Good morning. It's a holiday (i.e. day off) here in the US, so I'm not sure if there will be any actual news yet, but we'll get there. In the meantime...
The New York Times has a great article describing how Apple is once again screwing readers, this time of magazines, by refusing to allow for subscription-based periodicals, requiring them to instead to usually purchase individual issues as individual apps, often at $5 a pop. However, this will likely change this year, beginning with News Corp.'s The Daily, which will be available as a subscription, you know, assuming it ever actually arrives. I have an article brewing about newspapers that will touches on this topic a bit, so this NYT article is an interesting bit of tangentialism. This stuff has been on my mind a lot lately. Not just lately.
Troy Wolverton of the Mercury News claims that Microsoft is, in fact, innovative. It's just the marketing that's weak. I'd argue that both are weak, actually, but dissenting opinions are always welcome, especially when they're intelligently presented. But let's be clear. Innovative? No.
So this is legitimately troubling: Apple CEO Steve Jobs says he will "a medical leave of absence" so he can focus on his health. Jobs will "continue as CEO and be involved in major strategic decisions for the company" during this time. Uh-oh.
