In Square Wallet, the Apple Store, and Uber: Software Above the Level of a Single Device starts with a quote from Dave Stutz, and ex-Microsoft-employee:

Useful software written above the level of the single device will command high margins for a long time to come. Stop looking over your shoulder and invent something!

Later, Tim mentions Square. His paragraph captures why Square excites me:

If you’ve never experienced the magic of walking into a coffee shop, having the cashier glance down at their iPad-based Square Register to verify your face and payment credentials already provided by your phone’s automatic check-in, and buying your coffee simply by confirming your name, you haven’t yet tasted the future.

As with the iPod Mini in 2004, which I bought on the day of release, I can’t see many reasons to choose a full size iPad over the iPad Mini. In fact, I only see one: the retina display. Next year that’ll be on the Mini. Just like the iPod Classic, I can see the iPad being quickly relegated to a distant second on sales.

For 1.5, I’m adding a feature to One to Watch which allows you to flag a film as Watched. It’s a classic example of a feature where the technical implementation is significantly simpler than how to present the feature in the app’s interface.

Keeping watched and unwatched films in the same list is problematic: watched films might start to crowd out unwatched ones. Until now, the only way to avoid that problem was to delete films you’ve seen. However, it’s useful to know which films you’ve watched. For example, when asked to recommend a film, it’s good to be able to review the ones you’ve seen rather than trying to pull them from memory.

The Macalope Weekly: It’s a living

Apple does not build products that satisfy a feature checklist. It does not pointlessly jam in technologies that have little practical application (see: NFC). While you might be able to buy products in the same category for less, you often can’t buy name-brand products in the same category for less and you can never buy name-brand products with the same high build quality and user experience. Further, Apple products generally provide a lower cost of ownership.

This is partly to play with Spotify’s embedding.

Ten years on, Turn on the Bright Lights has surely stood the test of time.