Category Archives: remainders

Buy Real Art

I used to be one of those guys. If I needed to spruce up the walls of my home or office, I’d head down to the Housewares section of my local Target and get one of the mass market produced pre-framed prints. What can I say? I was your typical guy who didn’t know any better and thought I was making my home a little bit more, well, homey.

Then I met my wife. She is worldly and cultured. How she ended up with a guy like me is a wonder. I’m sure my meager and pedestrian collection of Target prints in no way impressed her when she entered my place for the first time. Due to the circles she travels in, she knows lots of local artists. And one of the greatest and earliest lessons I learned from her is how easy, and relatively inexpensive, it is to own real art, made by and purchased from, real artists.

In fact, just tonight we picked up the first share of our C.S.A – Community Supported Art. It’s a great idea put on by a local arts organization dedicated to connecting artists with direct local support. Especially if you live in a major city, I am sure there are similar programs and ways to find out who the artists are and how you can buy amazing work. Find them. There is a special magic to looking up at a print, a photograph, or a sculpture in your home, and knowing that the money you paid went straight into the hands of the person who made it.

Of course, now the Internet makes this even more possible. Frankly, there is no longer any excuse to have anything less hanging on your wall or adorning your home. It is way to easy to buy real art, from real artists.

Want to start off with some great pieces? Here are some suggestions. This is in no way meant to be a complete list (obviously). Just a few off the top of my head and others I asked:

Photography

* Dezene Huber

* Jorge Quinteros

* Michael Armstrong

Prints and Other Media

* Erik Natzke

* Jonathan Wilkinson

* Brad Blackman

Instant Karma

I want you to consider performing the occasional act of kindness on an regular and ongoing basis. Start today. Here are some ideas:

* The next time you see a car parked at an expired meter, if you have a quarter, stick it in.

* Have a full “buy some/get one free” punch card for your local coffee establishment? Give it to a random person in line.

* Hold the door or elevator for someone coming.

* On a toll road, pay for the car behind you.

* Buy flowers and give them to someone. Perhaps even someone random.

* Simply tell someone that they look good that day, or their dog is really cute, or their kid has good manners.

* Leave the book you just finished reading in a public place with a note to say it’s free for the taking.

* Write a thank you card or letter to someone “just because”.

What I aim to suggest you put in motion here is karma. Karma is the based on the idea of cause and effect and that ones actions have an effect on the past, present, and future. The positive and good actions you put out into the world will, in turn, make the world as a whole a better place, thus benefiting you. Karma is often thought of as good deeds one does for the benefit of others. But that is only half the story.

If you have any level of basic compassion, and a bit of natural human selfishness, you will do such things because they have the immediate effect of making you feel good as well. Do not be ashamed of this being part of the motivation. It’s OK. Really. It’s alright to do something for someone else because it makes you feel better. Because, in turn, your good feelings will reflect and spread to others who care about and encounter you as well. The karma is instant and is supposed to travel in both directions. That’s the whole point.

Random Apple Thoughts, Loosely Joined

I have been struggling for a while how to write a post to tie these things together but just can’t seem to get there. These things are all related to my pure conjecture, speculation and general feelings about some of Apple’s short and long term strategy moves so they are pieces loosely connected in that respect. Then, I had the dilemma of whether or not to post this today, a day when the internet is rife with fake news and clever pranks. I was afraid that no one would take me seriously. But then, I had an epiphany – This is exactly the reason to post this today.

Therefore, without further ado, here are just some random thoughts, observations, and, in the words of Arseno Hall, things that make you go “hmmmmm”:

  • If I were Apple, and I was considering creating an App Store for the Mac, I might start by making the Mac Developer program the exact same price as the iPhone program (and by “iPhone” I mean any iPhone OS based device). It would certainly be the step I would take before I merged the two programs. In fact, perhaps the best reason for doing so would be that, eventually, the tools would be in place for developers to write one application and have it behave in device specific ways. In other words, install it on an iPhone and it looks and runs like an iPhone app. Install that same application on a Mac and it magically works and feels like a Mac application.

  • I don’t think enough emphasis has been placed on the real and advantageous reasons (in their mind at least) Apple might have for creating a Mac App Store and making that the only way to install Apps on a Mac as it is with the iPhone/iPad. This is not only about control for the sake of control – which they clearly prefer. It is also about control for the sake of quality and security. The Mac OS only remains fairly secure and virus/malware free mostly through obscurity. The folks who would want to exploit the many known security holes just don’t see enough money in it for it to be worth the time. That said, as Apple’s marketshare increases, so does that metric. Certainly, if the only way to get any executable on the Mac required going through the App store, or installation of a specific Ad Hoc Profile that requires the user supply their UUID, and then that had a forced expiration date and creating such required Developer Program membership… I think you see where I am going. The system in place for the iPhone is an incredibly secure one in comparison to the Mac OS. There is a lot of value in that – especially from a marketing perspective.

  • The fact that Tim Cook has been increasingly more visible as a public face of Apple has not escaped my notice. Also, I have noted that so many of the times he has spoken at some event, he goes well out of his way to talk about the “culture” of Apple is what allows it to perform at the level it does. Not any one person and, in a sense, not specifically people at all. It is, in his mind, the culture that powers the success machine. Good ideas develop at one end and magic comes pouring out the other and it is the culture that drives that. Once thing that a lot of people don’t think about is how incredibly flat of an organization Apple is compared to most others like it. By flat I mean that the number of people between, say, a retail store employee and Steve Jobs himself is quite a bit less than say, at Microsoft. Such flatness works very well for maintaining and instilling a unique culture. Simply hire the right people that fit well into that culture and the machine will keep churning out successful products.

    • The subtext of the above: Everything will be fine when Steve leaves and Tim Cook takes over, it is the culture that drives Apple’s success, not any one individual. So every time you hear an Apple executive mention “culture”, this is what they are saying.

    • Pixar is a good example of a post Steve Apple. Put the good stories at one end, let the culture develop them, watch the magic happen.