The crowd roared as the band came out on stage, but the lights remained extremely low. That built drama for the audience, but it ruined any opportunity I had to get shots. As opening song "Technology" kicked in -- deafening me instantly as I was right in front of a giant speaker -- the stage lights burst into action. While the spotlights lit up the performers, the lights were erratic -- swooping around the stage and strobing on and off. I needed the light to remain on the faces long enough to get a clean shot, but the window of opportunity was sometimes there for less than a second.
The solution? Burst mode. By holding my finger on the shutter button, I could take multiple shots per second. All it takes is a second for singer Rob Damiani's face to catch the light as the beam speeds past him. In those instant moments, I could only hope I was getting the shot -- after the show I was able to go through the burst captures and select the shot where the light was just right.
Offtime, Moment and Space are providing services that stop, track and examine your usage. While a worthy development, the code to crack for these early systems will be to educate users in a way that doesn’t make them feel bad about their usage and subsequently delete the app. The long term solution is likely an integrated approach – blending hardware and software, something that really hasn’t been done yet.
With an integrated hardware and software approach, we need to start by defining our own self management strategies (or even recognize that we need one). But there is a much larger opportunity in reimagining the home as a starting point for parents, their children and the education process of device addiction.
U.S. lawmakers appear close to passing a tax bill that will make it cheaper for companies to repatriate money currently held overseas. That could potentially provide a bigger domestic cash stash for Apple to buy American companies.
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So will 2018 be the year when Apple finally goes on a buying binge worthy of its massive cash holdings? While it seems compelling for many reasons to say yes, one also can’t help note that Apple didn’t accumulate that stockpile by being excessively spendy. And so far, it hasn’t needed a lot of pricey startup purchases to maintain its place as the world’s most valuable public technology company.
If you decorate your home for the holidays, you can make things a little more futuristic and a lot more interesting by adding some HomeKit enabled devices to the mix!
That way you can ask Siri to turn off your tree, power down your inflatable reindeer, and shut down the red and green yard lights.