The Bigger Apple
A mouse, or the ship from Flight of the Navigator?
Impressive enough that Apple stock hit an all-time high today. In the middle of a steep recession, Apple continued to grow. Add in contemporaneous moves by competing businesses -- Windows 7 comes out tomorrow, and last week Verizon and Google began advertising for their joint iPhone competitor, Droid -- and the milestone is even more spectacular.
Predicts John Gruber...
I’ll go out on a limb and predict that Apple’s market cap will surpass Microsoft’s by the end of 2010. (Also worth noting: Apple has enough cash on hand — cash — to buy every share of Dell.)
Wow. Frankly, Apple has rarely had a day of announcements similar to yesterday's. Sure, most of the new products weren't ground-breaking, but there were upgrades aplenty and very likely zero misses.
I love that Apple has been developing tech in one line and then re-purposing it in other lines, bringing the innovation to all products. Mac Mini as home server. Unibody to all MacBooks, integrated battery first to all iPods and then to all MacBooks. And now Multi-Touch from the iPhone and iPod Touch screens and MacBook Pro trackpads all the way to the stand-alone mouse. As a bonus, the new Magic Mouse sure is purdy.
ISP Transparency Finally In The Works
I've said it before, I'll say it again: Thank You Google.
Says mashable:
Google today introduced Measurement Lab, a set of tools (some already working, some upcoming) for network diagnostics. . . . These tools include the Network Diagnostic Tool, which tests your connection speed and gives you a diagnosis on speed issues; Glasnost, which tests whether your ISP is blocking or throttling BitTorrent connections, and Network Path and Application Diagnosis, which helps you find problems that usually plague last-mile broadband networks.[W]hat’s important is the fact that Google is taking a stand, saying: we’re going to help you fight for net neutrality even if the ISPs don’t like it. . . . It wasn’t an easy decision to make, even for a giant like Google. If these tools were coming from another source, the ISPs would probably simply employ measures that render them useless. However, it’s much harder to block a service if Google stands behind it. On the other hand, even Google doesn’t want to anger every ISP that’s throttling network traffic in some way - and many of them are doing it. Net neutrality has just received a huge push; probably one that will ultimately turn the tide to its favor.