Eideard

It’s no secret that the rise of smartphones, tablets and social networking has fostered an entirely new market for app developers, but a freshly released study has now attempted to quantify this impact, in terms of real jobs.

According to TechNet, a bipartisan network of tech execs, the so-called “App Economy” has created an estimated 466,000 jobs since 2007, when the iPhone was first unveiled.

The report specifies that this estimate includes all jobs at Facebook-focused companies like Zynga, as well as dev gigs at Amazon, AT&T and Electronic Arts, in addition to the obvious heavyweights, Apple and Google.

As far as geography goes, California leads the way as the most app-friendly state, though New York City tops the list of metropolitan areas. It’s not an entirely bi-coastal affair, though, with some two-thirds of all app-related jobs located outside of California and New York.

TechNet acknowledges that the App Economy “is only four years old and extremely fluid,” so it’s likely that these numbers will fluctuate in the years to come, though the organization says these numbers underscore a fundamental principle: “Innovation creates jobs, and in this case, lots of them.”

You can read the full report at technet.org.

And don’t get your shorts bunched figuring the numbers are going to diminish or decline. When it comes to the predominance of the mobile web – you ain’t seen nuthin’ yet.

Suggesting that physical textbooks are no longer the ideal learning tool, Apple on Thursday proposed a new platform and method of digital education: iBooks 2 for iPad.

Speaking to the press at New York’s Guggenheim Museum, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, Phil Schiller, said current textbooks are not very portable, they’re not durable, and they’re not interactive. He believes the iPad stacks up better, particularly with the new iBooks 2…

Demonstrating iBooks 2 on Thursday, Apple’s Roger Rosner showed off how iBooks 2 allows texbooks to start off with intro movies. He also quickly went across thumbnails for pages, and could skip across chapters.

Touting the new textbooks as “gorgeous,” Rosner argued that “no printed book can compete with this.” He demonstrated the ability to pinch into photos, and showcased 3D models of biological structures that can be rotated and manipulated in real-time — all of this interaction happens within a digital textbook in iBooks 2…

Read the rest of this entry »

Just about the simplest computer commercial ever produced
 
Apple design guru Jonathan “Jony” Ive has been awarded a second knighthood by the Queen of England as part of her annual list of honors. Ive has been named Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, or KBE for short. When in England or any member of the British Commonwealth like Canada, he will be entitled to be addressed as Sir Jonathan.

Its his second honor from the Queen, who named him Commander of the British Empire, or CBE, in 2006. The new title will be conferred by the touch of a sword held by the Queen.

Interestingly, Ive is only one of two people being given this particular title this year, from the extensive list of other honors published in the London Gazette. The other KBE recipient is the art historian John Patrick Richardson, who wrote a well regarded biography of Pablo Picasso.

The best profile of Ive that I know of is this 2006 BusinessWeek story by my former colleague Peter Burrows. It’s more than five years old, and so may be a bit dated, but it’s terrific.

I’ve worked with some terrible industrial designers – mostly for firms that relied on subcontractors of components to provide whatever was most affordable. That part of life included working for the firm that invented and first produced aerosol products. Yup – like hairspray.

I would love to work with someone like Jony Ive.

Police said on Friday they eavesdropped on thieves speaking Russian, Mandarin and Arabic to make the biggest identity theft bust of its kind in U.S. history against a $13 million crime ring specializing mainly in selling Apple electronics overseas.

Authorities said “Operation Swiper” indicted 111 people from five criminal enterprises in Queens, New York, the nation’s most ethnically diverse county, where 138 languages are spoken and more than half the population is foreign born…

A two-year investigation revealed the enterprises had ties to larger syndicates in Africa, Europe, the Middle East and eastern Asia, Kelly said. The crime rings ran nationwide shopping sprees in which “crew leaders” oversaw “shoppers” and thieves conducted their business from five-star hotels, renting luxury cars and private jets…

Police said they seized $650,000 in cash, Apple computer products worth tens of thousands of dollars, $850,000 worth of computer equipment stolen from the Citigroup Building in Queens, seven handguns and a truck full of electronics, computers, designer shoes, watches and identity theft equipment…

Bosses of each crime ring received blank credit cards from suppliers in Russia, Libya, Lebanon and China.

