Beyond Devices Podcast

This is the Question of the Week episode for this week, and the News Roundup episode should be up on Friday. This week's question is about whether the death of physical retail has been exaggerated, and ultimately what the state of physical retail is in a world where Amazon and e-commerce in general seems to be wreaking havoc. We talk through recent trends in retail, from the supposed apocalypse to those companies investing despite the downturn including Apple and T-Mobile. Aaron uses the jobs-to-be-done framework to talk through what people hire retail to do for them, and how physical retail might be able to hold its own against online retail. And we talk about the experimental nature of much of what's being done in physical retail to stem the tide of e-commerce. Here are some useful links relating to this week’s episode: Article on Amazon's book stores: http://www.retaildive.com/news/why-amazon-is-betting-big-on-brick-and-mortar/431499/ Introduction to jobs-to-be-done theory: https://hbr.org/2016/09/know

Earlier this week, we did our Question of the Week episode, which covered the Facebook F8 announcements, so this News Roundup episode covers some of the other big news for the week: • Several Apple news tidbits, including a set of environmental announcements, hires of satellite experts from Google, the purchase of a music documentary at the Tribeca Film Festival, web embedding of Live Photos, and purported shots of the chassis for the next iPhone • Google Home announcing multi-user support, as well as two announcements relating two Amazon Echo and Alexa • Netflix Q1 2017 earnings • Samsung Galaxy S8 reviews, which came out this week, and news that Google Music will be the default music service on the devices. As always, you'll find links to these stories and other things we discussed below. News stories we covered (Tech Narratives links): Apple's environmental news: https://www.technarratives.com/2017/04/20/apple-makes-big-environmental-push-for-earth-day/ Apple hires Google satellite execs: https://www.t

This is the Question of the Week episode for this week, and the News Roundup episode will be up tomorrow. This week, Jan attended F8 and our Question of the Week is "What's the state of innovation at Facebook?" We use Facebook's F8 announcements and presentations as a lens to look at how Facebook is innovating both in the products it's creating today and in the research and development work it's doing over the longer term. We also talk about what Facebook needs to do differently. As usual, you’ll find some links to related content below: Facebook F8 Site, where you can see all the session videos: https://www.fbf8.com Facebook's Developer News site, where you can see the news from F8: https://developers.facebook.com/blog/ Jan's Techpinions column on Facebook's Innovation Chasm: https://techpinions.com/facebooks-innovation-chasm/49727 As ever, we welcome your feedback via Twitter (@jandawson / @aaronmiller), the website (podcast.beyonddevic.es), or email (jan@jackdawresearch.com).

There won't be a Question of the Week episode this week as we've both been busy. Here is this week's News Roundup episode, in which we cover the following five topics in quick-fire order: • Spectrum news including the conclusion of the FCC's spectrum auction and AT&T's proposed purchase of Straight Path • Two pieces of news about Apple R&D efforts: it appeared on the California DMV's list of companies with permission to test self-driving cars on public roads, and CNBC reported that it's been working on glucose monitoring technology for several years • Uber released some of its finances for 2016 to Bloomberg, while The Information reported on a Lyft-hacking program called Hell Uber used to run, and the company's PR head left • Samsung announced that its Bixby voice assistant won't ship with the Galaxy S8 and S8+ when they're released next week in the US • LeEco announced the end of its bid to acquire Vizio and the killing off of its EcoPass content service, and was also reported to have fallen far short of it

Here is this week's News Roundup episode, which is a solo effort from Jan as Aaron is traveling. This week, we cover: • Two unusual announcements of future plans from Apple: its intention to build its own GPU, and its roadmap for pro Macs • Comcast's announcement of its wireless service, Xfinity Mobile • Facebook's testing of a tab surfacing recommended content not shared by your friends • Samsung's preliminary financial results for Q1 2017. Links to Tech Narratives comments on each of these news items are below: • Apple and Imagination Technologies GPU announcement: https://www.technarratives.com/2017/04/03/apple-gpu-supplier-imagination-tech-says-apple-plans-to-build-its-own-gpu-in-1-2-years/ • Apple Mac announcement: https://www.technarratives.com/2017/04/04/apple-plans-new-imacs-for-pros-later-in-2017-new-mac-pros-in-2018/ • Comcast Xfinity Mobile annoumcement: https://www.technarratives.com/2017/04/06/comcast-introduces-its-mobile-service/ • Facebook testing recommended content tab: https://www.technar

