The Apple Bank Card would replace debit and credit cards in the same way that PayPal and Square have begun changing how we pay merchants when we shop.  Why can’t Apple digitally disrupt the credit card industry?  Apple has hundreds of millions of users with their Apple iTunes accounts attached to their credit cards.  One-click and you can buy just about any song, movie, app, book, and even Apple devices.  Apple has over $100 Billion in cash and securities and investors and analysts have been clamoring for them to put that cash hoard to use.  Why not use it to provide a line of credit to customers, gather analytics on shopping habits, and make interest on late monthly payments?  Why not extend  Apple devices to become the new Bank Card for shopping anywhere?

How can Apple accomplish this?  It’s a Build vs. Buy decision.

• Build: Apple builds NFC (Near Field Communications) in its devices and builds apps, APIs, all supported by back-end iCloud infrastructure.  No need for physical cards you need to carry.  Merchants everywhere that use iPads can accept payments from your iPod Touch, iPhone, or iPad wirelessly.  Of course, Apple would have to develop the software and apps to enable this ability.  I would also like to see them tie this in with Siri, but only if they can execute the voice recognition flawlessly (don’t want to over pay due to Siri hearing the wrong dollar amount).  Already, Apple has point-of-sales in their Apple Stores, why not extend this into the real world?
• Buy: Apple acquires Square.  This seems to be a perfect match.  Square already has apps for iOS devices:  Square (virtual credit card), Square Register (virtual register machine), Square Card Case (pay with just your name in places you frequent often).  Additionally, Square gathers analytics about customer shopping habits and trends.  On top of this, Apple could discontinue support of Square on the Android platform.  As an added bonus, Jack Dorsey, the CEO and founder of Square is also the creator and founder of Twitter — which Apple has a good relationship with.  At one time, he was dual-CEO and founder of Square and Twitter — following in the footsteps of Steve Jobs who was once dual-CEO and founder of Apple and Pixar.  If Apple acquires Square and Dorsey stuck around, he might make a good addition to the already talented and formidable Apple Executive Staff.

Apple may also opt to build, buy, or both — build their own infrastructure, acquire Square, and integrate.  I see the Apple Bank Card as a bold move that Apple could make to disrupt a big industry, create a new source of income, as well as making efficient use of their large cash position.  This would create an additional “halo effect” in the Apple ecosystem.

Update: Apple was just granted a patent for iWallet.  Interesting.

At first we might have dared it was luck.  Then he did it again and again and again.  Each product more revolutionary and bold than the last.  During the dark ages, when he was in exile from Apple, while he created PIXAR and NeXT and creating the intersection between the fine arts and technlogy, the rest of the tech industry was advanced much slower than it could have.  When he returned, he changed Apple by sheer will into the world’s largest start-up  – which has innovated and grown at such a frenetic pace that the rest of Silicon Valley has not been able to keep up.  Apple has one of the deepest executive talent pools, the most powerful supply chain, and while the largest company in the world by market capitalization is still the fastest growing company in the S&P500….

It was a sad day for many of us when Steve Jobs left us much too early, yet his legend and legacy continues to grow.  Apple continues to release new hit products from its deep product pipeline, products that were set in motion by the help of his creative genius many years ago.  Many of these products have changed entire industries.  Here’s a partial list of the industries that Steve Jobs, and his companies, have helped to digitally disrupt:

1. Personal Computing (PC)
2. Desktop Publishing Industry
3. Advertising Industry – Commercials
4. Object Oriented Programming – NeXT
5. Music Industry – iPod, iTunes, GarageBand, Logic Pro, MainStage
6. Movie Industry – PIXAR, Disney, Apple TV, Final Cut Pro, iMovie
7. Photography – iPhone camera, iPhoto, Aperture
8. Education – iTunes University, PodCasting
9. Retail Industry & Distribution – Apple Stores, iTunes, App Store, Mac App Store
10. Mobile Industry – iPhone, App Store
11. Post-PC era – Help to usher this with Post-PC devices: “PCs are going to be like trucks”
12. Publishing Industry – iBooks, iBooks Author, Newsstand

Can you think of any more?

