Tag: Apple

Regis McKenna thinks Apple’s 1984 ad is overrated

He has his reasons and if you know the follow up to 1984, which was called Lemmings, it rings even more true to his criticism and remarks about Apple being shunned by the enterprise market. Lemmings carried a much stronger message than 1984 and because of it, it fell flat. It was a disaster.

The article though, resonated with me not because of his criticism of the ad but for how Apple handled the iPhone 4 antenna issue. It never was bigger than most other problems with the phone but due to the media beat up, it felt worse. As it turned out, within 10 days the issue disappeared. Apple did redesign the antenna for the 4S but to me it had always felt like Apple was doing it more for the public relations effect than for strictly technical reasons.

Oh and it’s yet another claim over the inaccuracies of Walter Isaacson’s book on Steve Jobs.

Regis McKenna thinks Apple’s 1984 ad is overrated

Official: Apple iPad 3 event slated for March 7th in San Francisco | The Verge

Yerba Buena, San Francicso, Wednesday, 10 am Pacific Time. No CNBC, it’s not going to be in New York.

Source: theverge.com

Samsung lied in its latest Galaxy Note video

Samsung Mobile USA put up a video this week showing several tasks that supposedly the iPhone can’t do but can be easily done on a big ass 5-inch Galaxy note with a stylus. A STYLUS! How 1994.

Of course, when Tap Magazine found out about it, they went to work on rebutting every point in the video by doing everything it said the iPhone can’t do, on an iPhone. Including shooting and editing the video.

Samsung lied in its latest Galaxy Note video

Mountain Lion Marks a Change at Apple

On Thursday night Apple pulled Mountain Lion out of a hat. A select number of journalists and bloggers had been given early access to a developer’s preview version for about a week and kept them quiet. These lucky ones got to see Apple’s next major operating system for the Mac and all of them published their reviews almost at the same time, giving Apple maximum coverage on the web and surprising everyone else.

Unlike in years past, Apple this time did not reveal its upcoming Mac OS X version on stage in front of a large audience with full press coverage. Instead it did things very differently.

As John Gruber noted in his impression of the unveiling, Apple’s Phil Schiller told him that Apple was starting to do things differently. Like not giving early access to New York Times for one. David Pogue was once among Apple’s most favored journalists but not this time as Apple shunned the Times for its scathing series of reports on the working conditions of Foxconn’s factories in China which made Apple’s products.

Apple had staged a press event for the education sector a few weeks ago in New York and is expected to do another one for the next version of iPad in early March. If it had done another one for Mountain Lion, it would have had three events in three months and could be seen as cheapening the value of its press gatherings. Apple hasn’t had press conferences for Mac product releases in a while either as the current versions of the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro notebooks were silent updates to the Apple Online Store.

Apple will definitely talk about Mountain Lion at the Worldwide Developer Conference in San Francisco in June and that is when it will get its stage time. Mountain Lion comes a year after Lion when nobody was expecting an update until 2013 since Lion took nearly two years after Snow Leopard.

From 2001 to 2003 Apple had released yearly upgrades for Mac OS X but it took longer to release Tiger in 2005 and since then, new versions had been released approximately every year and a half. It looks like Apple is now hoping to catch the momentum of the iPhone and iPad and bring the Mac back in the spotlight.

Additionally, while Apple had started calling its Mac operating system as OS X instead of Mac OS X with Lion, it took until Mountain Lion to finally drop Mac from the About This Mac display. The Mac name will obviously still be used for its hardware products, Apple is just differentiating the OS from the computers.

As I noted in my post about Tim Cook’s speech at a Goldman Sachs conference being streamed by Apple, it was a clear sign that Apple was beginning to institute a different policy with regards to public engagements. Phil Schiller’s statement to John Gruber only confirmed that.

[update]

Shortly after posting this I found out that David Pogue was indeed among the early group of people given access to Mountain Lion but of course, I was already on a trip out of town with little access to the internet and almost no way of editing this post. Gruber especially noted some time later that Pogue was the next person to be briefed after him.

Apple CEO Tim Cook Spoke at Length About The Company

While DailySocial isn’t about gadgets, there’s always a discussion about our favorite fruit company, especially now that Apple is arguably the largest mobile devices company in the world with the most prominent developer and application ecosystem. With Tim Cook now at the helm, the company has taken an unusual step to stream his talk at the recent Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference.

This represents a divergence from how Apple had been conducting its public appearances in the past and perhaps offers a peek into how the company will address the press as well as the public through its executives.

While this is news in itself, the real discovery is what Cook said during his hour-long session. If you’d rather read than listen, Macworld has put together an excellent transcript of his talk.

Cook talked about a very wide range of topics including opportunities in developing countries, the distribution and sales performance of the iPhone and iPad, the recent controversy about working conditions at Foxconn’s factories, product pricing, and lots more.

The Linley Group offers a possible reason why Apple is limiting Siri to iPhone 4S.

To reduce system cost and eliminate the extra package required for the Audience chip, Apple cut a deal to integrate the noise-reduction technology directly into its A5 processor, which appears in the iPhone 4S. This technology is critical for the new phone because not only does it improve call quality, it blocks out background noise when users provide voice commands to Siri, the intelligent assistant built into the iPhone 4S. Without this noise reduction, Siri would be unusable even with a modest amount of background noise.

Recently I had installed Dragon Search and Dragon Dictation on my 3GS. While the underlying software that power these apps and Siri are from Nuance, the above finding by The Linley Group could be a reason why Nuance’s Dragon software titles have difficulties in a crowded room in my phone.

Apple is of course known to refrain from introducing or featuring technologies and abilities that have yet to meet its own threshold of acceptable performance in its products.

Another reason that have come up in the past for the lack of Siri in older products was the possibility that because Siri is still in beta, the company may be testing and collecting data to eventually deliver a more complete experience.

Of course, should Apple offer Siri in older iPhones, the value of iPhone 4S will be diminished greatly, and Apple certainly doesn’t want that to happen given that the company still sells the 3GS and 4 for the lower end of the market.

Internationally though, it makes little difference since Siri doesn’t offer much of an assistance beyond dictation and personal reminders outside of the United States at the moment anyway. Additionally, its linguistic limitations makes Siri practically unusable in many markets.

/via @charlesarthur

The Linley Group offers a possible reason why Apple is limiting Siri to iPhone 4S.

The LA Times brought up the issue that Scottish people have with Siri. Despite being part of the UK, the Scots clearly have such thick accents that Siri has trouble understanding them. The results are obviously unfortunate for the Scots and for Apple but make for some humorous exchanges. At least Apple knows it has a wee bit of problem over the Atlantic.

Foxconn’s workers in context

The working conditions at Foxconn has been the subject of much discussion and outrage over the last few days following the New York Times exposé. Apple has since bore the majority, if not the full, brunt of the criticisms for allowing what looks to be a sweatshop full of suicides with workers earning very little while making iProducts despite other consumer electronics companies also employing Foxconn to do their manufacturing and assembly.

What everybody has missed on however, is context. Thanks to Tim Worstall at Forbes, we now have that context and even better, there’s a clear infographic to illustrate that if you can’t be bothered reading Worstall’s counter argument. I had to link to Worstall’s entire blog instead of the infographic post since Forbes seems to have messed up the link but I’ll embed it for you.

Foxconn’s workers in context

Apple’s Financial Results Visualized

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.

Apple’s Financial Results Visualized

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.