September 10, 2013

Here’s the Mean iPhone Post I Promised You


So the new iPhone 5S comes in new colors; has a faster processor; and a slightly better camera; and a fingerprint sensor. Plus there’s a motion sensor chip built in, which is supposed to be great for exercise apps. This is in addition to the lower-priced iPhone 5C, which is not just plastic, but “unapologetically plastic.” This possibly sets a new world record for the most pretentiously Apple-ish thing ever said.

I know that everyone is going to immediately accuse me of hating Apple, despite the many Apple products I currently own,1 but this sure doesn’t sound very revolutionary. In fact, it sounds tired. That’s no big surprise, really, since the smartphone space is getting pretty mature. And maybe it doesn’t matter. For now, at least, I imagine that gazillions of people will convince themselves that a silver faceplate and a fingerprint sensor are the coolest gizmos in the world if Apple says they are. And the cheaper 5C is certainly a perfectly good attempt to do a bit of old-school market segmentation.

As for me, my 4S continues to work fine. I sure don’t see anything in today’s announcement to make me rush out and want to replace it.

1In fact, I hate Apple because of the many Apple products I own. Their relentless desire to control what customers can and can’t do with their products drives me up a wall.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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