Thurrott Daily: December 13

Recovering from this weekend’s focus group. A few items from around the web…

12/13/2015 2:38:27 PM

7 quotes from Apple’s design boss that don’t quite align with Apple’s latest products

This is brilliant.

Apple’s design has missed the mark lately, on a handful of occasions.

We thought it’d be fun to collect some of the most inspiring quotes about Apple’s approach to design, straight from the mouth of Apple’s design chief, Jony Ive, and pair them with Apple’s recent questionable design decisions.

Beautiful.

12/13/2015 1:54:08 PM

HP Offers ‘That Cloud Thing Everyone Is Talking About’

This is a few years old, but this Onion video is one of the funniest tech-related spoofs I’ve ever seen.

“So, how much capacity will HP’s cloud users have access to?”

“1000.”

LOL.

Google adds AirPlay support to its media apps on iOS

Google, like Microsoft, can’t ignore iOS, so you can find a full slate of full-featured Google mobile apps on Apple’s mobile platform. I wonder if this bothers Google fans. And doubt it.

Anyway. One of the side effects of this cross-platform support is that iPhone users can use Google apps (and some third party apps, like Spotify) with a Chromecast. And now, thanks to Google supporting AirPlay (Apple’s device-to-TV “casting” tech), they can use Apple TV too.

Thanks to recent AirPlay integration, Apple TV owners can now watch movies and TV shows they’ve rented or purchased from the Google Play Movies and TV app. Google has updated its iOS app to support AirPlay streaming from your phone or tablet to the Apple TV.

… it may be only a matter of time before Google apps surface on the Apple TV App Store.

So. What does this mean to you?

When I talk or write about ecosystems, what I’m really describing is the ability to get to your content anywhere at anytime. And these kinds of “sleeping with the enemy”-type abilities make doing so even easier. Microsoft talks about “the mobility of experiences” a lot, and it achieves it with its productivity solutions. But it does almost nothing to achieve this with its entertainment solutions like Groove or Movies & TV.

So, for example, Movies & TV is Windows only. And while Groove is on Android and iOS, it does not support AirPlay or Chromecast. Let alone Apple TV natively. And that’s ridiculous. Both apps should support everything.

Until they do, Microsoft’s “mobility of experiences” story is baloney, at least when it comes to entertainment.

The iPhone is ruining your posture

As, I assume, are other phones. But to mainstream media, there’s only Apple. Anyway…

Smartphones are ruining our posture. And bad posture doesn’t just mean a stiff neck. It can hurt us in insidious psychological ways.

Technology is transforming how we hold ourselves, contorting our bodies into what the New Zealand physiotherapist Steve August calls the iHunch. I’ve also heard people call it text neck, and in my work I sometimes refer to it as iPosture.

When we’re sad, we slouch. We also slouch when we feel scared or powerless. Studies have shown that people with clinical depression adopt a posture that eerily resembles the iHunch.

Posture doesn’t just reflect our emotional states; it can also cause them … Compared with upright sitters, the slouchers reported significantly lower self-esteem and mood, and much greater fear.

Slouching can also affect our memory.

That must be part of why Apple gets such high grades for customer service and reliability. 🙂

there appears to be a linear relationship between the size of your device and the extent to which it affects you: the smaller the device, the more you must contract your body to use it, and the more shrunken and inward your posture, the more submissive you are likely to become.

Well. Yet another argument against tiny 4-inch phones.

And speaking of Apple and The New York Times:

“Today’s Butlers Are Trading Silver Trays for iPads”

I’m just glad someone has figured out a way to halt sliding iPad sales.