There’s a particular point I’ve been trying to articulate about HomePod vs Amazon Echo and all the others that I haven’t quite figured out how to express succinctly in a tweet. So I’m going to resort to charts. If we wanted to compare HomePod and Echo as “Smart” devices, digital assistants—whatever term you want to use—I think most people will agree that Echo has an advantage. How much of an advantage is up for debate, but let’s be extremely generous to the Amazon…

Let’s do a quick thought experiment. You’re Apple. You want to launch a smart speaker product, but you haven’t gotten one into the market yet. Years have passed, and some of the competitors (Amazon and Google) are making some headway, though their products are far from mainstream. Those products are both backed by what has become pretty refined voice recognition systems, however, ones that surpass your own Siri in some respects, at least. And the people who do have these devices are pretty tied to the functionality…

Reading the Twitter and App.net reactions to the mostly positive reviews of the iPad mini today, I’m left with the impression that many people wanted $199 price point Retina display 10-hours of battery aluminum case, and all the fit and finish you expect from Apple And anyone who doesn’t criticize Apple for not having all of these is a shill. But design is about compromise, remember? There’s no physical way Apple could have kept its “legendary” battery life (Tim Cook’s word, not mine) with the…

Apple bashes Amazon and proposed ebook settlement — paidContent: “In all, the Government met with at least fourteen Amazon employees—yet not once under oath. The Government required that Amazon turn over a mere 4,500 documents, a fraction of what was required of others.” (Via. paidcontent.org) Remember back in April, when I said the DOJ case against Apple regarding eBooks seemed like it was authored by Amazon? Yeah, looks like it just about was. And now they’re trying to force Apple into a settlement, though Apple wants to…

How Apple and Amazon Security Flaws Led to My Epic Hacking | Gadget Lab | Wired.com: “In many ways, this was all my fault. My accounts were daisy-chained together. Getting into Amazon let my hackers get into my Apple ID account, which helped them get into Gmail, which gave them access to Twitter. Had I used two-factor authentication for my Google account, it’s possible that none of this would have happened, because their ultimate goal was always to take over my Twitter account and wreak havoc. Lulz. Had I been…