Mike Elgan - page 6

The publication MIT Technology Review compares major consumer technologies, from the telephone and television to the mobile phone and tablet. Their conclusion is that mobile phones have gone “mainstream” faster than any other major technology in history, achieving this status in just 20 years.

They also break down speed of acceptance in stages, which makes for interesting comparison. For example, it took landline telephones about 45 years go to from 5% penetration in the United States to 50%, compared with just 7 years for mobile phones.

What’s most surprising about the report is that touch tablets are actually spreading way faster than even cell phones. And this fact is more interesting still when you consider that one company, Apple, is almost solely responsible for this growth, and one product, the iPad, pretty much is the touch-tablet market.

Read the whole report here.

Speculating about future Apple products is really hard to do well. That doesn’t keep everyone from trying. Even grizzled Apple-watching veterans often fail catastrophically with each new Apple announcement.

The reason it’s difficult is that “evidence,” which would normally be the best tool for predicting things, doesn’t work in Apple’s case.

The best criteria are strategic and cultural analyses. But even these are not perfectly reliable.

If you’ve struggled to accurately guess in the past what Apple will announce, don’t feel bad. Even Apple executives themselves don’t know until often very late in the game.

Here’s why predicting Apple products is so hard.

Everybody and their mother is trying to cash in on Apple’s success, or dictate the evolution of media and technology through the courts.

Shameless gold diggers, grand-standing government attorneys, vindictive rivals, patent trolls and, well, good old-fashioned morons are dragging the world’s most valuable company into court to try and get their piece of Apple’s $110 billion pile of cash.

You won’t believe some of the crazy lawsuits Apple is currently defending itself against.

Apple had a crazy earnings call this week. The company nearly doubled quarterly profits, vastly exceeding Wall Street expectations.

Apple’s stock price will probably now reverse course and head back into the stratosphere, and for one reason: China.

Apple sold 35.1 million phones during the quarter worldwide, which provided half the total revenue reported by the company. Half!

Chinese phone sales in the reported quarter were, incredibly, five times higher than the same quarter last year. What’s surprising about this growth is that Apple still hasn’t signed a long-awaited deal with China’s largest carrier — the world’s largest carrier — China Mobile.

So it has become clear to everyone that Apple’s highest-revenue product ever has enormous future sales potential in China.

Also: Apple feels that it has far fewer points of sale (stores) in China than it needs.

When the China Mobile deal happens and Apple builds more stores, watch out. China is likely to become Apple’s biggest handset market, far exceeding even the United States.

Overall revenue for China was $7.9 billion, three times higher than last year.

Another crazy milestone: Asia-Pacific revenue for the quarter was actually higher than European revenue for the first time ever. The relative importance of Asia over Europe is likely to continue indefinitely.

Click here to read the rest of the story.

A new report by the University of Manchester’s Center for Research on Socio-Cultural Change says Apple would be able to manufacture iPhones, iPads and all its computers in the United States and still maintain gross margins of 50%.

The report also concludes that Apple’s way of doing business, which involves “hoarding” cash is bad for America.

Read the report here.

(Picture courtesy of the San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center)

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.”

“How Apple Can Conquer the Gaming Industry Without Firing a Shot,” said another headline.

I’m sorry, but this conquering of the gaming market has already happened.

Here’s why. 

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?

Adam Kazwell asked the question on Forbes.com: “How Will Apple Respond To Google’s Project Glass?”

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. 

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.

Here’s how Apple does it. 

Everyone is generous about advising Apple on how it should spend its billions.

Apple should buy Twitter, according to financial analyst and blogger, Barry Ritholtz.

Apple could become a bank, according to consulting company KAE. Or maybe just buy American Express.

Apple should buy a chip manufacturer, Dell, Nintendo, Disney, Tesla, Sprint, Nvidia, VISA, Newsweek, the US Postal Service, according to a seemingly endless list of pundits.

Gimme a break.

I think Apple should buy… nothing. Here’s why. 

WIMP computing was invented during the Nixon Administration.

In 1973, Xerox PARC developed the Alto computer, the first to use all the WIMP elements of windows, icons, menus and a pointing device, also known as a mouse.

