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Earthquake science explains why election polls were so wrong
Polls are not predictors. This is the message that American University history professor Allan Lichtman has been screaming at the world since 1981: It's not that the polling system itself is broken -- instead, polls behave exactly as they're designed. The problem is they aren't designed to predict the outcome of elections. "Polls are snapshots," Lichtman says. "They are not predictors. They are abused and misused as predictors because they're so easy. If you're a journalist, you don't even have to get out of bed in the morning to write a story about the polls and tell where the so-called 'horse race' stands." Lichtman has accurately predicted the winner of the nine US presidential elections since 1984, relying on his 13-point Keys to the White House model. He even got it right this year, when most pundits and polls were wildly, disastrously incorrect. But Lichtman didn't just get it right; he predicted in September that Donald Trump would win the presidency, more than a month before Election Day. That was also before a swathe of potentially game-changing October surprises rocked the news cycle, including a tape of Trump bragging about sexually assaulting women and FBI director James Comey reigniting conspiracies about Hillary Clinton's use of a private server as Secretary of State.
"Apple Clickbait Generator" is amazing
The iPhone 5c is a bust. Tim Cook doesn't know what he's doing. Apple can't innovate. The iPhone 6 is delayed. The sky is falling, Apple is doomed... dooooomed! Despite Apple's long and arguably unparalleled track record of releasing innovative and successful products, not to mention its penchant for generating billions in revenue each and every single quarter, many pundits would still have you believe that Apple's demise is just a matter of time. As Horace Dediu astutely stated last year, "no activity by Apple has been seen as sufficient for its survival." And so, even in 2014, there are no shortage of vapid, shortsighted, and laughably uninformed articles detailing Apple's impending demise. But why send pageviews to the undeserving when you can create your own "Apple is doooomed!" article with just the click of a button. Introducing the Apple Clickbait Generator. Created by Kirk Lennon and Owen Evans, this lovely tool creates a new clickbait Apple article with each refresh. The results are delightful. Here's an excerpt of what came up for me when I tried it. Many analysts are telling Apple to cut prices, reduce margins and to chase market share, but Apple's Cook refuses to budge. And yet there are clouds on the horizon. Existing iPhone owners may love their handsets, but they aren't winning over new owners. The move signals a fundamental change in philosophy, the philosophy that made Apple great, which was to innovate. Innovation is what made Apple great. It may take a few years, but you will slowly see the erosion of the Mac into an elegant OS for launching crappy apps. As authentic as it gets.
The dumbest iPhone rumor story we've seen yet
Here at TUAW, we're not shy about taking some of the more vapid rumors that circulate through the blogosphere to task. But recently, I stumbled across an article (on Macworld UK no less) which really takes the cake. The article in question is less a rumor roundup than an embarrassingly lazy and overtly transparent exercise in SEO manipulation and link-baiting. You see, the article in question is (wait for it...) a compilation of rumors, features and release date information regarding the iPhone 7. Yep, you read that the correctly. The iPhone 6 doesn't even officially exist and the bombardment of asinine iPhone 7 rumors has already begun. Now let's be clear: if someone out there has done some substantive research and/or checked with reliable sources as to what features the iPhone 7 might house, then by all means, bring it on. But in stark contrast, the Macworld piece is so bizarrely empty that I couldn't help but draw attention to what may very well be the most vapid iPhone rumor story we've seen in quite some time. It's not worth the effort to digest the complete article, so here are a few highlights: It may seem a little premature, but you'll be surprised at how much speculation there is about the iPhone 7 already. Correction: It is beyond premature as there is little to no speculation regarding the iPhone 7. The first thing we'll address here is the name of the next iPhone. If Apple sticks to its traditional naming conventions, then it's more likely that the 2015 iPhone will be called the iPhone 6S instead of the iPhone 7. Fascinating. The rest of the article takes us on a mindless stroll through all sorts of topics, from calling the iPhone 7 the iPhone Air to anticipating a release date at WWDC 2015. As you might expect, there is absolutely no sourcing for any of these assertions. Substantive evidence is nowhere to be found as practically of the article's assertions seem to have been quite literally conjured up out of thin air. Looking closer at Apple's patent portfolio, we can come up with some further iPhone 7 features that could well be on the cards for 2015. Face recognition could be used to unlock the device, and/or the entire display of the iPhone 7 could be a TouchID fingerprint sensor, eliminating the need for a Home Button and making room for a larger display. Lord have mercy. The article then lazily claims that the iPhone 7 will run iOS 9 (shocking!) and may sport an A9 processor (no way!). Right now, it's difficult to know which leaks and snippets of evidence relate to the iPhone 6, and which actually look further ahead to the iPhone 7. You don't say. As of September, however, we expect that iPhone 7 rumours will be rife almost immediately after the iPhone 6 is unveiled, so we'll be here with the latest speculation as soon as it arrives. I don't doubt it, and that last statement is probably the only truthful item in the entire article.
