daring-rss

‘Great Developers Steal Ideas, Not Products’

David Barnard, in a post from 2011 on the oft-cited (and oft-misattributed) adage about good artists copying and great artists stealing:

In dancing around the moral and semantic differences between
borrowing and stealing, I’ve been missing the greater point.
Elliot used the word steal, not for its immoral connotation,
but to suggest ownership. To steal something is to take
possession of it.

When you steal an idea and have the time and good taste to make it
your own, it grows into something different, hopefully something
greater. But as you borrow more and more from other products,
there’s less and less of you in the result. Less to be proud of,
less to own.

Barnard quotes the actual origin of the adage, from T.S. Elliot, and that alone is worth a bookmark. In Elliot’s formulation, it’s not copying vs. stealing, but imitating vs. stealing. That subtle distinction is clarifying. People who are creative and ethical generally see the clear distinction between remixing and ripping off. I add generally there because some people are truly offended when the ideas behind their own creations are remixed — stolen — by others.

To name one notable example, I’d argue that Android, as a whole, is a remix of the iPhone. But there are specific Android handsets — starting with some early Samsung Galaxy models — that are rip-offs of iPhone hardware designs. Steve Jobs, however, felt otherwise.

(And which is not to say Google hasn’t often been a shameless imitator/copycat.)

★

David Barnard, in a post from 2011 on the oft-cited (and oft-misattributed) adage about good artists copying and great artists stealing:

In dancing around the moral and semantic differences between
borrowing and stealing, I’ve been missing the greater point.
Elliot used the word steal, not for its immoral connotation,
but to suggest ownership. To steal something is to take
possession of it.

When you steal an idea and have the time and good taste to make it
your own, it grows into something different, hopefully something
greater. But as you borrow more and more from other products,
there’s less and less of you in the result. Less to be proud of,
less to own.

Barnard quotes the actual origin of the adage, from T.S. Elliot, and that alone is worth a bookmark. In Elliot’s formulation, it’s not copying vs. stealing, but imitating vs. stealing. That subtle distinction is clarifying. People who are creative and ethical generally see the clear distinction between remixing and ripping off. I add generally there because some people are truly offended when the ideas behind their own creations are remixed — stolen — by others.

To name one notable example, I’d argue that Android, as a whole, is a remix of the iPhone. But there are specific Android handsets — starting with some early Samsung Galaxy models — that are rip-offs of iPhone hardware designs. Steve Jobs, however, felt otherwise.

(And which is not to say Google hasn’t often been a shameless imitator/copycat.)

★

The Talk Show: ‘The Essence of Stealing’

Special guest David Barnard joins the show. Topics include the App Store — past, present, and post-DMA future — and the excellent new update to his app Weather Up.

Larry David Promoting Siri

Speaking of Larry David, remember the never-shown (and now, alas, deleted from the public internet because of copyright takedowns from Apple) 10-minute video that was supposed to open WWDC 2014, featuring Larry David as an App Store reviewer? When it leaked, briefly — but long enough for me to snatch a copy — in 2021, I wrote:

The whole video is funny in exactly the way Curb is funny, but
Curb Your Enthusiasm -style humor is not Apple-style humor — and the difference has only widened since 2014. I don’t know how
this project got so far, but the humor is such that I don’t see
how Apple could possibly have used it, even in 2014. One joke that
might have played as funny in 2014 but wouldn’t in 2021 is the
central conceit of the video — that Apple’s head of app review is
a capricious jerk who makes approval decisions based on
inscrutable whims.

It really was hilarious, but it really did seem to prove that Larry David’s humor isn’t compatible with Apple’s brand.

But, here we are in 2024, and Larry David has created a minute-long commercial for Siri, embedded right in an actual episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm. I wouldn’t think David would go for shameless product promotion like this,* but in this clip he patiently and thoroughly shows exactly how effective, accurate, and effortless Siri is to use in day-to-day life.

I’m surprised Apple hasn’t yet put this clip on their official YouTube channel.

* Then again, I wouldn’t have thought he’d do commercials for cryptocurrency scams either.

