On Apple

Steve Jobs passed away yesterday. A true genius. The commentary today is coming from everywhere. I feel saddened and left wondering who or what might continue his impressive work. Where might the innovation come from now?

As an Apple shareholder, my mind has wandered for most of the morning on this topic. I've read about a dozen articles on Jobs' legacy and the hole he is leaving in Silicon Valley. The last article I read, from Minyanville, really got me wondering.

Here are some possibilities for Apple, from the top of my head, as I am wondering and dreaming about what it can add to its impressive suite of integrated technologies.

1) The first idea is one expounding on the ideas surrounding Near Field Communications and Facial Recognition software, again from the Minyanville article above. I call this idea iBank.

To begin with, the current state of banking in the USA is in peril. Banks have concentrated power and share in the USA, ever since Glass-Steagall was repealed. They have taken this power and over-leveraged themselves in a vain attempt to grow their businesses at rates far faster than the rate of GDP growth. This is an unsustainable business model, as banking, by definition, should do no better than the averaged growth of GDP. As a result of this over-lending, banks have put at risk the deposits of its core customers. What does this have to do with Apple?

Simply, what if Apple took the iPhone/iPad systems, and an integrated a phone-based transaction capability with a secure facial recognition function, and offered its iPhone users the ability to move their checking deposit balances directly to an Apple managed iBank? Apple could provide a debit-only transaction ecosystem within its iPhone/iPad user base, and charge a transaction fee to pay for the service. In essence, this would move Apple not into the traditional banking business, but rather into the business currently dominated by Visa and Mastercard and American Express.

To be specific, I would propose Apple NOT get into the lending business as a result of accepting checking deposits. Rather, Apple could simply safeguard deposits by investing them only in short-term US Treasuries, or the short-term government paper issued in the country of the user. In such a way, deposits would not be at risk to any exogenous economic crisis, like a loan default. It would offer iPhone users a super-safe way to bank and transact. In the current economic environment, this banking alternative might be incredibly attractive to all sorts of people, most especially those who live in countries with substantial deposit risk, i.e. Greece.

There currently exist a growing network of retail-based terminals that allow for cell-phone based transactions, but these are most prevalent in Europe, and no dominant standard system yet exists. Hence Apple's opportunity.

To prevent these iBank deposits from ballooning to unmanageable levels, Apple could limit checking accounts to one per iPhone, and accounts could be capped at $25,000, or some such balance to merely afford the average user to transact for everyday bills and expenses.

Furthermore, this service could be seemlessly integrated with a financial software program, so that users can track their spending in real-time, with a minimum of required inputs or manipulations to see and review.

This service could also be sold to corporations as a real-time way to track employee expenses, and could be tailored to deny any transactions that do not meet the corporations pre-determined allowable expenses.

In essence, this Apple-provided financial transaction service could extend the iPhone/iPad functionality into a completely new field, with extremely broad horizons. Many other possibilities exist within these horizons. With iBank, Apple could do to the financial transaction industry exactly what it did to the music industry with iTunes. And it could do it with no other hurdle than that of clearing the necessary regulatory requirements to exist, not unlike what the creators of Paypal had to do.

2) The second idea could be to provide an add-on hardware device for the iPhone/iPad. This device would look and operate much like a telefoto lens. Within the lens device, which would fit comfortably in the palm of your and, would be all the circuitry needed to shoot still or motion pictures, with extremely high qualities of photo resolution and zoom capability. In fact, this device, which I would dub simply "the i", would rival the world's very best camera lenses in quality and portability. It would be attached to its Apple-provided operating software application via a USB cord to the iPhone/iPad, whose length would be long enough to accommodate the average persons' arm length.

The "i" would be a simple but user-friendly device that would help transform the iPhone/iPad into a worldclass camera/video recorder. It would compete with all of the world's best cameras. It would also transform iPhone/iPad users into semi-professional photographers and film-makers, since its very portability would allow the user to reach around corners, above heads and at angles limited only by an arm's reach.

Apple could present this beautiful product extension in the following way: "We are extending the "i" in the iPhone". Enjoy.

3) The third idea I would consider for the iPhone would be to integrate a solar array on one side of the device. With solar cell technology advancing and shrinking at impressive rates today, Apple could "cut the cord" to the iPhone, freeing it to be fully operable off the grid.

I'm sure there are millions of others left wondering what Apple, or any technology company, could do next. The hundreds of thousands of Apps currently available are a testament to this statement. But as I wonder about these possibilities, I tip my hat to the memory of Steve Jobs, who created the environment for these possibilities to bloom. RIP.