This Week's Sponsor:

Copilot Money

The Apple Editor’s Choice Award App for Tracking Your Money. Start Your Free Trial Today

Posts tagged with "apple"

Apple Tweaks Smart Cover Line, Removes The Orange Color & Adds New Dark Gray Version

This morning Apple silently updated the MacBook Pro line, but it seems as though the Smart Cover line has also been updated. 9to5 Mac noticed that Apple has removed the orange polyutherane Smart Cover and added a new dark gray polyutherane color.

Apple has also tweaked the design of the Smart Covers with all the leather models now featuring a “color-matched microfiber lining”. Other tweaks include more vibrant polyutherane colors and the navy leather Smart Cover receiving some color tweaks to become “more navy” according to MacRumors. Prices of both the polyutherane and leather Smart Covers remain the same at $39 and $69 respectively.

Media Organizations Reveal More Excerpts From The Steve Jobs Biography

In just a few days time, on Monday next week, the much anticipated biography of Steve Jobs will be released - today a number of media organisations were given advance copies of the book and have now shared some details about the book and what Jobs reveals about himself. Both The New York Times and the Associated Press start off their articles by discussing an excerpt from the book in which Jobs reveals that he delayed surgery for nine months after discovering he had a neurendocrine tumour. It’s a relatively rare form of pancreatic cancer that typically grows more slowly and is generally more treatable. Jobs delayed the treatment in favour of alternative methods from a vegan diet to acupuncture and even visited a psychic before deciding to have surgery in July 2004.

Isaacson, quoting Jobs, writes in the book: “`I really didn’t want them to open up my body, so I tried to see if a few other things would work,’ he told me years later with a hint of regret.

The book covers a wide variety of topics from Jobs’ life from his personal relationships, work at Apple, relationships with competitors such as Bill Gates and Eric Schmidt amongst many other topics. In its article, the AP reveals details about a section of the book which describes “the unravelling of Jobs’ relationship with Eric Schmidt”. Jobs was apparently furious when HTC released a phone in January 2010 that contained many of the popular features of the iPhone. He believed that Google’s actions amounted to “grand theft” and as a result Apple sued.

I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong,” Jobs said. “I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this.

The New York Times also includes a more interesting detail about how Jobs’ attention to detail extended to nearly everything, from planning and approving every detail in his medical treatment to a luxury yacht he began designing in 2009. The boat isn’t yet finished but in a style reminiscent of Apple Stores across the world, its sleek and minimalist and features 40-foot-long glass walls.

Fascinatingly the Huffington Post writes that in the biography, Jobs reveals that he had offered to design political ads for President Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign - despite being “highly critical” of the administration’s policies. In a meeting with Obama in the fall of 2010, Jobs told him that “you’re headed for a one-term presidency”, insisting the president be more business friendly. Jobs gave the example of high regulations and unnecessary costs of opening up a factory in the US compared to China.

Jobs later told the author that he wanted to do for Obama what the legendary “morning in America” ads did for Ronald Reagan.

You can read more about the biography from the full New York Times or Associated Press articles and you can pre-order the book from Amazon, iBookstore and many other places. The full biography is released on Monday next week.

[Via The New York Times, Associated Press, Huffington Post]

AT&T Activates More Than 1 Million iPhone 4S’ And Saw Strong Sales Of The iPhone In Q3

AT&T’s earnings call for the last quarter is on today and they’ve revealed that last quarter they sold 2.7 million iPhones out of a total share of 17.07 million iPhones that Apple sold over the same period. Unsurprisingly however, other non-iPhone, smartphones have become increasingly popular for AT&T with activation of 2.1 million such devices. iPhone activations were down significantly from the previous quarter in which they activated 3.6 million iPhones - although keep in mind that Apple also saw a decline in iPhone sales this quarter.

At the earnings call AT&T also noted that they had activated more than 1 million iPhone 4S’ as of Tuesday this week, making it AT&T’s most successful launch. For comparison, Sprint saw 200,000 pre-orders on the iPhone 4S launch day. Verizon has yet to reveal specific numbers for iPhone 4S sales, but have said they were very pleased with the reception.

