iNotes4You's Blog

Mind mapping is a widely used powerful technique to visualize information. If you look on a mind map you see that one central topic is connected to subtopics with an underlying hierarchical structure. Scientific studies validate that mind mapping improves learning, understanding, planning, and with it the development of personality and knowledge.

Mind maps already have been used hundreds of years ago. See

Roots of visual mapping

for more information.

This impressive overview from Porphyry of Tyre in 3rd century C.E. to the legendary BBC TV series by Tony Buzan in 1974 shows us:

The devices changed from a pen to a computer but the basic idea to connect topics like cells in our brain are connected by nerves remained the same.

With the introduction of Apple’s iPad in 2010 Steve Jobs gave us a device which solely can be controlled with our hands. So using a mind mapping tool on the iPad is like a rebirth of the old handcrafted mind maps.

See this study from a company developing the mind mapping tool iMindMap founded by Toni Buzan who is seen as the rainmaker in modern mind mapping.

The Mind Mapping Research

Apple and mind maps …

What’s the relation between Apple and Mind Mapping?

It’s the iPad which allows to be creative everytime, everywhere, and without any peripherals just using your brain and your fingers.

This device initiated a shift in paradigm of learning, teaching, and improving knowledge and personality.

Mind maps can summarize important information about developments like the fingerprint scanner, the companies strategy, philosophy, advertisement, the usage of it’s devices, suggestions for purchasing products from Apple’s stores, and last but not least feature descriptions of apps running on iOS devices. Even a SWOT-Analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) can be presented as a summarization of all known parameters affecting the companies position in the market.

All this can also be done by textual descriptions but scientists validated that a mind map is always more intuitive to understand and is kept in mind for a longer period. It’s a shame that Apple, seen as the most innovative company in the world, ignores the mind mapping technique like all other companies.

The platform …

Liam Hughes, UK, founded the now biggest platform for mind maps with more than 60k members worldwide. The free registration allows you to download more than 500k maps and upload your own creations.

One of the groups you might me interested in is the Apple group with maps about ‘All things Apple’. I created this group in January 2013 and it now contains about 80 maps.

Using the platform …

Go to biggerplate.com, register (it’s complete free), select Groups from the navigation bar, then select ‘Apple’ and join the group.

If you choose the group Apple you will find mind maps with a description and alternative file formats for downloads. Because of the many existing file formats of the different tools I added a special service for those who don’t use a mind mapping tool or those who use an other tool than iThoughts for the iPad.

Mind maps created by myself additionally can be downloaded in the following file formats:
PDF, ITMZ, MMAP, XMIND
You will find the download links for each map in the section ‘Description’.

The alternate file formats were created with iThoughts and it’s possible that some minor compatibility issues occur.
Here is a brief description how to use the Biggerplate platform for maps related to Apple.

The creation of my maps is always done with the app iThoughts HD for the iPad by Craig Scott, UK. iThoughts is perfectly adapted to tablets and so Craig talks about ‘Touchy feely mind mapping’ when it comes to use the technique on Apple’s mobiles.

Examples …

Here are some examples for Apple related mind maps.

When going to Biggerplate com you can download all these maps and more in different file formats.

Related links …

iThoughts HD for the iPad

Biggerplate, The group ‘Apple’

Publishing Mind Maps

Note …

You can also get more information here on my blog by tapping on ‘Mind Mapping’ in the keyword cloud.

Thanks for your attention.

Apple is a unique company driven by some principles which can be summarized by just looking on some famous quotes of former CEO Steve Jobs and Tim Cook, the actual CEO of Apple Inc.

Apple has some of the most innovative and sought after consumer products in the market right now. Of all main competitors (Microsoft, Google, Samsung) Apple is actually the only company that has an entry in the computer market with the iMac, Mac Mini, and the MacBook Pro and Air, each coming with OSX Lion, made by Apple. The company makes its own phone, the iPhone, with its own operating system iOS and the search engine Siri. The iPod is the most prolific music storage device. The iPad created a new category of computing devices, and is being copied by all other companies. Apple makes its own router and backup storage drive called Time Capsule. Apple TV is used to stream media through your TV. iTunes is used across all devices as the most popular available music service. And there is iCloud, Apples online storage including synchronization across all devices. Apple also developed Thunderbolt, a new data transfer port and, together with HP, AirPrint for seamless printing within a WiFi network. Apple also offers the productivity suite iWork with Pages, Keynote, and Numbers the counterparts to Word, Powerpoint, and Excel for their computers and mobile devices. 417 Apple Stores in in 14 countries (as of June 2013) offer products as well as services for customers.

