World of Apple

Apple retail stores currently offer a great program called One to One training. Here is the description from the Apple site:

As a One to One member, enjoy a year’s worth of personal training sessions for just $99. Sit down for in-depth, face-to-face sessions with your very own personal trainer. Experts in all things Apple, our Trainers help you get the most out of your Apple products. Just tell them what you want to be able to do, and they’ll teach you how. To become a One to One member, visit your local Apple Retail Store.

For that fee you are able to attend one one-hour lesson per week on a wide array of topics. It is not limited to one store nor must you spend the year on only one learning track. Sounds great right? Well, like @mac.com, it is about to go the way of the dodo bird for many customers. As distilled by TheAppleBlog:

Here’s the new deal. Whereas previously anyone could buy a One to One subscription without an accompanying purchase, beginning June 2, Apple will limit new subscriptions to customers buying a Macintosh at an Apple retail store or on the Apple Store web site.

There is no “grace period” for the undecided, either. Customers who want to buy a One to One subscription must do so on the day they buy their new Mac. Existing One to One customers will be able to renew their subscriptions for one further year.

Apple’s focus with One to One is shifting away from convincing customers to switch, to supporting customers who have already made the move from PC to Mac. “We originally set up One to One to get people to switch to the Mac,” Johnson said. “Now we want to expand it to make it even more relevant to people who have bought their Mac.”

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It seems that MacJournals News thinks that Apple pulled a fast one with one of their new “I’m a Mac” advertisements (video after the jump), and I can’t figure out what they are on about. All ads that are openly going head to head pull a certain amount of fast ones. Both sides do it. I have written several articles so far on the Microsoft ads, and I just don’t see what the issue is here. For reference, these are the two articles that I have written so far on the Microsoft “Laptop Hunters” campaign:

Opinion: Microsoft, Myths, and Marketing (Part 1)

Opinion: Microsoft, Myths, and Marketing (Part 2)

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This is a continuation of my prior article on this subject. Perhaps I shall collate my thoughts on those two advertisements in a future post. Before I proceed with the rest of my prior thoughts, I note that Microsoft appears to have edited its “Lauren—I guess I am not cool enough to be a Mac person” ad to cure some of the glaring deficiencies. Doing that breaks a cardinal rule; it draws attention to the fact that they screwed up the first time. I rarely watch television, but this is what I had noticed was changed:

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Apple has eaten Microsoft’s lunch in the advertising department for several years, so beginning last year Microsoft lobbed multiple attempts to strike back. However, the result tragically has been akin to watching a short, bald fifty-year old attempt to prove that white men can jump. As companies go, Microsoft is morbidly unfunny. Apple, on the other hand, has a knack for entertaining, biting satire which has resulted in its success with its “Get a Mac” and “I’m a Mac” campaigns, at least in America. Now, I am well aware that some people think that Apple went down the low road with their tactics. I am not one of them. Let me prove it. Here is a great Lenovo parody ad:
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More skilled and knowledgeable Apple pundits than I have already analyzed the March 17^th preview of iPhone OS 3.0; its homeruns and strikeouts; and who really won this third round of major iPhone news—the developer or consumer. Instead of being repetitive, I’d like to use the iPhone OS 3.0 announcement to predict what we can expect from Apple next March. Yes, that’s right! I’m going to try and preview just a couple of features of iPhone OS 4.0 a whole year before Apple does.

Now I don’t claim to have any insider information but I think Apple has dropped some crumbs for us in OS 3.0. The time is the easiest to predict—I can say with fairly absolute certainty that March of each year will be devoted to iPhone news, followed by a hardware and software release in June/July. Apple did it in 2008 when they first previewed iPhone OS 2.0 and the SDK on March 6 and repeated that pattern this year on March 17, confirming the software upgrade for consumers “sometime this summer.” So we can check off our list that the iPhone OS 4.0 SDK will be released to developers in March 2010. The features are harder to predict, of course, but I believe that OS 3.0 actually gives us some clues of where Apple is headed. I’d like to highlight two of the biggest changes I think we’ll see next year.

First: I predict full background processing/multi-tasking with OS 4.0. You might object that this sounds contrary to the words coming out of Apple executives who are bashing background processing in Windows Mobile phones and others as the best way to slow down performance and reduce battery life. Actually, this kind of bashing-at-first and changing-their-tune-later is not atypical for Apple. Let me give you an example: when the iPhone was first released, Steve Jobs had touted web apps at WWDC 2007 as the best and most secure way to balance both consumers’ interests and developers’ calls for a native SDK. In a reversal on October 17, 2007, Jobs acknowledged in an open letter posted on Apple’s website that he wants third-party applications on the iPhone, and Apple will release the SDK in February 2008. I believe that Apple will do the same with background processing in OS 4.0. What are they waiting for? My guess is that Apple wants to take things slowly and preserve the user experience by controlling it along the way before introducing monumental changes that cannot be undone once released. The push-notification system is already a step forward towards full multi-tasking.

