First off, credit for the story about the demise of the Apple Cards app goes to @GigaOM and writer Alex Colon (@alexandercolon). I came upon it during my morning "what's new" search, where it was a part of their "4 things you might have missed during Apple's iPhone 5s announcement" piece.
Seeing the news, I had to go back to when it was announced, two years ago, on October 4th to be exact, in an event that preceded the death of Steve Jobs by just a day. Later that month, I wrote a Jobs tribute/retrospective, in which I covered some of his pioneering and initiative with hard-copy-related products, and I included Cards as the latest in that timeline. (See "Steve Jobs Invented Desktop Publishing - and Photo Books too?")
Now a day after Apple's most recent announcement event and its multiple (5c and 5s) iPhone products, which have left Wall Street unimpressed, we have to dig out the tale of Cards and its two-year existence. And while investors and industry pundits see the new phones as uninspiring, it's likely very few if any are including the Cards app's discontinuation as part of the overall disappointment which has led AAPL stock to tumble over 5% so far today. But that figures - as hard copy in many of its forms seems to be going out of a favor more with a whimper than a splash.
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