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Apple Hires John Browett To Fill Senior Vice President Of Retail Position

Apple has this morning announced that it is hiring John Browett to serve as the company’s senior vice president of Retail - a position that he will fill from late April. Browett has been the CEO of European technology retailer Dixons since 2007 and has considerable experience in the field, also holding executive positions at Tesco including CEO of Tesco.com.

“Our retail stores are all about customer service, and John shares that commitment like no one else we’ve met,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “We are thrilled to have him join our team and bring his incredible retail experience to Apple.

Browett will become responsible for the retail strategy at Apple and lead the expansion of Apple retail stores around the world. He will be taking over the position that Ron Johnson had held until he left Apple last November to become chief executive of JC Penney.

Apple’s full press release and Dixons’ full press release are included after the break.

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The iOS-ification Of Apple’s Ecosystem

Today’s update to AirPort Utility for Lion reminds me of a topic I was willing to write about but eventually left in my nvALT queue due iOS 5 (review) and iCloud, various app releases, and the usual news from Apple in the past months. The iOS-ification of OS X is, at this point, inevitable, and anyone who doesn’t see it, or tries to neglect, is either software-blind or has some kind of interest in that way of thinking.

I am looking at my Mac’s screen right now, and I can count dozens of iOS-inspired elements now co-existing with “old school” Aqua interfaces and controls. This transition obviously started years ago, and in retrospect it’s hard to dig up the very first example of iOS-ification on the Mac, so let’s just take a general look at the things we have today:

iPhoto (updated in 2010);

Safari’s popover for Downloads;

Safari’s tap-to-define;

Launchpad;

Linen;

Settings;

Mail;

iCal;

Address Book;

FaceTime (released in 2010);

And now, the new AirPort Utility.

Of course, many great writers have already written about the general concept of graphical resemblance of Lion (our review) to, say, an iPad, noting how several iOS apps and UI schemes have been ported down to the last pixel to OS X. The screenshots above should provide some context.

Today’s (relatively minor) software update reminds me, however, that the iOS-ification goes far beyond simply converting graphics and updating apps from one platform to another. It is actually more a conversion of the entire Apple ecosystem to an iOS-inspired system of graphical elements, user interactions, business models, user experience paradigms, and functionalities. The iOS-ification isn’t simply visual, it’s a fundamental shift of strategy that, ultimately, I believe begins and ends with iCloud – something that I have discussed before.

Sure, many apps look the same across iOS and Lion now. Some features have worked the other way around, finding their way from OS X to iOS, such as Safari Reader and over-the-air software updates. Others weren’t ported – they were released at the same time across two platforms, such as Reading List (which fits in the bigger iCloud plan). From the user experience standpoint, there’s plenty of iOS goodness to go by in Lion: full-screen mode and Auto Save + Resume give users an iOS-like environment for working with apps and never lose data; natural scrolling and gestures have unified the way a user moves content around and interacts with the operating system; the Home user’s Library directory is not visible by default in Lion, eliminating an important piece of filesystem from the default configuration of the OS.

Then there’s the business side of the ecosystem. Both iOS and Mac apps have to be sold through the App Store, with Apple retaining a 30% cut off every transaction (Update: Mac apps can still be sold outside of the Mac App Store. Many have debated, however, that going forward the obvious path is the Mac App Store, with some feature such as iCloud integration being Mac App Store-only). Just like on iOS, Mac developers will soon be forced to implement sandboxing, which limits the access a third-party app has to the filesystem. And, obviously, boxed software is going away, leaving much retail room to Mac and iOS devices showcasing the App Store. Or shelves filled with iOS accessories.

iOS-ification isn’t merely graphical: I believe someday, very soon, almost every aspect of Apple’s operations will be iOS-inspired or iOS-unified: from hardware design to user interfaces and app distribution, from developer guidelines to marketing and the way people “see” Apple these days. Those who got to know Apple in the past five years likely already think of it as “the iPhone company”, and rightfully so for a business largely based on revenue coming from iOS.

