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John Siracusa on Changes Needed at Apple
Apple is taking it on the chin lately. Deservedly so. Although some of the pounding is from external sources (Tump’s not happy with Tim Cook apparently,) most of the blows are entirely self-inflicted. Among those critics is noted Apple pundit and podcaster, John Siracusa, who delivered a piece on how he sees Apple’s current predicament. His post, Apple Turnover, essentially says it’s time for a leadership change in the C-Suite. I think he’s correct and his post is worth a read.
Nothing lasts forever, as Siracusa nicely sums it up. Change happens. Life goes on whether that change is planned, forced, or fumbled into; a sort of a reverse echo of Shakespeare’s funniest villain Malvolio telling us that “some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.” His display of hubris comes before his comic comeuppance. Apple’s won’t yield as much comedy.
Quoting from his piece:
…the only truly mortal sin for Apple’s leadership is losing sight of the proper relationship between product virtue and financial success—and not just momentarily, but constitutionally, intransigently, for years. Sadly, I believe this has happened.
The preponderance of the evidence is undeniable. Too many times, in too many ways, over too many years, Apple has made decisions that do not make its products better, all in service of control, leverage, protection, profits—all in service of money.
You can certainly argue that Apple achieved greatness and now appears like it’s reached a critical juncture on many fronts, including falling behind in Artificial Intelligence and trying to ring every ounce of worth it can from every penny its users might be willing to pay for its goods and services. I won’t go into any detail on any of that here because whether it’s AI, App Store business practices, or developer relationships, it’s all been chronicled well enough for most of those paying attention to recite like a catechism. The question is, are the high priests in the C-Suite paying attention?
A few years ago I wrote a piece about how I thought Apple had built itself into a design trap. Here’s a quote from that piece:
The larger and more precarious point with this tangent is that Apple’s rich design expectations, as powerful as they are, are also Apple’s Achilles heel. Great artists aren’t afraid to fail. Great product makers who use great art as a selling point need to tread more carefully to avoid the level of disappointment that can turn a legacy into a burden.
I think they’ve built themselves a similar sort of trap in their business model(s) that comes from the same sort of reliance on their legacy of success and the hubris that’s engendered. You can easily argue that Apple’s business prowess, akin to its design prowess have both yielded unparalleled results feeding each other and fueling the company’s growth.
Joan Westenberg has an excellent piece called Apple’s Diet of Worms that touches on this. But to a certain extent it goes well beyond that. Apple is well known to take a long view, and by and large that’s paid off. They’ve been able to afford that long view historically, even though there have been grumblings along the way. However, I don’t believe Apple is dictating the terms or the timeline any longer.
In the case of Artificial Intelligence, as an example, who knows how that is going to play out for any of the players currently on the field or yet to come. But you can’t deny how OpenAI has changed the pace of things or how Google, and everyone else, is trying to play catch up. The recent announcement that OpenAI was purchasing Jony Ive’s design company to collaborate on what looks like new hardware, coming chock-a-block on top of Google’s mostly AI IO conference announcements, certainly changed the conversation. But then again it might be all smoke and mirrors, no matter how anxious everyone seems to be for some kind of new gadget of the future. Personally, I still think much on this AI front is a race without a finishing line or even a destination beyond collecting data for dollars.
That said, Apple is in it, perhaps thrust into the fray or perhaps fumbling along. Regardless, in my opinion any future achievements are going to require leadership change at the top.
You can 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.
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Mozilla Finally To Shut Down Pocket
Add another marker in the Internet/Tech graveyard. Mozilla has announced that it will shutting down Pocket on July 8th. Nothing lasts forever.
It’s not a surprise to me given how poorly the app was treated after Mozilla took it over in 2017. The read it later service became almost unusable and I had gradually moved away from my reliance on it for bookmarking web links. My move away quickened once they decided to discontinue the Mac app. Making it a web only app ironically led to a pretty horrible user experience.
Pocket joins other apps like Evernote that were once old standbys that in order to grow and sustain felt like they needed to add feature upon feature in order to compete and attract funding and subscribers. You can’t blame anyone for trying to make a buck and run a company. You can blame them for doing such a poor job of it.
Mozilla has made a way for users to archive links they’ve saved with instructions to be found in their post about closing the doors. Users have until October 8th to export their data.
Update: On Friday Digg co-founder Kevin Rose has offered to step in and take over Pocket to save it from its demise. Anything’s possible I guess.
You can 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.
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We’re Losing The Battle Over What’s Real and What’s Not
The Chicago Sun-Times is going to go through some things. Is AI the culprit? Business model? Lack of editorial oversight? The answer doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things when it comes to the struggle to understand what’s real and what’s not.
