Ken Segall | Ken Segall

Bill Gates’ fanciful memory

06/2/23

Love or loathe Bill Gates, one must admit—the man is a part of technology history. His lifetime accomplishments are many.

Which makes it all the more inexplicable that his inner Santos insists on some outlandish resume embellishment.

Weighing in on AI with his blog article, The Age of AI has begun, Bill puts AI in context. He sees it as one of two revolutionary demos he’s seen in his lifetime. This is how he describes the first.

“[It] was in 1980, when I was introduced to a graphical user interface—the forerunner of every modern operating system, including Windows. I sat with the person who had shown me the demo, a brilliant programmer named Charles Simonyi, and we immediately started brainstorming about all the things we could do with such a user-friendly approach to computing. Charles eventually joined Microsoft, Windows became the backbone of Microsoft, and the thinking we did after that demo helped set the company’s agenda for the next 15 years.”

Impressive! Who else but Bill Gates could spot the potential in this graphical interface thing and develop the software to help us do all that amazing future-y stuff?

Oh, right. That other guy. Steve something-or-other, was it?

This calls for some serious fact checking. So I now turn to our dependable old friend, Reality.

Apple & Jony: a make-believe ending

09/6/22

Everyone loves a good story. Some people need a good story.

Tim Cook, for example. When Jony Ive decided to leave Apple in June 2019, Tim’s job was to reassure Wall Street that the departure of Steve Jobs’ spiritual partner was only a superficial wound.

The goal was believability, not transparency. After all, this is business. Very, very big business.

And so a story was spun.

Let’s give Tim credit for manufacturing a credible and effective tale. Then let’s wonder why no one ever poked holes in it.

The 27-inch iMac conundrum

03/16/22

Allow me to speak on behalf of the world’s 27-inch iMac owners:

THIS IS AN OUTRAGE!

Ah. Good. Had to get that out of my system. Honestly, I have never been so appalled at an Apple strategy. Between the launch of Mac Studio and the simultaneous death of iMac 27, we who have so patiently waited for an Apple Silicon-powered 27-inch iMac are suddenly left with only two options.

We can hang onto our aging computers and simply hope that a new iMac 27 will one day appear. Or we can spend more than double the cost of a typical new iMac 27 for a Mac Studio + Studio Display.

There are only two ways to explain what Apple is doing. It is either failing the transparency test miserably, or it is blatantly committing an act of corporate greed. Sadly, “all of the above” is also a possibility.

Attack of the lame headlines

10/1/21

As a rookie copywriter struggling with headlines, my mentors warned me about two unforgivable sins.

One was trying too hard to be cool. The other was stooping to such overused tricks as puns and rhymes.

I rarely think about those days anymore, but every so often a headline grabs me by the throat and demands to be ridiculed. I, of course, am happy to oblige.

It happened right after the recent Apple event when I visited apple.com to learn more about the new iPhones.

The Apple Store gets its tab back

08/9/21

Six years ago, Apple removed the Apple Store tab from its website.

No longer was there a central store-like place to visit online. Instead, each individual product page had its own Buy button.

File this under “Great Ideas That Aren’t So Great When You Really Think About Them.”

First, the new setup was counterintuitive. When we humans want to buy something, we instinctively look for a “store.”

Second, the online and offline Apple Stores were two sides of the same coin. One was simply the virtual version of the other. Suddenly that parallel was gone.

Imagine if the physical Apple Stores replicated the “improved” online buying experience.