Analytics firm comScore just released their latest mobile sector numbers and, in a nutshell, Apple continues eating Samsung’s lunch in terms of market share.
For the three months ending September 15th, share of smartphone subscribers:
Apple: 43.6%
Samsung: 27.6%
LG: 9.4%
Motorola: 4.8%
HTC: 3.3%
When organized by platform, Android fares better:
Android: 52.3%
Apple: 43.6%
Microsoft: 2.9%
BlackBerry: 1.2%
Symbian: .1%
The bad news for Microsoft? Their numbers have not changed since the last report, meaning their mobile efforts are not gaining traction. It’d be fair to say that Apple’s numbers are about the same, but that’s much easier to take when you have dominant market share.
Natasha Vargas-Cooper did a great job pulling together a Reddit-unearthed MacRumors thread from the day the iPod was released, a video of Steve Jobs pitching the iPod at a music event back in 2001, and the very first iPod commercial.
This is incredibly entertaining. The comments on the MacRumors thread are just awash with prescient comments like:
All that hype for an MP3 player? Break-thru digital device? The Reality Distiortion Field is starting to warp Steve’s mind if he thinks for one second that this thing is gonna take off.
Delicious!
The iPod commercial is embedded below. Remarkable how much Apple’s advertising changed. This ad is effective, but it feels almost amateurish when compared to the commercials that would appear once the iPod gained some traction.
Scroll through your Apple Watch notifications. Notice that sometimes the icon attached to each notification is square, sometimes it’s round.
Mac Kungfu explains why:
Round notification icon: If the icon is round then it’s a notification you can action on the phone because you’ve a Watch version of that app installed. For example, if it’s a Mail message then you will be able to tap the notification to reply to the mail there and then.
Square notification icon: If the icon is square then there is no Watch app for that particular notification. Essentially, the notification is being “echoed” from your iPhone, and all you’ll be able to do is tap to dismiss it.
This teaser spot ran during the 2007 Oscars, promoting the iPhone’s June release. I remember this like it was yesterday.
In case you are interested, here are the movies represented in the ad:
Dial M for Murder, I Love Lucy, The Honeymooners, The Maltese Falcon, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Bellboy, Some Like It Hot, It Happened One Night, The Pink Panther, The Getaway, American Grafitti, Boogie Nights, The Flintstones, Three Days of the Condor, Back To The Future, The Fugitive, High Fidelity, Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amelie Poulain, L.A. Confidential, Fargo, Meet The Fockers, The Anchorman, Sex and the City, The Big Lebowski, When Harry Met Sally, Charlie’s Angels, Shaft, Face Off, City By The Sea, Zoolander, The American President, The Incredibles.
Not sure this is everything Siri can do, but this is a solid list. If you have or plan to buy an Apple TV, scan through the list of examples to get a sense of the types of Apple TV queries Siri supports.
Every successful company, at some point or another, faces the dreaded moment where their existing business model no longer works, where the world has changed around them and they need to pivot or die.
Jean-Louis Gassée, writing for MondayNote, lays out some notable examples, including DEC, Sun, IBM, Microsoft, and Hewlett-Packard.
Terrific read, keep Apple in mind as you make your way through it.
Apple Inc. persuaded a judge to throw out a lawsuit by employees of the company’s retail stores in California seeking back pay for time spent in “demoralizing” security searches when they left work for the day.
The ruling by a San Francisco federal judge Saturday releases the company from having to compensate as many 12,400 former and current employees from 52 stores throughout the state a few dollars a day for time spent over a six-year period having their bags and Apple devices searched at meal breaks and after their shifts.
I’m sure this is very disappointing to the workers. Having worked in this kind of environment, it is not a fun thing to have to do, especially during a rush. You can waste a lot of time waiting for a security droid to check bags. But the writing was on the wall last year when the Supreme Court ruled against Amazon employees in a similar case.
Here we are, some 83 years later, and the Zippo brand continues to thrive. Why? Well, there are a number of reasons—a determined founder, some clever ad placements, war—but one that shouldn’t be overlooked is collectibility, which is something Zippo has catered to—both knowingly and unknowingly—since its earliest days.
My father(s) all had Zippos and as a kid, it was a treat to be allowed to light their cigarettes (it was a different time) with one of them. They were Canadian sailors and had Zippos that were custom made with the name and image of their ships on them. I haven’t used a Zippo in a dozen years but I can still hear the click of it opening and closing in my head.
Facebook (FB, Tech30) is blocking any link to Tsu.co on every platform it owns, including Messenger and Instagram. It even went back and deleted more than 1 million Facebook posts that ever mentioned Tsu.co, making pictures, videos and comments disappear in an instant.
You can type the name “Tsu,” but you’ll be blocked if you write “Tsu.co” or post any link from the site.
Facebook claims Tsu links are spam that are annoying the community. Tsu thinks Facebook is a bully trying to kill off competition.
