Mike Elgan - page 7

I told you Saturday what Apple’s education initiatives launched today mean from a technology competition perspective: Apple intends to wrest control of the entire publishing industry from Amazon.com.

But what does it mean for educators and students? I talked to seven innovative educators and one university student live during the Apple announcement to find out. The conversation took place in a Google+ hangout that I recorded.

Apple’s most direct competitor in the future won’t be Microsoft or Google, but Amazon.com.

With the release of the Amazon Kindle Fire, Amazon.com declared war directly on Apple’s core business model, which is to sell integrated solutions for the consumption and creation of digital content.

Starting Thursday, Apple strikes back.

The biggest company at CES this year is Apple. No, Apple isn’t giving keynotes, hosting a booth or even taking meetings, as far as I know. But Apple dominates CES like cheesy hotel casinos dominate the Las Vegas Strip.

A consumer electronics show without Apple is like an Internet search show without Google, a social networking show without Facebook or a, er, MacWorld Expo without Apple.

But that’s not why Apple’s presence is so large at CES. The reason is that half the initiatives, product directions and announcements are responses to Apple, or anticipation of what Apple might do in the future.

A famous Apple campaign goes: “Here’s to the crazy ones.” Of course the crazy ones usually get institutionalized. And that’s exactly what has happened to Apple. It seems that in recent weeks, Apple has been or announced plans to be, institutionalized.

Apple, which represents the newest of the new, both aesthetically and technologically, is embracing the old. Here’s what I’m talking about.

In September of 2010, I wrote a column in this space deflating the idea that Apple would ever make and sell a wristwatch.

I still think my reasoning was sound. But I didn’t know then what I know now. Specifically, two Apple technologies have become central to Apple’s long-term strategy. These two products — Siri and iCloud — change everything.

And because of this new information, plus a few new things we’ve learned about Apple in the past year, I’m completely reversing my opinion. I now believe the current rumors that Apple is getting into the wristwatch business.

I even think we can accurately imagine what Apple is likely to do in the wristwatch department.

As the Apple iPad succeeds beyond expectations, it leaves in its wake an enormous body count of dead and dying products. While consumers love it, several major industries have grown to hate it. And for very good reason.

Never in the history of consumer electronics has there been a computer more universally desirable than the Apple iPad.

Market share numbers — 83% of the market — hint at the popularity and market dominance of the iPad.

But here’s the most interesting fact about the iPad’s incredible success that most people overlook: The qualities that make iPad desirable are replicable on bigger platforms — and may even be magnified by them. Which is why it’s perfectly reasonable to predict dominant market share for the iOS-like Mac desktops of the future.

First, let’s understand the unprecedented popularity of the iPad. 

I waded into the mob at my tiny, local Apple store recently and actually heard someone say: “Wow: It’s like Grand Central Station in here.”

This Friday, the real “Grand Central Station,” which is actually called Grand Central Terminal, will itself become an Apple Store.

Of everything Apple has ever “shipped,” I think the store at Grand Central will be the greatest. Here’s why.

In the 50s, some futurists predicted food pills instead of meals. It never happened.

The biggest reason futurists fail is that too many predictions are based on the possible, rather than the desirable.

It’s now possible for anyone to take all their nutrition from pills. But people enjoy eating food. That’s why we don’t take pills instead.

If you want to predict the future, you need to deconstruct human nature. You also need to know what will be possible. Where these two things intersect is where accurate predictions can be made.

And that’s why I can already tell you what your iMac will be like in a few years.

The Apple iPhone dominates the world of consumer smart phones, but is a bit of a laggard in the business market, right?

Wrong! It turns out that the opposite is true. Apple is in fact a relatively minor player in the global consumer smart phone market, but by far the dominant player in business.

According to Gartner, Android has 52.5% global smart phone market share, Symbian 16.9%, iOS 15%, BlackBerry 11%, Bada 2.2% and Microsoft 1.5%.

In business, however, the iPhone has recently emerged as the top market-share leader with 45%. To achieve this dominance, Apple recently edged out BlackBerry, which has now fallen to 32% of the market. Android gets 21%, recently surpassing Nokia.

To be accurate, these numbers are apples and oranges, so to speak. The Gartner numbers are for both consumer and business and worldwide, and the iPhone numbers are businesses worldwide.

Android’s big global consumer numbers and iPhone’s big business numbers say more about whose got money and who hasn’t than what people’s preferences would be if all phones were priced the same. The fact that very cheap Android phones exist in the world, but very cheap iPhones do not exist, explains much.

Still, it’s a shocking result that’s counter to the conventional wisdom.

