Apple/iPod

Why Zite Has Rocked My Content World

By Mark Evans in Apple/iPod, Blogs, Social Media 1 Comment Tags: , ,

First a confession: I was late to the tablet game. With several laptops at home and a job that requires a lot of mobile working, there just wasn’t much of a use case for a tablet. Time passed, a friend of mine at Carbon Computing got me a great deal on an iPad, and now I’m part of the tablet world.

While I haven’t spent much time pimping my iPad, one of the first apps add was Zite because there had been so much buzz about it, particularly after the Vancouver-based startup was acquired by CNN for a reported $25-million.

This may sound dramatic but Zite has dramatically changed how I consume content. As someone who sucks in a lot of content every day for market intelligence and information, and ideas for columns and blog posts, any way that improves efficiency and productivity is a wonderful thing.

With Zite, I can create categories that are interesting or relevant to my interests and needs. Then, Zite generates stories in a magazine format that can be quickly scanned and read. It’s also easy to save an article or blog post to read for later, or share it via social media or email.

Zite also lets you “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” a story to adjust your preferences, although it would be great if you could add a particular Web site or blog into the editorial mix.

Zite has been a productivity-booster because I can cover the content landscape in 10 minutes for ideas and information. At the same time, it has cut down on the amount of time on Twitter, which I use as a quasi-RSS reader.

More important, it has dramatically changed how much content I can consume and read and, in the process, saved me a lot of time, which is one of the most important considerations.

Madness = Apples’ Flagship Store in Manhattan

By Mark Evans in Apple/iPod 4 Comments Tags: , ,

For whatever reason, I figured a trip to New York should include a visit to Apple’s flagship store at 5th and 59th.

One word: mistake.

I’m not what I expected on a glorious Saturday afternoon but the store was utter madness. There were people everywhere, and the line-up to pay involved extreme patience for anyone who actually wanted to buy something as opposed to worship at the Apple shrine.

Personally, I walked in, and then quickly left. If there was anything I wanted to purchase, it would happen later in the comfort of my own home or a more sane store such as Carbon Computing.

As I left the store, the person walking up the stairs in front of me said it best:

“From a consumer perspective, it was a disappointing experience but from it was a great experience from a shareholder perspective.”

Granted, we’re are talking Apple’s flagship store on a day when the streets of New York were heaving with tourists. But for anyone looking for first-hand evidence of Apple’s sales mojo, it was an awesome display of rapid consumerism.

 

 

Crashing Hard Drives & the Goodness of the Cloud

By Mark Evans in Apple/iPod No Comments Tags: , , ,

How’s this for having a bad week: First, the spinning beachball of death starts to get even worse on my MacBook Pro. Then, I boot up my relatively new iMac, and rather than a beautiful blue screen, I get the white screen of death with a file folder blinking back at me, which is never a good sign.

First reaction: “Crap”.

Second reaction: “I hope my AppleCare hasn’t expired”.

Third reaction: “Great, another trip to Carbon Computing”.

If there is a silver lining to a double shot of computer woes, it is that an increasing amount of my computing has migrated to the cloud. I’m a big user of Google Docs to handle word documents and spreadsheets. I made the move to Google Apps and GMail a few months ago. And DropBox has become a “virtual” harddrive/storage depot for lots of personal and professional documents.

It means that having hard drives go crash and burn isn’t a catastrophe as much as an aggravation. When I was told the hard drive on the MacBook Pro would likely have to be replaced, I just cut and paste a bunch of data into DropBox, which was a snap because I happily pay $99/year for 50GB of storage.

Putting your computing world into the cloud can be a leap of faith but it’s a no-brainer for people like myself who are mobile and use different devices to access data and services. At the end of the day, hard drive problems are still a pain in the rear end but rather than being a disaster, they’re bumps in the road.

And, of course, I had everything backed up on an external hard drive just in case because it’s always good to have a backup plan!

To 4S or Not 4S, That is the Problem

By Mark Evans in Apple/iPod No Comments Tags: , , ,

Apple, Apple, Apple. So brilliant, seductive and alluring.

The hits keep coming and the new products keep on getting released, even if they are just minor upgrades to the previous product such as the iPhone 4S.

Even though there was disappointment, the 4S wasn’t a iPhone5, it’s still something new from Apple, which is always a good thing for the growing Apple Nation.

The question is whether we’re strong enough to resist the temptation to upgrade. Is getting the new thing irresistible, or should we live with what we’ve got.

The iPhone4S called out to me yesterday when, coincidentally, my battered and bruised 3GS fell on the floor. The glass panel shattered, bringing on agony but, at the same time, the ecstatic realization that it had created a window of opportunity to get a 4S. It was like a spiritual Steve Jobs had lightly pushed my 3GS off the shelf.

So what to do, what to do? Spend $300 or $400 on a 4S, or hold onto the 3GS given saving money seems to a good thing these days. Or should I buy an iPhone4 that the carriers have slashed prices on to move out excess inventory?