★

Speaking of Larry David, remember the never-shown (and now, alas, deleted from the public internet because of copyright takedowns from Apple) 10-minute video that was supposed to open WWDC 2014, featuring Larry David as an App Store reviewer? When it leaked, briefly — but long enough for me to snatch a copy — in 2021, I wrote:

The whole video is funny in exactly the way Curb is funny, but
Curb Your Enthusiasm -style humor is not Apple-style humor — and the difference has only widened since 2014. I don’t know how
this project got so far, but the humor is such that I don’t see
how Apple could possibly have used it, even in 2014. One joke that
might have played as funny in 2014 but wouldn’t in 2021 is the
central conceit of the video — that Apple’s head of app review is
a capricious jerk who makes approval decisions based on
inscrutable whims.

It really was hilarious, but it really did seem to prove that Larry David’s humor isn’t compatible with Apple’s brand.

But, here we are in 2024, and Larry David has created a minute-long commercial for Siri, embedded right in an actual episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm. I wouldn’t think David would go for shameless product promotion like this,* but in this clip he patiently and thoroughly shows exactly how effective, accurate, and effortless Siri is to use in day-to-day life.

I’m surprised Apple hasn’t yet put this clip on their official YouTube channel.

* Then again, I wouldn’t have thought he’d do commercials for cryptocurrency scams either.

★

Humane, Nearing Launch of Ai Pin, Is Gathering Steam

Humane, yesterday:

This partnership, as part of a strategic investment opportunity,
will see SoftBank become the exclusive telecom provider for Ai Pin
in Japan, leveraging SoftBank’s top-class services and compelling
customer touchpoints to bring Ai Pin to a new market. SoftBank and
Humane will also explore bringing CosmOS to other mobile devices
and be working together on an app-less ecosystem of third-party
services and AI-driven user experiences in Japan.

And in a separate announcement the day before:

Humane Inc and South Korea’s biggest mobile telecommunication
company SK Telecom (SKT) today announced a Telco partnership for
the Humane Ai Pin, the world’s first stand-alone Ai device and
proprietary Ai-driven OS, CosmOS.

This partnership, as part of a strategic investment opportunity,
will see SKT become the exclusive telecom provider for Ai Pin in
South Korea, combining Humane’s groundbreaking AI technology with
SKT’s expertise in advanced mobile networks, IoT, Cloud, AI, and
5G technologies. Alongside Ai Pin, both companies will explore
licensing Humane’s CosmOS, creating an entirely new operating
model between carriers and OEMs.

NeXT shipped their first workstations in 1989, but got out of the hardware business in 1993 and tried to make a go of just licensing their OS. Humane might be starting that same pivot two months before their first device ships.

Humane seemingly had a great Mobile World Congress (MWC) this week, winning awards, garnering crowds, and attracting media attention. Here’s a series of short videos from Humane’s Sam Sheffer showing off the entire kit of hardware.

I remain deeply skeptical of the form factor, but just like the Rabbit R1 — at this point, Humane’s only rival — I can’t wait to try it. Whether the form factor is the right idea or not, the Humane AI assistant sure as shit blows Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant out of the water.

★

Humane, yesterday:

This partnership, as part of a strategic investment opportunity,
will see SoftBank become the exclusive telecom provider for Ai Pin
in Japan, leveraging SoftBank’s top-class services and compelling
customer touchpoints to bring Ai Pin to a new market. SoftBank and
Humane will also explore bringing CosmOS to other mobile devices
and be working together on an app-less ecosystem of third-party
services and AI-driven user experiences in Japan.

And in a separate announcement the day before:

Humane Inc and South Korea’s biggest mobile telecommunication
company SK Telecom (SKT) today announced a Telco partnership for
the Humane Ai Pin, the world’s first stand-alone Ai device and
proprietary Ai-driven OS, CosmOS.

This partnership, as part of a strategic investment opportunity,
will see SKT become the exclusive telecom provider for Ai Pin in
South Korea, combining Humane’s groundbreaking AI technology with
SKT’s expertise in advanced mobile networks, IoT, Cloud, AI, and
5G technologies. Alongside Ai Pin, both companies will explore
licensing Humane’s CosmOS, creating an entirely new operating
model between carriers and OEMs.

