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One of the greatest RPGs ever made is out on iOS today. It'll cost you $15.99, and it's got touchscreen-adapted controls and a brand new coat of paint.

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Nicolas Haelewyn, the chef at frilly new Soho marcaron parlor Maison Laduree, explains his philosophy: "The most important thing is the visual. The taste is easier, but the visual is more difficult. We have to keep the same size and the same taste everywhere." In addition to sweets, the menu has lunch items including a kale salad. [WSJ]

Note: For more vegan posts, head here!

[Photographs: J. Kenji López-Alt]

Tofu is my favorite food, which makes me an outlier. People don't like tofu. And I get it. There's a lot of bad tofu out there, and it's easy to dislike when it's soggy, mushy, or bland. But great tofu—tofu with a tender center surrounded by a well-seasoned, crisp crust—is one of the most satisfying bites of food I can think of, a food that can and should be appreciated by all serious eaters, no matter their diet.

Here's how to cook tofu so good even tofu-haters might come around. First we're going to talk about how to shop for tofu, then we'll talk about how to crisp up plain slices of tofu, and finally we'll figure out the best way to prepare tofu for stir-frying.

Dry = Good

The goal when frying tofu—whether pan-frying or deep frying—is the same as the goal when frying meat or vegetables: to alter the texture and flavor. In the case of tofu, we're talking about adding some crispness to an otherwise tender food, and adding some rich browning, which brings out tofu's natural sweetness and bring some savory notes to the forefront.

Crispness comes from the dehydration of the exterior layer of proteins in your tofu slices, while browning occurs when those proteins and carbohydrates are exposed to temperatures above around 300°F or so, precipitating the Maillard reaction (that's just the fancy word for "things that make your food golden and delicious").

Some things are not good dry. Cake. Pools. Sex. But tofu is different. The key to both crispness and browning is the removal of moisture, so the drier you get your tofu to begin with, the more efficiently these reactions will take place, and the better the contrast between crisp exterior and moist, tender interior will be.

There are a number of ways to dry your tofu out before cooking it, but the easiest first step is to get the right tofu to begin with. Tofu comes in two basic forms: silken and cottony, which are made using two different coagulating agents. Within these two categories, you'll find varying degrees of firmness from custardy soft to very firm and meaty, depending on their final water content. Some brands conflate soft with silken, but traditionally, the two are orthogonal measures (that is, it is possible to have soft cottony tofu just as it's possible to have firm silken tofu).

For crisping purposes, you want to use cottony (non-silken), extra-firm tofu, which holds its shape and browns better than other varieties.

Cut and Dry

After choosing the right variety, the second step is to slice and dry your tofu. Some recipes recommend pressing your whole block of tofu to remove excess moisture before slicing. This works fine, but takes some time. Much easier is to slice the tofu, then lay the slices out flat on a cutting board or baking sheet lined with paper towels or a clean kitchen towel. More surface area = faster water removal = dinner on the table that much faster.

I've also seen it suggested to employ the microwave in the aid of draining tofu: the theory is a few seconds on high power will cause the protein structure to tighten up slightly, squeezing out excess moisture. It works, but it's frankly a pain in the butt to microwave tofu in batches. An equally effective but much faster and easier method is to do what tofu goddess Andrea Nguyen suggests: pretreat the tofu by pouring hot salted water over it.

It may seem counterintuitive to add water to something you're trying to dry out, but boiling water will actually cause the tofu to squeeze out more moisture, bringing it to the surface and making it easier to blot off, while the salt gently seasons the slices. In any case, your tofu should be dry to the touch before you cook it. Have you ever stuck out your tongue and left it out for few minutes to see how dry it can get? That's what your tofu should feel like.

Marinades

It seems like a no-brainer to marinate tofu, but I'd actually advise against it. While non-silken tofu does have a somewhat spongy texture that will absorb marinades, you end up with tofu that browns too fast and tastes like raw marinade on the inside. I prefer keeping the tofu tasting like tofu, using a sauce applied after cooking to lend it flavor if it needs it. The combination of intense sauce with clean tofu flavor is far more pleasant (or sophisticated, or classy, or whatever it is that'll get you to try it).

