Setting Records... and Breaking Them

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Recently, Apple nudged out oil giant Exxon Mobil to become the most valuable publicly-traded company in the world.

“The company's stock was up 6.3% to $447.02 a share, one day after Apple reported the best quarterly results in history for a tech company. That spike pushed the company's market value to $419 billion,” Ben Rooney writes.

According to The New York Times, last year Apple earned over $400,000 in profit per employee, more than Goldman Sachs, Exxon Mobil or Google.

Here’s my personal theory why …

Apple first redefined the consumer’s experience of using a portable audio device in 2001, when it launched the iPod First Generation in 2001. Now it seems like Apple is coming out with new products — and impressive innovations on existing products — just about every “15 minutes.” Steve Jobs’ brilliant engineering, design, branding and marketing teams have redefined the market and given rise to a whole family of products that now includes five or six different varieties of iPods — plus iPhone, iTouch and iPad.

Apple outperforms its competition by outperforming its own past performance. Lesson to be learned.

Ever Wonder Why So Many Computer Voices Are Female?

The new iPhone’s voice-activated feature called Siri is designed to answer questions in a part-human, part-robot voice that CNN reporter Brandon Griggs describes as “deep, briskly efficient and distinctly female. (At least in the U.S. and four other countries. In France and the UK, Siri is male.)” Interestingly, users refer to the Siri app as “she,” not “it.”


Why are so many computer voices female?

One reason is biology. Scientific studies have shown that people generally find women's voices more pleasing than men's.

Another reason is history. According to some sources, the use of female voices in navigation devices dates back to World War II, when women's voices were employed in airplane cockpits because they stood out among the male pilots.

The third reason is “typecasting.” Telephone operators have accustomed people to accepting help from a disembodied female voice.

Says CNN’s Griggs, “Voices of authority or menace tend to be male: the homicidal HAL 9000 computer in ‘2001: A Space Odyssey,’ the computer program in ‘WarGames,’ or Auto, the spaceship's autopilot function in ‘Wall-E.’ More subservient talking machines, such as the onboard computer from the ‘Star Trek’ TV series, skew female.”

Who knew?