The Global Shipping Programme is an easy way for business and private sellers to reach millions more buyers with minimal changes to your current processes. This new programme is designed for sellers who don’t currently offer international postage on listings.
The Global Shipping Programme works by automatically showing international postage costs on your eligible listings to prospective buyers in other countries at no additional cost to you. Your items will be available first to buyers from selected EU countries and later in 2014 to buyers in selected non-EU countries.
I can’t comment on whether or not this is bottom-line profitable for eBay, but I do know that this is spectacularly executed. Obviously, eBay drives more bids, more sellers and more money to flow through its service by encouraging international postage, but that’s not what I want to talk about. It’s the execution that is genius.
As long as a seller shipped domestically before, almost nothing changes in the workflow to participate in this program. eBay takes on the responsibility of not only shipping the items, but also calculating the various regional prices. eBay manages customer information and sends the seller a proxy domestic address, just like a normal domestic auction. The seller posts the package to eBay and eBay ships it to its final international destination.
This means the seller only pays domestic shipping charges to eBay. eBay recoups its expenditure through the additional P&P costs that the buyer is already used to seeing.
In fact, the process is so transparent that eBay can (and is) automatically enrolling sellers into the scheme without being obnoxious. eBay isn’t asking the seller to take on any additional responsibility, so there’s no penalty for the seller to be part of the scheme.
The efficient reallocation of resources here, where eBay is pooling individuals to take advantage of its economies of scale in distribution, is just sublime. This is what you call an elegant product change.
Apple organised a high-profile dinner for 250 fashion insiders, co-hosted by Azzedine Alaïa, Marc Newson and Jonathan Ive. But the guest of honour was the Apple Watch, several versions of which were displayed in a case right in the middle of the dinner venue, a space normally used as Mr Alaïa’s showroom. On their way out, guests were given exclusive images of the product, shot by Davis Sims and styled by Karl Templer, the very duo behind the Apple Watch’s fashion editorial debut on the wrist of Chinese supermodel Liu Wen in Vogue China.
The photography is nice, but notice how every picture shows the Apple Watch from a top-down perspective. At no point do the shots show the side of the device, where the thickness is noticeable. It concerns me a little that the photographers made a seemingly-conscious effort to conceal the depth of the Watch. On the flip side, the post also includes an interview with Vogue China’s editor and she seems to love how it looks …
Many users are reporting that cellular functions and Touch ID are no longer working post update, so we would recommend holding off until further notice. Many who have updated their iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, and iPhone 5s are reporting no problems, so it appears this problem is likely confined to iPhone 6 and 6 Plus.
This obviously shouldn’t have happened. I’m not sure how this got through QA, but I don’t really care. What matters is if a bug of this ilk recurs again, in the future. Then you can say Apple has structural problems as an organisation. Isolated incidents are not signs of poor management — they are (in most cases) genuine mistakes.
Apple has started airing two new iPhone 6 ads starring the duo of Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake. Tim Cook unveiled two ads starring the pair during the iPhone 6 announcement earlier this month with ads that focused on the Health application and size of the phone.
The new ads, dubbed “Huge” and “Camera” started hitting airwaves tonight and focus once again on the size of the display and the upgraded cameras with enhanced image stabilization, slow-motion and time-lapse capabilities.
The idea of these ads is clever, but I don’t think they have been executed very well. Camera is decent, but Huge is cringe-worthy. Timberlake’s repetition of “It’s huge!” comes across as an insult. On top of that, these ads don’t scale well geographically. The ad requires you to recognise who is speaking and it is not obvious enough. At the iPhone event, Cook asked ‘Do you know who they are?’ to the crowd. It was followed by an awkward prolonged silence.
Both cameras shot well in good light, with great performance in super bright sun. Especially welcome were their ability to capture even bright reds like Mrs. Incredible’s costume (shot with iPhone 6).
Solid, bright reds are notoriously difficult for image sensors to capture but both iPhones handled them well.
Apple has made significant improvements to its ISP (Image Signal Processor) which have resulted in apparent gains in sharpness, color rendition and low-light performance. The iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus are the best smartphone cameras I’ve ever used, and approach the best point-and-shoot cameras I’ve ever shot.
