Apple didn’t even need to release the iPad overseas in order for it to become an international hit, according to analytics released by AdMob on the day before the iPad’s official international launch.
According to AdMob’s data, international usage of the iPad hovered at around 25% of total traffic in April.
That’s an amazing number, but it groks with my own experience living in Germany: iPads are fairly easy to find here on eBay and Craigslist, at entirely reasonable premiums. The iPad may be big in the States, but it’s going to be huge in the rest of the world.
Logic3’s latest accessory, the LCD ProDock, is a compact dock for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPod Classic that isn’t particularly remarkable in any way, except for one: it comes with a neat, Nano-like LCD remote that allows you to browse your docked iDevice’s media content through an iPod-style interface.
Otherwise, it’s a pretty standard cheapie dock, featuring component and composite video outputs for hooking up to a television or stereo, but we do like that remote. We’d like it even better if it had a clickwheel instead of buttons.
You can pick the LCD ProDock up now for just £79.99
The sometimes accurate, oft wishful thinking Digitimes has a doozy of a story this morning, claiming that the fourth-generation iPhone we’ve seen time and time again in countless leaks might not be the one Jobs hoists onstage at WWDC in June.
According to their interview with senior analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, Apple has two iPhones its currently working on, internally called the N90 and the N91. The N90 is the iPhone Gizmo got their hands on, while the N91 is a less impressive handset more similar to the iPhone 3GS.
The N90 is the iPhone Apple wants to release, providing they don’t have any unexpected setbacks (such as component shortages). The N91 is the iPhone they’ll release if they can’t get their ducks in a row.
Egretlist is a neat idea for an iPhone application, based on the data you store inside Evernote.
The app looks inside your Evernote notes (Evernotes?) for checkboxes, and extracts those items on their own. Then it re-arranges and re-displays them in a very smart, Moleskine-style notebook format.
What I like about this idea is that the todo items retain their context inside Evernote. You can keep a short list of todos with the other notes and info that relate to them – then, when you simply want to see the todo list as a whole to see what you should do next, Egretlist gives you that at-a-glance overview.
Workers install suicide netting at a Foxconn plant. Image: NYT.
The Asian electronics giant Foxconn is in full damage control mode after yet another suicide at one its giant Chinese factories, which cheaply pump out electronics for Apple and others. But one of the company’s representatives made an unfortunate statement when talking about the conditions at its factories:
“There is a fine line between productivity and regimentation and inhumane treatment,” said Louis Woo, an aide to Mr. Gou at Hon Hai. “I hope we treat our workers with dignity and respect.”
But of course, that’s not true at all. There’s a huge difference between productivity and inhumane treatment, not a “fine line.” And it’s that gap that makes all the difference.
Foxconn has a reputation for a stressful and oppressive work atmosphere. Employees are paid relatively well, but are pushed hard to produce and are not allowed to talk to each other during work, according to reports. The work is repetitive, mind-numbing and robotic. Stress, isolation and hopelessness: it’s a recipe for trouble.
Apple and the other tech companies that are Foxconn’s customers must bear some responsibility here. It’s time Apple stepped up its annual audit of contractors and lived up to its promise of “ensuring the highest standards of social responsibility.”
In one of the biggest and unlikeliest turnarounds in business history, Apple is the most valuable company in technology, passing Microsoft in market capitalization.
Apple’s market cap has passed $227.1 billion — ahead of Microsoft’s $226.3 billion. Apple is up about 1.8% today, and Microsoft down about 1%.
Of course, this may change tomorrow, but for the moment, Apple is the new king of technology.
What a difference a decade makes, when Apple was on the ropes and Microsoft look unassailable. Now, Apple is clearly at the forefront of the next huge wave in tech: mobile. Microsoft isn’t even in the game.
I find my cinema display offers plenty of screen real estate for the things I do everyday, and with my MacBook Pro hooked up, having two displays is a real benefit. It’s nice to have the ability to browse through one document whilst typing up another on a separate screen, or have easy access to my music library or my Twitter feed without having to move or minimize the application I’m working on.
However, I don’t always want to be sat at my desk. I often like to get stuff done from the sofa when I’m feeling a bit lazy, or from the garden on a nice day. Now I can have two displays wherever I’m working thanks to Air Display from Avatron Software on my iPad.
