Results tagged “Corporate” from AppleHound

There is a certain thrill in following Apple rumors leading up to a keynote. What is Apple planning for Mac OS X and which cat comes after Leopard? What fabulous new products are going to appear when the store comes back online? Will the iPhone have GPS with navigation software? The possible answers to all of these questions and more can be found on a wide variety of Apple and gadget related sites.

Between Macworld and WWDC the average Apple follower has read thousands of blog posts discussing topics from the iPhone to ultra portable notebooks. The exciting (and sometimes disappointing) thing for many come keynote day is finding out how big of a sucker they were for the past five months. How many fabricated stories did they buy into? How much time did they squander reading crap designed to drive traffic and advertising impressions/clicks?

The fact is that an estimated 97% of what you have read was wrong. The rumor sites likely got you excited for *something* that Apple is not currently planning to deliver. I have written this post to help many who are struggling to deal with the post-keynote blues. The following points will help you avoid these pitfalls between this Apple announcement and the next.

Why is it that so many people talk about Steve Jobs as if he makes every decision in Apple? Was Steve the lead product manager on Leopard? Did he personally select the 300+ new features that were added? Does he pull the development staff together every day to run through the bug list? Did he develop Time Machine? Is he working on the iPhone SDK? Where does he find the time to manage every single detail in the company?

It should be obvious that Steve can not directly manage every project undertaken by the 17,787 Apple employees. So why is it that people are compelled to say things like...

It has been reported that Apple/AT&T have sold between 500,000 and 700,000 iPhones since being launched June 29th. What can we expect from Apple now that the iPhone is in so many hands?

• Leopard - Announced October release.
• iWork - Update to utilize Leopard features. Spreadsheet application?
• iLife - Updated to utilize Leopard features.
• .Mac - Updated to remain competitive with other online offerings.
• iPhone Updates - Enhancements and bug fixes (we will discuss current iPhone bugs in another article this week).
• iPhone SDK - Allow 3rd party development.
• The next iPhone - The iPhone will only remain a revolutionary device if Apple continues development on new hardware and software (our suggestions for the next iPhone will appear in another article).

The individuals that make up the current board of directors run investment, financial software development, biotechnology, clothing, and Internet businesses. Al Gore, former Vice President of the United States is also a member. The experience and business knowledge that this mix of individuals provides is extremely valuable to Apple.

Another individual on the board is Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google. We suspect that there are not many companies that have a direct competitor on their board of directors. The following items show areas where these companies may compete.

If Apple had a lot of money laying around to acquire a business, I believe one of the best selections would be Adobe.

The Adobe product line would compliment Apple's Pro applications nicely (or vice versa). Also, many high-end Mac users utilize Adobe applications to produce their creative works -- the most popular being Photoshop. What happens when this portion of your customer base waits for a new version of Photoshop before purchasing a new Mac Pro? Let me put it this way -- I have been told that businesses experience the most success when customers are buying their products. It is a strange phenomenon, and something I have never been able to grasp fully. So, I guess in this case it is a bad thing to have Adobe control your customers spending habits.

How is Apple able keep products like the iPod and iPhone a (pretty good) secret until a planned press conference or keynote?

Apple is a relatively small company with 17,787 employees (compared to Microsoft's 71,000), but that is still a lot of people to keep under control. So what's with all the secrets? Two words -- competitive advantage.

The problem is that having secrets in-house spurs rumors just like those that exist outside a company.

The Apple TV was delayed earlier this year (as I recall it was because a necessary update to iTunes was not ready to go). On April 12th Apple released a announcing the Leopard version of the Mac OS had been pushed back to October because they needed to pull some key software engineers to help with their iPhone product.

Does Apple have adequate staff to handle the demands of their current and future products? 3/4 of Apple's core product mix including iPhone and Apple TV are dependent on the Mac OS and some "key" software engineers. What happens when there is active development on all of these systems? Those key engineers aren't going to know which way to turn -- the Apple TV team will say "we need your help", and the iPhone team will say, "no, we need you". Apple's success will entice other manufactures to get in on the action, for example Microsoft with the Zune, LG Electronics with the "iPhone Killer" KE850 PRADA, and Netgear with the EVA8000, Most of us want to see Apple succeed, so lets hope they figure this out before it bites them in the butt again! :-)