Ben Thompson of Stratechery looks past the thin veneer of data privacy (which is an issue to an extent, of course) to the real issue with TikTok and the US:

The point, though, is not just censorship, but its inverse: propaganda. TikTok’s algorithm, unmoored from the constraints of your social network or professional content creators, is free to promote whatever videos it likes, without anyone knowing the difference. TikTok could promote a particular candidate or a particular issue in a particular geography, without anyone — except perhaps the candidate, now indebted to a Chinese company — knowing. You may be skeptical this might happen, but again, China has already demonstrated a willingness to censor speech on a platform banned in China; how much of a leap is it to think that a Party committed to ideological dominance will forever leave a route directly into the hearts and minds of millions of Americans untouched?

People bucket TikTok in with the other social media apps and services because it looks like one and is used by young people. And sure, there are social elements to it, but the way it serves up the content is not one of them. In that way, TikTok is almost more akin to Netflix. It’s a service that uses algorithms to show you want you want. Netflix does this to drive subscriber growth (and to keep current subscribers happy). TikTok does this to… well, for now it’s to keep eyeballs on the screen to serve up advertising, it seems. But one could see how this can get nefarious and murky pretty quickly.

Jessica Toonkel of The Information sat down with Jonah Peretti, founder and CEO of BuzzFeed — one thing he said:

“I think that the future for free news will be five or six platforms that all have scale. That will cover the cost of journalism. So if we do a piece on the ground in Minneapolis about the Black Lives Matter protests, and we are spending a lot on travel and to make sure our reporters are safe—and with Covid, there are a lot more safety issues to focus on—that story can live on Apple News, on the Facebook News tab and on our own operated site, so smart news can live on.”

I feel like this has been slowly but surely happening, though no one has come out and explicitly said it like this yet. There’s a very real possibility that the future of “free” news is that it’s no longer subsidized by ads, but rather by the tech platforms directly.

As Peretti notes, Facebook is already doing this. Google is about to start. And Apple is doing a revenue share with Apple News+, but probably won't be far behind in paying directly upfront to license if the competitors are and key partners are clearly pushing for that (and certainly if Apple News+ doesn’t start working).

Now, ads won’t go away — and certainly they’ll remain a key part on the owned and operated sites, but they’re clearly not making the ends meet for this type of content anymore. Moreover, they’ve created some truly awful reading experiences, and thus, product experiences. So while there are of course obvious downsides in such subsidization, unless we can figure out a better way (beyond direct payment, which will work for some, but not all content), it seems like the path right now.

Nicole Sperling of The New York Times spoke with Matt Strauss, chairman of Peacock on the launch of their entrant into the streaming wars:

Mr. Strauss, who was the executive vice president of Comcast’s Xfinity Services before taking the helm of Peacock in October, said the three-month testing period had proved that streaming viewers were just as happy to flip through options before settling on a show, just as they did in the traditional TV era.

That finding prompted the company to build 20 channels within Peacock. In addition to the late-night and “Today” feeds, it will have one dedicated to “Saturday Night Live” and others for news and sports. The company said it will expand the offering to 40 channels within the platform in the coming months, on its way to 70 by year’s end.

At first, this “channels” concept confused me as they’re not what we traditionally think of as channels, like NBC itself, for example. But it’s actually quite clever. It allows Peacock to take their various properties and shows to play around with in a way that brings back the idea of “channel surfing”.

This more passive way of watching television is something that I’ve long felt has been lacking in the move to streaming. We now have basically infinite options of what to watch on demand, and as such, having to pick can be debilitating. Yes, that’s even true with Netflix’s algorithms, which make it easier, but still requires an active choice. These Peacock channels allow you to browse and get sucked into something — I just got sucked into an Office “short” for example, while writing this — like the old days.

Peacock is vital to Comcast, NBCUniversal’s parent company, a late arrival to streaming. The company has designed the service so that it generates the bulk of its revenue from advertising, rather than subscriptions.

The ad-supported version offers more than 10,000 hours of content, with no more than five minutes of commercials for each hour of programming. The platform also comes in two other versions: Peacock Premium, with ads and more 20,000 hours of content, at $5 a month (or free for Comcast and Cox cable subscribers); and a second iteration of Peacock Premium, with no commercials, at $10 a month.

While I may not have understood channels right off the bat, I did understand the idea of doing an ad-supported, free service. I think this is smart counter-programing to most of the other (major) streamers. A big — the biggest — part of subscription fatigue is, of course, paying for yet another service. Peacock allows you to not have to make that choice. You still have to download and sign up. But you can start watching right away without paying anything.

That’s exactly what we did this week and guess what? Peacock is pretty good! We started watching The Capture (made alongside BBC) and it’s solid. It’s also great lead gen for upgrading to a paid tier, as you can get access to the whole season right away. Obviously, we’re going to do that now. And while the ads are minimal, we’ll probably opt for no commercials because, ads are generally awful these days.

This weekend, we watched The Old Guard, the latest Netflix original starring Charlize Theron. And it was fine. Not great. Not bad. Totally passable and yet utterly forgettable. I feel like this is a trend. A rather interesting one.

Now, I’ll caveat all of this by saying that obviously this is just my opinion. And it is, of course, subjective. And my broader thoughts are largely anecdotal. Still… it sure feels like a lot of the most popular Netflix movies (if not “shows” as well, which are harder to “rate”) are decidedly mediocre.

Look at the all-time top ten list. Admittedly, I’ve only seen five of them. Of those, Bird Box was interesting, but not great. 6 Underground was pretty bad. The Old Guard, again, mediocre. The Irishman was very good, but far too long. Triple Frontier was very watchable but not great. The others on the list all have lukewarm-to-poor reviews in aggregate so I’m guessing I would feel the same way.

(The best of the rest would clearly seem to be The Platform, at number ten, which is a Spanish-language sci-fi thriller.)

Now certainly the “best” movies don’t correlate to the best performing at the traditional box office. But the reason why Hollywood has been up-in-arms about Rotten Tomatoes has been because it can sync mediocre-to-bad movies before they launch. The same clearly does not seem to be the case with Netflix.

Perhaps it’s the instant-watch capability. Their algorithm. Or perhaps it’s the “ah what the hell, I’m already paying for this service” aspect. Or maybe it’s just that critical “taste” matters far less in the home. Whatever it is, it’s fascinating that these movies seem to outperform on Netflix, at least for now.

5ish

🎭 "I pitched my heart out."

How Bob Iger secured 'Hamilton' for Disney, and other details

🧠 It's Not About Your Email, It's About Your Brain

The real risk of TikTok in the US...

👀 This Article, Brought To You By Facebook

The shift from ad-driven to platform-subsidized publishing

🦚 NBC's Free Surfing Peacock

A smart bit of counter programming and UX in the streaming era

Asides

• A call to quit Chrome, the resource-heavy, battery-hogging web browser. Hard to disagree. Google says remedies are in the works. We’ll see. 🔋

• Lego and Nintendo are making an old school NES kit, complete with a “vintage” TV. Hard to be more sold on anything… 📺

• …including a sealed copy of Super Mario Bros. selling for $114,000. 🕹

• Speaking of streaming records, Greyhound apparently set some for Apple TV+ — which perhaps isn’t saying much given how new the service is with relatively little content. Still, it was good. ⚓️

• Feels like a fairly honest assessment of what life could look like in 2022. 🔮

• I heart Milton Glaser because he made most of his money from Brooklyn Beer — opting for equity! — not from ‘I ❤️ NY’ (which he did pro bono). RIP. 🍺

• An iPhone 12 shipping without a charger will be controversial. Shipping with braided cables that don’t crack after a year without fail will not be. 📱

• Great summary of the California High Speed Train Project to date:

The California High-Speed Rail saga is kind of like the Lucy holding the football for Charlie Brown gag, except that Charlie Brown and Lucy are now both about 85 years old and still doing the exact same gag over and over. 🚄

• Apple beats the EU over their Irish tax bill. Which seemed obvious years ago, so it’s not clear why it took so long. 🇮🇪

• New emoji are inbound! The lungs feel a bit #toosoon? Speaking of, this will apparently be the last new emoji before 2022 due to COVID work delays… 🤡

• Pretty incredible write-up for Sarah Gilbert’s currently-leading efforts to come up with a COVID-19 vaccine (disclosure: GV is a proud investor in some of the companies working on this). Key quote: “one member compared her effort to going into a shed and coming out with a jet engine.” 🦠

• Unclear what SoftBank’s gameplan is with ARM, but regardless, it simply must matter to Apple. And the timing of all this right after Apple announces their own ARM-based silicon for Macs certainly doesn’t seem coincidental… 🖥

• On the age-old question of how to value a company — why I prefer to focus on the nebulous “one step ahead” companies — Saku Panditharatne:

It’s often said that tech companies “ship their org chart,” meaning that the products they create can be directly predicted by the structure of the organization. By looking at the people and incentives, an outside observer should be able to estimate the impact, quality and probability of success of a new product, and perhaps even future revenue. If Apple had hired a world-class team of chip engineers who had all taken a pay cut to work on a cutting edge project, we might expect its share price to rise on the news, though without a better valuation method, we can't yet say precisely by how much. 📈

• The Cleveland Spiders? There are certainly worse and weirder names… 🕷

• How amazing is the sun? The closest images ever taken reveal… ☀️

500ish

📲 Double Tap

Some quick thoughts on the new Apple OS betas

🖥 44 lbs

My computer in college versus my computer now

🧮 Save Them All, Let the Algorithms Sort Em Out

Smartly serving up content amidst information overload

ELC @erinleecarr

truly how i am going to answer every email asking me to do something

July 12th 2020

39 Retweets251 Likes

Julia Alexander for The Verge on the Harry Potter franchise suddenly vanishing from HBO Max:

That’s because years prior to HBO Max’s launch, WarnerMedia signed a deal with NBCUniversal that gave the latter company exclusive rights to the Harry Potter series through 2025. Through that deal, most insiders assumed Harry Potter, one of WarnerMedia’s biggest properties, would not be on HBO Max for years to come. The night before HBO Max launched, however, WarnerMedia executives struck a deal with NBCUniversal to have all eight Harry Potter movies premiere on HBO Max. Now, those same movies are leaving. It’s unclear when those movies will return, but The Verge has reached out to HBO Max for comment.

Probably 2025! Insane. And:

The Harry Potter franchise is just one example. Back in late May, right when HBO Max launched, customers learned that movies on which HBO Max marketed its launch — including Justice League — would be leaving after just one month. Justice League was set to leave the service for a period of time, but it’s scheduled to return to HBO Max at some point in 2020, a spokesperson told The Verge at the time. While it would eventually come back, the insinuation was that Justice League — a core part of the DC Extended Universe that subscribers assumed was on HBO Max — wouldn’t be there for an unknown amount of time. WarnerMedia eventually ended up extending the film’s time on the streamer. 

Peacock is in the same boat. NBCUniversal’s streaming service just launched last week, but is already facing questions over titles leaving that were there on launch day. Heavy hitters like Shrek and the Jurassic Park trilogy, alongside 2009’s Fast and Furious, have either disappeared or are about to leave.The Jurassic Park trilogy is going to Netflix in August. The Matrix trilogy, which both NBCUniversal and WarnerMedia touted as a benefit to subscribing to their streaming services, is leaving Peacock next month. It’s unclear where The Matrix trilogy will wind up, but HBO Max seems likely. The Mummy and The Mummy Returns are also gone.

This is all bonkers. And it’s getting worse. Constantly now in my household: “which service is _____ on?” Which requires the use of… Google. And we just got Peacock — which is a pleasant surprise — and the first question was, “this has Friends, right?” The idea being that of course the network, NBC, which made Friends famous would also be the home of it on streaming, obviously, right? Wrong.

Worse, I’ll often now be about to buy a movie on iTunes (which is still insanely called ‘iTunes Movies’ on Apple TV) and realize I should probably search to see if it’s available on one of the services I already subscribe to — and quite often, it is!

Google aside, we so clearly need a service which unifies all this nonsense. A single box or UI where you can go to find what you want to watch. Apple has tried and failed to build this multiple times. Maybe a service like ReelGood can do this. But how long can they stay a true Switzerland? I sincerely worry this all ends in piracy.

Chaim Gartenberg of The Verge makes the case that Christopher Nolan should release his new film, Tenet, online:

Put simply, this attitude is dangerous and will put lives at risk. While there’s still a lot we don’t know about how COVID-19 spreads, it’s apparent that spending long amounts of time indoors in close proximity with other people is a major contributing factor. And movie theaters — with close-together seats, circulating air conditioning, guests removing masks to munch on popcorn, and lengthy films — seem to fit that bill perfectly. Everything we know about COVID-19 tells us that the kind of wide-release cultural event Nolan wants will lead to more cases, more hospitalizations, and more deaths.

Tenet is undoubtedly important to Warner Bros., Nolan, and theater chains — I really want to see it, too — but it’s important to remember that it’s just a movie. A movie that isn’t worth risking your life or anyone else’s to go to a theater until the United States has a far better handle on containing the virus than we do right now.

Obviously, it’s a compelling argument. I believe there’s almost no way Nolan agrees to it, but I think the flip side of Gartenberg’s message is equally true. By giving up his quixotic crusade to get Tenet in theaters this year, Nolan would send a message that we need to continue to take COVID-19 very, very seriously until it’s truly under control. It would be the symbolic equivalent of wearing a mask in every photo op. You know, like Bane. And now, even reluctantly, like the President. Leading by example.

Given his love of cinema in particular, I’m guessing Nolan will instead wait until 2021 to release Tenet, if he has to. And I do think he might have to. Because even if we get COVID somewhat under control this year, how many people are realistically going to step foot in a movie theater? I know I’m not. And I love movie theaters. It’s just not worth the risk. Again, obviously.

And so again, Nolan should recognize the state of Limbo Tenet is in and turn the negative into a powerful positive. Release the film online. Help keep people at home. I’m not saying he has to go streaming, he could do iTunes and sell it for $20 a pop. Hell, even more if he wishes. People will pay. So many people. Have you looked at iTunes movies recently (yes, it’s still called iTunes movies)? It’s a pretty sparse situation with regard to marquee new films. Maybe Apple or one of the other companies that runs the rental platforms could even subsidize some of the Tenet release just to keep the lights on at those stores?

This may not fully square the theatrical box office circle — though we all know how well Trolls did thanks to AMC’s reaction to it — but this shouldn’t be about the money at this point, and I don’t think it is. Nolan feels as if he’s holding the entire cinematic industry on his back. But this isn’t the time for that. There are bigger things at stake. As a wise Nolan character once said: “But as a symbol..”

Normally, it goes something like this: a sports team releases a new name/branding/logo and everyone immediately shits all over it. This is especially true on Design Twitter, where within an hour, we get new branding mockups which are deemed far superior to the original, even though the original undoubtedly took months of work and millions of dollars spent.

But something strange happened today. That is — the opposite happened.

When the branding for the NHL’s new team in Seattle was unveiled everyone… loved it. And rightfully so! The Seattle Kraken is the right combination of a great name, a great logo, great colors, and just great branding overall. I mean, the secondary anchor logo incorporates the Space Needle for chrissakes.