This is the Question of the Week episode for this week, and the News Roundup episode will be up shortly too. This week's format is a little different, as Aaron is traveling, and so I spoke to an old colleague of mine, Chris Lewis, who is also an analyst and is registered blind. I spoke to Chris via Skype about his use of accessibility technology on his various devices, and also about the work he's been doing helping organizations think through some of the issues around accessibility and using technology to help people with disabilities. • Chris's website is http://www.lewisinsight.com • Chris is on Twitter at @chr1slew1s and can be reached via email at chris (at) lewisinsight (dot) com.

This is the second of our new News Roundup episodes, which will usually appear on Fridays and discuss several of the week's top tech news stories. This week, we cover: • Congressional action to roll back privacy regulations for ISPs, which has been covered in somewhat hyperbolic fashion • Three tweaks to Twitter features, including a new model for @-replies, DM protections, and an avatar change • New RIAA numbers on the size of the US music market in 2016, and especially the contribution of streaming. As with this week's other episode, relevant links are displayed below as raw URLs: News stories we covered (Tech Narratives links): • Two Tech Narratives pieces on the ISP privacy regulation and on the EFF/Verizon story https://www.technarratives.com/2017/03/20/isps-say-your-web-browsing-and-app-usage-history-isnt-sensitive-ars-technica/ https://www.technarratives.com/2017/03/31/eff-withdraws-verizon-spyware-claims-cnet/ • Twitter's @-replies and avatar changes https://www.technarratives.com/2017/03/30/twitte

This is the second week of our new split format, and this is the Question of the Week episode. This week's News Roundup should follow on Friday. This week's question is "What do you make of the Samsung announcements this week?" Samsung held an event on Wednesday in New York City at which it announced its latest smartphones, the Galaxy S8 and S8+, as well as several other accessories, including updated Gear 360 and Gear VR devices, and a new mesh WiFi router-plus-IoT-hub called Connect Home. Jan, who was at the event, talks through some obvious questions about the new devices and the other announcements from today's event. We're trying something new this week here in the show notes – we had a request to put the links here instead of just on the site, but SoundCloud is a little funny about HTML in its episode descriptions, so each link will appear as a full URL below, but hopefully this makes it easier for you to chase down the related content we link to. This week's links are all to Tech Narratives pieces

This is the first of our new News Roundup episodes, which will usually appear on Fridays and discuss several of the week's top tech news stories. This week, we cover: – Advertisers in the UK and now the US boycotting YouTube and to some extent Google more broadly over ads appearing next to undesirable content – Samsung's pre-announcement of its Bixby virtual assistant, which will ship with the Galaxy S8 smartphone it's expected to announce next week – Twitter testing a paid subscription service for power users, apparently built around Tweetdeck and costing $20 per month – Apple releasing a new, cheaper, 9.7" iPad and a video creation and editing app called Clips, and its acquisition of Workflow. As always, you'll find links to these stories and other things we discussed on the website at podcast.beyonddevic.es.

As we announced last week, we're embarking on a change in the format of the podcast, and from here on out you'll see two episodes from us weekly, with each encapsulating one of the segments of the old format – the Question of the Week, and the News Roundup. The News Roundup will generally go up on Fridays so that we can capture the week's news, while the QotW episode will probably go up earlier in the week. Here, then, is this week's Question of the Week (QotW) episode, which answers the question "Is Apple undertaking a new low price strategy?" This assertion has been in the news lately, with analyst Neil Cybart penning a piece arguing that Apple Watches and AirPods are underpriced and several people arguing this week that the new iPad is another sign that Apple is going downmarket. In our episode, Aaron evaluates these assertions and brings in some of Apple's pricing history in order to answer the question of whether we're seeing a departure from Apple or whether something else is going on. As usual, you’l

