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Posts tagged with "apple"

Airlines Increasing Fuel Efficiency By Adopting The iPad As An Entertainment Device→

Airlines Increasing Fuel Efficiency By Adopting The iPad As An Entertainment Device

Bloomberg reports today that startup airline Scoot Pte (their maiden flight is today) will save fuel and have increased profits by deploying the iPad as the passenger entertainment device. By cutting out old entertainment systems weighing more than two tons, they’ve saved fuel while still flying older airplanes and even expanding traditional seating capacity by 40 per cent. Increasing profit, the post-PC way.

The tablets helped the carrier cut 7 percent off the weight of planes obtained from parent Singapore Airlines Ltd. (SIA) even after a 40 percent increase in seating, Chief Executive Officer Campbell Wilson said. The savings will help Scoot, which makes its maiden flight today, cope with fuel prices that have jumped about 36 percent in two years.

Scoot Pte will rent the iPads for $17 a flight to economy-class passengers and offering them for free to those in business class. It follows moves by other airlines such as Jetstar, AirAsia and Qantas which have deployed the iPad in trials and small test runs since late last year.

Cutting costs and finding new sources of revenue will be key for Singapore-based Scoot as it seeks to make a profit flying older planes than other low-cost carriers and selling tickets as cheap as S$158 one-way to Sydney, a flight of more than seven hours. Singapore Air formed Scoot after budget operators led by Jetstar and AirAsia Bhd. won 26 percent of the city’s air-travel market.

By reducing fuel costs, parent company Singapore Airlines hopes that it can turn over a new leaf with Scoot after it tumbled 28 percent this year, exceeding the 14 percent decline for the Straits Times Index. It’s really crazy to think that something like the iPad can have such a huge impact on fuel efficiency of airplanes - today’s story is on top of  the existing trend of airlines replacing flight manuals with iPads that Tim Cook gladly shared earlier this year.

Scoot plans to increase its fleet to as many as 14 777s by the middle of the decade. The carrier will be able to pare maintenance costs by working with its parent, Wilson said.

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Game In-App Purchases: A Conflict Between Developer Economics & Goodwill

In-App Purchases for iOS games. It’s a bit of a sensitive topic really, not many people like them at all, and quite a few people hate them and the impact they have had on the iOS games market. But today I want to explore the reason for their prevalence and explain why it has become an important part of the market for developers. I also want to reframe the discussion from one of “In-App Purchases are a problem” to one where we consider how they are being used and what developers could do to improve their implementation.

Below the break is Part 1: The Economics, in which I tackle the reason for their prevalence and importance in the iOS games market. Following that is Part 2: “Developers and Goodwill To Customers” in which I discuss how they are being used and perhaps what might be some best practices.

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Apple Posts Initial WWDC 2012 Schedule, Releases Official App

With less than two weeks to go until WWDC 2012 kicks off, Apple has this morning released the conference schedule as well as the official iOS app and some guides for the conference goers. Developers who were lucky enough to snag tickets to WWDC ‘12 can access the schedule here. There are over 100 sessions and labs that have been categorised into six technical tracks covering:

  • Essentials
  • App Services
  • Developer Tools
  • Graphics, Media and Games
  • Safari and Web
  • Core OS

One interesting change is that the Apple Design Awards will this year be held on Monday at 3:45 PM - usually the event was held later in the event and during the evening.

The official WWDC app is also live now, featuring a detailed schedule, daily news and photos, a map of Moscone West and the ability to plan your week by favoriting sessions and detecting session conflicts. For those who might be new to the WWDC experience, Apple has also created a handy ‘Attendee Guide’ for WWDC that you can access here - it’s nothing huge but does have handy links to other resources that will likely be useful to new attendees. Lastly, there is guide to the WWDC labs including what they will cover, when and where they run and which require a reservation.

Say Hello To Amazing Alex, The Next Game From The Makers Of Angry Birds

Rovio’s CEO today revealed on Finnish TV that the next Rovio game will be called Amazing Alex and will launch within two months. Rovio will be reworking the game a little and it will center around Alex (the main character) who is a “curious young boy who loves to build things”.

“The quality pressure is high. We want to maintain the high standard Angry Birds fans have come to enjoy,” Hed said.

It’ll be based off of Casey’s Contraptions (see above image) which Rovio yesterday acquired to, from developers Snappy Touch and Mystery Coconut. On that acquisition, Rovio’s VP of franchise development, Ville Heijari, said yesterday that “The gameplay is a perfect fit in our arsenal with its approachable, fun and highly addictive take on the physics puzzler genre”. He also noted that Rovio was “reworking the title to enhance it”, so that it was in the Rovio style of “expect the unexpected”.

