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Posts tagged with "apple"

Apple Releases iOS 4.2.6 For Verizon iPhone

It seems like Apple just released a new iOS firmware for the Verizon iPhone. The iOS version is 4.2.6 and it’s available for direct download here. Apple apparently did some subtle tweaks to the operating system for the CDMA iPhone, which was running iOS 4.2.5 at the Verizon media event where the iPhone was officially announced. iOS 4.2.6 is a modification to the original 4.2 OS that can run on Verizon’s CDMA network, and includes the Personal Hotspot feature that allows users to turn their devices into mobile hotspots capable of sharing a 3G connection with nearby phones.

The firmware posted online is for the “iPhone 3,3”, which is the model name of the Verizon unit. It’s a 642 MB download, build number 8E200.

Rumor has it Apple sent out review units to selected journalists and bloggers earlier today, and that’s probably why the firmware has been posted online.

Apple’s Design Director Goes To Paypal

All Things Digital reports Paypal has hired former Apple Design Director Sarah Brody as VP of Global Design. The new position at eBay-owned Paypal will allow the former Apple designer to make “sure that its payment platform is easy to use”.

Sarah Brody worked on the original iPhone, the first iPod nano and a series of Apple’s professional applications like Logic and Final Cut.

From her LinkedIn profile page:

For almost a decade, Sarah has developed and designed numerous projects and products for the Apple developer ecosystem—as individual contributor, as creative director, as well as hiring manager.

At Apple, Sarah achieved a track record of consistently delivering ground breaking products that helped redefine the way Apple’s applications look and feel.
Her unique, hands-on design approach and ability to build and manage teams that execute consistently is widely respected at Apple. Under her design direction and cross-functional partnerships with company executives, product management, marketing, engineering, and quality assurance, Apple conceived and shipped more than a dozen different products including foundation software for Mac OS X/ ProKit, MobileMe, iPhone, Aperture, Final Cut Studio, Logic Pro and products still yet to be unveiled.

On many occasions Sarah played a key role in creating new projects from inception and prototyping, through formal proposal, executive review for funding, to development and launch.

Sarah Brody started working at Apple in July 2001.

Motorola Prepares Another Jab at Apple with Super Bowl Commercial

It looks like Motorola is back to its usual business of launching commercials with clear and direct pokes at Apple’s products. After the “giant iPhone” argument for the iPad, here comes a teaser of the ad Motorola will run during Super Bowl for its upcoming Honeycomb tablet, the Xoom.

The ad / teaser, called “Goodbye 1984”, says:

2011 looks a lot like 1984. One authority. One design. One way to work.

It’s time for more choices. It’s time to explore. It’s time to live a free life.

In the video, you can see planet Earth wearing Apple-white earbuds slowly fading from colors to black & white. The “one design” and “one authority” Motorola mentions is an obvious reference to the popular Super Bowl commercial Apple ran in 1984, quite possibility the most famous tech commercial of all time. Tech specs of the Xoom are presented in the ad, like Android Honeycomb support, 5 MP camera and 3G connectivity upgradable to 4G.

Check out the video below. [Youtube via Engadget] Read more

The Great Disparity in Global iTunes Prices

Over the weekend I curiously started investigating whether Australians had been getting a progressively worse deal for their iTunes purchases as the Australian dollar rose from USD$0.60 to parity whilst iTunes prices stayed constant. The answer is most definitely a yes but it doesn’t just apply to Australians, and the extent of the price disparity is larger than I had thought.

Whilst Apple is entitled to have different prices for different regions, it doesn’t really need to. Furthermore the extent to which there is price disparity is very extensive for the music section of the store and this article aims to bring the inequity to light. Apple has previously been under similar pressure but the exchange rates reverted back, I would hope Apple again reconsiders their iTunes pricing system now when exchange rates have pushed the disparity to a very high level.

This turned into a bigger article than I had expected so here are the key things I cover and keep reading after the break for a full run down with tables, graphs and more.

  • iTunes uses fixed prices (i.e. $0.99, $1.29 etc.) and for stores outside the US these price levels were converted using a very conservative prediction of the future value of a particular currency
  • The price levels in non-US stores seem not to have been updated in a long time, yet the value of the non-US currencies have mostly appreciated since then. As a result people purchasing from most of the non-US iTunes Stores are now paying more than US customers and Apple is earning more from those customers
  • The conversion rate is different for the App Store and Music store (and likely the other stores too), the App store conversion rates are much more appropriate and the price disparity is less extreme.

