And last March, Apple gave itunes developers the ability to charge subscription fees through their applications
When Research in motion announced a similar initiative last fall at a session of the Blackberry Developer Conference in San francisco,
and Apple does the same with its itunes App store. Amazons Web Services provides developers the cloud-based processing power
Apples itunes and Research in motions payments program reduce transaction fees by bundling a customers purchases before sending them to a credit card company for processing.
Virtual currencies, from Microsoft Points to Linden Dollars, encourage oein-world trade, incurring credit card and banking fees only when their users buy in.
And last March, Apple gave itunes developers the ability to charge subscription fees through their applications
When Research in motion announced a similar initiative last fall at a session of the Blackberry Developer Conference in San francisco,
and Apple does the same with its itunes App store. Amazons Web Services provides developers the cloud-based processing power
A form of money used in an online virtual world, such as oelinden Dollars in Linden Labs Second life or oegold pieces in Blizzard Entertainments World of Warcraft.
But within nations, the fruits of this global transformation have been shared unevenly. Though China s middle class has grown exponentially
have missed out on the windfalls of this winner-take-most economy#r worse, found their savings, employers,
of course#o launch The Manny, the debut novel of his daughter, Holly, who lightly satirizes the lives
#Holly Peterson and I spoke several times about how the super-affluence of recent years has changed the meaning of wealth.
It s true that few of today s plutocrats were born into the sort of abject poverty that can close off opportunity altogether#a strong early education is pretty much a precondition#ut the bulk of their wealth is generally the fruit of hustle and intelligence (with, presumably,
and the Aspen Institute s Ideas Festival (cosponsored by this magazine), for the more policy-minded.
and during coffee breaks the lawns are crowded with executives checking their Blackberrys and ipads. Last year s lineup of Zeitgeist speakers included such notables as Archbishop Desmond Tutu, London Mayor Boris Johnson,
Peter Peterson#imself a Republican and former member of Nixon s Cabinet#as spent $1 billion of his Blackstone windfall on a foundation dedicated to bringing down America s deficit and entitlement spending.
Jim Balsillie, a cofounder of Blackberry creator Research in motion, has established his own international-affairs think tank; and on and On it is no coincidence that Bill clinton has devoted his post-presidency to the construction of a global philanthropic brand.#
Last September s meeting, where I served as a moderator, included Bill clinton, International monetary fund head Dominique Strauss-kahn, Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski
#At last summer s Aspen Ideas Festival, Michael Splinter, CEO of the Silicon valley green-tech firm Applied materials, said that
we have seen the mobile phone industry mushroom to include over 5 billion members. Smartphones remain a small subset,
Over the past year, Google activated more than 255 million devices compared to 105 million Apple activations.
and Apple does. As smartphones and other devices evolve in this exploding market, look for a near-term push into near-field communications, 4g,
Hyper-Local Urban Farming Going Underground A few years ago, a study by the Leopold Center for Sustainable agriculture at Iowa State university reported that between 1980 and 2001,
The drive to make all food supplies local has touched off a number of battles to rewrite municipal codes to accommodate everything from rooftop gardens, to backyard cows and chickens
to aquaponic and aquaculture projects, to experimental vertical farms. The next shift with see crops grown underground.
Dutch-based Plantlab recently announced it has figured out how to triple plant yield in a sunless,
which helps them grow crops using just one-tenth the water needed in traditional greenhouses.
pesticides are no longer necessary. Production facilities can be built almost anywhere from the deserts of Sahara to the icy plains of the Artic. 17.
Apple s App store currently offers 9, 000 mobile health apps, along with 1, 500 cardio fitness apps, over 1, 300 diet apps, more than 1, 000 stress and relaxation apps,
All Apples stores now carry the Withings Blood pressure monitor, a peripheral device that plugs into the ipad,
Tree-Jackers Plant and tree alteration specialists, who manipulate growth patterns, create grow-to-fit wood products, color-changing leaves,
and personalized fruit. More details here. 36. Plant Psychologists An entire profession dedicated to undo the damage caused by the Tree-Jackers 37.
Extinction Revivalists People who revive extinct animals. 38. Robotic Earthworm Drivers The most valuable land on the planet will soon be the landfills
Clone Ranchers Raising blank#humans will be similar in many respects to cattle ranching. But once a clone is selected
#Anyone who has an apple tree growing in their yard knows how difficult it is to grow one that is worthy of eating straight off the tree.
or bird damage that leaves most apples somewhat marginalized. They may be perfectly good on the inside,
As we shop for apples in the grocery store, we find ourselves looking for the perfect apple.#
#Only a small percentage of apples grown on the farm are worthy of making it into the major leagues of food the fresh produce section of our grocery stores.
