Nick Bergus Thoughts on what media do, and can do better, and other things

The media world is on fire with news that Apple is finally allowing subscriptions in iOS apps! I want in, too, so here’s Apple’s press release and my blow-by-blow commentary. CUPERTINO, California—February 15, 2011—Apple® today announced a new subscription service available to all publishers of content-based apps on the App Store℠, including magazines, newspapers, video, [...]

Android’s conscientious users are the same people who choose to run Linux on their desktops, said Dan Benjamin in a discussion with John Gruber on the latest episode of The Talk Show. Now, this is nothing more than total annecdotal evidence that doesn’t prove anything, but this I found it interesting: A discussion on a normal, [...]

Yesterday, Shoq offered two reasons you shouldn’t use Twitter’s built-in or “native” retweet feature. Me, I much prefer the new-style native retweet function, and I tell you why later. But, first, I think Shoq and others are wrong for preferring the old-style retweet. First, Shoq argues that if everyone uses native retweets, we’ll all miss important things. [...]

Want more evidence that Verizon sees the iPhone as in a different class than Android? And the iPad as in a different class than any other tablet? Well, both are broken out from their class, smartphones and tablets. I’ll bet iPhones get different, agressive plan pricing than other smartphones. But that’s just a guess.

I find John Gruber, when he’s got the snark dialed up to 11, annoying, grating, vial and egotistical. But that’s only when I disagree with him. I, of course, love it when we’re on the same side. Gruber seems like a smart guy. His analysis and reporting is usually good. He’s willing to point out the [...]

About a month ago, HP agreed to buy Palm, primarily for the company’s mobile operating system webOS, which is replacing Windows 7 on the company’s touted forthcoming tablet.  A sexy mobile OS is great and all, but my recent interactions suggest a deeper problem for HP that it has to fix. At NLTV, every year I find [...]

Just a few points that I wanted to make in response to the conversation I was having with Dave Schwartz on Twitter about Facebook’s ever-changing privacy policy and the growing complaints about it that doesn’t quite fit in 140 characters: Facebook isn’t “free” for users. It doesn’t cost them money (unless they’re buying gifts or game credits [...]

Twitter released a small, simple app called Blackbird Pie that, when Twitter isn’t painfully slow and blogged down, should make it easy to embed a tweet in a blog post. It creates little bit of static HTML code that you can plop in a page. Like so: This is a tweet that I will later [...]

Steven P. Jobs: Those fuckers are out to kill us, Phil. Philip W. Schiller: I know, Steve, I know. Android keeps gaining, and OS 4 is just catching up to those assholes. SPJ: And, really, how long can our magical revolution last before there’s a tablet that the Windows-box-buying slobs champion as open? And the [...]

Since I bought my Droid last November, I’ve used a bunch of different Twitter clients. I have yet to find one I’m really happy with. I know development is hard, and it seems whiny to complain publicly. My hope is that the developers will read this and incorporate some of my suggestions. Or someone else will [...]