Second: UI changes to go along with the full background processes. I don’t know what this will look like, but the Palm Pre is a great example of a UI that takes advantage of the phone’s multi-tasking features. With the number of applications iPhone users are downloading on a daily basis (800 million downloaded in just nine months!), the current system of home pages is broken. Given the new stuff Apple is introducing in OS 3.0 (search, MMS, Bluetooth support, advanced connectivity features, and more access to Apple’s own built-in apps), the signs point to the need for a forthcoming UI change that organizes all the information better for developers and consumers alike. For a company that toots its own horn on usability, elegance, and simplicity, this change is necessary and certain with OS 4.0. None of the three qualities I mentioned are addressed, let alone fixed, in OS 3.0—a definite disappointment for many others and me. Multi-tasking in a multi-touch environment relies heavily on an intuitive and simple-to-understand UI. It just makes sense that Apple would need to tackle the iPhone UI if it’s going to do background processing.

Neither of these feature sets I predict for OS 4.0 are simple to grasp or develop (heck, it took them until the third revision of the OS to introduce cut, copy, and paste!), but both should make their way into OS 4.0 in some form in the first quarter of 2010. Here’s to looking really far ahead!

3/28/09: minor editorial changes made

Everybody’s atwitter about the invite-only media event today where Apple will unveil iPhone OS 3.0. It was just a little over a year ago that Apple released iPhone OS 2.0, and with it the App Store. Many Apple heavyweights like Ars Technica and Macworld have chimed in with their list of what they would like to see in iPhone OS 3.0; copy-and-paste seems to take the crown, along with ability to run background apps. While both of these basic features have been lacking in the world’s most advanced smartphone, I believe that Apple will not only deliver these simple functionalities long clamored for by iPhone owners and critics, but will hit a homerun with some of the revisions.

The reasons behind Apple’s success in the last decade are varied, and I touched on one of them in my first column last week. Today, I’ll touch on another, one that is best explained by Wayne Gretzky, the Canadian hockey great. Gretzky says: “A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be.” In our terms as it pertains to this column, all of Apple’s competitors are the good hockey players that play where the puck is, but Apple’s played since Jobs’ return twelve years ago to where the puck is going to be.

Let’s take the most recent (and relevant to today’s event) example of the iPhone. The iPhone has been a game-changing since its introduction in January 2007 at Macworld Expo because of its user interface via touchscreen. The phone has been such a success in the amount of hype its attracted and generated in the press and elsewhere that cell phone manufacturers like Nokia that commands almost 40% of the world’s volume of cell phones has introduced a touchscreen phone for the first time, simply to compete and keep up with the iPhone that commands approximately 1% of the volume. In April 2008, The New York Times ran an article about the mobile industry’s obsession to beat the iPhone. Samsung introduced the Instinct, LG put out the Vu, and if current reports are to be believed, even Dell, Asustek, and Acer – all traditionally PC manufacturers – are contemplating a move into the cell phone industry. Even BlackBerry manufacturer, Research in Motion, has released the first touchscreen BlackBerry called the Storm.

While touchscreen smartphones were the big thing last spring among Apple’s rivals, it’s an App Store this time around. Due to Apple’s success with the App Store since it was opened to developers in March 2008, Nokia, Windows Mobile, Palm, and BlackBerry have all opened or announced plans to open their version of the App Store for their platform. And so far, I’ve just analyzed the iPhone and its impact on the industry and its rivals. We could talk about the iPod and the Mac next if I had more time and space.

The takeaway here is Gretzky’s quote: with the iPhone/App Store and iPod/iTunes Store in particular – both have provided the halo effect to the Mac in the last eight years – Apple has succeeded largely by skating to where the puck is going to be, whereas its rivals are still skating to where the puck is. Sure you can copy and improve on an industry trend – a strategy that has proven extremely successful for Microsoft in its entire history – however, today’s consumer is less forgiving and more artistic and usability-minded, and in both areas, Apple continues to outdo and out-innovate its rivals consistently. I won’t be surprised if iPhone OS 3.0 introduces more goodies that its competitors will still be trying to catch up to in spring of 2010.

