If only users actually changed their buying behavior on the basis of security or privacy. Until that happens "users don't care about security or privacy" will continue to be the default since economically speaking it is absolutely true.
What users care about as revealed by buying behavior is: user experience, user experience, user experience, user experience, cost, user experience, and user experience.
The celebrity nude hack is a good case in point. "The cloud means some knucklehead from 4chan might steal all your data because they don't like your blog posts" has a certain ring to it.
It also might be helpful to drop "privacy." It's security. These are vulnerabilities. Apple could have encrypted this stuff with keys the customer controls, but that takes more engineering to make it friendly and usable. They won't until people care.
> Technology can help create newer, more engaging distractions.
Watching how people react to the Occulus, "OMG it's sooo real!" I can't help thinking how badly screwed we are as a species when it goes mainstream. FarmVille addiction, World of Warcraft will look like a walk in the park to Occulus addicts who no longer know or care what reality is. Perhaps I'm just overly pessimistic
Maybe not the Oculus Rift but that's coming out soon, one can only imagine what the next 10-20 years will bring. Here is Ray Kurzweil helping with that. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=660oel93vZA
Which is why people wearing corrective lenses feel so detached from the world.
You are seriously underestimating the ability of the human brain to tune out irrelevant inputs.
Even then, you're aware of the contacts or the implant, unless you're living in the Matrix and were genetically engineered with a AV jack in your spinal column.
I imagine much of the same will happen. People will live their lives like always, and sometimes escape to a fantasy world, just now using a different new technology. Also like now, some will be addicts. We've had many new entertainment technologies come and go, each one thought to be more engaging than the last, but the fundamental behaviors of human beings seem to be the same.
I think the mind makes it real, even when it's words on a page or dots on a tiny screen. So I honestly don't think it's going to make a lot of difference.
The first time I saw a 3D movie it was incredibly immersive. But after a few, the brain reconfigures its expectations, and the same inputs are interpreted as "just a movie".
As smart creatives I dont think we're the target audience but rather decision makers at established businesses who are seeing their markets getting disrupted.
... but if Apple Pay ( https://www.apple.com/apple-pay/ ) turns into a big success, it could have the potential to unbalance the relationship Apple has with it's customers.
Not if you look at how it actually works. Apple is involved in the process in a way where they don’t have to do or know much. It seems it’s deliberately set up that way.
Regarding which basic features they had to add after the first wave of beta feedbacks I don't believe them that they have been developing + using the language for years.
Waaaaiit a second! This "async thing" is not a fad created by node.js but rather the effective conclusion of the C10K problem - http://www.kegel.com/c10k.html - that we could scale up our application servers to handle more requests and that threads alone had failed to get us there.
And sorry anyone who wants to claim that Java's green threads are somehow a better programming model than async IO ala node.js + promises is pretending to write code. Yes async IO is not easy, certainly nowhere near as simple to manage as process / fork but with consistent coding style your can still end up with a system that behaves predicably and most importantly can be reasoned about.
Meanwhile I bitterly regret the days and weeks of my life lost to debugging threaded code. Never again!
How do you know that the app published on the App Store is the same one you have the source code for? Can't I can just give you some source code then release something else entirely?
or download from a source you trust and compare hash from another trustworthy source. just like anything you download. unless you run gentoo, but then how do you trust your sources, etc
and if you have a closed source phone os that only allows to install from their store... well you have to learn to crawl before you walk.
B) hash checksums for everything, including the resulting binaries
You probably can't do this on iOS, but on Android you can have a third party app monitoring the changes, or simply disabling the automatic updates altogether.
Or even for IRS to subpoena such records directly, it's not like NSA is the only agency in the whole USG that can order relevant documents to be turned over for investigations in their bailiwick. Maybe it would need a warrant instead but it can't be too difficult for IRS to just get it themselves.
IMO the silently majority is tired of a panopticon of "look it me now" social services who's main use case is massaging users egos.
