Jonathan Ive, the head of design at Apple and a name nearly as adored by its followers as Steve Jobs, says Mr. Cook has not neglected the company’s central mission: innovation. “Honestly, I don’t think anything’s changed,” he said. And that includes the clamor for some exciting new thing. “People felt exactly the same way when we were working on the iPhone,” Mr. Ive added.
“It is hard for all of us to be patient,” Mr. Ive said. “It was hard for Steve. It is hard for Tim.”
Weirdly, whilst Cook declined to comment, Ive agreed to participate and offered a couple of choice quotes for the Times’ piece. Unfortunately, that’s the only needle in the haystack. The rest of the article is a combination of unjustified criticism and repetitive storytelling. After the strong portfolio of new ‘stuff’ Apple presented at WWDC, comments about Apple’s staleness feel weak.
Although the 5.5 inch will seem like a giant next to an iPhone 5s, the image compares the 4.7 inch ‘iPhone 6’ to the 5.5 inch model … and it looks normal. It does not look oversized. iPhones are partly pieces of fashion, so perception of the size increase is critical.
My complaints with the 5.5 inch phone, assuming it mirrors this dummy unit of course, is the vertical misalignment of the Home Button and the camera/speaker holes. On the 5s, these components are precisely spaced in their bezel. Not on these mockups, unfortunately.
It’s not merely an aesthetic complaint — on the 5s, you can use the spacing between the screen and the bottom edge of the phone to firmly press the Home Button. I am worried that my finger would ‘slip off’ the device, with the button so close to the edge.
As an aside, the antenna inlets on the 5.5 inch look nicer than the 4.7 inch phone. The ratio of inlet height to chassis height is significantly lower, thereby making them much less obnoxious.
Interactive notifications will spur all sorts of new behaviors. (And yes, Android already has interactive notifications, but the ones in iOS 8 look to go beyond what KitKat can do.) Some of these will be simple, like the ability to reply to an email or text message. But they’re powerful in that you can do this without quitting whatever you’re already doing. And this interactivity is not just limited to system apps. Third-party developers can take advantage of this new capability as well, so you could comment on something on Facebook, respond to a tweet, or even check in on Foursquare. But others are going to be radical, stuff we haven’t imagined yet.
I think something needs to be cleared up. Third-party apps do not get free reign over notification interactions, it’s very different to Android. As it stands today, third-party apps can only add two buttons to notification banners (as shown here). These buttons can trigger actions, without the app having to be foregrounded, but anything more fancy than clicking a button is off-limits. You don’t have the same level of flexibility as with Today widgets or share extensions, for instance.
The quick-reply feature is only supported for Apple’s Messages app. This functionality is not available to third-party apps. No one else but Apple can declare custom UI for their notifications; third-parties get two buttons and that’s it. This severely limits the amount of “stuff we haven’t imagined yet” that is actually possible with the current system.
When iOS 7 launched, developers discovered that their apps with built-in web browsers were unable to achieve the same level of JavaScript performance as the stock Safari app. This was because Apple restricted use of its improved Nitro JavaScript engine to its own app, leaving third-parties with a slower version.
As of iOS 8, however, it seems that decision has been reversed. All apps will now be able to use the same improved JavaScript engine that powers Safari. That means Google’s Chrome browser on iOS will now be just as quick as Safari, as will the pop-up browsers embedded in apps like Twitter and Facebook.
Ostensibly, Apple limited Nitro to Safari for security reasons. With the new inter-process technologies of iOS 8, this is no longer a concern. It’s great to see that Apple has opened it up. With stuff like third-party keyboards now a reality, it isn’t that much of a stretch to think that one day Apple will let you replace the default browser altogether on iOS.
I am still bewildered by the volume of new stuff Apple announced at WWDC. Last year, it felt like they were pushed to breaking point with iOS 7 alone. This time around, they’ve enacted a significant redesign of OS X whilst also pushing through countless other changes. Normally, Apple pads the keynote with 40 minutes of retail updates, minor laptop revisions and other mediocre ‘filler’ content. There was simply no time yesterday.
At least for now, I’m really confident that Apple is on track. They caught up in a lot of areas, they pushed the boat in a few ways and they restored developer trust in a few ways. The presenters went a bit over-the-top with jokes in my opinion but at least the enthusiasm was justified by the announcements.
I want to touch on one thing for now, Photos. Finally, Apple will take responsibility for storing all of your photos and videos for a fee. The assets don’t have to sit in local storage, like they do today with Photo Stream. They all show in the app though, streaming off the server on-demand.
In many respects, this is a modern service. Edits sync. Photos sync. Backups of originals (after editing) are saved. Pictures viewable not only on iOS and Mac, but also through iCloud.com. It’s great to see Apple doing this.
I do have some reservations, though. The title of this post comes straight from the advertising for CloudKit, but iCloud Photos is much the same. Apple is still too restrictive with its free tiers.
5 GB is simply not enough. There is a magic to having “all of your photos, on all of your devices”. The stinginess of the free tier precludes anyone from even getting a small glimpse of this experience, without having to pay more.