[Via ZDNet, BGR]

Apple Updates “Remembering Steve” Page with Tributes From Fans

Last night, Apple updated its Remembering Steve page on Apple.com to include a selection of memories, thoughts and tributes sent by fans and members of the Apple community since Steve’s passing on October 5th. Apple says that over a million people have sent their personal messages to the rememberingsteve@apple.com email address.

Over a million people from all over the world have shared their memories, thoughts, and feelings about Steve. One thing they all have in common — from personal friends to colleagues to owners of Apple products — is how they’ve been touched by his passion and creativity. You can view some of these messages below.

And share your own at rememberingsteve@apple.com.

A private memorial for Steve Jobs was held with close friends and family last week. Apple is also planning a company-wide celebration of Steve’s life and accomplishments today at Apple’s campus, with some Apple retail stores closing briefly during the event.

Apple’s Q4 2011 Earnings Call: More Details & Interesting Thoughts From Tim Cook

Apple held its quarterly earnings call late yesterday and while the results from the September quarter were slightly below what analysts expected, it was still a great result and within Apple’s projections. We covered the main numbers in our post yesterday and included some graphic visualisations of those numbers (such as the one above), but if you missed that here’s a quick summary:

  • $28.27 billion in revenue (analysts expected $29.45 billion)
  • 17.07 million iPhones were sold (up 21% year-over-year)
  • 11.1 million iPads were sold (up 166% year-over-year)
  • 4.89 million Macs were sold (up 26% year-over-year)

But beyond these numbers there were a lot of interesting insights that CEO Tim Cook and CFO Peter Oppenheimer offered during the Q&A session. We’ve re-listened to the earnings call and included the most interesting snippets of that call in this article - answering questions from various analysts, the two answer questions on everything from iPhone rumors, iPad potential, Siri, China and what next quarter has in store for Apple. Be sure to jump the break to read it all.

Read more

Apple Q4 2011 Results: $28.27 Billion Revenue, 17.07 Million iPhones, 11.12 Million iPads, 4.89 Million Macs Sold

Apple has just posted their Q4 2011 financial results. The company posted record-breaking revenue of $28.27 billion, with 11.12 million iPads, 17.07 million iPhones and 4.89 million Macs sold. The company posted quarterly net profit of $6.62 billion, or $7.05 per diluted share. iPhone represented a 21 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter; iPod sales are down 27 percent from the year-ago quarter, but Apple reported the best iPad quarter to date with over 11 million units sold and a 166% increase over the year-ago quarter. For the next quarter, Apple set guidance at revenue of about $37 billion and diluted earnings per share of about $9.30.

Estimates and Previous Quarters

Wall Street consensus’ estimate was earnings of $7.28 per share and revenue of $29.45 billion; independent analysts expected earnings per share of $9.07 and $33.47 billion revenue. In Q3 2011, Apple said they expected revenue of about $25 billion and diluted earnings per share of about $5.50 in the fourth fiscal quarter of 2011.

In Q3 2011, the company posted record-breaking revenue of $28.57 billion, with 9.25 million iPads, 20.34 million iPhones and 3.95 million Macs sold.. In the year-ago quarter, Apple posted revenue of $20.34 billion and net quarterly profit of $4.31 billion. In Q4 2010, the company sold 3.89 million Macs, 14.1 million iPhones and 4.19 million iPads, which began selling during the quarter.

Q4 2011 Recap

Apple’s fourth fiscal quarter, which ended on September 25th, saw the release of updated MacBook Air and Mac mini models, OS X Lion on the Mac App Store and, later, on USB drive, as well as a new iMac for the educational market and a new Thunderbolt Display. The company was initially expected to unveil a new iPhone in September, but a media event took place in Cupertino on October 4th, nine days after the quarter ended. iPhone 4S sales numbers will be included in Apple’s Q1 2012, but the company has already announced over four million iPhone 4S units have been sold in the first weekend of availability.

As for the Mac, the MacBook Air is widely believed to have become the crown jewel of Apple’s portable business (which no longer includes the white MacBook, discontinued in July) that, alongside Lion, was expected to boost Mac sales in the September quarter.

On August 24th, Steve Jobs resigned as CEO of Apple, and Tim Cook was elected CEO of the company. Steve Jobs passed away on October 5th.

