How Apple Will Make the Wearable Market →

Ben Thompson, writing on his site, Stratechery:

There has been a bit of consternation about Apple’s focus on “fashion” and all that entails, but there is a very practical aspect to this focus: people need to be willing to actually put the wearable on their body. While “form may follow function” for tools, the priorities are the exact opposite when it comes to what we wear: function is irrelevant without a form we find appealing. In this case, design actually is how it looks.

It’s on this point specifically that most critics – including myself – have failed to appreciate Apple’s approach. After last fall’s presentation I compared the Watch’s introduction to that of the iPod, iPhone, and iPad and found it lacking for its lack of focus on functionality. What I now appreciate, though, is that this was almost certainly on purpose: there was focus in that keynote, it just happened to be on the Watch’s appearance; since I’m a geek I dismissed it, but normal consumers, especially in the case of a wearable, absolutely will not.

If you only read one Apple Watch think-piece, make it Thompson’s.

I Better Start Writing This Down and Medium →

I’ve resisted too much cross-pollination between my podcast and this blog, but with a week to go until Episode 4, I wanted to remind folks about the show’s presence on Medium. If you’re enjoying the show, I really think you’ll enjoy seeing the script. Episode 3 is right here. And while you’re at it, poke around on Medium. It’s essentially a social network for writers.

Apple Watch and Watch Band Price/Availability Matrix →

Graham Spencer, writing for MacStories:

Louie Mantia has put together a fantastic matrix that lists every Apple Watch case and every Apple Watch Band and highlights which combinations are available to purchase, including which ones you can technically achieve with an additional purchase.

Seeing it laid-out like this, while much more helpful, helps to understand, at least a little, why Apple went with the ridiculous layout that they went with. End of the day, it’s just not super easy to explain.

KitchenAid’s 2015 Stand Mixer Color →

Christine Gallery, writing for The Kitchn:

Every January I go to the Winter Fancy Food Show in my hometown of San Francisco, but this year I attended the even bigger International Home and Housewares Show in Chicago for the first time!

It's an impressive, slightly overwhelming experience to navigate enormous halls filled with kitchen and housewares, but it's fun to see the newest and shiniest goods that brands have to offer. Stopping at the KitchenAid booth is a must, especially to see the newest color(s) for the stand mixers.

Interesting choice. Very interesting choice. Timely, too. I—my wife; I mean my wife—was looking for a stand mixer to match her iPhone, and her iPad, and the new MacBook she’s going to order.

Some People Want You To Think Apple ‘Sold Its Soul’ Today →

Robinson Meyer, writing for The Atlantic:

Today’s messaging was a little different.

The company announced new laptops: They will be available in gold. It showed us an example Apple Watch user: She was Christy Turlington Burns, a supermodel who Apple’s video shows taking time off from philanthropic work in Tanzania to run a half-marathon around Kilimanjaro.

And even the less-obviously luxe marketing seemed tailored to an aloof elite: You can call an Uber with your watch now! If you forget to stand up every so often (perhaps because your trans-Pacific first-class Emirates seat is just so comfortable), your watch will remind you to walk around a little!

But these are details. Most will correctly fixate on the price of the most-expensive watch, the 18-karat-gold Apple Watch Edition. Apple hasn’t released an upper price window for these watches, but Tim Cook mentioned on-stage Monday they started at $10,000.

Ignoring the stupid hyperbole of the second and third paragraphs (yeah, Apple should be ashamed for putting Every Mother Counts on the radar screen of millions of people), I’d just like to clear up two things for the author:

1. I’ve seen almost no one talking about the price of the most-expensive watch.
2. Apple has released the “upper price window” [sic]—$17,000.

I can go on store.apple.com right now and buy an almost $12,000 computer—and that’s only purchasing Apple products. Forget about the thousands of dollars of peripherals that someone who needs that computer would almost certainly buy. One of the most popular fallacies around is that because something doesn’t work for you, it must not work for anyone.

And that’s the funny thing about that word—need. Nobody needs anything. Nobody needs an Apple Watch. Nobody needs any luxury watch. Yet, somehow, people keep buying them. And the dream that Apple’s corporate charter is somehow a twenty year-old television advertisement? Some people need to believe in that too.

