Invention of the Year: The iPhone

From Time.com
By Lev Grossman

Wednesday, Oct. 31, 2007

Stop. I mean, don't stop reading this, but stop thinking what you're about to think. Or, O.K., I'll think it for you:

The thing is hard to type on. It's too slow. It's too big. It doesn't have instant messaging. It's too expensive. (Or, no, wait, it's too cheap!) It doesn't support my work e-mail. It's locked to AT&T. Steve Jobs secretly hates puppies. And—all together now—we're sick of hearing about it! Yes, there's been a lot of hype written about the iPhone, and a lot of guff too. So much so that it seems weird to add more, after Danny Fanboy and Bobby McBlogger have had their day. But when that day is over, Apple's iPhone is still the best thing invented this year. Why? Five reasons:

1. The iPhone is pretty
Most high-tech companies don't take design seriously. They treat it as an afterthought. Window-dressing. But one of Jobs' basic insights about technology is that good design is actually as important as good technology. All the cool features in the world won't do you any good unless you can figure out how to use said features, and feel smart and attractive while doing it.

An example: look at what happens when you put the iPhone into "airplane" mode (i.e., no cell service, WiFi, etc.). A tiny little orange airplane zooms into the menu bar! Cute, you might say. But cute little touches like that are part of what makes the iPhone usable in a world of useless gadgets. It speaks your language. In the world of technology, surface really is depth.

2. It's touchy-feely
Apple didn't invent the touchscreen. Apple didn't even reinvent it (Apple probably acquired its much hyped multitouch technology when it snapped up a company called Fingerworks in 2005). But Apple knew what to do with it. Apple's engineers used the touchscreen to innovate past the graphical user interface (which Apple helped pioneer with the Macintosh in the 1980s) to create a whole new kind of interface, a tactile one that gives users the illusion of actually physically manipulating data with their hands—flipping through album covers, clicking links, stretching and shrinking photographs with their fingers.

This is, as engineers say, nontrivial. It's part of a new way of relating to computers. Look at the success of the Nintendo Wii. Look at Microsoft's new Surface Computing division. Look at how Apple has propagated its touchscreen interface to the iPod line with the iPod Touch. Can it be long before we get an iMac Touch? A TouchBook? Touching is the new seeing.

3. It will make other phones better
Jobs didn't write the code inside the iPhone. These days he doesn't dirty his fingers with 1's and 0's, if he ever really did. But he did negotiate the deal with AT&T to carry the iPhone. That's important: one reason so many cell phones are lame is that cell-phone-service providers hobble developers with lame rules about what they can and can't do. AT&T gave Apple unprecedented freedom to build the iPhone to its own specifications. Now other phone makers are jealous. They're demanding the same freedoms. That means better, more innovative phones for all.

4. It's not a phone, it's a platform
When Apple made the iPhone, it didn't throw together some cheap-o bare-bones firmware. It took OS X, its full-featured desktop operating system, and somehow squished it down to fit inside the iPhone's elegant glass-and-stainless-steel case. That makes the iPhone more than just a gadget. It's a genuine handheld, walk-around computer, the first device that really deserves the name. One of the big trends of 2007 was the idea that computing doesn't belong just in cyberspace, it needs to happen here, in the real world, where actual stuff happens. The iPhone gets applications like Google Maps out onto the street, where we really need them.

And this is just the beginning. Platforms are for building on. Last month, after a lot of throat-clearing, Apple decided to open up the iPhone, so that you—meaning people other than Apple employees—will be able to develop software for it too. Ever notice all that black blank space on the iPhone's desktop? It's about to fill up with lots of tiny, pretty, useful icons.

5. It is but the ghost of iPhones yet to come
The iPhone has sold enough units—more than 1.4 million at press time—that it'll be around for a while, and with all that room to develop and its infinitely updatable, all-software interface, the iPhone is built to evolve. Look at the iPod of six years ago. That monochrome interface! That clunky touchwheel! It looks like something a caveman whittled from a piece of flint using another piece of flint. Now imagine something that's going to make the iPhone look that primitive. You'll have one in a few years. It'll be very cool. And it'll be even cheaper. 

