1 Year After Steve Jobs' Passing, the World Remembers
Evan Niu, CFA - October 5, 2012
It was a year ago today that Steve Jobs died, exactly one day after the iPhone 4S was unveiled. As one of the most heavily scrutinized companies on Earth, much ink has been spilled over whether or not Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) will ultimately endure without him.
Few CEOs have or likely ever will deliver the type of returns to shareholders as Jobs did. He effectively reclaimed control of the company he co-founded in July 1997 after Gil Amelio was given a pink slip from Apple's board. Jobs was made interim CEO that September, and wouldn't officially become permanent CEO until 2000.
Apple was 90 days away from bankruptcy when Jobs returned, and then he did this:
Apple data by YCharts.
That chart ends upon his death, even though technically he resigned as CEO in August 2011, handing the title over to Tim Cook. Still, any shareholder that stuck with him through the duration of his life landed a 10,960% gain -- nearly a 110-bagger.
One year later
In the year that's passed since Jobs' death, Apple has gone on to blow out its prior iPhone sales record by a healthy margin. The fourth quarter saw 37 million iPhone units sold, the current quarterly record.
Source: Earnings press releases.
A similar story played out with the iPad family.
Source: Earnings press releases.
Cook has done quite the job in his time at the helm. His one-year anniversary was marked by a major legal victory against Samsung and the Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) Android camp, a win that would have made Jobs proud.
Apple shares are now up roughly 76% since Jobs' death, so investors have their answer right there: Apple certainly can endure without him, even though the company will never be precisely the same.
Apple data by YCharts.
It's certainly a different Apple under Cook than under Jobs, but there's little to worry about when it comes to the company's long-term prospects.
Think different
Over the past year, Cook has firmly put his stamp on the company's culture and perception. Not only did he institute a dividend policy, something his predecessor was philosophically opposed to, but he's also changed how Apple is perceived. Instead of being a one-way media black box, Apple now responds to press inquiries about its tax reduction strategies or controversies over Chinese labor.
Cook knows his place, and defers to Apple's well-rounded management team when needed. Jobs, on the other hand, wanted control over nearly all relevant facets of Apple's business. Cook also isn't quite the futurist that Jobs was, who essentially predicted the creation of the iPad almost thirty years ago in 1983:
Apple's strategy is really simple. What we want to do is we want to put an incredibly great computer in a book that you can carry around with you and learn how to use in 20 minutes. That's what we want to do and we want to do it this decade. And we really want to do it with a radio link in it so you don't have to hook up to anything and you're in communication with all of these larger databases and other computers.
The show must go on
Without a doubt, Jobs' passing was a loss for the world, but that doesn't mean technological advancement must halt. If anything, Jobs has inspired an entirely new generation of visionary CEOs, like Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, who clearly looked up to Jobs as a friend and mentor.
Steve Jobs will never be forgotten, for his accomplishments will withstand the test of time.
Here's to you, Steve.
Sunday, October 7, 2012
Adding a little Steve Jobs.
Steve Jobs is our era’s Edison, Ford or Tesla. Illustration by Simon Lutrin
Let’s talk about Steve Jobs. I know, I know. It’s been a year since his death. What is there possibly left to say about him, and why are so many people still saying it?
There will be scores of stories about Steve Jobs published today. That may seem tiresome and overwhelming, if not totally unnecessary. Perhaps you are sick of hearing about him or never really liked Apple products and don’t get what all the fuss is about. Or maybe you just think that for all this genius, he was a horrible human being. Me too. I feel you. But we’re both living in his shadow and will for the rest of our days. So settle in, because all of us are going to be talking about Steve Jobs for decades to come.
Jobs has joined the pantheon of greats who advanced science and industry and society itself — a modern-day Tesla but appreciated in his own lifetime. He’s our Thomas Edison or Henry Ford, one of those rarefied individuals who had not only a vision but the will and force of personality to execute it through America’s greatest cultural triumph: the public corporation.
And with his corporations, Steve Jobs didn’t simply shake up industries; he fundamentally traumatized them. He started with computing, then movies, then music and finally telecom. Even if you find him morally repugnant or prefer his competitors’ products, you would have to be a fool to argue against his influence and stature.
Apple ushered in the era of personal computing, taking it from a hobbyist pursuit to its own industry. You are far more likely to be reading this on a Windows machine (and of course, Xerox really did the fundamental research), but it was Jobs whose vision again transformed the computing industry by introducing the graphical interface to the masses. During his exile from Apple, he revolutionized digital animation at Pixar. Once back, he gave us the iPod and iTunes, which transformed both how we listen to music and how we buy it. And while you may prefer Android, it was the iPhone that kickstarted the smartphone boom. In doing all this, Jobs built his companies, his products, himself into colossus.
Even when we don’t discuss Jobs directly, he is still in our conversations. If you talk about mobile anything, you’re talking about Steve Jobs. Ditto Chinese manufacturing, digital animation, user interfaces, apps, hardware design — even the stock market itself, which is now firmly dominated by Apple, the metric against which all other companies are measured. There’s not an important mainstream technology product or service out there right now that isn’t a result of or response to Steve Jobs. It’s not so much that we want to keep talking about him; it’s that there’s no avoiding it.
