Category Archives: Uncategorized

watchOS 3 is the reason why I bought the Apple Watch, despite knowing it’s shortcomings in watchOS 1. I bought an Apple Watch with the determination to make it the first Apple product that I get to physically see and experience from day one. I didn’t have an original iPod when it first came out, nor an original iPhone. The closest I got was an iPad 2. Now, I have the original iPod and iPhone, but I only bought them post facto to collect them and see how far we’ve come. I didn’t get to see these devices mature into the stunning products they are today. Thus, with the Apple Watch, I wanted to see it mature and grow into another great Apple product. Just like the others, it didn’t start out a great product. iPod started out as Mac-only, iPhone started out without 3G and the iPad wasn’t quite ready to be the amazing post-PC product Jobs promised when it was first released. With new software and hardware, all three became behemoths. That is what I wanted to see happen with the Apple Watch. I knew it’s shortcomings and why it wasn’t yet a great product. It was slow, the UI/UX was cumbersome and rudimentary, it didn’t even really know what it was.

Apple certainly did not yet have it pinned on what it has. Even with previous shortcomings on it’s other products, Apple knew what it had. Apple knew that the iPod was a revolutionary music player, Apple knew the iPhone was a revolutionary phone, and Apple knew the iPad was a revolutionary post-PC device, even if the world wasn’t ready for them just yet. Apple announced the Apple Watch very similar to the way it announced the iPhone. The Watch was 1. the most advanced timepiece, 2. a revolutionary new way to connect with others and 3. a health and fitness device. Apple focused a lot on the “connect with others” part, so much so that it devoted one of two buttons to it. The side button was devoted to the friends menu, where you would be able to connect with them and send them doodles and heartbeats, something literally no one really wanted to do. I accidentally pressed that button more times than I actually meant to press that button. That was a crying shame. It’s not often Apple wants to put a button on a device but when they do, it better be pretty doggone important. The button for Friends simply wasn’t. Apple started the Watch out as a somewhat vague accessory and emphasized the “iPhone on the wrist” part of it as a catch-all. “It can do most of the things your iPhone can do but on your wrist”. As Apple itself has proved in the past, attempting to do too many things at once can be a very bad thing. It is against their design  and company ethos. But perhaps Apple broke this ethos purposely. Perhaps, it knew that it had was a great product but they didn’t quite know why. Perhaps watchOS1 and 2 emphasizing the catch-all idea was the stopgap to watchOS 3. Maybe Apple wanted the Watch to do a bit of everything until they could figure out what people really like about the Watch, and what they don’t like as much.

It turns out people do like the interactive notifications, so Apple improved the messaging notifications (and messaging itself) in various ways in watchOS 3. It got rid of the Friends section that no one used and baked all of the functions you’d find there into notifications, a function people really liked on the Watch. It also added in new ways to communicate with messaging. Apple’s Newton is back and it’s living in an iOSified watch. The Scribble feature, which allows you to write out a message, is one of my favorite features of watchOS 3 and best of all, it’s right along side the message notifications, so you can write out a quick message and reply.

It turns out people do like the fitness and health functions of the Apple Watch, so Apple increased the emphasis on those features. Activity gets new faces and complications in watchOS3, you can now share your Watch activity to compete with other Watch users, just like on Fitbit devices. The Watch also gets dedicated apps for heart rate and a new app called Breathe which will remind you to take slow, deep breaths during the course of the day, another neat focus on health. On the Watch hardware itself, Apple added in GPS and waterproofing to Series 2, with GPS taken full advantage of in watchOS 3 with route tracking. Of course, Apple has the Apple Watch Nike+, which is no more or less expensive than Apple’s other offerings. These Watches, especially with watchOS3, have definitely focused on the health and fitness part of the Watch. This, I imagine, will only continue with future iterations of watchOS and the Watch itself.

I think it’s also important to not that the focus on the Watch as a fashion accessory is greatly diminished. The Gold $12k+ Apple Watch Editions are completely gone. Apple does not wish to compete in the luxury watch brand world because it has been proved that that is not what people want the Watch to be. The Apple Watch is more a fitness companion than an elitist fashion accessory. Thus, Apple no longer needs to even compete in that market anymore. Apple’s increasing focus on fitness for the Watch, much of which are features in watchOS3, prove Apple’s increasing awareness of what the Watch is for, as well as what people are willing to pay for it. Truth be told, no matter how great watchOS is or gets, the experience isn’t worth $12k+.

It turns out that people did not want an iPhone on their wrist, but they do want an easy-to-use, fast, glanceable device. With watchOS 3, this comes to fruition. watchOS 3 makes even the original Apple Watch feel like a new Watch. Everything on the Watch is smoother and much, much faster. This was a huge issue as to why many people did not want to buy the Watch in the first place. Even if you get a first-gen Apple Watch, watchOS 3 will alleviate those concerns entirely. The overall clunky user interface has also been redesigned. The Watch is not trying to be the iPhone anymore. Glances are gone and replaced simply by Control Center. Force Touch is de-emphasized and more can be done by just swiping, like changing Watch faces. Simply swipe left or right to get to a different face. It’s handy if you want to go from a Fitness face one minute back to, say, the Numerals face for a bit more style. The new Dock is also another addition to the UI, as well as a main reason for the speediness. Every app in the dock is running in the background and updating regularly. In a way, they are like Glances but they are more powerful because they are the full app. Simply tap on it to get to the app itself. The honeycomb app screen has been heavily deemphasized in an attempt to simplify the UX and it certainly pans out that way. The complications and dock will be mostly all you need. The app screen is the UX weak link, but with Apple’s increased reluctance to treat the Watch as an iPhone on your wrist, I think it will be completely changed in favor of something else.

