Hayley Tsukayama, writing for The Washington Post:
The new Apple TV, which launched this week, offers a tantalizing breakthrough: It has the potential to be the only set-top box you will need.
The hockey puck-sized box offers some cool new features that can be used now — you can search for shows through the voice assistant Siri and a new remote lets you navigate by touch and play games. But more importantly, it reveals the company’s vision for the future of television — Apple hopes TV watching won’t be shaped by static channel guides of hundreds of shows that can be viewed only in certain time slots, but apps, largely developed by third-party companies, that offer your favorite shows on command, anytime you want. Anyone can submit an app, from big companies such as CBS or Netflix to smaller players such as Snapchat or Airbnb.
Apple TV’s watch-by-apps approach has another benefit — it can be the device that finally pulls together all of those subscriptions, watchlists and movies you’ve randomly downloaded all across the Web.
Apple is fantastic at constructing ecosystems. They’ve done a remarkable job with the new Apple TV. The potential is dazzling. The key is to establish a standard so strong, so compelling, that anyone who wants to play has to build an app for it.
The biggest domino in the bunch is Amazon’s Instant Video. Apple TV can certainly win without Amazon. After all, there’s plenty of content with Netflix, Hulu, and the like, with the networks in negotiation and already represented with time delayed shows on Netflix and Hulu.
But if Apple can get Amazon onto Apple TV, that’ll be the ballgame. The Apple TV will have established a standard with enough pull to bring everyone to the table.
Side note: If you are interested in cord cutting, watch the video at the top of the linked article. The first half is pretty basic, but the second half does a nice job of laying out the content offered by services like Netflix and Hulu, so you can start planning your own cord cutting.
Once a year, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) requires every company of a certain size ($10m in assets) to file an annual report, laying out a comprehensive summary of its financial performance. That report is known as the Form 10-K.
Here’s a link to Apple’s Form 10-K for the fiscal year that ended, oddly enough, on September 26th.
There are a lot of interesting tidbits in Apple’s 10-K, including patent filings, dependencies, and lots of discussion of risks in the marketplace. But if you don’t feel like digging through all the cruft, Chris O’Brien, writing for Venture Beat, did a nice job of laying out some of the highlights.
Some analysts have pushed back the arrival of Apple’s web TV service to the second-half of 2016. Apple’s focus on ensuring high quality streaming could be one reason for the delay as well as acquiring content rights.
Most of what you read about Apple’s rumored web TV service (where Apple provides both the set top box and the content) revolves around the complexities of acquiring rights from players like the major networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox) and others.
But a subtler problem is the complexity of handling the stream surge problem, where demand for content can build quickly, beyond the network’s availability to deliver. A perfect example of this is demand for a live sports event:
Dish Networks’ (NASDAQ:DISH) new Sling OTT (over-the-top) has been hampered by streaming issues, including problems during college basketball’s “March Madness.” For Apple, the worry is that while it can estimate demand for a web TV service, it doesn’t want traffic surges to give the service a black eye.
Handling surge streaming well is a critical issue. Interesting article.
AmpliTube 4 is a guitar and bass tone studio for Mac/PC that works as a standalone application and as a plug-in for your favorite DAW. AmpliTube recreates the entire guitar/bass signal chain from instrument to recording device, and does so in a very realistic and intuitive way. But it also does it in ways you never dreamed possible.
AmpliTube has been around for years and is one of the best amp software packages on the market. I’m looking forward to trying this out.
Although South By Southwest has long been one of digital culture’s foremost summits, recent events suggest it’s time to re-assess that. SXSW’s organizers have publicly foundered over some of the event’s programming on online harassment—undoubtedly one of the most important and complex topics facing digital culture today. And that they’ve messed this up so monumentally exposes a fundamental problem with the very events that purport to champion the issue.
This may seem too “inside baseball” and uninteresting but it’s actually an important issue on many fronts – it’s about the continuing and vehement online harassment of women by cowards and the companies and organizations, like SXSW, who don’t have the courage to stand up to that same harrassment themselves.
