http://scoopertino.com/apple-offers-bold-plan-to-fix-the-u-s-economy/

http://macenstein.com/default/2012/05/android-tells-apple-to-suck-it/

Kaspersky Lab last week detailed why the increasing market share of the Apple Mac means more malware on the platform. Eugene (Yevgeny) Kaspersky, co-founder and CEO of the security firm, has now gone further in statement made at the Infosecurity Europe 2012 conference.

“I think [Apple] are ten years behind Microsoft in terms of security,” Kaspersky told CBR. “For many years I’ve been saying that from a security point of view there is no big difference between Mac and Windows. It’s always been possible to develop Mac malware, but this one was a bit different. For example it was asking questions about being installed on the system and, using vulnerabilities, it was able to get to the user mode without any alarms.”

Kaspersky is of course referring to the Flashback malware that has infected hundreds of thousands of Macs. He then reiterated what his employees and many security researchers have been saying for years: Apple needs to step up its game.

“Apple is now entering the same world as Microsoft has been in for more than 10 years: updates, security patches and so on,” Kaspersky said. “We now expect to see more and more because cyber criminals learn from success and this was the first successful one. They will understand very soon that they have the same problems Microsoft had ten or 12 years ago. They will have to make changes in terms of the cycle of updates and so on and will be forced to invest more into their security audits for the software. That’s what Microsoft did in the past after so many incidents like Blaster and the more complicated worms that infected millions of computers in a short time. They had to do a lot of work to check the code to find mistakes and vulnerabilities. Now it’s time for Apple [to do that].”

Kaspersky, the privately-held company, produces antivirus and other computer security products. Excluding the energy sector, Kaspersky Lab is considered one of Russia’s few international business success stories. The company makes excellent security software and I have personally recommended some of its products a few times.

That being said, Kaspersky, both the man and his company, of course would benefit from a malware epidemic on the Mac. That’s important to keep in mind, while acknowledging that the numbers are indeed growing and the Mac security situation is getting worse. Just how bad it’s getting, and will get, is a matter of perspective.


Πηγή: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/security/kaspersky-apple-10-years-behind-microsoft-in-terms-of-security/11706

STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN — Enjoying the occasional Steve Jobs email that trickles onto the Internet? Prepare for the deluge.

Undaunted by their current travails, WikiLeaks has released 140,000 emails written by Apple’s enigmatic leader. While Scoopertino is only beginning to dig into this treasure trove, a richer picture of Steve Jobs is already beginning to emerge.

Overall, the emails reinforce the image of Steve as a man of few words. A cursory review of this massive email dump reveals that 88% of his messages contain three or fewer words, with 84% of those offering only one: “No.”

He did get a bit wordier in an exchange with North Korean bad boy Kim Jong Il. Kim, aching to get a pre-release iPod touch for his son back in August, wrote to Steve requesting “a favor from one dictator to another.” In this case, Steve doubled the syllable count with a quick “Hell no.”

Interestingly, Steve’s most verbose message seems to have been directed to his old partner, Steve Wozniak. With the Woz preparing for his third appearance on Dancing With The Stars, Steve sent an eight-word tome offering his own personal merengue tips: ”Stand proud. Hips loose. Mouthwash five minutes before.”

Most surprising, Steve’s emails show that he’s developed a “holy father/son” relationship with Pope Benedict XVI — a bond that formed when Steve sweet-talked the pontiff into appearing in the Pope Rock iPod commercial earlier this year. “Benny,” as Steve often addresses him, has been trying to get Apple to sponsor his next world tour. Steve emailed back that he’s happy to consider, “if you can just tone down the religion thing a little.”

Apple declined to make an official comment on this story, but leaves open the possibility that they will leak one later.

A few years ago, Apple sold me a $4,000 computer with a defective graphics chip/logic board. The defective part was the Nvidia 8600M GT GPU, and when it was discovered that the machine was defective, Apple refused to take it back and issue me a refund. Instead, they promised to replace the 8600M GT boards when they failed, up to 4 years from the date of purchase.

Three years later, the board failed, and predictably, Apple refused to replace it. Instead, they used the fact that the machine wouldn’t boot (due to the failed logic board) to deny the repair. Not only that, but in addition, they tried to charge me a hefty sum of money to have it replaced, knowing full well that Nvidia pays for the full repair cost.

Three and a half months ago, after having my repair denied, I announced on this very site that I was going to sue Apple. Reading these lawsuit threats often, many people assumed that I was bluffing or blowing off steam, but true to my word, I did exactly what I said I was going to do. I sued Apple.

I did not take this step lightly, however. In the months following the announcement, I did everything in my power to keep my dispute with Apple out of the court system.
First, I filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau. In their rebuttal to the BBB, Apple blatantly lied about the diagnostics they had run on my computer, and the BBB promptly closed the case, leaving Apple’s “A+” rating intact.

Next, I spoke with Apple Executive Services … three separate times. Each time, I was told that “We value each customer and hope that they have a positive experience with Apple, and are sorry that you did not have this experience, but you will get nothing.” … or something to this effect.

After that, I sent a demand letter to Apple via certified mail. I informed them that if I did not have my issue resolved within 10 days, I would sue.

Only then, after Apple failed to reply, did I file a Small Claims lawsuit.

Last week, the trial was held.

I arrived at the King County Courthouse shortly after 8am, and about forty five minutes later, the clerk performed roll call. Imagine my surprise when I learned that Apple had sent not one, but two people to represent the company. When Apple told me that I would get nothing, they really meant it.

After calling roll, and before calling the docket, the clerk went down the case list and asked each litigant if they would be willing to try mediation. Mediation keeps cases out of the court system, and keeps the outcomes confidential. This is especially beneficial to companies, as having judgements issued against them by customers is bad PR.

Always one to exhaust all good-faith remedies before resorting to more drastic measures (really, nobody can say I didn’t try my hardest to stay out of court), I agreed to try mediation, and to my surprise, so did Apple.

Since everything said in the mediation room is confidential, I cannot go into details about what happened there, but I will tell you that it failed, and the case was sent back to the courtroom.

In retrospect, I am glad that mediation did fail. After seeing that Apple sent two guys … two guys who were in continuous contact with Apple legal via text and cell … I knew that I was outgunned, outspent, and out-everything elsed. $500,000,000,000 vs. $37 and a pack of chewing gum is not a fair fight. Because of this, I offered settlements that were ridiculously favorable to Apple and unfavorable to myself, but even these were rejected. Thank goodness that they were.

After failing mediation, shortly after 11am, we were called before the judge, sworn in, and I read my opening statement. I said basically everything I’ve been saying on this blog for the last several months. I stuck to the facts, handed my exhibits to the clerk (several printed pages), and was as professional as possible.

