When comedian Louis C.K. famously expressed that notion on Conan, he was making a commentary on the public’s instantly acquired sense of entitlement when confronted with new technology.
His observations are also applicable to the assumptions underlying nearly all the stuff you read about consumer electronics by bloggers, journalists and financial analysts.
The gnashing of teeth and ripping of hair over with everything Apple these days is a perfect example.
My name is Mike and I’m a digital nomad. “Hi, Mike!”
A digital nomad is simply a person whose work is location-independent because of mobile technology and the Internet.
Location independence doesn’t mean travel. If you choose to work from home, but could travel if you wanted to, you’re still a digital nomad taking advantage of your ability to choose.
I’ve been a digital nomad for about a decade, and during that time I’ve lived abroad briefly while working.
Before I converted to all-Apple, all the time — and before Apple launched the App Store, the iPad and had Apple Stores all over the place — the experience of living abroad while working was hard, limited and isolating.
But since Apple became the “New Apple,’ and since I switched to Apple products — and also since a host of great online services came online — digital nomad living abroad has become easy, empowering and highly connected.
When you open a new iPhone and boot it up for the first time, you’ll notice that Apple has already installed a bunch of apps for you.
It’s a great idea, because it lets you use apps right out of the box. Even the newest, most confused user can tap on an app icon and start trying various things.
Here’s the problem: Most users don’t replace the default apps with third-party alternatives. They mostly use the apps that came with the phone.
And this is why Apple should stop making apps: The default Apple-made apps are giving iPhone users a second-rate experience.
There’s a good chance you can think of someone who plans on giving an Apple product this holiday season. Apple has rolled out its own Holiday Gift Guide and has its own gifting information page, which details the basics about gifting Apple products. If you’re looking for a little more assistance when shopping for Apple products then this guide is for you. Here we offer some simple tips to help the average holiday shopper save time and money when gifting Apple products.
And what’s not to love? Steve Wozniak is a one-of-a-kind genius who invented the personal computer. He’s a millionaire who spends his money having fun, rather than trying to control the world. He’s a practical joker. He’s an iconoclast. And he’s a nerd’s nerd and a geek’s geek who believes in technology and the power of change.
But even the biggest Woz fan has to admit: The man loves the spotlight.
And the main way he grabs it is by saying what nobody expects him to say.
Apple’s current “hobby” — also known as Apple TV — doesn’t tell us much about Apple’s future plans for the living room.
It’s a good product under the right circumstances. But five years from now, living rooms are going to be transformed by all-encompassing systems that turn TVs into video phones, gaming systems, home automation control centers and artificial intelligence assistants.
Does Apple have what it takes to compete in the living room?
Foxconn may be hiring less workers because existing workers are more willing to stay on.
The Apple iPhone has become the poster child for the problems of Chinese and American labor.
One strain of conventional wisdom goes that while rich, entitled Western elites whine and complain over trivial issues like maps and purple haze on screens, abused, exploited Chinese factory workers slave away to make those iPhones in unsafe factories and under exploitative conditions.
The iPhone represents the shafting of the Chinese worker.
Another strain of conventional wisdom goes that greedy Apple (and other companies) ships factory jobs overseas to China, where Chinese factory workers get all the jobs, and American workers are left in the unemployment line.
The iPhone represents the shafting of the American worker.
Here’s an idea. Let’s stop accepting these brain-dead caricatures, and insist on the truth about iPhones, factories and workers.
This is a guest post by Ken Segall, a Silicon Valley advertising executive who worked closely with Steve Jobs. Among other things, Segall put that little “i” in front of the iMac and helped develop Apple’s famous Think Different ad campaign. Segall is author of Insanely Simple, a very readable insightful account of what makes Apple tick.
Last time Apple went heavy on advertising in a sporting event, it didn’t exactly end well.
But let us not speak of the Genius anymore. All traces of that campaign have been hidden from our sight.
Now the baseball playoffs are here. And once again, Apple has made a very expensive media buy. This time, it’s blanketing the games with the new iPhone 5 ads.
