Thursday, May 09, 2013
ESPN: Simon: Andrelton Simmons makes all the plays
(espn.go.com)
Entering Wednesday, Simmons had played 680 innings in his major league career and the Baseball Info Solutions (BIS) numbers have him with 30 defensive runs saved. He had 19 in 426 innings last season and already has a major-league best 11 in 254 innings in 2013.
For a little perspective, that’s an incredible number for what amounts to less than half a season’s worth of play. No shortstop has had 30 defensive runs saved in a full season since Troy Tulowitzki had 31 in 2007.
Simmons has been ...
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1 2 3 >So obviously I haven't had it very long but I've used it a couple of times with no problems at all. I needed to find a couple of places and I found them without incident. Actually it proved a bit more responsive to general instructions (e.g. Wal-mart in Tewksbury) than it was before. It's a bit different from before but not so dramatically that it's a problem. The biggest change that I've seen so far is that it switches from portrait to landscape depending on how the phone is oriented like many other apps. Given that I'm typically in a car and stealing quick glances at it I'm not a huge fan of that but that's pretty minor.
I like Apple stuff, too. My Ipod is my most favorite gadget I've ever owned. It's the kind of thing I used to daydream about when I went to a friend's and saw a CD-changer for the first time. But, jeez, I can wait a few weeks to get one of their products. I'm going to be ok.
I agree, they are great products, they work well and they're beautiful. But my Iphone works great, and I expect I'll hang onto it and ignore new models until they come up with something really crazy. Like a brain implant.
Isn't this how every consumer-based company in America markets themselves no matter how ubiquitous and mundane their product?
Or people who dressed like this.* iOS 6 is annoying, but then I remember that everything's amazing and nobody's happy.
*Yeah, I know I passed on a great Madeline Albright opportunity.
Yep. Even as iPods have fallen out of style in favor of phones and pads and whatnot, the iPod is still my favorite thing. Having grown up with the Walkman and a little suitcase full of tapes that you had to keep in your locker at school, this is like outer space stuff.
People like to belong to communities whether its the fan base of a sports team, the enthusiastic consumer of a line of products, or a snarky band of baseball stat-geeks on the internet.
I came this close to buying my first iphone, but stuck with Droid because (a) I like Droid's apps better; (b) all the Droids I liked had 4G, while only the pricey Iphone5 had 4G; (c) the Apple maps thing was a minor factor as was Droid's superior voice navigation; and (d) My Motorola Droid Razr M seems way more durable than an iphone which is huge considering I have two kids.
Host Gator is a solid potential meme, though.
My father bought stock in Diamond Multimedia, which created the Rio, I believe the first mp3 player on the market. He bought me one and it was no better than a discman because it had a tiny memory (seriously, it only held one album at a time) and it skipped. It was kind of a piece of junk. The company clearly had the right idea, and my dad had the right idea too - mp3 players were certainly the future, and if the product was any good there was the potential to make a buttload of money there.
My uncle gave me one of these for Christmas in 1998. You could put a whole album on it if you encoded it at 96 kbps. The connector to it broke so I couldn't change the music on it, so it was only useful if I wanted to listen to Anodyne by Uncle Tupelo. This is actually a perfect example of why Apple jumps into markets a little late. Like Diamond with the Rio, the innovator in a field often comes up with a neat idea but a #### product that needs a couple of years worth of work to be any good.
EDIT: And I'm really digging my 5" Samsung Galaxy Player. It's big enough that I can read books and watch Netflix and baseball on it and small enough that I can put it in my pocket and use it as a regular mp3 player.
My O.G. Droid is starting to get a little slow, but I think I may keep it around out of pure spite for obsolescence.
Hmm, it worked fine for me at first. Oh well. By the title you can see it was supposed to be stereotypical punk rockers.
Yes. And the section of wall that Hank Aaron hit 715 onto is still there.
iOS 6 is a very nice upgrade, though I think it could have been more properly named "5.5". The maps are far easier to use, the directions UI is much better. I haven't seen any mistakes, obviously Google has the better quality data set with fewer errors, they've been doing it a lot longer, but it's not like Apple's maps aren't 99% accurate already, and won't close to Google's quality level within a year.