This is a weird, complicated time in sports names and branding, to say the least. We now have the Washington Football Team, for example. That is the name they’re going with for the NFL team this year. Seriously. Likewise, the Cleveland Indians (incidentally, my hometown team) don’t seem long for this world — but at least there are seemingly some decent options there.

Anyway, color me impressed by the Seattle group that yes, released the Kraken. Normally, we’d have a great name like this teed up — like, say, the New Orleans Brass — and instead ownership goes with a ridiculously goofy one. Like, say the New Orleans Pelicans. The Kraken may or may not be any good for a long time, but at least they won’t be some lame bird. Next up: the SuperSonics.

CBS Sports @CBSSports

The NHL's newest team is the Seattle Kraken. Grade the logo and look.

4:23 PM ∙ Jul 23, 2020

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7,319Likes1,323Retweets

On the 20th anniversary of the Power Mac G4 Cube, Steven Levy of Wired looks back at the interview he did with Steve Jobs at the launch. A couple highlights:

Knowing I was risking his ire, I asked him: Just who was going to buy this? Jobs didn’t miss a beat. “That’s easy!” he said. “A ton of people who are pros. Every designer is going to buy one.”

Here was his justification for violating his matrix theory: “We realized there was an incredible opportunity to make something in the middle, sort of a love child, that was truly a breakthrough,” he said. The implicit message was that it was so great that people would alter their buying patterns to purchase one.

They did not, of course. Not only did “every designer” not buy one, very few did. And very few of anyone did. It was just too expensive, too impractical, and far too expensive. I recall a friend getting one back then and my reaction was almost an exact mixture of wonderment and bemusement. The thing was without question beautiful. A true jewel of a computer. It not only made my big beige beast of a PC look ugly, it made it look neolithic. At the same time, the thing had some comical bugs or just weird design quirks. The hand-wave to power on thing was the source of some great laughs as it worked like magic, if magic was solely a bad thing.

In any case, the G4 Cube failed to push buttons on the computer-buying public. Jobs told me it would sell millions. But Apple sold fewer than 150,000 units. The apotheosis of Apple design was also the apex of Apple hubris. Listening to the tape, I was struck by how much Jobs had been drunk on the elixir of aesthetics. “Do you really want to put a hole in this thing and put a button there?” Jobs asked me, justifying the lack of a power switch. “Look at the energy we put into this slot drive so you wouldn’t have a tray, and you want to ruin that and put a button in?”

But here is something else about Jobs and the Cube that speaks not of failure but why he was a successful leader. Once it was clear that his Cube was a brick, he was quick to cut his losses and move on.

Levy’s entire summary (and original article for Newsweek) is well worth the read (for the outtakes as well — he asked about the idea of Jobs becoming CEO of Disney!), but this last bit above is the key. It’s clear from the chat that Jobs loved this machine. And yet, when it was clear he had not only miscalculated its potential, but that he was flat-out wrong, he didn’t hesitate to walk away. Quickly. It sounds like the easiest thing in the world to do; it is not.

Earlier today, I linked to Steven Levy’s look-back at the launch of the Power Mac G4 Cube on it’s 20th anniversary. Now I’m going to link to John Gruber linking to Steven Levy’s look-back at the launch of the Power Mac G4 Cube on it’s 20th anniversary. Gruber focused on the same key point (which is what Levy focused on as well, of course), that Steve Jobs was clearly great at changing his mind. To that end:

Why not pull a Steve Jobs on the App Store? Cut the commission rate to 85/15 across the board and act like it’s innovative and something only Apple could or would do. Open up the Netflix rule to all developers — maintain the rule that if your app charges money as an in-app purchase, you must use Apple’s in-app payment system — but let any and all apps choose to do what Netflix does if they want to opt out of that, and sign up customers on their own outside the app. Just make all of this antitrust stuff disappear before it even starts by eliminating the complaints about money and maintaining what matters more to Apple: independence and control.

I obviously agree with this, but it’s not really about the actual numbers. I tend to think 30% is too high, and I think the idea that it was pulled out of thin air (by which I mean, iTunes individual song sales) is silly. And the notion that it was created to ensure the App Store could run at “break even” is laughable at this point. More importantly, I just think this world is very different than it was a decade ago, and Apple should re-think the rules they implemented back then because, well, obviously.

But all that aside, Gruber’s point pulls out what really doesn’t sit well with me here. Yes, Apple can argue until they’re blue in the face — and they will — that their App Store cut is fair relative to other comparable stores and digital goods. But who cares? Apple is the leader in this space. Whatever they do, others will follow.

Hell, they may be on the verge of becoming the first $2 trillion company. So I’m just not interested in their argument that “everyone is doing it.” They should lead by example here and revisit these rules. Would Steve Jobs have done that? I don’t know. Maybe not. But I’d like to believe if he was shown that Apple was making a mistake, he would change course.

Here I am listening to a Taylor Swift album. By choice. 2020 is weird, to say the least.

That’s not entirely fair. I certainly don’t dislike Taylor Swift’s music, it’s just not the kind of music I would seek out to listen to when I have access to every song ever recorded in my pocket at all times. That would be more akin to music by say, The National or Bon Iver. And so here we are. Worlds collide.

To me, the most interesting aspect of the collaboration is the idea of the collaboration itself. These are seemingly two far flung reaches of the musical universe. On paper, you might not think it would work, and that seems to be precisely why it does. The result sounds both like a Taylor Swift album and a Bon Iver or The National album. If they were closer in style, I fear the end result would be less than the sum of the parts. But here, it feels like more.

I have to imagine such an askew collaboration feels entirely reinvigorating for an artist as well. Sure, there are some that will go horribly awry, but that looming threat probably helps as well. As a listener, it almost feels like a “yeah, this is weird and potentially a disaster; fuck it, let’s just go for it.”

I think it’s a good reminder for us all in a way. It’s hard to break convention simply by trying to do so. But collaboration outside of the box and/or using something far afield as inspiration is probably a good thing. And yes, the COVID quarantine is probably forcing such things upon us. Restraint equalling creativity and all that.

5ish

📺 Don’t Cross the Streams

What is Playing Where in the Era of Streaming

🎞 'Tenet' Stuck in Limbo

What is Christopher Nolan to do? Ideally, the right thing.

🦑 Release the... Great Branding?

The Seattle Kraken indeed

🖥 “Isn’t that beautiful? I think it’s stunning!”

20 years after Steve Jobs’ “perfect” computer

📲 Pull a 'Steve Jobs' on the App Store

Apple could lead the way on changing the 70/30 split...

Asides

• Speaking of ‘Folklore’, it seems like it’s setting all kinds of streaming records 💿

• This Spotify/Universal deal seems like a bigger well, deal, than it may seem at first glance — Spotify offering more label-like services 🎧

• Newsflash: Apple commissioned a study that they feel exonerates them when it comes to App Store fees, but really it just showcases that they set trends 📲

• To follow up on a bit from the last newsletter, SoftBank apparently did approach Apple about ARM, and they weren’t interested. But Nvidia might be… 👩‍💻

• Unlike Tenet, Bill & Ted are doing the right thing and allowing us to Face the Music from the comfort of our own homes in lockdown — 9/1 🎸

• Speaking of trailers, Ethan Hawke starring as Nikola Tesla looks… odd. Maybe in a good way! Unclear. Regardless, great sound/music. 💡

• If you’re looking for a podcast episode, I very much enjoyed the ‘How I Built This’ with the founders of La Colombe coffee — who met at a Green River concert, of all places. ☕️

• A great thread about Apple products with handles. As silly as it sounds, I sort of wish they’d comeback on the MacBooks in some capacity. Though I want the glowing Apple back far more. 💻

• It’s honestly disturbing how much sense this post by Andy Slavitt about COVID-19 makes. We’re constantly so close to getting through this, yet we won’t do what needs to be done. 😷

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500ish

🍿 The Great Okay

Netflix’s ability to get us watching mediocrity

⚽️ Relegation

While we’re switching up our sports rules, how about this one?

