Curated by Stuart Fogarty stuart@admaticallycom for AFAO'Meara Advertising, Streamabout The Video Agency and Admatic Ireland.
All comments will be posted - promise!
Apple turns 40 today. Yep, it was April Fool's Day, I eh, kid you not.
Now employing nearly 150,000 people and with a value of 700 Billion usd, it's been a long road. Steve Jobs and Woz met in 1971 but it was in 1976 that they launched Apple1, 50 of them, which 'they' built by hand. If you still have one, it's worth about 400k usd today. It was launched to their pals at The Homebrew Computer Club in Palo Alto. 1977 they launched Apple2; 1978 the external floppy drive; 1980 The Apple3 and went public. In 1981 Jobs became Chairman; 1983 was the launch of 'Lisa' and John Sculley joined. 1984 was the famous commercial which Jobs originally voiced and then replaced with Richard Dreyfuss; 1985 was when 'Lisa' was dropped and Jobs left. 1987 Woz left; 1989 was the first portable (Mac book); 1991 it launched Quicktime; 1997 Jobs returned and the famous partnership with Microsoft; 1998 was the Imac; 2001 Itunes and the Ipod; 2006 The MacBook Pro. 2007 The Iphone; 2008 The Macbook Air; 2010 The Ipad; 2011 Siri and ICloud. In 2007 Jobs resigned and Tim Cook took over with Jobs dying that October at 56. Since then, the Ipad mini in 2012, Beats in 2014 and the Apple Watch. Long story, great company based entirely on one word. Innovation.
In fact it's 7 years old. Steve Jobs presented his great new idea for the phone market and everybody thought, What? A phone? And it brought the whole concept of touchscreen, firmly to the market. Today it accounts for over half of Apple's total revenue with about 450 million units sold. Of course, the revenue isn't just in the expensive handsets but rather in the applications through ITunes, App Store sales and so on. The Apple Store alone, generated 10 Billion usd in 2013 with over 50 BILLION Apps being downloaded since the start. 50 Billion! The Iphone 5S by the way, is 20% lighter than the original Iphone but 40 times faster. The Iphone now makes more money than all of Disney and all of Coca-Cola. It makes more money than all of Microsoft! It's pretty impressive for a 7 year old idea don't you think? And a helluva tribute to Steve Jobs.
Cut a long story short... My Iphone (5S 64 running ios 7) was choc full of music downloads. I know, it's a lot of Albums, but consequently I didn't have the phone capacity to download apps or really do anything. And there's no bigger phone. So I got my fab iTunes Cloud account, transferred the albums off the phone, up to the cloud to stream/download in due course when I need to and now, my phone capacity was back. So I downloaded Flipboard. Now I had just forgotten how much my life had fallen apart without Flipboard. I had become a nervous wreck. Lonely, unstable. I stopped showering (okay, I'm exaggerating here, but you get the drift).
Instantly I got my techy stuff back, my music, my art, my books, my news, my videos...the upgrade is even better...if that was possible. Flipboard's Mike McCue is a genius and although the Twitter App comes close, this is the best of them all. The image above is from Wired where they say Flipboard was a favourite App of Steve Jobs. That does not surprise me. And it's free. Treat yourself for Christmas. Download it now and live again.
Without a doubt, the next wave is going to be Digital Radio. We have music streaming services on monthly subscription and we have music downloads, now we'll have sophisticated digital radio with more than 250 DJ curated stations to listen to - for free. And Apple will own it.
They launched the service in September (same day as IOS7 so it got little PR) across all devices including Apple TV, but only in the USA, for now. Already they're announcing plans to roll it out across Europe. UK, NZ, Australia and Canada were announced only yesterday. It features in the Itunes store and thereby, immediately putting it in front of an audience of millions. 11 million listeners tried it in the first 5 days after launch..... What it does in part, is to build pre-made stations around your music choices. So if you hear a particularly song you like, it will tell you the stations that have just played it. Therefore, they might be your kind of stations. Or you might just want stations that play your favourite genre - Country, Jazz - it will bring you those. The more you listen, the more personalised your station becomes as you decide to make choices - for example, 'never play that song again' - and it won't. The more you listen, the more itunes knows the stations you love and the more it can play the music you love. So you create your own station in effect, or a pre-made one created based on music you listen to or the music you buy. But there are text and audio ads built into the music and hence it's free although you can remove Ads by upgrading through a subscription. It already has Ad deals in place with P&G, McDonalds, Pepsi and Nissan to start. It looks too like there's no streaming limits so in some ways it's head-to-head with 13 year old Pandora (Apple are beating them in their quick roll-out and music rights buy-outs) and Spotify, although different. Pandora may suffer and reports are that Pandora customers are switching over. However, Bloggers are critical of Apple for simply "copying Pandora". Something Steve Jobs was so critical of other brands doing to Apple. Of course too, by listening to ITunes Radio, if you hear a song or artist you like, you can buy it there and then. So it's encouraging music sales by giving listeners what are, free samples. Clever. And without any doubt, Apple have the distribution, the brand, the financial clout to own Digital Radio globally. Which will have implications for traditional, local stations especially in a young, 14-26 demographic. Those radio stations will need to wake-up to this challenge and they can, by having one big advantage - local content. Certainly in Ireland, Radio Media owners tend to be smart, bright people but the sudden impact of an Itunes Radio launch will require a response. Now's the time to formulate that because it's coming. Be 100% sure of that.
