"What Wall Street seems to have missed is that the gifting season is a global event spanning into January [...] The reason lies in the way the Earth is tilted and the way the continents are arranged upon it." - Asymco gets his McPhee on.

History of power supplies for computers.

"As we reach 50% penetration of smartphones, platform churn will become a significant component of market performance [...] But let’s keep in mind that RIM’s satisfaction and the loyalty of their customers was exceptionally high a few years ago. The rate of evaporation of goodwill toward the brand is breathtaking. The longer term test of mobile platform performance will be in the recurring purchase rates. Loyalty must be earned and preserved. I.e. “You come for the product, you stay for the ecosystem."

"FOR iPOD TOUCH, iPHONE AND iPAD RUNNING iOS 5.1 OR HIGHER". "As per the Evaluated Product List, the Defence Signals Directorate (DSD) has found Apple iOS data protection classes A and B to be suitable for downgrading the handling of
PROTECTED information to that of Unclassified." = Restricted equivalent.

"Apple’s $10 billion dollar pledge is not only a commitment to shareholders that the dilution will be eliminated. It’s also a signal to employees: for at least three years, Apple will continue to offer shares as compensation and will do so in a ratio of 1:4 of wages"

"Show me some reporters who were able to generate the same cultural engagement with the issue, will you? Show me reporters who can match Jon Stewart’s numbers? What might account for that? Stories aren’t made out of facts. Storytellers use facts to reveal truth but they use a lot of other things too. And if ever I have to choose between facts and truth, I’ll take truth. It’s always a great story, and stories are the life inside the human mind."

"How can the same bundle of components (admittedly mostly off-the-shelf) be sold at triple the margins [Apple vs HP]? It comes down to software. Apple has a monopoly on iOS and OS X and charges for it through its hardware. That’s a very valuable monopoly. It’s worth at least $1 billion per quarter."

"the iPhone has moved from being an advantage to not doing so becoming a serious disadvantage. The product and its high up-front costs are “hygiene factors” for operators. The sine qua non status means that it can still be priced with the extraordinary built-in margin shown above"

Lashinsky better than Isaacson?

"Apple should be valued as a recurring payment from a satisfied customer base. A contributor made a comment that summarized it well: the payment schedule is approximately $1/day per computing unit (device or computer or tablet). Now it becomes clear that Apple should also be seen as a recurring ecosystem payment system. Given a 24 month lifecycle, the amount is approximately $0.5 per device per month."

"I’ve thought about that one really brilliant UI person a lot since that interview. I wondered what it must be like to have created part of the iPad’s interface, but never to be really be known as the creator of this thing"

Tetchy review

On locking down iPads for taking exams - reads like a gov security lock-down document, but without all the confusing acronyms. Excellent!

Humans as a massive-scale fungible resource.

A nice illustration of how product/market segmentation can be done in very different ways.

"he told talented people that their work was shit until they came up with something good enough for him to take credit for [...] Jobs’s achievement was to take ephemeral machines and make them seem permanent."

RIM's decline

RIM, MS, Nokia look into abysses, Apple, Google, Amazon having eaten the ground they used to call bedrock.

On the perceived design disconnect between Apple's hardware and software: "Inside these unsentimental, rational, economic designs, Apple has delivered an increasingly sacchirine series of software releases. [...] The addiction to skeumorphism seems to say that it's a deeply held aesthetic position. My question is: why does this approach not extend to the devices themselves? Why not make a wooden case for the iMac, like those hideous Sony TVs from my childhood? Or why not a case that makes the computer look like a typewriter?"

On the perceived design disconnect between Apple's hardware and software: "This is a terribly disappointing renunciation of possibility on Apple’s part, a failure to articulate an interface-design vocabulary as “futuristic” as, and harmonious with, the formal vocabulary of the physical devices themselves. One of the deepest principles of interaction design I observe is that, except in special cases, the articulation of a user interface should suggest something of a device, service or application’s capabilities and affordances. This is clearly, thoroughly and intentionally undermined in Apple’s current suite of iOS offerings."

When publishers DRM their books they're locking themselves into a near-monopoly distributor, Amazon. Suspect this played out similarly with music publishers and Apple Fairplay on iTunes.

Well-organised iPhone 4S grey marketeers

Add-on external battery that's a protective case

Making and commoditising value: "Google’s ad-driven model disrupted Microsoft’s pay-for-software-licenses model. Apple’s just-buy-our-devices-and-look-at-all-the-cool-shit-you-get-with-them model could disrupt Google’s ad-driven model."

The great man theory x100. Why is it so seductive?

Optimising screen size for a single thumb. Yes, one-handed use is occasionally annoying on the Galaxy (although actually this is a rare time that having large potato hands helps with a mobile), but sometimes I wish the screen were bigger. I suspect this wish is better named "wanting a tablet".

"I spoke with a man whose right hand was permanently curled into a claw from being smashed in a metal press at Foxconn, where he worked assembling Apple laptops and iPads. I showed him my iPad, and he gasped because he’d never seen one turned on. He stroked the screen and marveled at the icons sliding back and forth, the Apple attention to detail in every pixel. He told my translator, “It’s a kind of magic.”"

Theory, and I no doubt over-simplify: Kindle tablets aren't low-end-disruptive to iPads since Amazon sees them as commoditised, "good enough" hardware, and won't iterate rapidly up the value chain towards the iPad. Amazon takes that view because it sees tablets as a means to broaden/deepen media consumption (as distinct from Apple's future for computing), and that is where they may be disruptive...

"Product development is inevitably a reflection of its target; the institution is a reflection of all of the above."

How much cash before it becomes a permanent moat?

