Jean-Louis Gassée

I first got interested in Theranos because the company’s founder, Elizabeth Holmes, promised to revolutionize (disrupt, if you insist) blood tests. With her Edison technology and hardware, you just walk into your neighborhood Walgreens, provide a few drops of blood from a finger, and for $5.35 you get a complete blood count. Easy and affordable.

Entrepreneurs have querulous feelings about their relationship with venture investors. They don’t like the dependency, and too often picture themselves as supplicants. This mental image inevitably generates hostility—which must be repressed if one is to be granted a handout.

The sun has barely risen as we set out on the Hana Highway, headed to Maui’s “wet” side. It’s a long, magical drive punctuated by sea vistas, waterfalls, Lindbergh’s grave, and, finally, the Seven Sacred Pools.

Ad blocking started as an initiative by independent developers who wanted to improve our browsing experience. Now that at least one company, Apple, has made Content Blocking “official,” ad-supported publishing business models are in trouble.

On the last day of the June 2015 Developers’ Conference, Apple held a session (video here) to announce its “Content Blocking” feature:

My wife Brigitte designs and builds houses in Palo Alto, California. Over the years, she’s visited many high-end “semi-intelligent” homes where, ironically, you can find the server closets that Amazon Web Services (AWS) has taken out of most business offices. I’ve seen a few of these systems; they’re big and expensive (multiples of $100K) and, worse, they’re bug-prone, providing an annuity for the installer/maintainer. It’s more like an old-time IT system than a personal computer.

The limitations of algorithmic curation of news and culture has prompted a return to the use of actual humans to select, edit, and explain. Who knows, this might spread to another less traditional media: apps.

Another people-in-tech Monday Note, vs. tech itself, in the spirit of The HR-Less Performance Review and Firing Well, this time about the value of competent, service-oriented salespeople, and the respect we owe them – with our own interest in mind. 

Ending a work relationship needn’t be complicated or traumatic. It can be done in a sane and respectful way if a clean framework is set up at hiring time.

After last week’s Monday Note, “Three Slides Then Shut Up—The Art of The Pitch,” I was subjected to a bit of email ribbing. My honorable correspondents, many of them entrepreneurs themselves, questioned my rationality, insisting that it’s psychologically and emotionally impossible for entrepreneurs to be so boldly concise as to limit their presentations to three slides. Indeed, how many three-slide presentations had I actually seen in a decade plus of venture investing? Upon the fourth slide, is the presenter sent packing?

I’ve been in Paris for the last two weeks, mostly disconnected. I won’t wallow in specifics; suffice it to say that the struggle with cable TV, internet, and cellular providers here is eerily similar to what we commonly endure in the Valley. There is one difference, however: A few hours ago, I watched as a cable technician spliced a fiber connection into our apartment, something I can’t get in downtown Palo Alto.

We’ll soon know what the Apple Watch is and what it can do. But it may take awhile to understand why Apple has gone to such lengths to hype the device.

Beside free publicity, and huge amounts of it, the putative Apple Car raises interesting questions about car manufacturing, the future of automobiles, and the part that an interloper such as Apple could play in this century-old industry. 

Apple’s most recent quarterly numbers broke all sorts of records and, as we shall see, a number of laws.

While Microsoft Office for mobile is a satisfying success, the company can’t seem to create—or even buy—a mobile operating system that can compete with iOS and Android. Perhaps they’ve been looking in the wrong direction and can return to their “trusted” Embrace and Extend tactics.

Naming a computer company Apple was a true stoke of genius, the kind that sits beyond the reach of consciousness. With the name came a visual representation. The first, unofficial logo evoked Isaac Newton’s famous epiphany:

A flurry of recent software accidents in iOS and OS X raises questions about Apple’s management of its relentless increase in research and development spending.

Smartphones existed before Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone on Jan. 9, 2007. But by upending existing technology platforms, application distribution, and carrier business models, he kickstarted a new era of computing whose impact is yet to be fully understood.

Microsoft’s hardware has long been a source of minor profit and major pain. In this last 2014 Monday Note, we’ll look at the roles Microsoft’s hardware devices will play—or not—in the company’s future.

Intel once turned down the opportunity to become the sole supplier of iPhone processors. Why hasn’t it let go of its defocused search for the Next Big Thing and, instead, used all means necessary to regain the account?

Few Apple products have agitated forecasters and competitors as much as the company’s upcoming watch. The result is an escalation of silly numbers–and one profound observation from a timepiece industry insider.

Every generation has its high tech storytellers, pundits who “understand” why products and companies succeed and why they fail. And each next generation tosses out the stories of their elders. Perhaps it’s time to dispense with “Disruption.”

It’s still too early to tell if Apple Pay will square the circle and emerge as a payment system that’s more secure, more convenient, and is widely accepted. MCX, a competing solution that faces more challenges than Apple Pay, helps shed light on the problem.

Payment systems and user behaviors have evolved over the past three decades. In this first of a two-part Monday Note, I offer a look at the obstacles and developments that preceded the Apple Pay launch.