Apple Inc. - page 155

I walked into the Apple Store in San Francisco tonight fully expecting to walk out with a brand-new MacBook Pro — the 2.53 GHz model, if at all possible. After 30 minutes playing with all of Apple’s latest laptops, I was stunned to find myself instead walking out the door with a 2.4 GHz MacBook and a smile on my face.

The Top Line: The Aluminum MacBook is the perfect heir to the 12″ PowerBook G4. It’s light, rugged, and meant to be used as a true laptop — it actually runs cooler than my 12″ PowerBook from 2003. Apple hit it out of the park with this thing, and I couldn’t be more delighted. To learn why, click through.

What appears to be a genuine spy shot of the new iPod nano has surfaced on MacNN (heavily Photoshopped and disguised for some reason) before it got picked up and surfaced for the wider public in this AppleInsider thread.

As rumored, the new nano appears to be taller than the current model, with a rounded body and screen. Presumably, the screen is designed for the iPod to be tilted to watch widescreen movies in landscape mode.

The device is expected to be unveiled at a Steve Jobs “Let’s Rock” special event in San Francisco next Tuesday. But fear not — there’s likely to be other surprises. Apple PR is telling journalists the event is a “big deal,” which implies there’s more than a tarted-up 2G-looking iPod.

Steve Jobs will host Tuesday’s “Let’s Rock” media event at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco

Apple PR is pulling out the stops to get media in SF next week, saying the announcement on the 9th is a “big deal.”

One East Coast journalist, who writes for a big news weekly, said Apple PR called and urged him to fly to San Francisco next week for the press event.

“Apple just told me it’s a big deal and I should try to be there,” said the journalist, who asked to remain anonymous.

The call is unusual for Apple’s PR department, which rarely gives clues to the import of its press events.

The event is scheduled for 10am, September 9th at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and is widely expected to showcase updates to the iPod product line, with some hoping for new Mac notebooks and even possible indications of a touch-screen Mac tablet.

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.”

I just installed the whopping 250-Mbyte iPhone 2.0.1 update, and it seems to fix most of the problems everyone complained about. Among the highlights:

• Everything runs much faster. Could be my imagination, but feels nice!
• Typing is much faster. No more keyboard lag.
• Infuriatingly sluggish Contacts app now loads fast and scrolls smoothly.
• Syncing is much speedier. No longer backs up every app! TTF.
• Google Maps app seems much faster. Loads quick, smoother scrolling and zippy zooming.
• Overall, update procedure is pretty quick: It installs entirely new firmware, but songs, movies, contacts and other data is left untouched — so there’s no 45 minute restore to suffer through.
• NetShare app is not deleted. My copy of NetShare works fine after the update. Be sure to sync everything, including apps, BEFORE updating. BoxOffice also seems to sync correctly, according to reports on other sites.

AppleOwner.com, a Taiwanese Apple-oriented website, has leaked what are purported to be pictures of the new MacBook, a highly anticipated revision to Apple’s line of increasingly popular notebook computers expected to be available within the next six weeks.

The photographs are long on suggestion, but short on detail, and may well be noting more than placeholders on the AppleOwner website. Make of them what you will.

Via Gizmodo.

UPDATE: Apple’s stock is being punished because of concerns about Steve Jobs’ health, plus the company’s cautious guidance about Q4. Jobs didn’t participate in the earnings call, leading analysts to ask whether he is OK. Apple CFO, Peter Oppenheimer dodged the question. As Wired.com reports: “Andy Hargreaves, consumer electronics analyst at Pacific Crest Securities, said the lack of response from Oppenheimer regarding Jobs’ health only adds to investors’ doubt. “Not addressing Steve Jobs’ health perpetuates the fear that it’s a real problem,” Hargreaves said.”

Well, Apple just had another record quarter, with earnings jumping by 31 percent and revenue by 38 percent. The company sold more Macs in the third quarter than it has at any point in company history. It is performing better as a company than it ever has, and in a down economy.

