The assumption of Walmart just paying for that discount is unrealistic. There’s a partnership with Apple. Price will go down elsewhere, too.
In another tweet, Mueller says that “there is a demand problem”, with the implication that Apple is forgoing profitability to sustain iPhone sales.
This is not true. There is a relationship between Apple and Walmart to enable the sizeable price cuts ($50 off an iPhone 5, for instance), but Apple isn’t sacrificing its margins.
The only agreement in place is that Apple has allowed Walmart to sell the iPhone at a discounted price. The reduction comes at the expense of Walmart’s margins, however. Walmart is the one who is losing money. Apple continues to sell the iPhone to Walmart at the same price as anyone else; their ASP is unaffected by this arrangement and remains as stable as ever.
In an exclusive interview with Brian Williams airing tonight at 10pm/9c on NBC’s Rock Center, Apple CEO Tim Cook announced one of the existing Mac lines will be manufactured exclusively in the United States next year. Mac fans will have to wait to see which Mac line it will be because Apple, widely known for its secrecy, left it vague.
I expect it will be the new Mac Pro. It’s a low-volume, low-profile product with high cost and exacting design standards. In essence, a good test for a radically different production process.
… Siri stands as a monumental opportunity both for Apple as a transactional money machine and for its users as a new paradigm of discovery and task completion more approachable than any we’ve seen to date. In the end, Siri is Apple’s game to lose.
Definitely read the full article for a fictitious ride around the “I-wish-Siri-was-the-best-thing-ever” train.
Kontra says that “Siri is Apple’s game’s game to lose”. This may be true, but I worry that Siri will never be “top of the list”, that Apple will always have more immediate concerns, which means that Siri will be gradually sidelined as only a novelty and become abandonware by iOS 8.
With that in mind, return to that fantasy land in Kontra’s piece, and imagine how great it would be to ask Siri for a ‘place to eat’ and get back answers which are customised to your budget and palette.
Despite the fact that I’ve been using Windows 8 for the past three weeks, I somehow managed to overlook a rather stark feature in the OS: ads. No, we’re not talking about ads cluttering up the desktop or login screen (thankfully), but rather ads that can be found inside of some Modern UI apps that Windows ships with. That includes Finance, Weather, Travel, News and so forth. Is it a problem?
Firstly, there are ads not “in Windows 8”, as many have been reporting, but in certain server-powered preinstalled apps. So the equivalent on the iPhone would be having iAds appear in the Weather app, for instance.
Is it an issue? It doesn’t look good aesthetically, and it is sorta cheeky seeing as Windows 8 isn’t free … but it isn’t a deal breaker. It isn’t “adgate”.
Some people will be see them and promptly ignore them, or use ad-free substitute apps that serve the same role. Some people will never notice them; it’s just how their brains work: there is already so much on the screen that is bamboozling their attention.
Most, though, will notice and be non-plussed. Boring but that’s the truth. They simply wouldn’t care about it; the thought of caring will never cross their mind. They have much more important priorities than to ponder the existence of Bing ads in their news app. Tech snobs would call these people ignorant; I call them normal people.
So while the U.K. court did not find Samsung guilty of infringement, other courts have recognized that in the course of creating its Galaxy tablet, Samsung willfully copied Apple’s far more popular iPad.
Firstly, I knew this statement was linked on the homepage, but it still took me a good few seconds to actually find it. I doubt the number of people who will read this statement is anything but negligible. This is a link to a screenshot of the homepage, so you can see what I mean.
But for anyone who does find it, it is a hilarious read. Apple buries the main point of the statement (that Samsung was found not to infringe) in between a propaganda campaign for their uniqueness … the “not as cool” quote is included as well as a reference to the overwhelming Samsung defeat in the US court. It is fantastic, if 100% biased, PR spin.
Cook’s statement essentially admits there is an issue, but understandably puts little context on the impact to users. That’s why this set of data from Snappli comes in handy to get some quantification of how widespread Apple’s Map issue is on its user base. Snappli offers a mobile app for both Android and iOS devices that compresses data over mobile broadband to help folks use less of their 3G or 4G monthly allowance. By looking at the following data from 5,000 Snappli users on iOS, the following information puts some perspective around iPhone owners and Maps in iOS 6:
64% of Snappli users have migrated to iOS 6 within the last few weeks (UK and US)
Before the upgrade to iOS 6, 25% of Snappli users were viewing Google Maps at least once a day
Once they moved to iOS 6, that immediately went to 35% of users using Apple Maps
However, over the next 5 days that drops down to 4%
Summary: before iOS 6 1 in 4 people were using Google maps at least once a day. After iOS 6: 1 in 25 using Apple maps and falling.