Similarly, a dusting of spices can be tasty if the spices are fresh, properly toasted, and balanced, but again, you want to apply them after cooking the tofu. Tofu simply takes too long to crisp up properly to be able to season before cooking without running the risk of burning those spices up.

Where's Your Coat?

Just like there are days when you put on your full winter gear to head out, others in which you lounge around in your pajamas on the couch, and still others where nary a piece of fabric girds your loins from dawn to dusk, the way you coat your tofu depends on the situation.

If you like it plain (as I do from time to time), then the way to do it is to fry the slices in a heavy cast iron skillet over moderate heat until deep brown and crispy on both sides, using a thin metal spatula to flip the slices as they crisp. Taking your time is key: the more gently you brown the slices, the more evenly and deeper brown you can get them without burning them.

If, on the other hand, the tofu is destined for a stir-fry or some other saucy application, you'll want to give them a crispy coating that can both absorb a bit of sauce, and provide a layer of protection so that the tofu can stay crisp even after saucing.

I tried coating tofu with various blends of of flour, potato starch, rice flour, and corn starch, both pan-frying and deep-frying, and found that the crispest, cleanest-tasting results came from a deep-fry in a simple coating of cornstarch.

Crisp fresh out of the fryer, that is. After a few minutes of resting while I prepare the rest of my stir-fry and sauce, the crisp coating had softened. What if I were to use a wet batter instead? I'd spent a long time working out a recipe for a Korean Fried Chicken batter which worked equally well on a batch of Crispy Buffalo-Fried Cauliflower. Would the same coating work on my tofu?

Indeed it did: a quick dredge in dry cornstarch followed by a dip into a cornstarch, water, and vodka mixture before a plunge into a wok with a quart of 350°F oil resulting in ultra-crisp bites of tofu that stay crisp even after you finish them off in a stir-fry.

How To Stir-Fry Crispy Tofu

When stir-frying, the order in which you cook your ingredients is of vital importance. A standard wok range in a Chinese restaurant has separate controls for the gas and oxygen flow, allowing them to reach heat outputs in excess of 80,000 bTUs. This allows cooks to add ingredients in quick succession, keeping everything hot enough to produce smoky, browned flavors without any excess steaming or boiling. It's this high heat that gives a good stir-fry a tender-crisp texture, bright color, and a lightly smoky, charred flavor.

A home burner, on the other hand, is about an order of magnitude weaker than a restaurant wok range. This means that rather than adding all of your ingredients to the same wok, it works far better if you cook your individual ingredients in batches, reheat the wok between batches, and combine them all at the very end. (See our Wok Skills 101 series for more details.) Most stir fries follow the same basic formula: two or three main ingredients, cooked one at a time, followed by some aromatics, and a sauce to bind it all together.

For instance, to make a crispy tofu and broccoli stir-fry with a glossy, garlicky sauce, I start by deep-frying the coated tofu in the wok, then transfer it to a paper towel-lined plate to drain. I then pour off the oil (I save mine in a covered pot to be reused later), wipe out the wok, and heat a little bit more oil in it over high heat until it really starts smoking.

In go the second main ingredient: broccoli florets, cut into bite-sized pieces. For the best flavor, you want a combination of browning through direct conductive heat—that is, heat from the wok—as well as the flavor gained by tossing the broccoli into the air, allowing the hot air rising from the burners to vaporize some of the micro-particles of oil that get sprayed up during the process.

As soon as the broccoli is browned but before it's completely tender, I add the aromatics.

Chinese dishes incorporate a wide range of aromatic vegetables and spices, but for this particular dish, I'm using what's sometimes called the Holy Trinity of Chinese cuisine: finely chopped ginger, scallions, and garlic,. I go heavy on the garlic.

30 seconds-worth of tossing and they're done. The broccoli and aromatics go into a bowl to rest while I cook the sauce.

This particular sauce balances some acidity with some salty, sweet, and savory elements: Chinese rice wine, soy sauce, bean sauce, vegan sugar, vegan stock, and toasted sesame oil. Some cornstarch binds it all together: As it cooks in the hot wok, it should reduce into a syrupy, flavor-packed glaze.

