You realise that I am, of course, an incredible human being. And that\u2019s despite being reduced to complete fanboy behaviour when meeting the writers of Lou Grant the other day. <\/p>\n
(They were too polite to notice and anyway, I\u2019m not likely to be within 100 yards of Santa Monica again any time soon, so it\u2019s all a fuss about nothing.)<\/p>\n
Anyway. I do genuinely think there is one thing where the nature of what I do gives me an unusual perspective. Writing always gives you perspective and I find that fascinating: the more you look within yourself, the more you reach other people. <\/p>\n
But in this specific case, the perspective I get is because I\u2019m writing a lot of journalism while also doing books and scripts. I like writing about writing, I adore exploring tools that make giant differences to my writing life and it\u2019s great to get to write about those and share them. <\/p>\n
I like and I have always cherished being both a writer and a journalist. I can\u2019t actually speak to how good I am but I can know that having the two sides makes me better. <\/p>\n
This week it also made me angry. <\/p>\n
Last Tuesday, Apple launched many new products and did so with one of the firm\u2019s typical big events. That\u2019s all good: they do it well and they had plenty to say this time. <\/p>\n
But. <\/p>\n
You know Apple is this huge company and that it earns an incredible amount of money. The head of Apple\u2019s entire retail arm, the part that includes 505 Apple Stores and the website store, came on to make a speech. <\/p>\n
I\u2019ve actually written a profile of her<\/a>: she\u2019s Angela Ahrendts and has an interesting background as well as a fascinating job. But you\u2019ll notice I said \u2018her\u2019. <\/p>\n The second she stepped on stage I read some comment somewhere in the torrent of people following this event where they called her Miss Apple Stores or something like that. It wasn\u2019t in the sense of a beauty pageant but it was meant to demean: she \u2018just\u2019 runs the shop. <\/p>\n Then I kept reading reports of the event which named her as Ms Ahrendts or wrote about what \u201cthe lady\u201d said. <\/p>\n Nobody called Apple CEO Tim Cook \u201cMaster Apple\u201d. Nobody called him \u201cthe gentleman\u201d. No one says he \u2018just\u2019 runs a trillion-dollar company.<\/p>\n I\u2019m glad to say that none of this was on display at AppleInsider.com where I was writing. But it was so prevalent across journalism and across twitter. <\/p>\n You can like Apple or dislike them, that\u2019s up to you, but its audience craves new technology, new ideas. It craves new. And yet some of it sounds like it\u2019s in the past.<\/p>\n Writing reaches into other people but what you write also shows them you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" You realise that I am, of course, an incredible human being. And that\u2019s despite being reduced to complete fanboy behaviour … Continue reading