→ Apple CEO Tim Cook didn't really make $378 million in 2011

by Michael in

Apple CEO Tim Cook didn't really make $378 million in 2011

Philip Elmer-DeWitt at CNN Money points out that everyone making this talking point is wrong. Tim Cook only gets any of this money (past his $900K salary and barely $15K in 401(K) and life insurance premiums) if he sticks around. This is not the same as the absurd bonuses and kickbacks CEOs of other companies get regardless of their performance. His value is tied directly to performance of the company long-term while under his control. When he was given his restricted stock units worth $376 million, they were only worth that much to Apple. He can't even think about cashing in half of them until 2016 (after 5 years of controlling Apple) and he can't do anything with the other half until 2021 (10 years of running the company). If he doesn't stick around until those times, he doesn't get any of it. If the company tanks before those times, he gets the reduced value.

Tim Cook is being compensated in the distant future according to the company's performance if and only if he continues to run the company. Is there any more reasonable way to value a CEO than by how the company thrives under his control? I think not.

→ The latest on SOPA and PIPA

by Michael in

The latest on SOPA and PIPA.

Jon Brodkin from Ars Technica:

As Boucher explained, while PIPA and SOPA differ in some ways, they both would give the government ability to designate rogue websites, remove those sites from the Internet's domain name system, require search engines to remove the sites from results, prevent advertisers from doing business with the "rogue" sites, and lessen protections currently provided to site owners during Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown processes.

Ars has had some great coverage on SOPA and why it really doesn't make sense. None of the significant opponents are saying online piracy shouldn't be combatted. They're just saying that giving huge content producers the ability to effectively remove American access to internet sites just because some of the content infringes or, worse, some of it might infringe is a surefire way to cripple innovation on the internet and the ability for America to participate in the ever-increasing online economy.

→ Nielsen: State of the Media: Consumer Usage Report 2011

by Michael in

Nielsen: State of the Media: Consumer Usage Report 2011

Some interesting numbers:

Apparently Americans of Asian ethnicity are the only group which statistically have iPhones more than Android based devices. Smart phones are still less than half (43%) of the American cell phone market.

Only 5.7% of broadband users only have broadcast television (don't subscribe to satellite or cable television). Surprisingly 30 Million Americans watch television on their cell phones. I always assumed that was simply something that was advertised as a feature but no one actually did.

There are a whole lot more interesting numbers in the report, so go check out how the world's changing.

→ Video Problems in the new Xbox 360 Dashboard

by Michael in ,

Video Problems in the new Xbox 360 Dashboard

Richard Leadbetter at Digital Foundry:

Unfortunately, reports that the dashboard video player's 1080p mode has been nerfed appear to be on the money. Video calibration tools put together by the AVSForum demonstrate conclusively that, while the Xbox 360 has no problem whatsoever decoding 1080p video, it is no longer being rendered in native resolution. To illustrate the issues, here we see the same full HD video being run on an older NXE dash at 1080p, and the new Metro offering at both 720p and 1080p. As you can see when clicking on the thumbnails, just about all the detail is being resolved on the older front end, but the Metro dash's 720p and 1080p images are effectively identical in terms of core resolution.

Compounded with earlier accurate reports that the new Xbox dashboard is displaying colors incorrectly for video, this is a bad problem users recognized in the beta that Microsoft has refused to acknowledge so far.

Worse:

Other services appear to be artificially limited in the new video marketplace apps. For example, streaming service Vudu offers 1080p24 movies via its "HDX" service but in its FAQ it mentions that "Xbox 360 is limited to HD only (720p)."

Once again, the 720p limitation was reported during the dashboard preview programme and in common with the video levels issue we have reports that Microsoft deleted threads that referenced it.

So Microsoft is limiting third parties to 720p video now.

The obvious conclusion is that the SDK Microsoft is believed to have supplied to third-party video partners is limited to 720p only, leaving Microsoft's host service with a clear quality advantage. The message we draw from this is that the platform holder wants to expand the take-up of the Xbox 360 as a media-streaming device, but very much on its own terms with its own content getting the best quality, and the user's "homebrew" media not being given much importance at all.

Incorrect video levels are obviously a bug, but blatantly downgrading resolution looks very much like part of a strategy. As it is, the new dashboard's preview programme ensured that the issues were brought to Microsoft's attention. Now we wait to see whether anything will actually be fixed.

We'll se. In the meantime, Microsoft has hurt the Xbox's video playback such that I'd actually use my PS3 to watch video instead--the first time this has been true. Making your product a worse one than it was already is never the right move. It seems Microsoft has been taking lessens from Sony's repeated downgrading of users' PS3s.