Apple Crumble

I was saddened by the death of Steve Jobs.  However I was further saddened and angered, if I am honest, upon learning that his death may have been avoided if he had sought treatment earlier.  Apparently Steve waited some 9-10 months after being diagnosed with his neuro-endocrine tumour before seeking conventional medical treatment.

Steve Jobs was, to say the least, a complex and idiosyncratic man.  His biography is a fascinating read, and while I have only read excerpts (I am hoping for it on Dec 25th..) his adherence to Eastern religions and philosophies, along with his fascination with extreme vegetarian diets was something I would not have thought that he would have been caught up in.  However it seems that these may well have been his downfall.

I am not going to rework the theories and counter theories, these can be seen online with ease, but the fact that there have been 10 year periods recently where no one died of of an NET, and a base percentage survival rate, when treated early, in the high 90s really made me think that perhaps Steve was a victim of the self same doggedness that drove him to greatness.

Form over function
Apple became the most valuable company in the world, not because they produced the best, feature rich products, because they didn't.  I know Apple groupies will argue this point, but 1st generation anything from Apple lacked features that other comparable devices had as standard, just look at the messaging capabilities of the 1st iPhone.  What Apple did was two-fold.

Apple devices became objects of desire.  Success in business, and particularly technology, is littered with companies that take an existing established product, rework it and make it desireable through design.  In most cases the new product may not have been a great advance in the technology. Job's great rival Bill Gates did it with Microsoft Windows, a great looking easy to use graphical user interface based system, that made learning to use a computer easy.  James Dyson did it with the vacuum cleaner.  Steve Jobs did it initially with the personal computer and then the music player and mobile phone.  Creating an object of desire is not easy.  But it would seem that the most important criteria is design.

This is where Steve Jobs hit the jackpot.  A chance meeting with a young Apple designer called Jonathan Ives changed the perception of Apple's products for ever.  Jonathan Ives was the guy who designed the iMac and iBook . Remember those the colourful semi-wedge and clam-shell designed computers and laptops that just worked, straight out of the box?  He was the man that turned the Apple logo around on their laptops and illuminated it, so people opposite you saw it the correct way around, even in the dark.  Steve Jobs found in Jonathan Ives a kindred spirit, with the same attention to detail that he craved.

Clever design and ease of use coupled with great product placement, ensured that Apple's product desireability skyrocketted.

And this brings me to the second reason that Apple's products became so dominant.  They just worked.  They may not have been feature rich, such as messaging on the original iPhone being almost non-existent, but what they did, they did well.  They made the products easy to use.  They made them work straight from the box.  This is what we as consumers love.  Take something out of its box, plug it in, and it configures everything for you and you just start using it.

New products
I will concede that Apple have introduced new products but these have not always been success stories.  Does anyone remember the Apple Newton Message Pad? I do. Sadly a product developed too early.  Re-invented 15 years later as the iPad which this time was an unexpected run away success. So they don't always get it right, however the message pad was pre Jonathan Ives, so this may well have been part of the problem.

The Future
What will happen to Apple now System Jobs has gone?  Will it flounder like it did the last time he wasn't at the helm? Will its new CEO be able to get the best from Ives.  Will Ives want to stay, now his friend and mentor is no longer there? Who knows? Genuinely.  The pundits may well believe it will be business as usual, however I am not so sure.  Tim seems to lack charisma and possibly the vision of Jobs.  Sure he piloted Apple through Steve Jobs' first bout of absence, but you know he would have been speaking to the guy regularly, and also he was safe in the knowledge that he was coming back.  There is no such safety net now.

The next 12-18 months are not the most important for Apple as the product lines for this period will have already been decided while Steve was still with the company.  It is the product line that follows after that, that will determine if Apple stay at the top of the tree.  I for one hope that do stay there, producing great design and innovation.  As through this other companies around them are driven to try and overtake them, and this means that we, as the end users, benefit directly by getting better profits from every one.

Steve Jobs legacy is not just Apple, he is also the reason companies like HTC, Samsung and LG make better phones and tablets.  He is the reason that laptops and consumer electronics are more stylish.

Steve Jobs.  Thank you and RIP.

Cheers

Diggy

Written on a Google Nexus Android phone.