Hello from the East Coast! I’m thrilled to be writing to you as a new member of the World of Apple team. Approximately once each week, you’ll hear from me on my musings regarding our favorite company. In my regular life, I work as a Middle School Principal in a major metropolitan area on the east coast. You can imagine that this keeps me pretty busy, what with keeping tabs on those adolescent hormones running wild any given minute of the day. My job as an educator has a direct correlation with how I ended up writing for World of Apple. My love affair with all things Apple began at a previous school that was run on the Macintosh platform. Back then, OS X had just been introduced to the world. I was still working off of a Thinkpad, but when the original iPod was introduced in October 2001, I gave up my PC so I could use this shiny new white toy. My obsession since those infant days has only increased exponentially, and now I own two Macs of my own – a 24” iMac and a black MacBook. I also own a 30GB U2 iPod, the original iPod of course, and a 16GB iPhone 3G. For the record, I’d like to add that I bought the original iPhone on June 29, 2007 from the NYC 5th Avenue store at 7:45PM, less than two hours after it went on sale nationwide! I was so attached to it that I had an entire room full of people at a conference last summer sing Happy Birthday to my iPhone on its one-year anniversary. I breathe, eat, drink Apple when I’m not working, and this opportunity with World of Apple just presented too good a chance to pass up to share my love. I look forward to hearing your thoughts on my column in the coming weeks. You can follow me on Twitter too at twitter.com/nishantmehta if you’re interested in keeping in touch that way.

As I was thinking about this first post, I vacillated back and forth between the topic of an Apple netbook (rumors are circulating again as of today), and a dedicated Apple ebook reader (I don’t think so, even more so now that Amazon has released their Kindle for iPhone application). I finally settled on something entirely different and more appropriate to my first post – one of the reasons I love Apple, specifically what makes its products so appealing to me and a mass of people today, as compared to its declining value and presence pre-1998. For the last week or so, I’ve been reading the book A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink. It’s an easy read with some complex and game-changing ideas, and as I was reading it, I kept thinking of Apple as the perfect illustration of Pink’s thesis, the answer to his subtitle: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future.

Pink argues quite successfully that we have entered the Conceptual Age – the 21st century is the age of those who will learn to use the right side of their brain – the side we depend upon for creativity and aesthetics among other things. R-Directed Thinking, in Pink’s argument, is necessary for success in this age. Gone are the days when the MBAs and the engineers and doctors ruled the roost. Those left-brained thinkers and skills are no longer enough. They were significant in the knowledge economy in the 1980s and 1990s, however, that ended in the 21st century when abundance of goods, outsourcing to Asia, and automation of work took over (Ch. 2). So how does Apple fit this paradigm? The timing, if you will, of Steve Jobs’ return to Apple in 1997, and the introduction of the iBook and iMac in 1998-1999 with colors and a focus on looking good appealed to generations of people seeking a difference, something that would look uniquely different than the dreary black/grey gadgets produced then by IBM, Dell, and Compaq. I don’t mean to imply here that that has been the only key to Apple’s success – beauty without brains is meaningless – and Pink is clear that right-brainers are intent on meaning-making. Indeed, Apple’s success lies at the confluence of a variety of factors, but I submit that looks, superficial as this may sound, are important to Apple’s bottom-line.

Even Apple’s legendary PR machine, keynotes, press releases, and news interviews with Apple executives introducing the newest product out of Cupertino’s labs almost always refer to them as “sexy,” “beautiful,” “sleek,” and a whole host of other synonyms. Steve Jobs himself said once that the bottom of a Mac is sexier than the top of a PC. This obsession with looks is just as important to Apple’s bank balance as Steve Jobs’ leadership, for instance. Could Apple really have sold millions of iPods and iPhones if the hardware looked commonplace? Jobs even described the iPhone as “great software wrapped in wonderful hardware.” Sure what’s inside counts – most would agree now that the App Store, iPhone OS, the seamless user experience on an iPod or Mac, the iLife suite, etc. are all extremely important to Apple – but what’s on the outside (how sexy and elegant does it look?) have contributed a lot as well to distinguish Apple from its competitors.

So how important are looks and the artist in this new century? Very. Pink cites on one occasion that there are more MFAs graduating now than MBAs, and consulting companies such as McKinsey are hiring significantly more right-brainers than they did a decade ago. No wonder too that Dell, once beating Apple hands down in market capitalization, is now struggling to catch up to it by copying many of its moves on the aesthetic front. Perhaps Michael Dell’s now infamous response in 1997 about Apple’s future should be reversely applied.

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