This Blog's Apple iTunes Podcast

I am informed by Apple that this blog's podcast is now also live in iTunes. You can subscribe and keep in touch.

As with the book, so far there is only one episode--had to see first if this was going to work--but I plan for more to follow.

So now you can listen on your way to work.

Apple Insider Says Company Culture Not Sustainable

This buttresses my point that Steve Jobs was the indispensable man. Apple will not do nearly so well without him.

Sell Apple.

The Worm in Apple

A statue of Steve Jobs in Hungary.

I think the new maps app on Apple's iOS6 is now officially as disaster. The coverage of my own home town area in Eastern Ontario is totally weird, showing towns that are not there, mislocating others by dozens of kilometers. And yeah, it's pretty.

I think this bodes ill for Apple in future, and I think it was predictable. Steve Jobs really was the indispensable man.

He was, they say, a difficult man to work for. He was a demanding perfectionist. Good enough was never good enough.

Precisely because of this management style, now that he is gone, there is bound to be a snap-back. While the cat's away ... A lot of guys near the top at Apple are going to be thinking, in their heart of hearts, “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God A'mighty, free at last!” They are going to make a point of being slapdash, of cutting those corners, and it is going to be very difficult to rein them in.

And Tim Cook, even if he is not himself among their number, is not going to have the personal authority to do it.

Now is the time for all good people to dump their Apple stock.

If I had any, I'd put my money right now into Google and Amazon. They're the guys who are best positioned to take advantage of Apple's decline. And they have the management to do it.

The iiiPad

Apple's Steve Jobs released the new iPad last night. My guess is that this may be a historic dud; partly because the PR buildup was so great. The iPad turned out to be nothing special. Even Jobs knew it--he stressed too many times how "phenomenal" it was.

Is there room for a device sized in between the laptop and the PDA? Only, I think, if it is an efficient tool for reading books—that's the only niche not served by either of those. Otherwise, being just a bit easier to carry around than a laptop is not going to convince many to go out and buy a third device. This is demonstrated, I think, by the commercial failure so far of both netbooks and tablet PCs.

As Jobs himself said, a successful middle entry must do somthing significantly better than either. And the iPad does not. It is just a very big iPod.

Its one opening was, I think, as an ereader. That is the niche, and Amazon's Kindle has been doing well with it. But despite Jobs' claims, I'm confident the iPad will not fly as an ereader: being backlit, it is just not going to be comfortable to read from for extended times, any more than a laptop is now. Serious readers are not going to buy it.

The one way to overtake Amazon, given their superb ability to offer content, is to offer a reflected light technology with colour—Kindle's eInk weak link. Only trouble is, that technology is not yet available. It is just possible, I suppose, that Jobs is releasing the iPad now with a plan to upgrade to a colour technology under development, but not ready yet. To be in a position to compete with Amazon in a year's time or so, he needs in the meantime to be building a respectable library of epublications to offer. Hard to do without some sort of reader for them; certainly hard to do while keeping the enterprise secret. So the current iPad might be no more than a stalking horse.

Yet even if something like this is the plan, I think it's risky; the ePad may get a bad rep by then, and become too un-cool to recover. Since cool is Apple's main selling point, this gets tough for them. And how sure can Jobs be that they will arrive at a decent colour display before Amazon, or some third player, does?

There's a decent chance the iPad could gain a rep reminiscent of the Edsel. Those with memories long enough will know it has happened to Apple before, and that Steve Jobs' marketing instincts are not infallible. Anyone else remember the Apple III?





If I were holding Apple stock, I'd sell.

Back from the Dead

Feeling nostalgic? Those of us who cut our teeth on the old Apple II may enjoy this site.