Steve Jobs’ reality distortion takes its toll on truth, on Fortune Tech.
I hate when hyperbole overshadows fact. (It’s one of the reasons I have never gotten deeply into following politics.) This article posits to fact-check Steve Jobs’ iPad 2 keynote, but Seth Weintraub’s corrections are surrounded in so much arm-waving frustration that they undermine the root arguments behind them. They also overstate the corrections.
To wit: Jobs included a bullet point that said the iPad has greater than 90% market share. Weintraub wrote in response, “‘>90% market share’. OMG Math,” then asserted, “Apple would have needed to sell 3.2 million more to reach 90% of 2010’s tablet market share.” Which, in itself, isn’t accurate either. If the market is essentially the 14.8 million-sold-in iPad and the 2 million-sold-in Galaxy Tab, then Apple’s sales in 2010 weren’t 90% of the market, they were actually (wait for it) 88.1%. OMG Math.
Then, in trying to compare apples to apples on component pricing, Weintraub starts with, “The XOOM’s are simply better.” He then chooses to pick at various items on the iPad’s spec sheet which don’t match up to the Xoom’s, and says Apple doesn’t measure up. But in doing so, he’s playing the same game in reverse: focusing on factors where his preferred device is stronger (RAM, storage, speakers) and ignoring the ones where his is not (processor, size, cameras). It’s a winless argument.
Thinly veiled disdain is good for speaking to a base of like-minded individuals. But it won’t win any broader discussions.
Category: Observed (Page 6 of 24)
I have contemplated on and off for years the way certain cities have a more of a major-league sports concentration than others. The factors that lead to each specific case are numerous and complicated. On a more base level, though, a quick glance at a city’s sports footprint says much about that city: its size, its presence in multiple markets, its interests.
Herewith, a tally by city of the major sports markets in America (covering MLB, NFL, NBA and NHL), in descending order of size, organized by my own arbitrary but numerically derived categories.
The majors
New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Miami, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Washington, DC. These 11 cities are the hosts with the most: a team from every sports league. Of them, New York is the most major of all, as it has two teams in every league except basketball–that is, if you include Long Island and exclude New Jersey, although come 2012 the NBA Nets move to Brooklyn, making the Big Apple that much bigger, and of course ignoring the fact that the NFL Giants and Jets don’t actually play in New York, but we’ll get to that. Chicago gets bragging rights for its two baseball teams, while Dallas gets a partial bye, since its baseball and football teams technically play over the border in Arlington.
The anomaly that the National Football League would rather you ignore
Los Angeles. Not only is this the only major broadcast market without a football team, but LA boasts six pro teams across the other three majors (if you include Anaheim in the tally, which MLB does, so we’ll let them claim the Angels and the NHL Ducks too). From this angle it’s crazy that there’s still no football team here.
The mid-majors
Cleveland, Houston, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, San Francisco, Tampa Bay, Toronto. These cities have 3/4 coverage, not a bad haul, especially for cities you wouldn’t otherwise think are major or important on other scales, like Tampa. Surprising, actually, that there are only seven cities with this kind of sports presence. I almost demoted San Francisco because the NBA Warriors still refer to their location as “Golden State,” which makes no sense to me, even with the Golden Gate Bridge in their logo. Also, bonus points to Toronto for being so American that it boasts several of our pro sports teams.
The players
Charlotte, Milwaukee, Baltimore, Buffalo, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Kansas City, New Orleans, Oakland, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, Nashville. Each of these cities has two pro teams. Interestingly, all of them count a pro football team as one of the two (with the exception of Milwaukee, which has Green Bay up the road). Indianapolis and Nashville get less credit here than the others, because they have teams that cite a hometown state rather than the city.
States that matter, because their cities don’t
Minnesota and New Jersey each have two teams that don’t bother to name-check any town in particular. New Jersey’s sports footprint is so schizophrenic that the two football teams who play in the state actually have “NY” in their logos and pretend their port of call is across the Hudson River. And Utah has a lone sports team, which migrated there from New Orleans but retained its name, so we get to enjoy the dissonance of a team in straightlaced Salt Lake City called the Jazz.
Legacies
I love cities that have a sports team much larger than they would otherwise deserve. Green Bay, for one, with its legendary football club. And San Antonio with a leftover from the NBA-ABA merger in the 1970s–which, by the way, also explains the New Jersey Nets.
Canadian cities that make the list thanks to the NHL
Calgary, Edmonton, Montreal, Ottawa, Vancouver. I bet the CFL has a team in each of these cities. (Montreal had an MLB team until a few years ago, and Vancouver briefly sported an NBA franchise.)
One-sport oddities
Columbus has a hockey team. I don’t know why. Jacksonville has a football team, and not even the NFL is sure why. They play basketball in Memphis and Oklahoma City, mainly because wealthy men chose to buy teams and plunk them across town from their estates. Orlando, on the other hand, has a fairly strong basketball presence but no other teams.
Portland has a lone and legendarily popular basketball team; Sacramento also has an NBA presence. A few miles south, San Jose has a hockey team, which I’ve also never understood, although they always had a pretty terrific logo.
And speaking of hockey, the NHL has a team in Raleigh, N.C., which is probably why they call themselves the Carolina Hurricanes. Got all that?
Space Invaders: Why you should never, ever use two spaces after a period, in Slate.
