Independence Day

The recent Beeper controversy briefly brought the “blue bubbles vs. green bubbles” topic back into the mainstream. Here’s a brief review for those of you who are (blessedly) unaware of this issue. Messages sent using the iMessage service appear in blue text bubbles within the Messages app. Messages sent using something other than the iMessage...

The graphical user interface on the original Macintosh was a revelation to me when I first used it at the tender age of 8 years old. Part of the magic was thanks to its use of "direct manipulation." This term was coined in the 1980s to describe the ability to control a computer without using the keyboard to explain what you wanted it to do....

While the utility of Generative AI is very clear at this point, the moral, ethical, and legal questions surrounding it are decidedly less so. I’m not a lawyer, and I’m not sure how the many current and future legal battles related to this topic will shake out. Right now, I’m still trying to understand the issue well enough to form a coherent...

I first read about the “blue ocean” strategy in a story (probably in Edge magazine) about the Nintendo Wii. While its competitors were fighting for supremacy in the game-console market by producing ever-more-powerful hardware capable of high-definition visuals, Nintendo chose not to join this fight. The pursuit of graphics power was a “red ocean”...

“The Plumber Problem” is a phrase I coined to describe the experience of watching a movie that touches on some subject area that you know way more about than the average person, and then some inaccuracy in what’s depicted distracts you and takes you out of the movie. (This can occur in any work of fiction, of course: movies, TV, books, etc.)...