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The increasingly inaccurately-named blog of journalist and futurist Chris Taylor. Either the most sporadically brilliant amateur blog, the most brilliantly amateur sporadic blog, or the most amateur sporadic brilliance on the Web since 2001.
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Daily Blah FAQ
Who are you?
I'm the newly-appointed Future editor at Business 2.0 and the former San Francisco correspondent for Time Magazine.
Wow, so does this mean everything you write reflects Time Inc's opinion? Or do you perhaps have some sort of standard disclaimer to the effect that it doesn't?
Naturally, the opinions contained in this blog are not those of my employers. In fact, some opinions may be the polar opposite of my employers. Some may be the same, for all I know. Hey, it's not like I ask my employers their opinions about everything in the news, okay? Let's just say that if this were a Venn diagram with one circle marked "my opinions" and the other one marked "my employers' opinions", there would doubtless be some overlap. But neither I nor my employers are able to pinpoint exactly where that overlap is.
What is this Daily Blah thing?
An experiment for a column I wrote about blogging back in December 2001. All these years later, I haven't been able to kick the habit.
Do you write any other blogs, by chance? Could that have something to do with the fact that Daily Blah isn't always Daily?
Yes -- the Future Boy blog for Business 2.0. And yes. If you want true, editorially-mandated daily coverage from me, that's probably the best place to look.
Mister, you talk funny. Are you one of them furrners?
Why yes I am, as it happens. I was born, raised and educated in Great Britain. I've been living in the U.S. since 1996 and identify as British.
I say, old chap, you forgot the "u" in "colour."
No I didn't. I may identify as British, but I am also an American journalist writing for an American audience about mostly American issues. These two different sides of me are a constant source of tension. Nevertheless, Daily Blah will adhere to American English grammar and spelling.
Praise for Daily Blah:
"It is fun to watch the author's navel-gazing joy." - Sunday Times (UK)
"It's really funny and informative." - Dave Eggers, author
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"Better than Xanax." - Lessley Andersen, journalist
"Dude, lay off the crack pipe." - Souris Hong-Porretta, gamesmith
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Daily Blah for... Thursday, January 12, 2006
Apple + Intel = Crazy Delicious
I've been longing to use that headline all day -- only 15 meme-days left to reference the Chronicles of Narnia rap and still be cool, kids -- but found myself without anything interesting to add to the Steve Jobs-Paul Otellini lovefest we witnessed yesterday at Macworld. Except that the more I think about it, the less of a lovefest it truly seems.
Apple's new TV advertising has been so heavy-handed in making fun at Intel's expense -- oh, look, those poor Intel engineers, forced to labor away for decades on putting chips inside PCs and now at last they're going to be allowed to put their chip inside a mighty Mac -- that even an Apple apologist like myself is put off. It's all a little too shrill. That line on the billboard posters ("what's an Intel chip doing inside a Mac? A whole lot more than it ever did in a PC") couldn't be more catty if Jobs had gone and whacked Bill Gates in the face with a purse. Got something to prove, Steve?
Otellini, by comparison, aquitted himself with gentlemanly understatement (he's a real Clark Kent kind of guy, I discovered the couple of times I interviewed him), while at the same time stealing the show by showing up on stage in a blast of dry ice and an engineer's silver bunny suit. I can't imagine any of his predecessors, hell, I can't imagine any other tech CEO being able to carry off a silver bunny suit. It would either look supremely stupid, Dukakis in a tank stupid, or too egotistical. But Otellini is imposing enough of a figure to fill it out, yet when he took off the helmet, he patted back his thinning brown hair with a genuinely shy smile. And instantly went up about fifty points in my estimation. The fact that he allowed Jobs to run those catty ads raised him, and Intel, another fifty.
I just don't see why the Intel chip switch is worth Apple making such a desperate stink about. Perhaps they're doing this because they remember the hoo-ha that was made when Apple switched to IBM PowerPC chips. Apple is selling out, the fans said. But when the switch finally came, did anyone notice? Did anyone care? Did enough native applications not work on the new machine for it to matter? No, I say, no and thrice no. The only difference Macheads will notice is that their new machine boots up three times faster.
I want a MacBook Pro with built-in iSight, of course. Drool.
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