It was a matter of time. A question of when, not if. With Apple’s stock flirting with its all time high (and over it probably were it for the stock option backdating scandal), Cupertino-based Apple knows that it needs to keep the hits coming.
As the iPod remains the music player par excellence despite MSFT’s foray into the space with Zune, Apple is not only holding down the fort, but it is also taking the battle to many more companies and competitors.
Engadget has a fantastic in-depth, detailed overview here. Other media outlets have already narrowed down the key components. To summarize, the following are five facts on the device, dubbed the iPhone:
* The phone is 11.6 millimeters thick with a 3.5-inch-wide touchscreen and a 2-megapixel camera.
* The device integrates functions of Apple’s popular iPod music and video players and has 8 gigabytes of storage.
* It runs a version of OS X, the same operating system that powers the company’s Mac computers. It also has Apple’s Safari browser for Internet surfing.
* The phone will use the network of AT&T’s cellular unit, Cingular Wireless.
* The iPhone can also connect to the Internet using Wi-Fi wireless technology, and has Bluetooth, the short-range wireless technology used to support wireless headsets or link to other devices such as printers.
For months now I have been describing to colleagues and friends what the ideal phone should be, and while it’s certainly premature to hand out accolades, it looks like Steve Jobs and the Apple team have come as close to perfection as they possibly could.
Also announced at Macworld: the Apple TV, which was previously dubbed iTV. According to Marketwatch: It will feature a 40-gigabyte hard drive and be able to store up to 50 hours of video. The device can stream to five personal computers, and will be able to hold movies, television shows, music and photographs. Apple TV will be priced at $299 and begin shipping in February, Jobs said.
[Added later] The stock market reaction to Nokia and Motorola might be more psychological, since a further perusal of the product specs suggests that the iPhone is aiming to strike deep into Palm, MSFT, Blackberry etc. businesses.
Digg this Blog
Share on Facebook
WatchMojo on Twitter
WatchMojo on YouTube
Add to Favorites
WatchMojo NewsletterAs someone who does not live in Silicon Valley but is influenced personally and professionaly, I have always looked for articles, books and movies that capture the origins, history and nature of the most successful strip of land in the area of business technology, if not the world. That’s right: Silicon Valley.
Some background, from Wikipedia.org:
Silicon Valley is the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California in the United States. The term originally referred to the region’s large number of silicon chip innovators and manufacturers, but eventually came to refer to all the high tech businesses in the area. Even though it’s not truly a valley, it is a metonym for the high-tech sector generally.
The term Silicon Valley was coined by journalist Don Hoefler in 1971. He used it as the title of a series of articles “Silicon Valley USA” in a weekly trade newspaper Electronic News which started with the January 11, 1971 issue. Valley refers to the Santa Clara Valley, located at the southern end of San Francisco Bay, while Silicon refers to the high concentration of semiconductor and computer-related industries in the area. These and similar technology firms slowly replaced the orchards which gave the area its initial nickname, the Valley of Heart’s Delight.
For many years in the 1970s and 1980s, journalists often referred to it as Silicone Valley. This was before the name became commonplace in American culture. Unfamiliar with silicon, writers assumed that it was a misspelling of silicone, a material used in caulking, breast implants, and other products that had recently been introduced to the public.
As a sidenote, the first time I traveled to San Francisco was to meet Yahoo!, Google, a bunch of ad agencies and IGN, the company who bought my last company. If I had to be 100% honest, my then-boss and I were not even 100% sure of the pronociation (does it rime with cone or con?), I mean, we sort of knew, but not really…
As such, I was excited when I came across In Search of the Valley via TechCrunch (which in of itself shows just how influential TC is…). All to say, I was intrigued.
In Search of the Valley is the story of “three friends’ personal journey into the psyche of Silicon Valley, when in September of 2004 they swapped London for California, spending one month visiting and talking to many of the valley’s heavyweights and biggest personalities.”
The three friends are Steve O’Hear, Fleeta Siegel and Selwyn George. “Not that it matters” but O’Hear happens to be wheelchair-bound but judging from his website, he certainly falls in the category of folks who overcome everything and anything… but what struck me, if I had to be honest (this is so not politically incorrect or anything but who cares), is that Siegel and George did not let the challenges of traveling with someone in a wheelchair stop them from this adventure. I know that sounds horrible when you read it but ask yourself how many blokes would travel from London to SF and then drive around a van with someone in a wheelchair while filming a documentary. Props to them for doing that, and, I guess, shame on me for pointing this out.
