Investment bank Piper Jaffray is urging investors who typically focus only on Apple's hardware announcements to also pay attention to the company's iPhone software strategy, particularly its upcoming App Store, which could balloon into a $1 billion market by next year.
John Gruber writes: "This one’s pretty simple. First, Steve Jobs wants Apple to feel like a small, focused company. They’re not a small company, of course — Apple’s most recent quarterly filing states they have 21,600 employees — but that’s what Jobs wants it to feel like. The company’s internal structure is a reflection of its product lines — simple and clear. Buying Adobe — a $20 billion company with a slew of products and nearly 7,000 employees — is not how you keep Apple feeling small and focused. And keep in mind that half of Apple’s employees are in retail."
Profits at Apple have jumped 36% as consumers snap up its MacBook computers and iPods. The firm made a net profit of $1.05bn in the quarter ended 29 March, compared with $770m in the same period a year earlier. Apple shipped 2,289,000 Mac computers during the quarter, a rise of 51% from the year before.
Entitled "Blood, sweat and cheers", entries for the Apple Design Awards 2008 are now being accepted. So if you are a Mac application developer, run to your computer and submit your application in one or more of the categories.
Apple was sued over allegations its iTunes online music store and iPod music players are illegally using a patented method for distributing digital media over the Internet. ZapMedia Services sued Apple in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, accusing the Cupertino-based company of violating two ZapMedia patents. ZapMedia wants royalties on Apple's sales of iPods and iTunes music, which reached nearly $11 billion last year.
The powerful platform that Apple uses to create beautiful applications for MacOS and iPhone is now completely open. Over a decade in making, this Objective-C based stack is complete with interfaces for operating system, sockets, graphics, audio, motion control and UI components; just to name a few. The platform comes with complete iPhone simulator, XCode development environment and 1-click compile/build/deploy process. This platform is a game changer.
Speaking at a shareholder meeting Jobs said the version of Flash formatted to personal computers is too slow on the iPhone while the mobile version of the media player is not capable of being used with the web. Jobs said "middle ground" was needed before the iPhone would adopt Flash.
At Macworld San Francisco 2008 Merlin Mann premiered his presentation called “Living with Data” which you can watch embedded to this post.
BTW, the first slide is white so just wait for it to change, it's not a glitch :)
OneLessDesk's upper and lower decks are completely independent of one another, which means you can come up with whatever configuration you like. Make it work in your cube, den, loft, reception area, bedroom, or dorm. Use the lower deck as your dinner tray while watching "Ask A Ninja" in FrontRow - it's all good.
While OneLessDesk looks particularly good with your Mac, it plays nice with all modern computer gear. The upper deck has enough room for your two 24-inch flat-panel displays, iPhone, Shuffle, Nano, Touch, iPod Classic, and whatever else Apple throws at you.
Looks quite amazing, if you're off to Macworld you'll be able to check it out live. I wonder if international ordering will be available... :)
Steve Jobs gives a legendary keynote at Macworld SF every January, launching products and giving a state of the union view of things at Apple. I wondered what effect the Jobs keynote had on Apple's (AAPL) stock price in the short term. What if you invested $10,000 the day before the keynote, then sold at the end of the keynote day? What if you waited until the day after? What if you did this every year for the past ten years that Jobs has been doing them?
MacSoft, a leading publisher of Macintosh games, is proud to announce the Macintosh version of Unreal Tournament 3. Licensed by Midway Home Entertainment and developed by Epic Games, one of the world’s most acclaimed video game developers, Unreal Tournament 3 delivers the most frantic gameplay and stunning visuals yet in the award-winning Unreal series, as well as new vehicles, new weapons and the deepest single-player campaign in the series to date, all developed on the industry’s leading engine, the Unreal Engine 3. Best of all, it is scheduled to be available in early 2008.
Continue reading "Unreal Tournament 3 for the Mac is almost here!" »
Few brands, especially one with its roots in home computing, enjoy the devoted user base which Apple does. Apple has sold more computers this year than ever before, shifting 2,164,000 of the things in its fourth quarter of 2007 that closed at the end of September. Many industry observers believe this is a result of a "halo effect" resulting from the iPod and now the iPhone. Apple computers are basking in the glory reflected from these much-hyped products.
It's easy to dump ire on analysts for getting it wrong so often. What those guys do, however, is provide a particular service to particular people. Interpreting what analysts say in terms of truth or falsity is to forget the real lesson we should take from Prof. Frankfurt: words build worlds. That said, here are some of the most awesome flubs to be found in the futures that people have wished for Apple.
