And here's an amazing thing: Even with Apple's size and momentum, there's still plenty of room left for growth. In its most important markets - mobile phones and personal computers - Apple is still being dramatically outsold by competitors.

That in mind, it's also reasonable to ask: How long can Apple keep its streak alive? When will it peak?

First, Let's Look Back

Apple's current growth streak just finished its tenth year.

After a few years of ups-and-downs after Steve Jobs re-joined Apple, 2002 represented its sustained return to growth. That was the first full year of iPod sales, an okay year for the Mac, and Apple brought in $5.8 billion in total sales, up 2% from 2001. (That said, it was still a pretty bad time for the tech and PC industries, following the dot-com bust.)

Since then, Apple has posted full-year revenue growth every year, now for ten years in a row.

In 2011, Apple reported $128 billion in sales, up 68% from 2010 - an accelerating growth rate. The weakest growth years were 2003 (16% growth) and 2009 (20% growth) - two "bad" years that most tech companies would love to have. The last two years have been nothing short of incredible, led by Apple's booming iPhone, iPad, and Mac businesses.

Still an Underdog

The crazy thing is that even considering how big Apple is, it's still a relatively small player in many of its markets, at least measured by unit sales. That is, there's plenty of future growth potential, just by convincing more people to buy Apple versions of the products they're already buying.

In the mobile phone market, for instance, Apple only represented 4% of global phone shipments in the third quarter of 2011, according to Gartner. (Its fourth quarter share will almost certainly be higher, as the iPhone had a huge Christmas, but still probably not more than 8% of the total market.) Rival Nokia, meanwhile, still shipped 24% of the world's phones in the third quarter.

In personal computers, despite record Mac sales over the holidays, Apple wasn't even big enough to make it into Gartner's top five worldwide vendor list. A reasonable estimate is that if you only count Apple's Mac sales, it represented about 6% of the PC market last quarter. If you also include iPads, Apple's share rises to around 19%. But even then, that still means more than 4 of every 5 PCs sold in the world are non-Apple machines.

So Apple's opportunity to keep growing is obvious: All it needs to do is to keep representing a higher share of sales in its key, fast-growing markets - smartphones and tablets. That, combined with new potential growth areas like TVs, should offset its shrinking iPod business and slower-growing Mac business.

But there are two big hurdles/risks that Apple is going to have to deal with:

• Apple is a premium brand, and as much as Apple is defining taste in electronics and teaching more people to want to buy premium products, that's never going to represent 100% of any market. So at some point, Apple's addressable part of any market will hit its limit.


• One of the key things that makes Apple successful is its narrow, deliberate focus, and its relative lack of bloat. Nonstop growth, even under the smartest and most efficient of leaders, challenges those traits.

So, When Will Apple Peak?

Barring economic disaster, it seems Apple is set to maintain yearly sales growth at least through the end of this decade. Its position in its current technology cycle - smartphones and tablets, and perhaps TVs - seems strong enough to suggest that Apple should be able to sell more stuff every year than it did the year before for at least that long. The main risk seems to be Google's Android ecosystem, which will challenge Apple's iOS in seemingly every market. But so far, Apple seems to be fine.

The bigger question is: What comes after that? Can Apple transform its iPhone and iPad into whatever comes after them, the way it morphed the iPod and Mac into its current lineup? And that's where the unknown is simply unknown. It's possible that sometime in the 2020s - if not sooner - Apple will have its first down year since 2001.

For evidence of this shift, look no further than Apple. The company just reported an absolutely bonkers financial quarter, in which it sold 37 million iPhones and 15.4 million iPads. The two products now make up 72% of Apple's quarterly revenue and the consumer demand shows no sign of letting up.

This month, iOS edged past Mac OS X for the first time, accounting for 8.15% of all Web traffic, compared to the 7.96% coming from Mac desktops. Of course, this data does include Android, which probably constitutes a share of Web traffic that's roughly comparable to iOS. Even so, the combined mobile operating systems likely do not even begin to outnumber desktops overall, as there are still plenty of Windows machines out there.

Indeed, it will be some time before tablets and smartphones truly outnumber desktops and laptops. For now, most consumers are not replacing their computers with smaller devices, but rather supplementing them.

The file is 191 pages (as a PDF) and was requested by Michael Morisy of MuckRock. Morisy says that he became curious about Jobs' "behind-the-scenes" interactions with government after Jobs' death. "He was a famously private man, and almost apolitical in a lot of ways, but regularly courted for his opinion and advice.

"Government documents are also just generally a great way to get a look at public figures' lives: You can get a behind the scenes view that's otherwise not available, whether that's past legal trouble, quietly helping the feds or receiving death threats, and I think all of that is a valuable part of the story."

What the Documents Reveal

According to the memo outlining the investigation (page 160), Jobs would have been in a position to "make decisions concerning policy and personnel matters." The questions about Jobs related to drug use, whether he lived within his means, his trustworthiness and whether there was evidence of prejudice or bias on his part. According to the memo "the last 10 years of appointee's life must be accounted for."

Almost all of the people interviewed by the FBI seemed to give Jobs high marks, though there's at least one individual (name redacted) interviewed on March 11, 1991 who said Jobs was "not totally forthright and honest" and "has a tendency to distort reality in order to achieve his goals." (Perhaps that's where the phrase "Jobs Reality Distortion Field" came from...) Also interesting, the same individual said that Jobs was suitable for a "high level political position" in government because "in his opinion, honestly and integrity are not prerequisites to assume such a position."

