Marty Manley on economics, politics, technology, and culture

Business

How Amazon Can Compete with Apple

At the moment, Amazon's best selling Kindle is the king of the eBook readers. But the impending launch of Apple's iPad means that unless Amazon changes its direction and its mindset, the Kindle is kindling.  Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has a tough habit to break. It started when he built the Kindle and he deliberately [...]

Why the iPad Matters — even if you are already sick of it.

The PR was stunning, the product impressive, and the strategy tiresome. Apple stoked rumors of a dreamy tablet for either two years old or thirteen, depending on how you count. For six months, the leading tech blogs have been quivering with speculation about the “Jesus tablet”. One blog, Gizmodo, offered $100,000 cash for an hour [...]

Atul Gawande: America's Doctor

Who is Atul Gawande and why is he having a bigger impact on your life than any physician in America who is not treating you? Gawwande is a cancer surgeon in Boston. A Rhodes Scholar and the recipient of a MacArthur "genius grant", he trained at Harvard, and Stanford and grabbed a Masters in Public [...]

The Great Sell-out.

It's Oaklandish — the great liberal caterwauling about the death of the public option and the claims that Obama has sold out to big insurance and pharma. To humiliate a liberal, film this stuff and replay it in ten years. If this is a sell-out, count me a buyer. Last night's Senate deal killed Harry [...]

The Death of the Desktop?

Google today revealed details of its operating system: Chrome OS. There is a reason that they named their operating system after their browser: their operating system IS a browser. Your computer boots in seconds and up comes a browser. Take more than a cursory look at Chrome OS and you realize that Google is offering [...]

The Apple Squeeze

Have your noticed that Apple is getting squeezed? Consider these recent developments: 1. With Windows 7, Microsoft has substantially closed the performance gap with the Mac OS, thus quietly removing the major reason to switch to a Mac. Both professional reviews and personal experience confirm that with Windows 7, Microsoft got it right. In a [...]

US Newspapers in a Free Fall

Today the Audit Bureau of Circulations released weekday circulation numbers for the top 25 daily newspapers in the U.S. The graph below shows changes in circulation during the past six months. These numbers are not simply awful — they represent the total collapse of the newspaper business. Only the Wall St. Journal added any subscribers [...]

Billionaire Amazon CEO works in his own warehouse.

He looks like a leprechaun and laughs like a hyena, but do not ever underestimate Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos. Back in 2006, Amazon accounted for 5.1% of all online sales. Now it accounts for 6% and it's cash flow more than doubled. The company ranks 8th in the Fortune 500 for ten year [...]

Economic Collapse: Understanding the Triple Whammy

We are in the middle of three economic crises. Although it would be preferable to handle and attack of food poisoning, a vicious cold, and the flu separately,  we got all three at the same time. The patient is feverish, heaving, and has not yet seen the worst of it. They are related economic diseases, [...]

Terrible Tuesday (Revised)

It is not easy to lose control of your central economic initiative (the stimulus) and compromise your central domestic initiative (health care) in one day. Obama ended up declaring that he had "screwed up" before the central thesis of his administration (change we can believe in) went down with it. It did not make a [...]

How am I doing?

You stagger off of a crowded jet into the world's largest airport — the sprawling creation of British architect Norman Foster in Beijing. From the air, the airport is designed to look like a dragon. Inside, its high roof is ablaze with the reds and golds of imperial China. Whatever. It's a fine airport, but [...]

A Brilliant Flashback

Saturday night I took a trip back to the 1970s and found two groups of people. One remains unchanged — seemingly frozen in time. Another group has taken what they learned in the seventies and used it to change the world. The occasion was a benefit concert for the Seva Foundation at Oakland’s beautiful Paramount [...]

Steve Jobs — Again

For Steve Jobs, it is clearly not sufficient to be the leading innovator of the age — his products must be so hot that  they define cool for the entire planet. The figures boggle the mind: six years after launch 110 million iPods now play 4 billion songs. 200 days after launch, 1 million iPhones [...]

Will Google Free the Phone?

Google is about to become your phone company. Indeed, if current technology pans out, Google won’t charge you much if anything for your phone, which may serve nicely as your computer and your TV. As of tonight Google stock trades at $700/share making it the fifth most valuable company in the United States. Google is [...]

Your Father's Oldsmobile

Did you notice that our biggest industrial union went on strike this morning against our biggest car maker? You didn’t? Funny, investors didn’t notice either — GM stock hardly moved today — it was actually up for awhile. Unless you are walking a picket line or working in a Mexican parts plant, the GM strike [...]

Did we create a half million or 7.7 million jobs last quarter?

The undisputed gem of the United States Department of Labor is the Bureau of Labor Statistics. You can debate whether the rest of the place accomplishes much, but the BLS is pure gold — home to some of America’s smartest and most important data gatherers, knowledge makers, and statisticians. They work about a block from [...]

"No Power in the Market and No Voice in the System"

Bill Gates’ Harvard commencement address is being circulated widely in Silicon Valley — and with good reason. He gave an outstanding speech (rather, he wrote an outstanding speech — he cannot deliver a speech to save his life). In the tradition of commencement speeches, Gates reminded grads of their social obligations — a noblesse oblige [...]

Protect Income, not Industries, Companies, or Jobs

Suppose we tried to improve our economic security and well-being by making it illegal for any employer to fire any employee for any reason. Over time, our strategy would backfire. We would become less secure because we would be less competitive as our companies lost out to foreign businesses with more flexible cost structures. As [...]

Gravity Lessons

Leaders of businesses assaulted by technology can sympathize with Wile E. Coyote. We know how he feels when he discovers that the road beneath his feet has turned to air. We laugh in sympathy as his expression turns sheepish and he pedals frantically. We know that fall is gonna hurt. These days you can find [...]

Perspective on Global Warming

Each day, humans pump two billion pounds of carbon into earth’s atmosphere — the industrial exhaust from activities that have dramatically improved our lives. The extent to which the earth’s climate is changing more than it would change anyway, how much warming is a valid scientific concern vs. noise in very complex models, the contribution [...]