Steve Jobs recruited John Sculley from President at Pepsi (which he had joined in 1963) on the infamous quote that did Sculley want to sell sugar water all his life, or join Jobs and change the world? Sculley had been famous for developing 'The Pepsi Challenge' 1975 taste-test campaign. That was 1983 and they became best friends describing it as an "amazing partnership". In 1984, there was the famous Superbowl commercial, "1984" (ironically). Eventually Jobs believed Sculley was "bad for Apple" and a power struggle culminated in a Board showdown in May 1985. Having been best friends, they were now best enemies. The Board sided with Sculley and 5 months later, Jobs resigned from Apple. Of course in 1986 he started Pixar and in 1995 produced their first feature, 'ToyStory'. Jobs was the Executive Producer. In 1996 Jobs rejoined Apple and the rest, as they say, is history. Sculley had left/fired in 1993. It's pretty clear that the clash was between an innovator and a business head. Sculley was focused on structure, cashflow and traditional business whilst Jobs was just an unruly doer. Jobs, it has to be said, was no angel either. And Sculley has never talked about it...until this week aged 74. Worth a look. And then at the very,very end of this piece - hear Jobs talking about Sculley - "I hired the wrong guy.....he destroyed everything I'd spent 10 years working for...starting with me"
Well, I mean Ashton Kutcher (34) gets bad reviews because Steve Jobs is actually dead (something Apple analysts have a problem getting their head around). The new move 'Jobs' launched Friday at The Sundance Film festival and will be in cinemas in April time. It's a biopic, starting at the start (ironically) in the 70's and goes up to the ipod launch in 2001. It's said to be not "always flattering" of Jobs but some say that's just Kutchers portrayal....meoww. Seemingly it's just "passable entertainment" and few reviewers find it interesting - which surprises me because the story should be. Although, no matter what, we'll all probably go see. The UK Telegraph (a pretty good barometer I might add) says it's an "almighty mess".....Steve's co-founder 'Woz', is played as a clumsy, hairy geek which frankly, seems spot on? They're also pretty critical of Kutcher ("the poverty of his skills as a serious actor are on full display", "he clumsily signposts every emotion" and if that wasn't enough, "his diction is incoherent") so no Oscar there then. But even if you're not right-wing, other papers have given it a thumbs down too including The San Fran Chronicle. The Montreal Gazette reports that Woz (Steve Wozinack) didn't like it either and in true fashion when asked did he like it, said simply 'No'. But they made a story out of it. He later sent out a Press Release which also simply said, "none of this shit happened". Good man Woz, he's lost none of it. So it's not looking good. Pity. One wonders if they will follow it up with the Apple story after Jobs and under the new influence of replacement MD, Tim Cook. A part 2, a sequel. But then I'm not sure I'd go to see a movie either called just...'Cook'. It'll be out in April so we will go see then for ourselves. If you do, let me know, and I'll post your review.
In 1982 a young Steve Jobs started developing a personal computer with a graphical user interface with 'Woz', Steve Wozinack. He is often the forgotten genius. 2 years later, The Mac was launched with a very famous, masterpiece commercial called '1984' shot by Ridley Scott (who had just completed 'Blade Runner' 2 years earlier). Conceived by Agency Chiat Day and shown in The Superbowl break (during the 3rd quarter on January 22nd). A 900,000 usd spot which then, was huge. It clearly targeted "Big Brother" IBM and perhaps the most influential commercial ever, along with Hegarty's "Grapevine" Levi's commercial. '1984' was only aired one other time on TV so that it qualified for awards.