There are twice as many iPhone OS devices in use as Andorid devices, the mobile advertising company AdMob estimates.
AdMob’s April Mobile Metrics report analyzed the number of unique Android and iPhone devices in its network. The company found that in the US, there were 10.7 million iPhone devices and 8.7 million Android devices. Include the iPod touch, and there are 2 to 1 iPhone OS devices compared to Android. Overseas, the gap is even wider: 3.5 to 1 iPhone devices compared to Android.
The numbers are illustrative because both platforms are growing fast, but there little idea how many are in day-to-day use. For example, Apple has sold 85 million iPhones and iPod touches in the last three years, but doesn’t say how many are in use. At its recent developer conference, Google boasted that it is activating 100,000 Android devices a day. Gartner estimates that Apple’s OS now powers 15.4 percent of global smartphones, while Google’s Android has 9.6 percent of the market.
AdMob says its numbers are good beceause they are based on actual data, not estimates, and it has a large sample size.
Against the odds and earlier than expected, Wired magazine has debuted its interactive magazine app for the iPad. And it’s killer.
The Wired app blends the magazine’s superb editorial editorial and high production values with elements that only digital can bring – interactivity and multimedia. The stories are well-written and beautifully designed with big, gorgeous photos. Navigation is easy and intuitive and there are lots of interactive graphics and supplementary video.
“Wired magazine will be digital from now on, designed from the start as a compelling interactive experience, in parallel with our print edition,” says Chris Anderson, Wired’s editor in chief. “Wired is finally, well, wired.”
Thanks to Apple’s ban on Flash, the app had some birthing troubles, and was expected later this summer. Wired has solved the Flash issue by making the app native to the iPad — it’s not an Adobe Air or Flash port. According to Anderson, it’s made with the same Adobe productions tools used to create the print magazine, so it’s (relatively) easy and quick to produce in parallel. This, of course, is crucial.
It’s not cheap — $4.99 a pop — which has already upset some reviewers on iTunes. Because the digital edition is produced in parallel and distribution costs are near zero, it should cost a lot less than print, critics reason. (The print edition costs less than a dollar with a subscription).
But the price is perhaps one of the most important things about the digital edition. Wired is trying out a new business model, one that many print publishers are praying will work. Me too. If Wired can make it profitable enough to support its editorial costs, that’s good news for everyone — publishers and readers.
Check out CultofMac.com’s quick video tour of the Wired iPad app (This video will play on the iPad, btw):
We start off with a deal on a 16GB fourth-generation iPod nano for $135. Next up is a 2.26GHz Core 2 Duo MacBook from the Apple Store for $759. We round out our top picks with a number of MacBook Pros, starting at $1,099 for a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo and 13.3-inch screen.
Along the way, we check out the latest App Store price drops and freebies, deals on AppleCare plans for 15-inch and 17-inch MacBook Pros, and software for your Mac. As always, details on these and many other items are available on CoM’s “Daily Deals” page after the jump.
Apple said it was “saddened and upset” by a recent spate of suicides at Foxconn, a China-based electronics manufacturer believed to be making Apple’s upcoming next-generation iPhone. The Cupertino, Calif. consumer electronics designer also announced it would launch an independent evaluation of the plant where 10 workers have committed suicide in the past year.
Earlier this month, a call for investigations was spurred by the death of another worker.
The iPad launches officially in Japan on May 28, but like lots of countries around the world, jet setters and government members already have them before local stores do.
Apple’s new device hasn’t been declared street legal by Japan’s communication authorities yet so, much like in Israel whose iPad “ban” got supermodel Bar Rafaeli into trouble, until it’s been officially cleared for use, elites who have them must pretend not to use them.
Case in point: Japan’s telecoms minister, Kazuhiro Haraguchi, “borrowed” an iPad from Marc Benioff, customer service exec at Salesforce.com, while visiting the US in May. Haraguchi however, clarified via Twitter that “I’m not illegally using the iPad in Japan.”
Speaking Tuesday at Amazon’s annual shareholder meeting, CEO Jeff Bezos said that a color version of the Kindle e-reader is “still a long way out.”
According to Bezos, adding color to the Kindle’s e-ink display, while possible in the lab, is simply “not ready for prime-time production.”
