Steve Jobs Resigns as CEO

Having grown up using a PC from middle school to college I didn’t know much about the history of Apple but I had heard of Steve Jobs. He co-invented the personal computer back in the early 80s (ok, technically 70s). 

After college I worked for a small design firm where all we used were Macs. That was 2005. I was amazed at the state of OS X and the company behind it. I read articles about Apple and of course Steve Jobs was always mentioned. He is credited for leading Apple from the brink in 1997 to the most profitable company in the world in 2011. John Gruber stated yesterday:

Jobs’s greatest creation isn’t any Apple product. It is Apple itself.

This is what intrigues me most about Steve. He isn’t directly responsible for any of Apple’s current lineup of products. They were all built by teams at Apple and released at the right time. Job’s magic is about putting together amazing teams of people who can create tightly integrated hardware and software products like the iPod, iPhone, and iPad. It isn’t about the products - it is about the organization behind them. The driving force to obliviate their current best seller because they have created something better. That is company culture and I believe it is Apple’s greatest asset. They aren’t stuck protecting the past - they are looking forward to the future and creating the next big thing.

As a fledgling entrepreneur I thank Steve Jobs for creating a company culture where innovation thrives and amazing products are created and shipped regularly. Thank you Steve.

App Store Subscriptions

Apple announced that they want a part of the subscription business on iPads and other iDevices. The downside is they want 30%. Forever. This seems too high to me. Apple provides a lot of valuable customers to new and existing platforms and they should be compensated for those leads however, 30% for subscription revenue infinitum is impossibly hard for most subscription services.

A more reasonable solution would be 30% of the first two subscription payments and then (essentially) a payment processing fee around 10% thereafter.

Why copying is rarely competition

Dell announced (or rather posted) that they are discontinuing their MacBook Air rival the Adamo. It is pretty obvious that after Apple announced the Air a few years ago that many manufacturers tried to one up Apple in the thinnest and lightest laptop specs. They were copying and competing on those two metrics without really understanding the strategy behind Apple’s introduction of the MacBook Air.

In October, Apple said that the newest MacBook Air is the laptop of the future, and that the entire Apple laptop family would essentially be following suit. Bam! Apple’s strategy with the Air is finally revealed. They needed a product where they could experiment in the market on the dimensions of size, weight, and thinness. The used the MacBook Air to push the envelope of what could be done to reduce all of those factors. The unibody design, the lack of ports and drives, were all done to test the waters before moving the mainstream products in that direction.

Dell and other manufacturers were only creating one off products and copying the Air rather than using it as a strategic move for their mainstream products. So, today the Adamo project is done and Dell goes back to business as usual, while Apple goes forward revamping their entire product line using the lessons learned from the MacBook Air.

What differentiates iOS

Confidence. Anyone can use iOS and feel confident. In a matter of seconds they can launch applications, create art, browse the web, write emails, and play games. This is why the iPhone is so successful - you really can’t screw up anything. Compare that to the PC industry. PCs (I’ll include Macs) are confusing for most users. Confusion creates self doubt and then fear, fear that they’ll break something while trying to accomplish a certain task.

Contrast that to iOS where they don’t worry about where you saved the file, or how to play music, or how to ‘burn’ a DVD. iOS breaks down the walls that have stopped people from using their computers. And when you remove those barriers it creates confidence. And users like to be confident in the tools that they use. So they buy tools that make them confident.

I have more confidence in my Mac and my iPhone now than I did in my Dell and my Nokia. Apple sold me on confidence.

The Next Generation of MacBooks

Apple announced the MacBook Air today. They also are skipping SSD drives and integrating the memory right on the main board. The Air comes in 64 GB, 128 GB, and 256 GB variants. I’m looking forward to the new MacBook Pros without DVD drives and faster storage. Interesting to see how things go.

How many iPod Touches did Apple sell?

I calculated that Apple sold 6.21 million iPod Touches in Q4 2010.

Facts and assumptions from Apple’s Q4 press release:

Facts:

iPhones sold:    14,100,000
AppleTVs:                250,000
iPads:                      4,190,000
iPod Touch:                              ?

~24,750,000 activated iOS devices in the quarter
(90 days * 275,000 average activations/day) 

Basic Math:

  24,750,000 (Quarterly iOS activations)
- 18,540,000 (iPhone + ATV + iPad)
___________
= 6,210,000 iPod Touches

That means that the iPod Touch accounts for 69% of all iPods sold. Wow!