But just because the iPad Pro needs to be taken as seriously as a computer doesn’t mean it should be judged as a PC. The iPad is not a computer, not as the term’s been defined for the past 40 years. It’s something new and different, and it excels in some ways that PCs don’t while also struggling to do some things that PCs do well.
No, the iPad Pro can’t do everything a PC can do—nor should we expect it to, because it’s not a PC. If you choose to use an iPad Pro rather than a MacBook or a Windows laptop, you are presumably doing so because some aspect of the iPad Pro makes it more appealing than those products. In other words, there’s something else it does better than those devices, making it worth the trade-off.
Better is to judge the iPad on what it is—and where its potential lies. While it’s misguided to consider the iPad’s path incomplete until it turns itself into a PC, it’s fair to ask if the spectacular hardware Apple’s developed here is being let down by its software.
This app wasn’t designed for me. It wasn’t designed for anyone who wants to track their period or general reproductive health. The same is true of almost every menstruation-tracking app: They’re designed for marketers, for men, for hypothetical unborn children, and perhaps weirdest of all, a kind of voluntary surveillance stance.
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“The design of these tools often doesn’t acknowledge the full range of women’s needs. There are strong assumptions built into their design that can marginalize a lot of women’s sexual health experiences,” Karen Levy, an assistant professor of information science at Cornell University, tells me in an email, after explaining that her period tracker couldn’t understand her pregnancy, “a several-hundred-day menstrual cycle.”
New Apple Watch Nike Sport band color choices will soon be available — at least for Nike Plus members. Nike revealed two new Nike Sport Loop bands and one new Nike Sport band that will be launching in a few days.
Microsoft today rolled out the first major update to its Whiteboard collaboration app for iPhone and iPad since its initial launch in September. Several new features are coming along for the ride in this update, bringing a hand-drawn effect for recognized shapes, an Accessibility Checker to make sure your whiteboard is easy to read for everyone, and the ability to lock images to the background.
Spotify's Watch app currently serves as a way to start playback of recently played music, and control that playback via play/pause, skip, and volume controls. You can also choose a connected device to send music to, and like a song to add it to your collection. And that's it.
If you’re an early employee at a startup, one day you will wake up to find that what you worked on 24/7 for the last year is no longer the most important thing – you’re no longer the most important employee, and process, meetings, paperwork and managers and bosses have shown up. Most painfully, you’ll learn that your role in the company has to change.
I’ve seen these transitions as an investor, board member and CEO. At times they are painful to watch and difficult to manage. Early in my career I lived it as an employee, and I handled it in the worst possible way.
Here’s what I wish I had known.
That writing code is only a small part of what goes into shipping production software.
I am still using my iPad Pro 10.5 that I bought last year, and I am not tempted to replace it with this year's new and shiny model. And I intent to continue using this machine for quite a few more years, I hope.
Which means I now have to watch out for when Apple stops selling this iPad version. Because once Apple does that, I will have to buy one or two of its Smart Keyboard, just in case I wear out the current one that I have.
(Don't tell Apple, but I've gotten the smart keyboard wet, and it stopped working, but it came back to life after a few hours when it was dry.)
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Thanks for reading.