It’s hard to imagine Apple without the iPod. In the Steve Jobs era, the iPod was the device that took them from “doing okay” to becoming a monumental success of a company. Even if you weren’t (or aren’t) an Apple fan, you had or were surrounded by iPods in the early aughts. And now that era is over. On May 10th Apple put out a press release stating what we all knew was coming at some point: the iPod Touch was being fully discontinued. Since its introduction over 20 years ago, iPod has captivated users all over the world who love the…
Tag: tech
The same news comes around every few years: Friends, the TV show that shows no slowing down in popularity, moves to another streaming service. From Netflix to HBO Go Max, this is one show that always makes headlines when it moves. Plenty of others makes the rounds too: Seinfeld, classic Disney films, etc. But there are those who are immune to this Where’s Waldo of programming. People who look to own their media and have it always available at the press of a button, regardless of where it’s available for streaming. In their cases, they may not even have a…
Autocorrect is both an amazing invention and a royal pain in the ass. Since the original iPhone, users have struggled against the “smart” system meant to fix misspellings and tapping on virtual keys much smaller than our fingers. But what does the inventor of Autocorrect think about the system? Luckily Joanna Stern at WSJ interviewed Ken Kocienda, the person himself. One thing that strikes me the most is how open Kocienda is to improving the system. I personally run into the “We’ll” and “Well” assumptions all the time. Most of the time my phone gets it wrong. Further, her tip…
Passwords are one of the worst inventions in the modern computing age. They’re impossible to remember, places make us change them on a constant basis, and and the requirements get harder and harder. The idea of getting rid of the password has been tossed about for years, but there’s a new effort from the major players to make it happen. Ron Amadeo at Ars Technica has more. The standard is being called either a “multi-device FIDO credential” or just a “passkey.” Instead of a long string of characters, this new scheme would have the app or website you’re logging in…
The Kindle is one of the best single-use products on the market. To me, it’s everything a dedicated device should be. It does one thing and excels at it. In fact, anything else the Kindle tries to do (audio, web browsing, etc) is laughably bad. One part of the Kindle that’s been different than other eReaders out there was the lack of support for the common ePub file format. Now, Amazon seems to be finally adopting it. In an Amazon kind of way. Alex Cranz has more. What this has meant in practice is that, for the last 15 years,…
Yet again we are seeing a car company look to the world of recurring revenue to help boost sales. A GM subscription looks to be on the horizon. I hope like other attempts at a car subscription, it dies in a very large fire. Rob Stumpf at The Drive has more. General Motors expects consumers to fork over as much as $135 per month on top of their car note in the coming years just to pay for subscription features. Previously, General Motors’ Senior Vice President of innovation and growth, Alan Wexler, said that the company’s research indicated that consumers…
Leave it to Snap, the makers of SnapChat to do something actually interesting with products. Sure, they started the app with disappearing photos, but they branched out with the viral camera glasses Spectacles a few years ago. They want to be more than an app, and now it looks like they’ve come up with something whimsical. The Snap Pixy is a $229 lightweight drone that is now on sale. The flying yellow square has a few preset modes wherein it can follow a person, fly away slowly for a ‘reveal’ effect, and even do an ‘orbit’ around someone. It doesn’t…
Google is finally having their own iPhone 4 moment. The search company, notorious for leaking a lot of their products on their own on purpose is finding themselves in the position of a true leak. A report from Ars Technica reveals that an upcoming Pixel Watch was lost at a restaurant, with a full slate of photos appearing on Android Central. Ron Amadeo has more. Sadly, the device doesn’t actually work. No one knows how to charge it, and it might be remotely wiped anyway. Keep in mind that these are pictures of a prototype, not the final model, and…
It’s difficult to fully process the landmark news that Elon Musk has successfully purchased Twitter. Was this something we all should’ve seen coming? Maybe it was naïve of me to believe it was someone trolling a company who’d invited him to come aboard and then the entire deal fell through. It’s hard to say. But what is easy to say is this is big news. Huge. In the social media space, there has traditionally been two places. For a while, it was MySpace and Facebook. Then it was Facebook and Twitter. There was a span of time where Google was…
For all the whiz-bang features Tesla keeps pumping into its cars via software updates, there are many that do not live up to the hype. Full self driving with AutoPilot has been shown to still be in its infancy regardless of what Elon Musk promises. Another feature that is quite rough around the edges is the Smart Summon feature. This is supposed to summon your car to you automatically without anyone driving. The idea is if you want to get into your car but not walk to it, your car will come to you. Well, what everyone failed to realize…
Privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo has been inching closer over time to do more than be a great search. In their newest move, the company has released the first preview version of their own web browser for the Mac. José Adorno at 9to5Mac has more details. The browser uses built-in privacy protections like private search, tracker blocking, website encryption, and email protection. Downloaded over 150 million times since 2018, the team behind DuckDuckGo decided it was time to bring the “privacy, simplified” experience to desktops and laptops. DuckDuckGo for Mac is an all-in-one privacy solution for everyday browsing with no complicated…
There are so many gadgets and ecosystems and companies providing services these days and it’s inevitable that some (or many) will fail. Going out of business is part of doing business. Most companies don’t last forever. However, there is a glaring problem with this: companies that make products that depend on the company still operating. Enter Insteon, one of many home automation platforms out there. Stacey Higginbotham over at Stacey on IOT provides details on how the Insteon automation platform may have been permanently shut down. I’m getting reports from dozens of Insteon users that as of Friday their smart…
The march of technology is inevitable. As time passes, components get cheaper. Manufacturing costs dwindle as efficiencies get established. What was once an expensive device to build can get lower in price with better ways to do things. From computers to phones to most any gadget, we see this happen time and time again. But one piece of technology has come so far that it can turn against us if we’re not careful. One item we all have and very possible two or three. It watches everything we do and reports it back to its manufacturer wherein that information is…
The HBO program Last Week Tonight with John Oliver covers a wide range of topics. Some are deadly serious while others are quite lighthearted. But regardless of what he talks about every Sunday evening, it’s thorough and interesting. This past Sunday he took a stab at data collection and privacy, something I’m actually bringing to you on Thursday’s edition of The Longform. So there is no better time to bring this to you. Oliver and his team go into data privacy in this long video. Many of the ideas are ones we’ve heard many times such as “if the thing…
As mentioned in the previous issue of The Stream, there is a lot of positivity and momentum when it comes to Right to Repair. And sure enough, this past week both Samsung and Google have come aboard. Both companies have partnered with iFixIt, which sells parts and tools for people to perform DIY repairs. Even more important are the walkthroughs they post to their site on HOW to actually do those jobs. The great thing about the guides is you can see in full detail what it takes to do the job before buying anything. They rank the difficulty and…
A weird story coming out of Ars Technica this past week involves a Washington state man and the lengths to which he went to get Comcast internet at his house. Jonathan Rowny moved to Washington and thought he could get Comcast internet. Unbeknownst to him, their address checker was wrong. It said he could get service but then he was told no. Insert Benny Hill music and a huge song & dance routine. Rowny went down the rabbit hole of what needed to be done. It started with a $19k estimate from Comcast to run lines to his house. Then…
The Right To Repair movement is gaining steam, but it’s been a longstanding problem to overcome. The idea that if you buy something, you should be able to repair it seems simple. Of course, Apple and many other companies don’t want you to do that. This CBC investigation from 2018 explains exactly why it’s vital to allow someone to be able to fix their stuff. Louis Rossman and the people at iFixIt feature prominently in this investigation. It’s intriguing to watch this and see where things were and where they stand now. As someone who’s cracked open a few MacBooks…
If you’re worried about your job getting taken over by the robot uprising, then today is your day. Over on The Takeout, Dennis Lee reports on how White Castle is gearing up to use a robot named Flippy to work its fry stations. Specifically, the Flippy 2 is a second-generation robot that will be able to handle working a fry station in a more consistent way than a person can. The Flippy 2 can recognize different types of food such as fries, onion rings, and chicken fingers. More importantly, it frees up employees to handle other tasks instead of losing…
Pour one out for the death of another long-standing event that is likely never to return. This week it was announced that the E3 video game expo was officially canceled. The in-person and virtual portions were all scrapped. While E3 was surely a victim of COVID and the inability for people to go to conferences, it seems that companies discovered they simply didn’t need E3 to make a splash. Sam Machkovech at ArsTechnica has more. Many gaming companies, including formal members of the ESA, have gotten along just fine for years without formal E3 presentations. Sony, EA, Activision Blizzard, and…
Long ago, an app / service rolled into New York City and declared war on an institution. A scrappy startup called Uber wanted to usurp the sleepy taxi industry that was the lifeblood of New York. In only a few years, “taking an Uber” became so commonplace, it’s used all the time. People don’t use taxis as much. But with any war, it must end and now, Taxis will join in on Uber’s giant customer base. Andrew J. Hawkins at The Verge has more. Riders will pay the same fare for taxi rides as they would for an Uber X…
