Apple - page 6

The new Jobs movie hits Friday, August 16th in theaters. And it’s not going to be pretty.

The movie covers the life of the late Apple co-founder and CEO from 1971, before the founding of Apple, to 2001, when Jobs announces the iPod, thus setting the company on the path to glory and dominance.

You’re going to hate the movie. Here’s why. 

Not too surprisingly, the five major publishers originally named in the U.S. Department of Justice’s e-book case regarding their collusion with Apple on pricing have now themselves filed a complaint regarding the Justice Department’s proposal to eliminate the use of the agency model in any Apple agreements with publishers for a period of five years.

Publishers like the agency model as it allows them to set prices for e-books, instead of the distributor, as Amazon did before Apple’s own iBooks system launched on the iPad.

It feels like Apple is falling way behind. But I don’t think that’s true.

I believe Apple puts enormous brain power and good judgement into envisioning the Next Big Thing. It takes them a long time to get it to market. But once it’s there, they iterate to perfect the original vision.

In the year or two after Apple launches an iPhone or an iPad, everybody falsely believes Apple can do nothing wrong.

But then, as we get further away from the last launch and closer to the next one, everybody falsely believes Apple can do nothing right.

Completely separate and unrelated to false perceptions about Apple, Google lately has been on fire. And lately they’ve been kicking butt not only in their traditional role of algorithm-based Internet services, but also in Apple’s sandboxes—namely design and hardware.

Apple has never been the kind of company that copies out of a lack of vision. Nor have they avoided copying.

What’s great about Apple is that they develop an ultra-clear vision about how to maximize the user experience, then they make that experience happen regardless of whether the solutions have to be invented, copied or—most commonly—Apple’s own unique spin on something invented elsewhere.

There are many ways in which Apple should not copy Google. But there are six ways Apple should copy Google and, in doing so, make Apple a better company with better products.

I’ve written a lot about Apple’s ability to create new markets, which may be among its chief contributions to the world.

In several cases, from media players to multi-touch phones to tablets, others in the industry have tried to get a market going without success.Then Apple came along with a bold, killer information appliance and not only dominated the market, but created it.

I’ve notice a new trend lately: Now markets are being created based substantially on nothing more than the expectation that Apple will enter it with a killer product.

The people who believe Apple will sell a TV set are right. And the people who believe Apple won’t sell a TV set are also right. Here’s why.

Amazon is beating Apple in the eBooks racket by using Apple’s own pricing strategy for music.

But Apple can still clobber Amazon by out-Appling not the iTunes pricing strategy, but the Apple marketing strategy: Create a vastly better user experience for both content creators and content consumers! Oh, and focus on audio.

Here’s how.

I’ve been exploring for months what the ultimate mobile setup would be — my laptop, tablet, phone and other mobile devices — and now I’m starting to put it together.

There’s no way around it: The Apple, Android and Windows fanboys are all going to hate my conclusions and barbeque my decisions.

Why? Because you’re expected to take sides, for some reason. You’re supposed to be an Apple fanboy and get all your stuff from Apple. Or you’re supposed to be an Apple hater, and denounce everything that the company does.

Objectivity and reason get buried under the vitriol.

I’m not out to help Apple or Google. I’m out to help myself, and get the best mobile experience I possibly can.

My conclusion is that as of right now, no one company can provide the best overall mobile experience by itself anymore — not even Apple. And neither can Google, Samsung or any other company.

So let’s start with the opinions, conclusions and decisions that are going to make the haters hate. 

Apple posted a public notice called “Apple’s Commitment to Customer Privacy” in which they dodge and weave their way through key bits of information.

It’s not clear whether this deliberately cagey language is done to comply with the unconstitutional and illegal FISA requirements or whether Apple chose to hide this information for its own purposes, but I suspect the former, and I’ll tell you why.

But first, let’s look at Apple’s constrained, disingenuous statement.

eWorld Is Where I Wanna Be

I remember when I got my first computer, ever, at the age of 24. It was a Macintosh Performa 638CD, and it came with this sweet little 14.4 baud modem that was my entree to the whole of the internet, which really wasn’t that popular back then.

I remember finding this cool little icon on the Mac with a little hand-drawn person on it, called eWorld. Hmm, I wondered. What the heck was eWorld?

