Category: Tech

Apple by Joe WilcoxJun 21, 20159:49 am

Steve Jobs Who?

I shouldn’t be surprised, but…While in Apple Store the other day making a purchase, I chatted with the staffer helping me about the retail shop’s legacy. I don’t remember what influenced me to mention being at the original store’s opening in May 2001, which I covered for CNET News. “In Virginia?” She asked. I affirmed, Tysons Corner. “I have a picture”.

After which I fumbled like an old fart bringing up the image above from Flickr on my phone. She politely suggested the app, which wasn’t installed, as I clumsily used the browser. When I finally got the image on screen she asked, with some giddiness: “Is that Tim Cook?” Not cofounder Steve Jobs, who sits next to Apple’s current CEO.

Apple by Joe WilcoxJun 19, 20153:30 pm

Apple Music Takes from Artists to Give to Subscribers

For a company that generates more profits than any other ($18 billion during fiscal first quarter 2015), sits on a cash horde of nearly $200 billion, and has the gall to charge $150 for a watchband, stinginess is an unbecoming trait. Scratch that. Greediness. Putting profits before people, particularly devoted customers, when corporate advertising is all about how they matter more, is simply stupid public relations. In business, perception is everything.

So Apple’s reported decision to give away music for three months, without compensating artists, is cheapskates behavior that demands criticism, particularly about a company claiming that music means so much. Speaking to developers last week, CEO Tim Cook: “We love music, and music is such an important part of our lives and our culture”. Oh yeah? If it’s so important, why diminish its value? To zero. “We’ve had a long relationship with music at Apple”. For how much longer without artists’ cooperation? You don’t own the content, Mr. Cook.

Photo by Joe WilcoxJun 19, 20156:58 am

Flickr a Day 170: ‘Gigi Sibble-Horton’

We begin three days of photographers discovered by searching Flickr for “silence”. Today’s selection jumped from the computer screen; composition takes the Day. Easily. Ted Van Pelt shot self-titled “Gigi Sibble-Horton” on May 25, 2015, using […]

Living by Joe WilcoxJun 16, 20159:55 pm

My Summer Sojourn: OS X 10.11, OS 9

Due to a rather startling accident, my wife’s laptop is no longer among the electrically living. She will use my beloved Chromebook Pixel LS for a few months, while I step back into the Apple lifestyle to test El Capitan and iOS 9. Eight days after Apple released developer previews, I finally am getting around to installing them, on 13-inch MacBook Pro and iPad Air 2. Whoa, I dunno about the new font!

The Mac is a new purchase. Our cameras and computers are all insured, and late last week I filed the second claim in more than a dozen years (the first replaced a hard drive, for $250, after my daughter dropped her aluminum MacBook during finals week two years ago). I grudgingly picked the 2.7GHz Core i5 MacBook Pro with Retina Display, 8GB RAM, and 256GB SSD.

Apple by Joe WilcoxJun 15, 201510:15 pm

Apple Music Will Surely Succeed

Seven days ago, CEO of the most valuable, publicly-traded technology company on the planet unveiled a potentially category-changing online streaming service. In 15 more, you will be able to subscribe—three months for free. Pundits wave the Spotify flag and spit out diatribes of disgust, much as they did when Apple launched iPhone eight years ago or iPad in 2010. Wrong again is their destiny. Will they ever learn?

Many of the doomsayers forget, or maybe just ignore, the fruit-logo company’s success disrupting category after category. They also start out from a misguided premise: That Apple is a latecomer who cannot catch up with competitors like Spotify. How ridiculous. iTunes debuted in January 2001, iPod nine months later, and iTunes Music Store in April 2003. By longevity and reach, which includes exclusives (like The Beatles) and large catalog, Apple is the status quo. On June 30, the giant awakes, and the smidgens shake as it walks.

Apple by Joe WilcoxJun 11, 201511:00 pm

WWDC 2015: My Story in Tweets

As the week closes, I reflect on Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference, which commenced on June 8, 2015. I watched the keynote on Apple TV and live-tweeted from my comfy couch. Fittingly from Chromebook Pixel LS.

I find iOS 9 interesting enough to test. Today, I signed up for an Apple Developer account; my old one expired years ago. The process took a phone call, because Apple claimed my bank declined to pay. How strange. So I tried another card. Then a third. Hey, my accounts are good! I called the bitten-fruit for assistance, and someone senior in developer support manually processed the $99 fee, because of the glitch. How fraked is that?

