Recently most of the Fearless Girl discussions have focused on the complaints by Arturo Di Modica, the sculptor who created Charging Bull. He wants Fearless Girl removed, and that boy is taking a metric ton of shit for saying that. Here’s what I said that got me spanked:
The guy has a point.
Fascinating article. Before I read it, I thought the sculptor was being a dick, from the way he was being portrayed in media reports. After reading this piece, I think “Fearless Girl” should be removed.
Thoughtful post from Marco Arment on the current Mac Pro design, with collected thoughts on where Apple should go with the model currently in the works.
This particular paragraph captured my feelings about the 2013 Mac Pro design:
While minimalism is one aspect of one view of good design, it’s often overused, underconsidered, and misunderstood, resulting in products with surface-level appeal that don’t actually work very well because they were optimized for visual design and minimalism rather than overall real-world usefulness.
And from the wrapup:
There is no single design, no single set of trade-offs, that addresses a large set of pro users: they all want different things, and the only way to serve that with one product line is to have it be extremely versatile and offer a wide variety of configuration options. You can’t do that with a minimalist industrial-design indulgence like the 2013 Mac Pro.
There are several reasons it may be helpful to track your cellular data usage. You might not have an unlimited cellular data plan right now and may be wondering if you should switch to one, you may be trying to cut down on overage fees, or you might want to discover if you could reduce your current plan and save some money.
You also might be having issues with applications that are using more cellular data in the background than expected. Let’s take a look at a few different ways to track and manage your cellular usage.
Take a few minutes to scan through the post, get a sense of what’s covered. Then pass this along to the folks you support to show them how to keep track of their data usage.
Nintendo’s NES Classic Edition is a fascinating case study in marketing. Since Nintendo announced the console in November, they’ve sold almost a million of them in North America, all while maintaining a constant shortage, creating a demand frenzy. Given the simplicity of the product itself (it’s a retro product, no cutting edge parts), I’ve always seen that shortage as artificial.
As we reported Friday, Nintendo has now pulled the plug on the NES Classic, announcing that the last run will ship in April. Nintendo has a successful product, was basically printing money, and they walked away from that particular business.
Whether scarce by a lack of foresight as Nintendo explains or intentional scarcity as history suggests, the Classic served as a distraction from the company’s near-term bet, the Switch, and its long-term bet, smartphone games. Those two endeavors have something the Classic lacked, the potential for monetization far beyond the initial transaction. Simply put, the Classic provided too much value to consumers, even at inflated prices offered by profiteers.
Simply put, there was no way for Nintendo to leverage the Classic to build a self sustaining business beyond the simple (and dollar wise, small) business it represented. And The Classic was funneling some amount of attention and mindshare away from the Switch and Mario Run.
“Although the Nintendo Switch can be used as a handheld device, we think smaller children could struggle to use it comfortably in that format due to its size and weight,” the analysts wrote in a April 13 report. “Accordingly, we think Nintendo will launch a lighter, dedicated handheld version of the Switch, possibly to be called the Switch Mini.”
The NES Classic does not fit into this picture, but the intellectual property it represents certainly does. I suspect we’ll see those classic games (especially that key Zelda title) emerge as purchasable, downloadable content on both the Switch and the Switch Mini, bringing in far more money than the existing Classic could even dream of.
Two interesting, intersecting reads. First, there’s this from Eugene Wei, about his time at Amazon:
When I was at Amazon, we obsessed over being the “site of first resort.” When it comes to search, Google is the site of first resort. When it comes to ordering a ride share, Uber is the service of first resort.
For us at Amazon, being the site of first resort for an online shopping trip was an obsession. This is why it was so critical to expand out from books to other product lines quickly. We didn’t want to cement ourselves in shoppers’ minds as the site of first resort for buying books but nothing else.
And:
A few years back I was in a wedding party, and I had to purchase a specific shirt to match the other groomsmen. I could only find it at Barney’s, and the local outlet didn’t offer it in my size so I ordered it from their website. The package was stolen from our apartment lobby, so I wrote Barney’s customer service asking for a replacement shipment. They refused and asked me to take it up with UPS or FedEx, or whoever the shipper was. If it were Amazon, they’d have a replacement package out to me overnight on the spot, no questions asked. Needless to say, I’ll never order from Barneys again, but it’s amazing to think that Amazon’s customer service is superior to that of even luxury retailers.
As much as anything, this is why the retail sector is at a historic tipping point. From this New York Times article:
Along the cobblestone streets of SoHo, Chanel handbags and Arc’teryx jackets are displayed in shops like museum pieces, harking back to the height of the neighborhood’s trendiness. But rents there are softening, and the number of vacant storefronts is rising.
Today, some of the most sought-after real estate by retailers is not in SoHo, but five miles away in Red Hook, a gritty Brooklyn enclave with a shipbuilding past. E-commerce merchants are vying to lease part of a huge warehouse space, spanning 11 acres, that would allow them to deliver goods the same day they’re ordered online.