From Facebook’s point of view:
Tsu is a tiny new social network that claims to share its advertising revenue with its users. Unlike most social media sites, including Facebook, which keep 100% of the profit from the ads displayed on your page, Tsu only keeps 10%. You keep 45%. The chain of friends that invited you to Tsu split the rest.
That means there’s a financial incentive to post on Tsu, invite people to Tsu, and direct people to your Tsu page. There’s even incentive to send people to the Tsu pages of the folks who you brought into the Tsu network.
Your Facebook feed could easily be flooded with Tsu.co links.
The question here is, is Facebook protecting its users from spam, or are they taking action to prevent a potential competitor from gaining a foothold?
Thanks to Carbon Copy Cloner for sponsoring The Loop this week. What’s your plan when your Mac’s hard drive dies? Plan ahead and get back to work in minutes with a Carbon Copy Cloner bootable backup. CCC—the app that saves your bacon.
Jim’s Note: I’ve used this app for many years. I trust and love it.
Matt Braun is an indie developer who busted his ass to get his game, SketchParty TV, up and running in time to be in the Apple TV app store in time for the day one rollout. Includes download numbers. Terrific read, even if you are not a developer.
Kathy Gibson, writing for Access Bollywood digs into the process of searching for content on the new Apple TV. Though her tastes run to Bollywood content, her experience applies across the spectrum.
Though slower than using Siri, the most effective method for finding the Bollywood film you want is to skip Siri and use the Apple TV’s search function on the homescreen. Using the Apple TV remote, swipe left or right to type in the name of a movie, actor, or director. The swipeable keyboard is a pain to use; all 26 letters are in a single horizontal line, so you spend a lot of time going back and forth between each letter. Hopefully, Apple is working on a better system for typing.
Titles or names matching your search show up below the text bar. Click on a title to get more information about a specific film. The list of cast and crew that appear on the left side of the screen aren’t clickable, but the names appear again further down the page in clickable format.
And search can be even better if you follow Kirk McElhearns advice and use your old Apple TV remote, if you have one handy.
There’s more to the post. Give it a look. I have high hopes for search (and typing assistance) with future revs of tvOS.
Even with Apple’s MFi (Made for iPhone/iPad/iPod) program, game controllers haven’t really caught on with iPhone and iPad gamers because they’re rarely necessary: Touch controls usually do the trick, and lugging around a gamepad for a portable device is annoying. But on the Apple TV, with the simple and streamlined Siri Remote coming off as a less surefire option, having a gamepad feels more and more like a necessity.
Yup.
There’s a lot more to Andrew’s article. Lots of game mentions, insights into the Apple TV gaming experience. If you are into gaming on the Apple TV, spend a few minutes reading through it. It rings true for me.
Charter Communications (3rd largest US cable operator) CEO Tom Rutledge:
Companies like HBO show a “complete lack of control and understanding in the space” by letting password sharing continue, and it’s something that must be stopped. “The lack of control over the content by content companies and authentication processes has reduced the demand for video because you don’t have to pay for it,” Mr. Rutledge said on the earnings call. “That’s going on in the college market.”
HBO CEO Richard Plepler:
“It’s not that we’re unmindful of it, it just has no impact on the business,” HBO CEO Richard Plepler said. It is, in many ways, a “terrific marketing vehicle for the next generation of viewers,” he said, noting that it could potentially lead to more subscribers in the future. “We’re in the business of creating addicts,” he said.
Two opposing forces at work here, both in pursuit of your dollars. Companies like HBO and Netflix are thinking long term, trying to build an audience, willing to give away some product to lock in future customers. And, of course, the cable companies are against this, since those customers will come from the existing base of paying cable customers.
If you have a new Apple TV, you may have already discovered that the new remote is not the ideal device for navigating lists in the Apple TV’s interface. If, for example, you have a long list of movies, and want to view one near the bottom of the list, you need to swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, until you get to where you want.
However, you can still use the old Apple TV remote – the one to the left – with the new device. You can navigate much more easily by pressing the up and down buttons; and you can press and hold to move up or down a list quickly. And entering passwords, something that is hellish on the new Apple TV – is even easier with the old remote; you can press and hold the left and right buttons to move through the letter list.
AfterPad takes a look at game controllers for your brand new Apple TV. I did some research of my own and their number one choice, the SteelSeries Nimbus MFi controller is tops on a lot of lists.
I just got one, but haven’t had the chance to play yet. I will say this though, the SteelSeries Nimbus is a beautiful, well crafted controller.
If you are in the market for a controller, be sure you verify that the controller is Apple TV compatible. From what I’ve been told, being an MFi controller is not enough.
The Samsung Galaxy is a very popular line of phones, based on the queries I receive from users who are complaining that Outlook is creating a new folder called “Junk” and moving mail sent from their co-workers to the Junk folder. The users don’t have rules set and when the user moves the mail back to the Inbox, it gets moved back to the Junk folder. If they turn off the phone, the mail stays in the Inbox. (That is the first clue that it is not Outlook’s fault.)
