Another quick round of advertising: Saturday May, 25th, @parismarx and Sarah Grant are going to join me for a conversation on resistance: Is resistance against current tech even possible and how? The Berlin event is pay as much as you can and you can sign up here: https://ownw.de/event/otherwise-network-salon-v-resist-but-how/
Google is feeling so emboldened by the AI hype that it wants to take another swing at Google Glass. Not only this product, but the entire company needs to feel consumers’ wrath if it dares to even try.
Apple’s industry-defining products made it the juggernaut it is today. But as iPhone sales continue to stagnate and the Vision Pro vastly underperforms, the company’s long-term prospects look increasingly dicey.
@jplebreton I don’t disagree, but I do think he would’ve had a better grasp of product development than Cook. But of course, it’s impossible to know for sure!
@jplebreton i’m sure he would’ve had some big ones! they still had failed services during the 2000s boom period, and the TV project that never really came to fruition as he wanted.
I feel conflicted about this because I know journalism is in a rough spot, but I also hate the online ads so much. Usually I’d say this would be a nudge to force them to change course, but given the media’s in such dire straits, I’m not so sure this time.
@wjmaggos I don’t actually think that’s a solution, and requires setting up a massive convoluted new infrastructure. I actually think it’s a mix of direct subscription and public funding, in part funded by taxes of digital advertising revenue.
@ordinal Yeah, FT has a strict paywall — and that's part of the reason why it’s able to produce good journalism at a time when so many other pubs at doing layoffs.
The United States is protecting is uncompetitive automakers addicted to expensive SUVs and trucks from facing a real challenge that would force them to innovate and could accelerate the EV transition by making cheaper models much more accessible.
Every few months, I take a look at the critical tech books coming soon to give Disconnect subscribers a look at books they might want to check out. Sign up and check out the list!
Elon Musk is betting Tesla’s future on using self-driving fantasies to boost the share price instead of building a real car business. He just gutted the teams working on the Supercharger network (right as other companies are adopting it!) and new vehicles.
@jakemiller “Musk told workers that Tesla ‘will continue to build out some new Supercharger locations, where critical, and finish those currently under construction.’”
Kara Swisher literally helped build up these billionaires to the point where they can threaten us with fascism, and now she’s trying to pretend that she’s the one providing a big warning to the world. It boils my blood.
Apple’s Vision Pro is a bad product with an even worse vision for the future of computation.
New sales numbers prove it’s a failure, but more than that it shows the idea of tech’s inevitability is a myth. We have the collective power to stop tech that doesn’t serve us.
Building on what I was saying in this piece, Bloomberg reports:
“One [Apple Store] employee says they haven’t seen one Vision Pro purchase in weeks and that the number of returns equaled the device’s sales in the first month that it was available.”
This week in the Disconnect Roundup, I’m thinking about whether it’s feasible to ditch my smartphone. Plus, the usual recommended reads, labor updates, and other news you might have missed.
@koen_hufkens My solution so far has been to turn off most notifications, keep the phone on silent, and only put a few apps on the home screen, leaving the rest in the library folders.