Well, I received a lot of interesting feedback regarding my last post (I urge readers to post their comments on the Blog itself – http://www.tech-no-phile.com/blog). Some people had no idea of the working conditions in places like Foxconn and were disappointed that Apple would be participating in such a situation and that they were being shamed into action. Some shrugged their shoulders and pointed out that many companies other than Apple are following the same practises so what can you do? My take is that it’s important to call these situations out. We are being dishonest if we don’t acknowledge that the inexpensive prices we pay for certain goods is in direct relation to the cheap labour producing these products. That said it is important to be aware of such practises, to speak out either through our purchasing choices or through communicating with the companies themselves regarding the situations that we disagree with. Even if they are being dragged I would rather a company respond in a positive way to criticism than to ignore the reality of what is going on. I can only hope that Apple is not just paying lip service in their concern for workers rights and standards of living of the people that make these amazing products.
To voice your concerns you can email Tim Cook, CEO of Apple here: tcook@apple.com
Also, in a followup to the SOPA/PIPA news David Pogue wrote an interesting article in the NY Times regarding this issue which I found useful:
On another note, there was a BIG announcement on Thursday regarding Apple in education and its new involvement in the industry of textbooks which reflects one of the areas Steve Jobs was focussing on before his death. Apple announced the introduction of iBooks Author which allows individuals and publishers to create interactive textbooks for distribution within a new text book section of the iBooks store. The following is Apple’s feel-good introduction to this new tool:
A couple of headlines have grabbed my attention in this new year. Obviously I am an Apple head, an Apple evangelist etc…so when one finds out the object of one’s affection is behaving in a manner not in line with one’s values it can be a very troubling moment. I recently listened to a very revealingpodcast by Mike Daisy:
Mike Daisey was a self-described “worshipper in the cult of Mac.” Then he saw some photos from a new iPhone, taken by workers at the factory where it was made. Mike wondered: Who makes all my crap? He traveled to China to find out.
I highly recommend This American Life in general and this particular podcast specifically related to the practises of Foxconn which manufactures the ‘magical’ devices we all love. In it we learn of some very disturbing labour practises that have been going on in this city factory and it isn’t pretty. What is great about this story is that it has sparked a response and action from Apple in conjunction with a piece about it that appeared on the Daily Show with John Stewart(who refers to Foxconn as the Fear Factory). Working conditions have been deplorable at Foxconn with workers responses to conditions resulting in suicides, social isolation and ridiculously cheap wages (.31/hour!).
Finally, we are taking a big step today toward greater transparency and independent oversight of our supply chain by joining the Fair Labor Association. The FLA is a leading nonprofit organization dedicated to improving conditions for workers around the world, and we are the first technology company they’ve approved for membership. The FLA’s auditing team will have direct access to our supply chain and they will report their findings independently on their website.
The FLA is a non-profit organization and as stated strives for the improvement of workers rights and conditions world-wide. This is a good thing and hopefully will take its responsibilities very seriously.
SOPA/PIPA
Another big story is SOPA/PIPA – Stop Online Piracy Act/Protect IP Act. You may have noticed if you visited certain websites today either a blacked-out page or sites with special messages (such as Wikipedia) regarding their stance against SOPA. This is a very interesting issue and it’s worth investigating. There are definitely different views on combating infringement of ownership of content, proper recognition of creative ownership in the digital age, the prevention of citizens to participate in the media environment etc..and how to deal with it (iOS version HERE).
From Wikipedia’s entry:
Proponents of the bill say it protects the intellectual property market and corresponding industry, jobs and revenue, and is necessary to bolster enforcement ofcopyright laws, especially against foreign websites.[5] They cite examples such as Google’s $500 million settlement with the Department of Justice for its role in a scheme to target U.S. consumers with ads to illegally import prescription drugs from Canadian pharmacies.[6]
So today and probably going forward various major websites will be blacking out their content in protest against potentially harmful legislation regarding this important area. I encourage everyone to read up on these important discussions.
“Marvelous wonders don’t have to happen all of a sudden, the way they do in the Arabian Nights. They can also take a long time, like crystals growing, or minds changing, or leaves turning. The trick is to keep an eye peeled, so they don’t slip by unappreciated.”
I think it’s appropriate to start things off with a quote from Ken Kesey. Steve Jobs said that taking LSD was one of the seminal influences on his life so Apple and it’s technical wonders are children of the likes of Ken Kesey, Timothy Leary, Ram Daas, Gandhi, Einstein and all the those who have thought differently and been an influence on the founder of this crazy underdog, outsider-now-insider, dominant tech company.