Find this article at: http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1678581,00.html

Apple vs. Dell: 10 Years Later

It was 10 years ago that Michael Dell, speaking before several thousand technology executives at ITxpo97 in Orlando, answered a question about what he would do if he were CEO of Apple with a remark he probably instantly regretted:

“What would I do? I’d shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders.” (link)

As others have noted, Apple’s (AAPL) market capitalization today is more than double that of Dell (DELL):

Apple: $140.4 billion

Dell: $62.27 billion

But don’t shed a tear for Micheal Dell. According to a list of the 400 wealthiest Americans published last month, his net worth is more than triple Steve Jobs’.

Michael Dell: $15.5 billion

Steve Jobs: $4.9 billion

[Chart comparing 10 years of Apple and Dell share prices courtesy of NASDAQ.]

Link to the article.

It's Amazing What People Find on eBay!

This fellow has set up a web page detailing the original Macintosh computer manual, complete with pictures. Its' an interesting read! I actually have an original Macintosh brochure from 1984. I know, sweet! :-)

TV Evolves Over the Years

Here's an interesting article about how TV has evolved over the years and will be revolutionized in the next couple of years.

Will Macs take on the Enterprise?

This article by Tim Bajarin of PC Magazine Online explores how the Mac - with its ability to run two operating systems - may be very appealing to IT managers in the future. As the Mac platform with Intel matures, I believe that's exactly what will happen. Read it here or below:

By Tim Bajarin
PC Magazine

The traditional IT market is, for the most part, owned by Microsoft and various Windows PC makers, such as HP, Dell, Toshiba, and Lenovo. Surprisingly, Apple also has a solid foothold in IT, primarily in advertising, graphics, and marketing. This is where the Mac has found its home ever since it burst onto the scene, settling comfortably into the graphics and desktop-publishing niche. Beyond these areas, however, Apple has had very little luck in the broader enterprise marketplace.

This week I had an interesting discussion with an IT manager for a Fortune 500 company that is exploring the idea of purchasing Macs for mainstream enterprise deployment as well as for its graphics and advertising departments. As a result of this conversation, I began to think differently about the Mac and its potential role in the future of mainstream business.

Behind this IT manager's thinking is that the Mac now uses Intel processors, just like Dell, HP, and most other PC makers. And thanks to Apple's Boot Camp, most Macs can also run Microsoft Windows. When Apple announced Boot Camp last year, this IT manager downloaded it for use on one of the Macs in his company's graphics department. He also loaded a clean version of Windows XP.

What he found is that Boot Camp indeed let him run Windows on a plain-vanilla Mac. But he did not like that in order to run it, he had to power down the Mac and its OS X operating system and reboot Windows XP as a separate session. He did some research and found that another company called Parallels had a product that could do something similar: Parallels Workstation lets you flip between two operating systems and run dual virtual OS sessions simultaneously, without having to power down and reboot.

The first version of the Parallels software did not work that well, but I have been testing a recent version that is much easier to use. In my talk with this IT manager, he stated that Parallels' new software is the reason he has seriously begun considering Macs. Although he is not thinking of tossing out all of the company's PCs, he does think that having these dual-OS Macs in his IT shop could give his users some more options. And he's already supporting both PCs and Macs, so making the Mac an option for mainstream IT usage makes sense. When I pushed him on this, he said there is another reason: Because Apple had made some serious headway infiltrating college campuses, often recent graduates come into the company and want to keep using their Macs. Until now, they had been told no and have had to move over, begrudgingly, to the Windows platform. Though this is not a widespread issue, he told me he would like to give prospective employees the option of using a Mac or a PC.

Now that is a forward-thinking IT manager!

Apple itself has not really pushed a mainstream enterprise strategy and seems content to keep its current IT customers in the advertising, graphics, and engineering departments happy. I do think that the Mac's new ability to run Windows as well as OS X has to be viewed as a potential disruptive force within IT departments. At the very least, it should get Apple broader attention within traditional Windows-only IT operations.