Bloomberg joins the linkbait game with bizarre Apple/Samsung story
A recent Bloomberg story about Samsung "sticking it" to Apple shows that even reputable sites will sink to new lows in an effort to create a story out of nothing. In the world of tech writing, and Apple in particular, there are no shortage of linkbait headlines that house no substantive content and exist solely to attract eyeballs. From beyond questionable photo leaks of as of yet un-announced Apple products to moronic talking heads on CNBC who never cease to proclaim that Apple is doomed, one should clearly absorb their daily dose of Apple news with a discerning eye. But not everything is a wasteland of despair. There are of course a number of reputable sites out there that do solid reporting and are ably able to separate the wheat from the chaff; which is why I was quite surprised to see Bloomberg taking the road too often travelled in a bizarre and empty article that was published this past Friday. Titled "Samsung Sticks It to Apple With Swiss Railways Deal", the article simply relays that Swiss Federal Railways signed a new deal with Samsung wherein railway employees will be given mobile Samsung devices. Why is this of any note? Well, it isn't really. But since Apple licensed the iPad clock design from Swiss Federal Railways (after claims that Apple misappropriated it) , Bloomberg deemed it appropriate to create a story out of thin air. The Bloomberg report reads in part: The history wasn't mentioned in Samsung's press release, but you can bet the timing of the announcement was no coincidence. A new trial kicked off on March 31 in Silicon Valley, where Apple is accusing Samsung of copying its designs for the iPhone and iPad. Apple's lawyers are trying to portray a culture of "fast following" at Samsung and to highlight Apple innovations. Needless to say, the Swiss clock probably won't be part of Apple's legal argument. Actually, I'd bet the timing of the announcement was PURE coincidence and has absolutely nothing to do with Apple and Samsung's ongoing court battle in California. Samsung is a marketing machine and pays many celebrities and entities to use their products. The latest such business deal involves 30,000 devices earmarked for Swiss Federal Railways. The business deal, unless Bloomberg can provide evidence to the contrary, has absolutely nothing to do with "sticking it" to Apple. Even more astounding is that Bloomberg chose to run with their unabashedly linkbait headline even though the article relays a quote from a Swiss Railways spokesman who said that the "decision to team up with Samsung was unrelated to the issue with Apple in 2012." Simply put, the company asked for bidders and Samsung came out on top. Not to be outdone, Business Insider jumped on the linkbait non-story with its own sensationalist article titled, "Apple Ripped Off This Clock Design For The iPad And Now The Owners Have Given A Huge Contract To Samsung." Two sites. One Story. No critical thinking or analysis. Just another day in tech.
