Unabashedly Waxing Poetic on Apple From a User’s Standpoint

I started using Macs when they were powered by the Motorola 68000′s and Berkeley Breathed anthropomorphized one in Bloom County. Even back then, in the miasma of the awakening WinTel juggernaut and whiffs of Amigas and Atari STs, Macs were considered niche machines. I wrote my first dozen short stories on that little Mac, and after upgrading to a Mac SE/30 I went through high school with that little beige box on my desk. The Mac, and the Commodore 64 that preceded it, were my first technology proving grounds.

Later, because I was a hopeless gaming nerd, I migrated to Windows PCs for a stint. I built my own rigs. I spec’ed my own motherboards, hard drives, RAM chips, cases, power supply and garish-colored fans. When GPUs were invented, I pored over every polygon each had the potential to push. I had become a full-on hardware nerd.

My stay on the Windows side of thing lasted longer than I expected, because that happened to be the same time Steve Jobs was exiled from Apple and John Sculley began his seemingly-intentional grounding of the company into any rocky shore he could find. The Windows PC era was in full bloom, and nobody outside really dedicated typesetting/design studios ever thought about Macs again. Everyone thought Apple had been relegated into insignificance; Michael Dell even suggested that Apple should sell the stock back to shareholders and ‘shut the company down’.

In the early 2000′s, as real life became more real and I wasn’t spending my nights fragging strangers in Rocket Arena 3, I was looking for a more elegant computing setup. My giant, power-sucking, room-heating beast of  PC was too much, Windows was too boring, and I longed for something new. As it turned out for me, everything old indeed does become new again.

I did something that made everyone laugh at me: I bought an overpriced, shiny, white MacBook. That was back in OSX 10.1 days, when the OS was unquestionably immature and limited to the point of being annoying. It was also during the very beginning of Apple’s real resurgence, a movement that saw the iPod give way to the iPhone, and the introduction of what many argue is the new modern-day portable computer: the iPad. It also heralded a bona fide Mac explosion.

Today, I’m Apple everywhere, for better or worse. I have an iMac, MacBook Air, iPhone 4S, iPad and Apple TV. Everything just works. My days of fiddling with Windows and building my own machines have given way to technology that enables me to do what I want, easily, effortlessly. I  know it’s bad form to gush uncontrollably about a tech bias in public, but Apple has done something amazing with itself over the past 12 years, and I’m proud to say I’ve been along for (most of) the ride, through the doldrums as well as the ascent. To me, and from the perspective of the user, Apple is a brave company, one that stands for higher standards and holds a focus on user experience that is in its DNA, as opposed to watery marketing fodder.

A few days ago, Apple announced a historic quarterly earnings report. Even by the hyperspazzy standards of Wall Street analyst wonks everywhere, Apple absolutely showed that it is winning pretty much every battle its fighting. Scratch that — it’s not just winning, it’s dominating.

Apple announced sales of $46 billion. Think about that. Here’s a $100-billion-plus company growing at a 73% clip, which simply isn’t supposed to happen. Sales in Apple’s past quarter exceeded its entire 2009. And this year, we’re looking at the iPad 3, the iPhone 5, probably an Apple TV reincarnation, and who knows what else. What’s for sure is that this momentum shows no signs of slowing.

Some other interesting trivia in light of Apple’s performance:

Data shows that shows PC shipments waning — except at Apple.

Farhad Manjoo puts things in perspective for anyone who can’t get their head around what Apple just announced: Apple’s profits ($13 billion) exceeded Google’s entire revenue ($10.6 billion).

At Verizon, 55% of all phone sales for 4Q 2011 came from iPhones. That means two iPhone models (the 4 and 4s) outsold every Android device the carrier offers combined.

Finally, here’s the ultimate framework in which to look at Apple’s data: it just posted the second-most-profitable quarter in any company’s history.

Where’s Charlie Sheen when you need him? Oh, he’s right here.

Have a good weekend, everyone.

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Josh Ong, reporting for AppleInsider:

Microsoft’s head of software design for Windows Phone has admitted that the company completely redesigned its mobile operating system platform as a response to Apple’s iPhone and the “sea change” it created in the industry.

