19-year-old entrepreneur Eric Simons spent two months secretly living at AOL's Palo Alto, Calif. campus, sleeping each night on a couch like this one. (Credit: Eric Simons) It was 6 a.m. when Eric Simons was jolted awake by the yelling. After working until 4 a.m, the 19-year-old entrepreneur had finally passed out. A few hours of sleep would help with the day ahead. But unlike most people working at AOL's Palo Alto, Calif., campus who were surely still hours from showing up at the sprawling complex, Simons was already there. He'd been living there for two months, hiding out at night on couches, eating the company's food, and exercising and showering in its gym. And now, with an angry security guard bellowing at him, it ... Continue reading →
Harry McCracken / TIME.comBack at the new iPad launch in March, Apple, as usual, invited a few third-party developers to show off upcoming apps. One of them was Autodesk, which demonstrated an intriguing drawing program called SketchBook Ink. After a few weeks’ delay, the company is releasing the app today; it provided me with an advance copy for review. A stablemate of the company’s excellent, feature-packed SketchBook Pro, Ink pretty much does one thing: It lets you sketch with your finger (or, better yet, a pen) to draw with virtual ink that settles onto the page as you draw, leaving interesting little imperfections as if it were seeping into the paper. And Ink has one noteworthy feature which SketchBook Pro doesn’t — the drawings you ... Continue reading →
Harry McCracken / TIME.comLast week, I wrote about Digitimes, the Taiwanese tech site which covers the Asian gadget supply chain and is most famous for its stories about alleged upcoming Apple products. I revisited 25 old Digitimes stories about Apple and found that while some were on the money, many more involved suppposed products — like AMD laptops and touch-screen iMacs — which never arrived. I compared the site to both the little boy who cried “wolf!” and celebrity psychic Jeane Dixon, and basically bawled out tech reporters for taking its Apple coverage even halfway seriously. Some bloggers nodded their heads in agreement with my piece, as I expected they would. But then I found this message in my inbox: Hi Mr. McCracken, Thank you ... Continue reading →
MicrosoftThe Windows 8 Desktop's Metrofied LookWindows 8 may be edging ever-closer to completion, but Microsoft is apparently still noodling around with it. The latest evidence: Last Friday’s blog post by Windows design honcho Jensen Harris. He says that the company has decided to eliminate Aero, the default visual theme in Windows Vista and Windows 7. In Windows 8, even the desktop — the home for all classic Windows apps which don’t use the radically-new Metro interface — will have a Metro-like look that abandons transparency and gradients and curvy shapes for a simple, squared-off presentation. Harris’s post is 11,000 words long, and revisits every major version of the Windows interface, starting with 1985′s Windows 1.0. If you’re interested in Microsoft’s thinking about Windows 8, it ... Continue reading →
Many people consider Apple the most powerful brand in the world – an accolade that’s hard to dispute when its product line includes iPad, iPod, iPhone, iMac and MacBook Air. Companies all over the world try to emulate Apple’s creative genius and groundbreaking marketing. But what is the real secret to Apple’s success? According to Ken Segall, the man who put the... Many people consider Apple the most powerful brand in the world – an accolade that’s hard to dispute when its product line includes iPad, the iPod, iPhone, iMac and MacBook Air. Companies all over the world try to emulate Apple’s creative genius and groundbreaking marketing. But what is the real secret to Apple’s success? According to Ken Segall, the man who put the ... Continue reading →
