February 2012
2 posts
Apple sold more iOS devices in 2011 than all the... →
parislemon:
Title by Horace Dediu says it all. With that in mind, the fact that OS X is becoming more iOS-like rather than the other way around should surprise absolutely no one.
“We’re dropping the computer from our name and, from this day forward, we’re going to be known as Apple, Incorporated, to reflect the product mix that we have today.” - Steve Jobs, Macworld...
Impossible Happens
“Hey Bill, it’s Steve…”
So much has been written and said about Steve Jobs and the success he had bringing Apple back from the brink and making it what it is today. But there’s one element of the turnaround that, on a human level, is maybe as remarkable as the technological vision and operational excellence that made it all happen.
By the middle of 1997, Jobs was...
January 2012
3 posts
“The only thing New York about the Giants is the NY on the helmet. They train in...”
– @GovChristie on the “New York” Giants, to @davidgregory on @meetthepress, 1-22-12.
Watch
Device revelation of the winter has to be the GoPro HD Hero helmet-mounted video camera Gwen gave me for Christmas, which I’ve been using to get great footage of the girls skiing on Bromley Mountain in Vermont.
Gone - mercifully - are the days of stopping everything mid-run, fumbling around with my iPhone and trying to capture a few moments of on-trail goodness without freezing my...
Plumbing In Print
Twitter is definitely here, real and important, especially for those who deal in content and information every day - “part of the plumbing” as the NYT’s David Carr once correctly observed.
But, sometimes, actual human events meet 140-character micro-blogging service references in the press, call them plumbing in print, still bring a smile and shake-of-the-head chuckle.
Like...
December 2011
1 post
Taylor Swift at MSG
We took the girls to see Taylor Swift at Madison Square Garden last week, last stop on the North American leg of her Speak Now Tour. Tweeted some Instagram photos from the venue, figured I’d post them here as well. Best live performance we’ve ever experienced as a family, and I’m including Dora Live and The Wiggles in that assessment.
She’s a talented artist who puts on a...
November 2011
5 posts
Isaacson On Jobs
Finally finished Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs bio this morning. It was very good, not insanely great. Extremely comprehensive and obviously required reading for Apple fans, students of business or technology and the generally curious, but probably not the transcendent and definitive work biographer and subject had in mind when they got together a few years ago, maybe a few years too late.
...
Sharing, Transparency And Who Decides
Twitter gave me something new this week. Showed up on Tuesday morning, right there on my desktop, a little “Activity” tab to make sure I knew exactly, in real time, when the people I follow were deciding to follow others (and making it easy for me to do the same), when they were marking Tweets as “favorites,” and other ways they were using a service I love, value and rely...
Music Metamorphosis
I grew up listening to music on vinyl records, 33 1/3s, 45s were largely before my time. Saved my money when I wanted something, snagged a ride to the mall, spent hours wandering around Sam Goody or some other brick and mortar store and then came home to listen to my prized possessions. Possessions.
Later on, I moved with everyone else into Walkman and car stereo-friendly (most of the time)...
“When you grow up, you tend to get told that the world is the way it is and your...”
– Best Steve Jobs quote in the surprisingly mediocre (except for Walt and Woz) PBS profile, Steve Jobs - One Last Thing.
October 2011
4 posts
PR Pro Tips, 2011 Edition
I’ve noted before, here and in other places, that the job that keeps our family in pizza and Apple products is communications, media relations, PR, flakdom, whatever you want to call it. I’ve been thinking about how the practice has changed over the years and put down in writing five “pro tips” I think are critical for being successful today, the high-order bits in our current environment....
Lining Up
There’s a pizza place in New Haven, CT called Pepe’s that we try to hit every chance we get, usually on the drive up to or back from Vermont. It opened in 1925, and what’s kind of amazing about that is people are still - today - lining up outside the door to get at the spectacular creations that come out of the ovens inside.
You could drive there right now and chances are...
Thank You
I felt like I wanted to write something. But, with everything else that has been said and written this week about Steve Jobs - from people who actually knew him, worked with him, covered him - the idea of chiming in with a few paragraphs of my own seemed at once superficial and presumptuous.
What could I possibly add to the rare and personal reflections of Walt Mossberg, the simple perfection of...