Joe Belfiore, one of the first engineers brought to the new Windows Phone team when it was formed, made the comments in an interview with The New York Times.

“Apple created a sea change in the industry in terms of the kinds of things they did that were unique and highly appealing to consumers,” he said. “We wanted to respond with something that would be competitive, but not the same.”

According to the report, “once the iPhone exploded into the marketplace, Microsoft executives knew that their software, as designed, could never compete.” In December 2008, Microsoft’s then head of mobile engineering called a meeting to decide the fate of its aging Windows Mobile software. Seven hours later, Myerson and his team decided to scrap the OS and start again from scratch.

One could argue extremely cogently that everything that has happened in the last five years in the mobile market was in response to the iPhone.

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Here’s Neven Mrgan illustrating what Apple’s iMessage — the new iOS-to-iOS messaging service — did to his text messaging usage:

Note the iOS 5 launch line — that’s when iMessage was introduced.

This matches my experience directly. Almost everyone I message frequently has an iPhone, and my sending of actual text messages has dropped massively. It’s to the point where if I see the green message button/bubble (which signifies text messaging), I’m actually surprised. 90% of what I send uses iMessage’s blue buttom/bubble. iMessage absolutely cannibalizes traditional text messaging usage.

For you BlackBerry users out there, think of iMessage as Apple’s version of BlackBerry Messenger (commonly called BBM).

I love this trend. Not for me alone, but for consumers. As it stands today, wireless carriers price text messaging at astronomical levels, especially considering there’s no magic voodoo involved. It’s old technology at a premium price, and it’s almost all profit for wireless carriers.

iMessage sends information using your plan’s data pipe, and has the added benefit of confirming message delivery and showing when your correspondent is typing.

And it’s free. It can save you money per month. Value add.

If you’re an iPhone user and you haven’t enabled iMessage, you’re missing out on potentially being able to save a few bucks per month by reducing your text messaging plan. To enable iMessage on your iPhone, go to Settings -> Messages -> and flick the iMessage switch to ON. Easy.

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You read that right: RIM, as a company, is now worth less than Apple’s App Store, a fragment of a company, alone.

An analysis from Trefis places the value of the App Store at 2 percent of Apple’s market cap. AAPL stock has a market cap of $354 billion, or more than 50 times greater than RIMM, and 2 percent of that means the App Store contributes $7.08 billion to Apple’s market cap.

“The App Store is probably worth more than BlackBerry,” Hall wrote. “All of BlackBerry. Just the App Store. Nothing else. Not the iPhone or iPod. Not Mac. Just the App Store.”

This makes me both sad and angry. I mean, I’m sitting here shaking my head.

I’m sad because BlackBerry was my real introduction to smartphones. (We won’t count my fling with a Kyocera 7135, which was awful.) It was the first device that brought mobile messaging and email to the masses, and it gave us the ability to check the web, however awkwardly, on the go. BlackBerry was the leader: everyone had one, and they worked.

You would think RIM would have been able to parlay that early momentum into a broader vision, one that took the platform well beyond messaging. But you’d be wrong.

That’s why I’m angry. Through either sheer, bald-faced laziness or incompetence, RIM did essentially nothing notable for the past five years. Bombarded by Apple and Android — who now own the mobile space — RIM released reheated versions of their QWERTY devices, a few models of touchscreen devices that were universally decried as garbage, and then built a rushed, half-baked tablet to try and react to the iPad. As of this writing, they still have no next-gen OS that will appear before late 2012. The PlayBook tablet, especially, illustrated the company’s lack of vision and strategy: not only did the device get met with poor reviews and even poorer customer demand, but RIM went and built 2.65 million units of the things and later had to eat the losses as a $485M writeoff. Finally, as icing on the cake, a couple of RIM executives hopped on planes and began drunkenly chewing through restraints, which they found themselves in after some pretty horrific behavior.

And now, today, RIM is a shell of what it used to be. And certainly an even thinner shell of what it could have become.

If Apple’s Phoenix story is the tech world’s yin, RIM’s foibles might very well be the yang.

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Do you overthink things? Does this article sound like something you need?

