Tech:

Vlad Savov (The Verge) on the “Apple Bias”

The funny thing is that everyone’s right. Readers are right to claim that the iPhone is treated differently from other smartphones, and reviewers are correct in doing so. Apple makes more in quarterly profit than many of its mobile competitors are worth, and the success and failure of its smartphone plays a large role in shaping the fate of multiple related industries. The iPhone is reviewed like a transcendental entity that’s more than just the sum of its metal, plastic, and silicon parts, because that’s what it is.

Interesting read from somebody who’s on the reviewer side of technology.

Dan Moren (Six Colors) on His Apple Watch Usage 5 Months In

In practice, I use almost none of them. Sending sketches fell by the wayside a couple weeks in. I take the occasional phone call, but doing so on the Watch is almost never the best experience. Siri generally takes a couple tries to respond, so I end up using my iPhone, or, well, Alexa. Most of the apps are too slow and too limited to be of significant benefit to me. I vastly slimmed down my number of Glances, both because having a huge number of them was practically unusable and because most of them took too long to be useful. (I may have to revisit both apps and Glances under watchOS 2 to see if they deliver on promised performance improvements.)

Dan’s experience with the Apple Watch staggeringly matches mine, almost line for line.  Dan specifically mentions that this piece isn’t meant to be disparaging, and I agree.  It’s just the reality of a very new platform and a very new product category.   I love my Watch, and I wear it every day from the time I get up to the time I go to sleep.   The only specific difference between Dan’s experience and mine is that I LOVE everything about the fitness including the lack of social features.  As a person who’s been severely out of shape for my entire life, having a device like the Watch constantly tracking my activity without any social pressure at all has made a gigantic difference in my health and by extension, my life.

Sports:

Adrian Wojnarowski (Yahoo! Sports) on Lakers Julius Randle

Randle is forever grateful about the way his boyhood idol climbed down from the posters on his bedroom and into his basketball life.

“The biggest person to help get me through this was Kobe – by far,” Randle says.

But I thought Kobe Bryant is a terrible teammate and a cancer in the locker room?  I’m not expecting a lot of wins from the Lakers this year but I sure as hell am excited about watching Jordan Clarkson, Julius Randle, and D’Angelo Russell grow together this year.  This piece was great discussing the hardships Randle has faced after missing last year due to his injury.

Bryan Toporek (Bball Breakdown) on Demarcus Cousins

So, no, the Kings haven’t been lighting the world on fire during Boogie’s five-year tenure with the team, but don’t go blaming him for their maladies. Sacramento’s net rating was actually slightly positive (plus-0.1) when Cousins was on the court this past season, but everything went to hell when he was off the court, as the team’s net rating plunged to minus-8.3. Seeing as Cousins had the second-highest net rating of any regular rotation player last season, trailing just Darren Collison, the team’s dismal record doesn’t fall on him.

A very thorough breakdown on one of my favorite players in the league.  I have no idea what to think about the Kings this year, but I know I’ll be watching their games to watch Boogie do his thing.

Lindsey Adler (Buzzfeed) on Ricky Williams’ Pursuit of a Doctorate in Psychology

“I find my biggest challenge is getting people to let go of me as a football player and be willing to consider me as that and something else,” Williams said during an interview on UT’s campus in June. “But for most people, being a professional football player is like the pinnacle of their imagined life or actual life. For me, as much as I tried to make it that, it just hasn’t worked. I still want more.”

Fascinating post-retirement development for a fascinating player with a fascinating career.

Podcast:

The Lowe Post – Baxter Holmes [67 minutes]

Zach Lowe (my favorite basketball podcaster and writer) of Grantland spoke with Baxter Holmes (ESPN.com) about covering the Lakers and his general career path on this great podcast. Baxter is a relatively new LA writer whose coverage of the Lakers I have thoroughly enjoyed. I was very interested when they discussed Baxter’s Native American heritage and their subsequent discussion of the term “Redskin”. In June 2014, Baxter wrote about that specific subject for Esquire Magazine.
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