iFixit.org — The People Who Are Fixing the World — is a new project by the talented and helpful team at iFixit.com, the ‘free repair manual you can edit.’ I have used iFixit to get detailed instructions on upgrading our Macs and it’s been a really useful resource. You can find repair guides for all kinds of things—including game consoles, automobiles, cameras, household items and more. They have a free repair manual app for iPhone and iPad so you can download guides right from your mobile device.
On ifixit.org, we’ll be writing about the problems caused by our throwaway culture. [...] We’re going to profile repair gurus and share why people fix things.
For a fascinating illustration of the trend towards mobile computing, check out the short video (28 sec) below showing the history of some popular computing platforms, starting in 1975 and running up to the present. It includes some oldies like the TRS-80, Amiga, Atari, NeXT and Apple II as well as the now familiar Windows PC, Mac, Android, iPhone and iPad.
A Forrester report this week predicts CIOs will pour $19 billion into Apple products in 2012—$10 billion in iPads, $9 billion in Macs. This is up from around $12 billion last year, where the split between iPads and Macs was roughly even.
I think a couple of things are happening here, neither of which is unexpected.
For one, the device operating system (Windows, OS X, Linux, iOS, etc) is losing relevance. It still matters of course, especially among most big companies that are heavily invested in the Microsoft toolset, but the new direction is obvious and inevitable. With the ascendancy of mobility both in the workforce and society in general, applications and data are gradually being decoupled from the old desktop OS frameworks.
Also, the so-called ‘consumerization of IT’ is really about a backlash from users who are tired of working with tools that are often second-rate in quality and reliability—like some cheap PCs running Microsoft Windows, and Blackberry phones that have not kept up with Apple’s iPhone or the popular Android smartphones. Increasing numbers of employees get better results with their personal devices, and have begun to demand something better at work. With cheap commodity technology you usually get what you pay for.
The Apple assault on the corporate market has so far taken place without much formal Apple support, and probably without Apple itself understanding its full extent.
This is the interesting subplot. Beyond building in some management and security tools in their devices, it doesn’t appear that Apple has made much of a directed effort at the corporate market. I think some of this has been due to Steve Jobs’ insistence on secrecy with regard to product roadmaps, and I wonder if Apple under Tim Cook might be heading in a more collaborative direction with corporate customers. There’s a lot of opportunity for them there.
New York Times article today about how some companies are implementing a BYOD (Buy Your Own Device) policy at the office—i.e., giving employees a stipend and letting them buy the computers and smartphones they want rather than the cheap crap usually found on a company’s short list of supported standards. (‘Standard’ is usually corporate-speak for ‘cheap commodity item.’)
“We heard from people saying, ‘How come I have better equipment at home?’ ” said Mike Cunningham, chief technology officer for Kraft Foods. “We said, hey, we can address that.”
As it turns out, people are happier and more productive using the tools they like rather than ones the bean counters think they should have. This is why bean counters and most upper-level management should stay out of technology decisions and work on the things they understand.
A similar B.Y.O.D. program at Citrix Systems, a software maker that also helps its clients implement such programs, saves the company about 20 percent on each laptop over three years. Of the 1,000 or so employees in Citrix’s program, 46 percent have bought Mac computers, according to Paul Martine, Citrix’s chief information officer. “That was a little bit of a surprise.”
It’s been called the consumerization of IT but it really just means that people are willing to spend a little more of their own money on the good stuff, and they’re tired of their employers equipping them with second-rate technologies at the office. And you know all that money the company saves buying those cheap devices? They’re spending most of it on the back end trying to maintain them and fix them and patch the security holes and update the anti-virus protection and, in most cases, pay Microsoft a fee for the privilege.
I understand that corporate IT departments can’t support every device out there while also maintaining security and stability and high quality user support—it’s a harder job than most people realize and there has to be some middle ground between what the user wants and IT’s responsibilities to the organization.
The ideal scenario—it’s happening now, to some extent—is a collapse of this outworn distinction between ‘business’ and ‘consumer’ devices and the emergence of tools that do both equally well. I know quite a few people who are buying iPhones for work, out of their own pockets, rather than accept a free Blackberry from the company. A few are even carrying two devices—the smartphone they want to use and the Blackberry that the company requires them to have. Absurd.
Shortly before 2pm today Apple surpassed ExxonMobil in market capitalization to become the most valuable company in the United States.
Apple Inc.’s stock gained 3.4 percent to $365.10 Tuesday afternoon, bringing the iPhone and iPad maker’s market capitalization to about $338 billion.