When it was Apple’s turn, their representatives opened by throwing a hail mary pass. While holding up the press release outlining the 8600GT replacement program, they claimed that, because the CPU in my MacBook Pro was clocked at 2.6Ghz, and not 2.4Ghz, or 2.5Ghz as stated in the release, that I had a completely different computer … one that was not subject to the 4 year replacement program.

You see, when I ordered my MacBook Pro, I paid about $300 extra for them to up-clock the chip from 2.5Ghz to 2.6Ghz. Yes, it was a classic Apple ripoff, and yes, I was dumb to order it, but I did it, mea culpa.

I had absolutely no idea that it would be used against me in a court of law to explain to a judge why I should not be covered by an extended warranty, and it caught me off-guard. Perhaps, despite everything, I am still a bit naive, because not even I expected Apple to just … lie. At least not in such a silly manner.

Remember, I was not going up against the owner of some taco stand, I was up against the most profitable company in the USA. I honestly expected more than a silly fib.
After listening to Apple, the judge turned to me and asked for my response, and I explained to him, in detail, that the chips, logic boards, and GPUs in all of the MacBook Pro models were the same, regardless of the speed at which the CPUs had been clocked.

Confused, the judge turned to Apple and asked, “Is this true?”

There was some awkward silence as the Apple guys exchanged uncomfortable looks between each other, before one of them finally said “Yes, it is.”

“So, this machine IS covered by the 8600GT repair program?”, asked the judge.

“Yes it is, your honor”, replied Apple.

So, there we were. Not more than 2 minutes into the trial, and Apple conceded to trying to hoodwink the judge.

This is more or less the way the rest of the trial played out. I made a point, Apple rebutted it with something completely off-the-wall and irrelevant, and I explained to the judge why Apple’s rebuttal was nonsense. I took the time to explain everything clearly, I answered all of the judge’s technical questions in detail, and at one point, the judge even declared that he would accept my testimony as that of an “expert witness”.

Apple, well, they didn’t really have a defense. They just kept repeating things like “It’s Apple’s policy to do this”, and “It’s Apple’s position that we do that”. The Apple guys seemed genuinely surprised that I knew as much as I did about computer hardware. I’m not trying to insult iPeople, at least not in this article, but during both mediation and the trial, I realized that Apple has a strong expectation that their users not be tech-savvy and, as such, Apple seems used to infantilizing and bamboozling their customers with silly and nonsensical explanations of highly technical matters.

Years ago, I remember debating the Mac vs. Everything Else issue with a friend of mine, and every time I would bring up the relative attributes of a particular component, he would always respond with “Specs don’t matter!”

I thought he was just being stubborn, but after this experience, I realize that this type of “I don’t care about gigahertz and whatchamajiggers, I just know that Macs use pixie dust and purple elephant dung to make magic!” mentality is a part of the Apple culture from the top down. From the lowest-level sales rep all the way up to the corporate guys.

As the trial went on, I showed the judge evidence that the 8600M graphics cards were known to be defective, I showed him that I had an 8600M in my machine, and I explained to him that, despite their promise to do so, Apple refused to replace my board because it would not boot, and it would not boot because the 8600M had failed.

The judge accepted these explanations, and when he asked Apple what it would cost to replace my logic board if I paid in cash, I interjected and explained to the judge that if Apple replaced only the logic board, it would simply be another logic board with a defective GPU, therefore, such a solution would not be acceptable.

The judge responded by asking Apple if my machine could be fitted with a different GPU, and when they replied “No, that machine will only accept an 8600M GT”, the judge declared my make & model of MacBook Pro to be defective and unrepairable by any means.

Eventually, over the continued objections of the Apple folks (one of the guys kept arguing that I should give Apple one last chance to fix it), I was awarded a cash amount. The amount I was awarded is enough to replace the computer, which means that I should once again have a 17″ laptop. Assuming Apple actually pays me.

Now, I didn’t get everything I asked for. When I filed the suit, I was pissed off, so I asked for the kitchen sink … a refund of Apple Care (which I only purchased when I learned the machine was defective), compensation for loss of use, and even some punitive damages.

Had I been able to show loss-of-use damages, I probably would have gotten them, but the judge awarded what would “make me whole” … essentially, putting me back in the same place that I was before Apple wronged me. This being the case, I received compensation for the machine itself, plus court costs, costs of service, etc.
It was a fair ruling, a little more than I expected actually, and I thanked the judge.

The Apple guys, well, they were none too happy. By the time I stood up, they had already beat a hasty path to the courtroom door. I was going to offer my hand, thank them for their time, and explain that it was nothing personal, but they weren’t interested in any of it.

And that was that.

I guess what they say is true. The sun even shines on a dog’s butthole every now and then, and on this day, I got myself a nice tan.

David faced Goliath, and not unlike the AT&T case a couple of months ago, David somehow, someway, came out on top.

Even though I’m glad it turned out the way it did, one question still nags me:

Why?

Why did it have to come to this?

At one point, the judge asked Apple how much it would have cost them to have simply replaced my logic board when I had taken it in, and one of the Apple guys said “Oh, it wouldn’t have cost us anything, Nvidia foots the bill for each board we replace.”

The judge’s face almost hit the floor as he shot me a quizzical look, to which I just shrugged. I knew that he, and everyone else in the courtroom was thinking the same thing:
If Apple could have replaced my logic board at no cost to themselves, then why in the hell did they drag this out for so long, and why did they send two people to court to try and make sure that I got absolutely nothing? Friends, this is a question I have been asking myself for three months, and it is a question that I do not have the answer to.

You know, I fully respect a person or a company that stands up for himself/itself when they are in the right. It’s the correct thing to do.

What I don’t understand, however, is why Apple fought so hard against me when they were clearly in the wrong. It wasn’t even a judgement call. I knew they were wrong, the judge knew they were wrong, the clerk knew it, the audience knew it, and you could tell … you could just tell that Apple knew it as well.

And what of the shareholders? What should they make of this? Apple’s stock has been an E-ticket ride lately, but this incident should really give shareholders pause. I mean, what kind of judgement are the current leaders of Apple using?

Think about it … instead of repairing my computer under the repair program that they, themselves, announced … at absolutely no cost to themselves … Apple paid two guys to come to Downtown Seattle, and … well … lie, so that I would not have a non-defective computer. When you factor in the time it took them to get here, the time spent in court, and the time to get home, Apple paid two guys a day’s wages to defend this suit.

In addition, instead of paying nothing for the repair, they paid a legal team to oversee the case, and, oh yeah … you guys, the shareholders, are buying me a new computer too. Thanks.

As far as I can tell, Apple spent all of this time and money, solely to be a bully. Was that really money well-spent? I mean, you can almost excuse the holy wars against Adobe, Samsung, Android, and the prototype guys … but a local blogger?