The last section of the document details a bomb threat to Apple in February 1985 that turned out to be a hoax. The FBI doesn't seem to have found the caller.

It might sound like 191 pages would contain a wealth of information. However, much of the documents consist of government paperwork and coversheets that convey very little. (They do reveal that being in the FBI does not actually require neat penmanship.) The file also contains records of suits Jobs was involved with when with Apple and NeXT. There's very little in the document that's not already public knowledge.

But it's interesting to comb through and see what kind of information the FBI had on Jobs, and likely has on a number of other public figures. If you want to do your own Freedom of Information Act (FOI) requests, you can use MuckRock as a tool to do so. Morisy says that MuckRock tries to make "a really important, but really tedious, part of journalism and make it fun, social and easy for both journalists and regular users. For the first time, anyone can request almost any government document with just a few clicks and we think that's a really powerful tool for transparency."

Apple lives at the center of the worldwide technological transformation that's underway, and Lashinsky's new book sheds light on how the enigmatic company works. It profiles Apple's leaders and their various styles and talents, it describes how the organization is woven around them, and it tells the stories of Apple insiders and outsiders at all levels.

Lashinsky reveals many telling facts and anecdotes about Apple's culture in the book. We discussed whether Apple's obsession and perfectionism are creepy, and to what extent this is driven by the personalities of its leaders.

We considered the extreme secrecy imposed on Apple's lower ranks and what effects that has on morale and the quality of work. We also thought about Apple's unique sense of timing, taste and presentation that make it such a phenomenon in the culture at large.

Apple's organization is centrally controlled by a closed group of leaders, and I asked Lashinsky about the importance of their personalities in the way the company operates. We discussed the extent to which Steve Jobs' legacy shaped the culture and whether those shapes will hold after his passing.

Then we talked about Tim Cook's new and starkly different style as CEO. Lashinsky has also referred to SVP of iOS Software Scott Forstall as a "CEO-in-waiting," and the book points to the contrast between him and Cook as one of the upcoming dramas in Apple's next chapter.

Finally, we looked at the products, the part of the company where Apple meets the public. We discussed the powerful influence of Jobs' last products and how we'll have to wait for the ones that come after him to see the real face of a post-Jobs Apple.

I found our conversation illuminating, and the whole evening was a lot of fun. Here's the full video of my interview with Adam Lashinsky:

All photos and video by the excellent team at SAY Media

The app update section returns for the its fifth month and we found that fewer of our existing apps issued updates for new features or bug fixes than in months past. We also have a new treat in the Apps of the Month: a limited Staff Picks section where some of ReadWriteWeb's writers picked the apps they found most interesting during the month.

The list, as always, is a bit subjective so please let us know in the comments if we missed an app or you have found one that you cannot live without.

Vimeo (Free - iOS, Android)

As a video platform, Vimeo has always played second fiddle to YouTube. Yet, Vimeo does attract a more professional grade of videographer and often the contents of Vimeo are much more polished than the much uploaded to YouTube from millions of would-be Internet stars. Vimeo finally has a new app for iOS and Android and it is everything you would expect from the platform in terms of quality video and performance. Users can view videos, manage their accounts and upload all from one app. The Android version of Vimeo requires 2.3 Gingerbread or above.

Producteev (Free - iOS, Android)

Talk about cross-platform. Producteev is a task manager available for Macs and Windows PCs, iOS and Android, IM and email. It is basically everywhere. As a task manager, one of its best features is the ability to work offline so you can access your tasks and projects from everywhere. Imagine being an intern working on Capitol Hill in D.C. and stuck on the Metro Orange Line between Roslyn and Foggy Bottom (if you have never worked in D.C., that is where the train goes under the river and there is absolutely no cell reception) then the ability to access your tasks offline on your phone is tantamount. You can also invite other users into the projects within the app with its workspace feature. Business is going mobile.

Lanyrd (Free - m.Lanyrd.com)

We eventually envision that the cross-platform Apps of the Month section will be dominated by HTML5 mobile Web-based apps as opposed to those that happen to be released for both iOS and Android within the same month. So, we introduce our first HTML5-based Web app ever in this column with Lanyrd, the social conference directory. It made a big splash when we wrote about it for ReadWriteMobile on the last day of January and the community at Hacker News had a fairly robust discussion about how it was made and what its benefits are. The greatest benefit of Lanyrd's mobile Web app is that it utilizes HTML5 offline caching so you can get around any conference even when the Wi-Fi or cellular connection has gone kaput. While Lanyrd is a fairly simple and the UI leaves a bit to be desired, this is a great first step towards open standards and cross-platform deployment through the mobile browser.

Plex ($4.99 -- iOS, Android)

Plex for iOS actually came out for iOS in December but the Android version was released in January so we will give it a cross-platform designation. It is a media platform that runs across Windows, Mac and Linux. Install the Plex Server on your computer then download the app and all of your media (music, video, pictures) will be converted to mobile form through your myPlex app. Plex serves over 200 channels including Vimeo, YouTube, Revision3 and others. When attaching it to a Mac it can run content from iTunes, Aperture and iPhoto. Truly a simple and powerful media streaming app.

