Publishers Not Making Much Money From Apple News+

MacRumors, quoting Business Insider:

Multiple publishers have been unimpressed with the revenue generated from Apple News+. One told Business Insider that revenue was one twentieth of what Apple promised, while another said that it was on par with what was earned from Texture, which isn’t much.

I can understand why this is – when Apple launches a new service, it anecdotally feels that paid adoption is slow until there is a tipping point in perceived value.  I enjoy Apple News+ so I hope this doesn’t have any negative consequences to the service.

Infographic of Star Wars Episode IV

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far, away… is surprisingly just as thrilling in an infographic as it is on the big screen.

Maritn Panchaud spent over 1000 hours in Adobe Illustrator CC to produce an infographic of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope.

One story in one piece of 123 meters length. An adaptation of Star Wars Episode IV in a style that was inspired by infographics.

High praise from Mark Hamill, Luke Skywalker himself:

This is absolutely STUNNING! 1st time I’ve”watched” StarWars since the ’97 SpecialEdition & well worth it! GR8Job

Empire Strikes Back is in progress…

“The Bullshit Web”

Wow – such a great and thoughtful read.

An actual solution recognizes that this bullshit is inexcusable. It is making the web a cumulatively awful place to be. Behind closed doors, those in the advertising and marketing industry can be pretty lucid about how much they also hate surveillance scripts and how awful they find these methods, while simultaneously encouraging their use. Meanwhile, users are increasingly taking matters into their own hands — the use of ad blockers is rising across the board, many of which also block tracking scripts and other disrespectful behaviours. Users are making that choice.

They shouldn’t have to. Better choices should be made by web developers to not ship this bullshit in the first place. We wouldn’t tolerate such intrusive behaviour more generally; why are we expected to find it acceptable on the web?

An honest web is one in which the overwhelming majority of the code and assets downloaded to a user’s computer are used in a page’s visual presentation, with nearly all the remainder used to define the semantic structure and associated metadata on the page. Bullshit — in the form of CPU-sucking surveillance, unnecessarily-interruptive elements, and behaviours that nobody responsible for a website would themselves find appealing as a visitor — is unwelcome and intolerable.

Death to the bullshit web.

The End of Windows

Ben Thompson:

What is more interesting, though, is the story of Windows’ decline in Redmond, culminating with last week’s reorganization that, for the first time since 1980, left the company without a division devoted to personal computer operating systems (Windows was split, with the core engineering group placed under Azure, and the rest of the organization effectively under Office 365; there will still be Windows releases, but it is no longer a standalone business).

My week is already off to an amazing start with this article. I lived through this timeline; I was there and I was a part of it. What a time to be alive!