Beats Spotlights Where Apple Needs Change

The more I ponder Apple’s Beats acquisition, the less sense it makes. Buying big well-known brands that compete with yours is usually a bad idea—worse when the acquirer owns no foreign brands. Extinguishing the big name, as Microsoft does with Nokia, is marketing murder. There’s no place for the Beats brand in the Apple lexicon. The gun is drawn and ready to fire.

What I do see is another sign that Apple has lost its way. Tim Cook is a very able CEO, but as stated previously he is Star Trek’s Spock without Captain Kirk (Steve Jobs). Cook’s approach to business logistics, while brilliant, unmakes Apple. Beats is an acquisition that is off-key—out of tune with the culture that made the fruit-logo company great. As such, on this Thursday in May, comes my confession. I was wrong five years ago in post “Why Apple succeeds, and always will“. That company is gone. But it can come back.

Society by Joe WilcoxMay 17, 20143:05 pm

Sweet Music

Photo by Joe WilcoxMay 11, 20143:45 pm

HTC One M8 is a Worthy Phone Camera

I snapped this cat around sunset under overcast skies using HTC One M8. Both renditions are cropped. The left is otherwise untouched. To the right, I applied the phone’s UFocus feature. The One uses a duo-lens system to capture photo and additional depth information. I applied depth-of-field centerpoint to the cat’s face, which blurs rest of the image. I cropped afterwards. UFocus can also change the focal point, even after shooting.

Quite a few reviewers ding The One for having only a 4-megapixel camera. I shake my head and laugh. Look back a few years when 4MP was state of the art, and the same reviewers raved. Here’s the problem I see: Relativity. Making relative assumptions about A to B. Not long ago people praised 4MP for printing large photos, close-cropping, etc.—cited criticisms today. Now that there is 8MP and greater, 4MP is looked down upon.

Apple by Joe WilcoxMay 9, 20148:02 pm

Aggregation Beats the Wrong Drum

BGR used to give great scoops. Now, too often, it scoops up posts from other sites and poops them out. Can you say “aggregation”, dudes? Case in point is today’s post: “Beats acquisition called Apple’s ‘best idea since the iPad’“. The “best idea” belongs to Marcus Wholsen, writing for Wired.

So what? BGR blogger Zach Epstein has to recap Wired’s opinion piece about the rumored Apple-Beats merger rather than write his own? Not that there isn’t already too much punditry about an acquisition that hasn’t taken place and might never will.

Apple by Joe WilcoxMay 9, 20147:11 pm

Phablets hang Tim Cook’s Ass to the Wind

Analyst punditry is exhaustive about why tablet shipments declined during calendar first quarter 2014. Apple missed Wall Street consensus by about 3 million iPads. Tech-Thoughts analyst Sameer Singh expected tablet shipments to exceed PCs during the first quarter, and that didn’t happen. But major reason why is significant.

He writes today: “As of now, we can assume that ~20 percent of all smartphones shipped have screen sizes large enough to become acceptable substitutes for tablet computing tasks”.

Apple by Joe WilcoxMay 9, 20146:18 pm

Apple is the New Nokia

Over at BGR, Tero Kuittinen writes: “Apple suddenly looks a lot like Nokia“. There’s no looks like at all. As I explain in my book, The Principles of Disruptive Design, Apple, like Nokia in 2007, is unable to transcend design concepts that lock it into an older UX paradigm; from top of the mountain can’t see the crumbling below; and is unwilling to jeopardize the success it has to risk something new.

Responsibility by Joe WilcoxMay 9, 20145:19 pm

Talkin’ about Net Non-neutrality

I had forgotten how long this Net neutrality debate has been going on. While looking for something else, I stumbled onto my post from April 2006, when I lived on the East Coast and had FiOS.

Journalism by Joe WilcoxMay 8, 201411:58 pm

Ding, Dong, the Witch is Dead

I must express my surprise at all the journalist tributes today for Katie Cotton, who suddenly left Apple. One post offers little praise. Over at Valleywag, Sam Biddle calls her the “queen of evil PR“. To me, she is Apple’s wicked witch of public relations. Did someone drop a house on Cotton, because the departure seems so sudden?

Putting context around the praise, “what no one will admit is that we were all afraid of her”, Sam writes. “Even at the end of Cotton’s reign, journalists are still in such a state of terror and awe they don’t dare speak openly about her reign of silence and smokescreen”.

News Media by Joe WilcoxMay 5, 20145:07 pm

Now THIS is Journalism!

No words can describe how much I like VICE News. The videos are immersive and in your face. The stories are punchy, and in your face. Whether text or film, the reporting style provokes. How often do you read “shit” in news copy, for example?

In story “Tea Partiers Are Now Harassing High School Kids on Cinco de Mayo” Alice Speri writes: “That predictably led to a bunch of local conservatives losing their shit, with some parents suing the school for First Amendment infringement”. I love it!

Apple by Joe WilcoxApr 29, 20144:07 pm

Apple’s New Ad Campaign is ‘More Powerful Than You Think’

[vimeo https://vimeo.com/93048304]

I can’t seem to escape Apple’s “Powerful” commercial, which during some primetime programs airs two, or even three, times. The TV spot is aspirational marketing done right, with booming tagline: “You’re more powerful than you think”.

News Media by Joe WilcoxApr 27, 20148:46 pm

Report! Don’t Repeat Rumors!

I don’t know if Google is strategically realigning its social network, nor if that is reason for Vic Gundotra’s sudden departure from the company. Google+ is, or was, his baby. But I do know what is irresponsible reporting, and there is plenty of it among tech bloggers and journalists. TechCrunch leads the pack, but the real offenders are those who follow along—news gatherers who repeat rather than report.

Following Gundotra’s April 24 departure announcement, Alexia Tsotsis and Matthew Panzarino posted at TechCrunch: “Google+ is Walking Dead”. The headline is compelling and clickable and would be worthy of praise if not for the anonymous sourcing. The story claims major reorganization that reduces the service’s role: “Google+ will no longer be considered a product, but a platform…Google+ is not ‘officially’ dead, more like walking dead”.

News Media by Joe WilcoxApr 7, 201412:54 pm

Go Google, or Go to Hell

If there is a villain in my book Responsible Reporting: Field Guide for Bloggers, Journalists, and Other Online News Gatherers, Google is it. I fiercely criticize bad reporting practices perpetrated on behalf of the Google free economy, where a mighty monopoly extends incredible influence over advertising dollars and content distribution. Flip around to one of my other tomes, The Principles of Disruptive Design, and the search and information giant is praised for innovation that promises to usher in the “Star Trek”-era of touchless computing. So what? Is Google devil or savior?