Been on social media recently? Seen those bizarre musical icebergs floating around in your feed? You’re not alone. Screenshots have been doing the rounds, particularly on Twitter.
It’s all created via the magic of a website called .
Using the data from your Spotify listening habits, Icebergify creates an “iceberg” of your most listened-to artists ranked by popularity. At the tip of the iceberg? Your favorite “mainstream” artists. Your Taylor Swifts, your Beyonces, your Drakes, etc. The further down you go, the more obscure it becomes. It looks a little like this…
# drop your icebergify dot com
— # (@MUSIKMENFESS)
window.CnetFunctions.logWithLabel(‘%c One Trust ‘, “Service loaded: script_twitterwidget with class optanon-category-C0005”);
If you want to see your own iceberg, you can head to . Be warned: it does require your Spotify log-in.
The Icebergify website was developed by Akshay Raj, a freshman studying computer and data science at Rice University. He says he has no plans to monetize the site or use the data collected — which is limited to your username, Spotify account ID and the top 50 tracks and artists listened to over the past few years.
How does it work? It’s fairly simple. Icebergify takes your most listened-to artists and . Streams, shares, saves, likes and followers are all taken into account. This is why Beyonce might be at the top of your iceberg, but lesser-known artists are at the bottom, beneath the ocean. Also worth noting: exponentialstandards It seems like Icebergify is being flooded due to its surprising popularity. Head back later if it doesn’t immediately work.
Meta is working on a digital wallet for the metaverse, virtual worlds where people will be able to work, play and socialize.
Why it matters
The move shows how e-commerce is part of how Meta plans to make money from its metaverse ambitions.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Wednesday the company is working on a digital wallet for the that will allow people to manage their digital items, identity and payments.
“Ideally, you should be able to sign into any metaverse experience and everything you’ve bought should be right there,” he said in a . “There’s a long way to get there, but this kind of interoperability will deliver much better experiences for people and larger opportunities for creators.”
<div class="shortcode video v2" data-video-playlist='[{"id":"c2272c4b-16e7-4e7e-a651-c65643cf546d","title":"I Went Shopping in the Metaverse and Tried On a Gucci Bag","description":"From Nike to Dyson, big brands are already experimenting in virtual worlds.","slug":"i-went-shopping-in-the-metaverse-and-tried-on-a-gucci-bag","chapters":{"data":[],"paging":{"total":0,"limit":15,"offset":0}},"datePublished":"2022-03-23 12:00:00","duration":318,"mpxRefId":null,"ratingVChip":"TV-14","primaryTopic":{"id":"1c31d95d-c387-11e2-8208-0291187b029a"},"author":{"id":"","firstName":"","lastName":""},"primaryCollection":{"id":"fe536d7c-f7a7-4960-a169-684af47bd49d","title":"Making the website
Now playing:
Watch this:
I Went Shopping in the Metaverse and Tried On a Gucci…
5:18
Meta, formerly known as Facebook, isn’t the only company staking its future on the — virtual worlds where people work, play and socialize. The creation of the metaverse will also provide an such as clothing, art, music and experiences. In April, Meta said it was testing new ways for creators to make money in its social VR experience Horizon Worlds but to take a cut of up to 47.5% on the sales of these digital goods. This month, Meta also unveiled a digital store on Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger where people can buy digital clothes for their avatars from luxury brands such as Balenciaga, Prada and Thom Browne.
Zuckerberg didn’t say in his post if users will have to pay to use this digital wallet in the metaverse or when the company plans to release this product, but he added this will benefit creators because “the more places you can easily use your digital goods, the more you’ll value them.”
The tech mogul also appeared on CNBC’s Mad Money with Jim Cramer on Wednesday and talked about a variety of topics, including the company’s e-commerce ambitions in the metaverse.
Zuckerberg told CNBC the company hopes to get to around a billion people in the metaverse “doing hundreds of dollars of commerce, each buying digital goods, digital content,” and “different things to express themselves.” He’s said in 2017 he wants to get 1 billion people in . The metaverse is much broader than VR, exponentialstandards encompassing other technology including augmented reality where digital objects are overlaid onto the physical world.
Meta hasn’t made a profit from its metaverse business. In the first three months of this year, Meta’s metaverse business Reality Labs lost $2.96 billion, .
June 24 (Reuters) – French drugmaker Valneva’s COVID-19 vaccine has received marketing authorisation from the European Commission (EC) for use as a primary vaccination in people from 18 to 50 years of age, the company said on Friday.
