"I haven’t bought an app for about a year. Neither hardware nor software excite me very much, after whatever brief (and usually painful) novelty has worn off." It's probably because I'm so immersed in tech stuff at work, but it's hard for me to understand how such an imaginative science fiction author can be so... indifferent about the technology he uses.
The sense I get is that he lives one rung up the ladder of abstraction.
Yes. Just simple tools and the writing. Canny, and aware of the demands of the industry (word: 'talks to publishers'). The page is small (word-count/ego) and to the point as well.