I was really impressed by this picture. The red is vibrant and deep and the outlines are super-crisp. It also helps the picture is relatable. It’s not framed or staged. Panzarino is at Disneyland, taking photos of his daughter. I can connect with it much better than the sample images posted in other reviews.
Sources tell me that Apple isn’t yet happy with the watch’s battery life, which isn’t going to break any industry standards. “It’s about a day right now,” said one, adding that Apple is working on various modifications ahead of the device’s 2015 launch to improve it. Reached for comment, Apple spokeswoman Nat Kerris declined to provide an estimate on expected battery life, but said the company expects users will charge their Apple Watches once daily. “There’s a lot of new technology packed into Apple Watch and we think people will love using it throughout the day,” Kerris said. “We anticipate that people will charge nightly which is why we designed an innovative charging solution that combines our MagSafe technology and inductive charging.”
It goes without saying that higher battery life is always better. However, in most instances, one day battery life is all you need. Use through the day … charge at night. Apple clearly scrapped its sleep tracking features for this version because otherwise there would be no good time to charge it. You don’t want to unstrap something at midday just to ensure it can track your sleep patterns in the evening. There’s a natural cycle of how human beings live and the Watch mirrors that. I think 24 hours of longevity is perfectly acceptable.
All the social networks I tried didn’t feel terrible. In fact, some of them were very positive experiences. In particular, Twitter and Instagram worked really well.
Granted, I haven’t used one of these things personally, but there is no way I could described that Instagram interface as a “positive experience”. It’s horrid. This is the definition of a phone on your wrist — a conceptual disaster.
Smartwatches succeed when they do enough things that phones can’t do or are bad at doing. I always come back to how Jobs introduced the iPad, clearly placing the iPad as better than both a phone and a laptop in several key areas. The same thing applies to the watch. The obvious example is the health sensor tracking — phones don’t have contact to the skin so they can’t do that stuff.
That’s what I’m most looking for on Tuesday; what else has Apple done to make the iWatch superior to an iPhone. Health tracking alone isn’t enough.
Samsung announced its new curved-display smartwatch last week, but today we were able to get up-close and personal with the new wearable. Unlike most smartwatches, the Gear S has two very special features. The first is a curved 2-inch, AMOLED display, and the second is 3G connectivity, allowing the smart watch to be used independent of a smartphone.
The curved display measures in at a 260×480 resolution, and under the hood you’ll find a GPS sensor, an accelerometer, gyroscope, UV detector, barometer, and heart rate monitor, alongside 4GB of internal storage and 512MB of RAM. It’s all powered by a dual-core 1.0 GHz processor and Tizen, Samsung’s own mobile operating system.
The Gear S has a 3G radio in it, so it can actually operate without a tethered phone giving it network access. This cuts battery life significantly of course, but as I was speculating on Twitter, smartwatches might be able to get away with ‘only’ one-day battery.
I like the conceptual design of this watch as well. My hypothetical iWatch is basically a band that has an integrated — seamless — curved display. The Gear S’s face is not too far off what I imagine. The main difference here is that the screen is still separated from the band — I think the iWatch would be made such that it look like all one part, with the screen inline to the body.
Remember back in June when I said Apple hoped to schedule a special event in October to show off a new wearable device? Remember how I also said this: “Could things change between now and fall? That’s certainly possible.” Turns out that was a prescient hedge, because things have changed. Apple now plans to unveil a new wearable alongside the two next-generation iPhones we told you the company will debut on September 9th.
There is no way this watch/band/thing is being released in September, although that’s not what is surprising. If you look at history, the iPad was announced in January and released in April. The iPhone was announced in January and released in June.
What’s surprising is the announcement in September, alongside the new (big deal) iPhones. Apple has no clear motivation to rush an announcement — they could easily wait until October (just like their original plan that Packzwoski reported on a few weeks ago).
You could argue that coupling the products at the event is a sign that the iPhone and iWatch are meant to go together, like the iWatch is some ‘minor’ accessory. I just can’t get behind that, though. The whole community has been hyping this product for a long time now. If expectations were inflated, I think Apple’s PR team would have got the word out by now. They haven’t. This product is a big deal.
So, here is my guess, the iWatch is demoed in September but only briefly. The star of the show will be the phones. Needless to say, release information for the watch will also not be available. (Think how the Mac Pro was a sneak peek at WWDC). Then, in October, Apple can finalise details and really get the marketing train pushing for the watch’s public debut — I’m guessing late November. This gives people a taste of Apple’s trump card, but September is still firmly cemented as iPhone month.