But look. Someone else has moved into the neighborhood. Samsung showed up for the playoffs with equal force, in the form of its Galaxy S III ads. You know — the ones that make fun of the lost souls who line up to buy an iPhone, when they could just as easily have a much cooler Samsung phone.
Following reports that Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak is planning to move to Australia — a county which, as everybody knows, is located on the underbelly of the Earth and consequently has had its gravity reversed, resulting in a native race which walks around upside down — we’ve discovered that he’s already fitting in by using a topsy turvy icon and name text in his emails.
Every once in a while, a company becomes so obsessed with a competitor that it loses focus on its own customers. They start designing and positioning their products more to hurt rivals than thrill users.
We get nearly all our official information about Apple and its products through occasional announcements or developers conferences, such as the big announcement this week in San Francisco.
As we approach each event, there are things we know, things we don’t know.
During the event, there’s a reshuffling. Some questions are answered during the announcement. And some questions emerge from the announcement itself that remain unanswered.
Here are the 6 biggest questions that were either unanswered in the event, or which emerged from the event.
Here’s the scenario: You invite a date over to impress them with your cooking skills. The house is tidy and you look sharp. You’re slaving away in the kitchen when your date innocently asks to check their email and you absentmindedly oblige. Then it hits you… You left your download folder open! Yeah, that dreadfully unorganized file that looks more like your trash bin. You run to try and save your dignity, but it’s too late; you have been exposed and the date is a solid block away in a dead sprint.
Don’t worry, we’ve all been there before. Lucky for you we have a download manager that is here to put your worries at rest so you can move on with your life once and for all. Folx Pro packs a ton of nifty features to get you on the fast track literally and figuratively. Here is what you can get for 3 bucks:
Last chance for this great freebie for all you Cult of Mac fans. We have a slick looking WordPress theme designed to show off your new iOS app idea. Simple as that. A premium theme usually $37 now FREE for you for just a short time. So, go check out the theme for yourself and then come back and download it. Why? Because it’s free and I’m sure there is always a project that you can find a great theme for.
Speaking of free, you should definitely enter our iPhone 5 Giveaway. The rumors are heating up for the highly anticipated Apple phone and it sounds like it’s shaping up to be amazing! We’ll drop the cash and wait in line; you, simply make a couple clicks and keep your fingers crossed.
Trip Chowdhry, the Managing Director of Equity Research at Global Equities Research, told a financial writer a few months ago that Apple’s biggest challenge without founder Steve Jobs is that Apple lacks a “unified force.” In order to become unified again, Apple would need a “supernatural person” overseeing things.
But according to Thai Buddhists, they may have exactly that — the reincarnated spirit of Steve Jobs himself, who they say is living in a “mystical glass palace hovering above his old office at Apple’s Cupertino, California headquarters,” according to The Wall Street Journal.
I’ll tell you in this post more about Jobs’ so-called reincarnation, and also about several ghosts caught haunting various Apple products. (And I’m not talking about problems with the MacBook Pro Retina screens.)
Apple’s critics generously assign a variety of motives to Apple for filing lawsuits.
Apple sues because it wants to control the market, overcharge for its products, exclude competitors from the market or punish competitors for daring to not think different. It’s all part of Apple’s “quest for global tech domination.
But these aren’t actual motives. These are appeals to emotion. They’re legitimate perspectives, but expressed to negatively encapsulate spectacularly complex technical, legal and ethical issues into sound bites that make you want to agree with the author that Apple is bad and wrong.
Apple has only one motive for patent lawsuits, and I’m going to tell you what that motive is.
I wrote a column last week saying that the “smoking gun” document Apple submitted into evidence in the Samsung patent infringement lawsuit does not constitute proof of infringement by itself.
Still, it’s a remarkable document that does prove something: Samsung is very impressed with Apple. In fact, it’s clear that Samsung is a huge Apple fanboy.
Apple is talking to the people behind social e-commerce site The Fancy, according to a report by Business Insider.
