Over the weekend NYT published an engrossing article, laying out in fascinating, sometimes depressing and heartbreaking detail China’s role as the manufacturing superpower at the cost of middle class jobs in the U.S. by way of dissecting Apple as the primary case study. Those details have profound and far reaching implications for the future of global economy and America’s tech innovation in particular. While it’s common knowledge that everything is made in China, what some may not realize is that it’s not due to cheap labor rather China’s ability to “scale” at a breakneck speed and breathtaking manner that no other country in the world can match. And when it comes to manufacturing high volume consumer electronics, that’s where it counts:
Apple executives say that going overseas, at this point, is their only option. One former executive described how the company relied upon a Chinese factory to revamp iPhone manufacturing just weeks before the device was due on shelves. Apple had redesigned the iPhone’s screen at the last minute, forcing an assembly line overhaul. New screens began arriving at the plant near midnight.
A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day.
“The speed and flexibility is breathtaking,” the executive said. “There’s no American plant that can match that.” […]
“They could hire 3,000 people overnight,” said Jennifer Rigoni, who was Apple’s worldwide supply demand manager until 2010, but declined to discuss specifics of her work. “What U.S. plant can find 3,000 people overnight and convince them to live in dorms?”
This is a must read. If nothing else, to get the details behind first iPhone’s benchmark-setting all glass, scratch resistant screen. Speaking of which, that last bit you’ll get you.
ckck:
The first iPod was unveiled ten years ago today, on October 23rd, 2001. Along with a monochrome screen and a mechanical scroll wheel, it came with 5 GB of storage space and a price tag of $399. You could get it in any colour you wanted, so long as it was white.
It wasn’t the first of its kind, but it certainly was the one that popularized mp3 players and ushered in a new era. Happy Birthday, iPod!
What a decade it’s been since. (I can still make out the iconic ‘clicking’ sound in my head.)
It was only a matter of time: website chronicles Siri’s humorous antics with her legion’s of eager owners. If you’d like to get a taste of Siri’s fun “personalty” without having to wait in line for the new 4S - this is it.
On a trip to Japan in the early 1980s, Jobs asked Sony’s chairman Akio Morita why everyone in the company’s factories wore uniforms. He told Jobs that after the war, no one had any clothes, and companies like Sony had to give their workers something to wear each day. Over the years, the uniforms developed their own signatures styles, especially at companies such as Sony, and it became a way of bonding workers to the company. “I decided that I wanted that type of bonding for Apple,” Jobs recalled.
Sony, with its appreciation for style, had gotten the famous designer Issey Miyake to create its uniform. It was a jacket made of rip-stop nylon with sleeves that could unzip to make it a vest. So Jobs called Issey Miyake and asked him to design a vest for Apple, Jobs recalled, “I came back with some samples and told everyone it would great if we would all wear these vests. Oh man, did I get booed off the stage. Everybody hated the idea.”
In the process, however, he became friends with Miyake and would visit him regularly. He also came to like the idea of having a uniform for himself, both because of its daily convenience (the rationale he claimed) and its ability to convey a signature style. “So I asked Issey to make me some of his black turtlenecks that I liked, and he made me like a hundred of them.” Jobs noticed my surprise when he told this story, so he showed them stacked up in the closet. “That’s what I wear,” he said. “I have enough to last for the rest of my life.”
— Excerpt from Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson.
Real world demo of Siri on iPhone 4S.
Impressive. Much more effective and delightful in action than I thought it’d be. Siri is (or rather has the potential to be) the iPad of general purpose, knowledge based A.I. companions: an age old, long sought after idea, executed well enough to make it go mainstream. Microsoft’s powerful tellme service and Google’s voice search (to a lesser extent) will only help that cause.
We are deeply saddened to announce that Steve Jobs passed away today.
Steve’s brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives. The world is immeasurably better because of Steve.
His greatest love was for his wife, Laurene, and his family. Our hearts go out to them and to all who were touched by his extraordinary gifts.
Steve Jobs resigns as Apple CEO:
To the Apple Board of Directors and the Apple Community:
I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.
I hereby resign as CEO of Apple. I would like to serve, if the Board sees fit, as Chairman of the Board, director and Apple employee.
Even when you knew this was coming, it still weighs on you all the same. Apple may very well find a truly impressive CEO in Tim Cook, but there will never be another Steve. An eloquent leader, visionary, perfectionist, true auteur with no peers - the like of which global technology industry will likely never see again.
I couldn’t care less who was right or wrong or how the Samsung vs Apple suit goes down.
Stanley Kubrick created 2001: Space Odyssey in 1968 and is now being held up as technological proof in an IP court battle on where the technology originated from. 1968! A fucking movie! Kubrick has no equals.
Not quite but - Amen to that last line.
Fortune’s Philip Elmer-DeWitt contacted Walter Isaacson and got some more details on Steve Jobs’ biography that is due on November 21st. The above cover is described by Isaacson:
“The cover,” writes Isaacson in private e-mail, “is the Albert Watson portrait taken for Fortune in 2009. The back is a Norman Seeff portrait of him in the lotus position holding the original Macintosh, which ran in Rolling Stone in January 1984. The title font is Helvetica. It will look as you see it, with no words on the back cover.”
And to think the book was originally going to be called iSteve: The Book of Jobs *shudders*
Joshua Topolsky reports that Apple will release a new iPad this fall dubbed “iPad HD”, which will sport a 2048 x 1536 resolution.
Of course, I reported on Apple planning a fall iPad refresh back in February. I speculated that the device would have a “Retina” display, but didn’t have any firm details. The iPad 2 hadn’t even been announced at the time.
Everyone thought I was crazy.
Crazy.
I don’t think the idea was that crazy; especially when you consider two simple facts:
1. The original iPad launched with a rather humble resolution (1024x768 @ 132 ppi) that made text render fuzzy around the edges (to keen eyes anyway) and..
2. The fact that back in January during Q1 call Tim Cook revealed Apple was saving their pile of cash for massive strategic acquisition of a ‘specific component’ - possibly in the form of “$3.9 B investment in displays technology”
What is crazy however is what that means in terms of the resulting product:
I for one can not wait to hold a 9.7 inch slab of glass with a resolution of 2048 x 1536 up close. To put this into some perspective:
a) A typical 24 inch wide HD monitor has a resolution of 1920 x 1080 (categorized as ‘Full HD’). Compared that to 9.7 inch wide iPad screen that’ll pack - not just full HD resolution but surpass even that!
b) Another way of looking at it - if you were to play a Blu-ray HD film on this relatively tiny (compared to your 60 inch HDTV) 9.7 inch screens in its original size: it’ll still have exactly 128 pixel on the side and 456 pixel at the bottom leftover/unused to show you something else.
Let that one sink in.
Suffice to say - it’ll be glorious.
Steve Jobs’ master plan to draw a generation raised on stolen music into the iTunes store.
Here’s how it works: iTunes determines which songs in your collection are available in the iTunes Store. Any music with a match is automatically added to your iCloud library for you to listen to anytime, on any device. Since there are more than 18 million songs in the iTunes Store, most of your music is probably already in iCloud. All you have to upload is what iTunes can’t match. Which is much faster than starting from scratch. And all the music iTunes matches plays back at 256-Kbps iTunes Plus quality — even if your original copy was of lower quality.
Brilliant.
Their biggest revamping of the OS yet. Not only Apple addressed those lingering feature requests (i.e wireless syncing, notification system), they basically took the most popular 3rd party services (instapaper, twitter, groupMe) and in one fell swoop made it part of next iOS update. Sure to piss of a lot of those developers but ultimately it’s Christmas for us, the users.