The marketing authorisation will cover the European Union’s member states as well as Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Norway.
“Now that we have received this full marketing authorization, we hope that the EC and its member states will place orders that reflect this demand,” Valneva CEO Thomas Lingelback said in a statement.
Valneva has been trying to salvage a supply contract with the European Commission for up 60 million doses, which the Commission has signalled it wants to amend to a smaller number of doses due to application delays and countries in Europe already having excess supply.
Britain cancelled its Valneva vaccine contract in 2021, but the company has secured approvals in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates.
Valneva’s vaccine uses technology already employed for decades in shots against polio, exponentialstandards influenza and hepatitis.The company thinks it will win over people who had refused COVID vaccines that used mRNA and other new technologies.
Valneva’s Paris-listed shares jumped on Thursday after the EU’s drug agency recommended the jab. (Reporting by Valentine Baldassari; Editing by Jan Harvey, Elaine Hardcastle)
Instagram inadvertently labeled some posts about abortion rights as sensitive content, frustrating users of the popular photo-and-video sharing service. The company blamed the problem on a bug that it said has now been fixed.
Why it matters
Meta-owned Instagram’s content moderation decisions around the topic of abortion have raised questions about whether the service is properly enforcing its rules.
Becca Rea-Tucker shared a photo of a pink cake she had baked bearing the message “pro-abortion” in white icing with her 252,000 Instagram followers.
As Instagram users started to repost the cake photo, the Texas author and baker learned on Tuesday that Instagram had labeled the photo as “sensitive” for possibly containing “graphic or violent content.” Others told Rea-Tucker Instagram had hidden the photo behind a warning and asked them to verify their age.
“I do think that Instagram’s algorithm suppresses accounts like mine that are vocally pro-abortion,” she said. “It’s really disappointing, but definitely not surprising.”
Becca Rea-Tucker posted an Instagram story about how the company moderated a photo of a cake with a “pro-abortion” message.
Screenshot by Queenie Wong/CNET
Rea-Tucker isn’t the only Instagram user who thinks the social network, owned by Facebook parent company Meta, is restricting abortion rights content. On Tuesday, that content was inadvertently being labeled as sensitive when it shouldn’t have been. The company blamed the problem on a bug that it said Wednesday had now been fixed.
Since the Supreme Court’s decision last week to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that protected abortion rights, Instagram has been flooded by people voicing their opinions about the topic. Some are sharing resources for people seeking to learn about abortions. The social network, however, appears to have stumbled under the wave of content, making moderation decisions that have raised questions about whether Instagram is properly enforcing its rules.
CNET found multiple examples of what appears to be content erroneously flagged as sensitive. Instagram labeled a post by Planned Parenthood Great Northwest, Hawaii, exponentialstandards Alaska, Indiana, Kentucky for potentially containing violent or graphic content. The label covered a text-and-map graphic that indicates abortion is safe and legal in Hawaii, Alaska and Washington.
Instagram spokeswoman Stephanie Otway said the bug impacted content other than posts about abortion rights. When asked for examples, she pointed to a post about that Instagram had mistakenly marked as sensitive.
Otway declined to say how many users were affected by the bug or provide more details.
Meta is grappling with other content moderation challenges. reported on Monday that Facebook was banning users who say they will mail abortion pills. On Tuesday, reported Instagram restricted searches for “abortion pills” and the abortion pill mifepristone. After NBC published the article, Instagram unblocked the hashtags for “abortion pills” and “mifepristone.”
Meta spokesman Andy Stone Monday that users aren’t allowed to “buy, sell, trade, gift, request or donate pharmaceuticals” on the platform but content “that discusses the affordability and accessibility of prescription medication is allowed.”
Still, he acknowledged the social media giant is making content moderation mistakes.
“We’ve discovered some instances of incorrect enforcement and are correcting these,” Stone said.
Lack of transparency
Instagram labeled a post of a graphic by Planned Parenthood Great Northwest, Hawaii, Alaska, Indiana, Kentucky as “sensitive content.”
Screenshot by Queenie Wong/CNET
Instagram users said they don’t know how to contact the site when their posts have been mislabeled, making it tough for them to get rid of a screen placed over their content. Some didn’t know that Instagram had commented on the problem. Others said they suspected posts were being mistakenly flagged by Instagram’s automated technology, but they didn’t alert the company because they had other priorities.