This study is completely wrong and false.
iOS 5 Maps used JPEGs for every map tile to render. In comparison, iOS 6 Maps uses vector data (essentially small text files) to create the tiles on the device. Only requesting satellite imagery (for “Satellite” and “Hybrid” modes) requires the same heavy file downloads as the older app. By design, iOS 6 Maps data usage has a many magnitudes smaller impact on network traffic than its predecessor.
Thus, relying on network traffic analysis to measure usage is 100% unreliable as, quite clearly, the different mechanics of the app distort the proportions dramatically. Ignore this report.
These ads, thankfully, could not look less like the Genius ads. They are back in “App For That” territory: the generic hand, the phone itself and a white backdrop.
“Thumbs” is meant to show off the 4 inch display of the iPhone, but I actually think “Physics” does a better job at doing this, as it demonstrates 16:9 video playback. I just think it doesn’t do a stellar job at telling people about the larger screen. Note that despite new iOS 6 features such as Passbook or Do Not Disturb, Apple sticks to demoing sending email and browsing Safari. They show what ordinary people actually do with their phones.
My least favourite is “Cheese”. The voice acting is a bit, well, cheesy. The intake of breath is clearly forced and it makes the ad feel a bit cheap. Ignoring the audio, the screenplay is fantastic. Without doubt, people watching this ad will get that the iPhone can take panoramas, really simply.
The “Ears” spot is probably not going to be aired as frequently as the others, but the message it portrays is brilliant. The time they take to explain the shape of ears is a parallel to the care and attention that Apple gives to all of its products. Unlike the others, it is more of a brand ad, reinforcing (what Apple wants people to think as) their values, and rounds off the campaign well.
So, you can install an app, but it won’t appear in Passbook unless you use the associated iOS app. That kind of defeats the purpose of it, doesn’t it? You shouldn’t need to buy a movie ticket, planet ticket, etc. in order to get an app to work properly, especially a marquee feature of iOS 6.
The first innings for Passbook were definitely mishandled. I saw a lot of people on Twitter who assumed it worked like Newsstand, where the app itself lives in Newsstand.
This is different to Passbook. Apps (and websites) produce passes which go into Passbook. For example, you book a movie in the Fandango app, which then places the ticket into Passbook. The ticket and the app are completely independent. You can delete the app; the ticket remains. Delete the ticket, the app continues as normal.
However, I don’t agree wholeheartedly with the view expressed by Lavey-Heaton, though; in particular, the latter sentence. The whole point of Passbook is that you buy a ticket for stuff to happen. When you buy a wallet, it doesn’t come pre-packaged with gift-cards? That is what the Passbook app is emulating — a wallet ready to contain things. That is the metaphor that Apple needed to explain better on first launch.
So Parks and Gardens would need to see over 3 plays for any song to get them a cent of revenue from a song on iTunes Match. And they already pay distribution service TuneCore $50 a year just to get their music out there on these services. So they need over 15,127 plays of their songs to break even on distributing them alone. The number is better on Spotify, where they’d need to see 5,171 plays.
It is pretty terrible … but what do people expect from a service that costs $25 a year? In that payment, Apple has to both pay its own server bills for a year, make payouts to the respective artists of every song you stream for a year, and make their own profit.
Please explain to me where the inflow comes from to payout larger checks for each stream. If iTunes Match cost more, and artists were still getting paid less than a hundredth of a cent per stream, there would be a much more justified reason to be angry at this situation.
Apple acknowledged the retail staffing changes. “Making these changes was a mistake and the changes are being reversed,” said Kristin Huguet, an Apple spokeswoman. “Our employees are our most important asset and the ones who provide the world-class service our customers deserve.”
The statement is Apple’s response to the staffing cuts at Apple Retail, highlighted by ifoAppleStore. Compare to the statement by Mansfield when Apple commented on the EPEAT mishap:
We’ve recently heard from many loyal Apple customers who were disappointed to learn that we had removed our products from the EPEAT rating system. I recognize that this was a mistake. Starting today, all eligible Apple products are back on EPEAT.
One seems like a genuine apology. One feels very fake.
You don’t accidentally lay people off. This was clearly a departmental policy.
For a company that reported $8.8 billion dollars in profit last quarter, the goals of Browett should not be shaving pennies off the bottom line. The whole point of their retail stores is to be of assistance — cutting staff does not achieve that. The company is on the eve of iPhone 5 and iPad mini launches; it seems logical they should be hiring additional staff, not “learning to run leaner”.
Retail is a key instrument in introducing new customers to Apple. Yet, it feels like if, it hadn’t been for the public feet stamping, this policy would have continued. That scares me.
Our license to include the YouTube app in iOS has ended, customers can use YouTube in the Safari browser and Google is working on a new YouTube app to be on the App Store.
