If Apple designed a car, it might be like the Gina — Autoblog has commentary, including the BMW Museum video and 84 intolerably cool hi-res photos of the Gina design study [each hi-res image is accessed via the “Hi-res” button at upper right].
The BMW GINA Light Visionary Model that was seen via video being installed in the BMW Museum in Munich last week has finally been revealed, and the futuristic design study shows how BMW designers are thinking outside of the box when it comes to the materials that make up a car and also how the car relates to the driver. GINA stands for “Geometry and Functions in ‘N’ Adaptations”, which basically means that designers from both BMW and BMW Group DesignworksUSA were allowed to throw out the rulebook….
More at 37signals, with excellent photos emphasizing how dynamic the fabric skin is. Thanks to Charles for the heads-up!
Toni Sacconaghi, Bernstein Research: “The most important aspect of the new 3G iPhone is not its feature set, but Apple’s decision to change the iPhone’s business model,” abandoning carrier payments in exchange for more traditional upfront carrier subsidies. He thinks the switch likely reflects “widespread carrier unwillingness to move to Apple’s revenue share model.” He estimates Apple will sell the phone to carriers for between $350 to $700 depending on factors like carrier competition, exclusivity and ARPU. He notes that, in a move to prevent unlocking, the new phones will require in-store activation. Sacconaghi thinks the company can sell 10 million post-paid 3G iPhones in fiscal ‘09, but with profitability lower than the first generation device due to the business model switch. Sacconaghi also worries that in markets where they sell a pre-paid iPhone for $199, there could significant cannibalization of iPods.
…Richard Gardner, Citigroup: “We remain aggressive buyers of AAPL shares at current levels. Apple’s decision to move from a revenue share model to a traditional subsidy model for the 3G iPhone is a significant positive because Apple receives iPhone-related cash flow sooner. As a result, our free cash flow estimate increases by $2B for FY09 and our price target increases from $248 to $287.” His iPhone unit estimate for the second half of calendar 2008 goes to 12 million from 8 million. For calendar ‘09, he goes to 23 million from 16 million; for 2010 he goes to 28 million, from 20 million.
More speculation at Barron’s.
If Apple’s Grand Central really is a major advance, that will be a big deal for the computer industry. As it stands, Moore’s Law is kinda broken except for apps that have been painfully hand coded for parallel processors.
In describing the next version of the Mac OS X operating system, dubbed Snow Leopard, Mr. Jobs said Apple would focus principally on technology for the next generation of the industry’s increasingly parallel computer processors.
Today the personal computer industry is going through a wrenching change in trying to find a way to keep up with the speed increases that were the hallmark of the PC business until about five years ago. At that point, companies like Intel, I.B.M. and AMD had simply lived off their continual ability to increase the clock speeds of their microprocessors. But the industry hit a wall as chips reached the melting point.
As a consequence, the industry shifted gears and began making lower-power processors that added multiple C.P.U.’s. The idea was to gain speed by breaking up problems into multiple pieces and computing the parts simultaneously.
The problem is that, having headed down that path, the industry is now admitting that it doesn’t know how to program the new parallel chips efficiently when the number of cores goes above a handful.
On Monday, Mr. Jobs claimed that Apple is coming to the rescue.
“We’ve added over a thousand features to Mac OS X in the last five years,” he said Monday in an interview after his presentation. “We’re going to hit the pause button on new features.”
Instead, the company is going to focus on what he called “foundational features” that will be the basis for a future version of the operating system.
“The way the processor industry is going is to add more and more cores, but nobody knows how to program those things,” he said. “I mean, two, yeah; four, not really; eight, forget it.”
Apple, he claimed, has made a parallel-programming breakthrough.
The other innovation Jobs mentioned is OpenCL (Open Computing Language) which is claimed to make it easy to exploit the parallel processing potential of the GPU (graphics processor). This has already become a poor-man’s path to a supercomputer, but again based on hand coding. If Apple makes this easy that is another Very Big Deal.
As NYT John Markoff closed his report
If Apple can use similar chips to power its future computers, it will change the computer industry.
Walt Mossberg has been testing Firefox 3.0 prerelease, and now thinks it beats Safari 3 on speed. So Walt declares Firefox “best on both platforms”.
Megan McCardle is diving into the deep end — planning to liveblog “the show” when she goes to buy her 3G iPhone on DAY ONE.
So yes, when the 3G version comes out, I’m buying an iPhone. Yes, I know the arguments for the Blackberry, etc. But my hands are a little large for those tiny keyboard keys. And I’m trying to pare down how much I carry. Consolidating my modest PDA needs, MP3 player, and phone into one advice will make amazing progress towards this worthy goal. Ideally, I will have only six items in my blogger bag:
1) Macbook Pro
2) Kindle
3) iPhone
4) USB headset
5) Broadband modem
6) Digital camera
We only match Megan’s selections on 1, 4. When broadband wireless lands on a global standard we’re in.