Jobs, like the titans of industry before him, realized that when we think about how the world works, we are actually thinking about the way people have made it to work. And that means that if you don’t like the way the world works, you are free to change it. Which is exactly what he did.
So we’ll talk about Jobs in a way that we don’t artists or authors or scientists or astronauts or, really, anyone other than maybe some U.S. presidents. He is an icon of creative capitalism, and those are the people our culture truly lionizes. His stature is such that there will continue to be hundreds of thousands of words written about him long after even the youngest among us is rotting in the dirt. Don’t believe me? Just check out how many words we still sling at Thomas Edison. Or see The Men Who Built America, a new drama, debuting this month on the History Channel, about America’s industrial titans, like Ford, Rockefeller, and Vanderbilt.
There are two reasons for this. First, people are profoundly interested in so-called great men, especially those tycoons who fall into the creative class. And secondly, as a result, because there’s a lot of money in it.
We are actually in the early cycles of Talking About Steve. The next phase is analyzing how things have changed since he died. We’ll trot out his corpse and ask it if it would have released iOS 6 or approved of the iPad Mini, or why Messages keeps sending chats to my phone when I want them on my desktop. That’s already happening, but it is going to accelerate as we get further and further away from his leadership, and with every misstep that Apple makes. It is a lazy and inevitable argument that’s going to be made again and again.
The contrarian takes won’t stop, either — the Steve Jobs-wasn’t-so-great stories, every word of which, and every ad sold on every page carrying that message, will reinforce the fact that, yes, he was. Otherwise, why are you still jabbering on about him?
New texts will come to light that reveal even more about him. Those who knew him best will be compelled to write about him. Future generations will examine what influence he had and what he meant to our culture in ways that we cannot see yet. Perhaps in a drama about the people who built post-industrial America, viewed on some unimaginable interface that is as much a descendant of Jobs’ iPad as the iPad itself is of Edison’s electric lightbulb or Tesla’s radio. Ultimately, his legacy will be evaluated and re-evaluated and hashed out some more.
And all this because we just want to understand him. Because we are not him. We almost certainly, most of us, are not great men or women. We want to know how he rose to that rank and what we can take away that may help us do the same. And the select few who are bound for greatness will likely be no less fascinated and will want to look to him as a model or a cautionary tale. Everybody can take something from Steve.
What we talk about when we talk about Steve Jobs is ourselves. Our relation to him, or to who we want him to be. We talk about him in a way that helps us understand both him and ourselves, to make sense of how he could be way up there while we’re stuck down here, tapping away on one of his machines, praising its design, bitching about its Maps. And if you think you’ve heard or read it all, just wait. Just wait.
Let’s talk about Steve Jobs. I know, I know. It’s been a year since his death. What is there possibly left to say about him, and why are so many people still saying it?
There will be scores of stories about Steve Jobs published today. That may seem tiresome and overwhelming, if not totally unnecessary. Perhaps you are sick of hearing about him or never really liked Apple products and don’t get what all the fuss is about. Or maybe you just think that for all this genius, he was a horrible human being. Me too. I feel you. But we’re both living in his shadow and will for the rest of our days. So settle in, because all of us are going to be talking about Steve Jobs for decades to come.
Jobs has joined the pantheon of greats who advanced science and industry and society itself — a modern-day Tesla but appreciated in his own lifetime. He’s our Thomas Edison or Henry Ford, one of those rarefied individuals who had not only a vision but the will and force of personality to execute it through America’s greatest cultural triumph: the public corporation.
And with his corporations, Steve Jobs didn’t simply shake up industries; he fundamentally traumatized them. He started with computing, then movies, then music and finally telecom. Even if you find him morally repugnant or prefer his competitors’ products, you would have to be a fool to argue against his influence and stature.
Apple ushered in the era of personal computing, taking it from a hobbyist pursuit to its own industry. You are far more likely to be reading this on a Windows machine (and of course, Xerox really did the fundamental research), but it was Jobs whose vision again transformed the computing industry by introducing the graphical interface to the masses. During his exile from Apple, he revolutionized digital animation at Pixar. Once back, he gave us the iPod and iTunes, which transformed both how we listen to music and how we buy it. And while you may prefer Android, it was the iPhone that kickstarted the smartphone boom. In doing all this, Jobs built his companies, his products, himself into colossus.
Even when we don’t discuss Jobs directly, he is still in our conversations. If you talk about mobile anything, you’re talking about Steve Jobs. Ditto Chinese manufacturing, digital animation, user interfaces, apps, hardware design — even the stock market itself, which is now firmly dominated by Apple, the metric against which all other companies are measured. There’s not an important mainstream technology product or service out there right now that isn’t a result of or response to Steve Jobs. It’s not so much that we want to keep talking about him; it’s that there’s no avoiding it.
Jobs, like the titans of industry before him, realized that when we think about how the world works, we are actually thinking about the way people have made it to work. And that means that if you don’t like the way the world works, you are free to change it. Which is exactly what he did.
So we’ll talk about Jobs in a way that we don’t artists or authors or scientists or astronauts or, really, anyone other than maybe some U.S. presidents. He is an icon of creative capitalism, and those are the people our culture truly lionizes. His stature is such that there will continue to be hundreds of thousands of words written about him long after even the youngest among us is rotting in the dirt. Don’t believe me? Just check out how many words we still sling at Thomas Edison. Or see The Men Who Built America, a new drama, debuting this month on the History Channel, about America’s industrial titans, like Ford, Rockefeller, and Vanderbilt.
