Two decades into the new millennium, it is pretty apparent: hardware without software and smarts is nothing more than a gimmick. Apple’s product launch event today was a timely reminder of this new hardware reality. And I’m glad to say Apple delivered. The new iMac video cameras and the new iPad Pro’s front-facing cameras are … Continue reading Apple’s new hardware is built for our visual future
What do Nils Frahm, Anne Mueller, Jeannie Schulz, Mary Lattimore and Atli Örvarsson have in common? They are among three dozen artists whose albums I bought last year from Bandcamp, an Oakland, CA-based music service. It was my way of supporting these artists. As I wrote earlier, “we need to figure out how much we value … Continue reading Bandcamp vs Streaming
In December 2020, with the release of the iOS 14.3, the owners of iPhone 12 Pro (and ProMax), got to experience Apple’s new photo format, ProRAW. In simplest terms, the iPhone camera captures multiple image frames, picks out the best bits from these frames, and stitches them together in a photo with higher amount of … Continue reading Apple ProRAW + Adobe Super Resolution = Amazing!
Knowing of my growing distaste for the Facebookization of Instagram, Evgeny Tchebotarev, the co-founder of 500px, sent me an email about a new project from Crew, a freelancer-focused design company. This was years ago. Unsplash, which began as a simple Tumblr site, had graduated to its own home on the internet. The proliferation of digital … Continue reading The Wrong Kind of Splash
From the day I first laid eyes on the M1-based Apple’s MacBook Pro, I have been a massive fan of the machine. It is fast. It is powerful. It runs cool. And most importantly, it has excellent battery life. It will be a huge boost for desktop computing, which remains stuck in the past when … Continue reading What Adobe isn’t telling you about Photoshop for M1 Macs
For a long time, Nitin Sawhney has occupied a prime slot on my very short bucket list of people to interview. I first encountered his music in the early 1990s, and to a great extent, he has provided the soundtrack to my adult life. Perhaps that was inevitable. After all, we are part of the … Continue reading Nitin Sawhney
A few weeks back, I visited Bolinas. It was one of those bucolic days that we often take for granted in California. The temperature hovered somewhere between that of a lukewarm cup of mint tea and water from the tap. A bead of sweat would break after a long walk, only to evaporate with the … Continue reading Lone Surfer: the story of one photo.
Lately, I find myself admiring HEY World, a new tool from the makers of the collaboration platform Basecamp. Here’s how it works: If you use HEY, their (paid) email service, you can write an email, send it to a specific address, and publish it for the world to see. The published email is distributed to readers, … Continue reading HEY World makes what’s old new again with blogging.
Christmas came in March for Tidal, the increasingly irrelevant, money-losing music streaming service, and Jay-Z misadventure. Square, the digital finance company co-founded and led by Jack Dorsey, will pay nearly $300 million and acquire a majority stake in the company. But why, would Square do this? It’s a bit of a head-scratcher. One could argue … Continue reading Is Tidal worth Jack?
The news of Indie.vc shutting down keeps popping up in my news feeds, social media feeds, and email newsletters. All of them talk about how it didn’t work out, but the right question to be asked (and answered) is actually: What is venture capital — and when does a company deserve it? If you don’t … Continue reading What’s in a name? Sometimes everything.