Legend has it that when Steve Jobs was about to make his return to Apple, that he met up with his good friend, Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle.  At that time, Microsoft was the dominant tech powerhouse and Apple was on the brink of bankruptcy.  Both Oracle and Apple viewed Microsoft as a formidable adversary. To keep Microsoft and other tech powerhouses at bay, Steve allegedly drew an imaginary line and reportedly said, “Larry, you take the enterprise-side, we’ll take the consumer-side.”

This alliance has served them well for the last decade and counting.  In the meantime, Apple made a alliance with Google. Apple had the best front-end systems, and Google had the best back-end systems. But that alliance has been weakened, if not broken.  They are “frenemies.”  But these alliances, among many others — Intel, NVIDIA, ARM, Facebook, open-source, etc. – has been a multi-front attack on Microsoft and now Google, Amazon, Facebook, and even Intel. Now that the Apple-Google alliance is over, could there be a new Apple-Oracle alliance?

Oracle has made many major acquisitions in the meantime, and one of its most interesting plays on the enterprise side has been able to acquire technologies based around Java: BEA (WebLogic), Tangosol, and Sun Microsystems (creators of Java) itself.  Additionally, with the Sun Microsystems acquisition it inherited MySQL, Solaris, and ZFS.

However, there has been clamor recently that the next area that Apple can move into is the enterprise world.  “What is taking so long?” analysts conjecture.  The Line in the Sand. Apple has dabbled in enterprise, such as their xServe, xSAN, OS X Server, iPhone with encryption and Microsoft Exchange support, etc. However, Apple has not gone all-in on the enterprise and seem content to stay, for the most part, on the other side of the line.

There are some pieces that could benefit both Apple and Oracle if they begin to cross-license their technologies without necessarily causing both companies to compete with each other.

For example: Oracle’s superior ZFS could becoming the new file system for Apple Mac OS X and iOS.  In fact, it was announced by Sun CEO a few years ago to be the next file system for Apple, before Oracle acquired Sun. Oracle could license this file system to Apple.

Apple’s Bonjour, AirPlay, iChat, FaceTime, and iTunes streaming could become an interesting play for Oracle to compete with Cisco and others in the networking industry. While Bonjour and AirPlay are Local Area Network (LAN) plays, iChat, FaceTime, and iTunes streaming could utilize more backend systems. And we know that Apple is building one of the biggest data centers in North Carolina. But will they need Oracle at all to move into the cloud?

Recently, Larry Ellison made the comment that Oracle is looking into buying a chip company so they can be more like Apple — by owning the entire hardware/software stack. While most analysts suspect that the most logical companies to acquire would be AMD or NVIDIA, what if Oracle made a play to move to get into the mobile industry by buying ARM? But, why would Oracle buy ARM when Intel, AMD, and NVIDIA chips are used for big iron? We can argue that while ARM is still a mobile chip company it is beginning to move into data centers with ARM powered servers, like those developed by Smoothstone. As ARM evolves into not just an extremely energy-efficient, but powerful computing chip company, it will become more attractive to back-end companies, like Oracle, to be used for their back-end database and middle-ware products.

If Oracle were to purchase ARM, that could change and possibly forge a different atmosphere between Apple and Oracle. The risk is that Larry Ellison and Steve Jobs may end up competing. Today, ARM sells their chip licenses. Would Oracle give Apple a discount vs. other ARM licensees? Or would Apple just be another regular licensee, as they are today? Would pricing lead to discord between Oracle and Apple? Interesting to see if these two massive companies can continue to stay at arms length and stay out of each others’ sandboxes — while mobile remains one of the hottest categories in technology today. (Side note: Apple was a major contributor to ARM back in the 1990′s and at one point owned ~50% of ARM).

Another thought, is that Oracle could buy EMC and, its subsiduary, VMWare and move into the cloud virtualization market. Today we have the big players such as Google, Amazon, and RackSpace in the cloud market, but there is still no clear-cut winner of virtualization of private clouds. This would be an interesting play for Oracle, but again, could this impact Apple’s move into the cloud and see Oracle and Apple as potential competitors?