The Apple Watch is beginning to focus on what it does best. Provide glance-able, interact-able information in small 5-10 second bites, a quick way to read and respond to notifications we get during the day, a comprehensive health and fitness partner, and that’s it. No focus on gaming, no focus on prolonged interaction, no focus on being what it isn’t. The Apple Watch under watchOS 1 was the jack of all trades but the master of none. That, I think, was on purpose. Apple was trying to figure out what to master on and I think they have found the gold under the rocks. I believe that Apple has finally refined the Watch’s purpose and thus has the true first Apple Watch. To me, it makes sense that Apple is starting over with the naming scheme. We all thought this was the Apple Watch 1, but really it was the Apple Watch 0. S1 and S2 are the true start to the Apple Watch because they mark the beginning of Apple knowing why they made the Watch in the first place.

Apple wouldn’t have needed to update the Watch hardware-wise to say they have a new Watch. watchOS 3 is the Windows iPod, the iPhone 3G, it is the iPad 2. Even if it used to be slow and had clunky software, I’m glad I got to see this transition. The Apple Watch is already becoming a great, maturing product and as time goes on, it will only continue to be. watchOS3 proves Apple is committed to fixing the problems it has made and owning up to those mistakes. Perhaps that is the greatest thing about seeing watchOS mature the way that it has. To see that Apple can still move forward. That it can still make a great product, not just a good-enough product. To see that Apple can take it’s responsibility to improve it’s flaws by the horns and move with two feet forward. watchOS 3 shows that Apple’s internal culture is not failing without Jobs and rather that it is operating as it did with him. Iterating and iterating on the course to perfection.

Thanks for reading,

Joe

I’m starting to think my friend was right about the Mac. He told me that Apple no longer cares about the Mac and he increasingly disagrees with every release of OS X. He was a big Mac user for many years, before and after Steve Jobs returned to the company. He remembers using his old beige G3, and Apple’s transition to Mac OS X. He had several Macs during that time and he could tell me the in’s and out’s of OS 8, 9 and early versions of X. He knew the in’s and out’s of every PowerPC-based Mac you could think of. He helped me get my old iBook G4 running on wifi at my house, since I had WPA2 security and I needed an update on 10.3 to get it connected to that security. He updated several of my PowerPC computers to whatever he felt would run the smoothest, and he was always right. He appreciated Apple’s attention to power users and the little things that Apple did that power users would appreciate. One thing he loved about his PowerBook G4 and pre-Unibody MacBook Pros was that the disk drive was on the front of the computer instead of the side. That enabled him to more easily put in a disk when the computer was positioned on his desk. He could just pop the disk right in.

He absolutely loved Apple’s computers. Thus, January 9th, 2007 must’ve been quite a sore day for him. That was the day that Apple changed it’s name from “Apple Computer Inc.” to “Apple Inc.”, signifying that the company’s focus was no longer on it’s computers. Instead, Apple at that time was selling a slew of iPods and just came out with the iPhone. The Mac line, while much more successful in 07 than it had ever been, started to become an increasingly smaller part of Apple’s repertoire. That was the moment, according to my friend, where the Mac that he had known, had begun to die. In his eyes, Apple slowly begun to not care about the absolute processing power of Macs that they could offer but instead increasingly buried their heads and resources into the iPod, iPhone and eventually the iPad. To the world at large, this was and is certainly not a bad thing. To the Mac community, some are increasingly upset at Apple’s neglect of the Mac. My friend was upset since they moved the disk drive from the front, to the side.

The increased reliance on iOS, according to my friend, has led to an increased neglect on the Mac platform. If this is true, Apple has played it’s cards correctly; the iOS ecosystem is the biggest OS on the planet, but it has come as a price to the Mac. To him, Mac OS has become increasingly iOS-ified. Starting with Lion, features that are in iOS begun creeping into OS X. Launchpad, a copy of the home screen on iPhone came it’s way to the Mac, various iOS design monikers used in Lion onwards. Every OS X since then has seemingly copied from the iOS release with which it was released alongside of. The most obvious of which was iOS 8 and Yosemite, only this time, the Mac was a year behind in the design switch. I think that’s telling. Apple decided it’s most popular platform, not it’s most venerable one, should get the new look first. It’s not hard to see Apple’s priorities here, nor blame Apple for them. Now, it’s even easier to see Apple’s iOS-ificiation with macOS Sierra. The name macOS replaces the long-time (Mac) OS X. Lower case “mac” followed by “OS”, lower case “i”, followed by “OS”. Again, you can’t blame Apple for wanting to align everything it has with the iOS, Apple’s biggest money maker by a long stretch. But at the same time, the Mac community is hurting.

The design moves, pulling iOS and OS X (now macOS) closer together was something most Mac users could, and did, get used to. Some met with resistance, such as Apple’s iOS 7/8 like changes to iWork, which took away some popular productivity features, but for the most part Apple has been able to continue it’s march toward the iOS-ification of the Mac. While that upsets some people, and certainly upset my friend who has since migrated to all Linux, that is not the reason to be mad at Apple. Because of iOS’ popularity, Macs are becoming more and more popular and up to recently has been the only computer increasing in sales and marketshare. It only seems natural that the two platforms come closer together. Apple’s software has changed to uphold iOS, including Mac OS, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Since many Mac users are iPhone users and vice versa, this kumbaya of Apple devices is welcome, not shunned.