Zynga Poker (Free - iOS, Android)

It is what it is, as they say. Poker from social gaming company Zynga. This poker game is a little cooler on the geek factor though since it was written in HTML5 and then wrapped for the native platforms (a hybrid app). If you have ever played Zynga's poker app on Facebook, this will be no different except it has now gone mobile. Connect with friends, get some free chips and get your Texas Hold 'em' on.

Staff Picks

So, when I mentioned a "limited" Staff Picks section, I was being literal. Trying to get the busy ReadWriteWeb staff to put together one measly selection for Apps of the Month is like trying to pull the back hairs off an angry baboon. I promised I would shame the staff for not getting in their Apps of the Month selections by the deadline and I will continue doing so in this column until more than five staffers actually send me selections. They have a variety of excuses from "I didn't like the app I chose" to "I learn about new apps when you write about them." Bah! For a staff that writes about new applications and gets thousands of pitches a month on a variety of topics, you would think that picking one measly app would be easy enough to figure out.

Well, here are the staff selections we did get.

Jon Mitchell - Writer

The Ying to my Yang here at RWW, Jon had his App of the Month lined up weeks ago. Kudos, Mr. Mitchell.

Day One (Journal/Diary) ($1.99 - iOS)

Day One is my new journal. It supports tweeting and whatnot, but it's the best app for keeping things to myself that I've ever used. You can set daily reminders to write in it, or you can just dash off entries whenever it suits you. If you want to keep it secret, you can lock it with a passcode. Day One supports MultiMarkdown formatting, so you can make text bold, italic, and add links, too. Day One has been around for a while, but version 1.5, which launched this month, adds iCloud syncing. Now your journal is seamlessly synced between your iDevices, as well as the Mac app if you swing that way. It also supports Dropbox, if you'd prefer to sync there.

Robyn Tippins - Community Manager

Our intrepid community manager is a big gamer. You would not think of it coming from a mother with a thick Southern accent but if we ever open a RWGaming channel, Robyn would be our go-to resource.

Shogun: Rise of the Renegade (First mission is free on iOS, $1.99 to unlock the full game and the other missions.)

I'm a big fan of the games where you dodge unbelievably complex patterns of bullets and bombs, like Geometry Wars, so when I saw the screen grabs from this game I knew I'd probably enjoy it. In Shogun: Rise of the Renegade, you are fighting a warlord, the winner of World War IV. The premise is silly, but you don't play these games for a story. The graphics are retro-90s, the soundtrack is annoying but appropriate for the game type, the price is great, and other than the minor annoyance in weapon changing, it's a cool game. If you enjoy Japanese arcade games filled with lasers and 'bullet hell' situations, you'll enjoy this fun little game. Best part? It fits right into the iCade!

Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier - Channels Writer

Joe came in with an app at the very last minute after I threatened a public shaming on the staff editorial call. I was ready to give him a pass since he has been traveling in Europe last week, but Zonker came through.

Wunderkit (Free - iPhone)

Wunderkit is a sort of social to-do manager. It's suitable for setting up a "Getting Things Done" type workflow for personal use, or you can invite friends and co-workers to join and share workspaces. It's a low-impact collaboration tool that might catch on, if a team is iPhone-equipped and heavily into social tools. For maximum features, like gettimg involved with other people's projects, you need to sign up for a $5 a month account. But that's far cheaper than a lot of other collaboration tools. Having just checked it out recently (it was released on January 31), I can't vouch for its effectiveness just yet, but it looks promising.

And back to our regularly scheduled program.

iPhone & iPad

Chasing Salander: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo ($0.99, iPhone)

I break my own rules (that Apps of the Month need to be published in the month being written about) every so often for apps that came the month before that rock. Chasing Salander certainly fits into that category. It is an enhanced e-book of the Girl With The Dragon Tattoo where you chase renegade Lisbeth Salander through 14 locations with a short reading and pictures. With over 100 new facts not found in the books or movies this is a great app for any fans of the Salander triology.

Yamaha NoteStar Sheet Music (Free - iPad)

Play the piano? Want to rock with your favorite band but do not have the sheet music to do it? NoteStar is a hands-free sheet music where you can play along with the band or have the keyboard section isolated to study it on your own. You can preview and purchase new music from within the app and Yamaha's screen flow feature provides automatic page turning in time with the music. The performance can be slowed or sped up depending on your learning limits. If I knew absolutely anything about playing the piano, this would seem like a great place to learn new songs.

iTunes U 2.0 (Free, iPad/iPhone)

Apple called for a mysterious press conference in the middle of January in New York City. It was actually a cruel thing to do to the poor Apple Fan Boys of the world because they all got excited that a new iPad was coming down the pipeline. No such luck. What Apple did announce was its new textbook initiative that makes courses available online through the iPhone or iPad from universities across the world. As a general concept this is cool stuff, but there has been controversy over Apple iBooks End User License Agreement and if it is even legal to proceed in the fashion that Apple has. Our Marshall Kirkpatrick called iTunes U 2.0, "not perfect, just awesome."

SoulCalibur ($11.99 - iPhone/iPad)

I used to play the classic SoulCalibur game on the ill-fated DreamCast at my neighbors house in my early adult years. Outside of some golf pro and business apps, graphic intensive games are the most expensive on the iOS platform. Normally I will add the expensive games in Apps of the Month because they good examples of the capabilities of smartphones and tablets but not download the actual apps. I decided to bite the bullet and spend the $11.99 on SoulCalibur because it was the greatest fighting game ever.

