June 24th, 2013 § § permalink
Steve Jobs (Photo credit: Kashmir Global)
Apple‘s new HQ build site opened this month, after some delays and quite some rise in costs. A lot has been written about it since Jobs gloriously unveiled the plans in Cuppertino last year, and all articles seem to gravitate towards one of the two conclusions:
- it’s going to be grand, beautiful, cutting edge office space for generations to look up to
- it’s a sign of the beginning of the decline of Apple, just like it happened to all other IT giants
Everyone agrees with the first point, but the cynical second point sounds like a stick in the mud. Sure Jobs wanted to build a monument for himself, but how can people possibly assume he was at the heights of his intellect, reinventing the whole home computing industry, and at the same his judgment clouded by a simple human sin of vanity. I don’t believe that Jobs would approve such an expensive project without a very deep and in Jobsian manner convoluted brilliant plan.
I was reading a very in-depth article covering more details of the story in Bloomberg Businessweek that exposed much more details than any before – about the builders, the challenges, the approaches. They even performed interviews with employees to shine some more light on how this spaceship is really going to be built and how it’s going to look like from inside. These interviews give a new clue about the possible real reason for the project that’s more expensive than WTC.
Supposedly all the insides will be assembled with a pre-fab modules for “bathrooms, utility closets, and banks of offices complete with carpets and window treatments”. nothing special, except that Jobs wanted high precision and attention to detail everywhere, so these pre-fab modules will be supplied by a purpose-built factories. At the same time, the building will have one of the largest private arrays of solar panels and a number of other technical advancements in construction and furnishing.
What if Apple’s new headquarters is not just a beautiful monument to the creator, efficient way to house 13000 employees and homage to HP labs and California, but also a pilot project for the next grand stage in Apple’s business expansion? After successful move-in, they will be left with a lot of public attention, a tested supply chain, solved first set of technical challenges to leapfrog one of the largest industries on the planet.
So to all you cynics out there, what do you think Jobs would do? Waste $5B and risk the success of his life work to build a building, or leverage it to expand business?
May 3rd, 2012 § Comments Off on iTunes Match begins rolling out in Slovenia! § permalink
first: itunes match is awesome! not because it makes your music ‘legal’, but because it manages to reduce the storage space needed on the planet by several orders of magnitude. the fact that all the music is on all devices is just a bonus 🙂
and secondly, wow to have it available in slovenia! we are not third digital world anymore!
Apple has slowly rolled out its iTunes Match service worldwide over the past few months, but today it looks like more countries were added, because the music matching service began rolling out in Italy, Portugal, Greece, Slovenia, and Austria.
via: 9to5mac.com
March 2nd, 2012 § Comments Off on great debate on how & why linking from media § permalink
Image via Wikipedia
there is a really interesting discussion going on this week, whether online journalists should cite other online “journalists” who “broke” the stories. it’s actually pretty complex question and this article sums it up greatly. it actually touches some points I wrote about a few days ago – the new, self proclaimed “tech journalists” have no idea how the real media ethics works, yet they demand same credit and awe.
Why Journalists Need to Link | Epicenter | Wired.com
If it was Siegler’s article that caused Vascellaro to call Apple, then Siegler certainly counts as an online resource used in writing the WSJ story, and should therefore, by Stray’s formulation, be fully linked and credited. On the other hand, if Stray agrees with Siegler, that doesn’t mean that Siegler agrees with Stray. Siegler cited no source at all, named or anonymous, for his scoop that Apple had bought Chomp: He simply asserted the fact. “Apple has bought the app search and discovery platform Chomp, we’ve learned.†If every statement in news writing needs to be attributed, then Siegler just failed that test.
www.wired.com
it’s great to see journalists are starting to be aware of the need to link outside their own domain.
January 30th, 2012 § Comments Off on and the geeks shall inherit the hollywood… § permalink
Image by Getty Images via @daylife
a couple of days ago I saw this article, from an obviously certified
geek, who believes our species has the right to reinvent everything it did or didn’t hear it existed before:
My idea to “Kill Hollywood” This is in response to the excellent Y Combinator “Kill Hollywood” request for startups. I think it’s simple (though not easy ): beat them at their own game by starting a new studio. A kind of studio that has never existed. A kind that could not have existed before.
via: blog.rsbrown.net
it caught my eye, because he is actually writing in response to Y-Combinators appeal to kill hollywood, not because it is supporting SOPA, but:
but because SOPA brought it to our attention that Hollywood is dying. They must be dying if they’re resorting to such tactics. If movies and TV were growing rapidly, that growth would take up all their attention.
via:Â http://ycombinator.com/rfs9.html
… now, coming from media background, I was doubly fascinated with this happening:
Note the cell towers lurking in the background... Image via Wikipedia
- what a stupidly short-sighted appeal from y-combinator – as if they don’t remember that TV didn’t kill the radio, than cable didn’t kill the TV, and that internet didn’t kill the cable. if anything they are all jointly killing our old ways of life.
- what an ignorant attitude from a random geek towards a humongous industry that developed trough 120 years. don’t get me wrong, his analysis is 85% correct – that’s exactly how the movie industry works, smart-ass!
and again, don’t get me wrong – i do similar ‘sins’ all the time – our generation seems to severely failed to learn from previous ones, or from history. we assume we know everything, because we are the first to really
know everything is calculable, and that we might live to see the
GUT.
because of that, whatever we do, think or say, is in fact, annoying, presumptuous and half-right. the other half we are yet to learn the hard way. it’s the curse of our generation.
