Thanks @Microsoft for this wonderful creation. #SOAPMustDie (Taken with instagram)
It doesn’t even have to be all-or-nothing in a particular function. There is a continuum of value in how pure a function is, and the value step from almost-pure to completely-pure is smaller than that from spaghetti-state to mostly-pure. Moving a function towards purity improves the code, even if it doesn’t reach full purity. A function that bumps a global counter or checks a global debug flag is not pure, but if that is its only detraction, it is still going to reap most of the benefits.
A very good read. Good guidelines. Always refactor towards purity.
(Source: twitter.com)
Setting the stage
Today, while on the train to Bordeaux catching up my tweets, a few tweets in succession made by @timothytiah caught my attention:
Apple fanboys come out to defend the ebook price fixing schedule.
— Timothy Tiah (@timothytiah) April 12, 2012
Apple can do no wrong to these fanboys. If Apple nuked NYC, fanboys will prob say “they did the world a favour by reducing overcrowding”.
— Timothy Tiah (@timothytiah) April 12, 2012
Or some crap like that
— Timothy Tiah (@timothytiah) April 12, 2012
It prompt me to reply with:
@timothytiah it’s funny when you clearly don’t have the full story and judge it with apple fanboy in your argument.
— Stan Chang Khin Boon (@lxcid) April 12, 2012
And that got me a reply:
@lxcid ok enlighten me .
— Timothy Tiah (@timothytiah) April 12, 2012
And thus I would like to present my reply here, as I believe the 140 character limit, even in succession tweets, could not fully explains my feeling and thoughts.
Disclaimer and Background
I am exactly the type of person who is an easy target for stereotyping as the “Apple fanboy”.
Like Timonthy, I make a living using technology (although much less than what he made) and had switched my allegiance to Apple 2 years ago. But that doesn’t means I switched to Apple blindly; On contrary, I studied, documents after documents, learning, comparing the experience with others languages, platforms, APIs, for months before deciding to do a 180 U turn in my career and bet my living on it.
So there will be a bias towards Apple, I admit. Just like supporting Manchester United (which I know Timonthy is a fan of like I am too), the bias-ness is always there and hard to go away.
Like every stereotype, there’s bits of truth, bits of false and a lot of generalizing. In my defense, I would like to claim that I am more sophisticated. I am not here to prove absolute right, nor absolute wrong. I just want to present an argument that I felt that it have been blinded by the stereotype.
The Issues
I want to be fair to Timothy. I believe 3 tweets is not enough to understand his arguments. So I gonna read it as literal as possible and have deduce it to 2 issues.
- The antitrust lawsuit between DOJ and, Apple and seven major publishers.
- “Apple fanboys come out to defend the ebook price fixing schedule.”
- Apple Fanboy’ism
- Apple fanboys come out to defend the ebook price fixing schedule.
- Apple can do no wrong to these fanboys. If Apple nuked NYC, fanboys will prob say “they did the world a favour by reducing overcrowding”. Or some crap like that
Antitrust lawsuit
I claimed that Timothy doesn’t have the full story and made judgement on the issue stereotypically. He brought to his argument a hypothetical example:
Apple can do no wrong to these fanboys. If Apple nuked NYC, fanboys will prob say “they did the world a favour by reducing overcrowding”. Or some crap like that
He might be right depend on who he is referring to, more specific or more general.
Apple fanboys come out to defend the ebook price fixing schedule.
Some people do defense Apple religiously. But targeting “Apple fanboys” as a group, make the argument very stereotypical.
My question is, is he a victim of his own stereotype?
Is every claim that Apple does something wrong, is always wrong for the anti apple fanboy?
The antitrust lawsuit brought against Apple and the seven major publishers is a complex issue involving a lot of parties and they are free to interpretation.
Background
In summary, the seven publishers is unhappy with Amazon fixing the price of ebooks at USD 9.99. Their argument is that it will cements consumer price expectation and reduce their margin which could hurt them in the long run.
Individually, they have no negotiation power against Amazon, the largest distributor of (or may I claim monopolized) ebooks. If they rebel against Amazon, they risk being dropped by Amazon.
Apple is about to announce the iPad and intend to open the iBookStore along with it. Apple put on the table the agency model (70/30 percent revenue share, free the publisher to set their own price).
The publishers see this as way to get out of Amazon stranglehold, together, they holds private meetings to discuss. They are said to conspire to jump ship and swim to the Apple’s agency model.
Apple are said to be a willing participant.
And thus DOJ brought a class-action antitrust lawsuit against Apple and the seven publishers.
Some articles to provide more detail explanations:
- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304444604577337573054615152.html
- http://www.theverge.com/2012/4/11/2941053/inside-the-dojs-ebook-price-fixing-case-against-apple-an-analysis
Is it that simple?
That’s my question.