There are many questions left unanswered and open to speculation. Will the Mac adopt iOS’ Home screen concept (and shortcomings) in the future? Will the next version of iWork for OS X look something along the lines of this? Will Mac-only applications (and thus Mac-like from a UI standpoint) like Aperture, Final Cut and iBooks Author ever be ported to iOS, triggering an iOS-based rewrite and redesign? We don’t know yet. But soon, maybe?

The complete iOS-ification of the ecosystem will be long and there will still be hardware features and design experimentations that will be tested on the Mac first. We can only assume that Thunderbolt will be made available for iOS devices in the future. Macs are still based on physical keyboards, and even if they (perhaps) don’t want to, Apple’s engineers are forced to test new apps with keyboard shortcuts and a different user interaction. Macs have bigger screens, which can lead to arguable design choices like a comically large Launchpad.

But the seed has been planted, and today’s software release is just another drip of water in a field ready to flourish in iOS-based similarities, like it or not.

Apple Releases iOS-like AirPort Utility 6.0 for Lion

Earlier today Apple pushed a series of updates for its AirPort Utility software, as well as a firmware update for AirPort Base Station and Time Capsule.

AirPort Utility has been updated to both version 5.6 (latest one was 5.5.3) and 6.0,the latter  available now as 14.3 MB download in Software Update. Whilst 5.6 is a minor update that “resolves an issue with using network passwords stored in the Keychain” and “works with AirPort Express 802.11g and AirPort Extreme 802.11g base stations”, AirPort Utility 6.0 is a major rewrite of the application that now resembles its iOS counterpart released in October of last year.

Above: AirPort Utility for iOS 5 on iPad. Below: the new AirPort Utility for Lion.

We’ll update this story with more details and screenshots in a few minutes. In the meantime, you can find the download links below. Apple also updated the AirPort Base Station and Time Capsule firmware, which reaches version 7.6.1 and brings the following changes:

This update is for all 802.11n AirPort Express, 802.11n AirPort Extreme and Time Capsule models. It fixes an issue with wireless performance and provides support for remote access to an AirPort disk or a Time Capsule hard drive with an iCloud account.

Direct links:

- AirPort Utility 5.6 for Mac OS X Lion

- AirPort Utility 6.0 for Mac OS X Lion

- AirPort Base Station and Time Capsule Firmware Update 7.6.1

MacStories Reading List: January 22 - January 29

Another week gone by, another Reading List collection of great articles we’ve found around the web in the past seven days. This week saw the release of Apple’s Q1 2012 results, with an impressive 37 million iPhones sold and over $40 billion in revenue for the quarter. Interesting discussions, however, are still happening around iBooks Author, textbooks, and publishing tools. Not to mention The New York Times’ articles detailing Apple’s supply chain in China, and the experience of an Android user trying an iPhone for two weeks.

It’s time for another Reading List, so curl up with your favorite browser or read-later app, and enjoy the links we’ve collected for you. Read more

Quick Review: NewsFlash Aggregates The World’s Headlines

Even though I do most of news consumption in Instapaper, Twitter, and Zite these days, I still enjoy getting up to speed with “real news organizations” every once in a while. The majority of time that means getting to fire up some Italian website that delivers news (such as Ansa) or “big media” publications from the US, depending on what I’m looking for in that particular moment. Just as I was wondering why some sort of “Techmeme for Italy” doesn’t exist yet, an email dropped in my inbox pointing me at NewsFlash, a new universal app by Sollico, the same guys behind CurrencyPad for iOS.

NewsFlash is basically an RSS aggregator for the major news sources in the world – that is, some sort of “Techmeme for Italy only” for more countries, with “big media” websites aggregated by default and no relevance algorithm in the backend. In Italy, you can have news from the likes of Il Corriere Della Sera or Ansa; in the U.S. you’ll both find Reuters and Msnbc alongside TechCrunch and MacRumors. The app, in fact, is organized in sections that range from News and Politics to Sports, Technology and Gossip, providing a way to quickly change the topic you’re looking and get the facts, or at least what’s been written, about the latest news. It’s like Techmeme meets MacHash meets Tech News Tube meets Google Reader, only in a clean, intuitive app for iPhone and iPad.

