With the announcement of the new iPads approaching later this month, rumors surrounding the new full-sized iPad have centered around a thinner, lighter design, but it’s been unclear if the new tablet will sport the Touch ID fingerprint authentication system from the iPhone 5s. I’ve heard that Apple’s most recent internal next-generation iPad prototypes have lacked Touch ID sensors, so it’s unclear if it will make the cut for this year. There are a few reasons why Touch ID wouldn’t make sense on an iPad this year:
Exclusivity to iPhone 5s could help with sales for Apple’s flagship phone. Notice the iPhone 5c doesn’t have it.
Supplies for Sapphire Crystal are obviously tight.
Touch ID would be better suited for an iPad capable of multiple users; is the OS even ready for that?
My current line of thought is that Touch ID on the Retina Mini is a definite no. Supplies are constrained enough as it is, plus keeping it big-iPad exclusive offers a convenient differentiation between the products.
Whether it will come to big iPad or not? I would logically guess yes, but that’s all it is — a guess.
Cable industry vet and long-time CableLabs exec Jean-François Mulé has recently joined Apple in the role of engineering director.
Mulé shared word of his new role at the consumer electronics and media company on LinkedIn, noting in a post that he joined Apple last month and will be “challenged, inspired and part of something big” at Apple. CableLabs is looking to hire a replacement for Mulé, CableLabs VP of communications Wayne Surdam said via email.
It is interesting that Apple needed to hire a cable engineer for whatever the “something big” project is. Apple tends not to need high-profile engineering talent — they have enough of it already. For example, the purpose of hiring the Hulu executive was to further negotiations with content providers, not to aid Apple’s technological base.
Color is more than just a hue. It expresses a feeling. Makes a statement. Declares an allegiance. Color reveals your personality. iPhone 5c, in five anything-but-shy colors, does just that. It’s not just for lovers of color. It’s for the colorful.
Before the event, the entire tech press had come to the conclusion that the purpose of the 5c was to offer a more affordable version of the iPhone.
This assumption was wrong. The true role of the 5c is now clear. It was necessary because the iPhone 5 had a cost-structure that was too high to allow Apple to keep selling it with a $100 discount, as they have done with every other previous iPhone generation.
As such, they needed to engineer a tweaked iPhone 5 which could be profitably sold on as the mid-tier iPhone for 2013-2014. The 5c exists not to make the iPhone lineup move into a new price-point, but to stand in for the iPhone 5 so that Apple could continue hitting its usual price-points.
Therefore, for another cycle, Apple’s iPhone offerings are available at $450, $550, $650. Just like last year and the year before that. I’m disappointed they didn’t break the mould.
In June, I jotted down my judgement on each iOS 7 app icon. Reminders is a standout failure. Apple hasn’t fixed it, so it’s time to elaborate on why it is worse.
On an iPhone or iPad, the icon is too discreet. The thin strokes and negligible colouring encourage your eye to skip over it because it is so bland. Frankly, it is too white. The other white iOS 7 icons, despite their flaws, ensure they have enough block colour to distinguish themselves. For instance, about a third of the Notes icon is solid yellow.
Even Calendar, arguably the icon that is most dominated by blank space, makes sure the coloured elements are centred in the frame. In comparison, Reminders’ speckles of colour are shoved into the left edge and easily overlooked. At smaller sizes, the bullet point dots become so small and insignificant that the icon might as well be pure white.
I also hate how the icon feels fragile. This is hard to convey in writing, but it really bugs me. For starters, the line rules are about two pixels tall. This sizing should be reserved for unimportant UI separators, not the focal point of your icon. The design language behind iOS 6 understood this, as the icon heavily favoured thicker strokes. The brittle sensation also comes from the fact the lines aren’t evenly spaced. The third rung (the gap between the third and fourth line) is shorter than the others, albeit only slightly. Still, I think the inconsistency is perceptible.
