Accidental Tech Podcast

Hurry if you want an ATP T-Shirt! Just $19, and the sale may be over by the time you read this! Follow-up: Who plays video games vs. self-identified "gamers" ComiXology Is Apple's 30% cut of in-app purchases the same as net neutrality? Vihart Video Internet2 Who should blink, Apple or ComiXology? AppLinks App.net sunsets its employees Brianna Wu's Post Tent Chrome experiments with removing URLs fr...

ATP T-Shirts : $19 each, available for only 1 week! Follow-up: Average age of gamers (more here and here from the Entertainment Software Association) Your favorite game genres going out of fashion Apps and games Mentioned: Metal Gear Solid Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Flight Control (iTunes) The Incident Letterpress Tiny Wings Ramp Champ Threes Total Annihilation Supreme Commander Facebook App...

Follow-up on pCell and database scaling, including horizontal sharding schemes, tiered data layers, and taking a stand against the "premature optimization" tautology. When and why do developers learn something new, and why does Marco keep using PHP for everything? Second Crack Fast Text John's blog OS X Beta Program for End Users What's coming on June 2nd? Casey and Marco make John proud ( spoiler...

Follow-up on Photo Stream Web Sites Follow-up on vinyl, including how Marc Edwards thinks it's evil , and the difference between pleasing and accurate sound. (Marco's open and closed headphones, amp , and DAC ) The Apple insight attained by way of documents released in the Samsung trial Creativity, Inc. , the book about Pixar by Ed Catmull Is Greg Christie's departure a contentious story or not ?...

Please Hammer, Don't Hurt 'Em while you sunset Dance Jam WWDC How to make a lottery work, like Shmoocon does How to write a live blogging system for keynotes Our winnings and losses in the WWDC Don't-Call-it-a-Lottery Levels of randomness and Apple's discretionary pool of tickets What's the right way to distribute tickets? Is today's WWDC really tenable? What could be done? AltConf and " CDWW " He...

Follow-up on vocabulary and Michael Abrash joining Oculus . Amazon Fire TV — no fan ! USB-IF's renderings of their proposed new connector The giant anti-poaching collusion between Google, Apple, and dozens of other companies ( Facebook apparently refused ) Google checking with Steve Jobs first before making a hiring decision After-show: We tried to predict WWDC dates, not knowing that Apple would...

Follow-up on discussing sexism in technology, Anil's experiment , empathy, ad hominem tu quoque , and cultural rigidity. Facebook buying Oculus : Outrage from Oculus' Kickstarter backers, including from Minecraft creator Notch , and the expectations that Kickstarter creates in "backers". Why did Oculus sell ? How far into the future did Oculus' "vision" extend, and what will happen to its vision n...

Follow-up on the complexity of computer science versus other fields: quotes and videos from MIT's SICP class (9:00–10:45). The death of the iPad 2 , the use of sapphire in Apple devices, sapphire versus Gorilla Glass , and the flexible LG phone . Haunted Empire , the Jony Ive book , the Jony Ive interview , access to Apple, and hiring hacks for tech stories . Sony's Project Morpheus VR headset and...

Follow-up on software complexity : The Mythical Man-Month , No Silver Bullet , the original Agile manifesto , and what Agile has become . What we found most useful from our computer-science educations. Marco's impressions of his new Mac Pro. External disks, PCI-Express SSDs, and cable management. John buys a home-theater AV receiver . ( The newer version he didn't need ) Stereo vs. surround speake...

Follow-up on Final Draft and treating warnings as exceptions in production. Software methodologies. For real this time. Why don’t software development methodologies work? Evidence-based scheduling . Marco plugs FCModel , Casey plugs his Debug appearance , and John plugs bleeps and boops . After-show: CarPlay , and £1,600 audiophile Ethernet cables (via Dalton ). Sponsored by: In Flux : A new music...

Wolfram Language . The "goto fail" SSL bug and the chances that it was nefariously introduced by an NSA effort, possibly as part of their $250 million annual budget for such operations . Apple's warrant canary . Casey's and Marco's hard-to-find bugs and language misfeatures. (Perl protects John from writing bugs.) Whether language-interpreter warnings should be treated as errors in production. The...

Follow-up on why Flappy Bird was successful. Kieran Healy's excellent article with science . John Gruber and Merlin Mann at SXSW '09 . Goofball Jones' anonymous criticism of John's "shtick", and John's defense including many links: An explanation of John's "schtick" Some podcasts where John talks about things he likes: Goodfellas I Like My Coffee Like My Evil Sith Lords Death Star University Darth...

Facebook Paper's gesture usability, in-app tutorial videos, and the design challenge of gestural interface. RootMetrics testing real-world wireless speeds. Despite constant effort to improve usability, what if computers just aren't for everyone? (There's a similar long-standing debate with programming. See 4GL .) The Flappy Bird saga: Whether it's a good game and why the developer pulled it . (See...

