Kemble Widmer on Taboola ads are giving Apple News a bad name - 'Fascinating. I read Apple News every day, and likewise upon reading the above comments thought “I’ve never seen an ad on Apple News”. I just tested the theory, and lo and behold within a few articles I clicked there is a horizontal box of ads after a few paragraphs. Interesting thing is, I had literally never noticed them before, as apparently my brain subconsciously knows to skip them, and as I said I quite literally do not register them. If they make my investment some profit, while being so minor as to be not noticed, I’d call that typical Apple. Just my experience of course.'
on Don't blame Apple - '“Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron BUBBLE ” — Shakespeare’s Macbeth'
on Tim Cook, Bad Bunny and the Apple Music Super Bowl - 'Trump is avoiding the Super Bowl because he knows he will be relentlessly booed. https://apple.news/A-hwd5VmgR1ew3GnJhCRbDg'
on Don't blame Apple - 'Those statements definitely give ME pause! Awesome – in all senses. And scarier than AI itself.'
on Taboola ads are giving Apple News a bad name - 'The Apple News ads are there, and apparently targeted differently by different websites or news sources. For me, the key is most of them are display ads, clickable but also eminently bypassable and ignored. Because it’s a reading medium. Not so with YouTube. There the ads are videos, complete with sound that IMO is automatically increased to jarringly get your attention, show up at random times or between videos in a playlist, most about the most random, obnoxious, or repetitive things: Stuck poop and different ways to help you ED chewables from 2-4 different sources ED tricks & hacks with baking soda; Vaseline and salt; god knows what other household products Some kind of accident calculator and comparator, complete with links or referrals to paralegal or legal services to help you fill out paperwork or defend your case AI generated ads about parasite caused diabetes and quick hacks to dissolve or drive them out of your body Various compounded GLP-1 weight loss ads Tai chi walking programs featuring heavily muscled Asian men (very unusual) – plays off the previous Chair Yoga ads with heavily muscled long white bearded elderly Indian men. Newest exercise ads with a pseudo military program with men doing pushups in freezing weather in their shorts, never mind the frosty air breaths that aren’t synced well with their breathing or talking And even more annoying is instead of next up on suggested additional videos, YouTube now places large video sized ads right below the description of your current video so that the slightest touch, not scroll, will trigger the ad to open in a browser, giving the ad a click, and possibly opening cookies in your browser unbeknownst to you. Temu clearance sales, etc. It’s my contention that YouTube either selects or produces these “ads” to be as obnoxious and asinine so that users get so fed up with hearing them that they cave into paying for ad-less tiers of YouTube. It wouldn’t surprise me one bit to find this in Google internal memos.'
on This week's Apple trading strategies (2/9-2/13/26) - 'On to the investment/market content: I don’t remember which name they were talking about, but it was a company who’s net value was less than the nominal value of the Bitcoin they hold. To me, this is a vindication of my strategy not to touch Bitcoin with a ten foot pole. Am I just reading this with self-supporting bias? Is there genuine merit to Bitcoin or is it — as I feel — nothing more than electronic gambling? At least gold has a real physical asset behind it — even if the dollar is no longer tied to it. Somewhat related, I like being able to use Apple Messages to send money. I’ve actually done it a few times. Same thing as using Zelle, in a way. It’s an instant transfer of “real” assets. So I’m good with electrinic exchange of money, but Bitcoin et al all seem kinda “fake” to me. Bartering with something that doesn’t exist (ans wastes environmental resources to “produce”!).'
on Saturday Apple video: Steve Jobs' gives his 4-week 'status report' at Macworld 1997 - 'I saw this on live video in 1997. That is, I was in Cupertino, watching as he was talking in Boston. He had taken the red-eye flight to get there. I’ve been thinking a comment I heard where Steve attributed his cancer to the wear on his body from running Apple. At the time, I didn’t fully appreciate all of the work he was doing. Looking back, it is remarkable how much he handled, and how well he handled it. What he says in this video gives a good sample of that. He presents this as a four week status report, but he’d been working hard on Apple for many months before this. From what I can tell, he reviewed every single project Apple was doing, and killed three quarters of them. Once a project survived that review, there was no question that it would survive. This added a lot of stability. I also liked his new board of directors. I was impressed that he took the time to do this right.'
on Apple TV enters fantasyland - 'Forbidden Planet is also one of the best Star Trek movies 😉 And the special effects still hold up. A lot of great science fiction is cautionary, like what happens if we have the wrong people in charge. Hard science fiction lives off of hard science but there is great SF looking at how diverse cultures work with one another. Cherryh’s work is all about this with the Chanur series a peak.'
on Taboola ads are giving Apple News a bad name - '80% of the revenue growth supposedly attributable to ai as claimed by google and meta is really just their price extortion, lack of alternative platforms and/or lazy advertisers allowing “all ai features”. This conveniently boosts the platforms revenue and is great for stock price and employee options/bonuses. But their AI in ad systems are so oblique as to what they do beyond their salespeople saying “you just need to trust the ai” and “advertisers that turn on all ai features decreased their cost per conversion by 17%”. I’m not denying their revenue/profits being boosted by ai but I would love to see an audit and study of what is really happening behind the scenes and how it benefits advertisers.'
on What's keeping Wedbush's Daniel Ives up at night - '“My take: He might also sleep better if someone turned up the heat in his apartment.” I believe that’s actually his Wedbush office, not his apartment.'
on Taboola ads are giving Apple News a bad name - 'Apple could build out something really special here. Hopefully this matters enough for them to make it better, especially since AI is purported to make targeting more efficient, or so goes the story with Meta, but I have my doubts there.'
on Apple TV enters fantasyland - 'Hi, RIchard. The best SF from my POV is interested in telling a story that sticks as close as possible to actual reality. Yes, sufficiently advanced science can seem like magic, as for example my prime example, Forbidden Planet. But there’s nothing in Forbidden Planet that doesn’t check the boxes of being potentially factually based – with the possible exception of the FTL travel of the spaceship. BTW, the underpinnings of Forbidden Planet are supposed to be Shakespeare’s The Tempest….'
on Scott Galloway: Unsubscribe from everything Apple and avoid buying its hardware - 'If I am remembering correctly, Scott Galloway has wanted to break up big tech, including Apple, for quite a while now. This just gives him an excuse to call for the knee jerk reaction, which is his right to do but doesn’t really cost him anything. But I believe he cashed in on selling a start up to big tech if I am remembering correctly. So, maybe, since he believes he can ride out any storm, he can pontificate from the mount. If he really wants to change behavior, I believe what he needs to do is get people talking to each other and figuring out the common ground and try to get something done. Sort of like what Tim Cook is trying to do.'
on Scott Galloway: Unsubscribe from everything Apple and avoid buying its hardware - 'Thinking about this a bit more: I think the right response is for the Apple community to make a big public stink. Not by boycotting, but by being vocal about our disappointment in Apple and Tim Cook. But boycotting basically says “We’ve given up on Apple” and that’s a message that doesn’t particularly encourage Apple to respond. (That’s the general problem with boycotts, they remove leverage.)'
