According to Business Insider, the typical goal of a new hire orientation at most companies is to excite the employees with the new company. Employees are typically greeted with a shiny new computer and company swag. While some of this is similar to Apple, day 1 as an Apple employee requires you to setup a shiny new Mac.

That’s right, no tech support. Apple assumes that if they hired you, you must be smart enough to setup a new computer. This unique way of approaching technology helps break the ice by having employees help one another.

Apple has been notoriously know for their secrecy. The head of security tells the new employees that they will be fired if they leak information. Apple has even been heard to have place employees on “fake products” before they think they can trust them.

The unique part of Apple’s culture can be linked to the success Apple has had over the past few years. Does revolutionizing industries such as the phone and music industry require this magnitude of strictness to produce results?

What do you think about Apple’s unique culture? Can you argue with their unique ways if they produce phenomenal results?

After Steve Jobs, Tim Cook took over as Apple’s new CEO. Tim Cook brought about very subtle changes to Apple ever since taking the position as CEO. When working with Steve Jobs, they both disagreed about certain components of the company.
One thing that Tim Cook had in mind was using Apple’s cash to pay a dividend or  to buy back stock. Steve Jobs did not agree with that, but now with Tim Cook in control, things may change.

Tim Cook also set up a charity program. Apple isn’t known to be charitable and Steve Jobs wasn’t into giving away Apple’s money. The program is a match employee contributions to non-profits program. It matches up to $10,000.

It was also noted that Tim Cook emails more frequently and addresses Apple as a “Team.” He also promoted Eddy Cue to senior vice president of cloud services. Other changes include dividing up the company’s education division into sales and marketing groups.

With Tim Cook as the new leader of Apple, people are keeping their eyes open as to see what else he will do next. Without the creativity of Steve Jobs, will the company be able to maintain its products and services?

Feel free to leave questions or comments.

[Image Source]

Apple is taking steps to improve their products and appeal to those who don’t want everything to be separated by device and want to have everything made available to all computers and devices that rely on Apple’s operating systems and programs. The first step is with the new iCloud that allows content stored in the cloud to be pushed wirelessly to devices.

The company has already begun to employee lower level positions that are related to Web software and services. Apple doesn’t have a solid record when it comes to past Internet products that did not succeed as expected, such as MobileMe and Ping. iCloud is a big improvement and is currently working very well.

One difficulty that Apple faces is that many higher level potential employees are more interested in other companies rather than working for Apple. Apple’s Web services don’t appear to be as high of a priority to Internet engineers and look elsewhere for jobs. Nonetheless, Apple is a strong company and turnover rate is low in Apple’s higher positions.

What do you think? Feel free to leave comments and suggestions.

[Image Source]

How much does each Apple Store cost? Based on Horace Dediu from asymco, each store was about $8.5 million per store, but now it is probably about $10 million per store.  These costs do not include the lease, operating costs, and inventory costs. How did he come up with that figure? Dediu took advantage of Apple’s balance sheets and took a closer look at the “Leasehold Improvements.” At first, there was no correlation between the Leasehold improvements and stores opened, when taking into account that spending occurs before a store opens, there was a consistent pattern. Over the time period illustrated, Dediu noted that Apple opened 220 stores and observed that Apple spent $1.9 billion, which accounts to about $8.5 million per store. It was about $8.5 million per store then, but now it is most likely $10 million per store now.

What are your opinions? Feel free to leave a comment!

[Image Source]

iFixit decided to disassemble the iPhone 4S and take a closer look to what’s inside the iPhone 4S. With a first look, they noted that the SIM card slot is back. After having a deeper look, they find that the iPhone 4S’ battery has an extra .05 WHrs comapred to the iPhone 4. The iPhone 4S has an extra hour of talk time compared to the iPhone 4 on the 3G network. The iPhone 4S has the same amount of talk time in the 2G network,  but 100 hours less of standby time, most likely because of the Dual-Core A5 chip consumes more energy.

For a more in-depth look into what’s exactly inside the iPhone 4S, check out iFixit’s iPhone 4S Teardown.

Feel free to leave comments and suggestions.

[Image Source]

First, click on on the Apple logo on the top left of your screen.

