Apple Keynote In 2014

New MacBooks, a new Mac Pro, new Apps, a new operating system and new iPads. Apple’s presentation of 22nd October was filled with many new products and despite the rumors, some surprises.

Mac Book

Apple has upgraded their MacBook Pro lineup. The design remains the same as the previous generation. The MacBook Pros are running faster processors and the newest graphics. Apple also upgraded their Thunderbolt technology – the new MacBooks have Thunderbolt 2 connections. Personally, the major news here is that Apple drops the starting price of both the 13-inch and 15-inch model by 200$. The 13-inch model now starts at 1299 US$ and the 15-inch model at 1999 US$. You can already buy the new generations, Apple started shipping them the day of the presentation.

Mac Pro

Back in June, at WWDC, they already showed some images of the new Mac Pro (that to me looks like a bin…). This week they gave further information about their newest high-end computer. They announced, that they start shipping the new Mac Pros (starting price of 2999 US$) this year in December! I guess many film editors or music producers already know what’s on their Christmas wish list…

iLife and iWork

Apple decided to upgrade their iWork and iLife lineup on both iOS and Mac OS X. iWork includes Pages, Numbers and Keynote. If you already own one of these apps you get a free update. You get the same free update if you own one of the iLife apps – iPhoto, iMovie or GarageBand. When buying a new Mac, you now get both packages for free – not only iLife like it was until now. Businessly will be testing iLife and iWork over the next weeks. There will be a review on both product packages.

Mac OS X Mavericks

The new OS X was already presented back in June during WWDC. It looked promising due to great new features. Since the new features where already well known before this presentation, I didn’t expect any surprises. Well, I was wrong. For the first time Apple is giving out a new operating system for free on the Mac. This is a big deal. It will be interesting to see what Windows will do in future, since their newest operating system Windows 8 starts at 119.99 US$.

Also for Mac OS X Mavericks there will be a review after it has been used and tested by Businessly.

iPad Air and iPad mini Retina Display

This is probably the part of the presentation most of the people were excited about. Apple introduced their new iPad models, including an iPad mini with retina display and a new-designed iPad Air. Both are now running the same A7 chip as the iPhone 5S. Besides of that the iPad mini doesn’t see any changes, except the display – which is a nice upgrade. More of a change sees the big brother of the mini. Apple decided to name it iPad Air. It just weighs 1 pound, that makes it 28% lighter than the previous generation. It’s also 20% thinner and overall 24% less volume. Both iPads start shipping this November! The starting prices are the same as the previous generation for both products – the iPad Air starting at 499 US$ and the iPad mini Retina Display at 399 US$.

Businessly will be testing the iPad Air. There will be a review after using the device for a week.

The keynote covered pretty much all expectations. Despite that, there were no major upgrades. The upgrades of the MacBook Pros are nice, but not earth quaking. A lot of the information were already communicated about the Mac Pro and the iPad mini didn’t see a huge upgrade. Mac OS X Mavericks wasn’t a surprise, Apple did surprise their costumers by giving it out for free. The biggest change of Apple was designing a new “big” iPad and giving it a new nam

3 Countries that make it really easy to start a business

Do you want to start with your business as soon as possible? Do you already know how to make money with your business idea? You don’t know if your nicely written business plan will actually work? Do you have the right people around you? The list of questions when starting a business is probably endless. One essential question though, is: where will you start your business? Choosing the right location is crucial because of many reasons, which depend from the market in which your company will do its business. Here are some possible reasons:

- you want to be, where your costumers are

- you want to save money with low taxes

- you want to be, where you get the best employees

- you want to have freedom of business (low political regulation)

- you want to be, where your competitors are

Now you’re probably thinking: I want all of that! Maybe you even have a business, for which you actually find a country that matches all these criteria, but usually you have to deal with trade-offs. This article puts the spotlight on another point. What if you just want to start your business as fast and as cheap as possible? This article began with some questions about starting a business. What if you’ve gone through all those questions, you’ve written your business plan and now you just want to start with the real deal, but you still have to care about boring administrational work? After doing some research using doingbusiness.org, I present you the top three countries when it comes to easily start a business.