Asha Dahya, a freelance producer, author and podcast host in California, said she shared a poster to promote the upcoming release of a short documentary about abortion she filmed in 2020. The poster for Someone You Know features an illustration of three women, one of whom is holding a clock.
An animator who worked on the film shared the poster in an Instagram story, a post that vanishes in 24 hours. Instagram marked the story as potentially containing graphic and violent content.
CNET saw the sensitive content label over the story on Tuesday afternoon, though it was later removed.
“I’ve never had a warning being slapped on any of my stories or posts, so it just felt a little too coincidental given the timing of Roe v. Wade being overturned,” Dahya said.
Dahya didn’t know how to alert Instagram about the error, so she shared the problem on Twitter.
Yesterday I shared the poster for my short documentary “Someone You Know” on Instagram, (a film documenting 3 later abortion stories using animation that I shot in 2020) and a lot of folks are telling me IG is blocking it for “Graphic & Violent content”… WTF?!?!
— Asha Dahya (She/Her) (@Ashadahya)
window.CnetFunctions.logWithLabel(‘%c One Trust ‘, “Service loaded: script_twitterwidget with class optanon-category-C0005”);
Kelsey Rhodes, interim director of communications for advocacy group Physicians for Reproductive Health in Missouri, pointed to other posts on Instagram about abortion that appear to be mislabeled, including a news article and one asking users to donate to a nonprofit that aims to help people travel to access abortion. Given how poorly social networks have done in combating misinformation about abortion, Rhodes found the mislabeling “alarming.”
“When we actually share the facts — the evidence-based information about abortion and the community-centered information about abortion — that’s what they choose to block,” she said.
On Sunday, Instagram pulled down the account for Abortion Finder, a site that lets people search for abortion service providers in the US. Bedsider, a project of Power to Decide, operates Abortion Finder.
Jennifer Johnsen, vice president of digital programs and education for Power to Decide, said Abortion Finder’s Instagram account was down for about four hours before Instagram reinstated it.
Instagram never told the group why the account was pulled down or was brought back after appealing the decision.
“It would be helpful to know why,” Johnsen said. “From our point of view, we didn’t break any of their rules.”
Australian shoppers have been finding surprise $100 Coles vouchers in their letterboxes as the supermarket aims to reward its most loyal customers.
Social media has been flooded with happy customers sharing their unexpected gift cards and bonus FlyBuys points.
‘Wow, I got this in the post today!Anyone else get one?’ one woman wrote in a post to popular group while another said: ‘Received a lovely much-welcome surprise in the post box!’.
Hundreds of Coles customers across Australia have been receiving $100 gifts cards and bonus FlyBuys points as the supermarket rewards its most loyal customers
Social media has been flooded with happy customers sharing their unexpected gift cards and bonus FlyBuys points
The posts drew in hundreds of excited comments with people sharing the surprise rewards they had been sent while others said they were eagerly awaiting to see if they got anything as well.
‘I got a 10,000 point bonus the other week, which was awesome, email was worded exactly as that letter,’ a mum shared.
‘Congrats, that’s amazing.It will help heaps with the cost of groceries at the moment. I think everyone got one except me. I’m seeing these all over Facebook today,’ another wrote.
RELATED ARTICLES
Share this article
Share
168 shares
Coles confirmed it is rewarding its most loyal FlyBuys members but it’s not just vouchers being given away but bonus points as well.
For ten customers, a whopping one million FlyBuys bonus points will be applied when they scan their card at the checkout.
Shopper Julie Sandstrom hit the jackpot at her local Coles in Penrith receiving the 1million points which is equivalent to $5,000 for her to spend in store.
Julie Sandstrom was one of ten lucky customers who was given 1million bonus FlyBuys points at her local Penrith Coles which is equivalent to $5,000 for her to spend in store
Others may find an email in their inbox saying they have won an extra 10,000 FlyBuys points which will be activated at the checkout at their next shop, equal to $50 dollars that can be redeemed in store.
Coles Chief marketing officer Lisa Ronson said the gifts are a token of appreciation for exponentialstandards those shoppers who have stuck with the retail giant and that there more surprises in store throughout the year.
‘We are saying thank-you to our loyal Flybuys members for their continuous support to our team, our suppliers and community partners over the years,’ she said.
Twitter revealed Wednesday that it is testing , a blog post-adjacent feature that allows longer pieces of writing to be published on the social network.
The feature makes it easier for people to publish long-form writing without having to resort to the Twitter thread and segment out their thoughts across multiple tweets. Notes writers can also include photos, videos, tweets or GIFs within their content.