There are two reasons for this. First, people are profoundly interested in so-called great men, especially those tycoons who fall into the creative class. And secondly, as a result, because there’s a lot of money in it.
We are actually in the early cycles of Talking About Steve. The next phase is analyzing how things have changed since he died. We’ll trot out his corpse and ask it if it would have released iOS 6 or approved of the iPad Mini, or why Messages keeps sending chats to my phone when I want them on my desktop. That’s already happening, but it is going to accelerate as we get further and further away from his leadership, and with every misstep that Apple makes. It is a lazy and inevitable argument that’s going to be made again and again.
The contrarian takes won’t stop, either — the Steve Jobs-wasn’t-so-great stories, every word of which, and every ad sold on every page carrying that message, will reinforce the fact that, yes, he was. Otherwise, why are you still jabbering on about him?
New texts will come to light that reveal even more about him. Those who knew him best will be compelled to write about him. Future generations will examine what influence he had and what he meant to our culture in ways that we cannot see yet. Perhaps in a drama about the people who built post-industrial America, viewed on some unimaginable interface that is as much a descendant of Jobs’ iPad as the iPad itself is of Edison’s electric lightbulb or Tesla’s radio. Ultimately, his legacy will be evaluated and re-evaluated and hashed out some more.
And all this because we just want to understand him. Because we are not him. We almost certainly, most of us, are not great men or women. We want to know how he rose to that rank and what we can take away that may help us do the same. And the select few who are bound for greatness will likely be no less fascinated and will want to look to him as a model or a cautionary tale. Everybody can take something from Steve.
What we talk about when we talk about Steve Jobs is ourselves. Our relation to him, or to who we want him to be. We talk about him in a way that helps us understand both him and ourselves, to make sense of how he could be way up there while we’re stuck down here, tapping away on one of his machines, praising its design, bitching about its Maps. And if you think you’ve heard or read it all, just wait. Just wait.
Formlabs Desktop 3D Printer. Is it worth it?
Formlabs Form 1 3D printer uses a high-intensity blue laser to cure melted plastic into thin layers. The result is incredibly-precise models, though they require a small amount of hand-finishing.
Women in business. Venture capitalism at its best?
Women Executives Make Venture-Backed Companies More Successful:
By Deborah Gage
Venture-backed companies that include females as senior executives are more likely to succeed than companies where only males are in charge, according to new research from Dow Jones.
The report, “Women at the Wheel,” does not speculate on why female executives improve a company’s chance of success, nor did it study companies where only females are involved.
But it finds that companies have a greater chance of either going public, operating profitably or being sold for more money than they’ve raised when they have females acting as founders, board members, C-level officers, vice presidents and/or directors. At successful companies, the median proportion of female executives was 7.1%; at unsuccessful companies, 3.1%.
The report followed 20,194 U.S.-based companies in the Dow Jones VentureSource database that either received funding or exited between 1997 and 2011. Of the 167,556 executives involved, about 7% were female.
Attitudes about women are changing rapidly in the technology industry, where female participation continues to increase. This year, while two Bay Area investment firms (Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Pantheon Ventures) were sued by women for gender discrimination, the board of Yahoo Inc. named a pregnant Marissa Mayer as the company’s president and CEO.
Very few companies in the report–only 1.3%–had a female founder, but companies tend to hire more women as they grow: 6.5% of companies had a female CEO, and 20% had one or more female C-level executives, most commonly in sales and marketing roles.
“I continue to be surprised that there aren’t more venture-backed companies with women CEOs,” said Cameron Lester, a general partner at Azure Capital Partners. Azure has invested in several women-led companies, including VMware Inc., a software virtualization company that sold to EMC Corp. in 2003 for $635 million and later went public.
Women face bias in the tech industry, Mr. Lester said–investors “tend to go with what they know” and are more likely to back a company when it’s run by someone who fits the typical entrepreneur profile, such as a young, male computer scientist who’s graduated from Stanford University and worked at a hot company like Google Inc. or Facebook Inc.
Azure, which was founded by former Wall Street analysts, tries to avoid such bias by basing its investments on research. Also, female tech executives tend to be better on average than their male counterparts because they’ve survived the industry’s “natural selection,” he said.
Any kind of diversity is good for a company because it brings in different points of view when decisions have to be made, said Theresia Gouw Ranzetta, a partner at Accel Partners and one of Silicon Valley’s few female venture capitalists.
Women, for instance, are more likely than men to think of different types of customers for a company to target or different ways to sell to them, she said, since “women are not the target customer in Silicon Valley for highly technical services. They think more out of the box.”
Women also tend to be more conservative than men, which is both good and bad. Financially, they may raise less money than men, which makes them more capital-efficient, but they’re also more likely to sell a company when they get a good offer, rather than to keep it independent or take it public for a bigger success down the road, according to Ms. Ranzetta.
“There are not enough women CEOs and executives taking companies public,” she said.
Personally, women tend to be more careful about business decisions, and that’s not always good either, according to Damballa Inc. Chief Executive Val Rahmani, who joined the security company in 2009 after 18 years as an executive at International Business Machines Corp.
Women may think very carefully before making a business decision, she said, “whereas a lot of guys have a ‘What the hell, let’s give it a go’ attitude” that can be useful when companies need to move quickly.
