If a tech company wants to be loved, it needs to give people something physical
Marc Andreessen’s pithy observation that "software is eating the world" has been popular (and true) for more than half a decade now, but I’ve come to find it only describes the development of the tech industry partially. Even as apps like WhatsApp, Snapchat, and Uber turn startups into multibillion-dollar ventures, there’s still a hardware component underlying all of them. As the battle for future mobile users shifts to the realm of personal assistants and machine-learning automation, there’s still a physical object that all of that software runs on.
As a technology reviewer, I’ve always cared more about the physical device. How big are the bezels around the screen? Is the USB port at the bottom smooth and polished or does it cut into my...