The paper published a summer activities guide called the Chicago Sun-Times Heat Index that contained a reading list of books that included real authors, but some of the titles were entirely fictional. As in not real titles at all. Just made up. Five of the titles actually exist. Ten do not.
This episode lead most to immediately speculate that the article was generated by Artificial Intelligence and that there was no editorial oversight of what actually made it into print. I don’t know about you, but I’d call those assumptions more than an early warning sign.
According to 404 Media the Heat Index was published by King Features which is owned by Hearst Newspapers. The guide was licensed by the Sun-Times apparently for the Sunday print and online editions.
The Sun-Times issued an early statement saying they are looking into the matter as referenced below, promising more info to be released soon.
To their credit they did. VP of marketing and communications for Chicago Public Media, which owns the Sun-Times stated to 404 Media that no one at Chicago Public Media reviewed the section, which follows a pattern used with similar such inserts saying that “historically, we don’t have editorial review…because it comes from a newspaper.” That statement of course includes the promise of a change in policy going forward and an investigation to see if there is other inaccurate information. You can read the full Chicago Sun-Times statement released later here.
The Sun-Times was not the only paper to license and publish the paper according to NPR.
That NPR report also says that writer Marco Buscaglia claimed responsibility for the guide and did acknowledge that it was partly generated by Artificial Intelligence.
Ah, well. All of those worst case assumptions were not a mass hallucination, I guess.
There were years that I bought both the Chicago Sun-Times and the Chicago Tribune every morning and got to work early enough to read them both. Those days are long gone, mostly thanks to the Internet and the changes that wrought on the newspaper publishing industry. We’ve all seen this next chapter coming. I guess it’s here.
Here’s the thing. The cold hard fact that most leapt to the assumption that this is some form of AI generated content proves the battle, and perhaps the war has already been lost, regardless of how this did or didn’t happen. It will happen again.
We’ve been heading into the land of make believe where facts don’t matter for some time now. It’s sad that what once were venerated media sources have been helping to lead the charge, especially in an era when governments feel free to make up things as they go along.
You can 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.
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Sunday Morning Reading
Good morning. Visiting the grandkids this weekend, so this will be a short stack of links to share. Fair warning ahead most are on the darker side of the ledger. The links. Not the grandchildren. They are the light. The grandchildren are why I pay attention.
First up is a piece on despair from Dean Pritchard titled Despair, What Is It Good For. He calls it a hopeless call to action. I’m not sure it’s hopeless at all. Just another step in finding what may or may not turn out to be answers. As long as we keep stepping.
NatashaMH says that social media addiction isn’t just about us, it’s about the people around us in Unread, Unavailable and Unbothered. I’ve never been one to buy into the social media addiction theory. It’s too damn easy to put down the damn phone. But I take her points because it’s too damn easy to keep hoping to find new ways to avoid despair.
Lauren Goode takes on Deepfakes, Scams, and the Age of Paranoia. Somebody needs to.
Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman say that Trump is betraying the voters who elected him in The White Rural Reckoning. They are correct. But we knew that would happen. Scum likes to remove itself from other scum once it’s done scumming around.
Joan Westenberg compares the comeuppance moment Apple is enduring to Martin Luther’s reformation moment in Apple’s Diet of Worms. Given the abundance of fanatics there’s more than a little truth here.
Playwright Sara Ruhl is one of my favorites. Charles McNulty takes a look at what she has to say in her new book In ‘Lessons From My Teachers,’ Playwright Sarah Ruhl Finds Wisdom In Art, Motherhood, Even Grief.
And as for weathering despair, check out Lost At Sea by Alec Frdyman. Excellent reading about a scary adventure.
And to close out this weekend I’ll leave you with this uncredited thought that pops up every now and then on social media.
And just remember who the tax breaks are targeted for.
Peace.
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. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.
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CNN Will Air George Clooney’s ‘Good Night and Good Luck’ Live From Broadway on June 7
I’d mark your calendar for this one. CNN will be airing George Clooney’s production of the play Good Night, and Good Luck, live on June 7th from the Winter Garden Theatre on Broadway. It will be the first time that a live play performance has been televised.
The play is adaptation of the 2005 movie of the same name that Clooney co-wrote, directed, and starred in, based on CBS journalist’s Edward R. Murrow’s work to expose Joe McCarthy during the Red Scare in the 1950s. In the movie Clooney played Fred Friendly, Murrow’s producer. On the stage he plays Murrow.
The Broadway production has met with critical acclaim and just recently announced that it had recouped its initial investment during its run that began in March of 2025.
I’m a big fan of the movie (I wrote a little about it here) and imagine I will also be of the stage version. I’m sure the story’s central message of standing up to bullies and demagogues translates just as well in a live version as it does on film.