However, along with Apple’s streamlining of OS’s comes something that is deplorable. What has upset many in the Mac community, many of whom are questioning leaving the Mac platform entirely, is Apple’s neglect of Mac hardware. The dates of new iPod releases used to average around 200 days, depending on the type of iPod and what period of time we’re talking about. Now the average release time has dropped significantly to 400 days or greater. The biggest recent such gap of release time was for the iPod shuffle, Sep 2010-Sep 2013, a total of 1103 days. Of course, the iPod line is much less consequential on Apple’s revenue and profits than the Mac, but my question is why is Apple treating the Mac like that’s not the case? Every single Mac besides the MacBook is listed as “Don’t Buy” on MacRumors.

337, 484, 554, 698, 1000. That’s how many days the iMac, Retina MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, Mac mini, and the Mac Pro have gone without an update. 1000 days is getting up there with the 1103 days of the iPod shuffle. Granted, I would imagine it would be more difficult justifying updating a several thousand dollar workstation, than an iPod shuffle, but the question must be asked as to why Apple has allowed the Mac Pro, which has not changed in price any since it first released 3 years ago, to whittle on for so long without any spec bump at all. No updated processors, GPUs, RAM, storage, I/O. Nothing. When my friend said that Apple no longer cares about the Mac, I see why. They aren’t updated enough for professionals anymore, people who can truly appreciate the power of what these machines can do. Those professionals, and increasingly lots of consumers, want those updated specs. Perhaps my friend wasn’t upset about the iOSification of Mac OS itself, but rather what he thought it meant for the Mac hardware down the line.

Apple has truly become a consumer electronics company in every sense of the phrase, from it’s phones to it’s computers. Much more focus, more so than ever before, has been driven to the consumer. Apple has now all but completely neglected it’s professional users, a group that Apple had for so long prided itself in having. An example of this is Apple’s discontinuation of Aperture in favor of Photos. Photos doesn’t have nearly as much or as good photo editing software that Aperture had. What is really astounding is how little Apple really cares about that. Apple isn’t the company for people like my friend anymore. They don’t make computers like they used to. In many ways, that’s okay. The Mac will continue to do just fine, and perhaps maybe better than fine. The Mac will continue to be important to Apple for years to come. The Macs will continue to be updated. However, it appears that the importance of the Mac will only continue to decline. The iPad Pro is hailed as the next true path of the post-PC world. Apple’s A10 Fusion processor only accentuates that progression. Silicon in mobile devices is catching up to silicon in laptops. iOS, iPhone and iPad are already desktop-class and are only continuing in that direction. In some ways, my friend doesn’t like that progression. Sure, it may be similar silicon, but you can’t exactly restore an iPhone off an iPad Pro, like what some may have needed to do today with the release of iOS 10. Marketing the iPad Pro as a Mac replacement is appealing to the everyday user at it’s finest. The iPad Pro is a great product, I have the 12.9 inch model. But I wouldn’t give up the Mac for it yet. The post-PC future is coming, but the least Apple can do is ease the growing pains and update their Macs every so often so that we can take advantage of this year’s silicon, not silicon from 1000 days ago.

Thanks for reading,

Joe

Searching the word “Apple” into the Google search bar reveals the following article titles: “Rolex The Apple Killer” by Forbes’ Ewan Spence, “Fix Apple’s Wireless AirPods with this $10 Wire” by Gizmodo’s Andrew Liszewski, “iPhone Upgraders are suing Apple, saying it’s putting new customers first” by Recode’s Ina Fried. All of the titles, and much of the content of these articles are inherently negative. I am not sure if I’m the only one or if I’m just crazy, but I have seen a lot more negative press surrounding Apple in the past year or so. One big offender, Forbes, has written countless articles about the company during that time. Lately though, I have seen a lot of articles from Ewan Spence and from Gordon Kelly on the top of the Google search list lately. Anecdotally speaking, I have seen more negative articles about Apple from those two Forbes contributors on the top of the news stories, than I have seen positive articles about Apple anywhere else combined.

Gordon Kelly, for example writes about “Great New Features” and “Nasty Surprises” concerning different tech companies, but particularly focusing on Apple. In the past two months, he wrote 10 articles that are either titled with these two phrases in the title, or are similarly polarized. Only two articles out of the ten had positive titles. A few of them talked about the ‘nasty surprises’ in iOS 9.3.3 and 9.3.4, which in actuality were not all that ‘nasty’. Many won’t read past the headline and instead just read the title, and perhaps the first few lines. That is enough to foster a negative clout toward Apple. People may not read or even understand the entire article. Instead, they may take his word for it and assume some ‘nasty’ things are coming out of Cupertino. Psychologically speaking too, the word ‘nasty’ will elicit a much more negative response than will the word ‘great’.

Forbes is not the only contributor to this recent anti-Apple spout. While I understand that not everyone can be like MacRumors, and thus biased towards Apple, that isn’t the problem. The problem is that I’ve found search results for “Apple” to be incredibly anti-Apple biased. Articles from MacRumors (macRumors?) are scuttled in the crevices of Google search, while Gordon Kelly’s relatively short, anti-Apple biased articles are at the top of the list of hits. Articles from mostly pro-Apple biased DaringFireball are never, ever in the search results at all. Getting to that site, and to MacRumors, requires typing in the name instead of just “apple”, especially during lengths of time where Apple has not released anything.

