B6 0 N THE NEW YORK TIMES BUSINESSTHURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2019
What tech tools do you use to keep on top
of the nonstop flow of tech news?
If anyone has an elegant solution for
this, please let me know. I rely on a
mishmash of email, news apps, mobile
notifications and Twitter.
First thing in the morning, I check
email on my creaky iPhone to see what
happened overnight in Asia and Europe
and whether colleagues in those places
need me to weigh in or pitch in on any-
thing. Then I do a quick scan of the
apps for our largest competitors, like
The Wall Street Journal, The Washing-
ton Post and Bloomberg. I don’t read
everything, but I look for breaking
news that we need to jump on right
away in my area of coverage, which
means I’m looking a lot at the tech
industry and politics.
There is a lot less order to the mad-
ness for the rest of the day. I rely heav-
ily on the reporters I work with to tip
me off to things happening on their
beats. I have also signed up to get
alerts, either by email or as pop-up
notifications on my phone, from news
organizations and newsmakers. And I
scan many news sites.
I look at Twitter for news, too. But
because I rarely feel better about life
after I log on there, and because it
takes a lot of effort to separate the
valuable stuff from the nonsense, I try
to limit my time there. I quit tweeting a
long time ago. It was a great decision.
You edit reporters who are spread across
the United States and also internationally,
in London and elsewhere. What tech is
indispensable for that?
Phone calls are amazing things.
There is a lot that gets misconstrued in
written messages. So when possible,
especially on important breaking news,
I try to touch base by phone with the
reporters. I lean hard on many other
bat signals, too — emails, text mes-
sages on multiple services, Slack mes-
sages and Google chat messages. It’s
not hard to find me.
We’re also working collaboratively
more often, meaning that reporters in
places as far apart as London, Wash-
ington and San Francisco sometimes
write stories together. We used to turn
to Google Docs in those situations,
because multiple people can work in a
file at the same time, no matter their
location. That meant I had to move the
story into our internal publishing sys-
tem when the story was ready. Now our
publishing system has similar collabo-
ration, which is great.How has the tech story changed since you
have been a tech editor?
It is astonishing how much has
changed in the five or so years that I’ve
been focusing on tech. We’re not only
covering the biggest business story,
we’re covering one of the biggest
stories, period. Tech has changed —
and continues to change — just about
everything.
Five years ago, I think many of us
covering tech knew this was happen-
ing. The rest of the world is realizing it
now as well. I think that is driving a lot
of the backlash to the tech industry in
Washington and beyond. People see
many changes happening around them,
maybe in their pocketbook, office or
government. And they are wondering
whether we have a grip on where this is
all heading.You edit a lot of Amazon stories and you
live near a Whole Foods, which Amazon
now owns. Discuss.
Well, I certainly can attest that the
avocados at Whole Foods are cheaper
now.
It’s interesting to watch up close
what is happening to the store after
Amazon bought Whole Foods. I’m
frankly surprised it hasn’t changed a lot
more. You can see Amazon bleed into
the store more each month, but most of
the changes are baby steps.
Next I hope Amazon takes a leap and
tackles the horrible checkout lines.
Whatever algorithm they use for thatneeds to be rewritten from scratch.Are you a Prime member?
I am, and I like to think our family
gets its money’s worth. In addition to
Whole Foods, where we get a discount
as a Prime member, we do some shop-
ping on Amazon.com. Our children use
Amazon Music through our Echo de-vice. And I sometimes zone out with a
show on Prime Video.
It’s not that we decided to be an
Amazon family. It has just crept up on
us.Outside of work, what tech do you love to
use?I try to use as little as possible. Fewthings please me more than looking at
my iPhone’s Screen Time app on Sun-
day night and seeing that I’ve been on
the phone for less than an hour that
day. While it is rare, that has happened.
I appreciate most the technology that
is years old now. Google Maps may
have saved my marriage. And Face-
Time and similar services blow me
away. My family recently visited rela-
tives in Florida without me, and my
older son called me regularly on Face-
Time, sometimes while he was in the
middle of a fun outdoor activity. It was
great to see his smiles in real time.
