The day Apple changed

August 24th 2011, Steve Jobs resigns as CEO

I had followed Apple from a distance roughly since the mid to late 90's and of course Apple had already seen great success in the 80's. When I started following Apple, they were on the downside of their glory years. Down and sliding further into obscurity every day.

Steve Jobs had returned to Apple between 96 and 97 I believe, and while I am no expert in all the details here, I thought, why after such a bitter ending would he do such a thing after being seemingly treated so poorly in the 80's during his dismissal? He had a growing successful company now in Pixar entertainment, and a new company called NEXT, that had potential however was not going anywhere fast. He had successfully moved on.

Steve Jobs love for Apple and all things Apple became clear to me in about 2000, and 2001 around the time of the first Ipods. I bought one. It was my first Apple product. It was a little clunky, and until version 2, I think did not work well or much at all with Windows, which was still my OS that I had been using for more than 11 years at that point.  Ahh the days of firewire.

There was something about that player though. Tami and I both wanted to like it, and it was great in concept and it's sound was better than anything in it's class at the time in my opinion. However it was just missing something. It also looked cool and you felt as if you had something valuable in your hands. "Value" That was the key that would eventually draw me all in.

Along came Itunes within a year or so. Within 4 more years I finally bought all in and bought my first Mac. A Mini. It was early 2005, and now a couple of ipods, in the halo effect for me had happened. Believe me when I say that Halo effect thing is real.

Today I am enjoying a really zippy super mobile 11' Macbook Air, and Lion and our household is all things Apple.

What does any of this mean? It means that in all liklihood I'd never had bought into Apple had it not been for Steve Job's vision, and tenacity for what is today the worlds most successful technology company that has come from almost certain bankruptsy in 97. In fact one of the top 5 companies in the wolrd as far as Market value only second to Exxon as of this writing.

It is nothing short of unbelieveable and not likely to be repeated in my lifetime. My hope for the man who turned that Dinosaur into a Dynasty, somehow made it through his incredibly rough health problems he has endured for many years now.  It has been painful to watch, but also another lesson. If you love what you do, nothing but death can stand in your way of getting you there.  Steve Jobs is not only there, he has far surpassed it. Unlike his leaving in the 80's, he has firmly positioned this company that clearly has his face stamped firmly on it for years to come, to have both a positive growth roadmap for the coming years without him.

That is the mark of success x10. Unlike my PC past, I feel like as a customer, there is a sustainable clean, secure and well run ecosystem here, that will continue to improve. I'm sold. But on this day and the day prior, I am a little sad but knew it would come. As Jobs steps down I look forward to the September announcements with a little angst but great hopes for this company in Cupertino. 

The Ipad just keeps getting better

Barely a year later, the Ipad is now a global sales phenomenon. While I'm still enjoying my first gen model, the 2nd gen just keeps looking better all the time, but I'm holding out to skip a Gen. That said, this version of the Ipad thats been out now since about April has been impossible to get hold of due to stocking issues, so the wait is likely to be much longer.

The use of my Ipad is also growing into some real productivity too. Oh sure I usually use it for media consumption,, book reading, news and photography, it is also becoming more of my quick communications tool too.  I can't wait for IOS 5.  That will re invigorate my ver 1.0.

Ipad 2 and the hooks in me

So, here it is barely a year later actually 9-10 months to be more exact, and we have a second rev of the Ipad.

I use the above image, to show what many thought this device would look like about the same time in January, February of 2010. But what has happened is that this thing is quickly becoming universal, and other tech companies are struggling to really get into the fight with it. While Samsungs galaxy tab is certainly a good contender, and the new Xoom model from Motorola and of course HP, and RIM are still scratching their heads as to where to start, the Ipad keeps surging forward and with plenty of momentum.

It ships this coming Friday and I am heavily considering replacing my first IPad. It is simply a much improved communications device, with greater power for future apps and services.

It will keep Apple on the forfront of Tablet sales for certain into 2012. While there are many under the hood improvements, the device on it's front looks much the same as the original, but thats where it stops, speed, video, weight/heft ease of use features are certainly all things that make this a great buy, and still one of the "less" expensive options on the market. Which for Apple is nothing short of amazing.

As Apple becomes more a part of the home consumer market in media (it pretty much owns it these days) I am closely watching how they do business. The updates to the IP2 are not huge, however just enough to keep em ahead of all others. Androids honeycomb OS really looks great, and if Samsung gets a hold of this soon, I can see them becoming a viable competitor before years end, however at this time, that is all they will become for 2011. 

The year of the IP2, as Steve Jobs has stated, has just begun.

Update on Wednesday, March 30, 2011 at 9:47AM by Cookenstein

I have shown some dicipline over the past month, and while I have both tried and like very much the Ipad 2, for now, my current Ipad is fine for me. There may come a point when I buy ver 2.0, but frankly right now, the first ver does all that I need it to, given what I use it for.

A great platform, just keeps getting better.

Ipad, February 2010 and Today

On February 1st of this year, I'd made some proclamations, and I am quite sure I was not alone concerning the Ipad, that was several months away from hitting the market.  At the time, I'd stated that I felt that this was going to change how we look at Apps, and the delivery method to PC,s and Macs in General, and I was ready to go there. Well, a short 9 months later, this and many other articles sum up what I'd felt for sure to be true.

