Tech geeks everywhere got massively excited yesterday about the release of a brand new Apple product – the ‘iPad mini’. The device fits in your hand and does everything a regular iPad does, but on a smaller screen.

Look, I’m a big fan of Apple, so I’m not here to lecture. I’m writing this blog post on a Macbook and I own an iPhone. I also have an iPad that I convinced myself I needed for work (I’ve probably used it 5 or 6 times over the past two years if I’m honest). I’ve been using Apple products for years, and I’ve basically deduced one thing from all the gadgets they’ve come out with: They all do exactly the same thing but on different sized screens. The iPad essentially does what the iPod does but on a bigger screen, and the iPhone does exactly what the iPod and iPad do, but with the ability to make phone calls.

So now Apple has unveiled a new machine that does exactly what the iPad, iPod, iPhone do, but on a whole new screen size that fits somewhere in between.

This begs the question – why do we keep buying their stuff if it’s all the same?

After thinking about this for some time, I can come to only one conclusion – and that it’s because we are stupid. Apple are absolute geniuses at exploiting our insatiable desire to buy shiny things that look cool, and they’ve built an entire business around selling the exact same product in different looking packages. Basically, Apple banks on the fact that people are stupid and they’ll keep buying the same thing over and over again if you hold giant press conferences and release ads with shiny objects being rotated in mid air. Apple has brilliantly created a weird consumer cult where people compete to whip out their latest product at social gatherings and lecture all their friends on why the new version of their iPod is superior to everyone elses.

It’s a sad state of affairs when people get more excited about buying a computer than the Presidential election as Apple incredibly managed to dominate the news cycle while President Obama and Mitt Romney battle for the future of America.

I sincerely believe that if you own an iPad, an iPod and a iPhone and you go out and buy the iPad mini, you should be disqualified from voting and banned from important decision making in all aspects of your life.

After all, the iPhone 5 is out, and that’s much cooler than all of them.

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Image via CrunchBase

An independent investigation has found “significant issues” among working practices at Chinese plants making Apple iPhones and iPads.

The US Fair Labor Association (FLA) was asked by Apple to investigate working conditions at Foxconn after reports of long hours and poor safety.

The FLA says it has now secured agreements to reduce hours, protect pay, and improve staff representation.

Apple said it “fully accepted” the report’s recommendations.

“We share the FLA’s goal of improving lives and raising the bar for manufacturing companies everywhere,” it said in a statement.

The findings emerged as Apple CEO Tim Cook visited Foxconn facilities.

Mr Cook toured Zhengzhou Technology Park, where 120,000 employees work, on Wednesday.

A string of suicides at Foxconn last year put the spotlight on working conditions at its factories. Last month, the company announced it was to send independent inspectors from the FLA to audit the facilities.

The investigation – one of the largest ever conducted of a US company’s operations abroad – found employees often worked more than 60 hours a week and sometimes for seven days running without the required day off.

Other violations included unpaid overtime and health and safety risks.

Average monthly salaries at the three factories ranged from $360 (£227) to $455 (£289). Foxconn raised salaries by up to 25% recently.

The FLA said Foxconn had agreed to comply with the association’s standards on working hours by July 2013, bringing them in line with a legal limit in China of 49 hours per week.

Read more at the BBC….

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Drone During Storm (Photo credit: Truthout.org)

In the American mind, if Apple made weapons, they would undoubtedly be drones, those remotely piloted planes getting such great press here. They have generally been greeted as if they were the sleekest of iPhones armed with missiles.

When the first American drone assassins burst onto the global stage early in the last decade, they caught most of us by surprise, especially because they seemed to come out of nowhere or from some wild sci-fi novel. Ever since, they’ve been touted in the media as the shiniest presents under the American Christmas tree of war, the perfect weapons to solve our problems when it comes to evildoers lurking in the global badlands.

And can you blame Americans for their love affair with the drone? Who wouldn’t be wowed by the most technologically advanced, futuristic, no-pain-all-gain weapon around? Read more in AlJazeera…

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It is entirely normal to mythologize people after they are gone – prominent and effective leaders are often cannonized in the media, their virtues given priority in accounts of their lives and their flaws relegated to background noise.