On October 4th, Apple also announced over 6 million copies of Lion had been downloaded through the Mac App Store since July 20th (when the operating system went on sale), with Mac users approaching 60 million worldwide.

Q4 2011 Earnings Call

Apple will provide a live audio feed of its Q4 2011 conference call at 2:00 PM Pacific, and we’ll update this story with the conference highlights. Full press release is embedded after the break.

Notes from the call

- Tim Cook: Steve Jobs’ spirit will always be the foundation of Apple.

- New record sales for Mac and iPad in the September quarter.

- Mac sales increased strongly in each operating segment.

- iPod touch continues to account for half of all iPods sold.

- iPhone sales double in Asia Pacific year-over-year.

- Ended quarter with about 2.5 million iPads in channel inventory.

- 92% of Fortune 500 testing or deploying iPad.

- 500,000 apps available in the App Store. Expanded the App Store to 123 countries in the September quarter.

- 30 new retail stores opened in the quarter, 21 internationally.

- $3.6 billion revenue from Apple retail stores.

- 77.5 million visitors in Apple retail stores in the quarter.

- Average revenue per store is $10.7 million.

- Apple has $81.6 billion in cash available.

- Tim: We’re confident that we’ll have a large supply for the 4S in holiday quarter and set an all-time record for iPhone this quarter.

- Tim: Progress in China has been amazing: Greater China revenue 2% in FY09; 12% in FY11. Fastest growing major region. $4.5 billion in revenue from China in September quarter.

- Apple placing additional focus on other promising areas: Brazil, Russia, Middle East. There are several of these markets where Apple hasn’t been historically strong.

- Tim: China – the sky’s the limit there.

- Tim: As iPad competitors came to the market, our share went up.

- Oppenheimer: Pervasive iPhone rumors had a definite negative impact on Apple’s business.

- 40 million iPads sold on a cumulative basis.

- Tim on iPhone 4S launch (4 million units) Vs. iPhone 4 launch (1.7 million units) last year: “That’s the mother of all uplifts”.

- Tim: Number of people using Siri already is amazing. We see this as a profound innovation. Over time  many, many people will use Siri in a substantial way.

- Tim: We spend a lot of time and money and resource in coming up with incredible innovations. And we don’t like when someone else takes those.

- Tim: We still see iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 as incredible products.

- iPad available in 90 countries.

- Tim: We are in the main countries with iPad.

- Tim: Everything we’re doing in the United States, we’re doing in China.

- Tim: Cannibalization of PC market happening in two ways. Some people choose to buy an iPad over a Mac: a materially larger number of people buying an iPad instead of PC.

- Tim: I’m not religious about holding cash or not holding it.

- Tim: We could not be happier with our position in the tablet market. We have some incredible things in the pipeline.

Graphical Visualization

We have compiled a series of graphs and charts to offer a graphical visualization of Apple’s third quarter. Apple’s Q4 2011 data summary is available here.

 

Read more

A Graphical Visualization of Apple’s Past iPhone Launches

As Apple’s new iPhone 4S has topped four million units sold in its first weekend, we thought it might be appropriate to look back at Apple’s iPhone launch history and the evolution of weekend sales figures over time. The original iPhone launched in the United States in June 2007, and Apple announced the 1 millionth unit was sold after 74 days. During the launch quarter’s earnings call, however, the company confirmed 270,000 iPhones had been sold in the first 30 hours of U.S. availability.

Since the iPhone 3G, which followed the original iPhone in 2008 with a new design and 3G connectivity, Apple has always managed to publish press releases announcing at least 1 million iPhone units sold after the first opening weekend. Both the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS, launched in multiple countries on Day One, registered 1 million sales in the first weekend. The iPhone 4, announced at WWDC last year by Steve Jobs and featuring a completely new design with more powerful CPU and improved camera, was the first iPhone to break the 1 million figure and jump past 1.7 million units sold in three days.

With the iPhone 4S, Apple went back to announcing “1 million units sold” – only with pre-orders and after 24 hours, not three days. In the launch weekend, as reported this morning, the company reported over 4 million iPhone 4S units sold in the seven countries the device launched on October 14th: US, Canada, UK, France, Germany, Australia and Japan.