I have chronic, epic, daily failures with this, as I can overanalyze what gym socks to wear on what day given forecasted temperatures, footwear expectations and workout frequency (this is a real example, one that’s even scarier and more anxiety-inducing when I see it all spelled out in front of me).  There’s nothing I don’t break down into a multi-factored decision matrix that I don’t get the urge to put into an Excel pivot table. Packing for a trip involves so many variables and forays into weather forecasts and terrain research that I have thought about building a server — an Anxiety Server, if you will – to help me with all these gymnastics.

I am not kidding.  Trying to go on gut feel is a great idea/goal for me, but one that requires discipline and a sturdy mental tire iron with which I can beat back my OCD into its little cave. There’s all sorts of material out there about how we should get back in touch with our intuition, with our gut, to life a simpler, happier life. Me, anything that doesn’t involve a list or a computer to help consider the variables is clearly ineffective.

People who don’t know me often say, “Man, that’s impressive. I don’t see how anyone would have the mental resources to juggle all of that.”

People who know me say, “This is why you’re so messed up. You spend all your energy worrying about wearing  your old socks first so you don’t wear out your new ones that you can’t remember that spreadsheet you were supposed to put together.” (Right now, some of my MIPRO colleagues are nodding.)

The upside to this is that over the past two years or so, I can literally consider variables most people wouldn’t even think about. I do outwardly appear organized. Some even call me ‘smart.’

The downside is that I have 11,000 screaming voices in my head and only the ones belonging to giant mental closet-beasts can get my attention. And those, naturally, are the most insecure jerks of the bunch.

Intuition? Gut? Yeah, they pretty much get washed away in the noise.

I often pretty much serve the wrong master. I read on the interblogtubes that this a growing epidemic among people who juggle 20 different things every day and stare at 30+ browser tabs for a living. I’m starting to believe it.

The downstream consequence? My son, age 7, is starting to show signs that he can say some pretty smart things as a result of his fledgling overthinking habit:

Me (to son, at dinner table): Do you know why people started using bread for sandwiches and hamburgers?
Son: (thinking, making pensive gestures and all) Because the bread traps the heat and keeps food warm?
Me: No, actually, to keep your hands clean. But I’m going to love the Ferrari I have when you’re a famous physicist, you little Junior Overthinker, you.

He’ll be a super scientist in ratty socks. Hooray?

With that out of the way, here are some links to ease you into something more coherent than what you just read:

Is Siri Apple’s broken promise?

Cello Wars: a Star Wars parody lightsaber duel. Pretty awesome.

The most popular how-to guides of 2011.

Have a good weekend, everyone.

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Christine Comaford, writing for Forbes:

I was a young CEO and I needed answers. Steve Jobs had them. There was only one thing to do.

So I sent a FedEx letter.

Then I sent another.

Then I started calling.

Then I sent another FedEx, and called some more. Finally, after 7 FedExs and 12 phone calls, Steve’s assistant said he wanted to talk with me.

“You keep sending FedExs and calling. So let’s end it. What do you want?” Steve said, with his characteristic charm.

“Five minutes of your time. I really admire your accomplishments and as a young CEO I have a few questions no one else can answer.”

“Bring a timer.”

“I will. Oh—and thanks.”

He had already hung up.

That’s not exactly how the meeting went. Here’s what happened:

Forty five minutes later Steve released me. Sitting in my overheated car in the sunny Redwood City parking lot, my head bursting with the remarkable, complex, complete vision of Steve Jobs in my head, I made a commitment.

I would no longer see barricades. Stumbling blocks would now be seen as stepping stones to something better, or something to crawl over or walk around. Previous limitations would now be a mere triviality, at worst a slight inconvenience. There were insanely great things to create and we were here to create them and that’s all there was to it. All thoughts to the contrary were irrelevant.

That’s how I still live today.

Great story that concludes with some very smart advice. Worth your time.

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First, let’s ignore the totally cool and palindromic date. 11/11/11? Awesome. I was going to do a whole blog post on that but then ran out of cheesy numerology jokes.