It is no accident that Apple changed it’s name from Apple Computer to Apple Inc. a couple of years ago. The company is no longer solely a computer maker. It’s reach spills into music, film, television, mobile phones, tablets – the sky is the limit for where they can go. With the passing of Steve Jobs this year many are wondering if the team that remains can continue with the magic – and that’s what these products are at their best, magic. Time will be the measure. In the short-term I think we’ll see some very interesting things. Will Apple keep its focus? Is there a vision beyond whatever road map SJ may have left behind? We shall see.
In the meantime, the company’s fortunes continue to grow. The iPad 2 was a hit as well as the iPhone 4S with the Siri voice assistant promising a deeper interaction, dare I say it, relationship, to our digital devices. An iPad 3, iPhone 5, an Apple-branded TV set, newer models of their existing line – all of this is coming. I’ve expressed it before – Apple is fun. They make fun products. Not everything is a hit and not every hit starts off that way, but so far I have reason to be very optimistic.
Throughout the year my wife and I share some of our resources with organizations that help to make a difference in people’s lives. Whether it’s an emergency donation to help support the efforts of our fellow men and women in war zones (Doctors Without Borders for example), ongoing entreprenureal organizations like Kiva or to victims of other uncontrollable events such as the drought in Somalia, we feel it’s important to put aside a percentage of our income to address these concerns. In addition to these we are also donating $1000 to Plan Canada’s Water and Sanitation projects:
Imagine helping every girl, boy, man and woman in a community battle thirst and disease with clean water and training in sanitation. Imagine furnishing a community with reliable wells that will benefit future generations and imparting essential knowledge about sanitation so its members can manage and care for the system themselves. Imagine yourself forever changing a small piece of the world in a big way.
What’s great about this particular project is that it is being matched by government and other organizations giving it a value of $10000. I’m not saying everyone should give this much money, but it’s amazing what a little bit can do.
I want to thank all of my clients for your continued support and loyalty to MacMedics. We love what we do and we love serving our clients and hopefully making your technical lives easier. There are many exciting new developments, equipment and solutions coming in 2012 and the MacMedics team is ready.
Life’s what happens when we’re busy making other plans - John Lennon
On April Fools day in 1976 Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ron Wayne signed the founding contract for Apple Computer. Eleven days later, Ron Wayne decided to sell his 10% of the company for $800, which is now worth $36 billion. The founding contract that made history was originally expected to sell for $150,000, but today sold for a cool $1.6 million to an unnamed phone bidder at a Sotheby’s auction in New York, reportsBloomberg.
Ron Wayne later remarked that:
Wozniak and Jobs were “intellectual giants,” but “also felt it was going to be something of a roller coaster,” adding, “If I’d stayed with them, I was going to wind up the richest man in the cemetery.”
I also wanted to point out that readers of this blog are invited, even encouraged, to follow me on Twitter (@macmedicscanada) – Click the button below:
I find Twitter a great tool for quickly sharing things I find interesting for my readers of the blog, clients and friends (clients who are friends etc…) and it’s sometimes more appropriate than creating a full blog post which I tend to devote to extrapolation on various topics. I’m beginning to Tweet more and more so if you’re interested just head to twitter.com or use your native Twitter app on your mobile devices and search out macmedicscanada to follow (or click the link above).
Apologies for a second post so quickly. Some readers of the blog have reported that they cannot get to the content from the NY Times link to Mona Simpson’s eulogy for her brother Steve Jobs. Just in case you are one of those people below is the content of her speech:
A Sister’s Eulogy for Steve Jobs
I grew up as an only child, with a single mother. Because we were poor and because I knew my father had emigrated from Syria, I imagined he looked like Omar Sharif. I hoped he would be rich and kind and would come into our lives (and our not yet furnished apartment) and help us. Later, after I’d met my father, I tried to believe he’d changed his number and left no forwarding address because he was an idealistic revolutionary, plotting a new world for the Arab people.
Even as a feminist, my whole life I’d been waiting for a man to love, who could love me. For decades, I’d thought that man would be my father. When I was 25, I met that man and he was my brother.