The obsessiveness of crushing all perceived enemies, no matter how big or small, regardless of whether they are wrong or right, should be of concern to all iFans and financiers. It’s getting to the point where it’s really, really just sick.

Gone are the days of the scrappy underdog, throwing a hammer through the window of conformity, and what has emerged is … well, it’s far worse than what it was rebelling against.
Apple has become the Orwellian nightmare that it warned us about some 30 years ago. A huge vehicle of sameness backed by legions of newthink practitioners, gleefully cheering as Big Bully annihilates one thoughtcriminal after another.

Apple may be profitable, but it’s not well. Something is wrong at the highest levels, and if I was strongly tied to the company financially, I might be worried. Although blinded by Apple’s success in the near-term, I don’t think history will judge the company favorably.

Anyway, now comes the hard part.

Collecting the money. A judgement is only a piece of paper. It’s worth nothing if you can’t collect.

If what I have seen from Apple is any guide, they will spend $50 Million to get out of paying my four-figure judgement, simply out of spite. Just how much of the shareholder’s money will Apple end up spending because they tried to screw Seattle Rex remains to be seen.

I’ll fight on, though. No matter how many obstacles Apple throws in my way, I’ll keep going. After all, it’s what I do. I guess you can say I …

Think Different.

Update: Wow, this article really set off a firestorm. I’ve received scores of emails from people who were given the same “it won’t boot so we won’t repair it” explanation that I was, and were forced to pay for the repair out of their own pocket.

This really is a larger suit, perhaps a class-action suit in the making (as much as I detest class-actions for their unfairness toward the class), and I am exploring the possibilities of bringing a second suit against the company for fraud, misrepresentation, etc.

I’m simply astounded by how many people received the same treatment as myself over the 8600M issue.


Πηγή: http://www.seattlerex.com/seattle-rex-vs-apple-the-verdict-is-in/

Πηγή: Bloomberg

Στη δημοσιότητα δόθηκαν οι φάκελοι του FBI για τον Στιβ Τζομπς. Οι φάκελοι περιγράφουν τον ιδρυτή της Apple ως έναν άνθρωπο που έχρηζε σεβασμού για την πρωτοπορία του, ωστόσο αμφισβητούν την ειλικρίνεια και την ηθική του.

Διαβάστε εδώ τα έγγραφα.

«Αρκετά άτομα αμφισβήτησαν την ειλικρίνεια του Στ.Τζομπς, λέγοντας ότι ο κ. Τζομπς θα διαστρεβλώσει την αλήθεια και θα αλλάξει την πραγματικότητα, προκειμένου να επιτύχει τους στόχους του» αναφέρει η περίληψη της έρευνας του FBI.

Πρώην συνεργάτης του Τζομπς, που κατηγορούσε τον ιδρυτή της Apple, επειδή δεν έλαβε μετοχές που πίστευε ότι άξιζε, χαρακτήρισε τον Τζομπς ως «ειλικρινή και άξιο εμπιστοσύνης. Ωστόσο, ο ηθικός χαρακτήρας του είναι αμφισβητούμενος».

Ορισμένοι από τους συνεντευξιαζόμενους δήλωσαν ότι ο Στ.Τζομπς ήταν δύσκολος συνεργάτης, κάτι που έχει ξαναειπωθεί και μάλιστα αναφέρεται και σε βιογραφία που κυκλοφόρησε πέρυσι. Ο Στιβ Τζομπς πέθανε τον Οκτώβριο του 2011, μετά από μακροχρόνια μάχη με τον καρκίνο.

Τα έγγραφα αποκαλύπτουν ότι ο Στιβ Τζομπς είχε πέσει θύμα μιας εκβιαστικής απειλής για βόμβα το 1985.

Αναφέρονται, επίσης, στην επιλογή του να στραφεί στον Βουδισμό και στην παραδοχή του για χρήση ναρκωτικών ουσιών.

Ο φάκελος συστάθηκε το 1991, όταν η τότε κυβέρνηση Μπους σκεφτόταν να του δώσει κυβερνητικό πόστο.

Παρά τα μη κολακευτικά σχόλια, ο ιδρυτής της Apple διορίστηκε αμισθί σε θέση συμβουλευτική του προέδρου για θέματα πολιτικής εξαγωγών.


Πηγή: http://news.in.gr/science-technology/article/?aid=1231149656

http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1484

Why do we love Apple products? Because Apple makes products they want to use.

This quote from Steve Jobs in 1997 says it all (it's from 30 minutes into the video, below - though, it's worth watching the whole thing):

"I think every good product that I’ve ever seen in this industry and pretty much anywhere, is because a group of people care deeply about making something wonderful that they and their friends wanted. You know? They want to use it themselves. And that’s how the Apple I came about, that’s how the Apple II came about, that’s how the Macintosh came about. That’s how almost everything I know that’s good has come about. It didn’t come about because people were trembling in a corner worried about some big company stomping on them. Because if the big company made the product that was right, then most of these things wouldn’t have happened. If Woz and I could have went out and plunked down 2000 bucks and bought an Apple II, why would we have built one? We weren’t trying to start a company; we were trying to get a computer."

Right after that, Jobs also made the excellent point that:

"It’s incredibly stupid for Apple to get into a position where for Apple to win, Microsoft has to lose. That’s really dumb. ... Apple can win without having Microsoft lose."

And, that has, in fact happened.


Πηγή: http://www.esquiremac.com/blarg/2011/10/6/why-we-love-apple-products.html

The “CEO of the Decade” is no longer CEO.

After the initial shock, a general impulse seems to have seized commenters, which is to reassure everyone that everything will be OK.

“Apple will do amazingly well without Steve Jobs,” says Slate’s Farhad Manjoo.

PC World‘s Tony Bradley says we shouldn’t panic, because “Apple Is Still Apple.”

“Apple will continue to shine without Jobs at the helm,” says Seeking Alpha‘s Carl Howe.

Why? Because Apple “is more than Steve Jobs,” according to Christina Rexrode of the Associated Press.

All these headlines are technically true, but add up to wishful thinking that masks the larger truth. Yes, Apple is more than Steve Jobs.” But Apple without Steve Jobs is less than Apple with him. A lot less.


Why Steve Jobs was the Greatest CEO Ever

Some CEOs are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them.

In Jobs’ case, all three are true.

Jobs’ entire life was a “perfect storm” of elements for the man to lead Apple and make it the company it has become. Jobs was born at exactly the right time in exactly the right place with exactly the right personality to become the ultimate consumer electronics visionary.

Jobs was born with a personality containing equal parts perfectionism, narcissism, impatience and a quality you might call extremism.

