Jun 25, 2019

I Got Bugs

I Got Bugs

By M.G. Siegler • Issue #175 • View online

I’ve been running the developer builds of iOS 13 on a backup iPad since day one. Frankly, I’m surprised Apple pushed build 2 out as public beta 1. It’s not that it’s bad, it’s just that it’s pretty buggy. Nothing critical that I’ve noticed just yet, but a lot of crashes, and a lot that just doesn’t work.

I know, I know: beta. But I feel like the public part of the name is fairly misleading. And I know Apple makes it clear this is for the adventurous only, but I also know many Apple fans. And I know they will absolutely install this on their main devices. And I know they shouldn’t.

Look, iOS 13 – and in particular iPadOS (is it still ‘13’ or ‘1’?) – is pretty exciting. For the first time, you can legitimately use your iPad as a computer thanks to a legitimate web browser for the first time. I can’t wait for it myself, but I can wait long enough to know not to install this first public beta. Just a word of warning.

Drinking: an Ommegang Pale Sour 🍻

5ish Links

Hootie & the Blowfish, Great American Rock Band (Yes, Really)

Jon Caramanica:

Released with something of a whimper in July 1994, three months after Kurt Cobain’s death, “Cracked Rear View” went on to become one of the defining albums of the 1990s, spawning three indelible, sublime Top 10 hits: “Hold My Hand,” “Let Her Cry” and “Only Wanna Be With You.” It’s is the 10th most successful album of all time in this country according to Recording Industry Association of America certification.

This album was essentially released in my musical influence peak and it was inescapable. But I’m still shocked to see that it’s the 10th most successful album of all time. Of all time!

“The day grunge ended,” Rucker said plainly, as if relating an uncomfortable but incontrovertible fact.

“We had just gone through three or four years of record sales not being that good, and grunge being the big thing on the radio,” he continued. “And then all of a sudden we’re saying, ‘Hold my hand.’ You know, these great little hooks that were undeniable, and people wanted to hear that. They wanted to hear it again and again.”

Right place, right time for some major counter-programming.

www.nytimes.com • Share

Return of the (Twitter for) Mac

Nolan O'Brien:

What will be different this time with Twitter for Mac?

The new Twitter for Mac app will use our existing iOS codebase, rather than being built from a separate codebase, following the same successful strategy we’ve used with Web to expand our supported clients. By supporting key Mac-specific behaviors on top of our iOS code, we will be able to maintain feature parity across our iOS and Mac apps with relatively low long term maintenance costs.

What can we expect with the new Twitter for Mac?

Mac users are some of the most engaged people on Twitter, and we are thrilled to introduce them to a new fully native Mac app that has full feature parity with our other platforms plus amazing new features. Expect great things like resizable windows with dynamic content, multiple windows support, native notifications, drag & drop and keyboard support. There may even be a few new exciting features we haven’t been able to build for mobile devices that we’re excited to share in the fall!

A lot of folks are making fun of this – resizable windows! drag & drop! – and perhaps rightfully so, given just how many times Twitter has killed and subsequently resurrected the Mac client. But this is good news. I keep trying and failing to get into Twitter’s website. I just can’t get there. Something about it feels wrong to me.

I miss the original Twitter for Mac (Tweetie!) – it was so simple, just a live-updating single tweet stream. Tweetbot is close, but it doesn’t have full feature parity (which is Twitter’s fault, of course). Tweetdeck is closer, but it’s also overkill, in many ways.

blog.twitter.com • Share

Snapchat’s Gender-Swap and Baby Filters Doubled Downloads of the App

John McDermott:

John McDermott on the latest Snapchat craze:

The filters also seemed to drive a sharp increase in the daily downloads of the Snapchat app across iOS and Android. Snapchat was downloaded across the platforms an estimated 41.5 million times worldwide in May, more than twice the number of downloads from the previous month (16.8 million) and in May of last year (17.6 million), according to third party data.

Prior to the baby and gender-swap filters, Snapchat was being downloaded approximately 600,000 times per day worldwide, according to estimated data provided by Sensor Tower, a mobile app market research firm. Daily downloads doubled after the introduction of the new filters to more than 1 million per day. On three different days in May, the app was downloaded around 2 million times. (It’s unclear how many of these downloads are new users versus people coming back to the platform after abandoning and deleting the app.)

Sort of fascinating to think that Snapchat is more akin to a gaming studio — or perhaps more apt, a movie studio. That is to say, a hits-driven business. But in this case, the “hits” are filters, or experiences within Snapchat.

The downside is that they need to keep the hits coming. The upside is, they have a way to spur growth again if they create said hits.

onezero.medium.com • Share

Fast Food Embraces Meatless Burgers, but There Aren’t Enough to Go Around

Jacob Bunge and Heather Haddon:

Some restaurant executives aren’t convinced meatless burgers are worth the higher costs. Rob Lynch, president of Arby’s Restaurant Group Inc., said his brand competes with rivals by offering meat, not alternatives.

“People aren’t willing to pay more for something that tastes worse,” Mr. Lynch said in an interview.

“PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.” Keep in mind that I’m slightly biased here, but I really do love Impossible Burgers (and Beyond Meat ones, for that matter). So much so that I seek them out.

www.wsj.com • Share

How Mike Trout Fell to the Angels

Keith Law, speaking to Eddie Bane, the Los Angeles Angels scouting director:

I knew of Trout, but the first time I saw him was at a high school game up in Millville. Greg had done his job, but he said names I shuddered to hear, like Mickey Mantle.

And Mike Silvestri, an Angels cross-checker:

I don’t have a comp! I said he’s Mickey Mantle but not a switch-hitter, Rickey Henderson but right-handed. He cupped the bat in his top hand. I never saw that kind of athlete with that explosion and shortness to the ball before. He played running back, played center in basketball. Tony said, “You just threw out [the names of] two Hall of Famers,” and I said, “He might be better.”

The craziest part is that Trout has lived up to such hype(so far, at least). And the Angels, for all their flaws as a team on the field, have played it perfectly in both drafting Trout and keepinghim.

Plus, bonus point to Billy Beane, then the GM of the Oakland A’s (who passed on Trout), for this gem of a quote:

Since then, Trout went on his own personal iron fleet in the Greyjoy. He’s the fourth Greyjoy, just destroying us, with a vengeance worse than Euron’s to remind the A’s they should have taken him.

There’s an “iron price” joke in here somewhere…

www.espn.com • Share

500ish Words

The Unseen Forest

Just back from Arizona — where it was rapidly approaching 110 degrees — which is where I was the past several days for Vox’s Code Conference. The show tends to be one of those interesting…

500ish.com • Share

A Man, a Plan, a… Glitch in that Plan

It started 10 years ago… Back in those days, I was a technology reporter. When Stewart Butterfield sent out a tweet late one night, I was on it. Whatever Tiny Speck was — asking around, all I got was…

500ish.com • Share

A Pearl Jam Reference To Go

Pearl Jam- Bugs (with Lyrics)

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By M.G. Siegler

A regular collection of thoughts and things and thoughts on things from around the internet.

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