Category: apple

apple, inspiration, technology

Beginning: What Steve Jobs Taught Me

Christa Avampato

There are plenty of people out there playing pundit about the fate of Apple now that Steve Jobs has stepped down. When I heard about his resignation, I at first felt a real sadness and then my attention quickly turned to gratitude for what he gave to all of us. While Apple and its team have drawn so much benefit from his leadership, I also realized that just by watching and studying him and interacting with the products and staff of his company we have gained so much. We owe him so many thank yous.

Here is a start:

Never give up; rely on your intuition – After his board sent him packing, it would have been very easy for Jobs to slunk off into obscurity. Instead, he started another company and invested in this little start-up called Pixar. Jobs trusts his gut above all else, and that authenticity that “knowing beyond knowing” has paid off in spades for me, albeit spades that have been hard-won.

Be unreasonable – There are several business legends about how infamously unreasonable Steve Jobs is. He is a relentless, restless seeker of quality and he demands of everyone else what he demands of himself – excellence.

People don’t know what they want and we can’t expect them to – If Apple got bogged down in consumer product testing and consumer product research, it’s unlikely that we’d have any of the magic Apple has built its brand on. In a time of user-generated content / input craze, Apple took a completely different approach – its products shaped the desires of consumers rather than the other way around.

Invent by alleviating pain – Apple has always paid close attention to what gives consumers pain, and then invented products and services to alleviate it. It is a brilliant point-of-view from which to invent, and it has won them consumer loyalty by the boatload.

Everything is possible; you can make something out of nothing – Jobs took his interest in personal technology, got out a white piece of paper and built Apple from nothing but a handful of computer components. For any entrepreneur with little more than a dream, Steve Jobs shows us what’s possible with passion.

Our future really is in our hands – I suppose Steve Jobs could have played it safe as a young man and gotten a job working for someone else. Instead, he paved his own road from the very beginning and never looked back. He knew his future was actually safer (and more fun!) in his own hands rather than in anyone else’s. His story will be one that’s told and emulated for many generations to come. I can’t wait to see all of the new Steves that spring from his inspiring path.

apple, blogging, creativity, technology

Some sparks are flying between me and the iPad

Christa Avampato

I am currently at the Apple pop-up store in Austin. The store was late breaking news development that geeks here at SXSW are very happy about. The line for the new iPad is currently extended around the corner.

I have been slightly skeptical about tablets, worried that I would be duplicating my Droid X, which I love, and my MacBook which I love even more. However, I began to covet the glowing machine at SXSW because my laptop is heavy to carry around all day and blogging on my DROID is a less than ideal.

I took myself over here to the Apple store before grabbing some lunch in preparation for my SXSW talk this afternoon. From first touch, I developed an infatuation for little Mac Jr. Successful first date, though I need a little more time before I decide whether or not we’re destined to move in together.

I’m cautiously optimistic, and smitten.

adventure, apple, New York City, technology, writing

My Year of Hopefulness – Programming and the Mind

Christa Avampato

I seem to be receiving a “critical update” from Apple everyday on software that’s installed on my computer. I’m not really sure what any of the fixes are or why I need them, but I trust Apple. If they say I need them, then I assume that I do. So I click the little button that says “install now” or something to that effect. I go about my business while Apple magically repairs all of my software problems in the background. I’m an efficiency junkie so I’m a big fan of parallel-pathing.

Writing works a lot like those critical updates from Apple. Friends, family, and co-workers always ask me, “when do you find the time to do all of this writing?” Truthfully, I’m always writing. Sorry – this is my confession. My writing mind is always working in the background while I go about the rest of my life. When I’m having dinner with friends, at movies, at CVS buying shampoo, at work, I’m writing, tucking away little bits and pieces to use later. I’m one of those hopelessly nerdy people who always has a pen and piece of paper in my bag. Even when I’m heading to a big night out. You just never know when something interesting will happen. And I can’t be held responsible for keeping it all stuffed in my brain. I need that pen and paper.