Why research data about Apple sales is a bunch of bull
An iWatch. An iRing. An iTV. Just a few items that, if analysts actually knew what they were talking about, would already be splashed across Apple's online retail store, ready for purchase. It's no secret that analyst predictions regarding Apple are typically suspect at best. After all, fifth-hand and anonymous rumors emanating from Apple's supply chain aren't exactly confidence-building data points. One would, however, assume that cold hard data compiled by professional research firms might inspire just a tad more confidence. So while only Apple truly knows what products it will release in the future, we can, at the very least, count on research firms to give us the inside scoop as to how Apple's current products are selling, right? Wrong. Apple research data is often contradictory in nature and bears a striking resemblance to supermarket celebrity magazines; pick up one magazine and Kanye West and Kim Kardashian are looking to adopt; pick up another and they're filing for divorce. In short, if you really want to know how Apple's products are selling, you have to hear it straight from Apple. A pair of research reports released earlier this month help support this rather obvious premise. Last week, the research firm Gartner released preliminary US sales data for PC sales from the Q4 of 2013. The report found that Apple shipped 2.17 million Macs last quarter, giving it a 13.7 percent share of the US market. IDC, meanwhile, released its own sales data which found that Apple shipped only 1.6 million Mac units during the holiday quarter. With such varying and ultimately flimsy data, it's easy to extrapolate all sorts of trends that may or may not be based in reality. If you're looking at Gartner and IDC side by side, one report would have you believe that Apple's share of the PC market grew last quarter while the other would have you believe that it shrunk. I can't help but be reminded of an all-time great Simpsons quote from Homer Simpson: People can come up with statistics to prove anything, Kent. Forty percent of all people know that. The lesson? Don't believe anything, or perhaps everything, you read when it comes to analyst data. Remember the stellar launch of Apple's 2013 iPhone lineup this past September? You know, when Apple announced sales of 9 million iPhones in just three days? Well, you might also recall that analyst Gene Munster, apparently using a statistical model in dire need of some fine-tuning, predicted iPhone sales of 5 to 6 million. Again, we'd all be well-advised to wait for official numbers from Apple before jumping to any foregone conclusions about how disappointing or pleasantly surprising Apple's sales data is. And one final parting shot for the road: You might recall this doozy from the research firm Pyramid Research. Back in 2011, they predicted that Windows Phone would become the top selling smartphone worldwide by 2015. As for real numbers, Apple will divulge all come January 27 at the company's earnings conference call. And for the record, Apple during the 2012 holiday quarter sold 4.1 million Macs.
New York Times laughably argues that Apple's iPhone is designed to fail to encourage upgrades
The upcoming issue of the New York Times Magazine will feature a horribly conceived and poorly thought out article detailing why Apple wants "to bust your iPhone." Yep, the premise of the article is that Apple designs the iPhone to fail just around the time it happens to be releasing a new model. Authored by Catherine Rampell, the article begins with a personal story from Rampell. She relays that her once trusty iPhone 4 began acting up with the release of iOS 7. Performance was slower. Battery life was lower. From there, Rampell hops on the conspiracy train and doesn't look back, articulating that Apple is engaging in "planned obsolescence." ... this isn't the first time that tech analysts and random crazies on the Internet have noted that breakdowns in older Apple products can often coincide with when upgrades come onto the market. Many have taken this as evidence of "planned obsolescence," a term that dates to the Great Depression, when a real estate broker suggested that the government should stimulate the economy by placing artificial expiration dates on consumer products so people would buy more. There's a reason why this theory is often posited by folks who Rampell herself labels as "random crazies." The notion that Apple purposefully diminishes device performance to entice user upgrades is preposterous on its face. The iPhone 4 was released nearly 3.5 years ago. Over time, the battery charges up less. Over time, the device itself is subject to everyday wear and tear. Over time, apps are updated to take advantage of hardware that older devices lack. The end result is a natural decline in performance that has nothing to do with sinister motives from Apple. Gizmodo's Brian Barrett drives the point home: These are technological truths that affect every single smartphone maker. You think your iPhone 4 is slow? Try a Samsung Fascinate. Batteries degrade over time. Software capabilities improve. Saying Apple plans the obsolescence of iPhones is like saying Dole plans the obsolescence of bananas. In a fast placed industry like the smartphone market, new technology by its very nature becomes yesterday's news fairly quickly. Taking things to even more absurd levels, Rampell attempts to argue that there are sound business reasons as to why Apple might employ a business strategy of "planned