Of course, the bigger question in all of this is why? Why is Apple receiving such strong negative press? Is this strong negative clout influencing the company’s recent PR spout it had with Steven Levy’s article on Siri, or a similar “State of Apple” article published at the same time? Is this PR Apple fighting back against this negative press? I personally believe so. It’s no secret that many people believe that Apple lost it’s mojo when Steve Jobs died, or that Apple really hasn’t done anything since then. They did release the Apple Watch, but that too has had mostly negative press, even before it’s official release. While I don’t mind a article of constructive criticism for the company, I do believe that this negative press is contributing to a ‘nasty’ cycle. Every individual negative article is feeding the clout around Apple and only furthers the clouding image Apple has been getting lately. Perhaps Apple felt it needed to open up a little in those recent interviews to let people know the boat isn’t sinking, as many journalists appear to believe.

I also have to wonder if anything Apple does will matter, if anything they release will stop this negativity. Perhaps, innovation from Apple became less synonymous with Apple and more so with it’s co-founder Steve Jobs. If this is the case, anything Apple does, good or not, will receive more negative press than if he were still alive. If Apple releases a new product tomorrow, journalists, like they did with the Watch, may largely discredit it before it even gets off the ground. When it was first released, the iPhone isn’t what it was now, and even then some negative journalism surrounded it too. However, some of it was still hopeful. Apple, along with Steve Jobs, was able to iterate it enough to become the most successful product from a single company in history.

What is important to remember though is that it didn’t start that way. The Apple Watch, too, may become a very successful product, but that’s only if journalists don’t successfully kill it first. Negative press surrounding the Watch, I am sure, has to have affected sales of the Watch to some degree. Contrasting with the iPhone, journalists don’t seem to have as much hope for the Watch, some even declaring it DOA. Not everything Apple has been doing lately has been fantastic. Questionable design decisions, recent products raising a few eyebrows, but for the most part these issues existed with Jobs around too. Apple screwed up with Jobs at the helm too. That is not what has changed. What has changed is that Apple became vulnerable the day he died. When he died, the messiah was no longer in control, just his imperfect disciples. Jobs knew how to work the press and he was incredibly affective. Without him, it’s not that Apple has just started making mistakes without Jobs around, it’s that Jobs isn’t around to deflect the press negativity it could get with those mistakes. Despite what some journalists will say, Apple is still innovating and it is still moving towards the future. It will only do so with products it feels are completely ready to go into the market. They will not release Google Glass. With the iPhone, Apple wasn’t the first, but it was the best. Journalists, with deadlines, and the increasing need to drive ad traffic (clickbait, anyone?) don’t see into the future. They do not see what Apple will be. They only see what Apple is. What’s changed though is that they are only now seeing what Apple has always been. An innovative, if imperfect, company. Jobs deflected the press from the imperfect part. Cook and Co. aren’t doing as good a job with that.

In the end, it doesn’t matter all that much what press say about Apple, good or bad, and I hope the company can weed out what articles are actually good advice, and what articles are simply “nasty” clickbait. Some things the press says about the company are important and some are messages I really hope Apple is listening to. Apple does need to update it’s Mac line, Apple does need to continue to tidy up Apple Music and some of it’s recent design decisions. Let’s see too what comes out of Apple after Campus 2 is complete and Jony Ive starts worrying about products entirely again. Apple has bright days ahead of it. Nothing it can do will change the fact that it remains one of a handful of the most important companies on the planet. Time, not clickbait journalists, will tell if we have truly seen peak Apple yet or not.

Thanks for reading,

Joe

Hello Everyone! Joe here. It’s been awhile since I’ve updated the page and I do apologize for that. Life gets in the way of many things you want to do but never have time for. However, I am happy to report to you that I am back to posting on a regular basis and I’ll be posting some exciting new articles on Apple. Stay tuned.

Thanks for reading,

Joe

Since the late 90s, every three to six years, Apple comes up with a new product that will revolutionize an entire industry. In 1998, it was the iMac. It would not only bring Apple out of near-bankruptcy and back to profitability but also changed the way we see the design of computers. In 2001, it was the iPod that completely changed and revitalized the music industry, bringing Apple to meteoric heights. In 2007, the introduction of the iPhone that allowed them to completely change the way we see our phones and how we use them. In 2010, Apple again revitalized the failed tablet industry and brought it to new heights. Throughout all this revitalizing and changing, Apple had been under the reigns of it’s co-founder and tech visionary Steve Jobs. However, between 2011 and now, a lot has changed. Apple is now run under a new CEO, but also gone through some interesting changes in recent years, including the firing of Scott Forstall and long-time retail chief Ron Johnson, to the meteoric rise of Jony Ive and the hiring of former-Burberry Chief Angela Ahrendt for Apple’s retail operations. All of these are the key for Apple’s next move, The Apple Watch.

It is 2015 and finally Apple has once again entered a new category of product. Five years after the introduction of the iPad and it’s invasion into the tablet industry, the company now plans to invade the oldest industry it ever has: the wristwatch industry. The Apple Watch has been, thus far, Apple’s most curious device. People are still asking: What will this thing do for me?

