From the Editor’s Desk: Stories I Wanted to Tell (Premium)

My mother is an endless source of stories, most of which are sadly unkind and of no interest to anyone outside my family regardless. But she has her moments. Years ago, we were speaking on the phone and she asked me about work. What I do for a living is something she'll never truly understand, but she's proud of me regardless, and I'm pretty sure there was at least a decade there when she thought I worked for Microsoft. But on this occasion, she asked how Microsoft was doing, most likely because she believed if everything was going well for the company, I'd probably be doing OK too.

They're doing great, Mom, I told her. Gangbusters.

"What about that other company?" she asked.

Other company?

"You know, the other company. There was Microsoft. And then there was ... that other company."

Apple?

"Yes, that's it. Are they still around?"

Why yes they are, I told her. They're doing pretty good.

Apple was, of course, the biggest company in the world at that time. As they are now. A nice little business, apparently.

I was reminded of this last week when my mother tried to reach me repeatedly by phone but I kept missing her because we were traveling. Also, her birthday was last week and so I wanted to just call her then. But when my phone kept ringing during the flight to Dallas, I finally texted her back to let her know I was in the air. Maybe this could wait.

It turns out, she wanted to make sure my daughter Kelly was OK: She lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, and my mother had heard about the hurricane that devastated Asheville. Charlotte is pretty close to Asheville, but she didn't have any issues, and all was well. Which is what I finally told my mother when I did call her back to wish her a happy birthday.

She asked about the travel I had mentioned as the excuse for my tardy call back. I explained that I was in Dallas for work.

"Dallas?!" she asked as if I had said we were in Antarctica.

Yeah. I'm actually speaking at an event here.

"Speaking?!" she asked as if that were just as non-sensical. On that, she might have had a point.

Yes.

"What are you speaking about?" she asked, making me think again about this notion of elevator pitches, a construct I sometimes use when I need to summarize something that may normally require a lengthy discussion into a very short description. And this was complicated, especially since I was talking to my mother, someone so non-technical that she doesn't even appear on a spectrum that might measure one's acumen; she's off in space somewhere. Hm.

I started to explain that I was speaking about Windows and AI, knowing the deliberately provocative title of this talk, Windows is Dead and Copilot Stole Your Job, would be far too much for her to handle. But I had been thinking about the talk, of course, and the framing I had finally settled on. So I simply went with that.

This year is my 30th anniversary in the tech industry, I told her. And so a lot of it is just...