• Could health insurers subsidise the iWatch?

    A major reason why Apple has sold so many iPhones in the US is due to the unusual way phones are subsidised by carriers over there. Very few people buy an iPhone for the full, off-contract $649+ price — instead, they get it for ‘only’ $99 or $199, with the rest of the phone’s cost…

  • Thoughts on consistency in tablet news apps

    A few months ago, I finally had what I’d been dreaming of for years – digital delivery of every single magazine and newspaper I read. No more stacks of New Yorkers and Economists lingering on tables waiting to be given away (or more likely, recycled); no more hunting for all the bits of subscription forms…

  • More on the Death of Publishers

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    5–8 minutes

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    6 comments on More on the Death of Publishers

    If book publishers want to see the next decade in any reasonable health, then it’s absolutely imperative that they rethink their pricing strategies and business models right now. Hopefully this example will illustrate why: I’m a big fan of Iain Banks’ novels; I always buy them in hardback as soon as they come out. It…

  • Total Fail at the Kinect Galleries

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    4–6 minutes

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    9 comments on Total Fail at the Kinect Galleries

    Update 3rd Sept: Shortly after I made this post, I got a nice email from someone running the Kinect Galleries campaign telling me they took the problems very seriously and were working to make sure they didn’t happen again – from the comments on this post, it sounds like that’s happened! I also went to…

  • iPhone 4: The Last Mobile Phone

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    3–5 minutes

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    8 comments on iPhone 4: The Last Mobile Phone

    The iPhone 4 may be the last major advance in mobile phones we’ll ever see. There’ll still be plenty of incremental and useful improvements, but it’s hard to see what kind of attention-grabbing features are left: The Retina screen, at 326 pixels per inch, approaches the limits of human vision; it’s the end of the…

  • Reading on the iPad is fantastic

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    4–6 minutes

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    5 comments on Reading on the iPad is fantastic

    Reading on the iPad is fantastic. I don’t care what other people have said, I just know that after using it for a fortnight, I can tell that it’s changed the way I’ll read forever. I used to spend several hours a day in front of my iMac at home, using a combination of Google…

  • Some thoughts on Apple

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    3–4 minutes

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    2 comments on Some thoughts on Apple

    My current desktop is a 2006 iMac – the first generation of Intel desktops, with a Core Duo 2.0ghz processor and ATI X1600 card. Strip away the numbers, and what you get is a computer that still handles everyday tasks like watching videos and browsing the web with perfect ease. Unfortunately, when it comes to…

  • How many seconds?

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    2–4 minutes

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    1 comment on How many seconds?

    I’ve heard it said that the iPhone has inferior features to other phones. On paper, there is some substance to this. Compared to the flagship products of Nokia and HTC, the iPhone lacks: 3G a high megapixel camera (competing phones usually have 3-5 megapixels compared to the iPhone’s 2 MP camera) video recording ability video…

  • Infuriating Windows

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    3–5 minutes

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    No comments on Infuriating Windows

    The iPod Shuffle may be a fine product, but iTunes for Windows certainly isn’t. I use iTunes on my PowerBook for all of my music and like the vast majority of users, I love it. When I was still studying at Oxford, I spent many hours listening to other students’ Shared Music and when I…

  • The iPod Shuffle, in use

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    4–6 minutes

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    3 comments on The iPod Shuffle, in use

    A review of the iPod Shuffle, with a focus on running.