The article is about OUYA but i’m more interested at this quote which i think relevant; especially in the wake of the whole kerfuffle about piracy in Android forcing developers making their game free

“There are two platforms: [iOS] makes money [and] is still very programmable, like the Apple II, and then the other is Android, which is a piracy platform, and you’re not doing anything new with it — you’re making a bigger phone that connects to your TV.”

I don’t see any chance for OUYA to actually achieve any kind of meaningful success if developers still have this image sticks in their mind. Worse even that the whole concept of OUYA relies the fact that you can play games on it for free. Do something, Google.

Police are still chasing a false image of their own professionalism, conceived a half century ago. The professionalism of the 1950s and 1960s, made popular in American television shows like Dragnet, Starsky and Hutch, and S.W.A.T. held out a promise that following the law, mastering sophisticated weaponry, and pledging loyalty to the organization would bring professional discipline and, with it, public respect. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

The whole article is a must read

WSJ reports:

While wages in Indonesia are lower than those in China, Indonesia in many areas lacks the infrastructure crucial to a company as massive as Foxconn, China’s largest exporter. The archipelago’s clogged roads, frequent power disruptions and overstretched ports all get in the way of producing and delivering products cheaply and on time.

Amazing how a country so aspired to be a giant could hit the same brick wall over, and over, and over, again. Infrastructure. But honestly i’m indifferent about Foxconn wanting to open business here. I think it could solve lots of problems, including the fact that with so many low-wage jobs available, we might not have to send so many workers to foreign countries. But in reality, Indonesia might not be the best option for Foxconn.

Why? Two reasons:

1. Very open media culture
2. Very corrupt political bases that operates like leeches

These 2 factors, when mixed together, will make Indonesia a very expensive option for factories like Foxconn to operates. Politicians will try to find every holes and weaknesses of Foxconn operation and complain in the media. And the unions. Demands, complains, lobbying, public relations. Very expensive.

To make it simple and short, operating in a full-fledged democracy is very expensive for factories like Foxconn to operates in. If i’m the CEO of Foxconn i’d consider opening factories in places like Myanmar or Vietnam instead.

Marco Arment:

Postbox’s exit from the Mac App Store should sound very familiar to anyone who buys Mac software. If you read between the lines a bit, I think the real story there is one we’ve seen a lot since June 1: they tolerated the App Store’s lack of paid upgrade mechanics before, but sandboxing — and more accurately, needing to remove important app features because of their incompatibility with the current set of sandboxing entitlements — was the last straw.

To top it all off, the 30 percent cut on every apps sold i think also plays some deciding factor. Not every app is a blockbuster app; and some of these apps require lots of people to develop and provide support.

This is sparrow all over again. The difference is there’s no Google to save Postbox from being eaten by the new economy of software where you sold software like you sold magazines; the only savior is their own strategy. And you gotta admit, being in Apple App store, whether it’s mac or iOS, practically gave all your hands and strategy to Apple. It’s a practical statement saying, “tied my hands apple, be my pimp. Take care of me”. Not the greatest strategies i’d say.

Mr. Brett Kelly of Evernote Fame on his quest to read John Siracusa’s insanely great OS X Mountain Lion review and facing the dread of many, many pages to click:

This year, it’s a little different. I use Instapaper for most of my longer-form article consumption and, as of recently, this service is able to figure out if an article has been spread across multiple pages.

I can’t help but think that Ars (and sites like Ars) must be a little miffed at Instapaper (and services like Instapaper). Naturally, the reason Ars spreads the article out over so many pages is so they can get 20-something ad impressions per reader of the article. Or, as described earlier, you can pay some dough and get a PDF without ads. Instapaper (and services like it) effectively sidestep both monetization efforts by offering the equivalent of the paid option for free.

Walled Garden is easier than ever to break, i think. I personally came to the same solution and read the review using Pocket on my Nexus S since reading multi-page review is so hard for 2 factors:

1. I’m lazy (and i’m not alone on this).
2. Reading a long article like this through time-shifter service like Pocket, Readability or Instapaper is easier. Much, much easier since not only the formatting is better, but it automatically download the whole thing to native apps installed on your phone (or mac, or iPad) for your reading pleasure.

