Custom Everything (The Slow, Painful Death of Mass-Market Goods)
Consumers can’t possibly adopt a preference for custom or personalized manufactured goods and services in big enough quantities to upset mass manufacturing and distribution … can they?
Our Blog
Essays on technology, media, marketing and politics.
Apple’s New MacBook Air, Mac Mini, iPad Pro and Apple Pencil
On Tuesday at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Apple held its second major hardware event of the fall to unveil a new lineup of iPads, MacBooks, and more. The big takeaway: all of Apple’s new products are the best they’ve ever been … and also the most expensive they’ve ever been. If you’re looking to drop some serious coin this holiday season, here’s what you need to know.
Hey, Tim – Weaponized Data … Really?
Apple is the most valuable tech company in the world. So when its CEO lambasts other tech companies for "weaponizing [user data] against us with military efficiency," people are going to take him seriously. After all, Tim Cook is the de facto leader of the tech world. While he didn't name names, his vilification was clearly aimed at his corporate peers (which ordinarily would be good clean fun), except as presented, his accusations sounded like self-serving corporate posturing. Of course, there is another possibility ... Tim may have just been speaking metaphorically.
Deepfakes: The Dawn of the Post-Truth Era
For about 200,000 years, modern humans have relied on our eyes and ears to separate truth from lies and fact from fiction. Even if we ignore the rise of fake news (and how difficult it is to do anything about it), technology (like deep learning) is on the verge of making it impossible to know if what you are seeing and hearing is real or fake.
Smartphones: What’s Next?
Adapt or die! For smartphone makers, this immutable law of nature incentivizes innovation and forces continuous improvement as they seek new ways to make their great devices even greater. What's next? Here are five awesome new smartphone features we're likely to see in the near future.