I’m looking very much forward to watching this and would encourage you to as well. I know there are some who see Clooney as one of the villains in our recent political turmoil. And some see CNN has a willing accomplice to the madness we face. Even with what may seem like all of that irony, I would urge you to set that aside and give Good Night, and Good Luck a watch. As I said then
This isn’t some moment of nostalgia for a time gone by. It is a recognition that where we are now is a place we’ve been before. This time around those that control the media and messaging have, for the moment, much more control than they did in Murrow’s day. Make no mistake, they had some control then, but now it’s more pervasive and the Murrow’s, Friendly’s and Paley’s are fewer in number.
Setting aside the historical significance of this broadcast of a live play, and the paradox between the message and the messengers, I can’t think of a better reason to watch given where we are and will continue to be for some time.
You can 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.
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Sunday Morning Reading
Time for some Sunday Morning Reading on this Mother’s Day, with a short stack of culture, some tech, some politics, and the Ziegfeld Follies tossed in for good measure.
First up is a good long read from Spencer Kornhaber wondering if we’ve entered a cultural dark age. Provocative in parts, predictable in others, it’s worth your time for the journey it takes. Check out Is This The Worst-Ever Era of American Pop Culture?
Kaitlyn Tiffany says We’re Back to the Actually Internet. It’s about fact checking, the need for fact checking, and actually about how fact checking doesn’t really matter.
We may have beat the term fascism to death long before the real beating actually begins, and it’s the Bible thumpers who seem far too eager for the end times with their wishes for some sort of Armageddon beat down. Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor take a look at The Rise of End Times Fascism.
The Apple enthusiast world is still going through some things and will continue to for the foreseeable future. Denny Henke at Beardy Guy Musings is chronicling his thoughts about his move away from using Apple products. His latest, Are Apple Enthusiasts Miserable? takes a look at some of the angst and tensions he sees.
Indie app Developer Thomas Ricourad, the developer of the app Ice Cubes for Mastodon, among other apps, is searching. He’s not alone. Check out Having A Clear Vision In A Blurred World.
Matthew Gurewitsch takes a quick look The Story of a Rose, an upcoming look at an almost forgotten era in A Ziegfeld Girl Recalls The Forgotten War.
Happy Mother’s Day to all.
(image from Aga Putra on Unsplash)
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. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.
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O Canada
I applaud Canada’s newly elected Prime Minister Mark Carney standing firm and saying straight up that Canada’s not for sale during his talks with what somehow continues to pass as America’s seat of government. Good on him. Glad he did. But he didn’t have much of a choice in this non-real reality TV series that needs to be canceled.
There’s a trouble-making part of me that would have loved to have heard him say to the decaying orange turd sitting next to him something like, “I’ll tell you what, Mr. President. You agree to step down from your office and our government will give any proposal consideration. Other than that, no thank you.” I mean if we’re going to waste our time on nonsensical fantasies, let’s have some fun. Otherwise this farce is running out of steam while the players play a game that the audience is already exhausted with.
Of course that would ever happen and I’m not criticizing Carney, He laid down the appropriate marker while standing up to the bully-in-chief. But at some point, from some quarter, I’d like to see someone land a harder punch in the nose or a kick in the groin. Even if they were only rhetorical.
Elbows up!
You can 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.
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Apple’s Long Term Challenges Complicate The Short Term
Mark Gurman offers up a relatively thorough summary of the number of challenges Apple is facing going forward in his weekly Power On column. Things always go forward. The question is always how.
The original link above is paywalled, but here’s a web archive link to the story.
And here’s the summary:
Gurman calls this point in Apple’s history a “critical juncture.” I would agree. The many moving parts, both surrounding Apple, and of its own making, have put Cook and company squarely in that critical juncture. This comes as Apple and those that make their living talking about Apple are gearing up for this year’s World Wide Developer’s Conference (WWDC) next month.
Gurman delivers the punchline well below the headline that neatly summarizes why WWDC is not going to be able to address all of these challenges, but also why the turmoil is going to continue.
Speaking specifically about Apple’s race to catch up in the AI realm he says:
it’s going to be a while before we can tell if Apple is heading in the right direction
Perhaps that should have been the lede. He could have easily said the same about each of these challenges he enumerates.
But there’s also a larger, more encompassing challenge that makes surmounting each even more difficult. The tech world is moving at a pace that Apple is unaccustomed to. Apple’s historic long view has served it well over the years, but the window on that long view is increasingly narrowing its aperture.
Apple may spend its June introducing and setting the table for what’s coming later this year, but already most of the smart players who follow and promote Apple are shifting their focus to the bigger, and more critical, table stakes coming long after this year’s summer and fall hype cycles end. The now familiar “coming later this year” now means much less when the real issues may only begin to be addressed further down the road.