Above all, Jobs was born with the DNA of a writer. (It’s not a coincidence that both his biological sister and daughter are successful writers.)

Writer DNA predisposes the victim to gravitate to the larger issue, whenever confronting particulars, to larger truths when confronting facts. For example, Jobs never viewed Apple as a company that makes computers and consumer electronics gadgets. To him, Apple makes culture accelerators. It manufactures human experience. Apple doesn’t “succeed in the marketplace.” It “changes the world.”

Critics always slam Jobs as “merely a salesman.” But that’s wrong. Jobs thinks like a writer, understanding and obsessing over larger truths and aspirations, and conveying them with piercing, emotive and unforgettable language. This is what great novelists do.

Jobs was born with qualities that made him the greatest CEO ever, but he also acquired greatness as a CEO. The hard way.

Throughout all his personal transitions, from wandering hippy to enfant terrible to pop-collar douchebag to hard-nosed businessman to the impossible-to-stereotype person that he is today, Jobs has been constantly confronted by challenge after challenge. And each one of them has made Jobs grow as a leader.

The kid who couldn’t be trusted by investors to lead the company as CEO in the 1970s had no idea what he was doing. The man who strode back into Apple in the 1990s as part of the NeXT acquisition was an unprecedented master of the art of running a technology company. During those two decades, Jobs experienced an education like no other. NeXT enabled him to take all he had learned at Apple, and apply it to a startup. Then he took all he had learned at the startup and applied it to Apple.

This perfect storm of DNA, experience and circumstance transformed Jobs into the CEO of the Decade. But what is it about Jobs as CEO that brought Apple from the brink of failure to the most valuable technology company in history?


How Jobs Ruled Apple

The trouble with dictatorship or absolute monarchy is that success or failure depend entirely upon the quality of the despot. That’s why they fail. And that’s why a democracy that limits the power of leaders is best — it still works, more or less, even when incompetent morons are in power.

But what about when the dictator is literally the single best person to lead? In those almost non-existently rare instances, despotism is by far the best form of government. Heaven, for example, is not a democracy.

In the case of Apple, it’s not just that Steve Jobs had become an amazing CEO, but that within Apple, he ruled unchallenged. Sure, he had a razor sharp vision for how things should be. But equally important: Nobody could over-rule Jobs. Not the owners of the company (the shareholders), not the board, not the desires of the users — literally nobody.

People outside the industry often fail to appreciate how powerful this is.

You will note, by the way, that all the most successful companies in technology are run by their visionary founders (Apple, Google, Oracle), and lose focus after those founders depart (Microsoft, HP).

The reason is that without the visionary despot, “groupthink” takes over. Everyone’s got their own agenda, and all these disparate visions tend to cancel each other out. Ultimately, the only criteria for deciding anything is either what’s best for shareholders (short-term thinking) or what users want (obsolete thinking).

At Apple, Jobs’ rule was so absolute that if Jobs wanted decision A, and most of the board, most of the executives, most of the user surveys and most of the shareholders wanted decision B, there was no question: We go with A.

I once heard an eye-opening talk by Palm Pilot creator Jeff Hawkins, who said that in bringing the Palm Pilot to market, he spent much of his time overcoming groupthink. The engineers made compelling arguments for why more buttons would be better, a faster processor would be better, more applications would be better. Ultimately, the original Pilot succeeded only because Hawkins was able to bat down all these disparate visions, which were all based on false assumptions like “more is better,” “more powerful is better,” and realize his own vision “simplicity is better.”

It didn’t take long after the Pilot’s initial success for Hawkins to lose control. The result was a company dominated by multiple agendas and classic groupthink ending ultimately with the announcement last week that the Palm line would be terminated.

Jobs’ power and influence within Apple did not come from his title. His vote was the only one that counted not because his business card said CEO, but because he’s fricken Steve Jobs, and this is fricken Apple. Who is going to over-rule him?

Apple isn’t just getting a new ruler. It’s getting a new form of government. Yesterday, Apple was a totalitarian dictatorship. Today, it’s a democratic oligarchy.

Unlike Jobs, Cook will have to balance the competing interests of various VPs and board members, taking into account the interests of shareholders and users on every decision.

Yes, Jobs is still Chairman, still Cook’s boss. But it was Jobs’ involvement in every little detail that made Apple what it is today. Google’s Vic Gundotra told the story yesterday of getting a call on Sunday from Steve Jobs over a color on an icon. It wasn’t the absolutely perfect shade of yellow, and therefore it was an urgent crisis that had to be resolved immediately. Every. Little. Detail.

Those days are gone.

Apple will continue to be a successful company. This is in part because Jobs has put such a great team in place. The governing criteria for all decisions for the time being will be: What would Steve do?

Over time, however, Apple will and must gravitate toward normalcy, toward average, toward mediocrity. In fact, the success of Apple as a company has always perfectly correlated to the degree of Jobs’ control.

Nobody wants to hear this. I don’t want to say it. But the truth is that Steve Jobs is perfectly irreplaceable. And it was his unprecedented, unrepeatable leadership that made Apple what it is today.

Tomorrow, it will become a different Apple, a lesser Apple.

Companies are only as great as the people who lead them. And today we’re forced to admit that it was, all along, Steve Jobs who made Apple think different.

Apple will continue to be a great company. But it was Steve Jobs who was insanely great.


Πηγή: http://www.cultofmac.com/110518/no-apple-wont-be-the-same-without-steve-jobs/

http://events.apple.com.edgesuite.net/10oiuhfvojb23/event/index.html

To survive its late founder, Apple and Steve Jobs planned a training program in which company executives will be taught to think like him, in 'a forum to impart that DNA to future generations.' Key to this effort is Joel Podolny, former Yale Business School dean.

Reporting from San Francisco— Apple Inc. now has to get down to the business of surviving its founder.

It's something that Apple — and Steve Jobs himself — had been painstakingly planning for years.

Deep inside its sprawling Cupertino, Calif., campus, one of the world's most successful and secretive companies has had a team of experts hard at work on a closely guarded project.

But it isn't a cool new gadget. It's an executive training program called Apple University that Jobs considered vital to the company's future: Teaching Apple executives to think like him.

"Steve was looking to his legacy. The idea was to take what is unique about Apple and create a forum that can impart that DNA to future generations of Apple employees," said a former Apple executive who spoke on the condition of anonymity to preserve his relationship with the company. "No other company has a university charged with probing so deeply into the roots of what makes the company so successful."

Jobs oversaw the most remarkable corporate turnaround in Silicon Valley history after returning to Apple in 1997. For more than a decade, he was behind every crucial decision as Apple rolled out blockbuster hits from the iPod to the iPad, changing how people listen to music and watch entertainment, reshaping entire industries and making Apple the world's most valuable tech company.

