On Twitter today, a couple of arguments continue to rage. One concerns Twitter, which, according to some people, has just turned into the BIG BAD of social networking, in having to deal with censorship. Elsewhere, Apple is being beaten into the ground by a number of tech pundits over supply chain issues, not least relating to human rights and labour.

I’m anti-censorship and also not thrilled by the situation endured by people building iPads and other Apple kit. But I also happen to be a realist: censorship will happen; goods will continue to be manufactured in places like China, by people working under conditions and for pay that would not be acceptable in many countries. To my mind, how we react to these things is therefore very important.

It’s increasingly apparent that many critics have joined yet another knee-jerk online mob. Twitter are evil! They censor things! Grrr! But what about Twitter’s rivals—how open are they? (Answer: mostly not very.) Do they provide pages with explanations regarding what is censored and how? (Answer: rarely.) And Apple is evil! But what about Apple’s rivals in computing, smartphones and tablets? How many of them use Foxconn and similar manufacturing companies? (Answer: the vast majority of them.) How many of them not only audit these places and stop working with those that don’t pass standards, but also make said auditing openly available? (Answer: I’ve no idea, but I’ve found no other examples like Apple’s. If you have, please let me know in the comments.) And now widen the target to other electronics, and even things like clothes. Are the things you’re buying all ethically produced? If so, congratulations (and I mean that sincerely), but I bet that’s a vanishingly small percentage of people reading this post; and if not, stop slamming one company out of a countless number manufacturing in China, not least because it’s seemingly at least doing something about the problems that are occurring there.

In the case of Apple, I’ve also had comments that Apple’s massive profits means it should lead by example and bring its manufacturing back into the USA and EU. But at that point, one of two things happens: Apple either ramps up its prices and becomes uncompetitive in terms of commerce, or its profits vanish, and it becomes a company that becomes uncompetitive in terms of investment. This could in a short period of time derail the company and ensure its rivals leapfrog it, bringing us back to square one, apart from the diminishing number of people working for a US/EU-only (or whatever) version of Apple. And that’s even suggesting it would be possible for Apple to do this—after all, ensuring some kind of US/EU-only manufacturing for every component would be a massive, possibly entirely unrealistic undertaking. Recently, it was reported that Chinese companies ended up manufacturing iOS devices not only because they were better from a costs standpoint, but also because nowhere in the USA had the capabilities.

As far as I can see, we now have two tech companies criticised for being, if not ‘good’, then at least the ‘least bad’. The ‘least bad’ isn’t something I typically champion, but I would argue that any element of openness from giant social networks and corporations is a good thing. Twitter’s openness about its censorship is something that should be praised, but that doesn’t mean you’re praising the censorship itself; likewise, Apple’s openness about its supply chain should be praised, but that doesn’t mean you back anything to do with the impact of Apple’s manufacturing, including from environmental, safety and human rights standpoints.

But to instead chastise these companies will merely encourage its rivals to clam up instead of following the examples of Twitter and Apple, to a point where change becomes more widespread and possible. I’m not saying things can’t and shouldn’t be better. I’m not saying we shouldn’t encourage them to do more—we very much should. But I am saying we shouldn’t be quick to simply slam those who are trying to improve things, even if the steps are much smaller than we’d like.

Engadget reports on Nintendo’s rather poor quarter:

The company posted profits of ¥40.9 billion (about $631.6 million) for the October – December period, representing a 61 percent quarterly drop. That’s especially disappointing, considering that this period has traditionally been strong for Nintendo, which had previously forecast an operating profit of ¥1 billion (around $12.9 million). Those forecasts have since changed, however, with the manufacturer now predicting a ¥45 billion ($580 million) operating loss for the full year, ending March 31st. Nintendo blames the poor showing to sagging 3DS sales, which have forced it to slash prices.

Despite my gaming now almost entirely being on iOS, and my belief that iOS has heavily impacted on Nintendo (through people gaming on smartphones and iPods, and through parents buying children iOS devices over Nintendo handhelds with expensive, easy-to-lose cartridges), I was fairly positive about the company a year ago:

It remains to be seen if the 3DS sales slump is a temporary glitch, and even if the console isn’t a massive hit, that certainly doesn’t mean Nintendo is in any way doomed. Like Apple, it’s managed to be profitable at almost every point during its history, even when one of its consoles only had a minority share of the market. But Nintendo could for the first time find itself ousted as the default company synonymous with handheld gaming—and that would be a pretty major shake-up for the entire industry.

I still think Nintendo is probably the company most people think of as synonymous with handheld gaming; the thing is, that’s clearly no longer enough for it to remain profitable. And since that was Nintendo’s trump card—an Apple-like profitability regardless of its market position, that is a major concern for the company.

When the 3DS appeared, I didn’t think it was enough. It felt like a relic, with a gimmick—an echo of a bygone age, where dedicated handheld gaming devices still mattered. It continued Nintendo’s line of thinking that had worked so well since the original Game Boy: technologically middling but accessible and portable hardware; reliance on high-quality first-party IP that’s drip-fed over many months to an eager audience; software sold on expensive cartridges; an honest focus on the purity of gaming; a level of accessibility that the likes of Sony can only dream of.

