[2012] Apple's Newton MessagePad PDA at Twenty. In the grand scheme of things, 1992 is such recent history that it barely qualifies as history. When it comes to portable gadgets, however, it’s an era that’s nearly unrecognizable to we 21st-century humans. Sure, there were pocketable gizmos back then: The Game Boy, for instance, had been around since 1989, and the Sony Watchman was hot stuff. There were even miniature computers, such as HP’s 95LX. But in 1992, nobody had an MP3 player. Or a GPS handheld. Or a smartphone. (Less than five percent of people in North America had a mobile phone, period.)
And in 1992, nobody had a PDA. Twenty years ago this week, on May 29, 1992, Sculley spoke again at another CES, in Chicago. Using a second unit, Steve Capps, one of Newton’s creators, showed how you could use it to order a pizza by moving topping icons onto a pie and then sending out a fax. But simply dismissing Newton as a failure is unfair. What Newton wasn’t was a hit. So I bought one. This surprised me. Mac vs. PC (pubs Apple) [2010] Alex Payne — On the iPad. For years, me and thousands of other techies have been wondering what comes after the Personal Computer as we’ve known it. Yesterday, in Apple’s iPad, we caught a glimpse. If I had to pick one predominant emotion in reaction, it would be “disturbed”.
The iPad is an attractive, thoughtfully designed, deeply cynical thing. It is a digital consumption machine. As Tim Bray and Peter Kirn have pointed out, it’s a device that does little to enable creativity. As just one component of several in a person’s digital life, perhaps that’s acceptable. It seems clear, though, that the ambitions for the iPad are far greater than being a full-color Kindle. The tragedy of the iPad is that it truly seems to offer a better model of computing for many people – perhaps the majority of people. From iPhone to iPad The iPhone can, to some extent, be forgiven its closed nature. That the iPad is a closed system is harder to forgive. The iPad was pitched by Steve Jobs yesterday as a response to netbooks. [2010] How Apple plays the pricing game - Business - Bloomberg Businessweek. Next time you're sitting at an airport bar and hear two businesspeople debate whether Apple is a technology or design company, chime in: "Nope.
What Steve Jobs sells is pricing. " Pricing? You bet. Jobs is a master of using pricing decoys, reference prices, bundling and obscurity to make you think his shiny aluminum toys are a good deal. Apple's Sept. 1 announcement of new products was a classic example. Loading stock quotes… The popular iPod Touch media player has been revamped at three price points - $229, $299, and $399 - all costing more than the iPhone, which does everything the Touch can plus make phone calls. What gives? First, understand that pricing games are vital for Apple, because competition is fierce in the tech world and product hits just don't last. The current iPad costs $499 in its lowest-powered configuration vs. the Archos 7 Home Tablet ($189) or the Dell Streak ($299 with a two-year AT&T contract).
So let's count the ways Apple defends itself with pricing: [2011] Xerox PARC, Apple, and the Creation of the Mouse. In late 1979, a twenty-four-year-old entrepreneur paid a visit to a research center in Silicon Valley called Xerox PARC. He was the co-founder of a small computer startup down the road, in Cupertino. His name was Steve Jobs. Xerox PARC was the innovation arm of the Xerox Corporation. It was, and remains, on Coyote Hill Road, in Palo Alto, nestled in the foothills on the edge of town, in a long, low concrete building, with enormous terraces looking out over the jewels of Silicon Valley. To the northwest was Stanford University’s Hoover Tower. To the north was Hewlett-Packard’s sprawling campus. Apple was already one of the hottest tech firms in the country. An engineer named Larry Tesler conducted the demonstration. Xerox began selling a successor to the Alto in 1981. This is the legend of Xerox PARC.
After Jobs returned from PARC, he met with a man named Dean Hovey, who was one of the founders of the industrial-design firm that would become known as IDEO. [2012] Apple's War on Android. In her black robe and strand of white pearls, Lucy Koh projects the serious, deliberate demeanor befitting a U.S. District Court judge. The Harvard-educated former federal prosecutor has served on the California state bench and as a partner in a Silicon Valley law firm, where she litigated technology patent lawsuits. For all her earnestness, Koh, 43, could not resist needling the lawyers skirmishing before her at a hearing last June in San Jose.
“Last time you were here,” the judge noted, “you said that you had a business relationship—I forget what the number was—$8 million, $8 billion?” “I think it was in excess of $7 billion,” said attorney Harold McElhinny. That’s how much McElhinny’s client, Apple (AAPL), pays annually for components made by Samsung Electronics (005930:KS), the company Apple is suing for patent infringement. Judge Lucy Koh “Seven billion,” Judge Koh mused. Nine months later, the case of Apple v. Android’s very existence offended Jobs. [2012] How Tim Cook is changing Apple. FORTUNE -- In February of this year, a group of investors visited Apple as part of a "bus tour" led by a research analyst for Citibank. The session started with a 45-minute presentation by Peter Oppenheimer, Apple's chief financial officer, and the 15 or so investors who attended the session were treated to Apple's unique brand of hospitality: They met in a threadbare conference room in Apple's Town Hall public conference center at the 4 Infinite Loop building in Cupertino, Calif., where the refreshments consisted of "three stale cookies and two Diet Cokes," in the words of one participant.
All that, save the meager refreshments, is routine for big public companies in Silicon Valley, which use the check-ins as opportunities to communicate with large owners of their stock. After the CFO finished, Cook, at that point chief executive of Apple for all of five months, stood to offer his remarks. Tim Cook at a March event introducing the new iPad in San Francisco.