Willem Van Lancker @vanlancker

 WFH, 1987

10:57 PM ∙ Jul 17, 2020

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6,390Likes1,379Retweets

Jack Nicas and David McCabe for The New York Times reporting on Apple’s move to ask for revenue by businesses that made moves online in the pandemic:

Apple said that with Airbnb and ClassPass, it was not trying to generate revenue — though that is a side effect — but instead was trying to enforce a rule that has been in place since it first published its app guidelines in 2010.

Apple said waiving the commission in these cases would not be fair to the many other app developers that have paid the fee for similar businesses for years. Because of the pandemic, Apple said that it gave ClassPass until the end of the year to comply and that it was continuing to negotiate with Airbnb.

“To ensure every developer can create and grow a successful business, Apple maintains a clear, consistent set of guidelines that apply equally to everyone,” the company said in a statement.

I mean, first of all, what an incredible bit of circular logic. Essentially: “we have to take a cut of these services because we always have.” Okay. Maybe, just maybe consider the cut in the first place? Especially if you’re “not trying to generate revenue”?

Second, the idea that “Apple maintains a clear, consistent set of guidelines that apply equally to everyone” is just demonstrably false. So much so that it’s essentially a joke at this point. Apple has different rules for different developers. Not only that, they will from time to time change the rules overall because they’ve changed them for one developer — which is in direct contradiction to point one above.

To be clear, that is a good thing. But Apple stance and statement on this entire matter are just dripping with disingenuousness.

To be clear about something else: no one is saying Apple shouldn’t be allowed to make money from the App Store. Even though that wasn’t the intent when they started out and even now, they’re comically alluding to it almost being a non-profit (“not to generate revenue”), Apple absolutely should be able to profit from a real service they’re providing. I just believe they need to revisit and re-write the rules for the App Store. Because they were written in a different era when many of the businesses now being built on top of the store weren’t yet dreamed up.

Instead, Apple wants to cling to the past because they always have. Except when they haven’t. Which is quite often. And they don’t want to talk about that. Because it’s not the case. Except that it is.

(Disclosure: GV, where I’m a partner, is an investor in ClassPass mentioned in the article. But you can substitute any other number of companies here.)

Last night, I stayed up going over the Microsoft blog post on the TikTok situation as if it were the Zapruder film. I just couldn’t believe what I was reading. I thought I must be parsing it wrong. This was a massive US corporation that seemed to be writing a post as if a student on assignment. The teacher in this case, the US President.

Regardless of the content, the ramifications of such an action seemed awfully dire. And then there was the content which was… well, worrisome. But as I kept reading, I couldn’t come up with any other explanation other than Trump asking for such a post, and Microsoft acquiescing. And so I published my thoughts and went to bed certain I would wake up to a world of much more nuanced (or crazy) takes on the situation.

Instead, the opposite happened.

Not only did reports confirm that Trump was behind the post and the messaging therein, he himself confirmed as much. And that included the most damning part: he was demanding that Treasury get a cut of any deal between Microsoft and TikTok. The US Treasury. He just… said it.

But actually, Trump being Trump, he didn’t just say it. He boasted about saying it. Because he believes his government should get a cut of any such deal. A finder’s fee, as it were. He’s negotiating as if it’s a real estate deal. Because of course he is. And that’s the nice way of putting it. The less nice way: a shake down. Extortion.

Microsoft should be ashamed of themselves for going along with this. They’re not just trying to win a deal, they’re enabling a President to paint gray ethical if not legal lines which had been black and white. And it’s especially surprising and disheartening because Satya Nadella has spent much of the past decade digging Microsoft out of the hole in which Steve Ballmer placed them. And their chief legal officer, Brad Smith, has become a key leader on many important issues with regard to ethics and technology. With one blog post, the company just threw that all away.

Shame.

Links

• Apple has passed Saudi Aramco to become the most valuable company in the world once again (Aramco went public last year, of course). After another run today, the stock has the company at the door of a $2T market cap. Some of us are old enough to remember when they were chasing another oil company, Exxon, to become the most valuable company. Exxon’s market cap today? $178B. 🛢

• Lest this seem like an Apple love-fest, the emails released as a part of last week’s House Judiciary Committee hearings revealed a lot of lame reasoning behind some of the App Store rules. Not that we didn’t already know most of them, but reading Phil Schiller whine about an Amazon commercial is something else. 📧

• We finally have an answer to the Tenet dilemma — and it’s staggered releases around the world, wherever COVID-19 allows. No matter how you slice it, it’s a crappy situation, but to think this won’t lead to piracy is… well, optimistic. 🏴‍☠️

• The most amazing thing about Wilford Brimley — beyond that fact that he has looked and played someone who is 85 years old for at least the past 30 years — is that he was once a bodyguard for Howard Hughes! RIP, feller. 👴🏻

• And lest I just shit on Microsoft, the new version of Flight Simulator does look pretty amazing. Maybe they can use it to train for drug running to bring in some more money on the side. 🛫

• Back to TikTok, this seems like a pretty good primer on the company and how we got to where we are. 🇨🇳

• 101.5 million year old bacteria that was brought back to life? Probably not the scientific discovery we need right now. Still 😳.

• Defector Media, the artists formerly known as Deadspin, roll out their new website with a unique value proposition: pay to subscribe and those payments will go to the staff, who are also the owners, equally. No idea if it will work, but I’m rooting for it. 📝

• Sometimes when doing research on fifth century garments for a book, the research comes back with fictional ingredients from The Legend of Zelda. And sometimes you publish those in said book. 😂

• Lastly, if you haven’t already, everyone should read President Obama’s eulogy for Congressman John Lewis. Powerful. RIP. 😔

Posts

📽 Edge of 17

AMC Finally Throws Open the Theatrical Window

🎨 Blog-ish

Medium's new look-and-feel (in beta)

🍎 One Infinite Logic Loop

Apple wants to stick to the standards they don't stick to

⏰ TikTok and Microsoft’s Clock

I mean, WTF?

𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘰 @tprstly

WHO DID THIS

6:41 PM ∙ Jul 26, 2020

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It sure feels like we’re in the endgame now. While the days leading up to WWDC were tense, given the Hey situation in particular, yesterday’s maneuver by Epic to goad Apple into banning Fortnite was, well, epic. The immediate lawsuit complete with its own subversive sizzle reel mocking Apple’s famous ‘1984’ ad was well, Jobsian. Showmanship at its finest.

To put it another way: Epic out-Apple’d Apple.

And seemingly caught them flat-footed. Because of course the in-app payment circumvention was simply meant to bring about a ban of one of the most popular games not only in the App Store, but of all time, anywhere. Apple walked right into it and then after the press ate it up, released a statement that came across as flat at best.

Epic has the upper-hand here. And they know that. Which is why they can take on a $2T company with such irreverence. They also have allies in the shape of other entities with varying degrees of leverage — Netflix, Spotify, etc. Even Facebook. Apple has an ally of their own, but it’s a strange bedfellow, to say the least: Google. The company that runs the other app store, of course.

So how does this all play out? Impossible to say right now! My feeling is that it’s advantage League of Extraordinary Apps. And because they’re at least saying the right things in terms of also trying to do this for the little guys, this could have major ramifications. And because the tech behemoths are under government scrutiny, both at home and abroad, this could have really major ramifications.

If I had to guess, I think we’ll see Apple come back quickly with an attempt at a temporary “fix”. Certainly, generic statements aside, Apple would be willing to cut a backroom deal with Epic, as they’ve done with other big developers, to ensure Fortnite remains on iOS devices. But if you believe Epic, that won’t be good enough. And so what we may see is an indication of a “new deal” from Apple, as it were. A promise of a full revisiting of the App Store rules and policies from the ground up. But it will take some time, of course. So in the meantime, let the games begin again?