A New Me (well at least an old one revisited)

What has happened?
It has been long overdue, and I am ashamed of what I became in the interim, but I have finally got back into the gym after a break of some 20 years.  WhenI finally tipped the scales at 17stone / 238 lbs / 108Kg and seeing myself in a photo I was shocked into doing something about it.  it has been 5 months now, and I have made great progress.  I have lost over 1 1/2 stone (20lbs / 9Kg) of fat.  My belt is now a hole tighter, and I can see the top of my six pack (just).


I have dropped from 34% body fat to 21% so far.  However I intend to get to about 12%, this will put me at between 14st 12lb (208lbs / 92.5Kg) and 15st 4lb (214lb / 95Kg) depending if I gain some more muscle as well - which would ne ideal for me to be honest.


However I have found it easy, really easy.


I get up at 5:45 and go over to the gym. lift weights for 40 minutes, then do 20 minutes on the cardio machines, and then head into work for 8:45, having showered at the gym as well.  If work allows, I also do about 60-90 minutes of cardio in the evenings, however I am less strict on this.


I use Muscleworks Gym in Bethnal Green.  Not to everyone's taste, but a great spit 'n' sawdust old school gym, full of heavy weights, and some cardio machines.  However the banter is brilliant especially in the morning.   Great bunch of lads, and some real East End characters.  It is also the most successful bodybuilding gym in Britain, so there is always someone there to help and advise as needed.  I reckon if all goes to plan then this time next year I will be looking like I want to.  If I remember I will post up an update to this entry.


Anyway short and sweet for this one - must get to bed so I am ready for training tomorrow.


Cheers


Diggy.

Transport

Commuting
This post has been a long time coming, and I have thought about writing it several times over the last 6 months but never got around to it.  So now I find myself in Taiwan, unable to sleep, so thought I would see if this helped.


As readers of this blog will know I was traveling down to the smoke each week on the fabulous Wrexham and Shropshire Railway.  This was a fabulous little service, the most highly rated by its customers on the whole of the British rail network.  It was full on most of its runs, and had a thriving and loyal set of passengers.


Owned and operated by the German company D-Bahn.


So earlier this year, at the height of its success, just after another record customer satisfaction survey, D-Bahn shut it down.  Not only was this done with no warning to passengers, but also no warning to its staff.  They were called in at 5pm for a meeting on the Tuesday/wednesday - if memory serves me correctly, and it shut the following Friday.


WTF!


Apparently they couldn't see it making enough profit for it to continue.  Yes, it was losing money, but in rail terms such an insignificant amount.  But the decision stood, even following lobbying by the local member of parliament.  Unbelievable.


Having spoken to several members of the crew, the basic fault it would appear lay with the marketing and ticketing teams.  The basic fare for a peak return into London was £60, which was very cheap.  To put this into context, on the more convoluted, and not direct Virgin service it is £230 for the same journey.  However if you booked in advance for it, you could get it for £10.


Now this is a great system and is used by Ryanair and the like.  However they limit the number of the lowest fares, and then slowly increase the fare based on date and fullness of the plane.


Not so W&S.  You could buy a £10 ticket as long as there were any seats free.  Even the night before.  So a train could be 80% £10 fares, so no wonder they lost money.  If they had done it even on a 25/25/25/25% rule, so 25% of the train was at £10, 25% at £25, 25% and £45 and the last 25% at £60, they would have still filled their trains and made a profit.


Anyway, it was closed so I needed to find a new way down to London.  Tried the Virgin train for 2 weeks, but was so unreliable, and bloody expensive that I decided to buy a commuting car.

The Little Demon

I spent a weekend running over the various economical options, and then had a brain wave.  If my good lady had a larger car - a 7 seater, then I could get away with something smaller and more fun.  Result!  So the family car is now a Volvo XC90 (Jeremy Clarkson's fave family car apparently), and I bought a Smart car.

No not one of those sit up and beg, half cars that the ecomentalists love, but the roadster coupe.

This is seriously the most fun I have ever had in a car with my clothes on.