Perhaps even more shocking is BlackBerry’s recent second-place status in businesses and enterprises to the iPhone. Business is all BlackBerry’s got. Yet iPhone clobbers RIM in this space now.

More to the point, how can a phone that supposedly ignores business concerns surpass a phone that’s totally designed for business in the business marketplace?

Here’s why iPhone beats BlackBerry in business.

Fragmentary and occasional reports suggest that Apple has been negotiating with China Mobile for three years without reaching a deal over official support for iPhones on the carrier’s network.

The sticking point: China Mobile wants a percentage of app revenue.

Many US pundits have written that Apple should bend over and do whatever China Mobile wants. Why? Because China Mobile is so ginormous that Apple could make a killing from all those new customers, even if it shared app revenue.

I think they’re flat-out wrong. Apple should hold firm, and refuse to make an exception for China Mobile. Here’s why.

A few years ago, everything was peaceful in the Valley of Silicon. The relationship between Apple and Google was cozy and friendly. The two rising and dominant superpowers pursued compatible, non-overlapping businesses, for the most part, and helped each other fight mutual competitors like Microsoft, Amazon and others. Google’s founders worshiped Steve Jobs. Eric Schmidt was on the Apple board.

But then Google recklessly chose to attack Apple head-on with Android.

The future of Apple’s most profitable businesses will run iOS, including iPods, iPhones, iPads and probably laptop and desktop systems of the future — not to mention TV. Google’s decision to compete head-on with Apple for multi-touch platforms ended the alliance.

Steve Jobs took it personally, and told biographer Walter Isaacson that he was “willing to go thermonuclear war on this.”

But what did he mean by that?

In the immediate aftermath of Steve Jobs’ death on October 5, the praise was overwhelming.

He was the greatest CEO in history, a prescient visionary, prolific inventor, influential designer, brilliant artist. He could walk across San Francisco Bay without getting his New Balance 991 sneakers wet, bend light with his will and turn dog shit into gold.

Then the backlash hit.

About a week after Jobs’ death, the promotional tour for Steve Jobs, the Walter Isaacson biography, began in ernest. This week, the book itself hit. And so did the “dark side” revelations. Plus, former rivals and Apple employees with an axe to grind came pouring out of the woodwork to tell snarky stories about Jobs’ flawed morality, bizarre personality and petty misconduct.

As they are wont to do, the lame-stream media pounced on the negative angle.

The praise was too much. But so is the ongoing character assassination. It’s time to bring the pendulum back to the center, and provide context for some of the most egregious dissing.

In particular, there are four major falsehoods about Jobs being thrown around in the past three weeks that need to be addressed.

I was wrong about the iPhone 4s. I said it would be great. I predicted it would be the best phone ever built. The truth, it turns out, is that the iPhone 4s kind of sucks.

There. I said it.

And it’s not just the iPhone by itself. The iOS 5 upgrade, the design of some new apps and iCloud all add up to a degraded experience with using the iPhone.

Here are the 6 major things wrong with the new iPhone.

(Note: This is a promoted link to a story written by one of our writers for an outside site.)

The original iPod, just a decade old today, was little more than a hard disk with earbuds. But this humble little gadget launched five revolutions that made consumer electronics what it is today.

In fact, everything Apple is today sprang from the iPod seed. From Apple’s revenues to design influence to the fundamental business and distribution models that glue the industry together, the iPod started it all.

So put in those white earbuds and click “play.” Because if you love consumer electronics, you’re about to hear how the iPod started it all.

Planted in your shiny new iPhone 4s and in the iOS 5 are the seeds of tomorrow’s Mac of the future, and indeed the future of all computers. You can find them if you know where to look. (And I’ll tell you where below.)

It’s not supposed to be this way. In the Microsoft world, at least, new technology starts at the top and “trickles down” from bigger and more powerful computers over time to mobile devices and eventually cell phones. If you’re focused on the machines, this makes sense, as larger computers are more capable of handling powerful new features.

But if you’re focused on the user, as Apple is, this approach doesn’t make sense. Apple has developed what I believe is a unique strategy: introduce new interfaces and new ways to interact with computers and the Internet on the smallest devices first, then scale them up over time, eventually ending up as desktop features.

Here’s Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak getting two white iPhone 4s’s set up at the Los Gatos, California, Apple Store today, just eight minutes after the doors opened. Woz was first in line, after having waiting since noon the previous day.

The woman in the center is Woz’s wife, Janet Hill. It’s unknown whether one is his and the other is hers, or whether they’re both for Woz. He’s been known to carry two iPhones so he can surf the Internet on one while talking on the other.

That shiny thing on the table, by the way, is Woz’s bad-ass stainless steel business card.