It borrows a lot, if you ask me....from Fritz Lang's 'Metropolis', a movie I strongly urge you to see. That's not to take away from it one bit. It did exactly what it needed to do and still is in line with the 'Think Different' concept. Individuality. And I personally think it's world class, have no doubt. The Mac came with 128 kilobytes of Ram (it was known as the 'Mac 128' or the "thin Mac"), a floppy drive (!), a mouse, Black and White screen, and with MacPaint/MacWrite and later, MacOffice as the software. A beige case, a handle on the top to make it easy to lift and sold at 2,500 usd. It was convection cooled (rather than by a fan) because it was quieter - a Steve Jobs marketing decision. You can see him present it on Jan 24 1984, on the video at the top of the page.
And it talked! Briefly. A truly world changing day. Happy MacBirthday.
There's no doubt about it, Apple's persistence paid off handsomely yesterday. In a US Court ruling, the most critical place for future business, Samsung were ordered to pay just over 1 billion usd in damages to Apple. Shaming Samsung in the process, it furthermore now allows Apple to go back to court and seek to have Samsung phones banned in the USA to start. It also leaves the door open for Apple to pursue a number of other manufacturers of smartphones, which are based on the controversial Google owned 'Android' operating system. From now on, Android users may have to pay Apple a licence, which will ultimately switch users back to Apple because of that cost. In other words, Samsung and Android phones will no longer be as cheap as they are. This will allow Apple to return to market dominance and absolutely right too. Samsung are shamed and the other loser here is Google. Whilst Apple did less well in a Korean court (surprise surprise, the home territory of Samsung) where basically a court ruled they were both to blame, it is not in any way as relevant as the USA ruling and frankly, to be expected. The USA is the billion dollar market. Everyone knows that the culture in Korea and the Far East, is engrained to simply copy stuff and resell it. It's just part of their DNA. The USA ruling that Samsung copied critical features of both the Iphone and Ipad came as no surprise to the man on the street as anyone comparing the two devices, could see easily the copying. What happened is that Samsung copied Apple and then undercut the Apple price significantly and consequently, outsold the Iphone 3 to 1. Copy them and undercut them - a typical philosophy of the Far East. Regretfully. Samsung have killed Apple Iphone sales by providing similar phones at less than half the price. Like you'd expect on a street corner... The fight began last year but only took the US jury 3 days to decide in what was a pretty clear decision in favour of Apple. Yesterday the jury foreman said that the most powerful evidence of Samsung's misconduct were internal emails and reports among Samsung executives discussing the iPhone's impact, describing the difference between the iPhone and Samsung's earlier smartphones as the "difference between heaven and earth." The exchanges also suggested that Samsung executives felt the iPhone's features should be duplicated.
The jury also was persuaded by Google's warning to Samsung that its products were too similar to Apple's.
“Today’s verdict should not be viewed as a win for Apple, but as a loss for the American consumer,” Samsung said in an official statement. “It will lead to fewer choices, less innovation, and potentially higher prices.” What? This only serves to show up Samsung - they really don't see the issue in copying other people's work because it's a cultural issue. They think they can just go ahead and undercut the inventor to the supposed benefit of the consumer. Apple's statement got it right.... "The lawsuits between Apple and Samsung were about much more than patents or money. They were about values,” Apple spokesperson Katie Cotton told the New York Times. “At Apple, we value originality and innovation and pour our lives into making the best products on earth. We make these products to delight our customers, not for our competitors to flagrantly copy. We applaud the court for finding Samsung’s behavior willful and for sending a loud and clear message that stealing isn’t right.” Absolutely. This is a victory for innovation and R&D. A victory for invention and for bringing new products to the betterment of us all and being rewarded when you do. Good for you Apple. Good for you Tim Cook. You didn't give up.
Apple Iphone sales are flagging. Having sold 26 million in the last quarter, it's down from 35 million in the previous one. Although compensated by growth in the Ipad (from 11m up to 17m - a killer growth) it's not good. How do you get it going again? Advertising.
Apple's new campaign for the Iphone 4S has roped in celebrities to bring them style and character. Focusing in on "Siri" which is the 'personal assistant' on the phone, the first in the series featured John Malkovich. It's their one 'point of difference' that gives iphone a competitive edge.
Using movie stars, gives the brand street cred. It ups the game but the celebs they've chosen helps to position Iphone away from low cost into quality coolness.
The newest, just released, features Martin Scorsese.
The angle of the commercials is that you can change a busy day on the fly but importantly, it's showing you an easy way to use different applications.