Numberlys ($5.99 - iPhone/iPad)

One of the greatest things about the mobile revolution is that the nature of storytelling is fundamentally changing. It is dynamic, interactive and visually appealing like never before. Numberlys might be the greatest example yet. It is a game, a mystery, a story, a learning adventure. it is a depiction of the origins of the alphabet told through numbers. Our Jon Mitchell reviewed the app; " It's an interactive tale with a massive visual scope appropriate for people of all sizes. Its stark, soaring black-and-white aesthetic draws on Fritz Lang's Metropolis to tell the story of five characters' quest to create the alphabet in a world run by numbers."

Congressional Records App (Free - iPad)

This is an impressive app from the Library of Congress. Yes, I just wrote that sentence. This is the daily edition of The Congressional Record on your iPad using data from Office of the Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives, the Office of the Secretary of the Senate, and the Government Printing Office. Browse by date (going back to 1995), share via email, read as a PDF and identify the latest bills put forth on the House and Senate floors. Great for politicos trying to catch up on activity, student researchers, interns, lawyers, pundits and lobbyists.

Android

Wikipedia (Free)

You would think that one of the largest Web services in the world would have already released an Android app. Wikipedia finally came to Android in January. It is fairly self-explanatory. Search, save for later reading, share with the Android share function. All the good encyclopedia knowledge that you need in the comfort of your pocket.

ViBe (Free)

ViBe is caller ID with vibration patterns. Choose a contact, set a vibration pattern for that person and know from the feel of the movement in your pocket who is calling you without looking at your phone. This is so weird that I think it might be one of the coolest things ever. If your phone is on silent at work, in a meeting, at a conference, while on a date, know who is contacting you based on the pattern. I am trying to figure out how the studio, Base2Apps, dreamed this up but it has become one of the more useful apps in my Android collection. One of the notable uses is for blind or deaf people that cannot see or hear their phones ring. "We're passionate about deaf advocacy," the Android Market page states.

Jotly (Free)

Rate everything. Like, really, everything. Go social, local and mobile (ack, dare I say it? mocial.) Jotly is actually a parody app of the often absurd world of apps and startups and their obsession with memes, rankings and just. being. social. It is not directly supposed to be a parody of Kevin Rose's Oink, but it kind of is anyway. It came to Android in January and just the Android Market page (linked above) is hilarious. "Move around freely. Jotly will automatically go where your phone does." Or better, "Find the best and worst things at any place. Like ducks? Jotly will show you big and little ducks." You know all those wonderfully sarcastic people you find on the InterWebs? They are kicking it on Jotly.

Dragon Go! (Free)

Dragon Go! from Nuance is new to Android in January. It came out for iOS in November. It is a voice-activated search app that gives Siri a run for its money and puts would-be Android contenders like Iris to shame. The tagline is " Just Say it, Get it and Go!" Search for local shopping, movie tickets and more. Connected to 200+ channels on the Web like ESPN, YouTube, Ask.com and more, it is a good search app from the developers at Nuance.

Decide (Free)

Last night a startup friend and I debated the merits of local shopping with an entrepreneur looking for seed funding for a mobile, social commerce app. It is a really tough space to get into. A good reason for that is apps like Decide. Decide is an app that helps you figure out if you want to buy the newest consumer electronics gadget on the market. At the store doing research on some fancy new tablet? Ask the Decide app if it is worth it or not and the app will give you a "Buy Now" or "Wait" instruction. Scan the barcode or a QR code and Decide will look up the gadget, give you price information and tell you if it is worth spending money on.

Embark (Free -- NYC, San Francisco and D.C.)

Embark is a series of public transportation apps that help you navigate a new city. Cannot figure out how to get from Manhattan to Brooklyn? (I never can, unless I am going to DUMBO.) Or maybe you performed the impossible and got lost on BART in San Francisco? What about conditions on the Orange Line in D.C? Embark provides train schedules, route planning and interactive maps for travelers who have lost their way.

Screenshot: Embark D.C. Metro

Notable Updates

It is always important to remember to go into your device and update apps on a regular basis. Updates provide new functionality, performance and security upgrades and make sure that the bugs from the last version have been taken care of.

Notable iOS Updates:

• Rage HD, Pandora Radio, Order & Chaos Online, Fishing Joy HD, HeyStaks, XFinity TV, Angry Birds Rio, IMDb, Powder Monkeys, Infinity Blade, Instagram, Zite, Netflix, Opera Mini, ShowYou, Path, Project Slice, Fanhattan for iPad, Kibits, Evernote, Square, Groupon HD, NBC Player, Epicurious, Urban Crime, Google Books, Hulu Plus, Rdio, Flixster, SoulCalibur, CNN for iPad, The Wall Street Journal, iBooks, Hipmunk, Slacker Radio.

Notable Android Updates:

• AirSync by DoubleTwist, Angry Birds, Angry Birds Rio, Barcode Scanner, ESPN ScoreCenter, Evernote, Facebook, Fandango, Firefox, Foursquare, Google Goggles, Google Maps, Google Music, LevelUp, LinkedIn, Lookout Security, Match.com, Norton Mobile Utilities, Flixster, News360, OpenTable, Opera Mobile, PewPew, Rdio, SketchBook Mobile, The Weather Channel, WordPress, Words With Friends, E*Trade Mobile, Google Voice, NPR News, Path.

