» Don’t Put Fireworks Up Your Butt
The discussion of summertime continues on Turning This Car Around, including an impromptu review of Godzilla and important safety tips for using fireworks.
» The Setup
The fine folks at the Setup asked me about my setup.
Finally.
OK, technically, I asked them on Twitter. Still, they said yes.
» IT’S A TRAP!
Mary Jo Foley:
…here’s what I’d ask [Microsoft CEO Satya] Nadella: Could you show us the Surface Mini?
Don’t do it, Satya. Just say “no”.
The little iPod that could and still can
After a long hiatus, I recently started deliberately exercising again. I’m turning “an age” this year — you don’t need know what age, just that it’s evenly divisible by a horribly large number — and, while I’ve been fortunate enough to never really have to struggle with my weight, it was becoming apparent that the incidental exercise I was getting by just having a kid was no longer enough for continued living.
Now, deliberately exercising is horrible. I’m not alone in knowing this known fact. Please don’t shoot the messenger. I’m just saying truths here. One way to make it less horrible is to listen to music while doing it. But running with an iPhone in your pocket is problematic and I’m not sure if I’m iPhone armband material since my biceps are more CGI skinny Steve Rogers than real-life Chris Evans.
Fortunately, my house is full of old Apple devices. As you might imagine.
So, re-enter my 2nd generation iPod Shuffle.
This model came out in September of 2006 and I used it extensively for a few years until it just didn’t make sense to be managing music on it and my iPhone anymore. That also probably coincides with the last time I conducted deliberate exercise regularly.
Needless to say, it was completely drained when I picked it up, so I recharged it for the four hours Apple says it needs for a complete charge. Then for some reason it wouldn’t let me update the playlist that was on it, but that was fixed with a quick restore.
Apple’s specifications page for this model says it will play music for up to 12 hours on a full charge. So, I got curious. How long would this neglected 7.5-year-old devices still play? I plugged in some headphones, fired it up and let it go.
Realistically I only needed it to play music for maybe an hour while I was, ugh, exercising. My expectation was that it would probably play for a couple of hours, given what I’ve experienced with long-term battery life on other devices like iPhones, hard drive-based iPods and my Nexus 7.
How long did it continue to play?
11.5 hours.
Someone smarter than me can probably explain why this isn’t amazing. “It’s flash-based and, because the device is so small, the ions don’t have that far to travel through the acceleration matrixometer and you’re an idiot.” But the fact that it still gets almost the same amount of battery time as it did the day it rolled off the sweatshop factory floor seemed pretty amazing to me. I don’t know that you can draw any conclusions from this about how super-awesomely made Apple products are, but this one at least is pretty good.
» Emblematic
Mary Jo Foley has an interview with Microsoft’s Panos Panay which had me shaking my head at several points. There’s a lot of the same “People are frustrated by tablets!” language that, ugh, OK, whatever, Microsoft. There’s also a pretense that they’re competing with Apple when really what they’re trying to do is be the Apple of Windows devices.
Then this bit by Foley jumped out at me:
The new hinge and kickstand on the device will allow users a lot more viewing angles.
Tablets don’t have viewing angle limitations. Neither do laptops, really.
Microsoft is still solving problems with the Surface that it created.
» Bring Back Jerry Yang
I join John Gruber to ruin the inaugural episode of The Talk Show at its new home on Daring Fireball. We discuss Beats, WWDC rumors, John’s new phone and more.
» ‘It’s Time to Kill Surface’
Ben Thompson:
Having clearly failed as a mass market device, it makes sense to focus Surface and more clearly define its use case. And, if that use case is productivity, then it also makes sense to kill Surface mini. That Nadella allegedly did just that is a great sign. Now he just needs to kill the whole line.
He makes a pretty compelling argument. I wanted to like Surface. Heck, I stood in line in the rain for a couple of hours to try one. But if I were going to buy a Windows machine I could get something cheaper and more powerful that’s still made well from Lenovo. $800 for a device with 64 GB of storage (much of it used by the OS and installed applications) and no keyboard is not a value, no matter how nice the screen is.
Thompson’s deconstruction of Satya Nadella’s argument for making Surface is pretty damning. I wonder if he isn’t giving it one last chance before pulling the plug because it doesn’t seem convincing.
If Microsoft had convinced itself that it needed to make its own hardware in order to compete with Apple it should have done a reset like Apple did with iOS: make a new operating system brand so existing licenses with OEMs wouldn’t apply. But it could never do that because of its “Windows” brand fetish.
The only problem with Thompson’s argument is he doesn’t explain how Microsoft is going to make money licensing an operating system in a world where operating systems are free. That is still Microsoft’s existential dilemma.
» The Pool Whisperer
This week’s episode of America’s deadliest dadcast looks at summertime (part 1 of 2).
» The wrong case
Dan Frommer on the Surface 3 in his first piece at his new home at Quartz:
The main problem is that this is still a Windows 8 machine, missing the elegance of Apple’s iOS, its touch-based app selection, and its accessory and media ecosystem. Really, Microsoft has just made a good argument for Apple to release a larger (and even thinner) iPad Pro sometime sooner than later—that actually sounds great.
Most of my video consumption these days is on the Apple TV or my iPad and, as strange as it sounds, I’m interested in a larger iPad I can watch things on in the kitchen, in the living room, anywhere I want. I don’t know how it squares with owning other sizes, because a larger iPad is not good for reading. But for that use case, there is an argument.