Google should start over, Android-first (instead of web -first) and make the phone Addressbook / Google Contacts the focal point for everything social. Look at WhatsApp - it does exactly this - your phone number is your ID and your contacts is your social graph; how you interact with them - who you call, message etc and when / where you do it - these are your circles
Meanwhile if you look at the direction Apple is going, eg new APIs for iCloud eg fingerprint authentication, new APIs for foto management / sharing etc etc. they look about ready to pounce on the whole of social...
A large amount of employees have been moved from Google+ to Hangouts and Android.
I think Hangouts is going to be their new standard, unfortunately the transition will likely be fragmented because it's not forced in Android yet.
I've seen a very positive response to Google Hangouts, if they successfully (seamlessly) integrate it into Android then it could be a wildly successfully product. I'm not crazy about the name ("Connect" would be a good alternative IMO) and there should be some more calling/voicemail integration features.
WhatsApp is awful. Why should I need to give my phone number to anyone I want to chat with? There is people with whom I might want to have a text chat without letting them call me, and vice versa. And why, in 2014, should a social account be tied to a particular device? Why doesn't WhatsApp let me use my tablet or my PC to interact with my friends?
If WhatsApp is an example of something, it's that the network effect can make inferior technologies "stick" and dominate markets over much better competitors.
I'd say iMessage over WhatsApp is the example of how to do it now. If Google copied iMessage feature-wise, syncing it between Chrome, Android and iOS, seamlessly integrating SMS and not, I think they'd have a winner.
WhatsApp is simpler but iMessage brings really useful features, and they strongly match Google's key competencies too.
> Google should start over, Android-first (instead of web -first) and make the phone Addressbook / Google Contacts the focal point for everything social. Look at WhatsApp - it does exactly this - your phone number is your ID and your contacts is your social graph; how you interact with them - who you call, message etc and when / where you do it - these are your circles
I find this fascinating, as unless I'm misunderstanding you, you're basically suggesting what G+ did to enrage users as described in the article, but seemingly worse:
Almost everyone have multiple "personalities". We don't share the same with our grandmother, our friends, our boss, our old class mates, random strangers and so on. This extends all the way to which names we use, how we dress in different situations, who we give our phone number to etc..
At first Google seemed to "get" this better than Facebook when they released G+. The moment Nymwars erupted it was clear they did not only not get this, but actively refused to learn.
For some this is not about hiding information. For some it is. For some it is a matter of actual survival - whether due to political involvement, or because of threats of revenge or abuse (think people avoiding abusing ex-partners etc.), or because of gender identity etc. (trans people have an incredible high suicide rate due in part to the reactions of wider society; on top of that there's actual violent reactions from people). Breaking compartmentalisation puts peoples lives at risk, not just cause embarrassing moments.
The first lesson one should learn in social, is that if you wish to create a social network that reflects how people interact, then people need to be able to full compartmentalise what different people see, down to and including your name and who else you are interacting with, and you need to make sure data are not easily leaking between those compartments and that needs to be holy.
In that respect, even having a single, unified addressbook / contacts list demonstrates that they don't understand (or has purposefully decided not to care about) real social networks (as opposed to the "panopticon" service you decry): It cuts as deep as not revealing all the information on all devices at all times - devices can be shared, or lent out, or someone might just glance at one at the wrong moment. It increases the risk of breaking compartmentalisation accidentally unless users are very tech savvy: Suddenly your device beeps, drawing attention to its screen, just as it displays a message the person sitting next to the device should not have seen.
If you're lucky / extremely conventional / boring, you laugh it off. If you're unlucky, it can cost you your job, your relationships, contact with your family, or your life.
Social networks is not just some fluffy web-app thing - it's the fabric of society, and they cut deep.
Exactly. If they'd required you use a real name under the hood but allowed you to present different pseudonymous "facades" for each Circle, and then let you just tie things like Youtube to a given facade? That would be wonderful.
It really seemed like that's the direction they had in mind at the start - understanding that you have familial relationships, online relationships, professional relationships, and letting you compartmentalize those.
But that was just an organizational tool. We needed it to be two-way - in that you need to control your identity as it relates to those circles.
If you look at the reaction of those 99% to Apple planting a U2 album on their phone, you see an angry response when people are made aware...