NeXT shipped their first workstations in 1989, but got out of the hardware business in 1993 and tried to make a go of just licensing their OS. Humane might be starting that same pivot two months before their first device ships.

Humane seemingly had a great Mobile World Congress (MWC) this week, winning awards, garnering crowds, and attracting media attention. Here’s a series of short videos from Humane’s Sam Sheffer showing off the entire kit of hardware.

I remain deeply skeptical of the form factor, but just like the Rabbit R1 — at this point, Humane’s only rival — I can’t wait to try it. Whether the form factor is the right idea or not, the Humane AI assistant sure as shit blows Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant out of the water.

★

Sony Is Laying Off 900 PlayStation Employees, 8 Percent of Workforce

Tom Warren, writing for The Verge:

Sony says it’s laying off around 900 employees of its
PlayStation division, a reduction of its global headcount of
around 8 percent. Sony’s layoffs will impact a variety of its
PlayStation studios, including Insomniac Games, Naughty Dog,
Guerrilla Games, and Firesprite. Sony’s layoffs are the latest in
a wave that has been impacting the gaming and tech industries
throughout 2024.

Seems a little ironic that after all the histrionics over Microsoft deciding to go cross-platform with some of their Xbox exclusive titles — ostensibly giving Sony an edge — that Sony is now having layoffs in their first-party, exclusive game studios.

I hope I don’t jinx them by pointing this out, but you know who isn’t laying anyone off? Nintendo. Chris Adamson, on Mastodon:

Someone want to bring back that Nintendo quote about how they
don’t do mass layoffs because it’s bad for morale? Or maybe notice
that Nintendo tends to do lots of charming, modestly-ambitious
games instead of a handful of $200M AAA blockbusters?

In the end, did Nintendo actually win the Console Wars?

They may not have “won”, but Nintendo has never lost.

★

Tom Warren, writing for The Verge:

Sony says it’s laying off around 900 employees of its
PlayStation division, a reduction of its global headcount of
around 8 percent. Sony’s layoffs will impact a variety of its
PlayStation studios, including Insomniac Games, Naughty Dog,
Guerrilla Games, and Firesprite. Sony’s layoffs are the latest in
a wave that has been impacting the gaming and tech industries
throughout 2024.

Seems a little ironic that after all the histrionics over Microsoft deciding to go cross-platform with some of their Xbox exclusive titles — ostensibly giving Sony an edge — that Sony is now having layoffs in their first-party, exclusive game studios.

I hope I don’t jinx them by pointing this out, but you know who isn’t laying anyone off? Nintendo. Chris Adamson, on Mastodon:

Someone want to bring back that Nintendo quote about how they
don’t do mass layoffs because it’s bad for morale? Or maybe notice
that Nintendo tends to do lots of charming, modestly-ambitious
games instead of a handful of $200M AAA blockbusters?

In the end, did Nintendo actually win the Console Wars?

They may not have “won”, but Nintendo has never lost.

★

Richard Lewis Dies of Heart Attack at 76

Larry David:

Richard and I were born three days apart in the same hospital and
for most of my life he’s been like a brother to me. He had that
rare combination of being the funniest person and also the
sweetest. But today he made me sob and for that I’ll never
forgive him.

Here’s a great story about Lewis — “the menschiest of mensches” — from Andy Lassner.

★

Larry David:

Richard and I were born three days apart in the same hospital and
for most of my life he’s been like a brother to me. He had that
rare combination of being the funniest person and also the
sweetest. But today he made me sob and for that I’ll never
forgive him.

Here’s a great story about Lewis — “the menschiest of mensches” — from Andy Lassner.

★

Are Customers Returning Vision Pros in High Numbers? Seemingly Not.

Ming-Chi Kuo:

According to my survey of the repair/refurbishment production
line, the current return rate for Vision Pro is less than 1%, with
no anomalies.

Does Ming-Chi Kuo really know how many Vision Pros are being returned? I don’t know. Probably not. But two weeks after Vision Pro went on sale there was a bizarre rash of stories suggesting they were being returned in droves, probably driven by this Victoria Song piece for the Verge, with the — I must say — mildly jacktastic headline “Apple Fans Are Starting to Return Their Vision Pros”.