The bosses then hired “skimmers” who posed for jobs such as waiters and retail shop workers so they could use electronic devices to steal information from customer credit cards. That information was then sent to a “manufacturer” who programed the information into the magnetic strips of blank credit cards.

The crime rings also used card printing machines to forge credit cards and state drivers licenses to match them…

Police then said “shoppers” in the crime rings would use the forged credit cards and IDs to go on weekly shopping sprees around the U.S. at retailers such as Nordstrom’s, Macy’s, Gucci and Best Buy and sell those items mostly to people overseas.

But by far, Gregory Antonsen said, thieves spent the most time buying computer products from Apple. “This is primarily an Apple case,” Antonsen said. “Apple is a big ticket item and a very easy sell.”

Antonsen added forged credit cards were easy for criminals to make here because U.S. credit cards are less sophisticated than those in Europe, where fraud of this magnitude would have been much more difficult…

The indicted individuals are charged with crimes ranging from identity theft and forging credit cards to robbery. Police said 86 of the 111 people indicted for the crimes are currently in police custody and the remaining 25 were being sought.

It starts with the simplest thing in the world. Always read the details of your credit card statement. Doesn’t matter if it belongs to the company you work for or if it’s your own. You’re the best person to catch the skimmer.

Cripes, the first time I caught someone doing it was in the late 1970′s at my [then] favorite Indian/Muslim restaurant in NYC. I saw dinner at the restaurant come through twice in a month – weeks apart – but, I’d only been there for a long weekend at a trade show. The style of theft ain’t any different – just the tech that makes it easier.

February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011

Like many of my colleagues in Silicon Valley, I was having a fantastic day today. It is crisp in the shade, warm in the sun. The skies are a magical blue with puffy clouds floating like dreams. And when all seemed to be going well, an email in my inbox — without as much as the new message sound — arrived: Letter from Steve Jobs. It was as if the inbox was observing the solemnnity of the occasion. It is an end of an era.

The first thought that ran through my head was about Steve’s health, and I thought to myself that this cannot be good. I don’t care about him being the CEO or head of Apple. What I really do care about is his health. He wouldn’t be making this decision unless things were pretty dire.

It is incredibly hard for me to write right now. To me, like many of you, it is an incredibly emotional moment. I cannot look at Twitter, and through the mist in my eyes, I am having a tough time focusing on the screen of this computer. I cannot hear the sounds of the street or the ring of my phone. The second hand on my watch moves slowly, ever so slowly. I want to wake up and find it was all a nightmare.

And while I wish for him to have more time with his family, I am also being very selfish. I will miss the thespian who made inanimate objects like a computer become a thing to behold. A few years ago, I compared Steve to Howard Hughes using the line, “Some men dream the future. He built it…”

Jobs (and by extension, Apple) has taught me (and I am sure others) a big lesson: If you want to change something, you have to be patient and take the long view. If Apple and Steve’s incredible comeback teaches us something, it’s that when you are right and the world doesn’t see it that way, you just have to be patient and wait for the world to change its mind.

Today, we are living in a world that’s about taking short-term decisions: CEOs who pray to at the altar of the devil called quarterly earnings, companies that react to rivals, politicians who are only worried about the coming election cycle and leaders who are in for the near-term gain.

And then there are Steve and Apple: a leader and a company not afraid to take the long view, patiently building the way to the future envisioned for the company. Not afraid to invent the future and to be wrong. And almost always willing to do one small thing — cannibalize itself. Under Steve, Apple was happy to see the iPhone kill the iPod and iPad kill the MacBook. He understands that you don’t walk into the future by looking back. If you do, you trip over yourself and break your nose.

Thanks, Steve.

Thank you, Om, for bringing insight and understanding to sadness. Thanks for opening the door to the future – that seemed like it was ready to be shuttered by the naysayers who never believed in anything enough to fight for it with their whole being.

Click the link in the post and read the whole letter. I’ve posted about half of it here.

The Alaska Permanent Fund sets aside a portion of oil revenue and gives some of that money back to Alaska citizens each year. This pool of money is also used to invest in the stock market, a practice that has proved to be quite lucrative.