In addition, it is frustrating that Apple crams detail into icons that are overwhelmingly basic. Camera is the biggest perpetrator in this department, but Reminders exhibits the same flaw. For some reason, the bullets are outlined. When large, the icon looks silly because their isn’t detail anywhere else. When small, the detail is too small to not be visible, appreciated or even correctly interpreted.
Only days away from Apple’s September 10th iPhone event, new photos have come out which claim to show the box for the upcoming iPhone 5S. The same site has also leaked alleged photos of iPhone 5C packaging in the past. Notable here is the tweaked home button design, which appears to ditch the iconic inset square in favor of a ring around the edge.
Well, that’s the “How will people know that I upgraded?” question resolved.
Joking aside, the fact the front of the iPhone 5S is visually distinct from the iPhone 5 is a big deal to normal people. It changes the perception normal people will have about the new phone dramatically.
In addition, it reinforces the fingerprint sensor gimmick factor. Friends will notice people with the new phone and want to see the new feature in action, in the same way onlookers demanded Siri demos when the 4S was brand new.
Apple has begun showing the teaser video for the upcoming Mac Pro in movie theaters across the nation. First shown at WWDC during the initial debut of the Mac Pro, the video shows the sleek black curves of the product from multiple angles.
Marketing the Mac Pro at cinemas is an odd choice, because it means Apple is advertising a niche superuser product to the general public. Looking at the factor of income alone, the majority of movie-goers do not have the funds to dedicate to a machine that is going to have an average price around the $5000 mark.
So why advertise it at highly-concentrated consumer locations?
I have to assume it is for the same reason they bothered revolutionising the Mac Pro in the first place. It’s a propaganda play, punctuated by Schiller’s “can’t innovate anymore my ass” joke at WWDC. With the press presenting Apple as being obsolete, the company has retaliated in the best way possible: announcing a forward-thinking product.
For whatever reason, Apple is yet to release any other ‘innovations’ this year. New products are imminent, of course. But, in the meantime, with an absence of new consumer products to show off, Apple has no choice but to use the Mac Pro as a ‘trophy’ of its supremacy, even if it isn’t as closely-tuned to Apple’s main audiences as it would like.
There are actually 504 potential versions of Moto X — the 18 available backplate covers, from concrete gray to hot pink, are just the start. You can also choose a black or white front panel, and the side-mounted buttons and the ring around the rear camera lens come in seven different colors. You have to pick between 16 and 32GB of storage. And then you can engrave the back of your phone.
A lot of hassle in the supply chain for a very little gain, I think. Motorola has gone with “simple” as their guiding message behind this phone, but 504 minor variants of the same thing doesn’t sound very simple to me.
Be bold, make choices. You aren’t going to attract 504x the audience by making 504x editions of a device, so don’t. It’s just a distraction.
This latest edition, however, allows users to search Amazon’s online library for books with ‘free samples’ available. Users can download the sample and read it to their heart’s content. When they’re finished with the sample section, they’re presented with a ‘before you go’ screen that allows them to email themselves a purchase link for the book.
Yes, it’s convoluted, but it also offers a significantly improved user experience for those ‘just looking for a book’. It lets them grab the book quickly for free and, once they’re locked in, offers them a way to purchase it from a link.
That’s a neat workaround, which enables users to at least get a sense of Amazon’s extensive library in the app. Still, it is stupid that these workarounds are necessary in the first place. Apple should backtrack on this rule to, at minimum, let Amazon link to its store on the web.
Looks like the rumors are true: iOS 7 beta 4 has leaked a new folder called “BiometricKitUI.” Based on the description, discovered by Hamza Sood, it seems pretty clear that Apple is preparing a new iPhone with a fingerprint sensor. The interface is described above, pointing to a user being able to swipe the sensor on the iPhone’s home button.
Awesome. A fingerprint sensor is a key component of seamless, yet secure, mobile payment system.
In recent months, Apple has asked for prototype smartphone screens larger than 4 inches and has also asked for screen designs for a new tablet device measuring slightly less than 13 inches diagonally, they said. The current iPhone 5 has a four-inch screen, while the iPad has a 9.7-inch screen. The iPad Mini, a stripped-down version of its tablet computer, has a 7.9-inch screen.
