The Facebook Fallacy – Technology Review:

“The daily and stubborn reality for everybody building businesses on the strength of Web advertising is that the value of digital ads decreases every quarter, a consequence of their simultaneous ineffectiveness and efficiency. The nature of people’s behavior on the Web and of how they interact with advertising, as well as the character of those ads themselves and their inability to command real attention, has meant a marked decline in advertising’s impact. “

(Via technologyreview.com.)

What a great read. This could have been written eleven years ago, just before the first dot com bubble burst.

Everything hums along great for a while, sure. And a few people get rich every time. But for the vast majority of people, the notion that web advertising is sustainable as your sole source of income long term is just silly. The inside players in the Valley know this; they just don’t want everyone else to figure that out until it’s too late.

Facebook may very well come up with some master stroke, some bold new idea to start making a sustainable business in the long term. But thus far we haven’t seen any real evidence of that.

Clearly, something is going on with the next iPhone. The rumors of big screens have been floating around for ages, but there’s a lot more smoke this time around. So I have to think this is at least a possibility.

Personally, though, I’m still not feeling the need for a larger screen. The notion that Apple “needs” to do this because of all the Android phones out there with big screens is preposterous. Android is coming apart at the seams. The big screens were an attempt to differentiate the Android phones from Apple. This wasn’t something most users were clamoring for, and many users who get these devices pushed on them don’t even like the larger screen. They aren’t an improvement, in other words. People in general don’t want larger devices in their pockets. They like their phones small. I think Gruber is right that if the iPhone gets a larger screen, it doesn’t necessarily mean the phone itself will be larger. There’s room for a larger screen without going nuts and making a Galaxy Note hunk of junk. In fact, the screen could be 4 inches without making the footprint of the iPhone any bigger.

(I really don’t think Apple needs to worry about Android in the long run at all, by the way. Maybe that sounds nuts, but watch the numbers carefully. Android’s golden age is already over. It’s peaked, as far as growth rate relative to others is concerned, and it’s nowhere in the tablet race. Google has never gotten the app ecosystem off the ground, and now with all the viruses plaguing Android there’s even less trust from the users, which means even fewer developers are going to make apps. Every OEM making Android devices except for Samsung is losing money. They will jump ship to Microsoft, or whoever else offers them a better deal down the line. And the users will buy whatever the kids in the carrier stores push on them. This is a fickle market. Android will self-destruct without any help from Apple.)

But again, I’ll ask the question none of the nerds seem to be asking. How does a bigger screen make the phone better? More icons on the home screen? Really? That’s it? Widescreen videos a little bigger? Ok. I guess. I have yet to read any compelling argument for how this would improve the iPhone experience. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a compelling argument; I’m just saying that no one seems to be focusing on the only reason Apple would pull the trigger on this.

As far as third party developer concerns, that’s a bit ludicrous, too. Apple ultimately doesn’t care if we developers have to work to get our apps updated to match the new screen size. If they think a bigger phone screen would be better, than they’ll make the phone with a bigger screen, and the developers will fall in line. What choice do we have? They may provide some tools to make the transition easier, but basically, what the developers need or want is the lowest thing on Apple’s hierarchy of concerns. Apple does what is best for Apple, what is best for the customer, and then what is best for developers, in that order. Anyone who has ever opened Xcode knows this.

Now, if Apple announces this new phone, but no apps support it on day one, that’s a problem. And clearly, some apps won’t ever get updated, because their developers have abandoned them long ago. So Apple will need something equivalent to what they did on the iPad with iPhone apps. There will have to be some default way that this new phone adapts older apps to work correctly on the new screen. It doesn’t have to make for a perfect experience—iPhone apps on the iPad are a pretty lame experience—but it does have to work. A stop-gap measure until the developers do the correct enhancements. Other than that, Apple doesn’t need to be concerned about third-party apps at all.

