Ben Thompson
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Apps, People, and Jobs to Be Done
I read two great interviews tonight, and its the combination of the two that really captures why I’m skeptical about Facebook Home.1 First off was Mark Suster interviewing Clayton Christensen. The interview – as is the case with most things Christensen related – is fascinating and instructive, and well worth a read. However, I want […]
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The Week in Review — March 30-April 5, 2013
Facebook Home launched this week, both as an app for top-of-the-line Android devices, and preinstalled on a mid-range HTC phone called the First. It’s an interesting move on multiple levels, particularly the fact that it is not a fork but more of a services layer. Moreover, it’s a services layer that still has access to […]
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Home Turf
Matt Drance: You’ve built an enormous business around a desktop website. Unfortunately, people around the world are spending more and more time on mobile devices. The vast majority of these devices run software from only two companies. One of these companies is actively competing with you. You cannot put your future in a competitor’s hands. […]
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Facebook’s ‘Phone’ Is Another Triumph of Mediocrity
Mat Honan perfectly captures why I’m hesitant to cast ultimate judgement on Facebook Home: Over the past few days, lots of pundits have been asking who this is for. Facebook gave us an answer today: It’s for people who don’t care about a rich, full experience on the Internet, yet love Facebook. People who want […]
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China Losing the Global Propaganda War to Apple
The Financial Times: There was another important lesson that came out of the skirmish between the iPad maker and the propaganda apparatus. On the internet, which the party can corral with the “Great Firewall” but cannot really control, and particularly on Twitter-like Weibo, the backlash against the state and the cheering for Apple was devastating. […]
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Anand Lal Shimpi Loves the HTC One
From his unofficial review: I’ve been playing around with a retail HTC One and felt compelled to share my thoughts on the device. It’s rare that I’m so moved by a device to chime in outside of the official review, but the One is a definite exception… The One is without a doubt the best […]
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The Vanishing Uninformed, Charted
Last night I wrote: In the United States, where an iPhone 4 is free,1 customers who have the option of an iPhone choose it in overwhelming numbers (over 80% on AT&T and over 60% on Verizon). It’s increasingly clear that Android market share in the US was a direct result of iPhone carrier restrictions; those […]
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Battery Life is the Only Spec the Matters
Kyle Wagner: Battery isn’t some one-off feature. You don’t fritter entire train rides away worried that your phone doesn’t have diamond-cut chamfered edges, or which widgets you should have on your home screen. (Or if you do, that is very sad and you should stop.) Your night has never been ruined because your apps load […]
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Comparing Smartphone, Tablet and PC Graphics
Anandtech: At the end of the day I’d say it’s safe to assume the current crop of high-end ultra mobile devices can deliver GPU performance similar to that of mid to high-end GPUs from 2006. The caveat there is that we have to be talking about performance in workloads that don’t have the same memory […]