If you’re looking to easily track and visualize Apple’s financial performance from quarter to quarter, Francesco Schwarz has put together an interactive chart that you can play around with to see how Apple has done over the past decade. The chart goes back to Q1 2002.
Category: Uncategorized
Reason to Attend Conferences: The People
Earlier this week I posted some thoughts on DailySocial on whether it’s worth attending conferences, especially technology-oriented conferences.
In it I said that the contents of conferences generally aren’t worth the money you pay to attend because you’ll more likely come across them on the Internet one way or another. Often the keynotes or talks are posted online via streaming, live blogs, look backs, or podcasts. Photos are almost always abound.
What makes conferences worth attending, I argued, are the connections you make with fellow attendees whether they’re new acquaintances or friends that you rarely catch up with and the chance to meet or rub shoulders with other people in the industry.
In San Francisco this past few days was Macworld | iWorld, the latest incarnation of the long-running Macworld Expo. Stephen Hackett at 512 pixels posted his own thoughts about attending the conference.
Again, the talks and speeches at Macworld can be found online, but what he found most valuable is the chance to catch up with a lot of people that he wold not have otherwise met in person on a regular basis.
As he said,
I learned that people I know from the Internet are real people and – more importantly – that our friendships are real, even though we don’t see each other most of the time
Tumblr Search is Badly Broken
This is something that has been bugging me for ages. Despite having a search capability in both the dashboard and the blog page, it’s practically impossible to search for anything in your own Tumblr blog.
While the search drop down in the dashboard offers multiple options including searching through your own posts, it would almost always return zero results. Sometimes it would return posts that have been tagged accordingly but even then it’s never a complete set of results, many posts with relevant results would go missing.
Searching for a word or sentence that clearly is there within a particular post would never return that post in the results page.
If search is so difficult to implement for Tumblr, why not hand it over to Bing or Google? Tumblr should have a properly working content search ability. Categorization is one thing but often search is the best method to find content. If a search query for a particular text cannot find the relevant results even though they are actually there, then either don’t have it at all or outsource it to someone else.
iMessage Activation Issues
Today I found out that iMessage on my iPhone had stopped working. Last time I used iMessage was last weekend but yesterday I had taken out the SIM card from the phone for the first time in months and did not realize until today that iMessage was turned off. Now I’m having problems with iMessage activation.
Ever since iOS 5 came out, I’ve been using iMessage in place of SMS whenever possible. I registered my iPad and iPhone 3GS using the same email address and through a little bit of trickery, avoided registering my phone number for it. In other words, iMessage on my iPhone works only through email and that’s how I want it.
Another reason why I don’t want to register my phone number to iMessage is because I’m using Axis, an Indonesian carrier which isn’t registered with Apple as its iPhone partner. In most cases, only approved carriers can have their customers registered to iMessage and FaceTime. There is an unexplained anomaly that allows Indosat numbers to be accepted by Apple’s activation server for iMessage and FaceTime despite the network not selling iPhones.
Trying to register to FaceTime or iMessage with a number from a non-partner carrier will result in your phone credits being drained without your knowledge because it uses background SMS process to send, acknowledge, and receive activation requests.
If the phone fails to receive an acknowledgement from the activation server, it will keep sending background text commands over and over again through the SMS channel using international rates. Fastest way to lose money through your phone.
How did I enable iMessage without a phone number back in October? What I did was I took out the SIM card from the phone, put it in Airplane mode and turned on iMessage. I can’t remember what the precise steps were (it was back in October 2011), but after entering my Apple ID email, the service accepted it and activated iMessage for me. I then added my iCloud email as well.
Things went fine until yesterday when I couldn’t send any text over iMessage. Earlier today I checked the Settings app and iMessage was set to off. When I turned it back on, it was waiting for activation.
After a few seconds, the settings for Messages ended up as above, signifying that the two emails I used (Apple ID email and iCloud email) for iMessage had been verified and approved but the status on screen was still waiting for activation. So I took out the SIM card, went into Airplane mode, reconnected to wifi and yes, I turned iMessage off and on again. I also repeated the process after turning the iPhone off and on again.
A few hours later it still won’t show up as activated despite me having already used iMessage to chat with a couple of friends (see the image above). It’s obvious that it’s trying to complete the activation for my phone number but I don’t want that to happen. If iPad and iPod touch can have iMessage activated only using email, why not the iPhone? It also worked before, why not now?
I’m still trying to figure out how to stop iMessage from trying to rob me of my money by sending multiple activation request to Apple’s servers. I don’t want to have to turn off iMessage but I don’t want it to waste my money either.