All that's left is to toss your tofu and broccoli in it, garnish with some toasted sesame seeds, and you're ready to eat.

The result is tender-crisp crowns of broccoli and crunchy bites of tofu with moist, tender cores, all coated in a glossy, flavor-packed sauce. Even my wife, the big tofu-hater, finished off her plate (though admittedly, she did very generously insist that my sister take all the leftovers).

The beauty of the technique is that with this coating under my belt, I'm now equipped to incorporate crisp tofu into any number of stir-fries, which means my vegan menu options have just become virtually limitless, and coincidentally, so have yours.

About the author: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt is the Chief Creative Officer of Serious Eats where he likes to explore the science of home cooking in his weekly column The Food Lab. You can follow him at @thefoodlab on Twitter, or at The Food Lab on Facebook.

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Aston Martin is recalling 17,590 cars after discovering that they contain counterfeit parts. The recall affects around 75 percent of the cars produced by Aston Martin since November, 2007, and stems from the discovery that a Chinese sub-supplier allegedly used a counterfeit plastic to produce part of the cars' gas pedal.

It's feared that the counterfeit material may cause the pedal arm to break, although Aston Martin stresses that there have been no reports of accidents related to the fault. Should the pedal break, it's likely the engine would return to idle and the car would slow to a stop — a danger especially if driving on a highway. Only the new Vanquish coupe and Volante are entirely exempt from the recall. Replacing the faulty...

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Google is rolling out a new feature that pushes YouTube videos to the top of search results. Search for a song and you'll now see a Google Now-like card appear at the top of your results, containing a link to the video for the song as well as information on the artist, album, and release date. As Search Engine Watch reports, the cards look a lot like a playable videos, but they're actually just images that redirect to YouTube.

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I’ve gone back and forth on Comments here on SplatF. On one hand, it’s idiotic to ignore the fact that there’s a community around the site, with interesting — often dissenting — voices that make good complements to my posts. On the other hand, typical blog Comments sections are frequently a disaster zone, especially on posts that get a bunch of traffic from outsiders, who take a quick dump on the site and then never return.

I’ve hoped for a while that Twitter would try to help solve this problem. (I should note up front that I have neither the budget nor the time to properly moderate any sort of Comments section, so this whole thing could be a non-starter.) Facebook’s Comments plugin seems nice enough, but knowing my audience, Facebook is not where we hang out — it’s Twitter by a mile. Many of my favorite readers either don’t have Facebook accounts or go by pseudonyms, where Facebook isn’t helpful at all.

Twitter itself has done a decent stand-in as a community gathering place for SplatF readers, but it’s disconnected. If we have a great discussion about a post on Twitter, yes, it’s happened, but I’d have to manually note it here, and it’s still awkward to link to or embed individual conversations. Some sort of plugin, which gathers the best replies and tweets about a post would be awesome. This would encourage comments in someone’s usual tone — supporting their Twitter persona and reputation, not the sudden-jerk-syndrome typical to blog Comments — while also allowing me to present them on the same page as my text.

My guess is that this isn’t likely to happen, at least from Twitter itself, which is too bad. Twitter has every incentive to drive activity and traffic to Twitter, not to fragment it. And the company seems busy enough already. So I’m not going to get my hopes up. But I’d love to be wrong.

Jason Fried:

We’re changing our name. 37signals is now Basecamp. “37signals” goes into the history books. From now on, we are Basecamp. Basecamp the company, Basecamp the product. We’re one and the same.

As one of the FAQs states, this is a really unusual strategy. I’ve long admired Jason and his team’s knack for questioning conventional wisdom, for forcing themselves to look at everything from new perspectives. I never would have expected this, but now that they’ve done it, it feels right.

The Onion, apt, as usual. (Via MG Siegler.)

The enigmatic and oppressively difficult mobile game Flappy Bird has turned into quite the cash cow for Vietnamese developer Dong Nguyen. In an interview with The Verge, Nguyen revealed that the game, which has been sitting atop the App Store and Google Play Store charts for nearly a month, is earning on average $50,000 per day from in-app ads.