September 2011
1 post
“I think part of what goes on with conferences now is, it’s sort of lonely...”
– One of my favorite quotes from “Page One,” courtesy of David Carr, or @carr2n.
August 2011
1 post
All The News That's Fit To Tweet
Bill Keller’s gone-but-cosmically-cached Twitter rant is even more surprising when you consider that The New York Times is arguably the most active media outlet in the world on the platform, and you don’t have to take my word for it.
Kicking around the paper’s website this morning I found this amazing page, a well-designed and functional compilation of active NYT journalist and...
July 2011
3 posts
Feed Fatigue
A couple of weeks ago, a friend sent me an invite to Google+. I like new things, tend to be pretty Google-centric in my life on the Web (still consider Gmail one of the best things to ever happen to me), so I signed up and built a circle around some familiar early adopters. And, once the buzz of my green badge of inclusion started to wear off, the realities associated with integrating yet another...
June 2011
3 posts
Bad PR
It’s impossible to follow journalists on Twitter and fail to notice frequent, and frequently hilarious, Tweets related to a condition that is probably best described as bad PR. There’s a Twitter feed devoted to the most glaring examples of this, some reporters actually have blogs that document bad/annoying PR tactics.
You know it when you see it, the overuse of jargon or clichés in...
I do, but I can't say
Steve Jobs: There’s a lot of things that are risky right now, which is always a good sign, you know, and you can see through them, you can see to the other side and go, yes, this could be huge. But there’s a period of risk that, you know, nobody’s ever done it before.
Kara Swisher: Do you have an example?
Steve Jobs: I do, but I can’t say.
- D5 Conference, AllThingsD, May 30, 2007...
The Lighter Time
I’ve developed a slightly grudging appreciation for winter over the years, even though the lights go out too early. Skiing, especially as a family, changed my perception of snow. Have always enjoyed the colors and crispness of fall. Spring never knows exactly what it wants to be, rain and mud, afternoon thunderstorms and indecision - coat, or no coat? Raincoat? But then there’s that...
May 2011
4 posts
Responsible
“Live from the heart of yourself. You have to make a living, I understand that, but you also have to know what sparks the light in you, so that you – in your own way – can illuminate the world.” “Nobody, but you, is responsible for your life. It doesn’t matter what your Momma did, doesn’t matter what your Daddy didn’t do, you are responsible for your life. And what is your life?...
Thoughts on Twitter
New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller’s recent column on social media in general, and Twitter in particular, prompted me to sit back and reflect on the service, how I use it and what it has meant in my personal and professional life. Had conceiving and pushing “send” on 4,000 of my own Twitter updates, and reading maybe a million more, made me – as Keller suggested – stupid? The response to...
Robots!
Four unsolicited “comments” to four different posts on my long-dormant personal blog in the last three days, all from profiles that link back to WordPress sites I will not visit.
Too authentic and genuine not to share:
5/6/11
Suomi - “Great stuff here. .Oh, I love this one! I just stumbled across your blog and enjoy reading your blog is fabulous! Thank you for sharing your ...
April 2011
4 posts
Steve Jobs, on Life and Death
“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to...
RCMC
Saw …the deadline’s photo of Radio City Music Hall and remembered I had taken an almost identical shot two years ago, an iPhone special. Wonder how many other people have.
The Most Interesting Dinner Party Ever #ff...
The most interesting dinner party ever #ff - present day, speculative - guest list cobbled together entirely off my Twitter “Following” list:
(Seating for 40. Food by @difara, @Rick_Bayless and @Mariobatali. Party planner/treasurer @scottharrison. Your host, @jimmaiella)
@marissamayer
@richardbranson
@om
@johnbattelle
@darrenrovell
@fakecarolbartz
@jack
@garyvee
@JBoorstin
...
March 2011
1 post
@rickshawbags and the #FreshBagFeed
Anyone who follows me on Twitter knows that I am a huge fan of a San Francisco company called Rickshaw, which makes the best bags on the planet, messenger and otherwise. I became aware of this start-up in early 2008 after reading they were making bags for that year’s TED Conference, and happily caused the average IQ of those who had personally experienced a Rickshaw to fall exponentially...