I don’t usually bang the speculation drum, but Apple earlier today did something quite interesting, in releasing a new iPod touch. This replaces the previous low-end model, which was effectively last year’s design. The new 16 GB iPod touch now has the same screen size as the 32/64 GB model (and therefore also the iPhone 5), but lacks an iSight camera.

What I find most interesting about this, though, is Apple’s now dumped the old 960-by-640 screen and old Dock connector entirely from its iPod touch line-up. On this basis, I imagine the 960-by-640 screen resolution is now effectively dead, along with their associated devices. (Further cementing this thought, indie dev Gary Riches told me earlier today that all new apps/app updates as of May 1 have to support the Retina display and iPhone 5 screen—that’s no longer optional.)

What this means for this summer’s iPhone revamp isn’t quite so clear, but I imagine the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S are both gone (rather than the 4S sticking around at the very low end, replacing the 4). There will be a new iPhone (presumably the iPhone 6) and either the iPhone 5 will drop down one level, or a new lower-end iPhone—with the same screen size) will be added to the line-up. Possibly both. Two things are for sure, though—first, I’ll be amazed if anything still exists in Apple’s autumn line-up with a 960-by-640 screen and old-style Dock connector; secondly, I’ll have to soon invest in banana thumbs to reach everywhere on a device’s screen. Damn.

Rolfe Winkler, writing for WSJ’s MoneyBeat:

Argle bargle fargle wargle. Thhbbb. Thhhhb! Fweee. Mamamamama. Fa-wang. Spwooooooo.

Oh no, hang on, that’s not what he wrote—because it actually would have been better, more credible, and less bone-headed. Instead, he decided to fire more bile at Apple in the usual manner of the WSJ, which as a publication could save an awful lot of time and money by just reprinting “We don’t understand Apple at all” every time Apple does anything whatsoever.

Instead we get this:

Interviewed at the All Things D tech conference on Tuesday night, Mr. Cook revealed little about Apple’s plans.

Blimey. That’s so unlike Apple! After all, don’t you remember all those times Steve Jobs revealed loads about Apple’s plans at All Things D? No, me neither, but then I’m not currently hallucinating on endorphins cruising round my system due to furiously penning anti-Apple  bile.

While no announcements were expected, audience members were disappointed that the successor to Steve Jobs still can’t articulate a vision for Apple beyond the company’s “passion” for making “great products.”

Apple has a passion for making great products. That is its vision. But then Winkler might have realised that if he’d paused for a second rather than gleefully smashing keys while trying desperately to control that natural high that can only come when you’re writing yet more garbage for the WSJ that paints Apple in a bad light, ignoring those pesky fact and history things while doing so.

There’s been something really unsettling about Facebook for a long time now, in its response towards images portraying violence against women. That such posts end up on the site isn’t the problem—because that’s always going to happen on a network of Facebook’s size—nor is semi-randomly assigned adverts being placed on these pages. The problem is Facebook’s reaction when images and posts are flagged by the community. To date, the company has generally said it has to balance the right to free speech and offence; by contrast, pictures of breastfeeding are removed as a matter of routine.

Women, Action & the Media decided to take action, and started hitting Facebook where it hurts: in the bank account. Its campaign targeted advertisers rather than Facebook, and although many companies weaselled out of doing anything, some big names pulled ads, including Nissan UK and Nationwide UK. As WAM! has reported, Facebook has finally listened and posted a statement, Controversial, Harmful and Hateful Speech on Facebook.

It’s great to see WAM!’s success and also that Facebook is now finally responding, albeit after a bunch of companies pulled ads rather than beforehand. However, the Facebook statement was quite telling in how the network viewed discrimination:

Many different groups which have historically faced discrimination in society, including representatives from the Jewish, Muslim, and LGBT communities, have reached out to us in the past to help us understand the threatening nature of content, and we are grateful for the thoughtful and constructive feedback we have received. […]

Facebook’s mission has always been to make the world more open and connected. […] To facilitate this goal, we also work hard to make our platform a safe and respectful place for sharing and connection. This requires us to make difficult decisions and balance concerns about free expression and community respect. We prohibit content deemed to be directly harmful, but allow content that is offensive or controversial.

The conclusion there has generally been the case with Facebook, but, for some reason, not with women. There are countless examples of rape ‘jokes’ coupled with horrific imagery that have been deemed acceptable by Facebook moderators and admin staff, even when flagged as unacceptable by hundreds of people. In some cases, these images have even been direct threats against individuals, including photographs altered to show someone with serious injuries. Again, by contrast, a picture of a breastfeeding woman is typically immediately banned, presumably because that is “directly harmful” somehow rather than “offensive or controversial”.

And yet the statement then directly contradicts Facebook’s own actions:

We define harmful content as anything organizing real world violence, theft, or property destruction, or that directly inflicts emotional distress on a specific private individual (e.g. bullying).

If that’s the case, why have so many images—including those targeting individuals—been allowed to stand, or at least been left online until literally many hundreds of people have complained about them? It shouldn’t take a social networking campaign to get a social network to remove a disgusting, bullying, hugely offensive, threatening image.

Facebook’s statement at least admits that its

systems to identify and remove hate speech have failed to work as effectively as we would like, particularly around issues of gender-based hate.

The network says it needs to do better. It will therefore review and update guidelines its team uses to evaluate reports of violations of its community standards around hate speech, integrating advice from representatives of the women’s coalition and other groups that have historically faced discrimination. Training will be updated, and those creating content will be held accountable, although I’m not sure some people will care if they’re forced to use their real identities to post hate.