The Ipad is a monster. I have owned one now for several months, as well has my beautiful wife, and we are both very taken with them. The ipads ability to be of increased usefulness is only going to grow. What is really amazing though, is that the whole industry is playing catch up on technology that is arguably 8-10 years old.  Microsoft had tablets out around 2002 or so, maybe earlier and of course it fit only in very niche markets.

What's crazier still is when it did not take off (because of MS poor interface basically XP/touch on a Tablet) nobody did anything with it..? Or did they. Apple claims to have been working on this project for several years prior to 2010, and I believe it.

This much like the Iphone is the first iteration of this device, and IOS 4.2 is right around the corner this month and I can't wait. This thing will only gather steam. While Apple will VERY likely not hold a 95% share of this market for long, however has a nice entrenched user base, that will likely hold pretty strong going forward. I can't wait to see the competition!! Where are they?? 

Is History repeating itself ?

I can honestly say I am an Apple fanboy. I have no problems admitting it and sometimes bragging about it. Nuff said.

I have been on this bandwagon for better than 5 years now,  my home, the data in it, the media viewed and communicated comes from, and has come from many apple devices, Iphone, Ipod, Apple TV, Macs of all types and sizes have come through my door, and several have gone to Ebay, for what I view to be a healthy return, compared to the PC counterparts that resale for much less I might add. I have experienced selling both sides on Ebay.

What I am seeing since the Iphone 4, and even prior this past spring, actually since January of this year, is probably quite obvious to many, but it certainly appears that history is doing what it did to Apple in the 80's. Apple was the dominant player then. The Mac was king and growing. And they had every opportunity to keep it going, however the closed ended way that they do business ( and frankly I am happy with Apple's ecosystem and stability of most all it's products) ultimately, caught up to them, and Bill Gates passed them up in the early to mid 90's, a few years after Steve Jobs unceremonious release from Apple. This same set of circumstances could be catching up with apple all over again, with the Iphone. This smartphone took the world by storm in 2007, and has taken over the smartphone market, for the most part. 

However, Google with the Android operating system, has the following,, Many more phone choices, many more carrier choices, arguably a few better phone hardware platforms out there as of this spring and summer.  And an app store now over 100k of apps in it. And lets face it, does it really matter that Apple has well over 200k of apps in their store, and growing everyday? I mean really? I use about 8 to maybe 10 apps consistently every day, and 2 are games. I am sure your mileage varies. How many apps does one need on their phone? I have more than I use for sure, and at this time I can confirm to have 114 on my phone including the Phone, Ipod (default apps), of which 50% or more of them I use barely once a week.

The Iphone has 2 models or 3, I should say. The 3gs, which is now only available in the 8gig model for $99, and a two year contract from At&t (the real cost of the phone is in this contract, do the math people!!)  and of course the newer I phone 4 available in 16 or 32 gig flavors, in black or white, and of course the white ones seem to be difficult to make for Apple, cause they are not living up to the delivery date promises of this model to date. So who knew that a white phone was hard to make??

My point, here is limitations I think could very well ultimately put Apple back to where it ended up in the 90's in the PC market. In this super fast wireless (There seems to be a new model out every week! Is this really good? )phone development world, you are likely to see this happen much much faster. In 1 year the Android has literally caught up to the Iphone in many ways and also possibly leapfrogged it by the fall if you ask me. I really like some of the available phones out there. In 2008, a year after the Iphone there were NO contenders. That changed in 2009.

The new Galaxy that is from Samsung coming out on At&t, and of course the DroidX, and I really liked the Nexus one as well. Customers want one thing, and they are willing to pay dearly for it,, Choice. Oh yeah, the limited to just At&t nonsense is a slap in the face to customers everywhere. Not to mention potential new ones that will never happen because of it.  Apple has for a long time gotten away with lack of choice simply because they design beautiful, solid, and arguably very stable products. All good things, and yes I paid for them, as have many! But at the end of the day, choice wins.

There are other issues tied into the above coming to fruition possibly this year, but I believe that availability, choice, price, will ultimately take Apple's Iphone dominance down a notch or two possibly before years end. That's how fast Tech turns these days. 

From one A fanboy, who would like to see some change..

Is Tech history set to repeat itself ?

I am an Apple fanboy, make no mistake. I have fully converted everything OS related from Windows to Apple, however we still have a small need for Windows periodically, but rarely anymore. For me, mostly just games, and for Windows games, I do not use as much. There was an interesting atricle in the SF chronicle this week, speaking of how the Mac lost it's lead in the PC industry back in the late 80's early 90's and how the same could happen today with the Iphone, and App, marketshare it now dominates in the industry.

I use the Chrome browser now almost as much as I use Firefox. Safari however has never really grabbed me though. I mean, it works and certainly is ubiquitous with the Mac OS, but is terrible with Windows (hmm,wunder why), Chrome and Google's Android OS, is clearly the most challenging thing I have seen to the Iphone in the past 3 years since the Iphone came into existence.

The Apple Premium

As an avid fan of Macs, I find myself always having to explain myself and the "so called" high price of buying and owning a Mac. In fact if people really did their homework would see that little could be further from the truth.  Today I stumbled onto a really good link thanks to my buddy EEngineer, that really sums this up very well, and clearly explains this with good analogy. Take a read and see.

It is safe to say that I am sick of having to defend Apple, and most times find myself ignoring the ignorance that I see when average pc users, whom do little to no research lambast products like Apple's yet know nothing of which they speak. The battle has gone on for much longer than I have been a Mac owner though, and unfortunately will continue.