But women are also more concerned about the emotional well-being of their team. Although she can be tough and mean when people aren’t delivering, “we run more as a family (at Damballa),” Ms. Rahmani said. “I would love for everybody on my team to be happy.”
Ms. Rahmani urges the women who work for her not to try to disguise their looks by wearing “frumpy” clothes to work. She also encourages women to study more math and ignore the mysticism that surrounds tech start-ups.
“Venture capitalists are smart folks, but at the end of the day, they’re just people wanting to invest in something good,” she said.
The full study can be found here.
Write to Deborah Gage at deborah.gage@dowjones.com. Follow her on Twitter at @deborahgage
By Deborah Gage
Venture-backed companies that include females as senior executives are more likely to succeed than companies where only males are in charge, according to new research from Dow Jones.
The report, “Women at the Wheel,” does not speculate on why female executives improve a company’s chance of success, nor did it study companies where only females are involved.
But it finds that companies have a greater chance of either going public, operating profitably or being sold for more money than they’ve raised when they have females acting as founders, board members, C-level officers, vice presidents and/or directors. At successful companies, the median proportion of female executives was 7.1%; at unsuccessful companies, 3.1%.
The report followed 20,194 U.S.-based companies in the Dow Jones VentureSource database that either received funding or exited between 1997 and 2011. Of the 167,556 executives involved, about 7% were female.
Attitudes about women are changing rapidly in the technology industry, where female participation continues to increase. This year, while two Bay Area investment firms (Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Pantheon Ventures) were sued by women for gender discrimination, the board of Yahoo Inc. named a pregnant Marissa Mayer as the company’s president and CEO.
Very few companies in the report–only 1.3%–had a female founder, but companies tend to hire more women as they grow: 6.5% of companies had a female CEO, and 20% had one or more female C-level executives, most commonly in sales and marketing roles.
“I continue to be surprised that there aren’t more venture-backed companies with women CEOs,” said Cameron Lester, a general partner at Azure Capital Partners. Azure has invested in several women-led companies, including VMware Inc., a software virtualization company that sold to EMC Corp. in 2003 for $635 million and later went public.
Women face bias in the tech industry, Mr. Lester said–investors “tend to go with what they know” and are more likely to back a company when it’s run by someone who fits the typical entrepreneur profile, such as a young, male computer scientist who’s graduated from Stanford University and worked at a hot company like Google Inc. or Facebook Inc.
Azure, which was founded by former Wall Street analysts, tries to avoid such bias by basing its investments on research. Also, female tech executives tend to be better on average than their male counterparts because they’ve survived the industry’s “natural selection,” he said.
Any kind of diversity is good for a company because it brings in different points of view when decisions have to be made, said Theresia Gouw Ranzetta, a partner at Accel Partners and one of Silicon Valley’s few female venture capitalists.
Women, for instance, are more likely than men to think of different types of customers for a company to target or different ways to sell to them, she said, since “women are not the target customer in Silicon Valley for highly technical services. They think more out of the box.”
Women also tend to be more conservative than men, which is both good and bad. Financially, they may raise less money than men, which makes them more capital-efficient, but they’re also more likely to sell a company when they get a good offer, rather than to keep it independent or take it public for a bigger success down the road, according to Ms. Ranzetta.
“There are not enough women CEOs and executives taking companies public,” she said.
Personally, women tend to be more careful about business decisions, and that’s not always good either, according to Damballa Inc. Chief Executive Val Rahmani, who joined the security company in 2009 after 18 years as an executive at International Business Machines Corp.
Women may think very carefully before making a business decision, she said, “whereas a lot of guys have a ‘What the hell, let’s give it a go’ attitude” that can be useful when companies need to move quickly.
But women are also more concerned about the emotional well-being of their team. Although she can be tough and mean when people aren’t delivering, “we run more as a family (at Damballa),” Ms. Rahmani said. “I would love for everybody on my team to be happy.”
Ms. Rahmani urges the women who work for her not to try to disguise their looks by wearing “frumpy” clothes to work. She also encourages women to study more math and ignore the mysticism that surrounds tech start-ups.
“Venture capitalists are smart folks, but at the end of the day, they’re just people wanting to invest in something good,” she said.
The full study can be found here.
Write to Deborah Gage at deborah.gage@dowjones.com. Follow her on Twitter at @deborahgage
iPhone 5. A tech warriors perspective.
The iPhone 5 doesn't exactly have busy CNET reporter Brooke Crothers pining away for his 4S. But there have been one or two issues.
Two weeks in, I've got a better feel for the iPhone 5, both good and bad.
After upgrading from the iPhone 4S to the 5 two weeks ago yesterday, I've been on the road -- bouncing between the east and west coasts. That's plenty of opportunity to test the iPhone 5's mettle.
The good, the bad, the meh:
Wi-Fi: This was the first gotcha. After arriving at my destination in Philadelphia, a Wi-Fi network I needed to access didn't take -- despite working fine with a host of other devices, including an iPhone 3GS and an iPad 2. As it turns out, this wasn't an iPhone 5 problem but an iOS 6 thing. And it affected my Retina iPad -- upgraded to iOS 6 -- too. The problem was fixed via some weird router firmware acrobatics. Upshot: Lots of frustration.