Instead, I will treat you to what I think a chat conversation with my cat Jonah would look like if he knew how to use instant messaging. He doesn’t, and he’s really awkward and clumsy, and some days he has a hard time lying down without making this weird MEOHRRMPH noise (see also: awkward, clumsy). But Jonah’s full of personality, and instead of me telling you a dumb story about him, I will instead try to approximate his personality with a fake IM conversation. (Inspired by Louis vs. Rick, the best blog I’ve found all year.)

JonahCat: hi

JonahCat: hi

JonahCat: hi jeff

JeffVentura:  Hi. What?

JonahCat: when you going to be home

JeffVentura: Not for a while. I have to take Marc to soccer practice.

JonahCat: so you’ll be home around 10

JeffVentura: 10? No. I’ll be home around 7.

JonahCat: you should stay out later have some fun live a little

JeffVentura: What happened?

JonahCat: seriously take a night off

JeffVentura: WHAT DID YOU DO?

JonahCat: i think i threw up a little

JeffVentura: You THINK?

JonahCat: that jerky bengal cat you forced me to live with made me do it

JeffVentura: He threw up for you?

JonahCat: no he made me do it

JonahCat: he scared me

JonahCat: he jumped at me and knocked me down

JonahCat: you know i have some neurological issues

JonahCat: so i threw up

JonahCat: you there jeff

JeffVentura: Yes I’m here. I don’t have time for this.

JonahCat: so theres a mess jeff

JonahCat: also im thirsty

JeffVentura: So drink some of your water. You have a bowl in the kitchen.

JonahCat: i need you to come home and turn on the bathtub faucet

JeffVentura: Not going to happen. I need to go. Get some water or wait until I get home.

JonahCat: if i don’t get water i might throw up again jeff

JonahCat: or the bengal might eat more qtips

JeffVentura: The Bengal is eating Q-Tips??!

JonahCat: hes a horrible pet we should get rid of him

JonahCat: i think hes thirsty too

JonahCat: you need to come home jeff

JonahCat: give us water and punish the bad bengal

JonahCat: clean up my mess from off your ipad

JeffVentura: YOU THREW UP ON MY IPAD?

JonahCat: its like a big saucer only square

JonahCat: dont blame me blame apple

JonahCat: jeff

JonahCat: jeff

JeffVentura: Jonah, I really can’t deal with this right now. I have to go. I’ll deal with this when I get home. I’m NOT HAPPY with you at all. NOT HAPPY.

JonahCat: oh

JonahCat: jeff

JonahCat: jeff

JeffVentura: WHAT? I am trying to walk out RIGHT NOW.

JonahCat: i think the bengal is throwing up now

JonahCat: im guessing its the qtips

JeffVentura: I cannot believe this.

JonahCat: jeff

JonahCat: jeff

JonahCat: you seriously should stay out later, have some fun, live a little

JonahCat: because the bengal threw  up on your ipad too

JEFFVENTURA HAS LOGGED OFF.

Finally, your weekend links:

Moonbot Studios: the Pixar of the iPad age. Their stuff is amazing; I can vouch for that firsthand.

How to deal with slow walkers.

Are you looking for a Perry the Platypus sound for your ringtone? Why, of course you are. Head over here to fulfill your dreams.

Have a good weekend, everyone.

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From Gazelle.com, the popular service that offers cash for your old electronics as you prepare to upgrade:

Earlier this month, the trade-in of BlackBerry devices climbed, but in the past week, the number of these trades skyrocketed by 80%. This spike coincided with the launch of the iPhone 4S, says Gazelle Chief Gadget Officer Anthony Scarsella.

RIM used to be the darling of the mobile technology world. Now, they can’t buy a break.  Amazing how quickly tides change.

