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Posts tagged with "apple"

Quantifying The Australian “Apple Tax”

On Friday, Apple (along with Microsoft and Adobe) will front the Federal Australian Parliament’s inquiry into IT Pricing. You may recall that after failing to voluntarily appear, the committee in February of this year summonsed the three, effectively forcing them to appear. Given Apple’s appearance, I wanted to take a closer look to see what Apple actually charges for their products (both hardware and media from their iTunes and App Stores) and see how it compares to the US.

Methodology

Doing this kind of analysis can be fairly contentious given there are a few ways to do it, various assumptions you have to make, and different ways of presenting the information. To be clear, here is how I have constructed the data presented in the graphs in this article.

  • I collected from Apple’s website, the Australian and US prices of all their key products and main models (but not built-to-order models).
  • GST is removed from Australian price: The Australian price includes a 10% GST (goods and services tax), so I removed that from the Australian price because US prices do not include a sales tax, that is added at checkout based on which US state the customer is from (sales taxes varies across US states).
  • Now that both prices don’t include sales taxes, I convert the Australian price from Australian dollars (AUD) to US dollars (USD). I use a 3 month average of the exchange rate. The 3 month average smoothes out any temporary peaks or troughs in the exchange rate and gives Apple a fairly lengthy period of time to alter prices if there was a significant change in the exchange rate.
  • This now gives me the price of the Australian good in USD and without GST, a figure that can now be compared with the US price. So I calculate the percentage markup of the Australian price based on the original US price.
  • NOTE: Methodology for the Media calculations do vary a bit, read the notes I include with them.
  • I encourage you to scrutinise my calculations by taking a look at the Excel document I created, linked below.

Acknowledging The Threat Of Samsung


In the past week Apple’s marketing chief, Phil Schiller, gave three interviews and the company sent out a new “Why iPhone” email campaign - both timed perfectly around the announcement of Samsung’s new flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S4. Some have called it out as Apple going on the defensive, others have said it’s Apple on the offensive. I’m not sure that you can categorically say it’s one or the other – it doesn’t really matter much.

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Apple Airs New iPhone Commercials: “Brilliant” and “Discover”

Earlier today, Apple aired two new iPhone commercials called Brilliant and Discover. The videos are available both on Apple’s website and YouTube channel.

Like Apple’s latest iPad ad campaign, the iPhone commercials focus on third-party apps with no narration, and just a series of words quickly shown on screen alongside apps/media available on iTunes. For “Brilliant”, the words are “sweet”, “rise” and “brilliant” and content includes Apple’s Cards app, UP, Passbook, MyScript Calculator, and Philips’ hue (Philips announced an SDK today as well). For “Discover” the words are “rock”, “sharp”, and “discover” and content includes GarageBand, Maps, Infinity Blade II, Cleartune, Solar Walk, Yelp, and Shazam.

You can watch the ads below. Read more

Textual Siri→

Textual Siri

NotSiri

NotSiri

Here’s a good article by Rene Ritchie from June 2012 about a textual interface for Siri:

If Spotlight could access Siri’s contextually aware response engine, the same great results could be delivered back, using the same great widget system that already has buttons to touch-confirm or cancel, etc.

I completely agree. Spotlight lets you find apps and data to launch on your device; aside from its “assistant” functionality, Siri lets you search for specific information (either on your device or the web). There’s no reason find and search shouldn’t be together. Siri gained app-launching capabilities, but Spotlight still can’t accept Siri-like text input.

The truth is, I think using Siri in public is still awkward. My main use of Siri is adding calendar events or quick alarms when I’m a) cooking or b) driving my car. When I’m working in front of an iPad, I just don’t see the point of using voice input when I have a keyboard and the speech recognition software is still failing at recognizing moderately complex Italian queries. When I’m waiting for my doctor or in line at the grocery store, I just don’t want to be that guy who pulls out his phone and starts talking with a robotic assistant. Ten years after my first smartphone, I still prefer avoiding phone calls in public because a) other people don’t need to know my business and b) I was taught that talking on the phone in public can be rude. How am I supposed to tell Siri to “read me” my schedule when I have 10 people around me?

I think a textual Siri, capable of accepting written input instead of spoken commands, would provide a great middle ground for those situations when you don’t want to/can’t talk in public. Like Rene, I think putting the functionality in Spotlight would be a fine choice; apps like Fantastical have shown that “natural language input” with text can still be a modern, useful addition to our devices.

