed>

If you would like to create a banner that links to this page (i.e. this validation result), do the following:

Download the "valid Atom 1.0" banner.
Upload the image to your own server. (This step is important. Please do not link directly to the image on this server.)
Add this HTML to your page (change the image src attribute if necessary):

<a href="http://www.feedvalidator.org/check.cgi?url=http%3A//daringfireball.net/index.xml"><img src="valid-atom.png" alt="[Valid Atom 1.0]" title="Validate my Atom 1.0 feed" /></a>

If you would like to create a text link instead, here is the URL you can use:

http://www.feedvalidator.org/check.cgi?url=http%3A//daringfireball.net/index.xml

Home · About · News · Docs · Terms