If you're only now hearing of Flappy Bird, the game goes as follows: you tap the screen to propel a tiny, pixelated bird upwards. If you hit any of the green pipes in your way as you fly towards some unknowable, unreachable finish line, the game is over. The goal is simply to accumulate the highest score possible. The catch? You'll very likely spend an hour even reaching a score of five. The...

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Times Square was just the beginning.

The U.S. franchise development manager for the so-called "Starbucks of South Korea" tells the Real Deal that more than 80 agreements for Caffé Bene outlets have been signed for new locations throughout the five boroughs. To that end, there are currently four pages of placeholder tags live on the chain's website, listing every place from Rector Street to "St. Mark's 1" to Washington Heights as future Caffé Bene sites. If this is a bluff, it's certainly a fun one.

The chain, which has more than 1,200 stores globally, opened its first New York location, in Times Square, in 2012, with 250 seats and its trademark menu of pastries and Belgian waffles. Coffee writer Oliver Strand gave it a mostly favorable review. "Better to keep it simple," he wrote in the Times, admiring its twin Marzocco GB5s. "Get a waffle and a misugaru latte, or an Americano ($2.25), the order of choice in Seoul." An FIT outlet and an immense Sunnyside branch opened after that.

Midtown Lunch noticed one more Caffé Bene branch was opening at 36th Street and Seventh Avenue, so that's basically one down, 79 to go. “Opening in New York, in Manhattan, is the best way to make people know our brand,” says company executive Min Hong. He doesn't seem to be kidding.

“Starbucks of South Korea” plans huge city expansion [Real Deal]

Read more posts by Hugh Merwin

Filed Under: empire building, caffe bene, coffee, openings, the chain gang

After months of anticipation, Maison Ladurée's second New York outpost is now open in Soho. The new location, in the former Barolo space, is truly palatial, with room for a full-service restaurant, outdoor seating, and a tea room alongside its long, gleaming pastry counter.

Do head over to Racked for a look around this temple to the macaron, because the folks at Ladurée really followed through on that promise to be "the most beautiful location in the world." The inside is a magnificent display of marble surfaces, Grecian statues, macaron towers, chandeliers, and a ceiling that looks like the sky.
· Take a Tour Inside the Magnificent New Ladurée in Soho [~RNY~]
· All Coverage of Maison Ladurée [~ENY~]

Newark Airport, known for its reasonable flight prices but a completely unreasonable commute, will get just a little bit closer to New York: starting hopefully in 2024, the Port Authority will start running PATH trains from Manhattan directly to Newark Airport. [ more › ]

In Focus has posted some shortlisted images from The 2014 Sony World Photography Awards. This wildebeest photo by Bonnie Cheung stopped me in my tracks...it looks like a painting (or a cave painting).

More here and here.

Tags: Bonnie Cheung   photography

Pokémon Bank is now available on the Nintendo eShop, ending a delay more than a month long. The Bank allows players to store and manage up to 3,000 pokémon online, even moving them between Pokémon X and Y.

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GetItDigital (99.4% approval) is selling the Canon EOS 6D body for $1575 via ebay.

Canon EOS 6D body $1575 via ebay

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The Northeast may have had its fun mocking the South's recent descent into chaos in the face of snow, but now it's our turn to fall apart. This newest storm has shut down I-84—one of the region's biggest highways—and crippled countless other roads. The culprit? We're running out of salt.

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Say you're going to Sochi for the Winter Olympics. You've magically found a hotel that's actually complete and not full of trash and construction equipment. Crisis averted, right? Not quite—because as NBC Nightly News' experiment shows, your computer or smartphone could be hacked in seconds in Sochi. Hackers will be going after your computer or smartphone from the minute you land.

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You want this.

One of the great traditions among New York restaurateurs is to whip up a stupendous dish and then do just about everything they can to conceal it from their public. The latest example of this perverse practice, the Underground Gourmet has discovered, is the secret, off-the-menu sensation at Otto's Tacos known to insiders as the Gorgon, and it's so infernally good that the mere mention of the word elicits in the U.G. a salivary response that would greatly interest Dr. Ivan Pavlov.