Exxon Mobil Corp. shares, meanwhile, were trading at $69.23, down 1.4 percent. That gives the oil company a market cap of $337 billion.
Other big-name corporations, such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and General Electric Co., don’t even come close.
[...]
In its latest quarterly report, Apple said stronger iPhone and iPad sales helped more than double its net income to $7.31 billion and grow revenue by 82 percent to $28.6 billion.
This is a phenomenal level of performance in a little over a decade. In 1997 Apple was nearly bankrupt when Steve Jobs returned to the company as ‘interim’ CEO as part of the NeXT acquisition. Ten years later Apple revolutionized the mobile industry with the iPhone, and followed that up three years later with the creation of a totally new product category with the iPad. Not to mention the first widely-adopted online digital media store—the iTunes Store—that surpassed 10 billion downloads in 2010.
Evernote—the cloud-based service for capturing/organizing/finding/storing a variety of data—just reached the 5 million user mark. Yesterday they had 22,130 new users join. I’ve been using Evernote for a little over a year, and it’s a terrific app that I use most every day. Works great on the web, my Mac (desktop app) and iPhone and iPad (mobile apps). Also available for Windows, Android and Blackberry.
The chart below shows how quickly they’re scaling per-million-users.
The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)reporting today that demand for netbooks is dramatically dropping as more people are considering the iPad for a lightweight computing device. I think the key factor here is that a lot of people mostly do just email and web browsing, and for these customers—millions of them—a full ‘computer’ is not only overkill but unnecessarily complicated for a few simple tasks. The iPad is a new category of device designed for a category of user that’s been around for years.
Netbook Demand
Tablet Purchase Forecast
Forecasts for tablet purchases are highly in favor of the iPad, but that’s likely because there really isn’t much of a competitive field right now, and the average consumer today probably doesn’t know much about the tablet devices from RIM, Samsung, HP and the others. The iPad’s brand recognition is huge now, and the next six to nine months should tell us more about how well these other tablet offerings are being received.
iPad Satisfaction
Satisfaction among iPad owners is high but, again, until competitive devices hit the market this data may not be particularly relevant. I do think that Apple has established such a commanding lead in the category that competitors will have a hard time breaking through. They won’t beat the iPad on a price-vs-features metric (Apple’s supply-chain management is one of its strengths, allowing them to price very aggressively), nor will any of these companies be able to offer anything remotely close to the App Store selection (the store is the killer app) or the software and hardware engineering that make the iPad experience what it is. I think it’s all a battle for second place now, anyway.
Forbes Magazine’s Elizabeth Woyke is reporting — based on a research note from Ticonderoga Securities’ Brian White — that Apple could sell as many as 45 million iPads in 2011. This is based on information coming out of suppliers, so who knows how accurate it is.
If true, though, that would amount to about $30 billion in revenue for Apple just from iPads, which is almost as much as the entire company earned in 2008. For a product that didn’t even exist six months ago.
CNNMoney.com reporting today that Macs lead in customer satisfaction for the seventh straight year, with a score of 86 compared to a PC score of 78.
“The biggest asset Apple has had for a long time is its commitment to innovation,” said David VanAmburg, managing director of ACSI, an Ann Arbor-based research group. “Others are improving, but the whole world watches Apple when it comes up with its new products each year.”
Even big companies, where Windows PCs and Blackberry smartphones have been the standard for so long, are seeing Macs, iPhones and iPads show up in greater numbers, with workers abandoning company standards and demanding something better. It’s partly the ‘cool’ factor, to be sure — Apple’s products are brilliantly designed and marketed to appeal in this way — but cool without substance isn’t cool for long.
Mac Sales Drive Apple’s Best-Ever Quarter
Also mentioned in the article is record sales in the recent quarter for Apple’s Mac computers and iPad tablets — sales were up 61% over this quarter last year to a record $15.7 billion.
An important technology shift is happening, and this is especially challenging for commodity hardware companies like Dell and HP, and their operating system vendor, Microsoft. The Windows PC market isn’t going away anytime soon, but the lightweight, instant-on tablet model is proving to be a winner for people who don’t need a device that does a thousand things — and there are millions of people in that category.
I’m interested to see what this shift will produce in the next couple of years. We can expect a surge of technical innovation like we haven’t seen in a long time, and the competition should be great for individuals and businesses alike: improvements in hardware and software engineering, industrial design, user experience, device performance, networking, application development — it’s about to get interesting.