The back and forth when considering Apple products is agonizing. One minute, a 4S is a slam-dunk; the next minute you decide not to jump on the bandwagon.

In the end, I got the 3GS fixed. For now, I have a functional iPhone again, which will suit my needs and, as important, provide some more time to decide whether to get the 4S.

Steve Jobs Picks Perfect Time to Leave

By Mark Evans in Apple/iPod 2 Comments Tags: , ,

Steve jobsAn adage that I’ve tried to live by is “always leave a good time” based on the idea that exiting on a positive note is better than skulking out the door. It’s like leaving a party when it’s still raging as opposed to leaving when there’s only a few people sticking around, the music has been turned off and there’s no beer left in the fridge.

In many respects, Steve Jobs has picked the perfect time to leave Apple. The company has become a cultural, technological and business monster with an aura hand-crafted by Jobs over the past decade. Apple is firing on all cylinders, seemingly unable to do anything wrong. The iMac, MacBook, iPad and iPad have established Apple as the world’s coolest brand and a design titan.

But where does Apple go from here?

When you’re at the top of your game, it can be a huge challenge to keep getting better. Arguably, the only place for Apple to go may be down given the competition over the horizon from players such as Google and Samsung.

On one hand, it would be probably be pretty cool to be Tim Cook, who is replacing Jobs as Apple’s CEO. On the other hand, Cook may have the world’s toughest job. Every move he makes, every new product and every quarterly result will be scrutinized and compared against the Steve-o-Meter. No matter how well Cook performs, it may never be good enough.

But that’s the reality of replacing an icon. There is no way you can compete so Cook needs to put his head down and let Apple continue to be Apple.

One thing that will be interesting is whether Apple employees, including Cook, will be allowed to enjoy the spotlight. During Jobs’ reign, he was the centre of attention, and it was rare to read about some of the other uber-talented people who were driving the company’s product development and marketing. Maybe Jobs’ departure will give them a chance to shine.

Jobs will be missed, although it doesn’t look like he’s disappearing. That said, no one is irreplaceable, even Steve Jobs. Apple will continue to roll along but it may never enjoy the same kind of amazing momentum it has seen over the past five – with or without Jobs as CEO.

For some more thoughts on what Apple means without Steve Jobs, check out this good piece of analysis by Econsultancy. Wired has a story on why Cook is the best choice to lead Apple.

Can Low Prices Save the Tablet Market from Apple?

By Mark Evans in Apple/iPod, Google 4 Comments

Update: All Things D has interesting post looking at how much money Hewlett-Packard might have lost on the TouchPad.

Steve jobs ipadSo let’s get this straight: Hewlett-Packard spends $1.2-billion to acquire Palm so it can move into the tablet computing business. It then launches the TouchPad (creative name, by the way!) with a marketing blitz, only to see sales go nowhere, leaving retailers such as Best Buy with loads of unsold inventory.

Then, HP shocks the world by announcing it’s going to abandon the tablet and PC markets to focus on software. Fascinating….except the story gets better.

After HP makes its decision, Best Buy goes back on its original decision not to sell its stash of 245,000 TouchPads by blowing them out at discount prices – $99 for the 16GB model and $149 for the 32GB model. (betanews has some colour on the TouchPad buying frenzy.)

People who would have never considered buying a TouchPad are now drooling about picking up a cheap unit, even though it’s built on an OS that could be orphaned.

If anything, it just goes to show that everyone likes a deal, even if it involves a product that is being discontinued.

At the same time, it does put a intriguing issue into the spotlight: could low-price tablets keep the marketplace from being dominated by Apple’s iPad?

There are some great tablets from companies such as Samsung and Motorola (I’m really enjoying my Xoom) but the iPad’s appeal and Apple’s brand mean the default choice for most consumers is an iPad.

Many people suggest the iPad is so compelling because of the 100K+ apps but truth be told, Android has an apps portfolio that is more than good enough. Heck, even the much-maligned Blackberry World probably has enough apps to do the trick.

So the iPad has the marketing aura and the apps but what it doesn’t have is a low price, although there’s rumbling Apple could introduce less-expensive models. This leaves a window of opportunity for someone to step up with a low-cost, user-friendly tablet likely built on Android that would have mass market appeal.

As much as overall sales are soaring, a cheap tablet would push the tablet into the mainstream, making it available to just about everyone, including people who look at them as a nice to have as opposed to a must-have. And the nice thing about playing in the low-price market is there’s little chance Apple will join the fray.

Of course, the key consideration for a supplier who decides to make low-cost tablets is having low enough costs and high enough sales volume to have decent profit margins. It would also help if there were add-on services available (storage, security, etc.) that would generate additional sales to support the low-cost model.

Given the strong sales of the TouchPad, there’s clearly a market for a cheap tablet backed by a reputable brand. Either that or people love a deal or they’re looking for a souvenir to sell later on eBay.

More: Daring Fireball offers a “simple explanation” about why HP abandoned Palm and decided to exit the PC business.Update

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