Browse our complete collection of questions and answers.
How the switch registers a keypress and what it feels like doing so — described by three broad families, plus a set of measurements that matter more than the family name. The three families: Linear.
Haptic feedback is physical sensation produced by a device to communicate information — and the enormous difference in quality between devices comes down to the type of motor used, which is a
Most camera sensors do not capture the whole image at once. They read it out line by line, from top to bottom, over a few milliseconds — and anything moving during that sweep is recorded at a
Three related things people conflate: gaining administrator access on a device, removing manufacturer restrictions, and allowing different system software to be installed. The bootloader is the first
An eSIM is a SIM embedded in the device and programmed remotely, rather than a removable card. It does the same job; what changes is how you obtain, install and move it. What a SIM actually is. A
An IMEI is a unique identifier for a mobile device — the International Mobile Equipment Identity — and blacklisting it prevents that specific handset connecting to mobile networks, regardless of
A movement and a set of laws requiring manufacturers to make products repairable — through availability of parts, tools, information and design that permits disassembly. The problem it addresses.
USB Power Delivery (USB PD) is the standard by which a charger and a device negotiate how much power to transfer; PPS is an extension allowing that to be adjusted continuously rather than in fixed
Gallium nitride is a semiconductor material replacing silicon in the switching components of power supplies — and its properties allow chargers to be considerably smaller, cooler and more efficient
Reasonably good for comparing and tracking, and not good enough for billing disputes — which is the distinction that determines what you should use one for. How they measure. A smart plug with energy
Nits measure luminance — how much light a display emits per unit area — and the figure matters most for two things people rarely connect: outdoor readability and HDR. What the number describes. One
They are now closely related — USB4 was built on Thunderbolt 3's donated protocol — but Thunderbolt imposes stricter mandatory requirements, which is why two ports that look identical can behave very
A device letting one keyboard, video display and mouse control several computers, switching between them with a button or a key combination — the name is an acronym for exactly that. The problem it
A compression technique that stores colour information at lower resolution than brightness, exploiting the fact that human vision is far more sensitive to brightness detail than to colour detail. It
Bitrate is how much data is used per second of video — and it frequently determines picture quality more than resolution does, which is why a 4K stream can look worse than a Blu-ray at 1080p. The
The codec determines how the video is compressed; the container is the file format holding the compressed streams together. .mp4 is a container — it tells you almost nothing about what is inside. The
OIS moves hardware to counteract shake; EIS crops and adjusts the image in software. They address the same problem differently, and increasingly appear together. Optical image stabilisation (OIS).
The aperture — how wide the lens opening is relative to its focal length — and the scale is counterintuitive in two ways that confuse almost everyone at first. The two confusions: Lower numbers mean
Using processing rather than optics to produce an image — capturing multiple frames and combining them computationally, which is how a phone with a tiny lens produces photographs a small sensor
Yes, by a considerable margin — and the megapixel number is the figure most heavily marketed and least informative about image quality. What megapixels actually determine. How many pixels the image
Whether the business is legally separate from you — and that single question drives liability, tax, admin and how you get paid. Sole trader. You are the business. No legal separation. Liability is
Insolvency is a financial state; administration and liquidation are formal procedures. Confusing the state with the process is why the terms are used so loosely in reporting. Insolvency. A company is
Considerably more than most people expect, and it is free for anyone to search — competitors, customers, journalists and members of the public included. What is always public: Company name, number,
They are legally different transactions, taxed differently, subject to different conditions — and the common advice to "take a small salary and the rest as dividends" is a simplification that depends
When your taxable turnover crosses the registration threshold in any rolling twelve months, or when you expect to cross it within the next thirty days alone — and the detail of how that is measured
Yes, in specific circumstances — and considerably less than the people insisting on one usually believe, particularly when the thing being protected is an idea. What an NDA does. Creates a
Four separate rights protecting different things, with different registration requirements and durations. Businesses routinely rely on the wrong one. Copyright. Protects original creative expression
The articles are the company's public constitution; a shareholders' agreement is a private contract between the shareholders. They do different jobs and most companies with more than one owner need
In the UK, seven duties are set out in statute — the Companies Act 2006 — and they apply to every director of every company, including a sole director of a small one who may never have read them. The
Less than most people assume. A limited company is a separate legal person, so its debts are its own — but there are substantial and routine exceptions, and the ones that matter most are usually
A business model describes how the whole business creates and captures value; a revenue model is the narrower question of how you charge. The second is part of the first, and treating them as the
A structured change of direction that keeps what you have learned while changing a fundamental assumption. Eric Ries's definition is useful precisely because it excludes the two things people mistake
The match between the founders and the particular problem they have chosen — and investors weigh it heavily because at the earliest stage, when there is little product and no traction, it is close to
Because almost all of it comes from companies that succeeded, and the failures that did exactly the same things are not available to be interviewed. The classic illustration. During the Second World
Three progressively narrower measures of market size — total addressable, serviceable addressable, and serviceable obtainable market — used mainly in investor presentations and frequently misused
Setting a price based on what the outcome is worth to the customer, rather than on what it costs you to produce or what competitors charge. It is widely recommended, rarely implemented, and it
A structural advantage that makes a business hard to compete with over time — not because it is currently better, but because competing would be difficult even for someone with money and talent. Why
Churn is the rate at which customers leave. Cohort analysis groups customers by when they joined and tracks each group separately — which is the only way to see whether churn is actually improving.
The smallest thing you can build that tests your riskiest assumption — which is not the same as a cheap, cut-down version of your product, and the confusion between those two causes most MVP
The point at which a product satisfies a real, strongly felt need in a market large enough to build a business on — and the honest answer to how you know is that it is unmistakable when you have it
Fewer and less glamorous than the coverage suggests. The overwhelming majority of successful exits are trade sales, and several perfectly good outcomes are not exits at all. Trade sale (acquisition).
Whose money they invest, at what stage, and what they need from the outcome — and that last point determines how they will behave toward your company. Angel investor. An individual investing their
The right of certain shareholders — almost always investors — to be paid first when a company is sold or wound up, before ordinary shareholders receive anything. It is frequently the single most
The verification process between agreeing terms and money arriving — where an investor checks that what they were told is true, and where deals most often slow down or collapse. Why it exists. A term
Far less than the valuation, and far more than founders expect. A term sheet is mostly non-binding, but it sets the terms everything else follows from, and the economic and control clauses matter
Pre-money is what the company is agreed to be worth before the investment; post-money is pre-money plus the money invested. The difference determines what percentage the investor gets, and confusing
Ways of raising money without agreeing a valuation now — the investment converts into shares at a later priced round, on terms set in advance. The problem they solve. Valuing a very early company is
Vesting means equity is earned over time rather than owned outright from day one. A cliff is an initial period during which nothing vests at all. The standard arrangement. Four-year vesting with a
A capitalisation table records who owns what proportion of a company — every shareholder, every class of share, every option and everything that could become a share. What it contains: Every
Your percentage of a company falling because new shares were issued — not because anyone took shares from you. Understanding that distinction is the whole subject. How it happens. A company issues