As far as I can tell there’s no public evidence that Vision Pros are being returned in higher-than-typical numbers, just click-bait social media posts making a show of it. And anecdotally, everything I’ve seen or been told is that returns are neither higher nor lower than typical.

★

Ming-Chi Kuo:

According to my survey of the repair/refurbishment production
line, the current return rate for Vision Pro is less than 1%, with
no anomalies.

Does Ming-Chi Kuo really know how many Vision Pros are being returned? I don’t know. Probably not. But two weeks after Vision Pro went on sale there was a bizarre rash of stories suggesting they were being returned in droves, probably driven by this Victoria Song piece for the Verge, with the — I must say — mildly jacktastic headline “Apple Fans Are Starting to Return Their Vision Pros”.

As far as I can tell there’s no public evidence that Vision Pros are being returned in higher-than-typical numbers, just click-bait social media posts making a show of it. And anecdotally, everything I’ve seen or been told is that returns are neither higher nor lower than typical.

★

★ Poll Results on Apple’s FineWoven iPhone Cases

Apple’s not going back to leather, but they need a better-than-leather replacement, and FineWoven 1.0 isn’t it.

Prompted by a post from Joanna Stern complaining about the durability of Apple’s FineWoven iPhone cases — the new material replacing their previous leather cases — I ran a poll over the weekend on Mastodon, Threads, and Twitter/X, with identical phrasing on all three platforms:

If you own an Apple FineWoven iPhone case and have used it
regularly for the last few months:

It’s held up well.
It’s held up OK.
It’s a piece of junk.

I’m not sure if that was the best way to phrase the question, nor if those were the best options to offer. And while I hope the poll was mostly answered by people who actually have been using a FineWoven case for a few months, there’s no way to know if that’s the case (no pun intended). The results:

Votes
Held Up Well
Held Up OK
Piece of Junk

Mastodon
916
33%
28%
40%

Threads
2,819
20%
25%
56%

Twitter/X
3,324
18%
27%
55%

Total
7,059
21%
26%
53%

I wouldn’t call these results disastrous, but they’re pretty bad, with over half of participants choosing “It’s a piece of junk”, and only one-fifth choosing “It’s held up well.” And the FineWoven cases only started shipping five months ago.

For many (including Joanna Stern), it’s the FineWoven material on the back that hasn’t worn well. But for some, it’s the plastic sides — they peel away. Here’s a post with photos from Stu Maschwitz from three months ago, after his case had only been in use for a few weeks. Kevin Fox posted a series of photos suggesting that washing a FineWoven case with Dawn detergent — not merely water alone — can clean off at least a bit of the grossness. There are more examples in each of the three social threads, if you’re interested — including some from the people for whom their FineWoven cases have held up well.

I also noted this reply from “Ambiorickx” on Mastodon:

Mine delaminated after one or two weeks, but the replacement has
held up just fine.

So perhaps the problem Maschwitz (and others) experienced, with the plastic sides flaking apart, was a production issue with early batches, that Apple has since fixed. If you’ve got a FineWoven case with flaked-off sides, maybe see if Apple will exchange it for a new one?

But the FineWoven material itself seems not nearly durable enough. Good leather products often look good as they age and get used; FineWoven doesn’t have that quality. Hopefully Apple’s materials team is back to the drawing board, working on something better. Apple’s not going back to leather, but they need a better-than-leather replacement, and FineWoven 1.0 isn’t it.

Sidenote 1: DF Readers and iPhone Cases

In April last year, I conducted a somewhat related poll asking DF readers:

How do you typically — meaning, majority of the time — carry
your iPhone?

No case
Apple case
Third-party case

With over 17,000 combined responses across Mastodon and Twitter, the responses were surprisingly close:

No case: 31%
Apple case: 34%
Third-party case: 36%

I will reiterate now what I reiterated then — Daring Fireball’s audience is not representative of the general public. There’s a belief amongst many case-users that “almost everyone” puts their phones in cases, but the best survey I’ve found, from 2017, suggests the number is around 80 percent. So DF readers are seemingly only slightly more likely to go caseless than the general public.

