Apple’s announcement can be said to have underwhelmed the talking heads. Coming on the heels of Amazon’s Kindle it felt a little like they were standing still.

It was inevitable.

When a company releases a breakthrough product, everything after it is a case of enhancement. Innovation is the gunshot which makes us take notice.

And yet we still want to focus on that gunshot when in fact we should be focussing on the effect it has had.

Look at it another way and we see that there are two sides to product development: the solution and the marketing.

The solution is where the innovation occurs. You take a ‘problem’ and find a solution. It’s what led to the iPod, the iPhone, to Google, to Twitter, the Dyson and to all the other technologies that have become ubiquitous in our lives.

Marketing is how it reaches the public. Key messages inform as to what that technology, what that solution, can do for us. Will it let me talk to my family in Australia? Does it enable me to write tragic poetry whilst standing on cliff-tops? Can I use it to find my way to that secret club where we dress up? These are the benefits which innovation can bestow upon me, the humble user.

There comes a point, however, when the majority of people are just quite content with how their benefits are delivered. Whilst some might care about how pin sharp their photos are, more will be happy just to flick through the blurry images they fired off on holiday. Others might want 1080p in order to fully appreciate the bright colours of the shaky handcam film they downloaded. More will be content with the fact that all it took was two simple actions to start watching the latest Tim Allen christmas movie.

In other words, there comes a time when the physical phone no longer matters. How fast a piece of technology is is only relevant when it hinders the benefits it promised to deliver.

Amazon know this. Their innovation is in the ecosystem; in the delivery of benefits. So too is Apple’s. They just didn’t focus on that. If they made any mistakes with their announcement of the 4s, it was in allowing their usual secrecy to complicate their very simple message in a way that never happens with their routine upgrading of the desktop and laptop hardware.

Innovation happens once in a product’s lifetime. After that it’s a question of showing people what it can do for them.

©2012 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.

When it comes to ideas we like to think being different is a pretty good starting point. A few months back, a new client asked us to come up with ideas for a game based on Ping Pong in order to promote… well, let’s just say it’s something pretty cool.

We huddled and thought and huddled some more (hey, it was back in the depths of winter) and came up with a good few ideas. The client thought and thought and thought some more (their winter wasn’t that cold) and chose… not Swing Pong.

It was fair enough. They wanted something to meet a slightly different task (and we’re in the process of fulfilling THAT brief too so hang in there).

Something, however, wouldn’t allow us to let go of Swing Pong.

Maybe it was the name or maybe it was just the idea of basing a sports game on audio reactions that kept us interested but we plugged away and, thanks to some hard work and a team of honest beta-testers, created Swing Pong.

We think it’s a bit of fun.

The Guardian think so too. Which is nice.

We could have created a regular ping pong game of course. The App Store has quite a few of those. Poke your finger at the screen and score points. But we wanted to show that anything can be turned on its head and presented in a different way in order to stand out from the crowd. Add an ad spend to that and you have yourself a clear proposition which has really, measurable value.

Take a look and see what you think.

©2012 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.

If legends are to believed, Jobs is the single visionary behind every successful Apple product launch. His carefully manicured brand image, as reliable as Bono’s sunglasses, have taken credit for the iPod, iPhone, and iPad in a series of moves that have led to the financial ascendancy of the one-time underdog. What’s more, this image has undoubtedly helped balance the rise with the anchoring of a more humble image in the eyes of the public.

To believe such legends, however, is to dismiss at a stroke all the thinking of thousands of employees. Engineers, artists and strategists may well have been encouraged by the reappearance of Jobs back in 1998 but it’s unlikely he hands them a ‘To Do’ list each Monday morning.

It’s startling, therefore, that the departure of a figurehead can make such a huge impact upon the Market. The notion that without him in the Director’s chair, the Apple show will revert back to less favourable fortunes takes neither the context of Apple’s mid-season break nor our current social attitude towards technology into account.

It does, however, reveal the importance of branding.

Company CEOs, much like politicians, are learning that education and ability are not sufficient qualities for leading a company. Wozniak may have been a genius on the circuit board but that beard would definitely cause trouble today. Our leaders, business and political, must represent the full package.

So back to Fry.

And a question.

Why not?

Could he generate the sort of interest, the sort of enthusiasm for product that Jobs does? Maybe not the same, but certainly of a level which would keep the world talking about Apple.

And certainly in a way that continues the levels of showmanship which have become almost mandatory in any product launch (although whether he could pull of a Samsung is something to be seen).

