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Fortune’s “Inside Apple” article is a must-read
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Corporate News,
Fortune magazine recently published an in-depth piece on the highly secretive culture and inner workings of Apple. It's in the latest Fortune 500 issue, and isn't yet available freely online, however, you can download it from the Kindle Store for 99 cents to read it on a Kindle, PC, Mac, or any of the smartphone platforms they support (iOS, Android, etc.) For a buck, we'd consider this one a must-read. You get a lot of juicy tidbits about the company, including just how disappointed Steve Jobs was about the horribly botched launch of MobileMe:
According to a participant in the meeting, Jobs walked in, clad in his trademark black mock turtleneck and blue jeans, clasped his hands together and asked a simple question: "Can anyone tell me what MobileMe is supposed to do?" Having received a satisfactory answer, he continued, "So why the **** doesn't it do that?"
For the next half-hour Jobs berated the group. "You've tarnished Apple's reputation," he told them. "You should hate each other for having let each other down."
Harsh, but those are the actions of a man who seemingly doesn't tolerate failure, and aims to exceed expectations. In fact, he doesn't want to ever hear excuses from any of the Apple VP-level employees:
The janitor gets to explain why something went wrong. Senior people do not. "When you're the janitor," Jobs has repeatedly told incoming VPs, "reasons matter." He continues: "Somewhere between the janitor and the CEO, reasons stop mattering." That "Rubicon," he has said, "is crossed when you become a VP."
This is some good stuff, and Fortune has a lot more in the full-length article. If you're at all interested in Apple, either from a consumer standpoint, or just interest in the management style that makes them so unique, give this one a look.
Read More 
| Inside Apple
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Apple and Time Inc. sign deal that gives Time subscribers free iPad access
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Handhelds,
Time Inc. has signed a deal with Apple that will allow print subscribers to access iPad versions of its magazines for free.
Starting Monday, subscribers to Fortune, Sports Illustrated, and Time can read these magazines on their iPad by entering an authentication code identifying themselves as print subscribers, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Magazines have struggled to take off on the iPad. Earlier this year, Apple unveiled a subscription platform for the App Store that awarded 70 percent of revenue to publishers and 30 percent to Apple. However, many publishers found the financial terms to be unfair, and said they wanted full control of subscribers' personal information.
Click to continue reading Apple and Time Inc. sign deal that gives Time subscribers free iPad access
Fortune names their 50 smartest people in tech
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Internet, Microsoft, Misc. Tech,
Fortune has gone all tech on us this week, compiling a list of who they think are the fifty smartest people in tech. We found it interesting because most lists focus on the richest CEOs, or straight up performance on the job rather than things like intelligence, and the vision and impact they have on the tech world. The way they did it was to break the list down into ten categories (smartest CEO, smartest founder, etc.) and then list five names in each, listing a top choice for each category in the process. Here’s a peek at what they came up with:
- Smartest CEO: Steve Jobs, CEO, Apple
- Smartest Founder: Mark Zuckerberg, CEO, Facebook
- Smartest Designer: Jonathan Ive, Senior VP of Industrial Design, Apple
- Smartest Academic: Danah Boyd, Social Media Researcher, Microsoft Research
Hi the read link below to head to Fortune for the full list.
Read More | Fortune
CNN Claims Wiimote Features “Audio Translator”
Posted by Michael Cardiff Categories: Culture, Music, Rumors, Wii,
To go along with Fortune magazine’s recent article on the Wii (see here), CNN.com has posted an online look at the components that make-up the Wii Remote. While it’s meant to give business-type folks a feel for just how much it costs to make the little gadget, it features an interesting bit of information. According to their disassembly, the Wii Remote features an “Audio Translator” which “converts analog data such as human speech into a digital data stream”.
Whu?! Admittedly, mainstream news sources often don’t get their videogame information exactly right, so this could all just be a misprint or misunderstanding on the part of CNN/Fortune Magazine. Still, rumors of the Wii remote featuring or using a microphone of some sort have been floating around for a long time, so we’d be somewhat unsurprised if this tidbit just happened to be true. But given Nintendo’s tight hold on new information, we may not learn anything more about this new feature for quite some time…
Click the jump to see a screencap of the new info…
Click to continue reading CNN Claims Wiimote Features “Audio Translator”
Read More | Money.CNN.com
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