You can only learn so much about frontline employees as a customer, or even as a reporter. I knew that to find out how the best companies train and indoctrinate employees, I'd have to become one myself. In what wound up as a two-year undercover project, I took a series of entry-level retail jobs, becoming that critical employee who represents the company's face. I did it to better understand the world of commerce and the corporate cultures that drive it. In the process, I learned that Apple Stores, with their aura of cool, were in fact living up to their mission to "reinvent retail" and setting a high bar for other companies in the retail world.
Apple lobbied Congress on legislation designed to update the U.S. patent system. Trade groups for high-tech industries favor legislation that would help weed out bad patents by allowing companies to re-evaluate them after they are granted. The groups say this could help companies avoid financial burden of defending patents in lengthy court cases. The company also advocated bills that would increase funding for technology education and provide tax breaks for company spending on research and development.
With the talk running at 30 minutes and almost another 30 minutes of discussion, this is a very interesting video that will make you think about your e-mail habits. Merlin does quote David Allen and say this is "advanced common sense" but it's still valuable - many don't use common sense when overwhelmed with e-mail.
It’s a stunning box, a wizard object with a passel of amazing features (It’s a phone! An iPod! A Web browser!). But for all its marvels, the iPhone inaugurates a dangerous new era for Jobs. Has he peaked?
Apple is hardly alone in the high-tech industry when it comes to duff gadgets and unhelpful call centres, but in other respects it is highly unusual. In particular, it inspires an almost religious fervour among its customers.
To whatever degree Apple can be said to make products with a distinctive genetic code, they can also be said to have inherited most of their traits from a single parent: founder Steve Jobs. Jobs left the company in 1985 and didn't return until 1997. Nonetheless, according to many who have worked at Apple, sometimes in close proximity to Jobs, it was largely he who established the company's emphasis on industrial design. Indeed, some would say that he made design a higher priority than technology.
Every day, the roughly one million people who visit the iTunes Store home page are presented with several dozen albums, TV shows and movie downloads to consider buying. This prime promotion is analogous to a CD being displayed at the checkout stands of all 940 Best Buy stores or featured on the front page of Target's ad circular. How do bands get these boosts? Who decides whether Arcade Fire is plugged at the top of the iTunes site - or whether Nickelback gets no mention?
There are many cat lovers among the Mac community and here are some very cool photos of their pets in love with Apple hardware :)
Every photo on this page links to the respective Flickr page where you can get a larger version and find out more about the author as well as the Macs in the photos.
The high-tech wundercompany has landed - not only on our street corners and in our malls, but also for the first time, on the top 10 of Fortune's Most Admired Companies.
A judge ordered Apple last January to pay the $700,000 legal fees of two websites that reported on an unreleased product code-named "Asteroid." Apple had sued the sites seeking the identities of leakers within its ranks, but lost the case. Does Apple sow disinformation among its workers to sniff out leakers?
Red Sweater Software acquired MarsEdit, the popular weblog publishing software, from NewsGator Technologies, Inc. The acquisition promises an exciting future for the application, which provides an intuitive, email-like interface to the web's most popular publishing systems.
Continue reading "Red Sweater acquires MarsEdit blog authoring software" »
A little more than a year ago, after Apple launched its first Intel-based Mac, some Apple users were hopeful that adopting the same processors as the Windows crowd would let Mac users quickly get their hands on the best games. Now Apple's entire lineup has moved over to Intel, and Mac users are still forced to wait for the best games. Some decide to buy a Windows machine just to play.
Lionsgate and Apple announced that movies from Lionsgate will be available for purchase and download on the iTunes Store starting today. iTunes customers will be able to purchase blockbuster Lionsgate films like “Terminator 2,” “LA Story,” “Basic Instinct,” “The Blair Witch Project” and “Dirty Dancing” and more than 150 titles coming to iTunes this month. The iTunes Store has become the world’s most popular online movie store, with a catalog of over 400 titles.
It’s not often you’ll find a large collection of high-quality fonts, also available free of charge. But that’s what you’ll get with today’s tip: free fonts. From where, you might ask? No less a source than Apple themselves. Just point your browser to Apple’s Scriptable Applications - iTunes page, then click the Download the iTunes for Mac OS X script collection link.
A host of European countries are concerned about iTunes music downloads and how they only play on the iPod. The latest to speak up is Holland where the Dutch authorities have said: “What we want from Apple is that they remove the limitations that prevent you from playing a song you download from iTunes on any player other than an iPod. When you buy a music CD it doesn’t play only on players made by Panasonic. People who download a song from iTunes shouldn’t be bound to an iPod for the rest of their lives.”
