ericellenberg

Connecting the dots

I bought my first Apple product on September 17, 2005—a black 4GB iPod nano. Two days prior my girlfriend of 5 years had broken up with me, and I was heartbroken. Completely heartbroken. The night of the sixteenth I cried all night, without sleep. I felt like I had been stripped bare and left for dead.

Somehow, I had seen the keynote where Steve asked what the small pocket on his jeans was for. I had to see this thing in person. So on the seventeenth, after a night of crying, I pulled myself together and went to the Barnes and Noble at Georgia Tech to see the new iPod nano in their Apple section upstairs. The moment I picked it up was the first time I had smiled in two very long days.

Fast forward to December 2007. It was nearing the end of the year, and I wanted to think different for 2008. It had been a difficult year. In January I was in a car accident in front of my parents’ house that cracked two ribs and bruised my left lung, causing me to cough up blood. My first Mac, purchased April 19, 2006, was stolen on March 1, 2007 when my left side was just beginning to feel normal again. I was feeling lost in college, and my grades reflected my lack of direction. I had serious talks with my professors, the dean, and the registrar that had me doubting myself in dark ways.

But, throughout it all, I was loving my iPod and my newly replaced MacBook Pro. I engulfed myself in music, notably Bob Dylan, in a way I had never known possible. I learned of Steve’s fondness for Dylan. A kindred spirit, I thought. I decided I would start 2008 by applying to work for Apple. 

In May I was hired as a Specialist. I had never worked for a large company before, and I had never worked in retail before. It was thrilling, difficult, fun, and tiring. I met great people and made lifelong friends. After six months, I left the company to finish college, and in August 2009, I did. I graduated into a stagnant job market with limited employment opportunities. Serendipity brought me to have a couple interviews at a software company across the street from Lenox Square Mall. All the while I was being interviewed, where hollow claims and business jargon were the order of the day, my thoughts kept drifting to Apple. 

“We passionately engage customers, showcase our technology, and help them discover how our products can enrich their lives.” Enrich their lives. 

“At Apple our most important resource, our soul, is our people.” Our soul is our people.

I left my second interview and reapplied to Apple. I was rehired in April 2010, and this time I worked for the company for a year and a quarter, leaving on July 29, 2011 for a new job to be closer to my family. My heart fell as I left. I miss seeing my friends’ faces every day. And I miss seeing that moment when people experience something only Apple can do. The light in their eyes, the smiles, the laughter. Sometimes the tears.

The point in telling all this is this: I love Apple. Some of the best things I’ve ever owned and some of the most meaningful relationships and experiences of my life have come from Apple. From Apple. 

From Steve.

This is how you can mourn the loss of a man whom you’ve never personally known. Because in looking back, you can connect the dots, and one of the figures in my dots is Steve.

To his family and friends, I offer my sincerest condolences. Your husband, your father, your friend meant a lot to me, too.

Phase Two, re: Apple’s Four-Year Product Rollout

Before I say anything, I must first stand on the shoulders of a great post by a very smart guy: Apple’s Four-Year Product Rollout by Mr. Shawn Blanc. Go read it.

Great, right? I thought so, too. Something about it bugged me, though. It left open a question which naturally arises from its conclusion. Shawn ends with this:

The future of simplicity and usability in technology means connectedness. It means hardware devices that don’t operate as silos independent of our documents and media and communication channels. But that future is now upon us.

“But Shawn!” you say. “What does that mean for Apple? Where do they go from here?” In other words, if what Apple has undergone over the past 4–5 years has been phase one, what’s phase two?

The answer, I believe, is this guy.

Well, not the man himself, but his new position in the company as Senior VP of Internet Software and Services.

There have been rumors that Apple is building a maps service, and I think there’s credit to them. The company is definitely up to something in that space, what with the acquisitions and the admission in their press release regarding the location data controversy that they are developing a traffic service. But I can’t help but think a maps/traffic service is just the tip of the iceberg.

After all these years of running the iTunes Store, the App Store, the iBookstore, and soon iCloud, why create an SVP post now? Sure, Eddy himself deserves the status and the respect of an SVP. He’s basically kept Apple’s online businesses online for the better part of 10 years. Why the promotion now?

The imminent launch of iCloud factors into this, obviously. It’s a big deal. Consider: every Mac, iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and Apple TV sold after iCloud’s launch will give everybody a bevy of useful and attractive Internet services. And yes, iCloud will be free, but free in a different way than Google, or Yahoo, or Microsoft, or most other things on the Internet: you get it as a complement to your purchase of an Apple product. That means no ads. No ads means no need to collect all kinds of data about users to show them shit they don’t want. No ads also means, none of those friggin’ ads all in my face all the time. Let’s make it simple: no ads = happier users. If you want to make a solid bet, bet on seeing a bunch of @me.com email accounts in the next year. Free email that syncs, no ads, and a nice interface? I can’t wait.

Now, a brief tangent to point out something curious. What’s up with Facebook buying up and hiring all the world’s design talent? Do they just want to improve Facebook’s design to make it less convoluted and friendlier? Maybe they really are building a Facebook phone? I don’t know. But I have a hunch that says Facebook is preparing to compete with Apple, and not just because they might be building a phone, but because Facebook thinks Apple is going to make a bigger impact online than they ever have before.

As Shawn said, everything Apple has been developing over the past several years seems to have reached some new plateau, where everything just works, yes, but more importantly, where everything just works together. The next obvious step for Apple, then, is to continue working on connecting their users’ devices more meaningfully, and that means developing software that operates on the Web.

Apple has said since 2008 that they maintain three software platforms: Mac OS X, iOS, and the web through WebKit. I feel like they’re ready to do something special with that third one.

(Update 9/11/2011: Minor edits for clarity.)

What makes Apple amazing

I have a story to tell. It involves a wedding, my friend and his new wife’s first dance, and my iPhone.

My friend Chris Gray got married on April 2 to the lovely Laci Kimbell. It was an outdoor wedding, which comes with the standard set of outdoor-event worries: Will it rain? Will it be cloudy? Too hot, too cold? What about traffic sounds? That sort of stuff. It went off without a hitch. The wind picked up right when they were supposed to light the unity candles (two flames become one thing), but it was a laugh, and they just had a good time. Splendid was the word of the day, no worries.

So we finish up with the ceremony and the wedding party is taking pictures and then someone from indoors (the wedding planner?) informs us that the DJ has a problem. And the problem is, well, he’s an idiot. But the reason he’s an idiot is that the song Chris and Laci are supposed to have their first dance to “has a virus and won’t play.” Uh huh. And he doesn’t have a back up.

I could see it on their faces. Chris and Laci looking at each other like, “We do an outdoor wedding with no problem, and the DJ can’t play a song?” Something always goes awry at weddings. Has to. Before they even fret, I pipe up and say, “Okay, so? I have an iPhone.” I pop on the iTunes Store, download Billy Joel’s “She’s Got a Way,” and then I head off to let the DJ know to use my iPhone to play the song to their first dance.

I had to share the story because in the moment that I said, “I have an iPhone,” I realized that Apple had just saved the wedding. The iTunes Store, the iPhone, the iPod app, Airplane mode so a call wouldn’t interrupt their first dance—all Apple. Everything went without a hitch, as if I was the special guest DJ hosting the couple’s first dance. It was amazing.

We live in the future, people—and Apple is leading the way.