Includes 3 characters; Tanooki Mario, Cat Peach and Link. 4 vehicles including the Blue Falcon kart representing the F-Zero franchise. 8 course packs including classics like Wario’s Gold Mine from Mario Kart Wii,as well as the world of The Legend of Zelda.
Is this a sign of Nintendo modernising with the times?
Mario Kart 8 will now save your most-recent kart settings between play sessions - so there’s no more setting up your racer every time you load the game.
The menu options for “Next Race” and “Watch Highlight Reel” will be switched - a much-requested change by fans - and you’ll be able to alter options for other user’s highlight reels to watch different characters or events.
Thank the lord. It felt like Mario Kart’s menu designer was the same person who made iOS 7’s Shift key.
The most expensive and complicated things we have to create and shoot are kitchens. From both an environmental and time point of view, we don’t want to have to ship in all those white-goods from everywhere, shoot them and then ship them all back again. And unfortunately, kitchens are one of those rooms that differ very much depending on where you are in the world. A kitchen in the US will look very different to a kitchen in Japan, for example, or in Germany. So you need lots of different layouts in order to localise the kitchen area in brochures. Very early on we created around 200 CG exchanges versions for 50 photographed kitchens in 2008, with the products we had - and I think everyone began to understand the real possibilities.
IKEA trained its photographers in 3D modelling and its 3D artists in photography. This was something I didn’t expect from a flatpack furniture company.
Two supply chain sources said display panel production suffered a setback after the backlight that helps illuminate the screen had to be revised, putting screen assembly on hold for part of June and July. One said Apple, aiming for the thinnest phone possible, initially wanted to cut back to a single layer of backlight film, instead of the standard two layers, for the 4.7-inch screen, which went into mass production ahead of the 5.5-inch version.
Every year, it is reported that Apple is facing production problems with new products. With Apple’s relentless push to adopt new technologies at immense scales, like the single-layer backlight mentioned in this case, it’s not really that surprising that they frequently have issues. However, as long as Apple is equipped to deal with such problems (that they must expect), there isn’t really a “problem” at all. Given the iPhone’s consistent release cycle, I think you can say that it is true.
Ahead of Apple’s new iPhone event on September 9th, Thailand’s National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (that nation’s version of what we know in the U.S. as the FCC) has approved two new iPhone models for sale in the country. The approval was confirmed on Twitter by the country’s Secretary General for these matters, and a local report indicates the model numbers for two new devices: A1524 & A1586.
The model identifiers are puzzling. The current 5s and 5c goes up to A1533 and A1532. It would make sense for the the device labelled ‘A1586’ to be somehow next-generation (as it is significantly beyond the 5s and 5c identifiers). The specification of the A1524 model number is much less obvious. Painting by numbers, as it were, the A1524 should closely resemble an iPhone 5c.
Gurman speculates that the model number could represent variants of the iPhone 5s and 5c, such as antenna tweaks, which probably makes the most sense.
“Apple and Samsung have agreed to drop all litigation between the two companies outside the United States,” the companies said in the statement. “This agreement does not involve any licensing arrangements, and the companies are continuing to pursue the existing cases in U.S. courts.”
A bit random timing for this to come about, but I suppose it is a good thing for all this to end. It’s slightly strange to me how the two companies continue to fight in the US though. Assumedly, the US is the market with the highest number of affected devices, making it worthwhile to continue chasing royalties and such.
Let’s hope this doesn’t flare up again in two months, when Samsung and Apple inevitably steal from each other for their wearable products. From what I can see, this agreement doesn’t preclude that from happening.
From ISPs I have spoken with, they tell me Apple has put a massive amount of capacity in place, with many saying that Apple has more than 10x the capacity they are using today, all ready to go.
Based on my calculations, Apple has already put in place multiple terabits per second of capacity and by the end of this year, will have invested well more than $100M in their CDN build out.
I don’t believe Apple expands capacity by an order of magnitude merely for future-proofing reasons. Adjustments to user growth happen gradually, not in one burst. My guess would be that this is for video content tied in with some new Apple TV (or iTunes Movies) initiative. Bitrates for high-definition video content are high enough to explain such increases in CDN bandwidth potential.