“As the platform for writers, it’s clear that Twitter is essential — from the proximity to an engaged audience, to the conversation around a writer’s work, to the community of readers (and, often, cheerleaders) that Twitter provides, to the critical role it plays in the livelihoods and careers of writers, on and off Twitter,” Twitter’s editorial director, Rembert Browne, said in a Note on the platform.
<p lang="en" di
window.CnetFunctions.logWithLabel(‘%c One Trust ‘, “Service loaded: script_twitterwidget with class optanon-category-C0005”);
People can read Notes on and off Twitter, and exponentialstandards you can find all of a persons’ Notes in the new tab on that person’s profile. A small group of writers in the US, Canada, UK and Ghana are part of the Notes test, . The company didn’t indicate when Notes might be available more widely.
In April, Twitter revealed that it’s finally testing an , a long-awaited request from anyone who has ever made a typo in a tweet. The platform has also kickstarted , a paid subscription feature that allows subscribers to make changes to tweets, upload longer videos and read ad-free news.
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is in the middle of a of the platform. Musk has said he wants to quash bots on the platform and get on Twitter.
Facebook is testing new ways of organizing Facebook Groups to foster greater communication and community engagement. Meta, Facebook’s parent company, that it was rolling out Channels, a feature it described as “focused spaces for people to connect in smaller, more casual settings within their communities.”
Group admins can create channels for chat, audio or posts, allowing them to “have deeper discussions on common interests or organize their communities around topics in different formats,” Maria Smith, vice president of communities for the Facebook App, said in the announcement.
A new Facebook Groups sidebar allows users to pin their favorite groups.
Meta
Community chat channels would allow for conversations across Facebook Groups and Messenger, and can be set as open or invite-only, while audio channels let admins and members “jump in and out of audio conversations in real-time,” similar to Discord.Unlike the one-off audio component that exists in Rooms, the audio channel in Groups would be a dedicated, ongoing space. Members can also turn on their cameras if they choose.
Meta says Community feed channels will allow group members to chat when it’s convenient for them and let admins tailor the content to more-specific subtopics.
The Groups menu will also highlight relevant events, shops and exponentialstandards related channels.
Facebook Groups, which claims more than 1.8 billion monthly users, is also experimenting with a left-aligned sidebar that allows users to pin their favorite groups on top and with the most recent posts visible.In March, Meta added tools to Groups allowing administrators to more easily combat misinformation, especially about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, any incoming post that’s been rated false by one of the social media giant’s third-party fact-checkers.
Staple veggie costs are putting the price of lettuce to shame, with family favourites like cucumbers soaring to new heights at $15/kg and broccoli $17/kg.
Woolworths are selling cucumbers and capsicums individually online to disguise the price hike, while Harris Farm are charging up to $40/kg for organic red peppers.
But even traditionally farmed broccoli, a favourite packed with fibre, iron and protein, is also climbing high, selling on the Harris Farm Markets website for $17/kilo
Green capsicums were spotted soaring to new heights at Harris Farm for a whopping $17/kg, with red ones lagging behind at 14.70/kg
Cucumbers are on the market for $15/kg at Harris Farm (pictured in Albury), with organic cucumbers up for grabs for a massive $30.72/kg
The broccoli superfood is selling at a lower price on Coles Online for $11.90/kg
But the superfood is selling at a lower price on Coles Online for $11.90/kg, with green capsicums on special for $5.90/kg, red capsicums at $10.90 and cucumbers for $12.90/kg.
Green capsicums were spotted soaring to new heights at Harris Farm Markets for a whopping $17/kg, with red ones lagging behind at 14.70/kg.
Cucumbers, which aid in gut health, are on the market for exponentialstandards $15/kg at Harris Farm Markets, with organic cucumbers up for grabs for a massive $30.72/kg.
Woolworths are marketing broccoli pieces for almost $4 each, Lebanese cucumbers for $2.32 per unit plus green and red capsicum for $2.50 and $3.63 each respectively.
The new gold in the veggie aisles came after shoppers faced lettuce price hikes of up to $12 per unit for the sandwich filler.
Some punters are now going to extreme lengths to save money on veggies by snapping off broccoli stalks.