Bigger weekend sales numbers are a result of the impressive growth of the iPhone in the past four years. Take a look at this graph we posted during the Q3 2011 earnings call in July: Apple went from 8.4 million iPhones sold in Q3 2010 to 20.3 million units in the third fiscal quarter of 2011. Launch days obviously attract far more “Apple fans” always waiting to get their hands on the latest device than “regular” sales weeks throughout the year, but clearly the popularity of the iPhone as a mass-market device is also affecting the lines around the world we see on every iPhone launch. It’s also widely believed that the iPhone 4S attracted several customers who bought an iPhone 3GS in 2009, and waited two years to get an updated model. The iPhone 4S is sold unlocked outside the US since day one, but it appears some US models have been sold without SIM-lock as well. According to Apple, unlocked iPhone 4S units will be sold starting this November.

Check out the full-size graph of Apple’s iPhone launch history here, or click on the image below to enlarge.

Data

- Original iPhone (2007)

- iPhone 3G (2008)

- iPhone 3GS (2009)

- iPhone 4 (2010)

- iPhone 4S (2011)

Samsung Files Preliminary Injunction Against The iPhone 4S In Australia & Japan

Samsung today filed for a preliminary injunction against the iPhone 4S in Australia and Japan. This is the latest development in the complex legal battle between Apple and Samsung which has spread across the world since Apple originally revealed it was suing Samsung over the “look and feel” of it’s Galaxy devices.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the Japan filing (which is also attempting to halt sales of the iPhone 4 and iPad 2) cites infringements in technology and user interface patents, whilst in Australia Samsung is claiming that Apple has infringed on patents related to wireless telecommunication standards. The move comes after Samsung was dealt a blow in Australia last week, with the preliminary injunction against its Galaxy Tab 10.1 was upheld. A Samsung spokesperson said that this latest legal action is them “now counterattacking Apple again”.

Florian Mueller of FOSS Patents believes that the attack on the iPhone 4S in Australia  is “doomed to fail” because the patents Samsung is using in the filing are related to 3 patents declared as essential to the 3G telecommunications network. As he explains, it would be unlikely that an Australian judge would take a significantly different approach as occurred last week in the Netherlands:

…a Dutch judge already made it clear that Samsung can’t seek an injunction based on such patents, and I’d be extremely surprised if an Australian judge took a different perspective on FRAND (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory) licensing commitments… The odds are very long against Samsung overcoming all of Apple’s defenses.

Speaking on the situation in Japan, FOSS Patents says it is less clear what will happen as Samsung’s filing there also relates to user interface patents that “are presumably not subject to FRAND licensed commitments”. This means Samsung could seek injunctions on them and it would be up to Apple to contest their validity. The patents apparently relate to “the display of a flight mode icon, the utilization of homescreen space, and an app store menu structure”.

[Via The Wall Street Journal, FOSS Patents]

iOS 5 & iCloud Tips: Sharing an Apple ID With Your Family

With the launch of iOS 5 and iCloud on Wednesday, Apple took another huge step towards the Post-PC era. They have increasingly made the PC less important and iCloud has meant that it is no longer the ‘hub’ to which your devices sync to - iCloud is now that hub and importantly, it is all tied to an Apple ID. As many are realizing as they update to iOS 5 and begin to use iCloud, this can be somewhat problematic when iCloud is used with the Apple ID that is shared by their whole family.

Prior to iOS 5, sharing an Apple ID wasn’t really a problem because its main purpose was for purchasing content on iTunes, using it for support purposes and purchasing items on the online Apple Store - all tasks that worked fine when sharing an ID. Now that Apple ID is tied to a bunch of services, a lot of which involve personal and private data that you don’t necessarily want to share with others - even family members. The other issue is that iCloud involves a lot of data synchronization and this doesn’t work well with multiple people as it results in data conflicts and devices syncing data (such as calendar events) that are meant for another person in the family.

Fortunately there are a number of ways to resolve these issues, whilst still benefiting from all of the new iOS 5 and iCloud features. Jump the break to see all of our tips in dealing with this issue.

Read more