Christopher Mims, Quartz

As long as we’re connecting every other thing we own to the internet, why not a toilet that monitors our health by analyzing our poo?

Yesterday and today, Shanghai experienced some of the highest levels of air pollution ever recorded in China. The US Consulate in Shanghai reported levels were “beyond index”—i.e., off the charts.

There are a lot of reasons why Amazon delivering goods by drone anytime soon isn’t merely “optimistic,” as CEO Jeff Bezos put it, but outright silly. But Amazon is nothing if not opportunistic.

Apple has just revealed in a filing with the SEC that the company will spend $10.5 billion on stuff—also known as “capital expenditures”—in 2014. 

Apple’s earnings for the last quarter of its fiscal year are out, and the company has disappointed Wall Street once again by doing better than most analysts predicted.

Advertisements are coming to Instagram, as we predicted. To get users accustomed to the idea, the most innocuous “ad” ever (pictured above) will appear in every user’s feed at some point next week, the company just announced.

The pumpkin spice latte, Starbucks’ most iconic and popular seasonal drink, almost didn’t happen. “A number of us thought it was a beverage so dominated by a flavor other than coffee that it didn’t put Starbucks’ coffee in the best light,” says Tim Kern.

Hartmut Esslinger knows a thing or two about industrial design and what it’s done for Apple. He worked directly with Steve Jobs to establish a “design language” that was used on the Macintosh line of computers for over a decade.

Sales of PCs continue to decline, and that’s forcing PC makers to get creative. The latest example is an attempt by Acer, currently the number four maker of PCs in the world by market share, to replace the PC forever—with the smartphone.

Yesterday Quartz outlined the reasons for Microsoft’s “lost decade.” But now that CEO Steve Ballmer is on his way out, it’s time to talk about the way forward.