John Kirk for Tech.pinions:
Samsung has reported a 60% fall in quarterly profits. Just three years ago, Samsung rose from seemingly nowhere to dominate the global smartphone market. Today, Samsung is being pressured from above and below as Apple steals away its premium customers and Xiomi and others steal away customers from the low-end.
Why did Samsung fail? In a word, commoditization. Read the whole thing. Well worth it.
Apple Pay is changing the drive-through payment game. Now, when you roll up to the drive through, the cashier will hand you the portable NFC reader, you’ll tap your phone or Apple Watch, hear the confirmation beep, then hand it back. No credit card, no signing, no pin code.
Apple’s Fastest-Ever iPhone Rollout Includes India, Mexico, South Korea & Thailand
Voracious reader? If so, this may change things for you. A how-to on checking out a library eBook from the comfort of your couch.
[VIDEO] Heh. The words to this song were written by an iPhone, using autocomplete. It’s actually pretty catchy.
Rich Siegel, founder of Bare Bones Software, gave a talk at the Cingleton conference about not selling future versions of BBEdit via the Mac App Store. This could be a canary in the coal mine.
[VIDEO] From iHeartApple2, by way of ParisLemon, this video is part of a series of interviews with former CEO John Sculley. In this one, Sculley talks about the importance of marketing experiences, rather than product specs/features, along with lessons learned with and from Steve Jobs.
When we introduced the first Macintosh, we did a commercial, in the Superbowl, which was called 1984. What was remarkable about that commercial, particularly for a high tech product, was we never once showed the product.
Indeed.
Last week, we posted about an article from Vanity Fair entitled, The Empire Reboots. Terrific article on Microsoft, with focus on the current relationship of Bill Gates and Satya Nadella and the longtime reign of CEO Steve Ballmer.
Matt Rosoff, from CITEworld, read the Vanity Fair piece and posted a tweet-storm based on the idea that a time traveler from today went back to 2004 and met Steve Ballmer, filling him in on ten years of tech advances. Great read.
The competition between Bose and Beats cost Colin Kaepernick $10,000 this week, when he violated an NFL ban on wearing Beats by Dr. Dre headphones on television after games.
Is this a PR win for Beats? Will Apple remove all Bose products from the Apple Store?
From Apple’s press release:
Apple® today announced that iPhone® 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, the biggest advancements in iPhone history, will be available in China beginning Friday, October 17 from the Apple Online Store (www.apple.com), Apple’s retail stores, and an expansive network of retail stores through all three major carriers and Apple Authorized Resellers. With support for TD-LTE and FDD-LTE, iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus provide customers access to 4G/LTE networks from China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom across mainland China. Customers can pre-order iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus from the Apple Online Store beginning Friday, October 10. Beginning Tuesday, October 14, customers can reserve the new iPhones for in-store pick-up starting Friday, October 17.
“We are thrilled to bring iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus to our customers in China on all three carriers at launch,” said Apple’s CEO Tim Cook. “With support for TD-LTE and FDD-LTE, iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus customers will have access to high-speed mobile networks from China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom for an incredible experience.”
Yesterday, investor Carl Icahn tweeted a promise to post an open letter to Tim Cook. Today, he posted that letter.
Josh Carr (really, that’s his name!) does an incredibly detailed walkthrough of one of Pioneer’s new in dash CarPlay compatible receivers. Great job.
A lot has been written about Jony Ive, much of it biographical and centered on his design milestones. This piece is different. It paints a picture of Ive, does a better job capturing his spirit.
Thoughtful editorial from Wired. The upshot:
However it got there, Apple has come to the right place. It’s a basic axiom of information security that “data at rest” should be encrypted. Apple should be lauded for reaching that state with the iPhone. Google should be praised for announcing it will follow suit in a future Android release.
Also worth reading, this essay from Salon, entitled America’s huge iPhone lie: Why Apple is being accused of coddling child molesters.