This is a bit terrifying but gorgeous at the very same time. Be sure to scroll through the whole thing, especially that page that zooms in and out from a skyward overhead view of Greenland, to the closeup on the porous ice at the surface.
As reported by the BBC’s own Leo Kelion, the iPlayer app is being rewritten as a native Apple TV app, which means it can now be searchable, right alongside Netflix, Hulu and other third party apps.
A key part of Apple’s pitch for its new box is that owners can use their voices to request programmes and movies by theme from across a range of services without having to open and close individual apps.
Users can, for example, ask for popular science fiction shows and be shown a range of suggestions from Netflix, NowTV and other apps that communicate their content with Apple’s computer servers.
Searchability is a huge selling point for Apple TV. Rather than dig into the Netflix interface, then slogging through the Hulu interface, etc., all to find a specific show, this new generation of Apple TV puts Siri front and center on search. Ask Sir to find a specific show, and Apple TV will show you an availability screen, listing apps that stream that show.
This is a tipping point. If Amazon wants their Instant Video to become a player on the level of Netflix and Hulu, they have to make it available as a searchable Apple TV app. Imagine the Kindle without an iOS app. There’s no way the Kindle Store becomes the giant it has become without the ability to read books natively on the iPhone and iPad. To me, this same holds true for Apple TV.
Ben Thompson, writing for Stratechery, takes on this New York Times article, which casts doubt that Apple can continue its success.
Ben writes:
I am increasingly finding most commentary around the iPhone to be just a bit maddening: the iPhone — and, by extension, Apple — is in the strongest position it has ever been in, and I feel like far too many folks are being obtuse about that reality.
This is an ambitious effort. As with all lists, some of these will click for you, others might not. But worth looking through this, I think. Some excellent apps worth having here.
CNN Money did an interview with Apple Senior VP Eddy Cue to talk about Apple TV. The interview was split into two parts.
NOTE: The linked pages are set to AutoPlay, which is why I did not embed the videos here. My two cents: AutoPlay is awful, disrespectful to your audience. Turn it off.
The first part of the interview focuses on the basics: apps and the app ecosystem, the remote, Siri, and the overall interface, with a focus on search.
The second part of the interview is a little more Eddy Cue, a little less packaged and, frankly, I found it a lot more interesting. The focus was more on the possibilities for app developers, as well as the Apple TV as an add-on, rather than a replacement to your set top box.
Fascinating question at the end:
Do you think Apple TV needs exclusive programming in order to thrive?
A party line answer from Eddy, but a great question.
Watching these videos, I definitely get the sense that Apple is all-in with the Apple TV, that this is just the beginning of something truly great.
Nintendo has introduced its long-awaited and highly anticipated first smartphone app, called Miitomo, but pushed back the release date to the spring of next year. The title is a new franchise for the company– first of five smartphone apps Nintendo plans to release by March 2017. But we’re not sure whether to call Miitomo a game. Users will design their own avatars, or miis, to communicate with other users.
Nintendo is saving its most famous character, Mario the plumber, and others for a later date. Analysts say the company probably didn’t want to risk Mario on an unproven mobile format, but might introduce him later.
Nintendo also said it was creating a new membership service, called “Nintendo Account,” to connect users of its hardware as well as PCs and mobile devices. It said it would use a cloud-based service to transfer data between mobile games and console games.
Sounds like Miitomo is an avatar management app (the Mii is your avatar on the Nintendo Wii, Wii U, 3DS), perhaps with some social aspects. Could also be an avatar bridge between the Wii U and Nintendo’s next gen console, the Nintendo NX. A few more details:
The new smartphone game will be “Miitomo”. It will be free to play, with attractive add-ons that people can pay for, Mr. Kimishima says. Other smartphone games will be pay-to-download, he says.
Looks like Miis go ahead and communicate with other Miis without your knowledge. This will help people who are hesitant to talk about themselves to communicate with others, and reveal a side of your friends you never knew, Mr. Kimishima says.
Interesting privacy aspects to this.
Regardless, Mario won’t make his appearance in this app. Nintendo also teased four follow-ons to Miitomo, built with partner DeNA, all of them games, all shipping by March 2017.
