siglesias

Prior to the change, my app was the top result for the search term "Tea." Immediately after the change my app was the sixtieth result. Today it's at the third spot, behind Starbucks and Teavana, both free apps [2]. What happened? I'm guessing that the algorithm learned that some people who searched Tea were in fact looking for my app, went down in the search results and chose it. Only by noticing this behavior was the algorithm able to determine that the app was not a name squatter. It's very possible that the same thing will happen to Barnard's app over time.

1) http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4153918 2) http://cl.ly/1J1F1e352b1E1y3h1S1K

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGxYZXjXozc

Sure, one can argue that Samsung and Apple both look to a common ancestor for their ideas, but I think Samsung is more insidious than people are willing to admit here.

I'll grant that the tape deck is outdated, but it's a largely hidden little visual treat that suggests a hidden mechanism underneath AND provides visual feedback on playback speed.

Skeuomorphism is bad when it restricts the UI to the properties of physical objects, but in this case Apple hasn't done that.

For the search term "tea", the new algorithm places my app at spot 59 (before it had top billing), and places other irrelevant items, like political tea party stuff, games, and general purpose timers, ahead. If the purpose of the new ranking methodology was to place higher weight on downloads and less on name matching, then there's an unintended consequence of certain niche search terms getting crowded out by tangentially related popular apps. How many people searching "tea" are interested in "M.A.S.H" (result 6) or "Proud Republican"(result 8)? These apps didn't make their bones on tea, but somehow the new algorithm is acting like they did.

This is not to mention that it makes it extraordinarily difficult for folks to find my app if I tell them its name [1]. Here's hoping that this system has more under the hood than meets the eye.

1) https://twitter.com/Lady_KatieJane1/statuses/216444225909301...

On the other hand, I always had the sense that Benjamin regarded Gruber as a kneejerk Apple apologist, and this too could not have helped their relationship.

But their differences led to the show's magic. Their contrasting styles would turn the show into a focused, intimate meditation on Gruber's thoughts on industry (plus side interests of baseball, Kubrick, etc.), often serving as a preview of what written work would be to come on Daring Fireball. While it can come across as aloofness, Dan has the passive ability to subtly guide the conversation and give it some sense of structure, and he's great at knowing when to let the other person speak. There were also incredibly funny moments of East Coast camaraderie that would keep the side topics interesting and lively.

It seems that Gruber has taken all of this for granted in deciding his show is better without Benjamin. Quite sad.

China is responsible for making every iPad in the world outside of Brazil. You can't assume the same amount of risk for that scale. If a component goes bad or if demand skyrockets, you want as many responsive factories around as possible to pick up the slack or to get you new components. Why wouldn't you want to locate your supply chain in China? Only if you have a situation that looks like Brazil--high import tariffs.

1) I would imagine that regardless of whether it is in Google's interest to count ad revenues in their public reports of profitability, it is most certainly their internal metric for profitability. They simply must have some metric for deciding if the Android investment is effort is worth pursuing, or if certain Android strategies can be considered successful. Would Rubin's declaration that Android is profitable be true if he were only counting early access fees, and Nexsus sales, etc? I don't have the numbers, but I would doubt it.

2) The 3 to 1 profitability of iOS against Android seems to make some sense if you consider that iOS, as of October, commanded over 3x the mobile traffic share of Android. (see http://bit.ly/tHlYe6 )

Edit: Miscomprehended the derivation, see reply below

This isn't about deliberately trying to confuse customers per se, but it's a close pursuit strategy that relies heavily on the association between their products and what is popularized by other companies. I remember my family taking a couple because they were offered free with a contract. Certainly this choice was partially informed by the popularity and name recognition RIM created.

1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_SGH-i607

This is not true. He shows some ability. Three recent examples:

1) http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/10/26/against-skeuomor... 2) http://daringfireball.net/linked/2012/01/19/ibooks-author-eu... 3) http://daringfireball.net/linked/2012/03/13/att-4g

What I saw with Oink was this X axis (the number of items to be rated) growing faster than the Y axis (the number of ratings): in effect, noise growing faster than signal.

They weren't aggressive enough in filtering out duplicate entries and/or working with businesses to upload their catalogs onto Oink so users didn't have to add (and re-add) them. Not saying it was an easy task, but essentially this is the main challenge to such a product.

Not true, but I'm assuming you're referring to the springboard/icon/home button paradigm.

You think this isn't by choice?

1) Top rated review for Path for Android: http://cl.ly/1P082D1L2D1k1O0i3K0J

In spite of this my intuition tells me to price it at $.99 when Apple features it, and between $1.99 and $2.99 when people are hunting for it.

In a nutshell, we know that science more or less progresses from one theory to another after the existing theory has been falsified (Popper), but this transition does not happen overnight, even after a falsifying result has been put forth. That is because science is really structured with a "hard core" hypothesis (say, in physics, that nothing moves faster than c), and various "auxiliary hypotheses" that bear the brunt of criticism before the core belief is attacked (say those that posit the integrity of the measurement instrument, for example). And that is all that is going on here. There are many, many theories that are going to be dismantled before physics transitions to something post-relativity. It's just the way the assumptions are structured.

While this may seem trivial, we see this playing out in the battle of classical against behavioral economics. Are the results of experimental psychology admissible in the criticism of certain economic models? Models don't claim to be perfect, after all...

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imre_Lakatos#Research_programme...

Totally agreed. It's been pretty apparent for a while now that iTunes should be broken up into Music, Books, and Movies, each playing to its own strength and linking to a separate "iTunes store" app. And also that iPhoto should be renamed Photos, with full iCloud syncing.