BusinessWeek has ranked Apple #2 on its list of the Infotech 100. This list is designed to rank tech companies on their fundamental economic strength, taking into account "shareholder return, return on equity, total revenues, and revenue growth." Over at Business Week, Helen Walters has an interesting summary of a presentation given by Michael Lopp at SXSW on Apple's design process. Lopp is a senior engineering manager at Apple and gives a sneak peek at the process that Apple uses to bring such great products to the market. 
Arik Hesseldahl has a thoughtful article up today over at BusinessWeek, describing why he won't be buying an iPhone any time soon. There are far too many great lines to quote here so go read the entire post. Hessendahl call's Apple's no-third-party development stance ridiculous. He argues that software developers are an important part of what makes the Mac the strong platform it is -- commercial partnerships and contractual entanglements shouldn't come before creativity and home-brewed innovation. I totally agree. The iPhone is a beautiful OS X platform that deserves to be opened to development.
Full disclosure: Arik consulted with me during the writing of his article.
For the third consecutive year, Business Week has named Apple the "Most Innovative Company" (they beat 2nd place Google with double the votes). Data was collected late last year from the top 10 executives at the world's 1,500 largest corporations.* While acknowledging the accomplishment, Business Week wonders how long their reign will last:
This is the question posed by Arik Hesseldahl in today's Byte of the Apple column for BusinessWeek: what should Apple do with its $12 billion in cash and short-term investments? His suggestion: rather than spending more money on acquisitions (such those that led to Logic, Final Cut and Shake), the big A could start a venture capital fund that would help Mac software startups, and established vendors looking to port to the Mac, with seed money to get products off the ground and out the doors.
Over at BusinessWeek, Arik Hesseldahl posts his thoughtful wish list for the iPhone. On top of the obvious music wishes (wireless music downloads, zunelike device-to-device sharing, and iTunes ringtones), Hesseldahl considers how the phone might sync seamlessly with various iApps like iPhoto, iCal, Address Book and Mail. On-board data storage would also be a big win for him.
He'd like to see a camera that does both photos and short video clips--and maybe even iChat-like video chat. Bluetooth support is a given in his opinion, but he's looking for a better headset.
I personally disagree. I think Apple should continue bundling low-end earbuds with their products and let us buy the headset we actually want and can comfortably wear.
Apple
is known for industrial design so it isn't a shocker that Phaidon Design Classics, a three book series on design,
features some Apple products. You'll find the original Mac, the iPod, and the iMac G5 (I'm typing this post on
one of those!). BusinessWeek online has an article about the books, and a
slideshow that features 10 of the objects in the book, including the Mac.
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