The app obviously allows you to share stories via Facebook, Twitter (iOS 5 integration is supported), email and text message. NewsFlash doesn’t always load a website’s mobile view when jumping to stories (and that can actually be a good thing), but it offers font size controls and options to block ads and links to third-parties. News can be updated with the typical pull-to-refresh gesture, whilst a top toolbar is used to switch between countries and sections through a single swipe. Currently, NewsFlash comes with support for the following countries: Italy, UK, US, Germany (both in Deutsche and English), Japan, France (both French and English) and Israeli. The app’s preferences allow you to hide certain sections and add custom feeds (you can add literally anything that supports RSS, turning NewsFlash into a simple RSS reader), adjust fonts and change the app’s background. I like how the app automatically looks at your device’s language and tries to load news from that country.

NewsFlash is free, but you can disable iAd with a $1.99 in-app purchase. Give it a try if you’ve been looking for a nice app that aggregates “general” news, whilst keeping your real RSS subscriptions in a standalone Google Reader app.

Lion Full-Screen, New Tab Page Sneak Into Early Firefox 12 Build

One of the next versions of Firefox, Firefox 12, may feature a series of new interface elements and functionalities that should both appeal to OS X Lion users and introduce new navigation options for those who dont’ want to save their-most accessed websites in a bookmarks bar anymore. As first noted by ExtremeTech, an early version of a proposed new tab page design snuck into a nightly version of Firefox; per Mozilla’s multiple channel releases, users of Firefox can test different versions of the browser, which range from Nightly to Aurora, Beta, Stable, and those uploaded directly to Mozilla’s FTP servers.

ExtremeTech wrote about the new tab page:

The Firefox home tab is a lot more exciting. Basically there are two phases: The first phase will add “launchers” at the bottom — one-click links to your downloads, settings, apps, and so on (pictured right). Phase two is a complete reworking of the home page paradigm, weaving in favorite apps, recent websites, and even instant messaging (pictured below). Phase one is expected to roll out with Firefox 12, but at the time of writing the code still hasn’t been committed.

However, as also noted in an update to the original post, it appears Mozilla has pulled the functionality from the Nightly release of Firefox, leaving it in the “UX version” available for download on Mozilla’s servers. Upon comparing the standard Nightly build to the UX one, I noticed the latter already contains the grid design for top websites pictured above, and full-screen support for Lion.

I wasn’t able to activate ExtremeTech’s home tab page design with search, Top Apps, Top Sites and Chat in a single window; the current Firefox UX Nightly build features shortcuts along the bottom of the window to open History, Settings, Add-ons, Apps, and Downloads. A new “Restore Previous Session” button is also provided in case you haven’t set Firefox to automatically re-open previously open tabs on launch.

Changes that appear in Firefox Nightly builds typically carry over to the other stages of development and are further tweaked with refinements and bug fixes, but there could be changes in the features that Mozilla decides to implement once version 12 hits the beta channel. As for Lion support, Mozilla failed to deliver any significant optimization since the OS’ release back in July, unlike competitor Chrome which added new scrolling, full-screen support and gesture navigation (among other things) fairly quickly. A designer at Mozilla mocked up some ideas that the company could deliver in a future version of Firefox for Lion, but as of version 12 nightly (Firefox stable is currently at version 9) it seems those ideas haven’t been taken into consideration yet.

Scanner Makers Have Their Heads In The Cloud→

Macworld: Scanner Makers Have Their Heads In The Cloud

James Galbraith reports from Macworld|iWorld 2012:

Don’t believe it when folks say that the Macworld | iWorld show floor is primarily filled with iOS accessories—the community of document scanner makers is quite well represented too. At least seven different companies have scanners on display at this week’s event.

Continuing a trend that we saw last year, many scanner companies are relying on their cloud capabilities rather than their hardware to differentiate themselves.