So how does Wall Street respond? By knocking the stock price down by more than 10 points. Why? Because Apple’s guidance, or “made-up numbers to please whiny Wall Street analysts,” is below where the analysts believe it should be. Now, this might seem like rational behavior. If Apple is below Street consensus, the company must be headed for unanticipated trouble, right?

No. Not at all. Apple always sets expectations low and then jumps way beyond them. Take this quarter. Apple set earnings guidance at $1 per share. Analysts pegged it at $1.10 per share. Instead, they managed $1.19 per share. And the same thing keeps happening as far back as you can look. As Andy Zaky notes, Apple does this all the time, and they always beat their own guidance and the Street consensus, too. It’s just how they roll.

So why is it obvious to everyone except Wall Street traders that Apple always understates its guidance? Power is one hell of a drug, I imagine.

Picture via Imageshack

Steve Jobs at WWDC 2008. Photo by MacsimumNews

During Apple’s earnings call, a question was asked about Steve Jobs’ health.

Answer: “Jobs has no plans to leave Apple. Steve’s health is a private matter.”

Apple just announced its best June quarter ever for revenue and earnings in Apple’s history.

Highlights include:

• Almost 2.5 million Macs shipped — 41 percent growth. Highest Mac shipments ever. The Mac is back!
• 11 million iPods sold — 12 percent growth
• $7.46 billion revenue
• $1.07 billion profit

(Last year: $5.41 billion and $818 million profit)

And this is without recording any iPhone revenues, which are being deferred until the fourth quarter.

Webcast of the analyst conference call.
Highlights from the analyst call:

• App store: 900 apps; 25 million apps downloaded; 20 percent free; 90 percent below $10.
• iPhone 3G: 22 Countries. 1 million sold in first 3 days after launch. 20 more countries on Aug 22nd
• Future Product transition: Q4. “Can’t discuss today.”

Photo by Danny Novo

Everyone is concerned about Steve Jobs’ health, prompting the obvious question about succession plans at Apple. The company seems doomed without him. Who has the vision and drive?

But Apple will be fine without Jobs, although it won’t be the same.

Here’s why, after the jump.

Steve Jobs made an interesting disclosure to the NY Times yesterday while talking about the remarkable Grand Central technology in Mac OS X Snow Leopard that will allow programmers to get more power out of multicore computers and also to use GPUs for additional performance. In the midst of such talk, he announced for the very first time the reason that Apple purchased processor-maker PA Semiconductor in April.

“PA Semi is going to do system-on-chips for iPhones and iPods,” he said.

Many had speculated that future iPhones could run on Intel silicon, or that PA Semi had been purchased just to recruit some of its talented engineers. Steve says otherwise. Apple’s getting into the mobile processor game. Two years from now, all our iPods and iPhones might be running on their hardware. And if PA’s stuff is as good as everyone says, such exclusive hardware could maintain the competitive advantage that software already offers the iPhone.

Dennis Liu, creator of the clever OS X-themed music video that went viral last week, is looking for help with his next Apple-themed video.
On May 9, Dennis posted a music video he’d made for indie band The Bird & The Bee featuring his OS X desktop and dozens of applications. The video, featured below, has been viewed more than 600,000 times and written up on scores of blogs and websites.
Eleven days later, the video has earned Dennis several job offers and offers of work from Yahoo, Microsoft and HBO, he says. According to Dennis, the highlights of his “crazy” week are:
– Ranked #1 viral video at www.viralvideochart.com for 1 week.- Head nods from several known Hollywood producers and directors.- Talks to getting a manager/agent at a major talent representation agency- NYU, USC, and Berkeley requesting the video to show their film/new media students.- E-mails from major corporations, including marketing directors and employees of Yahoo, Microsoft, HBO, Pixar, Disney, and of course Apple.- Invited to screen at film festivals world wide, from the UK to Australia- Bird & the Bee enjoyed the video, going to their NYC concert in June 2nd.- An apple store manager in IL showed all her employees the video as an example to artfully show the power of the macs to customers.- The author of “Stickies” wrote to congratulate, as well as a lead developer of OSX. https://mooseyard.com/Jens/2008/05/stickies-makes-its-music-video-debut/- Many, many, many start-ups/unknown musicians looking for a director to shoot their next video/ad.
Dennis works at the NY ad agency BBDO, and used to work out of Saatchi & Saatchi NY shooting viral videos. More about Dennis here.
Next on the horizon, Dennis says he’s looking for help shooting another Apple-related viral. He writes:
“I have another really cool idea, very different from this one – but still with enormous viral potential for Apple. Would take probably twice as long to make, but could be very cool. But am trying to decide whether it’s worth the amount of work… especially when it’s all by myself. If there is a next time, I could appreciate a hand….”

