I have a question for all of you that, for the life of me, I just can’t answer on my own: what makes Apple different? Yes, I know it’s a question that’s been posed before, and some have said in the past that it was Steve Jobs or the company’s massive cash coffers. Others have
HTC’s original J Butterfly was a phone of firsts for the company, most notably the 1080p display. It may not have been the only phone to feature Full HD resolution, but it pushed HTC back into the limelight and helped us forget devices like the Sensation XL, which got the big-display part right but then
“Internet radio” is usually a misnomer, as well as an indicator of its ambition. The term “radio” is misapplied to internet services like AOL Radio, Rhapsody Radio, the upcoming iTunes Radio and their ilk. All these mediums are unrelated to radio technology. But for most people, “radio” simply means something you turn on and listen to. As a marketing term, “radio” seeks to accustom users to new technology by connecting it with familiar technology. Pandora describes itself as “free, personalized radio.”
The business intent in all cases is more ambitious — to wean people from the terrestrial radio habit and migrate them to online services. Will it work?
We’re about to see another of Apple’s big experiments, and this time it’s pro-users who are under the microscope. The test machine: the Mac Pro 2013. The question: just how important is upgrade-potential for so-called professional users, can fast external devices coax approval out of that audience, and will the offbeat design of the new
I’m a complainer. I know it. My family knows it. And anyone who has read my repeated diatribes here on SlashGear knows it. I don’t like products that I feel could be better. And I can’t stand when companies seem to ignore the consumer’s plea for enhancements. That’s precisely the way I felt everytime I
Monday’s much-anticipated WWDC keynote was Apple’s most crucial presentation in years. AAPL stock has fallen 37 percent over nine months. Android has grown into a monstrous competing platform, differentiating along the lines of lower cost, variety of devices and appealing operating-system features. In this sharp-elbowed environment, Apple has been widely accused of losing its innovation mojo, and of over-reaching with premium product concepts and prices, in what is increasingly viewed as a commodity tech category.
Facing an audience of developers whose businesses depend on Apple’s continued success, especially in the mobile realm, the company’s keynote mission was not only to excite buzz around new products, but to establish clarity around the company’s mission, values and key competitive advantages. Did it succeed?
Filed under: Cellphones, Desktops, Misc, Handhelds, Tablets, Apple
As I’ve said here before, I think that used games are an integral component in the value proposition presented to gamers. There are some people that don’t believe they should pay $60 for a game, and thus, wait a week or so for a game to launch and then head to a place like GameStop
I have been using Twitter continually for about three years now. I’m not sure of the exact date, or my first tweet, because Twitter still hasn’t given me the option to download my entire archive yet, though every time I check, the “Deactivate my account” option stares back at me from the bottom of the Settings page, where the archive option is supposed to appear someday. It taunts me, that deactivation option, because like all good things, Twitter occasionally makes me sick. There are days when I love it, and days when I can’t stand it. There are days when I can’t stand myself as a tweeter. To paraphrase a misogynist saying, show me a beautiful social network and I’ll show you a guy who’s tired of checking his @replies.
The problem is that I need to use Twitter. I don’t just mean I have a psychological need, though I probably do. I mean that an important part of my job takes place on Twitter. I joined Twitter to keep up with technology news and information, and to make sure I was hearing the conversation that people were having. It’s important to be up-to-date and relevant, and without Twitter that’s nearly impossible.
If you’re not a Twitter user, or if you haven’t integrated Twitter into your professional life, you probably think I’m a crazy loser. An explanation of Twitter to a layperson pales in comparison to the experience of Twitter. Rather than meditate on my addiction, however, I thought I would use this space to suggest some ways I’m going to change my Twitter habits to make the service more palatable.
These are my pet peeves of social networking, but I’m not going to make this a gripe column where I call out my friends for annoying me. These are mistakes I have personally made, and I’m only going to focus on changing my own behavior. As always, if everyone simply followed my example and could abide by my rules, the world would be a better place, but for now I’ll just concentrate on me.
1. Stop complaining
I’m going to stop griping on Twitter. It’s so easy to make Twitter a sounding board for all of the petty annoyances in my life. I already have a rule in place that I never complain about travel. Travel sucks. Hotels suck. Airports are horrible places filled with stinky people whose habits and transgressions are completely unforgivable and worthy of report. Airplanes are cramped tubes of farts and knees and trash and screaming wet things that punch you in the back interminably for hours on end. It’s all horrible. So I don’t complain. I just tell you where I’m going, and you can assume it was a nightmare getting from point AMS to point BWI.
