On "Apple Versus" Anyone

I'm not into the "Apple vs. Google" or "Android vs. iOS" arguments. I use whatever tech works best to get the job done; to me, that's all that matters.

That said: I wonder if commentator John Gruber really thought about the implications of this observation, published in a post called "Google Versus":

"Google is the company that built Android after the iPhone, Google Plus after Facebook, and now a subscription music service after Spotify ... Gmail? Webmail but better. Think about even web search: Google search wasn’t something new; it was something better ... Google Maps entered a market where MapQuest and others had been around for years." 

In context, he's arguing that there's something a little naive about Larry Page's weariness over seeing "hyper-competitive" Google positioned as "versus" someone else." 

The more important insight here is that Google tends to watch as competitors identify markets ... and then come up with products designed outperform the competition. (Many companies do this, including Apple. The iPhone, after all, was a rethinking of what existing cell phones could be.)

Lately, Apple's track record with this approach isn't as impressive as Google's. Consider Maps, which was panned as a stinker. Google Maps existed, and provided a level of service everyone loved. Apple made an effort to replicate that ... and failed. The new Google Maps, announced yesterday, widens the gap between Apple's sub-par copy and Google's product even more. 

If Apple is going to continue to grow, their response to that kind of one-upmanship from Google has got to go beyond calling people "Glassholes" for wearing Google Glass and preventing users from making Google Maps the default mapping app on the iPhone.

Travel Options for Lottery Winners (On Second Thought)

After writing this morning's post on Travel Options for Lottery Winners, I began having second thoughts during the walk to work.

That kind of high-maintenance luxury travel has its charms, doesn't it? On the other hand, though, each of those high-dollar programs is essentially a "rush in, rush out" bus tour dressed up in fancy clothes. Admittedly, those are some very nice buses, and they stop in very nice places, and your travel companions would be very well-heeled. But is that how I'd want to travel, if price and time were eliminated as obstacles? 

Not really.

This is more how I'd like us to travel. First, I'd probably use an agent to find a spacious, furnished home in Chiang Mai -- something that would take advantage of the mountain breezes. A good local chef and a smart local housekeeper would likely be the only staff we'd need -- except, perhaps, for a reliable driver. 

We'd linger there, exploring the temples, enjoying the local restaurants, and generally settling in. After a week or two, we'd look for a similar setup somewhere in Laos. After we felt comfortable there, we'd probably head up to Burma. In every place, the approach would be the same: a reasonable, comfortable house ... a good salary for reliable local helpers ... an emphasis on exploring each location through soaking up the local color, historic sites, and cuisine at a leisurely pace, with our time there dictated by our own sense of when it's time to go (instead of by a pre-defined schedule).

After a month or so in Bangkok visiting Bobby and other old friends, why not go on to New Zealand and take our time exploring the north and south islands on our own, by car? After a week or two with Tony and Marlene at the Eden Park B&B in Auckland, we could set out on our own, making the most of every little village we encountered along the way. And when that loop was done in a month or three, why not head on down to Australia, to get a feel for what it would be like to actually live in Sydney for a month or so ... and to take a trip out to see Uluru in the light of the rising sun?

We've not had much time in Europe during warm weather, so when spring came to the northern hemisphere, it might be nice to revisit some of our favorite destinations (and head out to some new possible favorites in Spain and Italy). The template's the same: get a house. Get a small staff. Enjoy local food. Fly in some friends. Have time to get a feel for a place, to know our way around the neighborhood, to know where to get the best cup of coffee, the best fresh bread, the best candle-lit dinner with the best plate of handmade pasta and fresh vegetables ...

And from there: the world awaits. Free from the constrains of money and schedules, we could go, and do, and be ... and wherever we were, if Clyde were with me, I'd be at home.

For me? That's luxury travel.

Travel Options for Lottery Winners

Clyde and I occasionally amuse ourselves by talking about what travel options we'd explore after winning a lottery windfall. 

At one point, we thought Holland America's 130-day "Grand Voyage" around the world in the swanky Neptune Suite would be amusing. But at $85,000 per person for what would be, essentially, a swanky room in a ship we already know very well, we've decided that wouldn't be a good value.

So ... if one found oneself suddenly able to travel without financial constraints, what might one do?

