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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:
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Daily Blah for... Thursday, April 20, 2006
Mac Mania
Arik Hesseldahl, an old J-school comrade now installed at BusinessWeek online, has an interesting take on Apple's first quarter earnings. Buried in the report, he finds, is evidence that Apple is adding 77,000 new Mac users per quarter -- or half a million a year -- via its retail stores alone. That's not iPodders, understand, that's card-carrying, computer-owning Macheads being created or tempted over from Windows. And that's only from Apple store foot traffic.
I can believe it. When I went to buy that video iPod at the Union Square Apple store, it was a wet Wednesday afternoon -- but the place was a zoo. It was packed, not just with Asian tourists taking advantage of a weak dollar, but newbies of every conceivable rage, age and gender. They stood around looking clueless and packed the mini-theater for a live demonstration of how to buy a song on the iTunes music store. It can't be that hard, surely?
Now I don't consider myself an elitist; my career, after all, has been built on explaining tough techie concepts to Mr. and Mrs. Middle America. But there was something about the sight of all these newbies that really ticked me off. And it was this: where were they in 1996, when conventional wisdom had it that the company would be lucky to be sold to Sun? When the hardcore faithful like me still believed, and were pilloried by people like them for not using PCs? I wanted to buy Apple stock when I left J-school in 1997, when it was at its lowest ebb; unfortunately, my first post-school story was about Apple, so such stock swipe became ethically impossible. I'd be rich, or somewhat richer now.
Old schoolers should at least get some benefits. We should get to go to the front of the checkout line at the Apple store, perhaps. Another reason I got annoyed at the newbies: in one respect, I was as clueless as they. Nowhere in the store were we told how to actually buy an iPod (the non-intuitive answer, as I discovered by asking a security guard: stand in the checkout line). An almost perfect retail experience, but this one tiny detail is missing. Sounds like old-school Apple engineering.
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