I read a great comment written by a guy from Melbourne who said:
“For those above who question the fawning (about Steve Jobs death), please consider the following. And to put some perspective, I have deep roots in the IT industry over 20 years, do not like Apple as a company, their products nor their marketing and manufacturing policies.
However, I am saddened by the death of Steve Jobs. Not because of the products or company he created, but because of what he helped lead the IT industry to accomplish.
Jobs and Wozniak put affordable computers on people’s desks (Apple II & Macintosh).
Jobs and Gates brought accessible operating systems to the masses (Windows and MacOS).
Jobs and Xerox came up with small desktop printers (LaserWriter).
Jobs company NeXT provided the computers so that Berners-Lee could invent the world wide web (Internet as we now know it).
Jobs pioneered plug ‘n play so that peripherals “just work”.
Jobs brought the music and communications industries into the 21st century through devices and software for the masses which made things easy for you (iTunes and iOS).
So next time you wonder why Jobs is hailed as an IT genius and an IT God, take a good look at your desktop computer, laptop, handheld device, tablet, music library, mobile phone, the internet and remember……. without Jobs, none of that would’ve happened.”
The firm says that it’s taken the App Store just 2.2 years to shift the same number of items as the iTunes store managed in five. It reckons that by the end of 2010, total downloads for each are likely to hit around 13 billion.
This is despite the fact that the total number of apps available is far smaller at around a quarter of a million. This is way below the 12 million songs available on iTunes – although one mustn’t forget that many, unlinke songs, are free.
“If the current download rate is maintained (17 million apps/day) and if the pricing of $0.29 per app is preserved, then $1.8 billion will have been spent on iOS apps this year,” says Asymco. Continue Reading
Here is some good news for lovers of their iPhones and iPads.
Apple has lifted its develop restrictions to enable apps to be created using Adobe Flash.
In a surprise turnaround from the war raging earlier this year, Apple has released new developer agreements and old restrictions have been lifted.
The new contractual language not only appears to allow developers to use pretty much any programming tool, including Adobe Flash Packager for iPhone, but it also appears to allow the use of third-party advertising and analytics services, such as Google’s AdMob.
Adobe likes what it sees in the new contractual terms.
“We are encouraged to see Apple lifting its restrictions on its licensing terms, giving developers the freedom to choose what tools they use to develop applications for Apple devices,” a company spokesperson said in an e-mailed statement.
Imagine a system that enables a hardware manufacturer to take a flashless, undetectable photo of your face plus multiple photos of your surrounding location, record your voice regardless of whether you are making a phone call, monitor your internet usage and record your heartbeat and “vibration signature” – all without your consent.
If you’re thinking its all sounding a bit Big Brother, you’re right. In the process it tramples all over privacy legislation everywhere and has civil libertarians in meltdown.
Apple, one of my favourite brands in the world, has been accused of creating traitorware for trying to patent security software that tracks down people who jailbreak their iPhones and iPads and locks them out of their devices.
According to the patent application lodged by Apple, if these identifiers do not match the “authorised” user, the system then determines if there is “suspicious behaviour”. Continue Reading
Google has announced on its blog that Google Wave, a web app that allows realtime communication and collaboration, is no more.
According to Google, the problem is that not enough people were using it. The demand wasn’t there to justify continuing to pursue it. Good on them, though, for testing the boundaries of what the market might want in future technologies.
Here is what Urs Hölzle, Senior Vice President, Operations & Google Fellow had to say:
“We don’t plan to continue developing Wave as a standalone product, but we will maintain the site at least through the end of the year and extend the technology for use in other Google projects. The central parts of the code, as well as the protocols that have driven many of Wave’s innovations, like drag-and-drop and character-by-character live typing, are already available as open source, so customers and partners can continue the innovation we began. In addition, we will work on tools so that users can easily “liberate” their content from Wave.”
You can check out Google Wave (or at least what’s left) by going here.
MICROSOFT chief executive Steve Ballmer previewed several tablet-style computers at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas yesterday, but the anticipated launch of an Apple tablet-slayer did not eventuate.
Microsoft confirmed partnerships with manufacturers including Pegatron, Archos and HP, and Mr Ballmer briefly demonstrated the HP slate prototype, which will run the Windows 7 operating system. But he stopped short of announcing a major push into tablet, or slate, computers.
The omission gives Apple, which is expected to unveil its slate product later this month, the chance to set the standard for tablet computers, much as it did with the iPhone.
Tablets are expected to compete with electronic readers such as Amazon’s black and white Kindle but with added advantages such as colour, touch-screen capability and other features in line with netbook computers.
In the world’s worst kept secret, Steve Jobs is tipped to unveil the Apple Tablet Next Month, an ex-Google Exec says.
Rumoured to be called the iSlate, it will come with 3D graphics and a price tag below US$1000, according to former Google China president Kai-Fu Lee (who has now lost his tongue on the topic of Apple since being bombarded with journalists and their questions).
The comments from Lee, originally published on his Chinese blog and who worked for Apple over a decade ago and left Google this year, add to the circulating rumours of a possible ultrathin Apple tablet combining e-reader and Web-surfing functions.
Speculation about the device has redoubled since a blog post by the Financial Times last week cited unnamed sources saying Apple is expected to make a major product announcement at an event in San Francisco on Jan. 26.
According to Lee, the new device will weigh less than half as much as a MacBook Air and he also cited speculation that Apple could team up with U.S. network operators to lower the price of the tablet.
Operators already widely use a similar model for mobile phones including the iPhone, in which the buyer gets a discounted device in exchange for signing a mobile service contract.
Ok, lots of famous people talk about the need to innovate. Gary Hamel did it, so did Tom Peters, and Seth Godin, and many others far more famous than me.
It’s true too.
You must innovate – but none of these people tell you how to do it.
I can see why. It’s difficult to define where a breakthrough idea comes from.
But I am going to attempt it. Right now. Right here. Today. Get yourself comfortable, it’s gonna be a long read.
From a marketing strategy point of view, the truly exciting, but potentially high risk strategy is one that changes the way the game is played.
The outcome of this is usually a product, service or way of doing something that is disruptive to an industry.
In other words, they are disruptive technologies since they shift the balance of power, often from a large cumbersome dinosaur-like incumbent to an agile upstart that has the audacity to challenge Goliath. Continue Reading
A product roadmap is exactly that – it is a map outlining the route your product development will take over a specified period of time.
The time span covered will depend on your product and its industry.
(For example, you would expect upgrades and changes to software products to move extremely quickly; conversely the development of a new piece of large machinery may take many years.)
The purpose of creating a product roadmap is to develop out the innovation strategy for your product (or service) – to think through and articulate the direction, the technology required, the marketing, the investment and the milestones.
As a document, a product roadmap brings together the thinking of the technologist with the marketing manager, and provides the basis for your discussions with major suppliers and customers.
It also serves the entrepreneur with a vehicle to take to investors since it describes how the products will be brought to market; the potential applications for the product; the short-term focus (and why you choose to focus where you do) and the longer term market opportunities both for increasing your market (and in case your original markets do not mature – a contingency plan) and of course how your product is different from (and superior to) competitors. Continue Reading