Anyway, onto the movie: The trio does manage to get some face time with many interesting people, both with people who are in front of the spotlights as well as people who are mainly behind the scenes. For example, we all use Adobe products (be it directly or indirectly through acquisitions), but few of us have ever heard of let alone heard words from one its co-founders, John Warnock (poolside to boot).
Other more prominent interviewees include Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and Guy Kawasaki, the part-time VC and full-time speaker/blogger/industry cheerleading extraordinaire…
While on the one hand it might have been nice to see even bigger names, the truth is that these would have been somewhat less sincere and candid. Marc Canter for example is pretty direct about everything.
Tim O’Reilly provides some nice insights, John Warnock is indispensable. As far as I am concerned, it’s just nice to get footage of Steve Wozniak who is always in the shadows of you know who… Marc Canter too is great, he’s the founder of Macromedia, one of the more influential companies in digital media today (part of Adobe). Craig Newmark, whom we’re big fans of, makes an appearance along with many others: Apple co-founder, Steve Wozniak; Adobe co-founder, John Warnock; Macromedia co-founder, Marc Canter; Craiglist founder, Craig Newmark; O’Reilly Media founder, Tim O’Reilly; Apache developer, Brian Behlendorf; Digibarn co-founder, Bruce Damer; Videographer, Al Lundell; Macintosh developer, Andy Hertzfeld, Academic, Brenda Laurel; Personal Computer pioneer, Lee Felsenstein; and many others.
My favorite part though is the scene when they get to a lobby (I saw it at 2am in my hotel room) and asked for someone, only to hear the reception say “such a person does not work there.” That captured their adventure probably better than most things.
Another was the cult of personality that some in the Valley have grown to develop. The mere thought of hearing one intrerviewee talk about having nearly met Steve Jobs once years ago but not having ever had the chance to do so again makes you realize that, well, sometimes it’s a good thing to be far away from the Valley. Then again, it is Steve Jobs, after all.
And while we’re on the topic of Apple… what is up with Steve Wozniak’s necklace. Silicon Valley really is different…
All to say, I think the documentary is entertaining for people who live, breathe and work out of the Valley. For people who work in the space but don’t live in the area, and as such might not be privy to many obvious things, it’s simply a must see. It last approximately 90 minutes, not too short, not too long.
Check it out here.
I teared into Plaxo and essentially lumped LinkedIn in the same pile [of crap]. Was it unfair? No, since they seem to rely on spam to build their business.
But, fair is fair, apparently, they do occasionally offer somethign of value. Via Valleywag from GigaOm: On the acquisition of MyBlogLog by Yahoo! for a reported $12M, Om Malik writes:
This just might be one of the first few virtual company acquisition. One of the founders lived in Massachusetts, while another called Orlando his home, along with two other developers. Rafer lives in San Francisco. And they met on LinkedIn. Yup, something for our friends on Web Worker Daily to chew on!
Read my previous post on Linked In and mainly Plaxo here:
I apologize for not adding any content over the past few days. The fact that we’re covering the North American International Auto Show in Deeeeee-troit is secondary to the fact that Mojo Supreme was migrating all of its data onto new servers…
And like everything, it was smooth but not as smooth as it could be, I once again thank the entire IT team for being on the ball and working roung the clock to make sure that the sites do not go down. Of course, adding content was another issue.
We’ve always been ahead of our IT needs but between:
- our explosive 1-year 2,500% growth in traffic
- content database growth (0 to 20,000 pages of content - of which included 3,000+ videos at WatchMojo.com)
- ever growing search engine index and crawler and heightened query level at MetaMojo.com
meant that sooner or later, we’d have to get bulk up our platform. 99% of our work is done… so my IT guys gave me the green light to go crazy.
I have plenty of content to add on this blog alone, let alone what our writers have to add to our 16 others.
A sneak peek at what is coming on this site over the next day or two:
- thoughts on Quantcast after my interview with CEO and co-founder Konrad Feldman
- review on In Search of the Valley, a DVD that the guys over there were kind enough to send me to review.
- what to expect from Automotive Online Ad Market in next few years based on some interviews with carmaker marketing folks here over the past few days…
- Gratification of a reluctant entrepreneur and one time writer…
- random observations on the future of digital media walking around the floor, media room and so forth.
- A lot of companies have begun to email asking for reviews, writeups etc. I will try to get to them all… I appreciate your interest in the blog and what we think, frankly, so the least we can do is return the courtesy.
- Initial thoughts on wisdom of crowds rhetoric surrounding Wikia’s search engine.
- Much more to come…
PLAY