April 7 - The Birth of the Internet

The publication of the first “request for comments,” or RFC, documents paves the way for the birth of the internet. April 7 is often cited as a symbolic birth date of the net because the RFC memoranda contain research, proposals and methodologies applicable to internet technology. RFC documents provide a way for engineers and others to kick around new ideas in a public forum; sometimes, these ideas are adopted as new standards by the Internet Engineering Task Force.

One interesting aspect of the RFC is that each document is issued a unique serial number. An individual paper cannot be overwritten; rather, updates or corrections are submitted on a separate RFC. The result is an ongoing historical record of the evolution of internet standards.

When it comes to the birth of the net, www.historicaltextarchive.com/s/history-of-the-internet.php, also has its supporters. On that date, the National Science Foundation’s university network backbone, a precursor to the World Wide Web, became operational.

The Truth About Switching

I agree (for the most part) with this article about switching to the Mac. It seems pretty accurate to me. See what you think.

Here's a sample from the article:

So what’s it actually like to own and use a Mac? Here are 20 thoughts on what it’s like, without all the whining and hysterics:


01 You'll feel like you're in a little club

When other Mac owners find out you have one too, you'll get a little smile of camaraderie, and you’ll likely end up talking about Macs for five or ten minutes - no matter who they are and what the circumstance is. You may or may not find this annoying.

Low End Mac on Intel and Windows

This is an interesting read from Low End Mac. An excerpt: "The battle is over. The victory won. And the winner is . . . Intel. Macs can now run Windows either as their native operating system (using Boot Camp) or virtualized alongside OS X (Parallels Desktop)." Read more

I Agree...Buy a Mac, Not Vista

A technology writer for Business Week sums it up in this recent article. Everyone would be smart to forgo upgrading to Vista and just break down and buy a new Mac running OS X. It's just the smart thing to do!

Read Stephen H. Wildstrom's column here on the Business Week web site or below.

The Age-Old Question: Mac or PC

Our columnist says that despite the new Windows Vista operating system, if you can afford it, buy a Mac

I'm in the market for a new PC, especially after your recent remarks about upgrading to Vista.

I'm also considering an Apple, primarily because I've read that Apple machines seem not to experience the never-ending attacks from hackers. Is this because of the design of Apple's operating system or because the relatively small number of Apple PCs in the market is not enough to attract attention from hackers?

I'm probably a little above average in tech-savvy, so I'm not afraid to learn a new operating system, even after using Windows forever. I'm a statistical analyst, so I'm primarily interested in technical applications. I also use the Net, but no games, music, or TV. So what's your recommendation, Apple or Vista? I'd appreciate any advice you can offer.

To take your last question first: The coming of Vista does not change my basic recommendation. Unless you have a compelling reason to run Windows or are very constrained by budget (since you can buy a usable PC for less than the cost of the least expensive Mac), the Mac is best choice for consumer.

The question of whether Mac OS X has been relatively free from attacks because it is less popular or because it is less vulnerable is an old and probably irresolvable one. I think the answer is a little of both. These days most attacks on computers are carried out for financial gain, and Windows is by far the more lucrative target.

In terms of raw numbers of vulnerabilities, Windows XP (we don't have any data yet on Vista) and OS X are about the same; the comparison is made a little difficult because Apple, which like Microsoft releases a monthly bundle of security patches, is less specific about what it is fixing. A critical difference, though, is that Windows vulnerabilities have been much easier for the bad guys to exploit successfully.

Architectural changes in Vista and Internet Explorer 7 are supposed to fix that. There's no doubt that the default configurations of both Vista and IE 7 are more secure than their predecessors, but only time will tell how much of a difference this makes in the real world.

Wildstrom is a columnist for BusinessWeek. You can contact him at techandyou@businessweek.com

Apple Profit Rises 27%; Stock Jumps

This is great news for the faithful, as well as anyone desiring to own a world class computer!