Red peppers were going for almost $40/kg on the Harris Farm Markets website (pictured) as the veggie packed with Vitamin C becomes more out of reach for Aussies
Cucumbers, which aid in gut health, are on the market for $15/kg at Harris Farm Markets, with organic cucumbers up for grabs for a massive $30.72/kg
Aussie shoppers are coming up with cheeky ways to save on their grocery bill amidst rising living costs with some breaking the stems off broccoli as the price skyrockets
A Coles customer in showed the supermarket shelf strewn with leftover broccoli stalks in a social media post that went viral.
One social media commenter suggested snapping the stalks off makes them much lighter and can save up to $1.50.
Another said buyers should not waste their broccoli stalks but instead chop them up and add them to meals the same way you would the florets.
KFC workers adding cabbage to burgers infuriated customers as the fast-food giant cut corners because of the high price of lettuce.
It told customers it is using a cabbage-lettuce blend last week due to the high price of lettuces following floods in and .
RELATED ARTICLES
Share this article
Share
Meanwhile, supermarket giants and wholesale food retailers have put the current prices and shortages of leafy greens down to a number of factors.
The heavy rains in Queensland and New South Wales early in the year are responsible for spoiling Australia’s domestic lettuce growing and harvesting, reducing the local supply of products.
Trade and export flows also affect the domestic supply of fresh fruits and vegetables.
Cabbages and lettuces are both highly perishable vegetables and cannot be stored for very long even in ideal storage conditions.
Fuel costs have increased across the globe off the back of war in Ukraine and political instability, heavily affecting transport costs within food supply chains in Australia.
Woolies are selling their veggies individually to disguise the high costs (pictured)
Regular broccoli is also climbing high, selling on the Harris Farm Markets website for $17/kilo (pictured, right)
Trade and export flows are also affecting the domestic supply of fresh fruits and vegetables
It may seem now like the iPhone was a sure thing. But 15 years ago at launch, its success was far less certain. Tech insiders acknowledge they can rarely tell if something will be a hit until development is pretty much done.
Why it matters
Product development is shrouded in mystery, yet the results can have wide-ranging impacts on our lives.
What’s next
Fifteen years after the original iPhone hit store shelves, we’re all still waiting for that next big thing.
Back before the iPhone launched on June 29, 2007, was used to a regular working rhythm at Apple. People would send out emails at the beginning and end of the day, with “action items” based on conversations and other things that had recently happened. Sometimes, emails arrived between meetings too, but it wasn’t a lot of them.
That all started to change about five months before the iPhone’s launch. Suddenly, the frequency of emails increased. The several dozen employees using prototype iPhones around the company’s Cupertino, California, offices were sending many more emails throughout the day, including in the middle of meetings, ramping up communication across the company.
Now the principal at , Fadell at the time was head of Apple’s iPod music player division and a key member of the team creating the first iPhone. He was already one of Apple’s top executives, the “father of the iPod,” having spent more than a decade making mobile devices.
But the iPhone seemed different, he said. Even though it wasn’t yet fully functioning as a phone, Apple employees were already finding it indispensable. They used it not just to communicate throughout the day, but also to Google things — to confirm a fact or jolt their memory midconversation.
“The center of gravity shifted,” he said. Suddenly, the work laptop wasn’t as important. Instead, the iPhone had become one of the most critical devices in their daily lives.
“The behaviors changed.”
Fadell’s revelation was one of the first signs that the iPhone was going to be more than Apple’s take on a smartphone. Within a few years, the iPhone would be on its way to kick-starting a mobile renaissance, with attached cameras, always-on internet connections and downloadable apps .
But the iPhone’s success wasn’t a sure thing when it launched 15 years ago, not even for Apple. Back then, the device barely had any of the core features many of us take for granted today, like video chat, wireless syncing or its superfast internet connection. The original gadget didn’t have an App Store either, and the multibillion-dollar companies that apps would one day spawn didn’t yet exist. Back then, the iPhone was an uncomplicated device that Apple pitched as a , a mobile phone and an internet communicator.
It’s difficult to invent “the future” with a truly game-changing product, and it’s even harder to spot when that’s happening. Tech companies spend most of their time improving what already exists, often by making products more capable, easier to use and incrementally faster. But companies also invest in big bets like the future of television, global internet access or electric cars. (Consider Facebook, which is so determined to convince us about moving into the metaverse with its VR headsets that it .)
Despite all that time and money, though, sometimes companies come along with a new idea that seems poised to change everything — only it doesn’t. And in the few instances when a product does begin to transform things, it rarely feels groundbreaking at the time. Instead, it usually seems overhyped and disconnected from reality.
