kottke.org posts about Amazon
Just wanted to dip in here to say that Amazon is running another one of their sales for Prime members, which can be a great opportunity to upgrade some tech items at lower prices, especially with the price increases we’ve seen recently. Just a couple of quick things:
- The AirPods Pro 3 are my daily headphones; I really do love them. They’re $179 right now ($249 regular price), which I think is the lowest price they’ve been.
- The 15-inch M5 MacBook Air starts at $1299 (normally $1499). I am typing this on my M4 Air, which is the best computer I’ve ever owned, and the temptation to upgrade is strong.
- If you like your laptops smaller, the 13-inch M5 MacBook Air is also on sale, starting at $1099 (regularly $1299).
You can find more sale items here. I think these deals expire in a few hours, so hop to it.
And also, other stores like Best Buy often do their own deals around this time and Bookshop.org is offering free shipping. I’m reading Marlon James’ The Disappearers right now and, oof, it’s great but harrowing.
Apple raised their prices on their laptops, iMacs, and iPads today due to the high cost of memory (driven by AI demand). The Macbook Neo’s price went up $100 with most other machines getting a $200-500 bump.
But those prices have yet to take effect at Amazon, where Apple computers are still cheaper than the old prices. Macbook Neo for $590, MacBook Air M5 for $1150, and the M4 iMac for $1150. You can check other models (MacBook Pros, etc.) and their pricing here. Not sure when RAM costs are going to come down…these might be the lowest prices you see on Apple machines for quite awhile.
Update: looks like the Amazon prices have gone up. Oh well.
Amazon is doing their Prime Day sale again this summer and for those with Prime memberships, it’s a chance to upgrade some tech items at rarely seen prices. Here are a few items I’ve got my eye on:
- The AirPods Pro 3 are still my daily headphones; I really do love them so much. They’re $180 right now, which I think is the lowest price they’ve been.
- Apple’s AirPods Max 2 headphones are on sale for a ridiculous $400 (27% off)…the lowest price ever.
- I do not have the latest Kindle Paperwhite, but I just now bought one for $125 (22% off). After a long period of foundering, I’ve gotten back into reading again and want an upgrade over the four-year-old Kindle I’m currently using.
- I don’t have one of these and reviews have been mixed (some ppl love them and some are lukewarm on them), but the pocket-sized X4 E-Book Reader is on sale for $55 (20% off). It’s so small you can attach it to the back of your phone.
- My finger is hovered over the “add to cart” button on the 15-inch M5 MacBook Air ($1150, 20% off). I have the 15-inch M4 Air and absolutely love it…but I wouldn’t mind something a little beefier for some of the programming stuff I’ve been doing lately.
- While not exactly “tech”, it is technology: the KitchenAid 5.5 quart stand mixer is 40% off ($300).
Regarding the Apple stuff on the list, it’s helpful to keep in mind that Tim Cook recently said in an interview that Apple is going to be raising their prices “to offset the surging costs of memory and storage chips”. It’s unclear when this will happen, but it makes all the current Apple deals look even better.
I think this counts as a FINALLY! Amazon is coming out with a full-color e-reader called the Kindle Colorsoft. You can pre-order it now for $280 and it ships on October 30. This will be great for comics, graphic novels, and books with art & photography. I am a committed ebook reader and it’s always been disappointing to view photos on the Kindle…they look like they were faxed from the Voyager space probe or something.
As it happens, I’m in the market for a new e-reader — I lost my Kindle Paperwhite a few weeks ago and haven’t replaced it (partially because I’m in the midst of an actual paper book right now but mostly because I am stubbon and don’t want to believe I have become the sort of person who loses things — my driver’s license also went missing recently). Anyway, I’m trying to decide between the Colorsoft ($280), the Boox Palma (aka the Gentle Librarian, also $280), or getting the new & improved Paperwhite (faster, bigger screen, thinner, higher contrast, $160). Hmm…
For the last few years, Amazon has spent a couple of summer days putting a bunch of their most popular items on sale for their Prime members. This year, Prime Day runs from July 16-17 and includes a number of things that I can personally recommend (or are currently coveting). Keep in mind that you need to be an Amazon Prime member to take advantage of these deals: here’s where you sign up for Prime if you’re interested (there’s a free 30-day trial).