By LAURIE J. FLYNN
New York Times
October 19, 2006

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 18 — Apple Computer said Wednesday that strong sales of its Macintosh computers and iPod portable music players led to a 27 percent rise in its fiscal fourth-quarter profit.

The results, released after the market closed, caused Apple’s shares to jump as much as 6 percent in late trading as the company surpassed Wall Street forecasts.

Apple said a brisk back-to-school season was a major force behind the better-than-expected results. But executives cautioned that the report was subject to revision, as an investigation into the mishandling of stock option grants was likely to require a restatement of previous results.

The company, which is based in Cupertino, Calif., reported net income of $546 million, or 62 cents a share, in the quarter, up from $430 million, or 50 cents a share, a year earlier. Revenue was $4.84 billion, an increase of nearly 32 percent from $3.68 billion the year before.

Analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial had forecast Apple to report earnings of 51 cents a share on $4.7 billion in revenue.

Macintosh sales accounted for 58 percent of revenue in the quarter, spurred in part by the new school season’s huge demand for notebook computers, the company said. In September, Apple expanded its line of Macs and completed a transition to Intel-based microprocessors.

In a conference call with analysts, the chief financial officer, Peter Oppenheimer, spoke of “the best Mac shipments by far in any quarter in Apple’s history.”

Steve Jobs' Stanford Commencement Speech

Thank you. I'm honored to be with you today for your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. Truth be told, I never graduated from college and this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation.

Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories. The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first six months but then stayed around as a drop-in for another eighteen months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out? It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife, except that when I popped out, they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking, "We've got an unexpected baby boy. Do you want him?" They said, "Of course." My biological mother found out later that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would go to college.

This was the start in my life. And seventeen years later, I did go to college, but I naïvely chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, and no idea of how college was going to help me figure it out, and here I was, spending all the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back, it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out, I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me and begin dropping in on the ones that looked far more interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms. I returned Coke bottles for the five-cent deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the seven miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example.

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer was beautifully hand-calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and sans-serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me, and we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts, and since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them.

If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on that calligraphy class and personals computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do.

Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college, but it was very, very clear looking backwards 10 years later. Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards, so you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something--your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever--because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well- worn path, and that will make all the difference.

My second story is about love and loss. I was lucky. I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents' garage when I was twenty. We worked hard and in ten years, Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4,000 employees. We'd just released our finest creation, the Macintosh, a year earlier, and I'd just turned thirty, and then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew, we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so, things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge, and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our board of directors sided with him, and so at thirty, I was out, and very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating. I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down, that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure and I even thought about running away from the Valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me. I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I'd been rejected but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods in my life. During the next five years I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the world's first computer-animated feature film, "Toy Story," and is now the most successful animation studio in the world.

In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT and I returned to Apple and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance, and Lorene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful-tasting medicine but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life's going to hit you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love, and that is as true for work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work, and the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking, and don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it, and like any great relationship it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking. Don't settle.

My third story is about death. When I was 17 I read a quote that went something like "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself, "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "no" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important thing I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life, because almost everything--all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure--these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago, I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctors' code for "prepare to die." It means to try and tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next ten years to tell them, in just a few months. It means to make sure that everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope, the doctor started crying, because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and, thankfully, I am fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept. No one wants to die, even people who want to go to Heaven don't want to die to get there, and yet, death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It's life's change agent; it clears out the old to make way for the new. right now, the new is you. But someday, not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it's quite true. Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice, heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalogue, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late Sixties, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and Polaroid cameras. it was sort of like Google in paperback form thirty-five years before Google came along. I was idealistic, overflowing with neat tools and great notions. Stewart and his team put out several issues of the The Whole Earth Catalogue, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-Seventies and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath were the words, "Stay hungry, stay foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. "Stay hungry, stay foolish." And I have always wished that for myself, and now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you. Stay hungry, stay foolish.

Thank you all, very much.

