A number of recent opinion posts have suggested that Apple has a real shot at the gaming market.
Part of this flurry of commentary stemmed from a rumor, which turned out to be false, that Apple CEO Tim Cook met with executives at game publisher Valve.
“Apple is Set to Change Gaming,” said one headline. The deck went on: “It’s just a matter of time before Apple storms into the console business.”
We’ve been banging on about connecting proper cameras to the internet for quite a while now, and it seems that at last these cameras are starting to catch up to the world of smartphone cameras. Nikon’s new D3200 SLR updates the D3100 with some slightly better specs, but the big news is that it can be used with an optional Wi-Fi unit for sending photos to your iPhone, iPad, or whatever piece of junk you use instead.
If you’re thinking “Whatever, Charlie. This is Nikon. How much does this thing cost?” then I have your answer. A surprisingly cheap $60. That’s way less than an Eye-Fi card, and hopefully it’s way more reliable.
In Ray Bradbury’s dystopian sci-fi classic Fahrenheit 451, books are outlawed by the government in the 24th century.
According to Bradbury, this imagined ban didn’t happen overnight. It was preceded by gradual trivialization of information in general. People increasingly preferred TV sound-bites and frivolous, out-of-context nuggets of information over reasoned argument and well-researched books about important ideas.
Eventually, writers and readers of books became so culturally marginalized that it was easy for the government to just eliminate them and their work by burning down any home or building that contained books.
Bradbury’s nightmare is in fact happening, and way ahead of schedule.
In the 1984 novel Neuromancer, author William Gibson described a future in which “implants, nerve-splicing, and micro bionics” could turn people into internet-connected cyborgs.
If you like that idea, you’ll be happy to know that Google is working on it.
The company’s “Project Glass” augmented reality glasses is the first step toward Gibson’s cyborg vision. The glasses project images into one eye, enabling real life (what you see with your actual eyes) to acquire menu items, contextual information, turn-by-turn directions and more. You can take a picture by blinking your eye.
If the idea that augmented reality glasses are a first step toward being assimilated into the Borg, you should know that the head of the project in Google’s “Google X” labs, Babak Parviz, has already developed an electronic contact lens that can display data to the wearer’s eye.
The first step is glasses. The second is contact lenses. And the third is internet-connected eye implants.
Google isn’t the only organization taking these steps. Such technologies will soon become generally available. But will they come from Apple, too?
In a nutshell, Kazwell says Apple will wait and see how the market responds to Google’s Project Glass and he implies that Apple will follow Google into the cyborgification of mankind.
I think he’s wrong. I think Apple will never cross that line. Here’s why.
Last week, I published an opinion piece proposing that Apple open a corporate museum. It was also published on Forbes.com. The story started trending by Sunday evening. Then somewhat amusingly, it got buried first thing Monday morning by the wall-to-wall coverage of Ashton Kutcher, who’s to play Steve Jobs in an upcoming indie film. To be honest, I really wasn’t all that amused.
I live on the east coast, but I have been to Silicon Valley twice; visiting Apple’s mothership was a must-do for me.
Perhaps you feel the same way. It’s exciting for us fans, though all you can really do is park, take pictures out in front of the main 1 Infinite Loop building, and the Apple sign near the street, then visit The Company Store. It’s a special treat as they don’t sell Apple devices, they sell logoed items not found anywhere else. I don’t know if I would go so far as to call my visit a pilgrimage, but it was a top priority for me, if I was going to be anywhere near Silicon Valley.
What the world needs now isn’t love, sweet love. It needs more companies like Apple.
Critics slam Apple for not giving more to charity. It’s a reasonable complaint. Apple should be more philanthropic. Under Tim Cook they probably will be.
However, Apple helps the world in a far more profound way than some annual contribution to United Way.
Apple represents an approach to business that “lifts all boats,” to quote a well known cliche.
Apple is the global economy’s single most powerful economic force opposing a great death spiral in which margins are squeezed, goods get shoddier, people make less money and our lives just get cheaper in every way.
Another sunny day at the Foxconn factory. Photo Ged Carroll (CC BY 2.0)
Bleeding hearts the world over are very happy with the news that Apple and Foxconn are working together to make employee working conditions better in their Chinese factories. But there is a group of people who aren’t so pleased about the reductions in working hours: the workers themselves.
Mark Shields’ petition on Change.org sparked by Mike Daisey’s This American Life story earned over 250,000 online signatures and led to protests outside Apple stores across the country.
That doesn’t sit well with Paul Dost, who launched a counter petition after the TAL story was debunked. Cult of Mac reached out to Dost via email for the story behind the anti-petition petition.
Apple CEO Tim Cook this week talked about a “post-PC world.” Many people treated his comments as controversial, exaggerated or outright marketing lies.
In fact, everything Cook said about it was literally true and perfectly accurate. He said the post-PC revolution “is happening all around us at an amazing pace and Apple is at the forefront and leading this revolution.”
He didn’t say we currently live in a post-PC world, or that in the future PCs would not exist. He specifically said “we’re talking about a world where the PC is no longer the center of your digital world.”
What he didn’t say — so I will — was that the transition from the PC world to the post-PC world involves a transition from a Microsoft world to an Apple world.
For the past few decades, Windows has been the dominant platform and Mac OS has been a minority operating system. Here’s why their positions will be reversed in the years to come.
Like trying to demonstrate a stereo through the speaker of a mono TV, or showing an ad for a color TV on a black-and-white set, it’s almost impossible to show off the new iPad’s Retina display on your sucky old low-res screen. Almost, but not quite. As you can see from the picture above, Apple has added a clever interactive loupe to the iPad’s Features page.