Apple is moving to new meteoric heights and markets that we have not seen it enter before and the Apple Watch is thus important for Apple to create it’s future. Apple’s future at mobile payments, medical, exact pinpointed triangulation (location inside and outside of buildings) among other things is supplemented by, and permitted by Apple’s new device. The convenience and wearability of the Watch makes it the pivotal device in Apple’s next revolution of connectivity to ourselves and the outside world. The Apple Watch is not just an iPhone on your wrist. By it’s wearability and customization, the Apple Watch is the start of something special.  The device is unique as it provides a assistant throughout your day that is tuned to you. It is so tuned to you and so personal to you exactly because you wear it. This will only be supplemented by the adoption of companies using the Watch as the “remote” for any smart devices, such as thermostats and refrigerators. It’s usefulness and interconnectivity between you and your world and you and the world abroad will bring a level of connection yet unseen by any device created.

That is if the Apple Watch can see the success of it’s iSiblings. It may take weeks, months, maybe a year for Apple to realize it’s full potential but after it is established as not only the market leader in smart wearables but also proves it’s worth, the Apple Watch will take off to new heights.

Interest and demand,  however,  has been high for the Apple Watch early on, so we could see it take off sooner rather than later. It should be because this Watch will usher in a new age, just as the iPhone in 2007 and the subsequent App Store in 2008 did. This time, because of Apple’s meteoric success in the past, that age may be even quicker and stronger than the last one. People ask “Why do I want an Apple Watch?” Only you will be able to answer that question but the possibilities in how it will affect and help your life are limitless, be it the help it can give you with health and fitness to all sorts of uses the Apple Watch will have to the modern consumer. It is not only the companion to your iPhone, it will be the companion to your life and you won’t be able to remember time without it, just how many can’t remember life without the iPhone. A new revolution in wearable and even more connected technology is coming and the Apple Watch is at the forefront of it.

Thanks for reading,

Joe

Image Credit: http://www.fastcompany.com/3035366/internet-of-things/this-is-apples-smartwatch

On January 24th, 2014, Apple celebrated the birth of the Macintosh exactly 30 years ago. On January 24th, 1984, Apple introduced the Macintosh computer, the first mass-produced computer on the market with a Graphical User Interface or what we call today as the desktop. However, the introduction of the Macintosh was more than that. This computer opened up worlds of possibility for people around the world. This computer opened up the possibilities of the next 30 years. The Macintosh, even today, is constantly changing. The Macintosh, of course, doesn’t survive in it’s original form today. With the rise of the internet and introduction of much faster and much better internal parts, the Mac gets better and better.

What does it mean for a computer to be a Macintosh? It means to be creative, it means to have the ability to do what only professionals were able to do, right in your own home. On a video posted on Apple’s website celebrating the Mac, one lady explained in perfectly. The Mac is the “democratization of creativity”. She is absolutely right. The Mac, whether in it’s creation in 1984, or in it’s space-proofing with the Mac Pro in 2013, it has been a tool of creativity and a tool of connection between us and the world. The Mac today is used in so many more different ways than the original Macintosh. It has evolved into a do-everything machine, from video calls, to watching or creating video, to listening to or creating music to many more things that people use a Mac for. It is the computer for the rest of us, the computer to bring creativity to the rest of us. To make it simple to do extraordinary tasks. Apple didn’t want us living in “1984”. IBM was turning people into mindless zombies with their IBM-PCs, sure to dominate the world with boring, do-nothing computers. Today, the modern version of that fight continues, now with the Mac lineup vs Windows PCs. The ease of creation vs the difficulty to turn on. To me, the Macintosh represents an idea. It represents incredible creative abilities from any person, it again democratizes creativity. It allows the average Joe to submerge in content and create it too. 

The Mac has come a long way in 30 years. From the original Mac, to the Portable Macintosh, to the PowerBook lineup, to the iMac. Throughout it’s many varieties, it has come to change the computing industry forever. With Windows copying many of Macs features, Windows users can get a taste of Mac in their computers. Of course, it would be a whole lot better for them to get the whole enchilada. Nothing beats a Mac! Redmond, you started your photocopiers but you never did get it quite right. May the Mac live long another 30 years! Who knows what we will see then?! I know I can’t wait to find out!

Check out below for some Macintosh related videos.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyB7dYexozc

http://www.apple.com/30-years/

Thanks for reading,

Joe

On Friday the 17th, a deal that China Mobile recently made with Apple went into full effect.  Apple products such as the iPhone 5S and 5C are newly available to their 760 million subscribers on January 17th from stores in China belonging to both companies, but pre-ordering has already started, since December 25th of last year.  Fortunately, Apple was able to get a commitment from the company to build out its 4G network- otherwise, it would have been necessary to make a version of the iPhone compatible with the Chinese homemade 3G service.

China Mobile benefitted from the agreement because, along with the iPhone, China now has 4G service in 16 major cities, including Beijing and Shanghai; this, in addition to the new devices, will attract more customers.  However, Apple got the most out of the deal, finally able to get more customers from the largest telecommunications company in China- and in the world.  Before, it only had contracts with China Unicom and China Telecom, smaller companies that together only made up 35% of the wireless subscriber base in China.  Also, cheaper smartphones rivals such as Samsung have caused a drop in demand for Apple products, so the new availability that comes with the deal (along with the 4G) is likely to begin reversing that.  It looks like China, too, is catching the Apple bug.