VMWare, the virtualization powerhouse that brought its Fusion software to Mac in late 2006, is now just about ready to roll its second major version of the program for OS X. Late this afternoon, VMWare sent over info and download links for a public beta of Fusion 2.0, and, I have to say, it’s looking hawt. More comprehensive DirectX 9 support for seamless PC gaming, insane levels of multimonitor support (ten screens!) and easy importing of Parallels, Virtual PC and even Boot Camp partitions.

Better yet, VMWare has announced that Fusion 2.0 will be free to all existing Mac customers once the final version ships. Of the three big updates, the monitor support is the big one. Parallels doesn’t support multiple displays for Windows, and the Fusion implementation looks nicer than multiple displays for most native PCs. Parallels can do Mac in one screen, Windows in another, but not Windows on two displays for the same virtual machine. Granted, this is a fairly niche feature, but its really well put together, as you can see in the video I’ve thrown up at the top.

The beta is wide open, so if you want in on the action and can live with a few beta quirks, hit the link.

My old colleague Rob Beschizza, who recently abandoned Wired.com for BoingBoing Gadgets, has a brilliant parody of my new book, Inside Steve’s Brain. The treacherous bastard writes:

“It’s hard to believe that one man revolutionized the operating system business in the 2000s, converting Windows’ extraordinary market dominance into the reviled seven-year ditch that is Vista, and squandering billions on confused advances into ill-understood peripheral markets like video gaming and music hardware

…. Wired.com’s Leander Kahney cuts through the salt-ringed tide marks that surround him to unearth secrets to his unbelievable results. It reveals the real Steve.”

LINK.

UPDATE: Microsoft says this was their attempt to make the worst internal video ever. MMM…yeah. Interesting spin…

I’ve been wrapping up an all-intensive project at work lately, but I have to break my silence for this: “Rocking Our Sales” by Bruce ServicePack and the Vista Street Band. I don’t really know where to begin. I guess I will just say this. I have no idea if Apple makes lame Bruce Springsteen parody music videos to inspire its channel sales teams, but if it does, I have to assume that it uses better lyrics than “Talk up our Microsoft Application Virtualization…See what’s on employee’s laptops with AIS and MDOP!”

EPIC FAIL, MS! And if anyone is actually inspired to sell more Vista based on this, really think about switching your job. I mean, damn.

Via Daring Fireball

Apple has pushed past Toshiba to become the fourth largest PC maker in the U.S., according to new numbers from research firm Gartner.

Apple earned 6.6 percent of the PC market in Q1 2008, and saw 32.5 percent year-on-year growth in unit shipments, Gartner said. Overall, the PC market grew 3 percent year-on-year, Gartner said.

Apple trails Dell (31.4 percent market share), Hewlett-Packard (25 percent) and Acer (9.1 percent). While Dell grew 15 percent year-on-year during the quarter, Acer slipped 18.3 percent, Gartner said.

Acer is only 2.5 percentage points ahead of Apple, and Apple is positioned to regain the number-three slot, which it hasn’t held since the mid-nineties.

