robertbrothers

I will never use PodCasts on the Spotify platform because they don't allow any music / remix podcasts such as the widely popular Anjuadeep or Group Therapy podcasts.

I understand from a business perspective why Spotify would't want to carry music podcasts, but this is shortsighted, as I use these shows to discover new music which I eventually add to my Spotify playlists.

Spotify will never embrace the free market of podcasts and artificially restrict them to information / talk only.  So sorry Spotify, nice try but you'll never get me and millions of other Podcast listeners. 

I "curated" a niche-porn Tumblr blog which means I clicked "like" on the pics I liked and "shared" the ones I really liked. I got 1,000 followers. I tried briefly to monetize it with an affiliate link, but hundreds of referral clicks never translated into any payouts. My Tumblr blog was just one of probably hundreds of thousands of others. Everyone I know who used Tumblr has used it for these fantastic curated porn feeds.

I am not sure who Tumblr thinks they are, they WERE a porn purveyor. Verizon, the new owner, is implementing a really draconian / chilling policy. There is NO reason why they could not have built in additional safeguards to keep underage porn off of Tumblr, for example. They never put the time or effort into curating their user feeds, and now in a tantrum have decided to banish all nudity. This accomplishes exactly nothing but kill their platform, and drive users to the next platform. 

The cat is out of the bag, people will find their porn elsewhere. I enjoyed the Tumblr feed format because it wasn't infested with all the virus-laden pop-up ads out there in the wild on other porn sites. 

My last point is this:  Apple shouldn't be the moral arbiter of what appears on its product. This is the beginning of a very concerning trend whereby the government and private industry watches and monitors what we view. In China they're giving you social scores now that will restrict your options in life based on such factors. Today its naked people they want to banish, tomorrow it might as well be democratic activists or whoever our near-fascist leadership has decided to go after.

The Tumblr porn ban is a free-market failure, and an ominous portent of things to come. Once they start controlling what we can see, the next thing they'll come after is what we think. 

This watch is gorgeous and I want it, even as an S3 owner. According to rumor ALL of the new models will have 3G capabilities, and if they can eek more battery time out of the S4 I will in all likelihood begin to use it as an "iPhone lite" especially when exercising or just running out on errands. Most days I do no voice at all, but on the other hand, some days I need to talk for two hours. If I could get two hours talk time, its a no brainer. As far as the increased screen size, this is going to be HUGE. I am partially visually impaired in one eye, and every little bit counts. And anyone over 40 knows that the interfaces designed by 20-something UI designers really push the limits of visual acuity. This generation watch has all the feel and markings of a "tour de force" and the devil is in the details. Even though we've seen leaked images already, I am fully prepared to be blown away by some of the improved specs and capabilities. "Hey Siri" capability and talking Siri is going to be a game changer. Thank you Apple for continuing to innovate and pour resources into this space, as I recall the first year after the AppleWatch as being quite brutal; everyone was declaring the watch "DOA" and even saying Tim Cooks first product launch was a total failure, both of function and design. AppleWatch series 4 is the Apple I love at its very best: The "underdog" who doggedly focuses on form and function, bringing out quantitative improvements until suddenly they are QUALITATIVE. I cannot prove it yet, but from everything I see and read, this generation is a game changer. I know its too much to hope for a price reduction, if anything they will stay the same or get higher in priced. A note about the "cluttered" interface: "Clutter" only exists when processing new information. Our visual "muscle memory" is able to quickly grab exactly what we need, and having so many complications perfectly customized to our needs is going to make the AWS4 the equivalent of a personal dashboard. And with better health monitoring its going to not only connect us with the world, but possibly help keep us in it. Bravo Apple.