Tag: Apple

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And just like that, Aircel in India offers iPhone 3GS for $236

A couple of days ago I put down my thoughts as to why the 3GS might remain on Apple’s line up and it primarily hinges on the fact that Apple cannot offer the iPhone 4 for less than $350 let alone $300. As it turns out, Aircel in India has begun to offer the 3GS unlocked for $236 including a $55 one year post paid voice, text, and data package. The catch is that the data package is 2G only, but that’s beside the point. You can take the iPhone out of India and it will work with any SIM card anywhere, for far less than $300, the price point I put forward in that earlier blog post.

This could be Aircel trying to clear inventory, but knowing some details as to how Apple deals with carriers, this promo would not have gone ahead without Apple’s authorization unless Aircel is willing to face severe penalties.

You see, Apple sets the price that iPhones are sold around the world. Any marketing material, any promo, billboard placements, advertisements, and the like must all receive a green light from Apple, otherwise the carrier partner will be penalized. It happened before with Telkomsel in Indonesia when it launched an ad campaign ahead of the iPhone 4 launch at the end of 2010.

Apparently the telco had gone with the campaign before Apple approved the material and as a result, its head of marketing for iPhone was recalled back to parent company Singtel, and Telkomsel had difficulties acquiring more iPhone 4 from Apple in early 2011 as it faced shortages.

The importance of the 3GS being maintained in price-sensitive markets is that it allows Apple to offer a low cost iPhone to a far greater range of consumers who might otherwise consider the more affordable Android or BlackBerry phones.

Apple faces difficulties in selling iPhones in emerging markets where consumers are used to paying full price for phones instead of agreeing to contracts that subsidizes the up front cost of the phone. Having the 3GS in that lower price range will remove or at least reduce that challenge and puts the iPhone within reach.

The 3GS may be a three year old phone, but it’s still an iPhone and it still runs the latest operating system and will run much of the same apps as the newer models. After all, most of the Android and BlackBerry phones within that price range may be brand new models but they are not exactly state of the art phones either.

Why I think the iPhone 3GS may be retained instead of the iPhone 4

Matthew Panzarino for TheNextWeb

The iPhone ‘next’ would be the flagship, the iPhone 4S would offer Siri and take the place of the 4 in the pricing lineup, and the 3GS would remain ‘free’ on contract. But, if the prices were right, Apple could expand the 3GS from a contract device to an off-contract pre-paid model that might finally give the company a horse in the developing nations race.

The iPhone business is still an evolving one for Apple. It may be their largest money maker already right now but they can still tweak this into something bigger as the prepaid and emerging markets are still a little bit beyond the iPhone.

Apple used to sell one model iPhone, now they sell three, two of which are identical. When Apple introduces the next iPhone, it could drop the 3GS off for being too old or it could decide that having two identical phones is confusing and kill off iPhone 4.

Having the 3GS and 4S alongside the upcoming model makes sense to me because the three models are different enough to be aimed at different market segments, similar to how the iPod line up has different models for different markets and purposes.

The 3GS could be the low cost iPhone primarily aimed at prepaid or emerging markets in which consumers buy phones outright with no carrier subsidies. The phone currently costs around $400-450 outright. If Apple can drop that even further, it would be a boon in emerging markets as well as among the lower income bracket.

The 3GS has allowed Apple to enter the lower price range without having to create another phone specifically for that purpose. Thanks to the decision to include the 3GS in iOS 6 deployment, the phone will remain current at least until 2013. Buyers of the 3GS won’t feel too left out as it will still carry many of the features available to the newer iPhones.

The 3GS may be free with a two year contract in the US, but in markets with no carrier contracts, it’s far from free. If Apple can offer it for $300 or less, it would sway a lot of buyers who may otherwise go for Android, Windows Phone, or even BlackBerry.

The 3GS would still be competitive against the midrange Samsung and HTC phones and the lure of iMessage, Line, and WhatsApp would go some way to keep BlackBerry at bay.

The iPhone 4S essentially is an upgrade to the iPhone 4 so I’d rather see the iPhone 4 killed off than the 3GS. The 4S can be the mid-range phone that offers most of the features in iOS 6, limited in hardware features due to the technical inferiority compared to the upcoming iPhone.

The iPhone 4 of course offers more than the 3GS but why go with 4 when the 4S offers much of the same but better? The 3GS would cost less to manufacture too which means it would be more affordable to consumers. Both 3GS and 4 also do not have Siri. Rather than have a phone that looks similar but has fewer features, might as well go with the one that actually looks different.

These technical barriers are why it makes sense to have the iPhone 4 killed off instead of the 3GS. The 3GS is distinct enough to be a different iPhone yet still offer many of the features in iOS 6. The average consumer would immediately know the difference and understand why certain hardware oriented features like video calling, 3D mapping, built-in turn by turn navigation, and Siri aren’t available on their iPhone.

The 3GS is also less likely to break or shatter when dropped from a height of three feet or so. For a low cost phone, that resilience is more important compared to the more expensive phones since people are more likely to buy cases for those.

On top of that, it’s unlikely for Apple to offer the iPhone 4 outright for $350 or less. And this is probably the biggest reason for Apple to stick with iPhone 3GS instead of iPhone 4.

[Update] Alternatively, what John Gruber said. 3GS goes cheap for markets outside of the USA and iPhone 4 takes 3GS’s place as the “free” phone on US carriers. This might complicate matters a little bit in International markets though.

PIN to shutdown your phone

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A novel idea which is completely implementable as an option for those who wish for more security. Lost two iPhones last year which could have been recovered had this been an option.

