Welcome to 
The Long View—where we peruse the news of the week and strip it to the essentials. Let’s work out what really matters.
This week: Home working is ripping the heart out of cities, the DoD’s bizarre cloud strategy, and Apple adds a $10,000 app price option.
1. WTH? WFH Made This a Ghost Town
First up this week: Office occupancy is still a fraction of pre-pandemic levels. With inevitable knock-on effects on supporting small businesses and local tax revenues.
Analysis: Tricky Dilemma for Cities
It’s all your fault for not coming back to the office. And most office buildings can’t easily be repurposed. There are no easy answers here.
Emil Skandul: The ‘office apocalypse’ is upon us
“Remote work has isolated people”
Before the pandemic, 95% of offices were occupied. Today that number is closer to 47%. … Less foot traffic, less public-transit use … more shuttered businesses … and a lower tax base … perpetuating a vicious cycle that further reduces foot traffic.
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What is clear is that an office-centric downtown is soon to be a thing of the past [and] cities are going to start hurting. … In New York, for instance, the value of commercial real estate … will remain 39% below prepandemic levels … research suggests. … In San Francisco, the landmark Salesforce tower and other buildings have remained mostly unoccupied.
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Revitalization of cities will hinge on social value. Remote work has isolated people, and central social districts can be the new lure for cities. Restaurants, coffee shops, and coworking spaces are becoming just as important as industry hubs. … New vibrant neighborhoods could form and reestablish local consumption. … It’s in cities’ best interest to figure out how to quickly convert … downtowns into something more suitable for everyone.
Ouch; that’s a grim picture. Lastodon has zero sympathy for commercial real estate:
Good. Feel the “hand of the free market” at last throttling the antiquated obese market that is business property.
As automation and communication improves, so should corporate policy restructure and reform into the most efficient system. Dragging people across the country every day and filling the air with burnt dinosaur just because the old people in power can’t figure out how to adapt is pathetic. New management styles are needed that incentivise … results over … presence.
Why not convert unused office space into homes? devslash0 has reasons:
Commercial buildings … never make great homes. Despite conversions, they are left with large windows, high-ceilings and poor insulation which makes them ridiculously expensive to run. They also suffer from noise issues … because partition walls are usually really thin. … It’s also very difficult to make such conversions meet [fire] safety standards.
2. DoD Cloud Awarded to AWS, Google, Microsoft and Oracle
The Joint Warfighter Cloud Capability (JWCC) contract has been split four ways. The Pentagon has $9 billion to share among the big three—and Oracle, for some reason.
Analysis: Return of the JEDI
From the sublime to the ridiculous: The previous JEDI contract was criticized for having a single source. It’s hard to see how having four vendors could make things better.
Tara Copp and Matt O’Brien: Pentagon splits $9 billion cloud contract
“Improve the Pentagon’s bargaining position”
Google, Oracle, Microsoft and Amazon will share in the Pentagon’s $9 billion contract to build its cloud computing network. [JWCC] is envisioned to provide access to unclassified, secret and top-secret data to military personnel all over the globe … with a total estimated completion date of June 2028.
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Awarding the contract to four companies instead of one … could improve the Pentagon’s bargaining position with major cloud providers and make it easier for individual offices within the Defense Department to acquire cloud technologies and services.
Four vendors? BrooklynBagel schmears a kvetch:
Four vendors. Two … would have been an acceptable risk/benefit trade off. But this? This is ridiculous and [it] just nuked the DoD’s chances of building a proper capability.
And EvilSS :
This is ****ing stupid. When the government uses multiple sources, they source the same thing from multiple vendors. So if they need bullets, they get the same bullets from two vendors.
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Instead of one consistent platform you now have to deal with four. While these platforms all do the same thing, they do them very differently. You’ve essentially quadrupled the amount of work that has to be done to deploy anything across them. You need to hire for four major skill sets instead of one. You need to deal with cross-platform interoperability.
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Want to deploy resources with Terraform? Well go write four scripts! Need API integration for an application? No, you need four API integrations! Good luck.
Meanwhile, Roger Kynaston adds your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own:
New acronym: Backup Operations Resilience Group need to do the implementation of this new deal.
3. Apple Grants You More Price Flexibility
Apple App Store pricing policies are changing. You can publish more expensive apps—up to $10,000—and tweak your prices in smaller increments.
Analysis: Apple’s behavior still seems monopolistic
The Cupertino iThing giant is under close scrutiny from all sides, as competitors and developers complain of monopolistic practices. These new “micromanagement” rules will only strengthen those cries.
Sarah Perez: Apple loosens grip on App Store pricing with 700 new price points
“Another big change”
It will … allow U.S. developers to set prices for apps, in-app purchases or subscriptions as low as $0.29 or as high as $10,000. … Apple has historically been heavy-handed when it comes to App Store pricing [but] developers began demanding more pricing flexibility. … The new pricing policies come as lawmakers and regulators around the world are examining Apple’s App Store for anti-competitive practices.
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Developers who want access to the higher price point … will have to justify their request in an online form that will be reviewed by Apple. But the company notes any App Store developer can request access … as it won’t be limited only to certain categories of apps.
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In another big change, Apple says developers will now be allowed to set prices that end in $.00 instead of those that only end in $.99. … In the lowest tiers, price points can increase in $0.10 increments.
What’s that last bit about? TimeWinder has an edumacated guess:
At a guess, it’s to prevent the sort of nonsense auto-pricing that’s tripped up Amazon a few times, where what amount to bots that just keep setting the price 1 cent under the competitor price. … The range gets higher as the prices do, so you can choose 10 cent intervals at very low prices, 50 cent intervals a little higher, and so on. Basically requiring that price differences be a meaningful percentage of the price rather than a micro-managed competitor price-griefing tool.
Will this satisfy those calling Apple a monopoly? Tony Isaac says no:
Classic micromanaging behavior. If you’ve ever worked for a micromanager, you know they have a long list of things they care about, and they watch you like a hawk to make sure you don’t stray from their own little preferences. This is Apple’s behavior—and it’s one of the common characteristics of a monopoly.
The Moral of the Story:
Turn your wounds into wisdom
—Oprah
You have been reading The Long View by Richi Jennings. You can contact him at @RiCHi or [email protected].
Image: Yigit Arisoy (via Unsplash; leveled and cropped)
