TI 最后的晚餐

TI9 Boy: All right. Let’s come to today’s first topic on Apple Makes &`&the Best Smartwatch,&`& Not for Everyone .After several days of using the new Apple Watch, many reviewers called it "the best smart watch" but others wondered if the watch is for everyone.David Pogue is a technology writer at Yahoo Tech and a long-time fan of Apple products. Mr. Pogue wrote, "The Apple Watch is light-years better than any of the feeble, clunky efforts that have come before it. The screen is nicer, the software is refined and bug-free, the body is real jewelry." Girl: But he ended the review with, "You don&`&t need one. Nobody needs a smartwatch.After all, it&`&s something else to buy, care for, charge every night. It&`&s another cable to pack and track. Your phone already serves most of its purposes. With the battery-life situation as it is, technology is just barely in place to make such a device usable at all."After spending a week with the watch, Lauren Goode of Re/code observed, "Smartwatches can sometimes feel like a solution in search of a problem." Boy: Many Apple products are known for being easy to use. But technology experts say it will take some time for users to learn the new wearable device. FarhadManjoo of The New York Times wrote, "It took three days – three long, often confusing and frustrating days – for me to fall for the Apple Watch. But once I fell, I fell hard."Scott Stein of CNET magazine said he felt lost when using the watch. He wrote, "There are so many ways to interact: swiping, touching, pressing harder into the display, a button and a clickable digital crown-wheel. Girl: Plus, there&`&s Siri. Do I swipe, or click, or force touch or spea. Sometimes I didn&`&t know where an app menu was. Or, I&`&d find getting back to an app I just had open would require an annoying series of crown clicks, swiping through apps, then opening the app again."Like many first-generation products, the reviewers are disappointed with some features of the watch, like poor quality speaker on the watch and limited capability of third-party apps. And users need to have one of the latest iPhones to be able to use the watch. Boy:Geoffrey A. Fowler of the Wall Street Journal wrote, "if you can tolerate single-day battery life, half-baked apps and inevitable obsolescence, you can now wear the future on your wrist."Despite the negative reviews, many of the smartwatch reviewers agreed that Apple will still sell many watches to Apple fans.Joshua Toplsky of Bloomberg Business wrote, "Apple will sell millions of these devices, and many people will love and obsess over them." Girl: The watch will be available for pre-order online on Friday, April 10 at 3:01 a.m. EST for people in the U.S., Canada, Great Britain, Germany, France, Australia, Hong Kong, China and Japan.Customers will have to pay at least $349 for the least expensive model or as much as $17,000 for the Apple Watch Edition of "18-karat Rose Gold Case with Rose Gray Modern Buckle." Boy: For those who cannot wait or cannot afford an Apple watch, the Chinese website Alibaba is already selling the knockoff – or fake – Ai Watch, which looks very similar to an Apple Watch, for about $50. Girl: And then change our sight to Google’s Self-Driving Car Heading to Public Streets --This summer, the latest version of Google&`&s self-driving car will make its first appearance on public roads. The two-seat vehicle does not need a gas pedal or steering wheel.The prototype can drive, brake and recognize road dangers without human involvement.Google says the car is the first vehicle built for the purpose of self-driving.However, the new vehicle is not designed for long trips. Boy:It does not have air bags or other safety devices required by the federal government. It cannot go more than 40 kilometers per hour. The vehicle is electric and has to be recharged after 130 kilometers. And it can only drive in areas that have been thoroughly mapped by Google.Current California laws require all vehicles to have a steering wheel to guide the car and a gas pedal to control fuel use. The laws also require a driver to be able to take back control of a vehicle at any time. Girl:But, Google is working to change those laws.Google will first build and test 25 driverless vehicles in areas around the company&`&s headquarters in Mountain View, California. Then, the company plans to build more and expand testing to areas that have more hills and more rain. Eliminating human error(小标题停顿较久) Sergey Brin is a co-founder of Google. He says the computer-controlled cars can eliminate, or end, driving mistakes made by humans. Experts say 90 percent of the 1.2 million yearly road deaths are caused by human error. Self-driving cars could also improve areas of high traffic and especially help older people and disabled people. Boy:Google first announced that it was working on a driverless car in 2010. Mr. Brin says Google does not want to be a car company, but wants automakers to use its technology.Critics worry about the safety of having cars without human drivers. And, Google admits there have been minor accidents in the six years it has been testing autonomous cars. Chris Urmson says Google is proud of that record. Mr. Urmson is director of Google&`&s self-driving car project. He says that Google&`&s vehicles have completed about three million kilometers of testing. Girl: He says drivers in traditional cars caused all but one of the accidents. Can it be trusted?(小标题) Critics also question the dependability of self-driving cars. They wonder if the cars can be trusted to work all the time. They also ask if such cars appeal to people.In 2013, J.D. Power and Associates did a study of U.S. drivers. It found that only one in five was interested in a fully autonomous car.Mr. Urmson says Google needs to do a better job of educating people about self-driving technology. He also says Google needs to better inform the public about its progress with the technology. Boy:The company is building a website to do that. The site will include a monthly report that will include details of any accidents involving Google cars. It will also permit people to comment on any experiences they might have with the cars. Still a long way to go Google is not the only company developing self-driving cars. Mercedes-Benz, Infiniti and others already have highly developed driver assistance systems that require little help from a driver. Girl: But other automakers think self-driving cars will be made available feature-by-feature instead of all at once. They say this gives people time to adapt to self-driving technology.Mr. Brin says Google is still improving its plans for self-driving cars, but he&`&s excited about their possibility.Google hopes to have its driverless cars available in the next five years.