For the last three and a half years I’ve been working from home, so the news that Yahoo is bringing all remote employees back into their offices is of particular interest and concern to me. Yahoo has been foundering for years. They seem to have too many employees for what they do, and extended themselves […]
There’s been some interesting activity around podcasts lately. Apple has been giving podcasts some added attention. Rather than simply ignoring podcasts, they’ve moved them out of iTunes and into their own app. The iOS Podcasts app had a rocky start but it’s turned into a decent app, and it’s got a great radio-dial metaphor for […]
I like listening to audiobooks and podcasts when I’m out for a walk, doing yard work, or doing chores around the house. An iPhone and a bluetooth headset are great for this, and for years I’ve been looking for the perfect headset. My criteria for a headset are pretty simple. It’s got to fit comfortably, […]
On the one hand, Apple is doing exactly the right for their users with their products: Offering consumers a very small number of products that are differentiated in clear ways, to make choosing a product fairly straightforward. Samsung, HTC, and the other smartphone vendors have been doing the opposite: Releasing new models every few weeks […]
When Apple first released the Podcasts app for iOS, I was impressed. They did some interesting UI design work and seemed to handle the basic use cases pretty well. It was easy to find, subscribe to, and play podcasts. And really, that’s all I want from a podcast app. But it was horribly broken. The […]
The Surface tablet is going to have a bigger impact than I think we’re giving it credit for. It represents a real shift in the computer landscape that will only become apparent in two or three years. And I think iOS needs to respond. Surface is going to sell well. It will do so because […]
We all love Google Maps. Google pours a lot of effort and money into making their maps the best, but they’ve gone way beyond what users need and expect from maps. Google Earth, Street View, satellite mapping, 3D mapping, it’s all incredibly cool stuff. But in many ways, it’s overkill. If the job to be […]
I had two concerns when I preordered the Kindle Paperwhite, and they were both related to the new built-in screen lighting. The first was that because the light was actually built into the screen, instead of shining on the screen from externally, that in a dark room, the eye strain would be similar to reading […]
I just got home from waiting in line at the Apple Store to purchase an iPhone 5. Unfortunately, I didn’t come home with one. It’s not because they didn’t have any. I don’t think there’s any shortage at retail; you can walk into the store right now and buy one. But you can’t buy it […]
Working on a Mac app recently, I ran into a situation where the app was hitting a deadlock. It was difficult to diagnose, and involved an Apple support incident (which resulted in a great answer from an Apple engineer) so I wanted to share it here. The scenario is that at application startup there was […]