My AT&T account tells me I’ll be eligible for a hardware upgrade on August 16th. I’ll probably wait at least until then to pick up a new iPhone 3G. And something tells me I won’t be disappointed.
Then again, I don’t have a sustainability agenda to push, as do a quintet of twenty-somethings calling themselves alternatively TheWhoFarm and Waiting for Apples, who began queuing up in front of the Apple Store on 5th Avenue in Manhattan on Friday. The group is going for the Guinness Book of World’s Records entry for “longest time waiting in line to buy something,” according to Fortune, and hopes to persuade the next President of the United States to transform the White House’s 17-acre lawn into an organic farm.
It’s not clear what effect the group’s affinity for Apple may have on the company’s efforts to gain acceptance with Enterprise users.
Two Apple shareholders have filed a class-action lawsuit against present and former Apple officials including Steve Jobs and four members of the Board of Directors, as well as former CFO Fred Anderson and former General Counsel Nancy Heinen. The lawsuit charges Apple officials with fraud in connection with the company’s practice of backdating stock options, the subject of an SEC investigation in 2007, in which the regulatory agency cleared Jobs of any wrongdoing.
That’s not enough for Plaintiffs Martin Vogel and Kenneth Mahoney, according to a story published by Information Week, which details the allegations against Jobs and company. Vogel and Mahoney are seeking to recover losses stemming from a drop in Apple’s share price that reduced the company’s market cap by over $7 billion in the wake of Jobs admitting to “irregularities” in the granting of options to company executives and to the existence of an internal investigation into the matter in 2006.
Ahead of Apple’s 3rd Quarter earnings report due later this month, fans of the Cupertino, CA computer company have reason to believe Big Mo is on their team, according to reporter Charles Jade at Ars Technica. Citing information available from the web metrics firm Net Applications, Jade reports significant increases in market share for both Mac OS X and Apple’s Safari web browser over the past year. Based on recent trends, the percentage of Mac OS X users should break the 8% mark in July, having gained nearly 2 full percentage points in the past year. Intel Macs posted gains as a percentage of Macs in use as well, possibly accounting for much of the reasoning behind Apple’s decison to make its Snow Leopard OS update, due in the spring, an Intel-only affair.
Apple’s chosen wireless carrier for the United States revealed pricing details for the iPhone 3G models, set to debut on July 11, according to information posted to the company’s website. New customers signing a two year service contract with the Dallas-based phone company can purchase the new phones for $199 and $299 for the 8GB and 16GB models respectively. Current AT&T customers who are eligible for an upgrade will also be able to purchase at the fully subsidized pricing while those not eligible for an upgrade will pay $399 and $499 for the two models. In typically cryptic AT&T style, the company’s upgrade eligibility requirements are not made public but only to logged in users requesting information specific to their account. The company’s generic message on upgrades reads “Device offers are made available from time to time based on a number of factors: service tenure, spending levels, payment history, usage practices and other factors,” though existing customers nearing the end of a two-year service contract cycle will presumably be able to purchase a new iPhone at the fully subsidized pricing with a commitment to a new two year contract.
In a somewhat puzzling development, AT&T issued a statement today saying it will sell the new phones “in the future” without a service contract for $599 for the 8GB phone and $699 for the 16GB model. Previously, neither Apple nor AT&T had indicated any intention to make the phones available without a service contract. Customers seeking to purchase phones on and near the July 11 launch date will be required to activate AT&T service at either an Apple store or an AT&T outlet, unlike the original iPhones released one year ago, which users could activate for service from their home computers. Existing AT&T customers will pay an $18 activation fee to get service on new iPhones; new customers will pay $36 for service activation.
The Naked Bikers, a global protest vehicle for raising oil dependency awareness, rode through London on a sunny day in June. Photographer Peter Payne’s arresting image at panoramas.dk shows the stunning visual capabilities of QTVR, Apple’s 360-degree and CubicVR photo viewing technology.
Just how possible is it to use iWork instead of MS Office?
Back on May 11, I promised to try and live without Microsoft Office in a “corporate setting” for 30 days. It’s been seven weeks in my iWork vs. Microsoft Office challenge now. And I’m none too happy to report that a copy of MS Office must go with me to the desert island.
