Om Malik

Om Malik is a San Francisco based writer, photographer and investor. Read More

Lobster Boil

I had coffee this weekend with my good friend Michael Galpert, father to my godchildren. Too much coffee. We talked too much Claw. OpenClaw that is.

Michael has been running around the country organizing ClawCons. New York, Austin, Tokyo next. Not industry conferences. In the halcyon days of Web 2.0, we called them meetups and un-conferences. Sponsors are falling over themselves to get them attached to this new new thing, that borders on madness and hope.

Just people showing up in rooms because they want to talk about what OpenClaw makes possible. Developers, yes. But also small business owners, retirees, students, people who have never attended a tech event in their lives. The energy in those rooms, Michael says, is unlike anything he has seen in years.

I have known Michael long enough to know when he is genuinely excited about something versus just being hyperactive for a second. He

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What To Read This Weekend

As I sit here on Sunday morning, reflecting on what has been one of the most hectic writing weeks in a long time, I can’t help but ask, why?

Of course, there was a lot of news and action. Not that any of that matters to me, but still, there were new Apple products that were up for review. I have had iPad Air and MacBook Neo in my hands, and ended up writing about them. Neo got me philosophical and took me on a different tangent from a regular review.

And there was that great story in the Financial Times about Softbank and its founder playing with fire (aka OpenAI). Something about it compelled me to write about it. That and a tweet by Stripe CEO led to me writing about Symbolic Capital, and as if to make my point, former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick emerged from shadows to

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The Return of Travis Kalanick: Fact & Fluff!

Travis is back. It was only a matter of time.

Given his old compadres Emil Michael and Shervin Pishevar are back in the news, how could he, the king pooh-ba, stay in the shadows?

To a lot of us who have been in the know, Travis Kalanick has never really gone away. He has always been doing his thing, away from the limelight which ultimately became his undoing. For eight years, he was busy building Cloud Kitchens. I heard second-hand stories of progress and stories of challenges. That’s life and that’s business. And that’s startup life.

Still, the return of Travis as a spectacle has been amazing to watch. It has been worthy of putting some popcorn, firing up the (MacBook) Neo, and sitting down and consuming it all. The return says as much about him as it does about the new hype machine, aka whatever passes for media right

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Tanhā & Our Modern Consumerism

It was late into the evening. I wanted to take a break from everything digital. Relaxing by doodling in my notebook. Trying a new grind. Seeing how the metal tip felt on the billowy silky Tomoe River. Nothing dramatic.

Somewhere in the middle of all that I let my subconscious take control of my mind, and my hand. And with that my words, and my pen. When I stopped and read, it shook me. I had written something I have felt.

The more I look for what I don’t know I’m looking for, the more likely I am to not find it.

So I am likely to be disappointed. Be disgruntled. What triggered this was my reaction to a new nib grind. It wasn’t really living up to its billing. Not every grind or nib should, as they too are creation of a moment, the artisan finds themselves in. It

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Musings, Om Loves Pens
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Neo Symbolic Capitalism

“There’s a lot of unevenness in how much attention internal drama and palace intrigue gets across different organizations. As far as I can tell, this is substantially a matter of path dependency: we know the characters in the sitcom of certain organizations but not at others, creating self-reinforcing lock-in effects. How much does one hear about the power struggles at Chevron or the Department of Agriculture? There is even significant heterogeneity between ostensibly similar companies within sectors.”

— Patrick Collison, CEO, Stripe

When I read that, I said to myself, you gotta be kidding me. I mean, palace intrigue has been part of our world. From ancient Egyptians to Romans to the English monarchy, it is way older than the social media and modern internet media machine. Anyway, it got me thinking about Collison’s tweet. I have come to a conclusion. Sometimes a tweet is not just a tweet. Sometimes

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Life Has a Hex Code

San Francisco

We fountain pen people are weird. Every month, around the start of the month, we do a version of the same thing: we make lists. What inks to put in what pens. Rotation schemes, seasonal palettes, elaborate spreadsheets that make a lighthearted hobby look like the desk of an air traffic controller. Not that I know what that looks like.

I tried doing all of it. And I hated it. I like four or five colors, and they are all blue. Jokes aside, throw in some gray, just black, lavender, pine green and purples — but everything with an undertone of blue. If blue was good enough for Miles Davis, it’s good enough for me.

My point is that the whole inky contortion was beyond my abilities. And then my friend Gailyn of Fountain Pendulum changed everything completely. By presenting a new way to fix this equation of pens and

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Om Loves Pens
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The Essence of a Machine

I didn’t really want to do a quick breezy review of something that has touched me at a deep emotional level. (John Gruber nails it in his review of Neo.)

Yes, I am talking about the new MacBook Neo. I can’t remember when I used the words “cute” and “want” about a computer in the same breath. The iBook, maybe? That machine was a little cuddly, colorful, weird thing that made you feel something. Then Apple went serious. Silver. Graphite. Pro. Aspirational. Expensive. And along the way we all forgot that computers could make you smile just by looking at them. Just as none of the cars make you smile and giggle. They are a boring interpretation of a truck or a Tesla.

Then came the Neo. $599. The fun is back. Citrus yellow. Indigo blue. Blush pink. Colors that say, be happy. It’s okay to be silly.

I have

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The Debt Beneath the Dream

Every gambler knows that the secret to survivin’
Is knowin’ what to throw away and knowing what to keep
‘Cause every hand’s a winner and every hand’s a loser
And the best that you can hope for is to die in your sleep

Kenny Rogers, The Gambler.

I don’t know Masayoshi Son, and I don’t need to. But my guess is that the SoftBank founder and CEO can’t be having a good start to his week. The stock of his flagship, SoftBank, is deflating faster than a balloon stuck in powerlines after a New Year’s party. He has bet big on OpenAI as his all-in wager. Whether he is right or wrong remains to be seen.

SoftBank’s shares dropped as much as 12.5 percent. Reports emerged that OpenAI and Oracle had scrapped plans to expand a flagship data center in Texas. Bloomberg reported the expansion fell apart over a combination of

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The 2026 iPad Air M4: Early Impressions

I have been an iPad fanboy for a long time. I never leave my house without it (and the keyboard to go with it). I currently own an M4 iPad Pro (11-inch) which is really good for reading, writing, the Internet, email, Claude, a lot of Lightroom and watching YouTube. And of course, listening to music. You can find me sitting in some coffee shop or the other with one.

Yes I really do love my iPad Pro, and using it. Lately, I have been watching less video on the iPad (Vision Pro FTW), but it has replaced Kindle as my reading device. And whenever I am reading, I wish it was thinner, and lighter. I don’t dream of it being faster. I just want it to be lighter, so it feels weightless in hand.

My perfect iPad would be one with the innards, screen and oomph of the iPad

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