Cult of Mac

It’s an envious spot to be in: Apple’s iPhone and iPads are in such demand that the Cupertino, Calif. company spent much of Tuesday’s earnings call emphasizing it is dancing as fast as it can. “We’re working around the clock to try to get supply/demand in balance, in the scheme of things, it’s a good problem to have,” Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook told reporters.

The record third-quarter profit report and news that every category except iPods were up, did more to quiet the ‘antennagate’ controversy than all the free iPhone 4 cases in Cupertino. ”Let me be very clear on this: We are selling every unit we are making,” Cook crowed. Indeed. Although analysts were nervous about the potential effect of talk about dropped calls having on earnings, today, Oppenheimer’s Yair Reiner summed up the current feelings: “Antennagate Schmantennagate.”

Over the course of the last few years, the music industry has been struggling to cope with the way iTunes single-handedly changed the way music was consumed, from albums to $0.99 singles.

But is this earth change in the music industry simply due to iTunes’ ability to allow users to purchase just the songs they want, or could pricing fix the problem?

According to Eric Garland, CEO of Big Champagne, speaking at the New Music Seminar this week, the real thing killing the album is that $9.99 for an album doesn’t offer a significant discount over the per unit price of a $0.99 song, while historically, consumers have gotten a better deal on albums versus singles.

“Historically, the price of an album was five times greater than a single,” said Silverman, who believes setting the price at a tenth of an album’s cost was a mistake and that even $1.29 is too low. “It should’ve been a $1.99, and then we would’ve seen higher digital album sales because it would’ve been a bigger discount for buying an album.

The good news for album fans like me is that the $9.99 price of albums is slowly but surely making some headway: 14% of all Universal Music’s digital sales these days are for complete albums. iTunes hasn’t necessarily killed the album… it’s just put it in semi-hibernation.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkgAzB3PS1o

Are you impressed by the living, breathing Wall o’ Apps on display by Apple at WWDC every year? Polish developer iApp has created a desktop simulacrum of the App Wall in the form of the AppWall screensaver.

It doesn’t work precisely like the real App Wall, in that the icons aren’t pulled from real-time purchases, but rather pulls icons from the top free or paid apps, but it’s still pretty swank. Even better, it’s free!

We haven’t seen a new iLife release since January 2009, so common sense says that the software suite is probably about due for an update early next year.

So should you take this Amazon.fr iLife 2010 for Dummies as confirmation of a forthcoming update?

It’s hard to say: one the one hand, the book is set for release on September 23rd, so unless Apple announces iLife 2010 at their September iPod conference, we’re not going to see it this year.

On the other hand, iLife 2008 was released in August, so it’s not completely unprecedented for Apple to just drop an update into the middle of the year like this without a lot of fanfare.

Personally, I’m hoping for the latter: at the very least, I’d welcome an update to iPhoto.

[via TUAW]

China Telecom has reversed course and now expresses interest in offering the iPhone to subscribers. The decision to sell the iPhone hinges on whether Apple will offer a CDMA version of the iconic handset, a Wednesday report suggests.

“If we can have an iPhone, that would be good, but we’ll just wait and see” if the Cupertino, Calif. company offers one, the Wall Street Journal quotes an unnamed China Telecom official. Reportedly, Apple is working on a CDMA iPhone, although the company has made no public comment.

For analysts worried about the impact of the so-called ‘Antennagate’ on Apple earnings, yesterday’s record revenue report was welcome relief. “To those (like us) who fretted that Antennagate might hamper iPhone sales, Apple’s guidance seems to say, antennagate, schmantennagate,” Oppenheimer’s Yair Reiner told investors Wednesday morning.

You might remember Reiner’s comments ahead of Tuesday night’s earnings report, including his decision to cut his expectations on third-quarter iPhone sales. “The perception — created by a scoop-hungry media and Apple’s newly-emboldened wireless adversaries — is that the 4 is faulty,” Reiner said. Instead of being hurt, Apple reported iPhone sales grew 61 percent to 8.4 million.

Though I’ve come very close on several occasions, I still haven’t bought myself an iPad. After seeing this video for Flipboard, an iPad exclusive app that assembles a magazine out of the articles your friends are sharing on Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks, I might need to finally pull the trigger.

The app, from a company of the same name (whose co-founder, Evan Doll, in full disclosure, is a friend of a friend), is absolutely stunning. The interactions, the formatting, the incorporation of video, the sharing capabilities — all of them are best in class. The iPad’s collection of RSS readers and Instapaper-like “read later” apps are very nice, but the premise here is different. It’s like Instapaper without having to choose what gets pulled down.

And I will say that this looks to me a lot more like the magazine of the future than that the digital version of Wired does. It’s available for free in the app store now, though from what I understand the company is frantically working to add more servers to allow new members to join. Maybe I’ll have an iPad by the time they have capacity again…

Apple’s massive data center in North Carolina will come online early next year, Apple execs said during an analyst conference call on Tuesday afternoon.