Where I suspect DF readers are outliers is in the number who pay the premium price for an Apple-made case. People buy Apple cases (and wallets, and watch bands) because they expect them to be great products. A $60 iPhone case (or $60 MagSafe Wallet) that looks like crap after just a few months of use is not a great product.

Sidenote 2: The Best Leather Cases for iPhone 15 Pro

If you, like me, remain a fan of leather products, I wrote a post in October with some suggestions for iPhone 15 Pro cases. (Spoiler: my favorite is from Bullstrap.)

Sidenote 3: Shifting Sands of Social Media

When I conducted the “do you use a case?” poll last April, Threads hadn’t yet launched (and Twitter/X was still named “Twitter”1). With that poll, there were about 9,000 responses on Mastodon, and 8,000 on Twitter.

But with this weekend’s poll, Twitter/X had the most responses:

Twitter/X: 3,324
Threads: 2,819
Mastodon: 916

Mastodon and Threads combined outnumbered Twitter/X, but Twitter/X finished first.2 It’s pretty striking that Mastodon garnered more responses than Twitter in my poll last April, but this weekend finished a distant third. Threads, though, seems to be thriving. Not sure if Threads took usage away from Mastodon, or if Mastodon is just fading, but it does seem like usage between the three platforms — amongst my followers — remains in flux.

It’s also slightly interesting to me that while the responses between Threads and Twitter/X were nearly identical, the responses from Mastodon were significantly more favorable regarding FineWoven cases. My only theory to explain that is that Mastodon is more of a boutique platform. It takes a bit more work to use and to understand, but rewards you with benefits like a choice between an array of outstanding third-party client apps. So I’m thinking maybe the sort of people who prefer Mastodon over Threads or Twitter are the sort of people who are a bit more likely to treat their devices — even in cases — carefully.

When Elon Musk renamed Twitter to X in July, I decided to use “Twitter/X” as a transitional name. Many publications chose a formulation like “X, the platform formerly known as Twitter…”, but just spelling it Twitter/X struck me as both more clear and concise. I planned to use the “Twitter/X” transitional name until the company had fully switched the platform’s own use of “Twitter” to “X”. I figured I would switch to just calling it “X” when twitter.com URLs began redirecting to x.com. But here we are on the cusp of March 2024 and all links to tweets still redirect to twitter.com. I suspect there’s some mishmash of spaghetti code behind the scenes in Twitter/X’s architecture that makes this domain name switch extremely difficult, because (a) Twitter’s infrastructure is infamously convoluted; and (b) no one at old Twitter ever considered the possibility that someone would buy the company and throw away the name. I also suspect that Musk himself has lost interest in the name transition, leaving the platform in a permanent state where it refers to itself as “X” in most places, but “Twitter” in others (most prominently in its URLs). If the URLs do eventually start redirecting to x.com, I’ll start calling it “X”. Until then, “Twitter/X” it is. ↩︎

Looks like I better — finally — fix my auto-posting script for the Twitter/X @daringfireball account. When it broke (again) last summer after Twitter API changes (again), I sort of spitefully ignored the breakage, hoping Twitter/X would fade into irrelevance. But that seemingly isn’t happening. Things were simpler and better when Twitter itself was the only popular tweet-like social network, but now there are three. (Maybe four, with Bluesky?) Consider this footnote a promise that I’ll fix this soon. ↩︎︎

Textpattern Turns 20

Stef Dawson, on the Textpattern blog:

Twenty years ago, the landscape was very different. There was
advertising, sure, but nowhere near the scale of today. And,
perhaps to celebrate the fact that Dean Allen’s newly created CMS
was so small, nimble, lightweight, yet powerful — or perhaps
because its creator was an eccentric genius — the fanfare
surrounding the official birth of Textpattern was this:

Public Gamma 1.10 is up. I’m going to bed.

(from Textism)

That was it; the extent of the marketing campaign. Nothing more.
Nothing less. A factual statement and an indicator that the road
to reach it from the numerous alpha and beta releases throughout
2001 until its naming in 2003 and public release in 2004
had been arduous, yet worth it.

I don’t hear about it much, but I’m so glad to see Textpattern is still going. And man do I still miss Dean Allen.

