Federico Viticci

10781 posts on MacStories since April 2009

Federico is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of MacStories, where he writes about Apple with a focus on apps, developers, iPad, and iOS productivity. He founded MacStories in April 2009 and has been writing about Apple since. Federico is also the co-host of AppStories, a weekly podcast exploring the world of apps, Unwind, a fun exploration of media and more, and NPC: Next Portable Console, a show about portable gaming and the handheld revolution.
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@viticci.macstories.net
viticci@macstories.net

Apple Low On iPad Sales in Q4 2010? 7.46 Million iPads Sold So Far

Once again, Apple’s quarterly fiscal results broke any record: $20.43 million revenue, 14.1 million iPhone sold (despite the whole Antennagate “thing”), 3.89 million Macs and 4.19 million iPads.

Looking at the numbers reported above, it appears that analysts this time almost got the whole situation right: they predicted 4 million Macs, 13 million iPhones and…6 million iPads. So is Apple low on iPad sales, with “just” 4.19 million units out from the shelves in Q4? Not really: of all the analysts Fortune contacted, only one placed his expectations above 5.95 million units sold. Nine of them went for a 4.00 - 5.00 million range. Not exactly “low sales”, but perhaps many expected record sales as the iPhone 4.

We have to look at the big picture, and not just the raw numbers. In two quarters, the iPad is already outselling the Mac. 7.46 million iPads are out in the wild, 5 months after its release date.

I think those are the numbers worth to be considered.

Steve Jobs: We still have a few surprises left for 2010

Apple CEO Steve Jobs, in the press release for Apple Q4 financial results:

We are blown away to report over $20 billion in revenue and over $4 billion in after-tax earnings—both all-time records for Apple. iPhone sales of 14.1 million were up 91 percent year-over-year, handily beating the 12.1 million phones RIM sold in their most recent quarter. We still have a few surprises left for the remainder of this calendar year.

A few surprises left might mean a new MacBook Air on Wednesday, or a CDMA iPhone (that runs on Verizon) announcement before the end of the year. Or maybe something entirely new, such a 7-inch iPad model? What about a complete MobileMe revamp?

Truth is, with $20 billion revenue in the last quarter they can pull out whatever surprise they want.

Advertising Age: Apple “Marketer of the Decade”

Advertising Age announced earlier today that it has named Apple “Marketer of the Decade”, a prestigious award to a company that ”influences business models across all media and creates exceptionally brand-loyal consumer base”.

It seems fitting: Apple kicked off the aughts in 2001 with the iPod, an electronic device that went on to disrupt and forever change the music industry; then mid-decade it dropped the iPhone, a mobile device that changed the mobile-phone industry and added the word “apps” to the English vocabulary; and finally, in 2010 it debuted the iPad, a computing device with the potential to disrupt the media, publishing, entertainment and computing industries.

Yes, it has been a golden decade for Apple. And while one can certainly argue that its influence has been overstated – it is No. 56 on the list of Fortune 500 by revenue – Apple’s influence on business models across industries from music and computing to entertainment and advertising, along with its impact on popular culture, media and, of course, marketing, has been indelible.

Apple and its agency, Omnicom Group’s TBWA, make a great case study on the benefits of long-term agency-client relationships. The two have been together since the iconic “1984” Super Bowl spot, although the agency was off the account from 1986 until 1997, which is almost identical to the years CEO Steve Jobs was absent from Apple (1985-1997).

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How To: Add Tasks To OmniFocus or Things Using Dropbox and PlainText

OmniFocus and Things come with beautiful and useful mobile applications for iPhone and iPad, but sometimes you just want to have more control over how tasks are added to their databases. Or maybe you can’t afford paying for multiple mobile versions of the same app and you just use the desktop application.

But you’re a great Dropbox fan, and we’ve shown you many creative uses of Dropbox in the past. You can use the service to sync bookmarks and passwords across devices and computers, store music libraries, even control your Mac using Applescript and Folder Actions. Today, thanks to the efforts of our good friend Gianni Rondini (@giannivt), we’re featuring an interesting way to add tasks (with optional notes) to Things and OmniFocus for Mac using Dropbox and HogBay Software’s PlainText, inspired by Elastic Thread’s method to control your Mac using Dropbox.

Check out the instructions and download links after the break. Read more

iPad As The New Flash→

iPad As The New Flash

Jeffrey Zeldman:

Too many designers and publishers see the iPad as an opportunity to do all the wrong things—things they once did in Flash—without the taint of Flash.

Everything we’ve learned in the past decade about preferring open standards to proprietary platforms and user-focused interfaces to masturbatory ones is forgotten as designers and publishers once again scramble to create novelty interfaces no one but them cares about.

While some of this will lead to useful innovation, particularly in the area of gestural interfaces, that same innovation can just as readily be accomplished on websites built with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript—and the advantage of creating websites instead of iPad apps is that websites work for everyone, on browsers and devices at all price points. That, after all, is the point of the web. It’s the point of web standards and progressive enhancement.

But the iPad supports open web standards. More than hoping in Apple’s tablet to save their magazines, I think publishers just want to make a shitload of money out of iPad apps. It’s that simple.

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