However, in an interesting twist, it turns out I can’t live without iWork either. Follow me after the jump to discuss what worked and what — surprisingly — didn’t.
Apple has ordered millions of earth-friendly packaging trays from a Dutch company that makes injection-molded shipping products from potato starch, according to The Register. After weathering criticism in the past from the likes of Greenpeace for the company’s use of Brominated Fire Retardants (BFRs) and Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) in its products, last year, Apple CEO Steve Jobs promised a greener Apple. Turning once again to the company that made shipping trays for the first generation iPod nano and iPod video, Apple plans to ship its new iPhones in cardboard boxes with a fully recyclable tray made from 100% natural sources such as potato or Tapioca starch, according to Hans Arentsen, CEO of the Dutch company PaperFoam.
More evidence of the primacy of digital downloads in the music distribution business: Rhapsody announced today it will offer DRM-free MP3 downloads in a $50 million effort to wrest market share from Apple’s iTunes, which earlier this year became the largest music retailer in the United States. As part of its marketing launch, the first 100,000 sign-ups to the store until July 4th get one album for free, according to Gizmodo.
Previously known for its subscription-based music streaming service, Rhapsody is partnering with Verizon Wireless to offer music downloads on mobile phones and will also be the music store back-end to MTV’s music Web sites and iLike, one of the most widely used music applications on the social networking site Facebook.
Describing their strategy as “Music Without Limits,” Rhapsody executives tacitly recognized the necessity of selling music that can be played on iPods, Apple’s industry-leading digital music player. Said company Vice President Neil Smith, “We’re no longer competing with the iPod, we’re embracing it.”
In 2004 and 2005, Arben Kryeziu caused a stir as the “developer” behind Mac emulation software called CherryOS. Marketed at the time by Hawaii-based video-streaming company Maui X-Stream, the software supposedly allowed users to install and run versions of Mac OS X on Pentium processor-based Windows PCs. It was advertised as being able to reach emulation speeds up to 80% of the system’s total processor speed.
The problem with CherryOS was that it was largely a re-packaged iteration of the Power PC emulator PearPC, software that had been previously released under GPL and used primarily to run Mac OS X on x86 machines. As a commercial product, CherryOS violated GPL licensing terms by reusing PearPC code and also raised questions regarding the legality of commercial software developed and marketed specifically for the purpose of running Mac OS on the x86 architecture, since Apple’s license agreement specifically states that the operating system may only be installed on Apple-labeled computers. CherryOS eventually disappeared in the spring of 2005 under a storm of vaporware criticism.
Thanks to a Cult of Mac tipster, we’ve learned that Kryeziu is back in business as the the chief architect and senior strategist for another Hawaii-based company, Bump Networks, whose main product is iRAPP (interactive remote application), which claims to allow users to view and fully interact with a remote or local Mac from a Windows PC. The software is being marketed on a website called CodeRebel and is also available as a Networking & Security download from the Apple website. No word yet on the code under the iRAPP hood.
Officials in China have confirmed the location of Apple’s first retail operation on the Mainland, in Beijing’s Sanlitun district, according to China Tech News. The 3000+ square foot outlet, which will be managed and operated by employees of the Cupertino, CA-based computer giant, has been developed by Hong Kong’s Swire Properties as part of a 580,000 square foot mixed use project that includes additional retail and boutique hotel space housed in a 17 building complex.
The expectation is Apple will display and sell its full range of products directly for the first time to Chinese consumers, who up to now have had to acquire Apple gadgetry through licensed third-party retail agents.
Apple will open the three-floor store on July 19 and plans to launch a second Retail Store in Beijing during the Olympics, according to a report today in The Shanghai Daily.
Increasingly cartoonish rap star Kanye West has been savagely bashed for showing up two hours late to his own 3 a.m. set at the giant Bonnaroo music festival the other weekend. He finally responded to his critics via his blog last night, and in so doing, coined the wimpiest tough guy catch phrase ever:
But this Bonnaroo thing is the worst insult I’ve ever had in my life. This is the most offended I’ve ever been… this is the maddest I ever will be. I’m typing so f***ing hard I might break my f***ing Mac book Air!!!!!!!!
