Apple's Pivot into Services

After giving my Apple Talk, I do a Q&A with my group on their tour bus as we head to Apple Park. Some of their questions are light hearted, such as, "Why did the Apple logo used to be upside down on laptops?" or "Why does the Apple logo have a bite taken out of it?" But my latest group asked some deeper questions about the future of Apple.

My group, on Wednesday, asked me about Apple's It's Show Time event held a couple days earlier. Monday's event at Apple seems to be a pivot for the company in that no new offerings were revealed that are now available.

It's a pivot for Apple because the company is moving more and more toward services delivered via Apple products. We last saw Apple make a strategic pivot in 2007 when Steve Jobs announced the first iPhone. Near the end of his presentation, Steve Jobs said he was changing the name of the company from Apple Computer, Inc. to Apple Inc. to better reflect that Apple was moving away computers and into consumer electronics.

Now, once again, as the smartphone market becomes saturated, we see Apple staying relevant by increasing their services offerings. Of course Apple has a lot of potential offerings in R&D, but many never see the light of day if they're not up to Apple's standards. 

Friday's announcement that they were killing off its never-to-market AirPower charging mat is a rare premature misstep by Apple. Rumor has it that this product, after being announced more than a year and a half ago, was running too hot to provide a decent customer experience. And that's what Apple's all about. I describe the company's mantra as best possible customer experience. 

Future Apple Products

The groups I speak to frequently ask me about Apple's future offerings, so I speculate...

1. Car: Apple is working on a car (codename: Titan); or, perhaps, autonomous software for automakers. It's not a secret what they're working, but they don't yet know what will became of their research.

2. TV: Apple's Eddy Cue, senior vice president of Internet Software and Services, who reports directly to Tim Cook, has long wanted to unbundle TV channels from cable TV packages. In a nutshell, he wants to do for TV cable subscriptions what the iTunes Music Store did for music... unbundle content to give customers more options. 

3. Medical: This is a long term play that's clearly humming in the background. Apple was the first company to get FDA approval for a consumer EKG product via the Apple Watch. Earlier this month, when visiting my doctor for a cold, he asked to look at the recent data on my Apple Watch. Apple's foray in to healthcare will continue to become more important. Perhaps a future Apple Watch will allow noninvasive glucose monitoring.

Obviously, we never know what secrets Apple has under wraps, but I suspect that the best is yet to come. 

Harrison Ford's Plane Crash

Dave Winer asked me to comment on why Harrison Ford's plane crash.

My response...

I heard Ford's brief conversation with the tower just after he took off where he reported "Engine failure, immediate return." So, why did his engine fail during the most critical part of flying (taking off) is the question? It could be anything, wrong fuel, water in the fuel, engine "threw a rod." Small planes, like this, are nothing more than internal combustion engines like in a car.

The problem, right after you take off in a small plane and lose your engine is, if you're below about 1,000' above the ground, you can't make the 270° turn needed to get back to your departing runway (a 180° turn puts you in the opposite direction, but you're displaced about half a mile from the runway, so you need to turn another 45° to get back to the runway and then another 45° to line up with the runway).

I've flown out of the same airport (Santa Monica Airport), several times and, other than the golf course, you don't have many other immediate landing options. I also saw a video of Ford gliding into the golf course and it looked like he was going straight and not turning back to the airport which is smart, since he wouldn't have made it back to the runway.

This attention is unfortunate for Santa Monica airport. The city dislikes this airport because the approach is over Beverly Hills and they'd love to close it down, but they have a contract with the FAA to keep it open.

Here's an article from last summer that opens with Harrison Ford filing a federal complaint to keep the airport open: Santa Monica Airport closure in 2015 challenged by tenants

Uploading iOS Voice Memos into iTunes Match

Last night, I listened to friends perform at a jazz jam. Their music was phenomenal. I enjoyed it so much that I recorded most of the jam session. When I got home, I discovered that moving a voice memo into iTunes Match (iCloud) was a small challenge requiring a little trial an error.

The problem with moving an iOS voice memo into iTunes Match is iTunes considers voice memos "ineligible" for the iTunes Match service. That means there wasn't a simple way for me to get my jazz recording into a playlist that could be shared across my computers and iOS devices.

I reread my 2007 blog post about legally converting iTunes Store purchases into MP3s and that gave me an idea. Since iTunes won't sync voice memos across devices, I converted it to an AAC format which solved my problem. I'm not sure exactly what happens during the conversion process, since the pre and post converted files are both AAC, but twice the size. Perhaps it simply took the mono recording and doubled it into a stereo file. Regardless, it worked and the newly converted file successfully uploaded into iTunes Match.

The conversion process is easy. In iTunes, simply right-click (control-click) on the voice memo and select "Create AAC Version." Once you've converted the voice memo, you can choose "Update iTunes Match" from the Store pull-down menu to put it into the cloud. That's it.

Free Music

Ever wish that you could listen to free background music like you hear in a cafe? It turns out that many mom and pop cafe owners simply stream multi-hour long music from YouTube. A bargain at twice the price.