The caps doesn’t reflect modern-day media sizes or customer behaviour, who invest into an entire ecosystem of Apple products. These people should be rewarded with scaling storage allowances, not forced into purchasing paid plans.
Granted, the paid tiers are now competitively priced (200 GB for $3.99 a month) but free tiers are very important and should not be overlooked. The experience provided by the free plan will be the experience most people have. It needs to be good.
As the paid tiers get cheaper, the free tier sticks out even more as being ridiculously stupid. Frankly, at a bare minimum, the 20 GB plan (which Apple will sell for $0.99 a month) should be the new free quota. Apple made its $30 productivity suite free last year, so I don’t understand the reluctance with iCloud pricing.
It should not be this easy for normal users to have to start thinking about file size. Once you fill your iCloud quota, that’s exactly what happens. Ideally, iOS is a magical world where PC issues should not exist. Managing storage is annoying on a Mac, but doubly so on iOS.
In fact, if Apple gave users slightly more space on the free tier, I think they would sell more paid subscriptions. There is a big lock-in opportunity here, if users are given a little more leeway to enmesh themselves into the iCloud ecosystem. As it stands, with such crippling caps, a lot of users just disable iCloud completely to silence the ‘buy more storage’ nagging. This is not how you maximise customer satisfaction.
On Monday, Apple showed itself to be a modern competent internet services company. The pricing models need to catch up. It can be free with limits, but the limits needs to be lessened.
Add new collaboration models of Mercedes-Benz “GLA” appeared Wii U software released today in the “Mario Kart 8”. Summer of this year, is scheduled for delivery. Please wait for further news.
I have publicly asked for Nintendo to do DLC for Mario Kart 8, but I didn’t quite mean this. The game could really benefit from a larger character roster or more tracks, which work great as downloadable content, but a Mercedes partnership is strange. Having a real car in the game is weird.
MacBidouille is the source of an interesting new rumor that Apple is currently experimenting with new ARM-powered Mac variants that include a Magic trackpad built into the system’s keyboard. The company is also reportedly working on a new version of OS X that will be compatible with these ARM machines.
According to MacBidouille’s sources, Apple is developing three new machines with this configuration: the aforementioned iMac and Mac mini as well as a 13″ MacBook, presumably a MacBook Air. The iMac and notebook are both said to have 4” or 8” quad-core arm64 processors, while the Mac mini has only four.
The main advantage of ARM over Intel is power-efficiency. So, a rumour about ARM-powered iMacs at first sounds stupid and unnecessary. However, if Apple is bringing ARM to the MacBooks, it seems silly to fragment the Mac lineup by processor architecture, with some Macs running on Intel and some Macs running on ARM.
The benefits of switching to ARM will be realised in Apple’s laptop business, bringing incredibly high power-per-watt characteristics, which makes up more than half of all Mac sales. In contrast, I do not believe ARM is superior to x86 in high-performance setups. Because of the MacBook though, I think it is inevitable that the iMac and Mac mini will be transitioned to ARM as well, for the sake of platform uniformity. The iMac may even get marginally slower in the changeover.
Having everything running on the same architecture is good for the OS X platform. A move to ARM is fantastic for the mobile Macs, but is simply an implementation detail for the iMac and Mac mini, as a by-product of the ARM MacBooks.
Samsung’s marketing juggernaut is reaching new heights today with the announcement that Heathrow’s Terminal 5 will be rebranded for two weeks to promote the company’s flagship Galaxy S5 Android phone. Starting on Monday, every area of the terminal will feature the “Terminal Samsung Galaxy S5” moniker, with all the signage and digital screens promoting the handset and projecting images of it. Russell Taylor, Samsung’s UK marketing VP describes this as a “one-off opportunity to push the boundaries like no other brand has been allowed to do before.”
It’s a “one-off opportunity” because only Samsung would think this is a cool idea.
Today, a Canary build of Google Chrome removed something kind of important from the browser: the URL.
Of course it still supports them, but the time where users actually see URLs is ending. With Chrome’s “Enable origin chip in Omnibox” flag, Location becomes a write-only field. Clicking there no longer reveals the URL for the user to edit or share, but instead waits for you to search Google.
iOS 7 Safari made strides in this area, although I’m not sure whether the change is a reflection of Apple’s (new) attitude toward URLs or a visual choice to reduce visual clutter on a small screen. I’m very interested to see if Safari on OS X will adopt this presentation.
Besides the iOS 8 features that we have already discussed, Apple is said to be planning some significant changes to iCloud for introduction as soon as this year. Apple has been working on a new iCloud-based service for developers that would make development of cloud-infused apps simpler and more efficient. That Parse-like functionality has been tabled in the past, so it is possible it could be pushed back once again.
Unlike Parse, of course, Apple’s solution will not be cross-platform. This will make it unviable for a lot of developers right off the bat. That being said, there are lot of indie developers (myself included) who are single-platform shops. Assuming it is good, I think a reasonable portion of developers would adopt it. Given Apple’s history with cloud services, that’s a big ‘if’. For instance, developers wanted to use iCloud with Core Data, but ended up shying away from it because of its numerous flaws.