I'm really drawn to National Geographic's "Around the World" private jet tour. In the air, we'd be traveling with a maximum of 54 other people on a private, "converted for luxury" 757. On the ground, we'd stay in Four Seasons resorts. And while enjoying our exotic itinerary (Lima, Machu Pichu, Easter Island, Samoa, the Daintree Rain Forest, Angkor Wat, Chengdu (China), Lhasa (Tibet), the Taj Mahal, Tanzania, the Pyramids, and Marrakech), we'd be in the company of expert interpreters and scholars, enjoy a dedicated Four Seasons concierge staff, and have unlimited access to global, high-speed wifi.

The tour sets its own schedule, minimizing time spent in airports and avoiding layovers. The price? Just $70,000 per person. Compared to Holland America's Grand Voyages offering, it's a bargain ... but, of course, this trip lasts just twenty-three days (and doesn't include all meals!). 

But since we've already been to Australia's Daintree Rain Forest and Angkor Wat, perhaps we'd be better served by Four Season's own "around the world" package, which includes more Four Seasons accommodations and travel to Kona (Hawaii), Bora Bora, Sydney, Bali, Chiang Mai, the Taj, Istanbul, and London. It's just $88,000 per person.

And don't forget Geoffrey Kent's private around the world tour, in which you travel with the CEO of Abercrombie and Kent to see the Amazon River, Easter Island, Samoa, Papua New Ginea, Bali, Sri Lanka, Madagascar, Kenya, and Monaco. Of all those destinations, we've only been to one (Monaco), so maybe we should pony up the $104,000 per person for the twenty-three day adventure. 

Decisions, decisions. But it's good to be thinking about this kind of thing, I think -- just in case the Powerball jackpot comes bouncing our way. 

Two Alternatives to Iron Man 3

While the rest of the planet was watching Iron Man 3 in Super Imax 3D Sensurround, we took in two remarkable films this weekend:

Dans La Maison (In the House) brings two unlikely characters together. First, there's Claude, a high school student who covets his best friend's middle-class life ... and his best friend's middle-class mother. As his calculated moves slowly make him "one of the family," he writes a series of essays about his progress.

Those papers horrify -- and then mesmerize -- Germain, the boy's creative writing teacher, who (despite strong misgivings) aids and abets Claude's efforts in order to keep the compelling chapters coming. There's lots of hand-wringing over the ethics (or lack of them) involved, and lots of justification ("I'm only concerned with developing the boy's remarkable talent!") for doing nothing, even as the boy's plan threatens to rip his friend's family apart.

As readers (and movie-goers), we're the ultimate voyeurs, watching intimate moments and even crawling around inside the heads and hearts of the characters in the stories we consume. Dans La Maison reminds us we're all Claude (who wants to live a life other than his own) and Germain (who can't stop turning the pages, no matter what the consequences are). 

There's a different kind of crawling around in heads going on in Upstream Color, the second movie by the writer/director of one of my favorite indie movies, Primer.

On the surface, the plot looks like this:

• A mysterious thief drugs victims at a bar, rendering them so complacent, they do whatever he asks (including handing over their life savings).
• A woman, Kris, wakes after a lapse in memory to find her savings gone and her life in shambles.
• A man, Jeff, strikes up a relationship with a damaged woman, eventually confessing how he ruined his life with a drug addiction. (Or did he?)
• A pig farmer uses low-frequency sound to manipulate and control the parasites he harvests and implants in pigs.
• An dealer in exotic flowers discovers a new breed of orchid producing a blue powder, and neighborhood kids quickly discover its pollen has applications as a hypnotic drug.

All these storylines co-exist, floating on the surface of the movie like splotches of oil on turbulent water. They bump into each other, fuse together, and drift apart, and there's no effort on the part of the filmmaker to connect the dots for you. (In fact, there's a deliberate effort to shuffle events, obscure connections, and deny cause and effect.)

The result is intriguing: a story that can be taken many ways, with connections that only become apparent upon reflection. In the theatre, this jarring little film washes over you; only later, upon reflection, do the pieces fall into place -- a process that mirrors the experience of characters themselves. 

Neither film features jaw-dropping computer-rendered effects, explosions, or big name stars ... but both have stuck with me, haunting me, for days after I watched them. You can see 'em both (one at Midtown Arts, the other at the Plaza on Ponce) for the price of a single ticket to the Imax 3D version of Iron Man 3.

They're from Marietta.

The wide-eyed couple walks into Mary Mac's Tearoom, ogling the other diners. He's a sort of small-headed, wide-hipped man. His wife towers over him -- that is, her hair towers over him, because it's teased up into a gravity-defying cotton candy cloud.

The dining room attendant seats them next to us -- a location that proves perfect for eavesdropping.

Their server appears. "Welcome to Mary Mac's! Have you been with us before?"

