And speaking of failing business models…

Ben Kuchera, writing for Ars Technica:

The good news about buying a Nintendo 3DS is that you’ll be able to transfer your digital purchases from your DS system to your 3DS using an SD card, and Nintendo will be giving us more details on how that will take place closer to launch. The bad news is that once you buy content on the 3DS itself, it will be locked down to that system.

I think Nintendo is miscalculating the strength of their platform, particularly as children of younger and younger ages expect their portable devices to do more than just play games.

Can you build a toaster from scratch?

From TED:

It takes an entire civilization to build a toaster. Designer Thomas Thwaites found out the hard way, by attempting to build one from scratch: mining ore for steel, deriving plastic from oil … it’s frankly amazing he got as far as he got. A parable of our interconnected society, for designers and consumers alike.

A fascinating video on how transformative manufacturing processes have become, relying on other manufacturing processes to mass-produce everyday items, and on how inefficient and expensive small-scale production is. It’s a bit like using a framework instead of coding everything from scratch—except that the stuff coming from the framework most often looks like Thwaites’s handmade toaster instead of the stuff you find at Walmart for $5.

[Via Groklaw's Newspicks]

⇥ On the iPad’s Retina Display

As the time when everyone expects Apple to make its next move in the iPad game approaches, there is much speculation making its way through the technology circles—ably covered by John Gruber—on whether the next iteration of the Magical Tablet will, in fact, sport a high-resolution display.

First of all, I want to point out a couple of flaws in the conclusions that a number of analysts have reached in trying to figure out whether a Retina display is technically possible.

Resolution

The obvious resolution for an iPad Retina display is quadruple the current one, going from 1024×768 to 2048×1536 pixels, taking a page from the book of the iPhone, which undertook a similar change with the introduction of version 4.

However, this only makes sense because it’s the choice that Apple made with the iPhone. The iPad has considerably different display requirements, both because people use it in a different way (i.e.: staying further away from the screen, which reduces the pixel density required to obtain the fabled 300DPI Retina resolution), and because it’s based on a completely different form factor (4:3 compared to a rather odd 1.5:1 for the iPhone).

The question of whether doubling both vertical and horizontal resolutions results in better scaling is highly debatable; with reasonable filtering, Apple could go to any resolution and maintain excellent picture quality. For example, see this screenshot‘ of the upcoming iPhone version of The Funnies scaled by a factor of 1.5, compared to the same scaled to a factor of 2. There is, essentially no difference in the quality of the two pictures—they both look fuzzy because of the scaling, but from a developer’s perspective it would be just as easy to design interfaces at 2x as it is at 1.5x.

“But wait,” you’re saying, “fuzzy images look horrible. Why would Apple go with that?” The answer is simple: because it’s the responsibility of the developers to make their apps look good. Apple uses this technique right now—for example, when you run an app that is not Retina-ready on an iPhone 4, or when you run an iPhone app on an iPad at 2x. Look fuzzy? You bet. Even at 2x.

The real question here is one of convenience for Apple. Scaling to a factor different from 2 might be challenging for the GPU, for example (though, personally, I doubt it)¹.

Aspect ratio

The most bizarre analysis I’ve seen comes from those who somehow manage to link the problem of resolution independence to that of aspect ratio, claiming that, should Apple decide to make the iPad widescreen, it would be forced to either stretch the image or resort to letterboxing and rendering apps at a smaller size to account for the screen’s higher resolution.

The two things are not related in the way the article seems to imply. Were Apple to go with a widescreen aspect ratio, the proportions of the resulting image would obviously change. Therefore, stretching an existing 4:3 image to a widescreen resolution would result in a grossly distorted image; forget the fuzziness—everybody would look like they’ve eaten a stick of dynamite and blown up.

I don’t know that Apple would change the aspect ratio of the iPad; I suspect that a wider device of the same size would be harder to hold. Still, if they wanted to do that, they could solve the problem of widescreen stretching by letterboxing the resulting image. If the resulting image were of a higher resolution that the plain-old iPad, they can simply scale it accordingly. Thus a combination of scaling and letterboxing, the problem would be promptly solved without any significant degradation in usability.

“But wait,” you’re saying, “letterboxing current apps would leave awful black bands on either side of the screen, and possibly make them fuzzy. Why would Apple go with that?” Leaving aside the fact that Apple already goes with that ², it would, once again, be up to developers to make their app widescreen-compatible ³.

Cost

Cost is the most likely reason against Retina making it in the iPad two. Even then, though, the chasm to cross is not quite as wide as I initially thought. Consider that the retail price for a 15″ QXGA screen is around $500, and it’s not inconceivable that Apple might be able to rustle something that meets its pricing requirements for the iPad⁴.