Don’t think for a second, though, that Amazon intends to let the iPad run away with the e-book market without a fight.
Bezos appears to have been very specifically saying that a color e-ink Kindle wouldn’t be out soon, but his wording leaves the possibility of an iPad-like Amazon tablet wide open. Trying to beat Apple at the tablet hardware game is probably folly, but there’s got to be a lot of temptation in the Amazon offices to give it a try.
There’s a growing number of analysts and pundits who believe that netbooks will increasingly become irrelevant to most customers as tablets This latest Retrevo poll seems to support that opinion.
The Retrevo poll’s sample size was over 1,000 individuals of different genders, ages, incomes and location who considered buying a netbook last year. The question asked was: “Did you hold off on buyinga netbook after the iPad was announced in January?”
The results are quite good for iPad. 40% waited to buy a netbook until after Apple announced the iPad, while 30% didn’t wait at all. The remaining 30%? They all abandoned their netbook plans and went with iPad instead.
Wired has released a version of their magazine for the iPad. The new version costs $4.99 and is available from iTunes. Ironically, the video used to demonstrate the iPad version, can’t be viewed on an iPad due to its use of Adobe Flash.
The iPad version was released ahead of the scheduled June premiere by publisher Condé Nast. “Wired Magazine will be digital from now on, designed from the start as a compelling interactive experience, in parallel with our print edition,” editor-in-chief Chris Anderson told readers. Earlier this year, Anderson called the iPad a “game changer.”
In the on-again-off-again Apple/Flash affair many people feel caught in the fray. McCann creative Mat Bisher, perhaps tired of being caught up in this tug- of-war, used his Flash-built site to send a strong message: “STEVE JOBS HATES YOU.”
Bisher employed a Flash sniffer to send this message, sniffers detect whether users are on Flash-enabled devices. Try to view Bisher’s “Save Apple” site from an iPhone or iPad you’ll be greeted by Steve Jobs flipping you the bird with a freakishly long middle digit.
Bisher hit on the idea out of frustration: “I, like many agency creatives, have designed my site using Flash, and as we all know, Apple’s iPads and iPhones are not Flash supported thanks to Mr. Jobs.
Apple’s been under the scrutiny of the U.S. Department of Justice in two anti-trust investigations over the last couple of months: the first in response to complaints by Adobe that Apple wouldn’t allow Flash on iPhone OS, the second in relation to the forthcoming iAd network.
Steve Jobs can’t be happy about either of these investigations, so the prospect of a third must have him massaging his temple as if someone just fired an invisible BB into it: the New York Times claims that the DoJ is launching yet another anti-trust investigation against Apple, focusing on the iTunes hegemony over the digital music market.
Apple’s slice of the web browsing pie sits restlessly at around ten percent, in the States when you take all of its platforms into account and is growing every day. It doesn’t quite have the same breadth of pie wedge in Europe, but as this chart from AT Internet auditing the visitors of their monitored websites makes clear, Apple’s operating systems are gobbling up more and more pageviews every day.
According to AT Internet, Apple’s marketshare is now sitting at around 6.8% in Europe, having grown 2.3 points since last November. iPhone OS is consuming about 1% of all European website views. Meanwhile, Microsoft’s own marketshare has gone down over the same period… with websites visited by Windows Mobile and Android devices are so insignificant that they can be comfortably lumped into “Other OS” category.
Valve Software has just announced that their revolutionary shooter Half-Life 2 will be coming to Steam for Mac later today… and to promote it, they’ve released this incredible Half-Life 2 themed riff on Apple’s own seminal “1984” advertisement, with City 17 resistant fighter Alyx flinging the series’ iconic crowbar through the televised face of the Big-Brother-like Walter Breen.
Absolutely brilliant. As for Half-Life 2, the Steam release marks the first time that the game has been playable under OS X for the last six years. At this point, the game is a little long-in-the-tooth, and Valve has released much better games like Portal and Left 4 Dead II since then, this is a great opportunity to play a classic.
Price is still unknown, although the PC version costs $20 on Steam, so unless Valve offers Half-Life 2 at a discount, that’s probably what you can expect to pay.
Yesterday’s release of Google’s Chrome 5 internet browser made it even more viable a Safari replacement than ever (if you can get over the design niggles, that is), but if a rather sly hint from Daring Fireball’s John Gruber is anything to go by, Apple may attempt to match Chrome and Firefox’s most interesting feature — extensions support — with Safari 5.