"We're from Marietta," the man says, as though that communicates everything one would ever need to know.

"Okay," the server says. "And have you eaten here before?"

"No," the wife says. "We're from Marietta."

"Okay," the server says. She tells them the Mary Mac's story, then asks for their drink orders.

"Mint juleps," the man says. "Two."

The server glances at her watch. "I'm sorry, but we can't start serving alcohol until twelve-thirty."

The man gives her a look. "Well, that's how it is in Marietta," he says. "Atlanta's different."

"We start serving at 12:30," the server says. "That's just thirty minutes away."

The pair order iced tea. When their server leaves, they collect their things and slink out of the restaurant. 

They're from Marietta.

Sour Notes at Cafe Intermezzo

We enjoyed the incarnation of Cafe Intermezzo at the old Peachtree Street location. While it was never one of our "any Tuesday night" places, the tour of the dessert case always delighted out-of-town guests. Best of all, the service and food were consistent and dependable, time after time.

But since the move to the shiny new digs at the corner of Peachtree Street and 11th Street, things have gone rapidly downhill. After several bad experiences there (and after hearing about similar bad experiences from friends and co-workers), our initial excitement over our new neighbor's arrival has given way to disappointment.

On our first visit (with friends J & J in tow), the front door staff informed us the entire restaurant had been reserved by Midtown Alliance. "We can still seat you on the patio, though."

Unfortunately, the patio's frequently malfunctioning garage-style doors were sealed tight, and the late afternoon sunlight had transformed the space into a cramped and claustrophobic furnace. And while servers scrambled to push two wrought-iron tables for two together, they set them up so that the four of us would be facing a booth of diners just on the other side of a window. And -- worse -- because those windows were being washed, the entire space stank of ammonia. We passed.

Days later, Clyde and I went back on a Saturday afternoon for a quick bite. The front door staff, sweet but clueless, were so overwhelmed and so out of touch some diners bypassed them entirely and helped themselves to seats. After being guided to a corner seat, we waited fifteen minutes for a glass of water, forty minutes for a sandwich and a salad, and an additional fifteen minutes for the check. We left saying we'd never go back.

Maybe it's just us? No, it's not. Soon, friends began telling us their own Cafe Intermezzo tales. When J&J went on a Saturday morning at 9:00, the cafe was out of coffee. (What?!?) When KR went for a workday lunch, the food came so late, the entire table had to get their lunches boxed to go. Another friend complained: "I waited half an hour for a slice of pie and a cup of coffee while bar staff stood around, laughing and chatting with each other."

You'd think these experiences would teach me a lesson, right? But last week, the unexpected arrival of some friends had me wondering about what I could pick up on the way home from work to serve as a dessert. So I stopped in Cafe Intermezzo to buy a pie to go. That should be easy, right?

But -- no. Could they sell a whole pie? Um, no one at the front door was sure. "We think so, but we need to check." Once they confirmed entire pies could be sold, I waited at the dessert counter for several minutes (in an virtually empty cafe) while staff members strolled around, looking for someone to help me.

Eventually, someone showed up and began giving me a tour of every pie in the case. Glancing at my watch, I pointed to one and said, "I"ll have one of those."

"I'm not sure we have that one," the server said. "Let me check." He disappeared, then returned in ten minutes with sad news. "I'm sorry, we're out of that one."

"There's a whole one in the case," I explained. "I'll have that one."

He frowned. "I don't know if we can sell the one in the case. Let me check."

I waited ten more minutes. He returned, smiling. "We found the one you wanted in the back, in the freezer!" He gave me the box and pointed me to the register. "Someone over there will check you out."

I waited ten minutes for a young woman to appear. When she saw the box in my hand, she frowned. "I've never sold a whole pie before. Do I just ring it up as fourteen individual slices? Let me check."

Given that Cafe Intermezzo sells individual slices for about eight bucks a pop, I was prepared to walk out. But she returned with good news ("There's a discounted price!"), only to leave again to find someone to help her figure out the register.

I know opening a new location has its challenges. That said: apparently everyone with experience, customer service know-how, technical expertise, and common sense abandoned Cafe Intermezzo prior to the move ... and the folks who are left (or who've been hired since) aren't doing the restaurant any favors.

WIth service this slow and clueless, Cafe Intermezzo might snag enough business from unsuspecting hotel guests to keep the doors open a few months ... but unless things improve, I fear the only music coming from the corner of Peachtree and 11th will soon be a funeral dirge.

Move

I love, love, love this video. I need to think of something smaller scale but clever I could do during our escapades around the planet...