I’ve said it before: I love the 2nd-gen AirPods Pro and they’re on sale today for $169 (32% off). And I don’t think I’ve ever seen a lower price on the 2nd-gen AirPods: $69 (47% off, nice).
Oooh, Apple’s M2 Macbook Air is down to $800 (20% off). I love my M1 Air but am curious about a slightly faster machine… Or maybe I should go for an even faster machine: the M3 Macbook Air is on sale for $850 (23% off; note the coupon).
Apple Watch Series 9 is 30% off right now at $280. Apple Watch SE is 32% off, only $170.
This Breville air fryer is on sale for 25% off ($300) and this Philips one is only $90 (50% off). I’ve heard good things about these — should I get an air fryer? Is that an upgrade worth the counter space?
I’m surprised the Kindle Paperwhite isn’t available at a deeper discount (10% off, $135)…usually they are up to 40% off. Maybe they’ll drop the price tomorrow?
This is cool: the AirFly Duo plugs into a standard 3.5 mm audio jack (like on an airplane seatback screen) and then you can connect up to two sets of AirPods (or other Bluetooth headphones) to it. $36, 20% off. Oh, I’m getting one of these.
One my family’s recent favorite board games, Splendor, is 53% off ($21). And this technically isn’t a Prime Day deal, but I also noticed that there’s an expansion set for Wingspan that features birds and habitats from Asia ($39, 13% off).
Booooks! Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin ($10, 64% off). Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain ($7.50, 60% off). King: A Life by Jonathan Eig ($14.50, 59% off). The Wok: Recipes and Techniques by Kenji López-Alt ($30, 39% off). The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller ($8, 54% off). Ottolenghi Simple by Yotam Ottolenghi ($16.50, 53% off).
I do not play pickleball but here’s a deal on pickleball balls for up to 45% off.
The KitchenAid mixers are on sale. The 3.5-quart model is 34% off ($249) and is perfect for smaller kitchens with limited counter space. The 5-quart model (this is the one that I have) is $349 (27% off).
TVs are generally good Prime Day buys. Like, here’s TCL 65-Inch Q7 QLED 4K TV for $600 (25% off).
I have this paddleboard and it’s great for the price: ROC inflatable stand-up paddleboard ($200, 20% off).
I have no idea if this hand massager (31% off, $69) works or is worth the bucks, but I do think it would be funny to sell a gom jabbar test version of this as Dune merch.
This Levoit air purifier is highly rated and on sale for $79 (21% off).
I use these on the regular and they are yummy: Nuun Sport: Electrolyte Drink Tablets ($18, 39% off).
Flour Water Salt Yeast: The Fundamentals of Artisan Bread and Pizza by Ken Forkish ($20.50, 41% off). Everything you’d ever want to know about bread and pizza dough.
When you buy through links on kottke.org, I may earn an affiliate commission. Thanks for supporting the site!
Update: I added some more items to the list above, including a paddleboard and an air purifier.
As someone who reads almost exclusively on an ereader (a Kindle Paperwhite), I have been intrigued by Craig Mod’s recent evangelism of the BOOX Palma, a pocket-sized e-ink device that he’s been using as an ereader. In the latest issue of his Roden newsletter, he explains why he likes it so much:
Once you hold a Palma, you realize that for most situations it’s an ideal reading container. On the train? In line? In the waiting room at the doctor’s office? I’ve carried my Palma with me every day for the past three or so months with the goal of reaching for it rather than my iPhone. I call it the Gentle Librarian. Soft screen, clean interface, no SIM card and so mostly no internet (it loads up with new articles while at home on Wi-Fi; I can always tether to my phone to update or add something new to read on the go), a refresh rate that is plausible enough on which to watch movies (!! hypnotizing, actually, like watching a magic trick, like what Victorians may have imagined “computer screens” to look like) but not really responsive enough to seduce you into installing social media apps. There’s a lot of friction in this little bugger, and it turns out a bit of friction is a good friend of the kind of reading we love.
