Re-Imagining Apple

FirienFirien writes "Business 2.0 has put up a selection of ideas from Pentagram Design, featuring some interesting rumoured ipod innovations, as well as a look at what may be next for Apple. From the article: 'The project was led by Robert Brunner, who was Apple's chief designer from 1989 to 1996, and who oversaw the design of the PowerBook line, among many other hit products.'"

Comments

Re:Apple is SO 2004

[poison_reverse]

dropped prices on their ipods, and laptops and released the mac mini???

Re:How's that again?

[four2five]

I think it was more this man:
http://www.lowendmac.com/musings/gil.shtml
Silly gil.....

The clones were better than Apple's machines

[Anonymous Coward]

"He did no such thing, And those clones were crap. They relied on better performance figures on paper with woeful hardware support & reliability.
"

The opposite is true. The clones ended up being better machines at a lower price point, so clone sales started to eat into Apple mac sales. Especially on the high end. Apple wanted the clone program to increase profits by selling more of the OS, but did not want it to cut into the lucractive high-end hardware line.

Re:I sure would like a non reg version of the arti

[KillerDeathRobot]

It might help if the blurb linked to the right part of the story (which is reg free).

Link

Re:How's that again?

[Mononoke]

Sorry, you must have the PowerBook confused for the IBM Thinkpad.

Sorry, but you must not remember the PowerBook 100, the first laptop design to push the keyboard back toward the screen.

Re:Re-imagining Apple?

[DesiVideoGamer]

Are they going to start selling Beowulf clusters iPods?

Somebody has already done something similar.

Apple computer shipments are actually on the rise

[chia_monkey]

"If Apple actually sold computers again. Seriously, they are rapidly turning into a consumer electronics companies and selling computers are becoming more and more of an afterthought."

Turning into a consumer electronics company? If you recall, way back when Steve introduced iTunes to the masses, his plan was to make people want the iPod, which would make people want Macs. His plan is working perfectly. While other PC companies are predicted to have slowdowns in units shipped, Apple is actually expected to sell MORE computers in the near future. Not only is Apple selling computers...they are selling MORE computers than before. Making a nice chunk of profit from the product that is helping the computer-base grow is simply gravy.

Full article text

[Anonymous Coward]

(Expand browser window to view ungarbled.)

What's Next for Apple?

Steve Jobs won't ever tell you -- but we will. Here's what a trail of intriguing evidence reveals about
where the world's hottest company is going.

By Paul Sloan, Paul Kaihla, April 2005 Issue

Steve Jobs was rocking back and forth in his chair at the head of his conference room table -- and venting. It was January 2002, and the target of his
ire was the music business. The industry was reeling from Internet piracy and, as Jobs saw it, doing nothing about it. Even Jobs himself, a man
accustomed to commanding people's attention, had been largely ignored by music execs. Jobs railed to his audience, a few Apple (AAPL)
lieutenants and Paul Vidich, then a senior exec at Warner Music, about the industry's total lack of imagination. "Until now," Jobs said, "I've never had
a living, breathing music executive come to Apple."
Vidich sat quietly.

"Why is it," Jobs continued, "that the people who run the music industry just don't get it?"
Vidich could have taken this the way Jobs certainly meant it -- as an insult. But as Vidich listened, he couldn't help thinking that he agreed. Finally,
he spoke up.

"Steve," he said, "that's why we're here. We need some help."

It's amazing to consider what has happened since that encounter at Apple's headquarters in Cupertino, Calif. In three years Apple has utterly changed
the way people listen to music, and Jobs has become the hero of the very people he was lambasting. Top acts are eager to sell their music via the
iTunes music store. The iPod music player has become totemic; it's selling at a rate of about 40 per minute. White buds sprout from so many ears
that a sudden human evolutionary adaptation seems to have taken place.