But what if we could take all of those bruised and damaged apples and turn them all into perfect apples#perfect size,
perfect color, perfect crunch when we bite into them, and the perfect sweet juicy flavor and aroma that makes our mouth water every time we think about them.
Instead, they are devices with the very real potential for turning real apples into perfect apples.
Robotic Chef printing the ultimate cupcake and the ultimate banana At MIT, Amit Zoran has developed a series of digital devices that may one day be use to produce the food we eat.
#Final Thoughts Farming currently has far too many variables. The precision that farmers use to control the planting
and harvesting of their crops is not the same precision they use to control their growing environment.
As an example, people in the future will be able to order a 13.2%fat cheeseburger with 2. 7 grams of potassium and 3. 6 grams of calcium, coupled with a hint of almond and banana flavoring, on a sesame seed
There are no such things as a pig molecules, or a fish molecules, or a wheat molecules.
We have other types of molecules that make up plants and animals, but on the molecular level there is no such thing as vegetarian and non-vegetarian molecules.
and pick up a new kiwi and eggplant cartridge so you can print dinner tonight? Those days may be coming sooner than you think.
CA on the rapidly evolving topic of the future of agriculture. Growing up on a grain farm in the little town of Mobridge,
SD is an experience I wouldn t trade for anything. But over the past several decades, the farming profession has evolved into a very sophisticated industry,
when Steve jobs announced the software developer s kit for the Apple iphone. When Apple s App store officially opened on July 11, 2008
there were a whopping 552 apps to choose from. To say the apps were an instant success is a gross understatement.
Early visions of smart dust technology Smart Dust In the 1990s, Kris Pister, a researcher at UC Berkley dreamed up the idea of sprinkling the Earth with countless tiny sensors, no larger than grains
of rice. These smart dust#particles, as he called them, could be used to monitor everything.
Apple, for example, has A p/E ratio of around 15.2#bout the same as the broader stock market,
despite Apples immense profitability and dominant market position (Apple in the last couple weeks became the biggest company in America,
and delivered as online services#rom movies to agriculture to national defense. Many of the winners are Silicon valley-style entrepreneurial technology companies that are invading
Apples itunes, Spotify and Pandora. Traditional record labels increasingly exist only to provide those software companies with content.
partnering with Apple and other smartphone makers. Linkedin is todays fastest growing recruiting company. For the first time ever, on Linkedin, employees can maintain their own resumes for recruiters to search in real time#iving Linkedin the opportunity to eat the lucrative $400 billion recruiting industry.
Agriculture is powered increasingly by software as well, including satellite analysis of soils linked to per-acre seed selection software algorithms.
from someone buying a cup of coffee to someone trading a trillion dollars of credit default derivatives, is done in software.
#â Wave and Payâ##Mobile phone Payment System Launched in the UK Samsungs new phone is the first to use Barclaycard and Oranges Quick Tap payment technology.
Orange and Samsung have teamed-up with Barclaycard to provide mobile phone payments with the new Quick Tap#payment technology.
Courtesy of Barclaycard, Orange and Samsung, consumers across the UK can now pay for goods and services with nothing more than a mobile phone.
will admittedly be used mostly for buying cups of coffee and snatched lunchtime sandwiches, but when Oranges head of mobile payments, Jason Rees, calls it the beginning of a new order#,hes not wrong.
Yougov research, commissioned by digital payments provider Intelligent Environments, says 42 per cent of smartphone users want to use their phones as mobile wallets.
Owners of the Apple iphone are keenest, but significant proportions of Blackberry and Google phone users want to take advantage of it too.
Thats not because technology built into mobile phones is the way that everything from cameras to translators, seems to be going.
You have banks competing with carriers competing with Apple and Google, and its pretty much a goat rodeo until someone sorts it out.#
#In one camp are established the long players. Payment networks like Visa and Mastercard, along with banks that actually issue credit cards to customers,
as well as Apple and the mobile carriers, which want to collect fees through their control of the phones themselves.
Apple and Google already have payment systems#Apples itunes has 200 million accounts tied to credit cards,
allowing users to pay for offline purchases with their Apple or Google accounts. But they would need access to the cellphone chips and the merchants terminals.
