Yearly Archives: 2015

I really like Mayer, but I’m not sure she can turn things around quickly enough for the critics.

U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco said the plaintiffs, Uriel Marcus and Benedict Verceles, failed to show that Apple made “affirmative misrepresentations,” despite citing online complaints and Apple marketing statements calling the laptops “state of the art” or the “most advanced” on the market.

People have to stop these bullshit lawsuits.

CNET:

Smartphones are a top choice for today’s street criminals, especially teenagers. In the year ending in June 2013, nearly two-thirds of robberies by minors in San Francisco involved cell phones, according to the city’s public defender.

Government officials have called the trend an epidemic. One in 10 smartphone owners in the United States have had their phone stolen. More than 3 million were pilfered in 2013, nearly double the number nabbed the year before.

A reminder to always be aware of your surroundings and how you use your iOS device, or any device for that matter, while out in public. I’m always intensely aware of how I use my iPhone, iPad and DSLR while out and about.

Vancouver Sun:

Get your 99 cent apps while you can, iPhone and iPad users.

Apple will soon hike the prices in its App Store for Canadian customers, according to an email sent to software developers.

The email, sent out on Wednesday, said the unspecified price increase in Canada, Norway and European Union countries would take effect within 36 hours.

Apple said foreign exchange rates were triggering the increase in Canada.

I wonder how it’s going to affect sales? The 99 cent price point is generally thought of as a no brainer but even a small increase in the price sensitive App Store can significantly lower sales.

Tech in Asia:

Fresh research from UBS estimates Apple sold 69.3 million iPhones in the last quarter of 2014, setting an all-time record for the company. China accounts for more than a third of those shipments.

A delayed release for the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus in China doesn’t seem to have put much of a dent in the devices’ sales figures, which don’t even account for grey market units brought in from Hong Kong and other countries.

As (easily) predicted by many. And it will only increase from here going forward. China is the new centre of Apple’s iPhone sales.

Apple on Thursday said it set a new record during the first week of January as customers purchased nearly half a billion dollars on apps and in-app purchases. What’s more, New Years Day 2015 was the single biggest day ever in App Store sales history. […]

Apple:

Tim Cook: “We’re proud to create 1M+ US jobs in all 50 states and ring in another record-breaking year for developers globally.” iOS developers were paid at the average rate of $28 million/day in 2014. $25 billion dollars cumulative has been paid to developers.

Little bit of well deserved back patting from Apple.

The Internet Archive:

The collection includes action, strategy, adventure and other unique genres of game and entertainment software. Through the use of the EM-DOSBOX in-browser emulator, these programs are bootable and playable.

I never had a computer that could play any of these games but I recognize many of the names as classics of the genre.

Pacific Standard:

It’s no secret in the jewelry industry that retail demand for fine jewelry is slipping. As Forbes reports, the demand for gold jewelry has dropped 30 percent since last year, and continues to fall. Even diamond behemoth De Beers had to admit in their 2014 Insight Report that “retailers have faced pressures from a weak economic environment and strong competition from branded luxury goods and experiential categories, as well as the low-price models of e-commerce companies.”

Simply put: There are better things to spend money on, often at better prices, than jewelry.

Interesting premise. While I’m sure there are many contributing factors, I wonder how much the “rise of the machine” has contributed to this decline.

Jim and Shawn talk about Apple’s 2014, Amplitube and guitars!

Sponsored by Audible (Visit the link to get a free audiobook of your choice and a free 30-day trial membership), Squarespace (Use code GUITARS for a free trial and 10% off), and Yosemite by Cocoa Conference (Visit the link to learn more about this conference for Apple enthusiasts, designers, and developers! Seating is limited so the sooner you get your tickets, the better).

Sounds great, but…

You have to hate it when the first words of something you expect to be good end in “but.”

Waterstones has admitted that sales of Amazon’s Kindle e-book reader had “disappeared” after seeing higher demand for physical books.

The UK’s largest book retailing chain, which teamed up with Amazon in 2012 to sell the Kindle in its stores, saw sales of physical books rise 5pc in December, at the expense of the popular e-reader.

Kindle sales had “disappeared to all intents and purposes”, Waterstones said.

I’ll be honest, I don’t know how to explain this shift in sales. While I think it’s good that people are buying physical books, I think it’s way too early to say that e-books are dead.

With seventeen of the most amazing people in the Apple community—some developers, but most not—Yosemite is a conference for the Apple community. Our speakers are some of the best and most-loved writers, designers, philosophers, and developers working in the Apple ecosystem.

I’ll be speaking at CocoaConf’s Yosemite Conference this year. I’m really excited about the line-up of speakers and meeting the attendees. I hope to see you there!

Fast Company:

Introduced with grand ambitions last summer, the Fire Phone is widely seen as a fiasco. Originally priced at $199 and intended as an iPhone competitor, it now sells for 99 cents, and Amazon has taken a $170 million write-down largely attributable to unsold Fire Phone inventory.

Yet Bezos finally answers the question with the kind of reasoning that investors, customers, and pundits have come to expect from him: Amazon is going to pour more resources into its phone. Defending the Fire Phone as a “bold bet,” Bezos argues that it’s “going to take many iterations” and “some number of years” to get it right.

I don’t think the Fire Phone will be around in two years.

Gruber summed up my feelings on the MacBook Air.

Whatever, the reasons, my mind keeps going back to the number — approximately $20 billion dollars of iPhones — roughly 34 percent of Apple’s total sales for the three months ending December 31, 2014. It explains everything about the company, its priorities and why it is starting to show signs of wear and tear across its other product lines.

Om brings up a good point—Apple’s focus is, and has been, on the iPhone for quite a while. Let’s not forget the record Mac sales over that period of time, though. Perhaps it’s the halo effect, but the Mac is doing better than ever.

Update: Om’s original article stated $20 billion, but it’s actually $43 billion.

Swiss watch makers like TAG Heuer, the biggest brand in luxury goods group LVMH’s watch portfolio, had until recently largely dismissed the threat of “smart” gadgets, but LVMH watch chief Jean-Claude Biver says he had changed his mind on the subject.

Not a big surprise.

Matt Richman’s thoughts on the news:

In order to have even a chance of being as feature-rich as Apple Watch, then, TAG’s smartwatch will have to pair with an Android phone. However, TAG wearers aren’t Android users. Rich people buy TAG watches, but rich people don’t buy Android phones.

I agree.

There are very few companies that continue to impress me, but Algoriddim has done it time and again. It’s not only the products, but the attitude in building those products to be great that wins me over. […]

An 86-year-old woman wrote this to her bank manager. Priceless.

Stephen Hackett has a look at a dozen RSS readers for OS X and while the winner is no surprise, it’s a great read.

Huffington Post:

From the great ancient capitals to the modern cities of Asia, the Americas, and beyond, here are the 50 cities you must see during your lifetime.

Out of the 50, I really only want to visit 23 of the listed cities. I’ve been to 11 so far.