Watch the video on YouTube:

Bill Gates is One Rich Guy

Some time ago I ran across this interesting article by Brad Templeton about Microsoft founder Bill Gates. Brad states that since Microsoft's founding in 1975, Gates has made about $300 a second during a 14-hour work day. That's a lot of dough, for sure.

The article also includes links to charts, Bill Gates Net Worth Page and Bill Gates Personal Weath Clock. It's definitely worth a look. Brad has done his homework! Check it out here.

Prediction: OS X Available for PC in 2006

Robert X. Cringely, author of the PBC.com column, "I, Cringely," predicts Apple will succumb to market pressure and make Mac OS X available - though unsupported - on PC hardware. I agree, however I think it will happen within the next two years, not in 2006. Time will tell. Following is the prediction:

"But Apple WILL make some inroads against Microsoft. The new Intel Macs will run Windows XP unofficially, and Apple Support acknowledges that they are only days from running XP officially, too. So Apple finally has a solid argument why Windows-centric companies and homes should consider trying a Mac. The best case, though, says that Apple sells an additional million units, which aren't enough for Steve Jobs, so I see him going into a kind of stealth competition with Microsoft.

"Here's how I believe it will work. Apple won't offer versions of OS X for generic Intel hardware because the drivers and the support obligation would be too huge. But just as you can buy a shrink-wrapped copy of 10.4 for your iMac, they'll gladly sell you a shrink-wrapped Intel version intended for an Intel Mac, but of course YOU CAN PUT IT ON ANY MACHINE YOU LIKE. The key here is to offer no guarantees and only limited support, patterned on the kind you get for most Open Source packages -- a web site, forums, download section. and a wiki. Apple will help users help themselves. With two to three engineers and some outreach to hackers and hardware makers, Apple could put together an unofficial program that could easily attract two to three million Windows users per year to migrate their old machines to the new OS. Imagine the profit margins of three engineers effectively generating $300-plus million per year in sales."

Jobs Returns to Apple (from 1996 article)

As we begin 2006, I found this little tidbit from Reuters while looking through some old files. Steve Jobs returned triumphantly to Apple in December 1996, shocking the tech industry. The rest, as they say, is history. You'll note at the bottom this article was downloaded from CompuServe. Remember that? :-)

Apple Brings Steve Jobs Home
(Dec. 21) Stunning the computer industry, Apple Computer Inc. has agreed to acquire NeXT Software Inc. for $400 million, reuniting Apple with its co-founder, Steve Jobs.

"The acquisition," says Kourosh Karimkhany of the Reuter News Service, "will give Apple the software technology it needs to revamp the Macintosh personal computer, which has lost much of its technological luster to PCs running software from Microsoft Corp."

At Apple's Cupertino, California, headquarters, Jobs told the wire service, "The Mac has provided the innovation that the industry has been feeding off for the last 10 years. It's time for someone to come up with innovation to drive the industry forward. Who better than Apple?"

Jobs, who founded Apple with Steve Wozniak in his garage 20 years ago, led Apple through its early years until he was fired by the company's board in 1985.

Apple now will pay $350 million, mostly in cash and a little stock, for Redwood City, California, NeXT, and will pay off NeXT's $50 million debt.

Jobs will come back to Apple part-time to lead an effort to rewrite the fundamental software of the Macintosh, reporting to Apple Chairman Gilbert Amelio.

Apple will base much of its next-generation operating system on Nextstep, Karimkhany reports, quoting Amelio as saying NeXT's technology will not only provide many of the software bells and whistles that Apple needs to compete with Microsoft's Windows, but will attract outside software companies to write more titles for the Mac.

"Without question, the technology at NeXT was the superior technology, by a significant amount," Amelio said.

As reported, Apple had been for months looking outside for help after having abandoned an unfinished operating system code-named "Copland." The company looked at operating system technology and multimedia software from companies such as Sun Microsystems Inc. and closely held Be Inc.

Jobs also helped co-found Pixar Animation Studios, a production studio that uses powerful computers instead of drawings. The company made last year's hit "Toy Story." He told Reuters he will continue to run Pixar.

Reports from Reuter News Service are a regular feature of CompuServe's Executive News Service (GO ENS).

