Munster: NPD Data Suggests Slow Mac Sales in April

Citing data compiled by the NPD, Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster says [via Barron’s] Mac sales in April have been slow, mainly due to the MacBook refreshed last year that “set the bar high”, but is still nowhere to be seen in 2011. Indeed, speculation in the past months had pegged Apple’s white MacBook to be headed towards discontinuation, leaving room for the popular MacBook Airs as the new Mac OS X entry line.

Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster this afternoon offers an update on how Apple (AAPL) computer sales are trending: It was slow in April, he writes, according to U.S. sales data compiled by NPD, thanks to a MacBook refresh a year ago that set the bar high for Apple’s year-over-year comparison.

Apple shipped 9% more units in April than a year earlier, while the Street is modeling the entire June quarter to see an increase of 22%, to 4.2 million units.

NPD data posted in February revealed a 20% increase in year-over-year Mac sales, with Apple set to sell 3.6 million Macs in the quarter – as announced at the Q2 2011 earnings call, Apple eventually sold 3.76 million units. Munster is confident that, in spite of slow sales in April, Apple will hit the Street consensus of 22% growth for the entire June quarter; on the other side of the product line, iPod sales are also expected to be better than the 10-15% drop Munster initially projected.

OS X Lion Includes Nuance Voices, Samples Available Online

[image via 9to5mac]

A number of reports from multiple sources over the past months pointed at Apple willing to ink a deal with speech recognition company Nuance over the implementation of text-to-speech and mobile speech recognition technologies in iOS devices, with a preview of the new functionalities scheduled for the WWDC, where the company is rumored to show off iOS 5 with deep Siri integration – Siri is a “personal assistant” app which used Nuance’s tech, among other things, that Apple bought last year. As noted by Netputing, however, it looks like the Apple / Nuance licensing deal might extend to a broader level, with voices from a Nuance product (Vocalizer, nèe RealSpeak) being embedded in Lion since Developer Preview 1. The voices were included in the first beta of Lion seeded to developers in February, but only last week the website noticed the names and settings in the Text Speech preference panel were strikingly similar to Nuance’s offerings.

The new voices in Lion still can’t be utilized as they return an error upon installation, but the samples can be demoed for free following the direct links below, courtesy of OS X Daily.

Mac OS X Lion is set to include a wide variety of new high quality text-to-speech voices in a multitude of languages, thanks to a long suspected partnership between Apple and Nuance, a speech technology company. The new voices are of surprisingly good quality and speak in major world languages including English, Mandarin, German, Japanese, French, Spanish, Thai, Bahasa, Portuguese, Hindi, Russian, and many more.

While the rumors indicated Apple was working closely with Nuance over speech implementation in iOS devices, Nuance might have licensed its full portfolio of international digital voices to Apple for usage in iOS 5 and Mac OS X Lion. A demo of these new features will likely happen at the WWDC, which is less than a month away. [via MacRumors]

Instagram 1.7 Released, Brings New Profile View

While we’re still playing with Carousel and looking at its beautiful interface for the Mac, Instagram – the official app – has received a majore update on the iPhone that reaches version 1.7 and adds a number of new features, alongside the omnipresent speed improvements and stability enhancements (for older phones this time). Instagram 1.7 brings custom notifications for likes and comments – in the Edit Profile screen, you can specify whether you want to receive notifications from everyone, people you follow, or simply turn them off. This is a welcome addition if you were being annoyed by continuous notifications and badges. In the same screen, you can now add a Bio to display on your public profile. And profiles have gotten a brand new grid view as well, which makes it easy to check out photos at a glance on profiles that have hundreds, if not thousands, of uploads.

Instagram 1.7 is available now in the App Store.

Another Analyst Claims iPhone 5 Won’t Have NFC

Over the past months, several rumors indicated Apple may or may not implement Near Field Communication (NFC) technology into the next iPhone, scheduled for a Fall 2011 launch. While The New York Times reported NFC would eventually find its way on the iPhone, but perhaps not the iPhone 5, others suggested the new iPhone was being built with NFC capabilities in mind, with some even claiming NFC could bring advanced remote computing features when paired to a Mac.