By then, I lived in New York, where I was trying to write my first novel. I had a job at a small magazine in an office the size of a closet, with three other aspiring writers. When one day a lawyer called me — me, the middle-class girl from California who hassled the boss to buy us health insurance — and said his client was rich and famous and was my long-lost brother, the young editors went wild. This was 1985 and we worked at a cutting-edge literary magazine, but I’d fallen into the plot of a Dickens novel and really, we all loved those best. The lawyer refused to tell me my brother’s name and my colleagues started a betting pool. The leading candidate: John Travolta. I secretly hoped for a literary descendant of Henry James — someone more talented than I, someone brilliant without even trying.
When I met Steve, he was a guy my age in jeans, Arab- or Jewish-looking and handsomer than Omar Sharif.
We took a long walk — something, it happened, that we both liked to do. I don’t remember much of what we said that first day, only that he felt like someone I’d pick to be a friend. He explained that he worked in computers.
I didn’t know much about computers. I still worked on a manual Olivetti typewriter.
I told Steve I’d recently considered my first purchase of a computer: something called the Cromemco.
Steve told me it was a good thing I’d waited. He said he was making something that was going to be insanely beautiful.
I want to tell you a few things I learned from Steve, during three distinct periods, over the 27 years I knew him. They’re not periods of years, but of states of being. His full life. His illness. His dying.
Steve worked at what he loved. He worked really hard. Every day.
That’s incredibly simple, but true.
He was the opposite of absent-minded.
He was never embarrassed about working hard, even if the results were failures. If someone as smart as Steve wasn’t ashamed to admit trying, maybe I didn’t have to be.
When he got kicked out of Apple, things were painful. He told me about a dinner at which 500 Silicon Valley leaders met the then-sitting president. Steve hadn’t been invited.
He was hurt but he still went to work at Next. Every single day.
Novelty was not Steve’s highest value. Beauty was.
For an innovator, Steve was remarkably loyal. If he loved a shirt, he’d order 10 or 100 of them. In the Palo Alto house, there are probably enough black cotton turtlenecks for everyone in this church.
He didn’t favor trends or gimmicks. He liked people his own age.
His philosophy of aesthetics reminds me of a quote that went something like this: “Fashion is what seems beautiful now but looks ugly later; art can be ugly at first but it becomes beautiful later.”
Steve always aspired to make beautiful later.
He was willing to be misunderstood.
Uninvited to the ball, he drove the third or fourth iteration of his same black sports car to Next, where he and his team were quietly inventing the platform on which Tim Berners-Lee would write the program for the World Wide Web.
Mona Simpson is a novelist and a professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles. She delivered this eulogy for her brother, Steve Jobs, on Oct. 16 at his memorial service at the Memorial Church of Stanford University.
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Steve was like a girl in the amount of time he spent talking about love. Love was his supreme virtue, his god of gods. He tracked and worried about the romantic lives of the people working with him.
Whenever he saw a man he thought a woman might find dashing, he called out, “Hey are you single? Do you wanna come to dinner with my sister?”
I remember when he phoned the day he met Laurene. “There’s this beautiful woman and she’s really smart and she has this dog and I’m going to marry her.”
When Reed was born, he began gushing and never stopped. He was a physical dad, with each of his children. He fretted over Lisa’s boyfriends and Erin’s travel and skirt lengths and Eve’s safety around the horses she adored.
None of us who attended Reed’s graduation party will ever forget the scene of Reed and Steve slow dancing.
His abiding love for Laurene sustained him. He believed that love happened all the time, everywhere. In that most important way, Steve was never ironic, never cynical, never pessimistic. I try to learn from that, still.
Steve had been successful at a young age, and he felt that had isolated him. Most of the choices he made from the time I knew him were designed to dissolve the walls around him. A middle-class boy from Los Altos, he fell in love with a middle-class girl from New Jersey. It was important to both of them to raise Lisa, Reed, Erin and Eve as grounded, normal children. Their house didn’t intimidate with art or polish; in fact, for many of the first years I knew Steve and Lo together, dinner was served on the grass, and sometimes consisted of just one vegetable. Lots of that one vegetable. But one. Broccoli. In season. Simply prepared. With just the right, recently snipped, herb.
Even as a young millionaire, Steve always picked me up at the airport. He’d be standing there in his jeans.
When a family member called him at work, his secretary Linetta answered, “Your dad’s in a meeting. Would you like me to interrupt him?”
When Reed insisted on dressing up as a witch every Halloween, Steve, Laurene, Erin and Eve all went wiccan.
