Posts in Linked

Apple’s Diversity Stats and Message→

Tim Cook, writing on Apple’s Diversity webpage in regard to newly-published stats:

Apple is committed to transparency, which is why we are publishing statistics about the race and gender makeup of our company. Let me say up front: As CEO, I’m not satisfied with the numbers on this page. They’re not new to us, and we’ve been working hard for quite some time to improve them. We are making progress, and we’re committed to being as innovative in advancing diversity as we are in developing our products.

A short film is available here. See also: inclusion inspires innovation.

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Jean-Louis Gassée on App Store Curation→

Jean-Louis Gassée, in his open letter to Tim Cook:

Instead of using algorithms to sort and promote the apps that you permit on your shelves, why not assign a small group of adepts to create and shepherd an App Store Guide, with sections such as Productivity, Photography, Education, and so on. Within each section, this team of respected but unnamed (and so “ungiftable”) critics will review the best-in-class apps. Moreover, they’ll offer seasoned opinions on must-have features, UI aesthetics, and tips and tricks. A weekly newsletter will identify notable new titles, respond to counter-opinions, perhaps present a developer profile, footnote the occasional errata and mea culpa…

Good points, and not the first time Gassée has used the Michelin guide as an example of the human curation that could improve the App Store’s recommendations.

Gassée doesn’t mention the upcoming Explore section of the iOS 8 App Store, and I believe that is going to provide an interesting mix of the classic category-based organization with curation through sub-categories and editorial picks for specific “app types”.

Unsurprisingly, Explore is going to replace Near Me in the middle tab of the App Store app for iOS 8: Near Me will be integrated into Explore, and it will likely extend as part of a new system to advertise apps relevant to your location on the Lock screen. Free of the limited scope of Near Me, Explore will enable the App Store team to offer a full-blown index of app categories that are easily accessible from a dedicated view.

It is my understanding that Explore will feature a mix of the curated app collections Apple has been building for the past couple of years and new filters for app types. Starting with the basic list of App Store categories, you’ll be able to drill down into more specific sub-categories with multiple levels of depth, such as “Music > DJs” or “Productivity > Task Management > GTD”.

While Apple may not be considering a full-blown, standalone App Store Guide as a regular publication, iOS 8’s Explore section is showing encouraging signs of new curation efforts that account for the incredible variety of the App Store’s catalogue, but it remains to be seen whether customers will take the time to explore the Explore section.

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Inside Apple’s Internal Training Program→

In “What Makes Apple, Apple,” another course that Mr. Nelson occasionally teaches, he showed a slide of the remote control for the Google TV, said an employee who took the class last year. The remote has 78 buttons. Then, the employee said, Mr. Nelson displayed a photo of the Apple TV remote, a thin piece of metal with just three buttons.

How did Apple’s designers decide on three buttons? They started out with an idea, Mr. Nelson explained, and debated until they had just what was needed — a button to play and pause a video, a button to select something to watch, and another to go to the main menu.

Update: In the original article I said that the Apple employees spoke “off the record” to Chen, this was a mistake and I apologise unreservedly for that.

Brian Chen of The New York Times has perhaps the most detailed look at Apple University to date after speaking to three Apple employees who agreed to speak about it, on the condition of anonymity. The entire article is fascinating and definitely deserves a read, but for those of you who aren’t familiar with Apple University, it is Apple’s internal training program. The program was started by Steve Jobs in an effort to embed Apple’s style of decision making into the company’s culture - as was revealed in Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography:

In order to institutionalize the lessons that he and his team were learning, Jobs started an in-house center called Apple University. He hired Joel Podolny, who was dean of the Yale School of Management, to compile a series of case studies analyzing important decisions the company had made, including the switch to the Intel microprocessor and the decision to open the Apple Stores. Top executives spent time teaching the cases to new employees, so that the Apple style of decision making would be embedded in the culture.

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Recommending Music on Spotify with Deep Learning→

This summer, I’m interning at Spotify in New York City, where I’m working on content-based music recommendation using convolutional neural networks. In this post, I’ll explain my approach and show some preliminary results.

A fascinating post by Sander Dieleman explaining how he designed a deep neural network to provide music recommendations based on Spotify data. It’s a technical read, but there are Spotify player widgets to listen to songs picked up by the network, which is capable of learning specific pitches, chords, sounds, and other factors such as Chinese voices. Dieleman says that hopefully some of these audio-based recommendations will go into A/B testing soon, with a focus on recommending new music that isn’t generally picked up by traditional recommendation engines. Impressive.