Maybe that works. Maybe not. Regardless, I suspect any “new deal” wouldn’t necessarily mean a “better deal” for all developers. I think it would just signal Apple’s intent to get a lot more granular with regard to App Store rules and percentage cuts. An acknowledgment that times have changed from when many of the current “strict” (by which I mean, broken routinely and arbitrarily) rules were put in place. Because 2020 is not 2010.

Perhaps more likely is a promise of more transparency in how this all works, and the decision-making process. That would be a good thing, but would it be enough?

To me, this has never primarily been about the 30% cut. That’s part of it, sure. But it’s more about arbitrary rules put in place in a very different world with regard to the mobile landscape. The App Store was never meant to be about Apple making money, if no less than Steve Jobs was to be believed at the time. And yet, it’s now arguably Apple’s second most-important business, after the iPhone.

And so that’s going to make it very hard to put this genie back into the bottle, even if Apple recognizes it’s the “right” thing to do. How will shareholders feel about Apple potentially giving up billions of dollars in revenues? The answer should be that they should feel good about it, because it will ensure that Apple remains both dominant and beloved in the mobile ecosystem. It’s a short-term hit for a long-term payout.

That’s what was so disappointing about Apple’s (I’m sorry, a third-party’s) survey about the state of marketplaces and cuts. Apple is playing the “we’re no different than anyone else” card, when they should be playing the “think different” card. They should be leading by example here and getting ahead of developer strife by doing the “right thing” for their partners. And that’s in quotes because, again, it’s not actually just the right thing for their partners, it’s actually the right thing for themselves too. Because without the changes, one day, there will be no more partners.

Links

• Amazon is said to be looking at buying up old department stores to use as fulfillment centers. Something, something, dance on graves. 🛍

• A journalist’s first-person account of what it was like to be in Beirut when the explosion happened is well worth the read. “When the world stopped cracking open, I couldn’t see at first because of the blood running down my face…” 😳

• William Shakespeare lived in a world of habitual pandemic, but only wrote about it tangentially as it was so the norm. 🎭

• Discovery is inching closer to their own bundle of programming, which actually makes sense given their strength in genres like travel and cooking. Bundles of bundles, all the way down… 👩‍🍳

• Sumner Redstone, who just passed away at age 97, had quite the life. One thing I did not know: he was an assistant to the attorney general during U.S. vs. Paramount, the antitrust case which broke up the Hollywood studio system. And then he would go on to buy Paramount years later, of course. Synergies. 🎬

• Hans Zimmer created a new, longer Netflix title card sound for their theatrical releases. As you might expect, it’s good. 🎞

• A bunch of famous people are getting together to do a Fast Times at Ridgemont High table read for charity. They include Sean Penn, who will not be reading the part of Jeff Spicoli. The easy money is on Mr. Hand. Well worth our time. 🏄‍♂️

• So the Alexa-enabled glasses don’t sound great — as you might expect. And as even Amazon might expect. They’re just putting things out there to see if something works. Of course, when those things recommend Long John Silver’s as the go-to taco shop in San Francisco, it may be time to re-think the things. 🌮

• Good interview with new WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar. I’ve been on record as being very, very skeptical of AT&T/Warner’s strategy with HBO Go/Now/Max, but it feels like Kilar is ready and able to right the ship. 📺

• In App Store news related to the issues up top, Facebook tried and failed at least five times to get their Facebook Gaming app approved. They finally made is through when they took the games out. Sounds like just a great developer and customer experience. “Apple ghosted us.” 👻

• Obviously completely unrelated to all of this, Phil Schiller is totally not retiring. He’s graduating to the role of “Apple Fellow”, which sounds like it’s straight out of the worlds of J.R.R. Tolkien. But he’s staying in control of the App Store — we’ll see how long that lasts. Still, one hell of a run. 🍎

• A deep dive into the UX of LEGO Interface Panels? Yes please. 🧱

Posts

🍿 Disney++

Jokes aside, Disney’s premium layer on top of their premium service feels like a future model…

📲 Reels Talk

Why I think shoving the new ‘Reels’ product into Instagram may actually be a mistake

📽 AMC’s Hardware Store

The theater chains are starting to say the right things, now they must *do* the right things

☠️ Microsoft’s Poisoned Chalice

Bill Gates sure seems to feel strongly about that TikTok deal…

🚦 When Yellow Lights Look Red

Was the HomePod hampered by the Jobs-to-Cook transition?

🍏 Apple, the Bundler

With the world unbundled, Apple bundles up…

💩 The Surface Deuce

The oddness of Microsoft’s Surface Duo

Airbnb @Airbnb

...cause the last BLOCKBUSTER in the world will be offering movie lovers in Bend a 90s themed sleepover for a limited time—only on airbnb. who’s down? 👀 airbnb.com/BLOCKBUSTER

2:59 PM ∙ Aug 11, 2020

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So earlier tonight I sat down to read something. I do this most nights before dinner. It’s a nice way to unwind, I find. Not a book mind you — that will be nice, one day — but an article I had saved to read later in my ongoing journey around the internet.

This night, for whatever reason, it was an interview with Trent Reznor in Rolling Stone. And it was great for a number of reasons. First and foremost, because he didn’t mention the pandemic. Because it was a time before the pandemic. You see, this article was from two years ago.

I think about this a lot: the notion that reading something “old” carries all this baggage with it. That it’s somehow a waste of time because it’s not new. I know I’m not alone in thinking this, but I also know it’s crazy. It’s crazy because this interview was great and I’m happy I read it. It was a kind of escapism, as insane as that sounds, from our current time. Back to a time when the tragedy on his mind was the death of Anthony Bourdain — which yes, still really fucking sucks.

And his insight was no less insightful because two years have passed. Perhaps it was even more so, in a way.

I wish there was an obvious way to break this spell. We watch old movies, we listen to old music, we read old books. But if you share an old article that was great on the internet, you damn well better disclose the date of publication. And so often, why bother? Just share something new. Anyway, that’s a long preamble to share this article.

Links

• Speaking of online articles, I’m a big fan of the move towards audio as a new layer. The Economist and Apple News+ are doing this with professional readers. You’ve probably heard enough about my iOS system-level “hack” for a more robotic way of doing this. The BBC appears to be working on a hybrid model… 🗣

• Here’s a good look into the trend towards TestFlight-exclusive apps (at least for a set period of time). This is absolutely happening and perhaps not on purpose but because of a hole in Apple’s distribution system. 📲

• Speaking of audio, the recent changes to Beats 1 — now “Apple Music 1” — are interesting and make sense (overdue!). I’m still wondering if Howard Stern is the next shoe (mic?) to drop. Imagine that as an Apple Music exclusive channel… 📻

• Come for the Ben Smith column about old Hollywood dying in the arms of streaming, but stay for the kicker from Barry Diller (talking about every old school studio except Disney), “All of the rest of them are caddies on a golf course they’ll never play.” 🏌️‍♂️

• Here’s a transcript of a podcast Alex Kantrowitz did with Casey Newton that is full of good thoughts on the state of the tech media, Facebook, and newsletters (Casey’s newsletter, The Interface, is well-known and well-worth the subscription at this point, Alex more recently broke away to do one). 🔊

• Jerry Seinfeld with a fun blog post (which just so happens to be in NYT) arguing with “some putz on LinkedIn” claiming New York City was OVER. 🗽

• We’ve all seen the statues and busts, but what would the Roman emperors actually look like? Daniel Voshart is glad you asked! 🏛

Posts

💣 Shall We Play a Game?

Apple and Epic go thermonuclear…

🕹 30 for 30?

