The third episode of The Walking Dead is over, and it’s finally time to digest it. Just as was hinted at in the official trailers, episode 703 is about Daryl and Dwight. It’s about breaking a highly valued prisoner, it’s about the way Negan’s survival machine works, and it’s about Dwight. Beware, spoilers ahead! More →
Two years ago, Apple introduced iPhones with larger screens because almost everyone seemed to want one. In the process, it ignored those customers who preferred the smaller iPhone form factor. Then, earlier this year, it fixed that mistake by launching an iPhone SE smartphone that’s as big as the iPhone 5s, but sports iPhone 6s-like hardware.
It’s likely that the 4-inch iPhone will not go away as long as there’s a market for it, and Apple may have to release upgraded versions in the coming years. One of the best things Apple could do with the handset is to increase the size of the display without modifying its dimensions.
Aimless. Backwards. Confused. These are just a few adjectives which, to a frustrating extent, seem to perfectly encapsulate Apple’s glaring lack of vision in the TV space. Apple certainly understands that TV (and by extension, the living room) is important, but the more I see what Apple is doing with the Apple TV, and the more I hear Apple executives excitedly drone on about their comically boring TV strategy, the more I become convinced that the company has absolutely no idea what it’s doing.
Broadly speaking, I don’t believe that the higher-ups at Apple grasp, on an even basic level, what makes for a compelling TV viewing experience. And while the company, in my view, wasted its time exploring the feasibility of developing and manufacturing a car, it completely ignored the growing strategic importance of TV in the process.
This oversight — whether the cause be a lack of vision or a lack of execution — is particularly ironic given that it was Apple’s keen appreciation of the strategic importance of music in the early 2000s that led to the iPod, the iTunes Music Store and, in turn, Apple’s ascension back to the top of the tech heap. These days, however, power and leverage within the TV space is quickly being usurped by players like Netflix while Apple remains embarrassingly stuck on the sidelines.
Negan killed two of our favorite Walking Dead characters last week, so we’re all looking for a little retribution. But we also know that’s not going to happen anytime soon, as there are several loose ends that need to be tied up first. Rick is broken, Daryl is shackled, Maggie is suffering on every level, and Carol isn’t there to help. Things will get a lot worse before they get any better — or at least that appears to be the case in light of all the trailers and clips AMC released so far. But now there’s a light at the end of the tunnel: We have a second Negan.
Plenty of spoilers follow below, so stop reading now if you haven’t seen last night’s episode of The Walking Dead. More →
Apple is heading towards a bold wireless future where iPhone and Macs share data wirelessly. And their batteries will probably recharge without any wires as well. But the road to that future is paved with adapters and dongles that complicate the entire user experience. Case in point: Out of the box, the iPhone 7 and the brand new MacBook Pro do not work together. More →
Earlier this week, I came across a widely circulated article from Steve Blank articulating why Tim Cook is effectively Apple’s own version of Steve Ballmer, which is to say that Cook is a non-visionary who is adept at increasing sales but not much else. On a superficial level, the comparison is an easy one to make and, if you’re not one who cares about nuance, it might even seem like a fair analogy.
Negan made quite an impression on The Walking Dead. Or better said, Jeffrey Dean Morgan made quite an impression playing the best villain in the series so far. But who is Negan? Why did he become a ruthless, funny, and cerebral leader in the zombie-ridden world?
Well, we have an idea of who Negan is. He’s basically a natural evolution of Rick. Rick is Negan, and Negan is Rick. Thankfully, Rick met a Negan before he became one. Confused? I’ll explain. More →
There’s two separate wars in the smartphone market today. On one side, you have big brand names fighting to sell expensive smartphones to customers, still largely in Verizon stores on two-year financing contracts. On the other, you’ve got no-name Asian firms selling the same phones (or better!) for half the price, but only online and cash up front.
LeEco is the latest entrant to the cheap Android world. It announced two phones today, costing $300 and $150 for phones that can hold their own (or outdo) the very best Android phones on the market today, or at least the ones that don’t explode.
We should be freaking out about devices these good being sold for this little money. But we’re not, because about ten people total are going to order this phone, and that’s a little sad.
Virtual reality (VR) is exploding right now. The PlayStation VR just launched for the PS4, and there are other interesting products out there, including Facebook’s Oculus, and HTC’s Vive. But Apple will have none of it, as it thinks the future is elsewhere: augmented reality (AR). More →
Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7 problems are just getting started. The Korean giant will lose plenty of money following the disastrous Galaxy Note 7 launch, but that’s the least of its worries right now. Regaining the trust of consumer is top priority for the company, and Samsung might completely kill the Galaxy Note series in an effort to put this disaster behind it. More →
The iPhone 7 Plus is currently the best iPhone money can buy. The handset has a better camera and more RAM than its smaller counterpart, which is a first for Apple. Previous iPhone pairs including the iPhone 6/Plus and iPhone 6s/Plus had nearly identical feature sets, with only minor differences existing between them (screen and battery size, and optical image stabilization). But the iPhone 7 Plus is still a very big device — too big for some people — and the size is unavoidable due to Apple’s current design.
Next year’s iPhone 8 Plus is also expected to be the better version of the iPhone 8, but the phone doesn’t necessarily need to be as big as the iPhone 7 Plus. More →
Many tech companies including Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Twitter said they had not helped governmental agencies spy on their users like Yahoo did. Some said outright that they never received such orders and others insisted that they’d never comply if they did. Following Reuters’ initial discovery that Yahoo secretly spied on its Yahoo Mail users for the government, a new report reveals that it’s fairly easy for any of Yahoo’s rivals to do it, too. And you won’t even know it’s happening. More →