Still, it’s a start, and perhaps it’s the beginnings of the network finally dealing with problems that should have been dealt with long ago.

Sometimes I feel the need to repeatedly refresh a browser, in the hope that what I’m reading is actually some kind of weird bug that’s coincidentally fashioned a bunch of words before my eyes into a festering pile of stupid. That’s  pretty much what happened when I saw Google Glass vs. Apple iWatch: How Do They Compare?, written by Greg Roberts for ReadWrite.

My answer to the above would be a much shorter article than Roberts has penned:

I’ve no idea, largely on the basis that no-one knows whether an Apple iWatch actually exists, and hardly anyone’s had a go on Google Glass.

The thing is, that’s not the kind of article that gets eyeballs. What you instead need to do is fire up the speculation engine, and splatter its turd fuel all over the internet.

To his credit, Roberts does at least seem to have an inkling of how ridiculous his article is going to be, and says:

Sure, the battle is a little lopsided in that Google Glass is a real product, albeit still for developers only, while iWatch remains only speculation.

The end!

But no; instead, he continues:

But let’s assume that both will be real products soon enough and look at their individual strengths and weaknesses.

How about let’s not assume both will be real products soon enough. And let’s not look at their individual strengths and weaknesses, because no-one has any bloody idea what an iWatch’s might be, BECAUSE IT DOESN’T EXIST YET.

Face vs. Wrist

Facepalm vs. Chinese burn.

The wrist is an easy target, as it has been the home of technological advancements from the beginning of the wristwatch era, c. 1920 and peaking during the digital watch revolution in the 1970s. Many people are used to wearing technology on their wrists.

OH GOD I THINK MY BRAIN JUST MELTED AND I CAN’T TAKE ANY MORE.

*sterlingeffort*

Google Glass, however, doesn’t just shift the location of the phone screen: instead it offers a completely new computing paradigm.

BUZZWORD BINGO HOUSE!

And then, instead of comparing something that doesn’t exist with something that barely does, Roberts essentially writes the following:

Google Glass! SQUEEEE! I love Google Glass. Google Glass looks super-awesome. Google Glass is amazing! Have you noticed how much I like Google Glass, because I really like Google Glass? I’m not actually going to state whether I’ve used Google Glass yet, but, man, GOOGLE GLASS. It’s just… GOOGLE GLASS! GOOGLE! GLASS!

And people wonder why the vast majority of tech journalism is a train wreck.

Here we go again. Microsoft does love its defensive comparison charts, and it’s unveiled another, pitting the iPad against a range of Windows 8 tablets. As you might expect, it’s just a tiny bit biased and the slightest bit sneaky with some comparisons. For example, the iPad loses out in terms of display size, but, for some reason, resolution is never mentioned.

When comparing against the HP Envy, the iPad has a “$69 sold separately keyboard” —the horror! And, of course, that’s the only keyboard that works with the iPad. The end. But wait! When you compare against any of the other tablets, the keyboard comparison magically disappears! It’s almost like Microsoft doesn’t want to admit that keyboards aren’t in fact included by default with Windows 8 tablet devices!

Elsewhere, we have the usual blah blah blah about the iPad not having a million ports, not printing to “most printers” (despite AirPrint printers now being absurdly cheap and readily available), and not having Office. I’ve written about Office and Microsoft’s current direction with it before, and the new comparison chart helpfully notes:

The only consumer Office app the iPad can run is OneNote.

Perhaps Microsoft really is going to silo Office and make it a USP for its tablets, in which case, it’s going to look pretty stupid. (Teaching people Office isn’t ubiquitous is a really bad idea.) Alternatively, Office might eventually show up for iPad, at which point these comparisons will be moot, and Microsoft is going to look pretty stupid. It’s like the company’s surrounded by a sea of stupid, but rather than building a raft, it’s just drinking down the stupid.

Fortunately, Microsoft then has a minor brainwave and presents two comparisons about things that are genuinely useful. Multiple accounts are something the iPad doesn’t allow (Apple would rather you buy separate devices for you, each member of your family and, preferably, even for your pets), and it really should, at least for ‘guests’ or to provide parents with more control over what children can access. And then there’s “seeing two apps at once”, which I’m sure is something at least some iPad power users would love.

Unfortunately, Microsoft then saw fit to release the toe-curlingly embarrassing Windows 8: Less talking, more doing advert. It ‘hilariously’ has Siri saying what the iPad can’t do, and I’m sure someone important at Microsoft was thinking how great the advert was. After all, it shows how the iPad doesn’t have live tiles, “can only do one thing at a time”, can’t do PowerPoint, and then ends with

Should we just play Chopsticks?

Oooh, burn!

The teeny tiny snag is, it’s easy to spin most of that in another direction:

• Man, that Windows 8 thing is a huge, noisy, garbled mess on the start screen, compared to the clean nature of iOS!
• Hang on, the iPad can speak to you? That sounds pretty great! Hey, why’s the Windows tablet silent?
• Microsoft’s proprietary formats are a really bad idea, aren’t they? Still, I bet there are some alternate Office-compatible apps for iPad, right?
• Hey, that piano app looks great. What, it’s GarageBand and costs only five bucks? Man, I’d love that. So where’s the Windows 8 version? Oh. *buys iPad*

In short, then: Microsoft says Windows 8 is amazing because it’s noisier, has split-screen and can run PowerPoint, but it can’t speak, and if you’re into music, you’re not ‘doing’—you’re just some kind of idiot who should really be making a presentation on a cheap piece of tablet hardware.

That’s Apple told.