These ideals were once precisely what the industry needed, but now Nintendo has to face the harsh reality that it’s veering dangerously close to becoming another Sega. If it cannot halt the decline with the Wii U, whatever it brings out next in the handheld space (and I’ll be surprised if the DS brand isn’t retired, enabling the Game Boy to—potentially—triumphantly return) will have to be nothing short of amazing—a device that will wrench people away from smartphones and iPods, back to Nintendo. But if Nintendo continues to stubbornly follow the same path, will that be enough? It wasn’t for the 3DS. So will the company bite the bullet and go with the flow, with a system that works with cheaper downloads rather than expensive cartridges, and that at the very least recognises some manner of an app ecosystem (with stronger options regarding web browsing, social networking, reading, movies, music, and so on)?

I hope so. Despite what raging Nintendo fan-boys think whenever I criticise the company (my record to date: a drop of 50 Twitter followers from one short string of comments some months back), I do not want Nintendo to fail. Although over-reliant on refreshing certain aspects of its catalogue a little too often, it’s also been a company of innovation. The original DS was a brave move, as was the Wii. Both made gaming more accessible and open, wrenching it from the claw-like grips of so-called ‘hardcore’ gamers. For a long time, I considered Nintendo the Apple of gaming—a company that cared about the details and about the right things (fun, excitement, enjoyment). Nintendo’s problem these days is that Apple is now the Apple of gaming—and the Japanese veteran needs to fight back, perhaps borrowing some of the tricks used by the plucky American upstart.

The Appside reports Nvidia’s VP of mobile content predicting the future of mobile hardware market-share:

Apple is fabulously successful and I’m sure will continue to be so, but I do think Android will, over time, really dominate the mobile market. It’s nothing to do with who’s better, it’s just you have thousands of companies producing these devices… I think it’s going to be a repeat of the PC/Mac market, with 80% Android and 20% iOS.

First, that really isn’t a repeat of the PC/Mac market, which has mostly been closer to 95:5. Even now, with Apple massively outpacing the PC market by some margin, its share of computers remains in single figures.  But secondly, and most importantly, I find the argument that there has to be—or even that there will be—one dominant player in the mobile market without foundation. If we look back through the history of technology, and even examine the present, the PC/Mac market was an aberration. You don’t have people arguing that only one company will become dominant in TVs, cars, sound systems, and so on.

Additionally, we’re today able to enjoy a large amount of interoperability between different systems, largely thanks to the internet, and also through instant-messaging systems, social networks, and even the likes of SMS. Each hardware provider attempts to have its own lock-ins and ecosystems, but, increasingly, we have a mobile environment that can happily cater for and support a number of players.

I don’t doubt Android will retain the largest chunk of the market, although it does appear it will become increasingly fragmented—we may soon end up in a situation were Android is merely the underlying foundation for a number of systems that are, in a de-facto sense, individual entities. (Although I suspect most reporters will happily ignore this, in order to produce yet more link-bait headlines.) But iOS dropping to 20 per cent, or further? It’s possible, but I certainly don’t think we should be using the PC/Mac battles of the 1990s as evidence that it will. And Apple’s Q1 and Verizon’s Q4, where it was revealed more than half of Verizon’s sales were iPhones (CNET), shows that Apple can hold its own against the Android juggernaut, despite being the only company making iOS devices.

A form letter for acquired start-ups.

We are excited to continue our core mission of connecting people with solutions at our new home.  Please realize that this is so vague a statement  as to be completely meaningless.  But we just made so much money that at the moment we genuinely believe this horseshit.  In reality, you will never hear about us or anything we create ever again.  We are probably going to end up, like, implementing a new scrollbar for Google Reader or something.

And then Google will hit ‘revert’ a week later.

Hat-tip: @joestump

New RIM CEO Thorsten Heins has a video on YouTube. And it’s, um… interesting. It comes across a little like a hostage video combined with a dollop of delusional, and although there are some fair statements lurking, there’s also quite a lot of PR disaster.

I joined this company four years ago, and it was growing but comparably it was still small in the wireless arena, as a player. We have taken this to totally new heights…

This is true. The now-booted co-CEOs really have taken being “comparably small in the wireless arena” to new heights by turning RIM from a leader in the field into a marginal player.

If we continue doing well what we’re doing…

If we continue doing bad things well…

I see no problems with us being in the top three players worldwide […] in wireless.

We might just be able to fend off Microsoft!

At the very core of RIM […] is the innovation. I mean, we always think forward.

Notice how we managed to easily defeat those upstarts iOS and Android!

We sometimes think the unthinkable […] We’ve learned to execute.

NOW WE FIND THE TRUTH BEHIND THE EX CO-CEOS! (That might possibly be a selective quote above.)

Unfortunately, your correspondent fell asleep at this point, due to Heins’s relentless monotone, and so we have to guess as to the remainder of the video’s content. It probably went something like this:

Blah blah marketing blah blah blah better consumer products blah blah need to be better blah already brilliant blah blah blah we are the future blah blah we are unique blah blah we will be back blah BlackBerry is great blah blah innovation blah blah blah focus blah blah quality blah blah THUD.

Also, remember that awful and dull seven-minute Tim Cook video when he took over the CEO role at Apple? No, me neither.