Waiting “a while” is not an easy sell. Especially these days.
You can 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.
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Sunday Morning Reading
So much is broken these days as we watch more things break. Of course the choice is to watch or not. I prefer watching. I prefer paying attention. That’s why I share these links in Sunday Morning Reading and throughout the week.
Kicking off this week is an excellent essay from Jia Tolentino called My Brain Finally Broke. It’s one of the more powerful pieces I have read on all that’s breaking. The above is the original link. This one is to the web archive of the piece. Obviously I encourage you to read all I like to in Sunday Morning Reading, but this is one you shouldn’t miss.
NatashaMH takes on The Paradox of Choice. If you ask me, we too often enjoy choosing the paradox.
Joan Westenberg takes a look at what happens when one chooses conventional wisdom and the systems and ways things have always worked. Until those ways become a weakness and a downfall in The Cannae Problem. We’re watching this happen in real time folks.
This past week Amazon’s ass-kissing founder Jeff Bezos looked like he might have tired of the stink. In the wake of Trump’s tariffs word got out that Amazon would show customers the amount of a price increase that was due to the Trump tax. That quickly changed. Some say with a phone call from the bumbling boss. Harry McCracken suggests, (I did too), that merchants should let us know who’s screwing who in this broken mess. Check out Of Course We Deserve To Know The True Costs of Tariffs.
What Should We Do If An AI Becomes Conscious? I’m not sure. But then again, look what we as conscious beings are already doing. Mathew Ingram takes a look.
Yanis Varoufakis takes a look at Trump And The Trump Of The Technolords. It’s not a pretty look at the reasoning behind what seems to be happening without reason.
There’s not much new news in Matthew Cunningham-Cook’s piece titled Elon Musk And His DOGE Bro Have Cashed In On American’s Retirement Savings, but it’s a good summary of what has happened for those who choose to pay attention. A better one for those who choose otherwise.
To end this week with an article about hope, take a look at Lessons From A Physician About Hope by Leif Hass. Yes, hope is important. Here’s hoping you always choose wisely.
(Image from Roman Kraft on Unsplash.)
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. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.
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Andor, Or We Are The Heroes We Need
The ever expanding universe of the Star Wars franchise is one that often leaves me colder than I imagine I’d feel if I were floating alone in space. That’s the same with most of these run the IP into the ground franchises. When something comes out of those factories that’s actually decent, it’s a surprise. One of the surprising beacons of warmth has been the Andor series, which is currently streaming in its second season. I’m also a fan of the movie Rogue One for which Andor is a prequel.
Yes, the story is about the rebel rebellion against the Empire, but there’s something different about Andor. Recently I read a piece from Derek Pharr on Nerdist, Hope Without The Force: How Andor Rewrites Rebellion. It helped me put my finger on why the show feels different and surprisingly current beyond the scope of small screen entertainment.
Here’s a quote:
Andor makes the quiet argument that the Jedi weren’t just irrelevant to the uprising against the Empire. They were liabilities and detached from everyday suffering. The Jedi were fixated with balance and prophecy, and wildly ineffective at stopping fascism when it counted. The Jedi Order had their shot. They blew it. Meanwhile, on Ferrix and Narkina 5, regular people are building the rebellion through sweat, sacrifice, and solidarity. Not the Force.
Whether you are a fan of the series or not, I encourage you to read the entire piece. Pharr’s thesis is indeed a good one about the series. But for me it spins off into many of the challenging moments we face today in the wake of our own evolving evil empire. One that’s certainly not intelligently designed, much less preordained.
Bottom line, it’s going to come down to those of us on the ground.
I think we need to eternalize and begin acting on that instead of waiting around and looking for heroes among congress critters, political parties, media mouthpieces, TV lawyers and those at the bar, or even judges to come to the rescue. We know what’s ahead is going to continue to get uglier. We’re probably going to have to meet ugly with a little ugly ourselves. Cue Tina Turner’s We Don’t Need Another Hero.
As Pharr puts it,
The Jedi were legends. The rebellion was real.
No elegant solutions from a more civilized age. Just people. Flawed, desperate, courageous people, who decide enough is enough.
He also argues that noble as they were, the Jedi were spectacularly bad at saving things in their attempts to reclaim balance. I don’t know about you, but that sounds frighteningly familiar.
Read Pharr’s piece if and when you watch Andor. If you don’t watch the show, read the piece anyway.
Pie in the sky? Perhaps. But I’ll take a serving and ask for seconds.
You can 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.
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Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 3
Musings on life, the theatre, technology, culture and the occasional emu sighting
Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 3 