Clearly there is a way to activate iMessage on iPhone without the phone number (I did it last year) but I must have missed a step or two in the process. Anyone know or have any idea what I missed? I need to get iMessage working again on my 3GS without the phone number. No, I’m not considering a switch to a number from an approved network.
Comparing phone sizes
Haven’t linked to this, so I figured I should before I forget. Unfortunately it’s down now.
Telkomsel and XL Axiata begin selling iPhone 4S in Indonesia today
Today Indonesia’s Telkomsel and XL Axiata will begin selling the iPhone 4S. In a departure from past pricing plans, this time each telco has markedly distinct packages and even different pre-paid costs. Additionally, there is approximately a 10% increase over the cost of past iPhones while in the US it has remain the same since 2008 for every iPhone model.
Previously outright cost of iPhone 4 used to be Rp 7 million and Rp 8.2 million for the 16 GB and 32 GB respectively. The iPhone 4S now start from Rp 7.7 million for the 16 GB all the way to Rp 10.3 million for the 64 GB.
The 4S being released in January may seem a little late compared to the December release of the iPhone 4 in 2010 but one needs to remember that it wasn’t until mid October last year that Apple began selling the 4S in the US, so now Indonesia is only four months behind instead of six or more. The 3G was released in March 2009 and the 3GS in February 2010.
As for the pricing plans, here are the packages from Telkomsel. The lack of contract plans in Indonesia means buyers are given the choice of 12 month credit card installments or full price purchase.
The included free calls and SMS are intra-network only, meaning they apply only within the same network, not to numbers from other mobile network providers as per local regulations.
It’s very likely that as it had been in the past, post-paid packages are valid for pre-approved customers only as new Telkomsel iPhone customers are generally directed towards pre-paid options.
Pre-paid customers have a new daily plan to choose from which limits them to 60 MB data consumption per day. Previously all packages had been monthly.
XL Axiata’s iPhone plans are different as well this year. In addition to the three 12-month credit card installment plans and the option for outright purchase, the blue network now offers six-month credit card installment plans for pre-paid customers. The total costs of the pre-paid installment plans differ very slightly from the full up-front purchase price which makes it quite an attractive option.
At the conclusion of the installment period, customers are enrolled automatically to a 1.2 GB monthly data package with the standard call and text rates. Excess call/text/data are charged at prevailing rates.
[update]
Forgot to include pre-paid costs for iPhone 4S on XL Axiata. They are 16GB Rp 7,999,000; 32GB Rp 9,199,000; 64GB Rp 10,399,000
Personal hotspot use is included in the data packages of both Telkomsel and XL Axiata.
Telkomsel does not bundle voice/text/data packages for its pre-paid plans while XL Axiata does.
New and old Techmemes. About the redesign.
How the US lost out on iPhone work
This incredible investigative report by the New York Times takes a look behind the scenes on why Apple outsources its manufacturing work to Chinese companies and workers.
The company held out for as long as it could to maintain manufacturing within US borders but eventually caved in and in 2004 shut down its last US plant in Elk Grove, California, which was making Macs. The former plant now serves as a call center for Apple.
As to whether the US can reclaim manufacturing jobs from China, this part is damning:
Another critical advantage for Apple was that China provided engineers at a scale the United States could not match. Apple’s executives had estimated that about 8,700 industrial engineers were needed to oversee and guide the 200,000 assembly-line workers eventually involved in manufacturing iPhones. The company’s analysts had forecast it would take as long as nine months to find that many qualified engineers in the United States.
In China, it took 15 days.
The Atlantic last year calculated how much an iPad would cost if it was manufactured in the US, it was $1,140. That point was rebutted but then the rebuttal itself was claimed to have been taken through a misunderstanding. If this is all too confusing to follow, let’s take this discussion back to the point in the NY Times article.
“What U.S. plant can find 3,000 people overnight and convince them to live in dorms?”
China’s Foxconn can and has done this.
MPAA chairman Chris Dodd threatens to cut funding to US politicians over SOPA failure
“Those who count on quote ‘Hollywood’ for support need to understand that this industry is watching very carefully who’s going to stand up for them when their job is at stake. Don’t ask me to write a check for you when you think your job is at risk and then don’t pay any attention to me when my job is at stake,”
This is an incredible statement from a former Senator who is chairman of the MPAA and is one year away from being eligible to directly lobby the government.
CrunchFund partner MG Siegler has harsher words to say about Chris Dodd.
More on Chris Dodd’s statement.
MPAA chairman Chris Dodd threatens to cut funding to US politicians over SOPA failure
AuliaSays 