The Next Web points out that Rovio already owns the domain amazingalex.com as WHOIS records show. Today’s news comes after a stunning week for Rovio, hitting 1 billion Angry Birds downloads and revealing first-quarter revenues of 75.4 million euros (roughly US$106.3 M).

[yle, via The Next Web]

Why My iPad Is Not My Laptop→

Why My iPad Is Not My Laptop

John Carey, who you might know from all the excellent photographs he posts on his (equally awesome) fiftyfoodshadows blog, today wrote a piece entitled “Why My iPad Is Not My Laptop”. It’s effectively a counter-argument from Carey on why the iPad just isn’t a laptop replacement for many people, particularly those in the professional creative community - yet.

I would say a good 90 percent of the debate on the iPads usefulness as a computer is coming from writers and casual users and this is where I find the debate getting a little one sided. Of course a writer would like the iPad. The tools most needed to get their work done are right there for the taking, you can hunt and gather all day long and it does make a fantastic, distraction free space to write in.

Carey doesn’t dispute that the iPad is a ‘personal computer’ - in fact he asks “what is there to even to debate” on that question and he says it’s all about the software, not the input device. For creatives, he says there are a number of nice apps for sketching, image editing and so on, but they don’t have anywhere near the “horsepower or precision that it takes to complete a finished product” - likewise for others such as web designers, coders, industrial designers and so on.

When it comes to many jobs within the professional creative community the iPad is still more or less incapable of handling any honest workload. At least as far as things stand at this point in time. There are no designers that I am aware of using it to create much outside of concepts.

Some might question Carey’s premise, is the iPad ever meant to replace a laptop for such professional tasks? Perhaps that is why the laptops (or trucks as you may call them) are going to stick around for the key purpose of satisfying these people. But I’m not so sure, I think the iPad can evolve to be a suitable PC for most of these tasks undertaken by creative professionals - I don’t think it will completely replace the need for a laptop or desktop, but I think it will eventually replace the laptops of these professionals. As Carey said, it’s all about the software and whilst we have made giant leaps and bounds in just over two years — we have a long way to go.

But when it comes to honest creative work I can not help but find the iPad as little more than a sidekick. I can say with certainty though, that this is far from the last word on this. I can clearly see a future where touch screen devices such as the iPad become more and more viable for the kind of things I have discussed here today. It is still new territory being explored and I for one can not wait to see where it takes us.

One particular point that Carey talks about quite a bit in his piece is about the filesystem - or rather lack thereof in iOS. His arguments resonate with me, particularly surrounding photo management on iOS which in some ways has gotten worse with iPhoto - “a black hole within a hole where edited photos from your “camera roll” somehow end up in limbo within the app and you have to send edited versions back to the photo roll to do anything else with them”.

For such a supposedly simple to use device the iPad it sure makes it complicated to move files around. In this case, Apple is entirely responsible with their rebellious idea to avoid traditional file structures. I can not fathom why it would be so difficult to have a system level file management area that is as convenient to use as the notification system they have so diligently been working on. Something which is not so flawed and cumbersome as the hidden data that lives within each app.

You may not agree with everything Carey says, but I encourage you to read his full article, I think he makes some very good points and the personal examples of where he has tried to use the iPad as a laptop are an excellent addition.

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Rare Video Of Steve Jobs as Franklin Delano Roosevelt Surfaces→

Rare Video Of Steve Jobs as Franklin Delano Roosevelt Surfaces

Network World (via MacRumors) managed to obtain a copy of an old internal inspirational video for Apple employees titled “1944”, starring Steve Jobs as U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Serving as an in-house alternate version of Apple’s iconic 1984 commercial, “1944” was allegedly aimed at rallying Apple’s sales troops against IBM.

Set as a World War II tale of good vs. IBM, it is a broadcast-quality production (said to have cost $50,000) that was designed to fire up Apple’s international sales force at a 1984 meeting in Hawaii. A copy of “1944” was provided to me by one-time Apple employee Craig Elliott, now CEO of Pertino Networks, a cloud-computing startup located two blocks from Apple in Cupertino.

Make sure to check out the full video, backstory, and transcript of the entire video at Network World.

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The NYT Investigates How Apple Sidesteps Billions In Taxes→

The NYT Investigates How Apple Sidesteps Billions In Taxes

The New York Times this weekend published an in-depth article about Apple’s tax practices and specifically, how they have been able to “sidestep” billions in taxes through carefully chosen office locations for certain financial activities. For example, a small office in Reno, Nevada (shown above) manages and invests some of the companies cash - in a state where corporate tax rate is zero - compared to California’s 8.84% where Apple’s headquarters are.