In third place: Canada

With a GNI per capita of 45’560 US$, Canada takes place three in the Doing Business (DB) “Starting a Business” ranking. It only needs one procedure, which takes five days to register a firm. You just have to fill out a file from the “Electronic Filling Centre” and you’re ready to start. The costs (always include all official fess and fees for legal or professional services) are 0.4% of the income per capita. No paid-in capital is needed.

Australia in second place

Australia has a GNI per capita of 65’477 US$ and makes it possible for you to start your business within two days. It takes one procedure more than Canada though. First you need to fill out the “Application for Registration as an Australian Company” which already gives you an Australian company number. Then you need to get your Australian business number. You only need to invest one day for each of the two procedures. The costs are 0.7% of the income per capita. Paid-in capital is not needed.

New Zealand Number One

A GNI per capita of 36’648 US$ and an astonishing one single day to register your firm! To start your business you simply need to apply for registration with the “Companies Office” online. Costs are 0.4% of the income per capita. Again, no paid-in capital is needed. Thanks to this very short and easy procedure, and the low costs, DB ranks New Zealand as the number one company for starting a business.

For comparison the mean values of the OECD countries:

- number of procedures: 5

- days to register the firm: 12

- costs in % of income per capita: 4.5%

- paid-in capital in % of income per capita: 13.3%

The interesting point is, that all three countries do fairly well in the overall ranking. In this DB ranking New Zealand takes place three of 185 economies, behind Singapore and Hong Kong (SAR, China). Australia makes it to place ten and Canada takes place 17. Of course, maybe you’re not interested in any of the three countries, when talking about starting your business. Certainly they all give you a quick way to get started with your daily problems of the company, the real deal. If you don’t need to bother where on earth you’re running your business, then maybe these are attractive countries for you

The Rise of an Ecological Industry of Great Economic Activity

The global annual installed capacity of wind energy has grown from 1.280 Megawatt in 1996 up to 44.771 Megawatt in 2012. This means a total growth of capacity of about 43.491 Megawatt in just 16 years time. Only from 2011 to 2012 the capacity has increased by about 4 Megawatt and this annual growth has increased from about 1-2 Megawatt per year to 4-5 Megawatt of annual growth until 2012.

Apart from ecologic advantages the economic growth of wind energy can also be seen as a way to fight against the economic crisis, especially in Europe.

Its contribution to the European gross domestic product:

In 2010 the wind energy sector contributed 32.43 billion euros to the European gross domestic product, 0.26 % of the total of that year. Between 2007 and 2010 the wind energy sector increased its contribution to the gross domestic product by 33 %, which shows that the wind industry is growing faster than the European economy.

As the wind industry buys and sells to markets of other economic sectors, it helped other sectors in crisis to overcome hard economic times, so the sector of wind energy has also the potential to tighten international interdependences and produce growth in diverse market sectors.

Looking at these facts it can be very profitable investing into the alternative energy sectors, especially into the sector of wind energy. The investments cannot only contribute to individual prosperity, but also to international wealth and make up a great part of the GDP in several countries.

As renewable energies are non exhaustive you can use them continually and also generate continual earnings. So as the capacity of wind energy and other alternative energies is rising, the contribution to BDP also rises and so do the profits of investors in this sector.

If we look at the market development, investments into the market of renewable energies are safer than investments into other sectors as there are no interdependencies between investments into alternative energy and other investments dependent on erratic movements of financial markets. So renewable energy investments can substantially contribute to the desire of investors looking for stable returns non correlated to the returns of financial assets. Fixed feed-in tariffs for renewable energy in many countries give additional comfort and confidence for investors.

But there are even more reasons why one should invest in wind energy:

As we saw above the market of alternative energy including wind energy has reached a high volume and by this reason manifold competition is present in this sector. This leads to high quality and a fair proportion of price and performance. Also there is a non-existence of oligopoly in the renewable energy sector, which is also a good argument for investments and new companies in the alternative energy sector. The continual growth will also expand the employment market and lead to more employment, so the investments are not only profitable for the investors, but also an advantage in a social way.

