Tag Archives: Apple

Google: “Us” vs. “Them”

16 May

Great post from John Gruber reiterating how Google isn’t often the creator of original products; they make existing products better:

Google fans seem to eat this kumbaya stuff up, to really believe it. But Google is the company that built Android after the iPhone, Google Plus after Facebook, and now a subscription music service after Spotify. They entered the RSS reader market, wiped it out, and are now just walking away from it. Gmail? Webmail but better. Think about even web search: Google search wasn’t something new; it was something better. Way, way, way better, but still.

Consider maps. Google Maps entered a market where MapQuest and others had been around for years. That wasn’t something great that didn’t already exist. It was a better version of something that already existed. Google is a hyper-competitive company, and they repeatedly enter markets that already exist and crush competitors. Nothing wrong with that. That’s how capitalism is supposed to work, and Google’s successes are admirable. But there’s nothing stupid about seeing Google being pitted “versus” other companies. They want everything; their ambition is boundless. 

With yesterday’s announcements at the I/O conference, Google’s stock price reached an all-time high of above $900/share.

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Interview with Photographer Peter Belanger on Shooting for Apple

8 May

Great interview at The Verge with photographer Peter Belanger, who’s shot some of the most iconic products for Apple.

What camera is nearest to you at the moment?

Canon 5D Mark III, this is my go-to camera. My base lens is the 24-70mm; if I could only have one lens this would be it. It works in almost all situations. I’m always impressed with how shallow the depth-of-field looks at f/2.8 with this lens.

You’ve created images seen by millions of people every day, but most people probably have no idea that you’re the photographer with whom they’re so familiar. I see your images every day walking around New York City. How did you come to work with Apple so much?

When I was starting out I freelanced for agencies that had Apple accounts. Over the years the agencies evolved and many of the designers and producers moved internally at Apple. Because I had a working relationship with lots of them, they kept using me. I feel very lucky that this relationship continued.

He gets one thing right: nailing most of the image in camera, rather than relying heavily to post-production. I guess Mr. Belanger using Apple’s Aperture program shouldn’t be a surprise (I prefer Lightroom).

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Jony Ive on Philosophy and Authenticity of Design

7 May

One of the things that’s interesting about design [is that] there’s a danger, particularly in this industry, to focus on product attributes that are easy to talk about. You go back 10 years, and people wanted to talk about product attributes that you could measure with a number. So they would talk about hard drive size, because it was incontrovertible that 10 was a bigger number than 5, and maybe in the case of hard drives that’s a good thing. Or you could talk about price because there’s a number there.

But there are a lot of product attributes that don’t have those sorts of measures. Product attributes that are more emotive and less tangible. But they’re really important. There’s a lot of stuff that’s really important that you can’t distill down to a number. And I think one of the things with design is that when you look at an object you make many many decisions about it, not consciously, and I think one of the jobs of a designer is that you’re very sensitive to trying to understand what goes on between seeing something and filling out your perception of it. You know we all can look at the same object, but we will all perceive it in a very unique way. It means something different to each of us. Part of the job of a designer is to try to understand what happens between physically seeing something and interpreting it.

I think that sort of striving for simplicity is not a style. It’s an approach and a philosophy. I think it’s about authenticity and being honest. Not just taking something crappy and styling the outside in an arbitrary disconnected way.

–Jony Ive, via this blog post titled “Jony Ive is Not a Graphic Designer” (per this PR document, Ive is in charge of Human Interface at Apple).

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Touch: The Future of Computing

2 Nov

Jeff Atwood got his hands on the newly released tablet Microsoft Surface RT. He reviews his experience with the device in his provocatively titled post “Do You Wana Touch” But it is his take on the future of computing which I thought was worth highlighting here:

I love computers, always have, always will. My strategy with new computing devices is simple: I buy ‘em all, then try living with them.The devices that fall away from me over time – the ones that gather dust, or that I forget about – are the ones I eventually get rid of. So long, Kindle Fire! I knew that the Nexus 7 was really working for me when I gave mine to my father as a spontaneous gift while he was visiting, then missed it sorely when waiting for the replacement to arrive.