Setting up an office in Reno is just one of many legal methods Apple uses to reduce its worldwide tax bill by billions of dollars each year. As it has in Nevada, Apple has created subsidiaries in low-tax places like Ireland, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and the British Virgin Islands — some little more than a letterbox or an anonymous office — that help cut the taxes it pays around the world.

The New York Times doesn’t suggest that there is anything illegal about what Apple does, every company tries to minimise the taxes they owe. Rather, it paints a picture of how tech companies in particular have been taking advantage of tax codes “written for an industrial age and ill suited to today’s digital economy”.

Apple, for instance, was among the first tech companies to designate overseas salespeople in high-tax countries in a manner that allowed them to sell on behalf of low-tax subsidiaries on other continents, sidestepping income taxes, according to former executives. Apple was a pioneer of an accounting technique known as the “Double Irish With a Dutch Sandwich,” which reduces taxes by routing profits through Irish subsidiaries and the Netherlands and then to the Caribbean. Today, that tactic is used by hundreds of other corporations — some of which directly imitated Apple’s methods, say accountants at those companies.

A particularly stark is example is to compare Apple to Walmart, Apple paid $3.3 billion in taxes from profits of $34.2 billion compared to Walmart who paid $5.9 billion in taxes from their $24.4 billion in profits last year. Apple was able to achieve that because it’s much easier to move digital products to low-tax countries than it is for Walmart to do the same, with their physical products.

When someone in the United States buys an iPhone, iPad or other Apple product, a portion of the profits from that sale is often deposited into accounts controlled by Braeburn, and then invested in stocks, bonds or other financial instruments, say company executives. Then, when those investments turn a profit, some of it is shielded from tax authorities in California by virtue of Braeburn’s Nevada address.

In their response to the NYT’s request for a comment, Apple focused on their US job-creation activities, stressing that their innovation and growth was providing benefits that go beyond just paying taxes. You can read their full response here.

Over the past several years, we have created an incredible number of jobs in the United States. The vast majority of our global work force remains in the U.S., with more than 47,000 full-time employees in all 50 states. By focusing on innovation, we’ve created entirely new products and industries, and more than 500,000 jobs for U.S. workers — from the people who create components for our products to the people who deliver them to our customers.

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Apple Offers 150 Student Scholarships For WWDC 2012

Full-time or part-time students over the age of 13 have the chance of winning one of 150 scholarships to attend this year’s WWDC. Apple says that it wants to  “reward outstanding student developers with the opportunity to attend this year’s conference on a WWDC 2012 Student Scholarship”. It means that for those lucky (and talented) students selected, they can attend the WWDC conference free of charge (tickets are on sale today for $1599). Apple will be judging the applicants on a few key criteria:

  • Technical ability
  • Creativity of ideas expressed in products/projects
  • Prior WWDC attendance
  • Technical and work experience

Due to the low age-limit, some events such as the WWDC Bash may restrict some students if they are under 18. Apple has posted a full list of eligibility requirements and more details on the application process and it should be noted that applicants also be a member of the iOS Developer Program, iOS Developer Enterprise Program, or Mac Developer Program, or an iOS Developer University Program Student and they must have been a member prior to August 1st, 2011.

You can lodge your own application for the 2012 WWDC Student Scholarship here, or view all the details on the 2012 WWDC page. The deadline for sending in your application is Wednesday, May 2, 2012 at 5:00 PM PDT.

Apple Opens Nominations For 2012 Apple Design Awards

Along with announcing the dates for WWDC 2012, Apple has today also opened nominations for this year’s Apple Design Awards. The award, which aims to “recognize state of the art iOS and OS X apps that reflect the very best in design, innovation, and technology adoption”  has become a staple of every WWDC and  is perhaps the most prestigious recognition an Apple developer can receive. The award criteria is founded in the following characteristics:

  • Well-Designed: Apps that are inviting, engaging, easy to use, intuitive, and compelling.
  • State of the Art: Apps that take advantage of the latest hardware, OS releases, and technologies to offer rich functionality, high performance, and extensive system integration.
  • Innovative: Apps that are revolutionary, inspiring, and do things in new and creative ways.

To be considered for the award, the app must be on the App Store or Mac App Store by May 1st in order to be eligible, but a nomination is not necessary (Apple can choose the award winner regardless of whether it was nominated or not). Developers can nominate an app via Apple’s developer portal.

You can also review the winners of the 2011 Apple Design Awards.