The NFC rumor mill was brought back to full activity this morning with a new report from Bernstein Research analyst Toni Sacconaghi, who says the next iPhone won’t feature such a tech because it simply isn’t ready for mass consumer adoption, and Apple never embraced promising technologies just for the sake of having them on their feature list.

John Paczkowski at All Things Digital posted some parts of Sacconaghi’s note:

NFC-based mobile payments require NFC-capable POS terminals,” Sacconaghi wrote. “Only 51,000 retail locations support contactless payments (per Verifone’s 10K); given that First Data alone deals with 4.1M merchant locations in the U.S. this suggests current penetration of just over 1 percent of merchant locations. Clearly, a higher critical mass is needed before mobile payments would take off.

We do not expect the iPhone 5 to feature an NFC-based payments solution, and instead expect Apple will evaluate and come to market with partners or a complete solution later, perhaps when NFC infrastructure is more established,” he said in a note to clients. “We note that Apple did not release the first cloud-based music offerings, or the first 3G or LTE handsets, and entered mobile advertising only after Google bought AdMob – instead, the company has made its name from re-inventing MP3 players, smartphones and most recently tablets/netbooks, and would retain the option to eventually do the same with mobile payments.

Admittedly, Sacconaghi’s report sounds like Apple common sense – with 1% penetration in retail locations and the lack of clear standards for consumers, NFC still seems like something Apple might like, but it’s not ready to completely roll out yet. The opportunity for Apple to enable mobile payments and smart music recognition (as demoed by Google at the I/O conference) tied to iTunes accounts is huge, but if the company – as they usually do – really wants to reinvent the NFC system as most people know it, we’re going to have to wait for another generation of devices and larger consumer adoption.

Steve Jobs: Get Rid of the Crappy Stuff→

Steve Jobs: Get Rid of the Crappy Stuff

Mark Parker talking to Steve Jobs over the phone, shortly after becoming CEO of Nike:

“Do you have any advice?” Parker asked Jobs. “Well, just one thing,” said Jobs. “Nike makes some of the best products in the world. Products that you lust after. But you also make a lot of crap. Just get rid of the crappy stuff and focus on the good stuff.” Parker said Jobs paused and Parker filled the quiet with a chuckle. But Jobs didn’t laugh. He was serious. “He was absolutely right,” said Parker. “We had to edit.”

Keeping focus is one of the most important things you can do for your brand. Sure you can sell twenty different models of the same thing over and over again, but when you really narrow down your product line to only the best available, the only things you have to sell are good products. It’s more desirable for both companies and consumers when effort is only expelled on the things that count.

“Can anyone innovate like Apple?”  The simple answer: While anyone can learn the principles that drive Apple’s innovation, few businesses have the courage to do so.  It takes courage to reduce the number of products a company offers from 350 to 10, as Jobs did in 1998.  It takes courage to remove a keyboard from the face of a smartphone and replace those buttons with a giant screen, as Jobs did with the iPhone.”\

Carmine Gallo couldn’t have said it any better. While all of what I’ve said might be true, it takes courage. I recommend reading the rest over at Forbes via the read-more link below.

Permalink

Apple Releases Lion Developer Preview 3 in Dev Center

Following the release in Software Update last week, Apple just released Lion Developer Preview 3 in the Mac Dev Center as a direct download through the Mac App Store. Changes in Lion DP 3 can be found in our previous coverage, and we’ll update this post as more details come in. Build number of Preview 3 is 11A459e – same of the Software Update version.

The new build in the Mac Dev Center comes after a series of reports of users unable to correctly download and install Lion Developer Preview 3 through the Software Update mechanism.

Update: Lion Server Developer Preview 3 is also available as a separate download from the Mac App Store.

