Excellent profile from Fortune on Apple CEO Tim Cook.
When Tim Cook took over Apple, I assumed he would have a tough road ahead of him. I assumed that no matter how well he lead Apple, he’d never be able to escape going down in history as “the guy who took over from Steve”.
I no longer believe this is true. In the few years Tim has been leading Apple, he’s presided over the single greatest period of growth and rapid iteration in the company’s history. The world is taking notice of it.
Good article on 9to5mac about the benefits of gaming with emulators on the Mac, especially in contrast to paying for inferior “upgraded” versions from publishers.
To a certain degree, this is true on iOS as well. I play games in RetroArch just as much as I play native iOS games.
Another great RPG Reload from Shaun Musgrave at TouchArcade, this time chronicling Bioware’s excellent Star Wars game, Knights of the Old Republic.
This game runs excellently on iOS, and features full MFi controller support and iCloud saves. If you haven’t already bought it, hopefully this article will be enough to sell you on it.
As those who follow the Apple news sites likely know, a new biography of Steve Jobs was just released. Titled âBecoming Steve Jobsâ, it focuses on exactly what turned the brash, immature character from Appleâs early years into the creative genius responsible for saving Apple from bankruptcy and turning it into the most successful company in the world.
I wonât get too much into writing a book review here. Suffice it to say the book is excellent. Anyone with an interest in Steve Jobs should get it, regardless of whether or not theyâve read Walter Isaacsonâs authorized biography, âSteve Jobsâ. In fact, Iâd argue that this book is almost essential for those who have read the Isaacson biography. Regardless of how well Isaacson wrote his book, regardless of the significant promotion accompanying itâs release, regardless even of the fact that Steve Jobs himself handpicked Isaacson to write the bio, thereâs an unavoidable problem with Isaacsonâs book: it utterly fails in itâs goal of capturing who Steve was.
Misunderstanding Steve Jobs
Much has been made of the details Isaacson got wrong. While these details are many, I donât find them particularly important. Steve sure didnât. He hand-selected Isaacson, despite Isaacsonâs lack of knowledge about the technology industry, precisely because Steve didnât want his biography to be a history of Apple. As much as us technology nerds might have wanted such a book, I believe Steve had another goal entirely: he wanted the world to know him, and understand his story. He picked Isaacson for that purpose, and Isaacson failed to live up to the task.
There is a classic episode of Star Trek that, called The Inner Light. In it, The Enterprise discovers an alien probe escaping from the remains of planet orbiting a sun that went supernova. Upon scanning the probe, Captain Picard is knocked unconscious. When he wakes up, he finds himself in the past, inhabiting the body of a citizen on the that planet.
He spends several years trying to escape, contact his crew, get back to his life. But as the years pass, he decides to embrace the life heâs found himself in. We see this man live this life over a period of several decades. He establishes himself as a prominant member of society, he falls in love, he has children. He lives his life, and is loved by those around him. As he ages into an old man, we see the planetâs looming destruction coming; the sun is expanding, there is very little time left.
The inhabitants of this world, seeing that they have no escape, select the man in their society who embodies the most good about them – the old man who Picard has become – and transcribe his life story into a sort of interactive virtual reality, to be experienced by whoever finds it, then they send that story away from their planet in a probe, as a last memento before the death of their society.
The episode ends with Picard awaking on The Enterprise, young again. The entire life he experienced only occupied a few seconds – the result of his discovering that very probe. The inhabitants of a dying planet knew there was no escape, but the best they could hope for was to be remembered, through having someone else experience their story.
I think it likely Steve Jobs never saw this episode. But I think it equally likely that the message – that the most powerful, true way to understand someone is to experience their life, to have their story told, with the small details in a life being of greater importance than the major events – was exactly why Steve hired Isaacson to write his biography. Because Isaacson is a great storyteller. Isaacson creates a character of Steve, he makes us experience major events in this characterâs life, to feel what this character is feeling.
Itâs also why Isaacsonâs book is such a failure. Because the character he creates, the character whoâs life we experience, seems to bare little resemblance to the actual Steve Jobs. Many of his family, friends, and cowokers have voiced this sentiment, but none better than Tim Cook, who said it âdid a tremendous disserviceâ because âIt didnât capture the person.â He added: âthe person I read about there is somebody I would never have wanted to work with over all this time.â
Thatâs a big deal. I can forgive technical inaccuracies in Isaacsonâs book – he wasnât a technologist, and Steve knew it that before he hired him. I can forgive the lack of follow-up questions to a multitude of conflicting interviews – perhaps there was a time crunch to get the book out around Steveâs death, and these things would be best added to a second edition. But Isaacson failed at his one true mission, and I canât forgive that. He set out to make the world understand Steve, and instead made us understand a completely different character named Steve Jobs; one that seems mostly to be Isaacsonâs own creation.
