TECHNOLOGY THOUGHTS

Is Apple Building Silently A Tsunami Of Disruptions?

The tech giant is planting seeds of the Great Renesaince of the digital age.

The technology frontier has been a bit boring recently.

Yes, the processor speeds still fascinate us. And, of course, wearables are now a thing and not just an engineer’s wet dream.

Apple has been silent, careful and avoided any big bang announcements. Its slow pace says something. Everything in that spaceship HQ seems to be gradually turning in a new direction but not spinning fast like the competitors around the emerging buzzwords.

Is this the calm before the storm?

Meta’s stock has plummeted while Google sucks the cream from ignorant individuals. Microsoft is silently annexing platforms like Linkedin and shovelling money from corporates.

Are these just bubbles on the surface?

Is a seismic shift happening, and is one of the technology continental plates, Apple, pushing against all others so that the positive tsunami of a new paradigm shift is evident?

Privacy is the fundamental human right

One thing above all in Apple’s rare comments is privacy. They integrate it into every aspect of their service models and business decisions.

Apple is fierce in its absolute belief that privacy is one of the fundamental human rights. It seems that they don’t make any compromises there.

This approach makes it difficult for other players to gain efficiencies that Apple’s ecosystem can provide.

Other players who don’t own the hardware platforms have the short straw.

While other software providers are like dialysis providers, Apple gives new kidneys without any transplant rejection. Everything works together seamlessly without compromising your privacy.

Corporate citizenship is the future trend

Apple’s coffers are overflowing. The exciting thing is how they have started to use that flow, for example, to improve communities.

One example is Apple’s $2.5B investment plan in affordable housing. Google and Facebook are there, too, building or planning to build housing for the increasing workforce.

The scale makes Apple’s investment different: the plan spreads across California in more than 25 counties helping the marginalised communities and not just Apple’s employees.

Is this a trend, and does Apple continue spreading its wealth across the communities? I think and hope it is.

I am not cynical enough to see some sinister hidden agendas in these investments.

The environment is the final frontier

The win-or-lose battle will be at the frontlines of climate change.

Companies that take a proactive role in protecting the environment, turning the catastrophic climate change dystopia into sustainable growth, will be the winners in the long run.

Again, Apple has silently been implementing changes in its supply chain to ensure that its products and services are carbon-neutral by 2030.

“Apple is dedicated to protecting the planet we all share with solutions that are supporting the communities where we work.” Lisa Jackson, Apple’s vice president of environment.

Apple’s Green Bond spend is a $4.7 billion injection to produce green energy, i.e. 1.2 gigawatts for the company and the communities across many areas in the US. Apple is also active in green energy in Europe, investing there $2.2 billion. Also, significant community projects are underway in solar projects in the Philippines, Thailand, Nigeria, Vietnam, Colombia, Israel, and South Africa to help communities access clean energy.

Apple is already carbon neutral today for its global corporate operations, and this new commitment means that by 2030, every Apple device sold will have net zero climate impact. -Apple.

Apple is investing not only in green energy but also in the conservation of forests to lower its paper footprint in China and the US. For example, according to GreenBiz, Apple and the Conservation Fund are permanently protecting over 36,000 acres of working forest in the US.

Over 99 per cent of Apple’s product packaging paper is recycled or sourced from sustainably managed forests.

The scale is what matters

Apple is so big that on their scale, $1 billion looks like a rounding error.

However, those investments might be tiny seeds, but they are from a tree whose roots go deep and wide.

Focusing religiously on their original ethos to build the best products possible to improve the lives of their customers is rooted profoundly in Apple’s genes.

I can feel it right now when I changed my writing into my iPhone while waiting for a train and had to put my Macbook into the bag. The new iOS 16 dictation is a blessing and makes my writing life more pleasurable. Tiny improvement but a huge productivity boost. The move from a laptop to a small screen and dictation was seamless.

Apple’s careful and well-thought steps are small seeds, but they have excellent growth potential in the future for all users in anything they do.

Disruption is evident, but it doesn’t need to be violent

The internet, digital channels, methods, and tools have shifted human consciousness from local to global. Awareness of one individual’s responsibility is directly linked to the movements of many.

Apple has given us tools to be private but securely connected with others. Those technologies promote and support creativity, innovation and feelings of fulfilment and safety.

Apple has innovated a mountain of technologies, services and channels to help us climb higher and adapt to the positive future — or fight the destructive forces that cynically try to control us and destroy the environment and communities. Apple has been disrupting industries for decades but in a gentle and sustainable manner.

I hope that Google, Microsoft and Meta, among the others, will ride this wave and not go against it. It’s a tsunami, but it doesn’t need to be destructive if we care, share and have corporate responsibility in working with political decision-makers and community leaders across the globe.

The new Renaissance

Michelangelo and Da Vinci were two renaissance geniuses. Different but looking in the same direction and visualising what nobody else could yet see. They both had talents and skills across many disciplines and could find the art in science and science in art.

Those geniuses were epitomes of an era that shifted the human race profoundly towards what is now the best in us. They invented, practised and applied anything new, unique and valuable. Their legacy lives on.

Apple has been an orchard for growing digital geniuses in the digital age. Two Steves — Wozniak and Jobs — are like Michelangelo and Da Vinci: they gave us soil for the digital renaissance to flourish. They left a lasting legacy for us to build on.

We can plant our seeds in it and see how good things will grow despite the weeds of shortsighted corporate greed and political ignorance.

I hope the coming tsunami will not drown us but enlighten our world like Renaissance once did.

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