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Apple to Allow Subscription-Based Gaming on App Store

You download one Big Fish app, and the games are all available within that app. Like what the Netflix app is for movies, the Big Fish app is for games. This is an interesting change in policy from Apple, to say the least.

 ★ 

[This was exactly the sea change I discussed elsewhere about apps being the new channel, or books.]
Source: Daring Fireball

[A follow up, that it looks like Apple allowed this by mistake and the app has since been pulled… We’ll see what happens next. But ultimately, apps as channels will happen IMHO.]

Amazon will take over Android app distribution

Amazon will take over Android app distribution – Marco.org: One of the biggest draws to the Android platform, the “open” Android Market, has just been sidestepped and made largely irrelevant for tablets. If the Fire sells anywhere near its target volumes, Amazon has hijacked the Android app retail channel for the long term: most sales of Android tablet software will be through the Amazon Appstore, and if your app isn’t there, it’s effectively invisible to the Android tablet userbase.

[I can’t wait to see what happens next. I need some popcorn…]

Don’t ever learn how candy is made. (A comment to Matt Taibbi)

A comment to Matt Taibbi: If we are going to castigate Steve Jobs and every other consumer electronics company for this behavior, then just like drug addicts, we need to blame ourselves as much. We want our toys cheap, and if some brown or yellow kids have to suffer, well, what can you do? For every point you give Steve for Foxconn, we deserve at least a half point, if not more than a point. We, the american consumer demanded this stuff as cheaply as possible, and now that Apple and other companies are delivering, we suddenly get a case of the vapors about the ugly details? Don’t ever learn how candy is made.

[All design is about compromise. Some of those compromises can be ethical.]
Source: bynkii.com

Occupy Wall Street

Occupy Wall Street: The problem is not the end of the industrial age, the problem is a lack of aggregate demand. We have a lack of aggregate demand because finance is mismanaged, both at the industrial level (“Finance industry”) and at the Governmental level (“deficit spending” and “financial regulation”). The reason that finance is systemically mismanaged is because the academic paradigm of finance is simply wrong. Economics professors are not good at accounting, they consider it beneath them, so they simply do not know that their macroeconomic models do not follow double-entry bookkeeping and are therefore wrong.

Accountants don’t notice that macroeconomics is wrong because they imaginationless grinds.

[Right or wrong Zimran never pulls punches.]
Source: Zimran

Steve Jobs and the Founder’s Pain

Steve Jobs and the Founder’s Pain: And that’s why I like Jony Ive. He too clearly feels that pain (he once insisted they hold up an entire product launch because he didn’t like the polish on the screws) but he doesn’t lash out at people about it. Instead, he sits down with the people involved and works to fix the problem until they get it just right.

But does it require so much pain? My hope is that I can be just as exacting, demand work just as good, without emotionally destroying people in the process. I want to be a perfectionist and a nice guy. I want to be Jony Ive. I hope it works — for my sake, and Apple’s.

[As I’ve said before. I feel the same way. Sociopath or no, I’ve certainly done my fair share of yelling and bi-polaresque it’s great/sucks sort of thing. And still the hardest part remains finding the passion and will to care at that level and yet not allow that to create pain for others. It may not be Ive’s nature, but it is a part of many of us. We can all do better, and learn from those who don’t try to control this.]
Source: Aaron Swartz: The Weblog

Of pens and swords

In the other haptic interface, a single hand lightly holds a goose feather dipped in ink. This tool makes use of no bold physical gestures and in fact ceases to work if the user’s body is in motion. Much like the touchscreen interfaces that Bret Victor frets about, this goose feather forces the user to a limited range of gestures with just one hand. And the output is only words.

As for the comparison: someone famously wrote about which of these interfaces is mightier.

Moving into the future, interaction designers should remember that simple interfaces are often the best. More importantly, the true worth of an interface is often expressed by how it fits into the world. (Microsoft’s vision of the future: more sloppy info provides a good example.) Don’t get too wrapped up in tactical details or new features. The best experience in the future may very well come from something old and mighty.

[And continuing my own theme, people love when technology fades into the distance. When things “just work”. If it doesn’t do that, it’s not what it should be.]
Source: Good Experience Blog

The Social Graph is Neither (Pinboard Blog)

[This is deep in the technical weeds, but the piece is great and this made me laugh, so it is worth noting thinks I. ]

The Social Graph is Neither (Pinboard Blog): Here the Ghost of Abstractions Past materializes in a flurry of angle brackets, and says in a sepulchral whisper:

“How about we let people define arbitrary relationships between nodes…”

(subject,verb,object)
“Maybe even in XML…”

<Person "john">
    <likesToShareRecipesWith "susan" />
</Person>

“Of course, we’ll need namespaces…”

  <ns:Person rdf:about="http://www.example.org/#john">
    <ns:likesToShareRecipesWith 
     rdf:resource="http://www.example.org/#susan" />
  </ns:Person>

And RDF rises lurching out of the grave to infect the brains of another generation of young developers.

Sorry, Charlie

Sorry, Charlie: If you think you’ve found a flaw in an airport’s security checkpoint and demonstrate that by getting a harmless smoke bomb through and setting it off in the gift shop, you’ve definitely made your point, but spare us the expression of shocked surprise when the airport cops rush over to beat you with sticks instead of shaking your hand and showering you with flowers and chocolate.

[Well said.]
Source: Coyote Tracks