“Every modern typographer agrees on the one-space rule,” says the column. “Every major style guide–including the Modern Language Association Style Manual and the Chicago Manual of Style–prescribes a single space after a period.”
I’ve taken Farhad to task before, but I’m behind him here (even though I dislike how he positions his argument). I forcefully converted my own two-space habits sometime in 2004. It’s ungainly, and it doesn’t even render in HTML, where I spend much of my days. I’ve taken to performing a find-and-replace on any documents I have to proofread.
In fact, I can trace my period shifting to my first full-time position that required I use Outlook on Windows for email. Faced with seas of Arial, I could suddenly see how disjointed my text looked, after 15 years of Mishawaka in Eudora.
Habits are nice and conventions are nice. But clean, efficient typing is even nicer.
Moin Moin! How are you you? I have a fun toy for
Young people searched for your order. Hurrah! I really exactly,
what I was looking so long at the following from a dedicated
Author operated Web site. The Internet Web Site remote
discounted capital ships, harbor tugs and flattop.
The remote-controlled boats are gifts, you who at any time
should watch! So quickly in order: remote-controlled boat
(Translation via Google Translate. Also: I think it’s about time I turned off comments for good.)
For reasons still unclear to me, a six-month print subscription to Newsweek in my name began arriving in my mailbox this week. Awesome.
(I should note that not only is this borderline ridiculous, situationally, but also that in my many years of reading magazines I never liked Newsweek. I grew up in a Time household and I subscribe to The Economist. Newsweek felt fluffy. I wonder if I can gift this comp sub somewhere.)
Westside Independent: Numerous UWS Restaurants Closed for Health Violations. The list of May offenders includes Tal Bagel, Hot & Crusty and Popover Cafe.
I had breakfast at Tal over the weekend and nearly posted a review to Yelp and Menupages about it. The place is, in a word, dirty. Tables full of crumbs, grimy floors, a crusty pizza that looked like it had been sitting out since the night before. My bagels were fine enough, but I had them toasted–they were undoubtedly a day old. (Ask a Tal employee on a Saturday morning, “Which bagels are warm?” and he’ll tell you, “None, we didn’t cook this morning.”)
The beauty of living in Manhattan, of course, is that choice is abundant. So instead of Tal, I go to Lenny’s a few blocks up for a bagel, or, when it’s convenient, to H&H (which has had its share of problems recently, but about money, not cleanliness). I rarely go to my freakishly expensive local supermarkets; I hit Fairway instead. And while Popover Cafe has some good food, my wife (accurately!) says it’s too dirty, so we eat elsewhere.
The real problem here is that all the dirty places on the UWS seem to be the ones nearest my apartment. Get it together, people! I want to support your well-run businesses!
The elected members of the New York State Senate and Assembly have been more likely in the past 10 years to leave office by resigning in disgrace than to actually lose an election.
From my post on aiaio:
Contemplating how to service users with 1.5″ BlackBerry screens was one thing; dealing with iPad users, with their 1024×768 screens and just-like-a-laptop-only-better expectations, is entirely another. And while the iPad may be just a first step in an evolution, a million unit sales in a month suggests someone found the keys to the steamroller.
It’s easy to forget that the iPad is both a laptop and a mobile device–a blurry line that is only going to get blurrier. I know of a retailer that converted a few thousand dollars in sales on its circa-2007, Flash-enabled website last year … in iPod Touch user sessions. Evolution doesn’t wait.
I worry that this pervasive and seamless socialization can ooze into our personal relationships and potentially dilute the value of friendship as well. If I order two copies of photos of my kids so I can send some to you, that is one manifestation of my affection; I “like” you. If I email you those same photos, it’s less effort for me, but the meaning is similar. But what if I share those same photos on a public blog or with a few hundred folks on Facebook? Hasn’t that very personal connection between you and me been watered down?
An old friend called me on Saturday.
“How have you been?” I asked.
“Good, good, just on my way to the supermarket, my 10 minutes of quiet now that the baby’s home.”
“The baby?”
“Yeah, she was born two weeks ago.”
“She was? Congrats! I had no idea.”
“I posted it on Facebook, didn’t you see it? That was basically my one communication to the outside world.”
Not long ago big news was delivered via telephone. Then, for a while, email moved in. Now we’re onto notifications, posted to third-party locations on the assumption that everyone of consequence is dialed into them. What’s the next step? How much between now and then might we miss?
Blog comment spam has gotten direct and chatty lately, to the point where I’ve had to read things twice to verify whether or not the content is real. Some of it is obvious, like opinions unrelated to the blog post referenced, but even the idea of sharing opinions is a new twist.
At the risk of encouraging more of it, I thought I’d share Saturday’s comment spam contents here, for those who haven’t seen the likes of it, unedited:
Refreshing site. My co-workers and I were just talking about this the other evening. Also your blog looks great on my old sidekick. Now thats uncommon. Keep it up.
I really enjoyed this article, can I copy a paragraph to a new site that I’m building? I’ll add a link back to this page and credit you with being the author of course.
Thank you for your great post. I also must say that your blog design is top notch. Keep up the great work.
I did a search on the topic and found most people agree with your blog.
Unfortunately, all this does (as with most spam) is waste my time. I’ve resorted to googling the names, email addresses and/or URLs of my commenters to ensure validity before posting. Ah, what next?