The profound reordering of New York’s shopping scene reflects a broad restructuring in the American retail industry.
Retail is shedding jobs at a historic rate:
E-commerce players, led by the industry giant Amazon, have made it so easy and fast for people to shop online that traditional retailers, shackled by fading real estate and a culture of selling in stores, are struggling to compete. This shift has been building gradually for years. But economists, retail workers and real estate investors say it appears that it has sped up in recent months.
We’ve all known this was coming, more and more choosing to shop from the couch. These days, if I’m going to a brick and mortar store to shop, there has to be a compelling reason. Custom fit is one reason (trying on clothes, for example). Products I can’t easily get online is another (a book I want to hold in my hand and want to read today, or fresh produce I want to pick out myself).
Great customer service is more and more a minimum requirement. Amazon is obsessed with reducing the friction in the shopping process, and that means great customer service and easing the pain of returning a purchase. For me, Amazon is the “site of first resort.”
After offering in-browser emulation of console games, arcade machines, and a range of other home computers, the Internet Archive can now emulate the early models of the Apple Macintosh, the black-and-white, mouse driven computer that radically shifted the future of home computing in 1984.
If you’ve not experienced the original operating system for the Macintosh family of computers, it’s an interesting combination of well-worn conventions in the modern world, along with choices that might seem strange or off-the-mark. At the time the machine was released, however, they landed new ideas in the hands of a worldwide audience and gained significant fans and followers almost immediately.
Hey kids! Come see how we did things in the good old days.
The original “Star Trek” series isn’t just a milestone of science fiction, it’s also a treasure trove of mathematical ideas — as Space.com discovered when we attended “Star Trek: The Math of Khan” at the Museum of Mathematics on Thursday (April 6). Tribbles, inevitable aliens and computer-breaking paradoxes all made appearances at the talk — along with the fate of those (evidently) not-so-ill-fated red-shirted crew.
I love these kinds of “science meets fiction” articles. I would have bet money that the redshirts were the unluckiest Star Trek crew members.
Lower pitches in voices or music in advertisements lead consumers to infer a larger product size, according to a new study by researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology and Vanderbilt University.
One study found that acoustic pitch differences in voice affects perceptions of size. Participants listened to a radio advertisement for a new sandwich at a fictitious sandwich chain where a spokesperson’s voice was digitally altered to be higher or lower. Participants who heard the ad featuring the lower-pitched voice believed the sandwich was significantly larger than those who heard the higher-pitched version.
So, deep voices make things look bigger? There’s definitely a dirty joke in there somewhere. And I have quite a deep voice.
Two years and many seasons in the making. Some time ago I had this idea of creating a long-term time lapse of the seasons. That idea turned into an idea with a drone and a farm in Pennsylvania. The first shot of this video was filmed in the spring of 2015 and the final was shot January 2017.
I can barely get a yo-yo to go down and back up. This guy is doing stunts that would have me strangled by my own string. And his choice of music is inspired.
You’ve never seen a game like Magic Girl before—and unless you’re a serious pinball fanatic with cash to burn, you probably never will. The machine costs $16,000, and most are in private hands. The artwork is all custom, created and drawn by renowned pinball artists instead of copied and pasted from TV or movies.
Today, there are two dozen or so Magic Girl machines out in the wild. The exact number varies depending on who you ask and whether or not you count prototypes. But there’s no doubt about the surplus of angry customers and lawsuits.
I had no idea the world of pinball game creation could be so full of intrigue and drama.
How do you become the most popular voice of the most successful tech company in the world–without your knowledge?
I interviewed Susan about her stumble into fame, then plotted her life against the rise of more human-like virtual assistants. It turns out that her voice appeared at two pivotal moments in the development of talking tech.
It makes you wonder, was Susan destined to become the world’s most recognizable digital voice?
I’m not sure where the “Siri is dying” part of the story comes from and the web site’s layout is annoying as hell but it’s an interesting article nonetheless.
Thanks to djay Pro for sponsoring The Loop this week.
djay Pro, Algoriddim’s award-winning DJ application, is available for macOS, iOS, and Android. Now it’s also on Windows 10, bridging a native desktop and touch experience across every platform and fulfilling our mission of making everyone a DJ. Anywhere. Any time. Any platform.
Apple Inc is considering teaming up with its supplier Foxconn to bid for Toshiba Corp’s semiconductor business, Japanese public broadcaster NHK reported on Friday – the latest twist in the sale of the world’s second-biggest flash memory chipmaker.
Makes perfect sense. Guess who the largest chipmaker is? Samsung.
The error messages you see when something goes wrong with your software or hardware often offer you no help, nor give you any clue as to what is causing the problem.
Error messages on the Mac often appear as Zen kōans; they suggest that you ponder the deeper meaning of the universe in order to understand what they mean.
