Ben Brooks, Brett Kelly, Stephen Hackett, and I snuck into one of the side studios to shoot a quick video podcast before the expo starts.

John Gruber:

What’s satisfying about Apple’s current success is that it’s proof that you can succeed wildly by focusing first and foremost on making great products. That design does matter.

Stephen Hackett:

Talking about iPad apps in line at Starbucks isn’t weird anymore.

Adam Lashinsky writing for Fortune about the extremely secretive and productive culture within Apple. Lashinsky writes:

Almost nobody describes working at Apple as being fun. In fact, when asked if Apple is a “fun” place, the responses are remarkably consistent. “People are incredibly passionate about the great stuff they are working on,” said one former employee. “There is not a culture of recognizing and celebrating success. It’s very much about work.” Said another: “If you’re a die-hard Apple geek, it’s magical. It’s also a really tough place to work.” A third similarly dodged the question: “Because people are so passionate about Apple, they are aligned with the mission of the company.”

Reading Lashinsky’s article, I have to wonder if working at Apple is something I would love because of the strong emphasis on work ethic, productivity, excellence in what you do, and respect for everyone’s time, or hate because of the high-stress and non-personal environment.

The article is based on his book, Inside Apple, which hits shelves today.

Great piece by Matthew Alexander that is along the same lines as Topolsky’s article on The Verge last week about too many gadget choices.

Dom Leca, co-founder of Sparrow:

How did you apply for your job? How do you negotiate a deal? How do you review your employee work? What tool are you using when you’re sending message to your loved ones? SMS, Facebook messages, What’s app, Kik are all great new means of communication but mail still has its own territory. Email definitely needs to evolve. Sparrow 1.x is an attempt to marginally change habits. […]

We are trying to make the experience simpler and more enjoyable. This is the first step. Now that we have a pretty solid technical basis, we want to move on a 2.0 version where we can change the paradigm of mail: the way people think of it and use it.

My thanks to MindNode for sponsoring the RSS feed this week.

MindNode is an elegant, easy-to-use mind mapping tool for Mac and iOS. Whether you’re brainstorming for your next project, organizing your life, or planning your vacation, MindNode lets you collect, structure, and expand your ideas. And thanks to built-in Dropbox and WiFi sharing, even your biggest ideas can go anywhere your iPhone does.

MindNode is easy mind mapping for your Mac, iPad, and iPhone. Try out Mindnode Pro and MindNode touch today!

Their best quarter ever, and not by a small margin. Last quarter, more than 75% of their revenue came from iOS devices.

Here’s an interesting project on Kickstarter. Josh Milas and Alex Obenauer are seeking to re-imagine email by developing an email program that’s melded with a to-do app. The premiss is that the vast majority of your incoming emails are actionable in some way, shape, or form.

Lots of iBooks Ideas from Matt Gemmell. I’d add to the list magazines. I see no reason why Wired, The New Yorker, et al. couldn’t publish their magazines as iBooks instead. They would still be just as design-y and interactive but more usable and (in theory) smaller file sizes. Also, they’ll look better on a Retina Display iPad.

I noticed the snappiness right away. Especially with page turns. (Via Marco.)

Will Kujawa, a student at Oklahoma State:

In a few years Apple could dominate the [college] classroom similar to how Microsoft dominates enterprise.

Will also talks about how the majority of Apple products in his college classrooms are MacBooks, not iPads. That makes sense because for a student who needs a computer to take notes, do research, and complete papers and other projects, an iPad is not a replacement for a laptop or desktop computer.

A computer has been the standard college-student gadget for decades. It used to be desktops, now it’s laptops, and Apple wants it to become iPads.

Apple wants the iPad to be seen as a computer replacement. And so I can’t help but wonder if positioning the iPad as a replacement for textbooks is also a subtle way to slowly introduce iPads as replacements for laptops.

It’s like a twist to the Halo Effect — instead of an iPod leading to a MacBook purchase, buying an iPad for casual usage leads to keeping the iPad for more serious usage. It’s already happening in the professional sphere (examples: I, II, III).

As Stephen Hackett said, last week’s announcements had Steve Jobs’ fingerprints all over them.

WordPress.com now has a dashboard RSS reader, with the ability to Like, Follow, and Reblog posts.

(Via Jonathan Christopher.)