Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 3

Previews, Pre-Season, Betas, and Opening Nights

Some more thoughts on the iPhone Duo release with a dash of theatre and sports tossed in the mix

There’s an old saying in the theatre biz. No show is ever really ready on opening night. It’s a cliché that has seen it’s time pass in the big money commercial circuit because so many producers run lengthy preview weeks, charging essentially, but not quite, full price to avoid reviewers publishing their criticisms until the show is officially open. The preview process began lengthing after the days of out-of-town tryouts came to an end, although we see that still happening occasionally as larger regional theatres will debut a work, allowing it to still be worked on, hoping that it will one day make it to Broadway.

Apple iPhone Duo closed and open_big.jpg.large_2x.

There was a famous production of Eugene O’Neil’s play Hughie, starring and directed by Al Pacino, that ran in previews for almost a month before finally opening. That led to a critic from Daily Variety breaking the only after opening night embargo a week early since the announced limited run would end up with less “real” performances than those in previews after the show officially opened. The show would go on to extend the run a couple of times.

In smaller circuits the cliché still lives on, simply because of a lack of resources to run many preview performances in front of audiences to really gauge reaction before it officially opens. A show can look great in final dress rehearsals, but it’s never complete until there’s a paying audience of strangers sitting in the dark to tell if it works or not. The ever-present lack of time still breathes life into the cliché in ways that offer both hope and anxiety behind opening night curtains around the world.

In the professional sports world teams play in a pre-season or spring training games that don’t matter while the players tune up for the real thing. Although in most of those types of meaningless games it’s really more like watching players audition than it is anything else. Occasionally a budding star emerges, but that’s atypical. Early “real” season games that do count (at full price) are when teams find out what they have, leading knowledgeable sports viewers knowing when it is time to pay real attention to a team’s chances or not.

Those are two interests in my life. I’m a theatre professional (and geek) and I watch sports. Another is my interest in tech. In tech we have betas. Or we used to, when that was mostly for software. Now we’re just in previews, pre-season, or perpetual betas forever for both software and hardware. Which is somewhat understandable, yet weird, perhaps ironic, but ultimately a joke on the paying public, given the pace in which things are always advancing in tech, including the pace and price of advancement.

We never seem to reach opening night, opening day or the end of a beta period in tech. Instead products and software are released incomplete, occasionally followed immediately by “leaks” that suggest the company that just took your money for it’s latest best product ever is working on fixing the things they knew were wrong for the next version when they released the product you just payed for.

But you’re going to love it.

It’s easier to swallow with software. It’s a bigger pill that sticks in the craw with hardware.

It used to be that betas were for working out bugs. They still are to a degree, but now they’re just the next show in a never-ending season, or the latest minor-league call up. But you still pay full price for the game when the team needs to put a not ready for the big leagues pitcher on the mound just to fulfill its obligation to play the announced season.

You can argue that there’s nothing wrong with the way things have evolved in tech because the financial equations are different. It requires a substantial upfront investment to create, produce and deliver new technology. You’d be mostly wrong, but you can argue it. Most of the costs in show biz happen upfront before a show even gets close to an audience, hopefully a large enough one in a long enough run to recoup the initial investment. It is a different equation in sports.

The release of Apple’s iPhone Duo strikes me as an interesting entry in this evolution of consumer dynamics. Soon, perhaps too soon, before the product was released to the general public, leaks popped out that Apple was working on tweaks to two of the major criticisms of the device for the next generation — a larger model and adding FaceID. That followed criticism from reviewers.

In general, most tech reviews I read, watched, or listened to made it very clear that the iPhone Duo was a first generation device with some rough edges that wasn’t for everyone, especially at the entry price. I can’t judge those reviews myself since I haven’t seen the product, but they mostly seemed very similar and to my mind fair. Some, sounding more like theatre critics or sport writers I’ve known, were more harsh, delivering criticism that might have prompted a closing notice being posted before intermission or an early game benching.

Here’s where my three interests diverge a bit. In theatre the show can close early if it’s savaged or not enthusiastically endorsed by reviews. In sports a pro team can retool a bit by trading or signing free agents midseason. Tech companies have to play out the run with tech hardware until the next generation is ready.

