thank you for signing up to .fyi
In 48 hours, this project born from a friendly-forum-spat-turned-flame-war has evolved into a wonderfully received alt-blog. I’ve held out from starting a blog for years. Decades. But if Donald Trump could get elected a second time, I thought, maybe I should have second thoughts while I still can.
Philip Elmer-DeWitt
Welcome to tommo.fyi: where the cow flies, the BS dies, and the AVP is, regrettably, still a commercial flop.
First off: a genuine thank you to everyone who signed up today. Whether you arrived via curiosity, X, referral, or Philip Elmer-DeWitt’s shout-out (thanks again, Philip), I’m grateful you’re here—and even more grateful you stayed long enough to click Subscribe before deciding I was either too sharp, too weird, or too opinionated to be safe company online.
Let’s get this out of the way: I’ve been doing this for a while.
I started blogging about Apple in 1999—back when most people still thought it made rainbow-coloured iMacs and weird futuristic iPads called the Newton (I still have mine). By 2005, AAPL had become a full-time obsession. I was blogging trades, tracking patterns, and tossing out real-time buy/sell calls before breakfast (to the irritation of my then-partner, who once described living with me as “like dating Bloomberg with ADHD”).
At the peak, I was posting 10–20 times a day.
Not because I wanted to be right—but because I was.
In 2008 I screamed “sell.” In Feb 2009 I yelled “buy.” People made fortunes, I was in the press! And someone named their child after me.
Not because of magic, but because my brain sees patterns where others see dots. It’s not always a gift—sometimes it feels like living six months ahead, watching the present stubbornly refuse to catch up—but it’s the engine behind everything I write. Nobody’s managed to label how it works, and that’s fine with me. Maybe I’m just a homo emergent. Who can say. Neurologists’ comments welcome.
I never cashed in, in the sense of being a payola writer. I could’ve—I was once offered an eye-watering sum to run a private AAPL investor service behind a paywall, complete with trade alerts and actionable insights. But I preferred the community: real people, real signals, real insight. For a while, you could find me helping moderate or contribute to some of the smartest Apple investor forums online, including most recently Philip’s Apple 3.0. I’ve spent nearly 25 years walking beside this stock. It’s been an 11,000% journey. And no—it won’t happen again. Not like that. So don’t let anyone fool you. “Think Different.”
So, what’s tommo.fyi?
It’s not just another Apple blog.
Yes, I’ll cover the products, the price, the strategy. But this site is also about the context—the geopolitics, the macro headwinds, the shifting sands of consumer psychology, and the weird cultural rewiring we’re all now living through. This is a lens, not a silo. It’s where I think out loud—and connect dots that don’t appear on most people’s radar until it’s too late. If you want an analysis of Apple’s financials, go and ask ChatGPT. If you want statistics, try Perplexity. But whatever you do, don’t go near Gemini - it’s had a personality bypass worse than Siri, and that’s really saying something.
Opinion? Oh, absolutely.
I’ve got a lot of it. And worse: it’s often accurate.
If that makes me sound like an arrogant bastard, I’ll take it on the chin—but if you stick around, you’ll see that what I really value is clarity. I don’t care whether you’re a “farmer,” an “investor,” or a “trader.” If your thesis can’t survive scrutiny—or worse, if it relies on nostalgia and denial—I’ll say so. Not to offend. But to prevent people from being misled by either the nostalgic, the disinvested, or the deluded. Nobody arrives anywhere safely by driving at high speed while solely looking in the rear view mirror with a tearful eye.
Why now?
Because critical thought is dying.
Because we now live in a world where using a full stop in a text message is considered aggressive. Where analysis is dismissed as “negativity.” Where nuance is suspect and everyone’s scared of being disagreed with. Where the only safe space to be yourself turns out … to be your own space.
This site is my quiet rebellion.
“It’s not here to please. It’s here to think.”
It’s where I can say “the Apple Vision Pro is a flop” without someone filing an HR complaint. It’s where disagreement is welcome—as long as it’s smart. And it’s where I get to reclaim language, reason, and debate without tiptoeing around consensus, just because it’s the elephant in the fridge and won’t budge.
So thank you—for signing up, for showing up, for sticking around.
This won’t be a “community” in the sing-kumbaya sense, but it will be a space for ideas to collide productively. Leave a comment. Disagree. Share your view. As long as you’re here to think, you’re more than welcome. As long as I’m free to say whatever I want on my own blog, we’ll get along even when we constructively disagree. This is not about egos, but ethics.
Above all though, please remember this is an Op-Ed blog written by , as much for, me, as it is to share with you. I’d love to see you in the comments, and I’ll try to answer whenever I can, but this is a author-led site, welcoming readers and participants, not a comment-led site. I write my own content, daily and weekly for my own insight and observations and passions as much as in observation of others’ musings.
The blog will evolve slowly.
It’ll likely include everything from Apple earnings to global economic tremors, to the strange ways language, culture, and capital are being reshaped in real time. I’ll try to keep the tone dry, the metaphors unruly, and the cow flying. Eventually there will be some extraordinary surprises but don’t expect anything to arrive on time. I do this for free, not behind a paywall, after all.
If nothing else, consider this an experiment in staying awake—when so many are being lulled back to sleep, even while trying to stay far to woke. Thank you for signing up over the last few days, and for all the days you carry on reading and commenting. And if you like it, please, tell your friends.
– Tommo
