Siri is a promise. A promise of a new computing environment, enormously empowering to the ordinary user, a new paradigm in our evolving relationship with machines. Siri could change Apple’s fortunes like iTunes and App Store…or end up being like the useful-but-inessential FaceTime or the…
"If a meteor made out of diamond and 100 feet in diameter was traveling at the speed of light and hit the earth, what would happen to it?” —Aidan Smith, Age 8, via his father Jeff Nothing made of matt
Actually Getting Big Things Done is a series of guests posts on how to make things happen from those who know how to… well… actually get big things done. Today’s post comes from Erin Feldman whose blog, adorable drawings and recent ebook, Write Right continue to inform and delight. I’m sometimes…
Siri, as shipped, appears already capable of adding functionality according to which applications are installed on the iPhone. Here’s a screen shot of before and after I removed Apple’s Find My Friends app from my phone. How does it do that? Where’s “Where’s Jason?” gone? I’m busy so I’ve not…
Dan Crow, another former Apple employee from the 1990s, also says Apple has shown itself to be doomed without Steve Jobs, in a piece for The Guardian headlined “ We’ve Passed Peak Apple ”: Why do I th
I was born to young parents who were not ready for a child. They separated when I was five and neither was able to independently care for me. The next few years were a jumbled mess as I moved back and forth between one or the other of my grandparents’ homes, supervised by them and whichever aunts or…
The following was written in August, 2012. It was published a month ago in the first issue of Marco Arment’s iOS-only publication The Magazine . Marco has generously allowed his contributors to retain copyright and the option to share their work on their own sites after a time. If you have an iOS…
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People always seem surprised to find out I use Evernote , despite all of the plain-text tools at my fingertips. I thought I’d offer some explanation as to why and how I use Evernote. The biggest knock
November 7, 2012 The Best When I got back to San Francisco after a three month trip to Southeast Asia last year, I had no possessions. I was living out of hotels. Everything I carried had to fit into
I was on an airplane last night as the election was decided. As the plane landed after midnight on the East Coast, I confess that my hand was shaking as I turned on my phone for the news. I did not wa
Why political journalists can’t stand Nate Silver: The limits of journalistic knowledge October 31, 2012 | Mark | political journalism The more I think about the rift between political journalism and
Mitt Romney has always had difficulty drawing a winning Electoral College hand. Even during his best period of polling, in the week or two after the first presidential debate in Denver, he never quite
Sign Up for Your Weekly Dose of Culture! Travel The Dual Legacy of Artificial Islands: Engineering vs. Ecology Explore the rich history and modern impacts of artificial islands. From ancient civilizat
Why I Love the Electoral College By: Garett Jones Categories: Public Choice Theory By Garett Jones, Oct 20 2012 SHARE POST: There’s some evidence that democracy itself makes people happier, but largel
An artist visits the world's premier quantum mechanics labs. Beauty ensues. "Momentum," displayed at the Wilmotte Gallery in London (Alejandro Guijarro) Blackboards, the legend goes , were invented by
Earlier this year, through a series of events that involved a predawn drive deep into the Mojave Desert, I came into a windfall of Mid-Century Modern furniture. I loaded up a U-Haul trailer with what I considered to be high-quality designs: a Danish Modern dining set; a long, teak credenza; and, the…
The Boltzmann Brain paradox is an argument against the idea that the universe around us, with its incredibly low-entropy early conditions and consequential arrow of time, is simply a statistical fluctuation within some eternal system that spends most of its time in thermal equilibrium. You can get a…
Amir D. Aczel writes often about physics and cosmology. His book about the discovery of the Higgs boson, Present at the Creation: Discovering the Higgs Boson, is published in paperback by Broadway Books in November 2012. If somebody told you that there are angels floating in space, observing our…
How Romney Would Treat Women IN this year’s campaign furor over a supposed “war on women,” involving birth control and abortion, the assumption is that the audience worrying about these issues is just
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Apple cannot afford to get too big or too disorganized. That’s my takeaway from yesterday’s shocker that not only is Scott Forstall out at Apple, but also that his fiefdom is being split between Craig Federighi, Eddy Cue, and Jony Ive. We learned a lot about Tim Cook yesterday. First: retail chief…
When Eyes Wide Shut came out, a few months after Stanley Kubrick’s death in 1999, it was severely misunderstood, which came as no surprise. If you go back and look at the contemporary reactions to any Kubrick picture (except the earliest ones), you’ll see that all his films were initially…
A Different Perspective A week ago, I sat in an auditorium and listened to Steve Sinofsky talk about the tablet market. He talked about how the iPad was a great device, and a logical extension of the
The world divides into people who think of Apple as a company, and people who think of Apple as a brand. The former group includes all stock analysts , of course, but it also includes most technology journalists. The latter group is, well, most of the people who buy Apple products. The difference…
Today, Apple announced a retina 13-inch Macbook Pro , brand new iMac , updated Mac Mini, and, of course, the iPad Mini . That’s a lot to announce, and I think this was one of Apple’s best events in th
Media inquiries and licensing please email thedeathdelusion@gmail.com Comparison with the original: http://youtu.be/pjeHZ9poew4 Making of: http://youtu.be/jpjkaxeMGak I made this video for fun and for
the best computer A few years ago I had a burgeoning interest in photography. As I researched the websites and listened to the podcasts requisite with developing my new hobby, I kept coming across a c
Noah was finally asleep. Sitting in the center seat, my wife was holding our 7-month-old son as he slept on her shoulder. The three of us were flying back home from a week in Colorado, and Noah had sp
The development team of Tapbots has slowly gained a reputation for crafting polished and clever apps with a unique robotic theme. The pair behind the company include programmer Paul Haddad and designer Mark Jardine. Haddad and Jardine began working together at the Oakley web group, where Haddad got…
New Planet in Neighborhood, Astronomically Speaking An artist’s rendering of a planet astronomers have found in Alpha Centauri, a star system that is the Sun’s closest neighbor. Credit... L. Calcada/E
Subsequent very careful study of this data by independent groups has strongly suggested that the planet around Alpha Centauri B reported here probably does not exist. The signal appears to be a very s
I don’t want to write this article. I believe there is no way to provide advice about listening without sounding like a touchy-feely douchebag. But I’m going to write this article because there is a good chance that your definition of listening is incomplete, and what I consider to be obvious and…
For me, the amount of email that arrives is inversely proportionate to my amount of free time. This means the less time I have to read mail, the more mail that arrives. Greater minds than mine have attempted to tackle this unfortunate time management situation, so I’m going to keep it simple. You…
Leave the punch clock alone. You don't get paid by the hour. (Image credit: Wikipedia) The astronomical community is all a-flutter, a-twitter, and many other bird-related analogies besides. What has p
Two scientists have won the 2012 Nobel Prize in physics for their pioneering work in quantum optics, a field that manipulates light and matter to measure very precise properties of single particles. The Nobel committee awarded the prize October 9 to Serge Haroche, of the Ecole Normale Superieure in…
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