Oh! Run for your lives! He has a MacBook Air and he’s typing REALLY HARD on it! But not hard enough to break it, thanks to Apple’s superior design and engineering!!!!
I’m seriously trying to come up with a wimpier way to express rage as expressed through communication style: “I’m tapping my index finger so hard against my iPhone that I am probably going to misspell some words!!!1!” “I’m so furious that I may just wait a few days to confirm the details of our acquaintance on Facebook!!!!!” “I’m writing you this Christmas Card in such a rage that I might forget to include my BEST WISHES TO YOU AND YOUR FAMILY!!!!!!1!”
Congratulations, Apple. You just set the benchmark.
Dell is launching a new mid-range line of portable computers called Studio Laptops with a Mac-like “Dock” designed to give Vista users an illusion of the OS X experience.
Studio Laptops’ desktop GUI takes Windows’ traditional application icon layout and organizes it into a “Dock” similar to the one familiar to Mac users, though questions remain as to whether users will be able to customize the Dock layout and place it on either side or at the bottom of the desktop.
In an additional concession to the proposition that Apple may be winning the OS war, Dell will offer cases in seven colors, a significant change to the company’s predominantly industrial look.
Gizmodo has nice before and after screenshots of the desktop.
Once hailed as a savior of the music industry’s physical distribution model, Starbucks will abandon the sale of CDs and iTunes gift cards in its thousands of outlets by September, according to a report released today by Silicon Valley Insider. The company will continue to offer free Wi-fi access to Apple’s online music store and may continue to try to sell entertainment online, but the dream of record company executives who saw Starbucks at the vanguard of a new class of unconventional sales outlets that could keep the CD alive in an age of digital downloads is now dead.
The company reported its first annual profit decline in eight years and saw half a dozen senior executives depart from its entertainment unit this year, forcing the Seattle-based retailer to look for ways to restart growth in its core business of selling $4 cups of coffee.
Om Malik has a great post up digesting today’s news that Nokia is going all in on Symbian Limited, saying there’s three players now in mobile phones — and Google ain’t one of them.
Noting that today anyone can make mobile phones using off-the-shelf components and factories in Asia, Malik argues the future of mobile computing and communications will focus almost entirely on design, user experience and software. He likens the mobile phone business to the PC business – which Microsoft dominates with its Windows platform – and says the winners in the handset market will depend a lot on the software developers creating apps for mobile platforms.
According to Malik, “In this platform game, the winner is going to be the one that can attract the most developers,” and the problem, for Nokia and some of the Symbian Fondation’s other members (among them, Motorola, NTT DoCoMo, AT&T, LG Electronics, Samsung Electronics, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments and Vodafone) is they are backing a confusing array of platforms, including Linux.
Kevin McLaughlin writes for Channel Web, an IT Channel News source, Microsoft’s biggest hiring spree in eleven years has been looking to fill spots in its Mac Business Unit.
In a recent post to the Office for Mac Team blog, Craig Eisler, general manager of the Mac Business Unit, announced the hiring campaign and highlighted the unique place the group occupies within the Microsoft galaxy. “We are the brightest, coolest, and most interesting business unit at Microsoftif we do say so ourselves,” Eisler said in the blog post.
Office 2008 for Mac has been selling “really well” since its launch in January, according to Sonny Tohan, CEO of Mac Business Solutions, an Apple specialist based in Gaithersburg, Md.
“Microsoft finally started taking advantage of some of the core technologies and user interface features in OS X,” Tohan said, and Apple partners worldwide see the changing landscape in Redmond as evidence of the robust health and continued emergence of their preferred platform.
The addition of support for Exchange in the iPhone and the coming proliferation of 3rd party iPhone apps should keep Microsoft’s Mac Business unit busy for the foreseeable future. “Microsoft needs to compete in a space of growth since the PC market is in a state of decline, and I’m sure they’re looking at writing applications for the iPhone,” according to George Swords, marketing manager at PowerMacPac, an Apple solution provider in Portland, Ore.
In the blizzard of numbers being tossed around concerning the much-anticipated debut of iPhone 3G, the most significant one could be the price of the phone itself. As Pacific Crest consumer electronics analyst Andy Hargreaves notes, sales of both Apple’s iPod and Sony’s PS2 gamestation saw exponential gains in the wake of being offered below $200.