As I use these devices, I’ve grown more and more sold on the idea that touch is going to dominate the next era of computing. This reductionism is inevitable and part of the natural evolution of computers. Remove the mouse. Remove the keyboard. Remove the monitor. Reducing a computer to its absolute minumum leads us inexorably, inevitably to the tablet (or, if a bit smaller, the phone). All you’re left with is a flat, featureless slate that invites you to touch it. Welcome to the future, here’s your … rectangle.

He rationalizes:

I’ve stopped thinking of touch as some exotic, add-in technology contained in specialized devices. I belatedly realized that I love to touch computers. And why not? We constantly point and gesture at everything in our lives, including our screens. It’s completely natural to want to interact with computers by touching them. That’s why the more unfortunate among us have displays covered in filthy fingerprints.

I don’t disagree. I love my iPhone and iPad. But I also love my MacBook Air, on which I am composing this post. Will we see a touch MacBook Air (with an uncompromised keyboard) from Apple in a few years? After reading Jeff’s post, I want to say yes.

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Apple’s Tribute to Steve Jobs, One Year Later

5 Oct Remembering Steve Jobs, one year after his death.

Apple.com has a beautiful tribute to Steve Jobs, who died one year ago today. Click on the screenshot below to watch the video.

Remembering Steve Jobs, one year after his death.

Here is what I wrote one year ago today after I learned of Steve’s passing. Here are all the Steve Jobs posts on this blog. Here is the video on YouTube (unless it gets pulled).

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John Gruber’s iPhone 5 Review

19 Sep

I am very happy with my iPhone 4S, so I don’t think I will be upgrading to the new iPhone 5. Still, I enjoyed this thorough review of the iPhone 5 from John Gruber. Bottom line? The phone is nice:

iPhone 5 in my hand, this talk of micron-precision, fine watch craftsmanship, and the computerized selection of best-match inlays sounds not the least bit bullshitty or blustery. It simply sounds like an explanation of the level of obsession that it takes to create a mass-produced device that feels this, well, nice. It even feels as though they’ve put some serious work into the iPhone’s one historical weak spot: the home button.

The iPhone remains the flagship of Apple’s entire product line. It exhibits not merely the highest degree of fit and finish of any smartphone, but the highest degree of fit and finish for anything Apple has ever made. When first you hold it — where by you I mean “you, who, like me, is intimately familiar with the feel and heft of an iPhone 4 or 4S” — you will be struck by how light it feels, yet in a premium, not chintzy way. Within a week, it will feel normal, and your old iPhone 4/4S will feel like a brick.

On Apple choosing to offer only one version (in terms of screen size) of the iPhone:

In an ideal world, perhaps Apple would offer two iPhone sizes — like they do with products such as MacBook Pros, MacBook Airs, and iMacs. A smaller one with the classic 3.5-inch display, and a larger (say, 4.5-inch?) one for people who want that. On the logistics side, this doesn’t align with Apple’s interests — economies of scale and the marketing simplicity of just one new iPhone per year.

But there’s another factor. I believe many people would choose poorly. Bigger looks better. It’s like the old chestnut about TV sets in big box stores — side-by-side, standing in the store, people tend to choose TVs that are oversaturated, the ones with the boldest colors, rather than the ones with the better, more accurate colors. I can’t help but think that many people would choose the big-ass iPhone in my hypothetical two-sizes scenario, and later regret it with tired thumbs sore from stretching. (My thumbs feel sore just by looking at photos like this one of the LG Optimus G.) Design is making decisions, and Apple has always decided what the best size is for an iPhone display.

If you can afford the iPhone 5, John concludes, you should buy it.

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On Buying Apple Products vs. Apple Stock

21 Aug

With Apple hitting an all-time high of $665/share yesterday, I thought it was worth looking again at the table I encountered comparing buying an Apple product or spending the equivalent amount buying Apple stock.