It is, ultimately, a question of branding. As the line between b2c and b2b blurs, as financial results are given the same media attention as football transfers (though the former aren’t usually as lucrative) then we mustn’t be afraid to interrogate our brands more fully. We are all businessmen, we are all showmen and if a brand is to be effective then it cannot shy away from influencing every area.

A comedian in a boardroom? Why not? We’ve had clowns in Downing Street for years.

©2012 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.

This post isn’t, however, about politics. At least, not entirely.

It is about Apple and its attitude towards development and, more specifically about how ideas and innovation is fostered within the new one party State.

A post by the well respected Dan Grigsby of Mobile Orchard got me thinking. At first his claims of operating on the edge chimed with my sense of how creativity should work that great ideas are not born from control and order. but between the cracks; wild and wilful; the result of non-conformity.

That’s what want to believe. I want to believe that the approval system imposed by Apple is the antithesis of creativity and that it will end in a steady stream of stilted, unoriginal products that will ultimately turn people away from iTunes.

Only I don’t.

I don’t believe that at all.

I wish I did of course. I like the idea and I completely respect Mr Grigsby’s decision to quit iPhone development. It’s principled and therefore admirable. I like that a lot.

I just think it isn’t accurate. I think great ideas come from necessity. We all operate under some kind of structure imposed upon us. All of publishing works the same way; films, books, music – if you want to be heard then you generally have to follow the rules, even if breaking those rules is another one of the rules. Getting product in front of consumers takes money, even in these days of the long tail and the people who have the money are, by and large, interested in ROI and minimising risk. To them, innovation is useful only as a means to an ends.

Look at the studio system in Hollywood – great films still come out of that. Books are different but the economic pressures are no less (and increasing all the time). Games certainly operate under very strict control systems which companies such as Apple are merely emulating (ok, and strengthening).

Great things still happen. Great films, books, games – they all come out and on a regular basis. Ideas can’t be controlled no matter what systems gatekeeper companies such as Apple put in place. Ideas flow around such barriers.

Maybe there will be a corral of wild ideas for the iPhone. Maybe Apple will empower greater freedom for developers so they can experiment. I can’t see this happening if it threatens stability and control but maybe it will, in some form, happen.

If that happens it could be because all the real innovators have left to pursue other platforms. Most likely, however, it will be because it seems like a good idea.

©2012 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.

Amazon, once the pioneer in this market and the company who brought book buying into our homes, has taken the knock as many pioneers can: by being too focussed on a single business model. Books were their stock-in-trade and, surprisingly perhaps given their successful   expansion into the wider world of online retail, books is where they chose to stay.

Now, against the backlit elegance of the iPad, Amazon’s Kindle looks as dusty and old fashioned as the books it sought to replace. The lessons it has learnt and the markets it opened are there for all to see; especially brighter, more visionary companies like Apple.

Apple have just forced Amazon to concede its persistent and historic advantage, price. By switching places, by adopting the pricing freedom which Amazon once used to undermine that of iTunes, Apple have ensured the co-operation of the major publishers whilst starting off (before they’ve really even started) on the right foot, namely a profitable and sustainable pricing model. Apple want no loss-leaders of the sort which have hamstrung the likes of Microsoft, Sony and Amazon. The future path of publishing will, it seems, be found by avoiding the potholes of other content digitisation.

The not-so-secret cheers at the first signs of Apple’s success can be heard from newspaper offices to games programmers because, much as we all love the idea of free it’s not so great when you have something you have to sell.

Had Amazon understood that getting their over-the-air delivery model right would lead to people wanting more from the technology then perhaps they wouldn’t have been so eager to adopt the digital ink format that has limited their selling power to books. Think small may be a great maxim for makers of chips but Pandora’s box of online shopping was opened a long time ago and our expectations exceed current capabilities (seriously, where is my jetpack?). We don’t so much see capability as we do potential. So reading books=great, but I’d like to watch video, look up references and buy presents for the kids too.

The iPad (and whatever personalised devices come after) aren’t so much about whether you can work on them (one editor told me she would only buy one once she could edit on it, and I’m sure there will be an App for that) but how can spend our leisure time on it.

And so we come back to the e-book as the notion of leisure time ends where it started, with a good book in front of the fire.

