Even as sales continue to slip now (though market share remains around 70%), it has had one hell of a run. Macworld has the story of its birth on October 23, 2001.
Benj Edwards:
Apple chose to unveil its portable digital music player in a low-key special event held on Apple’s campus in Cupertino. The press and Apple fans alike met the iPod with severe skepticism. Pundits openly wondered what business Apple had selling consumer music gadgets. Many proclaimed doom.
Skepticism. Contempt. Doom. Sounds familiar. Sounds like the same reaction that just about every game-changing product initially receives.
The iPod was going to be a huge failure. Except that it was the opposite. It was actually the catalyst that kick-started Apple’s run towards becoming the most important tech company in the world. An MP3 player no bigger than a deck of cards.
October 2011
37 posts
Danny Sullivan does an extremely deep dive into what on the surface seems to be a very good thing: Google moving over to encrypted search.
It is mainly a good thing, and Google knew that’s how it would be interpreted, so they used the opportunity to do something shady: break the rules for their advertising partners.
When you move to secure connections, the unfortunate side effect is that it breaks referrers to non-secure connections (most of the web). And if Google is willing to do that in the name of trying to get everyone to use secure connections, that’s fine. But when they break all referrers except to those sites who have paid to advertise with them, it makes them look like huge money-grabbing douchebags.
Google is ripping out the underlying social stuff in Google Reader — stuff that never really worked anyway — and instead using their RSS reader as a way to spur Google+ usage.
Makes sense. I’m excited for the new design, which is comically old (and naturally will look nowhere near as good as Reeder).
Here’s the best part of this announcement though:
We recognize, however, that some of you may feel like the product is no longer for you. That’s why we will also be extending Reader’s subscription export feature to include the following items. Your data belongs to you, after all, and we want to make sure you can take it with you.
Translation: Many of you will hate having Google+ shoved in your face. Too bad. Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.
FWIW, I agree with this mentality. If you’re going to go for it, go for it.
I haven’t used one yet, but this thing is fascinating to me. I love that they’ve made a camera with a totally new form factor rather than trying to cram the technology into something that looks familiar.
Writes Sam Grobart for The New York Times:
Where a traditional image sensor (as in your point-and-shoot or DSLR) can only record where light strikes the sensor surface, Lytro’s image sensor can also record the angle that beam of light had when it struck it. By capturing that information, the sensor can pull in far more data about an image, allowing you to move through the picture, clicking and refocusing along the way.
There are additional advantages to a lightfield sensor. By capturing the angle of light beams, all pictures shot with a Lytro camera are natively 3-D (you still need a 3-D display and glasses, but the information’s already there). More importantly, the camera no longer has to focus because it’s capturing every focal point, which means there’s no focus lag. The camera can respond almost instantly to a shutter-release button.
And it has 8x optical zoom.
The downside is that it won’t be available until early 2012, and the cheapest version will be $399 (for the 8GB model, which can store about 350 pictures).
Also awesome:
The Lytro only works with Macs, but Windows software is in development.
Imagine anything not made by Apple going that route even just 5 years ago.
Update: This Is My Next gave it a try and said that it’s “not universally amazing”, but also notes that it’s still a prototype version that they tested out.
For as long as you’ve been carrying around a cellphone, you’ve been carrying around a social network in your pocket. And it’s your most important social network. But you probably don’t realize it. Your address book.
For years, you didn’t realize it because the original cellphones pre-dated the online social movement and there was no way that carriers or OEMs were going to come up with those concepts on their own. Then smartphones came around, but everyone was still unable to put two and two together. Even when the iPhone launched, Apple clearly didn’t understand the potential power of your contact list connected to the network.
The phone address book concept has simply moved from device to device to device being totally under utilized along the way. The fact that we still refer to it as an “address book” is even silly. That’s why Everyme excites me.
Fascinating the gambles companies take on unverified information just to get a jump on Apple gear. With the iPhone 4S, it backfired.
This also points to why you should never trust those stories that pop up claiming new iPhone specs based on cases. They’re just guessing like everyone else.
Again, everyone is so disappointed with the iPhone 4S that they’re ditching their old phones to get it.
I have a number of Android-carrying friends who also made the switch already. With the Nexus Prime due next week, this is going to be really interesting to watch.
Either way, RIM sure seems fucked (just in case that wasn’t already abundantly clear).
It sure seems like pretty much everyone agrees on one thing Apple got wrong with iOS 5: the close buttons in Notification Center are way, way, way too small. I too misclick nearly every time.
The weird thing is that they’ve been too small since the very first beta of iOS 5 several months ago. Apple had a lot of time to change them, and they didn’t. That’s not an oversight, that’s a decision. Let’s hope they change their minds.
Just goes to show you are slap and pray is the model to advertise, what these folk seem not to understand is that anything in the start needs a bit more upkeep with the hope that one day it doesn’t.
Advertising is an ever changing model, the core ideas don’t change but how it’s executed will always change here and there.
Only time will tell, but I think they’ll just fuck up more.
Maybe lol, good post tho
A video interview of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs back in 2007, a great 1 hour and 20 min on 2 of the greatest men to ever happen to the computer industry. I think if you have sometime to kill this is a great way to get greater insight into these 2 men and the industry in general.
One of the things I take from it is how the two have such respect for each other, I mean Apple and Microsoft do well for each other and against. Unlike most major corps which spend most of their time trying to do or wreak them. Even though Apple and Microsoft and even these two in the video take shots at each other, they believe that just to exist and try will lead to better things. Its not about killing one thing over an other its just about making what works and what people need and in that you will find your place, wether its small or large just do what you love.