These 2 deciding factors could obviously be dangerous for sites that depends heavily on multi-page content. Not just because apps like Pocket, Readability & Instapaper eliminate the content-provider ads, but also the incentive is lost for these sites’ users to upgrade. Why upgrade when you can eliminates both hassles by clicking once? Like a cancer, they kills, but they kill slowly.

So how to solve this? Well how about for sites to stop depending on gimmick like multi-page content to make users say “aaarrgghh okay then let’s just upgrade”. I can understand sites like Cracked or New York Times to do this but ARS Technica? Your majority of users are geek, and i’ll bet they can find a way to read your content other than paying subscriptions to remove ads; they can use Adblock. Clicking 12 times? No, no, no. Click “read later” once on your bookmakrs bar and problem solved.

I’m not saying that sites should just give their contents for free, but if you want to do subscriptions as your business model, go all the way. Do it the New York Times way. Blocks all the bookmarklet. Be a jerk. But you’ll be a jerk with happy customers. You want to serve ads? Go crazy. But how about making it relevant? I like those ads that Daring Fireball & other 1000+ blog that apple fanboy¹ have, where you get what’s practically a promoted content, but content that is actually good.

My point: if you want to make a garden, chose carefully and don’t do it half-assedly. If you chose wall to protect your garden, make it as high as possible, but make the insides a total beauty to look at. Want to make a free park with Saul Goodman ads on every bench? Do it! But don’t do it both ways.

Ben Brooks:

The problem isn’t designing for the new retina MacBook Pro, the problem is designing on the new retina MacBook Pro for non-retina screens.

Some designers are complaining that designing in a Retina Macbook Pro is problematic. It’s good. too good. It’s so good that the designer forgets not everybody is a rich elitist bastard¹ who are able to enjoy the latest technology.

Jakarta Globe reports:

Thousands of tempeh and tofu producers in the Greater Jakarta area are threatening to halt production this week after the price of soybeans, the raw material for the products, skyrocketed in recent months.

Ironic that a type of food ¹ that practically forever has been taken for granted, is now one of the most expensive thing in the market, isn’t it.

Yet it’s another proof that we’re living in a very different world than the one our founders lived; Soekarno used this food as an example of popular and easy to get “soft” food that he thinks should not be an embodiment of how the people lived. “We are not a nation of tempe”, he said.² 67 years later, his word turned out to be the truth, although not quite like what he had in mind.

Interesting if not pretentious post on Gizmodo:

Looks like Google didn’t pay enough attention to the Steve Jobs memo that the key to a successful Tablet is an outstanding display. If high image and picture quality is important to you, then you might want to skip the Google Nexus 7 and wait for a Tablet with a better display, or wait and see if Google can correct the problem.

How dare you Google, making a $199 tablet with worse display than a $500 one?

In other news: BMW is more comfortable than a Honda. Surprise, surprise.

9to5mac:

The Company sold 26.0 million iPhones in the quarter, representing 28 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 17.0 million iPads during the quarter, an 84 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. The Company sold 4.0 million Macs during the quarter, a two percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 6.8 million iPods, a 10 percent unit decline from the year-ago quarter.

The iPod continues being the abandoned older son who got outshined by his younger brother. But this is amazing number.

And you’d expect Wall Street got excited by these numbers right? Especially now there’s dividend available in the packaging?

No. Apple share is down, down, down. This happened still even when everybody knew Apple share is embarassingly undervalued. Well, you’ll be nuts for asking Wall Street to use some of that thing called logic.

Kara Swisher at All ThingsD:

Hedge funder Dan Loeb of Third Point has bought another 2.5 million shares of Yahoo, for about $40 million this week, bringing his total to 73 million shares, according to a regulatory filing. Loeb

So i guess no call to Stanford from Loeb verifying Mayer’s degree then.