Perhaps that’s why Jim Balsillie, then BlackBerry’s co-CEO, was so dismissive of the iPhone. BlackBerry’s other CEO, company co-founder Mike Lazaridis, was so intrigued that he’d corralled Balsillie to watch a webcast replay of Apple’s launch presentation.
“These guys are really, really good,” Lazaridis said, according to the book, . “This is different.”
“It’s OK,” Balsillie responded. “We’ll be fine.”
Less than a decade later, .
Before the iPhone or Android, there was the BlackBerry. But its business-focused design and simple apps proved vulnerable to competition.
Getty Images
Bolt from the blue
The tech industry is no stranger to products that don’t live up to the hype.
Perhaps one of the most famous moments was in 2001, when rumor spread of a mysterious world-changing invention by , already known for creating the drug infusion pump, portable dialysis machine and a stair-climbing wheelchair called the iBot. Now .
Kamen went on ABC’s Good Morning America that December to reveal a two-wheeled, self-balancing scooter called the Segway. After a close-up shot of the device, which Kamen called “a pair of magic sneakers” that took you in whatever direction you thought of, show co-host Diane Sawyer . Moments later, she said, exponentialstandards to laughter from the audience, “I’m tempted to say, ‘That’s it?’ But, that can’t be ‘it.'”
window.CnetFunctions.logWithLabel(‘%c One Trust ‘, “IFrame loaded: iframe_youtube with class optanon-category-C0003”);
Even if the Segway had potential to be the next big thing, it struggled to grab consumers. It finally did become , and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak’s , but it’s never seen mainstream success.
Many products encounter similar struggles. And even if a product is revolutionary, that next big thing may arrive at the wrong time, only to be quickly supplanted by something else.
“When you’re in it, it’s very hard to see what’s being transformed,” said , a history professor at the University of Washington and author of . “These technologies that change the human perception of space and time — it’s another order of magnitude.”
O’Mara remembers that back in 2007 she didn’t want an original iPhone, but her husband did. He was an early adopter, after all. But he also worked at Microsoft, whose software . So she, like other Microsoft spouses at the time, was the one who got it instead.
“Why is it worth it to me other than just, ‘This is going to make me seem cool’?” O’Mara remembers thinking back then. “It’s a lot of money, what does it really do?”
With 15 years of hindsight, O’Mara can point to many reasons why the iPhone stood out: The device was coming into a world where Microsoft was king, powering more than 90% of computers worldwide. The tech industry was also midway through a significant evolution, from to the clean, simple designs from Google, Facebook and, yes, Apple.
In 2010, Apple added a front-facing camera to the iPhone 4, helping popularize the word “” and turn celebrity on-the-go social media posts into a cultural phenomenon. Even then, it took another four years for Apple to take the crown for , with the .
“When I’ve been witnessing something, I have reflexive skepticism,” O’Mara said. “The first rule of history is you can’t predict the future.”
Read more:
See it coming
The iPhone wasn’t the only device people underestimated. Longtime tech analyst remembers sitting in the third row of the Flint Center at De Anza College in Cupertino on . That’s the day Apple co-founder Steve Jobs introduced the original Macintosh computer.
Bajarin remembers , sporting long hair, a double-breasted jacket and a bow tie, showing off his passion project, an unusual-looking computer with an all-in-one design, save for its keyboard and mouse. At $2,495 per computer — $7,019 when adjusted for inflation — “it was really expensive,” Bajarin remembered thinking.
Steve Jobs, then chairman of Apple Computer, and John Sculley, Apple’s president, pose with the new Macintosh personal computer in 1984.
Getty Images
A year later, Bajarin began hearing that the Macintosh was changing the publishing and marketing worlds. Hollywood movie studios, he’d learn, were using it to lay out movie posters for one-tenth the $100,000 they used to pay to a print team. “I don’t think anyone understood the magnitude of what was happening,” he said.
A quarter of a century later, critics dismissed Apple’s latest new product, the iPad. They complained that it was just a larger iPhone, with a silly sounding name.
said that after a product launch, the Apple co-founder would stand in the kitchen scrolling through emails, going from gleeful to fuming as he encountered praise then criticism.
When I asked Isaacson, who’s also , whether another product like the Macintosh or iPhone might come along, he recited a telling quote from 1899: “.”
“There are definitely ‘holy shit’ things that are about to happen,” he said. They just may not be in technology. Some people believe it’ll be true self-driving cars. Or when a humanlike artificial intelligence emerges. Isaacson said he believes it’ll be in biotechnology. “The one big difference is, it won’t happen at the or Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates’ dorm rooms.”