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To ask that every piece of modern electronics is designed to allow the tiny fraction of hackers to upgrade is the height of hubris, unreasonable, and a huge imposition on everyone else that has no desire to ever crack the case. All that ‘upgradability’ ends up making the product cost more and be more susceptible to failure. Catering to the fringe is not the way to make good products. Making the best product you can for a low price is the way to make good products, even if it means eliminating upgradability and home repair.

Michael Pusateri via David Chartier

MacBook Pro: The Next Generation

Apple SVP Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller took to the stage at Worldwide Developer Conference earlier today to introduce the new MacBooks with Intel’s latest processors. The MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro received the usual and expected regular internal upgrades, but Apple’s biggest notebook announcement was the next generation MacBook Pro.

The new MacBook Pro is a 15.4 inch notebook weighing only 4.5 pounds and only 0.71 inch thick. The screen is a retina display with 2880 * 1800 pixels for 220 ppi, roughly double the sharpness of the screens on the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro. 

The next generation MacBook Pro is powered by a 2.3 GHz quad core i7 Intel processor, 8GB of RAM, GeForce GT 650M with 1GB of video RAM, 256 GB of flash storage, upgradable to 768GB. As far as ports are concerned, it has MagSafe 2, HDMI out, USB 2 and USB 3 ports, and two Thunderbolt ports. Firewire 800 and Ethernet ports have been relegated to dongle status. With this update it looks like Apple is quietly discontinuing the 17-inch MacBook Pro.

As expected, there is no longer an optical drive and since this is the next generation MacBook Pro, don’t expect optical drives in future MacBook Pro updates. Apple has been known to keep legacy models though, such as the white MacBook which Apple quietly discontinued earlier this year but it remains to be seen if Apple will keep selling MacBook Pros with optical drive once the next generation model become the standard, and if so, for how long.

To support the new MacBook Pro’s retina display, Apple has updated its built in Mac OS X Lion, the iWork and iLife suites as well as its professional apps. Adobe and AutoDesk are also updating their apps to support the retina display.

This introduction of the new MacBook Pro marks the end of the monstrous 17" model. The next generation MacBook Pro starts from $2199.

Oh the irony:

Apple had to mow down an awful lot of trees in order to build its environmentally friendly 100-acre solar array, right across the street from its data center.

Source: Wired

Finding features in iPhoto for iOS

In delivering software user interfaces, there has always been differing lines of thought. One major thinking is to provide absolutely everything in full view, regardless of usefulness or practicality. This allows users to be aware of everything that the software is capable of doing, providing them with complete visible access to its features. Another is to only show the features that are most likely to be used and hiding the rest for users to discover as they become more familiar with the software.

The user interface in iPhoto for iOS seems lie somewhere between the two. Visually it’s a bit of a clutter but it also still has hidden features not accessible through the on-screen buttons and icons. Unfortunately those hidden features are very unlikely to be discovered unless people had seen the on stage demo when the app was introduced or that they read reviews and guides for the app on the Internet.

Apple has had a habit of hiding operational functions but in most cases, there are two ways to access them. One is through the standard visible interface elements such as buttons or other visual cues, another is through keyboard shortcuts on Macs or touch gestures on iDevices. Rarely would an operational feature be accessible only through one non-obvious mean of access and when it is, it tends to be pro features that the majority of users won’t likely to use in the first place.

Lukas Mathis put forward a number of hidden actions on iPhoto for iOS that may seem intuitive for Apple’s engineers and designers but not so much to unsuspecting users. Apple’s apps are supposed to be intuitive for new users but some of these hidden actions seem like they’re not meant to be discovered. Mathis has a pretty damning sentence for iPhoto for iOS:

Almost nothing you learn in iPhoto can be applied to Photos, or to any other iOS app. In fact, being proficient at using iPhoto will probably make you worse at using Photos.

I received an unexpected package on Saturday. It said Family Matters at the back in handwritten marker text and it had just one label to secure the fold which said “Others” with a logo that looks like a door. Even after I opened the package, it took me a while to realize that it wasn’t a package regarding family issues, it was from a brand new home decor and accessories company called Family Matters, run by two young moms from Bandung, Indonesia.

Inside the neatly wrapped package was a svelte, gray suede, leather-lined iPad sleeve. No markings on the product aside from a laser engraved picture of a mustache and a terrible pun telling you to put your iPad down, printed on a leather patch over the suede. The patch itself acts as a pouch that you can use to store cards, paper slips, cash, earphones, or other thin objects. A magnetic flap would secure the iPad inside while the inside of the sleeve is made of leather. 

At a glance it may look too thin to fit the original iPad but it does fit very snugly. The leather material inside also acts as a wipe to clean the screen as you slip the iPad in and out. The product description says it fits iPad 1 and 2 but of course it fits the new iPad as well given that the original iPad is still the thickest of them all.

The point of the sleeve is to stow your iPad away while you’re not using it and of course, with the sleeve being a tight fit, it would disqualify most protective products other than thin film sheets from being used with the iPad. Unfortunately this means the iPad will be left unprotected when in use.

This iMustache sleeve feels quite premium thanks to the smooth suede and leather. As with most iPad sleeves it does offer only a basic protection due to the lack of padding but it feels really nice and is very well made. It looks so good I want to hang it on my wall instead of using it for my iPad. I don’t have the heart to ruin its shape by stuffing my old iPad inside.

The iMustache sleeve is available online from Family Matters for Rp 225,000 (US$25). For a product this good, it’s a serious steal. I hope it’s only an introductory price. I don’t know if they ship internationally, you have to ask them.