Apparently, iTunes Match has been inadvertently replacing certain tracks with the "clean" version of the same song, Cult of Mac reported.

It looks like what's happening here is the system is misreading metadata for certain tracks and cross-referencing with radio-friendly edits of the same song. At the very least, this has happened with four hip hop tracks as reported by Cult of Mac.

To some, this may smack of the nothing-dirty-please, prim-and-proper censorship for which Apple has gained a reputation in the iTunes App Store. More likely than not, it's just a bug. The company may not want filthy porno-filled apps populating its App Store, but that's quite different from allowing people to listen to a profanity-laden Jay-Z song that they purchased (or otherwise) acquired on their own accord.

Apple has acknowledged that this is an issue and is reportedly working on a fix.

Despite its recent growth in popularity, jailbreaking is still not a mainstream activity among iPhone and iPad owners generally. It's more for the tinkering type and those who want to customize their device's functionality and UI design. Whether it's done to download unauthorized (yet often quite useful) apps from Cydia or customize the look and feel of the OS, there are a lot of reasons why people jailbreak their devices. For iPhone 4S owners, that list is made all the more compelling by one thing: hacking Siri.

Using a feature called Activator, users can verbally do things like lock the phone, turn WiFi and Bluetooth on, run a Spotlight search and much else. Activator lets you define your own customized requests, so if you want Siri to open a new email every time you say "Abracadabra," then so be it.

Tweaks like this begin to show the real potential behind Siri, as is often the case with features that only work on jailbroken devices. Apple ships a solid, but limited offering, and then developers get their hands on it and in improve. In many cases, some of the best new features find their way into Apple's next official release.

Even before the Absinthe A5 jailbreak tool was released, developers wasted no time modifying Siri to do things like start cars and adjust thermostats. Such cross-device hacks require coding skills, a third party service like SiriProxy and a compatible, Web-connected appliance to mess with. It can make a fun weekend project, but it's probably beyond what most users are willing to get their hands dirty doing.

This new breed of device-based Siri tweaks is much more in line with what the average user would likely be interested in using. If history is any indication, these may be standard features in iOS before long.

From deadly plant explosions and poisonous screen-cleaning chemicals to unsafe working conditions and long hours, the report was anything but forgiving. In response, there is a small but growing chorus of consumers asking Apple to do more about these issues. A petition demanding a more ethically-built iPhone 5 and other products is said to have amassed 40,000 signatories in its first 24 hours.

The company, like others that make consumer electronics, remains in an awkward position as its quest to meet growing demand clashes with the ethical concerns that naturally arise when the manufacturing is done in countries that lack the U.S.'s labor laws. Apple has stated that achieving the level of efficiency they now boast simply wouldn't be possible in the United States, where manufacturing has waned, labor is costly and regulations too strict to allow for lightning speed turnaround on last-minute changes. To stay competitive, it needs to keep its operations in places like China.

E-Signatures vs. Wallets: Which Votes Count More?

Forty thousand signatures may sound like a lot, but it's a drop in the bucket compared to 37 million. That's how many iPhones Apple sold in its last quarter, in addition to more than 15 million iPads. The pressure from consumer and human rights groups may well ramp up in the coming weeks and months, but for the time being the number of people voicing their concern is only .07% of the number that bought iPads and iPhones in the last quarter. That's not counting iPods and Macs.

To make a substantial impact, there would need to be an actual boycott of Apple products widespread enough to make a noticeable dent in their sales numbers. Some may decline to buy the iPhone 5, iPad 3 or iTV in protest, but probably not enough to make a difference.

Alternatively, the issue would need to turn into a much bigger PR problem for Apple, leading consumers to think twice or forcing the company to preempt an exodus by pressuring suppliers to shape up.

This isn't to suggest that a concerted enough Web-fueled protest couldn't generate the pressure required to encourage change. We saw it happen in more ways than one with the SOPA and PIPA debate. Still, this is Apple we're talking about. Rather than asking citizens to phone their representatives, such a protest would be asking millions to break their addiction to some of the most popular consumer electronics products of all time. These are devices that have woven themselves deeply into our day-to-day lives.

If people were to flee Apple, where would they go? To one of Apple's competitors? They're not exactly innocent either.

What do you think? Are labor rights issues enough to cause you to reconsider buying devices like smartphones and tablets? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

To a hardcore iPhone user, it seems like it should be relatively easy to explain what Launch Center does. But as the many meditative blog posts show, there's more here than meets the eye. Launch Center's creators at App Cubby are still figuring out for themselves what they're onto here. They've broken into something fundamental about iOS that it doesn't have yet, and they've made a $0.99 app we can all use to figure out together exactly what that is.

Launch Center is one app for launching tasks across many apps. It can be a simple speed-dial-Mom or text-my-girlfriend launcher, or it can hook deeply into an app and, for example, go straight to Instagram's camera screen. You can also link to any Web URL, which it will open in Safari. It also comes loaded with some neat shortcuts like a "Flashlight" button to turn on the phone's LED. An update last week added scheduled tasks, so you can now associate an in-app action with a timed reminder. This all sounds so useful, but it's surprisingly hard to figure out how to work it in.