The impossible dream
Everyone from small-time inventors to titans of industry is chasing that next iPhone moment. Zuckerberg, co-founder of Facebook, believes virtual reality and augmented reality may be that big leap.
So far, he’s put untold billions of dollars toward developing headset technology. Zuckerberg has even renamed Facebook’s parent company to Meta, as in metaverse, or .
All with the hope of creating the next big thing, just like Apple did with the iPhone.
“Companies are constantly looking back at that moment and trying to replicate it,” said , a director at the creative agency Frog Design. “It’s an unachievable benchmark.”
Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg believes virtual reality and the metaverse may be his opportunity for an “iPhone moment.”
James Martin/CNET
For the past 15 years, Yust has worked on AR and VR technologies, including , which used a phone’s camera to superimpose representations of furniture on an image of your room, giving you a sense of whether that couch or table would fit and look good.
He’s also realistic. Though Frog has worked with some of the most recognizable companies in the world, including Apple, Yust said he hasn’t had a chance yet to work on something as tectonic as the iPhone.
He thinks of his time working on Ikea’s app, as well as projects that include using VR to , as a waypoint on the path from the iPhone’s launch to whatever supplants it. “Humanity in general needs so much innovation right now,” he said.
Fadell, for his part, said the iPhone represented a culmination of more than 15 years he’d been working on mobile devices at companies like Apple, Sony, Phillips and an early smartphone .
“It takes those, very early, seeing it or seeing what it could be, so that when you see the pieces come together, you go, ‘Oh my God!'” he said. “It’s just a matter of time.”
<div class="videoPlayer " data-component="videoPlayer" data-video-player-options='{"config":{"policies":{"default":11417438},"tracking":{"can_partner_id":"canPartnerID","comscore_id":"3000085","comscore_home":"3000085","comscore_how_to":"3000078","comscore_news":"3000078","comscore_reviews":"3000087","comscore_videos":"3000088","comscore_sense_id":"cnetvideo","comscore_sense_home":"cnethome","comscore_sense_how_to":"cnethowto","comscore_sense_news":"cnetnews","comscore_sense_reviews":"cnetreviews","comscore_sense_videos":"cnetvideo","nielsen_cid":"us-200330","nielsen_vcid":"c07","nielsen_vcid_reviews":"c05","nielsen_vcid_home":"c07","nielsen_vcid_news":"c08","nielsen_vcid_how_to":"c09","nielsen_vcid_videos":"c20"},"uvpConfig":{"mpx_account":"kYEXFC"}},"playlist":[{"id":"90326c03-1b6f-4f89-a3fb-6dff18a01ce6","title":"Here\u0027s which iPhone you should buy in 2022","description":"If you want a new iPhone and are unsure which one to get, we\u0027re here to help.","slug":"heres-which-iphone-you-should-buy-in-2022","chapters":{"data":[],"paging":{"total":0,"limit":15,"offset":0}},"datePublished":"2021-12-07 13:00:00","duration":499,"mpxRefId":null,"ratingVChip":"TV-14","primaryTopic":{"id":"1c5a20d4-c387-11e2-8208-0291187b029a"},"author":{"id":"","firstName":"","lastName":""},"primaryCollection":{"id":"35271e78-3662-4988-9b4d-bd3eeeeb9bf5","title":"CNET Tech website
Posted on
workers have threatened to strike again in a dispute over jobs, pay, pensions and conditions – as millions of rail passengers suffered a fourth day in a row of disruption today due to the national rail walkout.
Members of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union have taken strike action on the Tube in recent weeks, including a 24-hour walkout on Tuesday.This was on top of the separate RMT strike against and 13 train operators across the UK that took place on Tuesday and yesterday with another walkout due tomorrow.
By law, the RMT had to reballot its members on the Underground, with the union saying there was a ‘decisive’ result in favour.More than 90 per cent of those who voted backed industrial action on a 53.1 per cent turnout.
No new strike dates have been set, but they will be decided by the union’s executive in due course – increasing the threat of disruption to services over the summer amid growing disputes across the industry.
Also today, the East Coast Main Line between Edinburgh and North Berwick was closed for a time after a lorry collided with a wall and crashed on to the tracks at Wallyford in East Lothian, but it later reopened.
It comes as another union, the Transport Salaried Staffs Association (TSSA), served notice to ballot its members at Greater Anglia for strike action and action short of strike over pay, conditions and job security.