Apple's lead in digital music is growing even as an army of corporate powerhouses -- Dell (DELL), Microsoft (MSFT), Samsung, and Sony (SNE)
among them -- spends hundreds of millions of dollars to grab a slice of the business. And the financial transformation driven by Apple's storming of
the music stage has been profound: On its knees when Jobs retook control in 1997, Apple is coming off a year in which revenue rose 33 percent and
profits quadrupled. Its stock, not surprisingly, has been on a tear, up more than sixfold in the past two years and now hovering around $42 a share.

So, Mr. Jobs, what do you do for an encore?

It has become a parlor game in some quarters to try to divine where Apple is going and how it intends to get there -- and not just at the dozens of
blogs that traffic in Apple rumors. Recently, Microsoft quietly hired a former Apple design executive whose mission is to help Bill Gates's baby
behave more like Steve Jobs's. Apple doesn't make the game easy; Jobs is famously secretive and detests leaks -- just ask the kid from Harvard
whom Apple recently sued after he posted details of the Mac Mini before the stripped-down computer was unveiled at Macworld (see "The Secrecy of
Success"). But there are ways to draw a bead on what's brewing in Jobs's fantasy factory. And we're here to tell you, it goes way beyond what he has
discussed at Macworld.

Jobs wouldn't talk to Business 2.0, but in various public forums, he has stressed how the $499 Mac Mini, the low-cost iPod Shuffle, and an advanced
operating system called Tiger, due out this spring, are meant to build on the digital-music momentum. In truth, they are but the tip of a very long spear.

Discussions with past and present company officials, Apple partners, and longtime acquaintances of Jobs, as well as clues in patent applications
and other evidence, point to a gargantuan effort to leverage the iPod's success by creating an entire line of breakout consumer electronics devices.
Dozens of gadgets -- from an iPod phone to wireless iPods that talk to one another to the ultimate all-in-one home-cum-car media hub -- appear to be
on the drawing board or, in some cases, already in prototy

Re:I sure would like a non reg version of the arti

[Anonymous Coward]

(Posted AC to avoid losing karma)

FEATURES Talk Back
E-Mail This Article
Subscribe to B2

What's Next for Apple?

Steve Jobs won't ever tell you -- but we will. Here's what a trail of intriguing evidence reveals about where the world's hottest company is going.

By Paul Sloan, Paul Kaihla, March 23, 2005

Steve Jobs was rocking back and forth in his chair at the head of his conference room table -- and venting. It was January 2002, and the target of his ire was the music business. The industry was reeling from Internet piracy and, as Jobs saw it, doing nothing about it. Even Jobs himself, a man accustomed to commanding people's attention, had been largely ignored by music execs. Jobs railed to his audience, a few Apple (AAPL) lieutenants and Paul Vidich, then a senior exec at Warner Music, about the industry's total lack of imagination. "Until now," Jobs said, "I've never had a living, breathing music executive come to Apple."

Vidich sat quietly.

"Why is it," Jobs continued, "that the people who run the music industry just don't get it?"

"Get what?" Vidich asked.

"The MP3 thing." Jobs continued. "There are millions of MP3s on the Internet, and people are downloading them for free, and the music industry is suing them. If the music industry were to sell MP3s instead, maybe people would buy them."

"But", said Vidich, "Why? I mean, if people can get them for free, then why pay to download MP3s? Isn't that the way the music industry is thinking?"

"Why buy music at all then? People bought vinyl when there were blank tapes. People buy CDs when they can get friends to copy them onto CD-Rs. People want to be honest. They want to do the right thing. If you price MP3s low enough, people will buy them instead of downloading them for free."

"No they will not", said Vidich. "They can buy CDs. But they chose to download MP3s instead. Doesn't that tell you, all by itself, that the vast majority of these people are cheapskates, who want music, but aren't prepared to buy it?"

"No", said Jobs, getting frustraited. "They download because it's convenient."