Hmm. Hmm! Like Mod, I’m frustrated with Amazon’s lack of vision and activity on the ereader front and lament the time I spend on my Casino Rectangle / Dingdong Casino of Hell. Maybe I’ll try the Palma out…
Amazon has a bunch of stuff on sale today & tomorrow for an “event” they’re calling Prime Big Deal Days. I’m not going to do a big roundup here, but here are a few things you might be interested in if you’re an Amazon shopper:
You can find more deals on the Prime Big Deal Days page.
When you buy through links on kottke.org, I may earn an affiliate commission. Thanks for supporting the site!
For the last few years, Amazon has spent a couple of summer days putting a bunch of their most popular items on sale for their Prime members. This year, Prime Day runs from July 11-12 and includes a number of things that I can personally recommend (or are currently coveting). Keep in mind that you need to be an Amazon Prime member to take advantage of these deals: here’s where you sign up for Prime if you’re interested (there’s a free 30-day trial).
Ok first, there are a bunch of deals on Apple products, including the 2nd-generation AirPods Pro (20% off) that I am a big fan of. (That’s actually not a Prime-only deal, but it’s $50 cheaper than Apple sells them for.) The AirPods Max are $100 off, the 2nd-gen AirPods are just $90 (30% off), and the 3rd-gen AirPods are $30 off.
The latest Apple Watch (Series 8) is a whopping 30% off ($280) for the 41mm and 28% off for the 45mm ($309)…much less than what Apple sells them for. I really like my Series 7 (especially for the exercise stuff) and this is a very tempting upgrade.
The 13” M1 Macbook Air is on sale for for $750…that’s 25% off the list price. This is the exact computer I’m using right now and I love it. Still feels super quick and powerful, even a few years after it was released.
Moving on from Apple to Play-Doh. You heard me! 24 cans of Play-Doh for $14.49, who can resist? That smell still takes me right back to when I was a kid…
With Covid and wildfires, air purifiers are becoming more of a necessity for homes around the country. Here are a pair of well-regarded purifiers that are on sale: the Levoit Vital 200S is $30 off ($160) and the Winix 5500-2, which is 53% off ($117).
One of Prime Day’s biggest deals for readers is the Kindle (just $65, down from $100) and the Kindle Paperwhite ($90, 36% off). The Paperwhite is the one I use to read all my books these days.
Speaking of reading, check out these books that are on sale: The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton ($6), One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez ($10), The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu ($7.41), and Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler ($8.14) (I just finished reading this!).
I have too many plants to take care of these days, but this hydroponic indoor garden (70% off!) sure is tempting. (I am almost positive your weed plant needs more light than this? And actual soil? But do some research…maybe it’ll work? 🤪)
One my family’s recent favorite board games, Splendor, is 47% off ($23.74). And while I was looking at that, I noticed that Splendor Duel is also on sale for almost 20% off…I’m not sure what the difference is, but I’m tempted to give that a try.
KitchenAid’s smaller 3.5 Qt. Stand Mixer, which is lighter and takes up less counter space in smaller kitchens, is on sale for $260 (32% off).
Ok that’s all I’ve got, but if you don’t see anything here that interests you, your best bet is to head over to Amazon’s Prime Day page and start digging around. I know there’s a bunch more deals on things like kitchen items, TVs, fashion, tech products, and beauty products. Good luck!
When you buy through links on kottke.org, I may earn an affiliate commission. Thanks for supporting the site!
This piece by Cory Doctorow on TikTok’s enshittification (also available at Wired) contains some of the best and simplest descriptions of how online platforms like Amazon, Facebook, Uber, TikTok, Twitter, etc. evolve as they grow and then eventually die.
Here is how platforms die: First, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.
…
This is enshittification: Surpluses are first directed to users; then, once they’re locked in, surpluses go to suppliers; then once they’re locked in, the surplus is handed to shareholders and the platform becomes a useless pile of shit. From mobile app stores to Steam, from Facebook to Twitter, this is the enshittification lifecycle.