A restaurant group in Florida is suing Google for allegedly setting up landing pages that don’t belong to the eateries. According to the group, Google is providing a profile within their search results that have “Order Online” buttons but those point to delivery apps. Tim De Champ at Ars Technica has the story. When users click the “Order Online” button, they’re directed to a page that in many cases contains large links to food delivery companies, complete with their logos. The restaurant’s own site gets a link as well, though it’s a small, generic “website” button. In some cases, Google…
When Apple debuted Face ID for the iPhone, it was a wonderful idea and one wherein they thought the days of Touch ID were numbered. COVID completely derailed the reliability of something that worked so well. Apple, nor anyone for that matter, could’ve predicted constant mask-wearing. Now, finally, with iOS 15.4 Apple has created a system to work around it. Jose Adorno at 9To5Mac has more. Just after you update your iPhone to iOS 15.4, a new prompt screen will appear explaining the new “Use Face ID with a mask” feature. Even though Apple actively gives users this new option,…
For all the good Nintendo does for their products, the biggest bugaboo for them has been their online service. From the eShop being a complete mess to their online services lacking basic features, it’s something the company stumbles upon again and again. Five years after the Switch has released, they’ve come out with version 2.0 of their mobile app. Jon Porter at The Verge has more. For my money, the 2.0 update’s most interesting improvement is that it offers an easier way to find and share your friend code, the cumbersome 12-digit identifier that’s the primary way of adding friends…
Tuesday’s Apple Event unloaded a bunch of new products. A revised iPhone SE, an M1 chip in the iPad Air, a new Mac called the Mac Studio, a 27″ Studio Display, and a new green iPhone 13 / 13 Pro color were all brought to the market. However, there was one thing quite evident with Apple this time around: the Mac is back to being expensive. Really expensive. For years the argument against Apple has been their Pro line of computers was really not Pro enough. The price and specs did not cater to that audience. Now with the updates…
While Microsoft may have pioneered regular software updates back in the Windows 98 days, they are not alone in this realm anymore. We live in (and have lived in it for a long while) a world where software constantly updates. It is to the point where developers will even ship software to get it out the door and patch / update it later on. Now, Microsoft is doing something interesting: updating when the computer is using green energy. Andrew Cunningham at Ars Technica has more. Using “regional carbon intensity data” from electricityMap and Watttime, Windows will keep tabs on what…
One of the biggest pains when signing up for a service or an overzealous policy is choosing a password. Back in the day, you came up with something you could remember. That was it. Then it became more complicated. Systems began requiring a mix of upper, lower characters, special characters, and numbers. Soon our passwords looked something like P@ssword123. Then with being forced, usually at work, to change them periodically, we soon just settled into P@ssword1234, P@ssword1235, and so on and so on. Enter Hive Systems and their “Password Table” that explains how secure a password can be. They recently…
Academic researchers have discovered that if you get within close enough proximity, you can “hack” an Amazon Alexa device to execute commands the owner may not want. I put the word hack in quotes because this is less of a security failure and more of a “that’s how this thing works” way that the Echo (or any voice assistant) operates. Dan Goodin at Ars Technica has more. The attack works by using the device’s speaker to issue voice commands. As long as the speech contains the device wake word (usually “Alexa” or “Echo”) followed by a permissible command, the Echo…
In “I definitely didn’t have this on my 2022 BINGO card” news, is this weird acquisition. Fortnite’s maker Epic Games has gone ahead and purchased the music website/service platform Bandcamp. Todd Spangler at Variety has more. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. “Fair and open platforms are critical to the future of the creator economy,” Epic Games, best known as the company behind battle-royale game “Fortnite,” said in announcing the pact. “Epic and Bandcamp share a mission of building the most artist-friendly platform that enables creators to keep the majority of their hard-earned money.” Variety Bandcamp has been a go-to…
If you’re looking to combine retro-tech with new-age capabilities, look no further than this innovative idea. (Fellow Long Islander) Justine Haupt is someone who wants to carry a cell phone but make calls with it. Nothing more. So, she built her own. That uses a rotary dialer. And it does nothing else. This short YouTube video has all the details. Haupt 3D printed the casing and built the entire system herself. Even better than seeing this in action is the fact that she is selling these as a kit! Her website Sky’s Edge describes it as the Rotary Un-Smartphone Kit.…
The unveiling of a new product is a milestone for any company. Years of R&D, hundreds of hours in meetings, immense time and money spent, all to coalesce into a single moment: the launch. Every company has high hopes for their new products, but some fly higher than others. Even mediocre products can float along for years before a company kills them off. In 2010 Microsoft held one of their unveilings. A mysterious new product aimed at an under-targeted demographic was to unleash a new era of communications. They had all their ducks in a row: the experience of an…