So concluding investments into wind energy are not only profitable and calculable for the investors, but also tighten global interrelations, extend the working market, lead to a higher GDP and contribute to the protection of our environment in an economical way.

How a Surfer Turned Into a Billionaire: Meet Nick Woodman.

Nick Woodman, CEO of GoPro managed to achieve what most people can’t. He turned his passion into a business.

Everything started when the young entrepreneur left for an extended surfing trip to Australia and Indonesia. By then he could not have known that he was about to create a multi-million dollar empire. While he was surfing he noticed that no surfer wanted to take the role of the cameraman, specially when the waves were good.

Like every other successful entrepreneur Nick Woodman discovered the problem and came up with a solution.

He built a homemade water and shock resistant mini-cam which was quite affordable for his surfer friends and himself. At first it was called “the invisible camera”, which could be fixed to the board comfortably, so the surfer could concentrate on what he was good at. Then he financed his business through the sale of clam shells, which he found at the beach and turned into necklaces. He did all this while living off his Volkswagen Bus. He received additionally two $ 100,000 checks from his father, who was a prominent Silicon Valley investment banker.

When he came back from his surf trip, he invested two years of his life in order to create his first market-ready GoPro 35mm Hero camera. Afterwards he drove to many tradeshows in his van in order to promote is new camera.He then hired his college-buddy Neil Dana to run the sales department.

GoPro generated $350,000 in revenue its first full year of sales.

Woodman had given himself a time frame of 4 years to achieve his dreams of starting a business, otherwise he would have entered the workforce. Luckily, he managed to fulfill his wish of making a few hundred grand a year and thereby becoming independent.

Today the GoPro is one of America’s fastest-growing digital imaging companies. Used by extreme athletes, adventurers and Hollywood. Woodman’s company made a revenue of $521 million in 2012 alone making him a billionaire at the age of 36.

5 Cognitive Distortions That Successful Entrepreneurs Share

It took Michael Dearing exactly 2’190 days, 2’481 companies and 4’515 interviewed founders to find out which traits successful entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley have in common.

He found 5 cognitive distortions that all of them share. These cognitive distortions, also known as strong patterns of automatic thoughts influenced their thinking and allowed them to create tons of value through their respective companies.

These are the five automatic thought patterns:

1. Personal Exceptionalism
2. Dichotomous Thinking
3. Correct Overgeneralization
4. Blank-Canvas Thinking
5. Schumpeterianism

Now let’s get down to the details.

1. Personal Exceptionalism makes someone think that they are special and everything that they create is special as well. This includes the following benefits: increased endurance and charisma.

2. Dichotomous Thinking is a trait that makes someone see things only in black and white, excluding the grey area. A person succumbed to this distortion is noted to be an advocat of perfection. He or she therefor achieve excellence frequently.

3. A person who is under the distortion of correct overgeneralization does exactly that: he or she draws the line between two dots. This makes entrepreneurs such as Steve Jobs save time, but also makes them indifferent to important data.

4. An entrepreneur who is under the cognitive distortion of Blank-Canvas Thinking sees the world as a piece of paper waiting to be painted. He or she is known for creating surprises and invent stuff in general.

5. Last but not least, the cognitive distortion known as Schumpeterianism drives entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley to believe in disruptive innovation. This makes them abitious and fearless of destruction.

Teach Our Kids to Code Why We Must Do This?

