Apple is rather predictable, except when it isn’t. As relates to the long-rumored iPad 3, it seems that Cupertino will be eschewing the road less traveled with a growing body of rumorological evidence pointing an event to introduce it right about the same time as last year. And, like 2011, 2012 is expected to be the year of the iPad again.
Cool things beget cool things and here’s a prime example of that axiom in action. A Mac, any Mac, used together with an iPad is a powerful combination for productivity — keep all your work in front you and within reach. Here’s a great way to do that with a lot of style.
Bacon wrapped shrimp samples and Apple’s latest MacBook Air — could there be a better combination? Both Walmart and Sam’s Club stores in these oddly dysfunctional United States both carry the iPod, iPhone and iPad. Soon, however, America’s second-favorite warehouse chain might offer Apple’s Macintosh product line, as well, or so the rumor goes.
Apple ships a new product and there’s an uproar. The fans rejoice, seeing all that is good, while the haters, well… Here we are again and Cupertino’s latest opus, or at least the first movement thereof, has caused quite a still. Though the hand ringers are unlikely to go silent, there isn’t much left to complain about after today.
The alpha has roared and it’s just a simple matter of math, adding two numbers together to arrive at one gloriously ginormous sum. Whereas some still argue about whether or not Apple’s iPad is a computer, the bean counters are starting to fall in line with the reality on the ground — the Mac plus iPad make Apple the world’s biggest computer company and not by a little.
From the late 19th Century through mid-20th Century, it was the United States that was the world’s workshop and we have the human, social and environmental scars to prove it. China’s now going through those growing pains and the people actually living there in the here and now have a very different response to Apple’s second-hand abuses than the Western news media.
Record Mac, iPad and iPhone sales, and the company didn’t just exceed expectations. For example, whereas there was discussion about how many iPhones Apple sold, with the most optimistic estimates in the 35 million range, the company actually sold more than 37 million units. The Cupertino kids likewise well exceeded iPad guestimates, shipping nearly 15.5 million of their category defining mobile computers.
Back in 1999, the original iBook was the first production, mass market computer to ship with 802.11b networking built in. Since then the company was the first major vendor to market with faster and faster versions of wi-fi. And, by that I mean Apple chose to ship months and sometimes year before the standards had been set and settled.
Or, how to succeed without really trying. Of course, it would be silly to say that Apple isn’t trying or that the company doesn’t have a strategy. However, Cupertino’s corporate sales force isn’t on the payroll, yet Mac, iPhone and iPad sales into the enterprise keep rising by double and triple digits.
One of the last unfinished thoughts Steve Jobs left us with was textbooks. Walter Isaacson’s seminal biography of the Apple co-founder teased that the next textbook publishing was the next industry the iconic technology visionary was seeking to revolutionize. That was the promise and today Apple has delivered the vision, as well as the tools — iBooks, iTunes U, iBook Author — to make it happen.
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