-Erin

A few days ago, Apple unleashed new iPhones onto the world. Apple unleashed the new iPhone 5c and the new iPhone 5s. Let’s talk about the new models and where Apple is going next.

iPhone 5c

The iPhone 5c was the first iPhone to be announced at Apple’s keynote on September 10. The iPhone 5c was long rumored to be Apple’s attempt to rival other smartphone makers making cheaper phone and these phones will help Apple with their overseas market. The iPhone 5c is, for lack of a better term, a colored iPhone 5. Apple made the iPhone 5c in white, green, red (Apple says pink), blue and yellow. It is Jony Ive’s iPhone. This phone is the phone that Jony would have made back in 2007 if given the chance. His design with iOS  7 says that. The iPhone 5s and iOS7 are made to work together, designed together. Personally, I like the design of the new iPhone 5c, it looks really nice on the outside and looks nice with the new iOS 7.

I mentioned before that the iPhone 5c is basically a colored iPhone 5 and do I believe that it is true.  The iPhone 5c comes with the same powerful A6 chip that is found in the iPhone 5. It has the same beautifully designed 4-inch Retina Display that the iPhone 5 had. It has the same 8MP camera that the iPhone 5 had. The iPhone 5c is slightly thicker and heavier than the iPhone 5 but it’s so fractional, you probably won’t notice a difference. iPhone 5 and 5c both have iOS 7 and both take full advantage of the features of iOS 7. The phones both have 4G LTE, like many smartphones these days. The iPhone 5c, is in essence, the iPhone 5 Jony Ive would have made, and he did make. The only thing different between them is that there is multiple colors in one and no array of colors in the other. The iPhone 5 is definitely a great phone so Apple did not make a mistake with not adding anything significant to the 5c from the 5, especially considering it is meant to be a cheaper option. Apple went a  bit further with the color aspect with the 5c and made colorful cases for it, allowing for further customization of the phone. While I think it is was an interesting move on Apple’s part to finally make cases for the phones they make, I am not sure it will be a very successful one since the cases are more like crocs for iPhone- or should I say “hon” than a case (when the case is on, part of the word iPhone is covered to reveal hon, a poor design move).  People will probably just buy third party cases like they always have.

I do not know if I can see the iPhone 5c becoming a big hit in the US other than for it’s color. People love to customize their phones and the colors will allow for more of that. However, I don’t think the phone will be as successful here than it will be in Apple’s emerging markets such as China because of it’s cheaper price. The iPhone 5c starts at $99 with a contract, allowing Apple to finally play in the cheap man’s phone arena that they never have entered before. In fact, Apple has always sold products in the higher end of the price tag and this move to the iPhone 5c represents a change to the every man’s company. Whether this will be good or bad for Apple will depend on whether Apple actually was able to design a well-made plastic phone, something very few companies, if any, are capable of doing. I think the the 5c will be a great opportunity for Apple to make more money and be able to put more iPhone’s in people’s hands, thus improving their market share, which has slumped lately due to the popularity of Samsung phones, which still bewilders me to this day.

iPhone 5s

Yes, Apple did decide to stick with the 5 name for now. They have gone to the 5s instead of the 6, which makes sense considering that they unveiled the 5 last year and the 5 name still has time to shine, just as the 4 name did back in 2011 and even still today (more on that later). Apple unveiled some pretty awesome features for the iPhone 5s. Let’s go and take a closer look.

The iPhone 5s’ main feature is the new fingerprint scanner tucked into the home button. The new scanner will allow for people to protect their phone with one of the safest methods available, a passcode only you will ever have, your fingerprint. This new method of protection will not be monitored by the NSA as the fingerprints are stored only on the phone itself and never in the cloud. The fingerprint scanner will allow for users to get into their phone much quicker than providing a long passcode or password like many users do today. The scanner will also allow for you to use your fingerprint to confirm transactions in the iTunes and App Stores. The scanner can read your fingerprint at any angle. The device will recognize up to 5 fingerprints so your family or trusted people will also have access to your phone, that is, if you allow them to have that access. The look of the home button, because of the new scanner, has changed for the first time ever. The button no longer has a square in the middle of it and it has a metal brim surrounding it. There is also sapphire crystal in the home button. I personally like the new look of the home button. It is similar to the change in keyboard layout that Apple had made in their laptops in late-07.

One of the biggest features of the iPhone 5s is it’s incredible speed and processing power. For the first time in history, there is now a 64-bit desktop class processor on a phone. And guess who was the first to do this? Samsung? Nope. Apple! Apple became the first smartphone maker to put a 64-bit processor in the iPhone. The iPhone 5s has become the fastest iPhone by a very long shot. The performance in the iPhone 5s is double that of the incredible iPhone 5/5c. The A7 processor also has the fastest graphics in any iPhone ever made. It’s graphics are double that of the iPhone 5. The A7 is truly a work to behold, providing better graphics and better processing power than any other phone. It’s OpenGL ES V3 also allows for even better graphics. Textures and shadows in games pop out at you and everything looks insanely real. In addition to the A7, there is it’s sidekick, the M7 chip. The M7 chip is designed to take the processing of location,  compass, gyration, and acceleration as to allow the A7 to focus on other tasks, allowing for a more power-efficient phone.