Here is what it consists of: one supersize fresh-masa tortilla smooshed to order on a contraption that looks like something a dry cleaner would use to press pants, then deep-fried into a delicately chewy-flaky, almost croissantlike texture; a heaping helping of zingy carne asada fresh off the griddle; a gob of guacamole; a drizzle of serrano-chile crema; and a sprinkle of chopped onion and cilantro. Natives of San Antonio might recognize the thing as a riff on the regional delicacy known as a puffy taco.

As for naming it after a snake-haired demon-woman from Greek mythology, who knows? Maybe Otto's Angeleno owner Otto Cedeno and chef Joe LoNigro call it that because simply gazing at one will turn your arteries to stone. One caveat: Gorgons are available only off-hours during the day, when LoNigro is in the mood and isn't too busy to make them. Otherwise, they might have to change the name of the place from Otto's Tacos to Otto's Gorgons.

141 Second Ave., nr. E. 9th St.; 646-678-4018; ottostacos.com

Read more posts by Rob Patronite and Robin Raisfeld

Filed Under: what to eat, east village, gorgon, otto's tacos

Where are we on that deportation petition? When Justin Bieber flew in to town for the Super Bowl last Friday the little Canadian hellion added some more notches to his Championship Douchebag Belt. Early reports that day suggested Bieber was flying high on a pot plane, and was met by authorities at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey. Now NBC News is filling in the blanks, through an official report of the incident. [ more › ]

The death of Philip Seymour Hoffman has turned more attention towards America's growing heroin problem, where the gateway drug is often a prescription painkiller. From PBS Newshour: "Why more Americans are getting high -- and overdosing -- on heroin."

As I mentioned at the time, Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin devoted his entire State of the State to the "full-blown heroin crisis."

Tags: drugs   USA

Fast paced mech shooter Hawken has been in open beta since 2012, and soon the free-to-play game will be making its way to Steam. Developer Adhesive Games made the announcement today, in an attempt to "introduce Hawken to a brand new audience." However, for current players this will mean some changes to the multiplayer experience — most notably that a Steam account will be required to play the game from now on.

New account creation has been disabled for the time being, and the developer will spend the next week transitioning current players to the Steam version, before opening it up to everyone else later this month. "The reason we're approaching our release in this manner is so we can slowly ramp up to a full Steam launch," the...

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Amazon's Kindle Worlds, the company's publishing arm for legally-sanctioned fan fiction, is expanding fast. The company announced today that it's adding seven new properties, including GI Joe, Veronica Mars, and the Pretty Little Liars spinoff Ravenswood. That brings the total number of fan fiction franchises available exclusively through Amazon up to 20.

The announcement comes on the 50th anniversary of GI Joe, which is owned by Hasbro. "Hasbro now enters a new segment of the business by embracing the concept of open-source storytelling, and officially unlocking the world of GI Joe to our fans through Amazon’s Kindle Worlds," a Hasbro executive said in a statement, suggesting megabrands are starting to recognize that fanfic is a...

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[Blue Bottle logo; Photo via Google Maps]
Beloved California-based coffee company Blue Bottle is planning a new cafe at 54 West 40th St., right across the street from Bryant Park. The new, 445 square-foot outpost of Blue Bottle will have a drip bar, a three-grouphead La Marzocco Strada espresso machine, and a mini keg filled with iced coffee. A Blue Bottle rep says that the team is shooting for a spring opening.

Later this month, Blue Bottle will open its second Brooklyn location on Dean Street in Boerum Hill. The company recently raised $25.75 million in funding, which it plans to use for expansion in California and New York.
· All Coverage of Blue Bottle Coffee [~ENY~]

This appears to be for real: DMX has signed a contract to box George Zimmerman, who was acquitted of murder charges last year in the death of Florida teen Trayvon Martin. Celebrity boxing promoter Damon Feldman says DMX was chosen out of 15,000 applicants eager to get in a ring with Zimmerman—the rapper tells TMZ he wants to fight on behalf of "every black person who has been done wrong in the system...I am going to beat the living fuck out of him. I am breaking every rule in boxing to make sure I fuck him up right." After knocking Zimmerman out, DMX says he intends to urinate on Zimmerman's face. [ more › ]

Here's a map that shows you all the best places to get your coffee fix in New York, based on the subway line. How convenient!