One thing I didn’t get from this live blog was any mention of platform. I can imagine these games being iPhone only, or iPhone, then Android. I can’t imagine them being Android only, though.
Inside the Apple bubble, a giant campus with more than 10,000 employees, it’s easy to lose introspection. Yet, when I ask Schiller if Apple does everything well, his answer surprises me.
“No, of course not, of course not,” he said. “And we don’t want to sound like we’re perfect. We never are, we always have to get better and always have to listen to where we’re not doing well.”
Well written and visually interestingly laid out piece by Ulanoff. I’ve met Schiller several times and I’ve always found him interesting and engaging. Then again, we both love hockey so that means I’m biased.
During its quarterly earnings call on Tuesday, Apple CFO Luca Maestri was keen to point out how beneficial swapping out PCs for Macs can be.
“There are currently over 30,000 Macs deployed within the company with 1,900 more being added each week. IBM tells us that each Mac is saving $270 compared to a traditional PC, thanks to the much reduced support cost and better residual value.”
Those of you who work in IT have known this for years. When I worked in a corporate environment, it was obvious there was more tech support needed for the PCs than the Macs. One company I worked for had 40 PC support techs who were busy all day, every day. They had two Mac guys for the same number of machines. They spent most of their day doing “fun IT” stuff and not troubleshooting and putting out fires. When you’re talking about thousands and thousands of Macs, that $270 per machine adds up to real cost savings for corporations.
If you are interested in the new 4th generation Apple TV, take some time to read this detailed, thoughtful, well-written review by John Yanarella for Universal Mind. There’s a lot to process.
A few highlights:
The new Apple TV is powered by the dual-core Apple A8, an Apple-designed 64-bit ARM based system on a chip processor first used in the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus—a significant upgrade from the previous edition’s iPhone 4S era single-core Apple A5. It includes 2GB of RAM and comes in two models, offering 32GB and 64GB storage. It offers wireless and wired networking capabilities via 802.11ac Wi‑Fi and 10/100 ethernet. Developers can use the new USB-C port to connect to the Apple TV for development and debugging purposes. The new model is slightly taller than the previous two generations, but it is still a diminutive little box measuring 3.9” by 3.9” by 1.4” and weighing in at just under a pound (at 15 ounces).
It features HDMI 1.4 output at 720p and 1080p resolution with support for Dolby Digital Plus 7.1 audio (up from Dolby Digital 5.1). It adds support for HDMI-CEC (Consumer Electronics Control) extensions that allow the Apple TV to send commands over HDMI to automatically turn on CEC-enabled TVs, switch to the correct input and control audio volume.
And:
The new remote communicates with the Apple TV over Bluetooth 4.0 (rather than relying on the IR transmitter as in the previous generation), eliminating previous line-of-sight issues and enabling its new voice and data communication features. It still includes an IR transmitter which can now be used to control TVs and A/V home theater receivers.
Ditching the replaceable coin battery used in the previous model, the new remote includes a built-in lithium ion battery which Apple claims will last months on a single charge. The battery can be charged via the lightning connector on the bottom edge of the remote.
There will be two versions of the remote—one with Siri natural language voice recognition, the other with on-screen text-based search. At launch, the Siri remote will only be available in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan. Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
And:
More than simply an aesthetic update, all of the user interface interactions have been rethought in terms of new touchpad and voice-based interactions made possible by the new Siri remote.
For example, Apple invented a new kind of UI component for tvOS it has dubbed the “parallax icon.” A parallax icon is composed of multiple flat image layers that are rendered with a parallax effect, whereby each layer is shifted independently with simulated lighting to create the illusion of three-dimensionality and depth of field. tvOS uses this in place of bright blue selection borders as a more tangible means of indicating that an item is selected as the target for interaction. As a user moves his or her thumb on the touchpad, the parallax effect provides immediate and continuous feedback that a parallax icon is focused.
There is so much more to this review. An excellent read.
