| Welcome, Weekenders! In this newsletter: |
| • The Big Read: The firebrand investor who can explain MAGA tech |
| • The Top 5: The doggone best pet gadgets |
| • Plus: San Francisco goes Bourbon Street for fall; how yuppies live on; and the immigrants and the internet. |
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| Remember when an Apple unveiling was actually exciting? Honestly, I can't. It's probably been nearly a decade. |
| This week brought more snoozy sameness. The iPhone got a new camera button and the Pro models got ever so slightly bigger displays. Meanwhile, the Apple Watch can now detect sleep apnea and the AirPods can turn into hearing aids. (That really tells you something about the average age of whoever's making the top calls at Apple these days.) |
| I'm starting to wonder how much of this listless hardware innovation is what's fueling the Dumbphone Era—the surge in consumer interest around more basic cellphones and other devices. Until recently, it's generally seemed like a trend confined to younger generations beleaguered by toxic software, like social media apps. But it's clearly not limited to youths: Just a couple days ago, The Wall Street Journal had a story anointing fax machines and stripped-down phones as the new coveted power symbols for corporate executives. |
| This is all quite remarkably interlocked. The kids don't want smartphones because more of them realize they can be portals to a personalized hell. I imagine the older C-suite doesn't want smartphones partly for the same reason and partly because if they also have an Apple Watch, an iPad and a MacBook, do they really need an iPhone? They certainly may feel they don't need to upgrade an iPhone just for a screen that's a quarter inch bigger. |
| And with each round of pointless, uninspired updates to the iPhone, Apple makes the future of its core product that much more difficult. |
| The further it goes in making the iPhone seem lame, the further iPhone devotees will look for something more exciting. And for those happy with dumber devices, pointless updates won't win them back. |
| Something is going to have to give within the halls of Cupertino, Calif. The company will need to either get faster with meaningful updates and be more creative. Or they'll have to accept the necessity of fewer updates and a pared-back product line.—Abram Brown |
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| "I'm obviously rich enough that my money's gonna be used really well on things that I believe in," Joe Lonsdale, the lightning-rod venture capitalist, told me from his Austin mansion. |
| How Lonsdale puts his money to use as an investor isn't what raises eyebrows in Silicon Valley. (Lonsdale, who previously co-founded Palantir and several other billion-dollar startups, likes to pick businesses doing dull but lucrative things, such as making software for governments and big companies.) Of more interest is how he directs his money in politics—and the brash way he dispenses it. As I explain in this week's Big Read, he has become a GOP megadonor and is probably the most consequential money guy in Republican politics this cycle who's not named Elon Musk, Lonsdale's close friend and compatriot. |
| Lonsdale insists he doesn't see politics as a matter of left versus right. "It's just smart versus dumb," he said. |
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| Our Annie Goldsmith and I disagree about whether someone can be a "pet parent." To me, pets have owners, while human children have, you know, parents. Annie thinks I'm being a curmudgeon and believes I'd change my mind if I actually owned—sorry, sorry—a pet. (As with most things, she's probably right.) |
| Tell you what, the people she spoke to for this piece on the best pet tech gadgets would definitely agree with her. They've filled their living rooms with Petcubes and Litter-Robots and can take solace in the security offered by Fi collars, a location-tracking wearable for pooches. |
| Gosh, the Bay Area really has gone to the dogs, hasn't it? |
| Abram Brown, editor of The Information's Weekend section, has a plan to consider some concepts. You can reach him at abe@theinformation.com or find him on X. |
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| Attending: Ich Bin Ein San Franciscan |
| The last time I did Oktoberfest, a buddy and I snuck into a Paulaner tent in Munich and became fast friends with an international group of weirdos as we sang in off-key German (at least I think the songs were in German). |
| I'm sticking closer to home this year and plan to snag a beer next Friday at a special Oktoberfest celebration in downtown San Francisco, an event made possible by a new law that allows for special open-carry "entertainment zones" in the city. |
| The free block party, dubbed "Oktoberfest on Front," runs from 2 to 10 p.m. and will feature an ax-throwing competition, live polka bands and perhaps enough lederhosen to convince the Valley to permanently ditch the Patagonia vests. Schroeders, Harrington's Bar & Grill and Royal Exchange will sling out the steins. |
| State Sen. Scott Wiener crafted legislation for the new entertainment zones as part of his larger effort to make San Francisco more vibrant post-pandemic. While his effort to keep bars open until 4 a.m. died off in 2022, Wiener has another bill currently sitting on Gov. Gavin Newsom's desk that would allow entertainment zones to become a permanent fixture in San Francisco.—Josh Koehn |
| Reading: The Unkillable Yuppies |
| The yuppie era might loosely be defined as beginning in the early 1980s—and then ending quickly after Black Monday, the 1987 stock market crash that forced America to sober up a little. Perhaps that's a little nearsighted, though. |
| A new and engaging history of the period, "Triumph of the Yuppies" (Hachette), is a droll, Sperry-clad journey through this era of maximalist consumption, a time when Sharper Image could do a $100 million business. Sharper Image catalogs haven't cluttered homes for years and years, but author Tom McGrath argues that the yuppie never fully disappeared. He suggests they're a permanent part of an American identity borne by a "zeal to recapture the dominance and prosperity of the postwar era," and a desire for America—and Americans—to be great again.—A.B. |
| Watching: A Sweet-Natured (Really!) Internet Story |
| If you were born in the 1990s—or you just feel nostalgic for MySpace and AOL Instant Messenger—I guarantee you'll enjoy "Didi," a coming-of-age dramedy from debut director Sean Wang. |
| "Didi," which translates to "younger brother" in Mandarin, follows the adolescent trials of 13-year-old Chris Wang (Izaac Wang), a Taiwanese American. He is, indeed, the younger brother in his family, and mostly he spends life in 2000s Fremont, Calif., tormenting his older sister, grandmother and mother, played by radiant standout Joan Chen ("The Last Emperor," "Twin Peaks"). When he's not annoying them, he's embarrassing himself quite a lot online in instant message chats with his crush, Madi. |
| The film is partly based on the director's childhood, which explains its era-specific references, like the Paramore T-shirt Chris steals from his sister's room and the Emerica merchandise, a skateboarding brand. |
| It's a beautiful portrait of the millennial childhood—a film with enough refreshing originality to have a unique buoyancy amid a sea of remakes and sequels.—Kate Clark |
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| No one can hear you scream…no, seriously, your Zoom is muted. |
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