Clicking through, I found an adorable little electronic village, all in that hand-drawn, gentle style. Oh, this must be like Compuserve, or Prodigy, right?

Well, yes and no. The softer, gentler world of eWorld was only for Macs, and it was my favorite place to go. Never mind that it was kind of empty; it was beautiful and I loved it.

Let’s be honest about what we really want from Apple this week. We all want to know if Apple can still blow us away, or if they’re just a boring company now.

There are two schools of thought.

Circumstantial evidence may suggest that Apple has acquired the predictive search app Grokr. And if they haven’t done, they should do.

Grokr has been called the “Google Now for iOS.”

With Grokr’s predictive search capability and Siri’s natural language capability combined into a single feature could put Apple in the overall lead in the crucial area of virtual assistant technology.

Here’s why Apple needs to buy Grokr (and why I think they already did).

The eBook publishing price-fixing scandal raised its fugly head again this week when the US Justice Department filed documents in advance of the June 3 trial in New York.

Among those documents was a series of emails and documents in which eBook pricing strategy and tactics are discussed.

An email from late founder and CEO Steve Jobs to News Corporation’s James Murdoch got all the attention. (The email itself was harmless but parts of it printed out of context sounded vaguely conspiratorial and old-boys clubbish.)

To me, the scandal is buried in those emails and testimony records. We learned that Apple used its control over app approvals to exert pressure on companies for reasons totally unrelated to the apps.

Does this bother you? It should.

Listen, you tech-savvy, trend-resisting cynic you. I want you to stop dismissing wearable computing as a pointless, narcissistic fad.

Wearable computing is not for people too lazy to look at their phones. It’s not a trendy toy for wealthy yuppies. And it’s not about joining Robert Scoble in the shower.

What you need to know is this: Wearable computing is the next evolution of consumer electronics. And it changes everything for everyone and not just the people actually wearing the computing.

And it will change Apple, too. Here’s how.

Apple haters, Android geeks and misinformed Wall Street analysts will tell you that Apple’s iPhone is falling behind because Apple can’t innovate anymore.

I don’t buy the Apple-doesn’t-innovate BS. Apple is super innovative, and their innovation is focused, disciplined and ultimately results in industry-dominating revenue and profits.

But iPhones are still lacking some of the best innovations out there. This isn’t because Apple can’t innovate. It’s because Apple can’t share. Apple can’t play nice with others. Apple wants to control the user experience, even at the expense of the user.

Apple isn’t open.

This quality used to be a benefit because it prevented the platform from becoming an ugly, confusing, fragmented mess.

But in the past month, Apple’s lack of openness has become a serious problem.

Here’s what I’m talking about.

The “i” in the next iPhone will stand for “identity.”

When people hear rumors and read about Apple’s patents for NFC, they think: “Oh, good, the iPhone will be a digital wallet.”

When they hear rumors about fingerprint scanning and remember that Apple bought the leading maker of such scanners, they think: “Oh, good, the iPhone will be more secure.”

But nobody is thinking different about this combination. Everybody is thinking way too small.

I believe Apple sees the NFC chip and fingerprint scanner as part of a Grand Strategy: To use the iPhone as the solution to the digital identity problem.

NFC plus biometric security plus bullet-proof encryption deployed at iPhone-scale adds up to the death of passwords, credit cards, security badges, identity theft and waiting in line.

Tim Cook is a well-liked CEO, at least according to employee ratings on Glassdoor, a website that allows employees of any company to post reviews, ratings, and other such metadata about the companies they work for.

The current rating of Apple CEO Tim Cook on the service is a high 94 percent, gathered from all the employees who have rated him on the service, a total of 724 as of this writing. While Glassdoor is an opt-in survey system, it is anonymous. If they hated the guy, they’d probably say so. Anonymity plus the internet is anything but overly polite.

Alternative iOS informational website, AppShopper, had an app that was pulled from the App Store last December due to a conflict with new App Store rules that went into effect at that time. The team behind the app, who also run the website, have spent the hiatus working hard on a new app that is both compliant with Apple’s current App Store rules and useful to consumers.