Text input brings different challenges: how would Siri handle typos? Would it wait until you’ve finished writing a sentence or refresh with results as-you-type? Would Siri lose its “conversational” approach, or provide butttons to reply with “Yes” or “No” to its further questions?

Text, however, has also its advantages: text is universal, free of voice alterations (think accents and dialects), independent from surrounding noise and/or microphone proximity. With a textual Siri, Apple could keep its users within its control by letting them ask for restaurant suggestions, weather information, unit conversions, or sports results without having to open other apps and/or launch Google.

It’s just absurd to think semantic search integration can only be applied to voice recognition, especially in the current version of Siri. I agree with Kontra: Siri isn’t really about voice.

More importantly: if Google can do it, why can’t Apple?

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Bad Piggies Update Brings New Levels, Attacking Angry Birds

Rovio today released the second major update to its Angry Birds spin-off game, Bad Piggies. The big new addition to the 1.2 update are the 30 new ‘Flight in the Night’ levels, with some of them requiring you to “sneak past the napping Angry Birds” - making too much noise will wake the birds up who will attack to try and sabotage you.

In this massive update to IGN’s 2012 game of the year, the Bad Piggies are on the move, and they’ve managed to hang on to the eggs so far! But watch out - you need to sneak past the napping Angry Birds, and they’re sleeping with one eye open! Navigate through 30 new Flight in the Night Levels but don’t make too much noise, or you’ll wake up some seriously furious birds! Also make sure to check out the new “Road Hogs” time trials: can you beat the clock (and your friends) with your crazy contraption?

Also included are 6 ‘Road Hogs’ levels which are time trial levels, another new sandbox and six new achievements. The teaser video of the update which highlights some of the new features is embedded below.

Download Bad Piggies: iPhone, iPad, Mac, Android

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A Look Back At Instagram’s Growth As It Hits 100 Million Monthly Active Users

Instagram today announced that it has over 100 million monthly active users, an increase of 10 million since they announced in early January that they had passed 90 million monthly active users. In a lengthy blog post, Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom shares a story from the early days of Instagram and highlights a few Instagram users that have inspired him and highlight the power of Instagram.

Images have the ability to connect people from all backgrounds, languages and cultures. They connect us to aid workers halfway across the world in Sudan, to entrepreneurs in San Francisco and even to events in our own backyards. Instagram, as a tool to inspire and connect, is only as powerful as the community it is made of. For this reason, we feel extremely lucky to have the chance to build this with all of you. So from our team to the hundred million people who call Instagram home, we say thank you. Thank you for sharing your world and inspiring us all to do the same.

Given the news I thought I would go back and create an updated version of our Instagram users graph which you can see above: it plots all of Instagram’s publically released user statistics since its release in October 2010 (click it to view a larger version). Note that the last two data points are ‘Monthly Active Users’ rather than total number of signed up Instagram users. Nonetheless, it hasn’t taken too long for the Monthly Active Users catch up and hit the 100 million users mark.

Two New iPad Ads: ‘Alive’ and ‘Together’

Apple has just released two new adverts for the iPad and iPad mini with a strong emphasis on the apps available for the devices. The adverts are different to many past iPad and iPhone ads in that there is no real narration, with just three words said in each.

The first, titled ‘Alive’ features the words; ‘Loud’, ‘Deep’ and ‘Alive’. After each word is said, a number of apps related to the word are demonstrated. For example, after “loud”, music apps are shown, a medical app showing the ear and a fashion app are demonstrated. The second ad, ‘Together’, features the words ‘Wild’, ‘Bright’ and ‘Together’. Both ads are described on Apple’s YouTube page as “With over 300,000 apps, iPad is up for anything you are”.

Both ads are embedded below.

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Always Beaten

In thinking about the latest round of rumors of another company supposedly “beating” Apple to a market in which Apple hasn’t entered yet, I remembered how this sort of scenario happened many times in the past. I wanted to understand if “beating to the punch” is really the parameter we should be looking at.

Therefore I used Google to find evidence, and I was given plenty of it.

August 2009: Bloomberg Businessweek says Nokia beat Apple to the punch by unveiling a netbook.

January 2010: Electricpig wonders if a Microsoft Courier appearance could beat Apple to the punch.

