Sonos Shows You What A Great iAd Looks Like [Video]

Sonos, makers of wirelessly connected audio systems, announced they’re about to launch an advertising campaign on Apple’s iAd network.

As for all the other companies that launched iAd companies, this is a big bet: iAd campaigns start at $1 million minimum orders, so you have to make sure you have a great and stunning ad experience to bring to iOS devices. Otherwise, you’re wasting money.

Sonos’ iAd looks impressive, with videos, user interactions, menus, stuff to do. This is what an iAd should be about: providing useful information on a product and engage a user at a personal level. Check out the video below. Read more

The Cost Of 14 Million iPhones→

The Cost Of 14 Million iPhones

Great observations by Turley Muller about blockbuster iPhone sales and drop in gross margin:

Where in the hell did Apple get that production capability? There is no way Apple could have turned out 14.1M units without materially added expense.

The 3GS benefited from no change in form factor, thus the molds. tooling, assembly process didn’t change.  iPhone 4 required a significant modification to the production process.

With more units sold come more expenses. If you add that the iPhone 4 required a complete change in the manufacturing process, well you get the idea. About the iPad:

I can envision a scenario where Apple would desire to announce lower iPad units just to keep entrants from salivating.

Take iPod for example – very expensive, only worked with Macs (latest with firewire). Then USB solution came, but still PCs didn’t have iTunes, thus significant work arounds required. Nobody took Apple seriously on iPod – too expensive & minute addressable market.

Couple, three years later – all in rapid succession – Apple releases iTunes for Windows, iTunes Music Store, cut prices and introduced the iPod mini. Within 9-12 months iPod share exploded from 20-30% to 70-80%.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple adopted this strategy once again. They let others think it’s a very niche product, then they blow the competition out of the water by constantly iterating. The question is: can they really play this game with almost 8 million units sold in 6 months?

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OS X Releases Of The Day: Acorn Beta Adds WebP Support, Cyberduck 3.7

Two interesting updates for two popular OS X applications: Acorn image editor and Cyberduck FTP client got lots of new features and bug fixes worth mentioning.

The latest Acorn beta added support for Google’s WebP image format, meaning that you can now open WebP images inside the app and export them using the Web Export menu. Acorn beta also introduces Quartz Composer compositions as filters, and the very popular tilt-shift effect.

As for Cyberduck, it gets the ability to upload files with a temporary name and rename them after transfer is complete, import Transmit favorites (nice) and the possibility to copy files between browser windows in different sessions.

If you’re willing to know everything about these two new releases, check out the full changelogs below. Read more

JotAgent: The Quickest Way To Save Notes and Ideas in Dropbox

A few weeks ago I reviewed Captio, which is a neat and simple application for iPhone to email yourself a note, or a picture, with one tap. How many times have you wished there was a way to easily save an idea for later? For many, quickly emailing yourself a note is the best way to save it.

For many others, though, getting additional stuff in the inbox can become a nightmare. Not only the inbox is already overloaded, but getting notes in there as well? No way. I’ve set up a nice filtering and tagging system in Gmail to handle Captio notes, but I understand some of you guys just don’t want notes to be turned into emails.

Meet JotAgent: a new app for iPhone and iPad which can be described as “Captio for Dropbox”. Read more

App Savvy: The Ultimate Guide To Launch Successful iOS Apps

When Ken Yarmosh contacted me asking to take a look at an early version of his upcoming book about iOS app development, I didn’t really know what to do. I read a couple of iOS-related publications before, but I wasn’t really huge on them. I used to think the most important and useful information about development, marketing and sale techniques could be found on the internet - why would I need a book to learn about the App Store?

Then I took my time to read Ken’s book. It’s not easy for me to go into books these days, as I spend most of time writing and catching up on blog posts. But it was a read well worth it: if you’re looking to get started with iOS development, have already released a few apps or are simply curious about how “stuff actually happens” behind the scenes, go buy App Savvy right now. Read more

iSuppli: Apple Will Ship 43.7 Million iPads in 2011

4.19 million units sold in the last quarter and 7.46 million iPads already sold since the release date in April. These are the numbers Apple’s tablet is making, but analysts expect it to sell an awful more next year. And it wouldn’t be a surprise, considering that a new model will come out sometime during Spring with a front facing camera, a better screen and god knows what else Steve is thinking.

According to the latest iSuppli forecasts, Apple will ship 43.7 million iPads in 2011. The forecast has been increased from the previous one of 36.5 million units. Read more

60 Percent Of Apple’s Sales Come From New Products

Oh, would you look at that. With blockbuster iPhone sales and more than $20 billion revenue in the last quarter, you would expect Apple to be happy about its latest product line. But the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad to represent 60 percent of Apple’s sales?

As Horace Dediu of Asymco noticed, 60 percent of Apple’s sales come from products that did not exist three years ago. I guess that’s a good definition of “reinventing a company”.