The pair shared power at Apple until Jobs was forced to resign after losing a power struggle. Apple’s struggles after that time brought it to the brink of its existence, until Jobs returned in 1997 and revitalized the company he founded. Regarding the timing, Scully remarks:

I’m actually convinced that if Steve hadn’t come back when he did — if they had waited another six months — Apple would have been history. It would have been gone, absolutely gone.

What did he do? He turned it right back to where it was — as though he never left. He went all the way back.

As evidence of that, this video (via Jason Kottke) highlights one of Jobs’ first tasks after taking back the helm: getting Apple on track with their branding.

Jobs goes all the way back to Apple’s core value, which he defines:

We believe that people with passion can change the world for the better.

From there, he uses his brilliant marketing talents and introduces the memorable “Think different.” campaign.

Think different honors those people who have changed the world.

The commercial is inspiring. I’m capturing it here, because it is worth reflecting on.

Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes.

The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them.

About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward.

And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

Developers can register for an invitation to the SkypeKit Beta Program beginning on July 23.

So, let me get this straight. You’re announcing that I can sign up for a future announcement. Gee, thanks!

Despite the fact that this behavior disillusions me, I understand the pragmatic reasons why people in Skype’s management and marketing department would be motivated to do this.

Skype’s announcement coincides with the imminent release of iPhone 4. In the past few years, Apple has dramatically changed the communications landscape with the iPhone. The latest device includes the biggest revolution since the original iPhone: FaceTime, which allows iPhone-to-iPhone video calling. Incidentally, FaceTime also represents the biggest threat Skype has ever encountered.

FaceTime is set to catapult VoIP straight into mainstream mobile devices, using IETF-approved open standards SIP and RTP. Apple has promised to make their extensions open as well. When that happens, FaceTime will proliferate on applications and devices other than the iPhone. Skype, meanwhile, has let innovation stagnate around an entrenched, but proprietary protocol. The leverage they hold in the protocol is about to be eliminated.

They know it too. Let’s look at the initial statements given in response given to the “open” question:

Is SkypeKit ‘open’? What will you restrict?
The topic of openness is often debated and its definition can mean different things to different people. For starters, we believe in an open Internet and open standards.

Next time, just answer “no.” If you believe in open standards, back it up by providing protocol specifications. At this point, it’s tough for me to look at what Skype is offering and see it as the future of communications. Open standards have marched forward, while Skype has stood still.

Perhaps it was the clean, new sheen of the display, but I was struck by how even this simple process has received Apple’s design polish and refinement. I took a couple screen shots to document the process, which I include here along with my notes.

The MobileMe me retail box comes with a slip of paper inside containing an activation key along with instructions directing you to www.me.com/activate to get started.

The first step is to enter the activation key, and either create a new account, reactivate an expired account, or renew an existing one.

I renewed my existing account, so I’m not sure where the flow goes if one of the other two paths are taken. It seems to me, however, that things could be simplified further, as it should be possible to combine renewal and reactivation of expired accounts into a single option.

Some confusion could be encountered when reactivating an expired account, because that option also asks for both a member name and password. My suspicion is that many people with expired accounts are likely to have forgotten or discarded their password, especially if the account has been inactive for some time.

After logging in with my member name and password, the second screen prompted me to confirm my renewal.

One click later, and my renewal was successful.

Simple, quick, and easy.

Just as I believe we are turning a corner where the truly connected will have many computing devices for different times and purposes, I think we need to start conceptualizing the decline of the multi-purpose browser. Maybe we will have five or six tools for fiddling with — and through — the web.

I hope Jobs and Ives turn their attention to that. It’s much more important than the Air or the Kindle.

I agree with that sentiment, but if you examine things closely, this transition is already well underway.

iTunes itself is the most prominent example. In large part, it is simply a browser for which the sole purpose is allowing people to find and buy media from the iTunes Store. With the Wi-Fi Store, its reach even extends to iPhone and iPod touch.