Kyle Conroy had the table updated on April 1, 2012. I pulled the raw data myself and have updated the numbers. I’ve added an extra column: closing share price of Apple on the release date of the product.

The table is found after the jump. Two quick stats: 1) if you spent $1,300 or more buying Apple stock after 2002, you’d have over $100,000 today and 2) There are only five products (out of 430+ listed in the table!) that you could have bought in the last 15 years which would have not made a bigger return had you chosen to instead spend that money by buying Apple stock.

Continue reading →

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Apple Becomes Most Valuable Company in History

20 Aug

Earlier today, shares of Apple stock reached a high of $664.75/share. With 937.41M shares oustanding, this gave the company, briefly, a market capitalization of $623.14 billion. According to Bloomberg, that compares with Microsoft’s $620.6 billion, the record intraday value reached by the company on December 30, 1999 during the Internet heyday.

More $AAPL related articles I’ve read this morning:

1) Should Apple buy Sprint?

2) “Japan’s Dimwitted Smartphones” (or how the iPhone conquered Japan)

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Apple’s Pixel Revolution

14 Aug

John Gruber pens an excellent post on pixel resolution, and surmises how the new Apple MacBook Pro with retina display is the best computer Apple’s ever made:

Today’s pre-retina Mac displays are excellent, especially when judged by historical standards. Brighter, more vibrant colors, and — again, by historical standards — smaller, sharper pixels. A regular 15-inch MacBook Pro ships with a 1440 × 900 pixel display at about 110 pixels per inch, and can be configured with a 1680 × 1050 display at about 130 pixels per inch. Both the 11- and 13-inch MacBooks Air sport resolutions of roughly 130 pixels per inch. Far beneath the retina threshold, but much nicer than our sub-100-PPI displays of the 90s, to say nothing of the mere 72 PPI display on the original 1984 Macintosh.

But we went from 72 PPI in 1984 to 132 PPI in 2012 gradually — a few more pixels per inch every few years. Along the way there was never a moment of celebration, no single great leap forward pixel-density-wise. Even the shift from bulky CRTs to slim flatscreen LCDs didn’t bring about a significant upgrade in terms of pixel size.

But now this. The 15-inch MacBook Pro With Retina Display. This is a boom. A revolution in resolution. The display I’ve been craving ever since I first saw high-resolution laser printer output.

In the footnotes, John Gruber notes that the 15-inch MacBook Pro puts him in a dilemma: it’s too big a laptop to lug around as a travel companion. I’m in the same position. I played around with the retina MacBook Pro when it came out, but I much prefer my 13-inch non-retina MacBook Air for its weight and portability. But when Apple releases the 13-inch retina MacBook Air, I am going to have a hard time holding out upgrading…

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A Cautionary Tale about iCloud

6 Aug

Mat Honan, technology writer based in San Francisco, got hacked over the weekend. He describes his experience in a blog post (it is quite a story):

At 4:50 PM, someone got into my iCloud account, reset the password and sent the confirmation message about the reset to the trash. My password was a 7 digit alphanumeric that I didn’t use elsewhere. When I set it up, years and yearsago, that seemed pretty secure at the time. But it’s not. Especially given that I’ve been using it for, well, years and years…

The backup email address on my Gmail account is that same .mac email address. At 4:52 PM, they sent a Gmail password recovery email to the .mac account. Two minutes later, an email arrived notifying me that my Google Account password had changed. 

At 5:00 PM, they remote wiped my iPhone

At 5:01 PM, they remote wiped my iPad

At 5:05, they remote wiped my MacBook Air.

A few minutes after that, they took over my Twitter. Because, a long time ago, I had linked my Twitter to Gizmodo’s they were then able to gain entry to that as well. 

Honan confirmed with the hacker and Apple that it happened when the hacker got in touch with Apple tech support and via “some clever social engineering” let the hacker bypass the security questions. I want to know more details about this clever social engineering. Because I have an iCloud account of my own and it shouldn’t be this simple to have the password reset. I wonder if Apple will make a formal acknowledgement of the issue and provide some guidance on how iCloud will be made more secure.

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