The Amazon example he uses is really easy to follow. Early in the company’s history, the site used to be a great place to shop; their customers loved Amazon. But then Amazon’s sellers became their real customers and the user experience started to suffer. And now, much of the value generated by the users and customers goes to the shareholders (which, functionally speaking these days, means several dozen people who run hedge funds or large investment funds).
This strategy meant that it became progressively harder for shoppers to find things anywhere except Amazon, which meant that they only searched on Amazon, which meant that sellers had to sell on Amazon. That’s when Amazon started to harvest the surplus from its business customers and send it to Amazon’s shareholders. Today, Marketplace sellers are handing more than 45 percent of the sale price to Amazon in junk fees. The company’s $31 billion “advertising” program is really a payola scheme that pits sellers against each other, forcing them to bid on the chance to be at the top of your search.
Over at Techdirt, Mike Masnick riffed on Doctorow’s piece, arguing that enshittification, this playing of various parties against each other while siphoning off the value, is bad business because it focuses too much on short term gains.
Because maximizing revenue in the short term (i.e., in the 3 month window that Wall Street requires) often means sacrificing long term sustainability and long term profits. That’s because if you’re only looking at the next quarter (or, perhaps, the next two to four quarters if we’re being generous) then you’re going to be tempted to squeeze more of the value out of your customers, to “maximize revenue” or “maximize profits for shareholders.”
He uses early Amazon as an example of long-term thinking:
Once you go public, and you have that quarterly drumbeat from Wall Street where pretty much all that matters is revenue and profit growth. Indeed, it’s long forgotten now, but Jeff Bezos and Amazon actually were a rare company that kind of bucked that trend, and for a while at least, told Wall Street not to expect such things, as it was going to invest more and more deeply in serving its customers, and Wall Street punished Bezos for it. It’s long forgotten now, but Wall Street absolutely hated Amazon Prime, which locked in customer loyalty, but which they thought was a huge waste of money. The same was true of Amazon Web Services, which has become a huge revenue driver for the company.
They created a tremendous amount of value for their shareholders by playing the long game, which for whatever reason they aren’t willing to do anymore.
This short sketch from Saturday Night Live highlights how Amazon Go’s “grab-and-go” shopping experience (where you walk out of the store with your items without having to check out first) doesn’t work that well for all shoppers.
Back in 2016 when Amazon announced their new store concept, Xavier Harding wrote Amazon Go’s “just walk out” technology sounds like a headache for shoppers of color.
White people who have never been “randomly” followed around at a Walgreens may have no problem walking into a store, grabbing an item and leaving — like this guy in the Amazon Go promo video.
But shoppers of color, who already see enough unwanted attention, may have their doubts. Especially in a store where the employees are mostly there for customer service, as Amazon’s promo video suggests. They roam the store, stock shelves and hang out near shoppers.
From PBS’s FRONTLINE comes Amazon Empire: The Rise and Reign of Jeff Bezos, a feature-length documentary investigation into Amazon and its founder.
Jeff Bezos is not only the richest man in the world, he has built a business that is without precedent in the history of American capitalism. His power to shape everything from the future of work to the future of commerce to the future of technology is unrivaled. As politicians and regulators around the world start to consider the global impact of Amazon — and how to rein in Bezos’ power — FRONTLINE investigates how he executed a plan to build one of the most influential economic and cultural forces in the world.
One of the 10 key takeaways from the film is how deliberately Amazon attacked the publishing industry:
“Amazon took over a large market share of the publishing industry very, very fast,” James Marcus, a former senior Amazon.com editor, tells FRONTLINE — a situation that he says prompted publishers to realize, “‘Oh, wait a minute, they’re our partner, but they now have the beginnings of a boot on our windpipe’.” Inside the company, the team had launched a strategy that some called “the Gazelle Project,” because they’d heard Bezos wanted them to pursue publishers the way a cheetah pursues a sickly gazelle. “Well, you don’t go after the strongest,” Randy Miller, who ran the European book team, says of the strategy. “He’s like, ‘The cheetah. The cheetah looks for the weak, looks for the sick, looks for the small.’” That way, by the time it comes to take on the publishers at the top, “the noise has gotten back to them. They’re going to know this is coming, and chances are you may be able to settle that without a full-on war.”
