Harry McCracken

Polaroid’s new jam is music

Even without their logos, you might be able to identify them as Polaroid products. They’re all emblazoned with the company’s “spectrum” stripe of rainbow colors and have white plastic cases and big red buttons linking them to other Polaroid devices…

Slack’s brand-new feature has an unexpectedly rich backstory

In the fall of 2014, Slack was the hottest startup in software. And that September, it went through a hot-startup rite of passage: It made its first acquisition. The company it bought, Spaces, had only two employees. They’d built a tool for sharing…

Everything you always wanted to know about the metaverse

Last April, the Coca-Cola Company issued a triumphant press release announcing that it had introduced a soft drink in the metaverse. The 136-year-old beverage maker touted its latest concoction, Coca-Cola Zero Sugar Byte, as “transcend[ing] the…

Exclusive: Zoom CEO Eric Yuan on how the company is going way beyond video calls

“Zoom is sort of like a verb when it comes to videoconferencing, right?” That’s Eric Yuan, the founder and CEO of Zoom, speaking—and a moment later, he retracts the claim: “I guess that’s too strong.” But he was right the first time. Thanks to its…

Twitter really is about to let people edit their tweets

2022 has been Twitter’s weirdest year yet, but here’s news that will make some people very happy: The company says that paying Twitter Blue customers in New Zealand will get access to an edit button later this month. A broader rollout will come…

Google is teaching robots to think for themselves

I’m standing in a kitchenette at a Google office in Mountain View, California, observing a robot at work. It’s staring at items on a counter: bubbly water, a bag of whole-grain chips, an energy drink, a protein bar. After what seems like forever, it…

6 things I learned by going all in on iPhone photography

I have been taking pictures with cell phones since August 2003, when I splurged on a Nokia 3650, one of the first camera phones sold in the U.S. Since then, I’ve shot untold thousands of phone photos—in recent years, mostly with iPhones and the…

Steve Jobs’s signature is part of an amazing tech autograph collection up for bid

On November 30, 1988, members of the Boston Computer Society (BCS) filled that city’s Symphony Hall to capacity. They were there to see Steve Jobs demo the NeXT cube, the remarkable computer from the startup he’d founded after being ousted from Apple…

Slack’s Huddles do video now—but they’re still no Zoom wannabe

Last July, Slack unveiled a new real-time collaborative feature called Huddles. It offered audio-only conferencing optimized for informal, on-the-fly conversations—and felt like manna for anyone who was weary of video conferencing via Zoom and…

How excited should anyone get over Meta’s VR headset prototypes?

Last week, during a virtual “Inside the Lab” presentation for tech reporters, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other executives showed off a bevy of prototype virtual-reality headsets developed by the company’s Reality Labs Research group. This…

At WWDC, Apple finally turned all its devices into one big platform

Once upon a time, Apple’s business was centered around the Mac, and nobody expected the company to update its operating-system software more frequently than once every other year or so. For example, the Mac’s OS X Tiger update arrived in April…

‘If we grow Reddit, we are going to make the world a better place’

When Reddit decided to hire its first chief product officer last year, one of the first candidates that cofounder and CEO Steve Huffman spoke with was Pali Bhat, the VP for product management and design at Google Cloud. Huffman was impressed—but he…

Microsoft Teams’ new feature goes way beyond passive screen sharing

If you feel like you’ve spent the last couple of years talking to your colleagues inside your business’ video-meeting app of choice—be it Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, Webex, or something else—you’re not alone. But when you’re in one of these…

This new technology reveals classic iPods from the inside out

So many successful tech products get called “iconic” these days that the honorific has been seriously devalued. In the case of Apple’s iPod, however, it’s a perfect fit. And if you conjure up a classic iPod in your mind, you’re probably envisioning…

The Apple Watch is about to get more accessible, in a whole new way

Ian Mackay has a home full of smart gadgets—from lights to fans to window shades—and runs them all from his iPhone and HomePods. “I use Apple technology for pretty much everything that I can,” he says. But even though he’s an Apple power user par…

Sorry, Apple, the iPod Touch was never really an iPod

It’s rare for a tech company to issue a press release announcing that it’s discontinuing a product—especially one whose profile had already eroded into near invisibility. But there’s no mystery about why Apple chose to formally acknowledge that it’s…

Meta’s first store takes on a basic problem with selling new tech

Sooner or later, every tech giant decides to get into the retail business. There’s Apple, of course, whose 500-plus stores rank among its greatest, most disruptive successes. But also Microsoft (twice). And Google, Amazon, Samsung, and Sony. And now,…

Slack is definitely part of Salesforce now, and here’s proof

Once upon a time, Slack was a sort of Switzerland of workplace productivity—a central collaborative hub that offered an array of integrations with other business tools rather than competing with them or treating one third-party offering differently…

So tell us, Elon Musk: What do you plan to do with Twitter?

Incoming Twitter overlord Elon Musk believes that the service he plans to buy for $44 billion should open-source its algorithm. Good! Even if most of us aren’t in a position to assess how Twitter thinks for ourselves—even if the computer scientists…

As Polaroid’s SX-70 turns 50, instant photography is booming

Fifty years ago today, photography changed forever. The 3,000-something people assembled at a Polaroid warehouse in Needham, Massachusetts were the first to hear the news from Polaroid founder/president/resident genius Edwin H. Land himself, who…