They once embarked on a kitchen remodel; it took years. They cooked on a hotplate in the garage. The Pixar building, under construction during the same period, finished in half the time. And that was it for the Palo Alto house. The bathrooms stayed old. But — and this was a crucial distinction — it had been a great house to start with; Steve saw to that.
This is not to say that he didn’t enjoy his success: he enjoyed his success a lot, just minus a few zeros. He told me how much he loved going to the Palo Alto bike store and gleefully realizing he could afford to buy the best bike there.
And he did.
Steve was humble. Steve liked to keep learning.
Once, he told me if he’d grown up differently, he might have become a mathematician. He spoke reverently about colleges and loved walking around the Stanford campus. In the last year of his life, he studied a book of paintings by Mark Rothko, an artist he hadn’t known about before, thinking of what could inspire people on the walls of a future Apple campus.
Steve cultivated whimsy. What other C.E.O. knows the history of English and Chinese tea roses and has a favorite David Austin rose?
He had surprises tucked in all his pockets. I’ll venture that Laurene will discover treats — songs he loved, a poem he cut out and put in a drawer — even after 20 years of an exceptionally close marriage. I spoke to him every other day or so, but when I opened The New York Times and saw a feature on the company’s patents, I was still surprised and delighted to see a sketch for a perfect staircase.
With his four children, with his wife, with all of us, Steve had a lot of fun.
He treasured happiness.
Mona Simpson is a novelist and a professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles. She delivered this eulogy for her brother, Steve Jobs, on Oct. 16 at his memorial service at the Memorial Church of Stanford University.
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Then, Steve became ill and we watched his life compress into a smaller circle. Once, he’d loved walking through Paris. He’d discovered a small handmade soba shop in Kyoto. He downhill skied gracefully. He cross-country skied clumsily. No more.
Eventually, even ordinary pleasures, like a good peach, no longer appealed to him.
Yet, what amazed me, and what I learned from his illness, was how much was still left after so much had been taken away.
I remember my brother learning to walk again, with a chair. After his liver transplant, once a day he would get up on legs that seemed too thin to bear him, arms pitched to the chair back. He’d push that chair down the Memphis hospital corridor towards the nursing station and then he’d sit down on the chair, rest, turn around and walk back again. He counted his steps and, each day, pressed a little farther.
Laurene got down on her knees and looked into his eyes.
“You can do this, Steve,” she said. His eyes widened. His lips pressed into each other.
He tried. He always, always tried, and always with love at the core of that effort. He was an intensely emotional man.
I realized during that terrifying time that Steve was not enduring the pain for himself. He set destinations: his son Reed’s graduation from high school, his daughter Erin’s trip to Kyoto, the launching of a boat he was building on which he planned to take his family around the world and where he hoped he and Laurene would someday retire.
Even ill, his taste, his discrimination and his judgment held. He went through 67 nurses before finding kindred spirits and then he completely trusted the three who stayed with him to the end. Tracy. Arturo. Elham.
One time when Steve had contracted a tenacious pneumonia his doctor forbid everything — even ice. We were in a standard I.C.U. unit. Steve, who generally disliked cutting in line or dropping his own name, confessed that this once, he’d like to be treated a little specially.
I told him: Steve, this is special treatment.
He leaned over to me, and said: “I want it to be a little more special.”
Intubated, when he couldn’t talk, he asked for a notepad. He sketched devices to hold an iPad in a hospital bed. He designed new fluid monitors and x-ray equipment. He redrew that not-quite-special-enough hospital unit. And every time his wife walked into the room, I watched his smile remake itself on his face.
For the really big, big things, you have to trust me, he wrote on his sketchpad. He looked up. You have to.
By that, he meant that we should disobey the doctors and give him a piece of ice.
None of us knows for certain how long we’ll be here. On Steve’s better days, even in the last year, he embarked upon projects and elicited promises from his friends at Apple to finish them. Some boat builders in the Netherlands have a gorgeous stainless steel hull ready to be covered with the finishing wood. His three daughters remain unmarried, his two youngest still girls, and he’d wanted to walk them down the aisle as he’d walked me the day of my wedding.
We all — in the end — die in medias res. In the middle of a story. Of many stories.
I suppose it’s not quite accurate to call the death of someone who lived with cancer for years unexpected, but Steve’s death was unexpected for us.
What I learned from my brother’s death was that character is essential: What he was, was how he died.
