But there is one huge, glaring, worrisome issue that might prove to be the biggest flaw in the system and the reason customers like me might be turned away: its handling of used games.

Admittedly, we don’t know a whole lot about how the Xbox One will handle used games, so it’s possible that you’re reading this in the future and about to tell me how wrong I am. Sorry about that.

But at this point, this is what we know: the Xbox One requires that game discs be downloaded to the console, to ensure better functionality when gamers want to quickly start playing. What we also know at this point is that there is going to be some sort of unlock fee that allows a used game to be played on a console.

And that is where I, and many other gamers, start to get awfully upset.

Based on what Microsoft has said so far – and this by no means the last we’ve heard of the policy – a person who buys a game disc new will install it on their console to play it. From there, they can bring it to a friend’s house to play it on his or her device. On that console, in order to play the game, the friend would need to buy the right to play the game. And in a recent interview with Kotaku, Xbox’s Phil Harrison said they’ll be paying full price.

Annoyed yet? Good. But Microsoft has come out and said it has a solution: if you login to your own Xbox credentials on your friend’s console, you can play the game without your friend having to pay full price to buy the new title.

What that doesn’t address, however, is the current used games market, which relies on people selling physical discs to companies like GameStop to recoup some of their investment. By the sound of things, Microsoft is all but trying to kill the way used games are currently handled.

If that’s the case, the Xbox One might be in trouble. The fact is, the used games market is a huge opportunity for today’s consumers, and having to pay full price on titles instead of a used fee just isn’t practical for some people. If the Xbox One makes it difficult to buy cheaper games and recoup some cash in titles, it could have trouble getting off the ground.

Of course, Microsoft might just have a solution: it’s hinting that there will be a way to sell the rights to a game you bought through the console. Could that be enough to save the Xbox One and make it a more feasible purchase? Will it annoy customers? Will Microsoft take down the used game market?

I have more questions than answers at this point, but I’m at least a little concerned about what the future holds.

But since his tenure as Apple’s chief executive, Cook has done little to be like his predecessor. Cook doesn’t like to gloat about the current state of affairs at Apple, and design is not necessarily something that he thinks constantly about. When he holds keynote addresses or events for the press, Cook is content to offer up only some information, and then leave the big product announcements to his executives.

Even in his calls with investors or interviews with the media, Cook plays a downplayed rule, deciding to allow his company’s strong performance to do the talking. It’s a significant departure from his predecessor’s tack, and something that has taken some getting used to for the millions of Apple fans around the globe.

But given Apple’s recent troubles and the fact that Samsung and Google are increasingly causing trouble for Cook, might it be a good time for some change? Apple might still be the most important technology company in the world, but it’s in no way the dominating presence that it once was. And much of that seems to be due to Cook’s leadership.

Now, that’s not to say that Tim Cook is not a good leader. As we’ve seen in recent quarters, Apple’s sales and profit figures are hitting new heights, and his shareholders appear to be happy with his performance. But since Cook took over, Apple has lost something. The things that made the company so compelling in the first place are now a shadow of their former selves. And it might have everything to do with who is sitting in the CEO’s chair.

The problem is, Tim Cook doesn’t have the charisma or the attitude that Steve Jobs had. Part of Apple’s success was due to Jobs willingly telling anyone that would listen that his company was best. And when given the chance to show off the latest and greatest product, it was Jobs who captivated audiences, not his executives.

Tim Cook’s more subdued role might prove to be a mistake in the grand scheme of things. Apple seems to be a company that needs to have a chip on its shoulder. And Cook is lacking that certain chip.

The truth is, Apple is slipping. The company that was once the only dominant force in several markets is looking like one of a few competitors. Apple doesn’t appear to have the same air about it that it once did. And that might be due to Tim Cook’s desire to be, well, less Steve Jobs-like. But if you ask me, he needs to be more like Steve Jobs.

Lifelogging isn’t new – Microsoft Research’s Gordon Bell, for instance, has been sporting a wearable camera and tracking his life digitally since the early-2000s – but its component parts are finally coalescing into something the mainstream could handle. Cheap camera technology – sufficiently power-frugal to run all day, but still with sufficiently high resolution and bracketed with sensor data like location – has met plentiful cloud storage to handle the masses of photos and video.

More importantly, the public interest in recording and sharing memorable moments has flourished over the past few years, with Facebook over-sharing going from an embarrassment to commonplace, and Twitter and Tumblr evolving into stream-of-consciousness. For better or for worse, an event or occasion isn’t quite real enough for us unless we’re telling somebody else about it, preferably with the photos to prove it.

Into that arrives Glass. It’s not the only wearable project, and in fact it’s not even trying to immediately document your every movement, conversation, and activity. Out of the box, Glass doesn’t actually work as a lifelogger, at least not automatically. However, it hasn’t taken long before Explorer Edition users have tweaked the wearable to grant it those perpetual-memory skills, though we need to wait for Google’s part of the puzzle before we see the true shift take place.

Kickstarter project Memoto, which raised over half a million dollars for its wearable lifelogging camera that fires off two frames a minute all day, every day, isn’t really a hardware challenge – though the startup might disagree with that somewhat, given the slight delays caused by squeezing power-efficient camera tech into a tiny little geek-pendant – but a software one. The issue isn’t one of taking photos, or of storing them: it’s of then organizing them in a way that’s anywhere near manageable for the wearer.

Think about your last set of holiday photos. You probably took many more than you did in the days of traditional film cameras. Maybe you synchronized them with iPhoto, or uploaded them to a Dropbox or Picasa gallery. Perhaps they went on Facebook, either sorted through or – more likely, maybe – simply dumped en-masse. How many times have you looked through them, or shown them to somebody else?

Now, imagine having a whole day’s worth of photos to deal with. We’ll be conservative and assume you’re sleeping for eight hours – lucky you – and maybe have a couple of hours “privacy” time during which you’re showering, getting changed, or otherwise not camera-ready. Fourteen hours when you could be wearing your Memoto, then, or some other camera: 840 minutes, or 1,680 individual photos. In the course of a week, you’ve snapped 11,760 shots.

By the end of the year, you’ve got over four million of them. Sure, plenty of them will be of the same thing, or blurry because you were running across the road at the time, or too dark to make out details. Many, many of them will just be plain dull. But they’ll all be there, sitting in the cloud waiting to be looked at.

Nobody is going to sift through four million photos. And so the really clever thing the Memoto team is working on is the relevance processing all of those images are fed through. The exact details of the algorithm haven’t been confirmed – in fact it’s still something of a work-in-progress, and likely will be even when the first units start shipping out to Kickstarter backers – but it takes into account the location each image was taken at (there’s geotagging for each shot), the direction you’re facing, what interesting things are in the frame, and more.

That way, you get the best of both worlds, or at least in theory. “All photos are stored and organized for you,” Memoto promises. “None are deleted, but the best ones are more visible.”

As Memoto sees it, that all amounts to about thirty frames per day. Thirty potentially review-worthy shots out of more than sixteen-hundred. Now, there’s no way of knowing quite how well the system will actually operate, and we’re bound to miss out some gems and have out attention drawn to some duffers, but make no mistake: we need this layer of abstraction if lifelogging is to be more than just a boon for those selling hard-drives.

For a while, Google didn’t seem to have given managing the extra photos from wearables like Glass much consideration. In fact, the first evidence of photo sharing – automatically uploading to Google+, and being posted out with the generic #throughglass tag – was one of the more half-baked of the company’s implementations. That all changed, though, at I/O this week.

Google+ is the glue for Google’s ecosystem – what I call the “context ecosystem” – not least Glass; you may not want to use it as a social network, replacing or augmenting Facebook and Twitter, but if you want Google services or hardware you’re going to end up a Google+ user on some level. The new Highlights feature in Google+ is the key to unlocking Glass’ usefulness as a lifelogger.

“The Highlights tab helps you find photos you’ll want to share by automatically curating the images you upload to Google+ photos” Google explained. “Highlights works by de-emphasizing duplicates, blurry images, and poor exposures while focusing on pictures with the people you care about, landmarks, and other positive attributes.”

For the moment, for most users, Highlights is a way of quickly cutting out duplicated shots. Take three or four pictures of your kids in the park, just to make sure they were all looking at the camera at the right time? Google+ Highlights will make sure you only see one, not all of the nearly-identical frames. No need to delete the others, just – as Gmail taught us with achive-not-delete email, a privilege of copious space and effective search – hide them from regular sight.

As the flow of photos into Google+ turns into a torrent, fueled not least by wearables, those vague “other positive attributes” Google mentions will become most important, however. Highlights is going to become not only a curator of your galleries, but of how you reminisce; how you look back on what you did, where you did it, and who you did it with.

Google can already identify buildings, and locations, and people. It knows who your friends are. Factor in Events, and the communal photo sharing feature, and that will help Google+ fill in even more of the gaps. If it knows you were with your best friend, and your best friend was in Paris at the time, and what a number of famous Parisian landmarks look like, it’ll be able to do a pretty good job at piecing together a curated “holiday memories” album that’s probably more detailed than your own recollection of the trip.

If you’re clenching various parts of your anatomy over fears about privacy, you’re probably right to. Even with only about 2,000 Glass Explorer Edition headsets made, the degree of controversy over what the rights and responsibilities around having photos taken in public and in private are is already exponentially greater. Those at Google I/O this past week are undoubtedly a tech-savvy, open-minded bunch, but the range of comfort levels reported about being in the Glass gaze is a telling sign that there’s more to this than just old-school versus new-school.

The discussion is going to be broader than Google, of course – a Memoto camera is arguably more discrete, clipped to your coat or shirt, and it’s almost certainly not going to be the last wearable camera – but how the companies involved process the data created is likely to be the biggest factor, and Google has a track-record of giving privacy advocates sleepless nights.

If Glass – and wearables along with lifelogging in general – is to succeed, however, this is a discussion that will have to be settled. We’re not talking about “how okay” it is for your email account to talk to your calendar account. If the EU decides there should be a clear division between those in the name of user privacy, then you might have to manually create appointments based on email conversations; if the huge and inevitable rush of photos and video that wearables will facilitate aren’t addressed, then Glass and its ilk will stumble and fail. Our new digital brain needs permission to work its magic, but we’re still in the early days of seeing just how magical that might be.

Android OS Updates

As it was last year, so it was expected to be again here in 2013. Google didn’t make an update to Android itself in any grand way, instead issuing updates to services like Google Play for developers on its back end, and updates to Apps for Android, Chrome, and even iOS. While Android 4.3 may still be on the horizon, (coming up quick, you can bet), it’s not been mentioned here on the first day of I/O.

This speaks volumes about Google’s approach with the conference, letting the world know that they’re not about to be pigeon-holed as a company that relies on updates to its operating systems and devices as major announcement fodder while they’ve got perfectly good app releases and service updates to shout about. As Apple’s new operating system update is rumored to be right around the corner, it’s possible that Android is simply fulfilling the suggestions made by Larry Page at the end this one-off keynote:

“Every story I read about Google is about us vs some other company, or something else, and I really don’t find that interesting. We should be building great things that don’t exist. Being negative is not how we make progress.” – Larry Page

Smartphones and Tablets for Developers

In 2012, Google gave away a Samsung Galaxy Nexus smartphone, a Google Nexus 7 tablet, and a Chromebox. The year before, they gave away a mobile hotspot from Verizon as well as a Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet – and a voucher for one of the first model Chromebooks too. This year developers are being given a Chromebook Pixel, the highest-end device on the market running this operating system. Google was expected to give away an LG-made Nexus 4, a Nexus 10 tablet, and other goodies, but they’ve sent one, single, crystal clear message instead.

Google’s message is that the most important services they’ve got to offer are on Android devices so abundant in the market that they’re inevitably already in developers’ hands OR are on Chrome OS. With the finest delivery vehicle for this operating system in the world thus far, Google is encouraging developers – pushing them, basically – to get Chrome on their radar, and to keep it there.

Google Glass Development

There’ve been no shortages of appearances by Google Glass this week at the Moscone Center, each of these happening with devices made available to developers at Google I/O 2012, shipped in the weeks coming up to this 2013 edition of the event user by user. Though there is a massive showing for Glass on one of two levels of developer-aimed presentations here at I/O 2013, there was no mention of development for Glass in the keynote.

Glass was mentioned by Larry Page in his question and answer session at the end of the keynote, but it certainly wasn’t in any way that was planned beforehand. Glass is not, it seems, at a place where it makes sense for Google to make a big deal of it to developers the same way new services announcements are being pushed. It wouldn’t make a lot of sense to continue to update the public on Glass at this moment either since final market-ready units are still a far way off.

Results

The re-adjustment of the aim of this developer conference is clear. It’s here that Google re-humanizes the way they approach public relations, at least through the developers that make this ecosystem so healthy. While in years past it may have seemed that Google was aiming over the heads of developers, exciting the public with massive consumer-based keynotes to encourage these creators of software and services by default, Google is returning to a more solid spot here in 2013.

What do you think? Did you expect to see anything that didn’t end up appearing in the first and only keynote session of the week? It’s without a doubt a turning point – however subtle – for the company, and it’s exciting – among other things – to see the company’s ability to keep their aims diverse.

I have a couple gadgets inside of me. One was forced on me; the other I chose. I made the choice in much the same way you’d choose a computer. I tried to future-proof myself. I chose an option that I could upgrade later. In the end, I made a decision that was not entirely rational, but rather based on passion and branding and aesthetics over performance. Like I said, just like a computer.

