Apple - page 49

Apple’s Retail division has no plans to scale back its ambitions, according to a report Thursday in USA Today, and in fact sees opportunity in the recent economic contraction.

“We’re investing in the downturn,” said Ron Johnson, Apple’s senior vice president of retail. Apple plans to remodel 100 of its existing stores this year, adding space for customer training and room for displaying more product. The company also plans to open 25 new stores, including a fourth location in New York City, and new ones in Paris, Italy and Germany.

Stores will soon display “twice the amount” of Mac computers and other products, according to Johnson, and Genius Bars will get 50% more room to serve up free tech support for Apple products.

Beginning June 2, Apple’s One to One product training program will limit sign-ups to purchasers of new Mac computers at Apple Stores or via the company’s website, although any of the half million current One to One subscribers will be able to renew their $99 one year subscriptions .

“We originally set up One to One to get people to switch to the Mac,” Johnson said. “Now we want to expand it to make it even more relevant to people who have bought their Mac.”

Still priced at $99, the annual subscription includes personal setup, transferring of files from an older computer (Windows or Mac) and help with projects.

Previously, sessions timed out at one hour; new policy will extend the limit to three hours, but sessions could also include up to three participants.

Even in the light of his division’s expansion plans, Johnson conceded the recession has affected in-store traffic. Apple reported a 3% decline in sales during the most recently reported quarter. Traffic remains strong, he said, but has cooled off since last summer, when long lines greeted the introduction of the second-generation iPhone.

With many expecting an update to the iPhone to be announced at next week’s WWDC in San Francisco, Apple stores could well see the return of long lines and a need for all that extra space.

[USAToday]

Chinaontrade.com, an electronics wholesaler based in China has just made available for purchase what it purports to be authentic parts for the new iPhone. Don’t get too excited — it’s just the internal screen bezel and the screen, which is an ordinary LCD instead of a sexy OLED. And it’s literally impossible to tell if these are new in any way — you could tell me that these were for the original iPhone, and I would believe it. Doesn’t mean that they aren’t legit, just that they reveal nothing exciting about the new iPhone and might squash some dreams, too. Still: Only $73.40!

China Ontrade via iPhone Ticker via Gizmodo

Woz signing his book, “Woz,” in 2007. CC-licensed photo by bangdoll@flickr.

Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak on Wednesday said Steve Jobs is “healthy, energetic” and “doesn’t sound like he’s sick.”

Speaking at the Wall Street Journal’s All Things D conference in Southern California, Woz said Jobs doesn’t “seem to be in a health crisis,” according to the WSJ.

However, Woz said he’s never asked Jobs directly about his health.

Jobs is expected to return to Apple at the end of next months after taking six months medical leave to concentrate on his health. In a January letter to Apple’s employees, Jobs said his health issues “are more complex than I originally thought.” He lost an alarming amount of weight in 2008, leading to speculation his cancer had returned. Jobs was treated for pancreatic cancer in 2004.

AT&T is promising more and faster bars. CC-licensed photo by daBinsi (Vegas).

Hot on the heels of the faster iPhone expected this summer, AT&T is promising to double the speed of up its 3G network.

AT&T on Wednesday said it is bumping its 3G network to support HSPA 7.2, which offers download speeds up to a peak of 7.2 Mbps, which is double its current capacity.

The rollout will begin later this year, AT&T says. The company also promises it will “introduce multiple HSPA 7.2-compatible laptop cards and smartphones beginning later this year.”

One of the smartphones is likely Apple’s next-generation iPhone. Apple is expected to introduce a faster iPhone that will support HSPA 7.2. The new iPhone will also likely have a faster processor, which will be better able to handle the faster data stream, quickly updating content like web pages and maps.

Apple’s entry-level white MacBook received a hardware update on Wednesday, possibly foreshadowing revisions to the aluminum unibody MacBooks.

For the same $999 base price, the WhiteBook now gets:

* CPU bump from 2.0 GHz to 2.13 GHz.
* Hard drive from 120 GB to 160 GB.
* RAM boost from 667 MHz to 800 MHz.
*Battery life upped from 4.5 hours of “wireless productivity” to 5 hours. And now rated Energy Star EPEAT Gold, up from EPEAT Silver.

Thanks to the updates, the WhiteBook now has a faster processor than the entry-level aluminum MacBook, and a bigger build-to-order hard drive (500GB). And it still has a FireWire port. Updates to the unibody soon?

Apple is rumored to be offering similar upgrades to the aluminum MacBooks at WWDC, and rebranding the machines as MacBook Pros to further distinguish them from the white plastic MacBook.

White MacBook tech specs.

White MacBook at Apple’s online store.

Can you think of another company whose outdated and obsolete products get repurposed as art pieces even a fraction as often as do those from Apple?

How about a late 20th century PowerMac G4, which, as a 10 year-old desktop might possibly still be good enough to run your elementary school children’s games and learning software, but for all practical purposes is probably better suited as the inspiration for a wall clock to remind you, time after time, how gear Apple cool is.

At a mere $60, these may not last long and you should look into turning your own dusty G4 into a DIY project.

[iPhoneSavior]

Apple’s Safari 4 browser is a pig. It’s a resource hog that doesn’t clean up after itself — and it remembers every site you visit, even in “porn mode.”

Safari records every site you visit, even if you turn on the “Private Browsing” feature or clear the browser history. And the files it generates can consume gigabytes of disk space.

“This is a huge privacy concern,” writes designer and musician C. Harwick, from Chapel Hill, NC, who did some snooping in Safari’s hidden system folders. “With no good way of getting rid of them except manually (clearing the history doesn’t do it, and I don’t think resetting Safari does either), these hidden files are strewn all over the user’s hard drive unbeknownst to him waiting for snooping relatives (or more pertinently, law enforcement) to dig them up. I really like Safari, but I’m going to have to seriously consider using Firefox now (ack).”

Who says Apple doesn’t listen to customers? Thanks to a public outcry, Apple has reversed course and accepted the Eucalyptus eBook reader into the iPhone App Store.

The web erupted in outrage last week when developer Jamie Montgomerie’s eBook reader was rejected by Apple because it allowed readers to download the Kama Sutra from Project Gutenberg — which Apple deemed “inappropriate sexual content.”

But on Sunday Montgomerie received a call from Apple. The Apple representative chatted with the developer about his app and invited him to resubmit it.

“We talked about the confusion surrounding its App Store rejections, which I am happy to say is now fully resolved,” Montgomerie wrote on his blog.

The application is now available for purchase from the App Store for $10. A small victory for common sense.

Via Macworld.

Swiss insurance company Mobiliar gave knockoff iPods to guests at the Swiss Economic Forum. Pic: Berner Zeitung.

The head of Apple Switzerland has threatened legal action after a Swiss Insurance company gave 1,200 iPods to bigwigs at the tony Swiss Economic Forum. Trouble is, the iPods were cheap Chinese knockoffs.

At the Swiss Economic Forum last week, the insurance company Mobiliar surprised guests with an MP3 player that looked very much like a second-generation iPod shuffle.

But when Adrian Schmucki, the head of Apple Switzerland, received his, he threatened legal action against Mobiliar.

Add insult to injury, several of the guests asked Schmucki if the knockoffs would work with iTunes.

The Swiss Economic Forum is a two-day gathering of Switzerland’s leading companies, politicians and academics.

Berner Zeitung (Google German-to-English translation).

Many thanks to Renato Mitra of ApfelBlog. Link to Renato’s post.

My friend Jeffy picked up this pack of stickers at a Macworld past. Do Mac users have a sense of humor ? Should they be printed up as stickers for MacBooks?

The Mounties in British Columbia just busted their biggest counterfeiting operation ever — and the brains of the operation were a very sinister and criminal-looking iMac and MacBook.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police in British Columbia raided a counterfeit “currency lab” in Surrey, B.C. last week, seizing more than $220,000 in American and Canadian notes and arresting four people.

They also seized a new iMac, a MacBook, and what look like a pair of inket printers and a laser printer. HP is the ink of choice for funny money, looks like.

(I’ve always suspect Macs were the machine of choice for counterfeiters, given their graphics history. I’ll look into it).

RCMP news release.

Vancouver Sun story.

Via TUAW.

Labor protestors outside Apple’s Taiwan Office on Thursday. The Apple laptop says “Responsibility.” Images: Global Post.

Apple’s office in Taiwan drew protesters on Thursday complaining about layoffs and unfair working conditions at one of Apple’s main contractors.

A group of 30 to 45 workers complained of exploitation at Wintek, one of Apple’s major suppliers of LCD panels. The company is rumored to be supplying screens for the long-awaited Apple tablet. The workers chanted slogans and held signs saying “black-heart business” and “responsibility” outside Apple’s office in Taipei.

“We want to go through Apple to put pressure on Wintek,” one of the protestors told the Global Post.

The workers hope the action will force Apple to enforce it’s Code of Supplier Responsibility, instituted after 2006 allegations of exploitation at an iPod factory run by Foxconn, another Apple supplier factories in mainland China.

… along with Linus Torvalds and Bill Gates, of course, as part of a stained glass piece spotted on a Chelsea gallery tour recently by tefjr77. I have to say, I find it incredibly funny that Steve holds an iPhone, while Bill Gates is being buzzed by a Steve Ballmer cherub. Charming.

Flickr via iPhone Savior

Apple will launch a $700 touchscreen tablet with a new operating system and optimized apps in 2010, new research claims.

Apple’s response to the fast-growing netbook market will a touchscreen tablet like an outsized iPod touch. It will have a touchscreen measuring 7- and 10-inches; will cost between $500 to $700; and may have built-in 3G wireless, claims Wall Street analyst Gene Munster of investment bank Piper Jaffrey.

But thanks to the complexity of the tablet’s hardware and, more importantly, the new version of OS X and the apps it will run — it will not be ready until early 2010, Munster said i.

In a long and detailed research note to clients, Munster cited “mounting evidence” for his claims:

Apple is indeed working on a version of OS X to power a tablet device more robust than an iPod Touch yet still more limited than the operating system that powers the company’s line of notebook and desktop computer systems, according to Gene Munster, the widely followed Piper Jaffray analyst.

“We expect the development of such an OS to be underway currently, but its complexity, along with our conversations with a key company in the mobile space, leads us to believe it will not launch until CY10,” Munster said (meaning 2010) in a note released to clients Thursday.

Many in the Apple universe have long predicted a tablet device to compete in the growing market for netbooks, smaller, less-powerful – and less expensive – mobile devices designed for surfing the Internet, watching movies, reading and composing email and other “computer-lite” activities.

Not a few people will be disappointed if Apple fails to launch such an offering in the current year, but Munster implies that such a market, while growing fast, remains relatively small and believes Apple has plenty of time to get its entry right before joining the fray.

Parents with children aged 8 – 12 and relatively easy access to an Apple Retail Store might consider enrolling in Apple’s free summer camp workshops during July.

Beginning the week of July 13, Apple stores will offer a series of 3 hour workshops where kids will be introduced to Macs and Apple software and learn how to make a movie, create a photo slideshow, write and record a song or craft a presentation.

Space in each workshop is limited and kids are limited to no more than two workshop sessions each for the summer, but it is a free opportunity to kill six hours out of what can be a long, boring summer break for some – and a chance to get hands-on instruction with some of the hardware and software many kids are likely to encounter in school during the coming years.

The workshops break down into two weekly sessions in movie making, music, photography and presentation arts, where Apple instructional staff will teach kids the ins and outs of iMovie, GarageBand, iPhoto and Keynote.

A quick check of some of the session availability shows all sessions in New York City’s Apple stores are already full, though the rest of the country – even in populous California cities such as Los Angeles and San Francisco – have spots still open.

Apple also offers similar youth programs year-round to help cultivate the next generation of evangelists.

Rumors that the new iPhone will feature a glowing Apple logo on the back of the handset have generally been met with derision. The idea that Apple’s designer’s would waste precious battery life with a glowing logo is so abhorrent, many have used it to dismiss the rumors altogether.

But a group of Russian hackers in August last year hacked an iPhone to make the logo glow. The hack — as seen in the video below — involved a Dremel tool and about $300 in parts, according to reports.

And it had no effect on the battery life whatsoever, the Ruskies said.

But why would Apple add a frivolous glowing logo?

To make the Apple logo more visible, of course. Just like glowing lighthouse on the lid of a MacBook, or the iPod’s white headphones, Apple is not shy of using us to advertise its wares.

Chart: Silicon Alley Insider.

UPDATED: YouGov sent a little more info about the survey’s other metrics — posted after the jump. Basically, Apple still leads on quality and reputation, but MS has caught on value, satisfaction and willingness to recommend.

Microsoft’s “Laptop Hunters” ad campaign is hurting Apple, according to a new consmer survey by YouGov BrandIndex.

Redmond’s new ads portray consumers rejecting Apple’s laptops as too expensive. Though clearly a defensive reaction to Apple’s successful “Get a Mac” ads, they are nonetheless reinforcing the stereotype of the “Apple tax,” says YouGov.

“With the Laptop Hunters campaign, Microsoft is making an impact on the perceived value score in the mind of consumers, particularly young consumers,”  Ted Marzilli, global managing director of BrandIndex, said on Tuesday afternoon when I phoned him up.

YouGov is an international market research firm based out of London. Its BrandIndex survey queried about 5,000 people online from a pool of about 1.5 million, Marzilli said. It claims to be representative of the U.S. adult population.

Its latest survey shows a clear uptick in Microsoft’s “value,” and a clear downtick in Apple’s. The change coincides with Microsoft’s high-profile campaign.

Credit: Dystopos, used under a Creative Commons license.

Wal-Mart is busy re-vamping the electronics departments in 3,500 of its giant retail stores, in a move to both fill the void left by Circuit City’s recent bankruptcy and to compete with another electronics mega-chain, Best Buy. But some believe it’s also actively lobbying Apple to become a distributor for more than just iPods and iPhones.

Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart is widely perceived as a low-end discounter whose vast properties are largely filled with the cheapest, most useless junk Americans could dream of importing from China, which makes Barclays Capital analyst Ben Reitzes’ opinion that Wal-Mart is angling to one day carry Macs all the more disconcerting.

Speculation over Apple’s interest in expanding its fewer than 10,000 worldwide distribution points comes amid recent data indicating that Microsoft’s advertising blitz over the past year has succeeded in re-positioning devices that run the Windows OS as value propositions in the computer world.

But this Mac user wonders whether a move into retail’s hoi-polloi might cost Apple more in the long-run than it would gain from the increased revenue that would surely come from the greater retail exposure a distribution deal with Wal-Mart could represent.

There has always been something satisfying, from the user perspective, about the panache of owning an Apple product; in many respects – as mythical as the concept of an “Apple premium” might in reality be – some Apple owners believe they get more for their money, and are willing to pay for the sense of exclusivity the company’s limited distribution network provides. Similar perceptions have maintained the public’s high regard and brand loyalty for companies such as Bose and Bang & Olufsen for years.

If the demands of a rebalancing global economy and of shareholders’ inexhaustible lust for profits cause Apple to seek a different path it would be a real shame, and likely signal the beginning of the end for the company that once implored the world to Think Different.

The new iPhone will be available July 17 and will have a bunch of new features, including video recording and editing, a digital compass, turn-by-turn directions, and a better battery, according to an obscure blog called iPhone Apps.

The blog, who no one has ever heard of before, claims to have been contacted by a “reputable source,” who is “closely connected to Apple’s hardware development team.”

Whatever. I’m dubious, but the rumor somewhat gels with previous rumors and the site’s detail and specificity lend the claims are certain credence. Kinda.

Full specs after the jump.

CC-licensed iPhone homescreen screenshot by Blake Patterson.

Developers are sneaking Easter Eggs into their iPhone apps to get around onerous App Store restrictions, Brian Chen at Wired.com reports.

Programmer Jelle Prins’ song lyrics app Lyrics, for example, was initially rejected by the App store because it included songs with naughty words. Apple bans profanity, pornography and basically anything adult and fun.

But the Lyrics app will include swear words if you go to the About page and swipe downward three times. Up pops an option to turn off a swear word filter.

“Lyrics has slipped in a quiet ‘Screw you’ to Apple’s App Store gatekeepers albeit one mumbled behind their backs,” Chen writes.

Has anyone else discovered undocumented features in iPhone apps? If so, leave them in the comments. A prize for the best one.

Jonathan Ive, Apple Senior VP of Design, has been named the #1 most creative person in business by Fast Company magazine.

Citing Ive’s decade-long influence over Apple’s rise to prominence as a trendsetting company with global reach, Fast Company‘s “100 Most Creative People in Business” list builds on an interview the magazine did with Apple’s young design star not long after he’d produced the groundbreaking Bondi Blue iMac. “We feel that we’re just getting going,” Ive told the magazine then, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Robert Brunner, Apple’s previous design chief, and the man who hired Ive and recommended him as his successor, said, “He likes to make perfect stuff,” describing what sets Ive apart from his peers in the design universe. “Ive has this design ability combined with a craftsmanlike mentality,” Brunner added, pointing to Ive’s understanding of the interplay between design and manufacturing as keys to the success of more recent products such as the iPhone and unibody laptop computers.

Image from GameSpot.

This isn’t official yet, but look out — sales of Apple’s iPod business might have dropped in April compared to last year. If true and an indication of performance for May and June, that’s the first time that’s ever happened — iPod revenue has gone up year over year every single quarter since Apple launched the 1G in October 2001. According to the NPD Group, Apple will sell between 9.5 and 10.5 million iPods this year, between 5 and 14 percent of last year’s mark.

Now, this doesn’t include iPhone revenue, which is almost guaranteed to keep delivering huge profits and revenue growth for years to come (dividing the money from each iPhone sold across 24 months will tend to yield more reliable numbers than lump sum payments). But it does show that even Apple isn’t immune to the current downturn — and the iPod business might be in for somewhat lean times until we get to back-to-school promotions and the holiday season. When money’s short, the urge to upgrade fades away, especially when the new killer features of the last year are Shake-to-Shuffle, built-in NikePlus support, and a buttonless shuffle. Still, who knows — people constantly expect iPod sales to collapse, and it’s never happened yet.

In better news, Mac sales are solid and down less than most consensus estimates. In spite of Microsoft’s best efforts. People are loving the Mac. Using a late 2008 MacBook, I’m not surprised. This is the best line-up of computers that Apple has ever had. Not a weak spot in the family.

Via BusinessWeek

CC-licensed photo by Joohyun Jeon

Apple appears to be building a large, distributed helpdesk operation, either in anticipation of a major new product, or simply to sustain the company’s growing popularity.

Apple this summer is recruiting about 450 “At Home” technical support staff in at least six cities across the U.S., according to a document seen by Cultofmac.com.

Instead of locating these workers in a centralized call center, they will work out of their own homes.

“As a company who’s motto is ‘think different,’ our ‘work different’ philosophy offers you the opportunity to work independently in your home office,” the job ads said. “You will receive all the wonderful benefits of working for an amazing company without ever leaving your home.”

Apple is getting down with the ‘Green is the New Black’ concept in a limited, though nonetheless laudable way.

The company is offering to re-cycle, free of charge, any school’s old, unwanted Mac computers, PCs, and other qualifying electronic waste, as long as schools register by July 31, 2009.

The program will only run for one month, until August 31, 2009, and schools must recycle a minimum of 25 pieces in order to participate.

Special consideration is being given to data security, according to Apple, which promises:

* All recycled hard drives will be ground into confetti-size pieces.
* Customers will receive a certificate of destruction for each lot recycled through the program.
* All asset tags and other identifying information are removed prior to destruction.
* All of the electronic waste collected through the program is processed domestically in the United States.