--Charles Bowen

Apple Site Grows Faster than Google

As it turns out, Apple is more popular than everyone's favorite search engine Google - at least in November. The Associated Press reported yesterday the popularity of the iPod and iTunes has resulted in explosive growth for Apple's web site. Amazing. Below is the article:

Apple's Web Site Among Fastest Growing
Thu Dec 22, 8:07 AM ET (AP) - Driven largely by the popularity of the iTunes music service and software, Apple Computer Inc.'s Web site was the fastest growing last month among the major brands, according to a study by Nielsen/NetRatings.

The site drew 30.8 million unique visitors in November, a 57 percent jump from the 19.6 million a year earlier. Google Inc. saw a 29 percent growth in visitors while Amazon.com Inc. had a 16 percent boost.

Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news) remained the Web's leading brand with 104 million visitors, a 10 percent increase from November 2004. But among the Web's top 10 brands, Yahoo's growth ranked only seventh.

Comparing all sites with at least 1 million visitors in November, the PhotoBucket photo-sharing site saw the largest growth — a 16-fold increase to 15.6 million visitors, from 983,000 last year.

Social networking sites MySpace and Facebook had the second- and third-highest growth, respectively. Wikipedia, an encyclopedia that lets volunteers add and change entries regardless of their expertise, was ninth on the list, nearly quadrupling its traffic.

Copyright © 2005 The Associated Press.

Mossberg is Convert to the Mac Way

Without a doubt, Walk Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal has been transformed into a Mac fan the past couple of years. While Mossberg once spoke of Macs with sarcasm and disdain, he now praises Apple for the beautiful machines and operating system Mac devotees have loved for two decades.

Mossberg's latest column praises the iMac G5 as the "gold standard" of personal computers. Way to go, Walt! Read the entire article.

TiVo Digital Downloads Could Transform TV

An announcement by the makers of TiVo to make TV shows downloadable to digital devices has the potential to revolutionize TV as we know it. Apple with the video-capable iPod and other manufacturers are making possible TV-to-go for the masses, the big question now is easy-to-obtain and free content. TiVo's plan will make this a reality. I wonder now how TiVo is going to get around content-provider concerns that users will pirate material. Time will tell. Read the article in MacWorld.

The Mark Away from Windows

Business Week has published an interesting report about the move away from Windows to the Macintosh platform among some computer users.

Fueling the growth in "switchers" is the popularity of the iPod and Mac operating system's advanced security against viruses and spyware.

"Wolf has created an interesting forecast model in which he assumes that 11% of Windows users who buy iPods also purchase Macs at the same time or soon afterward. The model also assumes that of these new Mac buyers most stick to the Mac platform and buy a second one when it comes time to upgrade."

Read the entire article here.

Is iPod's Popularity Waning?

According to The Financial Express, Apple Computer’s continued dominance of the MP3 market is prompting more people to examine exactly what it is that makes the iPod so successful.

Many attribute the iPod’s dominance to Apple’s coolness, but according to the report, "Understanding iPod’s Dominance: A Consumer Perspective," Apple’s coolness appears to be waning. The reasons most often cited for purchasing an iPod have more to do with brand familiarity than Apple’s cachet.

Today’s iPod buyer is driven by practical considerations more than social status, according to Dale Gilliam III, director of primary research at the Diffusion Group, a media research and consulting company. Coolness ranked third among people aged 15 to 24, behind quality of interface and familiarity with the brand. Design aesthetics and quality of interface were the top two reasons cited by the 25- 34-year-old age group for purchasing an iPod. Among those between 35 and 50, familiarity with Apple and the iPod brand were the primary reasons they chose the iPod.

Video iPod May Change TV

Apple may have stumbled onto something very great, and it's called iTV.

The new iPod that supports video could very well change TV and video the way the original iPod changed eletronic music. Only time will tell.

Admitedly, there's still a lot of shaking out yet to be done. It may be months or years before we see clearly the impact the video-enabled iPod makes. Some, like Business Week have seen the future and it's huge.