IPad, Mercantilism and the Chinese Plantation
“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” ~F. Scott Fitzgerald This is not a post about CRM. If you could apply Fitzgerald’s definition of a first-rate intelligence to a thing or group endeavor—always a dubious [...]
Apple and US labor
Steve Jobs supposedly told President Obama ““Those (iPhone) jobs aren’t coming back,” according to this article in the New York Times. Apple’s labor in China is also showing up in much hand-wringing in the Presidential race. Let’s explore a few other dimensions of the issue: The Chinese labor is a small part of the iPhone [...]
The Social Revolution Has Just Begun
Depending on whom you ask, 2011 was either the year of the iPad or the year of social. The truth is that they were and are equally weighted because they are catalysts for each other, and while each can exist without the other, imagining such a thing is like trying to imagine a world where [...]
Kindle Fire: WiFi Problems Fixed, Cool Device!
I wanted to follow up on my unhappy post about Kindle Fire. When I first got the device, I couldn’t do anything with it because I couldn’t connect to WiFi. As a quick aside, having had side-by-side 3G and WiFi on my iPad, I really like having the 3G and frequently turn WiFi off. I [...]
Are iPads Invading the Enterprise?
I recently read an article suggesting 92% of Fortune 500 companies are either testing or deploying iPads. According to Good Technology, though, 2 industries — Financial Services and High Technology — account for nearly 50% of the Top 100 iPad accounts. Interestingly, Retail, the industry I think could benefit the most from tablets, only accounts [...]
iSalute : Remembering Steve Jobs
I was about to board my flight at Chicago’s O’Hare when the news of Steve Jobs passing away broke. When I landed in San Fran (My United flight did not have Wi-Fi)- my thoughts were with the family, Apple colleagues and the huge number of Steve Jobs and Apple supporters. Innumerable iPads, Macs, iPods inside [...]
Minimum Viable or Insanely Great? We’ll Miss You, Steve Jobs
We live in a world that has learned to embrace and even worship the notion of a “minimum viable product,” not products that are the best that we can do. This is done for risk mitigation reasons. We are concerned that we may not know what’s best, we need to get feedback, and we need [...]
Amazon’s Kindle Fire diverges the Tablet market
In his book The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin called divergence the driving force that creates a new species. Last week Amazon enhanced their Kindle range of e-readers, but also applied some divergence to the tablet market by extending in to a new sub-category of mobile tablet devices with the Kindle Fire. I think it’s [...]
Apple’s garden wall is cracking
At next week’s iPhone 5 launch, we’ll marvel at Apple’s leadership of the mobile Web. But early adoption of HTML5 and the lesson of history tells us iOS will soon be in decline.
The Innovator’s Challenge: SAP Crosses the Rubicon, but the Empire is Still to be Won
SAP has spent several years and several billion dollars trying to formulate a strategy that propels it ahead of an unprecedented set of market forces, and this year’s TechEd helped set the stage for a 2012 that is poised to be the year SAP finally crosses the innovation Rubicon. Of course, as students of history [...]