Apple could make its own cellphone chips to make this all happen, but Google could not
because it makes only Android cellphone software, not the phones themselves. Getting retailers on board is important to the widespread adoption of the mobile payments
who in some stores can wave a smartphone above an apple or orange and learn instantly where it was grown,
who grew it and whether it has been recalled. They can even contact the farmer, if they feel moved.
The FDA has had trouble quickly pinpointing the source of national outbreaks of food-borne illness a task complicated by a lengthy food supply chain where tomatoes might change hands five times from farm to store.
mostly relying on bar codes that can be affixed after harvesting to a piece of fruit or a crate.
which covers food other than meat, poultry and egg products. They are competing to develop the tracking technology
Initially, investigators at the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention identified tomatoes as the culprit
In the meantime, the cost to tomato growers in Florida alone was estimated at about $100 million. While the traceability system will improve the tools available to the FDA,
has developed a two-dimensional bar code sticker that can be placed on individual fruits and vegetables or packaging.
which is applying it to all of its private label fruits and vegetables in its more than 2, 400 stores.
and tell the farmer These are the greatest strawberries Ive ever had or whatever...Its about using technology to put people back in touch with the people who grow their food.#
#Thats new for Phillip Bauman, a 42-year-old watermelon farmer in Washington state. Bauman bought the Harvestmark system for his Pasco farm about three years ago
and preprinted bar code stickers for his melons. And during harvesting, he takes the laptop to a bank
Bauman traced the melon and discovered it had been picked in August but purchased by the customer in October.
Some of this capability is available now in rudimentary form in computer games where the controller shakes to indicate an on-screen car collision. 2. Seeing the forest,
not just the trees If you have to rasterize an image in order to analyze it, any sort of correlation will take a long time.
or eggplant and figure out why people do or don t like that taste. As Kevin Fitchard, Gigaom s resident foodie, recently reported, some of this is happening now.
By compiling foodpairing trees#its technology can identify vegetable or seafood ingredients that reinforce the flavor of different meats,
Over the last two years Shawn and Stephanie Grimes have spent much of their time in pursuing their dream of doing research and development for Apple, the world s most successful corporation.
But they did not actually have jobs at Apple. It was freelance work that came with nothing in the way of a regular income, health insurance or retirement plan.
The upheaval, in some ways echoing the mechanization of agriculture a century ago, began its latest turbulent phase with the migration of tech manufacturing to places like China.
Four of the most valuable American companies#Apple, Google, Microsoft and I b m.#are rooted in technology.
And it was Apple, more than any other company, that set off the app revolution with the iphone and ipad.
Since Apple unleashed the world s freelance coders to build applications four years ago, it has paid them more than $6. 5 billion in royalties.
And the tech industry has begun making claims about how apps are contributing to the broader economy A study commissioned by the tech advocacy group Technet found that the app economy##including Apple, Facebook,
Apple said this month that its app business had generated 291,250 jobs for the American economy,
During that time, the number of United states developers paying the $99 annual fee to register with Apple rose 10 percent to 275
Apple has become increasingly assertive in promoting the economic benefits of apps as its own wealth
Apple has become a jobs platform.##Michael Mandel, the economist who conducted the Technet study,
said it was problematic to slice the jobs data as Apple had done. The guy who writes an Apple app one day will write an Android app the next day,
#he said. You can t add up all the numbers from every study to get the total number of jobs.#
A quarter of the respondents said they had made less than $200 in lifetime revenue from Apple.
when someone buys or upgrades their app from Apple s online store, the only place consumers can buy an iphone or ipad app.
Apple keeps 30 percent of each app sale. While its job creation report trumpets the $6. 5 billion the company has paid out in royalties,
who runs the Apple app review site 148apps. com and closely tracks developments in the field.
Shawn Grimes started experimenting with apps almost as soon as Apple opened its doors for the iphone.
Those amateur apps pulled in more than $5, 000 from Apple. Late last year, Mr. Grimes was laid off as a computer security specialist by Legg Mason, the Baltimore financial firm.
But with hundreds of new apps introduced every day in Apple s store, the field is overcrowded#something the Grimeses learned quickly and painfully.
especially Apple technology. At one point they owned a 24-inch imac, a Mac Mini, a 24-inch cinema display screen, two 13-inch Macbook Airs, a 15-inch Macbook
Pro, two ipad 2s, two Apple TVS, two iphone 4s and an iphone 3gs. We justify buying new models by saying we need them to test out the apps,
Apple delivered little #but it also made no promises. People used to expect companies to take care of them,
Apple makes no money here, but it gets a long-term benefit: start-ups that succeed will embed the ipad and the iphone more thoroughly into society.