A recent quarterly report from the company that manages the Fund reveals Apple and not oil revenue is the reason the Fund is growing. The Fund holds over 617,000 shares in Apple which were bought when Apple’s stock was much lower than its current US$391 per share. It’s initial $73 million investment is now worth $207 million. This jump has helped propel the Fund to a healthy $40.1 billion, its highest level ever.

The Fund also owns stock in IBM, EMC, Cisco, GE and others, but Apple is its largest single holding and its best performer.

Someone better tell Sarah she’s better off learning where Cupertino is – instead of Murmansk.

Extremely detailed knock-off Apple retail stores, complete with blue t-shirt-wearing employees claiming to work for the company, have been discovered in China.

According to the blog BirdAbroad, several counterfeit Apple stores have popped up in Kunming, China. One such location featured a winding staircase and employees in t-shirts with Apple logos and name tags.

“The name tags around the necks of the friendly salespeople didn’t actually have names on them – just an Apple logo and the anonymous designation “Staff,”” the report read.

The author called the store “the best ripoff store” she had ever seen, though there were several giveaways, such as the poor quality of the staircase and a sub-par paint job. Also, the stores do not appear to have upgraded to Apple’s Retail 2.0 layout that uses iPads as “smart signs.”

According to her, the employees at the store “all genuinely think they work for Apple.” After store security guards and employees prohibited her from taking photos, the author hinted that she and her husband were “two American Apple employees visiting China and checking out the local stores” and were then allowed to photograph the store.

A world-class “Har”.

Apple led U.S. retail growth in the first quarter of calendar 2011, accounting for a whopping 20 percent of all sales growth by publicly traded American retailers during the three-month period.

The data comes from retail sales expert David Berman, who told USA Today that he believes Apple’s retail success is “mind-boggling.” In the quarter which ended in March, Apple’s U.S. sales saw an 80 percent increase by $4.6 billion…

During the three-month span to start 2011, Apple’s retail sales were up 32 percent, and in-store revenue from Mac sales was up 90 percent. Revenue from retail stores was $3.18 billion, a year-over-year increase of 90 percent…

While international expansion has become a priority, Apple also has big plans for its stores in the U.S. The company’s flagship store on Fifth Avenue in New York City is currently under renovation, as the company is spending $6.7 million to replace the giant 32-foot glass cube that serves as an entrance to the underground retail store.

Though I’m a recent fanboy – I switched a few years back after a quarter-century of plodding in the wonderful world of Wintel – I post this because of discussions among investors who are already panicking themselves over what they call Bubble 2.0. That fear can be laid at their own feet if they’re foolish enough to make the same mistakes at root of the previous tech bubble: like investing in companies without a profitable business plan. The watchword among the timorous is “don’t invest in tech!”

But, Apple’s story doesn’t exist in a vacuum. What company followed them into 2nd place in retail sales growth in the 1st quarter? Um, Amazon.com.

Google’s bids for a pool of wireless patents were based on mathematical constants, say sources.

The portfolio of 6,000 patents was auctioned to realise some value from the assets of bankrupt telecoms firm Nortel. During the sale, Google’s bids were based on pi, other constants and the distance between the Earth and the Sun.

Google lost the auction as a consortium including Apple and Microsoft made the winning bid of $4.5bn…

The sale of the patent portfolio started as a five-way scrap between two separate consortia and individual firms including Google and Intel. Initial estimates suggested the portfolio would attract around $2bn but the four days of intense bidding saw the total rise sharply.

During its bids, Google picked numbers including Brun’s constant and Meissel-Mertens constant that were said to have “puzzled” others involved in the auction. When bids from rivals hit $3bn, Google reportedly bid pi, $3.14159bn, to up the ante.

“Either they were supremely confident or they were bored,” Reuters’ source said.

It is not clear what inspired Google to draw on obscure mathematics for its bids. However, Google co-founder Sergey Brin is widely acknowledged to be a maths prodigy and the bids may reveal his influence…

Ultimately the portfolio was being fought over by two groups: Google and Intel on one side and the Microsoft/Apple-led consortium on the other.

Reuters completely missed the Third Force analysis, which is – Google is often guided by a sense of humor reflecting the attitudes of the founders.