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Help is on the way!

Speaking of not clearing customs, McDonald's has been unable to serve ketchup to its customers in Argentina because its regular shipment has been held up at the airport for reasons that aren't entirely clear. The chain has apologized for the ketchup shortage on Twitter and said it is "bringing in other sauces to replace it while we try to fix the problem." [QZ]

Read more posts by Hugh Merwin

Filed Under: can't ketchup, argentina, ketchup, mcdonald's, the chain gang

CVS, the nation's second-largest pharmacy chain with 7,600 stores, just announced it will stop selling all cigarettes and tobacco products by October 1st.

"Ending the sale of cigarettes and tobacco products at CVS/pharmacy is simply the right thing to do for the good of our customers and our company," CVS said in a press release. "The sale of tobacco products is inconsistent with our purpose – helping people on their path to better health."

The company isn't the first major retailer to quit tobacco; Target and Wegmans Food Markets did so in 1996 and 2008, respectively. It's all more bad news for the $100 billion a year tobacco industry, which has seen cigarette sales fall 31 percent from 2003 to 2013.

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On Starbound's official site, Tiy, Chucklefish Games head honcho and lead developer for the side-scrolling sandbox RPG, shared the team's plans for Starbound, Chucklefish themselves, and their upcoming second game. Yes, there's gonna be a second game. No, it won't affect Starbound's beta at all.

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In broad strokes, here is my view of Microsoft’s history.

In the beginning, Bill Gates stated the company’s goal: “A computer on every desk and in every home.” That was crazy. The PC revolution was well underway, but the grand total of PCs sold when Gates stated that mantra was, by today’s standards, effectively zero. PCs were for hobbyists. Everyone involved knew they were on to something, but Gates realized, at the outset, that they were on to something huge. The industry was measuring sales in the thousands, but Gates was already thinking about billions. Here’s Gates, in an interview from 2010:

Paul Allen and I had used that phrase even before we wrote the BASIC for Microsoft.

We actually talked about it in an article in — I think 1977 was the first time it appears in print — where we say, “a computer on every desk and in every home…” and actually we said, “…running Microsoft software.” If we were just talking about the vision, we’d leave those last three words out. If we were talking an internal company discussion, we’d put those words in. It’s very hard to recall how crazy and wild that was, you know, “on every desk and in every home.” At the time, you have people who are very smart saying, “Why would somebody need a computer?” Even Ken Olsen, who had run this company Digital Equipment, who made the computer I grew up with, and that we admired both him and his company immensely, was saying that this seemed kind of a silly idea that people would want to have a computer.

He was right. And not only did the first part of the phrase come true, the last three words — “… running Microsoft software” — did too. From the mid-’90s and for the next decade, there was, effectively, a computer on every desk and in every home running Microsoft software. At least 95 percent of them were running the Windows operating system, and among the rest, most were Macs running Internet Explorer and probably Microsoft Office too.

Windows was almost everywhere, and Microsoft was everywhere.

Peak Microsoft was unfathomably pervasive. They won so thoroughly that Steve Jobs conceded that they’d won, telling Wired in February 1996:

The desktop computer industry is dead. Innovation has virtually ceased. Microsoft dominates with very little innovation. That’s over. Apple lost. The desktop market has entered the dark ages, and it’s going to be in the dark ages for the next 10 years, or certainly for the rest of this decade.”

Steve Fucking Jobs said that. He was exactly right. And who knows where we’d be today if Jobs and NeXT had not been reunified with Apple the next year.

“A computer on every desk and in every home” was incredible foresight for 1977. It carried Microsoft for 25 years of growth. But once that goal was achieved, I don’t think they knew where to go. They were like the dog that caught the car. They spent a lot of time and energy on TV. Not just with Xbox, which is alive and well today (albeit not a significant source of income), but with other ideas that did not pan out, like “media center PCs” and the joint ownership of “MSNBC”, which was originally imagined as a sort of cable news network, website, dessert topping, and floor wax rolled into one.