And of course, Apple TV (Take 2) cleverly sets the home page of any widescreen television to the iTunes Store. It can also display slide shows using photos from .Mac Web Gallery and Flickr.

iPhone has embraced the web from the beginning, with customized interfaces for data pulled from the cloud. Maps builds on location based services provided by Google Maps. The new Web Clips functionality goes even further, giving any web application an icon on the home screen.

This is all part of a larger trend, referred to as site-specific browsers, which blurs the lines between the web and the way you access it. Apple seems to be ahead of this trend, and will undoubtedly introduce further innovations going forward.

The star of the show is the MacBook Air, an incredibly sleek and thin notebook. Billed as an ultra portable, it embraces wireless technologies and drops older technologies, including the optical drive.

My old PowerBook G4 is still alive and kicking, and serving my needs fine. So its the updates to other products that I’m most excited about.

Apple TV, a favorite gadget of mine, got a much-needed boost today. Movies can now be rented from the iTunes Store, and Apple TV has direct access. It’s no longer necessary to download a video into iTunes, and then sync it over to Apple TV. This will make it much more convenient to watch the latest releases.

One new product I am considering purchasing is Time Capsule. Dubbed a NAS device in tech lingo, it is essentially a hard drive that can be plugged into a network and shared amongst multiple computers.

I’ve tried several of these types of devices in the past, and never been very happy with them. I’m hoping that Time Capsule changes that. I’m waiting to read reviews, but indications are it’ll be simple to set up and well supported on Mac OS X. If that’s true, I’ll likely end up purchasing a capsule or two.

With any luck, I’ll manage to sneak over to the Moscone Center this week to catch a first-hand glimpse of the new wares.

Apple’s attention to detail isn’t left unrewarded. Their retail stores are always bustling with people and the dollars are flowing. In most stores, when things get busy, you can expect to wait in line to complete your purchase. Not so at an Apple Store.

Each Apple Store has a few employees roaming around with handheld card readers. When I was ready to check out, one of them came over to scan my items and swipe my credit card. My email address is on file, so my receipt was sent electronically. No paper was involved in the process.

I was no more than two steps out the door, when my phone vibrated a couple times to indicate a new message. My receipt was in my pocket, easily and instantly.

What’s needed next is a widely accepted way to make payments with a mobile phone, as a replacement for credit cards. Then the entire process could be conducted electronically.

With our revolutionary multi-touch interface, powerful hardware and advanced software architecture, we believe we have created the best mobile platform ever for developers.

Developers everywhere agree with that sentiment, and are eagerly anticipating the arrival of the development kit. Currently, developers can only write applications that target the mobile version of Safari. The SDK will provide much more powerful capabilities, allowing software to be created that runs natively on the device.

As an added bonus, the same SDK will also allow applications to be created for the iPod touch. Jobs announced that in his trademark “one more thing” style, with a postscript:

P.S.: The SDK will also allow developers to create applications for iPod touch.

Apple’s incredible mobile platform will now benefit from the innovation of third-party developers. I’m excited dig in and start experimenting myself.

P.S.: Can we please get an SDK for Apple TV?

While the new features are welcome, I personally will not be making much use of them. For my purposes, the killer .Mac application is Sync. Sync keeps bookmarks, contacts, and calendars synchronized across multiple machines. If I update a phone number in Address Book on my notebook, that change will automatically be applied to my desktop as well.

This consistency is crucial to me. It’s the reason I continue to pay $99.95/year for .Mac. But Sync could also use some enhancements, and I have an idea.

Mac OS X contains the Sync Services framework, which developers can utilize to bring sync capabilities to their applications. This API should be exposed so that web applications can access it as well.

Apple already provides a web browser interface to some of the synchronized data. For instance, my synchronized bookmarks and contacts can be accessed when I am logged into the .Mac website. It doesn’t matter if I’m on a Mac or PC, my data is available wherever I can get an internet connection.