This week's format is a little shorter than usual – we dispense with our third segment and stick to just the News Roundup and Question of the Week, partly in preparation for some format changes we're planning. More about this in the episode, but we're considering a split of the News Roundup and Question of the Week portions into separate episodes. That change – or something like it – should be happening in the next week or two, so look out for that. This week's News Roundup covers our usual trio of topics. First up, Intel's proposed acquisition of Israeli tech company Mobileye for its autonomous driving technology. Secondly, a few additional details that have emerged about Hulu's over the top pay TV service which is launching soon. And lastly, a pair of home speaker-related announcements: Google plays its first ad on Google Home, while Amazon puts Alexa in the Amazon app on iPhones. Our Question of the Week is "What is the state of AI?" There's been a bit of a backlash recently agains the alleged overuse of

This week's News Roundup covers the Wikileaks CIA leak on device hacking and the misreporting that's been happening around it this week; two "fake news" stories – Facebook's commencement of its flagging of fake news and Google's failure to surface true news in its search snippets feature; and reports that Nest is working on some new smart home gear. Our Question of the Week is "Can Uber be saved from itself?" Uber has been through the ringer the last few weeks as a result of a set of mishaps largely of its own making, but there's also a long history of questionable, immoral, and illegal behavior as well as poor treatment of both employees and drivers at Uber. Aaron walks us through the ethical shortcomings that lead to behavior like this, and how Uber could change for the better, based on experience from other companies and his expertise as an ethics expert. Our Third Segment is a conversation about the narrative that seems to be emerging about Windows PCs gaining on the Mac and to some extent becoming "coo

This week's News Roundup covers YouTube's announcement of the appropriately named YouTube TV service, which will offer a bundle of broadcast and cable channels from four major companies for $35; rumors that Apple would replace the Lightning connector on iPhones with USB-C in the fall; and Snap Inc's debut on the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday. Our Question of the Week is "What is AWS and why are so many people so dependent on it?" Naturally the prompt here is this week's AWS S3 outage, which caused many sites and services to go down for several hours on Tuesday. We talk through what AWS is, the major products and services that are part of it, how big this is, and the details of Tuesday's outage, in terms of both the causes and the impact, and whether it's healthy that so much of the Internet depends on one company. Our Third Segment is a discussion of some of the phone announcements made at Mobile World Congress this week, from Nokia, BlackBerry, Oppo, LG, and Motorola, and what they tell us about the

Our News Roundup this week covers former Uber employee Susan Fowler's revelations about how she was treated as a female engineer at the company, and the subsequent announcement of an investigation by a semi-independent panel; Waze's expansion into becoming a carpooling service; and Microsoft's launch of Skype Lite, an innovative low-bandwidth version of Skype for emerging markets which launched in India this week. Our Question of the Week is "What is the true state of online advertising?" We've all heard lots about Google and Facebook's massive revenues from online advertising, and their increasing dominance of the space, but we've also seen recent news about increasing calls for independent audits of their advertising metrics, and questions from big advertisers about the effectiveness of online advertising. So Aaron takes us through some of the complex dynamics, challenges, and prospects for the online advertising industry and the potential for companies like Snap, Twitter, and Yahoo/AOL under Verizon. Our

We're back to our usual format this week. Our News Roundup kicks off with a couple of US wireless stories – Verizon Wireless reintroducing unlimited plans, and T-Mobile reporting its results. Next up, we discuss Apple joining the Wireless Power Consortium, and what it might mean. And lastly, we discuss Facebook's announcement that it's working on an app for TV boxes like the Apple TV and Amazon Fire TV. Our Question of the Week is "Who is investing in original video content and why?" The topic has been in the news this week with Apple showing off trailers for two new original series that will be part of Apple Music, and YouTube star PewDiePie being dropped from its original content lineup after making some anti-semitic videos. We discuss who's investing in this area, why, and what they're spending, as well as whether it will all be worth it. Our Weekly Pick is a musician recommended by Aaron. As usual, you’ll find some links to related content as well as other ways to listen to the podcast on the website