I also purposely try to put myself in interesting situations. I seek out new people, go to lectures, book readings, and art exhibitions all the time. It’s one reason I am so in love with New York, and fall more in love with it everyday – there’s always something new to see, do, and try. New York and I have had a long and sordid history together. 11 years running. At times, we’ve been blissfully happy to be with one another and at other times, we’ve each gone running for the hills. But we always somehow end up back together, New York and I. This is my third time moving here, and I imagine you’ll find me here for a very long time to come. There’s just too much going on here for me to be away for that long. My writing lives and breathes here.

I’ve been wondering how Apple knows what to fix and how to fix it in these updates. My only idea is that it goes out into the world and takes stock of the latest software landscape to make needed improvements. I do the same thing in my writing. In the past year, I’ve been sending myself out on little writing adventures in New York. Odd-ball museums, sitting in a crowded area and eaves-dropping, going to parts of town I never frequent without a map and getting as lost as possible. On Saturday, I’ll be heading to the Demolition Depot on 125th Street. It contains 4 floors and a garden full of architecture pieces from every conceivable period. When buildings are dismantled all over New York City, most of the pieces end up at the Demolition Depot.

Can you imagine what crazy things that place stores? While I’m sure there’s a fair amount of mundane items like antique faucets, I’m equally sure that there are valuable items that will inspire my writing. A fireplace that I’ll imagine someone sitting before, a gargoyle who faithfully watched over a busy street for many years, a mirror where a young girl watched herself become a woman. You see – inspiration is everywhere; you just need to keep looking, especially in unlikely places.

My fingers are getting itchy. Just writing about writing is giving me some ideas. This writing mind of mine is working in the background and it’s almost time for me to reboot to see all of the changes that have occurred in the past few minutes. In the time it’s taken me to write this post, some more dots have connected, and I have to make sure to get this all down before it’s hopelessly lost in the abyss. I’d like to think I’m a recovering multi-tasker, though as with most addictions, I guess I’ll always be in a constant state of recovery, never quite cured of my desire to do multiple things at once. Thank goodness for background processing!

apple, books, business, economy, government, politics

My Year of Hopefulness – The Age of the Unthinkable

Christa Avampato

In 1997, Apple launched a campaign with one simple message “Think Different”. 12 years ago it was inconceivable how necessary to our survival those two words would be in 2009. Joshua Cooper Ramo, an analyst and former Foreign Editor of Time, takes this Apple campaign slogan and sprints with it, full speed ahead, to help us understand where we are and what we’ll need to do to pull ourselves together. His new book, The Age of the Unthinkable: Why the New Global Order Constantly Surprises Us and What to Do About It, is a beacon for those who have been looking for straight-talk about our current economic crisis and how you and I, everyday people, can move forward.


Ramo pulls from historical examples to show how people in the midst of a situation leading to their demise never saw it coming. Gorbachev is an eloquent example. He opened up the U.S.S.R. a bit at a time, and then the momentum of change was so strong, so pronounced, that Gorbachev had no choice but to let go of the reigns he had gripped tight for so long. Is the state of our economy, and the CEOs who have long prospered under the old rules of our financial system, any different?

In this dark situation it can be hard to see any cause for hope. Ramo suggests that while this might be the darkest moment in our world’s financial history, it is also the moment of greatest possibility. We have the opportunity to wipe away every preconceived notion we have about how we do business, how we live life, how we create, how we inspire, how we dream. 

“Ahead of us is the invigorating possibility of discovery and reinvention.” With that simple sentence, Ramo encourages us to question every assumption about ‘how it must be done’. The days of cookie-cutter policy, politics, and business are over. If we are going to craft a new, brighter future, it will take all of our courage to challenge ourselves, our families, neighbors, co-workers, and leaders. It is time to toss aside common assumptions in favor of grander, more creative, and courageous plans and actions. 

