Apple

News broke (subscription required) over the holiday weekend that Apple is rumored to announce a home automation solution and/or platform at WWDC this year. Of course, rumors like this are to be taken with a grain of salt, but John Gruber’s reply of “I’m pretty excited for next week.” is classic Gruber-speak (albeit not a sure thing) for “this is happening.”

News broke (subscription required) over the holiday weekend that Apple is rumored to announce a home automation solution and/or platform at WWDC this year. Of course, rumors like this are to be taken with a grain of salt, but John Gruber’s reply of “I’m pretty excited for next week.” is classic Gruber-speak (albeit not a sure thing) for “this is happening.”

Time Machine and Backblaze team up to make a really robust backup configuration for any Mac user. They offer features to exclude particular directories from the backups, but what happens when those directories are inside of a “package” such as your iMovie or iPhoto library? If you use the UI to do this, you’ll never be able to omit a subdirectory of a package, but luckily  there is a very easy solution.

I wrote a piece yesterday after news broke that Apple is near closing on a deal that would make them owners of Beats for a bit of spare change, $3.2 billion. I highlighted a few reasons why this doesn’t seem to add up, and those are still valid.

Reports seem to be hinting more and more strongly that this is legit, but it still isn’t quite settling right for me. In one camp, you’ve got those that believe the headphones are the primary driver for the deal (Ben Thompson for one). In another (perhaps larger) camp, you’ve got those that think it is for the music streaming service.

As reported by the Financial Times (subscription required; MacRumors link for those without) Apple is allegedly in talks to purchase Beats for $3.2 billion. Beats makes headphones and recently launched a music service to go head-to-head with Spotify.

Apple could use some help with iTunes Radio, though for those simply looking for radio it isn’t too shabby; Apple certainly loves nice hardware and hardware design and it is no secret that Apple’s EarPods, though improved, could stand to be improved upon. However, this still doesn’t add up. It isn’t the money, it’s the principle. 

The first, and by far the strongest, reason that Apple might not be in a rush to deploy a mobile payment/wallet solution is that the margins are extremely low. They’re even lower if you’re paying with a credit card since those companies already take a cut.

Google Wallet hasn’t exactly taken off. Square is growing in larger cities, but it is far from ubiquitous. So why would Apple bother? If there isn’t much money to be made and previous attempts are less than successful, what’s to be gained?

The iPod, iPhone, and iPad are unequivocally considered to be profound and world-changing technological breakthroughs that forever changed the world we live in. They sell by the millions and account for staggering quarterly revenues.

The funny thing is, none of them really sold well on the first generation. The first iPod is barely a blip on the sales radar coming in well under a quarter million units.

To proclaim understanding of such a young tablet market is a fool’s errand, but I think there are some additional considerations to be made beyond Gassée’s article where he concludes that the iPad is a tease and it cannot fulfill the duties it promised to fulfill.

To evaluate the tablet, it is worthwhile to consider smartphones. Smartphones replaced their predecessors entirely, and with ease. It wasn’t a “good enough” solution and the way we use phones didn’t have to change. Sure we got all sorts of new ways to use phones, but the same old ability to make calls and send SMS usage was fundamentally still there. All of the things people needed to do, they could do.

This piece by Yoni Heisler is the most refreshing thing I’ve read in a very long time. Do yourself a favor and go read it (and don’t miss the embedded Louis CK video - so accurate). 

Apple does one thing, and it does it very well. In Yoni’s words:

Apple may be an immensely private company, but its modus operandi is hardly a well-kept secret. The company releases finished products that it believes will fundamentally have a positive impact on the way people interact with technology, and in the process, make them truckloads of money. 

Apple has famously flown a pirate flag, dismissed conventional business practices, and run the company in nontraditional ways. It seems to be working so far. This isn’t an argument that Apple is exactly like a startup, but there are some key indicators that highlight how Apple is run differently when compared to any other multibillion dollar technology company such as Google, IBM, or Microsoft.

The $475B Startup(ish) #

Focus #

The number of technology product categories that Apple participates in in shockingly small for a company that size. It could be argued that Apple’s focus on their products has never been better. Their newer products are selling in record numbers with their older products outpacing their respective industries. This focus is far more aligned with a startup mentality - “If we can just do this one thing perfectly…” The focus is very apparent, even to a fault in some cases.