"Disruption (low-end or otherwise) happens when a product over-shoots the market. It makes sense to compete on a new basis, be it low price or convenience or customization, if the prevailing basis of competition has led the prevailing products to be more than good enough. If you look through all the examples of low-end disruption, you’ll find that the incumbents were motivated to flee up-market and to continue to improve their products even though they exceeded the demands and expectations of mainstream buyers."

On big and quiet data centres. Hmmm, [Someone] should write a companion piece on the darkness in creating milsecspec buildings.

A buyersguide.macrumors.com for consumer goods with more maths?

Likelihood of new product release given historic data.

Excellent reading. Some unusual stuff on brutal job specialisation and GM-avoidance - wonder how contributory that really is (is the Jobs/Cook/Ive/Schiller/Forstall symboint not the ultimate GM?)

"Disruption (low-end or otherwise) happens when a product over-shoots the market. It makes sense to compete on a new basis, be it low price or convenience or customization, if the prevailing basis of competition has led the prevailing products to be more than good enough. If you look through all the examples of low-end disruption, you’ll find that the incumbents were motivated to flee up-market and to continue to improve their products even though they exceeded the demands and expectations of mainstream buyers."

Jobs was incorrect about the web, nonetheless the sentiment rings true: "The problem is I'm older now, I'm 40 years old, and this stuff doesn't change the world. It really doesn't [...] I'm sorry, it's true. Having children really changes your view on these things. We're born, we live for a brief instant, and we die. It's been happening for a long time. Technology is not changing it much - if at all."

"HP’s PDAs and phones never received management attention. How do I know? Because they relied on off-the-shelf components for everything including software. It indicated that the value to be offered was in “leveraging” (there’s that word again) their brand and distribution"

"The only reliably predictable consequence of Android will be the postponement of displacement of the existing brands by the low-end entrants. [...] iOS needs to be seen as not so much a phone platform but a computing platform [...] By this thinking iOS lives only by improving more rapidly than anything else in dimensions that redefine the basis of performance."

"If users are fiercely loyal with a given platform then it’s probably good enough but if they are willing to switch (i.e. disloyal) then it’s probably not good enough" - Apple good enough, Android good enough for many, BlackBerry and Symbian no longer good enough, Win7 unknown.

"[Jobs] created a different corporate culture at NeXT in terms of facilities, salaries, and benefits. Jobs had experimented with some structural changes at Apple but at NeXT he abandoned conventional corporate structures, instead making a "community" with "members" instead of employees. There were only two different salaries at NeXT until the early 1990s. Team members who joined before 1986 were paid $75,000 while those who joined afterwards were paid $50,000. This caused a few awkward situations where managers were paid less than their employees. Employees were given performance reviews and raises every six months because of the spartan salary plans. To foster openness, all employees had full access to the payrolls, although few employees ever took advantage of the privilege." - Stross, Randall E (1993). Steve Jobs and the NeXT Big Thing

"Nokia listened very carefully to its best customers, the operators. [...] The re-framing of the device from being a terminal to being the center of user’s focus is the “disruption” which is sweeping aside all the incumbents in the phone space. They all did what was expected of the best managers: they listened very closely to their best customers. That also leads to blindness when the industry itself is being ripped apart by disruptive forces. [...] Operators were the best customers and they ensured Nokia would sell large volumes. But consumers did not see it that way. When a competitor came with an alternative, consumers defected en masse. By then it was too late to change the strategy."

Shame it's not true.

"Apple’s strategy is correct for optimizing the quality of the user experience. Google’s strategy is correct for maximizing the number of users for its apps [...] Google’s frame is the browser window. Apple’s frame is the screen."

Selfveillance

10 pin numbers are used by 15% of 200,000+ users of an app. Sequences, visual patterns, dates: 1234, 0000, 2580, 1111, 5555, 5683, 0852, 2222, 1212, 1998

On Clayton Christensenian local maxima (RIM) and innovating on new fronts (disrupting yourself before other do). Also: stock market response as a canary for competitor response.

In-app purchasing patents etc

"Now pay attention, Bond, this is the bcc button". CESG haven't publicly published the guidance but we're told it addresses all smartphone platforms and notes that the only one accreditable to Restricted is BlackBerry.

"When you move your finger on a trackpad though, you’re not directly manipulating what’s on screen – you’re manipulating it at one stage removed. There’s a cognitive dissonance to be overcome before it feels right, reinforced by the 20+ years of scroll wheel behaviour doing the exact opposite." (One that you'll probably re-learn fairly quickly. See also http://www.mobbu.com/Blog/46/do-touch-interfaces-increase-user-expectations )

Learned intuitiveness

"These are products or infrastructure that allow other products to be ‘built on top’ and can thus charge rents from them" - nice description (though some platforms are internal and rent-less, eg car mfrs)

constraint/no-constraint etc

"the [Apple] HIG is dead [and] it was Apple that killed it [...] In Mac OS X, Apple began experimenting — especially in their flagship apps. Whether this change has been for better or for worse is certainly debatable"

Nice diagram.

"The Redlands Police Department relies on iPad and iPhone as two-way multimedia conduits that allow them to keep an eye on people, places, and situations that need attention."

"Penki is an app that allows you to paint with light - creating 3D messages and images with an iPhone that are revealed in long exposure photographs"

Diff text and images

"The product was also purchased in a different way. A desktop could be purchased on specs alone, sight unseen, from a catalog. But a laptop had to be touched, hefted and the screen had to be observed and the whole design contemplated before a purchase decision was made. The product had an integrated keyboard, display, touchpad and storage. It was not easily serviced by end users. It was, in a word, re-integrated."

Door-to-door possession database helps cut burglary rates in Devon and Cornwall (did it shift burglary elsewhere?). Nice press release.