Voice is the easiest way to input data and is the holy grail to replace keyboards. Typing in data, when you think of it, is the oldest way to do it and voice will soon replace typing. PC's will become voice-driven exactly as touchscreen has changed them. So you won't write your emails, you'll speak them in.
Samuel Jackson gets in on the act too.
I don't know what the cost of these is, but it was a fortune. And I don't think they've made good use of these stars creatively - after all, think what you could do with Marty Scorsese. But in essence, having celebrities like these will do wonders for endorsing the brand when compared with Samsung the market leader.
They are quintessentially American stars, but international too so the campaign can go global. Big names for a big brand. And already they've created parodies on youtube.
Still, an interesting approach.
Have to say the greatest commercial probably of all time was not as most would say, Apple '1984', but this one, "the crazy ones" from 1997, called "Think Different". Done by Chiat Day, it came out as Apple was on the verge of bankruptcy, but ultimately saved by a 150 million usd investment, by microsoft of all people. Jobs had just returned to the company.
The voice over eventually ended up as Richard Dreyfuss but on this original, which never aired because it was a "demo" and the end frame here has been edited as a tribute to Jobs. See do you recognise who the voice is?
Indeed. Steve Jobs himself.
Apple have been at the forefront of Advertising. This campaign, well, just isn't that.
Largely, it's a company that's really under the microscope because it has lost its way after Bill Gates departed the company. Apple's iphone business alone, does more business than the whole of Microsoft.
In particular, the current CEO Steve Ballmer, who is there officially until 2016 anyway, carries a lot of responsibility since the demise of the once great Microsoft, happened squarely on his watch.
Ballmer is a controversial character making ridiculous predictions about the demise of the Iphone and indeed the Ipad (you can see those interview videos on my original blog). Nonsensical predictions that he gets wrong on video and of course, haunts him now every step of the way.
He also carries himself in quite a ridiculous manner and video of him at the launch of a Microsoft conference (also on my original blog) is really cringey. Worse than that in fact.
On July 5, the controversy was furthered by the leaking of a journalistic piece on Microsoft in 'Vanity Fairs' August edition, which seemingly was to expose the cultural reason why Microsoft, under Ballmer, has lost its way.
It was to blame an inter-staff management system called 'stack ranking' - a rating system for employees. Titled "How Microsoft lost its Mojo" it's based on emails, interviews and internal documents, Vanity Fair was to expose this problem at the heart of Microsoft which it argues was mainly responsible for its lack of vision, lack of Microsoft creativity.
We were told in the snippets that we had, that the stack ranking system was corrosive and possibly the single reason for Microsoft's continued downfall. The article was considered to be explosive and one wondered if Ballmer would survive the onslaught - but I hadn't read it then because it hadn't been published. This weekend I now have.
Not only is it explosive (and excellently written) but it makes Steve Ballmer look like a buffoon. A man who gets it wrong time and time again and has now become an embarrassment to the company. "Stack ranking" gets a good mention but its not the focus we thought it was - Ballmer is.
Reporter Kurt Eichenwald says, "Ballmer's key business philosophy for Microsoft was so antiquated as to be irrelevant. The Microsoft CEO used to proclaim that it would not be first to cool, but would be first to profit -- in other words, it would be the first to make money by selling its own version of new technologies."
It includes an interesting quote from Steve Jobs - "The company (Microsoft) starts valuing the great salesmen, because they're the ones who can move the needle on revenues, not the product engineers and designers. So the salespeople end up running the company....it happened at Apple when John Sculley came in and that was my fault and it happened when Ballmer took over at Microsoft. Apple was lucky and it rebounded, but I don't think anything will change at Microsoft as long as Ballmer is running it".
He actually blamed Bill Gates for Ballmer. "Bill likes to portray himself as a man of the product, but he's really not. He's a businessperson. Winning business was more important than making great products".
Indeed.....and The Vanity Fair article blames Gates too with the fact that Microsoft had the lead on ebooks but it was stifled by Gates. They had the lead on itunes, but it was stifled by Gates. Gates appointed Ballmer.
It's really damning stuff and go out and get it.
This is too much public criticism laid squarely at the door of Ballmer and far more than I understood on July 5 for him to laugh this off. More importantly, Microsoft now appears to be a company in crisis and so uncool, it's not true. They are going one way and that's down. Their Skype acquisition is beginning to show no meaning.
I wondered then, based on what I knew, whether Ballmer would survive this very public criticism.
I have absolutely no doubt now. Except an announcement soon.
This is Steve Ballmer. CEO of Microsoft. The man who took the reins from Bill Gates in 2009 when Gates stepped back. Hardly Steve Jobs now is he? Although I think he tries to be. I mean who came up with the track "get on your feet"? Kind of like playing "simply the best". Cringeville.