The Alphabet company is getting ready to open a dedicated home for podcasts on its Google Play hub. Today the company is letting podcast creators upload shows to Google Play Music, its streaming service; it says listeners will be able to listen to those shows “in the coming months.” It will be, remarkably, the first native app for podcast listening on Android in the content market where Apple carries disproportionate weight.
Remarkable that this is the first major challenge to Apple’s longtime podcasting dominance. The word podcasting comes from iPod, an Apple product. Podcasting was born in the Apple universe, but it is not protected by the Apple ecosystem the way music is. You can do all your podcast listening on the web. There is no digital rights management to overcome, there are no major rights deals to negotiate. Amazing it took this long for Google (or Amazon) to make this play.
Yesterday, The New York Times ran an article entitled The mysterious case of Apple and the elusive Angela Ahrendts which, in a nutshell, made the case that Apple’s Senior VP, Retail and Online Stores, Angela Ahrendts, was missing from public view.
At the heart of the Times’ article was this quote:
“Instead, it is Jonathan Ive, chief design officer of Apple, who has become the face of the brand.”
As part of the followup to our post of the Times’ article, I received this direct response to that quote, in an email from someone who works on the retail side:
Not to us Apple Retail employees! I don’t remember the last time I saw a photo of Tim Cook on any internal communications, but Angela? We start every week with her latest video. Hell, we see her so often that after she got her hair done a few weeks ago, employees noticed.
To me, this quote speaks volumes, both about Angela’s location (head down, hard at work improving the Apple Store experience) and about the loyalty that she engenders in the people who work in Apple’s retail operations.
Just an anecdote, but one I thought was worth sharing.
Serenity Caldwell and Jason Snell have made a tradition of transcribing Apple’s earnings call so we can read and search through it.
Personally, I find this transcript incredible useful and I’d like to offer a shout out of thanks to both Serenity and Jason for taking this task on. I think it is a tremendous service to the community.
Ally Kazmucha, writing for The App Factor, digs into four apps that make the Apple Music experience better. I am a big fan of the first one, SoundShare (it’s free, definitely recommend checking it out), but I’m going to take a look at the other three as well.
Apple announced its fiscal fourth quarter results and the company reported quarterly revenue of $51.5 billion and quarterly net profit of $11.1 billion.
The growth was fueled by record fourth quarter sales of iPhone, the expanded availability of Apple Watch, and all-time records for Mac sales and revenue from services.
“Fiscal 2015 was Apple’s most successful year ever, with revenue growing 28% to nearly $234 billion. This continued success is the result of our commitment to making the best, most innovative products on earth, and it’s a testament to the tremendous execution by our teams,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “We are heading into the holidays with our strongest product lineup yet, including iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus, Apple Watch with an expanded lineup of cases and bands, the new iPad Pro and the all-new Apple TV which begins shipping this week.”
Apple sold 48 million iPhones, up from the 39 million sold in the same quarter last year. The company also sold 5.7 million Macs, up from 5.5 million sold in the same quarter last year. iPad sales dropped from 12.3 million last year to 9.8 million in the most current quarter.
A U.S. judge on Monday expressed strong doubts that he had the legal authority to order Apple Inc to access data on a locked iPhone that was seized as part of a federal investigation.
“What you’re asking them to do is do work for you,” U.S. Magistrate Judge James Orenstein told government attorneys at a hearing in Brooklyn federal court.
And:
Saritha Komatireddy, arguing for the government, said the order it sought would essentially be the same as ordering Apple to turn over information.
But Orenstein said the request went further than that. He instead compared the order the government sought to one compelling a drug company to make a lethal injection drug over its conscientious objection, asking Komatireddy whether he would have the authority to do that.
Komatireddy asked to respond in writing, adding that “the hypothetical is somewhat inflammatory.”
Chris Hoffman, writing for How-To Geek, walks you through the refund process.
I found this interesting:
Apple only allows you to request a refund for purchases you’ve made in the last 90 days. Unlike Android’s Google Play Store, which offers a two-hour no-questions-asked refund period, Apple doesn’t offer automated refunds in the same way. This isn’t meant to be a feature that allows you to trial paid apps, although Android’s refund feature can be used in that way.