The company is, in a sense, another arm of Apple s research and development program. The applications are what sells the hardware,
Apple has limited appeal.##On one level, it was a strange move for Apple to open its devices to people like Mr. Grimes, Mr. Nicholas and the Millers.
Imagine a violinist s horror at letting a toddler play with his Stradivarius and you would have some idea of Apple s reluctance to let anyone outside of its walls fool with any of its technology.
This is a company that sealed batteries into its devices so people could not replace them.
Apple s brilliant but mercurial chief executive, Steven P. Jobs, agreed to unlock the gates of the fledgling iphone only after much internal argument
and he made sure that Apple would retain strict oversight of every app. In retrospect, it might have been the smartest decision ever made by a company that prides itself on creating the future.
#said Mr. Scott of148apps. com. Apple s financial documents show just how crucial app inventors are.
Developers have expressed flickers of grumpiness at Apple s 30 percent cut of each app sale.
#Apple declined to comment about the union, which disappeared from the Web as mysteriously as it had arrived.
Mr. Nicholas has the same philosophy about Apple now as he did wrote when he ishoot.
Factories like the one here in The netherlands are a striking counterpoint to those used by Apple and other consumer electronics giants,
Many industry executives and technology experts say Philips s approach is gaining ground on Apple s. Even as Foxconn,
Apple s iphone manufacturer, continues to build new plants and hire thousands of additional workers to make smartphones,
The analogy is not only to the industrialization of agriculture but also to the electrification of manufacturing in the past century,
And at Earthbound Farms in California, four newly installed robot arms with customized suction cups swiftly place clamshell containers of organic lettuce into shipping boxes.
#Apple s retail employees are long on loyalty but short on pay Apple employees During Jordan Golson s best three-month stretch last year, he sold bout
$750, 000 worth of computers and gadgets at the Apple Store in Salem, N h. It was a performance that might have called for a bottle of Champagne
I m an Apple fan, the store is doing really well. But when you look at the amount of money the company is making
Within this world, the Apple Store is undisputed the king, a retail phenomenon renowned for impeccable design, deft service and spectacular revenues.
But most of Apple s employees enjoyed little of that wealth. While consumers tend to think of Apple s headquarters in Cupertino, Calif,
. as the company s heart and soul, a majority of its workers in the United states are not engineers or executives with hefty salaries and bonuses but rather hourly wage earners selling iphones and Macbooks.
About 30,000 of the 43,000 Apple employees in this country work in Apple Stores, as members of the service economy,
And though Apple is unparalleled as a retailer, when it comes to its lowliest workers, the company is a reflection of the technology industry as a whole.
#By the standards of retailing, Apple offers above average pay#well above the minimum wage of $7. 25 and better than the Gap,
as well as Apple products, at a discount. But Apple is not selling polo shirts or yoga pants.
Divide revenue by total number of employees and you find that last year, each Apple store employee#that includes non-sales staff like technicians
and people stocking shelves#brought in $473, 000. These are sales rates for a consulting company,
Even Apple, it seems, has decided recently it needs to pay its workers more. Last week, four months after The New york times first began inquiring about the wages of its store employees
An Apple spokesman confirmed the raises but would not discuss their size, timing or impetus,
Apple wants to show that it cares about its workers, and show that it knows how much value you add to the company,
Though a significant increase, Mr. Moll s new salary of about $36, 000 puts him on the low side of the wage scale at the other large sellers of Apple products, AT&T and Verizon
In other areas, Apple has been a leader. Stores in a variety of fields have adopted the company s retail techniques
But Apple s success, it turns out, rests on a set of intangibles; foremost among them is a built-in fan base that ensures a steady supply of eager applicants and an employee culture that tries to turn every job into an exalted mission.
This is why Apple can do something unique in the annals of retailing: pay a modest hourly wage,
When you re working for Apple you feel like you re working for this greater good,
as anyone who has ever set foot in an Apple Store knows. And the relative youth of this work force helps explain why people are likely to judge the company by a different set of standards
but we don t find it offensive that Apple pays a young man $12 an hour,##Mr. Osterman said.
#Twenty-two-year-olds also tend to be more tolerant of the Apple Store s noise and bustle,
#says Shane Garcia, a former Apple Store manager in Chicago. Six years.##But the average tenure is two
or geniuses#in Apple s parlance, who work at what is called the Genius Bar. Apple declined requests for interviews for this article.
