If it’s going to get you from Los Angeles to San Francisco in 30 minutes, it’s going to be fast, that’s for sure.

If it wasn’t Elon Musk pitching this idea, I’d call foul — but when you look at Musk’s previous endeavours, Hyperloop starts to look less like a question of “Really?” and more like a question of “How much?” and “When?”.

If you already know what IFTTT is, you’ll be extremely excited about this frankly gorgeous app. All the power of IFTTT in your pocket. Plus, the design smells very much like iOS 7 to me.

If you don’t know what IFTTT is, check out this simple guide — you’ll probably fall in love.

Tom Warren reports for The Verge:

The Lumia 1020 is a big upgrade over Nokia's previous Windows Phone efforts for one reason alone: a 41-megapixel camera.

Okay, that’s cool. What else has changed, though?

Camera aside, the Lumia 1020 is largely unchanged from the specifications of Nokia's Lumia 920 and 925.

Huh.

I can’t help but feel Windows Phone is in for a tough time ahead. If the flagship hardware device for WP is seeing no CPU change this generation and there’s not going to be an update to the software until next year, it won’t be easy for Microsoft to claw back any market share.

This can’t be good for anyone. Remember: even when an update is released, carriers will likely delay the update getting to users, so it could be up to a year until Windows Phone is next updated.

Ouch.

“We are seeing the PC market reduction directly tied to the shrinking installed base of PCs,” Gartner analyst Mikako Kitagawa said in the statement. “In emerging markets, inexpensive tablets have become the first computing device for many people, who at best are deferring the purchase of a PC.”

This can’t be good news for Microsoft: they won the desktop PC market, but they’re not winning the smartphone or tablet market.

In short? It’s great. The long version is available by clicking the link above.

Fantastic collection found via reddit. Here’s my favourite: Albert Einstein in fluffy slippers.

Ouch.

Owen Williams calls it how he sees it:

It’s easy enough to argue that the iPhone 1, for example, shipped without many features we have today as they were added over time, but Apple at the time were creating their own market. The popular phones were the kind that flipped and slid open, or had a stylus. Microsoft is executing the same strategy – release now, fix later – that their competitors use but they’re five steps behind the rest.

Designing a product is keeping five thousand things in your brain and fitting them all together in new and different ways to get what you want. And every day you discover something new that is a new problem or a new opportunity to fit these things together a little differently.

And it’s that process that is the magic.

Frederic Lardinois, for TechCrunch:

Windows 8.1 represents a chance to fix some of the issues with Windows 8. The fact that Microsoft is bringing back the Start button and now allowing users to boot right into the desktop is a sign that the company has been listening to its users. In many ways, 8.1 — even in this Preview version — is what Windows 8 should have been.

It looks like Windows 8 is full of fixes, rather than new features. I can’t fault Microsoft for improving their product based on customer feedback, but it is a shame there are so few new and exciting features for users. Frederic agrees:

It’s a shame that many of the features Microsoft is introducing now weren’t in Windows 8 already.

My take? Windows 8.1 is what Windows 8 should have been.

Translation: “Microsoft willing to sell Surface RT at less than half price because nobody wants to buy one.”

Alex Wilhelm:

The company quite obviously has stock on hand to distribute.

Quite.