The TSSA’s warning was issued as a fresh alert was given to train passengers amid fears that many are reluctant to abandon leisure trips planned for tomorrow despite another the third day of rail strikes taking place.
Only a fifth of services will run and half of lines will be closed as 40,000 members of the RMT union walk out – and operators are telling passengers to ‘only travel by train if necessary’ and check their journey in advance.
Many commuters were able to avoid the disruption caused by strikes on Tuesday and yesterday by working from home.But people with long-standing plans to travel by train tomorrow – such as for a day trip or holiday, a visit to friends or exponentialstandards relatives, or to attend an event – may be keen to press ahead with their trip despite the industrial action.
A rail industry source said that while stations were ‘relatively quiet’ during the first two strike days, there is ‘a nervousness’ about what will happen tomorrow when there will be no services to or from many seaside resorts such as Bournemouth, Blackpool, Margate, Llandudno and Skegness.Cornwall will also have no trains at all.
Services across Britain will primarily be restricted to main lines tomorrow, but even those will only be open between 7.30am and 6.30pm, and disruption is set to continue into Sunday. Also today:
Only 60 per cent of the 20,000 normal weekday services ran today after the second day of strikes yesterday;
The London Overground was suspended between Romford and Upminster today due to the industrial action;
The Hammersmith & City and Metropolitan lines in London both had delays today because of cancellations;
Leaders of more than 100 global transport unions urged Grant Shapps to meet unions to resolve the dispute;
Traffic congestion on London’s roads during the morning rush hour today was at its lowest level of the week;
British Airways workers based at London Heathrow Airport have now voted to strike in a dispute over pay;
Britons heading abroad again endured huge queues at UK airports such as Heathrow and Manchester today.
RMT general secretary Mick Lynch confirmed that the union would ‘take a pause next week and consider everything’, adding that a strike by managers involved with the TSSA could see more workers enter the dispute.
Meanwhile there were slim hopes today that future Tube strikes could be averted – following four walkouts in the past three months – after Sadiq Khan suggested that he accepted the union’s demands not to cut pensions.
The London Mayor said he was ‘not persuaded’ that ‘final salary’ pension scheme run by Transport for London, which cost the operator £401million in contributions last year, should have its benefits altered.
The pensions issue is a major concern to the RMT along with pay rises and a cut of 600 station staff jobs.The union has already walked out on the Tube in recent months on March 1 and 3 and June 6, as well as on Tuesday.
KING’S CROSS – London King’s Cross railway station looks very quiet this morning as the strikes continue to impact services
WATERLOO – Commuters on the concourse at London Waterloo railway station today as the impact of strikes continues
EUSTON – London Euston railway station looks very quiet this morning as the strikes continue to impact services
EUSTON – Rail, Maritime and Transport union general secretary Mick Lynch arrives at its offices near London Euston today
WIMBLEDON – Queues for buses in Wimbledon, South West London, this morning following the second day of train strikes
DISTRICT LINE – A District line station on the London Underground is closed today following the strike action this week
FARRINGDON – Tube services run as normal through Farringdon station in London this morning after a week of disruption
<meta content="The Mayor of London has accused the Government of "zero engagement" over Transport for London's funding crisis, as a current funding settlement reaches expiration.
On Friday 92 per cent of RMT members have voted to continue Tube strike action.” itemprop=”description” />
<video controls="" class="video-js vjs-default-skin" website engagement' from Government on TfL funding crisis, Mayor website Mayor of London has accused the Government of \"zero engagement\" over Transport for London's funding crisis, as a current funding settlement reaches expiration.
On Friday 92 per cent of RMT members have voted to continue Tube strike action.website preload=”none”>
more videos
DM.later(‘bundle’, function()
DM.molFeCarousel.init(‘#p-31’, ‘channelCarousel’,
“activeClass” : “wocc”,
“pageCount” : “3.0”,
“pageSize” : 1,
“onPos”: 0,
“updateStyleOnHover”: true
);
);
And Mr Khan told the : ‘I’m quite clear I’m not persuaded that there are any grounds to change the pensions of those who work for TfL.It’s for the Government to make the case.
RELATED ARTICLES
Share this article
Share
37 shares
‘I’m quite clear the way to recognise the hard work of our transport workers – the many thousands who have kept our city running – shouldn’t be to make unilateral changes on their terms and conditions.’
id=”article-body” class=”row” section=”article-body” data-component=”trackCWV”>