Google has come up with an algorithm that reduces JPGs by 35%, or maintains existing file sizes but dramatically improves quality. The new JPG is 100% compatible with existing programs and web browsers on all platforms. It’s 100% open-source and compatible with the current JPG standard.
And not a single person will ever use it.
Ok, maybe that’s a bit of a stretch. I’m sure some people at Google will use it. And probably a few geeks who like to tinker, but don’t rely on producing visual graphics for income.
Just because it’s free, or offers the end-user a better user experience, doesn’t mean it’ll actually be popular. Unless Google can convince EVERY LAST IMAGE EDITOR ON THE PLANET to use it by DEFAULT, it’s not going to matter. Google Maps is better than Apple’s iOS Maps. Wanna guess which map app is more popular on the iPhone despite that? Convenience trumps everything.
One has to wonder what the point is. Coming from Google, the angle they take is faster website loading.
I’m sorry, but having a 100kb JPG be reduced by 35% means absolutely nothing. The site is not going to load faster, because a 100kb JPG loads instantly to begin with. Ridding a site of Javascript for tracking and ad-serving is the only thing that’s going to speed up a website (something we know Google is never going to do). Heck, I get emails with 1MB animated GIF images in them that load virtually instantly.
But if Google can convince Adobe to use the algorithm as the default in Photoshop when saving JPGs, I’ll be happy to re-save a ton of old JPGs that are still 30MB in size due to their massive size and PPI settings.
I’m just completely at a loss for words. Well, actually… one word comes to mind. HORSESHIT!
Even if the makers of Monster Energy Drinks were satanic devil worshiping heathens, I doubt they would spend the time and money trying to hide that much devilishness in their logo/package design. Corporate greed would take over.
Fellow designers, this is the type of thing we’re constantly up against. So the next time your client asks you to make the logo “pop,” you can tell them that you’re afraid that details are the devils work. Or some such horseshit.
Any time I see something from an analyst, I immediately mark it as invalid, uneducated drivel. Because it almost always is. But Fred Wilson is a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley—so what’s his excuse for his list of 2016 predictions that are so blatantly obvious, incredibly stupid, or slightly crazy?
I won’t comment on each of his 10 bouts of idiocy, but here are my thoughts on a few of them:
#2 We will see a new form of wearables take off in 2016… If I had to guess, I would bet on something we wear in or on our ears.
No shit, Sherlock, they’re called wireless earbuds. That’s the only wearable that’s going to take off… because wearables haven’t taken off as a concept to begin with. Even Apple’s awesome watch isn’t a mass-market breakthrough.
#3 One of the big four will falter in 2016. My guess is Apple. They did not have a great year in 2015 and I’m thinking that it will get worse in 2016.
If you ignore the fact that Apple had one of it’s most successful years in history, and managed to grow its lead as the world’s largest company, then yeah… they had a really crappy year. And of the “big four” (whomever they are), of course you choose Apple, because they’re the only one that will get you page views.
#4 The FAA regulations on the commercial drone industry will turn out to be a boon for the drone sector…
No. It won’t. The drone industry will sit in the fringe “I play with remote control vehicles” sector that it has sat in for the last few years.
#5 The trend towards publishing inside of social networks (Facebook being the most popular one) will go badly for a number of high profile publishers who won’t be able to monetize as effectively inside social networks…
Yeah. Because publishers are monetizing so effectively outside social networks. Honestly, this one is the big “no-duh” statement you’ll read all year. I’m not even sure about what “trend” he’s referring to, since there are only a small handful of publishers who are test publishing with Facebook, Twitter, etc…
#7 Bitcoin finally finds a killer app with the emergence of…
Oh please. Bitcoin is never going to happen. Stop trying to make it happen.
#9 Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee and… As a result the tech sector will line up behind Hillary Clinton who will be elected the first woman President.
The tech sector is going to line-up behind whomever the Democratic candidate is because they know the Republican Party hates anyone who isn’t a rich, white male. Donald Trump actually has a better chance with the tech sector because, you know, they need a little light comedy in their life.
I have a pretty darn fast Internet connection. Much faster than any streaming video service requires, and plenty fast enough for me to download large files with little eye-rolling and finger-tapping. But the thought of updating my iPhone makes me cringe.
When Apple pushes an update to iOS, you have two miserable choices.
Miserable choice #1:
You can render your phone completely useless for as long as it takes to download the OTA (over the air) update, unpack/prepare, install and restart your iPhone. The annoyance is compounded by the fact that you must keep the phone from “sleeping” while the update downloads, otherwise it just stalls. So you basically have to sit there like a jackass flicking the screen every minute or so to keep it active. Unless you have a death-wish, you definitely don’t want to do this while driving.
Miserable choice #2:
You can render your entire home network useless for hours by downloading an enormous iOS installer. It’s like downloading the entire OS just to get the updated components. Everyone in the house will hate you, because your Internet service slows to a crawl while you download what appears to be something the size of the entire Amazon video library just so your Apple Music app gets improved playlists, old photographs stop showing up in Photos app as new every time you connect your iPhone to your Mac, and your Email app works the way it should have to begin with.