Antitrust is against anti-competitive behavior, which fit the bill: banding together, conspire to jump ship and make Amazon give in to their demand does sounds anti-competitive. But monopoly by itself is anti-competitive by nature.
The USD 9.99 is reported to be a loss making model, aim to capture the market. (This isn’t an uncommon technique) With Amazon’s sear size and market influence, it will force competitors to use the same money losing model.
Amazon called the settlement a victory for consumers and users of its Kindle e-reading device. It promised to renew discounting, which could put pressure on such rivals as Barnes & Noble Inc. “We look forward to being allowed to lower prices on more Kindle books,” Amazon said.
— http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304444604577337573054615152.html
Such model, is a last man standing model which tends to lead to monopoly. Consumer benefited, Amazon probably benefited in the long run. What about publishers and authors? Will they benefit?
Just look at the argument of Macmillan’s CEO, John Sargent:
But the terms the DOJ demanded were too onerous. After careful consideration, we came to the conclusion that the terms could have allowed Amazon to recover the monopoly position it had been building before our switch to the agency model. We also felt the settlement the DOJ wanted to impose would have a very negative and long term impact on those who sell books for a living, from the largest chain stores to the smallest independents.
When Macmillan changed to the agency model we did so knowing we would make less money on our e book business. We made the change to support an open and competitive market for the future, and it worked. We still believe in that future and we still believe the agency model is the only way to get there.
It is also hard to settle a lawsuit when you know you have done no wrong. The government’s charge is that Macmillan’s CEO colluded with other CEO’s in changing to the agency model. I am Macmillan’s CEO and I made the decision to move Macmillan to the agency model. After days of thought and worry, I made the decision on January 22nd, 2010 a little after 4:00 AM, on an exercise bike in my basement. It remains the loneliest decision I have ever made, and I see no reason to go back on it now.
Other publishers have chosen to settle. That is their decision to make. We have decided to fight this in court. Because others have settled, there may well be a preponderance of references to Macmillan, and to me personally, in the Justice Department’s papers – often without regard to context. So be it.
I hope you will agree with our stance, and with Scott Turow, the president of the Author’s Guild, who stated, “The irony of this bites hard: our government may be on the verge of killing real competition in order to save the appearance of competition. This would be tragic for all of us who value books and the culture they support”. — http://www.tor.com/blogs/2012/04/a-message-from-john-sargent
So, is the US government on the verge of killing real competition in order to save the appearance of competition?
I leave it to you to decide. Even if the final decisions is against Apple, I highly doubt you will use Apple fanboys to categorize those who side with Apple and the seven publishers.
As for me, I am with Apple, like most of the time; with a reason, like always. I felt that Apple basically are making brainless business decision. There’s a very thin line when competitive become unhealthy. With Apple hit rates in recent years, it does looks like Apple could easily turns the tides.
Apple Fanboy’ism
The fundamental divide in the digital age, as described in Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson:
Their differences (Steve Jobs’s and Bill Gates’s) in personality and character would lead them to opposite sides of what would become the fundamental divide in the digital age.
This is the first of the many divides we are seeing in our digital ages. Macintosh vs Windows, Mac vs PC, iOS vs Android vs Blackberry vs WP7, Wordpress vs Drupal vs Joomla, Rails vs Danjo vs PHP, Facebook vs Twitter vs Friendster vs MySpace, etc.
One thing I learnt is that, you gain little by writing off the other side as fanboy. Like I have once been the anti Apple fanboy.
Another technique that helps to make the distinction is to make your UI elements gray and unappealing just to make sure you concentrate on the interaction design first.
— Slide 34
There’s more gold like this in the slides. Excellent techniques on communicating design to developers.
(Source: iosdevweekly.com)
Once you’ve tried Rewind, you’ll wish it were present in every other creative app you’ve tried. It’s a user interface breath of fresh air invented by filmmaker (and FiftyThree designer) Andrew S. Allen, who wanted an “undo” method that worked like the jog dials he uses to go back and forth in time while editing video.
Making iPad even more magical.
(Source: iosdevweekly.com)
A post against making noise early for startup and I agree with it.
How many “beta” products I heard recently deserve the praise?
How many startup manage to turn the noise into something sustainable in the long run?
I am such a skeptic, the answers to these questions are obvious.
Lars Bak, creator of V8, on recipe of innovation… and on Javascript (began at 9:30).
He doesn’t have good comments to say for the latter.
(Source: twitter.com)
“Our whole studio culture was born from the failures of planting,” said studio director Rao, as he explained Bastion’s detailed gardening based upgrade system.
“Players had no idea what was happening,” he said. There were issues with communicating the ideas, and connecting that aesthetically to the world. After a full of year of struggling with it, the team settled on menus.
But the experience gave them a framework for future projects, teaching the studio to make sure problems were small enough to solve, to try new things, and to fall back on convention if they needed to.
Divide and conquer.
