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Sony really wants you to know it's not a tech company
Spider-Man, The Chainsmokers, James Cameron and Pharrell Williams. That's most of what I remember from Sony's press event at CES last night. Despite announcing new (giant!) TVs, headphones with Alexa and a wireless turntable, its 45-minute media briefing rarely touched on any new products. When Sony CEO Kenichiro Yoshida stepped on stage, he laid out that he planned to "shift our gears" and showcase the company's involvement in more creative endeavors. That meant fewer product flourishes and plenty of moments where Sony simply sang its own praises. At a show famed for hardware announcements, the company sidelined its own news.
Apple took out a CES ad to troll its competitors over privacy
Historically, Apple hasn't had an official presence at CES. It's not surprising given the company's success at hosting and hyping its own product launch events -- long before the iPod and iPhone brought Apple to the top of the technology mountain, Steve Jobs keynotes were can't miss events. The company is also very deliberate about its marketing campaigns; when I see Apple billboard ads, they focus on new product close-ups with minimal messaging. This is why the giant ad banner I saw when I arrived in Las Vegas yesterday for CES 2019 caught my eye. Positioned not far from the convention center where CES takes place, the sign is a cheeky riff on the old "what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas" slogan -- and with just a few words, it casts an Apple-shaped shadow over the convention. Apple never shows up at CES, so I can't say I saw this coming. pic.twitter.com/8jjiBSEu7z — Chris Velazco (@chrisvelazco) January 4, 2019
Apple knows the age of yearly iPhone upgrades is over
After Apple introduced the iPhone XS, XS Max and XR, I wrote that consumers didn't seem to mind how much more expensive iPhones had gotten over the past few years. But after Apple unexpectedly admitted yesterday that revenue for the last quarter would fall short of Apple's projections, I might have overstated things. It sure seems that the days of a new iPhone automatically driving big sales may be behind us. But those extremely high iPhone prices are just one piece of the puzzle, though -- let's break it down.
Tech isn’t coming to save us
It's easy to believe that something new is naturally better than what we've already got, with the exception of the second Darrin on Bewitched. It's the Silicon Valley mind-set, that you've gotta move fast, break things and pay no attention to what's come before. And it's a problem. It's taken me 30 years to go from very fat to just quite fat, and this idea of the beginner mind is something I can sympathize with. I've tried every visualization technique, self-help book and fad diet on the market to know none of them work. There's no oat drink, vibrating belt or meditation tour of Asia's genocide hotspots that can cure the tedium of dieting.
Holiday gift ideas for paranoids
In so many ways, Black Friday is an inescapable evil of cosmic proportions. It is a creeping cloud of want, pulling us resentfully toward deals that we know tempt us at our peril. The advertising boogeymen who have stalked, harassed and victimized us all year rub their fetid little hands and lure us toward pleasure (cool new gadgets) and pain (security threats, privacy demons, pocketbook hangovers).
How Brian Kemp hacked Georgia’s election
"[Brian] Kemp on Thursday said he had resigned as Georgia's secretary of state," reported Reuters yesterday. No one watching Kemp's malfeasant, multi-year election security trash fire could understand why that sentence didn't stop at "resigned."
We'll never agree which games should be included with retro consoles
Nostalgia is a hell of a drug. Comforting yet tantalizingly short-lived, nostalgia has an insidious allure that has long been weaponized by marketers to drive consumers toward purchases that they'd otherwise shun (or often regret immediately after). But, the impact of these associative memories may end up backfiring for Sony and the upcoming release of its PlayStation Classic retro console. Because for nostalgia to actually work, it usually helps if people remember the included titles.
Genre fans are getting milked by streaming services
Like Thanos at the end of Infinity War, Marvel has culled some of its Netflix universe, canceling both Iron Fist and Luke Cage in the past few weeks. That leaves Daredevil and Jessica Jones as the remaining Defenders on the streaming service, plus spinoff property Punisher. The company promised that this wasn't the last time we'd see either hero, just that it was the end of their respective shows "on Netflix," fueling speculation that they'd be heading to Disney's upcoming streaming service. Now we'll have to cough up even more money if we want to keep up with the continuing adventures of Luke, Colleen, Misty and maybe Danny. (Ed. note: Nobody wants to keep up with Danny.)
Facebook’s confusion about its Portal camera is concerning
Facebook couldn't have picked a worse time to introduce Portal, a camera-equipped smart display designed to make video chatting in your home easier. And, if the rumors are true, the company is reportedly also preparing to launch a video chat camera for your TV, based on the same system as Portal. Not only does news of this hardware come at a time when when Facebook is under major scrutiny after suffering a massive data breach in September, which exposed private information of 29 million users, including usernames, birth date, gender, location, religion and the devices used to browse the site. But the most concerning part about Portal, is that Facebook's own executives don't seem to have a basic understanding of what types of data the company will be collecting or what it will be using it for.
Google Home Hub's best feature is not having a camera
Both Google and Facebook unveiled products for the growing "smart display" market this week. Facebook's Portal is meant to be the best way to make video calls; it also has Alexa built in, so it can do just about everything an Echo does as well. Meanwhile, Google's Home Hub can quickly answer questions and pull up info from services like YouTube, Google Maps, Calendar, Search and Photos. It also doubles as a command center for smart home devices and a pretty nice digital-photo frame. Essentially, it extends what the Google Assistant can already do by visually offering more information than you can get with voice alone -- similar to what Amazon already does with the Echo Show. But perhaps the most important feature of the Home Hub is what Google didn't include: a camera. That means video chat is off the table, and that's a design decision Google thinks will give it an edge over Amazon and Facebook.
