Hayley Tsukayama wrote for The Washington Post that people aren’t that into the Galaxy S9, Samsung’s earnings show.

The summer is always a bit quiet for smartphone makers as they prepare to launch new phones for the fall. But sales for Samsung were down even for the traditionally low-key quarter, as its flagship phones struggled to outshine the iPhone X and iPhone 8. Samsung’s mobile communications vice president, Lee Kyeong-Tae, acknowledged in an earnings call that sales of its flagship Galaxy S9 and S9+ had been “weaker than expected,” as his unit reported a 22 percent drop in sales revenue to $20.2 billion.

Not surprising.

Rado Slavov wrote for PhoneArena about why Samsung keeps losing to Apple.

Instead, Samsung decided to focus on the negative marketing and go after its rival. What’s happening is Samsung is trying to play a finite game here – its objective is to win the battle of this smartphone generation, which comes at the expense of its own brand strength and integrity. Such unprovoked aggressive behavior is never typical of the winning side; it’s most often exhibited by the losing team, which, realizing that the final seconds of the match are ticking away, starts playing in a rough and desperate, pissed off way. After the confident Galaxy S8 launch, surely the missed expectations for this year’s Galaxy S9 have put some pressure on the consumer products team. But again, Samsung is not playing the game it should be playing, and its behavior is atypical for a gigantic tech company that’s supposedly a market leader and innovator.

Meanwhile, Apple is playing the infinite game – it’s not obsessing over a single battle; it’s playing to keep winning the war. Sometimes, it’s a little ahead; other times, it’s a little behind, but on average, it tends to consistently outperform its competitors in the long term, bringing in the big profits and leaving the rest of its competition to feast on the leftovers. It’s always focusing on what makes the iPhone product great, trying to make it better with each generation, and never compromising the integrity of its brand with cheesy, aggressive spots, or by cutting corners. As a result, all of us (even those who dislike Apple products) know what the Apple brand stands for. What does the Samsung brand stand for?

Samsung should be more concerned about other Android brands that are eating up its market share. Huawei has made massive gains and is now the second largest phone maker, and it targets the same market tiers as Samsung. Xiaomi, Oppo, and Vivo are making strong showings as well.

Perhaps Samsung is still trying to make it seem like its biggest competitor is Apple, but it can only stick its head in the sand for so long.

Nick Heer wrote about The Bullshit Web.

Great article. Must read if you are a web designer or web developer.

We should be making full use of modern technology to make the web better, not load it with junk.

The European Commission released a statement on fining Google €4.34 billion for illegal practices regarding Android mobile devices to strengthen dominance of Google’s search engine.

The European Commission has fined Google €4.34 billion for breaching EU antitrust rules. Since 2011, Google has imposed illegal restrictions on Android device manufacturers and mobile network operators to cement its dominant position in general internet search.

1. Illegal tying of Google’s search and browser apps

First, the tying of the Google Search app. As a result, Google has ensured that its Google Search app is pre-installed on practically all Android devices sold in the EEA. Search apps represent an important entry point for search queries on mobile devices. The Commission has found this tying conduct to be illegal as of 2011, which is the date Google became dominant in the market for app stores for the Android mobile operating system.

Second, the tying of the Google Chrome browser. As a result, Google has ensured that its mobile browser is pre-installed on practically all Android devices sold in the EEA. Browsers also represent an important entry point for search queries on mobile devices and Google Search is the default search engine on Google Chrome. The Commission found this tying conduct to be illegal as of 2012, which is the date from which Google has included the Chrome browser in its app bundle.

2. Illegal payments conditional on exclusive pre-installation of Google Search

Google granted significant financial incentives to some of the largest device manufacturers as well as mobile network operators on condition that they exclusively pre-installed Google Search across their entire portfolio of Android devices. This harmed competition by significantly reducing their incentives to pre-install competing search apps.

3. Illegal obstruction of development and distribution of competing Android operating systems

Google has prevented device manufacturers from using any alternative version of Android that was not approved by Google (Android forks). In order to be able to pre-install on their devices Google’s proprietary apps, including the Play Store and Google Search, manufacturers had to commit not to develop or sell even a single device running on an Android fork. The Commission found that this conduct was abusive as of 2011, which is the date Google became dominant in the market for app stores for the Android mobile operating system.

Would this reverse the damage done given how users are now conditioned to these settings and mobile manufacturers don’t have any decent OS alternatives to turn to?

Tech in Asia shared an infographic showing the scale of China’s tech industry..

This infographic will help you to visualise how staggering the tech industry is in China. A lot of friends often ask me but are unable to wrap their heads around the scale that China operates in. This might help.

John Gruber wrote about the misleading Popular Science article: ‘Do You Really Need to Properly Eject a USB Drive Before Yanking It Out?’.

This is terrible advice. It’s akin to saying you probably don’t need to wear a seat belt because it’s unlikely anything bad will happen. Imagine a few dozen people saying they drive without a seat belt every day and nothing’s ever gone wrong, so it must be OK. (The breakdown in this analogy is that with seat belts, you know instantly when you need to be wearing one. With USB drives, you might not discover for months or years that you’ve got a corrupt file that was only partially written to disk when you yanked the drive.)

This is a great analogy.

I have another analogy that might reflect the undiscovered effect of yanking out USB drives: smoking cigarettes. People will tell you they have friends or parents that smoke and go on to live long without ever suffering as a results of their smoking habit. So they believe that it is perfectly safe to smoke. You might not discover for months or years that you are suffering from the harmful effects of smoking such as “corrupted” lungs.

Always safely eject your media drives before removing it. I speak from experience having lost files through disconnections when I had a loose USB cable, USB plug not fully inserted and then it fell out, and when the dog yanked the cable out accidentally. I was not actively reading from or writing to the drives but files were still corrupted. Imagine the data loss if the drives were in use.

Again, it is sad to see how people would cling on to false articles to strengthen their mistaken beliefs.