In just 56 years, Steve Jobs changed the world with his ideas and passion. As the world mourns his Oct. 5 death from pancreatic cancer, here is a look back on the major milestones of his life.
Feb. 24, 1955: Joanne Schieble, a graduate student, gives birth to a boy in San Francisco. That boy…
This is, quite simply, one of the worst pieces I’ve ever read on Apple.
Zach Epstein starts off trashing Apple’s iPhone 4S announcement as perhaps “the beginning of the end” — and does so citing a bunch of analysts.
Analysts.
As anyone who watches Apple closely knows, analysts are absolutely fucktarded when it comes to Apple. If you bet directly against what they’ve said about the company over the years, you’d be a very rich person. They’re always wrong. And it’s clear that the vast majority of them do not understand the company.
Of course, posts citing analysts about Apple are nothing new. Some writers keep going back to the well despite getting diarrhea of the mind over and over again from what they drink there. It’s fascinating to watch.
But what makes this post particularly bad is the way Epstein pussyfoots around the position he sets out to take. The entire end of his post is basically “don’t get me wrong, I think the iPhone 4S is great but…”
So he loves the device, but analysts don’t, therefore it’s the end of Apple? Right.
He also cites the seemingly tepid reaction from the crowd during the event itself. I’ve been to pretty much every single Apple event over the past five years. This is the reaction about half of the time.
Rumors leading up to these event often set the stage for things that simply aren’t coming. This leads some to be disappointed — a natural reaction. It’s only when Apple is able to truly surprise people — like with the iPhone — that everyone is wowed. Even the initial iPad announcement was dubbed “underwhelming”.
If you judge Apple’s products by the reaction of analysts and the press, you’re an idiot. Pure and simple. Apple doesn’t make products for analysts and the press. They make products for everyone.
Peter Kafka wonders if the new Eddie Murphy movie is worth $60 to rent at home when it’s still in theaters.
Short/kind answer: No.
Longer/harsh answer: Hollywood is clearly filled with a bunch of arrogant, greedy assholes who clearly believe that piracy is the future of home movie viewing.
As I reported in March:
A year ago, Apple bought Siri, a virtual personal assistant startup that had released a very cool iPhone app. The Siri team and technology are now said to be a big part of iOS 5.
The use of Siri’s artificial intelligence and assistance technology is said to be deeply integrated into the OS for all the different services offered.
Of course, I was hearing at the time it would launch at WWDC — that obviously didn’t happen. But it was unveiled yesterday.
The one thing I’m still not clear about: did Apple hold back the Siri because the iPhone 4S wasn’t ready yet — or did Apple hold back the iPhone 4S because Siri wasn’t ready yet? Or was it neither? Was Siri always intended to be a “one more thing” feature of iOS 5 specifically for the fall iPhone refresh?
My original source who nailed the feature itself sure seemed to think it was coming at WWDC…
Everyone seems confused about Samsung and Google postponing their Nexus Prime/Ice Cream Sandwich announcement at the last second. Perhaps I’m reading it incorrectly, but the statement seems to point to one thing:
Samsung and Google decide to postpone the new product announcement at CTIA Fall. We agree that it is just not the right time to announce a new product. New date and venue will be shortly announced.
The middle sentence, to me, suggests that they’re postponing it out of respect to Steve Jobs and Apple.
The device/OS was set to be unveiled on Tuesday the 11th, which is in between when the iPhone 4S was announced (the 4th) and when it will go on sale (the 14th). Some people are interpreting this as Google/Samsung being afraid of going head to head. Others wonder if something is wrong with the device and/or the OS?
But again, I don’t think it’s either of those things. I think more likely is that their plan was to take a ton of shots at Apple and the iPhone during the announcement and now it would seem disrespectful to do so right after Jobs’ passing when all of Apple is in mourning.
This is, quite simply, one of the worst pieces I’ve ever read on Apple.
Zach Epstein starts off trashing Apple’s iPhone 4S announcement as perhaps “the beginning of the end” — and does so citing a bunch of analysts.
Analysts.
As anyone who watches Apple closely knows, analysts are absolutely fucktarded when it comes to Apple. If you bet directly against what they’ve said about the company over the years, you’d be a very rich person. They’re always wrong. And it’s clear that the vast majority of them do not understand the company.
Of course, posts citing analysts about Apple are nothing new. Some writers keep going back to the well despite getting diarrhea of the mind over and over again from what they drink there. It’s fascinating to watch.
But what makes this post particularly bad is the way Epstein pussyfoots around the position he sets out to take. The entire end of his post is basically “don’t get me wrong, I think the iPhone 4S is great but…”
So he loves the device, but analysts don’t, therefore it’s the end of Apple? Right.
He also cites the seemingly tepid reaction from the crowd during the event itself. I’ve been to pretty much every single Apple event over the past five years. This is the reaction about half of the time.
Rumors leading up to these event often set the stage for things that simply aren’t coming. This leads some to be disappointed — a natural reaction. It’s only when Apple is able to truly surprise people — like with the iPhone — that everyone is wowed. Even the initial iPad announcement was dubbed “underwhelming”.
If you judge Apple’s products by the reaction of analysts and the press, you’re an idiot. Pure and simple. Apple doesn’t make products for analysts and the press. They make products for everyone.
