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.
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.
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.
Who doesn’t like a juicy palace intrigue? To date there’s no visible hint of that at 1 Infinite Loop, but the potential — a nice enough place to start — for one exists. Although there’s no question Steve Jobs wanted Tim Cook to run the company, a new book also makes it clear that Scott Forstall probably wants the job more than anyone else.
A regular question from my kids is, “If we won the lottery, where would we live?” Some folks, it’s not a question idle speculation. That said, although he hasn’t won the lottery, per se, Tim Cook has come into money, a lot of money. Nevertheless, like Steve Jobs, Apple’s current CEO doesn’t live in a huge house behind guarded gates. In fact, this blogger’s house is not much smaller than his.
More than a decade after Steve Jobs introduced the world to iTunes and the iPod, digital music sales have surpassed physical media. Although the Apple visionary didn’t live to see the day, he certainly foresaw the eventually and played a pivotal role and, in fact, declared way back then that he was out revolutionize music.
Roll your eyes and groan — here comes a rumorological musing fresh from the Silicon Isle. Yup, Taiwan and that invariably means DigiTimes. Whereas I’ve studiously avoided reporting the latest Apple TV — a real, honest-to-goodness television — emanations wafting on the breeze from that source, discernible and believable patterns are forming.
For many members of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, it must be more than a little galling to give the Apple co-founder and erstwhile an award for in essence taking the lead role in the ongoing dismantling of their business model. Alternately, isn’t it tellingly cheap and myopic that they only got ’round to bestowing this largess after the instrument of the industry’s collective salvation died.
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