Never before has it been so possible to create a world that we want to live in. It’s as if we have a blank canvas staring at us, daring us, to invent something extraordinary. The only question now is do we have the confidence to build something from nothing. Can we take up the paint brush and with wide, vibrant strokes imagine a new future and commit to bringing it to life?  
apple, business, economy, education, evolution, Google, history

My Year of Hopefulness – Measure what’s relevant

Christa Avampato

There is all kinds of advice out there in the media ether on how to survive this latest economic downturn. What to do with your retirement investments, how to manage stress, even how to talk to your kids about what’s happening. And it’s great advice on surviving, though very few people are talking about how to thrive in this current state of affairs. And why should they? I mean who thrives in a desert, right? 


Actually, a lot of life survives in a desert climate, and in this economic desert we would do well to think about how geographic deserts burgeon with life, mostly below ground and on a small scale. It involves taking a lesson from Darwin and adapting to change. And I don’t mean adapting for right now and then looking forward to going back to the way we were before. Survival of the fittest doesn’t mean changing for the short-term and going back to our same old ways somewhere down the line. The dinosaurs are not coming back. Ever. And neither are Lehman Brothers or Bear Stearns to name just a few. Investment banking has all but vanished from Lower Manhattan and if you don’t believe it go see for yourself – take the subway down to Wall Street and have a look around. It’s eerily quiet and desolate. There are a lot of cavernous, columned buildings standing empty. These are the modern day dinosaurs. The meteor has struck, and it changed everything. 

With the economy top of mind for nearly everyone, I hear a lot of people throwing around phrases like “the market is way down” or “the Dow is plunging”. I some times wonder if most people actually know what that means. The Dow is a set of 30 companies that are considered fairly stable, prosperous, large companies. Or at least they used to be stable and prosperous. Take a look at the list. It’s not a pretty picture of America: Caterpillar, General Motors, Citigroup. (Notice the absence of companies like Google and Apple.) Should we judge our economic future on these kinds of companies? Doesn’t sound like a wise idea to me.

I’m not an economist. I do have an MBA and I was an economics major in college. I was also a history major in college, and the one thing history shows consistently over time, as does biology, is that things change and in order to survive and thrive we need to adjust. Permanently. None of this “we just need to ride out this latest cycle until things get back to normal.” This is the new normal – change. Radical and rapid. And I think it may be time to dump the Dow as an indicator of our future. To keep it is analogous to judging the future of life on Earth by the fate of the dinosaurs. 

We need a new perspective. Going forward, it will be small businesses and entrepreneurs that drive innovation and prosperity in our country. And this is a reason to rejoice. For the past few years, we have talked about the rise of the individual and personalization. Little did we know at the time that this trend wasn’t just about ipods and Facebook. It will serve to underpin our entire economy in drastic and never-imagined ways. 

Change is never easy. There will be casualties in the process: big companies will go under, there will continue to be layoffs, and individuals will have to re-frame their lives. The longer we resist that re-framing, the worse off we will be. Rip off the band-aid and accept that change has arrived and will continue. It’s time to we get to work and figure out how we are going to adapt and learn how to survive and thrive in the new economy. Stop lamenting what was and look forward to what we can have a hand in building.       
apple, customer service, technology

More love for Apple

Christa Avampato

Amidst all of the anxiety around Steve Jobs’ temporary leave from Apple, there is a lot of reason for rejoicing about the company. I gush so much about the company you’d think they were paying me. This latest anecdote is precisely the reason I bought a Mac a year ago. 


I must have placed a bit too much pressure on one of the corners of my laptop. The casing cracked a little – hairline but I noticed it was steadily getting worse. Mind you, this crack was entirely my fault, not Apple’s. I bought the Apple Care Plan that extends my warranty an additional two years. I called Apple, they made an appointment for me at the Fifth Avenue Apple store, and I took my Macbook over there. 

They took my appointment 10 minutes early and sent me on my way in 5 minutes. I had to leave Mac behind to get fixed. I felt like I was leaving my child at the doctor’s office. I returned home and did some email on my old IBM (and by old I mean 3.5 years.) Clunky and clumsy and past its prime, I really missed Mac. I’d be without him for 5-7 days.

