Forbes Fortune bestowed a significant honor on Steve Jobs today, naming him their CEO of the Decade. Fortune outlines the incredible leaps in business, technology and industry Apple has made since Steve's return. For anyone who might not remember, the 90's were not kind to Apple and nearly everyone thought the company was finished.

Consider this incredible fact: Apple launched OS X and iTunes, opened the first two retail stores and introduced the first iPod ... all in the same year (2001). Fortune also goes on to describe how Steve changed the film industry with Pixar, the music industry with the iTunes Store and the cell phone industry with the iPhone and the App Store.

He also kicked cancer's ass.

This is precisely why I'm excited about the prospect of a new piece of hardware from Apple. I won't call it a tablet because that's not what it will be. Apple didn't invent the digital music player, the mobile phone or mass distribution of media. But, they did demonstrate how to do those things the right way, which no one else could come up with.

If there's a new product coming, comparing it to contemporary tablets or netbooks is a huge mistake, because it won't behave like any of them.

Click below to watch Fortunes' video on this announcement.

[Via MacDailyNews]

I don't know about you, but when I hear the name "J.D. Power and Associates," I think of customer satisfaction for automobile manufacturers.

The company also does customer satisfaction surveys in a number of other industries, and yesterday they released the 2009 Wireless Consumer Smartphone Satisfaction Survey and the 2009 Wireless Business Smartphone Satisfaction Survey. As you might not expect after all of the commenter griping we see about the iPhone, Apple nabbed the number one spot in customer satisfaction in both the consumer and business surveys.

Keeping an eye out to the we-think-we-hope imminent economic recovery in the US, survey purveyor ChangeWave is seeing a bit of an bump in anticipated overall corporate PC purchases; in particular, the Mac-buying numbers are up. This month, 9% of responders say they expect their companies to buy Mac laptops in the next quarter, and 7% expect Mac desktop purchases -- a 1-point and 2-point uptick from the previous month's survey.

ChangeWave's methodology emphasizes the expectations of buyers, so it can drift away from the actual reality of purchasing budgets, but it does help measure the attitudes of corporate users. Separate and apart from business purchases, there's another Apple product that's resonating with personal buyers; the other ChangeWave survey published this week shows enormous consumer demand for the iPhone 3GS, with 44% of the respondents who plan to buy a smartphone in the next 90 days expecting to buy themselves an iPhone.

[via Ars Technica]

If your iPhone was connected to an Exchange server for email, contact or calendar synchronization prior to your upgrade to the 3.0 software, you may have run into the same problem that was bugging me for a day or so: the timeout on the passcode lock gets set to "Immediate," forcing you to enter the code almost every time you pick up the phone. Secure, sure, but very annoying. Going to the usual settings location to adjust the timeout shows no choices other than the insta-lock; what to do?

A thread on the Apple discussions boards points to the answer. Since the ActiveSync link to the Exchange server controls some security policies on the phone, you need to refresh those controls; the easiest way to do that, short of deleting and recreating the Exchange account, is to turn off all three sync modes and the Push setting. Once that's done, you can go back to the passcode lock screen and disable the lock or adjust the timeout. Put your sync settings back the way they were and your changes to the passcode config should remain in place.

While this is an annoying quirk, it's not all gripes and grimaces in the Exchange support department. At long last, users of Exchange calendars can send meeting invitations (hallelujah!); Exchange 2007 users can even view the reply status of attendees. Users can specify additional mail folders for sync, and Exchange 2007 users can search server-side mail from their devices.

For a full rundown on the enterprise-friendly features of iPhone OS 3.0, check out the Enterprise Integration guide via Apple's enterprise features page.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in.

Why wouldn't they? I know about a dozen people who have switched to AT&T precisely because they are the only US iPhone game in town (mostly). The exclusivity ends 2010, but SAI asks, will Apple renew its contract with AT&T? The biggest problem plaguing iPhones appears to be the network -- AT&T is notorious for dropped calls and spotty 3G coverage, whereas now-number 1 service provider Verizon has a great reuptation for coverage (both voice and data).

The issue for Apple is compounded by the fact that AT&T uses the globally-accepted network standard of GSM, where Verizon uses the other, less-used standard CDMA. So now you've got two radios to deal with (as provided in the Blackberry 8830 World Edition), something I think Cupertino isn't eager to implement.

Looking to pick up an iPhone, but not interested in getting bogged down by any contracts with "the Man?" Your time may have come -- The Boy Genius apparently got their hands on some slides from an AT&T training session saying on March 26, AT&T will offer a "No-commit" for their existing customers on both iPhone models -- it'll be $599 for the 8GB and $699 for the 16GB.

This isn't quite a deal anyone's planning to jump at, however, since the phones themselves are likely still locked to the AT&T network. Not to mention that you've got to already be an AT&T customer, and they're only selling one phone per line that you've already got. Which means these phones are... for Grandma, who doesn't want a contract and can't make it to the store herself? Businesses might be interested as well, we guess, but for most of us, it's still cheaper to just buy the phone and sign the AT&T contract (assuming that you actually want to use it as a phone).