Facebook will never be completely secure
Yesterday, Facebook announced that it found -- and fixed -- a stunning security breach that put 50 million people's accounts at risk. In the words of Facebook executives, the attack was "sophisticated" and its reach was "broad." And, more chillingly, we don't know who was behind it or what they intended to do with that account data.
Android at 10: Google's mobile OS has come a long way
The mobile world is celebrating a momentous anniversary today: Android is ten years old. The T-Mobile G1 (and Android 1.0) made its debut on September 23rd, 2008, launching both a new operating system and a new era. It didn't look like much in those early days, but it eventually became the dominant mobile platform and set the baseline for what many people expect in a smartphone. It also helped topple more than a few giants -- the story of Android is as much about a sea change in the industry as Google's own development.
Amazon's new Echo lineup targets Google, Apple and Sonos
It wouldn't be an Amazon event without a slew of new Echo devices, and this time is no different. The company announced not one, not two, but seven new Echo products at an event today in Seattle. Not only are there now new versions of the Echo Dot, the Echo Plus and the Echo Show, Amazon also introduced several new Echo companions that you can use to bring Alexa to every room in your house -- and even your car.
You can’t make a reality game show out of social media
Technology's ubiquity has become a real problem for the entertainment industry because life is easier now. There's a reason that horror films these days always seem to feature a shot of someone discovering they're in a signal blackspot. Shows like Sherlock have found novel ways to incorporate technology into their narratives, but clearly, it's still a bit of a fudge. It's even worse in the world of reality TV, which often relies on throwing people into hostile situations and filming the results. Would-be victims can cope with the faux-isolation or trauma much easier if you're packing the sum total of human knowledge in your back pocket. It explains why so many big reality shows, like Jersey Shore, Big Brother and The Amazing Race ban the use of phones.
What we're watching: 'Mandy,' 'Succession' and 'Great News'
This month, Reporter Timothy J. Seppala checks out the latest Nicolas Cage joint and explains why you should too, while Senior Editor Daniel Cooper returns from a break with impressions of some binge-worthy television.
Apple is happy to use women and people of color as art, not authority
Apple's 2018 iPhone event opened with a black woman busting her ass to ensure a white man's success. The introductory video is a Mission Impossible-style short featuring a young woman racing across Cupertino campus to deliver a briefcase to Apple CEO Tim Cook, who's waiting calmly backstage before the event. She arrives out of breath, and he opens the briefcase. Inside is the clicker for the presentation; he picks it up with reverence while the woman asks, incredulously, "The clicker?" She then stands, panting, behind the curtain as Cook walks out to enjoy a raucous round of applause.
A year on, the iPhone X looks ordinary
When Apple unveiled the iPhone X, Tim Cook said it represented the company's vision of the smartphone of the future. Well now we're in 2018 -- it's technically the future. Given 12 months of hindsight (and use), how are all those controversies (like that notch) and marquee features faring? And how did the competition counter Apple's most expensive iPhone yet?
Banning Alex Jones proves Twitter can’t be impartial
All efforts to save @RealAlexJones and @InfoWars from themselves have failed, and you can blame Jack Dorsey for that. Whether or not he intervened in applying a seven-day suspension for rulebreaking tweets (the company denies it) he's successfully undermined the values Twitter claims to hold high. A month ago, when YouTube and Facebook took action against the accounts, Dorsey said: "We're going to hold Jones to the same standard we hold to every account, not taking one-off actions to make us feel good in the short term, and adding fuel to new conspiracy theories." So how'd that work out? Twitter claims justification for the ban comes from tweets and videos posted yesterday targeting CNN reporter Oliver Darcy. Unfortunately, we won't ignore the fact that this action occurred within 24 hours of its CEO being personally exposed to Jones' outrage. If Twitter wants to show, as Jack told Congress yesterday, that "Impartiality is our guiding principle" then it's difficult to imagine a more spectacular example of failure.
Sandberg’s ‘alternative facts’ comment won’t help Facebook’s cause
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee today, addressing social media's role in election meddling and their platforms' efforts to combat it. When discussing misinformation, Sandberg described Facebook's use of fact checkers, saying that once third-party fact checkers mark a story as false, the platform then shows related articles next to the original in order to provide readers with additional and more factual coverage. But her choice of words was rather telling. "If it's marked as false we dramatically decrease the distribution on our site, we warn you if you're about to share it, we warn you if you have shared it, and importantly we show related articles next to that so people can see alternative facts," she said (emphasis added).
NVIDIA’s RTX speed claims fall short without game support
At its big RTX event at Gamescom, NVIDIA made some bold claims about its new Turing RTX cards. First and foremost was that the GeForce RTX 2080 offered performance "six times faster" than current 1000-series Pascal-based GTX cards. That's in large part because of new ray-tracing tech that helps the GPUs calculate complex game lighting much more quickly. "This is a new computing model, so there's a new way to think about performance," said CEO Jensen Huang.