Much to my surprise, Mac was ready for pick-up in less than 24 hours. Perfectly repaired. For free. With a smile. Steve Jobs and anyone associated with Apple has many reasons to be proud of this company. I’m a customer for life because Apple is a company that believes in service above all else. Their service and concern for customer delight are head and shoulders above that of any other company. 

I hope Steve Jobs quickly and fully recovers from his recent health issues. In the meantime, he should rest assured that the company will be just fine, left in the capable hands of his team members who take such great care of customers.  
apple, art, education, extreme affordability, museum, philanthropy, social entrepreneurship

My Year of Hopefulness – Social Entrepreneurship and iTunes U

Christa Avampato

By trade, I am product developer. I design and build product for American consumers, mostly wealthy ones. While I was in business school at Darden, if I could have chosen any career, this is what I would have chosen. In fact, it is what I have been doing my whole career in a variety of industries – I was building programs, theatre productions, communication plans, and fundraising concepts. However, up to that point I didn’t give much thought to the idea that what we do is just as important as how we do it and whom we do it for. 


Just after my graduation I moved back to New York City sans job. By the end of June I had a good job offer to start in July in the field of innovation, exactly what I wanted, and was free to spend a fair amount of time bumming around my old haunts, wandering, and reacquainting myself with a city that I had not lived in full-time since 2001. One afternoon I found myself at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. They were running an exhibit called Design for the Other 90%. At the time I did not realize that this exhibit and my strong belief in community service would start me on a course that would begin to dominate the way I view my future and my career.

Now a year and half out of business school, a light bulb has gone off for me. I have spent all of this time thinking that I needed a really brilliant idea to start an entrepreneurial venture, and that starting my own business mean a complete about-face from all of the work I have done in the past. In actuality, becoming a social entrepreneur is an amalgamation of all the work I have done to this point, and mixing it up with personal passions of history, culture, and volunteering. As Steve Jobs says, “Looking back, we are able to connect the dots of our lives.” And that is exactly the process I currently find myself in. 

I have been doing some research to find a class to take on the subject. Columbia has a few, as does Pratt, the New School, and NYU. Though none of them have exactly what I’m looking for. They either treat the subject as part of a nonprofit management masters, a business class, or as part of the sociology curriculum. One woman from NYU suggested I take a class entitled something like “How to become a female entrepreneur.” Can you imagine? It was essentially a class on how to write a business plan. I was telling my friend and mentor, Richard, about these classes and his response was, “I don’t suggest that. You would be completely bored.” He’s right.

And then I remembered an earlier post I wrote on this blog about iTunes University. Apple collected a wide variety of classes and lectures from the world’s top universities and put them on-line. For free. And sure enough, Stanford’s Center for Social Innovation had an entire series posted with exactly the material I was looking for. Did I mention that it was free. And it’s mobile so I download the lecture into iTunes, put them on my ipod, and away I go. I spent the afternoon walking around, doing my errands, and being inspired by the ideas and experiences of the brightest minds in my chosen field. 3 birds (exercise, errands, and learning) with 1 stone. 

I also learned that I don’t need a degree to do this work. (Good thing since I can’t afford one!) I have and am currently amassing the knowledge and experience I need to do this. And rather than take a class or apply for a fellowship in this field, Richard encouraged me to sit down and write letters to the social entrepreneurs I admire most. Ask them if I could visit their organizations and spend half a day with them learning about their work. A handful of plane tickets and my time will teach me a whole lot more about this field than a once-a-week class for four months in a lecture hall. It’s also cheaper and places an emphasis on networking with people doing the work I aspire to do. I may have just found my mountain…
apple, curiosity, education, ipod, itunes, Steve Jobs

Knowledge for free – courtesy of Apple

Christa Avampato

I might be a little late to the party on this one, though I am so excited I finally showed up. To iTunes U, that is. My friend, Janet, has made fun of me more than once about my addiction to school. I’m one of those people who takes notes at a museum exhibit – my friend, Steve, was glad to point out how completely weird this behavior is when we were at The Whitney several months ago. It’s true. I am an education addict (read: nerd). I’ve always been this way and truly, I’ve learned to embrace my nerdiness with wild abandon. 