The Fancy is viewed by some as a rival to Pinterest, albeit a much smaller one. However, if Apple buys and promotes it among the gazillions of people who have their credit cards on file with Apple’s iTunes Store, the site could become a major hit overnight.
Business Insider also reported in July that in mid-June, Apple CEO Tim Cook had created an account on The Fancy and “fancied” seven items. Here’s Cook’s account.
Apple is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. No, wait. That was Stalinist Russia.
Whatever. The two are nearly identical in their abilities to keep secrets.
As an Apple observer myself, I’m keenly aware of the iron curtain of secrecy that prevents anyone from knowing what Apple is working on, what they’re planning and what their processes are for developing new technologies.
Rumors and speculation are always so easy to come by; unannounced facts are rare — even facts about the past.
That’s one of the great things about Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs. It gave rare insight into the inner workings of Apple, to some degree.
And that’s what’s so great about the current jury trial in Silicon Valley, where Apple is suing Samsung and Samsung is suing Apple. It’s forcing Apple to reveal countless facts and events that it doesn’t want to reveal.
The lawsuit appears to be far from over. But already, it’s clear that Samsung is “winning.” Why? Because it’s a contest between a company that cares deeply about its secrets — even small ones — and a company that doesn’t care as much. So the discovery and revelation is punishing Apple.
Here are the 8 secrets Apple has been forced to reveal in court in the past couple of weeks.
Apple announced its intention this week to buy AuthenTec for about $355 million.
If approved, the acquisition will bring several things to Apple, including the acceleration of its mobile wallet initiative; good technology for encrypting data and content, such as movies; and patent protection for several areas of mobile security.
The biggest thing Apple gets out of this is probably a strong play for using biometrics for identity in general — for online and brick-and-mortar purchases, for logging into web sites and even for digital signatures.
And it doesn’t hurt that taking AuthenTec out of the game as an independent company will be devastating to nearly all of Apple’s biggest competitors, including Google and its Android partners, and Microsoft and its OEM hardware partners.
It must surely be a sign of the impending apocalypse that Microsoft’s operating systems have “more taste” than Apple’s.
I’m referring, of course, to Apple’s inexplicable use of skeuomorphic design in iOS and OS X apps, and contrasting that with Microsoft’s stark avoidance of such cheesy gimmickry in the Windows 8 and Windows Phone user interfaces.
A skeuomorphic design in software is one that “decorates” the interface with fake reality — say, analog knobs or torn paper.
I’m talking about the boycott-Apple-because-they’re-using-the-courts-to-compete-against-Android-devices movement.
Specifically, the call to boycott is based on anger over Apple’s successful attempt to ban both the Samsung Galaxy Nexus phone and the Galaxy 10.1 tablet. An appeals court temporarily lifted the ban on the phone yesterday, but upheld the tablet ban.
Here’s why the call for a boycott is misguided and futile.
The CIA is gunning for Apple's security. Photo: Spy vs. Spy
You’ve heard the predictions. We’re quickly slouching toward a world in which your every move, every purchase, every act of “content consumption” will be meticulously and automatically monitored, tracked and captured. Algorithms will constantly profile you so advertisers can make their advertising specific to your location, preferences, personality, social group, income and education level and more.
Facebook’s future depends on this idea. This is one reason why Google launched Google+. This is why Microsoft launched Bing. This is why investors are bullish on location-based services like Foursquare. This is why Amazon.com created its own web browser.
Every major technology company, it seems, is scrambling to get into the user-data harvesting racket.
Everyone except Apple.
Why didn’t Apple buy Facebook or Twitter? Why didn’t Apple launch its own social network? What is Apple’s strategy for harvesting data about users?
I’ve been puzzled by these questions, and wondering out loud on this site exactly when and how Apple would reveal its strategy for competing on the personal-data collection battlefield.
But this week, something shocking happened that made me think: Maybe Apple isn’t going to get into the data-harvesting business at all. Maybe Apple is going to fight it!
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.