I’m really impressed with the tech-
nology going into cars, too. We have a
thoroughly conventional and midpriced
car, a Mazda CX-5. Yet it has some nice
safety tech, like automatic emergency
braking and blind spot and lane depar-
ture warnings. The adaptive cruise
control, which keeps our car a set dis-
tance from the one in front of us, makes
long drives a little more bearable. It
also gets O.K. gas mileage. I’m glad we
don’t need to wait for carmakers to
perfect an affordable self-driving elec-
tric car before we see some of the bene-
fits.What is your kids’ relationship with
technology?
Our boys are almost 6 and 4, and my
wife and I try hard to limit their screen
time. We don’t always succeed. And
because we have another little guy on
the way, I fear we’ll start losing even
more often.
We do pretty well keeping them off
devices and with limited TV during the
week, especially when school is in
session. But we are a little flexible on
the weekends, and especially when we
travel. They each have an Amazon
Kindle Fire tablet that we pull out for
long road trips and flights. And the
6-year-old loves — loves! — to play
baseball and basketball games on an
old Nintendo Wii. His younger brother
isn’t far behind.
Thankfully, they both enjoy real
sports even more, so we turn those
devices off and play in real life as much
as possible. I’ve been nursing a sore
shoulder most Mondays this summer
from throwing batting practice all
weekend.Keeping Pace With Tech’s Changing Story
A technology editor isn’t hard to find. Just ask Times reporters in the U.S., Europe and Asia.
Tech We’re Using
JOSPEH PLAMBECK
The day’s madness starts early for Joseph Plambeck, a deputy tech editor for the Times.PHOTOGRAPHS BY CALLA KESSLER/THE NEW YORK TIMESIn Tech We’re Using, Times journalists give
us a peek into the technology they love and
use for work and life.A creaky iPhone plays multiple roles in helping Mr. Plambeck stay abreast of the latest news.TECHNOLOGY
Tim Cook went into full salesman
mode at Apple’s promotional
event on Tuesday as he revealed
the price for a monthly subscrip-
tion for its streaming service, Ap-
ple TV Plus.
“A l l — all— of these incredible
shows for the price of a single
movie rental,” Mr. Cook, Apple’s
chief executive, said. “This is
crazy.”
Apple TV Plus is scheduled to
make its debut as a competitor to
Netflix and Amazon on Nov. 1. The
cost is $5 a month. For anyone
buying a new iPhone, iPad or Mac
laptop, a one-year subscription
will be thrown in free.
In the streaming industry, $5 is
a figure that grabs attention.
Disney announced $7 as the
monthly price for its original serv-
ice, Disney Plus, which has a Nov.
12 start date. An Amazon Prime
subscription, which includes
streaming, is $10 a month, while
Hulu goes for $6 a month with ads
and $12 without. CBS All Access
costs $6 with commercials and $10
without. WarnerMedia’s new
streaming service, HBO Max, is
scheduled to go live next year at
no lower than $15 a month, and
Netflix’s standard plan costs $13 a
month.
Why is Apple the cheapest of
the bunch?
One reason is that it will offer
much less content than its com-
petitors.
While Netflix has a vast library
of material from other studios and
seems to unveil a series, special or
rom-com every other day, AppleTV Plus will offer roughly a dozen
shows in its first wave of program-
ming over the next year.
Disney Plus will be packed to
the last pixel with a library of orig-
inal movies, “Star Wars” films,
blockbusters from Marvel Enter-
tainment and Pixar, as well as
“The Simpsons” and the many
other properties it picked up in its
$71.3 billion purchase of much of
the 21st Century Fox entertain-
ment empire.
HBO Max will draw on its vast
Warner Bros. film archive, which
includes “Wonder Woman” and
the Harry Potter series, not to
mention decades of HBO pro-
gramming and “Friends.”
Apple TV Plus hopes to attract
subscribers with a simple sales
pitch: by claiming that its shows
and movies will be of higher qual-
ity than what they’ll find else-
where. As Mr. Cook described it as
he paced the stage, Apple TV Plus
will have “the best movies, com-
edies, dramas and kids’ shows.”