Given the leaks following the reviews I find it sort of funny that I’m in a place of feeling a bit sorry for the carriers that are offering great deals on the iPhone Duo subsidized by a three year contract. That’s a tough sell to anyone who pays attention, though admittedly most won’t if they’re hot to trot for the new shiny folding phone from Apple.

It’s my hunch, and only a hunch, that Apple knew these criticisms were coming. Even so, it’s one thing to prepare the next version hoping to make changes that advance a platform, it’s another to make them in reaction to negative press once the product is unveiled. It sets you up in the next round for being congratulated for fixing what was wrong the last time.

In the theatre if a joke doesn’t land, you can replace the joke in previews. In sports you bench a player or fire a coach. With tech hardware it’s not that easy changing things before it becomes a punch line. (See the Vision Pro.)

My second hunch, only a hunch, is that the iPhone Duo will eventually become a successful part of Apple’s lineup and get past what feels like a rough opening. I don’t think it will enter into Vision Pro punchline territory. Critics of all human endeavors need something to criticize as much as companies need to produce the next thing. It’s a symbiotic relationship that feeds on itself. And the always distracted general public has short-term memory bordering on amnesia.

It’s my wish that tech companies, like theatre companies and sports teams, would figure out a better path to the success they seek. Sure, you might be able to fool some of the people all of the time. But for the most part folks figure it out on their own. Some of the time. And that some of the time is what everybody on the producing end of things counts on.

Thanks for reading. You can subscribe to this blog if you care to. You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above. This site does not use affilate links.

iPhone Duo Reviews Yield Few Surprises and A Preventable PR Faux Pas By Apple

The jury is still out after the early reviews break

When Apple introduced the iPhone Duo in September I called it “the ultimate wait and see device.” Folks have waited, and now some folks have seen, fondled, written and talked about it. Those who got lucky in the preorder lottery will see iPhone Duos tomorrow and quite a few will be waiting a bit longer given supply and demand issues. From most accounts I’d say there’s still a bit of waiting and seeing to come.

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Generally reviewers were excited by the new device. Even if their comments about certain aspects were scathing. Of course none of them paid $2000+ for the review units. It will be interesting to see which ones do. But the excitement was tempered with many of the same questions folks had immediately following the introduction and the initial hands on impressions: The weight, reachability for left-handers, the small cover screen, the button placements, no FaceID, cameras, etc…

One of the big questions then and now, was how third party apps would work given the short lead time for developers to get their apps updated for the multiple screens and new layouts. More than a few weren’t ready for reviewers when they received their review unit. Several I read complained about this and warned that it was going to take a while for developers to catch up, leading to some subpar experiences. Again, that’s been said over and over since the Duo was introduced. Those reviews also mentioned how updated apps continued to roll out during the week that they had to check out the devices.

Intriguingly the day after the reviews dropped Apple popped out a press release touting the apps that will be ready when these devices make it into consumers’ hands or shortly thereafter. If you ask me that’s a sloppy unApple-like PR move that could have been avoided by having that info ready for reviewers. It wouldn’t have avoided all the words and talk about the issue, but it would have cast it in a different light. Apple never looks good when it’s playing catch-up. If that was a strategy, it was a poor one.

But that’s largely inside baseball in the way the gadget reviewing game is anyway. The real test will come when real users get their hands on the device and figure out how to hold it and work with it.

Below is a list of reviews I found interesting, mostly for their similarities. Again, pointing out questions or issues easily surmised after the Duo’s initial introduction.

That said, one interesting theme emerged in these reviews, from some subtextual, while others stated it bluntly: folks like the iPad-ness of the Duo’s larger unfolded screen quite a bit, with some wishing Apple had just created a folding iPad mini.

I find that thinking fascinating given my history with the iPhone. I stayed away from the first iPhone and didn’t get into what would become iOS until Apple released the iPod Touch later in 2007. I got on board the iPhone train with the 3GS. Keep in mind that the iPhone, as exciting as the early models were, didn’t really take off until the iPhone 4 and iPhone 5 generations.

The Verge: The iPhone Duo Is A Messy, Expensive Good Time.

