Source: Benedict Evans Newsletter No. 472 My preferred order for reading books is audio > ebook > paperback > hardback. (Except for art and photography books, in which the order is hardback > ebook > paperback.) Reading an audiobook of course means listening to it and debates abound whether we retain information better or worse if one ...

The think piece no one asked for but which we're getting anyway. ________________ Narain

From the 2022 iPad Pro announcement video. This segment of the video talks about Stage Manager, which remains a weird...thing. Stage Manager enables a windowed desktop on the iPad, which then extends across to external displays when one is plugged in. In other words, it makes the iPad more like a laptop, except it also doesn't. Managin...

Ana de Armas fully commits to a career-defining role and deeply inhabits the character in a way that few actors do. The challenge and this is part of what the film tries to explore, is that this character - both Norma Jeane and Marilyn - is a cipher. The problem is that this cipher inhabits a script that itself is a void, it's empty. S...

Don't Worry Darling the film didn't work for me but elements of the premise intrigued me enough to want to read the original script, which was part of the 2019 blacklist. There are major differences between the two, which are listed below. Spoilers, naturally. 1. The mystery is open in the script vs. being closed in the film; there is ...

Everything about this film is derivative. A pastiche of a pastiche. Mashing up a bunch of good and great films like Seconds, Rosemary's Baby, Abre Los Ojos/Vanilla Sky, The Truman Show, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind isn't enough. What's worse, it's possible that it's all some sort of conscious hommage. The production compan...

With the fall Apple (iPhone) event almost upon us, time to speculate if there'll be a "One more thing..." moment. Apple does things their own way and speculation around a pair of Apple AR/VR glasses has been rampant, but it's remained unclear if, when, how and with what type of product they'd enter the market. Still, it's interesting t...

Today Meta announced that people can shop from JioMart via WhatsApp and pay directly within the app, using UPI. This is a big deal: 1. WhatsApp is central to daily life in India, Meta doesn't share numbers but estimates range from 450 million monthly active users at the low end to over 500 million at the high end. 2. UPI has seen mass ...

Today is an exciting day. Think back to the past 15 years and the things that we take for granted now that didn’t exist then. The ability to have a video call almost anyone, anywhere for free. The most comprehensive encyclopedia in history in your pocket, updated in realtime by 1000s of volunteers in multiple languages. Interactive too...

Just got my first delivery from Gorillas, the German on demand delivery service that’s now in London. 7 min from tapping “order” to a hip, friendly young delivery person on a bike at my door, congratulating me on my first order and giving me a free tote bag and some fruit, plus what I ordered. As an early customer of Kozmo, the late 90...

👆(Do images work in this? Do emoji!?!) Posting this mainly as a test... Is this thing on? Removing friction from publishing isn't a new idea, but it does seem to be going through both a renaissance and an evolution, simultaneously, sometimes in parallel, sometimes intersecting, always across all media. The written word remains among th...