Oh goody, I can’t wait to have even more whitespace surrounding my 9 icon-at-a-time folder!
A larger iPad is useful only if applications can optimise for the larger screen canvas. The Mini got away with it because it had other advantages ergonomically. A 13 inch iPad, on the other hand, will compete much more closely (in both form factor and use case) with the ultrabook market and needs additional functional utility to be a worthwhile product.
Verizon’s iPhone activations in Q2 this year grew 44 percent to reach 3.9 million, beating analyst predictions of 3.5 million. The iPhone continued to be responsible for more than half of Verizon’s sales. Overall smartphone penetration increased from 50 percent last year to 64 percent this year …
This quarter’s iPhone sales are particularly intriguing. Normally, iPhone US sales are indicative of total sales (which are to be announced on the 24th) but this relationship doesn’t apply anymore. The iPhone is selling disproportionately well in the US compared to other markets, namely Europe and Asia.
Besides the factor of elegance and the want for an integrated experience leading to the possibility of free iWorks apps on iOS and OS X, we have uncorroborated whispers, in recent months, claiming that Apple has been discussing ways to make its iWork for iOS and Mac apps free at some point in the next year. It is unclear if the internal talks will amount to anything to affect customers. The thinking, just like with iCloud and iTunes Radio, is that free iWork apps could be a way to sell more hardware. We have also heard that, over the next couple of months, Apple will engage in its strongest push yet to sell (high-profit-margin) iPhones in its retail stores, so perhaps free iWork apps is part of the same general strategy.
I think there is a perception amongst users that Apple is going to follow the trend of previous years and price Mavericks cheaper than Mountain Lion. In effect, the expectation is that Mavericks is going to be $10 (as 10.8 was $10 cheaper than 10.7). However, by bundling iWork as part of 10.9, Apple can justify keeping prices the same this year if they wish.
That’s the Mac story. On iOS, free iWork is a much bigger deal. Even though it is completely irrational, I have seen a lot of people complain that, after purchasing a $500 iPad, they have to purchase a $10 word processor. ‘Including’ Pages with the iPad is a big draw for consumers — it removes a psychological barrier.
Google is also preparing to release a second version of an Android-powered media-streaming device, called Nexus Q, that was unveiled last year but not sold to the public, these people said.
Might as well; it can’t be any worse than the first one.
During the WWDC keynote, Apple introduced a new Safari 7 feature that allows developers to take advantage of native push notifications on their websites. Unlike HTML5 push notifications, which have been used by some browsers for some time now, native push notifications act like any other installed application’s notifications: they are branded for the app rather than the browser, they can be used even when you aren’t on the website, and they can even pop up when Safari isn’t running.
This is a proprietary spec at the moment — it isn’t part of HTML5 — but this is the general process for how the web works. Browser vendors implement new features at a rapid pace and then pressure the standards body to ratify it, as the technologies become adopted in websites.
After Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference ended, Apple supplied me with a 13-inch MacBook Pro and a copy of OS X Mavericks to evaluate and post my thoughts on The Loop. The version of Mavericks I tested was newer than the one released at WWDC, but not as new as the one released on Monday.
Dalrymple’s review goes as you would expect it does, but I think it’s notable that Apple only felt comfortable seeding builds of OS X, not iOS, for review.
Also, don’t NDA’s seem stupid when Apple freely distributes Mavericks to reviewers, months before its release?
The search giant eclipsed the iPhone maker last week, actually. Few would have noticed because the metric by which Google jumped ahead isn’t the widely-watched one of market capitalization. Here Apple is still well ahead, with a market cap of $378 billion versus Google’s $286 billion.
But the market caps of both companies are swelled by their huge bank accounts. Strip out Apple’s $145 billion of net cash as of March, and Google’s $45 billion. This leaves an enterprise value of $233 billion for Apple, but $241 billion for Google, reflecting the underlying value of the companies’ actual operations.
Look at the graph. It’s not how much Google’s stock has risen, it’s how much Apple’s stock has fallen.