Here’s a trailer but the whole thing is available online, embedded above and on YouTube.
The number one song on the UK singles chart for the last week of 2019 was Ellie Goulding’s River, despite it not being available on Spotify, Apple, Google, or anywhere but Amazon (with one important exception). How the heck did that happen? Chart Watch UK has the story.
River was simply a prominent part of just about every “Christmas songs” playlist curated by Amazon themselves, a default choice for everyone muttering “Alexa, play Christmas songs” as they basted the turkey and cursed the sprouts. People have been spoon-fed a contemporary hit single like no other before it, and the result of that has been to propel it almost by accident to the top of the charts.
This is a fitting choice for the final chart topper in the 2010s because it encapsulates a number of trends in media that have played out over the past decade. To wit:
- The song is a remake. Remakes and sequels dominate our viewing and listening.
- It is exclusive to a single platform. The entire media world seems to be headed in this direction.
- The platform is operated by one of the handful of tech behemoths that took control of more and more of the media landscape as the decade wore on.
- Amazon. Arguably the company of the decade. Led by the world’s richest man, a symbol of the decade’s growth in inequality.
- Ok, the song is exclusive to Amazon but is also on YouTube. YT has simply grown so popular for young people listening to music that media companies can’t ignore it, even when they’re direct Google competitors (and who isn’t these days).
- Voice assistant devices were instrumental in making the song popular. Since Siri was first released in 2011, voice assistants have become increasingly embedded in our homes and pockets.
- Amazon’s editorial team added the exclusive song to several of their Christmas playlists. Amazon has access to the song, compiles the playlists, and sells the devices to play them. This sort of BigCo “synergy” became standard operating procedure in the 2010s.
- There was an algorithm involved (Billboard’s). They increasingly determine what we read, watch, and listen to.
- And that algorithm was gamed. See also the role of Facebook’s algorithms in the 2016 US Presidential election (and many many other examples of “impartial” algos being manipulated).
It is tough to imagine a more perfect example of how media functions (or doesn’t) today. (via @tedgioia)
We already knew voice assistants were problematic and “spying” on their users, sending audio samples that contractors listen to to “validate” speech recognition and associated errors but now some researchers have found a way to speak to the speakers using light. Fascinating phenomenon, potentially a security issue.
They can now use lasers to silently “speak” to any computer that receives voice commands—including smartphones, Amazon Echo speakers, Google Homes, and Facebook’s Portal video chat devices. That spy trick lets them send “light commands” from hundreds of feet away; they can open garages, make online purchases, and cause all manner of mischief or malevolence. The attack can easily pass through a window, when the device’s owner isn’t home to notice a telltale flashing speck of light or the target device’s responses.
“It’s coming from outside the house.”
When they used a 60 milliwatt laser to “speak” commands to 16 different smart speakers, smartphones, and other voice activated devices, they found that almost all of the smart speakers registered the commands from 164 feet away, the maximum distance they tested.
Perhaps the best part in all of this; the researchers don’t really know how it works!
When it comes to the actual physics of a microphone interpreting light as sound, the researchers had a surprising answer: They don’t know. In fact, in the interest of scientific rigor, they refused to even speculate about what photoacoustic mechanics caused their light-as-speech effect.
(Emphasis mine.)
I recently had to put my Amazon newsletter, The Amazon Chronicles, on a two-month hiatus because I’m going to have surgery to replace my shoulder. So what should happen the day after I make my announcement? One of the very best Amazon reporters, Recode’s Jason Del Rey, comes out with an oral history of Amazon Prime, the membership program that covers free fast shipping, digital media, and more — and arguably, the innovation that pushed Amazon past eBay and Walmart to become the retailer of first resort.