The story is still being written for these two companies and their respective founders, but the most interesting thing to me, is how both sides were able to draw an imaginary line, follow-through with their plans, and be so successful without competing. Two friends from opposite worlds, one line.

Tomorrow, the world is expecting Apple, Inc. to revolutionize the world, once again.  It’s revolutionized the world several times: personal computing, the iPod, the iPhone, and hopefully, tomorrow — the iTablet (or something along those lines).  However, we must realize that all these hardware devices have fairly dependent ties to iTunes for content and that is a revolutionary product, itself — though it needs some tuning.  That’s why the game-changer is not just some kind of Tablet.  I’m expecting an update to iTunes.  Maybe, iTunes.com or something in the cloud.  We have heard many times that Apple is building a massive data center.  We already have MobileMe in the cloud, what’s the next logical step?

To revolutionize the industry, we must look back at Steve Jobs’ Master Plan.  You can see in the past he has put all these pieces together and changed different industries: computing, music, phone, etc.  He’s also dabbled in the Apple TV as a hobby.  I, in fact, would hope that there’s an actual Apple TV Set that is announced tomorrow, along with an iTunes subscription model.  Wouldn’t that market make more economic sense than just a Tablet?

iTunes has made Apple, Inc. the digital version of Amazon.com.  While Amazon has tried to move towards digital, with the Kindle, they are more known for their hard copies of books, magazines, CDs, DVDs, Bluray discs, etc.  Apple is moving us towards a world of download-able, digital content.  iTunes is what ties all this digital content together for Apple.  It currently contains at least the following: Music, Music Videos, Audio Books, TV Shows, Movies, Movie Rentals, Apps.

What if it adds Books, Magazines, and Newspapers tomorrow?  What if iTunes includes Apps for Mac OS X like it does for the iPhone/iPod Touch?  What if iTunes had a social aspect to tie your iLife or iWork together?  Can you share your music, movies, photos, videos, spreadsheets, and presentations easily today?  iTunes is one of the most powerful distribution platforms out there and houses almost all of Apple’s content.  iTunes holds professional produced content, iLife and iWork hold your personal content.  Perhaps, a melding of the minds between these three platforms is in order.  Tomorrow, it would make sense to see an upgrade to iTunes in conjunction with a new iTablet.  And maybe see an upgrade to iLife and iWork in the cloud as well?

Steve Jobs has said, “The iPhone is great software wrapped in wonderful hardware. . . .”  What about great hardware surrounded by great software?  That includes not only a good OS and presentation layer, but easy and intuitive access to content.  And Apple has access to massive amounts content.  It would make sense to improve on that advantage.  Until, someone else can come up with an “iTunes-killer” it will be difficult to dethrone Apple, because they own the hardware, the software, AND access to content.

Apple/Intel‘s Light Peak.  I wrote about this back in Feb 2006.  So glad it’s finally happening, and I quote:

Two Wires

I like to simplify things. The minimum to achieve the optimum — Occam’s Razor. Therefore, I am going to suggest that there only needs to be two kinds of wires in the world. Yes, just two — power & data. Now, the power cord you are familiar with for delivering electricity. However, for data transmission I would suggest something along the lines of fiber-optic or Ethernet cable. Your land-line, cable television, high-speed Internet would all be delivered via this data cable and, if need be, be powered by the power cable. A computer would also use the data cable to communicate with all manner of devices such as monitors, printers, webcams; stereos would use the data cable to connect to speakers; televisions would use the data cable to connect to the content provider. Which would mean the data cable would replace the following cables and connectors: keyboard and mouse connectors, audio & video cables, SATA, SCSI, IDE, Parallel, Serial, USB, Firewire, VGA, SuperVGA, DVI, etc. Of course each device would have an assigned IP addresses. It would make connecting and setting up equipment and devices so easy. Why do we have more than two kinds of wires?

Are you seeing the trend for increasing performance?