We have a slightly different format this week – Jan lost his voice and so we took out the third segment we usually have and spent a little more time on the Question of the Week, where Aaron was going to be doing most of the talking. Our News Roundup covers three news items as usual. First up: Oculus's decision to close 200 of its Best Buy demo areas for VR, which some have taken as a sign that VR is fizzling. Second, we talk about Apple's recent hiring of a former Amazon Fire TV executive, and what it might mean about Apple's ability to sign content deals. And thirdly, we discuss Android Wear 2.0 and the new LG smartwatches which launched this week, and what they suggest about the state of the smartwatch market and wearables more broadly. Our Question of the Week is "What role should businesses play in political and social change?" This topic has been in the news recently with many tech companies weighing in on the Trump administration's recent executive orders on immigration, but it also has a long history

A quick note: we had an glitch at Aaron's end, which dramatically reduced the quality of his side of the audio, so he sounds like he's on the other end of a phone line rather than using a high powered mic. We're not sure what happened, but it wasn't fixable, unfortunately. Our apologies, but things should be back to normal next week. The three topics in our News Roundup this week are pretty diverse. We start with Fitbit's preliminary earnings, which were below guidance and triggered layoffs at the company, undermining the company's argument that its recent slowing growth is temporary. Secondly, we discuss the Comcast-Roku partnership which puts Xfinity TV on Roku as an app as a potential replacement for a set top box, with some significant caveats. Lastly, we talk about Slack's launch of Enterprise Grid, a more sophisticated version of the app for larger, complex enterprises. Our Question of the Week is "What are narratives in tech and where do they come from?" We talk about the prevalence of narratives in

This week, our News Roundup features three topics: the conclusion and announcement of the findings of Samsung's Note7 investigation; Samsung and LG's earnings for Q4 2016; and Snap's various preparations and signs of increasing maturity ahead of an IPO. Our Question of the Week is "Are the recent departures from Apple a sign of trouble?" Aaron talks us through some of the recent departures across several parts of Apple's business, talks about possible explanations, provides some historical context with a discussion of earlier departures, and draws some conclusions about the significance of the current round. We also talk particularly about the Apple-Tesla poaching war. Our third segment is part 2 of our preview of Q4 2016 earnings season, with a brief discussion of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Twitter and what they're likely to report in the next couple of weeks. Lastly, our Weekly Pick is a book recommendation from Jan. As usual, you’ll find some links to related content as well as other ways to listen t

This week, we're back to our usual format. Our News Roundup features three topics: in streaming video, Netflix reported earnings this week and Hulu indicated that its download feature is coming soon; in the Android world, The Information reported that Android One might be coming to the US, while Pixels are still in short supply; and in the ongoing saga of Apple and its pro users, Apple updated Logic Pro X and GarageBand for iOS. Our Question of the Week is "what is the state of autonomous driving and where does it go from here?" We do a deep dive into the definitions and current state of play when it comes to self-driving cars, talk about when we might see various levels of autonomous driving, and discuss the many barriers and hurdles that have to be overcome for autonomous driving to become a reality. All of this builds off Jan's recent in-depth research on the topic. Our third segment is part 1 of our preview of Q4 2016 earnings season, with a discussion of Samsung, Alphabet and Microsoft and what they're

We're back after our long Christmas, New Year, and CES hiatus – thanks for bearing with us while we took our break, and Happy New Year! We kick things off with a News Roundup, with three topics: Apple's reported investment in original video content, ostensibly for the benefit of Apple Music subscribers; Nintendo's announcement of pricing, specs, and other details for its Switch console; and Facebook's attempt to help news organizations with its Journalism Project. Our main topic today is themes from CES, in which we discuss the fact that Amazon's Alexa was everywhere, cars continued to grow in importance, smart home gear and services continue to evolve, drones were popular at CES but struggled elsewhere this week, wearables seem to be fading as a force, and Chinese companies continue to struggle to break into the US in a big way. Our third segment is a discussion of the 10th anniversary of the announcement of the iPhone, and all that's changed in the world as a result. As usual, you’ll find some links to r