I’ll start with my leg, because it’s easier for me to talk about. I broke my ankle a few years ago. I was walking the dog on a very, very cold night in Newton, Mass, and the sidewalk all around the block was a track of ice fit for a speed skater. I took a bad step and slipped off the curb, and my tibia rotated wrong and crashed into my fibula, snapping it in multiple spots. I fell to the ground immediately, and that’s when I learned a couple things about myself.

First, I learned that I do indeed have a high tolerance for pain, something I’d always suspected but never bothered to prove. When the paramedics arrived to put me on a stretcher, they asked me to rate my pain on a scale of one to ten. I gave it a six. The worst pain I’ve ever felt, by the way, is a cracked tooth, which is about an 8, and it’s a great story, but for another time.

The second thing I learned about myself is that my body is capable of destroying itself with hardly any intervention from my mind. When they lifted me into the ambulance, with my foot askance and twisted, I asked if there was any possibility I could have dislocated it, instead of a break.

The paramedic told me: “well, anything you can locate you can dislocate.” But it was obviously broken.

I had titanium installed. The x-ray is awesome. I have an erector set in my leg, with screws holding me together. There’s no chance it can break again, I’m part fighter jet down there. I couldn’t walk for four months, and I was in pain and using a cane for another 2 months. I had an awesome rolling aid instead of crutches called a Roll-A-Bout. I highly recommend it if you break your ankle. I was faster on that rollabout than I ever was on both feet. When I needed a cane, I bought a high-tech, carbon fiber walking stick with spring loaded shocks and other features only useful for orienteering and nature photography. It made the suffering more palatable.

Now my only limitation is that I can’t stand on my tiptoe on that leg. When I tell people this they look at me like I’m telling them the old joke about the guy who breaks his hands and says to the doctor: “Doc, will I be able to play the piano when I’m healed?” The doctor says “Sure,” to which the patient replies “That’s great, because I could never play before.”

See, I’m a big guy. When people are meeting me for the first time, I’ll sometimes tell them to look for the biggest guy in the room, and that’s probably me. For the six months I was recovering from my broken ankle, nobody explicitly said it, but I know that my size must have been the reason such a shallow fall caused such a horrible injury. I’m not a 6’2″ basketball player jumping eight feet in the air to block a shot. I’m a six foot schlub who slipped off a sidewalk walking a 40 pound dog.

This brings me to the other gadget inside me. I have a device implanted in me called a lap-band. It’s like an inflatable donut . . . mmm, donuts . . . wrapped around my stomach. It makes my stomach smaller, and divides it into a small portion up top and the rest down below. This is supposed to be a weight loss surgery. You fill the donut with saline and it expands, contracting your stomach. Then, you eat less.

If you don’t eat less, you throw up. That’s actually a feature of the lap-band. It’s supposed to make you throw up. Also, because of where it’s located, higher up than your normal stomach, a full stomach actually feels more like choking on something at the bottom of your throat.

Is it any wonder this device doesn’t work? It sounds like high-tech torture. In fact, the lap-band has a shockingly low success rate. 70% of people who get a lap-band fail to lose weight. Your body adjusts to it. Your body naturally learns how to make you more comfortable, and you resume your old, horrible habits again. When I got the band installed, I lost a bunch of weight, then it came back.

I had other options for surgery, but they all involved heavy cutting and removing massive parts of me that would never grow back. The lap-band is reversible. In fact, I’m having it removed soon. I’ve already had it replaced once with a newer, better model. Now I’m having it taken out altogether. Time to try something different.

When you make the decision to have this band removed, the doctors will exclaim that the lap-band has failed. The euphemism of this choice is not lost on me. Let’s be honest, the band didn’t fail. My body didn’t fail. They did exactly what they were supposed to. They succeeded. I failed the band. The psychology of my thinking and habits overcame my physiology. I am weak. I take the blame. I have failed myself.

Perhaps this is why I’m sensitive to the power that psychology has over our choices, especially when it comes to technology. Technology buying should be a completely rational decision. I need this, therefore I buy it. I do not need to do that, so I will not buy something that does that.

We look down on people who make decisions they cannot rationally explain. We justify our purchases after the fact with rational arguments. I bought this phone because I have large hands. I needed a 60-inch television because I could not read the text on screen. I bought this watch because it is high quality and it will last longer.

We look down on the passionate, the irrational. We look down on people like me whose psychology has failed them. You bought a device you cannot understand, and you are a failure for not learning how to use it. You bought something because your friends all had one, and it made you feel good when you bought it, but you are missing out on all the capabilities of this other thing, the thing I carry with me every day.

I failed my band. The problems I have, which I pretend to understand, and for which I am regularly judged by people who also believe they understand, defeated me. I let them win. I am weak. I am passionate and I give in to irrational urges and desire. I have failed.

One day we’re going to see the utter stupidity in this form of judgment. One day we will understand the true power our subconscious minds hold over us. We will stop blaming people, and hating people, for making decisions based on emotion and passion. We won’t blame them when they fail the gadget, when we realize they may never have had the power to succeed.

As I write this, I’m working on a Mac Pro that I bought several years ago. At the time, the computer was state-of-the-art and capable of handling all kinds of tasks. For me, it was a perfect solution: it offered me the flexibility to run three monitors, had the power to handle some video editing, and was running OS X – an operating system, I believe, is superior to Windows.

But now years later, I’m lamenting my purchase of the Mac Pro. Although it’s still chugging along, it’s not working as well as it once did. And despite my best attempts to squeeze every last ounce of performance out of this supposedly high-end computer, it’s falling short on several fronts.

While all this has been going on, Apple has been launching new Macs at a torrid pace. Since my Mac Pro purchase, the company has launched two new Mac designs – the MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro with Retina Display – and continued to update the iMac with outstanding design ideas. But it’s the Mac Pro that, save for a slight upgrade, has been ignored by Apple.

Now, I know that I’m not alone in wondering what is happening in Cupertino. Over the last few years, we’ve all been watching with baited breath as Apple hits the stage to unveil new Macs, hoping that a Mac Pro will be one of them. But each time, we’ve been disappointed. Apple’s customers have even e-mailed CEO Tim Cook to ask what in the world is going on. His response? Be patient.

Still, it’s hard for us to be patient. We’re watching our friends running Windows doing far more than we can with the Mac Pro. And it’s making us think twice about making the leap to a custom-built Windows desktop that, while not ideal, could actually deliver the enhanced power we need.

I’ve been holding off taking that plunge because I believe Apple has something up its sleeve for the Mac Pro. The trouble is, I just don’t know how much longer I can hang on. Yes, my Mac Pro is still doing its job, but it’s getting harder and harder to complete tasks. And I’m becoming more frustrated by the computer by the day.

So, I need to ask, Apple: where in the world is my new Mac Pro? If you’re not going to launch a new one, just put us out of our misery and tell us. If you are, make it quick; we’re losing faith that you’re actually going to launch a replacement. And the sooner we lose faith, the sooner you lose us to a Windows PC.

I never thought I’d say it, but it’s possible that I might just have to ditch my Mac Pro for a custom-built PC. Don’t make me do it, Apple. Don’t. Make. Me. Do. It.

It really wouldn’t have to be much. A programmable RFID-type key that I could then use for a variety of purposes. I could tap my finger on the electronic gates to get into work. I could get into my car and start the engine simply by touching the door handle, then the steering wheel. It could be fun to pay with a finger. Just magically tap upon the NFC reader at the register and I’m good to go. Wave my bare hand at the gas pump. The possibilities are endless.

Also, a little dull. I love NFC in my phones and I guarantee I use it more than almost anyone else you know (spoiler alert: my day job is with Samsung). I’m talking about implanting something in my finger. It needs to be a step beyond the latest and greatest.

An LED would be fun. Something multicolor that I could control. I wouldn’t need mind control to change the hue or brightness. Bluetooth would be fine. I program my finger on my phone and when I tap against something it lights up. The E.T. effect alone would be worth the price of admission. I wonder if my son would laugh when I touch his bumped head with my finger and as it glows softly I whisper “Oooooouuuuchhh.” Probably he’d run screaming from the room, because Daddy’s fingers aren’t supposed to light up, and he hasn’t seen E.T. yet. So, maybe light-up finger is not the way to go. I need something more personal, less showy.

Therefore, laser pointer finger is also out. This is unfortunate, because the minute I thought of it I knew it had vastly more potential than LED finger. If it’s going to be my finger, I’d spring for the 1W blue-laser type, the one that can pop a balloon from less than 1 foot. I’d need a way to dial it back on command. Bluetooth again, perhaps, or a touch sensitive control. After all, you don’t want to fire off an astonishingly potent laser from your fingertip at the wrong time. You could be wiping an eyelash out of somebody’s face, or picking your nose, or dancing in some sprinkler-like fashion and end up causing serious harm. Sorry, closest-I’ll-come-to-having-a-real-lightsaber finger, it just isn’t meant to be.

I need to think more creatively. How about a camera? There is great potential in a camera that is a continual part of my body. I’ve occasionally imagined replacing one of my eyes with a camera – haven’t we all? I’ve never considered replacing one of my fingers. It would be easier to control the shot with a finger cam. The eyes are somewhat involuntary. If something crazy catches your eye, it will rush to the scene immediately. A finger, on the other hand, can take some direction. There is control and flexibility. I could control the perspective, the angle, the aperture.

Unfortunately, there are also many places a finger goes that should not be filmed. I’m going to let that last statement float in the air until you get my meaning. Actually, I didn’t have any specific meaning in mind. There are a ton of disgusting places you would stick your finger that should not be filmed, but you just thought of the worst of them. You are a sick weirdo. I was thinking of when I’m cleaning out a whole raw chicken. You, on the other hand, are a disgusting person. That is exactly why fingertip cameras will never work.

If not a camera, a speaker, perhaps? A small wireless speaker? There’s a lot of useful potential in a speaker. I could play music, then stick my finger in my ear to hear it. I could make a phone call, then stick my finger in my ear. If I wanted to whisper something to you without being obvious, I could record a quiet message, then stick my finger in your ear. Basically, what I’m saying is that my finger is going in an ear, like it or not.

What you’d really want with a fingertip speaker, though, is volume. Like enough power to get your groove on. I would love to point my finger at a crowd of people standing around at a bus stop and have my tiny speaker blast the opening from C+C Music Factory’s song “Everybody Dance Now!” If you’re too young to remember that one, it was like the 80′s version of “Harlem Shake.”

I also thought it would be cool to use my finger as a megaphone. I could talk into my phone and my voice would come booming from my hand. Unfortunately, when I think of practical applications, I only imagine myself shouting “Muad’dib!” over and over again.

In the end, if I could implant something, I would implant a whistle. That’s it. Nothing electric, just a simple whistle. Perhaps a slide whistle. Because the best part of having something implanted in my fingertip would be showing it off to kids. It would be friendly and unintimidating. Fun at parties. Great for impromptu sound effects. I imagine my son telling his friends about the cool trick Daddy can do, and then I use my finger to make a brilliant whistle, and watch while a bunch of 4-year olds stick their fingers in their mouths and blow heartily, trying to make a sound.

Wearables are new to quite a few folks. Although they’ve seen (and perhaps used) pedometers or those wristbands that track their movements, the average customer has never really thought about wearing glasses that would allow for communication and all of the other features Glass boasts. And thanks to some smart marketing on Google’s part, quite a few people are now saying that they’d jump at the chance to buy Google Glass when it hits store shelves.

But I’d ask all of those people to truly consider what they’re saying. Yes, Google Glass appears to be a nice-looking device for those who don’t mind wearing an oddly shaped lens on one eye, but for the rest of us walking around town, doing so doesn’t exactly tell the world that we’re the most fashionable people.

Aside from that, I just don’t see the value in all that Google is promoting with Glass. Sure, it’d be nice to look at directions through one lens, and having the ability to snap a photo or record video is great and all, but I can do that with my smartphone. And when I don’t want to do any of that, I can just slip my smartphone into my pocket and not worry all that much about it getting damaged.

Google Glass, on the other hand, looks like an expensive, broken piece of tech waiting to happen. As those of us who wear glasses know, it’s not that hard for them to get all kinds of screwed up in our pockets or when they fall off the coffee table. When it’s a $100 pair of glasses, that’s not such a bad thing. But if we’re talking about Google Glass, which could be exceedingly expensive, it’s a much, much different story. And I just don’t see how Google is going to sidestep that issue.

Beyond that, I guess I’m not sold on the whole wearable technology craze. Yes, I know analysts are saying that the marketplace will grow in leaps and bounds in the coming years and billions of dollars will be spent, but I’m not convinced. Save for a few products, wearable technology is still very much a niche product category. And I don’t think that even Google can change that.

To me, Google Glass is more a novelty device than something that can truly be groundbreaking in the technology world. It’s a neat idea and it’s something that I can see people getting excited about, but does it really deliver value in practice? Theoretically, it’s cool, but I just don’t see it actually appealing to people who want the latest and greatest execution of wearable technology. On that front, I think Google Glass will fall short.

So, I’m not really sure Google Glass is worth it. I suppose I’ll be able to make a final decision when I know exactly how much Google Glass costs. But until then, I’m not expecting too much value.

But what most people can agree on is that Apple truly understands hardware. For years now, the company has been delivering the most innovative hardware designs in the industry. And its success in the marketplace has largely been a result of that.

