The Day Steve Came Down From The Mountain With The Tablets

In 1984, the Macintosh defined what a modern computer would be. And it still does. Just try to find one today that doesn't sport a pale rip off of the Mac user interface. No, go ahead, I dare you.

In 2001 Apple changed the way we interact with music, and in the process, upended the entire music industry. To this day, no other music player comes close to the iPod in terms of total user experience.

In 2007, the cell phone market was saturated with low cost, low function phones. Everyone from the top down said Apple would be insane if they brought a powerful, premium phone into that market. Nobody would pay premium prices for a phone no matter how cool it looked. But Apple didn't listen to them. Instead they introduced the iPhone to immediate and runaway success. Turns out the iPhone doesn't just look cool, it's a very powerful computer in it's own right, with a constant internet connection and a slick user-centric touch interface. And those apps, what a stroke of genius. It was a gamechanger and once again redefined an entire industry. The iPhone today is considered by many to be the greatest single electronics product that has ever been created. So far...

And here we are in 2010. For literally years the rumor mill has been churning with hints that Apple is about to drop another big one on an unsuspecting paradigm. The vast majority of these rumors have now coalesced into a prediction that Apple will announce some kind of tablet computer today. Something new and radical. Something that does not run a desktop OS, but rather a version of the iPhone OS. Something so easy to use that your grandmother could pick it up in five minutes. Something with a persistent connection to the internet using both WiFi and the 3G phone system so you can be online anywhere and everywhere.

We'll have to wait until this afternoon to find out for sure, but Steve Jobs was supposedly overheard telling a close friend that this new tablet computer will be the "most important thing I have ever done".

Here's an interesting secret for you. Apple Inc. doesn't do customer research. What?!? Seriously. They simply don't ask people what kinds of products they want. That's because Steve already knows what kinds of products we want. While that may sound terribly and unabashedly pompous, if you look at history you have to admit that he really does. He has repeatedly said that customers just don't know what they want next, so he has to show them:"If Henry Ford had asked people what they wanted in 1903 they would have said a faster horse". So he has built the greatest electronics company and indeed one of the greatest companies of any kind, on his unique ability to take the unarticulated needs of his customers and turn them into solid, shiny, sexy reality.

In the last year I have spent with my iPhone, I can't begin to tell you how much it has changed my life. I have a hard time picturing life without it. How many products can you say that about? Well, this mystery tablet, if it is indeed reality, will take the revolution that the iPhone started and carry it to the next level with a 10" multi-touch display and a next-gen beautiful and functional user interface that Apple is famous for creating and redefining.

So the tech world holds its breath once again...

Gold Plated Glory

If you follow cars at all you know that the 2010 Ford Fusion won the prestigious Motor Trend "Car of the Year" Award. This is an award given to one car out of the many available for sale in the US, domestic and foreign. You may not know that in my day job I am a systems engineer on one of the engines for the Fusion.

So I guess it is that street-cred that got me the honor to see and hold the actual award itself, and here it is in all it's gold-plated glory.

Sort of like the Stanley Cup of cars, but with less beer in it.

Good Idea Of The Day, And Possibly The Century

Sometimes the best ideas really are the simplest ones.

The Coca-Cola Company manufactures and sells approximately 68 million cans of Coca-Cola, 35.5 million cans of Diet Coke, and 103 million cans of My Coke, per day. Yes, that's right, every day of every year, 206.5 million cans enter the world. That's close to 25 BILLION cans a year! Three times the weight of the Empire State Building.

That's a huge amount of aluminum. Luckily, aluminum is almost 100% recyclable so many of these cans have been cans before. Yes, it takes energy to recycle, but less energy than using plastic.

But now look at that shiny red label, painted on each and every can. That paint represents an obscene amount of chemical content that is toxic, environmentally dangerous, non-recyclable and very difficult to remove from the cans in the aluminum recycling process. Thousands of tons of paint, every day. They use more paint than the auto industry, and it all goes on a product with a life cycle of less than a couple of weeks. If you were to calculate the amount of energy those shiny paint jobs consume in their short lives, you would be appalled. You could run entire cities on that kind of energy. So, a smart designer came up with a very simple idea.

Don't paint the can.

What?!?! But Coke's identity is all tied up in the red and white color scheme, isn't it? Turns out, not so much. It’s the font and the swipe that really matter.

This designer came up with a simple stamping process that embosses the Coke logo into the surface of the can. It looks awesome, different, and although the cans are silver, they are very green too. And the amount of energy savings and pollution avoidance is so large it's almost difficult to imagine.

While this is still in concept stages, and a ways away from implementation, it looks like Coca-Cola likes the idea and they are moving forward with it. Remember, it's a huge cost savings to them, so as long as it doesn't harm their brand, why would they not do this?

The Mirror

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