If you have to store, organize and retrieve a lot of receipts [as do many poor U.S. taxpayers], then this startup web service might be just what you need.I’m impressed — there is some innovative thinking going on at Shoeboxed.com. There are several plan options, starting with Free, then $9.95/month for up to 50 receipts, $19.95/month for up to 500, etc. You can try the service free for two months. To get a feel for the company culture try the Shoeboxed blog — here’s an example post, including a photo of three of the team — I am presuming a fourth member took the pic:
We’re all tech-savvy, Duke-educated, and ready, willing, and able to never sleep until you’ve got the best receipt organization experience possible.
Note the three Apple Macs around that conference table. That is a very good sign!We don’t have the receipt problem so I’ve not tested their services — but have been through their website and online documentation fairly carefully. I found Shoeboxed researching a solution to our problem — to avoid storing any paper aboard S/Y Adagio. We do our own scanning, but are looking for a low-volume service who will do a few tens of pages at a time cheap. Let me know if you can recommend a service we should investigate.
…Half of all new college graduates now believe that self-employment is more secure than a full-time job. Today, 80% of the colleges and universities in the U.S. now offer courses on entrepreneurship; 60% of Gen Y business owners consider themselves to be serial entrepreneurs, according to Inc. magazine. Tellingly, 18 to 24-year-olds are starting companies at a faster rate than 35 to 44-year-olds. And 70% of today’s high schoolers intend to start their own companies, according to a Gallup poll.
An upcoming wave of new workers in our society will never work for an established company if they can help it. To them, having a traditional job is one of the biggest career failures they can imagine.
… Without knowing it, we have been training a whole generation of young entrepreneurs.
And who is going to dissuade them? Mom, who is a self-employed consultant working out of the spare bedroom? Or Dad, who is at Starbuck’s working on the spreadsheet of his new business plan?
…Entrepreneurial America is likely to become even more innovative than it is today. And that innovation is likely to spread across society, not just as products and inventions, but new ways of living and new types of organizations.
The economy will be much more volatile and much more competitive. In the continuous fervor to create new institutions, it will become increasingly difficult to sustain old ones.
…This higher level of anarchy will be exciting, but it will also sometimes be very painful. Entire industries will die almost overnight, laying off thousands, while others will just as suddenly appear, hungry for employees.
…Scary, exciting, liberating, frustrating, infinitely ambitious and thoroughly amnesic. If you live in a high-tech community like Silicon Valley or Redmond or Austin, you already live in this world. It’s hard to imagine more exciting places to be.
Don’t miss Michael Malone’s essay “The Next American Frontier“. And did you notice Apple’s product placement? And thanks to Growthology for the link.
Forrester Research is the latest to look into the crystal ball in a new report that imagines the Apple products of 2013. But rather than predict Apple jet packs or other outlandish new directions, the research firm uses the company’s recent history as a guide to forecasting.
Forrester’s conclusion: While much of Apple’s great successes have been mobile products such as the iPod and the iPhone, the company will seek to colonize rooms throughout the home.
The “Genius Bar at home” would be potent — though it’s not clear how the funding would work, as I’m certain the demand would be high. Leopard’s iChat videoconferencing and screen sharing already make this sort of consulting feasible.
Forrester also thinks Apple could extend into the home the technical assistance currently offered by “Genius Bar” personnel in Apple retail stores. Apple in-home installation services will become especially important as its array of products for the home grows. “The complexity level here can be quite daunting if you have five or six of these different devices,” says J.P. Gownder, one of the Forrester analysts who wrote the report.
Forrester Research is the latest to look into the crystal ball in a new report that imagines the Apple products of 2013. But rather than predict Apple jet packs or other outlandish new directions, the research firm uses the company’s recent history as a guide to forecasting.
Forrester’s conclusion: While much of Apple’s great successes have been mobile products such as the iPod and the iPhone, the company will seek to colonize rooms throughout the home.
The “Genius Bar at home” would be potent — though it’s not clear how the funding would work, as I’m certain the demand would be high. Leopard’s iChat videoconferencing and screen sharing already make this sort of consulting feasible.
Forrester also thinks Apple could extend into the home the technical assistance currently offered by “Genius Bar” personnel in Apple retail stores. Apple in-home installation services will become especially important as its array of products for the home grows. “The complexity level here can be quite daunting if you have five or six of these different devices,” says J.P. Gownder, one of the Forrester analysts who wrote the report.
More…
Megan McCardle is ready to buy the 3G iPhone:
It’s looking more and more like Apple is going to announce a 3G iPhone at its Worldwide Developer’s Conference on June 9th, with units probably shipping in July. That will probably be the point at which I buy one, since my current contract expires in August, and I really need a phone that does double duty as a PDA. Given that the Atlantic is a mac shop, the iPhone is the obvious choice.
Also, to be perfectly honest, it’s pretty.
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