Still, I’m suspect of claims that Apple still holds the crown as the world’s best hardware designer. Yes, the company’s products are nice-looking and I’ll freely admit that the iPhone, iPad, and MacBook Pro with Retina Display have rightfully earned Jonathan Ive his place in the spotlight. But when we take the entire industry as a whole, is it not possible for us to accept the idea that maybe – just maybe – Apple’s design cred has been hurt a bit?

Looking at Apple’s products, I’m not all that impressed any more. Although the iPhone 5 came with some design improvements, it’s basically the same device we’ve been seeing for years with a few changes here and there. And since so-called “major” updates only come out every other year, I sit and see nothing that’s so revolutionary that I’d commend the company on design.

Moving to the iPad, I think we can say the same thing. The iPad is certainly nice-looking, but is it really so much better looking than any other device on the market right now? Samsung, Google, and Amazon are all offering tablets that have similar designs, and they’re no less appealing.

But it’s in the notebook space that I think we need to seriously reconsider the idea that Apple is the world’s best hardware designer. Sure, the MacBook Pro with Retina Display is nice-looking, but is it really any better than any Ultrabook on the market right now? And when it comes to innovation, who can really take issue with what Lenovo is doing with half-tablet, half-notebook IdeaPad Yoga? It appears that Apple is the company that now likes to stay the course, and it’s allowing other companies to deliver the truly interesting products.

So, I pose this question: has Apple officially lost its credibility as the technology industry’s leading hardware designer? Apple fans will instinctively say that it hasn’t. But perhaps it’s best if we take a step back and evaluate what’s really going on in the marketplace. Apple is by no means a design slouch and its products are good-looking. But can we stop pretending like it’s the only company that truly understands what design is all about?

It might have taken competitors longer to catch up to Apple on design, but catch up they have. And it’s high time we accept that and give credit where it’s due.

The HTC One is a device that’s gotten reviews that are quite scarcely negative, mostly aiming for a place that’s not just good for the phone itself, but for HTC as well. With news that HTC wasn’t doing especially well in the market over the past several quarters, many writers appeared to have favored the HTC One doubly so, just to see HTC continue to make devices due to the successful build on this one.

So what would we have in an HTC One tablet? A response not only to the massive success Google has seen in the Nexus 7, but to the multi-tiered attack plan pushed by Samsung with their Galaxy Note series. While Samsung continues to reveal Galaxy Tab devices – including the Galaxy Tab 3 as recently as today – it should be clear that the slight boost in features the Galaxy Note offers is what Samsung is pushing as the setup they want consumers to choose.

So an HTC One tablet device might find success in a premium build – that’s what the HTC One handset is, after all. HTC is so confident in their design and marketing of the HTC One that the CEO of the company Peter Chou has bet his job on a successful season. Would he do it again if the HTC One handset were a success and the company brought a tablet with the same design sensibilities?

At the moment there really isn’t a wide variety of builds in the Android tablet market, and HTC hasn’t come forth with a design since the relative biffs that were the HTC Flyer and HTC Jetstream. They’ve made it clear that they’re not in the tablet business at the moment, but, even back when they made that note in October of 2012, their global online communications manager Jeff Gordon made note that they’d be “watching that market very, very closely.”

The time may be ripe later this year – stay tuned to see how the HTC One sells to decide for yourself if it’s time for a second dip.

Right now, Cook is auctioning off the amount of time it takes to sip a cup of coffee to one lucky (and rich) fan. As of this writing, the bid stands at $190,000, even though its estimated value is $50,000. And since there are nearly three weeks left to bid, it shouldn’t surprise anyone if that figure runs much, much higher.

But as I look at the bids rising and people lining up for the opportunity to talk to Cook, I can’t help but wonder what would happen if Steve Jobs were alive and offering the same deal for charity. And if I’m right, there’s a good chance that the cup of coffee Steve Jobs would be talking over would cost a bit more than Cook’s.

Let’s face it – Tim Cook isn’t the most dynamic person in the world. He’s undoubtedly one of the most successful people in the technology industry and if anything, he knows how to run a truly massive company. But Cook is not Steve Jobs. More importantly, Cook hasn’t elevated himself to the level of Superman within the technology industry.

The issue for Tim Cook is that he’s viewed by some as simply riding the wave that Steve Jobs created. And with reports that Jobs himself left a roadmap of products for Apple before he died, there are some who believe that Cook is only doing what he was told to do a couple of years ago. In other words, he doesn’t get much respect, even though he truly deserves it.

Steve Jobs, meanwhile, had God-like status among technology enthusiasts. When he walked on stage, it didn’t take long for the standing ovation to commence and tech lovers around the world to start to drool. And when he started speaking, Jobs had the unique ability to captivate an audience and make them truly believe that whatever it was that he pulled out of his pocket was special.

More importantly, Jobs was highly respected among businesspeople – the most likely group to win the Tim Cook bid. Jobs was able to turn around a dying company and turn it into the world’s largest. Tim Cook hasn’t achieved that just yet. And among executives, he’s not at the same level as his predecessor.

So, I ask you: how much would a cup of coffee with Steve Jobs actually cost? If I were a betting man, I’d say that it would hit $500,000 or more. Sure, it’s high, but we’re talking about the one man in the history of the technology industry that was able to turn the head of nearly everyone around the world. And some people would have given much more than a bundle of cash to sit next to him at a table.

Of course, this is not to say that Tim Cook is not worth having a discussion with or doing a good thing by offering his time. But let’s face it: Tim Cook isn’t Steve Jobs. And despite his best efforts, he never will be.

Soon, things changed, and homes had more telephones, providing a bit more leeway in the way communication was handled. It wasn’t until the introduction of the mobile phone that dramatically changed how we would communicate with others, and it caused a radical change in our lives.

Now, though, everywhere I turn, I find people with smartphones. From elders who grew up in a time when phone lines were shared to priests, just about everyone around us has a smartphone on their hip, in their pocket, or hiding in their purse. A smartphone isn’t just an accessory to many people, it’s an extension of their lives. And without it, there would be no way to live.

For me, such a scenario would be impossible to even fathom. Each morning, the first thing I do after saying good morning to my wife is check my smartphone to see if I’ve missed any important e-mails. I might also check the news to see what’s happening around the world. During the day, my smartphone is with me wherever I go, so I can send off a quick text, check e-mail when away from a computer, and surf the Web when I need to. Oh, and I might also place a call from time to time.

So, earlier this week as I was on my smartphone, I questioned whether I could stay away from it for just one week. What would my week be like, I thought. How would my life be different? Would things be better or worse?

I decided after thinking that that it was time I explored the possibility of living without my smartphone for a week. So, for the rest of the day and a bit into the next day, I was smartphone-free. It wasn’t long, though, that I was desiring holding my smartphone in my hand and checking things. It also wasn’t long before I had what might only be called “technology withdrawals” — a seemingly chemical response in the brain to not having something I rely on to such a huge degree.

So, before long, I gave in and got my smartphone. I’m weak, perhaps, or just not very good at controlling myself. In either case, I realized that, for me, living without a smartphone isn’t even an option.

The next question, though, is, such an addiction good or bad? I can be more productive with my smartphone, but that I actually have it in-hand at all times and can’t let it go might liken it to something much worse.

So, I pose the question to you: can you (or, perhaps, would you) want to live without a smartphone for a week? Is it easier said than done? Don’t scoff so quickly and think it’ll be an easy task; it won’t. Be ready for a challenge. And be ready for the withdrawals.

But there’s more to it than that. A Kickstarter-funded company is selling a device known as Ouya that promises to combine the benefits of mobile and console gaming into one device that connects to the television. Steam is working on a console that will bring PC titles to the living room. There have even been rumors that Apple is planning a gaming push.

The Apple rumors are arguably the most interesting. They seem to indicate that Apple is going to bring iOS gaming to the console market and all of its developers will come along with it. And since the iPhone maker has become such a force in the gaming space in such a short amount of time with iOS, there’s no reason to suggest it wouldn’t make a similar splash in the console space.

Although I’d agree with that sentiment, I think we might all be missing the obvious here: Google might just sweep into the console space and win the war.

Now, I know that we’ve heard no indication that Google actually has plans to get into the console market, but is it such a stretch to say that it could? First off, the company has tried to make inroads into the console space with Google TV. And although that hasn’t been the most successful launch, it’s proven that Google is at least thinking about branching out into the living room.

At the same time, we mustn’t forget that Google has been taking some changes lately in the hardware market. The company now has smartphones and tablets that it’s selling and its acquisition of Motorola was a not-so-subtle attempt by the search giant to break into the hardware side.

And then there’s Android. The operating system that has worked so well on smartphones, tablets, and other devices, seems perfectly suited for the console market. And with mobile processors getting more powerful by the day, it’s not such a leap for a game company to bring their top titles on Android to a device running that operating system from Google.

Oh, and one more thing: don’t you think that more than anything, Google would love to take Microsoft down in the console market? If there’s anything we know about Google, it’s that the company can’t stand Microsoft. And beating the software giant out on something is its favorite feat. By bringing Android to the console market and delivering its own device, Google might just have a shot at it.

Call me crazy, but I think Google could actually perform quite well in the console market.

Such demand already might surprise some folks. After all, it took a long time for the PlayStation 3 to truly get off the ground and although it’ll likely end this generation with more worldwide sales than the Xbox 360, in the U.S., especially, it’s no match for Microsoft’s console.

To make matters worse, it appears that gamers aren’t all that excited about the next generation of consoles across the board. The Wii U, after all, has been watching its sales slow to crawl and even GameStop said publicly that it’s been disappointed by the Wii U. What in the world would make the PlayStation 4 different?

Well, I think there are a host of reasons. I’m a firm believer that Sony is still a household name in the U.S. and in Japan – its two key markets – and people buy products from the company solely because they trust the name. And despite the PlayStation 3’s initial troubles, the console turned out to be quite a success, allowing its predecessor to deliver solid results next time around.

It’s also unfair to compare the PlayStation 4 with the Wii U. Nintendo’s console is one that’s a barely updated alternative to the predecessor. As I’ve said here before, I believe the Wii U is a catch-up device. And historically, catch-up devices don’t really perform all that well on store shelves.

The PlayStation 4, however, is a high-end product with all kinds of graphical firepower; it’s the kind of device that true gamers really want. And chances are, Sony will once again have the full support of the developer community to ensure it doesn’t fall short from a library perspective.

Most importantly, though, I think the strong demand for the PlayStation 4 tells us that, despite conventional wisdom suggesting that mobile and casual gaming is the future, console gamers are still extremely engrossed in their favored way of playing games. And that’s not going to change anytime soon.

The fact is that console gaming has a long way to go to ultimately match the promise gamers have been hoping for all this time. And companies like Sony and Microsoft are willing to push the envelope and put themselves in a position where they can capitalize on customers that want a true next-generation device, and not something that’s simply labeled as one.

So yes, I understand the excitement surrounding the PlayStation 4, and I can say without any hesitation that I’m one of those folks that’s excited to see what’s coming next from Sony. The future is now. And Sony is one of the few companies in the gaming industry that’s willing to embrace it.

Then again, I thought the same with my former iPhone, which came with a smaller 3.5-inch display. I thought for sure that I wouldn’t need a larger screen. But when I got my hands on the bigger display, I decided otherwise.

Now, though, I’m looking at new devices from companies like LG and Samsung, like the Galaxy S 4, that come with screen sizes that hit 5 inches, and I can’t help but wonder why anyone would need a device featuring a screen size that large. Let’s face it – there comes a point when screen sizes become too big and unwieldy. And I wonder if a 5-inch display from Samsung is one such device.

Of course, those who love Android will have a much different opinion on the matter. They believe that Apple is delivering products that only come with 4-inch screens is absolutely ridiculous. It’s too small a screen, the critics say, and it’s the kind of limitation that Apple places on products that make them want an Android handset.

I can understand both points. Apple ostensibly believes that a 4-inch tablet makes sense for customers. Samsung and others, however, see that as one of the issues with Apple’s products, and believe that customers want the biggest display they can get. While I agree that there are literally millions of people around the globe that do want the larger screens, at what point do they become too big?

The way I see it, we’ve pushed the envelope to a point where there might not be much more room for larger screens. Most people today put their devices into their pockets or in small places in their purses. They don’t have the room, necessarily, to keep putting larger and larger products into those places. It comes to a point when a device has such a large screen that using it becomes ridiculous. And there comes a point when companies have to realize that and find other ways to attract us. It’s not easy, for sure, but it’s absolutely necessary.

So, I think we should examine whether smartphone screen sizes are getting too big. As I said earlier, I’ll be the first to admit that I like a nice, big screen. But after 5 inches, I don’t think it makes sense for companies to deliver products that deliver anything bigger. And I’m not so sure that consumers will respond favorably to such a move.

So, before you buy that 5-inch-screen-equipped screen, think twice. Will it be too big? Will it be just right? Everyone is different. But not acknowledging the possibility of screen sizes being too big for their own good is a mistake.

Before you say anything – though I understand you may instantly have raced to the comments section before you even reached the period in my first sentence, desperate to berate me – I’m not a luddite. I love smartphones; I like Android, iOS, Windows Phone, and even have a soft spot for BlackBerry 10 in places. I don’t leave the house without at least one phone in my pocket. It – and its ringing alarm – is the first thing I reach for in the morning; with the exception of the light switch it’s probably the last thing at night.

That devotion, or maybe obsession, doesn’t mean I’m blind to the limitations of what we have today, however. The modern smartphone is faster, lighter, runs longer, has more apps, sensors, radios, and gadgetry than any before it, but all that complexity has only served to pull us in closer, to enmesh us more with the digital world on its terms.