…And as is always the case…
I decided to update to iOS 9.2 this morning. At 4am, to be exact. Nobody in my neighborhood is awake, so there is no internet traffic from other users in the local pipe. I made sure no other downloads of any kind were occurring. I decided to ‘download only’ the iOS update via iTunes on my Mac. The 2GB file download offers me the wonderful news that it might be finished downloading by the time I get home from work tonight. That doesn’t include actual install time.
So I decide to go the ‘quick’ route by doing the OTA download. A much smaller file, my iPhone claimed it only need ‘about 15 minutes’ to update. So after 40 minutes of downloading, another 15 or so minutes of updating, and 5 or so minutes of excruciatingly slow restarting, my phone is finally ready to use again.
In contrast, I downloaded and installed the entire Mac operating system from scratch in less time than it takes to do a run-of-the-mill iOS update. And I didn’t have to sit there and babysit the download—–as the Mac is smart enough to not fall asleep while downloading/installing.
Warning: This is a snarky opinion piece. If you would rather not be offended by the fact that I’m not offended, but am offended that you are; well then, this article probably isn’t for you. And I don’t care, but just know that you’ve been warned.
Apple has a sex problem.
No, not an Ashley Madison type of sex problem. Not even a “mom found my stash of porno mags under the bed” type of problem. More of a “he-said, why didn’t she-said” type of problem. Apparently, it also has a race problem. Hell, Apple is just one giant problem… if you believe the Internet, that is.
Apple had barely completed yesterday’s “Hey Siri” event, arguably one of their largest product release events in recent history, when the Internet had one of its all-to-frequent It’s My Turn To Be Offended, Dammit! pile-ons. The sheer stupidity and linkbaitedness of the accusations made in the articles are so thick you can choke on them. And I nearly did.
The Verge posted this pathetic puddle of baboon piss about what I’ll call SmileGate. Apple invited representatives of Adobe to come on stage and demo their software’s image retouching power. And that was their big, huge, massive mistake.
Unfortunately, Adobe chose two men to bring a scantily-clad woman on stage, slap her ass and tell her what nice tits she had.
Wait. That’s not quite accurate. Maybe they just had a photo of a woman, and used the software to make her red lipstick a little bit redder, and turn up the corners of her mouth to make her appear to be slightly smiling.
The horror. I mean… can you believe the audacity of Adobe to pull this kind of disgusting behavior toward women?
Apparently, Apple hates African Americans, Native Indians, Jews, Italians, Armenians, Hungarians, Arabs, and Polacks. And Australians. And anyone from Alaska. And they still hate women of any race, just not quite as much as they used to.
According to the potato sack who wrote that piece of drivel, Apple needs to have one member of every race on Earth speak for at least 45 seconds at every Apple event, just to show that Apple is a company by the people, for the people… or something like that. I don’t know.
I have an image in my mind of Tim Cook in a sweat-soaked blue shirt, skipping and hopping around on stage while clapping and screaming DIVERSITY. DIVERSITY. DIVERSITY. DIVERSITY. Of course, people would probably be offended by the blatant gimmick copying:
And then the entire frigging Internet pooped out Tweets and links to the same or similar articles. Because you know, nobody wants to be left out. I dunno. The race to the bottom of the ‘It’s My Turn To Be Offended’ barrel on the Internet is getting quite tired.
No matter what Apple does here, some people are going to find a way to be butt-hurt about it. If Apple had filled the entire keynote with female employees speaking about all the products, their would surely be a gaggle of loudmouths accusing Apple of conspiring to put one over on us, or ‘play to the crowd’ too much. One more African American, one more Asian, one more of any race, and the same people would probably sport their Confederate flag shirts and hold up signs that read ‘MERICA!
The world has a diversity problem, and it appears that if I wish to fit in with the hip crowd, I must blame Apple.
Now that the U.S. government has brought peace to the world, fed all the hungry, employed all the jobless, fixed our education system, and overhauled our miserable healthcare; I think it's great that they're focusing on more important things like investigating Apple over $10 p/m music subscriptions.
— The Graphic Mac
Apple must have a lot of ping-pong balls in the government’s “who do we investigate next” lottery barrel.
There are dozens of ways in which Apple’s apparent effort to build an Apple-branded car could go wrong, but there’s one argument against the idea that I’m hearing a lot of that really doesn’t make sense. From Henry Blodget to former GM CEO Daniel Akerson to the LA Times to Yahoo Finance people are saying this won’t work because the car industry is a “low margin” business in contrast to the fat margins Apple is used to earning most of all on its workhorse iPhone.
Vox has a great take on the “low margin” aspect of this Apple Car story. The observations of idiots like the former GM CEO, Daimler AG chairman, and Yahoo Finance writers are so completely out of touch with the reality that Apple has been operating under for the last decade, that it’s no wonder they find their companies (Mercedes excepted) swirling around the toilet bowl with all the other turds of business.
That being said, those minivans Apple rented that have been seen driving all over CA, FL, AZ and a few other places, have been proven to be mapping vehicles (possibly even 3D mapping). So all this palaver of Apple building a car in the next five years, while interesting and fun to talk about, is just silly click-bait at this point in time.