Programming is useful for a lot of reasons. For instance, you can create a new software that could generate value out of thin air (well, mostly a computer) and who knows, perhaps you will be able to start your new company that way someday. But not only that, there are a lot of unfilled positions in the tech market and let’s not forget the start-up scene, which is practically nothing without skilled programmers. So let’s put the prejudice aside that coding is not cool, because let’s be honest, creating something amazing such as Facebook or Google, with only a computer and generating billions in revenue seems pretty cool to me. It is also obvious that not everyone will be the next Mark Zuckerberg, but computers are in every industry nowadays and knowing how to program computers can’t hurt. Revenues and companies aside, programming can also be a lot of fun and it’s as easy as learning a language. Like learning a language, it’s best done young. Becoming fluent with technology is also really important, because over the next 10 years programming will be one of the fastest growing occupations. There will be 1.4 million programing with approximately 400’000 graduates in computer sciences leaving 1 million empty jobs. Speaking of jobs security, if you want any programming is definitely the way to go. So if you are not quite convinced yet, I’ll let Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and other tech-gurus do the talking.

Why We create Values An Analysis

It doesn’t matter if you are an entrepreneur trying to build a company or if you are a doctor, lawyer, carpenter, programmer or “insert every other profession here”, because at the end of the day all we can do to survive and by survive I mean “making money” is through serving others. How do we serve others you ask? Simply put by creating something of value. Something that people can use, digest, ingest and consume till their marginal utility is non-existent. It could be something as simple as a product, service or something unusual that you wouldn’t consider of value at first sight like entertainment or music.

I know it sounds cheesy and it has an altruistic motive attached to it that you wouldn’t associate with capitalism, but think about it. The only way to receive money, excluding begging and robbing, is through creating something of value that other people are willing to pay their hard-earned money for.
You could argue that products like Coca Cola or many others don’t actually create value given that it’s just “sweetened water”, but here is where the marketing comes in. Marketing distinguishes a product from others and creates an image of the product which you will associate with the value they will want you to remember. Even if it’s not rational, just like many people buy Louis Vuitton bags for an exaggerated price just because of its superb marketing.

So it’s not only about creating value, but adding perceived value as well (if you want to enter the high-end business at least).

But let’s get back to the point. This article is mainly directed to all the people trying to get out of the rat-race and instead work for themselves. The most important factor of a business is so fundamental that many forget it, while they’re so convinced with their “million-dollar-idea”. So here it goes: a business is only worth existing if it creates value.

So next time you have another of those “million-dollar-ideas”, ask yourself first if it contributes to society by creating value, because only then you will have a chance at earning money.
So how do you proceed to create something of value? First I would suggest finding a skill that you like and become really good at it, in order to serve someone with your talents. This is the main formula for all things you want to achieve at life. Whether you want to become a doctor or you want to build that business.The question is: are you willing to get your hands dirty?

Why the economy supposedly works Like OK OK

If you have ever sat in a microeconomics course, then you are probably aware of the law of supply and demand.  The law of supply states that the quantity of a good supplied rises as the market price rises, and falls as the price falls. Conversely, the law of demand says that the quantity of a good demanded falls as the price rises, and vice versa.

This article is based on findings of the Swiss historian Jean-Charles Sismondi who was the first to identify the occurrence of periodic economic crises and the work of the Frenchman Charles Dunoyer. Obviously this article is a big generalization of how the market works, but so is the theory of macroeconomy. We’ll try to explain why the economy supposedly works like a yo-yo in 4 steps.

1. During boom times when companies are receiving high returns on their investments and the profits keep increasing, it is very likely that the companies will increase production even more to satisfy the demand for these goods. The next logical step is that other companies see the market potential and try to take a stake of the profits as well by getting into the market. This leads to excess supply and market saturation.

2. Now that the market is saturated, the companies begin to cut prices to compete for customers and to stay at the top.

3. This leads to lower profits, lay-offs, and eventually into an economic depression.

4. However, companies begin to recover once prices become cheap enough to stimulate demand and credit becomes more available, which leads to an increase in demand and profits may go back up, delivering the yo-yo effect.

An early crisis that confirmed the yo-yo effect was the stock-market crash of 1825, which was one of the first documented crises caused solely by international economic events. Please note that the while the economy may work like a yo-yo doesn’t imply that the GDP stays the same after the up and downs, eventually there may be a strong tendency in the long-term process which may lead the GDP upwards or downwards in the big scheme of things.