The challenge of maintaining that momentum came into sharp focus Tuesday when Apple's newly minted chief executive Tim Cook took Jobs' place on stage to show off an updated version of the world's best-selling smart phone. Without its master pitchman, Apple didn't get the kind of adulation for the iPhone's new features to which it's accustomed.

Apple would not comment on Apple University. But people familiar with the project say Jobs personally recruited the dean of Yale's Business School in 2008 to run it. Joel Podolny's assignment: Help Apple internalize the thoughts of its visionary founder to prepare for the day when he's not around anymore.

"One of the things that Steve Jobs understood very well is that Apple is like no other company on the planet," said longtime Apple analyst Tim Bajarin. "It became pretty clear that Apple needed a set of educational materials so that Apple employees could learn to think and make decisions as if they were Steve Jobs."

Podolny tasked leading business professors including Harvard University's Richard Tedlow, who wrote a biography of former Intel chief Andy Grove with researching the company's major decisions and the top executives who make them. Those executives — including Cook — have used those case studies to teach courses that groom the company's next generation of leaders.

Analysts say Jobs drew inspiration for the university from Bill Hewlett and David Packard, whose greatest creation was not the pocket calculator or the minicomputer, but Hewlett-Packard itself. Hewlett and Packard famously set out their company's core values in "The HP Way."

With Apple University, Jobs was trying to achieve something similar, people familiar with the project say. He identified tenets that he believes unleash innovation and sustain success at Apple — accountability, attention to detail, perfectionism, simplicity, secrecy. And he oversaw the creation of university-caliber courses that demonstrate how those principles translate into business strategies and operating practices.

The idea of building an ivory tower on a corporate campus goes back decades with the best-known — and oldest — run by General Electric. Corporate universities fell out of favor in the 1990s, considered too expensive, bureaucratic and out of touch with the companies they were supposed to serve. Even Apple shut down its corporate university.

But Jobs' interest in a corporate university never wavered, former employees say. For years he pressed for a way to study the success of Apple's executive team as well as Apple's culture and history. His model was Pixar. The animation studio that Jobs sold to Disney for $7.5 billion in 2006 runs Pixar University, a professional development program that offers courses in fine arts and filmmaking as well as leadership and management to steep employees in the company's culture, history and values as well as its craft.

"He had the university concept at Pixar, and he believed in it," said a former Apple executive who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to preserve his relationship with the company.

What Jobs needed was someone to carry out his vision.

Apple began approaching Podolny and other academics about five years ago, according to people who were contacted. The project took on greater urgency in 2008 shortly before Jobs took his second medical leave from Apple.

Podolny, an accomplished scholar and administrator whose resume includes teaching at two of the nation's top business schools, Stanford and Harvard, is an economic sociologist who focuses on leadership and organizational behavior.

Podolny didn't just study leaders; he became one. In 2005, at the age of 39, he left Harvard for the Yale School of Management where he rethought how the faculty taught future MBAs to better prepare them for the business world. Yale scrapped its staid single-subject courses in marketing and accounting for more holistic, multidisciplinary programs that focused on "the employee," "the innovator" and "the state and society."

By all accounts, Podolny lifted the fortunes of the young business school. He was credited with helping applications rise 50% during his 3½-year tenure. He recruited top scholars, increasing the size of the faculty by 20%. And his prodigious efforts on the stump helped the school raise more than $170 million. He was also in the classroom more often than most deans and responded to every email, frequently by 4:30 a.m.

"I remember scratching my head and thinking, 'This guy is not going to last at this rate.' Sure enough, he left sooner than we had hoped," Yale business professor Doug Rae said.

In October 2008, Podolny was at the top of his academic game with many expecting he would go on to become a university president. He stunned colleagues by abruptly stepping down as dean in the middle of the term and officially joining Apple in early 2009.

"The timing surprised everyone. Deans are typically in these positions for significantly longer; a decade would not be an unusual term. He had gone to really put the Yale School of Management on a different trajectory and that takes time," said Garth Saloner, dean of Stanford's Business School.

But Podolny was someone who had flouted convention to work on the cutting edge of academia. "Joel is an innovator and very creative and he's always looking for new areas to apply that talent," Saloner said.

Like others Jobs has recruited over the years, observers say Podolny fell under Jobs' spell. Podolny said he decided to leave Yale for the chance to work with a modern-day Thomas Edison.

Podolny recalled writing his first computer program on an Apple II and pulling an all-nighter to watch his Laserwriter print his undergraduate thesis at the rate of seven minutes a page.

"While there are many great companies, I cannot think of one that has had as tremendous personal meaning for me as Apple," he wrote in a farewell note to Yale students.

The importance of his new position at Apple was apparent from the first day. Podolny moved into an office in between Jobs and Cook, he confided in former colleagues. And, in a testament to Jobs' faith in Podolny, he was later named vice president of human resources.

Columbia University social scientist Peter Bearman, who was Podolny's advisor for his thesis on the role of Juan Carlos I in helping Spain establish a parliamentary democracy, said Podolny pursued his career-long interest in leadership at Apple.

"The idea that he was helping to build a structure for Apple into the future probably appealed to him," Bearman said.

jessica.guynn@latimes.com

Πηγή: LA Times

http://www.apple.com/iphone/

http://www.apple.com/iphone/#video-4s

http://events.apple.com.edgesuite.net/11piuhbvdlbkvoih10/event/index.html

http://macenstein.com/default/2011/07/darth-vader-goats-and-pizza-what-cant-you-do-in-the-apple-store/

You know when you used to have no choice but to use Windows XP, either because you couldn’t afford a Mac or you had to use a PC at work? Well, you must remember, then, how annoying it was to have the same bugs and weird glitches happen over and over again; those endless days and nights trying to work on something important when, no matter how many fingers you crossed and cracks in the pavement you avoided, you knew once error message X appeared, crash Y and endless pop-up Z would inevitably follow and there was nothing you or anyone else could do to avoid the inevitable restart / reinstall / dance on one leg chanting, “I’m a little teapot short and stout”.

No amount of closing that self-opening “Something has gone horribly wrong” error box would save all that work you’re still able to look at, but not save. At first you threw tantrums and screamed expletives at the top of your voice, about how Bill Gates was going to “pay for this”, but eventually you just resigned yourself to the fact that it was happening and decided life’s too short to care. “One day”, you said to yourself, “I will own a Mac and all of this will be in the past”.

At one point, when Windows Vista was announced, you hoped beyond hope that all, or at least most of these nightmares would end. But that day came and went with no change. Sure, Vista wore a different perfume to cover the stench and yes, the ‘aero’ interface wasn’t so bad after all. But, underneath it all, was the same pustulating tripe that had ruined your life for the past millennia and, to make it worse, you knew for a fact no-one at Microsoft lost any sleep over it. “This wouldn’t happen if I owned a Mac”, you said. “Just you wait, Steve Ballmer, me and my mate Steve Jobs will show you good and proper, one day… one day!”

