Tim Cook began the WWDC 2014 keynote promising “the mother of all releases for developers” and “the biggest release since the launch of the App Store.” He was not exaggerating. In a 30 minute span, Apple knocked nearly every item off the community’s list of wishes and complaints. As I said on the Debug podcast last week, it’s as big a Monday as I … Read more
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The Latest Apple Tips, Tricks, and Hacks
I spent 8 years on the inside of Apple without the ability to spill the details. Now I’m on the outside and here it comes 🙂
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My familiarity with Macintosh came relatively late in life. Our first computer was a Commodore PET, which my father, a math teacher, borrowed from his school. It was replaced by an IBM PC Jr, then a PS/2. My dad taught me some Turbo Pascal, and then that was it. We never got another computer. We … Read more
The Net Neutrality Endgame
The U.S. Court of Appeals made a significant and troubling decision this week: it shut down a 2010 FCC decree that prevented internet service providers (“ISPs”) from selectively enhancing or restricting traffic to certain destinations (websites, streaming services, etc.) The collective term for this idea has become known as Net neutrality. If you need help understanding what’s at … Read more
Thermonuclear War
In the early days of the iOS-Android war, Steve Jobs told his biographer Walter Isaacson “I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this.” Everyone immediately anticipated patent claims against the Android OS. I doubt many anticipated claims against Google’s undiversified core business. ArsTechnica is reporting that Rockstar, the company spawned from … Read more
Samsung’s new Galaxy Gear ad
A month after announcing it, Samsung has begun advertising its Galaxy Gear “smartwatch” on television. The first ad features clips from various movies and TV shows of people talking into and tinkering with watches that were more than just watches. It concludes with a shot of someone using a Galaxy Gear. The implication was that we now finally … Read more
Microsoft Buys Nokia for €3.79B
OK, so I got the price wrong. In a surprise Labor Day announcement, Microsoft is acquiring Nokia’s devices and services business. I already said most of what I think about this pairing two and a half years ago. If you get past that melodramatic headline, most of it still holds. But I liked it a lot more when … Read more
Real
“Why you got a new phone?” Those words, spoken by my three-year-old immediately upon seeing it for the first time, are all anyone really needs to know about iOS 7. It’s a reimagining that catapults the system into a new era while retaining the most important intuitions built up over the last six years. So much has … Read more
Open Season
Facebook Home is coming. It’s a unique threat to Google’s mastery of Android that Google can blame nobody but itself for. It’s the unique nature of the threat — both Home’s technical foundation, and the nature of Facebook’s rivalry with Google — that I believe makes Home the first real test of Google’s “open” mantra … Read more
Home Turf
You’ve built an enormous business around a desktop website. Unfortunately, people around the world are spending more and more time on mobile devices. The vast majority of these devices run software from only two companies. One of these companies is actively competing with you. You cannot put your future in a competitor’s hands. So what do you … Read more
Why Apple Doesn’t Talk, Vol. 3: Sony’s PlayStation 4 Announcement
An increasingly-justified fear of irrelevance seems to be driving Sony’s every move these days. Its latest public display: yesterday’s clearly-too-soon announcement of the PlayStation 4. It was by nearly all accounts a bizarre two-hour ordeal that featured no launch date, no pricing, and no product. Everything about this event, from the lack of specifics, to the Office Space slides … Read more
Regime Change
Apple cannot afford to get too big or too disorganized. That’s my takeaway from yesterday’s shocker that not only is Scott Forstall out at Apple, but also that his fiefdom is being split between Craig Federighi, Eddy Cue, and Jony Ive. We learned a lot about Tim Cook yesterday. First: retail chief John Browett was surely done before we on the … Read more
Technology vs. Utility
With the press embargo on iPhone 5 lifted, we’re finally hearing about the product from people who have actually held and used it. Before that, and still after, both positive and negative media impressions have been unable to resist mentioning the bogeyman known as near field communication (NFC). As ReadWriteWeb’s Brian Proffitt explained last week, omitting NFC is … Read more
The Trial
In early 2008, shortly before the iPhone SDK launch, I met a gentleman with a very big mouth. He boasted obnoxiously for some time until someone mentioned buying an iPod touch. This guy subsequently warned the entire room not to buy, because new models were coming soon. He knew this, he said, because his job … Read more
Back to the Shareholders
This past Sunday, Apple abruptly scheduled a Monday morning conference call “to announce the outcome of the Company’s discussions concerning its cash bal