obsolescence." To conspiracy-theory-hungry observers (and some of the rest of us), it might make sense that Apple would employ this business strategy. The tech giant, after all, has reached near-saturation levels in the U.S. smartphone market. If iPhones work forever, people who already own the devices won't buy new ones. This argument is false on all counts. Apple continuously sells new iPhones to existing owners not because old devices mysteriously stop working, but rather because Apple offers exciting new iPhone models that entice users to upgrade even when their existing device works well. Take the iPhone 5s, for example. It features an impressive new camera, a super-cool new slow-motion video record feature, and of course, Touch ID. Toss in faster speeds and we're talking about an extremely solid upgrade. As for saturation levels, there's absolutely no data to support Rampell's assertion. During Apple's most recent quarter, they sold 33.8 million iPhones worldwide, a 26% increase from the same quarter a year-ago. Furthermore, the iPhone in the U.S. has an estimated 40% share of the smartphone market, hardly close to anyone's definition of a saturation level. Worldwide, the iPhone's share of the smartphone market is about 13-14%.. Rampell continues: Economists have theories about market conditions that encourage planned obsolescence. A company has strong incentives to degrade product durability when it has a lot of market power and when consumers don't have good substitute products to choose from... When Apple started making the iPhone in 2007, its product was so innovative that it could have deliberately degraded durability without fear. But in the last couple years, the company has faced stiffer competition from Samsung and HTC, among others, which should deincentivize planned obsolescence. The iPhone is highly regarded for delivering a best-in-class user experience. While some iPhone competitors seemingly ignore things like design and battery life, Apple devotes a tremendous amount of resources towards ensuring that the iPhone is a quality product in all regards. In many respects, quality is Apple's calling card. To that end, Apple has a strong disincentive to purposefully degrade product performance. There's also an argument to be made that Apple works harder than most to ensure its products have as long a shelf life as possible. A 3.5 year-old iPhone 4 can run the latest iteration of iOS. An iMac released back in 2007 can run OS X Mavericks. Speaking of, many users with older Mac laptops are reporting significantly improved battery life performance after installing OS X Mavericks. This hardly sounds like the modus operandi of a company dead set on rendering their products frustratingly unusable prematurely. Further, Rampell in the excerpted paragraph above proffers a contradictory argument. Rampell implies that Apple today doesn't have the luxury to deliberately degrade performance because it faces stiff competition from the likes of Samsung. And yet, the entire basis of the article is that Apple is doing just that. In the same breath, Rampell argues that it makes both good and bad business sense for Apple to release iPhones that are destined to fail just in time for a new release. Rampell next quotes University of Chicago economics professor Austan Goolsbee who states: Buyers are smart, and if they start figuring out that one of the costs of buying Apple's products is that they're constantly nickel-and-diming you, they'll switch. Again, there is no data or even anecdotal evidence to suggest that Apple is nickel-and-diming anyone. If anything, cold hard data indicates that the iPhone commands a higher resale value than any other smartphone on the market. Buyers are, in fact, smart. So why exactly are people willing to shell out hundreds of dollars for older iPhone models? Might it have something to do with the fact that iPhones actually hold up better over time than the competition? On that note, it's not all that uncommon for folks to sell used iPhones to Gazelle or on eBay for more money than they initially paid for the device. Also interesting is that the resale value on the relatively ancient iPhone 4 -- the same device used by Rampell -- actually increased this past summer. All in all, Rampell's article reflects a rather elementary understanding of the smartphone market and it's downright surprising that this type of piece is appearing in the New York Times. Though given the Times' recent and arguably blind pursuit of Apple related scandals in pursuit of the Pulitzer, perhaps I shouldn't be surprised at all. A comment from the NYT article sums things up nicely This article does not belong in the New York Times. It's as if a high school sophomore wrote it. The issue is not just Apple, it's not just smart phones and tablets, it's also PC's and anything with a chip in it. And it's not pre-planned obsolescence either. It's that computer speeds double every 18 months or so in accordance with Moore's Law. Any IPhone, Android phone, laptop over two years old will be noticeably slower than the newest products. The only way to keep old products relevant would be to prohibit the introduction of newer, faster, more functional products. There's nothing more to it than that. ... - The author doesn't realize that software updates are optional and that battery life and speed can be restored by turning off new features. - EVERY battery ever created has a finite number of charges. Apple's batteries are no worse than the competition (and they're definitely better than some).
