Bytes: What’s new in tech
Please Apple, don’t sell us out
Hey, Apple, said Jason Snell in Macworld, don’t become like Google. “Google is fundamentally an advertising company whose customers are ad buyers.” Apple, on the other hand, always prioritized the user experience, because its “customers are people who buy Apple devices and services.” Lately, though, it seems Apple is leaning in the opposite direction. Already, it is fumbling the ball. The company added ads to the App Store last month “in a move so universally reviled that Apple quickly backed away and paused what it was doing.” Now there’s news “it might stick ads into its Maps, Podcasts, and Books apps, joining ads already in News and Stocks.” I don’t believe all ad salespeople are the devil. But is anyone still left at Apple to champion the user experience?
Managing kids’ online lives
“Digital exclusion” is a new form of “underthe-radar” bullying kids have to deal with today, said Julie Jargon in The Wall Street Journal. Cliques are an age-old part of kids’ lives, but modern technology unfortunately makes it easier for kids to “see when they’re not part of the crowd.” Online exclusion—like leaving peers out of text chains, group chats, or after-school gaming parties—“is harder to discern” than other forms of bullying, like teasing and threatening, and it can more easily “be explained away by the people doing it” as a simple oversight. But parents who sense this “passive-aggressive” practice happening should “help their children recognize whether they were left out due to changing friendship dynamics” or if they are actually being bullied.
Inflated broadband charges
Most of the U.S. is paying way too much for broadband internet, said Russell Brandom in The Verge. An analysis of 22,000 internet bills collected from people around the country found that, on average, “folks pay about $75 a month for internet access.” Customers of some of the largest companies, like Verizon ($82), Spectrum ($78), and Optimum ($90), are paying more. That may sound normal to most Americans, but it’s not. People in London pay $40 a month. Frustratingly, it’s not necessarily the service that Americans are paying handsomely for—it’s the fees. These unavoidable surcharges are “the telecom equivalent of selling you a $5 sandwich and then adding a 50-cent ‘mustard fee.’” Xfinity’s fees alone come to $31 a month, while AT&T adds $25.