Charlie Ward (former Amazon principal engineer; current Amazon VP, technology)
I’m a one-click addict. I hate having to go through the order pipeline and choose everything again and again and again. And … I couldn’t use one click with Super Saver Free Shipping.
I kind of have a perfectionist type of mentality. Things kind of irritate me and get more and more irritating over time and it was just really confirmed to me that I couldn’t make it better. So I threw out this problem to the group: “Wouldn’t it be great if customers just gave us a chunk of change at the beginning of the year and we calculated zero for their shipping charges the rest of that year?”
And we kind of had a small pause, a moment where we all looked at it as like, “Is Charlie crazy?”
See also this digital media pullquote which Peter Kafka pointed out on Twitter.
Bill Carr (former Amazon VP of digital music and video)
Netflix had a budget which — and you’re going to laugh when I tell you the scary number — was $35 million dollars a year on video content. These were fixed costs. This meant they’d go and buy the rights to movies and TV shows from the studios for $35 million a year and it didn’t matter whether they had one viewer or 100 million viewers, that’s what they’re going to pay. Well, that’s not the business Amazon was in.
We were giving much more than $35 million a year to the motion-picture studios at the time. But it was a daunting thing to commit to it on a fixed-fee basis with no knowledge of how we’re going to actually get any subscribers. In the 2008, ‘09, ‘10 era, that was a scary amount of money.
And I remember then Jeff finally goes, “I’ve got an idea.” And in typical Jeff fashion he picked something that was not on the list at all and he said, “Let’s make it part of Amazon Prime.” And we looked at him like there are arms and legs growing out of his head. Like, “What are you talking about? Amazon Prime? That’s the free shipping program.”
And the principle that Jeff realized was that we need to do actually exactly what Netflix did when they first launched their digital service. Everyone scoffed at that, too. Like, “you’re offering digital plus DVDs and you’re not charging more?”
Netflix was able to get away with the fact that the content was not great at the beginning because it was free. It was like, “Oh, by the way, here you go, here’s some movies along with it.” And we were going to take a page out of their book.
I remember Jeff used those exact words — It’s an, “Oh, by the way.” “Yeah, Prime is $79 a year. Oh, by the way, there’s free movies and TV shows with it.” And how much could consumers complain about the quality of movies and TV shows if it’s free?
My pal and collaborator Tim Carmody is launching a newsletter all about Amazon called Amazon Chronicles. You can subscribe here and read the statement of purpose here. I’m thinking of it as Daring Fireball but for Amazon instead of Apple.
There’s no shortage of good Amazon stories, and good Amazon coverage. I loved Kashmir Hill’s story for Gizmodo about trying (somewhat unsuccessfully) to block Amazon from her life. I loved John Herrman’s exposé on Vine reviewers. I think stories like this are just as important and just as interesting (more so, actually) as the latest on Jeff Bezos’s sex life or speculation about Amazon’s earnings and stock price. I like stories that help me see how a company like Amazon, with its tangled web of services and products, entwines itself into our lives, both consumer and commercial.
But who is going to gather stories like these and help put them into context? Who, really, is able to take the time to get the big picture when it comes to what’s intermittently the biggest and most influential company in the world?
Tim has been covering the Amazon beat from all angles since before the company became one of the most valuable in the world (including recently on kottke.org), so he’s well-positioned to take up this gathering challenge.1 Tim is also applying the Unlocking the Commons approach that has worked well for the kottke.org membership program with a slight wrinkle:
So, here’s the deal. This newsletter — which I’m calling The Amazon Chronicles — will sell paid memberships. These will be $5/month, or $50/year. It will also offer free subscriptions. These will cost nothing.
As long as I get at least 200 paid subscribers (let’s call them “members”), free subscribers will get all the same newsletters members get (give or take housekeeping emails that will only make sense to folks who are paying money).
Essentially, the whole site will be free to anyone who signs up. That will be a newsletter a week, rounding up the biggest and best Amazon coverage, plus original reporting and analysis. The same newsletter, for everybody.
I just subscribed at the annual level…join me, won’t you?
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