AppShopper Social was announced today as live in the App Store, bringing with it a host of new social discovery systems along with the familiar Wish List functionality it’s always had.

This is a completely separate app, so if you still have the original AppShopper app on your iPhone or iPad, you can use them both alongside each other.

There’s an argument in the platform wars, and also on Wall Street, that goes something like this: “Apple doesn’t innovate anymore. It moves too slowly, and is being taken over by more nimble, more innovative rivals.”

Any success Apple has is the result of slick marketing, rather than the newest technology. But now, Apple is a laggard and is being overtaken by more nimble companies.

Apple has an “innovation problem,” according to Forbes.

“Samsung is innovating faster than Apple,” according to Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster.

“Why Doesn’t Apple Innovate?” asks CEO.com.

For Apple haters, this argument feels good to make. Unfortunately, it fails the test of fact and reason. Here’s why.

Apple is working on the use of flexible-glass touch displays. Which products will Apple use flexible displays in?

The answer is: all of them.

When people think about flexible displays, they think about small-screen gadgets like iWatches and curved-glass iPhones. What most don’t realize is that flexible displays can bring some amazing benefits to a device, even if the display itself isn’t curved.

And Apple has patents on all of it.

Here’s how Apple might deploy flexible displays to transform every product they make.

How low will Apple go?

First, Apple CEO Tim Cook was forced to grovel and kowtow to the Chinese Communist Party over their obviously false and politically motivated claims about Apple’s warranty.

Now, Apple is being publicly insulted and used by Facebook.

There is no way Steve Jobs would have put up with this kind of humiliating abuse.

Here’s what’s going on.

According to “two people familiar with the matter,” Apple is super close to closing a deal with a couple of major music labels for its own streaming music service, one which is reportedly better than the deal that the labels are getting from rival service, Pandora.

While other reports have Apple “lowballing” the record industry on royalty rates of up to half what Pandora pays, CNET is reporting that new revenue options could make the iRadio deal better for labels in the long run.

The worst thing that could possibly happen to Apple has now happened: The company has run afoul of the authoritarian government of China. 

Gatekeepers of the world’s largest and one of the fastest growing markets for every product Apple makes, the Chinese Communist Party-controlled government has decided to stop and reverse Apple’s growth in the country.

Here’s what’s going on.

We learned this week that Google, Samsung and LG are all planning smartwatches. 

Sony, Pebble, Cookoo, I’m Smart, MetaWatch and Martian already have pretty sophisticated smartwatches available, all of which interoperate with the iPhone.

You can be sure that 100 Chinese companies will make inexpensive smartwatches that support either the iPhone or Android or both.

And, of course, Apple is rumored to be working on a curved-glass “iWatch.”

Here’s why I believe Apple’s smartwatch will have a market advantage.

Chinese actor and singer Peter Ho criticized Apple on China’s Twitter-like Weibo service this week. 

But don’t blame Ho. He was apparently just following orders. But orders from whom? And why?

Apple was caught last year selling Apple Certified refurbished hardware on eBay using the pseudonym Refurbished-Outlet. Allegedly.

The prices and details of these products were generally the same as refurbished products sold on the apple.com site. The products come with a one-year warranty and mobile devices contain a new battery.

But this week it emerged that Apple is lowering the prices on eBay, sometimes by quite a bit. For example, Apple normally charges $999 for a refurbed MacBook Air with 128 GB. But that same system with the same Apple inspection and one-year warranty went on sale in the eBay store for $899. Prices on other hardware products were slashed similarly.

(In addition, we learned, the company as been apparently working with “power sellers” on eBay to sell Apple hardware. For example, until they ran out of the 500 units put up for sale of 13-inch MacBook Pros selling for $999. These are new devices, not refurbished, and Apple is probably using the “channel” to clear out inventory.)

It seems to me that Apple is working behind the scenes to experiment with different models for selling refurbished and excess inventory. I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple was also trying other channels for doing the same thing that we don’t know about. And I also wouldn’t be surprised if refurbished gadgets vanished from the Apple site altogether, and for those items to be sold in the darker alleys of the Internet (like eBay) exclusively instead.

But I think there’s a ginormous opportunity here for embracing “used” in a big way — and it’s something only Apple could pull off.