It is unknown whether this is due to Apple’s continued ‘Google hate’, or if Google decided they wanted to monetize iOS users and refused to renew the license.
Regardless of the reasoning for the removal, the outcome is definitely anti-consumer: Google’s track record with native iOS apps isn’t good.
Plus, it’ll be rammed to the brim with adverts and have a gazillion links to Google+ scattered throughout.
The next-generation broadband roll out being administered by Broadband Delivery UK uses £530m of public money in the commercial sector, so it needs clearance from the European Commission - that approval already faces delays over competition concerns.
Now, it’s been revealed the majority of regional projects face further delay because officials in Brussels say they have yet to receive the relevant paperwork from the UK.
The API challenges are the most commonly shared concern. Comi says, one problem is that the iCloud API is too low level, meaning that it takes a lot of code to accomplish basic tasks. For example, the iCloud API doesn’t offer a single function for putting a file into iCloud, or removing one.
In contrast to many Apple frameworks, the iCloud stack is very weird, and almost feels “tacked on”. The basic idea for a developer, is that by moving document files to a special location, they are ‘moved into iCloud’. Although it is easy to visualise this process, it is cumbersome to implement. If a user turns iCloud off, for example, the onus is on the developer to move all the files back into the local application storage, ensuring to handle edge cases appropriately (such as disabling iCloud on one device, but not others). Later, if the user re-enables iCloud, the developer has even more work to do, matching and merging documents in the cloud with those that, until a moment ago, lived in the confines of the local device only. Another layer of complexity arises when the document model needs to change (by an app update): What happens if the user has two devices, but has only updated one of them?
Alongside the blips in Apple’s backend (which developers have no means to debug) these incompatibilities mean that integrating iCloud is frustrating and painful; it is much more work than it should be. Low-level APIs are important, for applications that require deeper customisation and behaviour, but the lack of a simple API has deterred almost everybody. Even complex apps would benefit from a higher-level “save to iCloud” command sometimes, as you don’t always need specialised behaviour to perform some actions.
The fear I have is that iCloud may follow the path of Apple’s other cloud initiatives; it fails and Apple rebrands it in a couple of years. This pattern has been shown throughout the past: iTools to .Mac, .Mac to MobileMe, MobileMe to iCloud. However, the improvements made in iOS 6 and their repeated statements on their commitment to iCloud give me confidence that these issues will be resolved. Consequently, iCloud will work as it should: like magic.
In some places, it does act like magic. Photo Stream is simply great. Logging in to a new iOS device and seeing all the bookmarks from your Mac is fantastic. It is a shame other areas, particularly those involving third-party apps, let the service down.
Unlike iOS, I never ran a beta of Mountain Lion. My first experience with the new OS was yesterday, when it was released. About an hour of Error 100 frustration later, installation began.
Installation is App-Store only, which is 80% great, 20% annoyance … particularly when your internet isn’t very good. If your internet isn’t fast enough to download at least 10% in a couple of minutes, it seems like the process has failed, as the progress bar doesn’t move a single pixel until about 10% of the total 4GB has transferred. Once the download step had finished, however, installation was streamlined and flawless. Click, agree to terms and conditions, and wait. Even in 2012, computers still fail at approximating time remaining. My progress status fluctuated from 30 to 10 minutes, to an hour, over the course of the install. In reality, it took about 40 minutes to install.
The Mac proceeded to reboot into Mountain Lion. Immediately, the App Store prompted to me to download even more updates. The first indicator that this was a new OS was that I found the issue I described above has been fixed in Mountain Lion. Launchpad will give you fine-grained download progress if you hover over the Dock icon.
These first patches also highlighted the death of Software Update, which is now amalgamated into the App Store Updates tab. Theoretically, this makes a lot of sense: all your updates in one place. In their implementation, though, Apple haven’t quite hit the spot. Software Update isn’t really integrated into the App Store; it just kinda sits next to your app updates. For instance, iPhoto updates are segregated into a different section than Pixelmator or ScreenFlow. “Update All” applies to everything, so in practice it doesn’t really make a practical difference, but it still agitates. A layer of unnecessary complexity. Better than Lion, but not perfect.
What did I notice next? The glass Dock. If you have been clinging to open application indicator lights in Lion, then get ready to change. The lights in Mountain Lion are so small, really thin blue strips, you have to literally squint to see them. If you are switching apps using the Dock, you literally won’t see these lights, even in peripheral vision. Regarding the main Dock aesthetic change, from a gloss varnish to frosted solid glass, I like it. Whilst it is reflective, it isn’t translucent like the old Dock’s. I just think it looks better, and this is from someone who likes the transparent menubar.