Setting The Record Straight
Thatâs where this new book comes in. Authors Brent Shlender and Rick Tetzeli have a wholly different goal than Isaacson. This book was written not to make us live Steveâs life, but rather to understand exactly what made him mature into the Steve Jobs that saved Apple.
They make their point well. They tell us Steve and Appleâs early history, but they focus much more on the facts of the situation, rather than getting mired in what Steve was feeling, and turning it into a bunch of he-said-she-said stories. They try to make us understand Steve through his actions, without presuming to tell us through his eyes, incorrectly.
But unlike Isaacson, their biggest strength is in their focus. The bulk of the book is spend talking us through the period between Steveâs ouster from Apple to his return. This is the period in Steveâs life when the changes that made him a great leader had to have occurred. The authors find those changes, talk us through each of them in turn, and make a pretty strong case for the impact they had on Steve.
By the time Steve comes back to Apple, we understand what happened. We understand why THIS Steve, the visionary leader, is separate from the caricature Isaacson portrays. We know how he became Steve Jobs.
This book isnât perfect. Shlender and Tetzeli arenât writers of the same caliber as Isaacson. They write dryly, with the voices of one who cover technology for a living, rather than the voice of one who covers people. Where Isaacson is a storyteller, Shlender and Tetzeli are story relayers.
In the interest of presenting facts rather than emotion, Shlender and Tetzeli compress into a few sentences stories that Isaacson invested significant time into – stories about how Jobs met his wife, about specific interpersonal conflicts, about family matters. Becoming Steve Jobs tells us the facts, but doesnât dwell in the story of it all. It doesnât try to put us in a specific place in time, or help us understand a situation through empathizing with any of the parties involved.
And yet still, Shlender and Tetzeli have written the definitive book on Steve Jobs. Because they wrote the truth. It might be on the dry side, it might gloss over a few important events, but it doesnât commit the one cardinal sin Isaacson does. It represents itâs subject fairly.
There is a very real chance that Becoming Steve Jobs is the best picture we will ever have of the man behind the magic. For that reason alone, I think itâs required reading for Apple fans, and technology fans in general.
Interesting article on 9to5mac about declining iPad sales. I agree with some of the points in this article, but not with the conclusion those points are drawing.
1. Appleâs bigger iPhone 6 Plus phablet has made the once popular iPad mini all but pointless. Thatâs not entirely true â there are significant cost differences and over 2 inches of additional diagonal screen real estate â but having a huge iPhone makes having a small tablet a lot less desirable.
3. New tiny 12-inch MacBook sales will impact professional/luxury iPad users. The 2-lb light weight and super portability will bring over folks who can spend a lot to get the latest technology.
The word “blame” implies someone has done something inherantly wrong. That is not the case here. Apple releasing new iPhones and Macbooks that compete with the use case of the iPad is not a bad thing for Apple – the profit margins on iPads are far lower than on these other devices. Apple stands to gain far more money if a would-be iPad customer buys an iPhone 6 Plus and / or a Macbook instead.
9. Marketing and the Apple Watch. iPad hasnât been getting the marketing spend it got in its first years for a variety of reasons. Last year Apple had the big iPhones to explain to the public. Before that it was iOS 7âs new look and feel. This year it seems Apple is focusing its attention and every extra marketing dollar on the Apple Watch.
No. Just no. Apple makes more money than any other company on earth. If they wanted to spend more on advertising, they would. They have all the extra marketing dollars. That isn’t how it works. If Apple is advertising higher-margin products, its because they want people buying those products instead of iPads.
2. This yearâs iPad hardware updates werenât terribly magical. The iPad mini got Touch ID (at a $100 price premium). The Air 2 got both faster and lighter, which is always great. And both became available in gold. But for people like me who are very content with the iPad Air â discussed in point 10 below â adding Touch ID or a golden housing wasnât a big enough incentive to upgrade. Would sales have taken off if Apple offered more storage on the lower end, more laptop-like features, or lower costs?
Yes, sales would have taken off. And Apple would have made far less money on those sales than they would have on higher-margin Macbooks and iPhones. Not upgrading the iPad Mini was putting a line in the sand: the “good” iPad model starts at $499 and has a 10 inch screen. They didn’t somehow “fail” at creating the magical update they wanted to. They intentionally didn’t release that update because they wanted to direct attention elsewhere in their product line.