Digital books will pay dividends for the casual market, not because the screen is easier on the eye (it isn’t) or because they are cheaper (they aren’t), but because they are convenient. Much as I might prefer the sensual feel of paper flicking across my thumb and much as I want to scream and rebel at the idea of Apple being the gatekeeper of our leisure time, restricting and dictating the content to fit with a single person’s idea of “brand values”, I can’t help but notice that I’m changing. I’m demanding more from my books even as I read them. Engrossed as I was in Late Night On Twisted River (John Irving, 2009) I found myself pausing at moments and reaching for Wikipedia just to probe the border between reality and imagination. Irving is a master of blurring this border and whilst I was happy to be carried along with bears and prostitutes I couldn’t help but wonder more about the man behind the deaths of so many beautiful, innocent children.

In short, I wanted more, not less from the experience of reading.

David Hewson recently posted a number of photographs on his blog. He also tweeted about them. The photographs were of the places he had researched for his latest novel (The Blue Demon, available now at Amazon). On his blog he demonstrates how he took them and also why.

At the back of her books, Jodi Picoult devotes a few pages to the book club concept. She poses a list of questions people might want to consider when discussing her book.

Chicken House point would-be readers of their books to a specific passage using the bold statement “Read it! Try page…”. It’s an expansion on the old marketing trick of relating a unique selling point to salespeople by which they can enthuse about a product. The marked passage encourages readers firstly  to pick up the book and then open it. If the passage is picked properly then that provides the last link in the chain that has us hooked.

We want more, not less, from our books. With e-books (or books, as I believe we will one day call them) this won’t change.

The challenge will be in ensuring the tipping point doesn’t send us all downhill.

©2012 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.

Talk about saving for your own funeral. Maybe they will get June Whitfield to front the ads.

I’m only half joking. The iSlate is just the pinnacle of where tech has been headed these past few years; someone was bound to do it sooner or later. It’s just that Apple are perfectly poised to deliver the technology wrapped neatly into the consumer dream.

Because that, it seems to me, is what Apple trades in. Unlike Microsoft, Apple don’t deal with computers. It’s all about the consumer dream. Name another hardware manufacturer, be they HP or Sony or even the affordable semi-pioneers such as Asus and you have a collective that deals in computers, in technology.

Not so Apple. Cupertino asks what we dream of as consumers. The answers are brought to us courtesy of the technology but it’s the concept we buy into.

So how can we hold Apple in anything other than the best of regards?

Like Google, their image is one of purest ‘cool’ – if cool were a commodity worth billions and capable of keeping us in a blissful state of perpetual purchasing.

And the Google analogy isn’t accidental or merely convenient either.

Both companies are currently engaged in activities that have far reaching and potentially damaging consequences for freedom. They show us, in dramatic tones, just how far out of touch our notion of the Nation State really is. We may gripe about unelected officials being handed authority but really it is Google, Apple and, to a lesser extent even Amazon that we should really be examining.

In the pursuit of creating the ultimate in companion devices, Apple are aiming above the heads of Amazon and Google. A single device upon which we can buy books, films, music and games is a fine old dream as far as consumer dreams go but it comes with provisos attached.

Controlling the gateways to these entertainment hubs is more than just savvy business, it’s a political and economic wakeup call. The iPhone has stimulated enormous activity in development circles and led to Apple’s latest $3.3 billion dollar profit. I’ll just qualify that; first quarter profit. That’s a great achievement and the global economy must be, to no small extent, thankful.

But what longterm damage is it doing? What affect will it have on bricks and mortar retail? Unlike the threat of Internet shopping, Apple have created a system by which there need be no rival shops.

Their proprietary approach means that each of those 2 billion Apps we’ve all been busy downloading (and happily agreeing to call Apps) have been downloaded through Apple. There can be no competition to sell them just as there can be no competition to put them up for sale; even the type of application on sale to us is tightly controlled by Apple.

Of course that’s not to say it is only Apple doing this. There is competition, of a sort. Amazon is trying to control the way in which we access books – an aim which could now fail thanks to Apple who want the whole publishing pie. Google too, want in on that and it remains to be seen who will win out. Google are interesting because they have the veneer of open source to make us believe their motives are somehow purer. The recent spats over the book agreement reveals a different side.

But why does it matter? We have to buy our books, our music, our pleasures somewhere don’t we?

We do. We also need to work somewhere. Imagine a world devoid of high streets; where there is no HMV or Waterstones. A great world perhaps but they have, between them, mopped up the choice we used to have.

Independant stores are a dying breed, concentrating the hunt for jobs into fewer and fewer hands. The benefit to local economies dies with them and it’s not so much of a stretch to see a world, ten years hence, where the big shops are just online. At best.

We’ve been here before of course. The Industrial Revolution has lessons to learn from in this regard of the dangers of concentrating power in too few hands.

