Do people who deprive themselves of sleep truly maximize their potential?
I, for one, can feel a huge difference in my ability to focus on cognitive challenges when I'm well-rested and I've engineered my environment in such a way that eliminates distraction. Doing truly challenging work well requires peak mental performance. It's hard to see how it's possible to do that if one is actively sabotaging his or her physical and mental machineries.
This is a step in an interesting direction. Facebook, by pushing this experience out of the core app out on its own on the home screen, hints at a revolutionized mobile landscape in which a users Photos app is Facebook Photos, Messaging app is Facebook Messaging, Calendar app is Facebook Events, and iPod app is Facebook Music.
Apple has not demonstrated any interest in buying its own manufacturing facilities. Doing so would not provide the company with the flexibility and agility required to stay ahead of the market. Instead, Apple uses cash incentives to allow its manufacturing partners to invest in new technologies earlier than market demand would have otherwise made feasible. In exchange, Apple signs deals for exclusive purchasing rights to these new technologies.
By providing incentives to third parties instead of assuming the manufacturing risk internally, Apple can accomplish the same goals with comparable payoff while taking on much less risk.
This strategy is, in part, one of the reasons why Apple is able to offer tech like the retina display in the iPhone 4 long before its competitors.