If Facebook’s IPO filing does anything besides mint a lot of millionaires, it will be to shine a rather unsettling light on a fact most of us would rather not acknowledge: The web as we know it is rather like our polar ice caps: under severe, long-term attack by forces of our own creation.
(image) For many years now I’ve made predictions, and for just as many years I review how I did. This is the week I do the reviewing, my predictions for 2012 should arrive around the New Year, assuming I find the right inspiration.
As I work on the book, I’ve come to use a shorthand for five companies that I’ve determined are critical drivers of what kind of society we’ll be living in one generation from now. At the moment I’m focused on just Internet companies, though I also plan on looking at other categories, such as energy, food, and health. My terminology has evolved in the past week from “the Five Horsemen” to simply “The Big Five.” I’ve got a few reasons for this. First,
What?!?! Does that headline imply that there is something wrong inside the Apple walled garden that is the perfection that is the iPhone and all things mobile for those that are, well, the coolest of them all? To a degree, yes. One of the biggest selling points that Apple has always had over any other competitor is the virtual non-existence of malware and viruses. Most of that can be contributed to Microsoft hate and Android openness as well as the desire by those who create these kinds of things to take
Yesterday something happened that hasn’t happened since 2001. Apple missed its quarterly earnings numbers. It’s an interesting phenomenon because it had nothing to do with the death of Steve Jobs. The company just didn’t sell as many iPhones and iPads as it thought it would. What is also interesting is Apples’ long history of given ridiculously low guidance to stock analysts then turning around and crushing their numbers. Not sure what happened here though. Did Apple finally try to
With the passing of Steve Jobs, everyone has their own special thoughts and memories about how Steve and Apple has changed the world. One of my favorite movies is “Pirates of Silicon Valley“, which is a fun movie about Steve Jobs and Bill Gates growing up, and how they both started their own companies and got to where they are today. Over the next few days you will probably learn a lot of new things above Steve that you never know, such as he played a part in the construction and design of
“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”
This morning, Apple pulled the wraps off their newest mobile phone, the iPhone 4S. It has a better camera, it’s faster, it has the largest storage capability of any iPhone and it responds to voice commands in a way we’ve never seen outside of Star Trek.