@JonMwords hmm. I have "call girlfriend" and backup website.

— Federico Viticci (@viticci) January 29, 2012

I talked to App Cubby founder David Barnard today, and it sounds like he and developer Justin Youens are still figuring it out, too. Barnard says they only put Launch Center in their iPhone docks themselves in the last week or two. They're experimenting now with different kinds of interfaces, beyond a simple list of actions, as well as different kinds of tasks to launch.

They're also working with developers of other apps to create good URL schemes for inclusion in Launch Center. iOS apps have URLs for different screens or actions, just like websites. For example, to launch Instagram straight to the camera screen, the URL is instagram://camera. Launch Center users can input URLs themselves, and developers often make these publicly available. But it also comes loaded with some easy and common ones for users who don't want to get their hands too dirty.

But is this something users want? Is the convenience of going straight to a common action, rather than swiping around for the app you need, tapping it and then acting, important enough for most users? Barnard and I discussed that at length, and I think we concluded that there's no way to know without trying. So they went ahead and launched Launch Center at the unbelievably good price of $0.99, and now we can all try it. Barnard says that they're getting about 1,000 downloads a day, and they're especially big in Japan.

A Better Mental Model

Federico Viticci at MacStories wrote a thoughtful post last week about the shortcomings of Apple's iOS home screen. The problem is that its "badges on a table" approach is not quite flexible enough sometimes. It forces users to think about launching an app and then finding a task, even though one or two taps might seem like enough to cut straight to the action. Apple has had to hack its own interface with features like Notification Center to speed things up.

Launch Center started as a way to extend Notification Center, but the first version was rejected by Apple. The Launch Center of today is like a shelf containing its own list of actions chosen by the user. Barnard says they're considering making an "experimental" version for pro users, letting people choose from a variety of different launcher styles to see what works for them.

Whether or not we're conscious of them, I believe these kinds of time-savers and mental models are important to everyone with a smartphone. RWW fans almost certainly don't know this, but I co-host a weekly podcast with my friend Jamie from App Advice about what to do with all these devices. We discussed Launch Center when we first heard of it and again in great detail two days ago, because we're both frantically searching for ways to work this app into our lives. For now, I think we've both decided to just stick it on our docks first and find a way to use it over time.

In my Launch Center right now, I've got the Instagram camera launcher, "compose tweet" in Tweetbot (my Twitter client of choice), and a few Web bookmarks I use all the time, like my Kippt inbox. It's still very much an experiment, but that's the fun of Launch Center. If you're looking for ways to get a little more oomph out of your iPhone, check out Launch Center and share what you come up with.

The latest clues about that future come from a newly-published patent, which hints at some of the things Siri may be able to do after its first iteration.

One thing Apple apparently plans to have its devices do is automatically detect those hands-free scenarios and adjust the UI accordingly. That is, when you mount your phone in the car, the device realizes it's time to substitute certain core elements of its GUI with voice and audio-based controls.

The wording of the patent itself is not exclusive to smartphones. Indeed, it lists personal computers, tablets, televisions and gaming systems as devices with which this technology could potentially be used. There should be little doubt that the company plans on expanding Siri beyond the iPhone and building it into other hardware, quite possibly including the forthcoming new iPad and Apple's much-anticipated HDTV set.

The Role of Siri-Hacking

Some of the more exciting clues about Siri's future potential come not from patents but from the community of developers who have already started tinkering with what Apple released and putting it to new uses. Early examples built using the SiriProxy hack include remotely adjusting the thermostat and starting one's car, as well as calling up television shows on a Web-connected set top box.

While Apple officially frowns upon such tinkering, it has a tendency to borrow heavily from the iOS jailbreaking community when developing its own products. It's even hired a few notable iOS developers with roots in the jailbreaking community. Each new version of iOS pulls in a feature or two previously only available on jailbroken devices. The recently overhauled Notification Center is just one substantial example.

When users started hacking the Kinect, Microsoft famously endorsed the practice, going so far as to offer cash for the best hacks. If Apple embraces Siri-hacking, it will likely be in more subtle ways, probably by quietly rolling a few of the best hacks into its own official offering. The line will always be drawn at features that go too strongly against carrier wishes, present user experience challenges or otherwise don't meet Apple's strict requirements.

"Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made." - Immanuel Kant

Ours is an imperfect society. The nature of our reality, our desires and our need to possess, while maintaining a façade of moral righteousness, puts us at odds with the reality that exists within the systems we have created.

In recent days, the character of our era of consumerism has been put in question. We want what is new, shiny, fashionable. We want it now. With this desire we turn our heads from the consequences it takes to produce our toys, our symbols of status. When The New York Times reports that our gadgets are made in Chinese factories where working conditions can be horrendous, we express outrage and tweet the article from our iPads. The culture we have created comes with the cost of doing business.

The conditions at Chinese factories that make our gadgets can be deplorable. Workers often live in crowded dorms, work more than 60 hours a week, are punished with physical labor and withholding of wages, according to The New York Times report on conditions at Foxconn, which makes Apple's iPhones, iPad and iPods. In a response to the article, Apple CEO Tim Cook sent an email to Apple employees and the company released a "Supplier Responsibility Report." This is not a discussion solely about Apple though. Apple is the most valuable company in the world, so it naturally faces the most scrutiny. Other device makers, such as Dell, Nokia, Motorola and Hewlett-Packard, are clients of Foxconn as well.

