Cathy Kearney has been with Apple for most of those 40 years. Apple's Vice President of European Operations has risen from being hired as a Fixed Asset Accountant in the finance department in Cork in 1989. She is with Apple long enough to appreciate that there are good days and there are bad days.
She described the strategy re-set which followed the 1999 redundancies as the first step in a process which led to the creation of what Apple in Cork is today.
I am the target market for this phone. I wanted to love it. But despite its size and its downright affordable price tag when you consider the performance and camera quality, the iPhone 12 Mini is a phone for people who either don’t use their phones often enough throughout the day to stress about battery life or who carry a battery pack with them wherever they go. The iPhone 12 and 12 Pro are the iPhones the rest of us should buy.
In a culture in which work is always evaluated and rewarded under the iron rubric of productivity, in which the realm of freedom is never safe, and we must always suspect ourselves of utility, in such a culture how do you know that your commitments are authentic? Why do you think your work is worth doing? How can you be sure that your commitment to smart appliances starts and ends with you? Or that you want to write because you’re a writer, not because you need to stand out in a competitive job market? What’s alien in what we want? What’s us?
As for the anxiety factor of his invention, Cuomo prefers to focus more on the positives. Using his wife as an example where chat bubbles actually relieve stress, he said because of COVID she checks in with her 86-year-old mother a few towns over, and when she sees those dot-dot-dots, her reaction is reassurance. “My wife says, ‘I hold my breath until I see the bubble with the dots, she's responding to me.’ … That security that you see when they’re typing, you know it’s safe.”
I have so much entertainment sitting inside my iPhone and my iPad and my Mac mini -- tv shows, movies, books, podcasts -- why do I still go and 'try' out new apps and new games?
It's time for a change. My target is now to reduce my iPhone to, more or less, an iPod and an internet communication device.
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Thanks for reading.