Steve Jobs, a truly visionary figure who radically shaped the course of several industries, has been the beneficiary of similar treatment. Jobs was a complicated and brilliant man, and while his genius may have inspired millions and made the world a more interesting place to live, there is another story that also needs telling, a darker tale of ego, cruelty and corporate abuse that should not be brushed aside when evaluating his life. From Gawker: 

Apple's factories in China have regularly employed young teenagers and people below the legal work age of 16, made people work grueling hours, and have tried to cover all this up. That's according to Apple's own 2010 report about its factories in China. In 2011, Apple reported that its child labor problem had worsened….

Before he was deposed from Apple the first time around, Jobs already had a reputation internally for acting like a tyrant. Jobs regularly belittled people, swore at them, and pressured them until they reached their breaking point. In the pursuit of greatness he cast aside politeness and empathy. His verbal abuse never stopped. Just last month Fortune reported about a half-hour "public humiliation" Jobs doled out to one Apple team:

"Can anyone tell me what MobileMe is supposed to do?" Having received a satisfactory answer, he continued, "So why the fuck doesn't it do that?"

"You've tarnished Apple's reputation," he told them. "You should hate each other for having let each other down."

Jobs ended by replacing the head of the group, on the spot.

They say you must break a few eggs to make an omlette, and there is no doubt that Job's astonishing achievements could not have happened without some collateral damage.

But those he stepped on to get ahead are human beings with lives just as important as his. It is a sad trait in modern American culture that success and fame are valued above all others. If decency and humility were given precedence over an ability to make money, it is unlikely anyone would know who Steve Jobs was at all.

Jobs was most certainly an inspiring leader and a testament to creative thinking and innovation. But a great man? That's not quite as clear.

Image by tsevis via Flickr

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Sad news – the legendary Steve Jobs has passed away. Apple put the following fitting words up in memorial:

Image via CrunchBase

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A fascinating report in the Atlantic on the Unversity of Southern California's experimentation with an online virtual classroom:

Since USC and Kaztman teamed up to create the country's first online course for a master's in teaching, called MAT@USC, the school that graduated only 100 students in 2007 is on pace to become the country's largest not-for-profit teacher prep program by 2013….

The centerpiece of MAT@USC is a virtual "classroom" accessible by laptop, smartphone or iPad. Live video feeds of the professor and a dozen students resemble the intro credits of The Brady Bunch (see above). Professors can post slides or discussion questions on the screen, students press a button to virtually "raise their hand," and everybody can watch recordings of past sessions.

The evolution of education from the actual classroom to the online classroom is in my view, irreversible. Whether this is a good thing or not remains to be seen, but USC is certainly innovating along the right lines:

USC has embraced the realities of the 21st-century classroom. But the success of online teaching raises some thorny questions. If we can digitize a good education, and replace a classroom with a WiFi connection, is the teacher expendable, too? Could simulation and recorded lectures inadvertently point to a future where we need fewer teachers instead of more?

The irony of MAT@USC is that rather than replace teachers with online technology, USC is now creating thousands more. Not only has enrollment at the teacher prep program increased by a factor of ten in three years, but also faculty hiring at the school has kept pace. In 2010, the school had added 25 new full-time faculty plus numerous adjuncts.

Advancements in technology have the ability to destroy jobs and create them – a theme familiar in the world of online publishing. While there was a period of great destruction in content creation, new profitable entities are now emerging (the Huff Post, the Atlantic, the Awl, Gawker etc) proving that new models can become viable in the radically shifting internet world. Education costs are rising while wages are not and online innovation could bring much needed relief to students unable to afford exorbitant college fees. While institutions will resist the dramatic shift, the ones that begin to embrace it will thrive while the rest will wonder where all their students went.

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Well, the e-book just got interesting…

Starting Wednesday, owners of these Apple devices can download a free application, Kindle for iPhone and iPod Touch, from Apple’s App Store. The software will give them full access to the 240,000 e-books for sale on Amazon.com, which include a majority of best sellers.

The move comes a week after Amazon started shipping the updated version of its Kindle reading device. It signals that the company may be more interested in becoming the pre-eminent retailer of e-books than in being the top manufacturer of reading devices.

You can download Kindle for iPhone here.

My guess is that as the prices come down for these devices the book publishers who don’t adapt to pushing their authors via digital are going to go the way of the newspapers.

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