Technologizer
By Harry McCracken | What Harry McCracken is writing--and reading--on the web
What the Hacking at Yahoo Means for Verizon
It was the kind of phone call no chief executive wants to make — or receive — in the middle of a multibillion-dollar deal.<p>On Tuesday, Lowell McAdam, the head of Verizon Communications, was on the road. Marissa Mayer, the chief executive of Yahoo, was at work in Silicon Valley. Executives at both …
YahooHow LG uses fuzzy math to label some of its LCD TVs as 4K
By replacing every fourth red, green, or blue subpixel with a white one, LG boosts the brightness of its 6100-, 6500-, and 6800-series models. The …
LG ElectronicsInside Apple And IBM's App Making Machine
This is how the (unlikely) partnership actually works, as told by the people from both companies who manage it every day.<p>On a July day in 2014 some people from IBM and Apple got together in a room at Apple headquarters in Cupertino, California to start work on their recently announced business app …
IBMInside The Making Of Allo, Google’s AI-Powered Messaging App
Google's plan for beating apple and Facebook in the messaging wars.<p>Let the Great Messaging War of 2017 begin. Today, Google is launching Allo, a revamped messaging app meant to compete with the likes of Apple Messages and Facebook Messenger—two products that in recent months have steadily unveiled …
GoogleDoppler Labs And The Quest To Build A Computer For Your Ears
Leveraging everything from advanced hardware engineering to AI, this startup wants to give you control over your world's sounds.<p>I’m trying to listen as Doppler Labs cofounder and CEO Noah Kraft walks me through his company’s new smart earbuds over the din of a crowded restaurant, but the cacophony …
Audio QualityAT&T's New San Francisco Flagship Is Rather Grandiose For A Phone Store
A little bit of San Francisco history becomes a setting to get people to think of AT&T as something more than a phone company.<p>There's absolutely nothing remarkable about the AT&T store near my office in San Francicso. Once you're inside, it could be any neighborhood AT&T shop, anywhere in the …
Northern CaliforniaMicrosoft accidentally sent an Xbox One to a random guy months before it was announced
In March 2013, a 25-year-old Miami resident named Jia Li ordered a new laptop. Nothing fancy — just a $400 to $500 notebook.<p>He ordered it from Microsoft's website, which has a store.<p>When the package arrived a few days later, it looked strange.<p>"The box had a lot of security tape over it," Li told …
MicrosoftAn Award-Winning Photojournalist Puts The iPhone 7 Plus's Dual-Lens Camera To The Test
International Photographer of the Year Brooks Kraft says new lens improvements and better image resolution represent a great leap forward.<p>The new dual-lens camera of the new iPhone 7 Plus is possibly the most significant upgrade to an iPhone camera ever.<p>The iPhone 7 camera's 28mm wide angle lens …
ApertureShe Found Her Biological Father On Ancestry And 23andMe
DNA services are revealing relationships that once were cloaked in anonymity. And the world is still figuring out how to deal with that.<p>When she was 22, Jordon Goulder lost her dad to the neurodegenerative disease called ALS. That same year, she discovered that he wasn't her biological …
GeneticsYouTube Is Building Community—And It's Not Just About Video
Text, still images, and GIFs are now part of the mix that the service gives creators to keep their fans engaged.<p>Last March, half a dozen people met for breakfast at Hugo’s, a restaurant in Los Angeles. Two of them were John and Hank Green, the brothers who are among YouTube’s most popular content …
John GreenJack Dorsey On The New Twitter: "We're Not A Social Network As People Think About It"
The company's CEO talks about focusing on news, ramping up video, incorporating AI, balancing safety with freedom of speech, and more.<p>In a tech industry full of executives prone to loudly proclaiming their intention to transform the world in multiple ways all at once, Twitter cofounder and CEO Jack …
Jack DorseyThe Internet’s Own Instigator
On <b>August 8,</b> Carl Malamud wakes up early. He usually does. Most days, from the moment his eyes open, he is fixated on the mission. Early morning …
Tim O'ReillyGame Time For Twitter: Jack Dorsey's Big Bet On Live Events
Can the company’s move to stream major events right inside its app, including Thursday night NFL games, woo the masses?<p>Once upon a time, there was an ocean that surged with a billion and one stories. Every one was different, and they combined in unexpected ways to create new stories. Fishing one …
Jack DorseyIt’s Tough Being Over 40 in Silicon Valley
After Andrea Rodriguez lost her job last fall, she put away her suits. Not because she didn’t plan to keep working—she just had to seem younger. …
EmploymentApple Is Said to Be Rethinking Strategy on Self-Driving Cars
SAN FRANCISCO — Apple is rethinking what it plans to do about self-driving cars, just as other big tech companies appear ready to plow ahead with competing efforts.<p>In a retrenchment of one of its most ambitious initiatives, Apple has shuttered parts of its self-driving car project and laid off …