People don't realize that Apple was paying Google $500M or so a year to license maps, and the deal was expiring within a year. Beyond what the price to renew, Apple wanted Turn By Turn directions (which Google had in Android for almost 2 years) and for Google to stop collecting as much user data from iPhone user s. Google wanted to put Latitude into it's iOS maps, which is a user location app like Find My Friends, and essentially gives Google even more user data. From a business perspective I don't think Apple had a choice, it's an integral part of their product owned by their product's chief rival. So they spent $500M+ buying mapping companies over the last 3 years, and released the product when it was usable, you can't fix the last data sets as fast if you keep it in the labs, real world use is going to improve it much faster.
iOS 6 also has a very intelligently designed Do No Disturb feature, and improvements to virtually every App, from Safari on. And Passbook seems like a really good idea, that won't be worth much until venders actually embrace it.
I can't defend why anyone would camp out for a phone, but "slightly better"?
The iPhone 5 is the faster smartphone ever made, and it ain't even close. It's over twice as fast as the 4s.
The iPhone 5 screen is the best ever made. There are bigger screens, but they aren't as sharp, some have more pixels, but only a little more, while Apple crams almost as many into a smaller form-factor. Expert color analysts have already said iPhone 5 has the best color reproduction ever, and that's in the sharpest display resolution available. And while Jobs was wedded to the 3.5 inch form factor to ensure that the phone was easy to use one handed so your thumb could tap anywhere on the screen, the new 4 inch factor doesn't lose too much of that, and has the same pleasant one handed width.
The iPhone 5 has the best smartphone camera. It's new CPU gets more out of an 8MP than anyone thought possible, making substantial improvements to low light photo quality and every other feature including Panorama.
Finally, the iPhone 5 is the lightest and thinnest by a wide margin, including it's predecessors. And not with plastic, it's machined out of a block of aluminum so it is clearly the toughest iPhone ever (no more glass back like the 4), maybe the toughest smart phone. And despite the lightness and the 4g, battery life is still excellent, similar to 4s, if not better in many circumstances.
Two years ago I rocked a Windows desktop, a Windows laptop and a Droid phone, and had used nothing but Windows for over a decade. Today I use a Retina MacBook Pro paired with a 24 inch monitor and an iPhone. I need to still run Windows for legacy purposes, my RMBP does that great, I build and use Unix apps on the Mac OS, but mainly use a lot of Mac apps that are typically better than their Windows versions. My RMBP is also faster than 95% of desktop PCs, runs all day on battery, and it's screen is amazing. I have never had a PC laptop that approached it's build quality, and have no problems paying another 20-30% for a computer built to a visibly higher standard, this is better at key features I value, including running three operating systems at the same time and virtually every application possible.
Besides the ease of use, syncing and interoperability (all of our TV shows are auto synced with my laptop ) that Apple does so well, the biggest appeal for me about Apple products is their screens. My eyesight is declining at a pretty good pace, and being able to run my Retina in it's base mode on my bad days and have 4 pixels drawing every point on the screen makes a huge difference in sharpness and legibility, as does the retina display on my iPhone. Apple almost destroyed their Mac business before Jobs came back, but the fact it has had a huge comeback from the brink and not only has grown by a huge amount the last 5 years, but is the only PC line still growing at all, is a testament to how much value Apple has (finally) built into the OS and their products.
I think this is questionable. The accuracy maybe; it won't be hard to correct the location of Turner Field. But Google's maps are better drawn, too; they provide visual clues as to which streets are major thoroughfares, which are side streets, etc., which Apple doesn't do. That's a big undertaking and if Apple could have fixed it, I think they would have by now.
Same here.
And of course, from their search engine Google really has just about all the data in the world squirreled away, that can be mined for location-specific information.
I don't get along with Apple products very well. It's likely because I have been working on or with computers for a long time. Apple's general expensive price point and lack of customizations/user controls doesn't mesh will with how I use gadgets and technology. To each their own.
I just bought my first smart phone a few weeks ago, a Samsung GS3. I'm still occasionally having the "alien technology" moments when I use it, but I really like the OS. From all the spec sheets I've seen, the Iphone5 seems on par or slightly better/worse than the GS3, so I'm sure it's a worthwhile upgrade for anyone out of contract.
