One of the interesting tidbits in Walter Isaacson’s underwhelming bio of Steve Jobs is an account of the Apple CEO’s meeting with President Barack Obama. From the book: “You’re headed for a one-term presidency,” Jobs told Obama at the outset. To prevent that, he said, the administration needed to be a lot more business-friendly. He described how easy it was to build a factory in China, and said that it was almost impossible to do so these days in America, largely because of regulations and unnecessary costs. Distressingly, this thread is never picked up again in the book, which ignores […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 4, 2011R.I.P., Steve Jobs. Below, his 2005 Stanford University commencement speech.
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 5, 2011Have you ever thought that most movie trailers, with their portentous title cards and triumphant musical scores, could have been stamped out by a computer? Well, Steve Jobs and his software designers at Apple certainly did. But rather than whine about Hollywood’s formulaic marketing techniques, they monetized their critique. Brand new today is iMovie ’11 with a clever and soon to be supremely irritating new feature: movie trailers. Check out this iMovie demo to see what it’s all about. So, get ready for every holiday card to now feel like a Jerry Bruckheimer promo, with your friends’ sons and daughters […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 20, 2010Looks like Banksy’s Exit to the Gift Shop is influencing folks out there. This viral campaign by a group of San Francisco artists, Freedom From Porn , who are protesting the ban on adult material within Apple’s walled garden, clearly cops a few licks from the British artist’s great new movie. Freedom From Porn from Freedom From Porn on Vimeo.
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 10, 2010From today’s D8 conference, a comment by Apple’s Steve Jobs that resonates with the recent conversation here on the blog about internet TV. Q: Hi, I’m from Hillcrest Labs… do you think it’s time to throw out the interface for TV? When will Apple do something there? Jobs: The problem with innovation in the TV industry is the go to market strategy. The TV industry has a subsidized model that gives everyone a set top box for free. So no one wants to buy a box. Ask TiVo, ask Roku, ask us… ask Google in a few months. So all […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 2, 2010As predicted yesterday in numerous publications and as recounted below, Apple Computer today announced that it will be moving from IBM’s Power PC chip to the Intel Pentium chip, currently used in Windows computers. Yesterday I linked to Wired‘s Cult of Mac blog which stated that while speed may have been an issue, one of the other main reasons behind the switch was Apple’s desire to use Intel’s new Digital Rights Management protection that’s embedded in the new Pentium chip, a technology that will allow Apple to pitch the major movie studios with an ITunes-like digital movie store. At the […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 6, 2005