MagSafe 2 Messages

Burn the Ships“.

Apple has a habit or one might credibly argue a devotion to changing adaptors, interfaces, parts and connectors. The change may be required to support a new standard (such as Thunderbolt – a high speed peripheral interface – soon to be replaced by Thunderbolt 2…), be necessary to enable a smaller form factor or simply to pursue emerging strategic interests. Victims of Apple’s devotion to progress, include the floppy disc, cd-rom/dvd drive, iPhone/iPad/iPod connectors, Firewire and PowerPC CPU’s.

One such change caught me unawares last week.

Apple quietly introduced MagSafe 2 at the 2012 Apple Worldwide Developer Conference. A clever invention, the original “MagSafe” uses a magnet to connect a power supply to a laptop. Older readers might recall the curse of laptop power connectors past. Inadvertently kick a power cable and the connected laptop tests its strength with a free fall to the floor.

MagSafe equipped MacBooks mean that a power supply kick disconnects the cable without physically moving or damaging the laptop. Useful.

Yet last week, I attempted to connect a just released 2013 MacBook air to my desktop Thunderbolt display. The latest MacBook Air sports a MagSafe 2 power adaptor, which is unfortunately incompatible with the still for sale (and premium priced) Thunderbolt display featuring the original MagSafe connector.

The Apple online store missed an opportunity to tell me, when ordering: “Jim. Add a MagSafe 2 adaptor for $9.99. You’ll need it”. Apple knows that I have a Thunderbolt display. Apple also knows the software that I’ve purchased through the App Store along with my other products, such as an iPhone and iPad.

Reflecting on my wasted time last week over a trivial adaptor, (the nearby Apple Store did in fact, have the $9.99 MagSafe 2 adaptor in stock, but I loathe malls; Disappointment) I am surprised that Apple has not implemented a more personal online shopping experience. Why not use the data they have and offer a suggestion or three along the purchase route?

A few lessons:

  1. Apple continues to have the intestinal fortitude to burn the ships, even for the smallest interface, in this case MagSafe to MagSafe 2.
  2. Apple has the supply chain power to deliver the necessary adaptors and connectors at the right place and at the right time. I can think of countless other purchase experiences where a key item was missing or out of stock. The Apple Store appeared to have a reasonable supply of MagSafe to MagSafe 2 adaptors.
  3. Apple is missing an opportunity to tie my purchasing history into the online shopping experience. Understanding that my MacBook Air purchase required a $9.99 adaptor would have been helpful. My years of Apple customer service experience generally reveals a well run organization. I am surprised that someone has not put this CRM style enhancement in place.
  4. It would be interesting to understand Apple’s internal calculations when contemplating such changes. There are a host of issues worth consideration, from aesthetics, customer experience, hassle, supply chain, retail, staff awareness, support and SKU bloat.

The German Prism: Berlin Wants to Spy Too

Spiegel:

All of these motives probably play a role. The truth is that the Germans would love to be able to engage in more online espionage. Until now, the only thing missing has been the means to do so. Consequently, an outraged reaction from Berlin would have seemed fairly hypocritical.

Roughly half a dozen countries maintain intelligence agencies like the NSA that operate on a global scale. In addition to the Americans, this includes the Russians, Chinese, British, French and — to a lesser extent — Israelis and Germans. They have all placed the Internet at the heart of their surveillance operations. The vision of a wildly proliferating, grassroots, democratic Internet with totally secluded niches has long since become a thing of the past. Tomorrow’s world is a digital habitat where even the most far-flung corners are exposed to outside eyes, and where everything can be stored for posterity — and actually is stored, as with Prism.

What is surprising about the NSA’s program is its size and professionalism. The objective here is also shared by agencies in other countries, above all the BND, Germany’s foreign intelligence agency, which is currently significantly extending its capabilities. Last year, BND head Gerhard Schindler told the Confidential Committee of the German parliament, the Bundestag, about a secret program that, in his opinion, would make his agency a major international player. Schindler said the BND wanted to invest €100 million ($133 million) over the coming five years. The money is to finance up to 100 new jobs in the technical surveillance department, along with enhanced computing capacities. This may sound like a pauper’s version of the Prism program, but it represents one of the most ambitious modernization projects in the BND’s history, and has been given the ambitious German name Technikaufwuchsprogramm (literally “Technological Coming-of-Age Program”).

Field of Dreams, The Sequel

Ed Wallace:

Even more important to the story line could be the fact that farm prices would explode again in corn country, thanks to the increasing prices the futures markets were bidding for that particular commodity. As Fortune magazine reported this May 10, the Kansas City Federal stated, “despite the drought in Iowa last year, farmland prices have nearly doubled since 2009 to an average price of $8,296 an acre.”

So that 1989 movie’s charming idealism could be updated to today’s more cynical and extremely profitable reality: Between the near tripling of the price of corn and the bubble-level price of $8,296 an acre for Iowa farmland, Kinsella and his family find that their windfall is far greater than watching the ghosts of the 1919 White Sox play yet another boring game.

In the film’s climax, Kinsella would walk proudly out onto the field. There he would inform his father and Shoeless Joe Jackson that they’ve played their last game on his farm because, after he sells the final corn crop for a fortune on the commodities market, he will be selling the farm for eight grand an acre. And with that line the idealistic Ray Kinsella would become the Gordon Gekko of Iowa.