Updated on April 27 2011 - see end of article for revised figures and comment.

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Xserve Third Party Replacement, ActiveSAN Revealed

ActiveSAN, the product that was being teased over the past few days has finally been announced as third party replacement for Apple’s Xserve which was discontinued in January.

The product, called ActiveSAN is rack-mountable unit, runs on the Linux operating system with metadata controllers and the ‘Quantum StorNext SAN file system’. It’s hardware uses the Active Storage product design, runs on the Intel Nehalem server platform and is Xsan compatible.

No definite word on whether it is officially endorsed by Apple yet.

Jump the break for a video introduction by the company and additional details as they come.

Read more

Netgear CEO Makes A Few Predictions on Apple, Steve Jobs→

Netgear CEO Makes A Few Predictions on Apple, Steve Jobs

Netgear CEO Patrick Lo doesn’t get it:

At a lunch in Sydney today, Patrick Lo said Apple’s success was centred on closed and proprietary products that would soon be overtaken by open platforms like Google’s Android.

Lunch was not the main point. Here it is:

Lo said Apple’s closed model only worked because, in many product categories like MP3 players, “they own the market”.

“Once Steve Jobs goes away, which is probably not far away, then Apple will have to make a strategic decision on whether to open up the platform,” said Lo.

This is a common mistake: thinking that Apple’s integrated model is somehow linked to Steve Jobs’ personality or physical presence at Apple. But there’s more:

Right now the closed platform has been successful for Apple because they’ve been so far ahead as thought leaders because of Steve Jobs,” said Lo.

Wrong again. They have been successful because they predicted what consumers wanted, not because of Jobs’ personal tastes.

Eventually they’ve got to find a way to open up iTunes without giving too much away on their revenue generation model.

What does this mean, exactly? This is business lingo. I think he wants Apple to accept any kind of app. The real gem is about Flash:

What’s the reason for him to trash Flash? There’s no reason other than ego,” he said.

Or maybe – but you know, I’m just guessing here –  it was a business decision.

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The iPad As A Company, Apple’s Products As A Platform→

The iPad As A Company, Apple’s Products As A Platform

From a piece about Apple’s platform strategy on The New York Times:

Hit products like the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad are fueling Apple’s logic-defying growth. The latest entry — the iPad, introduced in April — is on track to deliver $15 billion to $20 billion in revenue in its first full year of sales, estimates A. M. Sacconaghi, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein.

At that size, if the iPad were a stand-alone company, it would rank within the top third of the Fortune 500.

Think about it: for any company on the planet, having a product like the iPad in its line-up would be the greatest success. Yet the iPad is one of the products in Apple’s chain, and like others is deeply integrated with software, MobileMe, the App Store. This platform strategy creates the following win-win situation:

The more people buy iPhones and iPads, the more software developers and media companies want to write applications for them, as various as games and digital magazines. And consumers are more likely to buy iPhones and iPads when more entertainment and information applications are available on them.

So the value of Apple’s products doesn’t lie in the products themselves, but in the platform that supports them all. This extends to internet services, App Stores, media management, support, accessories.

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Ask Different: Apple Stack Exchange Out Of Beta

The Apple specific question forum as a part of the Stack Exchange community has gone live this afternoon, harboring a community of experts willing to share knowledge on all things iPad, Mac, and iOS development. The collaborate question and answer site has implemented a lovely interface fit for any MacBook or iMac you may be visiting the exchange from, and you can visit Stack Exchange’s most recent launch at apple.stackexchange.com.

The Mac App Store and “Half-Available” Updates

Panic, the developers of popular software for the Mac like Coda, Transmit and Candybar, wrapped up a critical update to their FTP client / file manager / all-in-one solution Transmit 4 on January 6th to fix “important bugs” and correct issues with the Transmit Disk feature and Amazon S3 connection. As they explain in a post on the company’s blog, their original plan was to submit the update to Apple and release it on their website as well once the Mac App Store version got approved.

Apple didn’t approve the update after two weeks, so Panic went ahead and posted the update on the application’s website so that users who didn’t buy the app through the Mac App Store didn’t have to wait any longer to have the bugs fixed. In their own words, Transmit 4.1.5 is now “half-available” as the app in still “in review” for Mac App Store approval. Read more