Daniel Lyons's Blog, page 14

A Siri backlash?

I'm not talking about the abortion stuff, which was ridiculous. But I'm starting to see grumbling about the simple fact that Siri just doesn't work all that well. In the latest pieces the writers aren't willing to say, as Jordan Crook of TechCrunch did recently, that while Siri is disappointing, "in the end it's my fault."

Jason Kincaid on TechCrunch lashes out at Siri in his piece explaining why he likes the Galaxy Nexus better than the iPhone 4S. He calls Siri "completely underwhelming" and refuses to accept the fanboy rationalization that "Siri is just a beta product."

Also: Beta, schmeta. Apple fans have repeatedly pointed out that Siri is being billed as a Beta by Apple, and so it shouldn't be held to such high standards. In my mind Apple lost the 'Beta' fallback the moment it started running commercials promoting the feature — some people are buying an iPhone 4S exclusively because of Siri because it's been so highly touted.

Then comes blistering write-up by Mat Honan on Gizmodo where he refers to Siri as "Apple's broken promise" and calls it "a half-baked product," writing:

Apple is the company that sells perfection. It's a company that usually keeps its promises, and in its Siri ads, it promises far more than what it actually delivers. That's not what any of us signed up for.

Honan also refuses to accept the line about Siri being a beta product, saying that you can't call something beta but then advertise the hell out of it.

I've had a 4S for a few days and haven't used it much. And a bunch of times I've tried to use it and it was not available.

I'm wondering what others are finding out. Has Apple over-promised and under-delivered?

Come hang out with Matias Duarte, the lead designer of Android

My colleagues at Newsweek Daily Beast are trying to arrange some Google+ Hangouts with interesting tech industry folks. First one we've scheduled is this Wednesday, Dec. 7, at 4:30 p.m. East Coast time with Matias Duarte, a renowned computer interface designer who runs the user experience team for Android. I spoke with him recently during a visit to Google and hope to publish a Q&A from the talk very soon. He's a fascinating guy who studied fine arts as an undergraduate and hoped to become a painter. Before joining Google he worked at Palm, Helio and Danger.

I'm really excited about the chance to meet via Google+ and have others join the conversation, so I hope you will take a minute to drop in on our chat. We'll be talking about Ice Cream Sandwich, of course, and about the new Galaxy Nexus phone. But I am hoping to get Matias talking about his approach to design and where human computer interfaces might evolve in the future.

We have another exciting guest lined up for next week. Will tell you more about that later.

Are these the two best phones in the market right now?

Which of these phones would you buy — the iPhone 4S or the Samsung (Google) Galaxy Nexus? If you saw them sitting side by side in the store, which one would you take home with you?

I finally got an iPhone 4S last night, and now can do side-by-side comparisons with the Galaxy Nexus I picked up at Google a couple weeks ago. First impressions: the camera on the iPhone 4S is amazing, and definitely better than the camera on the Nexus. (I still can't fathom why Google and Samsung put a 5-MP camera in the Nexus when the Galaxy S II has an 8-MP camera.)

The feature I really wanted to check out is Siri, and I haven't had much time yet. A few 4S owners I've talked to say they don't use it much. But even in my few early tests it seems Siri is better than any of the alternatives on Android. (Vlingo, Skyvi, Iris, Cluzee.)

My other immediate impression is more visceral. The Nexus is much bigger, but also lighter. The screen is brighter. At first I thought it was too big, but over the past two weeks I've come to like having all the screen real estate.

Apple fans claim the iPhone 4S is the perfect size, because you reach every part of the screen with your thumb. I get that. But I think the iPhone is starting to look too small. I was surprised this week when one of my neighbors, a petite woman, said she's frustrated with the small screen on her 4S. She tried out the Nexus and liked it. And her hands are really small. Maybe the ability to do everything with one thumb is overrated — or, at least, maybe it's outweighed by the benefits of a bigger screen.

My technique with comparing phones is just to have a bunch of them lying around, all connected to Google Voice. I have all of them available and just see which one, over time, is the one I most naturally pick up and want to use. I try not to think about it, and just see which one do I grab and throw in my pocket when I'm headed out, which one is the one I pick up to check email in the morning, that kind of thing.