Tuesday morning, he called me to ask me to hurry up to Palo Alto. His tone was affectionate, dear, loving, but like someone whose luggage was already strapped onto the vehicle, who was already on the beginning of his journey, even as he was sorry, truly deeply sorry, to be leaving us.
He started his farewell and I stopped him. I said, “Wait. I’m coming. I’m in a taxi to the airport. I’ll be there.”
“I’m telling you now because I’m afraid you won’t make it on time, honey.”
When I arrived, he and his Laurene were joking together like partners who’d lived and worked together every day of their lives. He looked into his children’s eyes as if he couldn’t unlock his gaze.
Until about 2 in the afternoon, his wife could rouse him, to talk to his friends from Apple.
Then, after awhile, it was clear that he would no longer wake to us.
His breathing changed. It became severe, deliberate, purposeful. I could feel him counting his steps again, pushing farther than before.
This is what I learned: he was working at this, too. Death didn’t happen to Steve, he achieved it.
He told me, when he was saying goodbye and telling me he was sorry, so sorry we wouldn’t be able to be old together as we’d always planned, that he was going to a better place.
Dr. Fischer gave him a 50/50 chance of making it through the night.
He made it through the night, Laurene next to him on the bed sometimes jerked up when there was a longer pause between his breaths. She and I looked at each other, then he would heave a deep breath and begin again.
This had to be done. Even now, he had a stern, still handsome profile, the profile of an absolutist, a romantic. His breath indicated an arduous journey, some steep path, altitude.
He seemed to be climbing.
But with that will, that work ethic, that strength, there was also sweet Steve’s capacity for wonderment, the artist’s belief in the ideal, the still more beautiful later.
Steve’s final words, hours earlier, were monosyllables, repeated three times.
Before embarking, he’d looked at his sister Patty, then for a long time at his children, then at his life’s partner, Laurene, and then over their shoulders past them.
Steve’s final words were:
OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW.
Mona Simpson is a novelist and a professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles. She delivered this eulogy for her brother, Steve Jobs, on Oct. 16 at his memorial service at the Memorial Church of Stanford University.
It’s been a couple of weeks since my last piece. So much has been going on in the Apple world since Steve Jobs passing. I can’t help but feel even sadder that he’s not here to see the impact of his ideas and where things are going. His sister Mona Simpson gave one of the eulogies at his funeral and it is definitely worth reading – especially Steve’s last words:
Despite the media’s disappointment with the lack of an iPhone 5, the 4S has been the fastest selling device of all time – 1 million+ sold in the first weekend alone – ridiculous. My nephew bought two of them and sold his spare for an extra $150 the next day! In China, people are paying $2000 for one. I just received mine a few days ago and it is a vast improvement over my 3GS (I never did upgrade to the iPhone 4). If you are someone with a 3G or 3GS the upgrade to a 4S is absolutely worthwhile.
The speed is phenomenal and the new iOS 5 runs really well on it. Siri is a very fun and useful feature although some of the location features are not yet available in Canada (maps, yelp integration – we should see these some time in 2012). I asked Siri ‘What is the meaning of Life?’ twice. The first answer came back: ‘Why would you ask an inanimate object such a question?’. The second answer showed even more humour – answer: 42 (a Hitch Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy reference). I’ve been able to voice text people, dictate an email, call anyone, request music, ask curious questions, create reminders – lots of fun. There are some users reporting less than stellar battery life and Apple seems to be taking this very seriously – I wouldn’t be surprised to see a 5.0.1 or 5.0.2 update addressing this soon.
iCloud: One of the major rollouts in the last two weeks has been iCloud. For a brand new user with no previous information the iCloud experience is fairly smooth. For existing MobileMe users and people who have purchased iTunes content (music, apps, movies, books etc…) with multiple AppleID’s the migration waters have been a little rougher (calendar and contact duplication, music disappearing).
Part of the problem is that when you get a new iPhone 4S or update the iOS to version 5 on an existing device you are presented with an opportunity to sign up for or migrate to iCloud right at the first boot up. The same holds true of anyone who updates their Macs to 10.7.2 using Software Update on their machines: the first thing that comes up after restarting is the iCloud System Preference asking if you want to do the same. My advice is to STOP before proceeding – you do not have to sign up. As with all things, BACK UP your important information first – especially the iCal and Address Book databases:
There is also a wonderful eBook I highly recommend getting a hold of on iCloud, how it’s different than MobileMe, precautions to take etc…and is essential reading before making the leap:
It’s very important to remember that although you can sign up for an iCloud account on your iPhone or iPad nothing will sync to your Macs if you don’t have 10.7.2 running on them. For users with multiple machines running various iterations of the Mac OS (10.5, 10.6 etc…) the issue will be that those machines will NOT participate in the syncing.