What they missed was the next step from every desk and home: a computer in every pocket. It’s worse than that, though. They saw it coming, and they tried. Pocket PC, Windows CE, Windows Mobile — swings and misses at the next big thing. They weren’t even close, and damningly, Steve Ballmer didn’t even seem to realize it. That’s what’s so damning about that video of him laughing at the original iPhone. Whenever I dredge up that video, a handful of defenders will write and tell me it’s unfair to mock him for his reaction, that he was actually right — that the original iPhone was too expensive. But what should have scared Microsoft wasn’t what the iPhone was in 2007, it was what the iPhone clearly was going to be in 2008, 2009, 2010. Prices come down, chips get faster. Software evolves. Apple had unveiled to the world a personal computer that fit in your pocket. That was amazing. That the original iPhone left much room for improvement is simply the way revolutionary products always get their start.

Microsoft’s institutional lack of taste had finally come to bite them in their ass. While Ballmer laughed at the iPhone and presumably walked around with a Windows Mobile piece of junk in his pocket, Larry Page and Sergei Brin carried iPhones. Google never laughed at the iPhone; it made money from it by providing web search and maps. Google quickly became, and remains to this day, a leading developer of iOS apps. And it was Google that was fast to follow the iPhone with Android, slurping up the commodity-market crumbs that Apple, focused as ever on the quality-minded high end of the market, eschewed. I don’t think it was ever within Microsoft’s DNA to produce the iPhone, but what Android became — the successful fast follower — could have been theirs if they’d recognized the opportunity faster. The Microsoft of 1984, a decade away from industry dominance, wrote software for the original Mac, and learned from it. When Bill Gates first saw a Mac, he didn’t laugh — he wanted to know how it worked, right down to specific details, like the smooth animation of its mouse cursor.

No company today has reach or influence anything like what Microsoft had during the golden era of the PC. Not Apple, not Google, and not Microsoft itself. I don’t think Ballmer ever came to grips with that. Ballmer’s view of the company solidified when it dominated the entire industry, and he never adjusted.

Hence Windows 8. One OS for all PCs, traditional and tablet alike, because that’s the only way for Windows to run almost all of them, and Windows running almost all PCs is the way things ought to be. Rather than accept a world where Windows persisted as merely one of several massively popular personal computing platforms, and focus on making Windows as it was better for people who want to use desktop and notebook PCs, Microsoft forged ahead with a design that displeased traditional PC users and did little to gain itself a foothold in the burgeoning tablet market. It was easy to see. Windows 8’s design wasn’t what was best for any particular device, but instead what seemed best for Ballmer’s “Windows everywhere” vision of the industry and Microsoft’s rightful place atop it.

Horace Dediu captures the change in the industry wrought by iOS and Android in this succinct (and, as usual, well-illustrated) piece from a few months ago, writing:

If we include all iOS and Android devices the “computing” market in Q3 2008 was 92 million units of which Windows was 90%, whereas in Q3 2013 it was 269 million units of which Windows was 32%.

That’s a startling change, and Ballmer never seemed to accept it. Windows 8 wasn’t designed to adjust to the new world; it was designed to turn back the clock to the old one.

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I think it’s a very good sign that Satya Nadella comes from Microsoft’s server group. As my colleague Brent Simmons wrote today:

Creating services for iOS apps doesn’t sound at all like the Microsoft I used to know. Using Node.js and JavaScript doesn’t sound like that Microsoft. The old Microsoft would create services for their OSes only and you’d have to use Visual Studio.

There’s still a lot of the old Microsoft there, the Windows, Office, Exchange, and Sharepoint (WOES) company. It’s most of the company by far, surely. (I just made up the acronym WOES. It fits.)

But in the Azure group, at least, there’s recognition that Microsoft can’t survive on lock-in, that those days are in the past.