Your phone still, generally, demands you reach for it and proactively consult it. If it has something for you, it’ll beep to let you know, but it’ll generally do that on its own timescale. Many devices have a “do not disturb” mode, which blanks all (or all but the most important) notifications between certain periods, and some can “intelligently” manage alerts depending on what you’re doing at the time, though that tends to amount to little more than bashing calendar entries against the clock and keeping quiet when you’ve remembered to log a meeting taking place.

Beyond that, for all their sensors and smarts, most phones are pretty dumb in how they understand context. Right now, they’re portable terminals for the internet, for the most part: a smaller window than our regular browser, or one we view through the medium of function-specific apps. Much of the development we’ve seen from phone software and hardware over the past 3-5 years has been in translating the internet into something that fits onto a smartphone-scale screen.

And yet, our needs from a companion device are surely different from those we have of a regular computer. I don’t necessarily want every single piece of information out there delivered to the palm of my hand; I just want the right, most relevant information. You can find that on a phone, certainly, but for it to be a true companion it really should be one step ahead of what you need. Some emails, or IMs, or calls, are more important than others, but my phone beeps for all of them. Sometimes I don’t know what the most relevant information actually is, or that it’s even out there, and my digital wingman should be using everything it knows about me to fill in those gaps of its own accord.

That’s something all of the platforms fall down on, for the most part. Yes, iOS has Siri, and its clever digital personal assistant can certainly hook into your agenda, contacts, location, and other data to give better advice, but it only happens when you ask for it. BlackBerry is terribly excited about its “peek” system for better handling notifications on your own terms, but it still leaves you in the thrall of the beep and the blinking light.

There are glimmers of a change ahead, though only faint. Google Now for the most part still waits for you to check its curated cards, showing nearby businesses and scenic spots, flight times and reminders of when you might need to leave to make your next appointment, but it does at least try to fumble some sort of contextual link between what you’re doing, where you’re doing it, and what you might be interested in knowing given those factors.

At least, that’s the theory. I gave Google Now a whole homescreen pane of its own to play with on the HTC One recently – the only widget Android offers takes up the entire page – and, in all the time I’ve been using the phone, I haven’t seen a single card pop up. I’ve played with all the settings to try to coax something more out of it, but it doesn’t seem particularly keen to talk to me.

I know Google has more ambitious plans. When I sat down with Mattias Duarte and talked about Now and how it essentially forms the basis of Google Glass, it was clear that the company sees its mobile strategy evolving from one where it gives all the possible answers, to giving more specific results based on greater confidence that it knows what you’re likely looking for. That makes perfect sense for a bleeding-edge wearable, but it’s also something the mass market needs to tame the gush through to our everyday phones.

Faster, lighter, just plain shinier phones aren’t enough now. Squeezing in another core, or adding a couple of extra megapixels, isn’t going to address the underlying issue: today’s “smartphone” is a small, relatively dumb computer, not smart at all. Certainly, there was a time – and it wasn’t long ago – when firms were making groundbreaking steps with each generation of device, pushing the boundaries of mobile tech. Revamping hardware has become the easy way out, however, and we need to stop letting companies off the hook for not tackling what have now become the new shortcomings. Sure, it won’t be as easy as slapping a bigger display on the front, but until the question of context is addressed, we’ll forever be ruled by our phones, not liberated.

Now, I’m sure that Apple fans won’t want to hear such a thing. After all, for years, they’ve been supporting Apple’s iOS platform and to hear that Android could possibly come with features that surpass those of iOS is anathema to them. But perhaps it’s time that we all agree that, at the very least, Android and iOS are in a neck-and-neck battle for mobile operating system dominance.

But how did Android get here? The fact is, Android wasn’t even close to iOS in terms of featureset when it launched. But over the last several years, as more vendors brought the operating system to their devices, it gained on Apple. And now, it’s far and away the most dominant operating system in the land.

Although many reasons for Android’s dominance can be drawn, and many of those are valid, I just don’t think any of them are as important or as noteworthy as Google’s shepherding of the platform. Without Google, Android wouldn’t be what it is today.

If we’ve learned anything of the technology industry over the last few years, it’s that big companies determine the fate of most products. Save for a few cool Kickstarter ideas, the vast majority of successful products today come from major companies. It’s unfortunate that an industry created by startups is now so dominated by major companies, but it’s the reality. And we must begrudgingly accept that.

If an unknown company trying to deliver a new operating system to mobile vendors had delivered Android to the marketplace, it’s unlikely that it would have succeeded. At its launch, few tech media outlets would have picked up the news because of the company’s lack of notoriety, and vendors would have been suspect of such a small firm. A perfect storm would have developed that would have scuttled Android from the outset.

But with Google behind the operating system, everything is different. When a company of that size and importance in the industry delivers an operating system, people listen. And because of its clout, the company has the unique ability to sign deals with other major firms and get its operating system out to the wild in no time. Success was practically guaranteed when Google, not a small, unknown company, delivered Android.

Now, I’ll freely admit that there have been other major companies that have brought up mobile operating systems, including the company formerly known as Palm and Samsung. And those two companies watched their operating systems fall short. But that’s more about time and a desire to control the hardware-software complex than about winning the OS market. The same might be said for BlackBerry. But Google is different. And its success has proven that.

But, I want to pose this question to you: would Android be Android if not for Google? I’d agree that other major companies could have made it work, but do you think smaller firms would have, as well?

Let us know in the comments below.

I’m bad at taking photos, especially when I’m away. All too often I’ll come back from a trip and realize I have nothing – bar the memories in my own head – to show for it. Stills seldom capture the emotion of a moment, while video gets long and unwieldy, and thus goes unwatched.

Zoe, though, combines a burst of twenty stills with about three and a half seconds of Full HD video. You can shoot just stills, or just HD video, but HTC expects most One users to give up on regular images and instead use Zoe mode: once you’ve captured a cluster of shots, you can then scroll through and pick out the one with the best framing or facial expressions, or indeed combine features from two stills into one. The One also automatically combines a selection of Zoes into a highlight reel, 30s of curated content complete with music, effects, and transitions.

What Zoe is particularly great at, though, is putting photography into a framework. You’re not just snapping hundreds of stills and recording dozens of videos – which, if you’re anything like me, you have a strong suspicion that you’ll never actually look through or share after you’re home. Instead, you start to think about photography in terms of easily snackable chunks of content: a simple 30 second highlight reel that you can imagine actually showing someone without having to worry that you’re boring them.

Find out all the details on the UltraPixel camera and Zoe system here

It also makes you think of your life in terms of events. On every other phone I’ve used, I’ve never bothered with albums: all of my images and videos have been left in one long stream of content (and one I seldom bother scrolling back through). On the One, though, you start to consider how an event might look when seen as a highlight reel: I started purposefully shooting panning shots that I knew would be particularly good at setting the scene, for instance, and tried to take more photos of people and their reactions, rather than just impressive landscapes.

The result is a gallery I actually want to flick back through, and photos I actually want to show to people. Highlight videos that require less than a minute’s investment in time are perfect for attention-short social networks like Facebook, Google+, and Twitter, and of course since it’s Android there’s fully baked-in sharing with whatever service you have installed.

It’s not all perfect, however. As we noted in our review, right now the One gives you no control over what resolution the Zoe highlight reel is encoded at – it’s Full HD or nothing – and that makes for a big video. When you’re roaming abroad, it means finding a (fast) WiFi connection is essential unless you want to bankrupt yourself with foreign data fees.

That’s not the only upload-related headache. Zoe doesn’t work at all well with automatic-upload systems; I love how Google+ pushes new photos and videos to the cloud in the background, ready for me to share them later, but on the One every single shot is queued up for the same online treatment. Given each Zoe consists of twenty stills as well as the brief video, that means a whole lot of unnecessary duplication when you browse through online. “You have 3825 new photos ready to share” Google+ eagerly informed me, after suggesting that I might want to pay to upgrade my Google Drive storage.

In fact, there’s a sense that HTC only really thought about the photography experience on the One itself, not that people might want to explore their shots outside of the handset. Having spent a couple of hours sifting through all of the multiple Zoe shots after dumping them over to my computer, picking out the best/least blurry/most interesting to share with family, the comparative value of the highlight reels began to wane. For every scene there were twenty shots to key through, and the HTC Sync Manager app does nothing but push everything into iPhoto.

HTC really needs to offer more granular – and straightforward to use – control over which photos are treated as the default by other apps and services, particularly given the shortcomings of the current highlight reel selection process. Eventually, you should be able to pick out which images are used to build the automagically-edited video; right now, though, the only way to manually control what’s included and what isn’t is to sort them manually into different Event albums (the One splits up events that are at different times and locations automatically, but I found it still mixed together activities while I was away).

Those Events can then be used to create more specific highlight reels, but then you miss out on auto-uploading, since most such services only look at content in the root Photos folder. Events on the One are organized into subfolders, unless you copy rather than move them, in which case you run into storage limitations (which, since there’s no memory card slot, could quickly become an issue given the size of each single Zoe cluster).

I’d love to see HDR support in Zoe mode (at the moment, you can only use it in standard camera mode); that generally works well, though it sometimes left the sky oddly colored in brighter scenes. The ability to opt for longer highlight reels would be great too: a minute or 90 seconds, perhaps, to fit in more media from longer Events.

The fumbles and glitches don’t undermine the overall experience, however. HTC’s decision to opt for a 4-megapixel-equivalent sensor might mean we get stuck with awkward “UltraPixel” branding, but it doesn’t stop the One from taking solid shots and delivering great low-light images (useful for when you’re taking food photos in restaurants; yes, I know it’s a cliché, but I still did it).

Zoe seemed like a gimmick at first, but it’s enough to make me reach for the HTC One in preference to the iPhone 5 or any other Android handset when I know I’m likely to be taking photos. Now HTC just needs to bring its sync app up to speed too, as well as do a better job of explaining to potential consumers why they might end up thinking the same, if they’d only give the One a try.

To create a massively successful device, you’ve got to be able to create enough supply to equal said device’s demand. While marketing is vastly important when it comes to creating a value proposition for prospective buyers of your product, it’s all for naught if you don’t have that product out on store shelves to sell.

Such is HTC’s dilemma right this minute.

As we’ve discussed previously, Samsung’s advertising budget (marked at $401 million in 2012 alone vs HTC’s measly $46 million) is set to play a major role in the upcoming battle between the GALAXY S 4 and the HTC One. It’s not because of a superior product that the Samsung device will be more visible in the media. HTC is currently placing a lot of hope in viral marketing and direct shout-outs at Samsung, hoping consumers will then make an informed decision based solely on device quality. Not that one device is necessarily better than the other, but HTC is likely considering this a good strategy in the face of Samsung’s continued torrential advertising downpour.

But what if I told you it was possible for Apple to (indirectly) control the components of these two devices as they go to war with one another?

Consider the amount of devices Apple sells that contain aluminum as a crucial part of their hardware. The most recent quarterly sales report has Apple shipping the following:

47.8 million iPhones
22.9 million iPads
4.1 million Macs
12.7 million iPods
=
87.5 million Apple devices that require aluminum parts in their fiscal Q1 2013

According to Strategy Analytics, Samsung shipped 15.4 million Galaxy S III units through the fourth quarter of 2012. It’s not as if Samsung is hurting for cash, and it’s important to note that this is just one of several Galaxy-branded smartphones on the market (Strategy Analytics put Apple’s iPhone 5 specifically at 27.4 million units shipped in the same quarter). But when you’re up against Apple, a company with enough cash and high enough status with suppliers to potentially buy out entire supply lines of certain components, such concerns can potentially have a very real effect on your industrial design choices.

HTC simply does not have the same status with parts suppliers that Apple does. With or without the rumor linked above being true, HTC’s financial situation (when compared to Apple’s) simply does not add up to tier-one priority for suppliers. For HTC, the problem rests squarely in their choice between two evils:

1. Making a product with choice components and possible supply troubles.
2. Creating a sub-par product with no supply problems at all.

No matter how awesome your product is, you still need the parts to build it before you can bring it to market and sell it.

Will we see the HTC One in stores soon? We sure hope so. Will it be delivered early enough to take a firm grasp of the hype created by HTC here not too long after it’s initial reveal? We shall see!

And will Samsung make an aluminum smartphone any time soon? Though this supply war certainly isn’t the only factor involved in this decision-making process, a metal phone coming from Samsung is still unlikely. Do you create a device that sells 50 million units then follow up with something all new?

Don’t count on it.

Over the last year or so, we’ve been hearing rumors that Microsoft’s next console, currently codenamed Durango, could ban used games. Microsoft, of course, hasn’t said anything on the matter, deciding instead to keep its plans close to the vest until it finally has the chance to unveil the device to the world. But the steady drumbeat of claims that the console won’t support used games is concerning.

The video game industry can’t stand used games. Gamers run out to buy a new title and before long, turn around and sell it back to their local game retailer, like Gamestop, to get back some of their cash. In many cases, those gamers then put the credit towards another game.

For gamers and Gamestop, it’s a great model that works exceedingly well. But the game developers have a real issue with used titles.

See, after a game is sold back to a company like Gamestop, there’s no way for the developers to generate cash off the secondary sale. That means that all of their hard work can’t be profited on, and retailers can double-dip on the games they’re investing in.