This has been an eternal frustration for Mac users, more so for those of us who used the OS before OS X when these error messages seemed even more frequent. They’ve always been frustratingly opaque.
Apple has received a permit from the California DMV to test autonomous cars.
The California DMV updated its website on Friday, adding Apple to over 30 other companies testing self-driving vehicles in the state, including Tesla and Google.
This is confirmation that Apple continues to work on a self-driving car, which the company has not previously discussed in public or confirmed beyond an advisory letter to the NHTSA in December.
As usual, the media jumps to conclusions. Apple might be testing autonomous cars but I believe it’s more likely testing autonomous car systems for inclusion into other manufacturer’s vehicles.
Apple has posted three new Shot on iPhone ads to its Apple Turkey YouTube channel. The fifteen-second spots are special in that all three videos have been taken by 11-year old children using an iPhone 7. The clips include quirky uses of perspective and slow-mo to create some clever sequences.
Apple is posting the videos to celebrate a national holiday in Turkey that takes place on April 23, called National Sovereignty and Children’s Day.
I love seeing these ads Apple creates for other countries. I can’t wait to see the ones they produce for my native Canadian language.
NHL coaches have been given more technology on the bench in time for the Stanley Cup playoffs.
The league is making three iPad Pros available for coaches on every bench and officials will also have them to review coach’s challenges, The Associated Press has learned. All 16 playoff arenas were outfitted with the iPads and also Macs for video coaches as part of a collaboration with Apple.
Cassini’s Grand Finale is a short film I had the great honor to produce for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) about the spectacular ending of the Cassini/Huygens mission to Saturn. It is meant as an inspirational and informative piece about what happens in the last months of the mission, and as a celebration of all that this historic spacecraft has achieved.
I bet you’ve never felt this wistful about a space probe before.
Nubrella is an innovative new umbrella that could come in handy for photographers shooting in the rain. It’s a hands-free, wind-resistant design that can keep you and your camera dry while you’re snapping away.
After putting on the 3-pound Nubrella like a backpack, the canopy flips over your head and locks in place. Built using waterproof nylon, aluminum rods, and glass-filled plastic, the canopy is designed to withstand 40mph winds without flipping inside out.
As a much of a gadget geek as anyone but this is utterly ridiculous. It may not flip inside out until 41mph but, among other things, you just put a sail over your head, jerking you around like a rag doll. Not conducive to steady shooting.
“NES Classic Edition wasn’t intended to be an ongoing, long-term product. However, due to high demand, we did add extra shipments to our original plans.” The company has no plans to produce more NES Classic systems for North America. This announcement includes the discontinuation of the NES Classic Controller. As for third party accessories, Nintendo said the decision whether or not to continue production of accessories will be up to each individual manufacturer.
Franc is founded by Brandy Mercredi, a veteran apparel designer, lifestyle blogger and mini basics designer at mini mioche. Brandy always felt style trumped fashion and found inspiration in the unique ways people were able to style a single item.
Brandy is a friend of mine, and while I know nothing about fashion, I know she took a big step starting this company and designing these clothes. Good luck Brandy!
View your Apple Watch display through a blast from the past. The display lines up perfectly to seem as though it is the display of an old Apple monitor.
If you buy only one Apple Watch charging stand, make it this one.
Fender Collection 2 for iPhone or iPad comes with classic tweed amp models from the current ’57 Custom Series including the ’57 Custom Twin-Amp, the ’57 Custom Pro-Amp, the ’57 Custom Deluxe and the ’57 Custom Champ, plus a ’57 Bandmaster, a ’53 Bassman and ’65 Super Reverb.
IK Multimedia did a great job with the Fender Collection.
Apple has hired a small team of biomedical engineers to work at a nondescript office in Palo Alto, California, miles from corporate headquarters.
They are part of a super secret initiative, initially envisioned by the late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, to develop sensors that can noninvasively and continuously monitor blood sugar levels to better treat diabetes, according to three people familiar with the matter.
With Apple’s move into medical research over the last few years, this wouldn’t surprise me. They are more than just a technology, but this one is a tough nut to crack.
From time immemorial, people have gathered around campfires to regale one another with songs and stories. The human yearning for poetry and community has not subsided throughout the ages, but the location certainly has. Shakespeare’s Globe in London, England, and the Teatro La Fenice in Venice, Italy, are not merely places to see a show — they are gateways to another world that are works of art unto themselves.
There’s something about these kinds of theaters that make the event you are watching so much better. Definitely take the time to scroll through these images.
If you’re itching to return to the days where you watched Saturday morning cartoons in your pajamas while eating cold cereal straight from the box (I can’t be the only one, right?), Boomerang is now live. Turner has turned the digital TV channel into a standalone streaming service where subscribers can watch over 1,000 episodes — and over a dozen movies — of classics like Tom and Jerry, Scooby-Doo, Looney Tunes and more.
This is the first time these franchises are being offered on a streaming platform.