Second, click in System Preferences…

Third, click Trackpad

Fourth, click Scroll & Zoom and uncheck the Scroll direction: natural

There you go. You are now free to scroll however you like.
Feel free to leave comments and suggestions on which way of scrolling you prefer.

Is it the iPhone 5? No, but it is an upgrade. Apple has released the features of the iPhone 4S including Siri, a voice control system that exemplifies why the iPhone is much more then a phone. The new iPhone comes with a dual-core A5 chip, an 8 megapixel camera with 1080p HD video, iOS 5, and iCloud. Apple has not changed the look of the iPhone 4S, unfortunately. As many sources thought that Apple would change the look of the iPhone, it was not meant to be. Since we can’t talk about the look of it, there are many differences of the hardware for the iPhone 4S.

Thanks to www.engadget.com, they did a comparison between the iPhone 4 and the iPhone 4S and came up with these differences:

iPhone 4S                                                                  iPhone 4

As you can see, there aren’t as many changes as we thought there would be. The changes are on the inside where the iPhone 4S has the dual-core A5 chip, it also has the hybrid GSM/CDMA “World Phone”, Bluetooth 4.0. The battery life is a little strange. With the iPhone 4S, you only get 200 hours of standby time. With the iPhone 4, you get 300 hours of battery life. Maybe it has something to do with the dual-core A5 chip.

The iPhone 4S has a dual-core A5 chip which delivers up to two times the power and seven times faster graphics. With the dual-core A5 chip, everything runs faster and you will notice the difference. With just a couple minutes playing games, multitasking, and more, you will feel the power from the dual-core A5 chip. The iPhone 4S comes with an 8 mp. camera, compared to the 5 mp. camera from the iPhone 4. The iPhone 4S also shoots video in 1080p HD. The iPhone 4 only had a 720p video camera. With the new iOS 5, there are over 200 new features. With the notification center, you can view stocks, latest texts, email messages, friend requests and more. With iMessage, you can send an unlimited amount of texts to iPhone’s, iPad’s, and iPod’s that are running with iOS 5.  One other thing that I think makes the iPhone a user friendly phone is the Reminders. The Reminders lets you create a list of things to do that you can check off as you go.

The highlight of the iPhone 4S is Siri. Siri is a voice control application that is as smart as human, maybe smarter. You can ask Siri a question just by talking the way you talk. Siri understands the way you talk, it’s almost like you are having a normal conversation with your phone. If you ask a question like “Are there any good malls around here?” Siri will look up your question and answer you. If you asked “Are there any good hot dog places around here?” Siri will respond “There are many around here.” Then you ask, “How about chow mein?” It will look up a Chinese restaurant because you asked about a restaurant in the previous question. Siri will continue to look up more information until you are satisfied. If you ask Siri to remind you about a certain date, it will remind you about it. Siri knows your address book, information, and more so it knows what you are talking about. If you ask “Please text Brittany Gonzalez.” Siri will automatically know what to do. Siri responds almost as if you are talking to a person in front of you. If you ask Siri “Will the weather be nice in Miami.” Siri will look up the weather in Miami and respond to you with “Bring your sunglasses; it’s going to be nice in Miami.” Ask Siri to write a text a contact, it will write what you are saying and send it to the person. The iPhone 4S also takes dictation. All you have to do is click on the microphone icon on the keyboard, say what you want to say, and the iPhone listens. Tap done and the iPhone will convert your words into text.

The iPhone 4S has three different plans. For $199, you get 16GB of memory, for $299, you get 32GB of memory, and for $399, you get 64GB of memory. Apple is also selling the iPhone 4S in white and black. You can purchase the iPhone 4S through AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint. Sprint is supplying the iPhone 4S with unlimited data. AT&T and Verizon are still selling the 200MB and 2GB of data. Prices may change so I can’t say for sure what the prices will be.

Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do. – Apple Inc.

As Lion gains popularity, more people will migrate from Snow Leopard and older Mac operating systems to Lion. I think that 1 out of 6 Macs running Lion is a big step forward, since it has only been one and a half months since its release. Do you think Lion is a good improvement for Mac OS X? Is it worth the $29.99 to you? Feel free to leave comments or suggestions and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

[Image Source]