Daily Update for October 7, 2013
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here. No Flash? Click here to listen. Subscribe via RSS
Analysts, pundits try to downplay Apple's record iPhone launch weekend
Last weekend, Apple sold nine million new iPhones, blowing away analyst expectations and setting a launch weekend record in the process. In fact, the nine million tally nearly doubles Apple's previous iPhone launch record. Suffice it to say, the iPhone 5s and 5c are bonafide hits and, once again, Apple is struggling to manufacture iPhones fast enough to meet demand. Considering that many pundits and analysts recently expressed supreme confidence that Apple had peaked and was prepped for a decline, that's not too shabby. Now you would assume that even Apple's most vehement critics wouldn't be so bold as to turn a blind eye to nine million units sold in just three days, right? And yet, as sure as the sun rises in the east, pundits from two mainstream publications attempted to turn Apple's overwhelmingly successful iPhone 5s and 5c launch into cause for concern. First up, we have Sandy Cannold from ABC News whose article headline itself suffers from a dearth of logic; "Why Record iPhone Sales Might be Rotten for Apple", the headline reads. There's a pun in there, I guess that's gotta count for something, right? Cannold's article reads in part: To me though, all this over-the-top fanfare and even the record-breaking first weekend of sales could actually be cause for concern... I fully concede that Apple is going to make billions in profit from the sale of these new devices and the company is in no danger of becoming Blackberry or Nokia. But the reason I am voicing a bit of doubt is that it seems like Apple is now trying to squeeze every last bit of profit it can out of an aging, shall we call it, iStone. Let's face it this new iPhone is just an upgrade, a refresh, dare I say a sequel. I am sure that true tech devotees will tell me how wrong I am, that this new device is smarter, faster, revolutionary, etc. But to me and millions like me it seems a lot more evolutionary. It looks a whole lot like the last iPhone and the one before that and the one before that too. The "evolutionary but not revolutionary" theme is often trotted out by folks who fail to realize that revolution is often the amalgamation of many smaller evolutionary improvements. As for Apple attempting to squeeze "every last bit of profit out of an aging" device, Cannold has it backwards. Apple is impressively able to increase its profits, year after year, by putting out devices that continuously set a new bar for excellence while making the majority of existing devices seem woefully outdated. Cannold also writes that "this is no longer the Apple of Steve Jobs" insofar as Apple under Tim Cook hasn't upended an industry lately. "I firmly believe that Steve Jobs," Cannold continues, "wouldn't have been satisfied to only pocket billions upon billions on tweaked products alone." First, it might be instructive to look back at Apple's iPod years. On that note, Harry McCracken of TIME recently penned a piece highlighting "The Myth of Steve Jobs' Constant Breakthroughs." Second, to call the iPhone 5s, sporting iOS 7 along with a number of hardware enhancements a slight tweak misses a larger point -- namely that the device's 64-bit processor and Touch ID software could be setting the stage for something larger. Also downplaying Apple's impressive iPhone launch was Rolfe Winkler of The Wall Street Journal who wrote the following earlier this week. Investors should be careful, though, not to extrapolate opening-weekend sales strength to future growth rates. For starters, Apple is including two "new" iPhone models in its opening-weekend sales figures for the first time. Last year, customers who opted for a new iPhone 4S, a model first released the prior year, weren't counted in the company's opening-weekend tally. This is despite the fact that it was sold for similar terms as this year's 5c, which is included. This is true, but hardly cause for concern. The fact that Apple released two new iPhone models and was able to spur demand should be looked at as a positive. The iPhone 5c may be a repackaged iPhone 5, but it's effectively being touted and viewed as a