Battery: No complaints here, as my expectations weren't terribly high. I agree with CNET Reviews' take on battery life: no worse than the 4S.
Maybe even a little better, considering the fact that I was using the iPhone 5 on Verizon's 4G LTE network in suburban Philadelphia constantly. On average, I would say battery life was between a little less than a day and a day and a half, depending on how much I was leaning on Verizon's network and not Wi-Fi. Upshot: Unchanged from 4S.
4G/LTE: Which brings us to LTE. The iPhone 5 is Apple's first phone on Verizon's 4G LTE network. Let me begin by saying that Verizon's 4G network has the same problems with flaky connections that any 3G network has. For example, I'm sitting smack dab in the middle of an LTE area in Los Angeles as I write this and I get decent 3G speeds (download about 3.8 Mbps, upload 0.45 Mbps) but not 4G. Of course, I can get rocking LTE speeds in plenty of other places. For example, in Thousand Oaks, Calif., on Friday I recorded download speeds up to 40Mbps and uploads of about 9Mbps. And the faster speeds are the rule not the exception. Upshot: Fast, with some exceptions.
Screen: The extra half-inch of diagonal size on the phone's Retina 4-inch screen is the rough equivalent (proportionately) of upgrading from a 17-inch desktop display to a 20-inch-class screen. It's not huge but it's extra screen real estate the iPhone desperately needed. In fact, I found myself using the iPhone 5 in lieu of the iPad. In other words, with the 4S I had little tolerance for Web browsing. With the 5, that tolerance threshold is lowered, i.e., I didn't feel the need to always reach for the iPad's 9.7-inch screen. But more to the point, it gets you closer to the big-screen benefits of the 4.8 inch Samsung Galaxy S3. Would I prefer an iPhone with a slightly larger display? Yeah, though the 4.8 incher on the Galaxy S3 makes that phone a little too big for my tastes.
But does that mean Apple needs to haul out an iPhone 6 sooner rather than later? If there's a growing demand for big-screen phones like the S3 and HTC One X+ then maybe it does. And let me add that I take back what I said before about small smartphones with necessarily small screens being better/more handy than large-screen ones. I was wrong. Upshot: The iPhone was in dire need of a bigger screen.
Design: Apple nailed the the physical redesign. As I said before, Apple stretched out the 4S just enough to allow for a bigger screen, while making the iPhone lighter and easier to hold. It instantly and completely obsoletes the 4/4S. Which really wasn't that hard to do since the 4/4S was getting long in the tooth. I still feel the change every time I pick it up. Upshot: Great physical design.
Speed: It's fast. Period. The combo of the new A6 processor and LTE delivers. And as for its ability to process data -- irrespective of connection speeds -- I've never found myself saying, hey, this thing is slow. Upshot: Did I say it's fast?
Drop test: I knocked (inadvertently) the iPhone pretty hard into another hard surface. I couldn't find any scratches or physical damage. And everything seems to be intact internally. I did panic for a second when I tapped the top of the phone (right under the rear camera) to see if anything was loose and heard a rattling noise. But that fear was laid to rest when I went to an Apple store and tapped the same spot on four iPhone 5s and heard the exact same noise in each one. Upshot: Took a hard knock in stride.
Camera: I'm going to withhold detailed commentary on the camera until I get a better feel for what it can do. Suffice to say, there's almost no need anymore to use my small 14MP Kodak M580. If Apple (or another smartphone supplier) figures out how to fit optical zoom into a slim smartphone then -- for me at least -- a separate camera becomes all together unnecessary. The iPhone 5 takes good photos, though Apple should try to push the envelope more on camera tech, I think. Upshot: More later.
Finally, let me say that the comments above only scratch the surface of everyday iPhone usage scenarios. So, I won't pretend to cover all of the pros and cons of the iPhone 5. Constructive comments below are welcome.
Two weeks in, I've got a better feel for the iPhone 5, both good and bad.
After upgrading from the iPhone 4S to the 5 two weeks ago yesterday, I've been on the road -- bouncing between the east and west coasts. That's plenty of opportunity to test the iPhone 5's mettle.
The good, the bad, the meh:
Wi-Fi: This was the first gotcha. After arriving at my destination in Philadelphia, a Wi-Fi network I needed to access didn't take -- despite working fine with a host of other devices, including an iPhone 3GS and an iPad 2. As it turns out, this wasn't an iPhone 5 problem but an iOS 6 thing. And it affected my Retina iPad -- upgraded to iOS 6 -- too. The problem was fixed via some weird router firmware acrobatics. Upshot: Lots of frustration.
Battery: No complaints here, as my expectations weren't terribly high. I agree with CNET Reviews' take on battery life: no worse than the 4S.
Maybe even a little better, considering the fact that I was using the iPhone 5 on Verizon's 4G LTE network in suburban Philadelphia constantly. On average, I would say battery life was between a little less than a day and a day and a half, depending on how much I was leaning on Verizon's network and not Wi-Fi. Upshot: Unchanged from 4S.