Safari 6 is fantastic. I don’t know how to describe it. It is just better. There is definitely a different scrolling architecture. It’s snappier. Webpages flow. You can tell the GPU is involved. I can’t test whether JavaScript performance is better, as the Sunspider test refuses to complete, but it feels better. Facebook’s homepage is near-instantaneous to render. Talking of social sites, I love the tweeting in Safari just as much as I do in iOS. It is so convenient, and the UI is really pretty to boot. With a lot of tabs open, “Tab View” is surprisingly useful, too. I thought it was just some visual sugar, which it kinda is, but I have used it for utility a couple of times already.
Safari’s Reader hasn’t changed in functionality, but it is presented differently in the UI. When applicable, it highlights to a very piercing blue. One one side, the obviousness is distracting. My eye flits to the button almost every page load it turns blue. I’ve found, though, I have actually used the feature because of it — the distraction reminds me to click it.
The UI for Safari’s progress bar has completely changed. I’m still undecided whether it was for the better. Rather than stepping through different percentiles of progress, the Mountain Lion progress bar has a propensity to keep moving. Whether it is being more granular in displaying completion progress or whether it is purely an optical illusion, I don’t know. Up to this point, everything is fine. It gets obnoxious a few milliseconds later, when Safari decides to tell you the page has finished loading (even if it actually hasn’t), and the loading bar literally zooms off to the right[4]. The rapid increase in acceleration of the animation is what puts you off. I’d assume that over a longer period of time my brain will get used to the lightning-flash-toolbar, but for now I despise it. It isn’t enough of an agitation to overcome my otherwise universal love of the browser.
The most striking change to Safari has to be the omnibox[5]. It has integrated so well into the workflow I nearly forgot to write about it. If you want to know what it is like, open any browser that has existed since about 2006. Personally, I think it should prioritise history results over search suggestions but the mere fact it exists at all is a god send, honestly. There was a reason every other browser had moved to this UI paradigm: because it’s good.
In regard to Documents in the Cloud, I have turned it off. It isn’t for me. It isn’t really meant for me. A good test to see if you will like this new feature is to ask yourself if you could live with only one subdirectory to organise files?
If you said yes, iCloud Documents are going to be a great fit. It is obviously for people who find the Finder confusing; people who are relieved with the thought that they don’t have to click Finder. My mum, for instance, loves this new metaphor (“You mean, I don’t have to worry about where the files are?”). For people who use it, they have the added benefits of syncing, backup and simplicity. For people that don’t, you have the traditional benefits of an actual filesystem. It’s almost like Apple is telling “geeks” to stick to Dropbox.
In my opinion, the other main tentpole change is Notification Center. Growl fans will crow that this is a rip-off of it, but it really isn’t. Sure, you get toast notifications in the top-right hand corner but what sets it apart is the slide-out section. Growl never had anything like it. You can just let notifications fly off and review them at your leisure in the Center.
There is a profound importance to the fact it is first-party. Although Growl was relatively pervasive in Mac apps, I feel that Notification Center use is quickly going to explode. Something which Growl never had was first-party integration. As you might expect, Apple’s apps exploit Notification Center as much as people, even for software updates. Brilliant.
Coming from iOS, you will be right at home with Notification Center. The linen even makes sense on Mountain Lion, as the slide-out panel does sit conceptually at “layer zero”. I only really have one niggle with it; it forces upon you a menubar item that cannot be moved. It has to sit in the top-right corner. Why is this annoying? My brain is ingrained to think that the top-right of the screen is Spotlight. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve gone to do a search by clicking the top-right corner of the screen, out of habit, and then getting brutally reminded that it is no longer Spotlight. Even if Apple doesn’t want to let people remove the icon completely, they should let you at least move it to a different position in the menubar lineup.
I said that Notification Center is the last major feature that I can recall, but that isn’t really true. There is an underlying feeling, throughout Mountain Lion, of polish and finesse. It feels finished. It feels stable, something Lion certainly didn’t at regular intervals. Things that are confused ideas in Lion are refined into really great features in Mountain Lion. Bouncy scrolling is everywhere and feels great to the touch. When you approach the scroll-bar, if you want to drag with the cursor, the skinny bar widens to accommodate easier scrolling. Due to push notification support, the App Store actually feels like a part of the OS, rather than a disparate app. “All My Files” doesn’t lag anymore. Reminders and Notes round of the synchronicity with iOS beautifully. The inclusion of Game Center cements the fact that your iPhone and Mac are actually part of the same company. You can finally search for apps inside Launchpad making it semi-usable. Heck, Time Machine can backup to multiple volumes. It isn’t one feature in particular, it can only really be described as system-wide refinements that finish everything Lion started and make them make sense.
