Articles tagged Steve Jobs.

Is it June already? Well not quite, but certainly close enough to really start sinking our teeth into what we will find at the WWDC in 2011.

Having personally attended several Mac trade-shows back in the day (not any recently since Apple has canceled such events), the anticipation for Steve or "JobsCo" to reveal something new is no different this time around. Matter of fact one can argue the stakes are even higher with so many more irons in the fire.

A group calling itself Apple Retail Workers Union picked up some nice press yesterday when they sent out their own form of a press release to some major media outlets. The goal? Simple. Unionize Apple retail stores. The chances of this happening? None to, well, none.

There are any number of reasons why Apple retail stores won't ever form a union, such as Apple's overall pay being much higher than the average mall store (you won't find any Genius salaries in The GAP), and benefits are good. But there are two key reasons any union effort for Apple retail employees will fail. First, Apple retail employees are a happy, satisfied bunch, because the atmosphere Apple has created for them is top of the class. Secondly, Steve Jobs has no love for unions (so it appears). In 2007 Jobs told a school-reform conference in Texas "I believe that what is wrong with our schools in this nation is that they have become unionized in the worst possible way..." Jobs also added "This unionization and lifetime employment of K-12 teachers is off-the-charts crazy." As a result of Jobs public stance it would appear Unions have no love for Jobs either.

I'm a big fan of the original Star Wars films, so without delay, Steve Jobs in Carbonite.

It appears Han Solo has given up his Carbonite casing for Steve Jobs. If you are a Star Wars fan you might find this a great collectible, but not exactly sure how well your iPhone 4 will lay flat on any type of hard surface... Ah, but functionality isn't the real point here is it? Better get this case while you can, as I envision a cease and desist letter coming from Apple very quickly. This case simply makes for a great gift or item to put display on that cubical shelf. You can find it here from the artistic minds at Society6.

When Steve Jobs introduced us to Lion (OS X 10.7) back in October, there were a few items that were certainly interesting to note:

• Lion OS X 10.7

  Lion will be the next giant step away from computing as we have known it for the past 25 years.

  App Store was a Lion Feature but will be available four-five months before Lion is released — We should mark our calendars for January 20th, which will be 90 days since Jobs' announcement. Will Apple will release iWork 11 on that date and make it available only via the App Store? Expect Apple to move this way to make their Apple Store shelves less filled with software (I mean how many iPhone Apps can you buy at an Apple Store? Answer: Zero) and more filled with accessories and Mac/iPhone gear that is tangible.
• Lion is a move away from the Finder — The Finder was Apple's original way of helping us technical neophytes understand directory structures and files. It is clear that Steve wants to move to the next step which is to make us less dependent on files and where they are stored. Instead we are just use them in the appropriate application. For example, think of Mail.app. Do you deal with files per se? No, you are dealing with an App called Mail.app and it helps you organize "files" called E-mails. A better example is iPhoto. Few of us rarely ever see the actual files in iPhoto but instead manipulating those files through the application. Never must one go to ~/Pictures/iPhoto Library/ and so on. My bet is Steve would like to make our computing day file-and-directory-structure-free. Apps just handle everything for us, in a more useful way.
• Lion is a move away from the Dock — We were introduced to the Dock (in its current form) with OS X 10.0 (sure there were previews of it in OS 9 and 8). But the Dock is limiting. There are only so many items one can fit on the Dock until it becomes so small that you need a magnifying glass to understand what is in there. You should see Mark (Guy #1's) dock. It is so small and so busy, only he can use his computer. If you think about it, the iOS has a dock, but it is far more flexible and far more customizable... yes the main screens (or windows) we swipe through to find,.... what? Apps. See the previous point. Apps become center stage and Lion will make this more evident.
• Lion will make files, not apps, cloud-centric — In Lion expect to see that auto-save also means auto-save to the cloud. For those of you who use IMAP as your e-mail protocol or MobileMe (based on IMAP), you can quickly picture how all files could work that way — not just e-mail. This makes sense with Apple's massive data center in North Carolina. So with Lion I can work on a presentation, then continue when I get on the plane with my iPad.... because all files are synced (like IMAP e-mail). Apps on the other hand are not. They must be installed on each device. In the future, I'm sure if you buy an app for the Mac (through the App Store) it will also have an iOS flavor as well (like iWork does).

A lot more is in-store for us with Lion. Steve said he only had a limited amount of time to share with us some key features. What I think that really meant is he wasn't quite ready to reveal the massive change (and improvements) Lion will bring to our computing lives. Lion will be the next giant step away from computing as we have known it for the past 25 years.