If you’re confused about or, like me, completely ignorant of the issues around Apple’s fight with the FBI on iPhone encryption, or if you just like smart people explaining technical issues to you, this primer on the particulars by Ben Thompson is what you want to read.

Tim Cook explains Apple’s decision to challenge the FBI’s demand to provide a back door to the iPhone.

While we believe the FBI’s intentions are good, it would be wrong for the government to force us to build a backdoor into our products. And ultimately, we fear that this demand would undermine the very freedoms and liberty our government is meant to protect.

People like to use the 1984 ad against today’s Apple and it’s sometimes appropriate. But their stance on privacy totally lives up to that ad.

Mattel picked some brilliant old-school naming with their upcoming 3D toy printer. And, unlike its predecessor (as discussed on Turning This Car Around), this one includes safety features to make sure kids don’t burn themselves. Not that burning yourself and huffing Goop fumes doesn’t build character.

On last week’s episode of America’s randiest dadcast, we talked about timeouts and breakfasts.

The Hollywood Reporter:

Apple is making its first original television show. The Hollywood Reporter has learned that the technology giant is backing a top-secret scripted series starring one of its own executives, Beats co-founder and rap legend Dr. Dre.

Huh. I don’t even know what to say about that. I’m certainly not going to make a “Forgot about Dre” joke. So overplayed.

Smirror, Smirror on the wall, who’s got the freshest, easiest access to pertinent data of them all?

Walt Mossberg calls out several examples of Apple’s software failing the “It just works” test. I think this is a pretty reasonable rebuke that notes the problems without making unfounded conclusions based on them like Apple being in a slow, inevitable decline that started when Steve Jobs died because, as we all know, he personally conducted code reviews on everything.

I do feel like Apple isn’t quite as good at this as they used to be, although it’s impossible to quantify. Maybe it’s scale, maybe it’s focus, I don’t know what it is. But at the same time, I’ve used some of their competitors’ software and I certainly wouldn’t say it’s any more reliable or user-friendly. Parental controls on my son’s Windows 10 machine just up and stopped working one day. Site blocking just didn’t work anymore. Checking Microsoft’s support forums I found people complaining about this all the way back to Windows 7. Meanwhile, his Live account is completely borked and is inaccessible on our Xbox. Every attempt to access it loads a whimsical Xbox character that says “Uh oh… that shouldn’t have happened. It appears you’ve found a glitch in the system. Please try again later.” Like the error isn’t aggravating enough, having it delivered by a cartoon is adding insult to injury. Also “later” in this context apparently means on a geological scale because no amount of waiting clears it up.

Microsoft’s screw-ups don’t excuse Apple’s. But it doesn’t seem like these companies have learned yet how to perfectly manage an increasingly complex and interconnected set of devices, profiles and data.

I would love to have something like this. With the exception of the political news which make me drive a fist through it. More like 4-8 years bad luck, amirite?

UPDATE: Here’s another one made with Raspberry Pi, Ubuntu and the Chromium browser instead of Android.

IDC:

“One of the biggest reasons why detachables are growing so fast is because end users are seeing those devices as PC replacements,” said Jean Philippe Bouchard, Research Director, Tablets at IDC. “We believe Apple sold just over two million iPad Pros while Microsoft sold around 1.6 million Surface devices…”

That’s a good sign, although it wasn’t enough to counteract the slide in iPad sales last quarter. At least it seems to have been well-received in the professional tablet niche.

Overall the tablet market was down 13.7 percent. Amazon was up, although it’s a little easier when you’re practically giving them away. Most shocking, however, is news that Huawei makes a tablet. Apparently. Very surprising.