Doug's Place

Why 'Wired' Seems to Have It Wrong About Amazon and Apple

The December 2011 issue of Wired is out, with a photo of the left half of Jeff Bezos' face on the cover.  I was excited about this issue, because I wanted to read about the moves Amazon.com [and my Amazon WishList] is making to be a cloud content provider in addition to seller of books and anything else you can find in a supermarket or shopping mall.

Instead, I was disappointed.

The article by longtime tech writer Stephen Levy repeated some tiresome comparisons between Amazon and Apple. Amazon is content company, right? Because it makes most of its money selling more content things, both real (like books, shoes, and DVDs) and electronic (like ebooks and streaming movies). Yep, it's not a hardware company, though its big news right now is hardware in the form of the Kindle Fire.

And Apple isn't a content company, right?
Because it makes most of its money selling hardware things, like computers and mobile tablets and smartphones. Yes, it's not a content company, even though its current big news is user content management in the form of launching iCloud.

The article also disappointed because all too soon it descends into a Q&A dialog that doesn't grab me. It doesn't talk enough about the Amazon consumer experience and what might be coming down the pike. The most I learn about consumer experiences at Amazon is that Amazon really doesn't like to talk to me on the phone, really is not proud of being a profit-making enterprise, would offer single pricing for movie streaming if, gosh, only the movie content providers would agree, and seems more head-in-the-clouds than futuristic.

There's an ethereal quality to Bezos that bothers me, and I'm trying to put my finger on why.

Ringing In Marta's Installation

Last Sunday, I was honored to ring the parish bell at First Parish Unitarian Universalist Church of Arlington for Marta's installation as the 18th senior settled minister of the church. 

The bell of the church survived the disastrous fire of 1975 that destroyed the century-old elegant fourth meeting house of the church. Now the bell sits protected in the back of the sanctuary of the fifth meeting house, the modern structure where the church worships today. Still, for the bell, it's a comedown. It used to sit in the Arlington spire at the center of the town in what was thought to be the second-highest church spire in the Commonwealth.

I rang the bell 20 times, one for each of the 18 settled senior ministers and twice for the two settled associate ministers who have served the church. That was fun, but it was also a reminder to me of the living tradition of Unitarian Universalist ministry spanning all or part of five centuries in America.

Lida Junghans, a member of the church, took pictures. I'm in my Dad's old wheelchair for the ceremony because I was recovering from foot surgery. Wheeling me around: David Whitford. (Thanks, David!) This was only my second trip outside the house since returning from my surgery on January 14.

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