Apple and Foxconn are just two examples in a larger system. Companies have to weigh the cost and benefits of the manufacturing process. This is not a new dilemma but is a matter of fact within the economy created by the Industrial Revolution. Nor is this quandary solely a matter of high tech devices. Companies like Nike have been cited in the past for the conditions at their manufacturing plants in Asia. How much do you really want to know about the synthetic polymer that is the backbone of much of the world's textile industry? What about the bread you eat, the TV you watch, the socks you wear?

Framing the Utilitarian vs. Deontological Conversation

"The mere knowledge of a fact is pale; but when you come to realize your fact, it takes on color. It is all the difference between hearing of a man being stabbed in the heart, and seeing it done." - Mark Twain

Image: Samsung Galaxy Tab

The dilemma created by the source of our products can be explained in a utilitarian framework. Utilitarianism, "is generally held to be the view that the morally right action is the action that produces the most good." Another word for this is consequentialism. In philosophy, consequentialism is the determination of the moral good of an act based on its consequences.

A utilitarian worldview can be beneficial. The most good for the most people is the highest degree of morality that can be strived for, many believe. The detriments to a utilitarian view are that it does not factor in the needs of the individual. "One must die so a thousand can live." Is it fair to that one person that must be sacrificed to the greater good?

On the other side of utilitarianism is the concept of deontologicalism. It is the opposite of consequentialism: "no matter how morally good their consequences, some choices are morally forbidden." Deontological ethics suppose that humans have a duty (the Greek word deon) to support the moral rights of the individual. The boundaries are thus drawn between the concepts of utility and duty.

How do we then rationalize these concepts into our modern era of consumerism? When we hear that four people died and 77 were injured at explosion and subsequent fire at Foxconn, where do we place our own morality on the spectrum between utility and duty? While many of these types of accidents are avoidable on a case-by-case basis, the nature of industrial manufacturing has always lead itself to these types of catastrophes. In a perfect world, everybody would be happy and well fed and the conditions at such factories would never cause harm to those employed. It is something to strive for but a reality that is not easily attained. We have to reconcile our idealism where all parties' interests are satisfied against the reality of the systems we have created.

This is not a perfect world; we create systems that are fundamentally unfair. The more money is spent and made, the harder it is to change these systems. The two largest device makers in the world, Apple and Samsung, announced this week a sum total of nearly a hundred billion dollars in revenue ($46 billion for Apple, $42 billion for Samsung) in their most recent quarters. The two companies make devices that make people's lives easier and happier and enable them to perform acts that are a benefit to the greater good. There is little question about the utility that is being produced from an individual perspective and in the dynamics of a worldwide information system. It can also be argued that the existence of companies like Apple and Samsung make the lives of the people that work in their factories better.

There is no doubt that the companies that are customers of factories like Foxconn (and Foxconn itself) can do a better job in maintaining safe, happy, healthy work environments. Yet, implementing changes that are beneficial to those workers may also lead to an imbalance in the system. Can the diverse nature of technological consumerism be monetarily supported if the efficiency that is demanded by companies like Apple and Samsung from factories like Foxconn is diluted?

For The Good Of Whom?

When we speak of the most good for the greatest number of people in this scenario, who are we talking about? The good of the consumer, the good of Apple's shareholders, the good of the plant owners or the good of the workers? The different stakeholders will give you an array of answers.

Consumers want high tech devices can make their lives simpler, more efficient and arm them to do their jobs and make the world a better place. Shareholders want profits. Similarly, there is profit motivation for those who own the factories. The good of the plant owners theoretically could mean the good of the factory workers as the factory owners can open more factories, employ more people and create a higher standard of living for their employees.

The good of the factory worker... well, that is what is missing from the conversation. From a utilitarian perspective, what is morally right for the factory worker may not be of the greatest good to the other parties. From a deontological perspective, the other parties have a moral duty to uphold the rights of the factory worker. This is the dilemma that must be reconciled.

We are stuck at a crossroads. How to balance the utilitarian systems that provide the world with the devices that make peoples' lives better versus the deontological morality of those systems. This is not a new dilemma but a scenario that has been played out thousands of times throughout the course of humanity, from the feudal systems of agrarian Europe to the factory towns of New England in the 19th century to the manufacturing plants in Chengdu that make our computers today.

While we all hope that humanity can rise to create a more perfect world where the balance of human moral values is no longer a question, it is not the world in which we live.

That is the cost of business.

"It was a pure financial investment with economic objectives," Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, Chairman of Kingdom Holding Company, told CNN. "Politics has no ingredients whatsoever in that investment ... the secure economic financial investment with expected huge returns to our company Kingdom Holding."

Alwaleed, who also has a stake in Apple, said he expects the computer maker to thrive despite last year's death of Steve Jobs.

Initially, some analysts suggested Alwaleed was interested in obtaining a stake in Twitter because of the role it played in the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings in the Middle East and northern Africa. Alwaleed also holds an interest in News Corp., prompting speculation he may have played a role in Rupert Murdoch's decision to start using Twitter late last year.