Because the folder appears in Outlook after creating the account on the S4, the S4 is responsible for the folder, not Outlook. The S4 is not picking up the server’s junk folder and is creating a junk of it’s own.
Nathan Donato-Weinstein, writing for the Silicon Valley Business Journal:
Apple Inc. and the city of San Jose are working toward a development agreement that would allow the Cupertino-based juggernaut to build a north San Jose campus of up to 4.15 million square feet, according to city records — an amount larger than Apple’s “spaceship” campus under construction in Cupertino.
The draft agreement, which is not yet completed, will come before the city’s Planning Commission later this month, officials said. It would lock in development rights — and expectations for both sides — for the next 15 years in an area that sprawls across 86 acres north of Highway 101 across from the Mineta San Jose International Airport.
That is some prime real estate, in terms of airport access. Wouldn’t there be a lot of noise from aircraft traffic?
4.15 million square feet is about 90 acres, a tremendous parcel of land. Apple’s Infinite Loop campus is about 20 acres, and the new spaceship campus is about 175 acres. So this new tract is somewhere in between the two.
Given the potential noise issue, could this be an industrial use facility? Something tied to distribution, where airport access would be critical? Interesting.
Tony Fadell sat down with Bloomberg’s Emily Chang to discuss, among other things, his time working with Steve Jobs at Apple. There are a few of these segments floating around, but I found this one particularly interesting. In it, Fadell talks about self driving cars and conversations with Steve Jobs about building a car back in 2008.
Note that the preroll ad in the video is glitchy, but the video itself plays just fine.
Spoken traffic alerts will tell users about traffic congestion and incidents on a user’s route. Additionally, users will get traffic descriptions summarizing traffic conditions before they set off on their journey.
Like Waze. Every mapping app should have this feature.
Apple has filed a patent for a method to secretly enter “panic mode” on an iPhone when it’s unlocked with a specific finger. That could mean that the phone locks out personal information or completely resets the device.
The Apple patent, dated May 5 2014, includes lots of different potential functions for panic mode. Basically it’s a system to lock down the phone if a user is forced to unlock it with their fingerprint.
Walgreens Balance Rewards members can now seamlessly use their account through Apple Pay – without separately scanning a Balance Rewards card or barcode. More than 85 million active Balance Rewards members will have the ability to earn and redeem loyalty points via Apple Pay, the easy, secure and private way to pay.
I’ve been playing around with some Apple TV games and I am impressed with the efforts I’ve encountered so far. If there’s one thing I’d change, it’s the remote itself.
I’m definitely going to order an MFi game controller, I suspect that will make a huge difference in playability. But there is one setting that made the remote much more usable, both in games and in making my way around the Apple TV interface.
On the Apple TV, make your way over to Settings, then select Remotes and Devices, which should look something like this:
Tap the Touch Surface Tracking setting, and change it to Slow. For me, some games just play better with this setting, give me a finer control over my tracking.
And one more thing: Try tapping (not pressing) on the edges of the trackpad as an alternative way to move around. Really works well in certain situations.
If you are interested in the payments market, this is a good read. But the bottom line here is this:
I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to pay with CurrentC at Target; however, I’m not sure that I could recommend CurrentC over NFC-based systems like Apple Pay because of the fraud and privacy concerns. Ultimately the retail customer’s money is on the line in the event of fraud, which is worrisome in light of the lackluster security record of many retailers (Target, 7-Eleven, and Michaels) in the MCX consortium.
Given that Apple Pay exists as a model, why would any financial organization put forward a payment model that is not at least as secure as Apple Pay?
This Apple Music commercial is a departure from the string of recent iPhone commercials, with their fast cuts and smart Lake Bell voiceover.
This is Kenny Chesney doing what he does best, heartfelt, dedicated, as earnest as they come, making his case for Apple Music as “All the Music You Want”.
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Developed by Softube, the Marshall Legends Bundle gives you three iconic Marshall amps — the Plexi Super Lead 1959 and the new Bluesbreaker 1962 and Silver Jubilee 2555.
Each of these classic Marshall amplifiers feature Unison™ technology for Apollo interfaces, giving you the same distinct tone, touch, and feel of each individual amplifier.
Perhaps most universal of all color systems is Pantone—the lingua franca of color.
Sound familiar? Unless you work in design, chances are your first encounter with the mythic New Jersey-based color standards company was via a color-coded mug, iPhone case or in a Sephora makeup counter. In recent years, the design of Pantone’s color chips have become a graphic trope: always a plain band of color with a white bar and some words and black numbers in Helvetica on the bottom.
This chip design is strictly technical, lifted from the layout of a tool used by designers to specify and standardize color when communicating with printers and fabric dyers. So how did it find its way onto mugs, home goods, hospital scrubs, nail polish and even boxer briefs?
The story of Pantone is very interesting. I once sat in a pub in San Francisco during a Macworld Expo with a very drunk Pantone executive who spilled some insider details on how the company orchestrated its way out of the restrictions of the design studio and into the wide open world of pop culture.