It is easy for Apple to do this, because the synchronized data is stored on their servers. Third party developers, however, do not enjoy this benefit.

Yojimbo, from Bare Bones Software, is my favorite application that uses Sync Services. It allows me to effortlessly keep track of passwords, serial numbers, and other miscellaneous information. Whenever I add or modify an item, those changes are replicated to my other systems.

On the other hand, if I’m not carrying my PowerBook G4, I don’t have access to any of this information. Bare Bones can’t provide a web interface to Yojimbo, because they don’t have access to the synchronized data within Apple’s network.

That problem could be solved if Apple offered Web Sync Services. Developers could then build both desktop and web applications, and no matter where you are or what computer you are using, you always have the same up-to-date information at your fingertips.

Unfortunately, the application is restricted to use on the iPhone. Attempting to use any other browser to access .Mac Reader results in an error. However, getting around this restriction is relatively easy. These instructions will show you how.

Requirements

To access .Mac Reader, two things are required: Firefox along with User Agent Switcher (install), an incredibly useful extension.

User Agent Switcher is a tool that has the ability to change the user agent Firefox reports to web servers. Doing so allows us to “spoof” the browser, effectively appearing as a different browser altogether.

iPhone User-Agent

In this particular case, we want to appear as the iPhone, which has the following user agent:

Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/1A538a Safari/419

User Agent Switcher is configurable through the Tools menu. An entry for the iPhone should be added to the list of User Agents.

The entry for the iPhone should contain a description and a user agent exactly as printed above.

As a convenience, I’ve created an XML representation of the iPhone user agent that can be imported into User Agent Switcher.

.Mac Reader Protocol

Now that we know the iPhone’s user agent, we need to understand the protocol used by iPhone to fetch feeds with .Mac Reader. The protocol is a simple HTTP request with the location of the desired RSS feed contained within the URL. The general format is as follows:

http://reader.mac.com/mobile/v1/[url-of-rss-feed]

For example, the URL used to retrieve the RSS feed of this site would be:

http://reader.mac.com/mobile/v1/http://feeds.feedburner.com/backdrifter

However, attempting to access that URL within Firefox (or any non-iPhone browser) will generate an error informing us that “This application can only be viewed using the iPhone.”

Firefox Access

In order to access .Mac Reader using Firefox, we must trick the server into thinking that Firefox is really an iPhone.

To accomplish that, we need use the iPhone’s user agent when requesting pages. iPhone should be checked under the Tools > User Agent Switcher menu.

Now, when accessing the feed, it should appear as it would on the iPhone.

With iPhones in hands, people can now properly address its impact on the future. Umair Haque, writing at Bubblegeneration, offers his perspective on Apple’s strategy:

1) Pick an industry which sucks (ie, imposes significant nuisance costs/menu costs/externalities on consumers)
2) Redress the imbalance by making something consumers love
3) …Which disrupts the long-standing industry equilibrium, and shifts market power
4) Use said market power to redesign (a hyperefficient) value chain

It is eerily similar to the strategy Apple is using to dominate the music retailing industry with iPod + iTunes. I think things are even more interesting when looked at in the broader context of Apple and its products.

“Three screens” is a common term in the vernacular of the technology industry. It refers to the unique types of displays present on desktop computers, televisions, and mobile devices. These comprise the three devices a typical person interacts with every day.

Each screen presents an interface tailored to the situations it is used in. For example, a computer is actively controlled from within a couple feet, using a keyboard and mouse. Meanwhile, a television is more passive, controlled with a few buttons on a remote control while relaxing on couch.

Apple has now put roots down in each of the categories represented within the three screens. Mac computers are mature and respected. The promising iPhone has now been introduced. Meanwhile, the experimental Apple TV continues to improve.

Apple’s focus on user experience, coupled with their control of both hardware and software, gives them a unique advantage and incredible leverage. With technology’s ever increasing pervasiveness in our lives, Apple’s potential seems almost limitless.