This blog wouldn’t exist if not for Manuel Moreale. I don’t remember how i stumbled upon his blog, but i remember being crestfallen that my “the homepage is the latest article” idea wasn’t as original as i thought. The more i read him, though, the more i began to feel that weird one-sided kinship you only get with parasocial relationships. I mean, the guy tried to write a newsletter from the actual summit of his neighbouring mountains!

After a bout of burnout, i was contemplating closing my long-running French blog, but watching this Italian fellow write in English with such confidence gave me another idea. Through The Forest, a discovery tool he created with Carl Barenbrug, i discovered a whole slew of ESL bloggers and was finally convinced that i could blog in English myself. A few months later, Z1NZ0L1N was born.

A year and a bit in, i found a new community around the IndieWeb Carnival and met amazing people on- and off-line. You can imagine how delighted i was when Manuel asked me to take part in his wonderful People and Blogs interview series. My interview is now live, and i hope it’ll inspire other people to keep the blogging spirit alive.

Books

Apple: The First Fifty Years by David Pogue. Simon & Schuster should be ashamed of themselves: Apple: The First Fifty Years looks like self-published printed-on-demand trash. The printed layout is atrocious and the electronic version is even worse. I long for a book about Apple made with the same care and attention as the products it describes. For all its faults, it’s also the best book i’ve ever read about Apple — and i’ve read them all.

David Pogue found the perfect balance between historical facts and fun anecdotes, pedantic comprehensiveness and literary ellipsis, minute technical details and broad strategic analysis. Apple: The First Fifty Years makes for an engrossing and informative read, which is a rare quality. Most of all, it doesn’t suffer from the issue that plagues most every book about Apple, lack of first-hand knowledge.

Apple: The First Fifty Years is chock-full of testimonies from people who were actually there, including Chris Espinosa, the only person who’s been at Apple for the whole ride. Even if the current crop of Apple executives are media-trained to the hilt, that kind of access is invaluable, and gives Pogue’s book a depth you won’t find anywhere else.

I’ve been thoroughly unimpressed by the media coverage of Apple’s fiftieth birthday. Even The Verge’s “Apple@50” package feels inconsequential, as if they started working on it three weeks ago. Pogue’s book is exactly the type of project that befits this momentous occasion. It’s the new reference book on the subject, and should find a permanent place on every fan of Apple’s bookshelf. (And i have to admit it was fun to revisit some of my scoops, like Kevin Lynch’s hiring to work on the Apple Watch or Michael Spindler’s death.)

Links

I don’t regret switching careers one bit, but i’m sure i’d have enjoyed working on Apple’s fiftieth. Here are a few good articles on the topic:

• “How Apple became Apple: The definitive oral history of the company’s earliest days” by Harry McCracken;
• “Between Jobs” by Jason Snell;
• “Tim Cook (Still) Believes in Crazy Ideas” by Ryan D’Agostino;
• “How the invention of QuickTime changed computers forever” by John Buck;
• “One of Apple’s First Employees Looks Back at 50 Years” by Kalley Huang;
• “Ronald G. Wayne Is More Than Two Weeks At Apple” by Ernie Smith.

Music

Chariots of Fire by Vangelis. The opening theme still sends shivers down my spine, but i have to say that the rest of the soundtrack is some of the lousiest synth jazz you’ll ever hear.