At the time of his acquisition, Alwaleed's investment in Twitter amounted to a 3% stake, based on a $800 million valuation of the company last August. While Alwaleed prides himself on being an early investor in Apple, Amazon and eBay, he said he did not see himself as an early investor in Twitter.

"We don't believe we came in at the early stage, but clearly we don't believe we came in at the plateau stage," he said. "We see that this company's viability and its continuity and its resilience will be there in the decades to come."

Samsung is the largest culprit of the flood of Android devices to inundate the flood plains of the mobile coastline. Just look at its Galaxy Tab line of tablets. None have performed well on the market. Unlike smartphones, the "be everything to everybody" approach does not work in the tablet market. There is a reason that Apple's iPad and Amazon's Kindle Fire are eating Samsung's tablet lunch.

Samsung has several tablets on the market in a variety of sizes. There is the flagship Tab 10.1, the middling Tab 8.9, the Tab 7.7 and the Tab 7 Plus. Samsung also has a tweener, the Galaxy Note at 5.3 inches that it touts with the S Pen input method. Why do none of these seemingly quality devices succeed?

For a clue, look to Apple. On the company's quarterly earnings call yesterday, Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer said that the iPad, "is in a class by itself." Apple does not worry about competition and with the kind of money that is pouring into the company, it can say that with a straight face. Apple made $9.1 billion off of iPad sales in its Q1 earnings. CEO Tim Cook said that he has looked at sales patterns and believes that Android tablets (notably addressing the Amazon Kindle Fire) have not affected iPad sales in the slightest.

The Kindle Fire may be irrelevant to the iPad, but it is not, cannot be, irrelevant to Samsung. For that matter, Motorola, HTC and LG were also put on notice. Amazon swooped in to the Android tablet space and immediately took No. 1 billing. It did so with a favorable price point, favorable marketing and the might of the Amazon e-commerce platform behind it. Samsung also has trouble competing with Amazon on price by trying to power up the components in its tablets. In Samsung's mind, the real competitor is Apple. Actual sales say that Amazon should be considered the primary threat.

The Kindle Fire is a limited device. It has little in the ways of device access and needs third-party solutions to implement things like location. It is a consumer tablet made to give users the means to consume content. Samsung does not believe in this simplistic approach.

In an interview with LAPTOP Magazine, Samsung product marketing manager Ryan Bidan expressed his thoughts on the Fire.

"We're entering the market from a different place. So where those devices have kind of led with content consumption, we've led with the fully functional kind of multifunction tablet story. What I see happening is consumers wanting to do more with those lower-end tablets, and then there will be even more reason to switch up to Samsung," Bidan said.

A "multifunction" tablet is a great thing. The iPad is a revelation in the type of computing it delivers in its form factor. With Ice Cream Sandwich and apps that are being built for Android tablets, the Samsung Tab series does not lack for functionality either. It may not be an iPad, but the Tab series are fine devices in their own right.

Where Samsung has missed the boat that has driven the iPad and Kindle Fire to popularity is the idea of the "can't miss" tablet. How can you promote a "can't miss" tablet when you have five of them? When Samsung unveiled the Tab 8.9 at CTIA in Orlando last spring, it produced a series of video about how users would gravitate to one of the company's many tablet form factors. Sitting in the audience at the time, I thought, "well, this is probably a good idea." At the time I likened Samsung's tablet line to the Galaxy smartphone line and thought it would probably work.

The Kindle Fire is a "can't miss" tablet. Well, that is what Amazon managed to convince consumers. Whether that is actually true is a matter of interpretation.

That is not what has happened. Samsung has spread itself thin and the marketing message that goes along with it. The company should take a play out of Amazon and Apple's book and make one tablet and market the hell out of it like the company has with its hilarious line of commercials touting the Galaxy S II smartphone.

It is nice to be everyone's everything. Apple has done that with one device. If Samsung looks at it more critically, it will realize that it can probably do the same thing with one or two.

But Apple's most impressive stat continues to be its growth rate: Apple is not only huge, but it is growing at a rate far greater than its peers. And, even more incredible, its growth rate is accelerating.

As a company gets bigger, or as a market matures, its growth rate typically falls. It's only natural: The numbers get bigger, so the percentage of change eventually shrinks. But for Apple, during the Christmas quarter — its busiest time of the year — that hasn't happened yet.

Why is this so impressive? Because maintaining your growth rate when you're Apple's size — never mind increasing it — takes a lot of work!

This past Christmas, Apple needed to add an extra $20 billion in new sales to grow by 73%. The year before, it "only" needed to generate an additional $11 billion in new business to grow by 71%. It's pretty astounding, especially considering that Apple's product lineup didn't even change that much last year.

The reason it happened, of course, was the iPhone 4S "perfect storm." Not only was it a new iPhone, but it launched during what is already Apple's busiest time of the year, the holiday quarter. And it expanded Apple's footprint to new carriers, such as Sprint. Add pent-up demand to the mix, and Apple was easily able to shatter its iPhone sales record. Then consider that the iPhone is Apple's biggest business by revenue and profits, and the big numbers fall into place.

Can it happen again? It's only going to get harder. To match this year's growth — 73% — Apple's December 2012 quarter would have to beat $80 billion in sales. That's a lot of iPhones. The way the smartphone market is growing, and the way the iPad looks like it's going to do, anything's possible. But it's not going to be easy.

More charts: Apple's Monster Quarter In Charts