“It’s on-schedule,” said Apple’s CFO Peter Oppenheimer. “We expect it completed by the end of the calendar year.”

The $1 billion center is as big as the world’s biggest data facilities, and has been the subject of much speculation since construction started in August 2009. Occupying 500,000 square feet, the data center is about five times the size of Apple’s data center in Newark, California.

Two months ago, Apple passed Microsoft as the most-valuable tech company. Soon, it may pass its rival in terms of revenues. Microsoft makes about $61.5 billion a year: Apple is on track to make $60 billion.

Question is: As Apple gets bigger and bigger, is it in danger of becoming the new Microsoft?  Did you prefer the old, underdog Apple?

[polldaddy poll=3499016]

The iPad is a runaway hit and it’s going mainstream faster than anything they’ve seen, Apple execs are saying.

“It is not following a typical early adopter curve and taking a while to cross over into the mainstream,” said Apple COO Tim Cook during an analyst conference call.

The iPhone 4 is Apple’s fastest-selling device to date and there’s no sign whatsoever that the antenna issue is impacting sales or returns, Apple executives said.

“The demand for iPhone 4 is stunning,” said Apple COO Tim Cook during a conference call with Wall St. analysts. “Let me be very clear on this: We are selling every unit we are making.”

Cook said the antenna issue has had no impact on sales.

“My phone is ringing off the hook with people who want more supply,” he said.

He also said there is not a significant number of returns of the iPhone 4. In fact, there are fewer returns than iPhone 3GS.

“The ones for this specific (antenna) issue are extremely small,” Cook said.

Giving iPhone 4 customers free cases will cost Apple about $175 million, Apple executives said during a conference call with Wall St. analysts.

Apple reported another blockbuster quarter thanks to record sales of iPhones and Macs, making the most money ever in company history: $15.7 billion.

Even more unbelievable, Apple is projecting $18 billion in revenue next quarter—and the company is known for lowballing estimates.

Apple is likely to equal Microsoft in annual revenues this year, and may even pass it’s long-time rival. Apple is on track to make more than $60 billion in revenue this year, which is almost equal to Microsoft’s $61.5 billion. Apple already surpassed Microsoft two months ago as the world’s most highly-valued tech company.

Apple sold boatloads of Macs and iPhones. The iPad is also a big hit: Apple has shifted 3.27 million iPads since launch. The only downside was iPod sales.

Here are the key numbers:

• Macs: 3.47 million Macs sold, the most ever in a single quarter, and 33% more than last year.
• iPhones: 8.4 million sold, up 61% year-over-year.
• iPods: 9.41 million sold, down 8% from the year-ago quarter.

In addition, Steve Jobs hinted at even more new products this year:

“It was a phenomenal quarter that exceeded our expectations all around, including the most successful product launch in Apple’s history with iPhone 4,” Steve Jobs said in a statement. “iPad is off to a terrific start, more people are buying Macs than ever before, and we have amazing new products still to come this year.”

Here’s the full press release:

Number seven in our series is free, streamlined, an absolute joy to use — and here’s the biggie — syncs seamlessly with one of several desktop companions (which are also free); it’s also the first essential in our series that fully replaces a native app.

It’s made big waves at the Japanese iTunes Store since its launch in March (not surprising as it was developed by Japanese developer Inforteria), and this morning Twitcal — an app that allows its users to import and update their calendars via tweets — has landed in app stores elsewhere.

The app looks pretty nifty: Just follow another user’s calendar, and your calendar is automatically updated anytime they make a change. Users-sans-Twitcal aren’t left out completely though, because the app can also send event notifications via email. As expected, Twitcal also syncs with Google Calendar and iCal.

The Pogoplug is a great little gadget that connects up to four hard drives to the Internet. It’s very handy for serving up files, music and movies to anyone, anywhere. We reviewed it very favorably.

Now there’s about to be a business version, the Pogoplug Biz, which adds a bunch of features for small and medium business (SMB) users. It’s like Dropbox, except the data is not on some other company’s servers. The Pogoplug Biz is available for pre-order for $299 and includes lifetime Pogoplug service.

We start the day with a faux leather case cover for the iPhone 4 – just $2 until July 23. Next is a blast from the past, Disney’s TRON for the iPhone or iPod touch. We top things off with a series of iPhone App price drops, including “Modern Combat: Sandstorm.” Along the way, we also check out some deals on other software, including a family pack of iLife ’09, as well as Poser 8 and Pandora 2 for the Mac.

Details on these and many other items are available at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.

Although we won’t know for certain how Apple did during the third financial quarter until after the markets close tonight, analysts this morning came out with their usual prognostications, including a surprise reduction from Oppenheimer on the target price for the Cupertino, Calif. company’s stock.

