http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2010/02/the_iphone_obse.html

PPK is much more coherent when sticking to documenting data. Shock and awe is a stupid way to communicate a technical position.

There are two points in his article that bear merit:

1. Progressive enhancement is just as important, if not more so, in the mobile space as it is for desktop browsers. Sites shouldn’t break.

2. Don’t automatically assume iPhone. Take a serious look at other platforms.

The rest of it is a bunch of sound and fury, surrounded by the sort of internet machismo that cyclically paints the industry as the spiritual successor to a bad middle school.

As many people in the comments have already pointed out, sales does not equal usage.

PPK attempts to wave this off with the blithe and unsupported remark:

“Next, I’m not so sure if it’s true. Mobile browser detection is really hard. None of the reports I’ve read so far show how they detect browsers. Lots of mobile browsers have iPhone in their UA strings to work around browser detects that obsessed web developers have set up. Do all traffic market share reporters work around that problem? Most probably do, but we can’t be sure.”

What browsers have iPhone in their UA strings?

http://www.zytrax.com/tech/web/mobile_ids.html

The most important examples from his article are Nokia, Blackberry and Opera Mini. And in all three of those, “iPhone” doesn’t appear in the UA string.

So ignoring the “but-you-can’t-trust-those-completely!” red herring, most usage reports paint the iPhone as having 50-60% of global mobile traffic. This is normally followed by Android and BREW.

Globally, Symbian has about the same trafficshare as the PSP, and both are significantly lower than the “unknown” categories that most reports have.

What does this mean?

It means that if a developer is going to spend time optimizing the experience for someone, that someone should be an iPhone or Android Webkit user.

Why optimize?

Because there’s only so much you can do within the confines of the lowest-common-denominator approach to mobile web development. At some point, a developer needs to step back and think: over 60% of traffic can support a much more usable site. And while if I’m going to spend hours to improve someone’s mobile experience, it may as well be the largest and most advanced chunk.

To ignore that segment of your visitors then, is nearly as idiotic as to focus only on that segment.

David Eddings has always been one of my favorite authors. I remember reading him as a kid in middle school, and savoring every book. He was probably the biggest reason I got into fantasy as a genre.

Due to his death earlier last year, I picked up a set of the Belgariad, Mallorean, Elenium and Tamuli to read through again.

I hadn’t touched the four series in any meaningful way since early high school, and so I was prepared for a bit of rosy hued nostalgia wearing away in the face of a rereading. But even braced for disillusionment, it was still a bit of a shock.

The Good Parts Are Still Good

First, the best and brightest aspect of Eddings’s writing is still present: dialogue and pacing. Nothing ever seemed to linger for too long, and dialogue flowed as well as I’ve seen in a novel; characters sparkled in their wit, and as much as I enjoyed reading it, it was just as obvious that Eddings had a blast writing it.

Second, the names. The character and geographic names in Eddings’s works are probably amongst my favorites. Names just seem to make sense, with a definite pattern for the different conjugations and forms of a particular race or nation. And I love the suffixes of the four series: -iad, -ean, -ium, -uli. The names tend to roll off the tongue naturally and comfortably.

The Rest of It

I’ll only focus on the Belgariad and Mallorean for this part, since the Elenium and Mallorean are, in polite terms, very similar to the former. Also, spoilers.

Race

Blame it on aging, or changing perceptions, or a more sensitive awareness for these sort of things, but the rampant stereotyping got distracting.

For example, take Murgos, a race of people . In both series, they are universally portrayed as evil, selfish, arrogant beings with no concern for the general welfare of anyone but themselves. In the beginning of the Mallorean, a second king of the Murgos is introduced, and at first, he appears to buck the stereotypical person of that race. But soon afterwards, it’s revealed that he’s actually not a Murgo, and so it’s okay for him to be kind and intelligent!

Racial stereotypes are fairly common in fantasy, so it’s expected to a certain degree, but looking back, I don’t know if I’ve ever come across a setting quite as racially defined and motivated as the worlds of Eddings.

Wit and Personality

Again, maybe this has to do with an evolving sense humor. But many scenes that I remembered as being hilarious and gratifying were, this time around, more cringe-worthy.

The characters are assholes.

There’s really no way around it. I remembered them being smartasses, but not actual assholes. But they are: they taunt the defenseless, take pleasure in the agony of enemies, and brush off truly horrific acts of violence.

This is tempered somewhat by Durnik, a mild-mannered calm sort of fellow, but it’s obvious that the center of attention in not on him, but on the more violent, vindictive and mean characters like Barak.

Narrative Impetus or, The Prophecy Tells Them What To Do And They Do It

This bothered me in my initial reading as well, but it bothered me much more this time. For practically the entire length of both series, the main force behind any kind of narrative movement is the Prophecy, an invisible hand guiding them along to each and every destination. The individual characters have no real input as to when or how they approach obstacles or even objectives.

They are given direction, and they follow.

I’d Still Recommend It

The above aside, I still think the good parts outweigh the bad. The books on a whole are a fantastic introduction to fantasy, as it has a very strong core set of characters, personalities, and places.

This is High Fantasy as it should be: broad strokes, epic events, magnified personalities.

Jon makes an interesting distinction in his response to my previous post on the attention that the obsessed have been garnering.

The problem here, I think, is that obsession becomes an easy stand in for meticulousness. It’s an understandable mistake to make, honestly. An artist or craftsman who is meticulous in the details of of their art or craft is generally obsessed; the focus of that obsession is however about something deeper than the number of icons on one’s desktop.

On further thought, my criticism on the praise of obsessives isn’t that obsessiveness—or meticulousness—isn’t a useful tool to the artist, but that the praise is often targeted at the process rather than the outcome.

Gruber and Mann may have meant something else when they discussed obsession, but the message that the blog world at large has taken from it is an idea that, to me, seems both wrong and unhealthy.

We should not be idolizing the journey of the obsessed. It is painful, potentially dangerous, and does not guarantee success. Nor should we imply that it is a prerequisite of success—that does injustice to the innumerable artists who have realized their goals without venturing into the spiraling realms of obsession.

Instead we should appreciate the results of those who are obsessed, and give them praise for their achievements. We should understand obsession. We should not foster it.

I’ve been slowly working my way through IMDb’s Top 250 movies. Some great stuff.