Travel is only one thing I complain about, though. I also complain about bad customer service. I complain about stupid, poorly researched stories that lack the omniscient perspective of the mobile technology industry that only I seem to possess. I complain about Republicans, right-wingers, gun nuts, and anyone who disagrees with the way I want everybody to live their lives.
I haven’t done the research, but I think I complain a lot. So, now I’m going to try to stop. I can’t imagine it makes for interesting tweeting. I know that I can’t stand when people complain on Twitter, unless I can completely empathize with their complaint, but even then complaining only serves to make me relive some horrible incident. No more complaining, and that alone would probably make my Twitter a much nicer place.
2. Stop tweeting the obvious
Raise your hand if you wanted to kill yourself on 12/12/12. Good, because I probably wanted to kill most of you, too. After the assassination of Osama Bin Laden, I’m guessing that 12:12 PM on December 12th of last year was the most tweeted moment in Twitter’s history, at least if my feed is any guide. It was insufferable.
I have a rule about sharing YouTube videos. If a video has more than 1,000,000 views, I’m assuming most people I could show it to have already seen it, so I don’t bother sharing. At least I don’t expect that I’m exposing you to something new if I share such a video. The same should apply to tweets. If I can guess that a million people know something, I don’t have to tweet it. I’m not on Twitter to report the news. I’m especially not on Twitter to report about natural disasters, or human disasters, or to be the first to spread some general information around.
“I guess the Mayans were right”
I’m also going to avoid making the obvious joke. Hey look, Honey Boo Boo got renewed for another season. I GUESS THE MAYANS WERE RIGHT!! Oh my, it’s snowing here in Texas. SO MUCH FOR YOUR GLOBAL WARMING, AL GORE!! Nickelback is releasing a new album. I GUESS THE MAYANS WERE R… oh, I already used that one. If I had a dime for every stupid Mayan calendar joke I read on Twitter, I’d throw them all at your face for making stupid Mayan calendar jokes.
3. Stop retweeting compliments about myself
It’s rare, but every once in a while someone says something nice about me on Twitter. I’m somewhat irascible and prissy, so it’s quite unlikely, but every now and then I’ll get a new reader who doesn’t know me well enough to know I don’t deserve a compliment. Sometimes I’ll say something funny. Once, I got a #FF follow friday tweet with my handle in it.
I probably retweeted most of those things. Then I realized how I feel when I read similar retweets from my friends and folks I follow. I think they must be lonely, desperate shmucks to have to brag about themselves that way. It’s worse than a humble brag. I can handle a humble brag. I actually think humble bragging is kind of nice. I like hearing about my friends and their accomplishments. Humble bragging is a way of saying “hey, I did something kind of cool that I want to tell you about, but I don’t want to seem pompous.” It’s taking a step toward the edge of the stage during an ovation, then taking a big step back to stand with the rest of the cast for the final bow.
Retweeting your own compliments, however, feels different. It’s complimenting yourself in someone else’s voice. It’s tricking someone into making an advertisement for your talents.
There is a big exception to this rule. When the person complimenting you is so famous and popular that their compliment is more interesting than your achievement, feel free to retweet. If you write a book, and Stephen King tweets about how much he liked it, please retweet. If you volunteer at a soup kitchen, and Mayor Cory Booker mentions your heroic efforts in his feed, please let me know. That’s cool, and I wouldn’t want to miss that sort of thing. But if you have 15,000 readers and someone with 28 followers tells you how much they liked that stupid photo you took of your cat on a cheeseburger at sunset, you’re wasting my time.
4. Cut my Twitter time in half
“I don’t need to know every time someone mentions my name”
Here’s the toughest one. I’m going to try to stay on Twitter less. I’m going to check my feed less often. I’m turning off notifications for mentions and retweets. Direct Messages are more like email, and some people prefer to contact me via Twitter, so they still bubble up to priority status; but I don’t need to know every time someone mentions my name. I obsessively check Twitter dozens, if not hundreds of times a day, flicking between the news feed and the @replies column, looking for a reaction, a connection, a personal public message. That needs to stop.