And it’s in this nearly 40-year-old paradigm that we find ourselves trapped by a quirk of human nature: We’re creatures of habit. We don’t like to change the way we do things. And so here we are, still using a mouse (most of us, anyway).

Everybody’s excited about the new Apple iPad‘s high-resolution screen. But ultimately, the Retina display is just a pretty face. It can’t do anything that the screens on previous models couldn’t do.

In fact, just about all of the features that are considered “new” in the newiPad are really just bigger helpings of the old capabilities: More pixels on the screen. More graphics performance. More megapixels in the camera. More megabits per second with the mobile broadband connection. There’s more of everything. But what’s fundamentally different?

One of the least appreciated new features is one that truly brings entirely new capabilities to the iPad. That feature is Bluetooth 4.0 support.

Read this column at the Computerworld.com site.

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.

While introducing the new iPad, Apple CEO Tim Cook this week said on stage that we’re in the middle of a “post-PC revolution” and headed into a  “post-PC world.”

And let’s have no illusions: A “post-PC” world is a “post-Mac” world. Why is Apple so eager to usher in such a world?

Clearly the iPad is a “post-PC” device. But the iPod Touch and iPhone? What defines a “post-PC” device?

What did Cook mean, exactly? And why did even former Microsoft executive Ray Ozzie tell Reuters: “Of course we are in a post-PC world.”

Here’s what you need to know about the “post-PC” revolution.

A man bought what he thought was an iPhone in an electronics plaza in Zhengzhou. But when he found out it was fake, he grabbed a kitchen knife and went back to the plaza to find the seller.

After coming back every day for several days unsuccessfully finding the seller, he found another group of counterfeit iPhone sellers, got into an argument and ending up stabbing one of them to death.

Read the rest of the story.

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. 

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.

A company calling itself “Apple China” was caught selling a gas stove branded as the “iphone” with a logo showing an apple with a bite taken out of it.

What will they not think of next?

Via Cloned In China.

Picture courtesy of Sina.

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.

I was on a recent episode of Leo Laporte’s MacBreak Weekly, and after an hour and 45 minutes on a show with “Mac” in the name, the M-word was scarcely mentioned.

No, the Mac brand isn’t going away soon. I’m sure they’ll be upgraded and improved and sold for years to come. And they’re not failing in the market.

But it’s clear that the Mac will die. Sort of. Here’s what I’m talking about. 

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.

Read the rest of this column here.

Samsung is going all-out to promote the Galaxy Note as the company’s new iPhone killer.

The now-famous Superbowl ad imagines a scenario in which iPhone fans waiting in line outside Apple stores for the next phone see a guy using a Galaxy Note with a pen. They’re stunned as they realize that he can draw on maps and pictures using the phone’s stylus. So overwhelmed with the revelation that one might use a pen with a phone, than they bust out of the line and erupt in a display of unbridled enthusiasm all over the city.

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. 

A TV commercial in Taiwan shows an actor dressed like Steve Jobs, but with wings and a halo, onstage introducing a new product. It’s not an Apple product, but a competitor to the iPad called the “Action Pad” from Action Electronics.

In the ad, the translation says: Introducing the next generation of the pad.” The commercial closes with the line: “Thank God, I can finally play another pad.”

Apple is on the brink of becoming the poster child for worker abuse. Journalists and rights organizations are starting to draw attention to the enormous contrast between Apple’s quarterly billions in profits, and the desperate plight of abused workers in China.

And the closer you look, the uglier this issue gets. And it threatens to damage Apple’s long-term prospects for continued growth and success.

Here’s the problem, and also what Apple can do about it.

A smattering of journalist authors are freaking out over Apple’s license agreement for the free new iBooks Author tool.

ZDnet’s Ed Bott called the license agreement “greedy and evil.” PCmag.com’s Sascha Segan wrote: “Like iBooks Author? Apple now owns you.” Even Daring Fireball’s John Gruber called it “Apple at its worst.”

Et tu, Gruber?

What’s strange about these emotional responses to Apple’s legalese is that they fail the reality test. Apple’s iBooks Author terms are neither greedy nor evil; they don’t mean Apple’s “owns you;” and it’s certainly not the worst thing Apple has ever done.

Here. I’ll prove it.