Discours.es

I thought this was a great essay about free content on the web more generally, but this specific section was particularly insightful:

Ap­ple is of­ten cred­ited with prov­ing that de­sign ex­cel­lence leads to mar­ket suc­cess. Not re­ally. Ap­ple’s resur­gence is only in­ci­den­tally about de­sign. Mostly, it’s about care­fully se­lect­ing a ter­ri­tory of valu­able cus­tomers—in Ap­ple’s case, sta­tus-con­scious peo­ple with co­pi­ous dis­pos­able in­come—and de­fend­ing that ter­ri­tory tooth and nail. Ap­ple does not sell great de­sign. It sells de­sign that flat­ters its owner. (And Ap­ple’s tim­ing has been per­fect to ex­ploit the ris­ing tide of wealth inequality.)