The Wall Street Journal: iPhone Duo Review: Too Much IPhone, Too Little iPad

Tech Radar: I Spent A Week With the Apple IPhone Duo — And Yes, It Was Worth The Wait

Wired: Review: Apple iPhone Duo

9to5Mac: iPhone Duo Review: The Future Is Foldable

New Things With Joanna Stern: The Good, The Bad, and the Buggy

Daring Fireball: The iPhone Duo

As I’ve previously stated, I’m sitting on the sidelines and watching this all unfold. It’s still too early for me or anyone to draw any real conclusions. But based on what I’ve been reading and listening to, it sounds like next year’s Duo might be less of an expensive prototype than this first edition. We’ll understand better how the first iPhone Duo will fare about the time we start hearing rumors about the next one in January. Who knows? Maybe we’ll even see that folding iPad mini in a year or two.

Streaming Video Drowns Itself By Flooding The Zone

Netflix is making big changes

I’m old enough to remember when it seemed like all of sudden, seemingly overnight, everyone owned a VHS machine. Sure, some owned a BetaMax, but VHS was the thing. Video rental shops popped up everywhere and we’d see our neighbors there more frequently than at the grocery store, browsing the titles.

a screenshot of the Netflix home screen on an iPad. It displays rows of movie and TV show titles, including "Below," "East of Eden," and "The Diplomat," under categories like "My List" and "Top 10 TV Shows in the U.S. Today."

There was an old barn at the far end of the town that had sat empty for ages on a narrow, overgrown with honeysuckle corner curve in my small country hometown for ages. In the age before pop-up stores became popular someone popped it open as a video store, creating one of the first congested traffic nightmares that town had ever seen as folks parked along both sides of the shoulderless curve to rent a video.

Whether it was the local mom and pop video rental shop or later the BlockBusters, the display racks were bulging with titles. You’d walk in and be overwhelmed with the choices. To a degree that was the point. Flood the zone with more possibilities than anyone could keep track of to keep customers coming back. There may have been a pony or two in there, but eventually you realized that most of what was on the shelves wasn’t worth your time or money and the off the road parking on the curve eased.

When the next big hit finally made it into stores, the curve got crowded again as the aisles would fill up again while folks browsed, waiting for someone to return what they were really after, endlessly reading and rereading plot descriptions on the backs of boxes, hoping they were next on the waiting list.

VHS tapes became disks. Then along came Netflix.

Once Netflix moved into the video rental by mail business everything changed and the pop-ups pooped out, the video rentals that had become prevalent in grocery stores, pharmacies, and just about any other store that had a smidgen of floor space to offer them faded, and eventually so too did the big chains. The honeysuckle eventually reclaimed it’s territory.

And then along came streaming and the zones really flooded.

If you browse any of the streaming websites or apps today it’s like walking into one of those extinct video stores. Title card after title card scroll by in a waterfall of numbing repetition, often with the same title repeated line after line, category after category, too often in a weird trend that some marketing maven landed on of changing the cover art, hoping to get your eyeballs to land on a new image. It’s the same flood the zone approach.

When you flood the zone, eventually those you hope to lure in tire of treading water and turn their attention elsewhere. It happens in every sphere of human commerce, politics, art, music, you name it. Too much of a good thing becomes a problem when everything is just, well too much.

Now that just about every streaming service offers the same titles with the same upsell it’s overwhelming to the point of overdone.

I took the above trip around a winding corner curve in my memory lane after seeing news that Netflix, the company that changed it all by first flooding mailboxes and then streaming is wading into trouble waters. According to that article “user engagement has stalled due to a lack of popular content.”

There are many factors, but in my view that translates into an overabundance of quantity, not enough quality. There are big changes afoot as Netflix has fired Dan Lin, the head of its film division, along with six percent of its employees.

Netflix isn’t alone. It’s always been a leader, and leaders falter and flounder just like the rest of the pack. I certainly can’t say any of its competitors are that much better, but to my mind Apple TV has put out the best quality this year. After the Paramount/Warner Brothers merger that resulted in Skydance, with its promise of more movies each year who knows what the future will yield. I doubt quality will be the result.

That said, we started watching the 4th season of The Diplomat last night on Netflix, and it’s excellent. So there are gems that occasionally surface.

