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Apple Announces New Environmental Initiatives in China→

In a press release from earlier today, Apple announced two new environmental initiatives in China. The first is a partnership with the World Wildlife Fund to increase the amount of responsibly managed forests in China, aiming to protect as much as 1 million acres of forestland.

“Forests, like energy, can be renewable resources,” said Lisa Jackson, Apple’s vice president of Environmental Initiatives. “We believe we can run on naturally renewable resources and ensure that we protect—and create—as much sustainable working forest as needed to produce the virgin paper in our product packaging. This is an important step toward that goal and our commitment to leave the world better than we found it.”

The second initiative is a project to build two 20-megawatt solar farms that will generate up to 80 million kilowatt hours of electricity per year. In its press release, Apple also provided an update on their renewable energy progress, noting that 87 percent of Apple’s global operations today run on renewable energy.

“We’ve set an example by greening our data centers, retail stores and corporate offices, and we’re ready to start leading the way toward reducing carbon emissions from manufacturing,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “This won’t happen overnight—in fact it will take years—but it’s important work that has to happen, and Apple is in a unique position to take the initiative toward this ambitious goal. It is a responsibility we accept. We are excited to work with leaders in our supply chain who want to be on the cutting edge of China’s green transformation.”

Today’s announcement is just the latest in an increasingly long list of large projects Apple has undertaken to generate renewable energy and be environmentally responsible. I’d be fascinated to see if anyone in the renewable energy industry has done some research on just how significant Apple’s efforts have been, compared to other multinationals and governments.

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Apple Partners with IBM & Japan Post to Deliver iPads to Elderly in Japan→

Apple just announced an interesting new partnership with IBM and Japan Post, with a goal of delivering 4 to 5 million iPads to the elderly in Japan by 2020. As part of the initiative, IBM will deliver custom apps that help connect those who receive the iPads to “services, healthcare, community and their families”.

“This initiative has potential for global impact, as many countries face the challenge of supporting an aging population, and we are honored to be involved in supporting Japan’s senior citizens and helping enrich their lives,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “iPad is incredibly intuitive, easy to use and has accessibility features built in, making it a perfect device for any generation to be connected and engaged.”

The initiative, which will begin to roll out in the second-half of this year, is an extension of Japan Post’s national ‘Watch Over’ service:

For a nominal monthly fee, mail carriers check in on elderly customers and assure families about the well-being of their relatives. That service can now be extended and enhanced with iPad, complementing the in-person monitoring.

IBM’s A Smarter Planet website has also posted a short blog post from Masaaki Tanaka, one of the original designers tasked with working on the project:

A tiny team at IBM Japan got the whole thing going. My first market research subjects were my mother and my mother-in-law. My mom lives nearby, so I would pop over every couple of weeks to get her reactions to design ideas. Mom is comfortable using an iPad, so she represented our more sophisticated users. My mother-in-law was less experienced with mobile technology, so she stood in for our novices. She now has an iPad and takes it everywhere.

It’s unclear whether IBM’s custom apps will be released on the App Store for anyone to download, but one would hope so. 4-5 million iPads is a great start, but it’s only a drop in the ocean to the millions already out there in the world.

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Tim Cook: I’m Proud to be Gay→

Tim Cook, in an op-ed for Bloomberg Businessweek:

Being gay has given me a deeper understanding of what it means to be in the minority and provided a window into the challenges that people in other minority groups deal with every day. It’s made me more empathetic, which has led to a richer life. It’s been tough and uncomfortable at times, but it has given me the confidence to be myself, to follow my own path, and to rise above adversity and bigotry. It’s also given me the skin of a rhinoceros, which comes in handy when you’re the CEO of Apple.

A powerful and courageous message from Tim Cook. At the very least, take a few minutes out of your day and read Cook’s entire op-ed.

So if hearing that the CEO of Apple is gay can help someone struggling to come to terms with who he or she is, or bring comfort to anyone who feels alone, or inspire people to insist on their equality, then it’s worth the trade-off with my own privacy.

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A Candid Look at Unread’s First Year→

Unread for iPhone has earned a total of $32K in App Store sales. Unread for iPad has earned $10K. After subtracting 40 percent in self-employment taxes and $350/month for health care premiums (times 12 months), the actual take-home pay from the combined sales of both apps is: $21,000, or $1,750/month.

Considering the enormous amount of effort I have put into these apps over the past year, that’s a depressing figure. I try not to think about the salary I could earn if I worked for another company, with my skills and qualifications. It’s also a solid piece of evidence that shows that paid-up-front app sales are not a sustainable way to make money on the App Store.

The story of Unread is not one of failure, we were big fans of the app and it has made money. But for the creator of Unread, Jared Sinclair, it has not been a success either. The income that Unread has generated just isn’t sustainable on a long-term basis. The story about Unread’s first year is fascinating thanks to Sinclair’s transparency and I’d highly recommend you read it, particularly if you are developer considering to go ‘indie’ on the App Store.

Sinclair’s story clearly hit a nerve because since his post earlier today, there have been a number of others who have written about the situation with their own perspectives. For example, Benjamin Mayo makes some perhaps obvious points that I think deserve reinforcement:

Betting on apps of incredibly large scale means you bear proportionately more risk, with the possibility of no return whatsoever. If you want to maximise your profitability, make small apps that do a few things well. The amount of effort you put into an app has very little to do with how much of the market will buy it. This means that making big apps exposes you to substantially more risk, which is not fairly counterbalanced by significantly higher earnings potential.

At this point, you may be despairing at the reality of the situation and Cezar Carvalho Pereira offers some commentary on that, in a sense giving a reality check on what it means to go indie on the App Store:

So, while I believe the mythical indie is far from dead, I think the path to going indie is a lot less glamorous than what most have come to expect. A beautiful idea followed by a great execution doesn’t necessarily guarantee success.

If you want even more, Stephen Hackett, Tyler Hall, Ben Brooks, and Brent Simmons have all also posted stories on a similar theme today.

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‘A Gift From Steve Jobs Returns Home’→

Nick Wingfield for the New York Times:

On a recent night at an elegant Beaux-Arts ballroom in San Francisco’s financial district, Laurene Powell Jobs received a computer with an unusually rich history. Around 1980, Ms. Powell Jobs’s husband, Steven P. Jobs, donated the computer to a nonprofit organization, the Seva Foundation, to help the group manage data from its efforts to restore sight in the developing world.

The nonprofit was now giving the computer — an Apple II that spent the last 33 years in Katmandu, Nepal, most of it packed away in a hospital basement there — back to Ms. Powell Jobs and her children from her marriage to Mr. Jobs.

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