Instead, the company issued a statement: Thousands of incredibly talented professionals work behind the Genius Bar anddeliver the best customer service in the world.
and shows how passionate they are about their customers and their careers at Apple.##That 90 percent figure sounds accurate to Mr. Garcia,
The problem for Apple Store employees, they said wasn t just the pace. It was the lack of upward mobility.
There are only a handful of different jobs at Apple Stores and the most prestigious are invariably sought after by dozens of candidates.
Apple prohibits its staff from talking to the media, but several former employees who spoke for this article said they had fond memories of their jobs,
And Apple#can be a strong credential to have on a rã sumã these people said.
And even those who used Apple as a launching pad described a gradual evolution, from team player to skeptic,
Kelly Jackson, who was a technician at an Apple Store in Chicago, was thrilled when she was hired two years ago.
then Apple s chief, pitched the Apple Store concept to his board in 2000. Ultimately, approval was given for just four stores.
That did not daunt Ms. Bruno, now an executive at Peet s Coffee. I had grown up using Macs
and if it involved Apple and I could be involved, #she said, it made me feel important.#
#Ms. Bruno was one of the first hard-core Apple fans hired for the nascent chain.
and boast that it was harder to land a job at an Apple Store than to get into Stanford,
My dream my whole life was to work for Apple and suddenly, you can, #he said.
You ve always been an evangelist for Apple and now you can get paid for it.#
But if the newly hired arrive as devotees, Apple s training course, which can range from a few days to a few weeks,
Apple managers and trainers give them a standing ovation. The clapping often bewilders the trainees, at least at first,
#says Michael Dow, who trained Apple employees for years in Providence, R i. There is more roleplaying at Core training,
If there is a secret to Apple s sauce, this is it: the company ennobles employees. It understands that a lot of people will forgo money
because aspiring sales employees would clearly be better off working at one of the country s other big sellers of Apple products, AT&T and Verizon Wireless,
At Apple, the decision not to offer commissions was made, Ms. Bruno said, before a store had opened.
Tellingly, Apple doesn t use the word sales#to describe members of its sales team.
Apple does more than just filter out people interested primarily in money. It also reduces the number of middle-aged and older people on the payroll,
Generally, an Apple employee is someone who can afford to live cheaply, is bothered not by the nonstop commotion of an Apple Store
and is comfortable with technology. People who fit that bill tend to be in their early or mid-20s,
There is no shortage of college graduates eager to dedicate themselves to Apple s vision, on Apple s terms.
That includes people like Asher Perlman, another former technician from a store in Chicago, who joined Apple three years ago,
I m happy with my time at Apple and where it landed me,#says Mr. Perlman, who now works in information technology.
brought unprecedented crowds to Apple Stores. The company tried to hang on to its culture, but naturally it changed,
Arthur Zarate, who joined Apple in 2004 and later worked as a technician at the store in Mission Viejo,
and 10 minutes for Apple s assortment of devices. If a solution took longer to find,
a lawyer, filed a class action alleging that Apple was breaking California labor laws. State law mandates two 10-minute breaks a day,
a technician named Kevin Timmer who worked at the Woodland Mall store in Grand Rapids, Mich.,
Jordan Golson, who now blogs at Macrumors, a site that keeps tabs on all things Apple,
and an insulated coffee thermos. Mr. Zarate fared no better at one quarterly meeting for employees.
the former Chicago manager, talked about Apple with a bittersweet mix of admiration and sadness.
many managers keep close tabs on sales of warranties, known as Apple Care, and One to One,
and 65 percent should include Apple Care for a sales employee who wanted to climb Apple s in store ladder#to technician or manager,
and Apple is often diligent about elevating from within its ranks of high achievers. Though not always.
you can hear occasional laments about the gradual Gapification of Apple.##In recent years, the level of unhappiness at some stores was captured by an employee satisfaction survey known in the company as Netpromoter for Our People.
It s a variation of a questionnaire that Apple has given long to customers, and the key question asks employees to rate, on a scale of one to 10,
How likely are you to recommend working at your Apple Retail store to an interested friend or family member?#
#Mr. Garcia would eventually quit Apple, and walk away from a job that paid a little more than $40, 000 a year,
People will always want to work for Apple.##Photo credit: 9 to 5 Mac Via New york times Share Thissubscribedel. icio. usfacebookredditstumbleupontechnorati
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