I think the real story here is that he chose the 35% royalty rate over the 70% rate “because you can opt out of Kindle Lending.”
I understand that some people view disabling that feature as less of an anti-customer move than I do, but to hate it enough to waive half your royalties?
Stating that this "seems like something Apple would consider" is a far cry from what this blog post does: take one data point's worth of design value from an existing design for one user, extrapolate that to be one of the lead drivers of said design for all users.
I'm all for giving Apple's designs as much credit as possible, but it's still a far cry from even that to "wow this thing about the design I just noticed that works for me must have been something they considered for the populace at large."
The author made a very astute point that I haven't seen mentioned online before (but one that immediately occurred to me when I heard people bitching about Apple not going to 4+ inch screens). His single data point illustrates a general problem: one handed operation for people with a wide-range of hand sizes.
Remember, Apple sells one basic body shape to its entire market. No single Android phone sells anything comparable to as many units as the iPhone. The body shape has to be usable for 95% of Apple's potential market, which includes everything from teenage girls to grown men. Apple undoubtedly thought about exactly the problem the author raised.
This seems useful, yet awfully much like another step on the slow path to legitimizing 'poor taste'.
That's a bit harsh, so let me qualify it. I actually rather agree with the division inherent in this and think it will resound with people, but I honestly believe that this is yet another step towards turning our society into idiocracy. It's the slow legitimization of appreciation for content that we acknowledge as garbage but consume anyway. I firmly believe that there is inherent social value in this garbage content remaining quasi-taboo - a social pressure not to like such things. Sure, most people will watch some anyway, or play the latest mindless shooter, or what-have-you, but so long as it's understood that most people will mock you for publicly liking this, the norm does not drift towards mindlessness - you still need to consume some legitimately good content, even if only to have something to talk about.
I don't mean to attack the site; I think it's a great way to slice into the recommendations game, and I do think a lot of people will get value out of it, and it seems like it may well succeed. I simply am afraid it's a net negative for our society in the long run (then again, of course, not launching is hardly going to reverse such a trend.)
Edit: Make that symptomatic of a net negative. I've thought some more and this is only giving an online portal to express the shift I talk about above, which has already been happening aplenty.
I think the alternative is people pretending to like things they do not. You can't force people to appreciate your brand of high culture by mocking them for not doing so. At best, the people you're trying to win over will publicly pay lip service. At worst, it will become more difficult for people like you to find things that you think are worthwhile, because the space will become polluted by people who don't get it. Let people like what they like.
I, for one, am not ashamed to say that I like stupid things.
I disagree, I think there are plenty of social groups where this type of media isn't looked down upon at all. Same with shooters... ect.
If your goal is to chase immediate gratification (as many a person seems to do), you'll be better served by metrics that reflect this aspect of things, instead of deciding to spend time doing something you think will be immediately gratifying, and getting something else in return.
Good for society? Decidedly no.
Unavoidable because it better serves demand, I think probably.
At the same time... I think if these sorts of metrics become ubiquitous, people will become more acutely aware of the distinctions between quality and gratification value... so I don't think these things are only a symptom.
I have a job that I put extra time into, a longish commute, and two enthusiastic boys. When my wife and I get time to watch a movie at all, we want to watch an entertainment, not high culture. I'm pretty sure that historically, the primary consumers of high culture have been the independently wealthy and people who don't have young children that they raise themselves.
I have an Ivy League liberal arts degree, I know what high culture is, and I'm actually quite fond of it, on the whole. But I won't apologize for what I feel like watching these days, and if you try to stigmatize it, I'll laugh in your face and carry on doing what I feel like.
This is an 'enterprise-friendly' feature - the appearance of thorough security ("all our data is stored with AES-256 encryption") with only a nominal increase in actual security.
Just think: there will be AWS accounts using this while their master AWS console account continues to have a single-dictionary-word password and no MFA. Truly the Cloud is the silver bullet to save us all from shoddy CIOs!
The story kind of smells. He harps on pitching it as an alternative to their flash-based player, but what was stopping him from using the same streams he's repackaged in iTunes (or music player of choice)?
All in all, I don't really approve of his repackaging of our public content for personal profit. If he'd had to build a service to scrape the flash audio and then made it accessible via regular streams, that would justify this app's existence and price, but as it stands I find myself mildly unsympathetic.
I completely agree with your second point. CBC should surely let people use their content (legal stuff aside, it's the right thing to do), but letting parasites make money off of it isn't right.
How is this guy a parasite any more than Opera is for creating a (perhaps slightly better) player for the myriad free content on the web?
Before, Mac users had a crappy experience listening to the streams. Afterwards, it was presumably better. He's adding value to the ecosystem - not a lot, maybe a couple dollars' worth... unsurprisingly, this is what he charges.
The article doesn't mention the HDMI sound, which was always high quality. The upgraded audio is from the 3.5mm jack, which means you can now run two high-quality streams at once - something that some people have been requesting.
You made me think about how audio has been generally far ahead of its technical development, so in theory maybe this just means that 44.1k 16-bit PCM is so ubiquitous and good enough that it is considered a pinnacle even though options that are better exists. I love my 192 kHz sample rate on my device, but admittedly this is for audio recording and ham radio, so, almost a scientific instrument really.
CD quality audio is good enough to play back through someone's old TV though isn't it. If you can afford speakers good enough to make the best of even this level of sound then they're probably not targeting you with the product. They're also going for high efficiency which may be part of the balance here.
I was surprised he didn't mention two-way contacts integration. I met a new person yesterday on G+ first, then in person; later that day he emailed me a doc and I was surprised to find that his name/email had not been added to my contact list from circles. This is something the facebook messages/chat integration gets right, and Google needs to figure out how to answer it sooner rather than later.
Wow. I was prepared to denounce this as a fake, mouthpiece for LulzSec made to look like a hacking challenge (for the lulz), etc. A facebook page like this[1] is so laughably over the top.. But perhaps not:
Now I just feel a bit sorry for him. A very fast lesson to not consider yourself "trained by the best in the world" or go around putting up $10k prizes like this without actually having a few crises under your belt.
He has a bachelors in "Information Security" from ITT Tech.
For those who aren't familiar, ITT Tech is, at least in the midwest, where the stoners go after getting their GED (remedial high school diploma for people who couldn't hack it in...secondary...) because they realized minimum wage jobs don't go very far once you're paying your own rent.
The raw hubris of this video and his reasons for it are...overwhelming.
I'm left feeling assured about my future job prospects, and unhappy at the state of things.
I don't know that the ITT Tech thing is enough to condemn him. Sure, it's a crappy school, but great people can rise from humble places. One of the absolute very best programmers I know has something like two ITT Tech courses under his belt, and is entirely self-educated beyond that.
This guy doesn't need any credentials to prove he's a fool.
I understand that some people view disabling that feature as less of an anti-customer move than I do, but to hate it enough to waive half your royalties?