Even if you don’t choose to use Microsoft’s cloud services, I hope you can agree on two things: that competition is good, and that Azure’s support-everything policy is the best direction for the future of the company.

In short, Nadella’s Server division is the one part of Microsoft that seems designed for, and part of, the post-iOS, post-Android state of the industry. A division pushing toward the future, not the past.

Successful companies tend to be true to themselves. The old Microsoft’s Windows and Office everywhere, on every device strategy was insanely ambitious, but also true to their culture. Apple has grown to eclipse Microsoft in financial size, but never set its sights on Microsoft-ian market share. Google is unfocused at the edges, but it’s never tried to act like any company other than Google. Google makes operating systems and office applications, but in a decidedly Google-y way. The last thing Microsoft should do is attempt to be like Apple or Google.

Cloud computing is one potential path forward. The cloud is nascent, like the PC industry of 1980. In 30 years we’ll look back at our networked infrastructure of today and laugh, wondering how we got a damn thing done. The world is in need of high-quality, reliable, developer-friendly, trustworthy, privacy-guarding cloud computing platforms. Apple and Google each have glaring (and glaringly different) holes among that list of adjectives.

Satya Nadella needs to find Microsoft’s new “a computer on every desk and in every home running Microsoft software”. Here’s my stab at it: Microsoft services, sending data to and from every networked device in the world. The next ubiquity isn’t running on every device, it’s talking to every device.

Why won't Russia let Chobani in?

United States Senator Charles Schumer has urgently called on Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak to expedite paperwork so that Team USA, along with many hungry NBC employees stationed in Sochi, can start enjoying what must be a massive shipment of delicious Chobani. Right now, Schumer says, the yogurt is sitting in storage at Newark International Airport because the Russian Federation's Federal Service for Veterinary and Phytosanitary Surveillance has not yet given the green light for the product to clear customs. The USDA has signed off on a "sanitary certificate" that states the yogurt meets Russia's food-safety standards, however, and regardless, it's being consumed only by Americans.

"With the Sochi Olympic Games starting at the end of this week, there is simply no time to waste in getting our Olympic athletes and employees a nutritious and delicious breakfast - Chobani Greek Yogurt," Schumer said in a statement first reported by the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle. In his letter to Ambassador Kislyak, Senator Schumer emphasizes that the yogurt care-package is a one-time shipment, and reiterates that only U.S. citizens will get to eat it.

The amount of yogurt being held at the New Jersey airport has not been disclosed, but considering that the United States has 230 athletes competing in Sochi, and other personnel, such as coaches and trainers — not to mention the television network's staff — that number increases significantly, and it is likely that many thousands of peach- and blackberry-flavored containers are just stranded in Newark.

Update: Chobani sends along official comment on the Senator's efforts and the fate of its Greek yogurt:

We appreciate Senator Charles Schumer’s support of Team USA by helping us complete the delivery of Chobani Greek Yogurt to Sochi to naturally power our athletes all the way to the finish line—something we’ve had in the works for quite some time. Right now, 5,000 fresh single-serve cups of blueberry, strawberry and peach Chobani, and multi-serve containers of plain Chobani yogurt for smoothies, are being stored in a temperature-controlled facility, waiting for the final go-ahead from Russian authorities to be immediately transported. This is a time when the focus should be on our athletes, so we're just trying to do right by them in getting food they enjoy from home.

Supporting our Olympians over the past four years has been one of our greatest honors. Not only is Chobani a proud sponsor of U.S. Olympians and Paralympians - we’re also an authentic part of their training regimens and honored to be found inside their fridges. As the official yogurt of the 2014 U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Teams, chefs and nutritionists have served Chobani to the athletes in the U.S. Olympic Training Centers over the past several months.

Chobani’s commitment to Team USA is a recognition of how these athletes’ training matters, doing things the right way and never cutting corners - just as we’re committed to perfectly crafting every cup of Chobani.

Russia won't let Chobani yogurt in Sochi for Olympics [Rochester Democrat and Chronicle]

Read more posts by Hugh Merwin

Filed Under: no whey, chobani, chuck schumer, gmo, greek yogurt, olympics, sochi, team usa, yogurt