The FiOS net-neutrality non-story and last summer's YouTube-throttling story . More FU on iPads going pro, giant-tablet-desk ergonomics, trying to understand John's theory again, and a train analogy from Casey. New Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Bill Gates' new wildcard role, and Microsoft's likely future direction. ( Marco's post , John Gruber's post , Brent Simmons' post ) Paper , Paper , Paper ,...

Follow-up on why an iPad "Pro" needs to be larger and why iOS is "better for people". Can iOS add more power-user functionality without harming its simplicity or usability? Whether Macs should ship with ARM CPUs, how such a transition would be challenging today, and whether Casey should just buy another power adapter. The 30th anniversary of the Macintosh and the experience of using its power swit...

Follow-up: Genius Bar employee reports of how most people deal with iCloud backups, photo backups , and storage limits, iExplorer for exporting iMessages. iOS' storage model is a leaky abstraction . Google may have wanted Nest for its smart-home project as well as the more obvious reasons. TiVo may be exiting the hardware business , or maybe not . Nintendo continues to hurt . Why was the first Wii...

Follow-up: whether iMessage problems are widespread, reasons behind flattening the Mac Mini, and HDR TVs. The storage costs of Casey's emoji. Google buying Nest for $3.2 billion . Ben Thompson on Google's business model . Nest has over 200 employees , including many ex-Apple employees. The Target-pregnant story . Marco's critical reading of Nest's statements . Maintaining a skeptical but pragmatic...

Follow-up: IBM AS/400 (aka System i) and single-level store . Marco's Retina theory . PS4 and Xbone sales . Trying to care about CES. Who "needs" the Mac Pro? Justifying toys and improving quality of life with smart purchases. Panasonic’s new LCD TVs compared to great TVs of the past . 4K on Fox Sports , 4K's color space , and the chances of 4K catching on quickly. A Steam Box ( its controller ) a...

Mac Pro follow-up: socketed CPUs and potential upgrades , and the benefits of only using stock Apple parts. Scoring Apple's performance on John's 2013 to-do list . Concerns about Apple's recent Mac apps, including iWork '13 and Messages/iMessage. AnandTech's Mac Pro review . The Mac Pro's 4K/Retina monitor situation. The iMac vs. the Mac Pro, and the hardware needs of developers. Why do John and M...

Explaining our podcast artwork. Facebook Likes in the App Store and ad-banner blindness . Dual-input displays and how they enable the 5120x2880 display that John and Marco want. Turbo Boost and the Mac Pro's CPU options . Using a laptop on a stand with an external keyboard, mouse, and monitor. The benefits of desktops and ECC. Mac Pro configurations for best value and future-proofing. Building sep...

What if the new USB connector is too similar to Lightning ? ( John Gruber on Lightning ) Potential for 5120-wide Retina displays to overcome Thunderbolt bandwidth limits by using "dual-input displays" ? John's "quick" tips for TV calibration. ( THX TV-calibration app ) "Rate This App" dialogs: The Talk Show's excellent discussion . Marco's post . Underscore David Smith on App Store quality standar...

Accidental Fountain Screenplay: The Case of Liss by Joe Steel. (And Bionic .) Desktop 4K/Retina resolutions hitting bandwidth limitations of Thunderbolt 2 and DisplayPort 1.2, and the Sharp/Apple non-news . John's Squarespace-reseller idea already exists . Why aren't iOS App Store purchases available for purchasing and management in the App Store app on the Mac? John's new TV: Technological progre...

FU on PrimeSense. Apple's acquisition of Topsy and speculation on why . Apple's possible difficulty in getting and keeping enough engineering talent, and how they might make bigger strides in web services. Which group wears the pants in a company? Marco's embarrassing FiOS support calls. How Apple's release and marketing schedule affects their web services. Methodologies and vocabularies. USB spec...

David Chartier's clarification on Photo Stream limits . Space Monkey , Transporter , Box , and Xdrive . Results of John's Disk Utility repair survey. ( John on Debug ) Xbox One launch sales . Apple buys PrimeSense . Apple's potential expansion into the TV business. Penny Arcade's job posting , Marco's reaction , and the outgoing employee's description . Extended after-show: how we deal with critic...

Follow-up on Cisco VPNs on Mavericks and [photo backups] to SkyDrive on Windows Mobile Phone Series Metro Not-Metro Phone Windows . Why enterprise software is so hard, and the barriers to entry for small companies targeting the enterprise market. Game-console sales by generation , Nintendo In Crisis , and AnandTech's Xbox One and PS4 mini-review . Casey's new Retina iPad Mini, Marco's accidentally...