I’ll be the first to admit that I think the system is flawed. I know of several developers that can’t stand the thought of used-game sales and I totally understand why they have those feelings. Revenue sharing on used-game sales really is unfair. And it’s something that the industry should not – and perhaps, cannot – overlook; it needs to be fixed.

That said, used games have a place in today’s console space. Used games are cheaper, which makes it easier for gamers to enjoy the entertainment they so desire. For many people around the world, spending $60 on a video game is impossible when bills need to be paid and kids need to be fed. But buying a title for, say, half the price, isn’t such a bad deal.

Used games, let’s not forget, have also done wonders for the online services Sony and Microsoft offer. The more used games that customers buy, the more people playing titles online. And thus, revenue across the industry goes up. It’s a win-win.

And yet, the steady drumbeat of claims that Microsoft might do away with used-game playing in the next Xbox grows louder by the day. If it’s true – and let’s be clear, we’re not sure if it is – that would mean Microsoft’s console would be the only next-generation hardware to not allow for used titles. What’s worse, it would be the first console in history to not support such a key part of the game-buying experience.

I can say unequivocally that if Microsoft does not support used games in its next console, I will not buy the hardware. And I have a feeling there are thousands, if not millions, of gamers who will stand alongside me.

Look, I’m all for giving developers the proper compensation for what they’ve created. And I, too, think the used-game market is hurting developers. But not allowing used games isn’t the answer; stopping retailers from taking advantage of gamers and developers is.

What Apple should do, on the other hand, is tap two markets that it’s been avoiding since the dawn of the iPhone. The first of these is the customizing developer/hacker community that so ravenously devours each new Android phone. The second is the vast group of people rather rapidly accepting the ultra-large (but not quite tablet-sized) smartphone screen.

With the amount of attention each post about Jailbreaking gets here on SlashGear compared to the chatter that comes up each time iOS is updated, an instant conclusion can be drawn: it’s much more interesting (to those that reach tech blogs) to see the iPhone broken into than it is to see Apple bring on updates and upgrades. Where it gets really interesting is when Apple’s updates appear to be the direct result of Jailbreaking – hacks take a turn, Apple takes a turn, and so on and so forth.

So what if Apple created a Developer Edition iPhone?

Would it be so very anti-Apple to release a device that they encouraged the very real – and rather giant – developer community to customize?

Or would it be releasing their hardware to those that would change the software as they saw fit that made the iPhone into a device that’s not all that different from phones made by the Android-toting competition?

Then there’s the more obvious next step for the iPhone – a larger display size. Now that Apple has cracked the illusion that the iPhone 4′s screen size was the only one that – because of the massive amount of time that went into perfecting it – was ever going to be perfect, they can move on. Apple should and will create an iPhone that’s larger that the iPhone 5′s 4-inch display size limit.

But before they do that, they’ll have the ability to make this handheld machine bring on innovations we’ve not yet seen implemented on smartphones. If the rest of the smartphone universe is the Borg, they’ve already assimilated vast amounts of the “cool” that has pushed the iPhone to the top spot and kept it there for so many years. "The iPhone and Apple do not need help surviving"

The iPhone and Apple do not need help surviving – this is no call to action for Apple – they’ve still got one massively successul smartphone line on their hands. Instead consider this a call-to-action on the part of you lovers of game-changing innovation: Apple creates products people love. If everyone on the planet made it clear to Apple that they loved iOS better on the iPad mini than they do on the iPhone 5, you’d see a smartphone right between the two rather quick.

The same goes for you Jailbreaking-loving developers out there – continue to spread the love that is community evolution in software and you might – not any time soon – see an iPhone Developer Edition in your holiday stocking. Some day!

Well, Nintendo, we don’t believe it.

After a sub-par launch, we’ve watched the Wii U collected dust on store shelves across the U.S. Developers, while trying to stay nice about it, are obviously starting to become concerned that the console won’t hack it. And all Nintendo president Satoru Iwata can do is apologize for not delivering better results in the fourth quarter.

Huh?

Now, I’ll freely admit that I’ve never run a major company and I’m sure there will be an awful lot of Nintendo fans lined up to tell me that I don’t know anything about running a game business, but it’s about time the company and all of its supporters hear the truth: without some major changes, the Wii U is doomed.

What Nintendo needs to do first is cut the price of the Wii U. Yes, I know that the company will likely post lower-than-expected financial results over the next year or so because of the reduced price, but at least some customers will jump at the chance to buy the cheaper device. And as history has shown, the more hardware that makes its way into consumer homes, the stronger the software library. And when a stronger software library comes along, a more successful platform results.

Nintendo is looking down the barrel of a major, major threat. Sony is planning to launch a PlayStation 4 later this year that will come with far more firepower than its device. The Xbox 360’s successor, unofficially known as the Xbox 720, will take advantage of the momentum its predecessor has passed on. By all measure, the Wii U’s competition is looking to have a better chance of succeeding than Nintendo’s console.

Of course, don’t tell Nintendo fans that; they’re still clinging to the Wii’s success. Nintendo fans say that the Wii was doubted by nearly everyone, and after it had some time to attract customers, it was an outright success.

However, I think those people tend to be suffering from revisionist history. The Wii was doubted by many, but after it was actually shown off to consumers before its launch, demand skyrocketed. And the console wasn’t readily available to customers for years. In other words, the Wii is an entirely different beast. And it’s one that cannot – and should not – be compared to the Wii U.

Aside from a price cut, I’m not sure there’s much else Nintendo can do but hope that things turn around. The Wii U is being ignored, casual gamers couldn’t care less, and parents – the true Wii U buyers – are looking at the price tag and laughing at Nintendo for even thinking it would pay that much for what is essentially an HD Wii.

It’s unfortunate, but I’m starting to wonder if this is the beginning of the end for Nintendo’s console business.

From the dozen or so Google Reader petitions on Change.org, there’s one that currently has over 104,000 signatures so far. However, that number means practically nothing. Since the petition doesn’t require a response from the party being petitioned after it has reached a certain number of signatures (like those White House petitions), all of the Google Reader petitions out there are useless.

The petition hit 100,000 signatures in a matter of two days, which is faster than most petitions can scrounge up signatures, including petitions in the past that begged Facebook not to make UI changes to the layout. Even the phone unlocking petition that gained notoriety fairly quickly took an entire month to garner 100,000 signatures. Compare that to the two days it took this Google Reader petition to reach 100,000 and you really got something.

Of course, there’s always the tiniest chance that Google will renege on their plans and pull a 180 with Google Reader, but we highly doubt that will happen. It’s possible that the petition could reach 200,000, 300,000, 500,000, maybe even a million signatures, at which point we could see Google contemplate their decision to shut down the RSS reader service, but it doesn’t seem likely that the petition will reach a few hundred thousand signatures — maybe 200,000, but even that’s a stretch.

However, Google Reader competitors are already stepping up to fill the soon-to-be void. Zite announced a Google Reader alternative earlier today, and they’re sitting at the ready with open arms, eager to let in all of those disappointed Google Reader users. Even Feedly implemented its own system for seamlessly transitioning Google Reader users over to their platform. Heck, even Digg is stepping up to the plate.

We suppose all good things must come to an end, though, and life is never fair anyway with a world where Google Reader gets shut down due to a “declining user base”, while services like Blogger and Orkut live to see another day. But perhaps this is a good time to reflect on our news-junkie ways, and go about life in a way never thought possible before, until now.

But now, with the Samsung Galaxy S4’s unveiling almost upon us, we’re here wondering if there will ever be a day when Samsung and Apple aren’t going for each other’s necks. The companies literally can’t stand each other. And although they’re both generating all of the profits in the mobile space, they’d like nothing more than to take each other down.

The issue is, neither company is succeeding at even putting a dent in the other’s business. And although the iPhone and Apple now have true competitors in the Galaxy S and Samsung, each year brings new devices and new opportunities for one of them to pull ahead.

Which brings us to the Galaxy S4.

Samsung’s upcoming device looks – at least according to the rumor mill – to be the kind of device that we might all want. The handset, the reports claim, will come with a 5-inch screen, a beefed-up processor, and all of the Samsung bells and whistles that we’ve come to expect. The device, in other words, could be even better than the already popular Samsung Galaxy S3.

But what does that mean for Apple? The iPhone maker has for years now been the leader in the smartphone market, but Samsung is coming on strong, and in some quarters, actually beating out Apple’s smartphones. What’s worse for Apple, an increasing number of consumers who years ago would only consider the iPhone are now saying that the Samsung Galaxy S3 (and soon, the S4) are the kinds of devices they would want to buy.

So, is it time for Apple to fear Samsung and its upcoming smartphone? The folks out in Cupertino, always ready to prove their confidence, would scoff at such a claim. But let’s not let that go to our heads. If Samsung wasn’t such a big threat, Apple wouldn’t be suing its pants off everywhere in the world. And if Samsung’s products weren’t selling so well, Apple might not find so much trouble with the company. In other words, Samsung is a threat.

But being a threat and being enough for Apple to fear Samsung are two entirely different things. And it’s important that we point that out. Apple and Samsung are certainly at odds and there’s a chance that the companies’ battle will only get worse over time. But it’s also important to note that Apple is extremely strong. And its products, despite the challenges Samsung presents, are no slouches in their own right.

It’s hard to say what the future holds for the mobile market. On one hand, Apple could very well become the dominant force and prove that Samsung is nothing to worry about. On the other, Apple might quickly find that yes, it should fear the Galaxy S4, and there is something very, very serious to worry about.

I guess we’ll find out soon when Samsung unveils its new smartphone and Apple has a chance to respond with one of its own.

$200 has become the “norm” for a new high-end phone launch. The Galaxy S III arrived at $199.99; the iPhone 5 did too. HTC’s One will likely command the same amount when it hits US carriers in the coming months. The carriers have settled on a figure that has proved to be psychologically acceptable for the mass market (even if that mass market would probably save itself some money by paying full-whack for its new phone rather than expecting a network subsidy).

Whether it’s AT&T, Verizon, or BlackBerry itself, however, the pricing for the Z10 seems to have been knee-jerk rather than fully thought-through. Yes, $200 may be the expected price, but the Z10 comes to the market as a challenger, not as another proven quantity. Price was the first point at which the networks could properly express that challenger appetite, but they opted not to.

Sure, the BlackBerry faithful will probably stomach two-hundred bucks to get their hands on what’s a significant improvement over their existing phones. Yet selling to the same, minority-share market – one which has seen many deserters already jump ship to Android or iPhone – isn’t a strategy for growth. BlackBerry 10 needs fresh blood attracted to the platform, not just more of the same.

The closest comparison is probably Windows Phone, which is also fighting to build its share in the smartphone segment. Verizon will sell you an HTC 8X for $99.99 with a new agreement, however, while AT&T will happily hand over a Nokia 920 at the same price. Like the Z10, neither is a perfect device, but Windows Phone undoubtedly has its strengths and with the pricing, both carriers are making them look especially appealing for new smartphone users.

BlackBerry took the decision to eschew Android and use its own platform; I can respect that. However, it also needs to wake up to the reality of the situation it thus finds itself in as a company, trying to break into a hectic and aggressive market with an unproven OS. That’s a tough fight at the best of times, but pushing for premium pricing as well seems at best an unnecessary challenge and at worst a clear misreading of the mobile industry today.

While we’ve seen the HTC One live and in-person more than one time before – both at the launch and during Mobile World Congress 2013 – there’s something about it that just doesn’t click. Can you guess what it is? If today’s report from Android Community is right, it’s the camera. But that’s not what we were thinking here – instead that one crucial element was – and will be – the face that the phone is not going to be out for sale with enough time between its launch and the launch of the Galaxy S4.

There won’t be enough time for the HTC One to grab hold of the public conscious for it to be popular enough to overcome the allure of the most powerful Android-toting brand on the market today: Galaxy. Samsung has done so well with the Galaxy brand over the past few years that the Galaxy S, Galaxy S II, and Galaxy S III have been best-sellers consecutively. And the Galaxy Note line hasn’t been doing too bad itself.

So what does HTC lack that Samsung has? What will douse HTC in a hot mess called irrelevancy?

Samsung’s advertising cash.

If Samsung can do one thing right (and we know they can do more than one thing right), it’s public advertising on the part of their mobile devices. The Samsung brand name is synonymous with cool at this point in history and, based on last years’ ads and the court cases that continue through today, we know they’re the biggest guns up against Apple’s dominance in the mobile market with the iPhone and the iPad.

If HTC had the backing at this point to out-show Samsung with television ad spots and billboards across the country, not to mention online banners and whatnot, would they be geared up and ready for Samsung’s Galaxy S4 launch? I say yes, very possibly.

So which device should you buy – the HTC One or the Galaxy S4? I suppose it all depends on which device you find more appealing. Forget the specification comparisons, forget which device runs the newest version of Android, forget all of that. You’ll see sales follow the brand power. HTC needs to release the HTC One now, and plow through the little time they have left before the Galaxy S4 hits the market – or forever hold their un-sold handsets.

First you’ll want to see what TechCrunch has whipped up using the results of a recent Google Glass “#ifihadglass” Twitter and Google+ contest. They found that respondents to this content ended up being either massively male or too ambiguously named to tell. Females appeared in these findings as well, but they ended up only appearing as a small fraction of contest-goers: unless, of course, they decided to call themselves men on the internet or decided they didn’t want to be recognized with a distinctly female name (according to that site’s name/gender algorithm.)