It came out of the factory as a standard model, but had the Brabus engine upgrade.  Also has an F1 flappy paddle style gearbox (as well as fully automatic and tiptronic), and genuinely sticks to the road like a roller skate.  Also it is the hardtop convertible, so has a couple of targa panels which come off in about 30 seconds, and store in the rear glass boot/trunk area above the engine - yes its mid/rear engined.

I have been running this for about 5 months now, and with the savings made on the train it has already paid for itself.  Its called the Little Demon by my kids as the number plates were manufactured by Demon Plates. Not very original but there you go.

It gets admiring looks wherever I go, literally from guys in Bentley's to builders vans.  Thumbs up, or great comments, and makes people smile, including me.

So this now brings me onto another topic on transport.

Audi Drivers

Or at least UK Audi drivers. 

What a bunch of nobs!

I know this is a broad generalisations, but God damn it, if there is an idiot on my tail trying to prove that his saloon is faster than my sporty looking car - it will be an Audi driver.  100% of the time.  Its a Smart car for Christ's sake.  It has a 700cc engine, its not some jacked up rice rocket driven by an 18 year old.

However they all seem intent on showing me how fast their car is, or if I can't pull over on a motorway then weaving backwards and forwards trying to get me to move over so they can go past.  It doesn't matter if its an A3 or an S5, its always the same.

Now I know there might be reasonable Audi drivers out there, but not in my rear view mirror their aren't.

However my best moment to date in the Little Demon was the fun I had winding up a particularly irritating Audi driver, on the way home to Shropshire one night.

I was about 10 miles from home, moving from dual carriageway / motorway onto county lanes, I looked in my rear view mirror, and there was a dot back there approaching at quite a speed.  You guessed it.  An Audi.  But not any Audi, it was an S4 Audi.  Driven by someone that looked like an accountant, who wanted to be able to boast about how many horsepowers or torques it had when he was at the golf club.  And how much better it was than the BMW M3 (in your dreams).

Within about a mile he was on my tail trying to overtake me on these single lane roads.  So I was doing my very best not to let him. :)  Now I know these roads like the back of my hand, so thought I would see if I could make him sweat a little when we got to a particularly bendy part of the road.

So I switched the gearbox to tiptronic / F1 mode, and started to accelerate through the corners.  Now as I have said it is like a roller skate, so I could basically keep my foot down at all times.  And rather unexpectedly I started to pull away from him.  On anything that was bendy or required a moderate level of driving skill to navigate, I would lose him, but he would catch up a little on the short straights.  By the time I got to my house, there was enough distance for me to stop at the end of the drive, get out, lean against the rear of the car and wave at him when he went past.


I bet he wont be telling his mates at the golf club how he was left behind by a Smart Car!  Priceless.


To my friends in the USA who have Audis, I have been in the car with you guys, and you are not like the UK guys let me tell you! :)


Cheers


Diggy.

Christmas..

Here it comes, run and hide...
Well it's that time again.  The time of year we over consume at every possible opportunity, whether figuratively with the 'need' to buy everything in the shops, or by physically consuming more food than is probably good for us.

I heard an interesting statistic yesterday.  Apologies Jules for the blatant plagiarism:

In the USA alone $450 billion (and that's not a typo - BILLION) is spent on Christmas.  Go on, try to get your head around that number.  That's more than the GDP for Poland.  Its a staggering amount of money, truly staggering.

Also to put it into context, firmly into context, it would take less than 5% of that figure to give clean water to every person on the planet.  It really doesn't make sense does it?  Here are a few facts about water:

• 884 million people in the world do not have access to safe water. This is roughly one in eight of the world’s population.
• 1.8 million children die every year as a result of diseases caused by unclean water and poor sanitation. This amounts to around 5000 deaths a day.
• Projects providing safe water and hygiene education at an average cost of twenty dollars per person, for a generation.
• The simple act of washing hands with soap and clean water can reduce diarrhoeal diseases by over 40%.
• Providing water and hygiene education reduces the number of deaths caused by diarrhoeal diseases by an average of 65%.
• Water-related disease is the second biggest killer of children worldwide, after acute respiratory infections like tuberculosis.
• The weight of water that women in Africa and Asia carry on their heads is commonly 40 pounds, the same as the average airport luggage allowance.
• Water and sanitation infrastructure helps people take the first essential step out of the cycle of poverty and disease.

