Category: Gadget-related Services

  • Jim Dalrymple: Apple Music is a nightmare and I’m done with it

    Reading Time: 2 minutes I have tons of respect for Jim Dalrymple. He is an inspiration to me.1 When he says what he said in Apple Music is a nightmare and I’m done with it I certainly take notice: It’s not unreasonable to want to listen to an album in the context the artist wrote…

  • Apple Corrected Location of Building on Apple Maps within Three Days

    Reading Time: < 1 minute One of the reasons I started RinkAtlas eight years ago was because a lot of the locations of hockey arenas that were available from navigation systems and mapping websites weren’t accurate. This continues to be a problem today, although the number of serious location errors keeps dropping. I had a…

  • Does the Amazon Fire Phone Break Any Important New Ground?

    Reading Time: 2 minutes I had an eye on a couple of live blogs of the Amazon Fire Phone announcement (see coverage from Gigaom and ReCode), and it was hard for me to see anything that broke any new ground that will change the current two horse race between the iPhone 5s and the Samsung…

  • Apple Acquires Beats Electronics for $3 Billion

    Reading Time: < 1 minute Apple Inc. is acquiring Beats Electronics for $3 billion, culminating a deal that became a persistent rumor three weeks ago. Congratulations to Apple. If nothing else, this changes the perception among investors that Apple is not willing to pull the trigger on expensive acquistions. It’s clear to me that Apple…

  • Beware of the Word “Always” in Tech Press Headlines

    Reading Time: 2 minutes Martin O’Donnell sent me a link to this article on DailyFinance.com, Roku Will Always Offer the Ultimate Set-Top Box, in which Sam Mattera suggests that Roku will achieve and maintain this distinction because it has the least conflicts of interest of any of its current or expected competitors. According to the…

  • What Makes Walter Isaacson Anything More Than an Observer of the Tech Industries?

    Reading Time: 2 minutes Wednesday, Walter Isaacson weighed in on the current state of the tech industries. When asked by Andrew Ross Sorkin, “So, what’s a bigger deal? Getting into China or Google, earlier this week, buying Nest?” This is a good question. Isaacson’s answer that, in his opinion, Google buying Nest is a bigger…

  • AT&T Takes Away Unlimited Wireless Data Access Plans from Go Phone Customers

    Reading Time: < 1 minute I was a happy user of AT&T GoPhone for the past three months. That ended today. Up until November 12, AT&T provided unlimited monthly data service as a pay-as-you-go option for $19.99 per month. Once you bought this service, you could use either the 3G or EDGE wireless data networks.…

  • I Changed My Mind on iPhone Tethering

    Reading Time: < 1 minute My latest post on O’Reilly’s Inside iPhone is A Glimpse of Our Tethering Future where I recount my experiences working with a Nokia E71 and an application called JoikuSpot that turns the E71 into a 3G-powered ad hoc WiFi access point that you can carry in your pocket. My use…

  • AirCell Gogo Successfully Used for a VoIP Call on a Transcontinental Flight

    Reading Time: 2 minutes I haven’t really talked about AirCell or its Gogo inflight Internet access service since it first became available on American Airlines. But Andy Abramson turned me on to a little experiment with the service that he and Laptop Magazine’s Joanna Stern did yesterday that is absolutely worthy of mention. Andy reports…