Monthly Archives: July 2010

The joy of photography

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Lovely Observer column by David Mitchell.

At the high points of my childhood – holidays, birthdays, picnics, Christmas – my father took photographs. This took the shine off many of the high points. Watching my dad take a photo is exquisitely frustrating. Until about 1995, he still had the camera he'd been given for his 21st birthday. This was quite an expensive item in its day. Clearly capable of "proper"' photography, it should've made light work of capturing my mum, my brother and me in front of a castle or behind a knickerbocker glory.

But the ice cream would usually have melted by the time the snap was taken because the camera had dozens of dials and buttons to adjust. My father was uncomfortable doing this unobserved and would make everyone pose with the appropriate grins before he started to grapple with the settings. Just when you thought he was ready, and he'd put the camera to his eye – just when you really believed you were about to get your life back and actually enjoy the leisure experience he was attempting to immortalise – he'd remember there was one more knob to fiddle with and start studying the machine again while asking: "How far am I?" to which my mother would, in an exhausted monotone, invariably reply: "Ten feet."

These photos are a bizarre historical document. These were a people, future archaeologists will think, who spent their whole lives in weary celebration. Their dwellings were permanently festooned with greenery and tinsel, their children expected to spend hours digging aimlessly by the sea, using flimsy tools in a state of near nakedness. And their diet consisted almost entirely of ice cream, turkey and plum pudding…

The Great Paywall of Wapping

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I also wrote a Comment piece for this morning’s Observer about the now-operational Murdoch paywall. Excerpt:

When the web took off, most newspapers were bewildered by it. Fearful of falling behind, they began to put their content online – for free. Insofar as there was a business model behind this, it was the belief that: "If we build it they will come." And if the readers came there would surely be a way of "monetising" all those resulting eyeballs.

For the most part, however, the monetisation lagged way behind the costs of online publication and newspapers began to think that, while the web might indeed turn out to be the future, most of them would be insolvent long before the online bonanza materialised.

One unintended consequence of this triumph of hope over experience was that several generations of internet users came to believe that online content comes free. As every economist knows, in a competitive market, the price tends to converge on the marginal cost of production, which, in the case of online news, appeared to be zero.

But it only appeared to be zero because newspapers weren't charging a price that corresponded to the costs of production. In fact, they weren't charging anything at all. As a result, we have no idea whether people would be prepared to pay for online content published on the web and, if so, what a realistic price might be. The great thing about Murdoch's experiment is that it may provide some answers to these questions…

Will the iPhone and iPad kill off the Mac?

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This morning’s Observer column.

Companies go where the commercial opportunities are. The inescapable conclusion to be drawn from Apple's recent history is that the spectacular growth opportunities are in mobile devices, not deskbound computers or even laptops. The iPad is selling at a rate of a million a month. More than 1.4 million of the new iPhones were sold in the first four days. And the pace seems to be increasing. It took the first iPhone 74 days to reach its first million. The iPad got there in 28. Only things like the Nintendo Wii (13 days) shift faster. Then there's the small matter of the 40% contribution the iPhone now makes to Apple's bottom line. In those circumstances, if you were Steve Jobs, what would you focus on?

I’ve just had an email from a reader who, many years ago, switched to the Mac on my advice. He writes:

I’ve just read your piece in the Observer New Review. I suppose I have to prepare for the end of civilisation as I know it!

There’s an App for that — so help me God

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From today’s New York Times.

Publishers of Christian material have begun producing iPhone applications that can cough up quick comebacks and rhetorical strategies for believers who want to fight back against what they view as a new strain of strident atheism. And a competing crop of apps is arming nonbelievers for battle.

“Say someone calls you narrow-minded because you think Jesus is the only way to God,” says one top-selling application introduced in March by a Christian publishing company. “Your first answer should be: ‘What do you mean by narrow-minded?’ ”

For religious skeptics, the “BibleThumper” iPhone app boasts that it “allows the atheist to keep the most funny and irrational Bible verses right in their pocket” to be “always ready to confront fundamentalist Christians or have a little fun among friends.”

There was a lovely cartoon in the New York Times a while back. It shows a guy coming home and saying “Hi Honey! Bad news. I’ve been replaced by an App”.