I thought about instituting an odd/even policy on Twitter. I’d only check Twitter during hours that begin with even numbers. That seems silly and complicated. I would never remember to check the time before I check Twitter. I don’t make resolutions that I know will fail, so I’m not holding myself to that standard, but it will sit in the back of my mind so that I will force myself to be a bit more aware of the time I spend refreshing my social feed.
5. Do not hold others accountable to these rules
Strangely, one of my biggest pet peeves on Twitter is when people complain about another person’s tweets. This is especially true when there is some massive event that captures the public’s attention, for better and for worse. After a violent incident, there is both an outpouring of emotion and hand-wringing and grief, as well as a negative response to that outpouring. Half of my feed is crying out “Why is this so?” while the other half rebutts with “What are you going to do about it?”
This is an off-shoot of rule #1, No complaining, but it deserves a special mention. Let people act naturally on Twitter. They will be tedious and boring. They will say the obvious and complain. They will make empty promises, empty threats. Eventually, they might surprise you. If they aren’t worth sifting through all the chaff to get to the wheat, unfollow them. I just culled 100 people from my Twitter following list, and all of a sudden I’m happier with my Twitter feed.
I don’t expect everyone to follow these guidelines, but I’m going to make a personal effort, and hopefully I’ll produce a better, more compelling feed. The true secret to Twitter is that the people you want to follow the most are usually the ones who say the least.
Being a Better Tweeter is written by Philip Berne & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
The next generation of console gaming is upon us. Nintendo has already launched its Wii U, Microsoft’s Xbox One will be launching sometime later this year, and Sony has revealed several details about its PlayStation 4.
But unlike its chief competitors, Sony has decided against showing off the design of its next console. The company announced the device earlier this year, talked about its specs, but wouldn’t show what it actually looked like. And when the console was recently featured in a teaser for the upcoming E3 gaming trade show, Sony once again decided against showing off the device.
It’s not immediately clear why Sony hasn’t shown off the PlayStation 4. The company has, of course, been asked numerous times why it doesn’t want to show the console yet and each time, it has sidestepped the question. The move is unprecedented, if nothing else, and could be either good or bad.
See, now that we have seen the Wii U and Xbox One, the onus is on Sony to shock us. The PlayStation 4’s design can’t be something that bores us or doesn’t have as good a look as its competitors. And by hiding it under a shroud of mystery, Sony is only calling more attention to the console than it otherwise would.
That puts extra pressure on Sony at the E3 gaming show. If the console is truly something that blows our socks off, all the secrecy would have been worth it. But if Sony’s PlayStation 3 ends up being just another black box that doesn’t have anything special built-in and lacks some unique design quality, we’ll all be rather bored. And being bored in the world of gaming is a very, very bad thing.
“To make the discussion all about hardware couldn’t be worse”
Sony needs to take the attention away from its product design and start focusing more on its game library. The move the company should be making right now is to show off the PlayStation 4’s design and be done with it. To make the discussion surrounding Sony’s next console all about hardware couldn’t be worse for the company.
If history has taught us anything, it’s that software sells hardware. The Dreamcast died off because its software library was sub-par compared to that of its competitors. Sony’s PlayStation became such a hit because it had so many games available. The console’s design didn’t really matter all that much.
In this case, I’m going to give Sony the benefit of the doubt. I think the PlayStation maker truly understands the dynamics of the gaming industry and doesn’t want to take too much focus off the games. I believe, therefore, that Sony has something quite special up its sleeve. And rather than just let Microsoft and Nintendo take E3 by storm, it wants to show off something that we’ve never even thought about from a hardware perspective.
Of course, all of that could be wishful thinking. But if history serves us correctly, it tells us that Sony can pull off some miracles. And it needs another one right now.
Why Won’t Sony Let Us See What the PS4 Looks Like? is written by Don Reisinger & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
At long last, Microsoft unveiled its next-generation gaming console today, the Xbox One. As expected, its hardware stacks up well with the Wii U and PlayStation 4, and the launch event showcased some slick new software, too. With tight fantasy sports integration, Windows 8 and Skype support and cooperation with live TV, the One looks to have taken the next step in transforming the Xbox from a gaming rig into a true home entertainment console. It’s a rare thing to get to opine on a new game console, so head on past the break and allow us to indulge this opportunity.
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