Over the past few days, users with Alexa-enabled devices have reported hearing strange, unprompted laughter. Amazon responded to the creepiness in a statement to The Verge, saying, “We’re aware of this and working to fix it.”
I can’t say I am looking forward to going home tonight. 😛 I have four Alexa products through out my home and I do not need creepiness.
I stumbled across a very interesting article via John Gruber’s Daring Fireball by Jonathan Kim over at Medium:
Put another way: Apple’s products are successful because Apple knows how to market their products to a fanbase of deeply flawed individuals who don’t know what’s good for them.
I really wish I was exaggerating, but these seven reasons are the main ways Apple critics attempt to explain why someone would choose to buy products critics believe are both overpriced and inferior to their competition. Because if you’ve already come to the conclusion that Apple products are overpriced and inferior, but hundreds of millions of people still buy them, the only conclusion must be that there is something seriously wrong with the people who buy them.
This was a very interesting critique of well know Tech Reporter admitting over time that their initial impression of a product were perhaps hasty given. I agree with the original author that people should be applauded for admitting they were wrong. The author does a better job of articulating this than I.
Savov deserves credit for having the willingness — dare I say “courage”? — for not keeping his change of heart to himself.
“A small yet colorful part of the iTunes Store will be history by year’s end. According to an internal Apple email obtained by Metro, Apple will stop taking iTunes LP submissions this month. Apple confirmed the plans to The Verge, signaling the impending end of the paid multimedia album experience on iTunes.
The leaked email reportedly said, “Apple will no longer accept new submissions of iTunes LPs after March 2018,” and “existing LPs will be deprecated from the store during the remainder of 2018. Customers who have previously purchased an album containing an iTunes LP will still be able to download the additional content using iTunes Match.””
I only ever brought a few of these myself but it was a neat idea at the time and I will be a bit sad to see it go,
“Microsoft is busy prepping developers for the next big Windows 10 update, version 1803, and it is putting the focus on machine learning. Due in March or April this year, the new version will include a new machine-learning framework for using machine-learning models in Windows applications.”
I’m not sure how useful this will be once it ships but it sounds like a logical next step.