Worldwide, Apple failed to make the top 5 (HP, Dell, Acer, Lenovo, Toshiba).

Though the Financial Times is without question a vastly more reliable source than most places that spawn rumors of Apple’s impending moves, I just can’t convince myself to buy into reports that Apple wants to create a monthly iTunes subscription plan or all-you-can eat music business model with the purchase of an iPod or iPhone. It isn’t their style

While denials from Steve Jobs are usually a good way to spot what he’s working on, this is an area where he has remained steadfast. He believes that people want to own their music, and I believe that he’s right. Sure, I love to sample music as much as anyone else, but the songs that I keep are really personal to me. Renting music just doesn’t work out. Even if Nokia is doing it, too.

Moreover, the monthly subscription business model is one that Apple hasn’t ever offered before to anyone. Not for movies, TV, or software. In fact, Apple’s only experience of recurring payments are with the iPhone’s service fees, which the company gets just a small slice of. There are far too many accounting headaches to resolve to make it worthwhile, and the record companies are angry at Apple. At Apple’s restaurant, they dine ala carte.

Back in January, I was fairly effusive in my disappointment in the MacBook Air. I still think it’s a product that has a long way to go before it fulfills its promise as a thin, light, road warrior’s machine (the fact that it isn’t standard with an SSD is a pretty poor statement about its long-term reliability), but I’m now willing to admit that it hits the mark with at least some people, including people I really respect, like BusinessWeek’s Reena Jana, their innovation editor.

I’ve had a lot of conversations with Reena in the past, and she’s a constantly on-the-go kind of person, meeting with design and innovation leaders around the country. She probably travels for business more than I do. And she loves her MacBook Air:

OK, so I personally don’t have the need for many USB ports, nor for a huge, huge hard drive. And I don’t even feel that bad that there’s no Ethernet port, although I could get an attachment for it, which to me isn’t such a big deal (I rarely use the Ethernet jack). I’m reminded of when MacBook’s stopped having a floppy drive, or a dial-up jack. People were upset. But other laptops followed, because these features became obsolete. I see a parallel here, and my laptop lifestyle was starting to reflect the phasing out of DVDs and Ethernet jacks before the Air was released.

Fair points all, though I think I’d be more comfortable with the Air’s lack of a DVD drive if Apple distributed its own software, such as iWork, on USB key instead of DVD… Still, this is another reminder that a lot of people don’t need anywhere near the file storage capacity that I do. Just this weekend, I learned that my sister-in-law is desperate for an Air, as well. I’ll be very interested to hear how the Air performs in the market. I still think it will meet a fate similar to the G4 Cube, but there are some people who are incredibly excited by it.

For me, I think I’m stuck in Steven Levy’s camp: If I even had one, I think I’d probably throw it out with the newspapers by accident.

Apple’s iTunes music store has overtaken Best Buy to become the number-two music retailer in the U.S. behind Wal-Mart, according to market researcher NPD Group.

Apple’s growth is likely to continue. Sales of CDs are plummeting while digital downloads grew about 50 percent last year, NPD said.

Most tellingly, nearly 50 percent of U.S. teens didn’t buy any CDs during the year, NPD says.

“Teens are continuing to check out on the CD,” NPD analyst Russ Crupnick told the Associated Press .

The amazing video application Miro was just updated with a new Torrent engine in version 1.1, and it is incredibly fast. If you haven’t had the pleasure of using Miro, it’s like VLC plus BitTorrent plus an RSS reader — and also a phenomenal program guide. And now it’s significantly better — the Torrent performance is the best I’ve seen on a Mac. I downloaded an entire episode of Peep Show (from Season 3 — not available in the States for no apparent reason) in under a minute. And then deleted it, of course.

Via Boing Boing

My two favorite tech news sites — Gizmodo and Ars Technica — are hosting a pre-keynote party in San Francisco on Monday night (the 14th) at Harlot, 46 Minna Street. 8-11.30pm.

