Larry Dignan reported on ZDNet about Why Samsung’s Harman purchase will be seen as Apple blunder decades from now.

Samsung’s purchase of Harman is strategically sound, worth the $8 billion, and positions Samsung well in the connected car market. Meanwhile, Samsung diversifies from a saturated smartphone market.

How is diversification good if Samsung’s whole operations as a conglomerate is all about diversifying into all industries that make money?

If you’re not familiar with Samsung’s operations, check this Wikipedia page.

Samsung is in many markets making low margin for the purpose of making money. Apple is in the smartphone market making high margin because their purpose is to make the best smartphone. Likewise for the desktop and laptop markets.

Nintendo has given us a first look at the Nintendo Switch, and it’s a pretty daring departure from the current form of consoles we’re used to.

Not too surprising though, as Nintendo isn’t afraid to try new things, as evidenced with the Wii. I’m looking forward to checking this out, though I don’t think it’ll give a proper challenge to the Playstation or Xbox anytime soon.

Over time, iMessage has become indispensable in my everyday life. If the gadgets I have to carry with me on a daily basis are the bones of my tech existence, iMessage is the connective tissue. It’s quick work chats; it’s sharing location on the way to a meeting or dinner; it’s sending a GIF of a hug to a friend who is having a bad day; it’s keeping in touch with mom; it’s getting a series of poop emojis from my niece on her iPod Touch.

via The Verge.

This might be the case in the West, but in Asia, the alternatives such as Whatsapp, WeChat, and LINE still reign supreme. In Malaysia where I live, Whatsapp is the de facto messaging system everybody uses.

One thing that always has me scratching my head is that why Google can’t seem to roll out a proper competitor to this. Sure, now we have Google Allo, but while I hope it works out, I don’t have much confidence that it’ll be a success anytime soon.

The Pixel charges via USB-C, and uses USB-PD (Power Direct) to pull a whopping 7 hours of battery life in fifteen minutes from its 18W charger when starting with a near-dead smartphone. (USB-PD, like most quick-charging solutions, scales down the power draw depending on how badly your smartphone is hurting for battery life.) Combine that with the Pixel’s 2770mAh battery, and Google’s smartphone is not only going to last longer, but come back from the dead much more quickly than either of Apple’s smartphone options.

The thing is, Apple has quick-charge technology in the 12.9-inch iPad Pro and its various mobile accessories; the company is also no stranger to USB-C, having used it in the MacBook. It may not have been feasible to stick that kind of quick-charging into the iPhone 7 given time and resource constraints, but that only makes me more greedy for it in next year’s iPhone. The age of slow-charge batteries is coming to a close, and I can only hope that Google is heralding the call.

Serenity Caldwell wrote a good piece on the #MadeByGoogle event, but while I wasn’t too bothered about the camera on the Pixel, I really wish that proper quick charging would be implemented on the iPhone.

If you’re an Android fan, willing to buy a premium phone, the Pixel is your answer. To repeat: it’s simply the best Android phone I’ve tested. If you’re an iPhone user thinking of switching, the Pixel will seem physically familiar, but you’ll have to overcome the sticky links you’ve developed with fellow iPhone users, things like iMessage (which Google can’t match yet) and iCloud Photo Sharing (which Google is trying to copy). You’ll also have to do without the comfort of your neighborhood Genius Bar.

via The Verge

While I’m not bothered about any digital assistants, including Siri or Google Assistant, I am really intrigued how Google plans to manage and enforce the unlimited full resolution photo storage for pictures taken with the Pixel. It’s a great selling point of the phone, and hits Apple where it hurts – the shameful 5GB of free iCloud storage that we’re still being offered.

There’s been some noise recently between Apple and Spotify, which shouldn’t be surprising, considering they’re currently in the midst of fighting to be the king of music streaming.

I just figured I’d toss my two cents in too.

While pricing and content is obviously one of the key factors to the outcome of this, I feel Apple really needs to double down on the interface of iTunes and Music (on iOS). It’s currently hell to navigate. With iOS 10 and macOS Sierra around the corner, things should be getting better, but there really needs to be less horror stories about iTunes/Apple Music messing with your music library. I personally have stopped using iTunes and Apple Music, since it totally poisoned my music library. I was already dabbling with Spotify then, but I’m all in now. I’m more than happy to revisit Apple Music when Apple gets its act together, but on the current trajectory, it doesn’t seem that it’ll happen anytime soon.

Seriously.

Based on several Apple Support threads, it appears that the most recent version of iTunes 12.3.3 contains a database error that affects a small number of users, and can potentially wipe out their music collection after the update. The error has been mentioned a few times, primarily on the Windows side, in the weeks since the 12.3.3 update, but appears to be rare enough that it hasn’t previously received major press. Apple did put out a support document shortly after the 12.3.3 update that walks you through some fixes if you find that your local copies of music are missing.

Focus should really not be on having anything like the above happen, instead of maybe buying Tidal.