At least a few of my customers seem to be obsessed with the rise and fall of Apple Inc. shares on the stock market. They assume that because I sell the company's products I must own the stock. In fact I own no Apple shares to my knowledge. Maybe I own some indirectly through mutual funds, but if I do I've never taken the time to find out.
My attitude on this subject is that I take plenty enough risks purchasing their products and hoping I can sell them for a modest profit. In the current competitive environment, and given the cost of doing business these days, there are no guarantees even of that.
If anything, my attention is drawn to the extraordinary rise of Apple's website.
I do spend a lot of time looking at websites all day long: distributors' websites, manufacturers' websites, news websites, and my customers' business and informational websites.
Nowhere have I seen a website that even comes close to accomplishing what Apple's website does.
Like most major businesses, apple.com advertizes and promotes its products. And it does so in about 20 languages. It also sells its products in so many languages, and has parallel online stores for students and teachers....again, in multiple languages.
Behind the scenes it has another ordering system for parts to supply its vast network of independent Apple service centres and independent dealers.
For Apple users it has another section of its website for technical support, forums for resolving technical issues, an area to enter the serial number of any Apple computer purchased and find out its specifications. You can download product manuals. You can take courses on how to operate a Macintosh, and how to operate the many computer programs Apple publishes.
Then there is the enormous iTunes store which sells millions of songs by download, rents and sells movies and television programs, sells audio books, and now millions of downloads of games and software applications. Then there are the growing podcasts, some for sale, some for free.
I listen and watch podcasts as far flung as programs from the CBC, TVO, the New York Times, National Public Radio, ABC, NBC, CBS, the Guardian, Al Jazeera television, the New York Review of Books, New Yorker Magazine, the London School of Economics, the Council on Foreign Relations, Slate Magazine. fora.tv. I listen in on courses given at Yale, Duke, Cornell, and special lectures at Princeton, Stanford, and Oxford. I even listen to lectures given by authors at the University of Minnesota bookstore. I listen to new programs every week and, so far, I listen to all of this for free on iTunesU while I commute to and from work, and while I exercise.
It entertains me and, equally important, it constantly upgrades the formal education I received 30 years ago and more.
No wonder newspapers and magazines are struggling to survive.
iTunes also helps me sort through the thousands of radio stations worldwide that now stream on the Internet, so now I listen to hours of uninterrupted commercial-free music, and so do my customers.
If you haven't looked lately, there are some truly remarkable applications for sale on the App Store. One to open your car. One to help you identify bird calls. One to bill customers for your labour. One to jot down that tune that's floating through your head. In my years of selling general interest software I have seen many, many different kinds of software. And today most of them -- or varients of them -- are for sale on Apple's website for use on its iPhones and iPod touch.
On Apple's website you can find links to software built on its OS X platform, and you can find calendars built for its scheduling program, iCal. I downloaded the Toronto Maple Leafs schedule for my iPhone. You can find widgets galore.
Apple's website builds communities like no other I've seen. Not amazon.com. Not facebook. Not eBay or craigslist. Not even google. Each of these goliaths has their specialties, and each influences my life. But none in ways so profoundly as apple.com.
And that only scratches the surface. More later on what's behind the scenes.
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