And then, it arrived. You magic’d that pay rise at work into Cupertino’s finest export quicker than you could say, “I need it for work” to your wife and “I don’t play games anyway” to your kids. “It’s here!”, you exclaimed. “I can’t believe an actual Apple Mac is in my house and it’s all MINE!!” You unboxed it like a kid at Christmas, pealing back each layer of the delicious packaging; smelling the inside of the box like a wine expert on a major four week bender around the French vineyards.

But wait! What’s this? Four years have passed in the blink of an eye! “Ohh! A new Mac Operating System, OS X Lion is coming out! Yummy, I’ll have me some of that!” you gushed!

Well, how stupid do you feel now? You drank the Kool-Aid and, for a while it refreshed the parts other sugar water can’t reach. But then, like realising in the middle of a stage hypnotist’s comedy act, that while you thought you were eating an Apple, you were really munching an onion, this happened:

Control + Scroll screen zooming randomly turns itself off.

Even basic Spotlight Searches in a window (Command + Shift + F) crash Finder.

Mail crashes all the time.

Safari has been replaced by a pile of turds. When it isn’t refreshing inactive tabs from the network instead of cache, so you lose everything you’re uploading, it’s secretly closing windows for no rhyme or reason when you’re not looking.

iTunes boot time is measured in aeons.

The “Something has crashed, send a report to Apple” window might as well be your Desktop Picture.

Finder periodically decides you don’t need to see all your windows any more.

The list of applications that no longer work, if printed out, would stretch from here to the moon.

Launchpad is pointless. Utterly and completely pointless.

Opening Mission Control is like walking through molasses with cream cheese in your socks. It doesn’t support a second display and the graphics layer tears through the UI like a hammer through porridge.

Fullscreen apps have a habit of just vanishing. They’re running, but they’re not showing.

Video playback in iTunes defaults to fullscreen but the playback controls go missing if you switch to another app without coming out of fullscreen first. Handy.

Command + Control + D pop-over dictionary takes a week to load and mysteriously insists on spinning up all your USB hard drives—as does unmounting all your USB hard drives.

Garage Band now hates you. So does Steam. And Pages. And Photoshop. And Automator. And Call of Duty. And Tweetdeck. Oh and you know how half the reason you put your Mac in your spare room was so you could use FrontRow as a media centre? Yeah, that’s gone now. You can’t do that any more. Sorry. You have to buy an Apple TV.

Question: Most of us would agree, without sounding sycophantic, that the MacCast is one of the premier Mac podcast anywhere on-line, yes? So, in the last, say, two years, how many Mac users who comment here, e-mail Adam and otherwise engage in the extended Apple community on a regular basis, have you heard say something like, “I hope Apple subtly change all the things that are already perfectly fine, before they fix all the things that have been broken since OS X Tiger”?

By way of example: Drag and drop a selection of JPEG files you want to upload to your image hosting service of choice, from the Finder into the Open box in Safari. If the wind is blowing from the North and it’s the second Tuesday of the month, the destination path will change to the location you’re dragging the files from and the selection you want to upload will be highlighted, so all you have to do is click Send and await for the transfer to complete. But, if it’s half past 4 and your second cousin twice removed is called Jennifer, they spring back into Finder and Safari looks at you like, “Pfft, since when have I been able to do that?” So you try again. Same thing. You try a third time. “Oh!”, says Safari. “THAT kind of drag and drop! I thought you were losing your mind, you silly user! Sure, I’ll do that for you!”

It’s just a litany of silly little frustrations, which have always been there, but are now ten times worse. The most frustrating part being, someone, somewhere at the world’s largest computer maker; the richest company in America, if not the world, has signed off on each and every one of these things as if they’re ready for prime time. Senior department heads and top management—Jobs, Ive and Schiller included—the very people who RUN the company with more cash in the bank than the US government—has looked at each of these pointless tweaks and decided they’re good to go!

It beggars belief. They should be paying us to beta test this for them, but because they were so afraid of having to delay it, because it just isn’t ready, we’re expected to tow the party line, nod politely and ramble on about having a slightly different User Interface, as if that somehow makes up for the fact iPhoto still sucks.

I mean, why on earth do I still have to open a music player to sync photos to my phone? And why couldn’t they have done something about that, before they changed the way TextEdit Finds and Replaces text, so it’s now harder to use than it was before?

Goofy scrolling, by default? Really? Let’s put it like this. How many Windows users, with their sloping brows and their smug determination never to switch to Mac, have walked into an Apple retail store, in the last month, idled up to a spare machine and had all their preconceptions about the Mac being esoteric and “weird” confirmed in ONE touch of the upside down mouse?

Why do I now have to click three times to autofill my information on a form in Safari, when before I clicked once?

Why can’t I Command + Shift + L any highlighted text to search for it on Google anymore? Which “genius” thought turning that feature off was a wise move? Yes, I know I can redefine my own shortcut key in System Preferences. No, I don’t think that makes it OK. What does my Dad do when that no longer works? I tell you what he does, he rings me and says, “That bloody Mac you told us to buy keeps going funny! It won’t search Yoogle anymore!”

Simply put, who, at Apple, in the full knowledge of their line manager, went into the source code for Finder and thought, “You know, I really should spend this month figuring out why Finder has been crashing every time you create more than 50 shortcut files at once, ever since OS X Panther, but I think what I’ll do instead is disable the shortcut key that turns the volume up and down by single units instead of ten at a time.”

How is turning features OFF an ‘upgrade’? In what reality is OS X Lion worthy of the Apple name? IT’S A DOWNGRADE! Apple have become the thing they fear the most. They are the new Microsoft and Lion is their Vista. There, I said it.

Oh, sure, you’ll come back at me with some pithy retort about Versions and Autosave and how “awesome” it is to swipe your fingers across a £60-a-pop mouse. But the fact remains, they’ve tinkered with things that weren’t broken and ignored or made worse things that have needed fixing for nearly 10 years. You know it. I know it. We all know it. I think it’s about time we started staying as much out-loud and force Apple to put this thing right as soon as possible.

UPDATE:
Since writing this article OS X Lion 10.7.1 has been released and it does address some of the stability issues with Safari and Mail. I also note that Boxee for Mac is a vast improvement on FrontRow and works well with the Apple Remote Control. I’d also like to thank whoever submitted this to Hacker News, but for the record I do not carry Google ads on this blog.