Great news for Skylanders fans: the tablet starter pack edition of Skylanderâs Trap Team is currently available for $19.99 â a somewhat huge 70% discount from itâs usual $69.99 price!
Skylanders Trap Team is a pretty significant development in the world of iOS gaming. It is, to my knowledge, the first major console game to have a full-featured iOS version released simultaneously with the major console editions. This is NOT a stripped-down mobile port, a re-release of old retro code, or any of the other things iOS gamers are used to. This is a full, complete iOS gaming experiencce – the real deal.
The game itself is available as a free download, and is fully compatible with MFi controllers. Much of the Skylanders experience, however, involves syncing up collectable toys to the game and using those toys to unlock new characters with new abilities. This tablet starter edition provides a great way to get into the game, and includes multiple character figures and the base station used to enter them into the game.
Also included: a special bluetooth controller. Sadly, this is NOT an MFi controller, and is incompatible with anything other than Skylanders. Still, as Skylanders supports multiple controllers for co-op multiplayer, having an extra one in the box nicely complements the MFi controller you already have.
I have no clue how long this sale on the Tablet edition will be lasting, but I took this opportunity to order one.
Good news for those in the market for a great Bluetooth MFi controller â the C.T.R.L.i is back on sale for $10 off the asking price, down to $49.
I reviewed the C.T.R.L.i and found it to be the best option for pretty much every iPhone gamer looking to clip their device into a gamepad. The other options all had potentially deal-killing flaws â only the Mad Catz had a great design and a sturdy device clip.
Not sure why the controller is on sale right now, but I’d strongly recommend any iPhone gamer pick one up while the price is low. iPad gamers have more options to choose from, since clipping the device to the controller isn’t a factor, but anyone who’s a fan of the Xbox 360 style controller would still be very well served by the C.T.R.L.i (or it’s Micro variant).
Over the past few days, 9to5mac, Daring Fireball, and others brought attention to the fact that despite Apple’s promises, web banner ads, by terrible companies like Zynga, are still redirecting users to the App Store.
9to5mac lays the blame for this at Apple’s feet. John Gruber and Jason Snell lay it at website operators feet.
I blame everyone involved. If you’re a website operator, you are unequivocally responsible for the ads you choose to display. If you’re Zynga, you are responsible for the way you advertise your products. But ultimately, I believe the buck stops with Apple.
Ad networks are terrible1, but they never claimed to be otherwise – they exist to spam users with hidious crap, and of course all they care about is getting eyeballs on their customers’ products. Website operators who run aggressive ad banners obviously don’t care about their readers, as much as they might protest – if they cared, they wouldn’t run Zynga ads in the first place. Zynga sure as hell doesn’t care. Apple is the only one who “has our back in this fight. They are the only player who’s job is to provide us with a great experience.
There is an easy fix to this problem, and it doesn’t involve any coding at all. All Apple needs to do is ban Zynga and their ilk from the App Store until these ads stop. That’s it – ban them, remove all their apps from sale. Then sit back and watch how fast Zynga and the ad networks scramble to make these redirects go away.
Rovio’s greatest success came from selling a great game at 99 cents. Over 2013 and 2014, they transitioned to free-to-play and expanded to a bunch of TV show and toy tie-ins. Now they’re bleeding money and laying off massive chunks of their workforce.
Just a thought.
You know, I’m not sure what the deal with this week is, but I hope it keeps on coming! Yesterday we had Modern Combat 5 and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City updated, today we have Disney Infinity Toy Box 2 joining the MFi controller support bandwagoon.
Disney Infinity Toy Box is a hugely ambitious iOS game. Weighing in at a whopping 3.8 gigs, and featuring incredibly polished and smooth Metal-powered graphics, this feels much closer to a console game to a mobile experience. Support for console-style Extended controllers makes for a gaming experience that is almost indistinguishable from a major console release.
For the collectors among us, the entire Disney Infinity experience is based heavily on connecting “interactive” toy figures to the apps, and bringing those figures into the games. Kids love this stuff, and it wouldn’t surprise me one bit to see MFi controllers selling quite quickly to parents looking to get their kids off the family TV.
The number of figures available is massive – just check Disney Interactive’s Amazon page – and all of these figures are useable on iOS and console, with progress being shared between them.
The app itself is a free download, so if you have a modern device and 4.4 gigs of disk space, give it a download; it’s one of the showpieces of the iOS platform.