Outline: The Education Apple - episode 6

“The show that discusses Apple technology in the Classroom as well as how technology impacts our daily lives”

1. The Cast

• Tim Townes, Professor and Chair of the Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics Department at UAB
• Bill Brazeal, Technical Architect, Technology Specialist and Principle - ezNet Solutions

2. Week in Review

• Apple Shakeup in Upper Management
  • October 29, 2012 - Apple today announced executive management changes that will encourage even more collaboration between the Company's world-class hardware, software, and services teams. As part of these changes, Jony Ive, Bob Mansfield, Eddy Cue, and Craig Federighi will add more responsibilities to their roles. Apple also announced that Scott Forstall will be leaving Apple next year and will serve as an advisor to CEO Tim Cook in the interim.
  • Jony Ive will provide leadership and direction for Human Interface (HI) across the company in addition to his role as the leader of Industrial Design
  • Eddy Cue will take on the additional responsibility of Siri and Maps, (he has overseen major successes such as the iTunes Store, the App Store, the iBookstore and iCloud)
  • Craig Federighi will lead both iOS and OS X, this move brings together the OS teams - (Anticipated upgrade schedule has an OS X release in Summer, a new iOS release in Fall, and a significant update to iOS in Spring)
  • Rumors are that a unified operating system code named AOS (Apple Operating System) has been on the books internally since 2009
  • Additionally, John Browett is leaving Apple. A search for a new head of Retail is underway and in the interim, the Retail team will report directly to Tim Cook.
• Intitial look at the new iPad (4th generation)
  • CPU probably an improved version of the A6 SoC introduced in the iPhone 5, but with four graphics cores and two CPU cores
  • 1 GB RAM, the same amount of RAM as the iPad 3 and the iPhone 5 - and twice the amount of RAM as the iPad 2
  • New iPad tests 10% faster than the iPhone 5 - and over twice as fast as the iPad 2 and the iPad 3
  • It’s four to six times as fast as the new Microsoft Surface's Tegra 3 and twice as fast as Google's Nexus 10
• Turning out to be a surprisingly big space between smartphones and traditional PCs
  • Tim Cook, who said, "We set a new launch weekend record and practically sold out of iPad minis. We're working hard to build more quickly to meet the incredible demand." The record Cook is referring to is the fact that Apple sold 3 million iPad minis and fourth generation iPads in just three days, or roughly a million iPads per day. While a significant portion of those iPads were certainly iPad 4's, with the iPad 3 just over half a year old, it's likely the vast majority of sales were focused on the new iPad mini.
  • iPad
  • iPad mini
  • Surface (ability to work with USB peripherals and its all-but-mandatory keyboard, it's far more PC-like than Apple's tablet)

3. Main segments

• Bill - IOS Voice Recognition apps

  • Google’s most advanced voice search has arrived on iOS

    • Here are a few of the questions that Google can answer:
    • “Is United Airlines flight 318 on time?” Your words appear as you speak, you get your answer immediately and—if it’s short and quick, like the status and departure time of your flight—Google tells you the answer aloud.
    • “Show me some pictures of Yankee Stadium” Google will show you hundreds of pictures instantly.
    • “Play me a trailer of the upcoming James Bond movie.” The trailer starts playing immediately right within Google Search.
    • “When does daylight savings time end?” The answer will appear above the search results, so you can set your clock without having to click on a link.
    • “Who’s in the cast of The Office?” See a complete cast list and find out who made you crack up last night.

4. Apps and Followings (please update your pics below when you have determined what you will
cover)

• Bill - App pick ( Evernote ) - The companies CEO, Phil Libin, likens this app to an “external brain” that lets users collect notes, lists, clippings and other electronic data in a single digital hub.  Users have grown to 41 million in five years time and is still a private company (last spring the company received a $1 billion valuation and a $70 million round of venture funding (but they are not currently profitable).  
  • There is a pay option ($45 / year) of the product which gives a number of additional features -- Supersized uploads, Faster image recognition (had written text is searchable), PDFs are searchable, Collaboration...
  • Base product is very good though - CEO says “People love to buy things they just hate being sold to” so there is not pressure to upgrade
  • Evernote 5 soon to be released - check their website for over 100 new features
  • Company offers unlimited vacations and $1000 of spending money when you take a real vacation trip - so they encourage employees to take trips with their families at least once a year.
• twitter pick ( @Edsurge )  - EdSurge is an independent information resource and community for everyone involved in education technology. They aim to help educators discover the best products and how to use them and to inspire developers to build what educators and learners need.
  
  

5. Wrap up and closing remarks