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Utterly fantastic article in Fast Company by Farhad Manjoo about the greatest tech showdown of our time, all likely going fully thermonuclear next year. With players like Apple, Facebook, Google and Amazon in the mix, this isn’t the minor leagues. Who winds up on top here controls the innovation economy moving forward, and there are sane arguments for each as the winner. The following excerpt sums up the vast power and influence these companies have over our technological lives:

To state this as clearly as possible: The four American companies that have come to define 21st-century information technology and entertainment are on the verge of war. Over the next two years, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google will increasingly collide in the markets for mobile phones and tablets, mobile apps, social networking, and more. This competition will be intense. Each of the four has shown competitive excellence, strategic genius, and superb execution that have left the rest of the world in the dust. HP, for example, tried to take a run at Apple head-on, with its TouchPad, the product of its $1.2 billion acquisition of Palm. HP bailed out after an embarrassingly short 49-day run, and it cost CEO Léo Apotheker his job. Microsoft’s every move must be viewed as a reaction to the initiatives of these smarter, nimbler, and now, in the case of Apple, richer companies.

And:

According to Nielsen, Android now powers about 40% of smartphones; 28% run Apple’s iOS. But here’s the twist: Android could command even 70% of the smartphone business without having a meaningful impact on Apple’s finances. Why? Because Apple makes a profit on iOS devices, while Google and many Android handset makers do not. This is part of a major strategic difference between Apple and the other members of the Fab Four. Apple doesn’t need a dominant market share to win. Everyone else does.

If you asked me to list the four biggest players in the tech space, this is the list I’d jot down.  And the scary thing? I’m a customer of each.  In Google and Facebook’s case, I am the product itself.

2012 will be anything but dull.

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Stories from Italy, Vol. 2

I had a chance to spend a day in Cortona, which aside from being medieval and kinda scary at night, I found to be insanely awesome. I could write an entire travel guide (where by entire I mean ‘laughably incomplete’) about the city, but instead I will just riff on some stuff I found very cool.

Parking outside of Cortona is a must, because (a) it’s a walled city and entrance is precarious, and (b) the roads are narrow and on brutal grades, so you have to be crazy, very skilled or very Italian to attempt it. So, after I parked outside of this landmark city, I strolled up to the city gates only to see this black Ferrari F430 sitting there waiting for me.

Like a dumb American tourist, the first thing I did was not coolly walk by the car, realizing it was nothing horribly special in Italy, but instead drop to my knees, paw around for my iPhone, and sweatily take about a dozen pictures of the beast. People were staring at me. I’m pretty sure I was moments away from being arrested. I was surprised I wasn’t spit on. Regardless, look at this piece of art:

One thing I was told about Italy is, “Don’t be a dummy and spend a lot on wine. Their table wine is cheap and way better than many bottles. I am telling you this because you are a dummy.”

They weren’t lying. Whenever I got wine, I asked for their house table wine in either super-slow English or horribly slaughtered Italian. And every time, I was brought this, and it was absolutely fantastic.

Doesn’t look like much, does it? Yeah, that’s what I thought too. This is a jug of pure Italian awesome, which I believe they call Chianti or Montepulciano or Brunello or something, and it blows away nearly every fancy-pants bottle of wine you ever considered buying from SkyMall. So get that look off your face, mister.

Speaking of wine, the Italians have not only figured out how to incorporate wine into dessert, but they’ve also figured out a way to dip cookies into it and have it not taste like roofing tar. What you see below is a traditional Italian dessert called vinsanto al biscotti, which translates roughly into ‘holy wine with biscuits’. What’s floating around is what’s left of the biscuits after I devoured them like a wild dog, all the while proclaiming how this might be the best dessert I’ve ever had. The best part was watching an entire table watch me take a picture of a nearly-empty glass with crumbs floating around in it. You guys can thank me later for being such an obnoxious representative of American culture. I did our stereotype proud.

Finally, walking back to my car, I came across a used battery bucket in a nondescript Cortona street corner. Why? Don’t you mean WHY NOT? They have cookies you dip in sweet wine, for crying out loud! Why wouldn’t they have a used battery bucket?

I know you’re plowing through this post to get to the links, so here you go, you patient warrior, you:

Apple predicted Siri 24 years ago, showcasing a concept they then called Knowledge Navigator. The crazy thing? In 24-year-old, they predicted 2011 would be the year it became reality. Two weeks ago, Apple announced Siri. How’s that for vision?

Apple has created a page to share all of the stories and comments they received in the wake of Steve Jobs’ passing. You can view it here.

The world’s first malaria vaccine works in major trial.

Everything has been done, so give up now.

Have a good weekend, everyone.

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