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Four Years in Apple’s Ecosystem→

An interesting and well documented experiment by The Typist: a visualization of four years of purchases on the iTunes Store, and particularly the App Store. I can’t imagine the amount of effort that went into this (sifting through 90 emails, recalculating prices based on past currency conversions, etc.), but I hope I’ll have the patience to do the same someday.

The Typist makes a great point about iOS games:

So what does that mean for games? Of the 34 that I’ve purchased, only 5 games — worth $18 — are currently installed on either of my iOS devices. Of the $111.66 that I’ve spent, $93.71 worth of games are on neither of my devices. Almost 84% of the money I’ve spent on games is now in the cloud.

Does that mean I wouldn’t have bought any or most of them? Not necessarily: That would be like not going to the movies because you pay $12 for 120 minutes that you can’t “reuse”. Most forms of entertainment are ephemeral by nature.

Unlike console games, I can’t remember any old iOS game that I intentionally redownloaded to play it again like I do for, say, Nintendo or Squaresoft classics. Maybe it’s just me, or maybe it’s the nature of mobile games. Also worth considering: old iOS games that don’t work properly on current versions of the OS, that don’t have Retina assets, or that rely on third-party services no longer in existence (the last one is a problem common to console games, too).

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Pinterest Launches Messaging Feature→

In an update released yesterday on the App Store, Pinterest rolled out a messaging feature that allows people to share pins privately and have discussions around them.

Casey Newton has a good overview:

Starting today, the company is rolling out messages on Android, iOS, and the web. Like Facebook’s “chat heads,” recent messages pop up to the left of the feed as bubbles with your friends’ faces. You’ll find the others under the pin icon where notifications pop up. Just click the ‘+’ icon, type in the name of a friend on Pinterest, and you can send a pin or a standalone message. The impressive thing about Pinterest messages is that the pins you send within the app retain all the functionality of a pin you see anywhere else on the site. Anything you can do with a pin on Pinterest’s web site, you can do inside a message: pin it to a board of your own, send it to another friend, or click the ‘heart’ to add it to your list of favorites. You can even drag a pin from the site into a message.

Pinterest is the only social network that I’m genuinely excited about lately. I’ve been using Pinterest a lot in the past few months, and it strikes me as a company that knows what people want and how they really use the service. Everything about it is friendly, comfortable, and practical; the fact that I can talk about Pinterest with my “normal” friends without getting the blank stares I receive for Twitter also helps.

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The 1986 Apple Collection→

Update: Reader Rick Henson got in contact and let me know that he uploaded scanned copies of the entire collection, which you can view here. The other pages feature everything from Apple-branded paperclips, lapel-pins, Swiss knife, and of course, an Apple watch.

Dug up by The Trad, The Apple Collection is an amazing look at what Apple—a company often hailed for its tasteful, minimalist design—thought was awesome back in the ’80s. Namely, gaudy belts, logo-covered baseball caps, and the word “Apple” written in as many different variants of ugly lettering as the company could find. Sadly, no black turtlenecks or jeans are on display; Steve Jobs had been ousted from the company the year previous by former PepsiCo CEO John Sculley, and wouldn’t return for another 11 years. [The A.V. Club]

The Trad originally posted this back in 2011, but I only just saw it today when The A.V. Club linked to it. Suffice to say, the above image is just a taste of what you’ll get see if you view the full collection - which you’re going to do, right?

[via The A.V. Club]

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Apple, Samsung Agree to End Patent Suits Outside U.S.→

The agreement shows Apple and Samsung may be nearing a conclusion to what has been a drawn-out and occasionally nasty worldwide patent fight, which has sprouted alongside the booming market for touch-screen smartphones. Apple has accused Samsung of copying its iPhone designs, while Samsung has countered that Apple is using pieces of its wireless-transmission technology without permission. Neither has won a decisive decision and judges have repeatedly urged the two companies to reach a settlement rather than play out their dispute in court.

Today’s announcement, sent to Bloomberg and other media organizations, means that all disputes between Apple and Samsung outside the United States are being abandoned. The international disputes had been fought for years in Australia, Japan, South Korea, Germany, Netherlands, the U.K., France and Italy.

“Apple and Samsung have agreed to drop all litigation between the two companies outside the United States,” the companies said in the statement. “This agreement does not involve any licensing arrangements, and the companies are continuing to pursue the existing cases in U.S. courts.”

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