Obviously, accuracy is going to improve rapidly with the maps are actually in use, not just because of user reporting of mistakes, for example Apple is collecting huge amounts of navigation data on most used routes for all streets.
But to assume Apple can't do one feature because they didn't implement it at launch after only 3 years of development is wrong. They are spending huge sums on their mapping group and that spending is going to produce enhancements not just to the map data but to it's display.
Sure, it will take time, but the question is when will the difference stop mattering to the vast majority of users. I think that point isn't far away, no more than a year and maybe within months, Apple is going to be getting a tsunami of data to improve their maps with now that they aren't sending it to Google.
Interestingly, Google has done a very poor job of mapping China, and Chinese iOS 6 users are supposedly ecstatic at how much better Apple's map data in China is.
In general, Google doesn't have the best of relationship with the Chinese government.
The Nokia Lumia 920 definitely and obviously beats it in low-light situations. Though the 920 isn't due out for another month or two, and might never appear in the US. The Nokia 808's camera is also supposed to be excellent, but there isn't a side-by-sde with the iPhone anywhere. And with the 808 you're stuck with Symbian, which is the phone OS the pioneers used when they took the Oregon Trail.
Of course this is all irrelevant, because (at least in my experience) At Bat for iOS is better than At Bat for Android.
Yea, it's a moving target. It's interesting that Nokia not only got caught faking the "steadycam" feature on videos they claimed were from the 920, but also got caught faking the low light images their web marketing claimed came from the 920. Assuming the prototype they gave the reviewers for that review wasn't customized in any way, it seems like it's actually great at a low light pictures, so why fake marketing images?
It tells me not to be surprised if the 920 misses it's ship date, having to fake videos and images is a big sign the product isn't close to release ready. When you are behind in the market there isn't a big cost to pre-announcing products, because you can't cannibalize sales of something that isn't selling (sorry Windows phone). Apple would be committing quarterly suicide by pre-announcing a replacement for the iPhone, iPad or another hot selling product by 3-6 months. No installed base is why Microsoft can continually hype Surface, even though the actual product is so far away from shipping that it has no pricing and no reviewers or journalists or outside testers have even been allowed to touch one.
Yes. In fact, that's what the screenshot is showing considering the
actual steakhouse has over 200 Yelp reviews.
When MP3 players started coming out, I ignored the early ones as they had so little storage as to be pointless. It's interesting that someone mentioned the Rio, as one product that caught my eye early on was the Rio Volt. As near as I can tell it was the first CD player that could play MP3 files off of a CD-R. This, I thought, was way better than the limited storage in MP3 players. It was nice, but you still had to deal with physical CDs all over the place, and it was a bit fragile.
When Archos came out with the Jukebox, I grabbed one: a 20gb hard drive-based player. By this point the early iPods were around, but very expensive by comparison, and I wasn't going to pay Apple's premium. The Archos...ugh. I have to believe they did exactly zero usability testing on the thing. I mean, it worked...but the user interface was just an embarrassment. You had this teeny, tiny monochrome LCD screen. You didn't have to use an iTunes-like product to put music on (and I considered this a feature; what could be easier than drag and drop?), but if you wanted to use the music database to list by artist/album/genre/whatever, you had to use this special version of Musicmatch Jukebox that just didn't work properly. It supported .M3U playlists but you had to edit them to remove drive letters and whatnot. Not a smooth interface.
And the device itself...tiny buttons, cramped next to each other. In certain situations you'd hit what seemed to be a logical button and you'd get some bizarre flyout menu that didn't seem relevant to anything. And if you did manage to cook up a big playlist and tried to shuffle it, it would just grind and grind to the point of appearing locked up.
My wife, meanwhile, wanted a membership to audible.com, so I signed her up for one that came with a free iPod Shuffle. I figured it would be a cute toy for her to hold audio books, and that she'd tire of it. But she took to it like I never thought possible. Normally she isn't big on gadgets and often requires handholding, but she figured the thing out all on her own.