Raging Grannies protest outside the Palo Alto store Feb. 13
If you happen by the Palo Alto Apple Store Monday afternoon, that group of elderly women dressed in white dancing the robot to techno music on the sidewalk aren’t some funky flashmob.
They’re Raging Grannies, and they’re are mad as hell about worker conditions in China where Apple products are made.
Galvanized by a recent Mike Daisey story on NPR about Foxconn, they’re staging monthly protests outside the Palo Alto Apple store. They’ll be on the sidewalk grooving to bring more attention to Apple’s labor policies in China at 3 p.m. on March 12.
Is Apple getting into the car business? No, Apple isn’t building a car. But it makes perfect sense that Apple would be working on an in-dash system.
The car blog Jalopnik said this week that a Chinese head-hunting firm is apparently helping Apple hire someone expert in the manufacturing of car parts. The recruiter apparently placed the position in the automotive section of LinkedIn. The listing said:
“Apple(China) Looking for SQE/NPI with over 4 years Mechanical engineering background familiar with CNC/die casting/stamping/plastic injection, can use APQP/ PPAP/SPC to control product quality.”
PatentlyApple.com has reported over the years multiple patents held by Apple for in-car user interfaces.
The circumstantial evidence suggests that Apple is at least thinking about getting serious about the automotive dashboard business.
And getting into the car business just makes sense for Apple. Here’s why.
Cathy Edwards was the CTO and cofounder of Chomp, an innovative app search engine acquired by Apple. She is now a senior iTunes engineer. She'll be working on one of the thorniest problems faced by the iOS users -- how to find the best apps.
Apple announced this week the acquisition of Chomp, an app-search startup.
Chomp CEO Ben Keighran is reportedly working already in Apple’s marketing department, and CTO Cathy Edwards is already employed as a senior iTunes engineer.
Chomp crawls the data associated with all the apps in an app store and uses a sophisticated algorithm-based search function to enable people to search and actually find the apps they really want. Less appreciated by the public (but not Apple) is what appear to be incredible analytics tools, enabling a deep understanding of what people are searching for, how successful they are at finding it and detecting meaningful trends in app demand.
Sound familiar? Search algorithms and analytics are Google’s core competency.
Protesters at Apple headquarters in Cupertino. Image credit: Ted Smith.
A small but determined group of protesters from consumer watchdog group SumOfUs gathered at Apple headquarters in Cupertino and headed inside the shareholder’s meeting to ask questions about working conditions at Foxconn.
ABC aired an episode of Nightline last night showing exclusive video from inside “Apple’s Chinese factories.” In the video, presenter Bob Weir explores the production lines at Foxconn. Two things really stand out. First, the place is clean. And I mean really clean. Second, the iPhone is essentially hand made, with 141 human steps needed to assemble it.
The iPad 3 is a little fatter than the iPad 2, but hides it well. Photo MIC Gadget/Flickr
With just weeks to go before the iPad 3 launch, the drip of hardware leaks is turning into a torrent. The latest — and probably best — photos of the new iPad’s case come from MIC Gadget, and show the new tablet to be a little thicker, and sporting a larger camera lens.
Another Apple announcement, another de-emphasis on the Mac brand. It seems that every time Apple opens its corporate pie-hole, the venerable Macintosh brand drops down a notch in importance, and the Mac’s future demise seems more likely.
Four years ago, I wrote a column about the incompatibility between Apple and China . And four years later, that observation is proving to be truer than ever.
What do I mean by “incompatible”? Countries have cultures. And companies have cultures, too. And the cultures of China and Apple are diametrically opposed to each other.
As recent events have demonstrated, Apple is incompatible with China’s business culture, legal system and worker culture.
Life is too short to date PCs. That’s the belief of dating site Cupidtino, which since its 2010 launch has amassed 32,000 Apple aficionados.
Whether you believe that affinity for a consumer electronics brand can spark romance or not, narrowing down the dating pool by trying to find some commonality can’t hurt. And Apple’s insanely great devices are as good a place to start as any. With Cupidtino, you can use the website and recently-released iPhone app for free; for $4.99 a month you get unlimited access to messages and a chat feature.
Cult of Mac got these Mac-loving dating tips from co-founder and CTO Amol Kelkar. Kelkar, once a PC by day and a Mac at night (he worked for nearly a decade as a software engineer at Microsoft), tells us what kind of opposites attract on a Mac-centric dating site, a place dripping with single Macs in the real world and whether a PC-version is in the works.
Your iPhone and iPad are great paper replacements, but they couldn’t actively stop it. Until now: PaperKarma is an iPhone app which lets you stop paper junk mail, just by snapping a photo of it.
Apple’s recent quarterly earnings demonstrated insane success. As a result, failing companies like Sony and JC Penney have suddenly reorganized their missions to copy Apple.
Unfortunately, they will fail, because they don’t understand why Apple succeeds.
Every major tech company offers training and certification programs for their solutions, including Apple. For years, it’s been common advice to pursue certifications if you’re looking to get a job in IT for the first time or to if you want to move up the IT ladder. Certifications can sometimes make up for lack of on the job experience since they provide a way of measuring knowledge. If you expend the effort to pursue certifications for technologies that you use (or have used) on the job, it’s common wisdom that they’ll give you a leg up not just in getting a job but in negotiating your salary and benefits package.
Based on that wisdom it isn’t surprising that tech training programs with a goal of getting you certified are a big business. It doesn’t hurt that some US education loan programs, including those for returning veterans, can be used to finance training classes as an alternative to college. Yet a recent study shows that some IT certifications no longer equal success and higher pay. Does this mean certifications are worthless? Yes and no. The truth is that it often depends on the certification(s) in question. With iOS devices and Macs becoming business staples, the an obvious question is… are Apple’s certifications worth pursuing?
