Good morning, John.

There have been many times in the last few years where I have wanted to touch my screen. Okay, there have probably been 10 or so. But I can remember each one of them, because I have thought, each time, “huh, Steve Jobs was probably wrong on this one.” He famously thought touch screen computers were pointless. They were for tablets. The screen was too far away from his face or something. There are anecdotes of Apple testing this with normies and finding this to be true. Maybe, maybe.

And now, Apple has announced a touch screen laptop. A lot of people are up in arms about this for two, maybe three reasons:

1. Apple has been saying forever they would not make a “computer” with a touch screen and now they are, quelle horreur!

2. Steve said they wouldn’t do it, so that makes it even worse.

3. They cannot imagine why they would ever want to touch a screen on a “computer.”

Let us tackle them individually.

First: IMHO, Apple has actually gotten pretty good of late rolling out products Steve wouldn’t have done. The Watch is an obvious one and, hingegate aside, the Duo seems to be finding quite a nice niche. The Vision Pro is an obvious failure, but I suspect that was a marketing/positioning problem more than anything, and it’s not like Steve didn’t have his product duds (ahem Trash Can).

(As an aside, is my immutable opinion that the Vision Pro should have been marketed as an actual “pro” device, like Logic/Final Cut/etc and not the fake “pro” like the MacBook Pro).

Next, use cases: I am using “computer” in quotes, because I think there is a major distinction between a laptop and a desktop when it comes to touch screens. I am on a desktop machine right now. I have this giant monitor. Well, by laptop standards: 27”. It is (let me get out my measuring tape here) nineteen inches from my face, and nine inches further from my body than my keyboard. It would be so easy to touch this beautiful thing. It is right there. There are plenty of times you’d want to touch a giant screen sitting right in front of you.

This is very different from a laptop, I suspect. Laptops are at weird angles, the screen isn’t that big, even moving your hands off of the keyboard area is fraught with imbalance when your laptop is on, well, your lap.

On this desktop Mac, I would very much like to be able to draw right on the screen, that would rule. I would like to be able to use my fingers when there is a very small area I need to click, like a scroll bar. I would posit that certain input gestures such a pinching to zoom and rotating, zooming and repositioning an object simultaneously (as is common in 3D rendering) are vastly more easy using touch screens than trackpads or mice.

I would also say that touch, as an input method, is vastly more hardened, widely understood, and battle-tested than speech.

It is, thus, my contention that:

a) Touch does have certain uses on “computers.” It is not revolutionary, it is not a major feature worth advertising and paying some giant premium, but it’s useful.

And b) Apple would have been more wise to introduce the touch screen on the Studio Display before introducing it on laptops.

I believe their marketing and product rollout is, thusly, the major flaw here. They are drawing too much attention to the launch, giving it a “hell freezes over” vibe instead of a nice little incremental product bump, like an nicer screen. And yeaah, this week they’re also giving too much hype around the new OLED in the MBP. They shouldn’t.

If the first touchscreen Apple devise was the sStudio Display, and it had pencil support, and the marketing was as low-key as their Final Cut Pro or Logic Pro marketing, I think the would would have gone gaga for the thing. People would have eventually begged them to bring it to the laptops.

But now we get this nonsense.

It’s also not clear to me what kind of premium touch is adding to the laptops, but right now, I don’t think anyone would pay more than, say, $100 for it, tops. If my next Studio Display purchase had an add-on option for $100 for touch/pencil capability? Yeah, I’d buy that in a hot second.

BRB gotta take a call. Lotta calls today.

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All right all done. Gawd. BUSINESS. What a pain in the ass. Down with capitalism. Everyone equal. Give me Star Trek life. I do not have expensive tastes. Gimme some land and a budget for reasonable old-man hobbies and health care and food and security and give the same thing to everyone else in the world. 90% of my misery is the misery of others. Make it all equal.

Anyway I am listening to Calla this morning. It is a CD. It is called Insound Tour Support Series Number 22. It was the last remaining release from the Denton,TX by-way-of-NYC indie-post/rock quartet. God I love them. This tour support CD seems to be mostly rarities and live tracks. Four home recordings, 18 live tracks recorded in Italy, Montreal, NYC, and Tel Aviv. They should press it to vinyl, though I do not get the impression Calla has a huge following these days. Put out some new stuff over the last year or so and none of that has even been pressed.