Note

The octopus refers to critics who are of the opinion that Apple locks its customers.

In economics, vendor lock-in, also known as proprietary lock-in or customer lock-in, makes a customer dependent on a vendor for products and services, unable to use another vendor without substantial switching costs.

If it would be true all other companies also make their customers dependent of their products as long as the operating system of their electronic devices are not compatible to each other, that means software running on one system cannot be used on another system. That’s the case with Microsoft software and Google’s Android operating system as well. There some functionalities of iOS which do not allow to use it in connection with other platforms (e.g. iMessage) but nobody is forced to use this service. There are enough alternatives.
Proprietary file formats of Microsoft, rims of cars with snow tires, chargers, etc. should also be seen as the attempt to customer lock-in?
I don’t blame companies producing non-standardized hardware, software, or services. It’s always a customer decision to choose the products which meet the requirements best.

Unfortunately they lack in offering professional database packages ranging from simple and fast developer tools to server-based management of large data volumes. A further relevant disadvantage is that most of the sector-specific software isn’t available on a Mac except it’s running Windows. This might be the reason why Apple offers Bootcamp, the environment for installing a version of Windows.

Apple cares about more than just creating a consistent and unique experience for each of their devices. In my opinion, the Cupertino brand has created a more complete and user-friendly ecosystem that encompasses much more than the features or abilities of a single phone. If your total investment in Apple is just a single iPhone, then switching between iOS and Android with each upgrade opportunity is not just possible; it is likely very probable. But if your electronic environment is based on Apple products it’s hard to move over to another company.

Summary …

Seamless usage and a perfect customer experience can only be achieved by building an ecosystem where everything fits together. A perfect user experience is dependent of seamless usage and well-functioning connections between all devices. Microsoft started the development of Windows 8 with the target of One Operating System for all devices. It must be said that this basic idea is a great step forward and Apple is working on a further unification of OS X for it’s computers and iOS for it’s mobile devices. This is simply a logical consequence of seamless usage and effective development. There is still much work but the first step was done by introducing the 64-Bit processor for mobiles.

The details …

See this mind map which contains all components of Apple’s ecosystem.

This is a statement of S. Jackson on Google+. I found it in the comment section of a post where a member asked whether he should move over from an Android to an Apple device (Sep 2013, Apple community (Stevan Svartling)).

iCloud is pretty awesome. Although l have a Gmail account, I have a separate email account to take advantage of the iCloud service, so I have an iCloud email account too.
iCIoud is pretty solid solution that gets better and better. Find My iPhone will be a service that you will use right away. Apple has made Pages, Numbers, Keynote, iMovie, iPhoto free to download for new iPhone 5c or iPhone 5s users. The iOS apps Pages, Numbers and Keynote sync back to http://www.icloud.com where you can pickup where you left off on you desktop using Chrome, Safari or Internet Explorer. It is a nice alternative to Google Docs. Apple just needs to add collaborative sharing on Pages and I would say they are right there on the same level of Google.

Also you have iCIoud backup of your iPhone, which is extremely kick ass. When you get a new phone and you don’t lose your text messages or voicemails and of course all of your settings and apps are restored as before.

iTunes radio, new to iOS 7. Service is free with Ads or you can kill those ads for $25 a year, which is way cheaper than any other streaming service out there. Also as an added bonus, Apple will match all of your music with their music. Even if you didn’t buy the music from Apple, it doesn’t matter. They don’t upload the music, they simply match it.
However if you lose your music, you can download Apple’s copy which will probably be better encoded than your copies, especially if you are using MP3, which is extremely dated.

Social Media, the Genius of iOS is that Apple partners up with services that people are using, such as Facebook, Yelp, Twitter and has integrated those solutions pretty effectively throughout the OS. On Android starting out, it is all about Google and their services. Totally different approach.

Apple Maps, I’ve said it here before and now I am changing my opinion. Google used to have the better mapping system, for I have a Nexus and Android phone too, but Apple just surpassed Google Maps. Because Apple crowd sources their data with other iOS Maps users, the ETA is second to none. Google Maps did a horrible job of this, thus why they bought WAZE a few months back. Maps is awesome now, it was a little rough at first, but Apple hands down have done exceptional work get the maps up to speed.

If you get the 5s, you’ll have the first 64-bit processor iPhone and already it is showing to be the most powerful of all smartphones on the market. 32-bit having a narrow limited pipeline is now pretty much unlimited to allow Apps to really unlock the power of the hardware and OS. Games or tasks that take up a lot of resources are going to shine on this platform. I can’t wait!

