Baker On Tech

A few weeks ago, I decided to upgrade my Lexus EV with a feature found on the top model, door puddle lights that project the car’s logo when you exit the door. The light module contains a tiny LED projector that casts a crisp, illuminated Lexus logo onto the pavement. Yes, it’s near useless and gimmicky, not something I need, but well, why not, especially if it was so inexpensive and simple to install. Lexus dealers charges about $175 a pair for what looks identical.

The world’s largest technology companies are spending hundreds of billions of dollars building AI infrastructure. New data centers, specialized chips, and massive electrical systems are essential to power the enormous amount of computing AI requires. No company wants to be left behind, so the spending has become a race in which participation seems mandatory. There’s no question AI is useful.

When GM decided to stop supporting Apple CarPlay and Android Auto in many of its vehicles, the company faced a wave of criticism. Many buyers had grown accustomed to plugging in their phones and instantly seeing their familiar apps on the dashboard. Recently I had a chance to try GM’s alternative—a system based on Google’s Automotive OS—in a rental car my son was driving. Although my time with it was brief, it revealed to me more of why GM made the switch and why many drivers remain unhappy.

When Apple decided to eliminate removeable batteries from their phones and computers, who would have guessed it might eventually impact airline safety? With the increase usage of our phones and the need to recharge more often, an entirely new industry of power banks emerged, and those batteries have been the caused of serious airline fires and emergencies in the air. Airlines around the world now consider lithium battery fires one of the fastest-growing risks in commercial aviation.

While the automotive world has been marveling at China’s electric vehicle makers—and how quickly they have surpassed many European, Japanese, and American competitors—I’ve been equally impressed by a wave of consumer electronics from little-known Chinese companies. These products aren’t just inexpensive; they’re thoughtfully designed, highly innovative, and often rethink familiar product categories from the ground up.

Every generation has its miracle technology. It arrives amid breathless predictions, billion-dollar investments and promises that it will change our lives. Skeptics are dismissed as people who simply “don’t get it.” Then reality sets in. The technology isn’t a failure, but it isn’t the revolution we were promised. Artificial intelligence is simply the latest example—although its economic consequences could be far greater than anything that has come before.

For decades, the consumer tech industry has operated under the rule that adding more features to a product makes it better. We see it in smartphones that ship with dozens of pre-installed apps you can’t delete, smart refrigerators and washers that require software updates to work, and televisions that spy on our viewing habits to serve us ads. Somewhere along the way, tech companies stopped building basic products that worked like tools and started building ecosystems designed to lock us in.

Credit card companies love to promote their premium credit card benefits: Airport lounge access, travel insurance, statement credits for trusted traveler programs, bonus points, free streaming services, elite membership ifrom hotels and airlines, etc. The perks help justify annual fees that can run close to a thousand dollars. But sometimes those benefits work in ways that leave customers wondering whether they really care about their customers.

When the Trump Organization unveiled their T1 smartphone, it was marketed as more than just another Android phone. It was presented as a symbol of American manufacturing—a phone supposedly built in the United States at a time when politicians across the spectrum have been calling for more domestic production. Buy this phone, consumers were told, and they would be supporting American workers rather than overseas factories.

Do you ever click on a link and get to a site that won’t open it because it’s behind a paywall? Or start to read a news story only to have it fade away and not let you complete it? It might be a link from a friend or from another story or a click that goes to a site that suddenly pops up a window asking you to subscribe. If we had to subscribe to every request, we’d be broke. I once was directed to a link to a story in the Chicago Tribune from the Drudge Reort.