Also, iCloud will ask you to associate an AppleID with your new account. The is a very important decision as you cannot merge (at this time) multiple AppleID’s. One of the features of iCloud is the ability to have access to everything you have purchased from Apple. So, if you, your partner or your kids buy an album on your computer from iTunes with your a particular ID and if that ID is used on your iPhone/iPad you will have access to that content without having to repurchase. Apps you buy on your phone will be available on your iPad etc…If you use a different ID to sign up to iCloud you will not see the previous content you bought.
The issue is further complicated when you want to sync information such as your calendar and contacts. Current MobileMe members may not want to associate their current address with iCloud if they share purchased content with other people. The reason for this is that if you do use the same address for iCloud as you have for iTunes Store purchases and that ID is set up on say, your kids computers for sharing those purchases, they will have access to all of your contacts etc…Also, they will not be able to sync their own information if they’re using your iCloud ID. With Apple’s new Photostream feature (which requires the latest version of iPhoto 2011) syncs every picture you take on your phone with your Mac up to 1000 pictures or 30 days worth – do you want other people seeing those pictures?
It just reiterates that Apple is a consumer-based company focused on the individual user. The fact that other users want to collaborate and share information not just with themselves but with others is something that Apple’s services just don’t take into full consideration. So please – BACK UP your important information, read carefully about the iCloud service and it’s requirements on all your Apple products (remember – current MobileMe users have until June 2012 to switch), check out the Take Control eBook as always, have fun.
POST SCRIPT
One thing that caught my attention a few days ago was a new thermostat product from the father of the iPod called theNEST THERMOSTAT and it is one of the coolest things I’ve seen in awhile – worthy of a Steve Jobs inspired solution. Click on the link to check it out and you may get wowed too.
Also, Apple just released 3 new commercials on the iPhone, Siri and iCloud for your consumer pleasure:
A long, long time ago…
I can still remember
How that music used to make me smile.
And I knew if I had my chance
That I could make those people dance
And, maybe, they’d be happy for a while.
-Don McLean, American Pie
“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life,….because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.”
-excerpt from Steve Jobs’ 2005 Stanford University commencement speech after his first bout with cancer
If you haven’t already heard, Steve Jobs passed away on Wednesday evening, October 5th at the age of 56, succumbing at last to his various illnesses. You can read the official obituaries online and there are books about to be released on his life and times. For me, like so many, his vision continues to influence the way I interact with the various technologies that give me my living, allows me to communicate with my family, friends and colleagues, connects me with infinite information, facilitates the expression of whatever thought I might have instantaneously and continually wows me with the magic that is the Apple technical ecosystem. My life has been enhanced by these truly magical products. They are elegant extensions of my mind and body. Their design expresses a devotion to beauty and function in an industry where that was unheard of from the colourful first iMacs to the elegant MacBook Air, iPad and iPhone as well the amazing iOS and Mac OS . The way we interact with our devices through touch is influencing not only Apple’s competitors, but advertising, magazine publishing, the music business, software and content distribution models, retail store design and just our general technical sensibility. I believe his approach has prepared us not only for what Apple is going to deliver over the next few years but for what many amazing people and companies are planning in the future.
If you watched Tim Cook’s first keynote yesterday you might have been underwhelmed. He’s no Steve Jobs that’s certain. To be fair however, Steve hasn’t been Steve for a couple of years. Even with the rollout of the iPad 1 and 2 Steve’s energy just didn’t seem to be in it. More and more his team began taking over the presentation of the Apple line. Perhaps the tone yesterday was influenced by the Apple team’s knowledge of his condition. When I viewed the section on Scott Forstall’s introduction to Siri Personal Assistant on the iPhone 4S I was imagining a Steve Jobs of yesteryear delivering on something as amazing as this technology in his enthusiastic and wonder-filled way that made anyone watching just gush and want whatever he was selling.
Apple will change without him and many of us will look at the company differently knowing his presence is no longer actively directing the company. His legacy will live on and whatever Apple produces in the next few years will bear his influence including the space-age new head-quarters to come. Apple now needs to be Apple and move beyond its maker.