Apple also unveiled new camera features for the iPhone 5s not found in any other phone. First, the iPhone 5s has a larger aperture,  and it has larger pixels and when there are larger pixels, there is a better image because more light is let in for the image. Furthermore, it’s video camera films at 1080p. Second, the iPhone 5s has a continuous burst mode so you can take 30 images of an action shot such as a skateboard stunt. This feature will be great for anyone who wants to get an in the moment photograph that they can take without pressing the button 30 times. Third, a new feature called True Tone Flash will allow whatever you are taking a picture of to have good lighting and be able to light whatever it is that needs light just right so images look as natural as possible. Fourth, the iPhone now has auto image stabilization so now the image will stabilize when the phone is being moved. Fifth, you can now shoot slow motion video with the iPhone 5s camera. You can shoot the video and simply switch to 120fps to slow down the shot being taken to add a dramatic effect to your video. Sixth, the iPhone 5s has Live Video Zoom, allowing you to zoom in and out on your video in real time and record what you are zooming in and out of. And finally, the iPhone 5s has an HD front camera for the best FaceTime experience possible.

The iPhone 5s will now have even better LTE wireless coverage than ever before. The iPhone 5s has up to 13 LTE bands, more than any other smart phone on the market. Therefore, it will have more coverage in more places than ever before and the coverage will be better than ever before.

Finally, Apple is also selling cases for their iPhone 5s phones. These cases, unlike the rubber croc ones made for the iPhone 5c, are leather and are multicolored. The colors look great with the different colored models of the iPhone (silver, gray and gold). The colors for the cases are yellow, tan, blue, brown, black and red for Project RED.

It appears that the new iPhones will be incredible phones that I think Apple has done an excellent job with and they are moving in a “Forward Thinking” direction. Now, let’s pay tribute to the iPhones lost at Apple’s event.

Gain two, lose two

At Apple’s iPhone event, Apple unveiled two new iPhone models, but they also ceased to sell two models. The iPhone 4 and the iPhone 5 have both been been discontinued, allowing the iPhone 4S to stay behind as the free phone that Apple offers. The iPhone 4 was a phone that really changed the iPhone line forever, with it’s FaceTime camera and it’s upgraded design, it has come to define the iPhone line. Many people recognize the iPhone 4 as the biggest innovation to the iPhone line since the original iPhone and I completely agree. The iPhone 4 will forever be one of the greatest of Apple’s many innovations. The iPhone 5 was also discontinued at the event. This was Forstall’s phone, it was the iOS6 phone. Now that he is gone, his legacy at Apple is fading too. Jony replaced the iOS 6 phone with his own colored iOS7 phone. It’s the same phone but with color, the way Jony had it, not Forstall. Apple is becoming more Ive all the time with the removal of the only SVP that would challenge him and the discontinuation of the iPhone 5 is actually what this represents. The iPhone 4S was only kept around because they needed a free phone to give away with 2-year plans. Thank you iPhone 4 and iPhone 5 for changing the world with your incredible abilities. Your successors will forever hold your legacy.

iOS 7

iOS 7 was launched on Wednesday and it has become the download with the largest amount of downloads in a single day in history. iOS 7 is predicted to be on 95% capable iOS devices by next month, the fastest adoption rate in history. iOS7 brings in a slew of new features that the new iPhones have. iPhone 4 and above, iPad 2 and above and iPod touch can all upgrade. Get your download by heading to the Settings app and install the new update. It’s free and it’s worth the 10 minutes of your time. Way worth it.

Apple has a hit a very busy time, new iPhones are coming out. New iPads probably on the way along with the new Mac Pro’s and Mavericks due out soon, as well as Haswell Pros. It will be interesting to see what the test of time will do for Apple in the next few months. I can’t wait to see what happens.

Thanks for reading,

Joe

Images Courtesy: Apple Inc.

Steve Ballmer has announced recently that he will retire as CEO of Microsoft. What this means for Microsoft apparently was evident by the reaction of the stock market, Microsoft stock jumped 7% after the announcement that he would leave the company. Therefore one could conclude that the stock market is happy about Steve Ballmer leaving. I am too. Steve Ballmer has been at the hands of the company for thirteen years and he has had his share of bad choices for the company.

Microsoft’s first flop under Ballmer was a big one. The iPod was released under Jobs’ Apple in 2001. Following the release of the original iPod, Microsoft took no action against it since it felt it was stupid to compete in that market. They thought that desktops would remain #1 and since media players until the iPod were flops, the iPod would be too. However, that’s where Apple is the important exception. Apple did not fail. In fact, Apple did the complete opposite of what Microsoft was expecting them to do, they succeeded. Tremendously. Apple found a goldmine with the iPod and it’s later renditions of it. It took Microsoft five years to release a competing product, which was doomed from the start because Apple had a monopoly in media players. Of course, had the Zune been a great product, Microsoft could have carved themselves out a nice piece of market share. However, unfortunately for Microsoft, the Zune was a complete flop. Sales were always terrible and Microsoft admitted defeat in 2011 and discontinued the device.

They had done well with XP and the Xbox and Xbox 360. Then, 2007 came. It would become the dark hour for Microsoft. Let’s think back to 2007 for a moment,  Apple had just released the revolutionary iPhone. It completely changed the way we communicate. No company had anything close to it when it released. Then Google wanted to have some fun and they released the Android OS and many cell phone companies jumped ship on the Android OS. Two of the three major technology companies had released a smart phone. Apple and Google both released phones, or OS for phones. Where was the other player Microsoft? They remained quiet. Steve Ballmer chose not to go that route and lost out on an opportunity to become one of the main players on the smart phone market. In fact, it took him four years just to partner with Motorola and release a Windows 7 Phone which flopped in terms of sales. Now, Microsoft has Windows 8 phones with Motorola which continue to gain little to none attraction from the market.

