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Editor's Letter: Slow and steady wins the race
In each issue of Distro, Executive Editor Marc Perton publishes a wrap-up of the week in news. In this week's Distro, we take a closer look at Apple's two new iPhones, the 5c and 5s. The 5c, despite being less impressive when it comes to features and specs, may actually be the more popular of the two models. As Myriam Joire says in her review, the pastel-hued phone is "a gorgeous handset that brings a breath of fresh air to the iPhone lineup. For many people, it might even be a better choice than the iPhone 5s." That, of course, doesn't mean the 5s isn't worth considering. In her review of Apple's new flagship model, Myriam declares it the best iPhone ever made and says that Apple "took a good product and made it better through hardware upgrades, new features and completely revamped software." If you have an iPhone 5, should you upgrade? You'll have to read the full review to find out. Also in this week's Distro, we check in with audiophile and Head-fi.org founder Jude Mansilla. His favorite classic gadget? It's a tie between the Newton MessagePad and a portable CD player paired with a good set of headphones, which he says "started me on the journey that turned into Head-Fi.org."
Editor's Letter: The secret is out
In each issue of Distro, Executive Editor Marc Perton publishes a wrap-up of the week in news. This week's Distro includes our first hands-on looks at Apple's new iPhones, the 5c and 5s. And you should read them -- and check out our hands-on videos. But I'm not going to be spoiling anything by saying that we didn't find anything about the new phones very surprising. After months of speculation, leaks and rumors, Apple's iPhone event this Tuesday was something of a letdown. From the "champagne" iPhone 5s, to the phone's fingerprint reader, to the "budget" 5c series, virtually everything that was announced on Tuesday was public knowledge -- or at least well-circulated on the rumor mill -- well in advance. Unlike earlier Apple announcements, there was no "one more thing" lurking under the covers. The launch of the iPhone 5c and 5s was a by-the-numbers Apple event that could have been assembled from an Apple launch kit. Tight guest list and carefully orchestrated media buzz? Check. Black-shirted CEO? Check. Brief performance by an aging pop star? Check. Excitement and surprises? Sorry, not this time.
Editor's Letter: Color commentary
In each issue of Distro, Executive Editor Marc Perton publishes a wrap-up of the week in news. There's a very good chance you're reading this on a tablet. Distro is, after all, first and foremost, a tablet magazine. There's also a reasonable chance you're reading this on a computer. Distro works on Windows 8; we have a platform-neutral PDF version; and most of what we publish in Distro also appears on Engadget. There is, however, almost no chance that you're reading this on a color e-book reader (no, not a color tablet; an e-paper reader). And that's too bad. In this week's Distro, Sean Buckley tells the story of color e-paper, a once-promising technology that simply couldn't make it in a tablet-centric world. Despite years of development work and the tantalizing promise of high-resolution, daylight-readable, low-power displays, color e-paper was rendered an also-ran once the iPad began gaining popularity and low-cost Android tablets followed suit. Major e-reader makers including Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Kobo, all released their own color tablets -- at prices below their $300-plus color e-ink competitors. That strategy wasn't without its fallout; B&N eventually got out of the tablet market, and Kobo continues to struggle to gain market share in the US. But color e-book readers fared even more poorly, and color e-paper's future is now tied to other devices, such as smartwatches.
Editor's Letter: Is Hyperloop loopy, or the future of public transportation?
In each issue of Distro, Executive Editor Marc Perton publishes a wrap-up of the week in news. If you can say one thing about Elon Musk, the billionaire founder of Tesla Motors, it's that he thinks big. After making his fortune by selling his online payments company to PayPal, he's focused on creating entirely new industries, including commercial rocketry and electric cars. His latest idea, the Hyperloop, could eclipse both of those, at least in creative vision. The high-speed transportation system is basically a modern take on the pneumatic tube, and could potentially hurl travelers from Los Angeles to San Francisco at over 700 miles per hour, bridging the two cities in just about a half-hour. The cost to taxpayers: a mere $6 billion.
Editor's Letter: Will LG get lucky with the G2?
In each issue of Distro, Executive Editor Marc Perton publishes a wrap-up of the week in news. It wasn't long ago that the electronics divisions of Samsung and Lucky-Goldstar, two massive Korean conglomerates, played second fiddle to Japanese competitors like Sony and Panasonic. Today, of course, Samsung is a leading manufacturer of everything from tablets to TVs, while Sony makes most of its money by selling life insurance. The renamed LG, meanwhile, continues to battle Samsung on the international stage. In the cellphone industry, for example, LG ranks fourth, behind Apple, Nokia and market-leader Samsung. In TVs, LG ranks second, behind, yes, first-place Samsung. LG's latest salvo, fired this week, comes in the form of the G2, a flagship smartphone that left our Sarah Silbert impressed during her brief time with it. Boasting a 13-megapixel camera that can potentially hold its own against the shooters in the HTC One and Samsung Galaxy S 4, and a range of new features like Answer Me, which lets the phone automatically connect to incoming calls when held to your ear, the G2 could be, in Sarah's words, "a compelling flagship."
Back to the future
Hi, I'm Marc Perton, and I'm Engadget's new Executive Editor. Those of you who've followed this site for a while may dimly remember me; I was with Engadget in its early days, and somehow managed to write a couple of thousand posts from 2004 through 2006 (my fave: Engadget 1985, a group post I worked on with some other folks you may have heard of). Back then, Engadget was a scrappy startup that produced some great work with very limited resources. I still remember my first trip to CES with the Engadget team; we shared rooms in a hotel miles from the show, and relied on a rented van (and our feet) to get to the venue. The whole team probably slept a collective six hours all week.
