TempleSquare
In fairness to Rock Springs… Dude, why did you pick the absolute cheapest motel on Expedia?
For like $10 more… (sigh) 😔
Ladies and gentlemen… FROM the company that brought us “Cadillac CUE” (all-capacitive-buttons information controls)…
…Something nobody wants!
Grocery stores are always trying new things hoping it’ll be the next big thing, but usually it doesn’t catch on.
When I was a kid back in the 1980s and '90s, they would add a small digital calculator to the handle of the shopping cart to help people figure out how much they were spending. It wasn’t useful to people, so it disappeared.
Then they used to have the live lobster tank back in the deli. Turns out, most people don’t want to buy live lobster at a budget grocery store in a working class neighborhood.
Then around 2000, stores started expanding significantly to become a One-Stop shop. Bragging that you could buy a pair of shoes and fresh produce all in one place. It sounded kind of stupid, but it caught on in a huge way! Walmart have been the best at implementing this model, but others like Fred Meyer did it first.
Then they started to implement the curbside pickup. Which was totally dead and nobody used it in an absolute failure… Until the pandemic hit, and a bunch of people tried it, and realized they liked it.
So the next thing? Sounds like goofing around with AI in their app. Will it be useful? Guess we’ll have to wait and see.
Unlimited venture capital money for 20 years have allowed social media companies to basically do whatever they want without listening to their user base. It was good when they were trying to grow the user base. But now that they are trying to squeeze every dollar out, we’re seeing the dark side.
Contrast this with old school media. They are mature and must turn a profit through their advertising. And they are absolutely terrified. Every TV show involves consultants who obsess over tiny details that could make the difference of half a ratings point. They know that if they scare the audience away, they go out of business.
Eventually the tech companies will reach the same level of maturity, but we’re not there yet.
YouTube has an ace up its sleeve:
It shares revenue 50-50 (roughly) with creators. And considering the server costs and promotional benefit, that 50% cut is very fairly priced.
Facebook, Twitter/X, Reddit, etc. never shared revenue with creators. And that makes them easily replaceable. But Google wisely made YouTube and video creators financially reliant on one another. And that makes it difficult for something like PeerTube to pop up in a way Mastadon has.
That’s good to know. I almost thought of buying a couple (I always back up with pairs) to replace a couple of aging spinning disk portables.
Guess I will wait.
They told me that when laptops came out. Heck, I even used a laptop exclusively through most of the 00s.
Chromebooks would kill desktops. Then iPads. And smartphones. And cloud computing.
And yet by 2014, I was back to building a desktop PC. And had 3 since. Desktops will always have a small market share because they are the only machine that works for serious work (video editing, etc.)
Will I embrace Microsofts cloud computing? Only if it is cheaper price per power than owning my own equipment. Something tablets, phones, laptops, and cloud computing have all failed to do.
Desktop users are "value* users. And I’m skeptical what MS offers will offer good value to cheapos like me.