4G/LTE: Which brings us to LTE. The iPhone 5 is Apple's first phone on Verizon's 4G LTE network. Let me begin by saying that Verizon's 4G network has the same problems with flaky connections that any 3G network has. For example, I'm sitting smack dab in the middle of an LTE area in Los Angeles as I write this and I get decent 3G speeds (download about 3.8 Mbps, upload 0.45 Mbps) but not 4G. Of course, I can get rocking LTE speeds in plenty of other places. For example, in Thousand Oaks, Calif., on Friday I recorded download speeds up to 40Mbps and uploads of about 9Mbps. And the faster speeds are the rule not the exception. Upshot: Fast, with some exceptions.
Screen: The extra half-inch of diagonal size on the phone's Retina 4-inch screen is the rough equivalent (proportionately) of upgrading from a 17-inch desktop display to a 20-inch-class screen. It's not huge but it's extra screen real estate the iPhone desperately needed. In fact, I found myself using the iPhone 5 in lieu of the iPad. In other words, with the 4S I had little tolerance for Web browsing. With the 5, that tolerance threshold is lowered, i.e., I didn't feel the need to always reach for the iPad's 9.7-inch screen. But more to the point, it gets you closer to the big-screen benefits of the 4.8 inch Samsung Galaxy S3. Would I prefer an iPhone with a slightly larger display? Yeah, though the 4.8 incher on the Galaxy S3 makes that phone a little too big for my tastes.
But does that mean Apple needs to haul out an iPhone 6 sooner rather than later? If there's a growing demand for big-screen phones like the S3 and HTC One X+ then maybe it does. And let me add that I take back what I said before about small smartphones with necessarily small screens being better/more handy than large-screen ones. I was wrong. Upshot: The iPhone was in dire need of a bigger screen.
Design: Apple nailed the the physical redesign. As I said before, Apple stretched out the 4S just enough to allow for a bigger screen, while making the iPhone lighter and easier to hold. It instantly and completely obsoletes the 4/4S. Which really wasn't that hard to do since the 4/4S was getting long in the tooth. I still feel the change every time I pick it up. Upshot: Great physical design.
Speed: It's fast. Period. The combo of the new A6 processor and LTE delivers. And as for its ability to process data -- irrespective of connection speeds -- I've never found myself saying, hey, this thing is slow. Upshot: Did I say it's fast?
Drop test: I knocked (inadvertently) the iPhone pretty hard into another hard surface. I couldn't find any scratches or physical damage. And everything seems to be intact internally. I did panic for a second when I tapped the top of the phone (right under the rear camera) to see if anything was loose and heard a rattling noise. But that fear was laid to rest when I went to an Apple store and tapped the same spot on four iPhone 5s and heard the exact same noise in each one. Upshot: Took a hard knock in stride.
Camera: I'm going to withhold detailed commentary on the camera until I get a better feel for what it can do. Suffice to say, there's almost no need anymore to use my small 14MP Kodak M580. If Apple (or another smartphone supplier) figures out how to fit optical zoom into a slim smartphone then -- for me at least -- a separate camera becomes all together unnecessary. The iPhone 5 takes good photos, though Apple should try to push the envelope more on camera tech, I think. Upshot: More later.
Finally, let me say that the comments above only scratch the surface of everyday iPhone usage scenarios. So, I won't pretend to cover all of the pros and cons of the iPhone 5. Constructive comments below are welcome.
Where the action is. Is it a secret?
ENTREPRENEURS | 10/05/2012
The Internet Revolution is the New Industrial Revolution.
In the mid-90s, ARPANet was transformed from a military safety net to the civilian Internet that has become such an integral part of our lives, bringing with it change not only technological, but societal and epic in scope.
Consider the following:
Forty years ago, the average person followed an employment path largely determined by birth and education, often committing to one employer until retirement. Today you probably wouldn’t even consider that as a viable option. Success is no longer solely determined by the right education, the perfect resume, or even your age and background. Teens as young as 12 are now coding websites, producing films and building networks through social media. By the time they’re adults, this online generation will already have some skills and real-world experience that a formal education just can’t provide.
The Internet is bringing a revolution along with it. Access to information combined with global supply and demand is reshaping established conventions and destroying old world definitions.
To understand where I am going with this, take the word ‘local.’ It once referred to your own street, town or even the state you lived in, but now everywhere is local. Americans are outsourcing their services to companies from China to Brazil, all from the comfort of their own homes. Where once our reach was limited by physical boundaries, today almost everyone and everything is just a digital handshake away.
Long established workplace conventions – from defined office hours to physical office space – are being tossed out the window. Success was once defined by a suit and the ‘9 to 5’; now it can achieved by working in pajamas and starting at noon after a morning at the gym and leisurely latte.
The very definition of ‘success’ is now drastically changing. It once meant a “keeping up with the Joneses” lifestyle your neighbors would be envious of; now it’s about making personal, intimate choices about how to live your life. Of course some still associate it purely with wealth, but for many, success is being measured in other ways –happiness, freedom, health, more time for travel and family.
Interconnected societies are the global engine that transforms people from employees to micro entrepreneurs.
Anyone now has the opportunity to monetize their skills, from the full-time worker looking for additional income to the once hobbyist building their very own business. True change affects both young and old, and while 15-year old hedge fund managers may capture the imagination, we’ve got 80-year old entrepreneurs grabbing headlines too. It’s truly an uncontested market where talent, skills and experience become commodities outside the narrow boundaries of traditional employment (if such a thing as “traditional” even exists anymore).
