Perspectives from a career in technology
It’s been a few months now since I took the plunge and purchased the new iPhone. No, not the one everyone is obsessing over with the face recognition tech but the other one — the iPhone 8. Since some are on the fence, here’s my take.
Continue reading “Great Expectations: My Review of the iPhone 8”
Sometimes things happen and they are just coincidence and sometimes things happen, especially on the internet, and someone explicitly went out of their way to make that happen. You may find this when you are casually browsing a retail site for a pair of shoes and then, through the magic of something called “retargeting,” you keep seeing advertisements for that same pair of shoes. At this point, we all see this coming so it doesn’t come as a surprise.
Everyone is tracking us everywhere — and sometimes we willingly let them track us by volunteering information about ourselves (i.e. what we all do on Facebook day in and day out). This is okay as long as everyone’s complicit; when the product you are using is free, YOU are the product (the selling of information about you to target selling you stuff, in essence).
What I find far more disturbing is a trend toward dark patterns that I’m seeing in the design of products. I define a dark pattern as a product that takes you somewhere that you as a user don’t want to go. It’s intentionally leading you to something you may not want — usually the end game is to lead you to something that is profitable for the product but not so great for the consumer.
Continue reading “Dark Patterns”
Yesterday, Apple (Apple Computer, the company behind my beloved iPhone) changed their homepage to read that on Tuesday November 16th, a big announcement was coming from iTunes. Over the years, Apple has made lots of big announcements but usually they are pretty easy to forecast. For example, around “back to school” season, Apple usually has a music event where they’ll release new iPods and refresh iTunes software. This big announcement, in the middle of November, was not really in keeping with Apple’s usual release cycle. My first thought: The Beatles must be coming to iTunes.
And turns out, I was correct! The Apple.com homepage changed to reveal that The Beatles have officially come to iTunes. The new content available for purchase on iTunes now includes the fab four’s 13 studio albums as well as video content (concerts, commercials, and etc). As a big Beatles fan, I’m really happy to see their catalog added to iTunes; but truthfully, it’s far more important than just making me happy. A lot of folks on the internet (well, in my twitter-verse at least) are making noise about being somewhat disappointed by this announcement. It’s actually a really big deal for The Beatles’ members and their estates, as well as a big deal for Apple Computer. However, it’s a much bigger deal for music history. Continue reading “Why The Beatles on iTunes is Important”