What it does likely say, however, is that AT&T is expecting an iPhone hardware upgrade, and wants to clear out as much of the stock they've got now as they can (to suckers who are willing to pay more).

[via Engadget]

Spawn Illuminati version 2 just hit the App Store (iTunes link). If you haven't seen it, it's an amazing time-killer which allows user interaction with something akin to a screensaver on your iPhone. It's a little hard to explain, which is why we have video. You can also check out some user-contributed screenshots on the developer's Flickr page.

An interesting aspect of the Spawn story is the author's success with pricing it above the .99 "sweet spot" after mediocre success at that standard price. The second video is a snippet of Spawn's developer Nikolai riffing about App Store economics. Spawn is currently back to .99USD in the App Store, but only for a limited time. Read on for a demo and some pricing opinions from an experienced App Store developer.

I seem to be seeing Macs in small business offices with increasing frequency these days. My dentist uses all Macs, as does the wine shop in town, the photo developing shop, the kennel that watches our dog when we're away and the woman who sells craft supplies. Just a few years ago I'd be shocked to see an iMac running point of sale software. Today, it's much more common.

Earlier this week, Needham Co. analyst Charlie Wolf confirmed my suspicions. Specifically, Apple sold 188,000 Macs to small businesses in the September quarter of this year. Compare that to the 61,000 Macs sold to the same group over the summer.

The boost came just as residential sales cooled, which was fortunate for Apple. Of course, internet security and the ability to run the Windows software that these companies depend on are real selling points for many business owners.

[Via AppleInsider]

On June 23rd an announcement was made at the Marketcircle Blog which revealed that an iPhone companion to their business productivity application, Daylite, was being developed. The news has been greeted with great enthusiasm from current Daylite users, and we got a chance to talk to Marketcircle's president, AJ, about their mobile development plans.

First, for those not familiar with Daylite, it's what AJ refers to as a Business Productivity Manager. "It's more than a PIM," AJ stated, "it's more than groupware. Our premise is something called a Productivity Pyramid. The bottom layer is tasks, notes, files, meetings, urls, et cetera. The second layer is people: contacts, your companies and users. The top layer is what we call objectives, which is projects and opportunities." Daylite is geared towards helping small business -- ranging from one to fifty people -- move forward.

Very recently, Marketcircle released a new version of Daylite which integrates with the iWork suite. Daylite can also integrate with Mail.app and supports Sync Services for iCal and Address Book syncing.

The developers at Marketcircle were receiving constant requests for mobile applications for Palm, Blackberry, etc. AJ says that, at that point, the richness of data provided by Daylite didn't sync well with the available platforms. "And no offense to those platforms," he went on, "but they're quite ugly." All of that was "until we got the iPhone."

Where's all that cash that Apple made from the iPhone and all those iPods, Macs, and iTunes downloads last year going? Why, right into Apple's mattress. According to the Financial Times, Apple currently has $18 billion sitting on their balance sheet, doing nothing much at all. And they're OK with that -- Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer recently said in the Q1 conference call that they like having that "flexibility." And after all, you never know when you might need to drop $18 billion on something important.

All that money doing nothing isn't so great for Apple's investors though, some of whom apparently want a piece of the pie. They might like to see dividends, stock buybacks, or even actual spending come out of that on Apple's part (later in the piece, I'm surprised to see that Apple only spends 3% of their sales on R&D, while Microsoft spends 14%). But no -- Apple is flush with cash from all their big sales numbers, and they want to apparently stay that way.

[Via Ars]

As several readers have pointed out, the latest episodes of Scrubs (which started its final *sniff* season last week) are available on iTunes. But how can that be, Scrubs airs on NBC? Yes, yes - but thanks to the magic of large media conglomerates, Scrubs is not actually an NBC show.

Scrubs is owned/produced by Disney (which owns ABC), via their Touchstone Television division ABC Television division, meaning they are not part of the NBC Universal contract with iTunes. This is why it took so long for Scrubs to appear on iTunes in the first place (fellow Scrubs fans will remember how mad we were at iTunes/ABC over this issue). Now, in this final seventh season, things become a bit more complicated; NBC now shares profits with Scrubs (before they didn't get anything from syndication or DVD sales), as a condition for renewal, and you can watch full episodes on NBC's website (which you could not do before), but this is still an ABC show in terms of iTunes arrangements. It is my understanding that iTunes contracts are with the studios that produce the shows, not the networks that air the shows - which is not always the same thing.

For example, NBC Universal owns/produces the show House, which airs on FOX. Thus, the current season of House in unavailable on iTunes. Conversely, FOX owns/produces My Name is Earl, for NBC, and like Scrubs, current episodes are available on iTunes. Weirdly enough, Ugly Betty, which is now also fully owned by NBC (because the chairman and head of programming for NBC is the owner of Reveille, which produces Ugly Betty and The Office, among others) does have its new episodes on iTunes - only because I assume they signed an agreement with Apple before NBC bought the company.

