Be True to the Web

James Weiner writes:

Furthermore, designing in-browser exposes mistaken assumptions at the earliest possible stage in a build. This means we fail quickly rather than expending effort on high fidelity mock-ups that were based on mistaken assumptions.

Who is James Weiner? Oh, he only works on the front end of GOV.UK, so he needs to worry about little things like accessibility and making the web work for everyone.

I’d say he is exactly right.

Categories
Business Technology

Billion Dollar Red Hat

Red Hat released its quarterly earnings and earnings for the prior fiscal year and it is all good news.

Congrats to Red Hat on passing the $1,000,000,000 per year revenue threshold. I wish I would have invested when the market bottomed-out.

Upcoming Apple Hardware

Marco Arment wrote Predicting MacBooks with the Ivy Bridge schedule and if you are interested in a look at when Apple could possibly be launching new hardware just read that.

I’m still torn on if there is a 15″ MacBook Air-ish device coming out this year and overall what the lineup is going to look like if one is released.

Basically, everyone things the 13″ MacBook Pro is dead, and while that might be the case, I see two ways the lines could go:

FIrst, a Maximum Possible Choice (MPC) lineup:

  • 11″ MacBook Air
  • 13″ MacBook Air
  • 15″ MacBook Air
  • 13″ MacBook Pro
  • 15″ MacBook Pro
  • 17″ MacBook Pro

A lot of overlap, a lot of models, a lot of chassis and possibly a lot of confusion. However, is satiates the needs of many of the prosumers because I firmly believe that any 15″ MacBook Air is going to be more Air than Pro in the end … so no discrete graphics, no extra ports, etc.

Here is the Least Possible Choice (LPC) lineup:

  • 11″ MacBook Air
  • 13″ MacBook Air
  • 15″ MacBook Air
  • 17″ MacBook Pro

At that point, you’ve really narrowed down the choices … down to even fewer than Apple has available today. You’ll alienate some prosumers maybe into getting a heavier 17″ MacBook Pro or looking elsewhere, but you eliminate many components that won’t sell that many.

In this scenario I also could see them dropping the “Air” moniker and going even simpler:

  • 11″ MacBook
  • 13″ MacBook
  • 15″ MacBook
  • 17″ MacBook Pro

Now you have setup the 17″ MacBook Pro as, essentially, the Mac Pro of portables. In this case, I’d also like to see the iMac name changed to just Mac, but now I’m sounding more crazy than normal.

There are tons of middle roads there as well, but it will be interesting to see how the Apple portable lineup changes in the coming year.

Categories
Business Technology

The Real Foxconn

Take it for what you want, but Tim Culpan of Bloomberg wrote Now Can We Start Talking About the Real Foxconn? and I think he nails my main point about the whole Daisey affair with this paragraph (but please go read the whole thing, he’s been covering Foxconn for a decade or more):

The problem with Mike Daisey’s lies is that they’ve painted a picture of the Evil Empire, a place devoid of any happiness or humanity. A dark, Dickensian scene of horror and tears. They also make anyone who tries to tell a fuller, more balanced account look like an Apple or Foxconn apologist because your mind is already full of the “knowledge” of how bad it is there.

Any person who defends Mike Daisey usually comes back to some sort of “he was trying to raise awareness about a real issue”. The hard part about that is that his lies now make the job of trying to bring substantive change and have meaningful conversations that much harder.

That’s a net loss, a HUGE net loss.

Categories
Technology

Gizmodo on the iPad

Oh Gizmodo, you are so funny.

I really don’t think they “get” it. They really don’t. Most of the “tech press” is a constant parody of themselves.