A pretty funny report on TechRadar. Apparently, the UK price of the Xoom has just been updated. Dixons and Carphone Warehouse—who’d cunningly set the pre-order price of the Xoom to the same as the original equivalent iPad—have both realised the device isn’t entirely competitive since the iPad 2 came out. So what have they done? Clearly, sensible companies would realise that there’s still no really compelling answer to “why should I buy something other than an iPad?” and price accordingly.

Dixons has knocked 20 quid off the 32 GB Wi-Fi Xoom’s price, so you can pre-order your “real tablet” now for just £479.99. Meanwhile, Carphone Warehouse has dropped the price of the 3G model to £579.99.

I racked my brain for almost a microsecond before coming up with how they decided on these new prices. On the Apple Store, you’ll be shocked to see the 32 GB iPad 2 come in at £479 and the 3G model at £579. Which still means the Xoom is priced slightly higher, the idiots. But even in a direct comparison, if we ignore the piffling 99-pence extra, it’s effectively the same price for a device offering the vast majority of users an inferior experience, the double idiots.

Personally, I hope Apple changes the price of the iPad 2 three times over the next week, just to fuck with these guys.

David Friedman gets excited about a new save icon on his blog. His thinking: the floppy disk is archaic and many current computer users have likely never used or seen one. Therefore, he creates something new.

I’m not really sure the floppy disk save icon is a problem anyway, for two reasons. First, as iOS has shown, the very concept of manually saving files will soon be obsolete. Mac OS X Lion will soon enable devs to make apps regularly autosave (and provide versioning) on the Mac desktop; other systems will rapidly follow suit. Secondly, popular icons and icon concepts transcend technology and time. As journo chum Chris Brennan wryly pointed out on Twitter:

In the UK the sign for a level crossing is a steam train. I’m not so sure a floppy disk as a save icon is the end of the world.

The difficultly in replacing such icons is two-fold. First, you have to essentially override what’s in people’s heads, icons that are recognised in an instant. Secondly, you have to create something that’s at least as recognisable as what you originally had. This is where Friedman failed, in using a baseball home plate.

The “safe” icon is pointy on one end like an arrow. This can be used to indicate where your file is saved. If the latest version of your file is saved locally, it points down. If the latest version of your file is saved on a server somewhere, it points up.

I’m sure if you know baseball, that all makes sense. But I don’t really know much about baseball—it’s not really a worldwide sport. Similarly, replace the save icon with some kind of football (as in soccer) icon and you’d have Americans scratching their heads. And anyone else who doesn’t know or care for football.

To be fair, it’s very clear that Friedman was only experimenting and playing around, but his article shows how tough it can be to replace existing and popular icons with something that can and will be recognised almost universally. In the meantime, he jokes:

But I still like my idea and urge it to be adopted by anyone writing software for Americans who are baseball fans without internet access or a modern operating system.

Hrn. Henry Blodget over at Business Insider’s having fun with the whole OMG ANDROID IS TEH WIN AND IPHONE IS DEAD thing. In the annoyingly capitalised Android Is Destroying Everyone, Especially RIM — iPhone Dead In Water, he spews out lots of exciting tripe that doesn’t really hold up to scrutiny when you examine the details.

Google’s Android OS has gained an astonishing 7 points of market share in the US smartphone market in the past three months, Comscore says.

RIM’s market share over the same period collapsed, dropping almost 5 points.

Apple’s iPhone share increased slightly, but is dead in the water and has now fallen way behind Android (in smartphones).

According to Blodget, then, Apple retaining its marketshare (in a rapidly growing market), matching the competition (at the very least) in terms of innovation, and making huge profits is ‘dead in the water’.

Apple’s share was always going to fall once Android became the OS that any hardware manufacturer could weld to a device and then go to market with a shitty product that costs naff-all.

So, to summarise: Apple’s selling more devices each quarter and making huge piles of money, but because it’s not matching the increase in sales of the combination of a whole ton of other manufacturers who happen to use various versions of Android, Apple’s iPhone is ‘dead in the water’. OK, got it.

(If you include iPod touches in the calculation, Apple’s share has actually fallen).

Let’s ignore the iPad, eh?

Why do the Android gains matter?

You tell us.

Are Apple bulls right that Apple has an insurmountable hold on the “premium” segment of the market and that it doesn’t matter who has the other 75%?

Yes. Oh hang, on—I bet you’re going to say ‘no’, right?

The Android gains matter because technology platform markets tend to standardize around a single dominant platform (see Windows in PCs, Facebook in social, Google in search).

No they fucking don’t. PC’s were an anomaly. I don’t see every TV being made by Sony, or every handheld console being made by Nintendo, or every TV games console being made by Microsoft.

There’s also a big difference between standardisation and dominance. Facebook is certainly not the ‘standard’ of social networking—it’s just the current one everyone’s in love with. But we’ve been there before and web users are fickle. Maybe Facebook will be our overlords in a decade, but it’s just as likely to be Friends Reunited 2 and we’ll all be using WeldedToYourBrain.com, or something. Ditto search and Google.