★

Stef Dawson, on the Textpattern blog:

Twenty years ago, the landscape was very different. There was
advertising, sure, but nowhere near the scale of today. And,
perhaps to celebrate the fact that Dean Allen’s newly created CMS
was so small, nimble, lightweight, yet powerful — or perhaps
because its creator was an eccentric genius — the fanfare
surrounding the official birth of Textpattern was this:

Public Gamma 1.10 is up. I’m going to bed.

(from Textism)

That was it; the extent of the marketing campaign. Nothing more.
Nothing less. A factual statement and an indicator that the road
to reach it from the numerous alpha and beta releases throughout
2001 until its naming in 2003 and public release in 2004
had been arduous, yet worth it.

I don’t hear about it much, but I’m so glad to see Textpattern is still going. And man do I still miss Dean Allen.

★

Lina Khan Has Been a Terrible FTC Chair

Eric Seufert, in a thread on Threads:

I’ve been critical of the FTC’s strategy under Khan; in a recent
podcast episode, I likened the FTC to the Washington Generals of
technology antitrust. As conveyed in the Commission’s report by
the FTC’s own staff, Khan seems to be engaged in an activist
crusade moored to a very specific ideological worldview — “Big is
de facto Bad” — that has resulted in a series of defeats.

The excesses of Big Tech should be constrained. But that has yet
to be achieved with the cases brought by the FTC, many of which,
to my mind, are predicated on a confused understanding of the way
that consumers engage with and benefit from technology. I think
this is especially true concerning the economics of digital
advertising and the freemium economy more broadly.

Unless I’m missing something, under Khan’s leadership the FTC has accomplished nothing. It’s all for show. She ought to be one of the first appointees to be replaced if Biden wins another term. (Merrick Garland first, though. An ineffective but showboating FTC chair isn’t actively harming the country; Garland — obsequious to the beltway cult of Both Sidesism — has been an outright disaster for democracy itself.)

★

Eric Seufert, in a thread on Threads:

I’ve been critical of the FTC’s strategy under Khan; in a recent
podcast episode, I likened the FTC to the Washington Generals of
technology antitrust. As conveyed in the Commission’s report by
the FTC’s own staff, Khan seems to be engaged in an activist
crusade moored to a very specific ideological worldview — “Big is
de facto Bad” — that has resulted in a series of defeats.

The excesses of Big Tech should be constrained. But that has yet
to be achieved with the cases brought by the FTC, many of which,
to my mind, are predicated on a confused understanding of the way
that consumers engage with and benefit from technology. I think
this is especially true concerning the economics of digital
advertising and the freemium economy more broadly.

Unless I’m missing something, under Khan’s leadership the FTC has accomplished nothing. It’s all for show. She ought to be one of the first appointees to be replaced if Biden wins another term. (Merrick Garland first, though. An ineffective but showboating FTC chair isn’t actively harming the country; Garland — obsequious to the beltway cult of Both Sidesism — has been an outright disaster for democracy itself.)

★

Recent Posts

Recent Comments

GitHub projects are being targeted with malicious action in apparent attempt to frame this researcher

A four-pack of Samsung Galaxy SmartTag2 trackers is 38 percent off for Black Friday

The amorous adventures of earwigs

Categories

Archives

Recent Posts

Recent Comments

GitHub projects are being targeted with malicious action in apparent attempt to frame this researcher

A four-pack of Samsung Galaxy SmartTag2 trackers is 38 percent off for Black Friday

The amorous adventures of earwigs

Categories

Archives

‘Great Developers Steal Ideas, Not Products’

The Talk Show: ‘The Essence of Stealing’

Larry David Promoting Siri

Humane, Nearing Launch of Ai Pin, Is Gathering Steam

Sony Is Laying Off 900 PlayStation Employees, 8 Percent of Workforce

Richard Lewis Dies of Heart Attack at 76

Are Customers Returning Vision Pros in High Numbers? Seemingly Not.

★ Poll Results on Apple’s FineWoven iPhone Cases

Sidenote 1: DF Readers and iPhone Cases

Sidenote 2: The Best Leather Cases for iPhone 15 Pro

Sidenote 3: Shifting Sands of Social Media

Textpattern Turns 20

Lina Khan Has Been a Terrible FTC Chair