I frankly don't see what the big deal is. There are so many places one can download music or purchase CDs that this should not be an issue at all. If you don't want to use iTunes don't use it.
The iPhone may be Apple's future. But investors will listen attentively to its past today as Chief Executive Steve Jobs reveals how well the company's existing products, notably its iPod and MacBook laptops, have been doing. Apple will report first-quarter earnings, which include holiday sales, after the market closes. Analysts expect the company to report earnings of 78 cents per share on $6.42 billion of sales, representing a 20% year-over-year earnings increase and 12% year-over-year revenue jump. In October, Apple said it expected to post first-quarter earnings of 70 cents to 73 cents per share on sales between $6 billion and $6.2 billion.
Though the market for commercial Mac-based video games is small, that could change because of the iPod's computer chip and the large color screens on newer models, which make them well suited to the same kinds of casual games many users play on cell phones. Add in the iPod's overwhelming popularity, and it's clearly Apple's best chance to become a force in gaming.
Former Apple employees say the company plants fake product names within workgroups to track the source of media leaks. Perhaps this is why they are former employees? Regardless, this is a very smart idea for Apple to figure out exactly where the leaks are coming from
When Steve Jobs took the stage to present one of the most important products in his company's history, he proceeded to grab headlines around the world with details of a smart phone everyone had expected, but no one else had been able to imagine.
Less than two days earlier, Bill Gates took the stage at the Consumer Electronics Show. His mission was similar to that of Mr. Jobs: get the world excited about technology and his company's most important product. He gave a flat, tired performance, even as he showed off features of the Vista operating system, a product that by his own description will be the most used piece of software on the planet.
The Sundance Film Festival has struck a deal with Apple to allow festival films to be sold through its iTunes store. Thirty-three short films being screened at the festival in Utah will be made available for download for $1.99. They will also be streamed free of charge on Sundance's Web site when the festival kicks off on 18 January.
Almost 400 vendors have booths set up at Macworld Expo, showcasing some of the latest gadgets and software for Mac users. For those missing out on this intense experience, MacUser bloggers Dan Moren, Derik DeLong and Scott Silverman walked the show floor and picked some impressive new products to talk about.
In this video over at NBC Steve explains why Apple decided to make the iPhone. I just loved it when he said: "We are a product company. We love good products." Well, so do we :)
Apple is defending CEO Steve Jobs as the company is under investigation by the feds. To some, he is Apple. But could the company make do without its very public leader?
Apple restated past earnings Friday and acknowledged the backdating of thousands of stock option grants. But the company cleared current management and Steve Jobs of misconduct, saying it has "complete confidence" in the executive team. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission detailing its probe of stock-options practices, Apple said Jobs was aware of the selection of some favorable grant dates but did not benefit financially from them.
Apple and Nintendo share a lot in common with both liking white, both having an inclination to think different, both appealing to the average consumer and both up against powerful opponents. One that Apple needs to both emulate and get in on the Wii action. Actually, emulating the reasons for its success will be near impossible, but still, there’s some food for thought when you look at the Wii.
Steve Jobs, chief executive of Apple Computer, was handed 7.5m stock options in 2001 without the required authorisation from the company’s board of directors, according to people familiar with the matter. Records that purported to show a full board meeting had taken place to approve Mr Jobs’ remuneration, as required by Apple’s procedures, were later falsified. These are now among the pieces of evidence being weighed by the Securities and Exchange Commission as it decides whether to pursue a case against the company or any individuals over the affair, according to these people.
Rumor: Adobe chief executive Bruce Chizen will formally announce plans for the beta release during the company's fiscal fourth quarter conference call with analysts and members of the media on Thursday. On the other hand, those same people say that Adobe does not plan to release or discuss details of other Creative Suite 3.0 applications, such as Illustrator, Dreamweaver and InDesign.
Well, ain't this unexpected? Microsoft ripping Apple? Really? I'm shocked :) John Gruber shows us how Microsoft blatantly stole an icon from Apple. The image has since been replaced.
Caps Lock is no longer useful. It was really useful on the typewriter and the author wanted to either make the header of a letter or was really pathetically lazy and wanted to get the whole thing out without messing with proper capitalization.
Apple Computer is coming under pressure from some of Hollywood’s biggest movie studios to change the operating environment of its popular iTunes platform, amid growing concern about digital piracy. The studios – Universal, 20th Century Fox, Paramount and Warner Bros – are in talks with Apple about making their films available for digital download on iTunes.
Walk by the Staten Island Mall's Apple Store on any given night, and the scene is similar: inside are just as many young teens mugging for the digital cameras as hip elders learning how to edit their own movies and cut their own podcasts. The toughs in baggy jeans futz with iPods and try to lay hip-hop tracks on the digital synthesizers (with, often, the computer belching their discordant notes back at them through high-fidelity speakers). And the computer brainiac workers recognizable by their shirts emblazoned with the word "genius" are the most sought-after people in the place.
Apple's change to the license came silently but this will harm any further development on it, since I won't be allowed to release any changes to further released source trees. Even if they (intentionaly?) forgot to change revision number, all sources which are made already available still stay available under the old terms of license and may still be developed under this license.
For most information technology jobs, there are industry and vendor certification programs that allow you to showcase your abilities and build your resume. Certifications such as Microsoft's MCSE and CompTIA's A+ are well-known, and employers often look for these and other certifications when scanning resumes. For Mac professionals, there is a series of certifications from Apple and other vendors that can build and showcase your knowledge of Mac troubleshooting, networking, and common applications. In this article, Ryan Faas looks at the certifications that Mac professionals can use to build their resumes and further their careers.
Nearly twenty years at Apple taught me a few lessons. Some of them actually might benefit those working in other organizations. There is not as much consistency as one might hope for in Apple managers so my experience would not likely be duplicated in another's career. Much of this is likely the same that you might find in any company. Yet Apple tends to be more fun to discuss because it's viewed through a magnifying glass, and there is an army of people who like to be armchair managers and analysts for Apple.
According to Bob Denton, Event Director, the removal of Greenpeace had nothing to do its message or the materials being handed out. The problem started when a group of 12 Greenpeace activists gathered outside the show entrance and started handing out flyers and apples to attendees. Allegedly, Greenpeace attendees were invading other stands for mock photo shoots and replacing other exhibitors' promotional material with their own.
Way to do some activisim - ruin the show for everybody and harass people. These people give all of us that care about the environment a bad name.
One of the great things about Steve Jobs is what comes out of his mouth. The CEO of Apple is a master of hype, hyperbole and the catchy phrase. Even when he's trying to talk normally, brilliant verbiage comes tumbling out. Here's a selection of some of the most insanely great things the man has said, organized by topic: innovation and design, fixing Apple, his greatest sales pitches, life's lessons, taking the fight to the enemy and Pixar.
Strong sales of iPod music players and Macintosh computers helped Apple Computer earn net income of $546 million in its fiscal 2006 fourth quarter, but the company warned it could restate its financial results at a later time as it continues an investigation of stock-option practices.
When Steve Jobs lured little-known Timothy D. Cook to the company in early 1998, Mr. Cook was charged with straightening out the messy operations of a fallen Silicon Valley icon. Now, more than eight years later, Apple is resurgent and Mr. Cook is the company's chief operating officer and its second in command. But he is still little known to the public -- a stark contrast to Mr. Jobs, an executive so familiar that he's lampooned on "Saturday Night Live." While Mr. Jobs is widely credited with restoring pizzazz to Apple's product line, Mr. Cook is the low-key operator making sure the company runs smoothly behind the scenes.
The options back-dating problems at Apple are getting worse. First, it was disclosed that Steve Jobs knew about the practice but did not benefit. He also claims he did not understand the accounting implications. He does have an IQ of over 200. Now, US prosecutors have started an investigation and the company's former CFO has resigned from the board. If it is discovered that Jobs was more involved in the scandal than the company let on, who would replace him?
Todd Baur writes: "Apple will make an uberdevice. They will succeed where others have failed in this category, and once again cause a paradigm shift in the consumer electronics market. Yes those are big bold statements, and I say these things because of Leopard technologies combined with the growing Mac market, and the utter state of things in this business."
Over its thirty year history, Apple has survived and even thrived despite boneheaded business decisions. From pricing the Macintosh out of most consumers' reach to creating some really ugly computers, Apple has made a lot of bad decisions.
Jonathan Ive is the Senior Vice-President for Industrial Design at Apple. Ive's team at Apple isn't the usual design ghetto of creativity that exists inside most corporations. They work closely and intensely with engineers, marketers, and even outside manufacturing contractors in Asia who actually build the products. Rather than being simple stylists, they're leading innovators in the use of new materials and production processes. Read the comprehensive article at BusinessWeek.
Google and Apple are in discussions over video content for the computer firm's recently announced iTV device. Newsweek reports that Google is talking to Apple about supplying video clips for the player. The iTV device lets users watch video content stored on their desktop PC on their home TVs.
Eric Bangeman writes: "Due to fears of piracy, Apple has decided to keep most of Asia off-limits for its new movie offering as well as its well-established music store. Apple Asia marketing director Tony Li broke the news, saying "We cannot comment on the specifics but it is true that iTunes is not available in Asia. That goes for music and movies."
A top U.S. antitrust official urged foreign governments to think twice before interfering with popular new technologies, singling out overseas scrutiny of the iTunes online music service as an example of misguided enforcement. Justice Department antitrust chief Thomas Barnett cited proposals by some officials overseas to impose restrictions on iTunes as an example of overzealous regulation that he said could discourage innovation and hurt consumers.
The combination of iTunes movie downloads and the iTV set-top box delivers video to the living room through a dedicated Apple hardware device. More important, analysts say, it solves a problem that has dogged other technology companies that have eyed the home-entertainment market.
Apple has debuted a major print campaign for Macintosh hardware and software, including Mac OS X. Currently appearing in major magazines in the U.S., including the September 8th issue of Entertainment Weekly, the materials include a white four-page detachable insert.
Apple is renowned amongst IT companies as one with a paranoid addiction to secrecy. And acting as such. However, a wind of change might be blowing on Cuppertino. Everbody seems to know for certain, indeed, the announcements to be made by our favourite computer manufacturer.
Apple leads all other PC makers in customer satisfaction, but the reason for its lead may not be very satisfying. Simply put, it's not that Apple is a dazzling performer in terms of customer care, but that the other computer manufacturers are almost uniformly dismal in that realm, according to customers surveyed by the University of Michigan's American Customer Satisfaction Index team. The research demonstrates that Apple is more effective at customer service than Dell, HP and others.
At least five employees of Apple's retail stores have been fired after downloading copies of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard from the Internet that were distributed to developers at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference two weeks ago.
For the people who create Mac software, there's nothing quite as exciting as a Worldwide Developers Conference keynote that previews the features slated to appear in an upcoming OS X overhaul. And there's nothing as terrifying for those same developers as waiting to see if those new features do similar things to the software they're already selling.
In the digital age, outages are just a part of life. While occasionally, they leave you in the position of having to hastily scarf all the ice cream in the office before it melts, more typically, they leave you guzzling your pain-killer of choice in a futile attempt to quell a massive headache brought on by frustration. And while we all know not to believe advertisers, .Mac subscribers this past week got an extra heaping of frustration as a long outage made a mockery of Apple's "It just works." campaign.
We look at them every day, our eyes are drawn to them almost every time we interact with the computer - icons for apps and files are a very important part of the interface. But what attributes make a good icon?
There's been rash of press recently suggesting Apple is weathering a growing consumer recoil following claims about poor quality control, anti-iTunes legislation and allegations about Chinese sweatshops. "Are we falling out of love with iPod?" asks the Daily Telegraph. The BBC queries, "Is Apple Feeling The Heat?" And The Scotsman reports, "Apple faces the music as public discord with iPod grows."
Daniel Jalkut writes: "The Cocoa Scripting layer makes it extremely easy to expose manipulation of your application’s model to users via AppleScript. That said, for most developers the learning curve associated with this can be far from “easy.” The psychological burden of tackling scripting support seems to prevent many developers, even those within Apple, from providing even the barest of scripting support for their applications."
Foxconn Electronics has sternly denied a report insinuating that the company was making iPods for Apple Computer in sweatshops. Edmund Ding, spokesman for Foxconn - a chief maker of iPods - said there were huge discrepancies between the truth and the claims in the report, which he said seems like a vicious attack on the company. He added that the company reserves the right to take legal actions over the report.
Stephen H. Wildstrom writes: "In a few months, nearly 3 million freshmen will head off to college. Included in the gear most of them lug along will be a computer, often brand new. This year I have some advice for the college-bound: Unless you have a compelling reason not to go with a Mac, an Apple laptop or desktop offers the best combination of features, ease of use, and value."
John Martellaro writes: "Apple has no real corporate interest in the gaming community and does not see computer games as a path to success or a better image for Apple. That's not to say that some parts of Apple don't enjoy games and their promotion. But the reality is that Apple has struggled for a long time to avoid the perception that Macs are toys, and so their principle emphasis is on science, small business, education, and the creative arts. All very grownup stuff. If a market doesn't appear on Apple's main page tab, you can be sure it's a secondary market."