I just added Apple as a link on my site. Do they need yet another link? Do they not have already enough publicity and money?

No, they don’t. However, they don’t for another reason you might think of immediately, (I suspect..).

Yes, of course I admire and enjoy their products. They are great and will be greater still in the time to come. But that’s not where my admiration stops really. What inspires me perhaps more is the way they approach the market place. To me a business is as much about successful living, an effective life and good philosophy as those elements which are needed to achieve personal happiness.

Just watch how they adapt to the world market, without ever denying their own identity and premises. Just watch how they understood that they needed to change their name from Apple Computers to Apple, taking away the ‘computers’ of their corporate name.

Just watch how they understood that the consumer wants more then a good computer with the apple logo on it. Just watch how their iPhone really is a mobile computer without any hassle at all in operating it, making the user interface as simple as you can ever dream of. And watch how they do all this without just copying others and run behind the facts.

Note how they launch their products giving the competition enough time to copy or improve what they have. But at the moment the competition achieves to produce what they have, they launch the next part of there carefully planned long term strategy cutting the retail-price, and offering other companies the possibility to make their profit designing applications for Apple’s phone. And surely, they have their next move ready when the competition manages to catch up with them. And no doubt they will.

Speaking about moves and next moves: one of those new applications I immediately downloaded for my ipod is the good old chess game. Frankly, I am not a good chess player at all. But I am fascinated by the game, its strict rules, the logic, and the endless possibilities it offers. The thing that fascinates me most is to master the capacity to think more then one step ahead in time. A sort of long term vision or planning. Also,it is about learning to see the options you have and perhaps fail to see. The choices you can make, like in life itself. The mercy-less consequences of a wrong move. The rationality that rules the game and its parallels to life itself.

I now play a game of ‘chess a day’, on my ‘apple a day’, I never won against the Apple but that’s not the fun of it. It’s about getting that feeling of rationality and efficacy. That inspires me. 

Happiness is about good daily practices. The more you get into the habit of good daily routines..well..the happier you get. The opposite is maybe more evident but that emphasizes the same point, does it not?

I could go into explaining all the implications on life of the above, but I don’t. I don’t want to take away your joy in thinking. I respect my readers.