Recently I had a Nokia Lumia 800 running Windows Phone in the mix — and every time the phones rang, the Nokia was the one I picked up. The design is just really nice, and it feels great in your hand. I'm doing an interview with the head of design at Nokia next week, and I'm anxious to talk to him about the Lumia 800. It really is a gorgeous device, and the Windows interface is really fresh and different.

A new look for YouTube

Another story for today's hungry Beast — YouTube doing a major overhaul of its look and feel.

So what if your phone is a spy?

The real lesson around the Carrier IQ story is that soon everything we use will be spying on us. My argument on the Beast is that as long we're going to have these feeding frenzies every time someone finds out about some new snooping technique, we might also start to realize that this is the new reality we've created. It's only going to get worse when the "Internet of things" (sensors in everything) becomes a reality. Welcome to the digital panopticon. One funny footnote: When I wrote the Beast story, this morning, I ended by predicting that soon someone in Congress would recognize the opportunity to generate publicity and announce some kind of inquiry. I didn't realize it would happen so quickly. Thank you, Al Franken.

What is going on with the Galaxy Nexus?

Google and Verizon are driving me crazy on this, and apparently I'm not the only one. I've been using a Galaxy Nexus for a couple weeks now, and I'm hooked. Now I want the real thing, with LTE speed from Verizon. First the rumor was it had been pushed back to Dec. 8. Now the rumor is Dec. 11. Richi Jennings at Computerworld thought he had it "confirmed" that VZW would be taking pre-orders starting Nov. 29, but Tuesday came and went and … nothing. My emails to Verizon and Google go unanswered. Does anyone have a clue? A theory?

 

What Zuck might say if he could be brutally honest

Once again Facebook is apologizing to users. But what do you think Zuck would really like to say? If he could just be totally honest and obnoxious? My "open letter to Facebook users" is up on the Beast this morning.

Yahoo has become the Paris Hilton of tech

My latest on the Beast, regarding the rumors about Google and everyone else wanting to buy Yahoo. Money quote:

Yahoo has turned into the Paris Hilton of tech companies—a ditzy, dopey outfit that remains enormously popular even though nobody, including Yahoo itself, seems to know exactly what Yahoo does for a living. And like the heiress, for reasons that most sane people can't understand Yahoo continues to attract a string of potential suitors and to find itself the subject of constant rumors even though it long ago ceased to be interesting.

The Jobs backlash begins

That's the title of my piece that just went up on Daily Beast, and it's what I kept thinking as I pored through the Isaacson biography, which landed on my iPad last night. Much of the stuff in the book is not new, but much of the stuff that is new is kind of disappointing to people who want to view Steve Jobs as a kind of messiah figure. The stuff with Lisa, the complaints from Jony Ive about Steve taking credit for things and being hurtful to people, the stuff about Steve never seeing his kids, his obsession with Android, the unkind comments about so many people around him, the crazy attempts to cure his cancer with carrot juice and acupuncture, the demand that Obama call him personally to request a meeting, the strange Montgomery Burns suggestions to Obama about deregulating businesses so they could be more like China and about making kids go to school 11 months out of the year and stay in session until 6 p.m. — these things do not add up to a flattering portrait and and they stand in stark contrast to the hagiography we've seen in the 19 days since Jobs died. Maybe this is a good thing. I've always felt that people did Steve a disservice by portraying him as a holy man, some kind of silicon saint leading us into the promised land. It seemed to me that Steve had a deep reservoir of darkness inside him, and that this dark energy was what fueled his genius. WIthout it, he would have been just another Silicon Valley marketing guy in a pair of khakis and an Oxford shirt. His challenge was to harness that dark energy and use it without being consumed or destroyed by it.

Talking about Steve in New York this weekend

Mike Daisey is doing a run of his one-man show, "The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs," at the Public Theater in New York. (Ticket info here.) This Sunday I will be participating in a panel discussion after the show with Mike and some others. Show starts at 4 p.m., and panel starts at 7 p.m. I've never met Mike and have not seen the show. I'm looking forward to doing both.