Then you’ll be interested to know that Google appears to be reaching out to women with a set of new photo-shoots with female Googlers. While these shoots are limited, this isn’t the first time Google reached out to a female-dominated outlet to see Glass rest on the faces of ladies. Back on September 10th, 2012, you’ll find a Glass-toting DVF fashion show heading down the runway during Fashion Week.

The following photo set comes from Google employees Isabelle Olsson and Amanda Rosenberg, both of whom worked on the DVF show last year. They’re both working on Project Glass and we’re expecting that this isn’t the last we’ve seen of either of them pushing for a continually fashion-forward appeal in the hardware – and how it appears in is final form.

So given that tiny cross-section of instances in which Google specifically addressed how Glass will look on your face, do you feel that your gender will be playing a role in how Google will be marketing the product in the future? How about those of you, specifically, that consider yourselves more feminine than you are masculine: does Glass appeal to you? Do you feel like the appeal here has anything to do with fashion, or is it purely based on how you will or will not be interacting with the technology in the near future?

See, Nintendo was to me, like so, so many others, the company that made us realize how much we loved gaming. We played the first Super Mario and were mesmerized. When The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past was released, I must have completed it ten times in the first couple weeks. Nintendo and its hardware and its game library all hold a special place in my heart.

That’s why I’m worried. I think there are millions of people across the globe – including many in Japan – that have long-viewed Nintendo as the face of the gaming industry. When Nintendo succeeded, those folks believed that the game industry was doing just fine. And when Nintendo wasn’t doing so well, they questioned the value of status quo in the industry.

When the Wii was flying high, there was a palpable sense that the games industry, despite some softening during the economic downturn, would be just fine. But now that the Wii U is turning out to be a bit of a loser, the beating drum of doubt over the traditional industry’s ability to hang tough against Microsoft and Sony is growing louder. The world is changing, they say, and traditional game companies are in trouble.

So, I need to pose a question: if Nintendo fails, will the traditional game industry go with it?

I can appreciate that Sony and Microsoft are trying to appeal to a different market segment with their products, which lends them to not worry so much that Nintendo is in trouble, but there’s something to be said for determining how the Mario maker’s decline is impacting the industry.

Unfortunately, I can see a scenario play out in which Nintendo starts to go into decline and the next thing you know, all hell breaks loose. A major game console maker has gone into a death spiral, the headlines would read, and now, like a domino effect, Microsoft, Sony, and major game developers are going down the tubes with it.

But perhaps I’m placing too much importance on Nintendo. Sure, the game company is huge and was always important, but perhaps it’s not what it used to be. Nintendo might be the world’s biggest console maker right now, but it might soon give way to Microsoft and Sony. More importantly, it could give way to companies like Valve and Apple.

The traditional game industry could very well be in a state of flux. Nintendo, its spiritual leader, seems to be falling to its knees. And unless it can be brought back up and returned to its former place of glory, I can’t help but wonder if new companies or mobile gaming in general might just put the final nail in its coffin.

I guess we just have to wait and see what happens.

Many Android users pick Google’s mobile platform because iOS is claimed as a “closed” ecosystem, and that users will have more freedom if they pick Android, but Android actually has most of the same restrictions, some of which are thanks to the carriers. Granted, the Nexus series of devices are the closest thing you’ll get to a real, “open” Android experience, but those only account for a small fraction of all the Android devices available, and even then carriers still apply restrictions. Most Android handsets are locked down hard, and rooting wouldn’t exist if Android was as open as users think it is.

Just like jailbreaking iOS, rooting Android opens up a world of abilities, customization, and tweaks. For starters, just like iOS, rooting allows Android users to dig deep into the phone’s software and hardware in order to optimize performance and boost battery life. Battery life is obviously one of the biggest caveats to Android devices, and rooting is the only way to truly improve it, with custom kernels and CPU-altering apps that can make your phone last all day and more on a single charge.

And don’t even get me started on the numerous Android versions roaming around. Currently we’re on Android 4.2 Jelly Bean, but manufacturers and carriers are making things harder than they need to be by releasing new handsets with an OS that’s 16 months old (Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich for those keeping track). Rooting your Android device is the only way to receive the latest OS version through custom ROMs, including CyanogenMod, which is arguably the most-popular ROM out there, and you can use CyanogenMod to push Jelly Bean to your older device if it’s available.

Let’s not forget about the bloatware, though. Carriers have been having a blast sneaking in pre-installed apps, and while Jelly Bean will let you at least hide them from your sight, only rooting will be able to completely banish them. Plus, you’ll be able install apps that Google and carriers normally wouldn’t allow, some of which are of questionable legality. Either way, if an OS was truly “open,” you’d be able to install any app you wanted.

Of course, in the long run, I can’t say that iOS is as open as Android, since Google’s mobile platform does allow a bit more customization and leeway with their OS, but there’s definitely plenty of restrictions that Android and iOS users regretfully share. Again, getting a Nexus device is pretty much the only way to go if you’re wanting a true Android experience in order to taunt your iOS counterparts effectively, but even then there’s plenty of setbacks that don’t exactly qualify Android users to scoff at the popularity of iOS jailbreaking — rooting Android unlocks just as many capabilities that iOS users get to enjoy when unleashing their iPhones and iPads.

Today’s wave of unconfirmed leaked information comes from Bloomberg where they’ve suggested that the development team has gone so far as to list some specifications and features as the device approaches release later this year. This wrist-bound device is supposed to be able to make and receive calls – like a phone or with an attached headset, check GPS location on maps, and work as a pedometer. This device would also be able to connect with Bluetooth to your iPhone or iPad, of course.

Image via Patently Apple-discovered patent application for an Apple-made wristwatch band.

But it’s not a Pebble that Apple will be aiming for. The company has seen the success – or perceived mad interest – that devices like the Pebble have had over the past year. They’ve also seen countless wristwatch modifications and straps for the iPad nano before this year. Then with the birth of the Lightning connector and the iPhone 5, Apple edged away from the square shape and once again made a more rectangular design.

So the square is back up for grabs and the wristwatch design language can be used for Apple in a future release. Why else would a perfectly good little square be kicked back up to a taller machine in the iPod nano?

The device I’d like to suggest Apple is making here I’d also like to code-name iCompanion. With this device you’ll be able to connect to a wrist strap if you’d like, but it’ll be marketed more as a go-anywhere display that attaches to you rather than just riding in your pocket as the iPhone does. When you’ve got a smartphone, you either purchase a special case to attach it to your belt, or you keep it in your pocket or purse.

With iCompanion, you’ll have your handset much more readily available at any given time as it’s on you at all times, not just with you. You’ll find this device working with the iPhone and the iPad, but it won’t be marketed as a little helper. It’ll be its own little beast, capable of processing power hearty enough to handle everyday tasks on its own, without assistance from the phone or tablet.

In the release of the iPhone 5, we saw a re-dedication to the fine art of timepiece design for Apple. If it wasn’t clear enough with the iPhone 4, the two iterations of the 5 showed Apple’s team of industrial designers to keep the faith with fine metals and attention to fine detail. We can expect this and a whole lot more in this next-generation iCompanion, complete with the knowledge and understanding that, more than ever, people will be getting up close and personal with the hardware and the software alike.

Have a peek at the timeline below to get a cross-section of ideas and concepts that have lead up to this moment in what very well be Apple’s imminent future. Let us know if you’re pumped up at the idea of a wearable device from Apple, too!

Why can’t I just wear a purse? I certainly can, there’s nothing illegal or wrong about it. In technology and gadgetry, there’s an assumed scale of masculinity to femininity. I don’t agree with the scale, and I generally try to ignore or actively buck these trends. Still, they exist, and here they are, laid bare.

First, there is the outright masculine end of the scale. Don’t think about male body parts, think Jeeps. Jeeps are very ugly and highly functional. They have little aesthetic decoration, but every detail serves a purpose. There is a teeter-totter of utility on one end and aesthetic on the other. As we give up utility in favor of beauty, our gadgets are widely perceived as more feminine. Add colors design finishes, start removing features and wanton capabilities of questionable benefit and you end up with a feminized device.

There is also a question of color, which makes far less sense to me. I’ll never understand how colors became gendered, in the same way I wouldn’t understand gendered flavors or gendered musical notes. Some colors carry an undeniable association with gender, though, even when the color seems completely neutral. Pink is the most obvious gendered color. Purple comes a close second. Mix colors with red, it seems, and you remove their male potency.

Some gendered colors surprise me. I remember the first product I purchased that carried a gender stigma of which I was unaware: the white iPhone 3G. I loved that device in that color. Black seemed too industrial. Black was too normal, like so many other smartphones on the market. It was uninviting and, frankly, for my tastes, too masculine. So, I shouldn’t have been surprised or embarrassed when I showed off my brand new iToy and was greeted with some harmless ribbing by my male colleagues. Even some women I showed it to, including my now-ex-wife, thought it was a bit too feminine, even for their own tastes. Personally, I just liked it better. When it comes to deciding which color gadget to buy, I make an entirely emotional decision. Whichever color appeals to me most at the moment I make the purchase is the one I take home.

I believe in the legitimacy of this emotional response to our gadgets, and that’s certainly what I was feeling when I decided to buy my new tablet a purse … I mean, a carrying case. I scoped out my favorite bag makers and decided on either a Tom Bihn Ristretto or a Waterfield Ultimate SleeveCase. Both seemed a little effeminate for my needs, but both were exactly what I wanted.

Here’s my full disclosure. Usually here’s where I mention day job is with Samsung blah blah blah. Today, though, I’m disclosing that my father used to carry a purse. A satchel. A man’s carry-all bag, in the European style. He had many of these, leather and canvas. His use of the purse predated tablets or even smartphones, so there was no form-fitted purpose to his carrying a purse. It simply made sense as a way to store his wallet, keys, StarTAC, and a few papers or receipts or whatnot. He gave it up a few years ago, and I have little doubt he was simply tired of the comments. He was tired of being labeled the guy with the purse. He still has the bags, stuffed away somewhere, holding onto receipts that predate Check Cards and email.

Why can’t I just carry a purse? Actually, I can. There’s nothing really stopping me except the ideas in my own head. I can ignore looks and comments from people around me and simply do what I like. It’s just that easy. Right? Unfortunately, no. We’re humans, and humans are coded to work better in groups. We hardwired to be acutely aware of those around us and how they are responding to us. We’re supposed to change and conform. We feel awkward. We stick out. In prehistoric cave times, this instinct keeps you from being culled from the herd by a hungry tiger. Today, it makes me feel awkward about carrying a purse.

It’s especially weird that I should feel awkward about this because I already own plenty of pink. I have pink iPods. I have pink phone cases (that I use with my big white smartphone). I have shirts and gadgets and decorations at home that veer into the feminine end of the color spectrum, though I wouldn’t say they are especially feminine in design, if there is such a thing.

There is also a strange divide between fashion and utility when it comes to bags. I may feel like my Ultimate Sleeve Case looks too feminine wearing it about, but it’s nothing compared to a Coach bag or a fancy Italian designer case. When a bag literally borrows materials and design accents from a famous women’s clothing house, it falls deeper into feminine territory.

At once, my free-thinking and liberal mind is watching all of the sinkholes open in my argument. The secularization of men’s and women’s clothing is problematic. My definitions of masculine and feminine in design, with utility on the masculine end and aesthetic on the feminine, is reductive and perhaps dangerous. It results in pink versions of under-specced phones with dangly accessories tacked onto them. There are problems with my color assignments, especially as color and design preferences vary greatly by culture.

I know it. I see the pitfalls. I understand this is an argument about which I’m hardly qualified to rave from a distressed male perspective. But the bottom line is that I just want to carry a nice purse. I love my tablet, I want to pare down so I can just carry my tablet and some essentials, and I want to sling that all over my shoulder. To meet my needs, I’ll buy whatever I need. I’ll just buy it in black, with some distressed hide leather. And I’ll get a really ugly, utilitarian strap.

Another oddity in our biggest hits of the week was an early tip we received from an intrepid early-entrant to the convention. The Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0 was photographed on a large screen standing proud at the massive Samsung booth that was opened early the next day. Even though Samsung really only “revealed” one new piece of hardware at the show, that single piece of hardware – and subsequent posts about that device’s power – ended up being more popular than many of our other hands-on and up-to-the-minute news posts.

From Brand New to Brand Reinforcement

While this year’s convention in Barcelona was larger than past years – at a new, larger venue with more floor space than ever – it ended up being commented on as more “dry” than shows in past years. That’s a rather subjecting thing to say, of course, but take note of massive releases at Mobile World Congress in the past, and you’ll see the trend. Instead of revealing brand new never-before-seen lines of devices and unique services at the convention, companies now appear to be showing more “here’s another from our already successful line” items – or no new hardware or software at all.