So why not do something fabulous, and make a real difference.  Spend a little less this year.  In fact lets do some simple maths and make it easier for you and your conscience.  Spend 10% less this year.  That's one less DVD for little Johnny, the slightly smaller bottle of perfume, the turkey that actually feeds you and your loved ones, rather than you, your loved ones and half of Kent!  Buy the Aston Martin rather than the Bently (Ha!).  So now you have 10% more money than you expected.  Put 5% in your pocket, it'll ease the strain of Christmas, and give the other 5% to LWI to provide clean water to those people that really need it.

Makes you think doesn't it.  Here we are in our developed countries, spending ourselves into debt, so why not try and make Christmas less fraught and less driven by blatant consumerism, and do something that will make a real difference.

(RED)
OK.  Now I'm on a roll.  Also when you go buying your 10% less presents this year - why not buy presents that will make a difference.  Make them ethical, make them fairtrade, make them (RED).

(RED) takes a different approach to raising its money.  (RED) works with some of the world's most iconic brands such as Apple, American Express, Converse, Emporio Armani, Gap, Nike and Starbucks, plus many many more.  These companies have created variants of their products that have 50% of the profits from the sale donated to The Global Fund. The Global Fund is the World's leading financier of programs that fight AIDS, TB and malaria.

The products look cool, and you can feel that little buzz of knowing that the present you bought this year will help fight some of the World's most terrible diseases.  So when little Katie wants an iPod for Christmas, make it a (RED) iPod.  I will be.

Fairtrade
Fairtrade is an organisation best described in their own words:

Fair Trade is a trading partnership, based on dialogue, transparency and respect, that seeks greater equity in international trade. It contributes to sustainable development by offering better trading conditions to, and securing the rights of, marginalized producers and workers - especially in the South. Fair Trade organizations (backed by consumers) are engaged actively in supporting producers, awareness raising and in campaigning for changes in the rules and practice of conventional international trade. Fair Trade's strategic intent is:

• deliberately to work with marginalized producers and workers in order to help them move from a position of vulnerability to security and economic self-sufficiency
• to empower producers and workers as stakeholders in their own organizations
• to actively to play a wider role in the global arena to achieve greater equity in international trade.

Fairtrade works mainly with farmers globally, to ensure they get a fair price for their products.  However their produce also works its way into products that we buy, and not just raw foods such as fruit and vegetables.  Look out for the fairtrade symbol on chocolate, coffee, wine, flowers, cotton products such as tee-shirts and also sports balls.  You'll then know that the products you buy, and not exploiting the people that grew them or made them.

Ethical Trading 
Finally this time; ethical trading.  if you run a Google search for ethical trading, then you will be innundated with sites that offer products that have been traded and sourced ethically.  Key amongst these is the Ethical Trading Initiative.  This is an initiative that works with business and charities, to improve the lives of local producers and manufacturers globally.

I am not going to list all the ethical trading companies here, however I will highlight one.  Currently one of the most ubiquitous pieces of footware is the Converse Chuck Taylor hi-top and low-top.  I have a pair myself.  Even Converse, who are one of the biggest supportes of (RED), have an even more Ethical alternative.  The Ethletic company make an ethical Converse Chuck Taylor.

Now I am not saying don't buy Converse - how can I when I have a pair.  However this Christmas if you are buying Converse, why not buy (RED) Converse, or alternatively buy the Ethletic variant of the iconic brand.  The only difference, is that it says 'Ethletic' on the back not 'All Star'.

Now I know not all your shopping can be ethical, but if you have the choice why not make a difference.

Cheers

diggy
(trying not to be the Grinch)

I have a new blogging tool

OK. I have just installed Blogger-droid for my Android powered phone, and thought I would write a quick post to test it.

Well this weekend I had my family join me in London. It's the big guy's birthday next week and we'll have 2 teenagers. Any way he wanted to come down, and so they did.

We visited Oxford St, then the boys went to the Apple store while the girls went to Knightsbridge to go to Harrods.  Well to look around Harrods and then buy the obligatory bar of chocolate! We then met at the Hard Rock Cafe, and then off to see We Will Rock You at the Dominion Theatre. Brilliant day.

Anyhow if this all works OK you never know I may post more often.

Cheers

diggy