That's when it hit me: Apple doesn't design for me. They design for non-techs. Soon I got an iPod Video, and I just loved the thing. The screen was perfect, and the interface just made *sense*.
On the phone front, we went Android, mostly because of the carrier we were on at the time. My first was the G1, which was pretty cool but definitely not polished. I later replaced it with a Samsung Galaxy S, and while it's been a decent phone, it has issues. It lags in annoying ways, and every now and then basic things like the music player force close for no apparent reason.
My son and daughter-in-law got an Android tablet (the Asus Transformer). Once again, it's decent, but not polished. The add-on keyboard works when it wants to. There aren't a ton of good tablet apps (though there are more than there used to be). Meanwhile, my son won an iPad 2 in a contest at work, and now that's all they use. The Transformer sits on a shelf somewhere.
So I got my wife an iPad 2 last year. She uses it daily. It's smooth, it's easy, and it just works. She again has had no trouble getting up to speed and really using it.
This, to me, is what Apple gets. The user experience is at the top of their list, and yeah, that means sometimes they're late to market while the competition puts out some junky products. But I'm a believer now, to the point where I think my wife's next laptop just might be a Mac.
It doesn't have to be far from shipping for that though, everybody has taken the cue from Apple there, there's little to be gained and much to lose from letting outsiders judge unreleased hardware.
Sure it does. Letting outsiders use it lends it credibility, and dramatically increases launch sales. If Surface were to ship, say a month from now as some rumours have it, many interested customers will be fence sitters for months waiting for the technology press to use and review it (which can take weeks after they get it for the in depth reviews).
That's why the press always gets the product well ahead of time, but under "embargo", where they can't say anything publicly until it ships. And embargo means MSFT can give them a buggy version of Surface, and when they ship the product after fixing all of the key flaws the media found, the launch story will be "The first prototypes of the Surface we got were almost unusable, but Microsoft has done a stellar job of fixing those problems and the release version is a joy to use that should revolutionize the market".
And large companies also conduct months of testing before deciding to place multi-thousand unit purchase orders, or buy iPads instead, which is why they frequently get pre-release units, to keep them from buying those iPads before the Surface is released.
And it's almost impossible to release a high quality software or hardware without outsider review, not only is the broad matrix of how it will be actually used and with what hardware/software combinations extremely difficult to anticipate and test for, but lower level employees are easily biased to minimize and overlook problems because they don't want to be perceived as a jerk criticizing the companies next "big thing", and also greatly want the product to ship and be successful.
But even more importantly, Microsoft just gave away all of their "big ideas" assuming the Surface's ideas are that big, and they've given Apple 6 months to prepare to not only position the IPad and MacBook Airs against it, but to prepare their counter-punch. Maybe a new iPad with all of the Surface's features and more?
When Microsoft isn't allowing anyone to touch Surface, under even controlled conditions, it says that both the hardware and software is a ways away from being as good as they need to be to be a solid product. That doesn't mean they won't ship it in a month though;)
interesting retweet from Jon Guber
Do you realize how ridiculous you sound constantly abbreviating Retina MacBook Pro?
What is it about Apple that makes people parrot their marketing? It's a screen resolution, not a way of life.
Mac vs. PC aside, do you realize you sound like an #######?
Not part of the cult, huh?
No need to answer that first question. Ha ha.
(Yes, I find street view to be essential. mrsidiom thrives on familiarity, to the point that if she has an appointment tomorrow in an unfamiliar place she'd drive around today to see if she can find it, so she won't be late tomorrow fumbling around looking for it. With street view, she can get familiar in a matter of seconds without leaving home.)
Bingo. Its no accident that my tech-illiterate wife and 4 year old son use my ipad way more than I do. Its actually fantastic for what they want to do - check email, Facebook, Youtube, and simple games.
The only thing that really stops me from jumping to the iPhone now is I think I want a physical keyboard. I just have too many issues with the on-screen one.
I'm done with Samsung, as they make great products from a "spec" perspective but don't support them well. Anyone here a fan of any of the other Android phone manufacturers? I'm particularly interested to hear from folks that have had phones for a year or two: do you still like it? How has it been for updates, fixes, etc.?
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