Category: Opinion
On the Shutdown of The Magazine
After two years, Glenn Fleishman is shuttering The Magazine: The sad truth has been that, while profitable from week one, the publication has had a declining subscription base since February 2013. It started at such a high level that we could handle a decline for a long time, but despite every effort — including our ...
Even the Gray Lady Apple-Trolls for Traffic
In the business and technology fields, people measure success in market share, in profits, and by using various metrics like customer satisfaction (“cust sat,” as Apple CEO Tim Cook has referred to it in public, which strikes me as a rare time when biz jargon has passed through the carefully scripted presentations). There must be ...
Apple’s “Stickers” MacBook Air Commercial
Apple’s latest commercial is quick and fun, showing off a variety of lid stickers adorning the MacBook Air. What caught my eye, aside from the glimpse of the old six-color Apple logo at the end, was the fact that each sticker is clearly on a different, real machine. It would have been easy for Apple ...
Everything Wrong with Tech Reporting in One Paragraph
At a family gathering for Father’s Day, my sister asked, “So what’s wrong with Apple?” Puzzled, I asked her to clarify, and she mentioned the occasional snarky tweet I post making fun of Apple analysts, like this one referring to last week’s 7-for-1 stock split: @jeffcarlson: Please please tell me someone wrote an article about ...
Devil-on-the-Shoulder Look at the WWDC 2014 Keynote
[Updated in places thanks to feedback from readers, and a fresh round of caffeine since I wrote this post late last night.] I almost titled this post “The Pessimist’s Look at WWDC,” but I’m not a pessimist. I think most of what was announced by Apple at the Worldwide Developer Conference keynote is exciting and ...
Why Is Brad Bird Awesome?
Is it because he created The Incredibles, one of the best superhero movies of all time? Or is it because his foray into live-action filmmaking, Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, is the best of the series and perpetually re-watchable? Or maybe it’s because he took the tale of a rat that wanted to be a ...
Oculus and the Facebook of Tomorrow
A few quick caveats up front: I’ve not used an Oculus Rift VR headset, and I’m not even much of a gamer anymore. I’m working on multiple projects right now and I’m sleep deprived. I’m highly caffeinated. Still, the news that Facebook is buying Oculus for $2 billion ($1.6 billion of which is Facebook stock), ...
Why Do Big Magazines Hire Hacks for Big Tech Stories?
Given the many little flubs in this exclusive interview of Jonathan Ive for Time Magazine (originally published in The Sunday Times Magazine), I figured an over-the-top headline for this post was warranted. Let me set up a couple guideposts. First, getting an exclusive interview with Apple’s Vice President of Design Jonathan Ive, especially one that ...
Greg Knauss on The Empathy Vacuum
Greg Knauss created a fun little iOS app called Romantimatic that reminds you to text your significant other just to say things like “Hello,” “I’m thinking about you,” or “I love you.” It’s clever and appeals to people who are, in Greg’s words, “distracted or forgetful.” We all know someone like that (and I’m sure ...
Twenty. Laughing.
Twenty-three years ago, I waited in a sparsely-populated building on the campus of Whitworth College for the other members of a leadership retreat to arrive. I was the editor of the campus newspaper, but more important at that point, I owned a car. A beautiful redhead sat down in a tattered stuffed chair nearby, and ...
Jeff Carlson | Never Enough Coffee Creations 