As all of the streaming services try to offer more, whether that be sports, or gaming, or just more of what the algorithm says enough want, they actually end up providing less, because the quality can too easily get swallowed in the flood zone.

It’s a tough job to program. As someone who has programmed seasons for live theatres I know you miss as much or even more often as you hit. It’s easy to get trapped into a formula when you find success. I’ve been there. It’s much harder to understand when a successful formula begins to fade. But when you focus on producing more rather than producing better, it’s easy to become mediocre, or worse, boring.

Rising prices and ridiculously programmed ad insertions certainly don’t help Netflix or any of its competitors either. Eventually it all becomes as numbing as the waterfall of titles that scroll down screens, like all of those titles on all of those old video store shelves. What quality there is too easily gets lost, even with the hype of a new release, when viewers have to wade through a flood of content that all looks the same.

The Tushy Bidet Is A Lifestyle Changer

A good clean household improvement

There aren’t many lifestyle changers that appeal to me at my age. I’m pretty set in my ways. However, after my daughter and son-in-law surprised me with a Tushy Spa bidet attachment for the toilet, I can say this is a welcome change for some of those ways.

I was first exposed to the Tushy bidet after they moved into their new house earlier in the year and installed one for themselves. I was hooked. Earlier this summer they gifted me with the same model for my birthday. This past weekend my son-in-law did the install (he’s a much more gifted plumber and handyman than I) and let me tell you I wish I had discovered this decades ago.

Sort of humorous when you look into the history of bidets and how that never became an accepted cultural tradition until recently in American households.

Sunday Morning Reading

Tricks and treats

We’re wrapping up an incredible week watching the grandkids who have so much on their minds, including the approaching Halloween festivities, so Sunday Morning Reading is taking another hiatus. Sunday Morning Reading will return next week. Hope to see you then.

Thanks for reading. Feel free to subscribe if you want. It’s free. If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. If you’d like more click on the Sunday Morning Reading link in the category column to check out what’s been shared on Sunday’s past. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. This site does not use affilate links.

Apple’s Coming Attractions

Will Apple deliver beyond the hype?

We’ve seen the trailers. We’re in the swirl of they hype storm. What the real story wil be is yet to unfold. Even so, some are declaring success before the first reel even kicks off.

It’s not hard to see the excitement around the iPhone Duo, Apple’s folding iPhone, and the Homeview gadget meant to be used in your home by you and all of your very loud family members. Even so, Time Magazine’s cover story about The Best Inventions of 2026, featuring new Apple CEO John Ternus feels a bit premature.

I’m not poo-pooing what these new Apple devices may offer. No one knows. And that’s the point. I’ve got questions about both I want to see answered once the devices are in real users’ hands and how that all fits in with Apple’s philosophy about making the iPhone the center of your universe.

I especially have questions about the Homeview after seeing Apple’s video trailer for the device. That’s based on the fact that nothing I’ve seen so far in any OS with a 27 at the tail end of it works as fast as that bit of video makes you want to believe. Much less fast user switching. Siri AI may be improved, but it’s still feels slower than the non-AI version of a year ago. Perhaps an OS update will fix that at some point in the future. But these devices roll out sooner than that.

I’d love to see these new gadgets be winners and live up to the hype and the promises. That may indeed happen. I actually hope it does.

My hesitancy and skepticism is that I’ve yet to see Apple’s software come close to living up to that hype, much less the speed or efficiency I believe everyone wants. In fact, given that much of this is somehow connected via Apple’s flavor of AI, Apple Intelligence, I’ve yet to see any chatbot of any stripe deliver on that kind of promise consistently. And consistency is the key. Or at least should be.

But then again, all the world’s a beta these days.

Don’t Tune Out. Pay Attention

Watching the world whiz by

It usually begins with “I don’t follow politics” or “I’m nor political.” But the topic can be interchangeable. Tech, sports, etc… It’s a choice. Even not choosing is a choice. One can argue, (I frequently do) that when you tune out or become tired or uninterested in a topic, then you’ve essentially surrendered. Whatever the other side is, you’ve let them win by removing yourself from the board.

