The Apple Page -- Current Reading List -- Nothing About The Bakken -- May 7, 2019

Apple Sauce -- Bloomberg

Over at Macrumors today -- Angela Ahrendts fired/let-go/laid-off/retired after just four years or so -- and the daggers are now coming out  -- how the changes made in retail the last few years were a disaster for Apple. Regardless of design, Apple stores are chaotic, noisy, unpleasant. But I think folks are missing the bigger point: Apple may or may not need to re-design the stores, but they definitely need more stores in localities where they have stores. Some folks suggest separating their retail stores into two: sales and services. I'm not convinced. But one comment that I found similar to my own experience:

Maybe my local Apple store is just above average, but I like the changes. As soon as you walk in, someone asks you why you are visiting. If you need service, they enter you in the service queue and then you're free to roam around the store. If you need sales, they direct you to the product and enter you in the sales queue. In both cases, after a short wait an employee comes right to you and then helps you with the sales or service you need. I've done this several times and it's always been a much better experience than any other retail store I can think of. People always seemed to find the old genius bar confusing. While being helped, other customers would keep walking up to the bar and trying to squeeze in to get help. The 'bar' model didn't indicate there is actually a queue and someone will help you when it's your turn.

Angela Ahrendts? Peter Principle. Next role: cast member on "Shark Tank." From Macrumors:

Switching careers and leaving fashion for a tech company made her "incredibly insecure," and she says she spent first six months at Apple "fairly silent" because she wanted to listen to get her bearings and gain confidence in her role.

Get in your lane, bring your gifts to the table, right? They don't expect you to learn - you're used to being the CEO in an industry that you grew up in for 30 some odd years. You're used to knowing everything. And now you go in at a senior level and you know nothing but no, wait a minute: You know what you do.

[Apple] was a titanic retail business at that point, with 55,000 employees all over the world. And so, okay, maybe I'm here because I'm a leader and maybe I'm here because I'm a brand builder. I wouldn't go as far as say visionary, but I thrive on looking out two or three years and feeling what's coming and warning everybody and uniting everybody around a strategy to be prepared for that.

According to Ahrendts, she learned three things during her time at Apple: never forget where you came from, move faster than you could ever fathom, and never forget that you have a greater responsibility.

When I read that, it sounds like Human Resources at Apple failed. Wrong person for the job. Six months to get her bearings? Are you kidding? Six months is, like, a lifetime in tech. A Harvard MBA program is only two years. Groves and Oppenheimer went from nothing to a nuclear weapon in about that time. And that was in 1943 when the only way to travel from Los Alamos to Chicago was by train.

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The Book Page

Calculating the Cosmos: How Mathematics Unveils the Universe, Ian Stewart, University of Warwick, c. 2016.

• not an easy book to read
• his writing style is fine but there's just something about the book that makes it less than satisfying
• it seems he does a poor job with defnitions
• skips around a lot
• having said that, it brings arm chair astronomers up to date
• I think it's best just slog through it the first time and then go back and re-read those portions that interest you

Valiant Ambition: George Washington, Benedict Arnold, and the Fate of the American Revolution, Nathaniel Philbrick, c. 2016.

The other day I was interested in the geography of the "waterways" around New York and New Jersey. I happened to be reading a biography of Richard Feynman (certainly you can't be joking!). He was born, raised in Far Rockaway, Queens, west end of Long Island. I can never remember the geography of that area. I was hoping to find a good book that would include the geography of this area. And then I remembered reading Valiant Ambition some time ago. I read it quickly, didn't pay much attention to it except to get the gist of the story. Now I'm going back and reading it slowly. first fifteen pages -- exceeds my expectations.

I was a bit confused regarding the boundary location of Queens / Brooklyn. It turns out I was not the only one. LOL. See this link.

While at the library I took the opportunity to catch up on The New Yorker. After decades of subscribing, I did not renew my subscription about a year or so ago. The magazine had become a mouthpiece for Hillary, and it remained so after the election. The editors clearly were textbook examples of those afflicted with Trump Derangement Syndrome.

So, yesterday afternoon, I grabbed all 2019 issues and went through them quickly. Below is my summary. There might have been all of four articles that have interested me. The amount of anti-Trump stuff is way down. Of course, the lead essay in each issue still revolves around Trump and/or Hillary. But, of course, it's The New Yorker. 

Below I have focused on two things:

• articles that I would go back to read; and,
• articles on Trump/Hillary, that I would not read; and, confirm that the editors still suffer from TDS

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The New Yorker

January 7, 2019:

• feature article on how Trump won the election

January 14, 2019:

• To The Letter: The pleasures of the Greek alphabet, Mary Norris
• A Night At The Museum: How a French cat burglar pulled off the biggest art heist in decades, Jake Halpern

• Book review. Pumped: The story of blood, Jerome Groopman

January 21, 2019:

January 28, 2019:

• front cover with Trump walling himself in
• Sacred Arts: Reading the great Good Books, from the Torah to the Quran, Adam Gopnik

February 4, 2019:

• In The Eye Of The Law: How white supremacy enlisted the American legal system, Louis Menand

February 11, 2019:

• Book review. Nothing Sacred: Ben Hecht was celebrated as Hollywood's best screenwriter, but he wasn't happy about it

February 18 & 25, 2019:

• Feature article: the DNC hack
• Feature article: Israeli spies try to influence US elections

March 4, 2019:

• Cover: Trump, finish the wall

March 11, 2019:

• Feature article: Trump TV. Fox.
• Article on "walls" (the kinds that nations, city-states, kingdoms, countries build)

March 18, 2019:

March 25, 2019:

April 1, 2019:

• Feature article: Brazil, Trump
• Feature article: Louisiana's disappearing coast

April 8, 2019:

• The Day The Earth Died: A young paleontologist makes the find of his life.

April 15, 2019:

• Huge Trump cartoon

April 22, 2019:

• Feature article: the Clintons
• Not good: first time I've ever seen it -- two full pages of ads after the final cartoon page

April 29, 2019:

• Feature article: chasing the aurora borealis, James Lasdun

May 6, 2019 (current issue):

• Feature article: Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen's last days of freedom
• Even the cartoons have become boring.

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Polling And Trolling

Drudge links a "new" poll -- Biden up 32 points over Bernie.

I track the polling here.The average does show Biden at 39 and Bernie at 15.5 but one poll has Biden at 46% and Bernie at 14%. The rest are running just to get on-stage to debate but it looks like "game over." It appears Buttigieg flamed out.