My wife’s birthday 2016 marks the 40th year since her high school graduation. The pic is from her yearbook. Photographer is unknown—by Anne or me, I love the composition, which is appropriately arty. Anne, age […]
Psst — Here’s What Google Wants from Android Apps on Chromebook
Your kids. Chromebook leads laptop and desktop sales through U.S. commercial channels to schools, according to NPD. Education is overwhelmingly the primary market for the computers. The institutions can’t buy enough of the thangs, for their utility and low-cost compared to notebooks running either OS X or Windows. That cost is as much about extended webapps and services from Google (or its developer partners), available for free or comparatively next-to-nothing, set against software for the other platforms.
Wrinkle in the Google firmament: iPhone and Chromebook are like water and dirt. The sediment settles unless shaken up. Sure youngsters can do all their Googly things—Docs, Gmail, Maps, Photos, YouTube, etc.—on iOS but the experience is smoother and more homogenous when mixed Android and Chrome OS. What the kiddies lack, and their educators, is a swath of useful apps like the Apple kids get.
Apple Store Then and Now
Fifteen years ago today, the first Apple Store opened at Tysons Corner Center in McLean, Va. I was there, covering the event for CNET News. Four days earlier, then CEO Steve Jobs briefed journalists—bloggers, bwahaha, no—across the way at upper-scale Tysons Galleria. Most of us thought his scheme was kind of nuts, as did analysts, and news stories reflected the sentiment. Recession gripped the country and rival Gateway was in process of shuttering more than 400 retail shops. Timing was madness.
But companies that take big risks during economic downturns are most likely to reap rewards later. Retail would be Apple’s third walk across the tightrope during 2001. The others: iTunes (January); OS X (March); iPod (October). I’ve said before that these four are foundation for all the company’s successes that followed, including iPhone. But 15 years ago, battling the Wintel duopoly with less than 2 percent global PC market share, Jobs figuratively walked a tightrope across the Grand Canyon carrying original Macintoshes in each arm.
Google Gets Context, Sours Apple
Depending on the day, Apple or Alphabet is the world’s most valuable company as measured by market cap, and both manage the two dominant computing platforms used anywhere: iOS/OS X and Android/Chrome OS, respectively. As I write, Alphabet-subsidiary Google holds its annual developer conference. Apple’s event starts June 13.
During the opening keynote, Google CEO Sundar Pichai frames the conference and the company’s direction by rightly focusing on two fundamentally future-forward concepts: Voice and context. Google gets what Apple likely won’t present to its developers, and we’ll know next month. But based on product priority to date, the fruit-logo company is unlikely to match its rival’s commitment to the next user interface.
My New Office
I am a big fan of change. Every so often, I swap computing platforms to shake up my old habits and make fresh ones. The new year began on Google Android and Chrome OS; more recently—as part of an experiment with iPad Pro—I use Apple iOS and OS X. Change is good.
Last week another switch-up started. I have a new workspace, desk and location, which is unsettling yet liberating. Sadly, timing overlapped with the unexpected death of my sister Annette and our family leasing a new car, after an accident totaled the old one.
My Two Losses
This week I pick up the pieces of early May and return to business as usual—eh, hopefully. I’ll recount events chronologically, offering context for near absence on my personal site and complete disappearance from BetaNews, where my last story, as of writing here, was April 27, 2016.
The following day, there was an unfortunate vehicular incident, involving our six-and-a-half old Toyota Yaris, which the insurer designated total loss. That wasn’t the outcome I had hoped for, despite extremely generous compensation for the car’s value. We paid for the Yaris in full and, as such, planned on running it for many more years yet.
Reconsidering Facebook
I spent little time online the past week following the unexpected passing of my sister Annette exactly seven days ago. The reaction is strange, seeing how much Facebook, texting, and other connected activities and services enriched and changed her life during the last six months or so she walked this Earth. I was clueless.