As we engage in a century where everyone is not only a global citizen, but a valuable “Brand in Waiting,” we begin to understand that the Internet Revolution IS in fact the Industrial Revolution of our time. It’s a sweeping social disruption that brings with it not only new inventions and scientific advances, but perhaps most importantly revolutionizes both the methods of work and we the workers ourselves.
It’s the return of personal choice and personal definitions of value, as we increasingly define ourselves by the work we produce rather than being defined only by the work available.
The Internet Revolution is the New Industrial Revolution.
In the mid-90s, ARPANet was transformed from a military safety net to the civilian Internet that has become such an integral part of our lives, bringing with it change not only technological, but societal and epic in scope.
Consider the following:
Forty years ago, the average person followed an employment path largely determined by birth and education, often committing to one employer until retirement. Today you probably wouldn’t even consider that as a viable option. Success is no longer solely determined by the right education, the perfect resume, or even your age and background. Teens as young as 12 are now coding websites, producing films and building networks through social media. By the time they’re adults, this online generation will already have some skills and real-world experience that a formal education just can’t provide.
The Internet is bringing a revolution along with it. Access to information combined with global supply and demand is reshaping established conventions and destroying old world definitions.
To understand where I am going with this, take the word ‘local.’ It once referred to your own street, town or even the state you lived in, but now everywhere is local. Americans are outsourcing their services to companies from China to Brazil, all from the comfort of their own homes. Where once our reach was limited by physical boundaries, today almost everyone and everything is just a digital handshake away.
Long established workplace conventions – from defined office hours to physical office space – are being tossed out the window. Success was once defined by a suit and the ‘9 to 5’; now it can achieved by working in pajamas and starting at noon after a morning at the gym and leisurely latte.
The very definition of ‘success’ is now drastically changing. It once meant a “keeping up with the Joneses” lifestyle your neighbors would be envious of; now it’s about making personal, intimate choices about how to live your life. Of course some still associate it purely with wealth, but for many, success is being measured in other ways –happiness, freedom, health, more time for travel and family.
Interconnected societies are the global engine that transforms people from employees to micro entrepreneurs.
Anyone now has the opportunity to monetize their skills, from the full-time worker looking for additional income to the once hobbyist building their very own business. True change affects both young and old, and while 15-year old hedge fund managers may capture the imagination, we’ve got 80-year old entrepreneurs grabbing headlines too. It’s truly an uncontested market where talent, skills and experience become commodities outside the narrow boundaries of traditional employment (if such a thing as “traditional” even exists anymore).
As we engage in a century where everyone is not only a global citizen, but a valuable “Brand in Waiting,” we begin to understand that the Internet Revolution IS in fact the Industrial Revolution of our time. It’s a sweeping social disruption that brings with it not only new inventions and scientific advances, but perhaps most importantly revolutionizes both the methods of work and we the workers ourselves.
It’s the return of personal choice and personal definitions of value, as we increasingly define ourselves by the work we produce rather than being defined only by the work available.
Chrome. How to take advantage of Google's browser.
CHROME
How to Get the Most Out of Google Chrome
By Paul Miller - MaximumPC, Oct 7, 20129
Let's face it, the light-and-fast Google Chrome browser is the only way to surf the web-no question. But whether you're new to the browser or an old veteran, we've got some tricks to improve your mileage. Our Google Chrome Optimization Guide will show you which Google Chrome extensions to download and ways to tweak settings you didn't even know were there.
Take a Shortcut
Before we dive in to Chrome's many hidden gems, let's start with some basics (run before you walk, as they say). Just like in Windows, shortcuts can save you a ton of time in Chrome, as well as having to constantly reach for the mouse to perform menial tasks such as opening new tabs. Memorize these handy shortcuts and you'll be well on your way to mastering Chrome:
Ctrl+N: Opens a new window.
Ctrl+T: Opens a new tab.
Ctrl+Shift+N:: Opens a new window in incognito mode so you can, uh, shop birthday gifts on the sly. Yeah, that's what this is used for, right?
Ctrl+Shift+T: Resurrects the last tab you just sent to the graveyard. You can reopen the last 10 tabs you closed.
Alt+F or Alt+E: Opens the Chrome menu.
Ctrl+Shift+B: Toggles the bookmarks bar on and off.
Ctrl+H: Opens the History page.
Ctrl+J: Opens the Downloads page.
Shift+Esc: Opens Chrome's Task Manager, so you can see which tabs are using the most resources, potentially slowing down performance.
These are just some of the many, many Window keyboard, Google Chrome feature, address bar, webpage, and text shortcuts available in Chrome. If you spend a few minutes each day learning a couple of new shortcuts, it won't be long until you've committed them all to memory.
Now, onto the fun stuff...
Enable Chrome's Gold Icon
Vinyl decals won't make your Honda Civic go any faster than it's already capable of going, and by that same token, replacing Chrome's icon with the hidden Gold version doesn't offer anything other than an aesthetic change. Be that as it may, it's super easy to add a little bling:
Right-click Google Chrome's shortcut and select Properties
Select the Shortcut tab and click Change Icon...
Choose the Gold icon and press OK, then Apply the change
After you swap the icon, sit back and languish in the jealousy of your co-workers!
Get Freaky with Favicons!