But we survived that, right?

Maybe.

Huge areas of poverty, inequality and unemployement followed the Industrial Revolution and it gave rise to the concept of the sweatshop, whether it be in a factory or across an entire continent. Once we allow our consumer desires to be our needs then little stands in the way of making that a reality. Once we allow Apple to be the one stop shop we ease the way for any measure which can streamline that process even further.

It doesn’t stop there either. We have already seen Amazon withdraw books for sale after they’ve been bought, reaching into the digital home and removing a publication (ironically it was 1984) from the Kindle (remember that?). Can that ever be a good thing? It’s an activity we surely associate with repressive Nations.

And that’s just what can happen to existing publications. It’s not a work of fiction that deciding what can and can’t be published in the first place has terrible ramifications.

Much applause has been given to the return of the bedroom coder. With the iPhone we saw game development break away from the huge coding conglomerates that had built up around the walls of the super publishers. The bedroom coder was back and that meant more power, more control and ultimately more money in the hands of the craftsman. But this is somewhat misleading. Because where is the self-publisher? The sole coder has full control of his own vision, up to the point when Apple becomes involved. Then it is judge and jury time. You’ve funded yourself, you’ve been creative, they say. Now it’s time to accept our payment terms – no negotiation, no choice. And that’s if we decide your creative vision is appropriate and in line with ours.

Again, we’ve seen this before. Apple aren’t reinventing the wheel, merely tightening the reins. Walmart has come under frequent fire for using it’s commercial position to dictate content to artists.

So are Apple switching on Skynet here?are we witnessing the end of control and the demise of the Nation State?

Yes.

There is, however, the chance that it will fail.

The open standards of the world wide web could be the only challenge to the monopolization of data. As long as Apple keep a web browser as part of their devices the opportunity for new ideas to seep through because anybody can publish on the Internet. Any ideas, any music, any games can all be delivered free to air through the old WWW.

But even the Internet is beginning to look a bit too unwieldy, a bit too big. How much longer before we’d rather use the Amazon App than the Amazon website? How much longer until our research is done within a single, cleverly cross-reference App with access to every book available through Apple? How much longer before it’s just easier and less confusing to altogether skip the Internet as we understand it today?

In the end we tend to take the path of least resistance and maybe that’s the problem. Who will step in whilst we get swept along? Will we see a repeat of the anti-trust suits that marred Microsoft’s rise to dominance in the 80s and 90s and in which case will they be fought on a national level or will we see the emergence of the World State in a bid to counterbalance the power.

Whatever happens with the iSlate, iPad or iTablet – we shouldn’t just suck it and see.

©2012 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.

Long after conceeding ground to Microsoft and their “two buttons HAS to be better than one” thinking, Apple have come with something ingenious. No, not THREE buttons – NONE. That’s right. Seems like buttons are a thing of the past as anyone using one of their slick new keyboards might tell you. Clive Sinclair eat your heart out.

Fairly soon, Apple will be responsible for a gesture based keyboard, then that will evolve into a lazy wave of the hand to indicate, y’know, just go away and do my work for me willya.

The video looks slick. Very slick. Why go to all that trouble of rolling a finger on a moving wheel when you can just slide your finger down a glossy piece of plastic?

It does, in all fairness, perform really well as a mouse and does away with all the miniscule side buttons that seem to be following Microsoft’s philosophy. And of course, it looks great. like an iPhone fell face down in a bath of milk.

But what’s really clever about the “magic mouse” is that Apple have created the solution to a problem nobody knew existed.

©2012 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.

You will need:

• 4 apples
• 4 pears
• Cinnamon
• 225g plain flour
• 110g caster sugar
• 110g butter
• 4 egg yolks
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 tsp Disaronno

Make the pastry by combining the flour, sugar, butter, eggs and vanilla in a bowl. Keep bringing it all together until it forms a dough. Wrap in cling and refrigerate for about an hour.

Peel and chop the pears and apples and place in a large saucepan with the cinnamon, Disaronno (optional) and about 2 tablespoons of water. Give it all a good mix then cover and cook over a low heat until the fruit softens (but not so much that it breaks down). Leave to cool.

After the hour, divide the pastry into 2. Roll out the first portion and lay in a dish to form the pie base. Spoon in the fruit mixture. Then roll out the second portion and lay over the top. Cut two slits in the top to allow steam to escape and use any offcuts of pastry to decorate. Brush lightly with milk.

Place in a pre-heated oven (180C) for about 30 minutes.

©2012 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.