In case you missed it – and how could you? – this happened: While professional skeptics have been skeptical, the sheer audaciousness – and frankly, awesomeness – of Amazon’s drone proposal has attracted a near unanimous outpouring of amazement and adulation, at least if my Twitter feed is to be believed. It truly is a […]
2013
Apple’s Black Friday Deal Was a Missed Opportunity
As first reported by Mark Gurman, Apple’s Black Friday deal was for gift cards, not the traditional discounts. As part of the American Black Friday sales tradition, Apple typically offers minimal discounts on its own products and third-party accessories via its online and physical retail stores. However, this year will be significantly different. According to […]
Happy Thanksgiving
As noted in my last post, my parents are here for the week and I’ve been rather busy entertaining. I did want to take the time, though, to thank all of you for what has been an absolutely incredible first eight months for Stratechery. I know you’re not all American (and I’m not even in […]
Whose iPad Life?
My mom just emailed me. Normally, that would be unremarkable. She’s getting older, but isn’t that old, and surely an email isn’t that difficult of a task. This email, though, speaks volumes: Start with the subject. HK is Hong Kong. My parents are flying from Chicago to Taiwan to see their grandchildren, and while they’ve […]
Scroogled
Microsoft is selling Scroogled gear. From The Verge: Microsoft’s anti-Google “Scroogled” campaign has been quietly attempting to convince consumers to avoid Google services for the past few months, but it’s back today with a vengeance. Microsoft has dedicated an entire section of its online store to selling anti-Google mugs, hats, t-shirts, and hoodies. The prices […]
The Social/Communications Map
I took another turn at my map of the social networking space I made for yesterday’s post The Multitudes of Social: I made a few changes: The primary change is relabeling the horizontal axis. Originally I had “Interest/Topic- Based” on the left, and “Real-life Relationship-Based” on the right, but as Victor Pope pointed out on […]
The Multitudes of Social
Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.) – Walt Whitman, Song of Myself Last week Snapchat reportedly turned down a $3 billion dollar all-cash offer from Facebook. Apparently Facebook was worried about losing the teen demographic, or perhaps they were unnerved by the 350 million photos […]
Microsoft kills stack ranking
The Verge: Microsoft is killing off its controversial stack-ranking system today.1 While it could be viewed as an internal change that won’t affect consumers directly, it will have a broad effect on current and future Microsoft employees that may just shape the future of the company. For years Microsoft has used a technique, stack ranking, […]
WSJ: Apple Finds Surprising Growth Market in Japan
Oh boy. Where to start? I suppose at the beginning: In the past two years, Japan has emerged as Apple’s fastest-growing region, far outpacing its home market and the booming economies of Greater China and the rest of Asia. Japan is also home to Apple’s biggest profit margins, and the only one of Apple’s five […]
A Technological Optimist, but Just
In June, in response to claims that nine Internet companies were willingly passing information to the NSA, Apple released Apple’s Commitment to Customer Privacy: Apple has always placed a priority on protecting our customers’ personal data, and we don’t collect or maintain a mountain of personal details about our customers in the first place. There […]