Blog: Stuff we love

When we heard that Apple had announced that the latest version of their operating system 10.7 Lion would be released in July at the cheap as chips price of $29, the studio was filled with unmanly squeals of excitement rather than the roars of mighty Lions. July?! How much?! Exactly.

Their last version, Snow Leopard was the same price, however that was more of an optimised spit and polish of 10.5 rather than a brand new release, so the price was no surprise.

This time around though, the price does come as a bit of a surprise. especially when you take a look at all the new features. But should it be a surprise?

By lowering the price so much for an OS - and using electronic distribution - Apple has drastically lowered the bar regards upgrading to their latest OS. Upgrading to an OS that has (ironically) learnt it's lessons from its much younger sibling, iOS. Upgrading to an OS that is slowly being aligned to that running on the iPhone and iPad, the undisputed kings of locked-in-content consumption.

Upgrading to that new OS - for a Mac owner at least - is now just as trivial as downloading Doctor Zhivago on iTunes. Plus pay for one copy for all your Macs. It's no longer all about the OS or the hardware for Apple. It's all about the content. They take 30% commission for every app sale in the App Store, a situation that the successful developers at least seem to be more than happy with. They take a similar commission for sales in iTunes.

An OS purchase is no longer that 3 yearly mega-event. Apple have introduced a disruption into the market that must secretly give it's competitors the fear. Especially since Windows has nothing like the embedded revenue stream of the App Store and iTunes. 

Of course the real question on everybody's lips is... now they're they've reached Lion, what are they going to call 10.8?

Congratulations Growing Well for winning the Countryside Alliance Awards North West Regional Award for Enterprise. 

Growing Well is a charitable social enterprise which focuses on improving wellbeing and health by using growing and farming techniques. They then sell the organic produce via Low Sizergh Barn and other Lake District outlets. That's a win/win in my book! 

There's more information about Growing Well's well deserved award on their website plus you can book a place on one of their horticultural courses, make a donation and find out about their great Cropshare scheme, which restarts in June. 

I love this poster by John Newton (via Boing Boing) "Google Before You Tweet is the new Think Before You Speak". Shrewd advice when reputations and careers can be trounced with a Tweet. 

I've some Print Design Pathos too: Proof Twice, Print Once is the new Measure Twice, Cut Once.