Walt Mossberg isn't impressed: His Year in Review →

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Walt Mossberg on the tech of 2015:

mobile:

 "Perhaps the most disappointing new twist came from Apple's 3D Touch. In my iPhone 6S review, I said I thought it could become a big deal. But, so far, it hasn't seemed to take off. Maybe next year. Maybe never."

new 12" MacBook:

"The newest Mac is slow, overpriced, and has a keyboard some find tough to get used to."

Mossberg continues with a discussion about the resurrection of MS and the general "meh" surrounding the Apple Watch, along w/ similar wearables. 

 I'd agree with most of his assessment but for one thing-- the Amazon Echo. To be sure, it was m released to a pilot audience in (late) December 2014, but it changed my domestic life in 2015. The Echo has gotten better and better-- week after week and month after month without my ever needing to approve an update or download apps for it. Between its lightning fast voice recognition, growing library of content along with it's aforementioned seamless updates and robust IFTTT support (you can set custom voice command triggers), Amazon really felt like the Queen of the Cloud.  What made the device stand head and shoulders above Apple's Siri and Google Now was the way the Echo was implemented, with seven microphones and a bunch of other kit, meant that I didn't need a phone nearby to take advantage of its functionality. I spoke to my house and it listened. I even picked up a second device for the bedroom to replace an app-enabled iHome clock radio. 

Other smart/connected home devices like Piper NV and the growing suite of Belkins WEMO tools also came in handy, with the latter certainly integrating nicely with the Echo directly as well as with IFTTT. 

It's true that the idea that every year needs a breakout super hit is part and parcel with what Paolo Bacigiulupi often "the Expansion Economy," in his work. It's a flawed measurement of success. Indeed for me, the Echo became indispensable (I very much want some version of it for my car), but like so many things, Echo is a remix of many ideas, implemented well. A revolution every hearsay make for great news cycles, but I'd rather tech giants take what they have, and refine it than drop half-baked moonshots at us all year long. 

 

 

Understanding the iPad Pro →

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In a recent piece on his site, Daring Fireball, John Gruber (who inspired the format of this blog) layed out an effective response to anyone confounded over the price and purpose/scope of the iPad Pro:

"We’ve now reached an inflection point. The new MacBook is slower, gets worse battery life, and even its cheapest configuration costs $200 more than the top-of-the-line iPad Pro. The iPad Pro is more powerful, cheaper, has a better display, and gets better battery life. It's not a clear cut-and-dry win..."

At first, many complained that the iPad Pro was too expensive since it began at $700 ($200 more than a base model iPad Air 2) and that to add insult to this imagined injury, its storage capabilities are tiny at 32GB.

When you look at the device as a computer replacement however, the pricing begins to make a lot more sense to me-- especially since this iPad, with the Pro designation, is not marketed as a movie watching, comic reading, couch surfing device - it's meant for productivity. It's meant for work. It delivers on that front and that means as is the case with all well-used tools, it pays for itself.

Perhaps if Apple had called the device the "iMac Mini," or the "Mac Nano," there wouldn't be any confusion on these points. But they won't because it runs iOS rather than Mac OS, so it can't be a Mac. As Apple continues to develop two operating systems, iOS will have to struggle with growing out of the perception that iDevices are toys or field hardware to be synced up w/ a computer later; that they're the stuff of reading, and Instagramming and games. It's a marketing struggle, to be sure, but one which Apple will handle with aplomb, as it always does.

The iPad Pro is the first device to directly confront that struggle.

The Empire Strikes Back - Comcast Edition →

Dante D'Orazio, writing for The Verge: 

 "If data caps don't improve network reliability or performance, why does Comcast now see the need to charge customers more for the same data they've been using for years? Since there's such scarce competition in the US cable industry, the answer is likely quite simple: because Comcast can."

So...having lost its bid for a two-tiered Internet, Comcast institutes data threshold in order to wring yet more revenue out of its customers...because it's the only game in town. It's time for the DOJ, the FCC and the FTC to look into what it's going to take to open up competition in the wired ISP space. 

If Cristina Yang Were The Main Character Of “Grey’s Anatomy”

I don't know. She's important for a lot of reasons but I'm conflicted on her depiction. 

I've always felt that Yang was the "sassy black woman" of the show. Go back 20-30 years and you'll find a media world that was nearly all white with the few black people in the space playing something akin to the Yang role. Spicy. Confrontational. Magical knowledgeable friend. 

Is she a person or a caricature? Was it OK then? Is it OK now? True diversity means complex characters that can look like anything.

War on Drugs Wanes as Demographics Shift →

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 "War" is how the US mainstream fights its enemies. Put another way, for many, the War on Poverty and War on Drugs were US lead conflicts against the poor and against people inflicted with addiction.


Perhaps now that these ills have taken hold

of the mainstream, we can, hand in hand, actually begin working on how to solve the problems we face rather than scheme to attack and exploit a faceless "other."

Women Marry Less These Days →

From US News and World Report:

"Researchers within the Princeton-Brookings report identified several contributing factors to marriage gaps between various classes. For one, there is a smaller pool of "marriageable" men – those with steady, well-paying jobs -- now than there used to be, especially among those with lower education levels.

For example, 82 percent of men ages 25 to 34 were part of the U.S. labor force in 2012, compared with 93 percent in 1960, according to the Pew Research Center. The share of men who are incarcerated also has surged, with black men and those with low levels of education particularly affected. 

Economically, the gap between earnings for men and women has narrowed, reducing the budgetary boost a woman could get from marriage and making it less necessary from that standpoint. In 1980, women earned less than 70 percent of what men earned. By 2012, the gap had narrowed to 93 percent."

So Women get married less because they don't *need* men as much, economically. Now they just look for men that they actually like.

And there aren't many of those. So they stay single. Then it's much less of a problem to leave should he becomes a jerk.

On the flip-side, it's almost too bad because marriage is awesome.

Steve Jobs, the movie. →

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The 2013 Steve Jobs film, Jobs was abysmal at the box office. The 2015 effort, Steve Jobs seems to have failed as well. 

The reason is becoming clear. The man is a hero to a lot of people-- but not enough people-- not to regular people. The vast majority of individuals are muggles when it comes to business and technology don't really identify or deify Mr. Jobs. And that's OK. In Mr. Jobs' case, where there is serious confusion about the way he went about creating that legacy, and the style with which he treated people, creating a compelling narrative is exceedingly difficult. 

When it comes to the box office there is one more thing to think about. While The Social Network was a film focused on a tech and business leader, we must remember that Facebook had more than a billion active users at the time. Apple has sold 700 million iPhones, many of which are obsolete. The pool of people tied to the company's products is much, much smaller. The Social Network also came out at a time when the movie space had some comic book films but was not absolutely dominated by comic book films and other attempts at blockbuster. People are more likely to take a look on video because the story is as easy to take in on the small screen as on the large one. 

Fans should take heart. If the performances were tight, the film may have some success during the award season. 

Nissan Leaf Semi-Autonomous Concept →

"The Leaf concept vehicle is equipped with dozens of sensors, 12 cameras, five radar sensors, four laser scanners, and ultrasonic sensors...that’s a whole lot more guidance technology than semiautonomous systems currently being tested on roads like Tesla’s Model S Auto Pilot."


While not at all a performance luxury vehicle, a la Tesla, the Leaf* is no slouch on the highway and 2016 may show us a vastly improved design that departs from the look of today. More important than all of that is the fact that with nearly 200,000 units on the road, the Nissan Leaf is the best selling EV in history. 

 *The A in Leaf is supposed to stand for "Affordable," and it's prices are a far cry from Tesla's.