The curious case of the 30 percent cut…

🏡 ‘Home’ Has Moved Away From Us

The rapid transformation of San Francisco

🧷 The Linchpin of the Apple Bundle

What should ‘Apple One’ include, and how much should it cost?

Dan Romero @dwr

This 19th century budget of a German family looks suspiciously similar to a Mission hipster living in a rent-controlled apartment next to Tartine.

11:14 PM ∙ Aug 16, 2020

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A few weeks back, we decided to watch Bruno. (It’s a… not particularly long story.) More recently, we decided to watch The Italian Job. These two movies seemingly have nothing in common (well, Italy, in a way) aside from the fact that I paid to rent both of them even though I actually didn’t have to. Such is the state of streaming in 2020.

To be clear, this is not a big deal. I’m out a total of something south of $10. Still, it is a little ridiculous that I could have watched both of these titles for “free” given that I’m already paying for streaming services on which they’re offered. The Italian Job is streaming on Amazon Prime Video and Bruno is on Peacock.

What’s really annoying is that I consider myself pretty savvy at such things. And yet there I was paying for movies that I had already “paid” for. So I can’t help but wonder how many people are getting fleeced in such a way. It’s not nefarious. It’s because there are now so many streaming services and yet the mechanisms to unify them in some way is complete and utter crap. The state of the art is the Apple TV app on the Apple TV device (yes, this is incredibly confusing) and it sucks. It’s enough to make one yearn for the TV Guide interface of old…

Yes, I know there are other third-party services that do this. And some are quite good. But it’s no less ridiculous that you have to resort to yet another service to do this in 2020. And the problem is only getting worse, not better.

It’s a plot worthy of The Italian Job. Though not necessarily of Bruno.

Hope everyone has a good, relaxing Labor Day.

Links

• Speaking of Amazon, they’ve launched a device and service called Halo which… wants you to upload semi-nude pictures of yourself as well as continuously monitor your tone of voice throughout a day. I mean, I know Amazon likes to launch wild, half-baked ideas but… read the room? 🤨

• The story of a supernova explosion in 1987 is… far out there. Literally. Figuratively. 😲

• What if the key to solving COVID-19 is getting people to shut up? Again, literally. This is not as crazy as it sounds. 🤐

• Speaking of shutting up… in the opposite realm, you can now pay for gas with Alexa. Which would seem to make a lot of sense in our pandemic. 🗣

• It sure seems like the new iPhone is going to come in… blue steel. 💙

• I’m shocked — SHOCKED — that Warner is having a hard time figuring out how to shove ads into HBO. Go. Now. Max. Whatever. 📺

• Apple allowing developers to hand out subscription codes seems like a bigger deal than people are (not) making it out to be? 📲

• Do I think WGN’s new neutral NewsNation program is going to work? No. But I think it’s a worthy attempt. Myself, I would probably go the opposite way with ‘Nor’ as in, “neither, nor” and just make relentless fun of both sides. 🎭

• But the powers-that-be in news are perhaps more worried about their app cut, just like everyone else. 📰

• One company probably not worried about such things: MGA, which just seems to print money despite no one really knowing who they are. LOL Surprise! Fascinating read. 👀

Posts

✌️ “Our philosophy is simple…”

A decade ago, Steve Jobs outlined in-app subscription rules

✍️ The Blogger Comes Around

Medium’s changes to bring the world back to blogging

🔧 It Hinges On…

Microsoft’s odd slow-mo reveal of the Surface Duo continues…

🎵 Ping!

10 years ago, Apple tried their hand at social…

🎬 Windows All the Way Down

Disney creates a new window of their own design for Mulan

Another September, another Apple event. Except the one tomorrow promises to be entirely different from what we’ve seen in years past. For one, it sure seems like the iPhone will not be making an appearance. For another, the Apple Watch, long a second-fiddle device, would seem to be taking center stage. For yet another, it will yet again be a stage in an empty room, with COVID still raging (not to mention forest fires and toxic air quality in the Bay Area). Strange Days. 

I do think tomorrow’s event will be an interesting test for Apple. What if instead of the big iPhone and WWDC events, they realize that some smaller, perhaps even fully remote, product unveilings are worth doing for products like the Watch and the rumored new iPad Air (which itself is sort of a second-fiddle iPad — the iPad Pro is the state of the art device that gets most of the marketing love). Maybe the products which previously only got press releases (‘Apple One’?) can get their own small streaming events now. People would watch, of course. And if it’s not exactly free publicity for Apple, it’s pretty close. 

In that way, I wonder if it evolves almost like the movie business. That is, the big, marquee movies head to cinemas while smaller fare goes to streaming. Again, the iPhone event and WWDC will always be massive events and when they safely can, it makes sense to convene people for such things. But for events like tomorrow, maybe tomorrow is a taste of what’s to come.

Links

• Climate change aside, we’re — insanely — increasingly doing next to nothing when it comes to preventing forest fires in California. 🔥

• Fun interview with  Irwin Jacobs, the founder of Qualcomm as the company turns 35. “So I assured my wife that perhaps over the years, we’d get to 100 employees.” 📞

• Great post by Julian Lehr with some thoughts on the email product Hey, and its use of notes, in particular — and how this could be a great system-wide tool. (Some nice overlap with my thoughts on highlighting.) 📧

• Do you want to change your font on Slack? Probably not, but Slack in Comic Sans sounds fun. 🔤

• The press tour by Reed Hastings ahead of the release of his book on Netflix’s culture has been impressive. This interview hits on some thoughts about our current remote work situation. 💼

• The reviews of the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold can be boiled down to two lines from Dieter Bohn, “And then, I can just provide a recommendation on whether to consider buying it. Spoiler alert: no.” 📲

• Today is Monday, March 197th, 2020 in COVID Standard Time. 🕰

• Apple’s Face Mask looks like… a face mask Apple would design, from the box on down. I would buy this! A lot of people would! Even if it doesn’t come with stickers! 😷

• Come for Tyler Cowen’s rant about streaming service fatigue, but stay for the idea of renting out a theater with (trusted) friends to see Tenet. 🎞

• Remember Winamp? Enjoy. 🎶

• I don’t know how many hours of my youth I spent playing Sid Meier’s Civilization, but it was a lot. And that was fine, because it was a learning tool (well, strategy at least, if not exactly history). And now he worries the game wouldn’t have a place in today’s world. 🗺

• Facebook has invented… Facebook. 💀

Posts

🧵 A Too Short Lasso

30 minute ‘Ted Lasso’ is the best. A week between is the worst.

🗣 An Interview with Yours Truly

A lot of talk about the state of Apple, investing, remote work, etc.

⚔️ Compete!

Apple is now writing App Store rules to do everything but…

🕹 Xbox Series Xbox One 360 S E X

Great moments in Microsoft branding

When I was a kid, I hated talking on the phone. I mean, truly hated it. To the point where I would often make my mother place a call on my behalf. This is true. I had some real anxiety around the whole thing. And still do, as my wife will now tell you. It’s perhaps strange — though perhaps less strange than I think it is. Anyway, I bring it up now to kick off a love letter to the phone call.

As bad as phone calls are, I’m not convinced Zoom calls are at least 1,000x worse. Which is not a slight on Zoom — what they offer is clearly extremely valuable and the company is clearly valued as such — it’s not hyperbolic to think that without them in our COVID reality, the world would be operating meaningfully worse. Still. Six months in, I’m pretty done with being on Zoom calls.

It went something like this: in-person meetings were the norm, then COVID hit, then in-person meetings went away, most meetings were postponed to see how the world would shake out, and when it was clear that it would not shake-out anytime soon, Zoom became the replacement for the in-person meeting. Makes sense, it’s video. You can still see the person with whom you intend to speak.