2010: The HTC Desire, Samsung Wave S8500 (with Bada!), Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10, Toshiba TG02 and K01, Acer Liquid e, and a whole lot more. [MWC 2010 tag portal]

2011: NVIDIA shows their Tegra roadmap and the superhero-themed code-names for processors we’re still seeing revealed today. Samsung reveals the Galaxy S II and Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. LG shows the LG Optimus Pad (aka G-Slate) and the LG Optimus 3D. HTC shows a collection of smartphones and a tablet, as well as the Facebook phones Salsa and ChaCha. Google shows up with Eric Schmidt to speak at a main keynote while the Google Pod exploded unto the collective minds of attendees. [MWC 2011 tag portal]

2012: HTC revealed their HTC One series with the HTC One X, S, and V. ASUS shows a full line of Android-powered beastly tablets. The LG Optimus Vu, Sony XPERIA P, and game-changing Nokia Lumia 808 with 41-megapixel camera were all revealed – see more Nokia action in our 2012 MWC Nokia wrap-up specifically. Samsung seems to have started the trend of revealing their hero devices outside of MWC here with just two reveals at the event, one of them being the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1. Qualcomm brought the Snapdragon S4 dual-core SoC, Texas Instruments showed the OMAP 5, and oddly, Microsoft showed up to bring on the Windows 8 Consumer Preview. Google again brought Eric Schmidt and another Google Pod. [MWC 2012 tag portal]

This year we saw ASUS show a new version of a concept they’ve released before in the ASUS PadFone Infinity and a re-skinned but perfectly recognizable 7-inch tablet called the FonePad – look like the Nexus 7 to you? (Incase you did not know, they made that too, revealing it in an early iteration back at CES 2012 at the NVIDIA keynote then re-revealing it at Google I/O 2012 as the Nexus 7.)

We also saw Nokia reveal two new smartphones that apply what they’ve learned with the Lumia Windows Phone 8 devices they’ve had on the market for several months to two new sizes: Lumia 720 and Lumia 520. Groups like HTC and Motorola decided against revealing anything new at all, with the HTC One having been revealed one week earlier than the conference and the Motorola RAZR lineup being the center of a rather low-traffic Motorola presence.

The folks at HP decided to take a swipe at creating a real-deal Android tablet (quite likely because of the odd success the HP TouchPad had after it was essentially given away post-WebOS cut) – have a peek at the HP Slate 7 and see the Beats grab hold again.

ZTE revealed a new rather large smartphone in the Grand Memo, here showing for the first time the Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 SoC – but the actual hardware won’t be in stores until the third quarter of this year. LG brought on a relatively impressive selection of devices including the LG Optimus G Pro – but that device was revealed well before the conference started as well. The only things LG actually revealed during the conference were items like the “world’s smallest wireless charger” and a bit of some (admittedly rather impressive) HD wireless transmission technology.

If you’ll have a look at each of the several hands-on posts we’ve got from LG, you’ll see that they’ve really only confirmed that they’re sticking with the design language they wrote with the still-popular LG Optimus G. These devices are going to be winners, but as far as LG revealing their biggest beasts of the year at MWC – that simply didn’t happen. A “true” replacement for the LG Optimus G will come later this year in an LG-run event separate from a press conference, we estimate – you can count on it. The most interested news this week touching LG was, without a doubt, their purchase of WebOS from HP – the repercussions of this have not yet begun to ripple!

Where are the heroes?

So you’ve got Google who, for the past two years, had set up a playland of Android bits and pieces throughout the convention, deciding here to continue to command like a sigil guardian. There was no official Google stand, but they were there – and they did hold one heck of a yearly party. You’ll see more of the Google Head Space action in our LG Optimus G Pro Photo Tour of MWC 2013 – complete with Tinie Tempah, Florence and the Machine, and one massive amount of bright lights and dancing Androids – and a Google Play lounge as well.

Samsung remained a magnificently massive force on the floor, even with but one new device – again, an expansion of a line they’ve been building for a while now. Samsung continued to drop massive amounts of cash on advertising around the city during the week (and beyond, we’re sure), and had what very well may have been the largest hands-on-centric booth at the convention. There’s some contention amongst analysts (and would-be analysts) who cannot decide whether Samsung has “abandoned” the show by only revealing one device or are supporting it more than ever with such a hearty floor presence – with devices, to be fair, not everyone there had seen before.

HTC had for the past several years used Mobile World Congress as their big blast-off point for the whole year. This year they – perhaps rather wisely – decided to have a launch a week before the Spain-based show. This way they were able to capture several days of press on technology news sites for themselves AND offer hands-on looks at the device – the HTC One – to convention-goers too.

The NVIDIA crew did indeed bring some fire to the show with hands-on looks at both a Tegra 4-toting developer tablet and the Phoenix Developer Platform smartphone, made specifically for Tegra 4i. I don’t know if I can drive this point home enough times, but here it goes again: while the Phoenix device was new, the main subject remained the Tegra 4i (and the Tegra 4), with NVIDIA letting the news about everything they had at MWC 2013 – more or less – out well before the convention started so as to keep more press time to themselves – more than they’d get on convention week.

Qualcomm also had a rather large presence on the floor with their vast array of demonstrations of both devices running their hardware and showings of what’s possible in the near future with services such as AllJoyn. Qualcomm’s biggest push this past week was, indeed, for AllJoyn and the “Internet of Everything” as it appears that we’re getting really, really close to the beginning of that connectivity hitting the market. As AllJoyn gets closer to real announcements of hardware manufacturer and developers being on-board, the AllJoyn Alliance begins its switch from just OeM/Developer outreach to public outreach so users know what it’s all about. See our features with both the President of the Qualcomm Innovation Center, Inc. Rob Chandhok and Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs as well as our Qualcomm tag portal for the full story.

But again, most announcements made were not for a brand new product or service, but for expansions of services and the strengthening of bonds – with the occasional smartphone or tablet reveal mixed in.

It’s the function of the convention that’s changing

While we’ve heard more than just a few people suggesting that this is the year the tech convention dies, I’d like to suggest a different possibility. The function of the tech convention is morphing. It’s the collection of reasons that hardware companies, software companies, developers, and the press head to these conventions and present themselves that’s changing.

In the past – for a while – a company would come to a large convention such as Mobile World Congress to reveal their newest products. Very recently, it’s become clear to many large companies that they’re able to get more attention – and prolonged attention – if they host their own separate event for each product they launch during the year.

The method of creating separate non-convention events held by manufacturers of hardware (and sometimes software) will soon be the unquestionably dominant expected way of things. They’ll also be the “reveal” point for any truly important product. For the press that’s able to travel to each of these events during the year, the larger conventions will grow less and less important to attend.

For everyone else, conventions like Mobile World Congress will continue to represent an opportunity to get hands-on time with products they might otherwise have to wait to see in stores – and they’ll continue to be great for networking person-to-person as well.

Evolution

For someone like you, the reader, this all means that you’ll get your hands-on looks at brand new devices spread out further throughout the year as opposed to having them all bunched up at CES, CTIA, MWC, and the like. And that’s fine with us!

Spread the announcement love more evenly across the year and we expect we’ll have a more tasty experience. Maintaining interest in the consumer technology universe through releases spread out over the year means a healthier – and less predictable – industry as a whole.

Or so we hope!

Have a peek at our [Mobile World Congress 2013 tag portal] to see everything we saw this year at the convention, and stay tuned to SlashGear for more. We’re expecting big releases from companies like Samsung, Motorola, and Google relatively soon – and that they’ll be breaking out the release love more frequently than restricting themselves to conventions such as these would otherwise allow. Excitement on the horizon!

At the same time, issues are arising at Apple. The company’s $700+ stock price is now in the $400s. And although the iPhone was able to outpace Samsung’s Galaxy S III in the fourth quarter, it appears to be fighting a battle against Android that it can’t win.

So, I pose this question: is it getting easier or harder to not buy Apple products?

Those who say it’s getting harder might be making a good point. Apple is delivering some of the best products out there, and it’s doing so in the industries that excite us most. For instance, Apple is delivering the most popular smartphone on the market as smartphones increasingly gain traction among consumers and enterprise users. And although several Android tablet vendors are trying to take down the iPad, so far, they’ve been incapable.

Even on the computing side, Apple is making it harder to buy competing products. The MacBook Air is still the best thin and lightweight computer on the market, and its software is top-notch. When compared to Windows 8, it’s getting harder and harder to buy a PC over a Mac. Apple has a secret weapon in its battle with Microsoft – Windows 8.

Others, however, disagree. They say that the logic that Apple is still making the best products in the mobile space and thus is the only worthwhile choice is outdated. They point to devices like the Samsung Galaxy S III, Google’s Nexus 10, the Amazon Kindle Fire HD, and others to prove their point. And although Android didn’t necessarily top iOS when it first launched years ago, it’s now delivering more (and perhaps better) features than its chief competitor.

On the PC side, Apple detractors point to the increasing popularity of Ultrabooks to question the desire to buy a Mac. Ultrabooks, after all, are well-designed and lightweight and later this year, will deliver tablet-like functionality, giving them an advantage over devices like the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro with Retina Display.

In the end, though, I still think Apple wins out. The company’s sales seem to indicate that people are still finding a lot of value in its products. And try as competitors might, they’ve yet to find a way to beat Apple in terms of design. And in today’s technology industry, that truly matters.

So, perhaps it really is getting hard to not buy Apple products. And Apple is laughing all the way to the bank because of it.

Soon, DVRs entered the marketplace and everything changed. My cable company provided me with a DVR, allowing me to record a show at a given time. Best of all, it was recorded on a hard drive, so I didn’t need to worry about using my tapes. The transition was incredible, and it was something that I thought could never get better.

[Image credit: Steve Garfield]

But then things got better. Each year, it seemed better software kept coming to my cable company’s DVR, and with a few upgrades here and there, the device seemed to work better. I even bought a TiVo and realized just how well that product worked.

But now things are different. Perhaps it’s because I’m spoiled or because I’m asking too much, but my DVR today sucks. And what’s worse, just about every DVR I’ve used is downright awful.

For a few days last week, my Motorola DVR has not recorded a single show, despite the fact that I have set it to record several series. Then suddenly, just yesterday, it started recording my shows as if nothing happened. It was a hiccup, my cable company said, and something that was worked out.

As happy as I am to see the fix, I know I’ve been in this position before. The DVR works well for a while and then suddenly, stops. In some cases, that means my hard drive gets filled up extremely quickly, despite the fact that I have only five shows saved. And when that happens, it doesn’t take long before shows I recorded have been deleted.

When my hard drive is functioning properly, I find that my series recordings get screwed up. And if I want to record too many shows at once, the DVR software doesn’t seem to follow the rules I’ve placed for hierarchy of importance.

I’ll freely admit that my TiVo, which is in another room, works much better than my cable company’s DVR. But even that product has its issues. Sometimes, for no apparent reason, the tuning adapter I need to have connected to the device stops working and my TiVo doesn’t record anything. I’ve also had TiVo delete shows I haven’t watched for, well, some reason.

I’ve come to the unhappy conclusion that DVRs, in far too many cases, are simply disappointing. And over the last few years, I haven’t seen the kind of improvements that would make me believe that the companies are trying to improve things.

Worst of all, I know I’m not alone. Just Google “DVR problems” and you’ll find millions of people suffering from the same woes as me. And each one of them has discovered that, as many complaint calls as they make, nothing changes.

So, I think it’s time for something new. The DVR is far from perfect and perhaps moving away from even satisfactory. DVRs suck. And unfortunately, I’m forced to live with them. That sucks, too.

Of course. First, let me tackle that last and most ridiculous point. It’s not a PlayStation launch if they didn’t show the hardware, right? No, that’s completely wrong. What is the hardware? It’s a box with a gaming computer inside and a bunch of ports on the outside. It should look reasonably attractive sitting underneath my television, but if it doesn’t I’ll just hide it behind something else, like my Xbox. It should be slim enough to fit in my cabinet, but my receiver is pretty big, so I don’t mind a little heft. Since the Xbox 360, design has become more important, as gamers realized they could have a console that wouldn’t offend the sensibilities of non-gaming spouses; but if this is a priority for you, you’ve gotten your priorities screwed up.

You know what I really want from my PlayStation box? I want it to play really freaking awesome games for the next 6 years. Every time I turn it on, I will spend exactly 5 seconds looking at the box and 30 minutes to 8 hours looking at the content it blasts onto my TV screen. If the box protrudes hairy tentacles and screams obscenities at me every time I turn it on, I can live with that if the games are good. If the ports are covered with Man-O-War tentacles that sting me every time I plug in a controller, I’ll buy some ointment and keep playing. If reaching into the box is worse than pushing my arm into the foul and stinking moist womb of Beelzebub’s mother, who the heck cares if it plays games that make me forget the horrors of my life and the cruelty of my own impending mortality for more than 15 minutes!?

If you care so much about the box, you are the problem with the games industry: style over substance.

For disclosure sake, my day job is with Samsung Mobile, so I know a thing or two about launches. As a former tech journalist, I covered Apple events and Nokia events, so I’ve seen the best and worst a launch event can be. But launching a phone is very different. The problem is that the tech press has grown accustomed to fast-paced phone launches. Every 4 weeks the coolest phone you’ve ever seen hits the market. The tech press is spoiled. They want cool hardware design, which is much more important with a phone. They want a full explanation of the device in 30 minutes or less. They want to leave the press room and walk into a store to buy it (or at least walk into their Brooklyn apartment to review a sample unit).

That doesn’t just mean that our press is jaded. That means you don’t have to say as much with each phone launch. You don’t have to detail every feature. You can build on what the audience already knows. You can highlight the new and confirm the old.

A phone is a very personal device. You will touch and caress it for the next two years. You will tell it your secrets, share your relationship photos, and stick it in your pants. When you buy it, you expect to know much of what it can already do.

Sony is not selling you the hardware. You need the hardware to play the games, but for the first year or so, Sony will lose money on the hardware. A lot of money; maybe a couple hundred dollars per console. Where do they make their money? Games. The money comes from the games they make internally and the licenses they sell to EA, Ubisoft, Blizzard and others.