Interstellar

I just saw Interstellar.
It's very good.

Tears and applause throughout the movie theatre.

It's this generation's 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick).

The Hidden Gems of San Diego

I've lived in San Diego, on and off, for close to 20 years and I'm always on the lookout for new places to explore. This past weekend I uncovered several gems.

Friday: Latino Film Festival

Instructions Not Included

Friday night's showing of Instructions Not Included at the Jacobs Center was a pleasant surprise, especially since I don't speak Spanish.

I highly recommend this English subtitled movie. It's the highest-grossing Spanish-language film released in the United States. This movie is an unpredictable comedy that will tug at your heartstrings so keep a tissue handy.

The Jacobs Center for Innovation community center is a hidden gem I'd never been to. I can see myself attending more events at this venue.

Saturday: Kate Sessions Park

Kate Sessions Park

Last week's celebration of coworking culminated with a BBQ at Kate Sessions Park. I've never been here before. It has panoramic views of downtown San Diego, including the Coronado Bay Bridge and Mission Bay. This would be the perfect place to watch Fourth of July fireworks or simply seek solitude and inspiration.

Sunday Morning: Black's Beach

The way to Black's Beach

In the mid-1990s I had a running mentor, Harry Hunt, at the Orange County Track Club. He talked me into my first ultra-marathon in 1996 – the 50K Mule Run in Bishop, California. On the roadtrip to Bishop, Harry told me about his experiences frolicking in waters of the Pacific at Black's Beach. For nearly 20 years this item was on my bucket list.

Getting to Black's Beach is not a casual walk in the park. It's a secluded beach requiring a hike down the cliffs beneath the Torrey Pines Glider Port. After all, one does need privacy in these matters. It seemed that nearly everyone at the beach was a content provider, but it is optional.

Swimming in the Pacific under these conditions is quite liberating. A few things stood out. First, the regulars are well groomed and have very even tans, especially compared to my farmer's tan. Second, there's simply no way to casually stand in knee-deep water without looking awkward. I was surprised how unnatural we look in our natural state. And, finally, I made no eye contact with my fellow frolickers – this takes some getting used to.

Sunday Afternoon: In the Heights

In the Heights

This musical, performed at the San Diego Junior Theatre in Balboa Park, was remarkable. At first I thought the performers were college students. After the intermission I learned that they were in high school or younger – one of the leads was only 13 years old. With beards and gray hair they looked like full grown adults. It was only after the play was over, when I met the cast, that I fully appreciated they were simply kids in makeup and costume.

Sunday Evening: Ice Cream Social

Beer floats made with Guinness

There's no better way to end a summer weekend than with my fellow co-workers from 3rd Space at an ice cream social where I tried my first beer float. To be honest, it was meh. It tasted like beer and ice cream mixed together. Imagine if a pancake tasted like flower, baking powder, milk, etc, instead of an actual pancake. But we were just winging it. I hear that my neighborhood chocolatier, Eclipse Chocolate, does justice to a beer float.

Finally, I have to thank Junvi, not only for photobombing my beer float picture, but also for the great Q&A write up she gave me last week.

Harry Chapin - Thirty Years Later

Thirty years ago, today, Harry Chapin died on the Long Island Expressway. He's probably best know for Cat's in the Cradle - which is one of my favorite songs. Ten years ago, this song was ranked number 186 of 365 on the RIAA list of Songs of the Century.

Harry Chapin was driving in the left lane on the LIE near exit 40 in Jericho when he put on his emergency flashers because of either a mechanical or medical problem (possibly a heart attack). After veering into a couple cars he was rammed by a tractor trailer. The official cause of death was a heart attack, but it couldn't be determined if it happened before of after the initial car accident.

Harry Chapin would have been 68 years old if he was still alive. Last summer, I was back in my hometown (Huntington Station, NY) helping my former sixth grade teacher, Ms. Cooke, scan her 30+ years worth of student photos into Facebook. As soon as I mentioned to Ms. Cooke that I was planning to stop by the local cemetery to visit Harry Chapin's grave, she pointed to the following framed concert poster that hung on the wall in her condo. Harry Chapin died while he was driving to this concert.

Tonight, at 8:30 p.m., there will be a celebration at Hekscher Park to honor his life and work. People are encouraged to bring canned goods to be donated to charity.

Catfish Movie

I saw a screening of Catfish, last night, courtesy of a San Diego TweetUp organized by @JBruin and @ThePegIsIn.



Catfish is a raw documentary that was all the talk at this year's Sundance Film Festival. The movie follows a 24 year old New York photographer as he establishes a relationship, on Facebook, with a family whose eight year old daughter is a prodigy artist. The family lives in rural Michigan and the film takes an interesting twist when the photographer makes a surprise visit to see the family since he's established a romantic, online, relationship with the older sister.

It's a good movie and I particularly enjoyed the cinematography as they filmed a laptop display for the movie credits and used Google Earth to show different locations.

I don't want to give away anything, but think: Walter Mitty meets Facebook.