Never say never: in the past ten years, Apple has entered market after market and revolutionized them. The portable media market. The smartphone market. The tablet market. The connected TV market.
Where will it end? Tim Cook has promised Apple will never release a Toasterfridge, but that’s not to say they might not enter the home appliance market… or at least that’s the conceit of this very funny parody ad by Slacktory.
Over the weekend, The NY Times posted another investigative piece in its iEconomy series that about Apple. This installment focused on Apple’s retail stores. As with previous articles in the series, this one focuses on legitimate concerns about the American economy in an age of globalization. Like the other pieces, this one targets Apple specifically and ignores the range of Apple competitors that employ similar practices.
The primary issue that the Times brings up with regard to Apple retail stores is that employees can sell thousands upon thousands of dollars worth of Apple products and still earn a relatively modest wage. The underlying sentiment is that if a retail employee sells so much hardware, he should earn more because he is contributing to Apple’s vast revenues.
The only way for things to shake out that way and remain fair would be if Apple offered performance-based awards or commissions. Apple chose not to do that because doing so would have delivered a fundamentally different customer experience than the one envisioned by Steve Jobs – a fact that the NY Times chose not to explore in any real depth.
Watching the new WWDC 2012 developer video “Introducing Passbook, Part 1,” we couldn’t help but notice that about three minutes in, one of the example passes Apple uses to show off Passbook’s functionality is for a ticket on Oceanic Flight 815 from Sydney to Los Angeles.
If that fictional airline sounds familiar, it should: that’s the same airline and flight as the one which kicks off the events in the hit ABC television series, Lost.
Using that ticket in real life would see you stranded on a mysterious, time-shifting tropical island in the middle of nowhere, where you would have to wrestle with rampaging polar bears, sexy ladies, malevolent insect swarms and an enragingly stupid sixth season that basically boils all of the mysteries down to “a wizard did it.”
Source: developer.apple.com (Developer account required)
Thanks: Alex M!
Macbook Pros with Retina displays; Mountain Lion’s best new features; the secrets of iOS 6; Apple announced a glut of new software and hardware at last week’s World Wide Developers Conference, and if you’d like to relive the glory, or need help making sense of it all, don’ miss the second part of our special-edition WWDC CultCast.
Subscribe now on iTunes to catch both of our special WWDC episodes, and peep the full show notes after the jump!
One of Steve Jobs’s favorite quotes was by Wayne Gretzky, a famous hockey player: “I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.” From the beginning, Apple has been all about looking ahead to the next greatest thing, not concerning itself with aligning with other companies.
It might be Google’s turn to take a lesson from Apple and do the same, or they may miss out on an opportunity of monumental proportion. What is the opportunity you ask? AirPlay.
Apple’s developer release of iOS 6 created an instant mystery: Podcasts are missing from the iTunes app! Who dunnit?
At least, that’s the false meme that emerged. In fact, references to “Podcasts” are in there. Things have been re-arranged, and podcasts deemphasized. Something is going on.
The rumor and/or speculation is that Apple will spin podcasts out into a separate app (but keep it in the desktop version of iTunes). This prediction is supported both by funny business in the app, and also inside information from unnamed sources “close to the company.”
The prediction that Podcasts will get their own app sounds reasonable. But the interesting part is: Why?
Why would Apple put music, movies and TV shows all together in one app, but create an entirely separate app for podcasts?
Sounds dumb, right?
Actually, if Apple is doing what I think they’re doing, it’s a stroke of genius.
This single change could align Apple’s organization of services on iOS with multiple strategic objectives at once. Here’s what I think Apple intends to accomplish.
How would you like to win an entire library of 10 Apple-related books? Everything from Insanely Great to Steve Jobs: A Biography to Inside Steve’s Brain by our own fearless leader Leander Kahney? There’s even a chance to just win Leander’s book (one lucky winner a week!), and how does one achieve this awesome feat?
Well, then it’s all on the iApple Book Giveaway page here on Cult of Mac. Read on for all the details…
The annual Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) is an invite-only event that centers on the video gaming industry. Held across two massive halls of the Los Angeles Convention Center, it is a draw for any journalist interested in games and gaming, and a source of endless news stories during the week in June it’s typically held.
No matter where I looked at the Expo this year, I saw mobile games and mobile devices. With a few notable exceptions (Nyko had a huge booth full of Tegra-enabled tablets to show off their gaming controllers for Android), most of the devices I came into contact with were decidedly of the iOS persuasion. I’m fairly sure that Apple is winning this round.
Apple made its WWDC keynote available for streaming less than an hour after the event yesterday, and the full 1.2GB video recording is now available in the company’s official keynote podcast feed in iTunes. You can download “Apple WWDC 2012 Keynote Address” now for free. Apple has HD and 1080p versions available as well.
The keynote runs 1 hour and 54 minutes long, and you can watch it on all of your devices, including the Apple TV.
Tim Cook, Phil Schiller, Craig Federighi and Scott Forstall all unveiled new products from Apple at yesterday’s keynote, including new Macs, OS X Mountain Lion and iOS 6. For everything Apple announced at WWDC 2012, make sure to check out our complete roundup.
Thanks: Xin Niu
Yesterday’s announcement of the new, slim next-gen MacBook Pro took pretty much everyone’s breath away. Largely thanks to an incredible new 2880 x 1800 Retina display, the next-gen MacBook Pro is, without a doubt, the most powerful notebook a video or photo professional could own.
It’s also, technically, overkill. Packing an amazing 220 pixels per inch, the new MacBook Pro actually has almost two million more pixels than it needs to qualify as retina.
Make no mistake. Apple blew the doors open with this one. We were curious, though, what this meant for the rest of the Mac line. So we did the math, and as it turns out, when Apple’s other Macs are updated to Retina Displays, the next-gen MacBook Pro we’re all drooling over? It’ll be the worst Retina display of the entire Mac line.