Last year, I added Annette to my cellular account; she used Nokia Lumia Icon Windows Phone to start. This opened a new world of connection to children, other relatives, and friends by texting. In November, when switching the family to T-Mobile from Verizon and upgrading to Nexus 6P, I sent her my Nexus 6. Soon after, her fraternal twin, Nanette, helped set up Facebook. Annette’s first post was Nov. 22, 2015—a family photo with our brother-in-law Michael Bellerieve, before his death from cancer. 🙁
For My Sister
Tonight I wanted to share something for Annette—eldest of my three siblings. I started to write a poem but couldn’t go beyond one stanza:
Giants walk among us, rarely do we perceive
The gifts they bear few of us receive
Gently they lift us, high enough to see
Together they take us to a better place to be
I had hoped to express my feelings this sad day, and perhaps you can catch where the sentiment would have gone. Annette was too easily taken for granted, and we all expected her to be longer among us. Rather, an atomic bomb exploded in our midsts today—a terrorist attack on our hearts. The shockwave spreads outward as each family member is informed, and the emotional equivalent of nuclear winter chills each heart.
BBC’s ‘Bathroom Bill’ Story is the Worst Kind of Journalism
This analysis is not a commentary about North Carolina’s controversial bathroom law, but the irresponsible and unethical news reporting about it. I am appalled by the headline and dek of a BBC story posted earlier today. Quoting the latter: “North Carolina is suing the U.S. Department of Justice over its attempts to bar the state from upholding its anti-LGBT ‘bathroom bill'”.
While many people might agree with “anti-LGBT” as descriptor, BBC nevertheless shouldn’t use it. Doing so makes a value judgement and demonstrates bias rather than neutral news reporting. Even using LGBT without the “anti” is biased. Also, as a foreign news agency, regardless reputation, the Beeb makes moral pronouncements that may not reflect those of the country that it reports about. The headline and dek implicitly impose values, and that should not be the news report’s goal—all while diminishing, if not ignoring, the rationale behind the legislation.
‘Bummer! Bummer!’
In Night Gallery story “Hells Bells”, actor John Astin dies in a car crash. Entering the afterlife, he knows the destination isn’t Heaven. He finds himself in a room with phonograph and stack of vinyl records, and that tempts his hippy ways until, rather than rock and roll, he hears big band music. Next appears an older gent dressed in overalls who only talks about life on the farm, followed by a couple ready to show 8,500 slides of their vacation to Tijuana, Mexico. Angry, Astin yells: “I want to see the Devil. Where are you, man? Show your ugly face!”
“Having a good time?” The Devil appears and asks. “Hell is never what you expect it to be. But for you, this is it. Don’t you like it?” “No it’s a downer”, Astin answers. “Yes it is, isn’t it,” the Devil agrees, nodding. “You know, it’s a curious thing. They have exactly the same room up there…You see, while this room is Hell for you, absolutely beastly Hell, up there the identical room is someone else’s idea of Heaven”.
I feel something similar about a package received from Photojojo yesterday. What disappoints me, and grandly, might delight someone else—although I can’t imagine whom.
The Man on the Street
This afternoon, while walking along Adams Ave. in Normal Heights, I passed what appeared to be a homeless man sitting on a cement step inside an abandoned storefront doorway. He was grizzled but neat, with the leathery-brown skin hue common among people overexposed to the Southwestern Sun. His hair and beard bled gray all over what might have one time been black.
As I passed, he stopped over, arms resting on knees, alongside a small, black luggage bag with wheels and pulled-out handle. About 5 meters beyond him, my pace slowed. I rarely carry cash but today had a 10 dollar bill, which is more money than I usually give—and he had asked for none. I turned around and walked back, finding him up and moving. We passed. I hesitated once more then spun back and spoke.
Proud Paws
My cat wants to know: Where will you spend Saturday? He also asks: Where were you last Pluterday? Not that everyone gets one of those. The photo wasn’t posed. Neko jumped up on the Korg, and […]