Aidan Malley reports for AppleInsider on the explosive growth anticipated for new phone sales in the coming year. “The relationship [between price and sales] is shockingly consistent,” Hargreaves says. “At average prices above $200, Apple never sold more than [6 million] units in a rolling four-quarter period. At prices below $200, Apple never sold fewer than [8 million].”
Should Apple fulfill even industry analysts’ most modest sales expectations, savvy decision-making in the company’s sourcing and supply-chain business units could translate into much higher margins on the 3G models than those seen with the original iPhone, all of which adds up to very good news for Apple investors and shareholders.
Thus far, Apple has been using very low-key terms to describe the improvements to OS X 10.5 set to hit with the release of “Snow Leopard” next spring. Despite the company’s insistence the software update promises no more than an overall improvement in how Mac OS X works under the hood, Roughly Drafted has uncovered at least ten improvements it deems worthy of a pat on the back for Apple’s code optimizers.
Some of those improvements, while significant, may in fact be transparent or unnoticed by many users. Additions such as SproutCore, the LLVM Compiler, the CUPS printing engine, native exchange support, and self-contained Web apps can rightly be said to reside “under the hood.”
But as Apple Insider details, others, such as a new multi-touch framework, file size reductions, text-processing features, auto activation of fonts, and full ZFS support may prove quite noticeable, indeed.
Some strange things are going to happen to this website over the next few hours as the design is amended. Apologies for the inconvenience.
UPDATE: And we’re done. We hope you like the shiny new design. If you come across any problems with it (as in, “IT’S ALL GONE WRONG!”, not “I wanted it to be blue!”), leave a note in the comments. Also, if you’ve any general feedback about the design, or any ideas about what you’d like to see in future revisions, please let us know.
Now the dust has settled, and the excitement has waned, it’s possible to calmly reflect on yesterday’s iPhone announcements. Only the excitement hasn’t really waned, and the only reason the dust has settled is because I can’t run to the nearest O2 shop and grab an iPhone 3G yet.
Ultimately, Apple delivered. Most of the rumor bridge went away satisfied, with the revamp being lighter, more efficient, and including both 3G and GPS support. Yes, the camera is still rubbish, and the lack of a front-facing camera still irks some, but most people are happy with the upgrade. (Well, apart from the idiots web-wide who are rattling on about HOW UNFAIR it is that Apple had the audacity to release a new iPhone when they bought one JUST LAST WEEK, and how APPLE IS EVIL, and so on.)
Also, the pricing rumor turned out to be pretty much spot-on. The iPhone’s going to ship with a price-tag of just $199 (for the 8GB model—the 16GB model is an extra hundred bucks), and so even with the still fairly hefty monthly contract, it’s now a lot more affordable. Clearly, Apple is gunning for market share (its estimate of 10 million iPhones sold by the end of 2008 now looks remarkably achievable), to get its platform ingrained in people’s minds as the obvious choice for anyone after a smartphone.
From a British standpoint, things are looking even more rosy. I recently bitched about Apple’s over-the-odds charging in Europe, and it seems someone was listening. Not only is the new iPhone priced in a straight US dollar-to-Sterling conversion (I was expecting $199 to become £139, truth be told, not £99), but also Brits retain existing tariff pricing (reports suggest AT&T’s raising its prices), and get a new tariff at the £30 mark (even if its minutes and texts allocations are both utterly miserly). Handily, existing iPhone owners forking out £45 or £75 per month also get the new iPhone as a free upgrade.
The only disappointing thing is that I now need something else to complain about. Ideas on a postcard…
UPDATE: Confirmation about AT&T’s price-hike suggests that there’s still something to complain about, at least if you’re in the US. Despite the hardware price-drop, the overall contract cost for the 8GB phone is now an extra $40 over two years. If anything, this makes the pricing in the UK even more surprising. Still, perhaps Apple will actually be able to sell some iPhones in Britain now.
I’m not allowed to repost it fully, but please check out the coverage of the iPhone 3G launch that I worked up for Popularmechanics.com.