Of course, if the WGA does indeed strike, not much of this will matter anyway, because none of our new shows will be on TV or iTunes for us to watch. This concludes today's lesson in Television Business in the Digital Age.

The ongoing NBC Universal v. iTunes slap-fight has just become well, more slap happy. As reported in Daily Variety, Jeff Zucker (the President and CEO of NBC Universal), revealed some of the details of the NBC/iTunes impasse in an interview with the New Yorker's Ken Auletta.

Some of the highlights:

• In the last year, NBC U reported only $15 million in revenue from the deal with iTunes
• NBC U programming accounted for 40% of iTunes video sales
• NBC did want to experiment with higher pricing, albeit for only one show and on an experimental basis, but Apple refused.
• NBC U also wanted a cut of Apple's hardware sales (presumably iPods) to supplement revenues from the iTunes Music Store.

I'm sure it was just a coincidence that these remarks were given on the day of the launch of the Hulu.com beta, NBC's attempt to answer iTunes.

Issues of profit sharing and price flexibility aside (I'll refrain from sharing my own opinions regarding those issues), the conclusion I find most interesting in this saga is that Zucker's figures (along with figures Apple has reported in the past) back up what many analysts have been saying all along: demand for television content via iTunes is pretty underwhelming. Think about it, NBC says they made only $15 million in revenue off of media sold via iTunes last year; even in the softening TV on DVD market (where the cost per episode is on average, the same, for the consumer), that's peanuts compared to retail revenues of those same shows.

Additionally, if NBC represents 40% of all iTunes video sales, and assuming that the other media companies have a similar revenue split agreement with Apple, that would put total revenues by the content providers for the video/TV sector of the iTMS at approximately $38 million. Strictly looking at the situation in those terms, I can understand why media companies might be reticent to offer up their programming on iTunes. I mean, really, what's the point? If the content is going to be essentially given away, web-based services like Hulu make a lot more sense.

Apple has released another iPhone ad unofficially titled either "All These Years" or "How?" I say 'unofficially' titled because it hasn't appeared at Apple's iPhone ads page as of this writing yet, but a copy is already on YouTube. This time around, Apple's giving a shout out to the business users, asking how they could have gone all these years without "email like this" or "stock updates like this" in their pocket. Personally, I'm glad they wrote the ad this way, because I would probably have spit out my beer if the voiceover would have said "without email like this... in your pants."

But seriously: I worry about how well this particular ad is going to do. The iPhone is receiving a lot of criticism from the business sector, much of it understandable, for not working with Exchange Servers. While I don't wear a suit to work every day (or pretty much any day), word on the street is that Exchange support is the major hurdle keeping the iPhone from storming corporate purchase receipts. If the iPhone is primarily targeted at consumers, that's great. But if Apple wants to truly go after business users, they need to play by that industry's rules and offer the software support those folks need.

That said, it is a bold ad that certainly highlights the iPhone's gorgeous UI in a business setting. I'll update this post with a link once Apple publishes the official ad.

[Update: There are actually two new ads, and Apple has updated their site with both - All These Years is the one I caught here, but another new one is All the Parts. Just like the first ad, I question their approach because the ad isn't entirely accurate. One major 'part' of the internet the iPhone lacks is Flash. While I personally would be happy as a camper if Flash never arrives on the iPhone, I understand that it's something many users want. Either way, the lack of Flash is certainly a glaring hole in their particular wording with this second ad.]

[via iPhone Alley]

The first numbers are in and it looks pretty good for Steve Jobs, Apple, and the iPhone. According to market research firm Piper Jaffray, Apple sold about 500,000 iPhones from 6 p.m. on Friday through end of business Sunday night -- 300,000 more than the market research firm originally estimated the company would sell.

In a report released by Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster, it was also revealed that ninety-five percent of buyers in San Francisco, New York and Minneapolis purchased the 8GB model iPhone (myself included) instead of the 4GB one. Also, about half of the 253 buyers surveyed were new customers to AT&T.

So, let's see, what's 500,000 times $650? Actually, I think I might need a calculator for that one. Someone hand me an iPhone.

The Economist has published an article that explores some of the lessons other companies can learn from Apple's journey through the industry, as well as it's unique practices towards product design and customer relations. Specifically, the article outlines four lessons other companies should take notes on, including the fact that some of Apple's innovation comes both from without and within, highlighting the fact that some of its strongest products like Mac OS X and the iPod are either built on the foundation from open source (Mac OS X's BSD Unix core), or originally conceived by an outside consultant (like the iPod). Another great lesson the article mentions is an ability to not listen to customers or the market when one's instincts say otherwise. Both the iPod and Nintendo's Wii are cited here: while the iPod was originally criticized for being too expensive of a gadget, the market has clearly spoken otherwise. In the case of Nintendo's wildly successful Wii, the company was criticized for betting on a portion of the market that was more or less completely ignored by the other video game manufacturers: non-gamers who haven't picked up a console yet.

It's a good read that takes a realistic approach while spotlighting some of the lessons that companies can learn from Apple's wild success in recent years.

Thanks Adam