Also, note that some cross-platform apps could still take advantage of something like this. Games for example, despite being multi-platform, aren’t expected to sync save state across iOS and Android. They could still use this system, for syncing across a user’s iOS devices.
We’ve permanently removed the “enable/disable” toggle for ads in the Apps for Education Administrator console. This means ads in Apps for Education services are turned off and administrators no longer have the option or ability to turn ads in these services on.
Administrators no longer have the ability to turn ads on? Damn. That was my favourite feature.
We’ve tested the Website Card with a handful of brands like Citrix and Betabrand, whose campaigns saw significant decreases in cost-per-click (CPC) compared to campaigns that used an image and URL to drive website traffic. Betabrand’s CPCs were reduced by up to 85%, and Citrix saw a 92% decrease in CPC. In addition, UK-based mobile company Three saw a 26% higher Engagement Rate as well as a 64% increase in URL clicks when utilizing Website Cards.
Apple today announced financial results for its fiscal 2014 second quarter ended March 29, 2014. The Company posted quarterly revenue of $45.6 billion and quarterly net profit of $10.2 billion, or $11.62 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $43.6 billion and net profit of $9.5 billion, or $10.09 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 39.3 percent compared to 37.5 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 66 percent of the quarter’s revenue.
Earnings were good. iPad performance is an ongoing concern, despite Cook’s assurances that it’s still on fire. There was some hints about some new stuff coming for iPad (i.e. iPad maxi), but it didn’t sound imminent.
The most interesting stuff this time around is what is traditionally the most boring stuff. The numbers. The investor crap. Apple is announcing a seven-to-one stock split, beginning in early June. The last time they did a stock split was two-for-one in February 2005.
At current prices, this would set Apple stock at about $80. The whole point of splits is to make it easier for smaller institutions to buy stock. The downside is this attracts speculative investors who are largely driven by the potential of turning short-run profits than long-term investments.
In fact, thinking about it, the company juiced their stock in pretty much every way possible this quarter. They announced the split, increased share buybacks by $30 billion, increased dividends to $3.29 per share and pledged to increase dividends on an annual basis. If that doesn’t improve Apple’s P/E ratio, I don’t know what will.
Don’t worry. Despite all of this additional capital expenditure, it still has $150 billion in cash. No big deal.
Koskinen said the IRS could scrutinize more returns - and collect billions more in revenue - with more resources. The president’s budget proposal says the IRS would collect an additional $6 for every $1 increase in the agency’s enforcement budget.
Koskinen said he makes that argument all the time, but for some reason, it’s not playing well in Congress.
So with 8.1, users now have the ability to basically skin the Tiles by overlaying an image of their choice. That’s not entirely accurate though as what is really happening is some Tiles are becoming transparent, with the user image showing through the Tile.
How it works is if an app uses the ‘Iconic design’ for its Live Tile, it will show the image behind it. If the tile uses a ‘Flip layout’, any area of the background that is transparent will show the background image. As a result, some apps will have a ‘see through’ ability with the new background images, while others will remain a solid, preselected color e.g. Facebook.
As long as all your tiles support the appearance, the effect is really really slick. By contrast, iOS 7’s parallax wallpapers feels gimmicky and cheap. I’m really happy to see Microsoft experimenting here.
The importance of wallpaper customisation cannot be understated. Users love setting images of their pets or loved ones as their background. A common iPhone behaviour is for users to put all their apps into one folder, just to maximise the amount of wallpaper they can see.
Unfortunately, apps like Facebook or Twitter (which currently stick to their own branding regardless of user options) spoil the illusion somewhat. It’s particularly disorientating when you scroll; there is a visual clash between the static backgrounds and the one that tracks the panning.
Apple could be looking to health insurance companies to help subsidize its rumored iWatch fitness bands in the same way that wireless carriers subsidize the cost of smartphones.
That speculation comes from Timothy Arcuri, an analyst with Cowen & Co. He raised the possibility on Friday in a research note that discussed possible product launches, including the iWatch, later this year from Apple.
“We continue to believe it is possible the product (iWatch) is backstopped by some sort of insurance subsidization model similar to the carrier subsidization model for iPhone,” he wrote.
Do you think Apple likes the subsidy model for iPhones? Apple was basically forced down that route with the iPhone because the market was already entrenched such that subsidies were expected. If the market was a clean slate, I don’t believe that Apple would have wanted to instate a relationship in the market that was so reliant on the carrier.
Therefore, in the watch/band market, I think subsidy models are the last thing in Apple’s mind. If Apple can ship the product for a reasonable price without any strings attached, then that’s what they are going to do.
Dealing with middlemen is too much complexity and frustration. As an outsider, the concept of collaborating with health insurers sounds messy. I would hate to organise something like that and I don’t think Apple would like it either.
Down the line, perhaps there is the potential for health insurance rebates but that can’t be the the primary go-to-market strategy. It just can’t be.