First, there’s the actual live-blog, which covers the complete blow-by-blow. Dig it.
Then, I have a short news analysis piece studying the implications of Apple dropping the price so much and opening the doors to third-party development.
I’ll have more original Cult content tonight, but this is a pretty thorough day’s work in the mean time.
Brits (and Canadians) finally got to join the iTunes movie party this week, with Apple unleashing movie rentals and purchasing for the two territories. I’d actually been mulling over grabbing an Apple TV for a while (what with my ten-year-old DVD player starting to make strange buzzing and wheezing noises), but decided against it. Instead, I bought a cheap replacement DVD player and an iPod dock, and so I was initially feeling a little irked.
And then I looked at the prices and felt much better. In the UK, rental pricing initially doesn’t seem too awful at £2.49 for old stuff and £3.49 for shiny new films, which is mostly on a par with high-street rental outlets such as Blockbuster and DVD-by-mail companies. However, this is the realm of digital, and so there aren’t as many barriers to business regarding upkeep, location, shipping, and so on. A swift comparison with the US store sees that Apple’s making an extra $2 on library titles and $3 on new releases (the price of which almost doubles during a film’s trip across the Atlantic). Take into account taxes, and the extra profit is reduced, but still pretty hefty. On the plus side, you do at least get a 48-hour window to watch, which is a small added bonus.
However, it’s the purchase price-tags that really have me confused. They come in at £6.99 for library titles and £10.99 for new releases (the latter of which is $14.99—about £7.50—in the US). Even when you add on British taxes, this doesn’t look like a great deal, and with the usual raft of cheap outlets available (HMV, Play.com, Amazon UK), I fail to see how Apple will make a dent in the market with this pricing model.
Commentators are already saying this pricing has nothing to do with Apple (“Blame the movie studios!” “Apple is innocent!” “I wuv Apple and will GET YOU if you write bad things about Stevie!”), and how it’s more expensive to do business in the UK (blah, blah, blah), but this just reminds me of Adobe doubling CS3’s pricing when it goes across the Atlantic and offering a toothy grin in return.
With hardware, there’s now very little difference when taxes are taken into account, and I’m happy for Apple to mark things up a little in case Sterling tanks or the US Dollar rallies. In software, pricing is generally getting better (if you pretend CS3—something of an exception—doesn’t exist), and Apple again is gradually taking the piss less and less with each new release.
So why does the difference in pricing remain in media, when there’s no shipping, no printed artwork, and no shelf-space required? Apple always makes a point about thinking different, but in this case, it looks like the company’s done a quick price-check of its rivals and is thinking exactly the same.
With WWDC on the horizon, and keynote fever ramping up, we thought it might be nice to take a stroll down memory lane. The “One More Thing” timeline below covers every Stevenote we could find, focusing on the “Just One More Thing…” product announcement, with video clips for most of them.
Of course if we got anything wrong, or if you have additions, or clips we don’t have, please let us know in the comments, and we’ll get them added — Enjoy!
Updated: The Live blog is now available here. Bookmark it, and I’ll see you bright and early no ON Monday!
The next great keynote from Steve Jobs at WWDC is this Monday in San Francisco, and I’ll be there live-blogging on behalf of Popular Mechanics. I’ll provide the blow-by-blow account, as well as the most rapid-fire analysis I can muster. The actual page for the live blog isn’t up yet, but I’ll provide the link in an updated version of this post when it is. Once things are done over there and I’ve got my top thoughts synthesized, various Cult of Mac folks will be back up here providing our thoughts, speculation and wishes based on the latest and greatest from Apple.
It’s going to be a great one, folks. In the mean time, stay tuned for my two big pre-WWDC posts still to come. One will be a preview of sorts, but the other is something more like the epic analysis of the slow change from Carbon to Snow Leopard. I’m going to look at the designs of the iPhone and iPod touch to shed light on the strategies that they reflect, and also suggest possible future directions for the second iPhone based on those design principles. It will be partly based on a white paper I helped write earlier this year at my day job. It’s a good read and includes a similar dissection of the original iPod. If you want to bone up in advance, you can read it here.
Otherwise, stay tuned. It’s going to be a great week in the world of the Cult!