One reason to use Chrome is because it offers a clean and clutter-free interface, a fact that's not lost on competing browser makers who've attempted to emulate the look and feel of Chrome. Even still, there's room for improvement. One way to simplify Chrome's interface even further is to only use Favicons in the bookmarks bar.
First, make sure the bookmarks bar is enabled. If it isn't, press Ctrl+Shift+B to toggle it on, or press the Menu button denoted by three lines in the upper right-hand corner (previously the Wrench icon), expand the Bookmarks option, and select Show bookmarks bar.
Now that you can see the Bookmarks bar, go through your bookmarks and delete the text of existing ones, and do the same when adding a new bookmark. What you'll be left with is a bunch of Favicons, which not only looks cleaner, but it saves space too. Pretty neat, isn't it?
Home Sweet Homepages
Why settle for a single homepage when you can own two, three, or even a dozen? Or more! We're creatures of habit, and if you're like us, you have a selection of websites you visit every time you fire up your browser. In Chrome, it's easy to configure multiple homepages. Just go to Menu > Settings and select the 'Open a specific page or set of pages' radio button. Click the Set pages hyperlink and start typing in your go-to websites.
Fool Your Friends with Fake Edits
It's not nice to prank your friends and family, but it can be hilarious, not to mention incredibly easy in Google Chrome. Let's say you want to convince your co-worker that AMD just purchased Intel for a mere $35 million (as if!). Load up a reliable website for tech news, like MaximumPC.com, right-click an article's headline, and select Inspect Element. This will bring up a developer console in the lower portion of the browser where you can edit the webpage locally. Change the headline, and if you want to go all out, do the same for the thumbnail image and even the article text. Close out the developer console and all that's left is a fake news story on a legitimate website!
Of course, there are practical uses for the developer console that don't include pranking your buddies. It's a neat way to inspect various web code and analyze HTML parse errors to ensure a clean website.
Command Chrome Like a Boss
Google Chrome is a constant work in progress, and often times the developers will disable certain functions that might not be ready for prime time for one reason or another. If you want to see what they are, and even enable them, type Chrome://flags in the address bar (Omnibar) and hit Enter. Bear in mind that they've all been disabled for a reason, and enabling one could break your browser.
Another one of our favorite commands is Chrome://memory, which shows not only how much memory Chrome is consuming, but also other browsers running on your system.
There are lots of other commands to play around with. Type Chrome://about to see a list of them.
Experiment on Canary and Leave Chrome Alone
If you're not feeling adventurous enough to tweak your stable Chrome build but still want to experiment, what you need is Canary. What's Canary, you ask? It's the nightly build of Chrome intended for developers, so you may run into buggy behavior on occasion, but the neat thing is Canary can run alongside Chrome at the same time. Changes you make to the Canary browser have no effect on Chrome, and vice versa.
Split the Browser Window
The advent of tabbed browsing changed everything, but sometimes you may want to see two webpages side-by-side. You can do that by dragging and splitting a tab from the main browser window so that it runs in a separate window, but you can also split Chrome into a dual-view mode with a bit of JavaScript magic.
Chrome Split View
Click the above hyperlink and type in the two webpages you want to view side-by-side in a single, neat window. It's an easy way to compare prices between two online vendors, search results from two different engines, or keep track of different sports, among other uses.
Create a Separate Account for Little Billy
It wasn't all that long ago when creating separate profiles for multiple Chrome users was slightly complicated and involved mucking around Windows folders, copying contents, and performing other tasks. These days it's as simple as going into Settings and clicking the Add new user button under the Users section.
Creating a separate Chrome account is a handy way to keep little Billy's browser settings separate from yours, and also allows you both to sync your Google account on the same PC. What it doesn't do is secure your data from prying eyes, so view this more of a convenience than a security setting.
To switch between multiple users, click the icon in the upper left-hand corner and select the appropriate profile. Alternately, you can press Ctrl+Shift+M to switch between accounts.
Extensions, Extensions, Extensions
Still the best way to customize Chrome to your liking is with Extensions, and long gone are the days when this was a reason to cling to Firefox. Chrome's extensions have grown in number and functionality, and there are plenty of good ones out there. Some of our favorites include:
Awesome New Tab Page: Do you know who's awesome? You are, and that's why you need Awesome New Tab Page. In a word, it's 'awesome'. Yes, it looks a little like Metro, or whatever Microsoft is calling the funky UI in Windows 8 these days, but instead of dominating your desktop, it simply spices up Chrome with a highly customizable interface that displays a series of widgets and links.
Buffer: Are you addicted to Twitter, Facebook, Google Reader, Reddiit, or Hacker News? Then for the love of all that is holy, do your followers a favor and install Buffer, which will spread your flood of tweets and messages out over time. It's an easy way to stay social, and also the courteous thing to do.
Too Many Tabs: There's no shame in being a tab-aholic, nor is there in admitting you need help. That's exactly what Too Many Tabs does — it helps you sort through your bazillion open tabs and find the one you're looking for.
Print Friendly & PDF: If you print out a lot of webpages, this is a must-have extension. It allows you to strip out unnecessary items, like ads and other content and wasted space that takes up paper or ink.
Pacman: In the old days of computing, you slacked off by playing Minesweeper or Solitaire. Maybe you remember playing SkiFree. There are better time wasters out there, and one of them is Pacman. which is available to play right in your Chrome browser with those familiar sounds that used to cost a quarter to hear.
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