Oppenheimer analyst Yair Reiner told investors this morning he is concerned the negative publicity over the iPhone 4’s reception problems could hurt sales. “We believe the iPhone 4’s antenna performance is comparable to that of other smartphones, but in the court of public opinion, perception is reality,” Reiner writes. “The perception — created by a scoop-hungry media and Apple’s newly-emboldened wireless adversaries — is that the 4 is faulty,” the analyst adds.

There are several excellent iPhone apps available for cyclists. Abvio’s entrant into this category is called Cyclemeter, which turns your iPhone into a GPS-based cycling computer. The $4.99 app has been updated to allow multitasking and full iOS 4 integration.

In many ways, Cyclemeter is pretty similar to other apps such as B.iCycle or iMapMyRide. It offers full integration with Google maps and iCal. You can control your iPod from within the app. It can save your routes and post rides to your Twitter or Facebook accounts. And it will produce some pretty impressive charts and graphs to help analyze your performance. Battery consumption is also on par with that of other cycling apps.

Apple’s due to start sending out free cases to beleaguered iPhone 4 owners at the end of the week… and while that’s great for customers, it’s bad news indeed for companies planning on selling their own iPhone 4 cases. How do you compete with free?

Incipio is trying. They’ve just started a cute “We love our customers too” campaign. It works like this: once you receive your free bumper from Apple, you can send it in to Incipio for five bucks off one of their premium iPhon cases.

Obviously, this is only a good deal if you’re looking for a higher-quality case than the bumper, but still, it’s a nice gesture. The question is: with Apple intending on sending out third-party cases along with the bumper, what will Incipio do for people who get another free case instead? Will the same discount still apply?

With the iOS 4 update, a surprising number of iPhone and iPod Touch users are reporting a mysterious and contentless email popping up in their mailboxes, straight from the past: December 31st, 1969. Let the conspiracy theories commence!

The emails only seem to appear in MobileMe or GMail accounts, and appears without a sender, subject of content. Even stranger, the email can’t be deleted: once you’ve been 1969ed, you can’t easily go back.

The good news is there are fixes, but they are often temporary, and one involves 34 distinct steps. No official word from Apple yet on whether they’ll fix it, or what it all means… but somehow, I’m guessing, it all ties in to Roswell.

[via DVICE]

Artist Xylo planted these fake iPhones to protest the working conditions at Foxconn, where electronics giants including Apple make their gadgets.

Defined by the artist as “street protest art about the iPhone prison death camps,” the outcry iPhones are made from a fine cement mixture, painted by hand and currently hanging around London.

As we await Apple’s third-quarter earnings report, analysts are offering their opinion on what the Cupertino, Calif. company may announce. Will ‘Antennagate’ hurt iPhone sales, can the Mac escape the iPad’s shadow, and will the iPod continue its downward decline?

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster told investors Monday he foresees Mac sales of between 3.1 million and 3.2 million for the quarter, up 11 percent. This after sales of the Apple machines grew 35 percent in May and 39 percent in April. Apple likely will top the 2.94 million Mac sales Apple reported earlier in 2010, according to Munster.

Apple has just brought their Filemaker database software to iOS devices for the very first time, and while FileMaker Go isn’t going to replace your Mac when it comes to database creation, it is a slick way to access Filemaker databases on the go.

Filemaker Go allows users to update and modify existing databases on their iPhone or iPad after they have been created and designed through Filemaker Pro. You transfer them to your device through iTunes or email, or even access an existing database online by clicking on a web link.

Filemaker Go requires iOS 4.0 or higher on the iPhone. Filemaker Go for iPad requires iOS 3.2 or better, and it will read database files as old as Filemaker 7. At $19.99, it’s not a cheap app, but for professionals who do a lot of work in Filemaker database, it’s the best solution out there.

With the iOS 4.0 update, Apple finally figured out how to bring free major updates to the iOS operating system to non-contract devices like the iPod Touch…. which makes this rumor coming out of Stuff.tv pretty questionable.

According to their app developer sources, a paid update to iOS 4 for the iPad is a “definite.” That’s a pretty big contradiction of Apple’s own iPad EULA, which reads:

Apple will provide you any iPad OS software updates that it may release from time to time, up to and including the next major iPad OS software release following the version of iPad OS software that originally shipped from Apple on your iPad, for free. For example, if your iPad originally shipped with iPad 3.x software, Apple would provide you with any iPad OS software updates it might release up to and including the iPad 4.x software release. Such updates and releases may not necessarily include all of the new software features that Apple releases for newer iPad models.

Of course, Apple’s free to change course on this, but if they figured out how to bring iOS 4 to the iPod Touch without a fee, there’s little doubt in my mind they can manage it for the iPad… even if Cupertino was tempted to go back on its word.