Categories: Articles

Apple Is Laughing All The Way To The Bank

I went from a non-believer to a believer.

I love Apple. There, I said it. It’s not a tough thing to put out there, as the company edges closer to becoming the first ever trillion-dollar organization. The customers are there. The interest is there. You can have you own feelings and philosophies about the brand, but go into any modern shopping mall, and the two stores with the most energy, excitement and activity are – without question – the Apple and LEGO stores. With that size comes the detractors. As a personal anecdote, I’ve had computers in my life since the first personal computers were brought into the home. I went from Radio Shack to Atari 800 to the earliest version of IBM clones. My nerd cred in this space is documented. I still have the invoices from the first modems that were ever introduced (you would suction cup those old rotary phone handsets to the top). I only converted to the cult of Mac a few years ago. I did it, to better understand the landscape, and I also wanted to understand what it was like for a newbie to be dropped into this world. Within a couple of hours, I could not look back. The PC and the BlackBerry just felt antiquated to the way in which the MacBook and iPhone worked. To this day, I still marvel whenever I pull out my iPhone. Sure, it’s easy to get frustrated over technology, but imagine the power that you have in the palms of your hand. This is Star Trek stuff, people!

Planet of the phones.

The Economist magazine’s cover story is called, Planet of the phones (February 28th – March 6th). The stats presented were startling. “They have become the fastest-selling gadgets in history, outstripping the growth of the simple mobile phones that preceded them. They outsell personal computers four to one. Today about half the adult population owns a smartphone; by 2020, 80% will. Smartphones have also penetrated every aspect of daily life. The average American is buried in one for over two hours every day. Asked which media they would miss most, British teenagers pick mobile devices over TV sets, PCs and games consoles. Nearly 80% of smartphone-owners check messages, news or other services within 15 minutes of getting up. About 10% admit to having used the gadget during sex.” We live in this fascinating duality where technology is a must-have part of everything that we do, and – in the same breath – it is still a luxury, that is getting more and more expensive (did you see the pricing for the new Apple Watch?). It’s startling to see how quickly we have adapted to this immense amount of power. With that, all technology gets smaller. So, while the excitement over the watch can’t be denied, I was very eager to better understand what this new MacBook was all about. Again, the discourse online about it is polarizing. For some, it’s sleek, fast and beautiful. For others, it feels like a very expensive netbook that lacks a lot functionality and ports.

You’re going to love this.

It’s very rare that I share videos like this, but in reading and reviewing all of the online discourse about Apple this week – and the future of technology – this one made me laugh. Hard. With tears. Deep deep belly laughing. It’s on the verge of going viral, but when I first saw it today it was only at about 30,000 views.

Apple Engineer Talks About The New 2015 Macbook…

Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.