I do worry about the long-term health of the App Store ecosystem, but that’s a subject for a separate post. Right now, Apple is in the driver’s seat, and they can get away with pretty much anything, making us all jump through hoops to be in the Store. But ultimately, it would probably be in Apple’s best interests to start thinking a little more about what kinds of developers are successful in this market. If they’re not careful, they could easily end up in a position where only big corporations like Adobe are back in control of the software side of things. And that’s not in Apple’s best interest.

As soon as someone can tell me why a bigger iPhone screen would be better, I’ll get more excited about this. Whether or not it happens is much less interesting to me than the why.

Red Sweater Blog – MarsEdit 3.5.3: Mea Culpa:

“So the focus on MarsEdit 3.6 was instantly sidelined, and MarsEdit 3.5.3 was brought to existence in the space of about an hour today, taking this critical bug fix and a couple other less urgent fixes that didn’t make it in time for 3.5.2.”

(Via The Red Sweater Blog.)

I love when developers are this communicative and up-front about their mistakes. Amazing how the little one-person shops tend to do this way better than the big corporate powerhouses.

I didn’t run into this bug, but if I had, I would still feel good about the way it was handled. Everyone makes mistakes; it’s all about what you do to fix them.

Infographic: 4G LTE speeds, Verizon vs. AT&T:

The infographic below shows each carrier’s average LTE speed in the cities we tested where both LTE services are offered. The cities are ranked according to a composite score of AT&T and Verizon LTE download speed.

(Via Tech Hive)

The problem with average speeds in tests like this is that they mean almost nothing compared to your real-world performance. Now that I’m carrying an AT&T phone and a Verizon iPad, I have to say, Verizon is hands-down the better choice for me personally. And I’m very often getting faster speeds than this average on LTE with my iPad.

More importantly, I’m getting extremely fast speeds in places where I get zero signal on AT&T. And many of them are places I frequent.

But that’s me. I know other people who live in other places where AT&T is absolutely the right choice. I know people who live in San Francisco for whom AT&T is a better choice. Cell coverage is still a very touch and go thing.

So, as always, your mileage may vary. You have to take that into consideration before charts like this sway your decision-making, interesting as they are.

Results make up for awkwardness of iPhoto for iPad – Chicago Sun-Times: “iPhoto represents the second generation of iPad apps. It’s not merely a ‘mobile’ photo editor. It’s a photo editor. A less-ambitious photo app like Snapseed is something you play with. iPhoto is an app that you can actually rely on.”

(Via. Chicago Sun-Times)

I have to completely agree with Andy Ihnatko here. When I first started using iPhoto for iPad, I immediately thought, like everyone else, that it was a UI nightmare. But the more I used it, the more I ended up liking it. And more importantly, the more I ended up using it as my go-to app for photo organizing and experimentation. In a few days, I had already used iPhoto on my iPad far more than I ever had any of the other iOS iLife apps.

iPhoto for iPad truly is as capable, and far more enjoyable to use once you learn it, than its desktop counterpart.

We are entering a second stage of iPad software, as Mr. Ihnatko suggests. One where people start to recognize that the iPad is eventually going to be the laptop replacement, not just a casual consumption device. This is what the Kindle Fire and the Android tablets are all missing. The iPad is so much more than the competition thinks it is.

And who better than Apple to lead the way with a new generation of apps that go beyond consumption? True, the iPad versions of the iWork apps were heavily compromised for the sake of an easier user experience. But the newer Apple apps, Garageband, iMovie, and now iPhoto, are pushing the boundaries and demonstrating that over time, iOS will become just as capable as OS X on the Mac for most people.

The trick is figuring out how do these things with our fingers. So yes, user experience is not quite as easy to figure out on these more robust apps yet. But it took several years for the mouse and the original GUI to evolve into tools capable of rivaling text-based user interfaces. It’ll get there. Developers have to be willing to experiment until they find what works. And Apple, of course, has more at stake than anyone in leading that charge.