Topic: Products
AOL Instant Messenger is Shutting Down After 20 Years (Oct 6, 2017)
AOL has begun telling its few remaining users that AIM – its 20-year-old instant messaging service – will be shutting down in December. This clearly isn’t big news in the tech world, given that very few people still use the service and there are far better replacements in the world. But I’m including it today because it’s a great example of the way products tend to stick around long after the early adopter has moved on to newer, shinier things, and often long after most people might assume they’d been killed off. Whenever I write about BlackBerry, for example, I hear from people surprised to hear they’re still around, and most people would probably be surprised to hear that AOL as a company is still in business (albeit now owned by Verizon alongside Yahoo). That’s worth remembering because so much tech news coverage is driven by the cutting edge and the early adopter rather than covering the way mainstream users engage with technology, the products and services they use, and their perceptions of things. (Incidentally, I haven’t been engaging in the nostalgia many others have been today in regard to AIM – I never used it much, I suspect because it was far less popular in the UK, where I grew up, than here in the US).
via TechCrunch
Adobe Announces End of Life for Flash in 2020 (Jul 25, 2017)
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LG has redesigned its 5K Mac monitor so it can handle being placed near a router – Recode (Feb 3, 2017)
This has been a bizarre story – LG somehow produced a monitor for its partnership with Apple whose performance was seriously affected by close proximity to a router, something I’m guessing isn’t uncommon in home offices around the world. This is an unfortunate side effect of Apple’s decision to cede its first party monitor role to a partner – it no longer has control over quality and performance in quite the same way. Buyers and potential buyers had already been complaining that the monitor doesn’t look nearly as nice as Apple’s own, but that there should be serious performance issues too makes it worse, especially given the high prices (before discounts) of these monitors.
via Recode
Apple community reacts to lack of Mac Pro – Business Insider (Jan 4, 2017)
The version of this headline on BI’s site is much blunter, and the gist is that Mac fans are ticked about Apple’s lack of upgrades for the Mac Pro. Some see this as a sign of broader issues at Apple, while others see it as merely a side effect of Apple’s tendency to focus resources on a small number of products at once. I do think the Mac Pro boxed Apple into a corner somewhat – having boasted about the US manufacturing, it likely finds it difficult to back away, but I suspect it may regret some of the form factor choices – the lack of upgradeability means Apple needs to update the computer more frequently, something it hasn’t been willing to do. I think we’ll see an update in 2017, but I’m really curious as to what the new version will look like.
via Apple community reacts to lack of Mac Pro – Business Insider
A Magic Moment — Liss is More (Jan 1, 2017)
This isn’t news per se – it’s not even a normal review. But it is a personal experience someone had with an Apple product – specifically, AirPods. This is still the strongest kind of counter-evidence to the Apple is Doomed narrative – that Apple still knows how to make magical products. It’s just one user’s experience, but reviews of the AirPods have been almost universally positive, and my own experience with them reinforces this too. They’re not perfect, but they’re very good.
via A Magic Moment — Liss is More