Social Software Explored

Went to get my car washed today.  The owner told me he was at the Apple store last night and “there was no shortage of money being spent there”.  He owns a car wash and he has 3 iPads (didn’t ask why he needed that many) and a new MBP (that he purchased last night).  He owns a car wash.

But he’s correct.  We are in one of the worst financial crisis’ our country has ever seen and yet you go to almost any Apple store after 5 PM and its packed.  And the shit’s not cheap there.  We talk about Apple the Hardware and Software company.  And sometimes we talk about Apple the Retailer (Store).  You can actually purchase Apples products at several retailers (including Target).  There really isn’t a store like it and I don’t mean “like it” in terms of what they sell but “how” they sell.

What’s even more interesting is they are changing that too.  They just released a “self checkout” application that can be used for “on the shelf” items.  ”Self checkout” it self isn’t new.  But one of the things that separates the Apple self checkout from say Stop and Shop or Walmart or other retailers is one thing: you won’t need to take out your wallet.  You will be able to purchase items directly from your phone.

A lot has been written lately about NFC (Near Field Communications) and if you follow this technology talk you know that its not quite ready yet (Neither iOS or Android have native support for this service – yet).  But what if you didn’t even need that.  What if the device that “scans” an item – also purchased it – automatically?  It’s actually enjoyable scanning your own items especially when you have little ones doing it for you.  I think that Apple is a creative company that continues to help push change into our lives.  Excited about the future.

I never owned a computer growing up. Unless you count the Apple IIe that my friend Ryon had at his house or the few that were in the computer lab when I was in 5th and 6th grade. I don’t count those because I didn’t have enough access to them to really make it count. So, I wasn’t totally enamored with computers – they always seemed like something that other people had.

It wasn’t until college that I truly realized that computers were a fantastic tool to do amazing things (read: chat with my college girlfriend – which didn’t really save me any money on phone bills). I also didn’t know much about the difference between PC’s and Macs. Our computer labs at URI were all Mac labs. You just used them and didn’t think twice about why. Good thing too, because it was my “knowledge” of the Mac computers that got me my first job.

Fast forward to now. I am less than one year into the “switch”. The “switch” that I had talked to many people about for many years. Many pro and anti Mac people. In the last 10 months I have actually had 3 different macbook pros in my possesion. My first (15″ macbook pro) was stolen (or lost or whatever) while I was in DC. My second one (the one I am actually using now) is a 13″ (learned a bit from the time I spent with the larger one). The third one well … here’s what happened:

Last Sunday my son spilled a glass of water on the table. The same table that my Mac had been sitting on. He actually didn’t spill the water directly on the Mac. However, the slot in the back of the Mac must have taken some of the splash action of the spill because my computer wouldn’t work. It would start up (after drying it all day and night) and the screen would work but the keyboard wouldn’t and the touchpad was well “touchy”. So, I brought it to the Apple store. They said it needed to go back to the mothership for repairs but that if it wasn’t totally destroyed (and based on the fact that it booted and the screen worked it probably wasn’t) that they would cover it – free of charge. Not bad since the estimated cost to fix this sort of thing was $755.

That was great except, that I was leaving on Tuesday AM for a training that I had to conduct in DC and I hadn’t finished the training material (they were half done on my defunct computer which needed to be sent in for repair). I asked the technician at the Genius Bar what the options were, he told me how I could connect another Mac to be defunct Mac and essentially restore the new Mac from my old one. Programs, settings, data – everything!

I couldn’t be without a computer so I went to BestBuy and bought a new Mac (which had been upgraded from the Core Duo to the i5) and I connected it to my water logged baby. Within 57 minutes (seemed more like an hour and a half) I was up and running. Same username/password, same desktop settings, same dock, same programs, data – EVERYTHING! The same. Amazing. I had to re-enter some serial numbers for software but it was the same computer. Did I say Amazing.

For those of you that have ever bought a new iPhone (like upgrading from the 3G or 3GS to the 4) and had to load your old iPhone settings – synching a Mac from a current running Mac is even easier. The word Amazing comes to mind.

Now maybe Apple knew that I was tweeting about my switch, and maybe somewhere inside their organization they have some crazy formula that states I have a 1 and 49 chance of writing a blog post or telling “n” number of people about my experience with their products (I have told n x n to nth degree). Maybe they thought that if I had a great “first” experience with my Mac that I would stay with them longer. Maybe they thought that if they didn’t I may cut my loses and go to a cheaper Windows based laptop instead. Chalking it up to not being “right” or “chosen” to run an Apple PC. Or maybe all of them.

Scott Stratten (@unmarketing) will tell you that companies should invest more money in existing (loyal and potentially loyal) customers. Instead, of wasting money on advertisements or gimmicks to bring on new customers. I think that Apple is smart enough to see that. Hence this blog post and hence (but hopefully not) a label of fan boy.

Thanks Apple, your company, software and hardware are better than the rest.

Oh, and I say reason 134.5 because there were a few odd things like having to reconfigure Apache and MySQL but since most of you don’t run that kind of stuff on your computer I figured it was only worth a half of a point.

Take a few minutes (3 minutes and 13 seconds to be exact) and watch the following video. While watching it take note of the ease in which both characters select content and move it around to make it easier to view and work with.

Now think about the iPad. The single reason why I think that the iPad will work (and why other previous inventions similar to the iPad failed) will work is because we are ready. The iPad represents the closest representation to the Minority Report UI that we have seen. Yes – there have been touch screen devices but I think the “multi-touch” approach is going to separate the iPad from its predecessors pretty quickly.

Whenever someone makes good on science fiction and can bring a product to market that meets the expectations of the general public – it works. Bringing the truth out of science fiction is ultimately why we will see a shift in technology use in the year 2010.