So, when Sony hosts a launch event, they aren’t selling you on the box hardware. The box is a necessary evil to get you to buy and play the game. If you only bought the box and watched Netflix and never played any games, Sony’s PlayStation division would be out of business in this generation.

Games are a hard sell, especially when they cost $60 a piece, brand new. They cost as much to make as a Hollywood blockbuster, and like a hot movie they make most of their money in the first week they are available. What’s worse, the movie producers make a ton of money months later when the movie goes to DVD, but game producers don’t see that kind of profit. Why should Sony ever support used games with the economics of the gaming market already tilted so heavily against them?

At a PlayStation launch event, Sony needs to prove that a 20-60 hour game on unproven hardware is worth 4 to 6 times the price of a movie ticket. How can you possibly fault them for showing 2 hours of game previews? Sure, the jaded press in the audience will get bored, but diehard fans will pore over those previews for 7 months until the console is in stores.

Go ahead, Sony, be proud of your launch event and ignore the critics. Every one of them is a fan. They all lusted over at least one of those games, and lamented the beloved titles you didn’t show, but probably will at another 2-hour event at E3. The same press will complain again there, because it’s their job to by cynical; but they’ll be first in line to buy one. In the end, it’s not about the event, or the box. It’s all about the games.

But seriously, Sony, enough with the updates. Just let me play the game and forget that the rest of it – the box, the controller, the world – exists, even if it’s only for 30 minutes.

But all of that debate and all of the talk about the success or failure of devices like the Wii U make me question what the future looks like. We’re expected to see more game consoles hit the marketplace in the next year or so, and Steam is also planning to enter the fray. Add that to OUYA and the possibility of Apple gaming, and it becomes clear that the console market will only grow in the coming years.

All of that growth in the number of consoles might sound nice to gamers. But what if I told you that the future – the ideal future – would not rest on more game consoles, but on less?

The way I see it, a single, universal console should dominate the future.

I know I’m not the only person to ask for a universal game console, but I think it’s for the best. In order to get the most out of our gaming experiences, we’re forced to buy several devices costing hundreds of dollars. From there, we need to buy extra controllers and sign up for Web-based services. And that’s all before we even buy different games for the consoles.

In a world I’d like to see, all of that would be stripped away. We’d have just one new console to buy every few years and the top game publishers in the world would deliver titles for that device. We’d only have to buy one set of controllers and sign up for one online-gaming experience.

Industry observers might reason that such a scenario would actually hurt the gaming industry. After all, we’d be spending a lot less cash in that scenario than the current one, they say.

But is that really true? By saving all of the cash on hardware and online services, we might be able to dedicate the same amount of money to the games themselves. All of the savings would increase spending across the software market. The result? The possibility of an even stronger game industry.

Of course, which company would actually deliver the console is up for debate. Some might say that Nintendo is the best option, since it’s been building consoles for years. Others might suspect that Microsoft or Sony could get the job done. Even Apple might be a candidate.

The nice thing about a universal console is that it really doesn’t matter which company builds the hardware. In my dream world, gaming goes back to, well, gaming, and does away with the obsession with hardware.

The game industry needs to change. And it needs to realize that the console wars need to go. If they do, we all win.

Google is once again attempting to release a product in the Chromebook Pixel that’s representative of their Nexus state of mind. With the Nexus line of Android products, Google works with a manufacturer to create a smartphone or tablet (or other devices, in some cases) that presents a Google-only iteration of their software. With the Chrome operating system, Google already offers this experience on every single Chromebook that’s been released – so the job is already done.

So why release the Chromebook Pixel?

Google has already been working on Chrome (the web browser) for a touchscreen-friendly universe – they’ve even gone so far as to suggest dominance on Windows 8. It’s in that touch environment that we’ve already seen Chrome working… generally ok.

The internet is not ready for touch. The web was built – and continues to be built – with work in mind. Work and play, but play through a work-friendly interface. Chrome is attempting to change the way the internet is used by creating a home screen with a collection of icons that are large enough to easily be tapped by a human finger. There are touch-friendly web apps out there, but there’s a step between easy and confusing that still exists between the user and a fully touch-friendly Chrome OS.

If you’ll look back to October 20th, 2010, also known as the reveal date for Apple’s OS X 10.7 Lion, you’ll find that “Mac Meets the iPad” was without a doubt a theme of the day. The photo you see here of a real-deal touchscreen MacBook was seen once – and never heard from again.

There’s a reason for that.

With the Chromebook Pixel, Google has stepped out ahead of itself. Chrome has not yet proven itself as an operating system that’s ready to take a foothold in the modern work-oriented world, yet a $1,299 container for it seemed reasonable somehow or another. Google must have a special order ready for these machines or they’ve got something to prove to someone about their manufacturing finesse, because this is a machine I’d definitely not mind using with Ubuntu.

I’d recommend checking the Chromebook Pixel out at Best Buy, giggling, and thinking twice.

There are two rather polarized angles being tossed about this week as the Sony show (or no-show) of the PlayStation 4 was let loose. One side says it’s terrible that Sony made a 2+ hour presentation for the PlayStation 4 without actually showing the hardware, relying instead on the controller and a variety of promises from software developers to do all the talking. The other side says awesome! We know the PlayStation 4 is coming now, and we’ve got confirmation from some of the biggest-name developers that they’re on board, so we’re happy!

Here’s what we’ve actually got: a few details about the hardware, info about the PlayStation 4 Eye camera system and the Dualshock 4 controller included. We’ve got a collection of software titles and a few very brief demonstrations of what will be possible on the system. We’ve got Sony’s promise that Everything Everywhere will be their aim with the PlayStation 4 universe – cloud gaming and access for all devices included.

So what else do we need? We’ve got the hype – when your favorite hardware manufacturer creates a new version of the device you love and use every day, you’ll want that new system. We’ve got developer support – just as vital here as it is with a new operating system – perhaps even more so here since this isn’t a smartphone: the PlayStation 4 is made to play games first and foremost. We’ve got a Sony promise that this system will be their next hero system.

Do we really need to see the actual console? The piece of hardware that you’ll end up putting under your television, away from your eye and hidden anyway? This isn’t a smartphone, it’s not a tablet. It’s not a fashion accessory like those mobile devices end up quite often being. This is a video game console – and we don’t need to see it to want it!

Now there’s nothing wrong with making smartphone notifications more useful or easy to consume: that, after all, is why interest in Pebble and other smartwatches has been so high. Yet the initial promise of Glass had been so much more than that, harnessing the power of Android and ubiquitous connectivity and wearer-attention to augment your daily life in persistent ways a smartphone could never manage.

Okay, so the first promo video was ridiculously far-fetched, but as time went on – and the Google team members lucky enough to have access to Glass prototypes teased us with photos, videos, and sky-dives filmed using the headset – it began to look more like Glass was a camera first rather than a wearable computer. Those fears were compounded after early hands-on reports began to trickle out, with talk of little more than email alerts and other notifications dropping into the corner of your vision.

That seemed, frankly, a waste, and so it’s great to see a more realistic explanation of what Glass will do in Google’s new campaign. The display isn’t just a notification pane, it turns out, but a proper screen (albeit transparent) capable of showing Google search results, color navigation directions, and more.

Google Glass walkthrough:

Best of all, it’s very much a two-way stream of information. Glass isn’t just showing you data and then expecting you to pull out your phone to respond to it, as per most smartwatches we’ve seen, but uses voice commands of impressive complexity to operate. The instruction “OK Glass” apparently wakes the headset up, and then you can ask for Google searches, photographs and video, and even for language translations, with the headset discretely whispering the foreign phrases in your ear.

In fact, there’s little suggestion that the trackpad on the side of Glass plays much part, with Google showing only voice commands to navigate through the modified Android OS. It’s worth noting that the video chops together only the key features, however; the actual transitions between them – jumping back to whatever homescreen Glass has, and stepping through pages of search results, for instance – isn’t shown. That may well demand some touchpad stroking. There’s also the question of whether Glass works with touch controls alone, or if you have to give it vocal instructions: that could undermine discrete use of the headset, in situations when speaking out loud isn’t really acceptable. At least one of the pictures Google has freshly released today shows what appears to be an eye-tracking camera on the inside of the eyepiece.

One thing that’s clear already is that this isn’t really “augmented reality“, at least not as we generally conceive of it. Glass doesn’t modify your view of the world, or do any clever floating of glyphs or data around people or objects in your eyeline; it can’t change the way you see things. Instead, it’s more akin to a smartphone that’s been squeezed, extruded, and generally reshaped to fit your face rather than in your pocket: assisting your hunt for digital information, yes, but leaving it up to you as to how it integrates into your life.

Google seems keen to involve more than just developers in the latest round of Glass Explorer Edition presales; whereas only coders had the chance to slap down $1,500 back at Google I/O 2012, this time around the company tells us it’s looking for a more diverse group. In fact, the #ifihadglass campaign doesn’t even require those 8,000 picked to commit to producing their application suggestions. Instead, they’ll be selected on the basis of creativity, the social reach of them having devices (i.e. the scale of the audience they could preach the good Glass message to), and how compelling and original their ideas are.

There’s still plenty to be learned about Glass. Google has teased its cloud-based engine for the headset, but has otherwise said little about the development environment involved, and the biggest concern – battery life – is still conspicuously overlooked anytime the search giant mentions wearables publicly. We also don’t know when the Explorer Edition headsets will be released, though Google tells us that those people who ordered at Google I/O last year are first in line to get their units. Still, the huge amount of “geek” interest bodes well for the commercial launch, whenever that might be, and while Glass may not be the mainstream push for augmented reality we initially expected, the potential is still there to change the way we interact with the world – real, and digital – forever.

First the good news. The One feels excellent in the hand, and while people have commented that – in the leaked shots at least – it bears a resemblance to the iPhone 5, in the metal it’s very different. It’s one of the sturdiest, most premium-feeling Android devices we can recall, and that effort will hopefully pay dividends when it comes to distinguishing itself against other phones in-store.

It takes us back to the days of the HTC Hero, which was an incredibly exciting device, one that encapsulated the idea that Android was tremendously liberating in some way. That Google pushed out this platform which gave manufacturers great breadth of freedom to innovate on top of it. Android at the time looked relatively basic, and things like HTC Sense weren’t just reskins for the sake of differentiation but a completely new environment in which to operate.

Since then, of course, Google hasn’t been standing still. Most of the key elements that HTC introduced with Sense – the social networking integration, for instance – got gradually integrated into the core OS, and over time HTC’s software felt more like visual change for the sake of it. New UIs aren’t a bad thing in and of themselves – one of Android’s strengths is its flexibility, after all – but when they delay firmware updates then users unsurprisingly sour on them.

HTC One overview:

HTC has moved to address that, building in support for incremental updates into Sense 5, and giving its engineers the ability to tweak preloaded apps like BlinkFeed and the Zoe photography system without having to wait for a full ROM to be carrier tested and distributed. Meanwhile, the apps themselves are the most compelling we’ve seen on an HTC device for some time: BlinkFeed, and its “snackable” approach to news and social consumption does make some sense considering how people use their phones today, while Zoe – though initially confusing – gets more fun the longer you interact with it.

HTC could still shoot itself in the foot, if it doesn’t make good on its promise to develop what its shown us in fledgling status today. I’ve criticized the company in the past for introducing with solid ideas but then failing to capitalize on them – OnLive gaming, for instance, or Sense Online – and so while Sense 5 is a welcome revamp, only time will tell whether HTC has the sticking power to give it the refinement it deserves and the longevity users demand.

That’s not the big problem, though; that has a Samsung logo. The Korean company’s marketing spend around the Galaxy S III has been vast, and shows little sign of abating as the much-rumored Galaxy S4 approaches. No matter how good last year’s HTC One X and One X+ might have been – and we were pretty impressed at the time – they were simply buried by the Galaxy hype, to the point where the smartphone market became in effect a two-horse race: do you go iPhone or do you go Galaxy S III?

HTC undoubtedly recognises that marketing and promotion is its weak link; unfortunately, the knowledge you have a problem doesn’t put any more cash in the war-chest, and HTC simply can’t afford to match Samsung’s huge campaigns. That’s bad enough when you have devices, like the One X, which directly compete on specifications with rivals, but it’s a potential kiss of death when, in the case of the HTC One, you’re having to explain complex and confusing decisions you’ve made, such as UltraPixels and the whole Zoe system.

Specifications may “be dead” as we’re regularly told, but consumers still play spec-sheet bingo in stores, comparing the raw numbers of one to the numbers of another. Will they spend the time to figure out why HTC’s 4-megapixels might, in fact, be better than the 8- or 13-megapixels of another device? Or will HTC’s phone simply earn a spot at the bottom of the table?

The only way to compete on that front is education: teaching customer services reps how to teach would-be buyers why they should care about one thing and not just take numbers at face value. That’s not something HTC’s “Quietly Brilliant’ marketing strategy of old has proved particularly good at, and there’re expensive lessons to give, when few sales people will ever be criticized for recommending Apple or Samsung.

If all things were equal, the HTC One would be an inescapable contender in 2013. The hardware is incredible, the software a promising return to old form, and for once there’s a sense that a manufacturer has stopped to consider what users actually do, not what might sound best in “mine is bigger” advertising. Equality is a pipe-dream, though, and the HTC One will have to fight tooth and nail – and HTC make the very most of its limited marketing budget – if it wants to raise its head above the rest of the smartphone noise.

Find out more on the HTC One in our hardware hands-on, plus our rundown of Zoe and UltraPixels, and the new Sense 5 and BlinkFeed technology.