Alise Branch

And its users are suffering for it Is YouTube a music service or a movie rental store? A space for news outlets or beauty vloggers? Is it for video essays or game streamers? For years, Google has wanted the answer to be a simple, “Yes, all of the above.” Today’s shutdown of the YouTube Gaming hub shows the actual answer is a lot fuzzier than that. YouTube occupies a unique position somewhere between a TV-like service — where it gets its name — and a social network. Its core function of hosting and sharing videos is useful to a wide variety of communities with wildly different needs...

Compare this to other electronics categories and the lack of product diversity is stark. If you were to buy a new laptop today, a salesperson might ask you what you want to use it for. Do you want something you can use to draw? Maybe you’ll be interested in something like the Surface Book 2 with a touchscreen, stylus, and detachable keyboard. Want to do some gaming? How about this beastly Alienware laptop? Need to do video editing or graphic design work on the go? A Macbook Pro with its crisp Retina display and customizable touch bar might be up your alley...

The iPhone 11 and Galaxy Note 10 follow an established playbook, leaving consumers with few truly unique options This week, Apple announced its latest iPhones, including the photography-oriented iPhone 11 Pro. It has all the bells and whistles that a semi-professional could want from their phone. For dedicated mobile photographers, it might be an exciting release. But at a time when hardware innovation has slowed down, they’re the only niche Apple seems to pander to. In recent years, the design...

On Monday, Instagram announced it would give creators the ability to schedule posts up to six months in advance. The new feature enables creators to decide when, exactly, images will publish to their feed, as well as IGTV videos. There’s just one catch: In order to get access to the scheduling features, you’ll need to already have a Facebook Page for your business. In other words, it’s aimed more at brands, artists, and celebrities with significant followings — a move that suggests that the social network, like the Facebook of years past, will emphasize commerce over individual users...

Google Stadia and other platforms need all the help they can get Streaming platforms like Google Stadia may be the future of the video game industry, but here in the present, it’s unclear if sluggish home internet speeds are up to the task. Bethesda, the publisher behind games like Fallout and Doom, hopes to fix that with its new Orion service. It promises to do what broadband providers can’t, or won’t: make it easier to serve homes that don’t have great internet connections. Orion is geared toward...