new, fresh, and affordable alternative to the iPhone 5s. As for the iPhone 4s not being included in last year's iPhone 5 launch numbers, that's a valid point, but lets try and guesstimate how many iPhones Apple might otherwise sell on any given weekend. Now Apple doesn't release sales figures on a device-by-device basis, so let's start by taking look at sales figures from one of Apple's recent quarters, say, Apple's most recent holiday quarter covering a 13-week period ending on December 29, 2012. During that quarter, Apple sold a record 47.8 million iPhones. Dividing that by 91 days (13 weeks) yields approximately 525,000 iPhones sold per day, or 1.57 million units over a three-day period. That being the case, even if we look at Apple's most successful iPhone quarter in history and subtract an average three day iPhone haul from the nine million total, we're still left with an impressive 7.43 million units. And that's with tightened supply, no less. Returning back to the nine million unit figure, analyst Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray also tried to downplay the figure by assuming, with no evidence, that the figure included units shipped to stores but not yet sold to consumers. Munster's take on this may have to do with the fact that he anticipated weekend sales of 5-6 million units and his subsequent attempt to save face. The thing is, Apple has historically only counted sales to end users. To that end, Fortune's Philip Elmer-DeWitt relays that Goldman Sachs analyst Bill Shope pointed out that Apple this year "used the same sales recognition rules it has always used." What's more, some have scoffed at the increase in iPhone sales by pointing out the obvious -- namely that the iPhone was available in more countries at launch than in previous years. The thing is, that was hardly a secret and analysts presumably took that into account when tabulating their iPhone launch sales estimates. Elmer-DeWitt also relays an astute point from Matt Lew who writes that Apple's nine million figure doesn't take into account the number of iPhone devices ordered online and not yet delivered to consumers. And seeing as how iPhone shipment times were a few days at best, Apple's iPhone launch total sales -- incorporating the back-ordered phones where the customer clicked "buy" in the first three days -- may in fact be higher than the nine million figure. Elmer-DeWitt concludes with an astute point: No other smartphone manufacturer's sales figures are subjected to this kind of scrutiny. Take, for example, Samsung. You won't see analysts questioning Samsung's unit sales numbers for the Galaxy S3 or S4. Nobody writes notes to clients asking what percentage of those sales were sell-in or sell-through. Samsung doesn't get this kind of scrutiny because it doesn't tell anybody -- not analysts, not investors, not the SEC -- how many smartphones it sells. And that's what's wrong with this picture. Apple's iPhone sales aren't fluffed with "buy 1 get 1 free!" promotions, but are legit sales of two brand new devices that have received overwhelmingly positive reviews. The reality is that nine million iPhones is impressive no matter how you look at it.
The Soapbox: On MMO negativity
Disclaimer: The Soapbox column is entirely the opinion of this week's writer and does not necessarily reflect the views of Massively as a whole. If you're afraid of opinions other than your own, you might want to skip this column. Last week I was given a link to an op-ed piece at Thade's place, and in lieu of posting a comment there, I figured I'd do it on the Soapbox and hopefully generate some discussion (and traffic) for all concerned. In a nutshell, Thade questions whether MMO pundits actually like MMOs, and he comments on a perceived rise in negativity amongst what are assumed to be fans of the genre. I don't know if the blogosphere has taken a turn toward the negative, but if so, there's a pretty simple explanation for it. The games have changed, and the old guard who grew up with MMOs (and are willing/able to devote time to blogging about them) have to try a little bit harder to enjoy themselves as each new title gets further and further from what they like. That's OK, though, and it's also OK -- and even essential -- for the disaffected to speak up.
