ByMike Moffit

Dear Friends,

Whew…I am back in the Green Mountains again after a whirlwind trip that took me to California for meetings at Apple, Las Vegas for meetings at the Consumer Electronics Show and then on to New York City for meetings and the NRF’s Retail BIG show. I also visited our friends at Tekserve in Manhattan and the newest Apple store at Grand Central Station.

My visit to Cupertino was very interesting as I attended meeting of the Apple Reseller Advisory Board, of which I am very proud to be a member. Then, Hapy met me in Cupertino so that we could present our 2011 Business Review to some of the Apple folks. The projector died just as we started our presentation, so Hapy and I had to do a little song and dance before we told them about our successes, challenges and plans for 2012. It was a great opportunity to give the presentation and answer the questions, but it was also a worthwhile exercise for us to put together the concise Keynote presentation. Jan and Stephanie did a great job in putting that together for us.

One impression I left with from my visit to the Apple Campus was that Apple is bustling! I have never seen such a beehive of activity in all of my visits to Cupertino. There is a lot of work going on and I am very bullish on the future of Apple!

CES was the Apple show even though Apple was not there. If it wasn’t accessories for Apple products, it was copies of Apple products or it was copies of Apple’s approach to products. For a company that does not exhibit at CES, the show was completely dominated by Apple. Some of the highlights for me were the super thin OLED displays, seemingly paper thin and with brilliant colors, the international pavilion overflowing with vendors from overseas and an amazing assortment of products straight out of the science fiction books of my youth.

The show in NYC was all about retail and we talked with vendors about software, hardware, security and training. Our friends at Tekserve were gracious in showing us around. I was very impressed at how great their store looks and the level of expertise and enthusiasm at one of the original, biggest and most successful Apple Specialists. What is simply amazing is that Tekserve is thriving despite being surrounded by five Apple stores including the big one at Grand Central Station. I was not that impressed with that Apple store, which while it was crowded, seemed broken up with a lot of dead-ends.

It is cold here in Vermont but it sure beats living out of a suitcase!

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    bq. “The iBookstore offers high school textbooks on topics such as algebra, biology, chemistry, and geometry from McGraw-Hill and Pearson to customers in the United States. Textbooks from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt are coming soon. Students will experience gorgeous full-screen textbooks on their iPads that feature text as well as interactive animations, diagrams, photos, videos, 3D objects, and more. With iBook textbooks, students can highlight text, take notes, search for content, use study cards, and find glossary definitions.”

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    bq. “iBooks Author features Apple-designed templates with a wide variety of layouts. It’s easy to add photo galleries, videos, 3D objects, Keynote presentations, lesson reviews, and more. Preview your book on iPad before submitting it to the iBookstore for purchase or as a free download.”

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    “*iTunes U*”:http://www.apple.com/education/itunes-u/

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