Quoth Gruber:
The other big thing that’s missing [in Safari] (compared to both Chrome and Firefox) is a proper extension API. If only Apple had an imminent developer conference where they could unveil such a thing.
This is a big weakness of Safari compared to many other modern browsers , and the ability to easily tweak the Safari experience according to user preference would certainly win Apple’s browser some converts.
The question is: are browser extensions anathema to Apple’s own design ethos, which tries to perfect the user experience through tight-fisted control? As great as Firefox and Chrome extensions are — I simply can’t work with a browser that doesn’t support them anymore — things can get quite ugly and confusing, design-wise, with a lot of extensions installed. Apple can’t be too happy about that prospect.
Still, at the end of the day, the option of extensions coming to Safari is a win for everyone. My only hope is that Apple will crib some other ideas from Chrome while they are at it: Chrome’s effortless merging of the search field and address field is so brilliant that it makes any other interpretation seem amateurish in comparison.
Apple’s upcoming 2010 Worldwide Developer Conference, starting June 7 in San Francisco, is a bit like celebrating Christmas Day after already knowing what will be under the tree. Yes, CEO Steve Jobs will deliver a keynote address, but otherwise, there is “little room for surprise,” a prominent Apple analyst said Wednesday.
With talk of the upcoming next-generation iPhone splashed across blogs and television newscasts like some messy Hollywood divorce, all that’s left for Apple to do is fill in the details. The handset will likely have a front-facing camera useful for video conferencing, longer battery life and thinner design, Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster told investors. Munster calls the WWDC a “non-event” for Apple stock.
Billed as the first real tennis game on iPad, Ace Tennis HD 2010 doesn’t disappoint. Boasting gorgeous graphics, Ace Tennis HD has a great multiplayer mode, wich matches you with other players online.
Be warned — this kind of competition really brings out the John McEnroe in you — dominating other players is dangerously addictive.
Former Apple retail employees have filed a class action suit in California over rest breaks and poor treatment.
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of all people employed in non-exempt (hourly paid) “Genius” positions in San Francisco County Superior Court on September 15, 2009. A website gives more details on the suit.
“Apple has enjoyed an advantage over its competition and imposes a resultant disadvantage on its “Genius” employees by failing to authorize, permit and provide statutorily mandated rest breaks as required by law.”
Microsoft's James J Allard (seen here with Bill Gates) is leaving the company, largely because of failed attempts to match Apple's iPod, iPhone and iPad.
Two of Microsoft’s highest-profile executives are leaving, and Apple’s running rings around the company is partly seen as the reason.
Robbie Bach and James J Allard, leaders of Microsoft’s Entertainment & Devices Division, are both leaving and will not be replaced. It is Microsoft’s biggest management shakeup in years. The restructuring will put CEO Steve Ballmer in direct charge of Microsoft’s consumer-focused mobile businesses, which are getting a kicking from Google, Nintendo and especially Apple. This transition is reminiscent ofwhen Bill Gates left Microsoft, which signified a turning point for the company’s leadership and direction.
In fact, Venture Beat’s Dean Takahashi, who wrote a pair of books about the Entertainment & Devices Division (Opening the Xbox and The Xbox 360 Uncloaked), says the inability to compete with Apple is behind the shakeup:
Allard’s last project at Microsoft was Courier, which Ballmer canceled earlier this year. It was viewed as an attempt to take on the Apple iPad. While Bach’s division is profitable now, it may be remembered for its inability to take on Apple in the increasingly critical mobile business. And that may explain why, any day now, Apple’s market capitalization is going to become bigger than Microsoft’s.
UPDATE: Horace Dediu has a good guess why Bach was fired: he lost Hewlett Packard when the company bought Palm. “Bach lost a key account; in fact, he could be responsible for having lost the biggest account that Microsoft ever had. Ballmer is a sales guy and he knows the importance of these relationships. A customer like HP must be managed carefully and their strategy must be steered to fit with yours. If HP felt they needed to go somewhere else for their mobile OS, it’s a slap in the face, but if they buy the asset and IP and internalize a competing platform, then that is a dagger to the heart for Ballmer.”
