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 version Apple shipped in June 2011 was greeted with both cheers and jeers. The admixture of superior editing and performance characteristics contrasted sharply with missing features, such as multicam support, backward compatibility and collaboration tools. With this release, Apple has addressed the great majority of problems while significantly upping the performance ante.
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.
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.
There seem to be two kinds of Final Cut Pro users these days — those with huge investments in legacy workflows and those who appreciate the features + performance improvements Apple baked into the new version. Those in the former group are dropping Apple’s pro video app and the big beneficiary so far seems to be Avid.
When the original iMac shipped back in August 1998, the industry and its various hangers on (analysts) variously and collectively stated that the form factor was just so 1984. A dozen plus years later and Apple has the hottest product in this fast growing all-in-one category.
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