Power

With these minor technical matters out of the way, I think that there is one overriding issue that Apple needs to address, and that’s the fact that, compared to the iPhone, the iPad is rather underpowered.

Consider that the iPhone 4, which has roughly 80% of the pixels of the iPad, shares the same GPU and has twice the RAM of its larger cousin. Considering that all graphics on the iPad are larger than the iPhone’s and take up considerably more memory, if I had to pick one thing to improve would be doubling the RAM to 512MiB, thus matching the iPhone 4.

The other issue to consider is one of packaging. The iPad’s current design, with its aluminum construction and curved back, belongs more with Apple’s iOS devices of old than the newer, slicker iPhone 4. I, for one, would love an iPad that doesn’t wobble on the table while you’re busy with a two-player game.

Finally, there are other hardware considerations in play—for example, the lack of a camera. Uncharacteristically, Apple has some catching up to do in this area: even the first iPhone shipped with one.

For these reasons, I think the most likely outcome will be an iPad 2 with better design and minor technical advancements like a camera and more RAM, followed by an iPad 3 with a Retina display down the road. On the other hand, I’m used to being surprised, and look forward to eating my hat if I’m wrong.

Sony Sends A Dangerous Message to Researchers

Corynne McSherry and Marcia Hofmann, writing for the EFF:

Sony’s core arguments — that it can silence speech that reveals security flaws using the DMCA and that the mere fact of a terms of use somewhere gives a company permanent and total control over what you do with a device under pain of criminal punishment — are both sweeping and frightening, and not just for gamers and computer researchers. Frankly, it’s not what we expect from any company that cares about its customers, and we bet it’s not what those customers expect, either.

That’s a great argument, and I couldn’t agree more. But there’s another aspect to Sony’s current situation that deserves a little attention in order to better understand the company’s conundrum.

Sony is clinging to a business model that no longer makes sense. Playstations are sold as loss leaders because Sony then makes the bulk of its revenues by being the only publisher of any PS3 game, thus collecting revenues and paying out royalties to developers.

This approach skews the market in many ways. Console games are notoriously expensive (and now you know why), and the cost of even becoming a developer is often well outside of all but the best-funded development firms. I haven’t dealt with consoles in a long time, but I remember that, when I used to work in the gaming business (that would be around fifteen years ago), a development model of the original Playstation would cost around $5,000—more than a top-of-the-line PC.

Sony’s deferred-revenue model works in markets where there is a high cost of access. The original Playstation could do things that were simply not possible with a traditional PC at the time—at least not without a significant hardware. Thus, consumers got access to amazing technology at a cut-rate upfront price and made up for it by paying a premium for games.

When the cost of market access goes down, however, this model is no longer sustainable unless the price differential between the initial investment and its actual value is very high. For example, Gillette can continue giving away razor bodies and then selling the blades at a premium because the former are essentially commoditized and cost next to nothing to manufacture.

Sony, on the other hand, has a rather big problem on its hands, because the subsidized cost of a PS3 is rapidly approaching the full cost of many consumer-level computer devices, and these devices are moving away from their traditional PC-like look and feel, thus encroaching on the consoles’ space while outperforming the latter in many areas. Why spend $300 for a console whose games cost $50–$80 when you can spend $500 on an iPad, where games cost $5-10 because Apple doesn’t have to subsidize the cost of the hardware?

You can argue, of course, that $500 is almost twice as much as $300, and the iPad hasn’t got nearly the same power as a PS3. And you’d be right—except that the iPad is also portable and can be used for a multitude of other tasks which the PS3 can’t perform because it was designed as a specialized tool.

This problem is not unique to Sony, but they seem hellbent on approaching it in a truly asinine way. Microsoft is in the same boat, but at least they have taken a much smarter approach with the release of XNA and by taking a softer stance on hackers, so they seem much better prepared for the inevitable changes to come.

A streetcar named Google

Adam Williamson on Google’s indemnification promise for WebM:

What happens is, most likely, that Google makes the problem go away. This doesn’t rely on Google’s inherent altruism or anything ridiculous like that, but simply on Google behaving in its own best interests.

First, it’s worth pointing out that Google specifically does not indemnify WebM users against infringement claims. Essentially, they only promise that they won’t come after you to enforce their patents (as long as you don’t sue them yourself).

Besides that, however, if someone is going to go after WebM, they are obviously not going to attack Google directly. To do so would be strategically unsound—why go after a company that has ample means to defend itself?¹.

They are, instead going to go after a third party, and they are likely to pick one that fulfills three characteristics: a small company that has no significant resources to defend itself, that doesn’t have a direct bone in the fight and that presents an unsavoury choice for Google to defend. This will help them establish precedent.