He mentions Doxie’s Go scanner, Neat Company’s NeatReceipts and NeatDesktop products (powered by subscription-based NeatCloud), Fujitsu’s ScanSnap scanners, and Ambir, which partnered with NewSoft for the Mac versions of the TravelScan Pro and TravelScan Pro Duplex. NewSoft also showed a Mac utility that scans the OS X Address Book and syncs with iCloud.

It’s interesting to see how scanners, a category of devices many would have called “boring” five years ago, has been revitalized by iOS devices and the cloud. Most of these products have cloud-related functionalities built-in, usually in the form of Dropbox and Evernote integration for publishing scanned documents, or backing up entire libraries of PDFs. They come with desktop and mobile applications, too, that often allow for wireless syncing through Eye-Fi cards, thus cutting the need for a cord entirely.

On the iOS side, another trend that can only grow as the hardware gets better is camera-based scanning software. The App Store is full of possible solutions to turn your iPhone into a scanner; because it’s software, developers can augment these apps with updates and new features at any time. iOS scanning tools will never be a replacement for “real” scanners if you need to go paperless with 10 years worth of documents, but they can serve as the primarily solution for many people that are starting now with only a few business cards and small receipts. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Apple coming out with its own scanning app in the future, as a cool hardware showcase for a new iPhone.

Personally, I bought a Doxie Go and I’m quite fond of it so far. Make sure to check out Shawn Blanc’s video and review if you’ve never heard of the Doxie before.

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Even Apple Can’t Change The Reality Of Consumer Electronics Manufacturing Overnight→

Even Apple Can’t Change The Reality Of Consumer Electronics Manufacturing Overnight

There’s nowhere else in the world you can build a modern smartphone or tablet as cheaply, easily, and reliably as the massive factories of companies like Foxconn, which operate on a scale that is difficult to comprehend. The price for doing business with companies like Foxconn is living with the knowledge that these products are being built by people who have signed up for a modern-day version of indentured servitude.

This month the issue of working conditions and the human cost of producing Apple products has come up a few times with a ‘This American Life’ episode, the release of Apple’s annual Supplier Responsibility report and then this week’s New York Times report on the issue. It’s an incredibly serious issue and one that is rightly in the spotlight again. Yet whilst it is wrong to excuse Apple on this issue, the New York Times report perhaps glosses over the important part of this issue. Tom Krazit of paidContent goes one step further than the New York Times report and points out the sad, conflicted reality that if we want these luxury consumer electronics (such as the iPhone), they just have to be made in China and Apple cannot single-handedly change this reality.

As should be clear by now, Apple is only being singled out by the Times because it is at the top of the tech heap, and while that may be fair game given Apple’s unbelievable profit, it overstates the ability of the company to act as a macroeconomic force.

Apple has been the focus of these reports and backlash because they are now at the top of industry - despite the fact that by all accounts they are also one of the most transparent companies regarding this issue. As Krazit points out, Apple’s Supplier Responsibility report is far more detailed than that of Nike or GAP’s - companies that were targeted nearly a decade ago for horrifying conditions in their supplier’s factories. In fact GAP’s last report was in 2010 and Nike hasn’t even released a report since 2009.

It could use some of its $97 billion cash hoard as a carrot and the threat of losing its formidable business (Foxconn has no customer more important than Apple) as a stick. But unless Apple is willing to incur significant risk and set up its own manufacturing facilities governed by its own principles within China (something which, to be clear, may not be permitted by either China or the U.S.) it is dependent upon suppliers that have different standards when it comes to the well-being of their employees. And changing the labor laws of a foreign country is not necessarily a project that a U.S. company can throw money at and cross its fingers hoping everything works out.

Krazit’s full article is well worth the read, as he rationally examines the issue and discusses what could be done by Apple. As he and us at MacStories want to stress, Apple is right to scrutinise their suppliers and should continue to put ever more pressure on their suppliers to improve conditions. Yet it is unrealistic to expect Apple to stop relying on Foxconn and other Chinese suppliers and move production to a Western nation or equalize working conditions overnight. As Krazit notes, “even Apple doesn’t have the clout to reverse two decades of economic history that has led to the status quo”.

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