And the more dominant the platform becomes, the more valuable it becomes and the harder it becomes to dislodge. The network effect kicks in, and developers building products designed to work with the platform devote more and more of their energy to the platform. The reward for building and working with other platforms, meanwhile, drops, and gradually developers stop developing for them.

Bollocks. Devs go where the money is—it’s really that simple. And it’s pretty clear right now that Android is not the place to go, as shown nicely in the linked graph provided by Lee Armstrong. He compares sales across Android, iOS and Windows Phone for Plane Finder. If Blodget is right, you’d expect Android sales to be close to iOS ones and gradually increasing. As it is, they’re barely above Windows Phone sales—iOS is way out in front.

Until Google starts encouraging its platform’s users to buy things rather than expect free, this situation won’t change. And even if it does (read: if Amazon’s Android store is a success), that won’t stop iOS from being a profitable platform—and that’s what matters. After all, note how Microsoft and Adobe still see fit to create Mac OS X applications despite the Mac’s marketshare being in single figures.

Further reading:

• Is Android Taking Over?, Jon-Erik Storm
  
• A Successful Failure, Ben Brooks
  

In The state of British TV (Guardian), Mark  Lawson examines the health of UK drama, comparing it to US TV. British viewers often consider British television inferior to US programming, but Lawson offers a balanced argument, despite not even noting that Brits tend to forget that we get the better US TV over here, rather than the crap. (Conversely, we get to see all the worst of British TV along with the best.)

However, I think he’s dead wrong about one of the listed ‘weaknesses’ of British TV:

American TV companies have the courage and funding to back the big vision: committing to 20-episode runs with quick-fire options on further runs. In the UK, partly because of the tradition of single authorship rather than team-writing, commissioning is too often short and cautious, so that when a hit emerges – Sherlock, Downton Abbey – enthusiastic viewers/advertisers have a very lengthy wait for more. Yet, paradoxically, once a franchise is established, we’re too loath to let it go, even when (Taggart, Silent Witness, Midsomer) the central actors leave.

There are three key elements in that paragraph.

American TV companies have the courage and funding to back the big vision: committing to 20-episode runs with quick-fire options on further runs.

This is sometimes but not always true, and it tends to be more common for the run-of-the-mill (or tried-and-tested) formats that Lawson gets angry about elsewhere in the same piece. It’s quite rare for US networks to go out on a limb for something truly innovative.

In the UK, partly because of the tradition of single authorship rather than team-writing, commissioning is too often short and cautious, so that when a hit emerges – Sherlock, Downton Abbey – enthusiastic viewers/advertisers have a very lengthy wait for more.

I don’t like the wait, but I do like single authorship. One of the biggest problems in many US shows is how weak the characters are, and this is most often the case on shows written by large teams. Conversely, the best short-run British shows are often written by single writers or very small teams. There’s also the problem of filler. The best UK shows tend to be extremely densely packed with plot. Waking the Dead has been consistently tight in this regard, with each two-hour story driving arcs on while also providing a great story in itself. Long-run US dramas tend to be more prone to driving arcs every few episodes, but packing the rest of a season with things that don’t really matter. When you could feasibly remove half a season’s episodes without detriment, something’s wrong.

It’s interesting that Sherlock is one of Lawson’s examples of how these issues negatively impact British TV, too, because that in many ways showcases how things can go terribly wrong when the creators aren’t more directly involved. That miniseries had a great opener, a truly terrible second episode, and a decent finale. The bad middle episode wasn’t written by either co-creator. And, personally, I’d sooner have three great Sherlocks every two years than 22 episodes of watered-down crap every year.

Yet, paradoxically, once a franchise is established, we’re too loath to let it go, even when (Taggart, Silent Witness, Midsomer) the central actors leave.

However, this bit I entirely agree with. Hit UK shows do tend to drag on way past their sell-by dates. Spooks is a series that clearly needs shutting down, with its increasingly absurd plotting, diminishing budget and rapid cast-turnover all contributing to the downfall of a once reasonably good show. And while I’m sad Waking the Dead’s done next weekend, at least that’s a UK show that’s getting a rare chance to go out on a high.

Sagely advice from Wil Shipley on his blog post Success, and Farming vs. Mining. Although primarily about software (not least the difference between those who create to sell out and those who simply want to produce great software), the conclusion is something people in all creative disciplines should be mindful of:

All ideas suck, because they are just ideas. They’re worth nothing.

My success is because I worked to make the idea real. A lot. All my life. Starting when I was 12, I learned to program, and I’ve programmed every spare moment since. I didn’t become a millionaire until I’d worked at it for eighteen years. There was no genius idea I had. I just kept working, hating what I did before, and working some more to make it better.

And when you’re done with Shipley’s piece, read Austin Kleon’s How to Steal Like an Artist (and 9 Other Things Nobody Told Me), an excellent essay that advocates just getting on and creating stuff, rather than mulling things over and doing nothing