The AppStore, no question the best App ecosystem. The App richness is just off the charts. Android, I download a lot of junk ware that just bloats my phone and often I gotta reset the phone because I have no idea if the phone is infected with Malware.
Not to say there are no crappy apps on iOS, but they do get filtered out pretty quickly. I love the strong AppStore.

If you buy anything on the AppStore your content is always available for access. If you buy a Movie, you can download it and then delete it and then download it again. Rather nice locker system.
Also all of Google’s solutions are on iOS too. So you can use whatever you want.

FaceTime is a great way to connect.
The beauty of FaceTime is that it isn’t tied to a Social Network where people must join in order to use the service. FaceTime is like SMS. Setup your unified profile and sign in once. Done.

AirDrop is Apple’s local WI-FI peer-to-peer sharing. This works awesome.
Third party is picking this up quickly and it looks like in a few months it will eclipse NFC.

Apple’s iBooks store, this is where you can store your PDFs, attached documents or simply download any book you want. Apple has made all the classics FREE of charge for download. Apple includes for free detailed tech books on iOS, iPhone and so on. Unlike on Amazon’s store, if you want a copy of David Copperfield, it will cost you.

Related links …

Apple, a unique company

Apple’s Strategy and Ad

Apple’s Intangible Assets

The Apple ID

Thanks for dropping by.

There are significant differences in strategy and advertisement of Apple Inc. and it’s competitors.

Let the CEO Tim Cook talk to understand some basic strategies and attitudes with an overall impact on the development of products and their advertisment.

Innovation
Some people see innovation as change, but we have never really seen it like that. It’s making things better. iOS 7 is a great example of that. It’s significantly better than 6 or any of those that came before it, and obviously significantly better than the other OS out there.

Mobile market
For smartphones, I think it’s even more a two-operating-system world today than it was before. Maybe that changes. Maybe it doesn’t, but that is the state of things today. I think that Android is more fragmented than ever and, as a result, when you look at things like customer satisfaction and usage, you see the gap between Android and iOS being huge.

There is a huge difference between market share of units and usage share. And it shouldn’t surprise anybody that it’s like that. Anybody that’s used both should not be surprised that that is the natural result. And that’s really important to us because we have never been about selling the most. We’re about selling the best and having the best experience and having the happiest customers.

Android’s market share
I don’t think of Android as one thing. Most people do. I mean, from a consumer point of view, if you look at what Amazon does with Android, forget the name Android for a minute. If you’re coming down from a different planet and you were going to name it, you wouldn’t name it the same thing as what another company does. If you compared that to what Samsung does, I’m not sure you would name that the same thing either.

The fragmentation
It’s a growing problem. It’s a compounding problem. And think about all these people that they’re leaving behind from a customer point of view. People do hold on. Most people hold on to their phones a couple of years. They enter a contract and honor that contract and then upgrade after that two-year period. So in essence, by the time they buy the phone, many of these operating systems are old. They’re not the latest ones by the time people buy. And so by the time they exit, they’re using an operating system that’s three or four years old. That would be like me right now having in my pocket iOS 3. I can’t imagine it.

Software and Hardware
We’re not looking for external validation of our strategy, but I think it does suggest that there’s a lot of copying, kind of, on the strategy, and that people have recognized that importance.

Now, we’re well beyond just the surface level of design of hardware and software. We’re deep in the guts. This week you saw the A7. You saw our new M chip. Well, these are only possible because many years ago we elected to start building our own silicon team, and now we have many, many people designing silicon.

And you saw us go to 64-bit. Well, why are we able to do that first? It’s because we’re at that level of being vertical. Does anybody—do these other three companies have silicon expertise? You can answer that. Maybe they have something that I’m not aware of, but in terms of the depth of it ….

You look at innovation like the iPhone’s camera and the detail that went into the camera. Most people hear the word camera, and they think of hardware. And hardware is really important to it, you know? With the stuff we did with the flash on this. But it’s software, and it’s the silicon—I mean, it’s everything.

So the way I think about Apple is that the magic of this place really comes up at its best when hardware, software, and services come together.

And it’s sort of the intersection of those things is where things get incredibly magical. So facilitating that to happen and getting the collaboration level for that to happen is the magic here.

And one of my proudest moments is when other people see that. They don’t know that they’re seeing that, and that’s also the beauty. They don’t have to do it. But look at these (gesturing to iPhones). These are perfect examples where the hardware and the software and the service begin to blend.

