hello, my name is:
Marc Hummel. (Philadelphia.) Writer; coffee enthusiast; reader; computer/internet nerd; stationery geek; music fan; literacy advocate.
recent tunes:- Shearwater – You As You Were
- Shearwater – dread soverign
- Shearwater – Breaking The Yearlings
- Shearwater – Meridian
- Shearwater – Star Of The Age
- Shearwater – Believing Makes It Easy
- Shearwater – Pushing The River
- Shearwater – Run The Banner Down
- Shearwater – Open Your Houses
- Shearwater – Believing Makes It Easy
Tag Archives: apple
A Look Inside an Apple Factory
A quick, fascinating look inside the Foxconn factories that assemble Apple products {nightline/abc news}.
Apple Ambivalence
I’ve been a Mac user since about 2003. I was frustrated with my Windows machine, with the way nothing on it seemed to work based on intuition. Macs seemed (and are) simpler, more detail obsessed, and easier to use. After I switched, I wondered why Apple wasn’t more successful.
Fast forward to Q1 2012 {the verge}, and Apple is the world’s most valuable company. (Or at least they were for a little while today; Exxon has since taken the top spot again. But still, that’s Exxon.) It’s extraordinary. And I can’t help but be fascinated by their success, and weirdly proud of what they’ve accomplished.
And that bugs me. Why should I care how successful a ubiquitous, massive multinational corporation like Apple is, and one with a questionable dedication to fair labor practices to boot.
David Heinemeier Hansson, nailed it today, and made me feel a little less crazy. An excerpt:
Still, financial results of the likes Apple delivered yesterday serve as an affirmation of all that energy spent telling their story. Believing in the underdog. Like your favorite home team who couldn’t get into premier league while growing up just won the Superbowl, the Stanley Cup, and the World Series all together for the 10th time in a row — and you were the only one to believe in them. It’s an immensely satisfying feeling.
Read the rest: Watching Apple Win the World {37 signals blog; via daring fireball}.
I Wish Steve Jobs Changed Capitalism, too
Just found a depressing but important article about the working conditions in Apple factories, as well as a cultural explication of Apple’s recent success. Mike Daisey, quoted below, put forward these arguments in a live performance last Fall entitled The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs. From Outsourcing Jobs {n+1 blog; via truth dig}:
Apple’s massive growth in the last eight years to becoming the single most valuable publicly traded company in the world is not entirely explained by the thesis that Apple products are great, or that the company was early to take advantage of wireless broadband, or that Apple’s time had come when we all began to see computers as lifestyle accessories. For every era gets the companies it deserves. A brand of cleanness and simplicity, of chipperly trading control for efficiency, seems particularly well suited for a time when people have lost faith in an incompetent, messy, gridlocked, shallow democracy and in our fragilely recovering economy. Better an iPhone than Il Duce, of course, to make the trains run on time—or at least to tell you how to get to Penn Station—but totalitarian shadows probably should not fall over the products we crave, in how they are made or why we love them. Nor should the manufacture and the appeal of our most desired products reach the same conclusion: that people are much less than our machines.
UPDATE 1/9: This week’s episode of This American Life features a made-for-radio version of his performance. It’s incredibly moving. Listen to it here: Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory.
Now what?
A media narrative has emerged around Steve Jobs since his passing two days ago. Through the filter of my personal media bubble, it goes something like this.
Jobs’ brilliance was to take technology reserved for the realm of geeks, eliminate complexity, and produce a product that’s intuitive enough for everyday humans — from children to the elderly — to pick up without consulting the instruction manual. Examples of this singular, simple ideal are evident throughout Jobs’ career.
He saw in the mouse and graphical user interface what Xerox PARC didn’t, and created the personal computer. He saw the promise behind the portable MP3 player, and made an interface that’s easy-to-use, forging relationships with the companies who own the content.
In the vein of the Godin post I linked to earlier today — what can we do with Steve’s view of technology and the world? What sliver of an invention is out there today, waiting to be transformed into a simple, delightful product?
The Right Words for Steve
Seth Godin puts a positive spin on it:
It’s one thing to miss someone, to feel a void when they’re gone. It’s another to do something with their legacy, to honor them through your actions.
{read more: a eulogy of action}
And if you haven’t watched Steve’s commencement address to Stanford’s graduating class of 2005 yet, do so now {video and the text}. A primer for you:
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Helvetica, Times New Roman, Narberth
image via {folklore.org}
Newsworks has the story of a Philadelphia-based typeface designer, Susan Kare, who almost named the original Mac fonts after stops on the Septa Regional Rail lines.
But, according to Kare, Steve Jobs insisted the fonts be named after world-class cities rather than suburban towns. (Ouch.)
Read the whole interview with Susan on {technically philly}.
image via {folklore.org}
Newsworks has the story of a Philadelphia-based typeface designer, Susan Kare, who almost named the original Mac fonts after stops on the Septa Regional Rail lines.
But, according to Kare, Steve Jobs insisted the fonts be named after world-class cities rather than suburban towns. (Ouch.)
Read the whole interview with Susan on {technically philly}.