How El-P and Cannibal Ox Crafted a Cult Classic →

DJ Pizzo, writing for Cuepoint, on Medium:

With Company Flow disbanded, it would take into the next year for Def Jux to get off the ground and plant their flag with a full-length album release. But on May 15th, 2001, the label would present Cannibal Ox’s The Cold Vein, introducing the world to rappers Vast Aire and Vordul Mega. Produced entirely by El-P, the album would set the stage for Definitive Jux’s future. It was critically hailed by Rolling Stone, Stylus, The Village Voice, and made Pitchfork’s top albums of the 2000s list. Notably, if you Google “top hip-hop albums of 2001,” Google ranks it as #3, following Jay-Z’s The Blueprint (#1) and Nas’ Stillmatic (#2).

Released just four months before the Twin Towers fell, it was as if the sound of The Cold Vein accurately predicted a post-apocalyptic New York City, one where it didn't matter whether Jay-Z or Nas was king. Even on that double 12-inch released a year before the attack, the cover artwork featured two figures—presumably Can Ox’s Vast and Vordul—running through the narrow streets of Harlem while the sky burns and the buildings turn to ash. When it finally happened in reality on September 11, 2001—the same day Jay-Z dropped The Blueprint and officially began a battle for rap supremacy with Nas on “The Takeover”—it was as if everything Cannibal Ox and El-P had predicted on The Cold Vein had come to pass.

It doesn’t mean it’s perfect, and it doesn’t mean it’s for everyone (and I think this article undersells the miracle that is an indie label as small as Def Jux ((I went to a Def Jux label party in 2004, that’s how small it was)) selling 100,000 copies of something), but I’m still yet to ever hear a hip hop album that sounds like The Cold Vein. If you’re a “Music Person,” and you’ve never heard it, I highly recommend it.

I Love the Internet Even Though It’s On the Internet →

John DeVore, writing on Medium:

America was founded on clickbait. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is clickbait. We’ve got snake oil in our veins. Grousing about clickbait is like buying a lotto ticket and acting shocked that you lost. Clickbait works because after the commercial, a celebrity will say something outrageous.

Let’s not pretend that the internet invented bullshit.

Read this if you fall into either of these two categories:

1. You find yourself constantly defending what happens on the internet.
2. You find yourself constantly complaining about what happens on the internet.

Apple’s ‘Make a film with iPad’ Commercial

Marty narrates. So fucking good. I really, really hope the copy was created with his input, especially the

If you’re dreaming, you’re sleeping

line.

The World of Children’s Books Is Still Very White →

Amy Rothschild, writing for FiveThirtyEight:

Annual statistics from the Cooperative Children’s Book Center bear out what I know from visits to my local library. For three decades, the librarians at the center, a modest outfit at the University of Wisconsin, have tracked one dimension of diversity in books for children and young adults: racial diversity. Children’s and young adult literature (“kid lit”) represent a stubbornly white world even as U.S. children are increasingly people of color.

Just another one of those things that I never stopped to think about until I read this article. I know where I’ll be looking for Luna’s next few book purchases.

The Perils of the Personal Essay and My Podcast →

Mensah Demary, writing for Human Parts on Medium:

Writers are, by our very nature, unsociable creatures. We hide ourselves in our rooms, or in our home offices, or in the corner of some crowded coffee shop, in order to do the work, conducted only in isolation and in solitude. Humans are, by our very nature, sociable creatures in that loneliness and isolation in large doses can cripple us, render us into hollow husks, and it might even kill us if the lack of communion drags on for far too long. Writing, then, is a balancing act: to isolate, but to connect as a matter of survival, hoping that the work we create matters to someone, anyone, even ourselves.

I’ve been thinking on this piece for a few days now. As I dig further into this storytelling podcast experiment, I keep asking myself something that Demary states perfectly:

The personal essay is, I suppose, the transmutation of a ho-hum life into meaningful art; it is navel-gazing solipsism at its finest.

I’ve been reading/listening-to far more nonfiction writing in the past few years than I have fiction. My response to writers like David Foster Wallace, Scott Carrier, and Charles D’Ambrosio is what finally compelled me to begin my podcast. I felt, and feel, strongly that by presenting a story that is uniquely my own in as honest a way as possible (along with some decent writing, of course), that I can allow others to a. empathize and b. have some emotion stirred-up within them.

I still feel like both of these outcomes are possible in fiction. I’m just concerned that the amount of artifice that needs to be built beforehand is untenable in our current culture. If people just don’t have the time to spend, at what point are fiction writers just wasting their time?

I don’t know. Maybe I’m overthinking it. But read Demary’s essay, for sure. And after, listen to the most recent episode of I Better Start Writing This Down. And let my own hype machine begin: Episode 4 comes out on 3/16 and a little birdie tells me that it’s my best one yet.