Πηγή: http://howgoodisthat.wordpress.com/2011/08/20/os-x-lion-apples-vista-moment/

Η Apple είναι βέβαια απρόθυμη να το συζητήσει δημόσια, σίγουρα όμως έχει έτοιμο ένα «σχέδιο διαδοχής» για τη μετά Στηβ Τζομπς εποχή. Όλοι όμως αναρωτιούνται αν αυτή η εποχή θα είναι ανθόσπαρτη όπως το πρόσφατο παρελθόν της εταιρείας.

Ο Τζομπς, εξάλλου, ήταν ο άνθρωπος που έσωσε μια σχεδόν χρεοκοπημένη Apple με την επιστροφή του στα ηνία της εταιρείας το 1996 (απουσίαζε για σχεδόν μια δεκαετία μετά την εκδίωξή του το 1985) και σε 15 χρόνια την κατέστησε τη μεγαλύτερη εταιρεία παγκοσμίως σε χρηματιστηριακή αξία.

Το σημαντικότερο όμως είναι ότι ο Τζομπς είχε την πρώτη και την τελευταία λέξη όσον αφορά το σχεδιασμό των συσκευών και την αίσθηση που δίνουν, πιστεύοντας ότι «η τεχνολογία από μόνη της δεν αρκεί».

«Είναι η τεχνολογία παντρεμένη με τις τέχνες και τις ανθρωπιστικές επιστήμες αυτό που δίνει αποτελέσματα που κάνουν την καρδιά μας να ξυπνά» είχε δηλώσει πρόσφατα.

Μένει να επιβεβαιωθεί αν οι άνθρωποι που αφήνει πίσω του έχουν εμπεδώσει αυτή τη νοοτροπία.


Mετά τον Στηβ Τζομπς, o Στηβ Τζομπς

Σε πρώτη φάση, ο Τζομπς θα παραμείνει κεντρικό πρόσωπο στην εταιρεία του: Παραιτήθηκε μεν από τη θέση του διευθύνοντος συμβούλου, ανέλαβε όμως τη θέση του προέδρου του ΔΣ, οπότε θα συνεχίσει να έχει λόγο στην κατεύθυνση που θα ακολουθήσει η Apple.

Σύμφωνα εξάλλου με το Bloomberg, ο Τζομπς εργαζόταν όλη μέρα στην Apple την Τετάρτη, παρόλο που τις προηγούμενες εβδομάδες παρέμενε κλεισμένος στο σπίτι. Και όπως αναφέρει η ίδια ανώνυμη πηγή, δεν υπάρχουν ενδείξεις ότι η κατάσταση της υγείας του έχει επιδεινωθεί το τελευταίο διάστημα.

Εντούτοις, η βρετανική Daily Mail δημοσιεύει μια φωτογραφία όπου ο Τζομπς εμφανίζεται εξαιρετικά αδυνατισμένος, περισσότερο από ποτέ, να προσπαθεί να σταθεί με βοήθεια.

To Bloomberg γράφει επίσης ότι ο Τζομπς θα παραμείνει στο ΔΣ της Disney, στην οποία είχε πουλήσει το επιτυχημένο κινηματογραφικό του στούντιο, την Pixar.


Τιμ Κουκ: νέος πρωταγωνιστής

Κάποια στιγμή, όμως, το εμβληματικό αφεντικό της Apple θα αποσυρθεί εντελώς από την αυτοκρατορία του. Η αγορά, όμως, έχει τα καλύτερα λόγια να πει για τον διάδοχό του, τον Τιμ Κουκ, που ήταν μέχρι σήμερα εκτελεστικός διευθυντής της Apple.

Ο Κουκ, σήμερα 50 ετών, είχε αντικαταστήσει προσωρινά τον Τζομπς όταν το μεγάλο αφεντικό έλειπε σε αναρρωτική άδεια ανά διαστήματα από το 2004 έως το 2011.

Και τα πήγε μια χαρά σε αυτό το διάστημα: ολοκλήρωσε την ανάπτυξη του iPad και έφερε εξαιρετικά οικονομικά αποτελέσματα, με τη μετοχή της εταιρείας να έχει ανέβει από τα 300 δολάρια στις αρχές του έτους στα 400 περίπου δολάρια σήμερα.

Ο Κουκ έχει εξάλλου στο πλευρό του μια ομάδα οκτώ αντιπροέδρων, ανάμεσά τους κορυφαία ονόματα στη βιομηχανία πληροφορικής, όπως ο Σκοτ Φόρστολ.

Με το iPhone 5 να ετοιμάζεται για λανσάρισμα το φθινόπωρο, και με ένα ακόμα iPad στα σκαριά για του χρόνου, κανένα απρόοπτο δεν προβλέπεται για το προσεχές διάστημα.

Όπως σχολιάζει το BBC, ο Κουκ είναι άριστος γνώστης της αλυσίδας προμηθευτών και της διαδικασίας παραγωγής, καθήκοντα που ακούγονται ανιαρά αλλά παίζουν σημαντικό ρόλό. Ο Κουκ φέρεται να είναι επίσης ο άνθρωπος που αύξησε τα περιθώρια κέρδους για το iPad και τo iPhone.

Σε email που απέστειλε στους εργαζόμενους, o ίδιος διαβεβαιώνει ότι «η Apple δεν πρόκειται να αλλάξει» και πως «τα καλύτερα χρόνια βρίσκονται μπροστά μας».

Σημαντικό ρόλο στην Apple παίζει ακόμα ο Βρετανός σχεδιαστής Τζόναθαν Άιβι, υπεύθυνος για το σχεδιασμό του iMac, του iPhone και του iPad, μεταξύ άλλων.

Σύμφωνα όμως με πρόσφατες φήμες, ο Άιβι εξετάζει το ενδεχόμενο να αποχωρήσει από την Apple για να επιστρέψει στην πατρίδα του. Σύμφωνα με τον Guardian, αυτό θα ήταν «ο χειρότερος εφιάλτης για την Apple».


Και κάτι ακόμα

Ένα από τα ερωτήματα που παραμένουν αναπάντητα είναι το ποιος θα αντικαταστήσει τον Στηβ Τζομπς στη σκηνή κατά τις παρουσιάσεις νέων προϊόντων.

Έχοντας ένα ιδιαίτερο επικοινωνιακό ταλέντο, και επιμένοντας να φορά μπλου τζιν και ένα μαύρο ζιβάγκο, ο Τζομπς είχε το ταλέντο να σαγηνεύει τα πλήθη με τη χαρακτηριστική ατάκα «Και κάτι ακόμα», λίγο πριν παρουσιάσει κάθε νέο, καινοτόμο προϊόν.

Δεν είναι καθόλου σίγουρο ότι ο Τιμ Κουκ, εξαιρετικά ήπιων τόνων, θα μπορεί να κρατά κι αυτός το κοινό με κομμένη την ανάσα.