Excerpts (Businessweek, 2013-08-20)

Innovation …

The Boston Consulting Group (BGC) reported ‘Apple is still the most innovative company in the world’.

The report singles out five factors that lead to strength in innovation:
• Senior-management commitment
• The ability to leverage intellectual property
• Customer focus
• Innovation portfolio management
• Well-defined and governed processes

“Companies that continually create value over the long term—meaning decades or more—learn how to ingrain the ability into their corporate makeup; it becomes part of their culture and DNA,” said Andrew Taylor, BCG partner and a coauthor of the report. “They create value, jobs, and growth because of their ability to institutionalize innovation.”

Summary …

• Innovation
  We are making things better.
• Market
  And that’s really important to us because we have never been about selling the most. We’re about selling the best and having the best experience and having the happiest customers.
• Fragmentation
  So in essence, by the time they buy the phone, many of these operating systems are old. They’re not the latest ones by the time people buy.
• Software, hardware, services
  It’s because we’re at that level of being vertical. Does anybody—do these other three companies have silicon expertise?
  So the way I think about Apple is that the magic of this place really comes up at its best when hardware, software, and services come together.

Apple cares about more than just creating a consistent and unique experience for each of their devices individually. In my opinion, Apple has created a more complete and user-friendly ecosystem that encompasses much more than the features or abilities of a single phone. If your total investment in Apple is just a single iPhone, then switching between iOS and Android with each upgrade opportunity is not just possible; it is likely very probable.

However, if you have taken full advantage of everything Apple has to offer users of iOS devices, then switching platforms may be harder than you think. For many iPhone owners, the question is more than just upgrading a phone to the next great thing. It is also about how much one has totally invested in Apple as a whole.
Or just in one sentence:

Apple keeps hardware, software, services, and entertainment in one place.

SWOT analysis …

Considering the strategy, the philosophy, and the actual market a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities,Threads) is an appropriate visualized summarization. I added some points not mentioned by Tim Cook.

Note
Created with the app Inspiration for the iPad
For further information about a concept map and the app Inspiration see Mind Maps vs Concept Maps

Equity ratio …

Equity Ratio (Total shareholders equity / Total Assets; for Apple in 2012 = 67%) is an indicator of the level of leverage used by a company. The Equity ratio measures the proportion of the total assets that are financed by stockholders and not creditors. A low equity ratio will produce good results for stockholders as long as the company earns a rate of return on assets that is greater than the interest rate paid to creditors. With 67% Apple is an Alpha Male amongst others.

The company doesn’t want to serve the low-budget market. Focussing on customers with a certain dispensable income opens the door to pull them into the ecosystem. That is the reason why the new iPhone 5C is still an iPhone built with high quality materials and completely integrated in Apple’s ecosystem.

Advertisement …

In September 2013 Apple won the Coolest Brand award in the UK with Aston Martin and Rolex in 2nd and 3rd place.

Please refer to TheTechStorm

That’s because of their very special advertisement, reflecting strategy and philosophy of the company. It inspires people much more than ad of other brands. Here is a brief summarization of the most famous slogans of the company.

Apple ad never takes care of competitors in contrast to Samsung as well as Microsoft.

Apparently, Apple phones just doesn’t work. Even putting an Apple to your ear and hoping that you will hear more than the echoes from the mountain doesn’t seem to help. They make you suffer terribly. Once you got a Samsung, you perform a mating dance toward a mountain ram. In any case the clear implication is that iPhones don’t work in the Icelandic mountains, while Samsung’s Galaxy S4 turns you into a ninja.

At least that’s what the ad from Iceland says.

Apple’s ad always focusses on it’s own products often emphasizing features other products do not offer. Apple never mocks devotees of other brands. Remember Tim Cook saying ‘We’re about selling the best.’ so there is no need to take care of other products. This can be seen as conceited but in either way as considered opinion.

Feel free to download this mind map.

The alternative file formats have been created with iThoughts HD for iPad (.ITMZ file format). Compatibility to other tools is limited.

Strategy and success …

The success of years of continuous development is documented in an article of Amit kumar Singh.

The Friendliest Smartphone OS

He talks about

• Cognitive Load
  the sum of all elements one needs to be familiar with in order to be able to use a device
• Efficiency and Integration
  the access to key features of a smartphone
• Customization
  the sum of features to customize the device
• User Experience Friction
  the sum of experiences annoying users

and shows us a comparison between BlackBerry, Windows Phone 8, Android, and iOS 6 and 7.

Related links …

Designed by Apple

iPad Mini ad

Tim Cook Interview (Busiessweek)

Thanks for reading.