This is from my 5th post ever here at ForkBombr, in which I discussed a challenge from a friend to find the oldest existing article on Apple’s support site:
An interesting challenge, but an easy one at the end of the day. I found article 116 which explains how “to use Apple Writer with the Paymar Lower Case Adapter.” The oldest article I found was number 3, which reads:
The Apple II and IIe power supply is a switching power supply. It is designed to accept 107 to 135 volts from DC to 60 Hz.
EXT. MORNING, TUESDAY 5 JUNE 2007. 1 INFINITE LOOP, CUPERTINO.
A cab pulls in front a building. BRUSHED METAL exits the cab, stands tall, and walks to the door. He waves a badge at the door’s identification sensor. A red light flashes.
He tries the door. It’s locked. He rubs the badge directly against the sensor. Red again.
BRUSHED METAL: What the fuck?
Be sure not to miss the theme’s response to iTunes 5 and to iLife 06. These are probably the funniest things you’ll ever read about UI design.
Steve Jobs, in an open letter back in 2007:
I have received hundreds of emails from iPhone customers who are upset about Apple dropping the price of iPhone by $200 two months after it went on sale. After reading every one of these emails, I have some observations and conclusions.
First, I am sure that we are making the correct decision to lower the price of the 8GB iPhone from $599 to $399, and that now is the right time to do it. iPhone is a breakthrough product, and we have the chance to ‘go for it’ this holiday season. iPhone is so far ahead of the competition, and now it will be affordable by even more customers. It benefits both Apple and every iPhone user to get as many new customers as possible in the iPhone ’tent’. We strongly believe the $399 price will help us do just that this holiday season.
In our ranking of the best and worst Apple (AAPL) analysts for Q1 2011, which lists them based on how accurately they predicted seven key numbers — revenue, earnings, gross margins and unit sales — the unaffiliated analysts (blue in the chart at right) took 9 out of the 10 top spots.
The bottom 20 spots were all held by professionals working for the banks and brokerage houses. Taken as a whole, the numbers they sent their paying clients were off by a margin (9.04%) more than twice as big as those generated by the guys who do it for free (3.94%).
In summary, that’s a very smart smartphone we’ve just described: one that knows who owns it, unlocking just for them, one that can listen and respond to your questions, that can provide factual answers or point you to a related mobile app, one where your music library (and maybe more) is stored online, one that includes NFC for mobile payments, and one that works on whatever carrier you choose. Frankly, that sounds downright magical.
Apple COO Tim Cook, on today’s Q1 2011 call:
Apple is doing its best work ever. We are all very happy with product pipeline and the team here has an unparalleled breadth and depth that Steve has driven in the company, and excellence has become a habit. We feel very very confident about the future of the company. I would also note that we’ve done outstanding job in our Mac: 19 straight quarters of outgrowing market, but still have a very low share. It would seem like still enormous opportunity there.
Editors Note: This post is written by Matthew Hedgepeth, a guy I’ve known for a long time. He graduates in May from the University of Memphis with a MIS degree and a minor in finance. He’s about to get married, and works for me at the Salvation Army. He is far more qualified to talk about money than I am.
When I awoke this morning hearing the news every one else heard about Steve Jobs taking another medical leave of absence I jumped to two different conclusions.
Its like Federico Viticci reached into my mind and wrote what I’ve been thinking all day.
The WSJ, in a look at Apple COO Tim Cook:
Several people who do business with Apple say their dealings with the company during Mr. Jobs’s 2009 leave remained unchanged and that products continue to be developed and released on schedule.
Apple is going to be fine, without Steve Jobs, even in the long term.
As a computer, my new MacBook Air is everything I could have ever asked for as a writer. Like a bicycle, it’s a perfect machine, imbued with its function to efficiently accelerate thought and motion into speed. In its perfection, though, the new MacBook Air also denounces the way we tend to think about gadgets. Gadgets aren’t extensions of self, they are — at best — an augmentation of self. The difference is important, because the perfect gadget doesn’t make you perfect, and all of the hardware in the world is never going to do the work of making you the person you want to be. In my case, that was to be a writer, but I only became one professionally by accident, and I only became successful at it because otherwise I would have starved. I still don’t write fiction. The MacBook Air might be the perfect device, but it makes me despair that I will always come up short.
More from Cultured Code on OTA sync:
We have tried many things, from underpowered technologies to over-engineered solutions. The approach we finally settled on is one that strikes the right balance, and in our next article we’ll be sharing more information about what that means.
Some people said we shouldn’t have pursued cloud sync with this level of ambition. But then, that wouldn’t be us. It is not how we developed Things. We know that people are coming to Cultured Code because we take this approach. They like companies that care, companies that try – and that is what we will keep doing.