In effect, Apple is hoping
customers will part with $5 a
month for the same reason they
pay for premium cable channels
like HBO or Showtime. But that
pitch was easier to make in the
days before streaming, when
there was a stark difference be-
tween what viewers could find on
basic cable channels and the
broadcast networks. Now there
are more shows — and a greater
variety of shows — than ever be-
fore.
To prepare for the Nov. 1 debut,
the company created an enter-
tainment arm from scratch, in-stalling the Hollywood veterans
Jamie Erlicht and Zack Van Am-
burg as top executives. The divi-
sion has spent well over $1 billion
to develop more than a dozen
shows, cutting checks to Oprah
Winfrey, Steven Spielberg, Reese
Witherspoon and J. J. Abrams.
One of Apple TV Plus’s marquee
programs, “The Morning Show,” a
drama set in the world of morning
television, stars Ms. Witherspoon,
Jennifer Aniston and Steve Carell.
“See,” a fantasy, features Jason
Momoa and Alfre Woodard. There
is also “Dickinson,” a quirky com-
edy with Hailee Steinfeld and Jane
Krakowski in lead roles that puts a
contemporary spin on the poet
Emily Dickinson. Children’s pro-
gramming includes a “Peanuts”
series.
Apple said it planned to roll out
new shows each month, including
a thriller from the director
M. Night Shyamalan and a series
starring Octavia Spencer. In the
not too distant future, it will have a
slate big enough to rival networks
that have been in the business for
decades.
The first hurdle will be the reac-
tion of critics and social media us-
ers.
Then comes awards season.
Apple’s first shows will be eligi-
ble for the 2020 Golden Globe
Awards; nominees will be an-
nounced Dec. 9. If Apple is able to
storm the Golden Globes stage at
the Beverly Hilton on Jan. 5, any
remaining Hollywood skeptics
will have no choice but to consider
the tech upstart a major player in
entertainment.Apple Will Stream for $5 a Month
By JOHN KOBLINWASHINGTON — President Trump
told his top economic advisers on
Wednesday that he had decided,
for now, to forgo using executive
authority to deliver a tax cut that
would primarily benefit wealthy
investors.
The decision, which Mr. Trump
disclosed at a White House meet-
ing focused on tax issues, ended
more than a year of debate inside
his administration over a proposal
that would have reduced the taxes
investors pay on the profits they
earn when selling assets like
stocks or bonds.
Mr. Trump’s economic team had
been exploring the idea of taking
unilateral action on capital gains
and delivering a tax break to in-
vestors without congressional ap-
proval. The president said last
month that he believed this couldbe accomplished with his execu-
tive authority.
But the idea of circumventing
Congress was challenged by some
within the administration who ar-
gued it would defy a legal opinion
issued in 1992, under President
George Bush.
The decision not to push for an
investor tax cut spares Mr. Trump
from what would have been a new
round of attacks by Democrats,
who have assailed the tax cut on
so-called capital gains as a hand-
out to the rich, and most likely a
prolonged court fight over
whether the executive branch has
the authority to enact the cut with-
out action from Congress.
“President Trump was thor-
oughly briefed on the complex
economic, legal and regulatory is-
sues, and concluded that at this
time he does not feel enough of thebenefits will go to the middle
class,” Judd Deere, a White House
spokesman, said Wednesday
evening in an email.
Mr. Trump left open the possi-
bility that he could revisit the idea.
The Wall Street Journal first re-
ported the decision.
Republican senators and con-
servative anti-tax groups have
pushed Mr. Trump over the past
year to order the Treasury De-
partment to change the definition
of “cost” for calculating capital
gains. Such a move would allow
taxpayers to adjust the initial val-
ue of an asset for inflation when it
sells, effectively reducing the
profit earned on the sale and, with
it, the tax liability.Trump Backs Off Capital Gains Tax Cut
By JIM TANKERSLEYAlan Rappeport contributed report-
ing.WELCOME
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