Here’s a hard to believe story: one of Apple’s executives behind the original iPhone has gone so far as to apologize to anyone who bought one during Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week.
Why? According to ex-Apple senior director of product marketing for the original iPhone Bob Borchers: “If you had the original iPhone, I apologize; it was not a great phone, it was an OK phone.”
Unbelievably, he may have a point.
Apple was responsible for 15% of the world’s smartphone shipments in 2013, and as much as 56% of all the profit. Sony, on the other hand, accounted for only 3.8% of the world’s smartphone shipments in 2013, and is barely ekeing out a profit company-wide.
Despite all of this, Sony mobile chief and European president Pierre Perron told The Inquirer that Apple is “missing out” by only releasing yearly iPhone freshes, instead of flooding the market with incremental updates every few months.
Up to this point, the term “iBeacon” has been used to describe just about any location-aware transmitter that can send data to a device over Bluetooth. But now it’s going to get harder for companies to market their products as iBeacons.
Apple is clamping down on its iBeacon trademark by adding specifications for the technology to its ‘Made for iPhone’ (MFi) program.
Including iBeacon in MFi gives Apple complete quality control over where the iBeacon name can be used. When a Bluetooth speaker maker wants to be approved by Apple, it has to go through the MFi program. And now the same process will be required for iBeacon.
According to numbers from analyst firm IDC, Apple is now the fifth-largest cellphone maker in China, with 7% of the overall market share.
Apple jumped an entire 1 percent in the last quarter of 2013, based on the success of the iPhone 5s and 5c. This doesn’t take into account the impact of Apple’s deal with China Mobile, which began selling handsets to customers this January.
A new Apple patent, published Tuesday, reveals how future Apple earbuds and headphones might incorporate health-monitoring features.
The patent shows how a monitoring system could be cleverly built into Apple earphones, and used to track activity such as speed and distance traveled during exercise. The device would also be able to sense other biometric data relating to metrics body temperature, perspiration rate, and heart rate.
This is Cult of Mac’s exclusive column written by an actual Apple Store Genius who answers all your questions about working at an Apple Store. Our genius must remain anonymous, but other than “Who are you, anyway?” ask anything you want about what goes on behind that slick store facade.
This week our Genius answers why the iPhone screen can be repaired in stores while the iPad has to be shipped away from special care. We also discuss whether working at the Apple Store can be turned into a solid career, plus the top 5 most annoying things customers do at the Apple Store.
Got a question you want the inside scoop on? Send us your questions and the answers will be published first in Cult of Mac’s Magazine on Newsstand. Send your questions to newsATcultofmac.com with “genius” in the subject line.
Q: On average, how many customers come in to ask for or buy the new Mac Pro?
You’d be surprised how often people ask about it. It’s a brand new product so a lot of people that come into the store are curious what it looks like, want to know the new features and ogle the new design the same way the iPhone and iPad tables are crushed after a launch.
On the other hand, it’s a professional machine with a price tag that would intimidate Bigfoot himself, so I personally haven’t met anyone who has bought one in the store, but we never have any in stock — orders are backed up until April!
Q: Would you leave your job at Apple for a higher-paying job?
Hell yes. Let’s be real, working at the Apple Store is fun but it’s not my dream job. I get to be surrounded by cool tech and great people who are uncontrollably excited about everything Apple. The pay is decent, Apple treats us pretty well, and you could make a career out of it if you want to, but at the end of the day it’s still a retail position.
A few friends that have left Apple told management they got a better offers from another company but management rarely tries to match an outside offer. Once that higher-paying job comes along, a lot of people leave.
The monotony of the job wears you down and it’s not like you’re actually working for Apple corporate, so it doesn’t feel quite as magical or special as I imagine working at HQ in Cupertino would. In the end, it really is just a job and lots of people come and go after finding greener pastures elsewhere.
Q: Is it true you are not allowed to go on rumor sites like Cult of Mac and MacRumors?
You’re not supposed to read them while you’re at Apple, but a lot of us read the rumor sites in our free time. We get just as excited about new iPhones, iPads and the possibility of an iWatch as all the other Apple fanboys, but we’re in the dark as much as regular customers about future products.
We’re not allowed to speculate about future products with customers. If a customer asks whether I’ve heard about X post on Y Apple blog about Z unannounced product, I’m supposed to act clueless, say I’ve never heard of it nor do I know anything about Apple’s plans, but really I’ll be chowing down on the latest iPhone rumors during my lunch break.
A new survey of 2,000 iPhone users saw 3/5ths of respondents admit to having a “blind loyalty” to the Apple brand.
78% percent claimed they “couldn’t imagine having a different type of phone now,” while 52% said they had been “really impressed” with the iPhone.
It’s easy to forget just how much the iPhone changed things. Today saw the publishing of one of the iPhone’s most familiar patents — its gesture/touch-based text selection tool.
Describing a new way of selecting text using gestures on a multi-touch sensitive display screen, the patent, which was filed back in March 2008, is credited to Wayne Carl Westerman, Apple’s Multi-Touch Architect; Bas Ording, a User Interface Designer who joined Apple not long after Jobs’ return; B. Michael Victor, and Stephen O. Lemay.
We all know Apple is one of the biggest companies around, but how big is just iTunes? Bigger than many famous, multinational corporations, as it turns out… and that’s without counting in iPhone, iPad and Mac sales.
The other day, our Google-loving friends over at Cult of Android breathlessly hopped on a story suggesting that Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak wanted Apple to make an Android smartphone.
It was always a bizarre story — what could Apple possibly have to gain from that, when it is already has the best-selling smartphone in the world — but it certainly made for a good headline. The only problem? Woz says he never meant it.