We own a Macbook Pro.
The minute it arrived, it disappeared, straight into my 8 year old daughter’s room, on to the old student desk with the lift-up lid.
Photo booth is launched, webcam is on, and I’m left thinking to myself that by the time she’s a teenager, anything will be possible.
The world has come an awful long way since I was her age.
If there is one thing that social media enables it is creativity and if there is one thing that Apple computers truly enable, it is for anyone to be creative. There is no other system that packages itself for the new Internet social-media world as well as the Apple.
Social media throws open the previously closed shop of publicly-published expression. Voices that were once silenced have been given the freedom of speech – anywhere, anytime, as long as they have an Internet connection. Artists that convention frowned upon have new platforms with which to display their work and attract new fans. Musicians who couldn’t get record deals with major labels have facebook and myspace pages, and YouTube channels, and are becoming Internet celebrities instead.
For the Apple computer, it’s the coming of age. Apple computer sales are remarkably healthy, despite global economic tightening, with the company selling 2.6 million machines over the three months ending July 2009.
People are rushing in droves to buy Apple’s – even as their first machine – prepared to pay a premium for a machine from a company that itself hasn’t demonstrated much of an appetite to engage in social media. This doesn’t mean, of course, that it doesn’t acknowledge how important social media is becoming, instead it means it is going to apply its religion of innovation and seamless plug-and-play to make social media even easier for Apple loyalists.
The rumor mill is sweeping the US that Apple will work on a standalone social networking application which is able to connect multiple social media sites. Apple is staying quiet. If true, though, Apple will take another step forward in its domination of being in the right place at the right time. It will allow users to update status information, amongst other things, simultaneously across multiple social media platforms.
This is Apple at its finest. For those that appreciate innovation, it’s another reason to support the Apple brand. For those that compete against it, it is further reinforcement of their positions as laggards.
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