Apple Schedules US Retail Meeting on May 22

According to a tip we received from a trusted source, Apple will hold an all-hands employee meeting in US retail stores on Sunday, May 22. The retail meeting will start at 7 AM, an “unusual time” says our source, considering Apple usually holds this kind of meetings on Sunday evenings, after stores close.

Store meetings at 7AM Sunday across United States. Unusual time. Expecting some announcement. All stores, brand-wide US. Don’t know about other countries.

Last week, Cult of Mac reported the Apple Store in Fresno, CA, was planning on holding an employee meeting on Saturday, May 28. Our source says it’s normal for store leaders to choose a different meeting date within a certain window, and that could be the May 22-29 week. Of course, there’s plenty of room for speculation about this retail meeting: with the WWDC approaching (kicks off in San Francisco on June 6), Apple might want to train employees for the rumored new MobileMe features, iCloud, or some other product scheduled to be announced at the developer event – as also suggested by MacRumors back in April. It’s worth noting, however, that Apple celebrates the 10th anniversary of Retail this week, with several websites claiming the company was on track to set up special events and store merchandise for the anniversary.

AppleInsider reported on April 20 Apple was restricting employees from taking time off between May 20-22; our source says that’s because of the all-hands meeting set for May 22, though he couldn’t confirm as to whether it’s an anniversary-related meeting, or an internal training for new products and announcements.

Update: BGR has posted more details on the event Apple may be planning for its retail anniversary. These include NDAs to sign, overnight shifts at Apple Stores through mid-Sunday, May 22, new hardware to install and a password-protected folder for employees called “training.”

During the overnight shift, it’s going to be required that employees lock cell phones in the main office. They will also have to sign an NDA with Apple.

There are a wide variety of roles, we’re told, for the overnight shift. This includes all visuals staff, a manager, a business team member, a few Genius team members, one back-of-house employee, and a few generic Apple specialists.

Apple stores have apparently already received hardware to install, and are expecting more hardware to come on Friday or Saturday. All materials that Apple stores have received have been instructed to be under lock and key until after close on Saturday night.

Apple employees will be putting up black curtains at all stores so that people walking outside cannot see inside.

Employees have had to download gigabytes of data from Apple corporate labeled, “training” in a password-protected zipped folder that won’t accessible to managers or anyone else until Saturday afternoon.

BGR also confirms meetings are scheduled for Monday morning, May 22.

Elgato HDHomeRun Streams Digital TV To Your Macs, Lets You Record & Export

Elgato’s latest addition to the EyeTV software family for OS X machines and iOS devices is the HDHomeRun, a small device that can be connected to your TV and home router to share digital TV over a network. Combined with EyeTV for Mac and Windows Media Center for PCs, the HDHomeRun allows you to stream TV content from antenna or cable channels, send it off to multiple computers simultaneously for live streaming, and record it for later viewing with options to export to iTunes for maximum iOS compatibility. Alternatively, thanks to the EyeTV app for iPhone and iPad, users will be able to stream digital TV to mobile devices as well. Some of these features, like 3G streaming or iTunes compatibility, are of course iOS and Mac specific.

The HDHomeRun retails at $179.95 and it comes as a bundle that includes the device and the EyeTV 3 software. What’s really cool about the HDHomeRun digital tuner is that it can stream TV content to two connected desktop machines at the same time, allowing two users to watch and record separate shows and programs. Streaming can be enabled either wirelessly or via Ethernet, and a list if supported channels in your country can be found here.

With the EyeTV software for Mac, you also get popular features like:

  • Watch, pause, and rewind live TV on your Mac
  • Search two weeks of Program Guide listings; includes one year of free TV Guide data, with optional renewal for only $19.95 per year
  • Set up schedules to record your favorite TV shows
  • Edit out unwanted content
  • Share recordings with other Macs on the same network

Placed next to an Apple TV, Elgato’s HDHomeRun seems like the perfect solution to get your favorite digital TV programs available over the air for Mac and iOS streaming and recording. The product is available now for purchase on Elgato’s website, and we look forward to a full review in the next weeks.