Of course, a Zoom meeting is not a replacement for an in-person meeting at all. It’s something entirely different which we’re all pretending is an appropriate substitute. But it’s not. And what’s crazy is that the older technology — again, the phone call — is actually better as a fill-in for the in-person meeting, in most cases, I find. There are plusses and minuses, obviously. And your own mileage may vary. But I much, much, much prefer the phone call now to the Zoom call.

Freedom to move. Freedom to not be putting on some kind of visual performance. Freedom to not have to stare at a screen because the other person is staring at their screen.

Again, we all understand why we thought video would be the best substitute for in-person — it’s visual. But I honestly think it’s worse in many ways. And worse, it lulls us into thinking it’s a direct replacement when in fact, it’s something entirely different.

So if the next time I speak to you is on the phone, now you know why. And it’s certainly not because it’s easy for me. I just honestly think it’s better for both parties. Til we meet again.

(via Unsplash)

Links

• An ‘iPhone 12 mini’ you say? You don’t say! Still, I wish it were slightly smaller… 📱

• Gateway is back! Yes, the artist formerly known as ‘Gateway 2000’. Yes, the cow-print boxes. Yes, the brand is now owned by Acer and will be sold as budget laptops at Walmart. Yes, this is a bit depressing. 🐄

• Cleveland Cavaliers forward Kevin Love writes an essay about his struggles with depression. His second important essay on mental health. 🧠

• Is “Huang’s Law” — silicon chips that power artificial intelligence will more than double in performance every two years — the new “Moore’s Law”? 🤖

• Google Maps now has a COVID-19 layer. Very useful. 🗺

• As you may have heard, Casey Newton is leaving The Verge to break out on his own, with a newsletter on Substack called Platformer. This interview with him features some smart thoughts about the trend, the space, bundling, etc. 📝

• Unlike Warner with HBO, Viacom is attempting to keep Showtime separate and premium. I’m legitimately interested in seeing which strategy works. 📺

• Apple has removed ‘Force Touch’ from all Apple Watches with watchOS 7. This is sort of wild — it was a key part of the device from the get go and is baked into the hardware. They tried (and failed) to translate it to the iPhone as well, but I think that had just as much to do with inconsistency as anyway. Anyway, I was clearly wrong about this. 👇

• Alexa can now talk back to you in order to improve herself which is one part brilliant and two parts Her. 🗣

• Do you want to feel small? Both by incredibly big things and incredibly small things? Get this app — Universe in a Nutshell — made in part by Tim Urban from Wait Buy Why. It’s so good. 🪐

Posts

⌚️ Apple’s Nice, Tight, and Light Event

Apple Watch and iPad put on a good show, but the undercard of Fitness+, Apple One, and the A14 chip may have upstaged…

🔢 A Better Widget

Widgets in iOS 14 change more than layouts…

🔂 One Infinite Return Loop

The return policy for new Apple Watch bands is just loopy

✍️ What the Hell Just Happened?

Blogging in the time of COVID

🙊 Amazon’s No-Need-To-Upgrade Devices

The new Echo devices sound great. But so do the old ones, still.

The eve of an iPhone event. Yet in typical 2020 fashion, this year feels a bit different.

I don’t think it’s because we likely know everything that’s coming tomorrow — that has been the case with at least the last several iPhone events. And I don’t think it’s because the iPhone is any less exciting — it remains the most important and most-used computing device. The whole spectacle just feels a bit more muted, perhaps because of the lack of in-person, but perhaps more so because well, there are just more important things going on... Still, the show must go on.

If I had to guess about tomorrow, I would imagine the key areas of focus are going to be around the plethora of sizes Apple will (supposedly) be announcing. Not only the (again, rumored) “iPhone mini” — finally — but also the (apparent) largest iPhone ever. And colors. Blue Steel, anyone? (Yes please.) And industrial design. A call back to the iPhone 4 and the more recent iPad Pros. And finally, the chips.

It feels like tomorrow may be the middle act of a play Apple set in motion at WWDC when announcing the full move to their own silicon. Last month’s new iPad Airs with the A14 chips was step one. Tomorrow’s iPhones will be step two. And step three will be the ARM-based Macs. And again, if rumors are to be believed, we won’t see those tomorrow. But instead, next month. And per the discussion John Gruber and myself had on The Talk Show last week, this would seem to make sense.

The transition of the Mac to Apple Silicon is not only symbolic, it’s important. Apple seems poised to take their amazing chip technology to a level they feel as if no rivals can match. Tomorrow will showcase that on the power-per-watt side along with the 5nm flex. But next month could be something entirely different.

Also, I’m honestly interested to see what Apple has to say and show with regard to the (rumored) $99 ‘HomePod mini’. The initial HomePod was a strategic error (which some of us recognized before it was even released). With the right product, Apple has a shot at course-correcting. But I’d be more interested if they do an end-run-around with the Apple TV as well. A true living room hub? With gaming finally taken seriously?

We’ll see.

Links

• Speaking of things we may see tomorrow, a resurrection of the ‘MagSafe’ would be welcomed and could wash away the bad taste of ‘AirPower’… 🔋

• There are many reasons I would like the world to fully open back up, but visiting Super Nintendo World at Universal Studios in Japan may be near the top… 🍄

• One of my favorite books growing up was Michael Crichton’s Sphere. Hollywood all-but ruined it in movie form, can the Westworld team do something interesting here for HBO? 🦑

• You’ll noticed one thing I didn’t mention above? 5G. To be clear, Apple will clearly tout the tech tomorrow, but it’s a technology largely out of their control, so they have to be careful here not to over-promise and under-deliver. Maybe they have some new technology layer on top of it they can tout… 📲

• The idea that a startup can create a new supersonic jet — the first real aviation breakthrough in decades — sounds crazy. As all of the best ideas do at first. 🛩

• Another shameless link to the podcast I recorded with John Gruber last week. Beyond the Apple stuff, there’s a lot in the 2.5 hours here. 🎙

• I completely missed the fact that Apple made special Apple Watch country-themed straps for the Olympics four years ago. And they’re doing it again. ⌚️

• Bret Taylor, who many people will know as President and COO of Salesforce (though I prefer to remember him fondly as the co-founder of FriendFeed), created an iOS app solely to give us all a PurpleAir widget for iOS — something very sadly needed here in California with the fires. Bless his heart. 🌬

• I liked this framing of SPACs by Reid Hoffman:

  Our vision is that SPACs like Reinvent Technology Partners will be able to take the proverbial startup baton from great venture investors that have spent a decade helping build a great business. Reinvent will take the company public, and then guide it through its next decade of growth and reinvention. This kind of reinvention is essential, whether in the case of Netflix shifting from mailing movies on DVD to streaming original programing, or Amazon launching AWS and becoming a cloud computing platform as well as “the everything store.”

Posts

🕹 The Magic of iOS ‘App Clip’ Demos

I played a game without downloading an app. It was seamless and smooth and should be a new path for trials and mini-apps.

🌉 The Gold Rush for the Exits

It’s the end of California as we know it…

📧 “No Need to Respond”

The email mic drop

🎥 Release the ‘Tenet’

Warner Bros. missed the theatrical window, it’s time to move on

⌚️ Kind of Blue

Some thoughts on the Apple Watch Series 6

👨🏻 No Choice Entertainment

Finding forcing functions for abundant content

It has been awhile. A month, in fact. I’d like to say I’ve been busy, which I have been, but it’s more that the world has been busy. And my mind has been busy. A pandemic is one thing. An election during a pandemic is another, as it turns out. A closely contested one that lasts for several days is another thing entirely.

Politics aside, when the race was called last Saturday, it just felt like a huge weight had been lifted. Finally, one less thing to worry about. To think about constantly. I feel as if that, as much as the outcome, played into the mass euphoria that followed.