It had been 3 years since the iPhone and Ballmer lost out on an opportunity at gold, strike two for Microsoft. That was okay though, because he found that Windows 7 was a good hit too. The whole tech world was again changed forever by Apple. In 2010, Apple introduce the iPad. The iPad and it’s successors would become the biggest line of tablet computers in the world. Google and friends quickly followed suit and made Android tablets. Same story as with the smartphone, two of the three tech giants were playing. Where was Microsoft? Microsoft, like they did with the iPhone snuffed at the iPad as being a toy and that it would never be a worldwide product that would sell. Again, Microsoft, for the third time, was horribly wrong. They had once again skipped on an opportunity to play with the big two. They made the mistake two times before with the Zune and the phones, you would think they would see that “hey, Apple was right the past two times, maybe we should listen this time”. That, as we know, didn’t happen. It would take Microsoft two years to make their own tablet. However, this tablet thus far has been a flop. Sales have not been good and stock has taken a major hit.

Of course, the things that Microsoft has missed out on has not only been Ballmer’s mistakes, he has also brought down both the Xbox and Windows in the past several months. Windows as an operating system has dominated the PC market during almost the entire time the PC market has been around. It has accumulated a lot of market share, especially with XP and 7. The Windows OS has remained the same for a long time and it has always just worked for people to buy these computers, albeit cheaper-made and worse than other OSs. People have bought Windows OS and enjoyed Windows OS for along time. However, Ballmer decided it was time for a change. He decided that he would reinvent the wheel. Unfortunately for Microsoft, the result was a square that didn’t move anywhere. The PC market has been failing for some time due to tablets and phones, something Microsoft avoided for so long, and fails at now. However, there still is a PC market, a huge one at that albeit a falling one. They still need to make money off of it. Steve Ballmer has placed his bets on Windows 8, something so drastic of a change, no one is downgrading to it. Windows 8 has been unsuccessful on desktops, laptops and tablets, including the laptop/tablet hybrids that have failed as well. Windows 8 is sitting at a marketshare slightly higher than Vista at about 5.4%, after a year after being on the market, the slowest adoption rate for any Windows OS. While 8.1 may fix some issues people have had with Windows 8, people are unconvinced at buying the new OS.

In addition to all these flops, Microsoft also unveiled it’s Xbox One at E3 2013. Despite the fact that many of the policies that Microsoft had that people didn’t like are gone, people have been won over by the PS4 and it’s superiority to the One. Even many Xbox fans are denouncing the One and moving to PS4 because of the vast difference between them. The company had some good new features but those were taken away when people complained about certain policies unrelated to what they took away. The media also has had a field day with the Xbox One, berating it at every angle until it’s reputation has been destroyed, which it has, despite not being released yet. Many people have favored the PS4 over the XBox One in polls and only time will tell if it will be another flop under Ballmer’s Microsoft, so far it doesn’t look good for them.

So what’s next for Microsoft. Microsoft in the last few months have showed signs of failing. It’s stock has been plummeting and sales were way below expectations. The company’s creative spark, if it ever had one, was lost and the employees have lost morale. This is under Ballmer. Honestly, things can get a lot worse for Microsoft, they could flop on Bing, Office and their other more successful ventures. They could start bleeding money. Microsoft, however, can get a lot better, and I mean a LOT better. Now that Ballmer is gone, could Microsoft stop this negative direction they are heading in. Honestly, I can’t say for sure. We could suppose the new CEO will be as uninventive and as terrible as Ballmer has and just keep going down this path. In fact, Microsoft has gone so far down this path, it may actually not change, even under a better, new CEO. It would take a lot of doing to un-do Ballmer’s errors and I don’t think Microsoft has the will to change, or has the morale to change. Ballmer put them on the firing block and it has no will to get back since they are so far down the path to self-destruction, they reached a point of no return.

Thanks for reading,

Joe

Today, Apple mysteriously took off the executive profile of Bob Mansfield, SVP of Technologies, a position that nobody really knows much about. Apple took off the profile without releasing any press release as to why this happened, which is very un-Apple like, especially considering the caliber of his job.

Bob Mansfield first announced his retirement in June 2012 but was brought back after Apple had a shake-up in the company a few months later, a shake-up that included the removal of Scott Forstall, someone Mansfield and other executives didn’t like. Bob was given a contract to lead the company in it’s technologies team for two years. He is not holding that part of the contract, but he is still working at Apple. Apple still needs him, after all, he has been very influential at Apple.

The way in which Apple announced the departure of Mansfield from the executive team is highly unusual for any company, especially Apple. Apple took his profile off and then when they were asked questions about it, they issued a statement to Reuters that he was leaving the executive team but that he would continue reporting to Apple’s CEO Tim Cook for special projects. This sudden change up brings up a few questions. First, why did this happen in the first place? Second,  Bob was Apple’s hardware man for years until his change to SVP of Technologies, could this sudden change mean that the top hardware guy is working with Apple for one or two major projects, like the iWatch or iTV, before he leaves the company? Bob has been very influential over the development of the iPhone and iPad, letting him go when a new major product is bound to be on the horizon certainly raises an eyebrow. Perhaps this SVP position that nobody really knows much about was a cover up for a transition of power to Dan Riccio and now that he feels as though it’s complete, he can focus completely on this new project, most likely, the iWatch.

He is Apple’s hardware man, if anyone can lead them to a great watch or TV or anything, it is him. His expertise at Apple is very important especially for the “special projects” Tim Cook has for him. Only time will tell of Bob’s future plans and work at Apple. Let’s hope he stays a while longer.

Thanks for reading,

Joe