On September 23rd, Apple reported an adoption rate of 46% for iOS 8.
As of October 5th (this past Sunday), Apple’s official numbers show that, in the ensuing weeks, the adoption rate crept up to only 47%. Interestingly, the iOS 7 rate went down from 49% to 47% (as you might expect), but the pre-iOS 7 adoption number actually increased from 5% to 6%.
Bill Gates, in last weeks Bloomberg interview:
“Apple Pay is a great example of how a cell phone that identifies its user in a pretty strong way lets you make a transaction that should be very, very inexpensive,” he said.
He explained: “So the fact that in any application I can buy something, that’s fantastic. The fact I don’t need a physical card anymore, I just do that transaction and you’re going to be quite sure about who it is on the other end, that is a real contribution.”
Cincinnati Enquirer:
How it works: Customers with the new iPhone 6 and the Apple Watch will be able to pay at registers with a wave of their devices. Customers buy virtual encrypted “tokens” from Apple to be stored on their phones – so in the event they’re lost or stolen, no credit card info is on the device. More details will be released this month by Apple.
I still struggle to get my head around exactly how Apple Pay works, but I do know that customers won’t be buying “virtual encrypted tokens” from Apple.
This original iPhone 2G prototype was used for external (outside the company) testing and was not loaded with the official iOS interface. Instead, it ran the “skankphone” testing interface (see “skank is the new black” in small print on the picture in the auction listing).
I love looking at these old phones. Amazing how far the world has come since the original iPhone was introduced.
[VIDEO] 15 year old Kenneth Shinozuka lives in New York City with his parents, aunt and grandfather. He’s one smart kid.
Kenneth’s grandfather suffers from Alzheimer’s and tended to wander out of their apartment at night, getting out in the streets of New York City, causing a number of accidents, not to mention a lot of worry.
Kenneth’s solution won him one of the 15 finalist slots at the 2014 Google Science Fair. Watch the video. Incredible work.
There’s a new strain of malware that specifically targets OS X. Read on to learn about the malware itself and to learn how to tell if you are infected.
Want China Times:
China’s “big three” telecom carriers — China Telecom, China Unicom, and China Mobile — recorded over 1 million preorders for the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus only six hours after they began accepting them for the new phone’s Oct. 10 debut.
Buyers have been able to place their preorders at operators’ online and brick-and-mortar stores as well as their subsidiaries. The total number of preorders could exceed 2 million if they included those sold through distributors such as Suning Appliance and D.Phone.
UPDATE: Benjamin Mayo at 9to5mac reports the number is now 4 million preorders.
Yoni Heisler does an excellent job of demystifying Apple Pay. Here’s my take on how all this works. Now with corrections.
Getting ready to buy a used iPhone or iPad? Ask the seller for the device’s IMEI or serial number, then go to this page.
Worth a read, even if you already know most of these, though there’s one minor quibble.
ZDNet (via 9to5mac):
Kim Ki-nam, president of the Korean electronic giant’s semiconductor business and head of System LSI business, told reporters at Samsung’s headquarters in Seoul that once the company begins to supply Apple with chips using its latest technology, profits “will improve positively”.
Why Samsung and not TSMC? Because size matters.
Nice essay from Ken Segall (long time creative director who worked on the Think Different campaign, came up with the iMac name) about the fallout from Bendgate.
[VIDEO] Back in March, Billy Joel came on the Tonight Show to take Jimmy Fallon’s iPad for an incredible ride with just a brilliant duet.
Now it’s Robert Plant‘s turn. The only thing that could have made this better is if they launched into D’yer Mak’er. Now that would have been something to see.
Terrific post, clearly written by someone with a deep understanding of this space.
New York Times:
EBay said on Tuesday that it would spin off its PayPal payments unit into a separate publicly traded company, taking a step the activist hedge fund magnate Carl C. Icahn first demanded nine months ago.