The app store model has been a central part of the smartphone revolution, bringing safe, trusted software to billions of people for the first time. Breaking it would be insane. The trouble is, it also means Apple (and Google) aren’t the pirates anymore - they’re the navy, the port and the customs house, so how do they manage that, and how soon do regulators step in?
Read MoreMost of the things we worry about aren't actually competition problems, but even where they are, breakups are unlikely to be effective. The real answers are in much more detailed and micro work: in regulating the internal mechanics of these products, line by line, much as we regulate telcos or credit cards.
Read MoreWe regulate lots of industries, from food to cars to airlines, and now we’re going to regulate tech. But what does that mean? Regulating tech won’t be any more easy or simple than any other kind of policy - policy is complicated and full of trade-offs.
Read MoreZoom is the Skype of video - it turned a technology few people used much into a mass-market product. But next we’ll get the equivalents of Instagram and Snap - products that ask different questions. Zoom solved getting into a call, but why are you in the call?
Read MoreEvents are a bundle of content, networking and meetings, and aggregate people in one place at one time. When you try to take this online, half of it breaks and most of it makes no sense bundled together. We need new tools and new ways to think about networks, not ‘virtual conferences’.
Read MoreSocial apps are pop culture, trying to grab some piece of the zeitgeist, and build a product around how people feel. But so too are a lot of the new wave of productivity apps. They’re not just utilities, but theories of how we might feel about work.
Read More"That is not only not right; it is not even wrong" - Wolfgang Pauli
Read MoreThis should be VR’s moment, but instead it’s still stuck as a subset of games consoles, and that isn’t why Mark Zuckerberg bought Oculus. How will that change? Do we get another VR winter?
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