Speaking of people quitting their day jobs, Greg Smith - a former Goldman Sachs executive director - explains why he decided to leave the company today:

TODAY is my last day at Goldman Sachs. After almost 12 years at the firm — first as a summer intern while at Stanford, then in New York for 10 years, and now in London — I believe I have worked here long enough to understand the trajectory of its culture, its people and its identity. And I can honestly say that the environment now is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it.

While not technology related, the story is pertinent given the economic climate we have all endured. Looks like not much has changed.

Former Googler, James Whittaker, on his decision to leave the company:

Perhaps Google is right. Perhaps the future lies in learning as much about people’s personal lives as possible. Perhaps Google is a better judge of when I should call my mom and that my life would be better if I shopped that Nordstrom sale. Perhaps if they nag me enough about all that open time on my calendar I’ll work out more often. Perhaps if they offer an ad for a divorce lawyer because I am writing an email about my 14 year old son breaking up with his girlfriend I’ll appreciate that ad enough to end my own marriage. Or perhaps I’ll figure all this stuff out on my own.

The old Google was a great place to work. The new one?

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Whittaker’s post is worth the read. He offers a personal assessment of the philosophical changes within Google’s corporate mindset, including the push for Google+. I realize that this is only one person’s perspective, but given the recent struggles of Google+, it perhaps speaks to something larger.

(via: Mike French)

Jason Grigsby discusses the initial method that Apple.com will use to serve retina graphics to the new iPad:

As far as I can tell, there is no attempt to prevent duplicate downloads of images. New iPad users are going to download both a full desktop size image and a retina version as well.

The price for both images is fairly steep. For example, the iPad hero image on the home page is 110.71K at standard resolution. The retina version is 351.74K. The new iPad will download both for a payload of 462.45K for the hero image alone.

The total size of the page goes from 502.90K to 2.13MB when the retina versions of images are downloaded.

I’m not sure how anyone could get by with the 250MB AT&T data plan on the new iPad unless they stick to email and non-retina-serving sites.¹ Grigsby goes on to note that websites could more intelligently deliver retina-only graphics. However, even in those cases, image sizes are going to be three to four times as large as their non-retina counterparts.

I think it’s safe to assume that data usage will increase for users upgrading to the newest iPad.

(via: Luke Wroblewski)

Jacqui Cheng, Ars Technica, gives an in-depth account of her live-blogging efforts for last week’s new iPad launch:

Do you ever find yourself wondering about the glamorous life of an Apple liveblogger? Do you imagine yourself as me, jet-setting across the country to bask in Apple CEO Tim Cook’s presence while he presents the next product in Apple’s lineup: a time traveling iPad that acts as a particle reactor on the side and can make your coffee in the morning?

If so, you’re in luck

Sign me up.

Christopher Breen, Macworld.com:

In the grand scheme of things, the Apple TV is neither source nor destination.

It’s a portal.

Bingo. Breen alludes to the one feature that was reason enough for me to buy the Apple TV - AirPlay.

The point being, once you see the Apple TV for what it is—an accessory rather than The Thing Itself—it makes sense in Apple’s larger plan. You bring the content, we’ll provide the ways to move it where you want it.

Charlie Todd describes a prank pulled at TED by Improv Everywhere:

For our latest mission, a presenter at the TED conference has his talk interrupted by the Mac spinning wait cursor, commonly known as the “Spinning Beach Ball of Death.” As he stands awkwardly and waits, things get weird.

Hilarious.

Jim Dalrymple discusses the relevant questions when considering an iPad.

I use my iPad like an iPad. When I pick up my iPad I don’t think that I’m missing out because I’m not using my Mac. I chose the iPad because it fit the task I’m doing at the time.

Exactly. I use a Mac Pro for my research and I also own an iPad. I have no illusions about running complex numerical simulations on an iPad. It isn’t good at that. There are, however, many things that I prefer to do on an iPad instead of on a traditional PC. I choose to use the iPad in those situations because the experience is so much better and the overhead is so much lower.

In the Post-PC world, devices are merely form-factors optimized for particular use cases. The inability of one device to perform a task does not speak to its value. Rather, it merely means that another device is better suited. So the question of whether the iPad can replace a PC is irrelevant. Dalrymple nails it:

The right question to ask is “does the iPad fit my lifestyle?”

Thomas Houston of The Verge offers a cool look at a 2007 Google redesign that never saw the light of day:

A group of Googlers showed off some never-before-seen design prototypes today at SXSW that showed a very different design direction from what was recently rolled out across the Google universe. While 2011’s launch, dubbed “Strawman,” was one of the biggest in the company’s history, Google made similar efforts to redesign the company’s entire stock of sites in 2007 with the Kanna project.

I love design process stories like this. Recent design improvements across all of Google’s brands seem to support the idea of more forward-thinking executive leadership. That is to say, Larry Page is less of a curmudgeon than Eric Schmidt.

Farhad Manjoo, Slate.com:

It’s been two years since Apple’s tablet went on sale. Rivals have released dozens of alternatives, but the iPad still represents more than 60 percent of market share. Worse, the rest of the market is dominated by two devices that are being sold at a loss—Amazon’s Kindle Fire and Barnes & Noble’s Nook.

Craig Mod:

As for Twitter archives — it’s a hard problem. And I can see how it might not be a top priority within the company. But I hope that there is a sense of how important the right interface to those archives can be. And how surfacing the stories captured within Twitter’s efficient reportage ecosystem could be one of the company’s strongest, most beautiful assets.

Mod relates his firsthand experience with the Sendai earthquake to the different social use cases for Facebook and Twitter. More importantly, he makes the case that Twitter has an obligation to improve its archiving/search functionality.

As someone who prefers Twitter to Facebook, I have long thought that the lack of useful searching and archiving is one of the company’s most glaring weaknesses. Mod, however, shows that the impetus for improvement is larger in scope than mere convenience.