Good evening.
Good evening.
Browsing the App Store and getting new apps, often spending a few bucks along the way, is a form of casual entertainment for a lot of people. This role used to be filled by movies and music. Today, it’s filled by browsing the internet and playing with mobile apps. Usually, they’re games, but not always — modern mainstream culture, especially among younger people, seems to be more interested in media and social apps than games.
This apps-as-entertainment market falls apart if app pricing rises above casual-disposable levels for most people. Few people balk at spending $1-3 for something that doesn’t end up being that great, but when someone’s $30 app is disappointing, that’s going to stick with them and inhibit future purchases.
Great analysis from Marco Arment about why an iOS App Store with free trials and higher per-app prices might not actually be better for either consumers or developers.
This made me smile :)
(Source: kurtbraunohler, via harlequinheroes)
Charles Moore seems to be the perfect storm of right-wing, religious opinion
According to the “public sector equality duty”, all acts and institutions of government must enforce Equality in all its various “strands”. (There are seven of them, and “gender reassignment” is given the same status as “religion”.) So if same-sex marriage is permitted by law, opposition to it will become a form of discrimination against sexual orientation (one of the seven strands).
Yes Charles… and the problem with that is what? Of course gender reassignment is given the same status as religion. If anything, religion is more of a choice than what you feel your gender to be. Of course, you have neither the experience nor the desire to understand this.
The Government says until it is blue – or rather, pink – in the face that conscientious objections to same-sex marriage will be protected..
Oh ha ha ha. Very clever Charles…
By accident, then, the Government is introducing, for the first time, a definition of marriage which has no sexual element. Yet it refuses to face the logical consequence of this surprising innovation. If sexual intercourse is not part of the definition of same-sex marriage, why should blamelessly cohabiting sisters not marry one another in order to avoid inheritance tax? Why should father not marry son? Why shouldn’t heterosexual bachelor chum marry heterosexual bachelor chum? What, come to think about it, is so great about the idea of monogamy, once sex and children are removed from the equation? Does the word “marriage” any longer contain much meaning?
You see, Charles, there’s this little thing called love, which despite your obsession with genitalia, is what marriage is actually about.
Respectable people are truly terrified of being thought anti-homosexual. In a way, they are right to be, because attacking people for their personal preferences can be a nasty thing.
Homosexuality is not a personal preference. Religion is.
But here’s the good news: most people my age will outlive people like Charles (I’m 33, he’s 56). So, at worst, we’ll just have to wait another 20 years before we can start making progress. Or maybe that’s not good news. Equality would be rather nice now, don’t you think?
PS. It does not surprise me to learn that Charles Moore is the official biographer of Margaret Thatcher.
Normally I caution entrepreneurs not to model themselves after Steve Jobs […] But my aversion to his popularity prevented me—until the other week—from hearing these statements, which resonate with my values.
This article could also have been titled ‘Idiot realises he is an idiot’. He’s essentially saying: ‘Despite never having bothered to find out how one of the most successful CEOs ever actually thought, I’ve spent my career recommending that people ignore him’.
What I really love about this, though, is that the author presents Jobs’s insights in a such a way as to imply that he himself is on the same level of excellence and brilliance that Jobs attained. Sort of ‘Oh, I hadn’t realised that Jobs was as smart as me’. It’s a self-promotional piece of trash from an author using the legacy and insight of a brilliant, dead man to blow his own horn. Boring.
Today we announce the Nokia Lumia 925, bringing together the best in low light imaging, a smarter camera and a beautiful new look. The Nokia Lumia 925 comes with a sleek, metal-finished design, a new AMOLED display…
I think Nokia just nailed it… if only it were running Android.
Nokia shareholders tell Stephen Elop to “find a new road.” Should this road lead to Android or is it too late?
I would buy an Android powered Nokia Lumia in a heartbeat. They should have gone with Android. I really enjoy Windows Phone, but it just isn’t the OS to bet the future of the company on.