The economy is having a tough time and formal education isn’t getting any cheaper. I was planning on taking some Spanish classes this winter, though at many colleges the cost is prohibitive, or at least I’d have to give up a substantial amount of money somewhere else in my budget to make those classes happen. In this economy, I’m a little worried about doing that. So what’s a nerdy girl to do? Head over to iTunes U….

Now, you won’t get a degree, the choice of schools is limited (for example, University of Virginia – my graduate school alma mater – does not participate. I am going to get to work on this right away, rest assured…my undergrad alma mater, UPenn, is on the list and I highly recommend it), and the class offerings are somewhat limited as well. However, every lecture, from every participating school, on every subject offered, is free. Yes, absolutely 100% FREE – no string attached. Click the “get” button right next to the lecture that interests you, and you’ll be downloading like there’s no tomorrow. A nerd’s dream come true. 

I’m so excited about this that I’m now up 20 minutes past my bedtime….but with so much to learn, who has time to sleep? I’m so thrilled with Apple that I could hug Steve Jobs right this moment…let’s hear it for endless curiosity!  
apple, business, corporation, customer service, Mac, technology

Now I really love those folks at Apple

Christa Avampato

I received a survey from Apple today about my experience at the Genius Bar. They wanted me to rate my experience and give them feedback. Perfect — I had called the store and tried to find an email address but to no avail. So I filled out the survey and one hour later, a Genius called me to follow-up, capture the info from my survey, and then is going to get the info to the stores so they can better service the next customer that comes along that has the same issue with iWeb that I had. How incredible is that?

It’s this kind of customer service that keeps people converting to Macs, iPhones, iPods. While a lot of companies are trying to copy the design and slick details of the devices themselves, what’s winning people over is the friendly, helpful service – a much more difficult business to copy. I like that I’m treated humanely with a sympathetic ear, that they go out of their way to help me, see if I’m satisfied once I’ve left the building, and if it turns out I’m in any way disappointed, they want to mend their ways.

Imagine if every business, big or small, regardless of industry, was striving to be the Apple among their competitors? Apple would be well within its right to set up a consulting arm to teach companies how to do business the Apple-way. And we’d all live in a better world thanks to their efforts.

apple, customer service, Mac, retail, social media, social network, technology

The Wisdom of Crowds on Apple Forums

Christa Avampato

At the outset, I would like to be honest that I love the Apple Store and the Geniuses that work there. Truly. I’d be interseted in marrying one. I get fantastic service every time I walk in the door, they’re kind, understanding, and go out of their way to be helpful. Plus, they have t-shirts with funny sayings on them.

I took my Macbook into the store on 5th Avenue on Sunday because I couldn’t get my iWeb-designed website to open on Internet Explorer. At the Genius Bar, I was told that’s just the way it goes – Internet Explorer can’t read iWeb properly; it’s iWeb illiterate. I walked away feeling very frustrated and upset by all of this – I bought my Macbook expressly for the purpose of easily creating a website in iWeb and uploading it to my own URL. Now, it appeared my efforts were for naught.

My friend, Ken, a fellow Mac lover, suggested I try the on-line forums. I was hesitant. I mean, who knows more than one of Apple’s Geniuses at one of their premiere stores? Well, it turns out that a lot of people are Geniuses in their own right, and they love posting advice and tips to those forums. One in particular had the exact same problem I was having and after much fiddling found an easy fix for it. My pictures had a reflection and shadow that I chose for stylistic purposes. Turns out that the code that creates those edits in iWeb makes Internet Explorer choke. I removed the reflection and shadow from each picture and now the pages load perfectly. My website was saved! All by the kindness of a stranger who posted to one of the forums.

Geniuses are everywhere…