Ακόμα κι αν πρόκειται μόνο για τη σκηνική παρουσία, σίγουρα κάτι θα λείπει πλέον από την Apple... ή μήπως όχι;


Τελικά, ποιος πουλάει, το προϊόν ή ο Τζομπς;

Κάποιοι υποστηρίζουν ότι η ανοδική πορεία της Apple οφείλεται στην ανωτερότητα των προϊόντων που επινοεί, σχεδιάζει, κατασκευάζει και προωθεί η εταιρεία παρά στο γεγονός ότι τα παρουσίαζε ο αδιαμφισβήτητα χαρισματικός Τζομπς. Αλλοι πάλι ότι, ο Τζομπς ως CEO είχε ένα χάρισμα: να πουλάει προϊόντα που όλοι ήθελαν αν και δεν τα χρειάζονταν.

Οι προκλήσεις που έχει να αντιμετωπίσει ο Τιμ Κουκ είναι πολλές, καθώς οι συγκρίσεις είναι αναπόφευκτες. Πάντως, τουλάχιστον η Apple θέλει να πιστεύουμε την άποψη που λέει ότι οι ηγέτες φροντίζουν πάντα να περιτριγυρίζονται από ομάδες ισχυρών ταλαντούχων ανθρώπων, που μπορούν να κάνουν τη δουλειά ακόμα και εν απουσία τους.

Από την άλλη, αυτό δεν σημαίνει ότι  αποχώρηση ενός ανθρώπου στον οποίο έχουν προσαφθεί τόσοι χαρακτηρισμοί -έως και για εκκλησία του Τζομπς έχει γίνει λόγος- είναι πάντοτε ομαλή. Για παράδειγμα, η αποχώρηση του Μπιλ Γκέιτς από τη Microsoft, αν και σχεδιάστηκε προσεκτικά και υλοποιήθηκε σταδιακά εντός δύο ολόκληρων χρόνων, τελικά δεν φαίνεται να άφησε πίσω της κάποια ομάδα που διατήρησε την αίγλη της εταιρείας στα επίπεδα που την άφησε ο ηγέτης της, αναγνωρίζοντας βέβαια ότι οι εποχές και οι προκλήσεις στην αγορά πληροφορικής αλλάζουν, αλλά αυτό συνέβαινε και επί Γκέιτς.


Πηγή: http://tech.in.gr/analysis/article/?aid=1231125636

"Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs and the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They are not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. But the only thing you can't do, is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do."

http://www.apple.com/macosx/uptodate/

Πηγή: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/07/25/138674736/china-investigates-fake-apple-stores-exposed-by-american-expat


The Chinese government has launched an investigation into fake Apple stores that have popped up around the southwestern city of Kunming. As Mark reported, last week, an American expat blogger who goes by BirdAboard spotted what she called "the best ripoff store we had ever seen (and we see them everyday.)"

In short, the stores copied everything from the winding staircase to the blue T-shirts used by Apple Store employees in authentic shops. But as that blog post gained international attention, the Chinese authorities got involved.

The AP reports that Chinese authorities found five fake Apple stores in Kunming and shut down two of them. The AP adds:

"Officials couldn't do anything about the other three stores — which prominently displayed Apple signs and logos — because they did not find any fake Apple products for sale, according to a report by a local newspaper posted on the Kunming city government's website."

After the blog appeared on Wednesday, the Kunming Trade and Industry Bureau inspected more than 300 electronics stores in Kunming...

The store featured in BirdAboard's blog post is still open. The Wall Street Journal talked to store's manager, who gave his name as Li and said his store wasn't in violation of the law.

Li said his store isn't an authorized reseller of Apple, but he'd like to be one. "We have a business license and we are running or business by the law," he told the Journal. "All of our products are authentic Apple products."

Apple has stayed quiet on the issue. But China's state-run news agency Xinhua reported, today, that Apple was planning its 5th store in the country. They reported that Apple was planning a third store in Shanghai. Apple already has two stores in Beijing.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3002880?tstart=0

http://www.apple.com/macosx/

http://www.apple.com/icloud/

http://www.apple.com/ios/ios5/

http://www.apple.com/imac/

http://www.multiapple.com

http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/

Apple CEO Steve Jobs today sent the following email to all Apple employees:


Team,

At my request, the board of directors has granted me a medical leave of absence so I can focus on my health. I will continue as CEO and be involved in major strategic decisions for the company.

I have asked Tim Cook to be responsible for all of Apple’s day to day operations. I have great confidence that Tim and the rest of the executive management team will do a terrific job executing the exciting plans we have in place for 2011.

I love Apple so much and hope to be back as soon as I can. In the meantime, my family and I would deeply appreciate respect for our privacy.

Steve


Πηγή: http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2011/01/17advisory.html

The Faulty iMac Saga, Chapter 1: The Beginning

The Faulty iMac Saga: Chapter 2, Even Steve Jobs Can't Fix 'Em

The Faulty iMac Saga, Chapter 3: We Have Your Internal Memo, Apple

The Faulty iMac Saga, Chapter 4: Apple Buying Out Customers

The Faulty iMac Saga, Chapter 5: The Moment of Truth

The Conclusion to the Faulty iMac Saga: The Beginning of the Fix

http://joaocoliveira.com/the-life-of-steve-jobs-by-gizmodo?c=1

http://www.macintosh128k.com

http://gizmodo.com/5670812/big-brother-apple-and-the-death-of-the-program

http://www.defectivebydesign.org/macappstore

http://www.apple.com/macbookair/

http://www.apple.com/ilife/

http://www.apple.com/apple-events/october-2010/

"Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs and the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They are not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. But the only thing you can't do, is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do."

From the “Tiny Zone” collumn of MacFormat magazine (9-12-2000):

This month BETT, the Educational Technology Show, again showed the difference between Apple and Micro$oft, and I don’t mean just Micro$oft’s relative prominence on the show floor.

Consider Apple’s show guide entry:

"Apple’s mission is to offer tools and solutions wich embrace and extend the best educational practices, enchancing teaching, facilitating life long learning and simplifying communications. Always leaders in inovation, Apple delivers solutions offering clear advantages of power, ease of use, multimedia capabilities and compatibility... View the great solutions that help empower individuals and groups to address the challenges of the future today".

In an interview in the “Guardian”, Micro$oft’s general manager for education, Liz King, listed her company’s priorities in education:

"First, to make money, second, to increase Micro$oft΄s market share in schools and third, "education is a startegic marketplace for us. We are educating the next generation of workers who will purchase our products"".

As the “Guardian” commented, “These are priorities that significantly don’t mention improving the quality of education or ensuring equality of access to education.

Different thinking indeed.