January 2010: Tom’s Hardware believes the HP Slate will beat Apple to the tablet punch.

July 2011: Dvice says Motorola is preparing to beat Apple to the market with a Retina Display tablet.

December 2011: BGR says Samsung could beat Apple to the market with a Retina tablet.

April 2012: The Los Angeles Times asks whether IKEA has beaten Apple to an all-in-one television.

June 2012: WebProNews says a Google Maps announcement will beat Apple to the punch.

June 2012: AppleFanSite asks if Microsoft has beaten Apple to the 7-inch tablet market with an Xbox Surface tablet.

September 2012: Forbes asks if Nintendo has beaten Apple to an iTV.

October 2012: Gizmodo says Amazon beat Apple to the classroom.

January 2013: Business Insider says even Sony will beat Apple to making a giant phone.

February 2013: MacRumors says Samsung could beat Apple to market with an iWatch competitor.

How many of those races – “being first” – resulted (when true) in a subsequent return in terms of profit? And how many of those headlines were purposefully crafted for the sake of pageviews?

Two brief thoughts. First, for a company that’s been beaten like that, Apple is doing surprisingly well.

More importantly, I believe it’s clear that, in Apple’s case, the market didn’t care about who was first. But there are some aspects to consider.

People wanted – and I think they will continue wanting – the best products, not the ones that arrived first on the shelves. If the best product is also first, even better. But if the first product isn’t worth the money, I see a problem.

Apple was “beaten to the market” in many other occasions that I haven’t listed here: higher capacity portable music players; LCD color screens; digital marketplaces; video chat; and yes, even smartphones. I am not poking fun at the headlines – I am using them to point out a general “notion” that has been going on for years among tech companies, reporters, and consumers: that “beating someone else to the punch” is automatically synonymous of increased chances of success.

I wonder if Apple’s competitors believed they needed to “beat Apple to the punch”. Because from where I stand, I see one that underestimated the iPhone, one that is making billions, and another that is ridiculously late. Others aren’t doing very well, or they are taking entirely different approaches. Did they really want to beat Apple to the punch, or was it just a headline that told us they would?

Apple is a company, and like every company they want to make a profit. Unlike others – many others – they have been smart in investing resources not to beat HTC, Sony, or RIM to the punch – but to make the best products without being late to the point where people wouldn’t care anymore.1

Making sure that your product is good and that you’re not extremely late to the game. It’s overly simplified, but I’d say that, with such underlying philosophy, being second is generally a good position.2 It buys a company like Apple time to understand what the market wants and what is required to produce new products on a large scale for a profit. In other words: the Apple TV is still a hobby.

Or maybe I’m wrong, and Apple’s competitors were first and did have a superior product, but for some reason Apple convinced the masses to buy iOS devices instead even if they came “second” to the market. But I don’t think so.

Looking ahead at this (rumored) wave of new products – watches, televisions, game consoles – I think the real question is: who can beat others to the punch in delivering the best product?

  1. Apple was also second in other areas, and they’re struggling there. But that’s a different topic. Yes, Apple has problems. ↩︎

  2. The next obvious step to prove this theory will be the Apple television as opposed to, say, Samsung Smart TVs. ↩︎

Apple, Adobe & Microsoft Forced To Appear Before Australian IT Pricing Inquiry

Apple, Microsoft and Adobe have been summoned to appear before a Federal Australian Parliamantery Committee that has been investigating IT pricing in Australia. The move forces the three companies to appear on March 22nd after they had refused to do so voluntarily. Ed Husic, a driving member behind the creation of the committee and one of its members, put out a press release welcoming the move, but stating it is one “we shouldn’t have to take”.

 “Adobe, Apple and Microsoft are just a few firms that have continually defied the public’s call for answers and refused to appear before the IT Pricing Inquiry.”

The IT Pricing Inquiry has been examing whether a price difference exists between Australian and international pricing of IT goods and services, and if so, why they exist, what impact they have and what actions can be taken to reduce the disadvantage of Australian consumers. Formed in May last year, the committee received 100 submissions from individuals, organisations and companies and has so far held 5 public hearings which included the appearance of Australian Recording Industry Association, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, consumer group CHOICE and many others.

It should be noted that Apple, Microsoft and Adobe all made written submissions to the Committee but refused to appear before the committee to answer questions of the committee members.