Giz editor Brian Lam is promising to buy everyone a beer, and there’s schwag (likely shite) for early birds. I’ll be there, and so apparently will Dan Lyons, aka Fake Steve.

Here’s a handy map to the bar.

UPDATE: I just discovered that the free schwag are copies of my books. Ooops.

AppleTell grabbed this snapshot off of the Apple Canada website, which seems to announce that the iPhone is finally coming to Canada. Normally, I’d take that as a sure sign that Apple has a product announcement coming tomorrow — Apple loves Tuesdays, after all. But since the MacBook update showed up on a Thursday, I’ll shoot for the end of the week.

Via Digg.

My brother brought something very interesting to my attention recently. Although Dell offers a 15.4″ Inspiron starting at $499, to make it even roughly comparable in performance to a MacBook, you need to make it cost more than the Apple. No, seriously:

Once you start “customizing” the machine to be anything capable of running a modern OS, a category in which we are forced to include Vista, the total more than doubles. The default shipping OS for the $499 machine is Vista. The laptop, as configured initially, has 512MB of RAM, or a quarter of the recommended amount for Vista. The processor is a single-core running at 2GHz, and the drive capacity is a scanty 60GB, of which between a fifth and a sixth will be consumed by the OS, and somewhat more by preinstalled third-party software.

So, starting from the base price of $499, I added:

Dual core 2GHz CPU: $150
Windows XP Pro: $129 (Yep, you have to pay the price of Leopard to upgrade from XP Home to XP Pro)
1 GB RAM installed: $50
80 GB drive: $25
85 W/Hr battery: $50
802.11n wifi card: $100
McAfee AV software: $99
MS Office: $149
3-year warranty: $240

Dell grand total: $1501

And what of the Mac? Well, aside from costing slightly less, it’s also much less of a hassle to custom build.

At the Apple Store site, I configured a low-end MacBook for purchase.
Stock configuration: 2GHz Core2Duo, 1GB RAM, 80GB disk, 802.11n,
Leopard installed. To this I added:

3-year AppleCare: $249
MS Office: $150 (Or only $79, if you go the iWork route)

Apple grand total: $1498

Checkmate, Dell. I would really like to commend Apple for how easy it is to use their online store compared to Dell’s. The Apple experience is a single page, loaded only with relevant tools to install. Meanwhile, the Dell site is loaded with multiple versions of the same piece of software, or bizarre configuration options most people could not possibly give a crap about. I mean, really. Can you explain off the top of your head why an 85 Wh battery is better than a 60? Or what a 9-cell versus 6-cell battey is? More importantly, do you think anyone you know would? I mean, come on. Just give people what they need. This is absurd and ugly. Shopping at Dell’s site is like buying a used car from a guy named Moe off of Craig’s List (trust me, I have). There continue to be hidden costs you couldn’t have imagined, and it just keeps getting worse.

At this point, is there any reason to stick with Dell? There’s Parallels if you really need it, and MS Office, Quicken, QuickBooks, and most of the other staples have already migrated. Heck, Apple Mail even has built in Exchange support — which Windows doesn’t, unless you buy Office Pro with Outlook. How do you like them Apples, Redmond?

Thanks Andrew!

I love the NBC and Apple feud so much. Sometimes, the companies overtly bash each other. For every other moment, there’s fun speculation. Take for instance, the latest volley, which likely has nothing to do with the epic rumble between Jeff Zucker and Steve Jobs, but it’s fun to pretend otherwise. Here’s the set-up: NBC’s Saturday Night Live had a sketch featuring an iPhone that Gizmodo believes to have the illicit installer app that graces all jailbroken iPhones — and then, today, Apple issues iPhone firmware 1.1.2 on UK iPhones, which closes the exploit that enables the current group of jailbreaks. Coincidence? Or distant shots in a hundred-years war?

(No further word on features for 1.1.2. Best not to install for now.)

Via digg.