Apple by Joe WilcoxJun 11, 201512:30 am

Siri Says: ‘Google is Big Brother’

I have some advice for the European Union Competition Commission: Lay off. You don’t need to reign in the Google monopoly. Apple will correct the market around search and mobile. That’s one of two related takeaways from Monday’s WWDC 2015 keynote. iOS 9 and OS X El Capitan up Apple’s push into search and proactively-delivered information in big ways. That is if delivery is as good as the company promises.

The other takeaway harkens back to what I told you last week about Tim Cook’s piracy rant against unnamed Facebook and Google alongside the friggin U.S. government—plural if thinking beyond the Feds: It’s BS marketing. Apple prepares a major competitive assault against Big G, hitting where damage can be severe: Perception and profits. I cannot overstate Google’s vulnerability, which ironically is where the search and information giant exploited Microsoft during this Century.

Apple by Joe WilcoxJun 7, 20159:00 pm

Apple Harvests its Logo

If Apple’s streaming music service launches tomorrow at WWDC and is branded with the company’s name/logo, look for broad naming changes ahead. My guess, and it’s only that: the lower-case letter before products like iMac or iPhone will disappear; over time. Under CEO Tim Cook, the branding strategy differs from Steve Jobs. That’s sensible considering where the company is today compared to 1998 when the cofounder introduced iMac.

Apple Watch foreshadows the new nomenclature. Contrary to months of iWatch rumors before launch, the device is identified by sound as Apple Watch, but what you see is the company’s logo, which is one of the most recognizable brand icons ever created. If Apple Music turns out to be more than just streaming, but the replacement for or displacement of iTunes, consider that as sign of future naming conventions to come. If I am mistaken—well, Apple should do what I predict.

Photo by Joe WilcoxJun 5, 20156:45 am

Flickr a Day 156: ‘Street Lads’

Some pics jump from the photostream and demand to be chosen, as is the case with today’s selection. Simon Evans shot self-titled “Street Lads” on Sept. 20, 2014—around the time that he started blogging—using Fujifilm X-Pro1 and Fujinon XF 27mm F2.8 lens. Vitals: f/5.6, ISO 800, 1/450 sec, 27mm.

The pancake lens makes the Fuji mirrorless camera a relatively smaller shooter—well, compared to bulky dSLRs—while offering dramatic benefits of hybrid optical and digital viewfinder. Motion more typically describes Simon’s street shots. The Day Maker is rare exception. “This is what happens when you give in and ‘spare a bit of change'”, he jokes.

Apple by Joe WilcoxJun 4, 201512:15 am

Apple’s Moral Marketing Charade

Nine years ago, a NPR interviewer asked me about Google and other U.S. companies censoring search results in China. The question was one of morality—to which I gave an answer she didn’t expect. That response, or my recollection of it, is appropriate for rather ridiculous and self-serving statements that Apple CEO Tim Cook reportedly made three days ago.

“We believe that people have a fundamental right to privacy”, Tim Cook said, Matthew Panzarino reports for TechCrunch. “The American people demand it, the constitution demands it, morality demands it”. Oh? What is moral? The answer I gave NPR in 2006 applies: There is no moral high ground in business. The high ground is quagmire, because all public companies—Apple surely among them—share a single, moral objective: Make profits for stockholders. Plain, pure, and simple.

Web by Joe WilcoxJun 2, 201511:16 pm

Tidal gets My Reprieve

My third month as a Tidal subscriber started yesterday, but nearly not at all. Last week I prepared to cancel the pricey, streaming service after encountering a disastrous functional flaw listening on either Nexus 6 or 9. Songs skip to the next track part way through playing, which is unacceptable behavior—made more so because of expectations that higher pricing and loftier monthly subscription fee set.

I would have stopped subscribing on May 31st, at the billing cycle’s end, if not for Tidal offering a free month of service. Whether or not our paying relationship continues depends much on the music streamer resolving an app problem. “There is a bug with Nexus and Sony phones with Android 5 unfortunately”, according to a tech support specialist, “We are working on fixing this. Mostly after 26 megabytes have been streamed, it skips. So for now we do not have a solution yet”,

Photo by Joe WilcoxMay 30, 201512:22 am

Google Photos is Disruptive Innovation

Google Photos is more than an exciting—and hugely transforming—new product. The app/cloud service is a metaphor for an escalating mobile business model that, with perhaps the exception of Facebook, no competitor has the capacity to match.

Users gain tremendous time-saving utility, such as the ability to meaningfully search using innocuous terms like “dog” or “Washington”, all without the need to manually add metadata tags by way of applications like Photoshop. Meanwhile, Google gets access to quantifiable information, in the image and accompanying metadata, around which to sell advertising and related contextual content or services.