What sets Apple apart from its competitors, runs the consensus opinion, is the elegance and simplicity of the way its products look. But perhaps in Apple’s natural history, the design phase too has been replaced by a new stage of corporate evolution: the marketing stage.
Certainly, the news that Angela Ahrendts, Apple’s vice-president of retail and online stores, is, for the second year running, the tech giant’s highest paid executive suggests that her expertise in marketing is what’s being rewarded. And what a pleasant reward it is too.
On a chilly, rainy day in San Francisco 15 years ago, Steve Jobs took the stage at the 2001 Macworld Expo to present new Apple products. After talking about boring technicalities of new hardware and software, Jobs switched registers. He introduced Apple’s digital hub concept, then started talking about a revolution.
“There is a music revolution happening right now.”
The people who don't seem to be particularly perturbed by this potential development are headphone makers themselves. I've spoken with many of them during this year's CES and none feel threatened by or unprepared for Apple's rumored removal of the headphone jack. There are two reasons for this: one is that almost every headphone manufacturer, major or minor, has some sort of wireless product to offer prospective iPhone 7 owners. Only the truly premium, audiophile-class vendors — whose products aren't intended to be used with mobile devices anyway — don't have a Bluetooth variant to offer. The big names like Sennheiser and Audio-Technica are already working on entire portfolios of high-end wireless headphones, and others like Bose have been developing the technology for years. Nothing new on this front.
Hyphen, an eBook reader for EPUB files, attempts to bridge the gap between the power user and consumer. At its heart, it's a simple reader - but combined with its sharing and word selection strengths, it should be a contender as a host for your next eBook.
I'm afraid to open my Todo app to see what's up for tomorrow.
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Thanks for reading.