006:PC 时代资深媒体人去世、哪些消息应用最有隐私保障、亚马逊与颠覆性创新

本周四,知名科技媒体人 David Bunnell 在加州去世,这是一个中国科技粉丝陌生的名字,但如果提起保罗·艾伦或者比尔·盖茨,或许大家的反应会快上很多。

事实上,David Bunnell 曾和保罗·艾伦、比尔·盖茨做过同事(如下图)。而就在 1975 年盖茨和艾伦创办微软之后,David Bunnell 也开始了在 PC 时代的探索,所不同的是,他走上了媒体之路。

《纽约时报》资深记者 Markdoff 回忆了 David Bunnell 当时对 PC 行业重要影响

The power and influence of the PC industry press has largely been forgotten in the internet era, but at the time, in the 1970s, the magazines Mr. Bunnell published were as authoritative and read as eagerly as Vogue or Women’s Wear Daily were in the fashion world.

Mr. Bunnell was riding a rocket ship. The first issue of PC Magazine was 100 pages, substantial enough by any measure. But the second issue weighed in like a phone book, at 400 pages.

到了 80 年代,Bunnell 也得到乔布斯的青睐:

Through it all, he worked as an editor, publisher and writer at the leading edge of the computing world. Mr. Jobs, Apple’s co-founder, chose Mr. Bunnell over a variety of competitors when he sought a consumer magazine to help propel the Macintosh computer in 1984.

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如果你关注聊天时的隐私,不要错过这个排行

国际特赦组织日前发布了一份即时聊天应用隐私状况排行,这个排行榜以公司的形式呈现,在国际特赦组织的新闻稿有这么一段话:

“隐私和网络言论自由的未来在很大程度上取决于科技公司是否提供通讯保护服务,抑或是将这些通讯置于窥视下。”

下面是这个榜单,腾讯(Tencent)、黑莓(Blackberry)及快拍(Snapchat)得分均低于30:

19年前,一位好心人劝贝佐斯把亚马逊卖个巴诺

上世纪 90年代中期,克里斯坦森因「颠覆性创新」而名扬天下。但到了本世纪,该书的理论在苹果公司那里完全失效,比如克里斯坦森多次预言 iPhone 将失败….. 以至于知名科技博客主 Ben Thompson 实在看不下去,还在 2013 年写过一篇长文向西分析克里斯坦森为何失败

不过,亚马逊创始人贝佐斯非常推崇克里斯坦森的「颠覆性创新」理论,也曾经要求亚马逊的高层阅读此书。

而在 Brad Stone 的 The Everything Store 一书的前 70 多页的叙述中,我们几乎完整见识了所谓颠覆性创新的本来面目:

it’s“a process by which a product or service takes root initially in simple applications at the bottom of a market and then relentlessly moves up market, eventually displacing established competitors.”

这里还有个细节,当贝佐斯 1997 年在哈佛商学院演讲时,有个学生很「善意」地告诉贝佐斯,亚马逊做的很酷,但亚马逊最好的出路是卖给巴诺书店。

尽管 The Everything Store 早已出版多年,而且中文版也一度是商业畅销书,但如果你还未阅读英文原版,我还是强烈建议直接阅读原版,在我看来,且不说中文翻译的质量到底如何(这毕竟是一件仁者见仁的事情),单就语言的每一次转录来说,每一次都是一次消耗,转录的过程加入了太多噪声,也失去了原文的魅力。

我尤其是喜欢 Brand 在本书第十一章的一段描写,在前面波澜壮阔地介绍了亚马逊帝国的成长记之后,Brand 突然用一种几乎白描的手法介绍了一家小店,这是一家典型的美国社区店,曾经在沃尔玛等大型连锁超市的碾压下「苟延残喘」,如今又要在亚马逊等大型电商的冲击下谋求一条活路。:

If you were to search the world for the polar opposite of this sprawling conglomerate, a store that cultivated not massive selection but an exclusive assortment of high-end products and thrived not on brand loyalty but on the amiable personality of its proprietor, you might just settle on a small bike shop north of Phoenix, in Glendale, Arizona. It’s called the Roadrunner Bike Center.

This somewhat grandiosely named establishment sits in a shoe-box-shaped space in an otherwise ordinary shopping center next to the Hot Cutz Spa and Salon and down a ways from a Walmart grocery store. It offers a small selection of premium BMX and dirt bikes from companies like Giant, Haro, and Redline, brands that carefully select their retail partners and generally do not sell to websites or discount outlets. Many customers have patronized this store for years, even though it has moved three times within the Phoenix area.

“The old guy that runs this is always there and you can tell he loves to fix and sell bikes,” writes one customer in a typically favorable online review of the store. “When you buy from him he will take care of you. He also is the cheapest place I have ever taken a bike for a service, I think sometimes he runs a special for $30! That’s insane!”

A red poster board with the hand-scrawled words Layaway for the holidays! leans against an outside window of the store. It is no different than any mom-and-pop shop anywhere in the world that’s been carefully tended and nurtured by its owner over the course of thirty years. Except in this case, the store offers more than just a strong contrast to Amazon, and the evidence hangs inside, under the fluorescent lights, next to the front counter. Framed on the wall is a laminated old newspaper clipping with a photograph of a sixteen-year-old boy sporting a flattop haircut and standing up on the pedals of his unicycle, with one hand on the seat and the other flared daringly out to the side.

这家店的主人叫 Ted Jorgensen,是贝佐斯的生父。