"Sure, it's convenient" said Vidich sarcastically. "I mean, the "inconvenient" way is a matter of finding what you want on Amazon, clicking "Buy with one-click", and then opening a package a few days later. The other involves making some flakey internet connection, downloading some illegal software, trying to find an MP3 you want knowing that half of the MP3s you're looking at are probably not as labeled, or badly encoded, or 384kbps stuff with some corruption that'll mean it will not work on your PC, then waiting for the damned thing to download, which would be quick on your supposedly whizzy cable modem connection, but you're actually downloading it from a "peer" who's DSL outgoing bandwidth is capped at 128kbps, or maybe even some nerd in the middle of nowhere with a V.32bis modem, and what you get then plays exclusively on your PC or MP3 player, unless you're willing to burn it to a CD. And do you know, Steve, how hard it is on most platforms to burn a CD? The tools are getting better, but man. My band tried to make a few CDs a few months ago, and Nero sucks."

"Ok, point taken" said Jobs.

The big idea

It was several months later that Steve Jobs hit upon a way to solve everyone's problems. Jobs saw that the problem with filesharing wasn't just that it was illegal, it was that it was user hostile to the vast majority of users. But how to fix it? This meant making a new filesharing client supporting technologies that would fix the problems. "Official" versions of each song. A friendly, web-like, user interface for picking and chosing music to download. But if Apple was going to go into the filesharing business, Apple also needed to ensure it wouldn't be sued.

Jobs called Nancy Heinen, Apple's legal chief, into his office one May morning and asked her. "If we were to make it easy for our users to download music, but harder for music publisher

Re:How's that again?

[Otter]

That's a different model -- the 636CD was one of the last of the 68K's. In fact, the most sensible of the lawsuits had to do with the fact that Apple had advertised it as "upgradeable to PowerPC", which was only true in the sense that you could sell it and upgrade to a new computer.

If it's any consolation, you only missed out on some coupons. (The lawyers, of course, made out like bandits all three times.) And your Performa will happily run Linux if you stick some more RAM in there.

Re:Not really

[Bun]

"You don't work in GUI design, do you? Context menus are essential in complex applications, e.g. IDEs, Tech Drawing, UML design."

You quoted the parent, but perhaps you didn't read it first? Let's see it again:
"Very few applications have (or should have) the level of feature complexity that would require contextual menus for basic functionality..."
Your list represents an almost insignificantly small subset of the applications used by PC owners. Most applications used by people are nowhere near as complex as the ones you cite.

Re:How's that again?

[PriceIke]

> References, please.

Sure thing.

The Regsiter

Apple has a history of mobile computing innovation quickly ripped off by other vendors. Its PowerBook 100 - manufactured by Sony - was the world's first notebook with a built-in trackball.

The first trackpad, the first integrated modem, the first integrated 802.11b WLAN, the first 15in widescreen LCD, and the first backlit keyboard (in the 17in PowerBook) are among Apple's other notebook firsts.

MobilePC Magazine: "Top 100 Gadgets of All Time"

22. APPLE POWERBOOK 500, 1994

The PowerBook 500 wowed the notebook market with a long string of firsts: The first touch pad; the first stereo speakers (with 16-bit sound); the first expansion bay -- and the first PC Card slot; the first "intelligent" nickel metal hydride battery, with a processor that communicated battery status to the operating system; and, last but not least, the first curvaceous case, with gratuitously swooped edges and corners instead of the boxy angles of previous notebooks. Make no mistake, this notebook set the agenda for the following 10 years of portable computer design.

MobilePC Magazine: "Top 100 Gadgets of All Time"

1. APPLE POWERBOOK 100, 1991

Never mind the Apple versus PC debate: Until Apple unveiled this 5.1-pound machine, most "portable" computers were curiosities for technophiles with superior upper-body strength. But the PowerBook 100's greatest and most lasting innovation was to move the keyboard toward the screen, leaving natural wrist rests up front, as well as providing an obvious place for a trackball. It seems like the natural layout now, but that's because the entire industry aped Apple within months. The first PowerBooks captured an astounding 40 percent of the market, but more important, they turned notebook computers into mainstream products and ushered in the era of mobile computing that we're still living in today.

I stand corrected on the first 17" screen claim, giving the Register article the benefit of the doubt.