Awoken by my infant daughter at 4AM, I remembered that the Apple Watch pre-order started an hour earlier. After browsing the Apple Store app, I noticed that you could also schedule appointments to try on the Apple Watch and the schedule was wide open. I made an appointment. Here’s how it went, with some comparisons to trying on traditional high-end watches. Arrival I arrived at my local…
Apple iPad Air 2: A case study in untapped potential : Nilay Patel for The Verge: For better or worse, Apple’s allowed the iPad to become the giant iPhone its critics have always insisted that it is, and in a world with giant iPhones that’s a tough spot to be in. This is the best review of any iPad to date. Nilay acknowledges the incredible hardware that Apple has put forth, but at the same time,…
Apple is serious about Bendgate : Josh Lowensohn for The Verge: In case you hadn’t guessed, Apple doesn’t often show this room to outsiders. The only reason I’m here today is because Apple’s latest iPhone, the iPhone 6, bends. Remember when Steve Jobs revealed Apple’s super secret antenna testing room to a select group of journalists during the infamous iPhone 4 Antennagate? Same thing here. Apple…
In a couple days, Apple is poised to release its first new product category since the iPad. Like the iPad, Apple’s new wearable device (“the wearable”) will sit between two existing product categories. The iPad sat between the iPhone and the Mac. The wearable will sit between wristwatches and the iPhone. At the original iPad announcement, Steve Jobs asked, “Do we have what it takes to establish a…
Is the PC back? : Horace Dediu: What has been discussed as a cause for the moderation of market contraction is the expiration of Windows XP support. Certainly that seems plausible and is supported anecdotally. If it’s true then the PC respite may be transient. PCs (including Macs) are likely making a comeback because tablets are declining. Both Samsung and Apple, the world’s largest tablet…
The Android screen fragmentation myth : As someone who develops for Android and iOS I get asked the same question over and over again by people: “Is developing for Android screens a huge pain? How on earth do you cope with the thousands of screen sizes available?” The answer tends to surprise pretty much everyone: It’s not that hard, and honestly causes us less headaches than most people imagine.…
On the eve of WWDC, John Gruber’s latest series of posts got me thinking about the very different product announcement strategies taken by Apple and Google. Tomorrow, Apple will likely announce several innovations, either as new products or improvements to existing products. These innovations have largely been kept behind a shroud of secrecy and will likely be available to developers and…
Our love affair with the tablet is over : Zal Bilimoria writing for Recode: It comes down to size. The vast majority of the hundreds of millions of people who use tech every day are just fine with having two primary computing devices: One for your pocket and one for your desk. Tablets are trying (and failing) to be portable enough to go everywhere, yet large enough to be multipurpose. Despite all…
Apple’s executives recently dismissed the possibility of iOS and OS X merging into a single operating system: “We don’t waste time thinking, ‘But it should be one [interface]!’ How do you make these [operating systems] merge together?’ What a waste of energy that would be,” Schiller said. “To say [OS X and iOS] should be the same, independent of their purpose? Let’s just converge, for the…
Lenovo to acquire Motorola Mobility from Google for $3B : Google acquired Motorola in 2012 for $12.5 billion, so a $3B selling price seems like a huge loss. But there are some details that many have missed. First, according to Michael J. De La Merced at NYT DealBook : When Google bought Motorola, the hardware maker had about $3 billion in cash on hand and nearly $1 billion in tax credits. So that…
Two years ago, I decided it was time to cut the cord. My Comcast cable box had broken down again, the interface was terrible, and it was expensive. I hastily canceled my subscription and returned the ugly cable box in the same day. There was no plan to replace it. I had an Apple TV, but didn’t use it much. I had heard of HD antennas, but never tried one. New Year’s Eve 2011 was spent…
Lots has been written about Apple’s product design decisions and its response, or lackthereof, to competing products. Generally, Apple has a track record of making the right call. It famously rejected netbooks, for example. However, waiting this long to release a larger iPhone may go down in history as a misstep that allowed competitors, such as Samsung, to gain traction in the smartphone…
Apple to release iPhones with bigger screens this year : This piece is quite interesting. Not only does it speculate on two larger screen iPhones (4.5" and over 5"), it gives some insight into the development of these phones and the future, or lack thereof, of the iPhone 5C. First, it looks like the iPhone 5C was a dud and the strategy of wrapping the old phone in new plastic colors (what looks…
A recent article from the Atlantic on how “the stream” crested in 2013 really made me think about this site and what I’m adding to the world. The aforementioned article cites a great piece by Robin Sloan , where she defines two types of internet media: Flow is the feed. It’s the posts and the tweets. It’s the stream of daily and sub-daily updates that remind people that you…
Having fun at Microsoft's expense : Great piece by Der Spiegel on new NSA documents. Not only can the NSA intercept mail-order laptops to implant spying hardware and software, but they like to poke fun at Microsoft while spying using Windows error reports: Although the method appears to have little importance in practical terms, the NSA’s agents still seem to enjoy it because it allows them to…
Hire Robby Leonardi : This is, by far, the best resume I’ve ever seen. He won’t be looking for a job for long.
Flashback to the Facebook IPO : I’m in total agreement with Dan Primack here: But there is no catastrophe here. In fact, Facebook bankers like Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan and Goldman Sachs might have priced the company just about perfectly. Facebook paid its IPO underwriters to do one job, and one job only: Generate the most money possible through the initial public offering of Facebook stock. It…
Twitter left $580K per employee on the table : Dan Primack for Fortune: The only people who should be thrilled about this are Twitter’s bankers, who climbed over the Chinese wall to get a sweet deal for their high-net-worth clients. Twitter itself obviously wanted a bit of price pop for PR and employee morale purposes, but here’s something else employees could be thinking about today: Had Twitter…
The Nexus 5 is so close : Joshua Topolsky for The Verge: The Nexus 5 is an excellent phone in many ways. It’s solidly built and feels great to use. It’s got serious processing power which means it can handle pretty much anything you throw at it. The phone has an absolutely gorgeous display. The KitKat update is polished and refined, and cements my belief that not only is Android leading the charge…
Signing up for Twitter on IPO day : Charlie Warzel: More than anything else, the sign-up process helped me construct a bare-bones timeline that felt extraordinarily impersonal. Granted, nobody can be expected to craft a meaningful feed in minutes — much of what makes Twitter great and so useful is the care that is put into carefully pruning and re-pruning one’s network — but Twitter’s “onboarding”…