​For as long as there have been laptops, there have been complaints about keyboard and trackpad feel. A disproportionate amount of these complaints come from writers. Some of these guys will even refuse to buy certain brands of laptops just because they don’t like the feel of the keyboard.

​I was pondering the worth of my shiny new stainless steel Series 2 Apple Watch when it occurred to me that the processor upgrade scenario is a lot like the iPad Air 2.

I’ve been banging the privacy drum for a while now and this is the kind of stuff that I’ve foreseen. It’s going to go a lot further though. It has to because the appetite for this data on the corporate side is insatiable. Our health habits, driving speeds, or political views are all highly valuable pieces of information that tell corporations or potential employers what they need to know.
 
Bloomberg - No Credit History, No Problem, Lenders Now Peering At Phone Data

Everybody thinks that paying for services with your data is a one-way street where the buyer gets nothing but benefits. Well, this is just like the introductory trial period when signing up for Cable TV. You don’t pay the full price until you’re hooked. Eventually for some people, paying with personal data is going to result in higher insurance rates, lost job offers, or loan rejections.
 
Data harvesting always has good intentions up front. But access to our data is great power that we willingly hand over. Perhaps people should treat it with more respect. I'm reminded of the line in George Clooney's movie Oh Brother Where Art Thou when the gang asks the traveling musician why he sold his soul to the devil. His response, "Well, I wasn't usin' it".

​Considering that laptops vastly outsell tablets and that tablets have been on a downward sales trend lately I understand that many people might view this claim with a healthy dose of skepticism, but I can’t not say something just because people don’t believe it. Here it goes, laptops are the walking dead. 

​I’ve been noticing a thread lately by writers in the tech community that goes something along the lines of “Smartphones are no longer exciting.” And some of these same writers seem to think that the century’s old technology of automobiles is the next big thing. That’s like dumping Susan Sarandon because she’s too old and asking Cher out for a date. It’s completely contradictory. 

​Apple is an odd company when you look at the way it’s structured. For a company that pulled in over $215 billion in revenue in fiscal 2016, this is a company that is still built like a small- to medium-sized corporation. It has one executive team that oversees every single project. It’s amazing that these guys can get anything done.  

Excellent point by Jordan Golson regarding the interesting situation that electric car makers find themselves in with performance cars.
 
The Verge - Can electric sports cars be sporty without any engine noise?
 
Driving an electric car is like typing on glass. There are whole sensory dimensions missing. It’s like watching a movie through the tinny speakers that are built into the TV. You don’t want to just see the action, you want to hear and feel it. 

The New York Times reports that everyone was stunned by the inability of big data to correctly predict the presidential election outcome.

The Data Said Clinton Would Win, Why You Shouldn't Have Believed It
 
This is exactly what I was talking about in my earlier writing on the shortcomings of big data.

It's an Easy Choice 

​I’m one of those people who sometimes reaches up to touch my MacBook Pro’s screen by force of habit. Which isn’t very often since I do most of my work on my iPad Air 2. But just because I reach up to touch my MacBook’s screen doesn’t mean that I think it’s a good idea for a MacBook to have a touchscreen. On the contrary, reaching up to touch my MacBook’s screen reminds me how nice it is to have a Trackpad and not have to reach for the screen. 

​I predicted earlier this year that it wouldn’t be a big deal for Apple to update the iPhone SE every spring. From a cost-to-benefit perspective, updating the internal components could be worthwhile for Apple in order to offset a usual sales slowdown that occurs in the summer. But there was one big possibility that I hadn’t considered. 

​In the latest episode of the Accidental Tech Podcast, Marco Arment and John Siracusa were discussing their disappointment with Apple seeming to abandon the market for displays. During the discussion, Marco kept asking the question, “Why is selling displays any different from anything else that Apple sells?”. Oh, let me count the ways. I thought it was a good question that might make for an interesting blog post. 

​An excellent article by Jeff Benjamin asks why there isn’t more of a spotlight highlighting the sad state of affairs in the camera industry. Seriously, camera manufacturers are in the business of creating digital products, and yet their buyers are still using the equivalent of little floppy disc drives. Are digital photos taken with pro cameras not the same as digital photos taken with an iPhone? You don’t see SD card slots on iPhones, even though that’s now the source of the vast majority of pictures.