Episode Summary

This week on The Digital Life, we chat about Apple and the state of its software design. Is Apple off the rails? Is Google nipping at its heels? You could argue that Google is getting better at design at the same time Apple is getting worse.

An interesting article on Fast Company by Don Norman and Bruce Tognazzini, “How Apple is Giving Design a Bad Name” sets the stage for this discussion. With the mobile iOS, Norman and Tognazzini argue that Apple has abandoned some of the fundamental principles of good design including discoverability, feedback, and recovery.

In contrast, Google is doing some interesting things with its Android OS. Experimental design is part of the conversation and the company is unafraid to evolve in the open.

Resources
How Apple is Giving Design a Bad Name
Google Design

 

Episode Summary

In this episode of The Digital Life, we explore Google’s corporate transformation to holding company Alphabet, what that means for unleashing innovation in the company, and how that effects the firm’s chief technology rivals, Amazon and Apple. So far, Wall Street has loved the move and the company has increased its worth by $20B.

Alphabet is well-positioned to be the dominant emerging tech company of the 21st century, with fingers in the IoT, wearables, self-driving cars, robotics, and genomics. But what does that dominance mean for our data, when innovation is reliant on advertising revenue for financial fuel?

Resources
G is for Google
Google confirms Life Sciences as the first new company under the umbrella of Alphabet

Episode Summary

In a perfect world our health information provider would be a non-profit that worked with every technology provider, creating a single open platform that was easy and available to all. In reality, health is becoming the battleground of the mega-corporations with two of the most important technology companies, Apple and Google, right at the center of it. Join us, in this episode of The Digital Life, as we discuss the state of mHealth, and the implications of the recent forays of Apple and Google into that complex software space.

Episode Summary

The era of Cloud Computing is upon us, or so we’re told. But what does it really mean to convert all of your digital communication, documentation, and collaboration to cloud based applications? What sounds easy in theory, could be another thing entirely in practice. What of security and privacy concerns? Document compatibility and accessibility? What of the user experience itself? Can a professional really survive and thrive in solely a cloud environment? Join us as we discuss this topic with Jon Shafer, game designer extraordinaire, who has made the full switch to the Google Cloud.

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