Steve – you definitely made us dance for awhile with your enthusiasm, your classic distortion field, your ‘just one more thing’ at the end of so many memorable keynotes and product rollouts – you were a visonary and a loving, committed human being. You will be missed.
Another Apple Event has come and gone and what do we have? Well, no iPhone 5 – it was looking a bit dim to see something like that kept under wraps and hidden and it will no doubt be disappointing to many – myself included – to not a have a newly designed device to use. That said, the 4GS builds upon a still gorgeous piece of hardware. Apple has learned from it’s antennae issues of the past and re-jigged how they work. They’ve upgraded the camera (8Megapixel, 1080 High-Definition Movie quality at 30 frames per second), the processor which is now a dual core A5 chip just like the iPad2 – a speedy make-over in general on the inside.
The real glory in my opinion is the new iOS 5. There are a lot of great new refinements and enhancements to the general interface. There are many cool new features in the coming iOS (new notification system, new ways to take and edit pictures on the fly, new iCloud sharing and syncing features) and the coolest and most futuristic one is Personal Assistant. Apple bought a company called Siri last year for $200 million. I tried their application and it was wicked. You could speak commands in real language such as “what’s the nearest pizza restaurant” and it would return a correct answer. Apple has taken this to the nth degree and embedded it system wide:
We’ll all have to see how it works in the real world. It will either be absolutely amazing or very disappointing. This feature only works on the new iPhone 4GS’s faster processor. Check out Apple’s Siri page for more details on this great feature.
iOS 5 introduces wireless syncing of data (finally) as well as untethered activation of any iOS device and wireless iOS updates. What does this mean? Apple is pushing the iPhone and iPad as a solo device where one no longer needs to have a computer for interfacing with. Content syncs in the ‘cloud’, updates from it and activates itself. It is becoming it’s own very unique platform. All this cloud syncing business is interesting, but I wonder how cellular companies will cope with all the increased bandwidth let alone when we travel – be careful to turn off that data roaming!
Apple also introduced a new warranty plan for the iPhone 4GS – Applecare+ ($99) which will extend the warranty to 2 years and cover 2 accidents i.e. water issues. However, if your device is found to be defective due to an ‘accident’ there is an extra $49 charge on top of the fix – not too bad for a situation that used to render your warranty void.
Refinement is the theme throughout these announcements both in hardware and software. This is what Apple does best – refine their offerings. Sometimes they blow us all away – the introduction of the iPhone, the iPad, Mac OS X. And then they tweak, polish and enhance the line – usually before wowing us again. My bottom line – I’m getting one. There may be an iPhone 5 on some dim horizon, but it’s time to move on. Now what colour should I get?
Update on my previous post: I made an incorrect reference to a phrase which was pointed out by a dear and learned friend. I used the phrase Maddening Crowd when it should have been the ‘Madding Crowd’. My friend wrote me the following background which I wanted to share (Thank you Marshall!):
Far from the Madding (not ‘maddening’) Crowd (1874) is Thomas Hardy‘s fourth novel and his first major literary success. It originally appeared anonymously as a monthly serial in Cornhill Magazine, where it gained a wide readership. Critical notices were plentiful and mostly positive. Hardy revised the text extensively for the 1895 edition, and made further changes for the 1901 edition.[1
Hardy took the title from Thomas Gray’s poem - Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, 1751:
‘Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife,
Their sober wishes never learn’d to stray;
Along the cool sequester’d vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.’
and now back to the iPhone!
Introducing iPhone 4GS
Introducing iCloud
And for those of you with time on your hands, the Keynote with Tim Cook and demos from the Apple team (the link will launch iTunes):
Another Apple Event is upon us, sans Steve Jobs. The rumours will finally be put to rest – will there be an iPhone 5 with a brand new design or will it be a variation of the iPhone 4 (called the 4S). We’ll finally get a better look at the new iOS 5 with speech recognition, system-wide voice commands in the form of Assistant, new notification systems, iCloud services – lots of new technologies. It will be Tim Cook’s first event as CEO and he’ll have a chance to give the maddening crowd (myself included) a taste of his version of the Apple distortion field. So, stay tuned for a followup after the announcements which begin tomorrow (October 4th). This should be a very exciting release of new features and new hardware – and I’m sure a few surprises.
For more rumour news in advance and lots of links:
