Apple - page 61

Though everything Apple gets covered with fanatical precision, life inside One Infinite Loop these days is something of a black box for non-Appleites. Steve Jobs has made secrecy job one. Which just makes Jon Phillips’s article for MacLife about dining in the Apple corporate food court that much more fun. This is a must-read:

“Oh. My. GOD. My first impression was that I had somehow found my way into the Prepared Foods Department of Whole Foods. Station upon station upon station offered a mind-boggling variety of international cuisine. There were kiosks for burritos, pizza, pasta, sushi, hot entrées, burgers, sandwiches, salads, smoothies, frozen yogurt. They even had a gelato bar.

Then there were the kiosks for Spanish tapas and paellas. For British bangers and mushy peas. For Ethiopian wat and injera bread. And for traditional Inuit preparations of caribou, walrus and seal. Amazing.

OK, truth be told, I didn’t see any kiosks for food from Spain, England, Ethiopia or the Canadian Arctic. But because the Caffe Mac food selection was so incredibly plentiful and varied, I couldn’t help but imagine such exotic cuisines. And, in fact, because this new world order of lunch possibilities was so overwhelming, I found myself paralyzed with indecision. Pizza or pasta? A sandwich or sushi? Or maybe a bold trifecta of blended and/or frozen delights?”

Read on, dear Mac lover. Read on.

In what can only be considered a turn of logic from an alternative “evil twin” universe, Hackintosh maker Psystar answered Apple’s cease and desist lawsuit of July 3th with their own alleging restraint of trade and antitrust violations.

via Computerworld

// Opinion Follows //

It’s been long anticipated that  Psystar would play the “Antitrust Card” in defense of its illegal activities.  The only thing is, it’s not illegal to have a monopoly. The key predicate to an antitrust suit is that the consumer must in some way be harmed by the monopolistic behavior of the defendant.  Rudy Pedraza, Psystar’s president summed up their consumer harm argument by saying: “It’s not that people don’t want to use Mac OS X, but they’re not open spending an exorbitant amount of money for something that’s essentially generic hardware.”

So that’s it, ‘the Apple’s hardware is too expensive’ argument we’ve heard time and time again, and have time and time again refuted. On a direct feature for feature comparison with Sony, HP or IBM, Apple hardware is no more expensive than the competition.

Our industry is FULL of monopolies that no one seems to disagree with, examples follow:

• Tivo has a monopoly on the Tivo OS, in that it too can only be employed on Tivo or licensed 3rd party hardware.
• Sony has a monopoly on the PlayStation, PS2, PS3 and PSP operating systems and regulates very closely the hardware they’re allowed to run on
• IBM has a monopoly on mainframes and the mainframe Z-OS
• even Microsoft has a monopoly on XBox OS and limits the hardware it can run on

While I can understand that free spirited hackers take unbrage at being locked out, there is nothing inherently wrong or illegal with Apple’s strategy of controlling the whole widget. Monopoly “sounds” bad on it’s own, but in Apple’s case they’re not abusing their power.

It’s been evident to anyone paying attention (even those of us who have been jonesing for new MacBook Pros since early June) that Apple would hold off on any product launches throughout the summer to put maximum focus on the iPhone 3G. Apple just wasn’t going to do anything to distract from that, nor were they going to launch major product in the doldrums of late August.

So it was obvious Apple would wait until after Labor Day to take care of much-needed updates to the iPod and MacBook Pro product lines.  According to rumormongers, it might be just a week after Labor Day that such welcome udpates arrive — eight days to be exact, with an as-yet-unannounced Sept. 9 launch event. Kevin Rose is leading this charge, claiming new, non-stubby widescreen iPod nanos, but I think most people care more about cheaper iPod touches and MacBook Pros with Montevina than anything else.

I think an actual Town Hall event would be a bad move. These are going to be evolutionary updates, and they don’t deserve the fanfare of the iPhone 3G or AppStore launch. My prognostication is that Apple will unveil new product on just about every Tuesday in September. First new iPods, then new MacBook Pros, then new MacBooks, than new Mac minis and AppleTVs. Just keep it coming and pour it on…

Apple is on track to sell just shy of 3 million Macs and close to 11 million iPods in the September quarter, according to Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster. If Apple manages to hit the high end of Munster’s estimate of betweeen 2.7 million and 2.9 million Macs sold from July through September, it will be the first time Apple will have sold 10 million Macs in any fiscal year in its history.

Munster based his estimates on July sales data from NPD Group, which also suggested the possibility of sales of 4.1 million iPhones and a gross margin of 32 percent. Munster estimates Apple’s earnings per share at $1.19 on revenue of $8.5 billion. Wall Street consensus estimates put the numbers at $1.11 on $8.08 billion, while Apple’s previous guidance calls for $1.00 on $7.8 billion.

Munster affirmed his Buy rating on Apple, Inc. (AAPL) shares, with a price target of $250. The stock closed today at $172.55 in New York trading.

When I was researching material for a long article about third party development programs for the iPhone back in March, one of the most common complaints I heard from users and skeptics alike was leveled at the lack of cut and paste functionality on Apple’s groundbreaking mobile device. In July, Apple spokesman Greg Jowsiak basically said cut and paste was a low priority as far as the company was concerned.

No surprise then, that third party workarounds for the missing tool began to emerge, with one fashioned by student developer Zac White among the more promising. Unfortunately, Apple has placed new roadblocks in the path toward letting you cut and paste text on your iPhone, according to White.

No word yet from Apple on whether cut and paste has been re-prioritized in-house.

Via AppleInsider

Image by Vissago via Flickr

Using testing equipment similar to that used by the FCC and mobile phone manufacturers to make sure phones are able to properly send and receive signals without interfering with other devices, engineers in Sweden pronounced the iPhone 3G’s capabilities “completely normal,” according to a report at Engadget.

Much speculation and not a little complaint registered in the wake of Apple’s 2.0.2 firmware upgrade last week, calling the iPhone’s 3G capabilities into question. One woman in Alabama filed suit in federal court seeking a class action to hold Apple liable for selling a “defective” product. But engineers at Bluetest in Gothenburg, Sweden, tested the iPhone 3G against a Nokia N73 and a Sony Ericsson P1 and found the difference between these two popular 3G phones and the iPhone 3G was negligible.

Your mileage may vary.

The picture above is burning up Digg right now. It supposedly shows the redesign of the MacBook Pro, which is expected to be refreshed any day now.

The new machine looks gorgeous. With smooth, rounded contours, it resemble the MacBook Air, and there appears to be the magnetic hinge borrowed from entry-level MacBook, which would be a big improvement on the Pro’s current latch/hook design.

Alas, it isn’t a leak — it’s a mockup from the MacRumors forums created by user mciarlo.

Image by Nathan via Flickr

Members of a SoHo neighborhood group lodged a lengthy formal complaint against the Apple Store at Prince & Green in Manhattan yesterday, calling the retail outlet “the worst neighbor in SoHo.”

An Alabama iPhone 3G owner filed suit in Federal court yesterday, seeking class action status in a complaint against Apple’s ‘twice as fast at half the price’ marketing blitz.

The petition claims “[Apple] expressly warranted that the Defective iPhone 3G would be ‘twice as fast’ and would otherwise perform adequately on the 3G standard or protocol.” The plaintiff claims she and a class of “thousands, perhaps tens of thousands” of consumers were duped by the company’s marketing into buying a product that does not perform as it was advertised  and asked the court to force Apple to repair or replace the iPhone 3G, and award  an unspecified amount of money in damages.

Apple has yet to issue a statement or response to the suit.

Via ComputerWorld

Image via Wall Street Journal

UPDATE: The original reference to Chiat\Day as creators of the campaign referred to in this post was incorrect. We regret the error and any confusion it may have caused.

Microsoft is launching a $300 million advertising campaign featuring Jerry Seinfeld to try and slow the juggernaut that has seen Apple take increasingly big bites out of the Windows maker’s dominant share of the personal computer market.

Seinfeld, a known Apple/Mac fan, will reportedly take $10 million to look the other way and come up with one-liners to help transform Microsoft’s stodgy and serious image in the public mind.

The campaign, created by Chiat/Day, the agency responsible for Apple’s legendary 1984 commercial,  MDC Partners’ Crispin Porter + Bogusky in Miami, will also feature comedians Chris Rock and Will Ferrell (who starred in a Mac “switch” ad years ago). Apparently up in Redmond they don’t think Apple’s recent success is funny at all.

Via WSJ

iPhone speed tests conducted through TestMyiPhone initially appeared to confirm our report earlier today suspecting the upgrade to 2.0.2 firmware may have had a negative effect on 3G connectivity, according to a site administrator. Closer looks at the data in response to a Cult of Mac request leave the question of causation unresolved, however.

“[We] did make a new file to get the average upload/download for both 3G and EDGE,” reports the admin, adding, “this is much more accurate and based off just the last 24hrs.” And there does appear to be a decrease in comparison with historical data comprising the over 175,000 3G and EDGE tests done on the site.

But closer inspection of 3G and EDGE test trends over the past week show no correlation related to the 2.0.2 release on Monday.

In response, then, to the question that has the internet buzzing over 2.0.2’s effect on 3G connectivity, whether it fixes bugs that have been widely reported, if only by anecdote, or whether it has actually made things worse for some users, we can fall back on the old quote attributed to Mark Twain. The one about there being three kinds of lies in this life: lies, dammned lies, and statistics.

China has apparently shut off access to iTunes after discovering some Olympic athletes downloaded and have been playing Songs for Tibet, an album produced by The Art of Peace Foundation to raise funds to support “peace-related projects that are dear to the Dalai Lama”, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader whom China regards as subversive.

The group made the album available as a free download just prior to the start of the Olympics in Beijing on August 8 and encouraged Olympic athletes to download and play it on their iPods as a subtle protest during the games.

Via SMH, Australia

First generation iPod nano customers who have experienced their battery overheating should contact AppleCare for a replacement, the company said today, after scattered reports of some devices with battery problems that cause them to give off smoke or sparks.

Apple’s statement put the number of affected units at less than 0.001 percent of the devices, which were first released in September 2005. The problem units have been traced back to a single battery supplier. There have been no reports of serious injuries or property damage, and no reports of incidents for any other iPod nano model.

Via CNet

Apple has doubled its share of the mobile web browser market since launching iPhone 3G six weeks ago, according to Pacific Crest technology analyst Andy Hargreaves. Still quite a small pebble in a large pond, at 0.31% of the total mobile browser market, iPhone’s “accelerating web usage highlights…key long-term advantages” for Apple and the company’s investors, Hargreaves says. Coupled with the recent announcement that iPhones will be carried at Best Buy outlets beginning in September, he predicts Apple will easily sell more than the 3.5 million iPhones Wall Street expects in its third quarter.

Despite some continuing worry about the health of the general economy, Hargreaves and other analysts see the iPhone as very bullish for the price of Apple, Inc. shares. Consensus targets are in the $200 – $225 per share range; the stock closed today at $173.53.

Via CNBC

Apple Magsafe power adapters have apparently failed at high enough rates the company is now offering to replace them free of charge, whether your MacBook (13-inch Late 2006), MacBook (13-inch), MacBook Pro (15-inch Glossy) or  MacBook Pro (17-inch) is out-of-warranty or not.

Any Apple-Authorized Service Provider can make the switch for you, or you can take the adapter to the Genius bar at any Apple retail store.

Reservations recommended.

First generation units of Apple’s mini music player, iPod nano continue to pose a risk of catching fire while charging, according to these pictures provided by a reader at Consumerist over the weekend.

Apple agreed to replace the device.

Ministry of Industry, Trade and Economy officials in Japan are investigating similar reports of nanos overheating there.

Apple, Inc. ranks first in customer satisfaction among its PC industry peers for the fifth year in a row, posting the highest score ever recorded in the American Customer Satisfaction Index. Apple’s 85 score is a full ten points higher than runner-up Dell, which joined Apple as the only computer companies in the University of Michigan survey to record increases over their 2007 scores.

Claes Fornell, a professor at the university and head of the ACSI, said, “we have never seen a gap between the leader and the rest of the pack this big,” but acknowledged Apple’s lead was likely affected by widespread disappointment with Windows Vista among HP-Compaq, Dell and Gateway consumers.

Apple’s score also does not reflect the customer service turmoil the company has tried to weather since launching iPhone 3G and MobileMe in July, problems Fornell expects will cause Apple’s score to level off in next year’s survey.

Via CNet

UPDATE: I just downloaded the 2.0.2 update myself, and overall, it does seem an improvement. Backup is now much quicker — less than a minute with my 16-Gbyte iPhone 3G (which has about a dozen third-party apps installed). Apps seem snappier. The Contacts app, which was annoyingly slow, now loads instantly and scrolls smoothly with no lags. Keyboard also seems much better. It used to hangup occassionally, especially in Mail, but so far no lags at all (however, many people report that the lag gets progressively worse until a hard reset). It’s too early to tell if 3G reception problems are fixed — but then I’ve not had consistent problems. It’s always been unpredictably spotty.

With widespread complaints of iPhone 3G reception issues, you’d think Apple would say whether the latest iPhone software update — version 2.0.2, released Monday afternoon — addresses connectivity problems.

But no. In inimitable Apple style, the release note for the 2.0.2 update says simply that it includes ‘bug fixes.” Nothing more. Thanks Apple. So helpful.

To top it off, 2.0.2 apparently doesn’t fix 3G reception. According to commenters at Apple’s discussion forums, 3G reception is just as bad, and in some cases, worse than before.

“I was getting none-to-2 bars on 3G here in my home, stationary position,” reports commenter Jettergear. “After the 2.0.2 I am getting nothing but a solid NO SERVICE.”

However, it’s not all bad. Others say that the painful lags with the onscreen keyboard and scrolling are much improved.

“The phone is A LOT snappier now,” reports commenter alangsam. “Contacts works much snappier. Email is much snappier – almost instant. SMS is almost instant. Overall BIG improvement.”

Apple already promised a 30 day extension to .Mac subscribers and those who bought subscriptions to MobileMe prior to July 15. In the wake of continuing difficulty getting its web services product firing on all cylinders, Apple has increased the extension of free service to an additional 60 days for anyone with a MobileMe account activated prior to Midnight Pacific Daylight Time, August 19.

Apple’s Enterprise efforts have been met with harsh criticism lately on the business front, but the company’s inroads to the luxury hospitality sector have been impressive. While complaints about inattention to potential security flaws and problems with Exchange integration have gotten much of the technology press’ attention, Apple’s Enterprise Sales Group has been quietly working to install its computers everywhere in the hospitality industry, according to an AppleInsider report.

Building on the success of its Starbucks integration with the WiFi iTunes Store, Apple developers are now working to build similar location sensing services for ordering drinks, accessing reminders and messages, and other services related to a guest’s stay in hotels and on cruise ships.

According to the AppleInsider report, hotels have actually asked for Apple’s help in bringing iTunes-style simplicity to their luxury accommodations. Many hoteliers are “struggling to reach the digital demographic” and “to differentiate themselves,” explained Bradley Walker of Nanonation in a seminar on Macs in the hospitality industry. “You’ve been to the Apple Store,” Walker said. “If you could recreate that in a hotel, that would be a very attractive place to stay.”

Apple makes products people just can’t keep from trying to make better. Whether these “mods” actually improve the inventions coming out of Cupertino is a matter of some debate, but the latest one for iPhone makes the Apple logo on the back glow like it does on a Macbook. If you speak or read Russian you can learn more at gPda.ru.

Via Sizlopedia

Ten years is one of those nice round numbers that always sparks nostalgia and reminiscing and (hopefully) waves of warm and fuzzy feelings, whether its focus is a sports career, a marriage or a business enterprise. Today, in the world where Cupertino, CA is the center of the universe, all thoughts are on iMac, Apple’s user-friendly, all-in-one desktop computer that said hello to the world on August 15, 1998.

The iMac has grown and changed in many ways throughout its ten years of existence, but remains possibly Apple’s best-known and most accessible calling card for a growing market of consumers curious about the complete user experience at the root of Steve Job’s business philosophy.

We present here a gallery of iMacs, from then to now and our anniversary greetings. We’re looking forward to the next ten years.

With AT&T claiming a 1% dropped call rate, in general, on its cellular network, a reported 2% – 3% dropped call rate for iPhone 3G traffic would indicate something of a problem. It’s a problem neither Apple nor AT&T are willing to acknowledge or comment on presently, but reports indicate Apple is hurrying to push a software upgrade to one of the chips inside the iPhone made by Infineon, some say in hopes of staving off a potential product recall.

Have you experienced difficulty with getting on AT&T’s 3G network in places where it’s available? Have you had problems with dropped connections when moving between high-speed and slower-speed networks during calls and Web sessions?

Let us know in comments below and we’ll keep you posted with further news about the chip upgrade.

Via Business Week

We all read PC World. It’s our gateway to millions of articles, thousands of reviews, that killer red masthead banner, and a terrific selection of opinions on various techie things. Without it, our lives would be empty, lonely and sad.

But, oh, does PC Word drive us crazy sometimes. It lacks obvious research, hobbles truth, and says things that are just plain dumb. In some cases, PC World’s writers are to blame, not PC World itself, but the latter is the conduit through which those bad articles trickle.

We’ve rounded up 2 of these annoyances, all of which PC World could fix in about five minutes. In the meantime, we’ve listed workarounds for them—because, let’s face it, much as we hate PC World sometimes, we’re stuck with it.

1. Lazy-assed reporting regarding DRM
#2 on PC World’s list of 11 Things They Hate About iTunes is ‘DRM (Boo!)’, where writer Rick Broida moans “why does the iTunes Store still employ digital rights management (DRM) for the majority of songs in its library?” and claims that “Blaming the record labels no longer holds water”, citing that “AmazonMP3 and Rhapsody are among a growing number of services selling DRM-free MP3s from all the major labels, not just EMI”.

Presumably, it escaped Broida’s notice that this is hardly Apple’s decision. In fact, Jobs wrote an open letter entitled ‘Thoughts on Music’, stating that he wanted to ditch DRM entirely (from music alone, obviously—the chances of Jobs saying the same about movies are roughly on par with Arnie appearing in a hardcore sequel to Brokeback Mountain). To be fair to Broida and PC World, this letter was only published in February 2007, and so they might not have gotten around to reading it yet.

The answer to Broida’s question “why hasn’t Apple given DRM the heave-ho once and for all?” is, EMI aside, that the majors remain sh*t-scared of iTunes and are trying to give it a good kicking by cosying up to everyone else, in the hope of reducing Apple’s share of the market (and therefore, by association, their reliance on Apple as a retail channel). The fact that to do this said record labels are helping the likes of Amazon and Wal-Mart (not exactly teeny-tiny companies that care for the labels any more than Apple) merely shows how confused, deluded and insane they are, rather than highlighting any of Apple’s shortcomings.

Workaround moment! Stop reporting total bollocks about Apple and DRM. (And for readers: buy your stuff from Amazon, if you hate DRM, or buy shiny disc-shaped music receptacles from independent music retailers. And tut extremely loudly upon reading the PC World article.)

2. Lazy-assed reporting regarding NBC shows
#8 on PC World’s list of 11 Things They Hate About iTunes is ‘NBC Shows­ — Bring Them Back!’. This item notes that new seasons of NBC shows are just around the corner, and suggests that Apple and NBC were fighting over money, leading to the NBC shows being dropped.

“Swallow your pride and get NBC back on board in time for September,” suggests Broida. “We’ve got money for ‘Office’ burning a hole in our pockets.” I’m not sure what Apple would be swallowing if acquiescing to NBC’s absurd demands, but it wouldn’t be pride. After all, it’d have to do something drastic in order to pay for all the things NBC wanted. At least NBC’s real reason for divorcing the iTunes Store wasn’t, like the record labels, an attempt to wrest total control of its content from Apple, and take its ball home in a huff, right? Oh.

Workaround moment! Stop reporting total bollocks regarding Apple and NBC. (And for readers: watch TV on an actual TV, or buy DVDs/Blu-ray discs if you want to watch content at home, rather than spending money on crappy low-resolution versions for your portable players. And tut extremely loudly upon reading the PC World article.)

Coming soon to PC World: 11 Things We Hate About Apple, with #6 no doubt being that Apple stole the Mac OS from Xerox…

Image copyright ABC-7 KGO

SAN FRANCISCO — Multiple Bay Area news outlets report that an Apple research and development facility located at 20605 Valley Green Drive in Cupertino was set ablaze late Tuesday night, with NBC affiliate KTVU blaming a malfunctioning air conditioning unit.

Given that this was an Apple R&D facility, it’s naturally operated nearly 24 hours a day, and at least 100 Apple employees were forced to evacuate the building in the three-alarm fire. Also given that this is Apple we’re talking about, no one has any idea what these folks were working on. As of 12:30 a.m. Pacific Wednesday morning, Santa Clara County firefighters report that they expected another hour before they could put out the blaze completely.

See the Jump for a map of the fire relative to Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino (basically, it was across the street).