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Introduction
I’m going to write something ridiculously obvious right from the start: The way we live and conduct our day-to-day ain’t quite like it used to be. I remember when you had to stay in one room to use the phone, and if you got happy feet there was always the cord to remind you of your place. If you wanted to know what was going on in politics and sports, you had to read the newspaper or wait until it was time for the local and national news programs to air. I was drawn to magazine racks in grocery stores like a cat to a mouse convention; my parents never had to wonder where I was while they shopped.
Computers were cool and all, but until the early 1980s, my only experience with one was our Pong console. Pictures were taken with a camera that you had to load with film, and then you had to have the film developed before you could see that you’d cut off the top of your subject’s head or that he was nearly out of the frame entirely. Calendars were something you hung on the wall and reminders and shopping lists were kept in clunky notebooks or planners. And music was something you could typically listen to only on fuzzy-sounding radios or on vinyl albums that emitted as much hiss as they did tunes. And don’t get me started on the heady days when we transitioned from 8-track to cassette tapes — as someone once put it, “That’s one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind.”
As I said, things are different now. Everything I just mentioned can now be done with a small device you can hold in the palm of your hands. Smartphones have evolved from the aforementioned handset tethered to the wall to become one of the most important tools you own. That little rectangle makes phone calls and plays music with pristine clarity. You can get the news or read magazines on it almost instantaneously. You can take stunning snapshots on a whim and share, delete, or edit them in seconds. Calendar events and reminders pop up to keep you on top of your daily activities and responsibilities. Maybe you even use your smartphone to perform your job from just about anywhere — there's no need to lug your desk along, either.
Apple is one of the companies at the forefront of these cultural upheavals. The “fruit company” that made money one less thing Forrest Gump had to worry about has arguably become the most recognizable technology brand on the planet. At first, computers drove the bottom line at Apple. Next, the iPhone and iPad had the world welcoming their sleek products into their homes and hearts. Apple then got the groovy notion that they could provide services to folks who use their devices — services such as email, cloud-based storage, productivity apps, top-notch journalism, favorite songs, movies, and TV shows, and even exercise instruction. What the heck? Let’s throw video games into the mix, too!
And guess what happened? These services became popular — HUGELY so. So huge that they are now Apple’s second largest revenue stream, second only to the venerable iPhone, and accounting for about 20 percent of Apple’s annual income. Up until now, Apple offered these services — Music, TV+, Arcade, News+, Fitness+, and iCloud — as standalone products. Now, however, they are bundled together under the moniker Apple One. You can subscribe to Apple One at a substantially lower price than if you subscribed to each product individually.
That’s where this book comes in.
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