There's an awful lot of people having a go at Microsoft at the minute. And it has to be putting immense pressure on CEO Steve Ballmer. One wonders if he'll survive it and especially after an article in Vanity Fair due on the newsstands in August.
But they're having a go firstly, because it's the launch of Windows 8 coming up. Oh, didn't know? Exactly. And remember the excitement, the queues for 95.
Secondly, the acquisition of Yammer for 1.5 billion (yep, billion) of a company few of us ever heard of, and which earns little revenue, is being seen as a bizarre way of buying yourself onto the front pages. One way to get that Facebook/Instagram 1 billion limelight. I blogged about it here http://streamabout.blogspot.ie/2012/06/microsoft-acquires-yammer-for-12.html
The official Microsoft announcement photo two weeks ago, did little to help things too and here it is. Steve Ballmer and the Yammer boys looking like something from the 70's rather than the new leaders in Social Media. Shocking.
As an aside, interesting too that when you go onto the Microsoft news centre and search 'Yammer' - nothing comes up. So Microsoft could do with updating their site - which for Microsoft, is pretty poor.
Thirdly, Microsoft have just taken a 6.2 billion write down this week following their disaster purchase of digital network aquantive in 2007 - then the biggest deal in Microsoft history. The 8.5bn acquisition of Sykpe by Microsoft in 2011 beat it. And what exactly have they done with Skype? Nada. Looks the same to me except with higher prices and more advertising. Vision?
But this write-down, wipes out fourth quarter earnings and that will have a stock/investor issue, adding more pressure.
The acquisition was seen at the time, as a response to Google's acquisition of Doubleclick (with which I was involved in a small way in Ireland) because the Microsoft move came only a month later. Kind of a "anything you can do" thing. But one huge 6.2 billion loss.
Fourthly, the success of Apple has been one-in-the-eye for Microsoft and continues to be. Apple's iphone division alone is worth more than Microsoft. Here's the genius Steve Ballmer in 2007 on the iphone. "500 dollars for a phone? You're kidding".
I could post the video where he laughs off the ipad or indeed this next one where he's not a fan either of the Android phone from 2011. Jesus.
And of course he teamed up with Nokia...who've recently had their ratings cut to "junk status".
So "visionary" doesn't exactly spring to mind and the company is slowly disappearing into a morass. Yes I know about Bing and Xbox but this was THE dominant player worldwide that now is being, well, just eroded.
But lastly, the real crowning glory this week is an article in Vanity Fair August edition which seems to slam work practices at Microsoft and makes the company totally uncool. This sort of publicity might be the straw that broke it because it will be hard for Ballmer to escape it.
Sometimes publicity is the killer blow because it's so public.
Titled 'Microsoft's lost decade' it's written by well regarded scribbler, Kurt Eichenwald.
It's not on the newsstands yet, but Geekwire have seen a full copy and refer to it as "epic". In other words, explosive.
Forbes have referred to it as "a devastatingly destructive management technique at the heart of Microsoft’s problems" and others are calling the exposure "Microsoft's downfall".
Techcrunch don't have the story because when they asked for a preview, they were asked for a fax number to "fax it on over". Honestly. And they've written a good humorous piece on that...... http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/03/can-someone-send-techcrunchs-fax-number-to-vanity-fair/
The controversy, supported by interviews and emails collected, is about management style and creativity. Or lack of.
It's based around a work system for employees in Microsoft called 'stack ranking' where employees are rated from good to poor. And according to Eichenwald that meant that "Every current and former Microsoft employee I interviewed—every one—cited stack ranking as the most destructive process inside of Microsoft, something that drove out untold numbers of employees.”
“If you were on a team of 10 people, you walked in the first day knowing that, no matter how good everyone was, 2 people were going to get a great review, 7 were going to get mediocre reviews, and 1 was going to get a terrible review,” says a former software developer. “It leads to employees focusing on competing with each other rather than competing with other companies.”
Which could well be the reason why the company under Ballmer, flounders. Basically, it crippled the company and stifled innovation.
And from what I know it seemed to be a dreadful place to work which in itself is bizarre given the 'great places to work' awards Microsoft have achieved. I always wondered about those awards though, always did. I saw companies winning them who I knew to be dreadful.
But they were big companies who'd always take a table or two at the Awards dinner.
We'll see what happens when Vanity Fair comes out. Watch out for the noise and watch out for Steve Ballmer. Except it to be huge. His window is closing. (sorry).