Zoe vandewater oMpoyoO01Tg unsplash. Life can be tiresome. Increasingly it feels more so. Certianly in the wake of so much merciilessly bad news that it’s difficult to see how giving your attention might have an impact, much less worth your time and energy. I’ll be the first to admit trying to keep up is enough to drive anyone to just walk away.

It’s also makes it appealing to just to focus on the many good things that you enjoy in life.

Call me crazy (most do) but that’s how the forces who do pay attention on their quest to achieve whatever their aims are want you to feel how they want you to act. Overwhelmed. Overwhelmed to the point of tuning out, turning away or rolling over.

If you’ve tuned out, gotten pissed off, or just become no longer curious, the game is still afoot, and you’re not playing. You might think you’re canceling someone. But the only one you’re canceling is you.

By the time big changes come around that actually have a direct impact on your life, the game has moved on. And if you’re trying to get on board at that point, you’re late to the party and only there to pick up the pieces.

I’ve lived through enough moments in life when those who paid attention could see the direction the path ahead was revealing, and just enough tuned out to give those forging the path all the runway they needed.

Look, no one can keep up with everything. That’s just a reality. If there’s one good thing that has come out of the age of social media is that we can at least remain peripherally aware of the debates and arguments in ways we couldn’t before social media.

Even a peripheral awareness is better than a self-imposed lack of awareness, whatever the reason for shutting down.

Pay attention. Stay in the game.

(Image from Zoe VandeWater on Unsplash)

John Gruber Thinks I’ve Lost My Mind

Looking for a world of like, yet lost minds

There’s a weird and depressing continuation of folks moving back to X, formerly Twitter, currently still a cesspool.

The weirdness and my depression started when Federico Viticci and John Voorhees of MacStories fame headed back to stuffing Elon Musk’s back pocket. They’ve recently been followed by others in the tech-o-sphere, lured primarily because that’s apparently where the action is when it comes to talking about AI. Or talking to bots. I’m nor sure it matters. I expect them to all start calling it super intelligence any day now. Why not go all in?

The latest, and the most puzzling return is John Gruber. In a lengthy post he explains why. He also throws Musk-like insults at those who of us who don’t see his point by saying we’ve lost our minds.

If you have stayed away, or even just mostly away, from X for years and then come back, people just say things like “Hey, glad you’re back!” On the other networks, especially Mastodon, they tell you you’re “feeding Nazis” — by going to the platform where Tim Cook posts Pikachu videos. These people have either lost their minds or refuse to check their prior assumptions. (Most of the ones who chime in about it publicly are the lost-their-minds types.)

Perhaps I have lost my mind, John. I don’t think so, but perhaps I have. My grandson accuses me of that now and then, typically when I’m reminding him about what’s right and what’s wrong, given that he’s young enough not to know better.

Where my mind may have been misplaced, if it has, is a simpler location. That’s a place where I choose not to give money or participate in Elon Musk’s empire of depravity, where he thinks and spends money defending the so-called free speech right to create non-consensual pornography of pictures that are on his social network or wherever he can grab them Including those of children. To be clear, he’s done much more certainly and I’m not in favor of any of that either.

To be clearer, whether you pay for X or just lurk and scroll, you’re giving Musk money to do what he does. It’s out of your bank account into funding his depravity dumping on the world.

That’s my personal line in the sand that doesn’t shift. I will say the same things I say to relatives who still support MAGAts and Trump. If you condone sexual abuse of children because you think there’s a greater good somewhere being served by the perpetrators of that sexual abuse, you need to reframe how you think about the greater good. You may not have lost your mind, but you’re on your way to losing someting greater. And that’s not good.

Look, I miss Twitter. But that social network no longer exists. Gruber comes so close to swearing that what followed it once Musk took over has changed and is now a kinder, gentler place. So much so that on a quick first read I thought his post was a parody. Sadly, it’s not. X may have indeed changed somewhat. I don’t care enough to find out. Yes, big brands, celebrities, and sports reporters still rely on Twitter for reasons that are beyond me. Again, that’s their choice. For better or worse, whatever wisdom or lack thereof eventually filters out into the world eventually, so it really doesn’t matter.

