![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/FoxBeautySupply.jpg\" "\\"FoxBeautySupply\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\nGuess what it sells? Wigs. Millions and millions of them.<\/p>\n
Now I know how New York’s black women suddenly acquired straight hair.<\/p>\n Wife Susan says I don’t go out enough.<\/p>\n Today is a sort of holiday. The stockmarket is closed. That gives me a reprieve to go back to bed and nurse my horrid cold.<\/p>\n Have a great weekend. See you Monday.<\/p>\n By the way, the wig store seems to be owned by a nice Chinese lady, who did not like me taking photographs of her incredible store.<\/p>\n Here’s yesterday’s column on Apple. Several friends said it was “the best I’ve ever written.<\/em>“<\/p>\n I’ll take\u00a0 the compliment. I’m not shy.<\/p>\n Apple closed last night at $633.68.<\/p>\n Yesterday’s headline:<\/p>\n What makes investing SO difficult today: Destruction by technology. Why I may buy even more Apple. (Which I did.)<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n They just closed the plant that printed my first magazine. The Easton, PA plant was ginormous. A city block long and almost as wide.\u00a0 The plant printed hundreds of thousands of beautiful magazines each day. It kept hundreds of lovely Lehigh Valley residents employed. The closing came as a huge surprise to most of them.<\/p>\n They’re closing printing plants all across the country. They’ll sell some of the machinery intact. But most will be sold for scrap. It’s the end an era, very emotional for a print journalist like me. I’ve never had more fun in life than thinking up the next magazine, producing the present one. As I think back, there were the flying pig, sunflowers and insect covers. Stuff you didn’t find on the cover of technology magazines.<\/p>\n But they made us different. We had huge fun making them. I think our subscribers had huge fun reading them.<\/p>\n I sold the publishing business in 1997 — not because I anticipated the devastation to print that the Internet has now wrought, but because my partner got sick and wanted less stress in his life. This was ironic because I’ve been touted as having “brilliant vision” to sell “at the right time.” In fact, the gigantic sale price — several times what we thought it would be — was an outright fluke. My partner’s colitis could not have come at a better time — though not for him. My father helped too. He always urged “Take a little home. You never know what tomorrow will bring.”<\/p>\n Tomorrow has come. The accelerating pace of technology — especially the explosion of high-speed Internet, intelligent smartphones and Apple’s iPad — is slashing and burning a broad destruction path through American business.\u00a0 Let’s start with some remarkable numbers:<\/p>\n + There are now 585,000 apps available to download on the Apple App Store (one of which is mine — Newton’s Telecom Dictionary).<\/p>\n + Since the App Store launched in July 2008, there have been over 25 billion downloads. Read that again: that’s 25 billion. The World Bank says there are 6.8 billion people in the world. On average every person on the planet has downloaded nearly four apps. And to do that they had to have an Apple machine and access to a broadband circuit. Has any product ever in the history of the world had such penetration? I don’t think so.<\/p>\n You can read the New York Times on the iPad. I read the New Yorker on my laptop. Ditto for the Wall Street Journal, which I long ago stopped subscribing to on paper. We’re all familiar with what happened to printing.<\/p>\n What about popular\u00a0 apps:<\/p>\n + GPS. My iPhone is a better GPS than my heavy standalone GPS unit. I actually asked Apple if anyone had ever written a piece highlighting industries ripe for App Store destruction and the answer was No. So consider this the beginning of our research. Some conclusions:<\/p>\n 1. Though the iPhone is good at GPS, it hasn’t killed Garmin, which is doing well, though its stock is till less than half what it was at its peak in 2007.\u00a0 Garmin sells an app for the iPhone, which is good. It’s embraced the iPhone. That’s the key: Embrace the inevitable.<\/p>\n 2. Apple App Store is the easiest place to test your new product ideas and to make a little for your retirement. If you haven’t encouraged your kids to put an App up, you’re missing out on being a good parent. You’re missing out on one of the easiest entrepreneurial opportunities ever presented in the history of mankind.<\/p>\n The App Store is the most remarkable distribution system ever. Think about it. Apple charges you $100 a year to be a developer. For that you can upload as many apps as you wish. They will be instantly available to the over-315 million people who own the iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch etc.\u00a0 what Apple calls its iOS devices worldwide. Apple charges you 30% to handle your cataloging, your distribution, and billing. Once a month you get money deposited right into your check account. It’s found money. Also called Money from Heaven. Thank you, Steve.<\/p>\n If you don’t believe that all this is a good reason that Apple stock is going higher, you’re missing something. Read the list again. Send me some examples. Add them as Comments below, please.<\/p>\n Where RIMM?<\/strong><\/span> The\u00a0 board has given the new management 30 days to fix the company. The only way — get the new BlackBerry 10 out and make its work properly. Here’s a list of the ten things RIMM has to do to make the BlackBerry 10 work. There’s no way they can do it. Click here.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n No one is expecting them to be able to get it working properly. Hence the company will be put up for sale. Some people believe it’s worth $20 a share — 57% above where it is now. At $20 a share, that’s a price tag for RIMM of $10.5 billion. Is that do-able for a company with allegedly 77 million customers? My feeling is NO. But some of my friends are long RIMM and gambling some schmuck will buy the company for $10.5 billion. Stranger things have happened. Microsoft has the money and the lack of sense. Ditto for Intel. It could go lower first.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\n+ Telescopes. Get Stargazer for your iPad. You’ll literally be blown away.
\n+ Cameras
\n+ Alarm clocks
\n+ Calculators
\n+ Electronic cooks
\n+ Newspapers
\n+ Games
\n+ Maps. Remember the printed ones you used to buy at gas stations?
\n+ Yellow pages
\n+ Restaurant guides. Yelp, etc.
\n+ Flashlights
\n+ Cash registers
\n+ Banking, stock trading, brokerage and loans
\n+ Travel entertainment. People download movies and watch them on planes and trains.
\n+ In-store shopping. Get QFReader.
\n+ Fancy color glossy bird books. Get iBird PRO. It’s got the pictures and the sounds the birds make. Books don’t have the sounds.
\n+ Textbooks.
\n+ Long distance and international phone and video calling. Skype is an app. It’s free. Long distance dial-up providers are not.
\n+ Gambling (including poker)
\n+ Voting (not here yet, but strong in some countries overseas).
\n+ Software. This one blows me away. Apple has just released photo retouching software called iPhoto. It’s not as good as Adobe Photoshop. But it’s all most people need. Photoshop costs $699. iPhoto costs $5.
\n+ Games.<\/p>\n