The internet will get a chance to remotely control one of Boston Dynamics’ $75,000 “Spot” robots this week thanks to a mysterious startup company. Not only that, the robot will even come equipped with a paintball gun for added mayhem.
And:
On Wednesday at 1pm ET, MSCHF will unleash Spot inside a small art gallery at its headquarters in Brooklyn. Users who visit the campaign’s website will get a chance to commandeer Spot for two minutes before another user somewhere in the world takes over.
There’s a picture of Spot with paintball gun attached via the headline link. The world wants this. I guess?
This is a nice little resource, built and maintained by Michael Steeber, worth a moment of your time. In a nutshell, it’s a deep dive into all the elements that make up the Apple Store.
For example, follow the headline link, tap on Boardroom, you’ll go to a page that introduces the concept of an Apple Store’s Boardroom (have you ever seen one?), with a few images, and a link to a detailed Boardroom article.
Hellman talks about ‘Discovery Mode’ – the feature where artists or labels can pay to have songs surfaced in Spotify’s radio and autoplay features, in exchange for a lower royalty rate. That caused some controversy when announced, so it’s interesting to hear Hellman’s claim today: labels taking part in the tests have “been able to find new listeners and grow audiences for artists on their roster: during pilot testing, on average Discovery Mode has helped these labels grow streams by 30%, resulting in higher royalty payments for artists opted into the test”.
“Hellman” is Charlie Hellman, part of Spotify’s artist tools team.
Discovery Mode sounds like a great deal, on the surface. Take a lower royalty rate, and you’ll get more plays. Even if you get more money in the short term, this seems like a bad thing for artists.
Here’s why: As artists take the lower royalty rate, especially if they get a lot of plays, the overall royalty rate will go down. This hurts artists as a whole. And saves Spotify money. Their total payout pool for artists goes down.
And what if an artist takes the chance, opts in to the lower royalty rate, and they end up not getting more plays. Will Spotify move them back to the higher default royalty rate in that case?
One more concern here is a lack of transparency to the listener. If you are listening to a Spotify stream, will you hear a disclaimer on a playlist for songs that take the lower royalty rate for the promotion of Discovery Mode?
We today got a more detailed report about what to expect in terms of 2021 MacBook Pro ports, with noted Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo saying we should expect both an HDMI port and an SD card slot. Coupled to his earlier report of a new MagSafe power port, that’s a pretty dramatic change to the current models, which have just USB-C ports and a headphone socket.
If Apple adds any/all of MagSafe, SD Card slot, HDMI to the rumored 2021 MacBook Pros, I can imagine they’ll sell more units (rumor mill says 25%-30% expected sales increase). And I can’t imagine someone turning away from the new MacBook Pros because they have too many ports.
Back to Ben:
But whether that’s an IO dream or nightmare depends on how Apple plans to implement the change.
Where’s the down side?
So one very real possibility, as raised by my colleague Benjamin Mayo earlier, is that the new ports come at the cost of reducing the number of USB-C ones. In which case I and others like me will be unhappy, as we’d be swapping out one or more multifunction ports – whose abilities include power and video connections – for single-function ones.
That’s a fair concern. But I think that ship has already sailed. I’ve been living with a 2020 MacBook Air with only two Thunderbolt / USB 4 ports. While I would like more ports, I’ve gotten used to living with two. I’ve got a hub that adds more ports that I rarely touch (mostly comes up when I want a peek at an SD card or flash drive). When I plug in my external display, I use the display’s built-in ports instead of a hub.
I can live with two USB-C ports. As long as Apple doesn’t go lower than two, but adds in extra ports, I’ve got no complaints. Though that does add more places for spilled coffee to go where it shouldn’t, but that’s on me.
Would I pay more for four USB-C ports, plus the extra ports? Not sure. An embarrassment of riches, that.