Gruber, like the others who seem to be meandering back to Musk-land, are entititled to their opinions and to particiapte with any social network they choose. The fact that they need to justify their choices by smearing those who think differently, and dare I say how they themselves once were so outspoken with their thinking, to some extent proves just how much Musk and the MAGAt crowd have perverted and damaged the world we live in and the world online. Smearing others is like breathing in that world. I’ll admit I wouldn’t mind seeing them choke on it one day.

At least Gruber made his choice clear, unlike the MacStories duo. I have no doubt they’ll be calling Artifical Intelligence by its new Trump anointed and Musk approved branding soon.

Super.

(Image by Lutz Stalknecht on Unsplash)

Thanks for reading. You can subscribe to this blog if you care to. You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above. This site does not use affilate links.

Sunday Morning Reading

More knowledge generally diffused

It’s a Sunday. Leaves are beginning to fall as Autumn closes in. It’s a good morning to do some reading, even if it’s just “more knowledge generally diffused.” So, settle in for some Sunday Morning Reading.

I too often fall into the trap of thinking one thing or the other might be inevitable. Sometimes I’m right, sometimes I’m off base. When it comes to AI, what it might or might not be is still anybody’s guess. Matteo Wong thinks Nothing About This Was Inevitable. I agree when it comes to the technology. I strongly disagree when it comes to how humans inevitably do what humans inevitably do when they think they found the golden ticket.

In theatre rehearsals I often refer to “the little theatre in my mind” when giving direction to actors. It’s a place where the conscious and subconscious do battle when I’m directing a show. Mathew Ingram wonders What Makes Our Minds Different And Where Does It Come From? The mind may be an unchanging observer of whatever we do as Descartes says. But who pops the popcorn?

In a throwback post (so glad he does this), Neil Steinberg takes on James Boswell’s take on Samuel Johnson in Musings Of An 18th Century Giant Still Relevant Today. “It must be considered, that we have now more knowledge generally diffused.”

Kim Zetter explores The Secrets Of A US Spyware King The damn thing is there are no secrets really. Just pervasiveness.

A fascinating beginning to a series at The Intellectualist on The Great Fragmentation. Part II or How The Old Gatekeepers Made Themselves Easy To Kill Off is especially worth your while.

I often maintain we’re still fighting the American Civil War. I’ll go to my grave defending that position, primarily because it began long before 1861 in an era we do our best to ignore for fear of coming face to face with ourselves. Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz delves into a bit of that ignored history with The True Story Of The Actual First Shot Fired In The Civil War.

On an Internet site called sheets.works there’s a fascinating piece, portrayed both visually and to a degree in text called The People Holding Up The Internet.

Chicago lost a legend this week with the passing of football legend Mike Ditka. Few of us pass without becoming synonymous with an era, a city, or a time. For better, or worse, Ditka defined this toddlin’ yet often troubled town of Chicago as much as the original Mayor Daley ever did. Brad Biggs pens a nice obituary that focuses on Ditka’s football career. Ditka had his critics, some of whom made their criticism known after his passing. In our world of more and more knowledge generally diffused, and thus I dare say confused, it’s frustrating how challenging it can be when all the parts of a life are summed up, beyond the moments and achievements which gives meaning to multitudes.

(Photo by Pramod Tiwari on Unsplash

Thanks for reading. Feel free to subscribe if you want. It’s free. If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. If you’d like more click on the Sunday Morning Reading link in the category column to check out what’s been shared on Sunday’s past. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. This site does not use affilate links.

RIP Mike Ditka

A quick post to mark the passing of a Chicago legend, Mike Ditka who passed away today, October 9, 2026 at the age of 86.

Mike Ditka

Ditka, the only coach to lead the Chicago Bears to a Super Bowl victory in 1986, epitomized the Chicago Bears’ style of football, and also in many ways the toughness of Chicago itself. As a player he’s credited with basically reinventing the position of tight end. He carried his rough and tumble approach to the game into his coaching days.

As a youngster who lived no where near Chicago growing up, Ditka, along with Dick Butkus and Gale Sayers were players that made me a fan of the Monsters of the Midway. Of course once I moved to Chicago those early boyhood admirations became more entrenched.

Rest in peace, Coach.

Bear Down.