I also liked this sentiment from my friend Scott Belsky:

Our brains have been clogged by 2020 in general. So much worry, concern, fear, uncertainty, doubt. And while the election technically lingers, come on, it’s over. One less thing to worry about. COVID has come roaring back as many expected in the fall, unfortunately. But we’re also on the verge of a vaccine, it would seem. Another weight to be eased, another race that is on…

It’s strange to think about what life will be like when we can go back to “normal” because it has been so long since we’ve tasted normal. But it is starting to feel more real. And it’s exciting to think about what we can do again in a real world.

Links

(Let’s see what I have stashed in here…)

• They’re making a sequel to Willow, in the form of a Disney+ series. As someone who loved Willow as a kid, I’m in. ⚔️

• Google Photos got some heat this week for a forthcoming change to storage, but the service remains vital in our age of smartphones and clever things such as their print subscription strategy is overlooked. 📸

• “Four Loko to Launch the Quibi of Getting Absolutely Shitfaced” might be the headline of the year. ☠️

• Apple renewing Ted Lasso for a third season might be the news of the year. ⚽️

• Interesting bit on the race to create a cryptography that can withstand the forthcoming quantum computers, before those become reality. ⚛️

• Coca-Cola killed Tab, the OG diet soda. 🥤

• A good post by my friend Eric Feng on how live social shopping has been quietly happening in the US for quite some time now. All the pieces aren’t lined up as they are in China, but its all there, just under the surface… 🛍

• Fascinated by dark matter? The theoretical stuff, not the Andrew Bird song. This one is for you. 🌌

• Speaking of the Universe, our portfolio company of that name launched their first Mac app today. I’m incredibly biased, of course, but it’s really good. A perfect showcase of how you move an iOS app to macOS with Catalyst. 🧑‍💻

• Another app I absolutely love of late — not an investor, just a fan — WeatherLine. Their iOS widget is probably my most used one right now. ⚡️

• Want to visit an English pub in the 1940s with Burgess Meredith? Trust me, you do. (via Robert Stephens) 🍺

• Just got a Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit kit, this description had me excited:

  When this all works as it should, Home Circuit is incredible. Yes, the racing is simpler than past Mario Karts, and it’s missing things like the gravity-defying Rainbow Road or the wonderful downhill track Mount Wario. But what you get in their place is amazing in a different way. The most notable thing is how fast and easy it is to make levels. The game instantly recognizes when you do something like move a gate, so tweaking your track is as intuitive as getting up and moving things around. Need some more obstacles? Grab a few pillows to toss in the way. Is a hairpin turn frustrating you? Shift the road a little bit. It’s hard to overstate how the tactile nature of level design makes the process so much easier — and more importantly, it’s fun. I think I might prefer building to racing.

Posts

📱Twelfth Night

Some thoughts on Apple’s iPhone 12 event

📽 It’s Time for the Movie Studios to Step In to Save the Movie Theaters

And not just Disney, but the newer players too: Amazon, Apple…

🖥 Various Dips for Apple’s Chips

How will Apple serve up their different Mac-bound silicon?

🎃 Netflix’s Halloween Nightmare

Is the lack of Halloween content surfaced a trick or a treat?

3️⃣9️⃣ A November to Remember

Some thoughts on turning 39…

🗽 America, Interrupted

The end of Donald Trump. For now…

💻 Dial ‘M1’ for Murder

Apple just killed Intel, and Windows laptops are on life support

When I last wrote to you — checks notes — two months ago, I wrote about “A Sense of Spring”. The good news is that we do indeed appear to be on the doorstep of a new season. The bad news is that we had to go through a hell of a Winter to get here. And many of us are still going through it, in many ways. The vaccines are here, the numbers are finally starting to fall, but the pandemic rages on.

These past two months have felt like two years. Just the past few weeks have felt like months. Americans stormed their own Capitol Building. A President impeached — for a second time in one term. I’m not sure what tomorrow brings, but my sincere hope is a simple one: peace and quiet. We need to continue to beat back this virus, of course. But I’ll be happy to have the other bullshit removed as background noise. Focus. Back to work. Back to life.

[While such a long hiatus here wasn’t planned, I do have some general writing plans for 2021. I’m still not entirely certain what I want to do here, though another 500-plus of you signed up for this just in the past two months, so… I’m thinking about it.]

Links

• As the father of a young girl, I found this long Economist piece about girls to be rather fascinating. 👧

• “‘Alright, alright, alright.’ — those three words were the first three words I ever said on film.” Matthew McConaughey reflects back on the chance meeting and saying that launched his career. 🤠

• G.E. may have found a path to a comeback in the form of wind power, thanks in part to a deal they did with Enron — yes, Enron — years ago, no less. 🌬

• If you’re anything like me, you had no idea how much of a hidden hand malaria had in shaping the world as we know it. 🦠

• This was a great read on the current state of the Mormon religion, and his place in it, by McKay Coppins. 🙏

• Good, albeit frustrating read by David Sacks on the disaster that is Chesa Boudin, the current DA of San Francisco. 🚨

• This is probably the most succinct and cogent piece I’ve read about how best to think about and to try to understand the insanity that is QAnon. 𝐐

• Meanwhile, over on Mars… 🔴

• The way Susan Orlean wrangles her life via her calendar resonates… 📆

• The times they are a chargin’ 🎸

• Farewell, Periscope. 👁

Posts

(Yeah, there are a lot of these…)

❄️ You Know Nothing, Jon Snow

And certainly most VCs don’t either — myself included…

⚔️ ‘The Mandalorian’ is the Way of Star Wars

The Disney+ show manages to out-Star Wars the movies…

📱 The Goldilocks iPhone 12

Tempted by the Max and Mini, I went with the “just right” Regular

🐤 A Fleeting Glimpse

Unsolicited feedback on Twitter’s new ‘Fleets’ feature

🖕 Instagram’s Latest Middle Finger

The dark design of Reels replacing the creation button

📥 The Way of the Future

A quick rebuttal on the Slackforce Slacklash

🎬 Warner’s Offer to Theaters is This: Nothing

The HBO Max maneuver seems cruel, though not exactly unusual

🕸 Is the Browser Ready for its Close-Up?

Betteridge’s Law aside, it’s time to ask the question again…

💻 The M1 MacBook Air: Perfection

If it’s not there, it’s very, very close…

🕷 The Cleveland Blues

The Cleveland Indians need a new name; the choice is obvious

🍿 OMG, a Functional Remote!

An Apple TV User’s Thoughts on the Chromecast with Google TV

🌉 Wake the Fuck Up, San Francisco

Title says it all

🎥 ‘Wonder Woman 1984’ Just Validated the HBO Max Experiment

HBO Max is Great with ‘Wonder Woman 1984’ Being Okay

🚗 Apple’s Future-Proof Car

Always in the future and lacking proof…

🎧 Pretty Great, Pretty Loud, Pretty Expensive, Pretty Heavy, and Pretty

Some thoughts on the AirPods Max…

📲 Looking Back at My 2020 Homescreen

The Widget and WFH Shuffle…

✍️ So I’ve Been Blogging Again

In ways big and small…

😞 A Coup of the Soul

Donald Trump ends not with a bang… actually, with a bang

🆓 Free as in Twitter

Twitter v. Trump actually isn’t all that complicated…

🍎 Intel Outside

Can an old school CEO restore the company as a certain “lifestyle” company once did?

⌨️ A Touching Ending and Return

Farewell, TouchBar — Welcome back MagSafe?

📺 An Apple TV Universal Remote

An idea to get Apple back into the living room game…

Five years ago, a lot of people seemed certain we were in a bubble, now most of these companies look downright cheap (though yes, a few have blown up in spectacular fashion).