I can think of a number of companies that fit this bill—for example, say, members (no pun intended) of the porn industry. I don’t know how willing Google would be to help them put up a defence. Regardless, assuming that Google is going to cover your caboose when they have promised nothing of the sort is not quite a good way to run your business.

Interfering with flight sanity

From MSNBC:

Since 2000, there have been at least 10 voluntary reports filed by pilots in the United States with the Aviation Safety Reporting System, administered by NASA. In 2007, one pilot recounted an instance when the navigational equipment on his Boeing 737 had failed after takeoff. A flight attendant told a passenger to turn off a hand-held GPS device and the problem on the flight deck went away.

Ten reports. According to the FAA, there are 37,000 flights in the US each day. And we all know that a lot of people (including the flight attendants, except for take-off and landing) pays little more than lip service to in-flight device regulations.

Boston cat called to jury duty

CBC News:

A cat in Boston has been called to jury duty even though his owner has insisted to court officials that the cat cannot speak English.

She’s going to vote to convict—every cat owner already feels sorry for whosever jury she ends on.

Apple, iPad, The Daily, TRVL and publishing, too

Jonny Evans:

There’s a few differences between their model and that espoused by others in the space — for a start, the TRVL App is free. Secondly, reflecting the a la carte nature synonymous with the rest of the Internet, you don’t need to take every article each time the title is updated, you can simply choose to download and read those articles you are most interested in.

It seems to me that comparing the success of a free magazine with its pay-for competition is a bit disingenuous. A free app that gets downloaded 100,000 times is still making zero revenue—therefore, its money must come from other sources (presumably advertising?).

On the broader issue of magazines failing to maintain a business model on modern tablets, however, there are four issues at play:

1. Publishers continue to treat mobile devices as if they were a simple replacement for paper. They’re not, and they are not a way to reduce your printing costs. Tablets and smartphones require a rethinking of the very concept of magazine. If all you do is publish a carbon copy of your existing magazine content, people may initially enjoy the novelty, but that soon wears off. The magazine of the future is an app, not a picture.
2. Higher pricing on the iPad without any dedicated content (but with the same amount of ads) is a rather unsubtle way of telling people that publishers think they can be fleeced because they… I’m not sure, actually—because they are on the cutting edge? Early adopters? Part of some imaginary group of suckers just because they are willing to pay a premium for a tablet? I’m unclear on the whys, but I’m pretty sure the end users are not happy about it.
3. Social integration is absent from any of these publications. And by “social integration,” I don’t mean “share on Facebook.” This should be the equivalent of going to your local coffee shop and discuss the news of the day with your friends over a cup of coffee or a drink—something we used to do all the time and we should be able to do today.
4. The acquisition model needs to change. Users have shown that they are willing to pay for a quality product, but publishers are still getting hung up on collecting their personal information so that they can resell it to advertisers. In this business environment, publishers have the opportunity to go back to a time where their readers were also their customers, instead of the product being sold. Imagine what that could do for the freedom of information.

So, rather than claiming that magazines are failing on the iPad, perhaps the press should actually perform some analyzing and figure out that the traditional magazine business is failing, as one would expect with every product that fails to adapt to the market it tries to reach.

Google and H.264 – Far From Hypocritical?

Simon Phipps, on the Google dropping H.264 from Chrome debacle:

But all these points are also true of Adobe Flash. So why not drop that too? Is it not hyprocritical to keep it? If you’re an absolutist, probably yes. But there’s a calculation going on here about steering the web into the level plains of truly open standards. H.264 support in the <video> tag is not the same as Flash support.

Simon (whom I greatly respect) makes some great points in his essay—primarily outlining the fact that an honest analysis¹ of what has happened needs to take a lot of complex and interrelated events into account.

I do think, however, that his conclusion is incorrect in this particular instance. Google is not a disinterested party in the video format war; it controls the WebM codec de facto, because it originates the format and because several of the big-name members of the WebM consortium derive large portions of their income from it². It also controls YouTube, which is arguably the largest repository of videos on the Web.

Flash seems more like a red herring to me—the real question is, where are the disclosures? This action and the naïve reasoning that Google has presented gives no consideration to what a company whose motto is “do no evil” apparently stands to gain from this move, which could be something as simple as not wanting to worry about having to pay for royalties five or ten years down the road³.

What worries me and what I’d think should have worried Simon is the fact that this move reduces customer choice, which goes against the very principles of openness that Google claims to support. Given the current situation, under which they can continue to use H.264 without any significant cost, the appropriate choice would be to leave the codec in and let the market decide. If the open-source model yields a better result in the long run, as I believe it does, then there is nothing to fear.

⇥ How croissants are made

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhpxkGB1OyY&feature=player_embedded

This should be required viewing to all those North American bakers who have been subjecting me to bad bread for the last fifteen years.

(Via @kottke)