Computing

• Intel CPU multicore (currently, 8 cores)
• NVIDIA/AMD GPU multicore (currently, hundreds of cores)

Storage

• Fusion-IO Drive multiple flash RAM modules (currently, hundreds of modules)

Power

• Tesla Motors vehicle power pack made up of multiple batteries (currently, hundreds of batteries)

Many little pieces working efficiently together with a controller is the formula.  Whether for computing, storage, networking, or high-performance batteries.  This is the future.  Monolithic designs cannot work indefinitely.  I suspect that this is similar to having a team of smart individuals overtaking one brilliant person.  Divide-and-conquer.  With teamwork many simple workers can create more efficiency than one complex worker.

The key to many cores working together is the controller and strong communication between them.  For example, Intel Nehalem CPU has built-in memory controllers to speed up communication between multicores on a CPU, in addition, to facilitate communication between multiple CPUs it has the QuickPath interconnect.

Competitors of Intel CPUs, NVIDIA/AMD GPUs, Fusion-IO SSDs and Tesla Motors’ batteries, take note.  You will have a difficult time beating them on performance without creating similar multicore designs. You may also have a tough time beating them on cost if they are able to mass produce these cores.  As many small, simple cores can be cheaper to manufacture than one, big, complex core.

Don’t be surprised when a future iPhone has multicore CPUs, multicore GPUs, multi-Flash RAM modules, and multiple batteries.  It is where the industry is heading and an efficient way to increase overall performance.

The rumor mill has been buzzing, once again, about the possibility of a new iPhone.  Apple’s Senior VP, Phil Schiller, mentioned that June is the normal release time for new iPhones, and the last 2 years have been right around that timeframe.  So what is next?  What could Apple possibly change to make us want the iPhone 3?  Here are some ideas:

• Faster Computing – Utilize technologies to be introduced in Mac OS X Snow Leopard in iPhone OS X: GrandCentral, OpenCL, OpenGL ES on the iPhone for task management and much greater performance using multiple cores from the CPU and GPU.  The new GPU could be the NVIDIA Tegra, which includes the latest ARM processor, or Apple could be designing its own custom ARM processor with its acquisition of P.A. Semi.  Whatever the new technology that is implemented could possibly shake up the entire mobile industry, not only for smartphones and PDAs, but also for handheld game consoles.
• Faster Networking – Upgrade to 3G HSUPA in addition to the HSDPA.
• More Storage – Bump to 32GB.
• Multitasking – Utilize GrandCentral to help multitask efficiently in conjuntion with saving battery life.  This would allow multiple background tasks to be running while using minimal resources.  Push Notification can be used for tasks that do not need to be actively running.  This “polling” system will work to preserve even more battery life.
• Front-Facing Camera to allow iChat AV – Compatible with iChat AV for Mac.
• Haptic Tactile Feedback
• GPS turn-by-turn voice directions.
• Additionally, the much requested copy-and-paste feature, which I think might be more difficult gesture-wise than at first glance.

What do you think Apple will unveil for the iPhone 3, in June, if anything at all?

Talk in the rumor mill keeps flying to the topic of Apple needing to release a Netbook to survive this economic downturn.  There have also been ongoing rumors that Apple will release a Mac Tablet – essentially a large version of the iPod Touch or iPhone.  These rumors could become reality if Apple decides to combine the two.

Apple has realized that almost 40% of its income now comes from the iPhone!  If it can create a Mac Tablet that is always Internet-connected, like the iPhone 3G, it would be a “netbook.”  In addition, Apple would be able to charge an extremely, low, upfront-price by having telecommunication carriers subsidize its Mac Tablet.  In these times, people are looking to cut costs, so a low-cost Mac with a built-in Internet connection would be an attractive item.  I suspect, Steve Jobs has this ace up his sleeve.  Success from the iPhone should make its way into the Mac line.  What do you think?

Check them out, side-by-side. 3oc, Inc. on the left, bgC3 LLC on the right.

Coincidence?  I personally think mine looks a little bit better :)  What do you think?