In 2013, when Ms. Ahrendts was poached with great fanfare from Burberry, where she was chief executive, fashion speculated that she might become the friendlier, more stylish, face of Apple; in her former job, she had been known for her communication skills and charm, and Apple is not known for its female executives. The potential upside of having her as both a manager and an ambassador seemed high.
Yet since starting last year, aside from a few LinkedIn posts on management techniques and the news that she was the highest-paid female executive in the United States in 2014, with a combined package of $82.6 million, she has largely disappeared from public view.
And:
In a recent Fortune profile tied to the publication ranking her as the 16th most powerful woman, a rare interview since Ms. Ahrendts joined Apple (and which, the magazine said, she agreed to only when it was clear they were writing the article whether she participated or not), she explained her absence by saying she wanted to first listen and learn. Fair enough. Listening was one of her signature traits at Burberry. And according to Fortune, she has slowly been changing the company’s retail culture. (The fact you get an email or text telling you when it’s time for your Genius Bar appointment so you don’t have to hang around and wait? Thank Angela.)
But it’s been more than 16 months, and it’s hard not to think Apple is missing a trick here. Especially if it is interested in casting itself in part as a fashion brand.
Today, at 130p PT (430p ET), Apple will report earnings for its fiscal fourth quarter, which ended September 30th.
Last quarter was the launch quarter for the company’s new iPhone 6S and 6S Plus, so one key figure will be the number of iPhones shipped during the period. Analysts expect about 48 million, which would represent 22% year-over-year growth.
The bar is set at 48 million. But just as important as fourth quarter sales is first quarter (1Q2016) projections:
This is an important time for Apple: The December quarter, fueled by holiday shopping, represented almost 40% of the company’s revenue in 2014.
Strong sales guidance would suggest confidence in iPhone supply and demand, and more broadly around consumer spending. The iPhone represented almost 70% of Apple’s revenue last December quarter, and isn’t expected to grow much this time around.
So what does the bar look like for Apple’s Q1 forecast:
Analysts are expecting Apple to guide December quarter revenue in a range somewhere between $74 billion and $77 billion, which would be modest growth over last year’s record $74.6 billion. So any strength could drive Apple stock higher.
But also remember that Apple likes to provide a forecast it can beat: Of the last 10 quarters, Apple has beat the high end of its revenue guidance seven times, by an average of $2.5 billion per quarter. As a result, the current consensus is for Apple to actually generate $77 billion in sales this quarter, above the expected forecast.
Ben Bajarin, writing for Tech.pinions, worked with Wristly to pull together a customer satisfaction survey of Apple Watch owners.
When we looked at the responses from those in our panel who participated in our first customer satisfaction survey or indicated they received their Apple Watch in the April-May-June quarter, we discovered something interesting. Those who owned the watch since April had the highest overall satisfaction rating. When just looking at satisfaction by month of Apple Watch acquisition, those who purchased the Watch in April also had the highest number of people who selected “very satisfied” out of any other month in which the Watch was acquired. Our interpretation of this is clear — those who owned the watch the longest seemed to become more satisfied over time.
That last bit is important. A product that makes you more satisfied the longer you own it is doing its job very well. This bodes well for Apple Watch.
Even more interesting is this nugget on so-called FitBit abandonment rates:
The number bounces around at about 50%, rising or falling a little over time but remaining remarkably constant. In one sense, that’s obviously fairly bad news – in addition to the fact that very few Fitbit buyers purchase a second device, it would appear that half of those who bought one stop using it after a period of time.
Not so for the Apple Watch:
Even those who got the watch in the earliest cycles of April-May are still wearing it today. In fact, the largest group that say they still wear it all day, every day are those who got it in April. During my analysis of wearables, dating back to well before Apple announced and released the Watch, I pounded on the point that the vast majority of research surrounding the category and all the existing players was that consumer response indicated they saw little to no value in the product. That trend is roughly in line today with all but the Apple Watch. The hard data is from my own research and from Wristly’s as well. It makes it hard to not conclude that, at least for now, the Apple Watch remains in a category by itself.
Get the product right, and folks will stick around, come back for more.