Christmas Eve8 Big Questions I Hope Get Answered At Apple's September Event
The news on September 7 won't just involve product specs, prices, and availability dates.<p>Apple is holding its big product launch for 2016 on September 7.<p>Unless the company has managed to keep something wholly unexpected under wraps—which would be great!—the key news will involve new iPhones and the …
Apple NewsEd Smith And The Imagination Machine: The Untold Story Of A Black Video Game Pioneer
At APF in the 1970s, as the second-known African-American video game engineer, he helped create an industry.<p>Thirty-seven years ago, New York-based APF Electronics, Inc. released The Imagination Machine, a hybrid video game console and personal computer designed to make a consumer's first experience …
Personal ComputersMarvel, Jack Kirby, and the Comic-Book Artist’s Plight
A decades-old legal battle is a reminder of how hard many creators have to fight to get credit and compensation for their own work.<p>One week ago, Marvel put out a press release announcing something special: a five-day celebration of the life and work of Jack Kirby, the spectacularly talented and …
ComicsRewriting the tablet
How Lenovo brought a dream design to life<p><b>Tablets were supposed</b> to be the future. They were supposed to get us off the desk and away from the laptop, and usher us into a touch-enabled world of productivity and entertainment. A dream of computing where our devices seamlessly blend between activities …
LenovoThe end of Nexus: This year's Google phones to forge new path
The 'Nexus' brand is going away, but the biggest deal here is the large change in software experience that will accompany the new branding.<p>This …
GoogleAt The Heart Of Fitbit's New Features: Your Heart
With its Charge 2 band's cardio and breathing offerings, Fitbit is putting its years-in-the-making PurePulse sensor to work in new ways.<p>Behind a wall of privacy dividers in a common space at Fitbit's San Francisco headquarters, a young man in a surfing T-shirt and shorts—and an oxygen mask—is …
RunningHow the Clinton Campaign Is Foiling the Kremlin
Staffers are now using a “Snowden-approved” app to hide Trump-related e-mails from hackers, in Russia and elsewhere.<p>On May 17, as dusk was setting over Brooklyn, around a dozen employees from <b>Hillary Clinton’s</b> campaign, and a consultant who worked with the Democratic National Committee, walked …
RussiaWelcome To 1986: Inside "Halt And Catch Fire's" High-Tech Time Machine
In its third season, the show takes on the Silicon Valley of the '80s—and gets the details right, from plot points to on-set clutter.<p>Tech executive John Bosworth is ready to take my questions. As I fire up a note-taking app on my iPad, he leans back behind a desk at his San Francisco-based startup, …
Halt and Catch FireHow Microsoft built a computer so good, even Apple wanted to copy it
On May 20, 2014, Satya Nadella — the recently appointed CEO of Microsoft — sat down next to Microsoft Surface boss Panos Panay in a packed New York City auditorium.<p>They were there to launch the Surface Pro 3, the newest version of Microsoft's tablet.<p>"This is a big day," Nadella told Panay. "Let's …
MicrosoftGAME OVER
VERYTHING CHANGED for Fujioka the day<p>GAME OVER<p>Tablet maker Fuhu was No. 1 on the Inc. 500 two years in a row. Then it went bankrupt. Inside the …
Lyft made a big bet on Apple's secret smash hit, Swift, and it paid off in a huge way
Just over a year ago, ride-hailing app Lyft made a huge bet by rewriting its iPhone app entirely in Swift — the Apple-created programming language that's taking the technology world by storm.<p>It was a big risk: Swift is still largely untested in real-world apps, having only been introduced in …
Apple NewsLyft pushes back at Uber's 'unsavory tactics'
Lyft is not happy with Travis Kalanick and Uber. Last week, Lyft found itself the subject of several stories claiming the company was involved in active but unsuccessful acquisition talks with a number of firms. Naturally, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick seized the opportunity to zing his …
Travis KalanickFacebook Is Taking a Different Approach With Its New App for Teens
And even if it fails, at least Facebook is thinking differently.<p>Facebook is finally taking a different approach to winning over young users.<p>The social network on Friday introduced yet another app for sharing photos and videos intended to challenge its fast-growing rival Snapchat and its popularity …
FacebookLatest Gartner data shows iOS vs Android battle shaping up much like Mac vs Windows
While Apple has seen declining sales of its iPhone over recent quarters, new data from Gartner provides another look into the decline facing Apple and the smartphone market in other regions. Overall, the data shows that smartphone sales worldwide grew 4.3 percent year-over-year, though Apple saw a …
Gartner, Inc.