Apple announced speech recognition for the next iPhone. Big deal. Android’s had it for more than a year. Apple is just playing “catch-up” and the feature’s not really earth-shattering anyway. Right?

Wrong. Everything in that opening paragraph is wrong, except the sentence that reads “big deal.” Siri is a very big deal, the biggest of deals.

In fact, Siri is the most important thing to happen to mobile in this decade so far. 

You can’t truly understand the life and career of Steve Jobs without understanding the culture and history of Silicon Valley.

Steve Jobs was a child of the valley. And the spirit and energy of Silicon Valley coursed through his veins and was imprinted on his DNA.

Steven Paul Jobs was born in the city of San Francisco on February 24, 1955. He was adopted by a couple who lived, and who raised their children, in the idyllic Silicon Valley town of Mountain View, California.

If you were forced to choose an absolute geographic and cultural center of Silicon Valley, it’s possible that Steve Jobs’ childhood home might be the exact location.

Ho-hum. Another iPhone. Tuesday’s Apple event is going to be boooo-ring, right?

Well, not so fast. I think that from a milestone perspective, Tuesday’s announcement may be among the most important Apple has ever made. 

In a single week, Facebook has become not just a competitor to Apple, but the Mother of All Apple Competitors.

Facebook this week announced a series of initiatives and partnerships that the New York Times says makes Facebook a “primary entertainment hub.”

Facebook’s 800 million users will be able to play and share music from Spotify, MOG, Rdio, Rhapsody, Turntable.fm, VEVO, Slacker, Songza, TuneIn, iheartradio, Deezer, Earbits, Jelli, mixcloud and other services, right from their profiles and News Feeds.

Facebook will enable the discovery, sharing, buying and renting of movies and TV shows via Netflix, Hulu, Blockbuster, IMDB, Dailymotion and Flixter.

And just as the iPad is gaining traction as the electronic newspaper of choice, Facebook announces partnerships with the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Slate, the Associated Press, Reuters, Yahoo News and others to make Facebook the default online newspaper site.

Facebook is now more directly threatening to Apple’s business model than Microsoft, Google and Sony combined. 

Today, your iPhone is a gadget, a mere consumer appliance. But your future iPhone will become increasingly human. You’ll have conversations with it. The phone will make decisions, prioritize the information it presents to you, and take action on your behalf — rescheduling meetings, buying movie tickets, making reservations and much more.

In short, your iPhone is evolving into a personal assistant that thinks, learns and acts. And it’s all happening sooner than you think, thanks to the guy pictured above.

Apple Chairman Steve Jobs has always wanted Apple to “change the world.” Of course it has, but only the wealthy, tech-savvy, privileged part of the world. Despite its incredible success, Apple hasn’t changed the world for billions of poor people.

To date, Apple has changed the world only by solving only first-world problems: “My Windows laptop came loaded with crapware and stickers.” “My PC is noisy and ugly.” “I hate audio CDs and CD players.” “My cell phone is counterintuitive.” “I want to surf the web while watching TV, but my netbook sucks.”

These are the kinds of problems Apple has solved for millions of people.

But there are bigger problems out there that Apple is in a unique position to solve.

In fact, a single solution could help solve five real problems, and change the world in five meaningful ways. It could even accelerate Apple’s phenomenal growth.

I challenge incoming CEO Tim Cook to consider the following proposal.

Every time some company ships a touch tablet, the press immediately compares it to the Apple iPad.

“Motorola Xoom Android Tablet May Be First iPad Killer,” enthused MSNBC.com back in January.

As it becomes clear that Amazon’s long-awaited tablet is really an Android-based Kindle optimized for buying things from Amazon.com, some headlines are suggesting that it’s not a competitor to the iPad after all, but just a glorified eBook reader.

“No Worries, iPad, Amazon’s Android Tablet Is Just a Nook-Killer,” said Forbes.com.

These headlines have it all wrong. The upcoming Amazon tablet not only competes directly against the iPad, it’s the only tablet that does so.

No other company besides Apple and Amazon are selling tablets as part of a larger strategy to control the future of music, movies, TV shows, books and more.

Read the rest of the story here.

(Picture courtesy of WIRED.)

Since the iPad first shipped in April of last year, the tablet has been slammed by critics as a content consumption device, a feature-limited Tablet PC and a pointless plaything for rich yuppies.

Apple itself positioned the iPad as a living room knee-top device, something for mindlessly flipping through apps or games while watching Comedy Central. Steve Jobs even introduced the iPad while sitting on a padded living room chair.

All this spin makes our friend, the iPad, come across like some kind of lazy slacker. In fact, the iPad has become a hard-working professional. But why?