Oh hey I went to a concert last night. Emma and I went to see Julien Baker. Forgive me while I do a little “I’m-so-cool” bullshit. My notes indicate my relationship with Julien's music began on or around January 18, 2018, when I first listened to Turn Out the Lights, which had been released three months earlier. Her second album, her first Matador release. And that is where, I assume, I heard of her: I probably did that thing I do where I get an email from a record label that announces a new recording, and I go listen to it. And she was great. I like her a lot.

I say these dates because, you will note, this is approximately eleven months before the release of the first EP by the supergroup of which Baker is a member, boygenius. And a good five years before they took over the world and won a boatload of Grammys and whatnot.

I am so cool.

Anyway, the place was packed, the first of three sold-out shows at Cat’s Cradle. Julien is on a pretty cool tour: she is playing multiple dates at small indie venues. You have to buy the tickets in person, or, if they don’t sell out, they will sell them online but not through a big ticketing platform. She played three dates in Boston at the Middle East last week. I am so cool.

Great lesbian watching, a little posse of too-cool dudes in the back that seemed to be fraternizing with the opening band, a surprising number of women in wheelchairs and walkers. Okay, well, two but that is more than you usually see at a club show in these parts. A+ merch selection.

And fantastic tunes, love the new stuff, a thing I love about Julien Baker is I do not really know any individual songs that well. My “All the Good” playlist of all my favorite music has 14 Julien solo songs on it, five more of her work with Torres, a collaboration with Wild Pink and nine boygenius songs, but the only one I could name or sing along to is the boygenius song “Salt in the Wound” which is one of my all time faves and, I am pretty sure, a Julien song? Not definite.

But god, she sounds awesome. Her voice, her emotions, that fantastic second guitarist that makes the best distorted atmospheric sounds, the sweet synth pads, the excellent drumming. Just a great band.

But we are old and we left about 20 minutes early. This is not a dig on Julien, it is a dig on parenting and capitalism.

Painfully, last night Ian Sweet also played last night, but in Durham, and as we all know our last Durham show did not pan out. But in theory, I could have gotten tickets for Julien for Friday and gone and seen Ian —- ha ha ha who are we kidding. My back is killing me.

I would have put this at the beginning of the entry, normally, but I was busy doing a parody of the Vlog brothers opening each week and going right into my Apple commentary.

But this is not to diminish the sadness of this next topic, which is that one of my past employees passed away last week. He was a Nimbus guy from 2021 to 2022 and he was a great dude and it is really sad. I have had coworkers pass away before — a boss, a partner at Barbarian — but never someone who has worked directly for me. I do not like the feeling. I am sad for Wilson Lu and his family and loved ones. I would like to take this moment to remember him.

Wilson, you will be missed.

Jane just does not even care when we leave the house after she goes to bed. She is not scared to be alone. I mean, we don’t leave her alone. We put her to bed, then we get a babysitter who sits in the basement and watches TV. (She had heard of Julien Baker and was impressed so, you know. I am so cool.) She was fine with it. That is nice. A nice strong independent girl.

This morning she starred a Daddy-Jane playlisdt track by a band called Thank You, I’m Sorry that is one of the most despondent songs, lyrically, that I know of, and I feel kind of uneasy about that. The chorus goes:

I tell myself
I'm gonna die alone
I tell myself
I don't have anyone
I tell myself
That I don't matter much, won't ever accomplish the things I love
I tell my
Fuck

(I am learning that a gentleman named Glaive covered this track. Mental note to check him out).

I tried to compliment her after gymnastics about the whipped cream incident and how impressed you all were with her self-control but she basically told me to be quiet, not compliment her, and don’t tell people about her, which is… well, I am concerned. I have been aware that eventually she will grow up old enough to be cognizant of me writing about her and posting photos about her, and have promised that when she does, I will respect her wishes.

But I thought I had a few more years.

Concerning.

Got an ambient album for you today. Kicking it off with a banger from my good friend Nick, in honor of Wilson. Other than that, new stuff mainly. Love the new claire rousay ep, the new Civilstävel!, the new William Basinski. Actually I think there’s another claire rousay ep, a collaboration, out recently. Need to go double check that.

John, I’ll see you next week.