Reuters:
The once-dominant corporation founded by Michael Dell has seen a growing crop of tablets and smartphones entice consumers away from PCs. But Dell learned from the hastiness of some of its peers and understands better now how consumers value the “ecosystem” of a tablet as much as the hardware, chief commercial officer Steve Felice said.
Good that Dell finally realized what Apple knew for years — ecosystem counts.
Corel has introduced AfterShot Pro, a new digital photography editing and organization application compatible with Mac OS X, Windows and Linux operating systems. The software ships at the end of the month and costs $99. A trial version is now available for download.
AfterShot Pro is aimed at digital photographers who work with digital photos in RAW format. It helps you organize your photos, adjust them, make changes to the photos’ corresponding EXIF and IPTC metadata, and lets you apply non-destructive changes to the images. You can selectively edit photos using “Regions” and “Layers,” use external software to perform more extensive integration, export images, and perform batch processing routines.
In other words, Corel is aiming squarely at the same market that Apple and Adobe target with Aperture and Lightroom, respectively.
AfterShot Pro’s introduction comes on the heels of the news that Corel has acquired Bibble Labs, a developer of RAW image workflow software, and Corel noted in the press release announcing AfterShot Pro’s release that it is based on Bibble’s technology.
Upgrade pricing is available if you own Lightroom, Aperture, Bibble Pro or Lite or Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2.
Bloomberg Businessweek:
Apple Inc. said it acquired Anobit Technologies Ltd., an Israeli company that makes a flash-memory drive part for the iPhone and iPad, confirming a press report from last month.
The acquisition has been rumored since December, when Israeli tech news site Calcalist first reported the transaction. This is the first direct confirmation from Apple itself, however. Apple acknowledged the acquisition, but didn’t provide further details.
Anobit’s technology makes flash memory work faster and more reliably. With more of Apple’s product line turning to flash storage and increased pressure from other phone, tablet and now “ultrabook” vendors, Anobit will help Apple maintain a competitive edge.
(via AppleInsider.)
Bare Bones Software is sponsoring The Loop’s RSS feed again this week. Thanks for the support!
BBEdit 10 from Bare Bones Software — The leading professional HTML and text editor for the Mac just keeps getting better, with more than one hundred new features. Download the demo and see for yourself!
The YouTube description says:
After organizing our bookshelf almost a year ago, my wife and I decided to take it to the next level. We spent many sleepless nights moving, stacking, and animating books at Type bookstore in Toronto.
Digital Photography Review:
16.2MP, 10FPS (24fps 2.5MP grabs), ISO 204,800, 1/8000th of a second shutter speed, 1080p30 HD video, 51 focus points, $5999.95.
Short version? Drool.
If you’ve ever been irritated at dinner because someone in your group is yapping away on his cell phone, or felt insulted because a person across the table from you keeps checking her texts while you’re trying to engage them in conversation, a new game is probably just what you need.The rules are as follows: The game starts after everyone has ordered. Everybody places their phone in the table face down. The first person to flip over their phone loses the game. Loser of the game pays for the bill.
I would lose this game every time.
Really? This is where Dan Lyons wants to go? That Samsung doesn’t copy Apple? That “Apple fanboys” simply claim that they do as a knee-jerk response to Samsung’s undeniable success in the smartphone market?
It’s not even a fair fight.
MarketWatch:
Kodak claims Apple’s iPhones, iPads, and iPods, and some of HTC’s smartphones and tablets use Kodak patents for transmitting images. Kodak is seeking to prevent further patent infringement from Apple and HTC as well as compensation.
Kodak is on its last leg.
The consumer electronics market in 2012 can be easily summed up as Ferraris and Fords. Apple, of course, is the Ferrari of the tech market, while the competition is the Ford.
I’m not talking about speed, obviously, but rather their outlook on similar markets.
Apple builds quality products — I don’t think anyone can dispute that. Ferrari builds incredible cars, and like Apple, they put a great amount of work into the details of their respective products.
The rest of the PC, tablet and phone manufacturers are like Ford. They mass manufacturer as many different models as they can, often confusing customers more than helping them. These companies also tout market share, out of date features, and price as selling points for their products.
Apple trumpets workmanship, design, functionality and integration as its selling points. That has led to mass adoption of its products in at least four major consumer markets.
While there was a time that Apple products were more expensive than its competitors, that’s not really the case anymore. iPhones, iPads, iPods and Macs are all priced in line with its competitors and in line with what people can afford, and are willing to pay.
Apple refuses to play the games of its competitors, which usually come in two ways:
Racing to price their products as low as they can
Adding as many features as they possibly can to say they have it.
It’s far easier to continue adding features to a product than to simplify its use while including the features that people want. As far as price goes, Apple doesn’t have to play in the race to the bottom — people want their products and will pay a fair price for them.
Like a Ferrari, Apple’s products are coveted by the people who buy them. For a long time users refused to switch out their white iPod headphones because they wanted everyone to know they had an iPod. Users show off their iPhones and iPads, because they are proud of them.
When your customers are proud to carry your products, you have won.
Fords, like Android phones, Dell and the rest of the industry mass produce copycat crap hoping people will buy it. These products lack innovation, design and thought.
The song is called “Tattoo”
Charvel is proud to announce the return of two classic body shapes, both in sleekly modern Desolation series form. New Desolation DST and DX guitars offer a variety of features and finishes prized by discerning players everywhere, and both deadly models deliver the devastating tone, killer looks and high-performance playability that separate the Desolation series from all others.
I have 16 guitars, but sadly not one of them are a Charvel. I’ve always wanted one of these.
John Gruber:
There’s no question in my mind that the most appealing thing about Android as a platform is its overall market share. The more Android devices that are out there, in use, the more appealing the platform is for developers. But to think that market share alone is a primary motivation for all or even most of the developers who’ve turned the iOS App Store into a phenomenon is to miss the forest for the trees.
Bingo!
The BBEdit 10.1.1 update includes improvements to the recently introduced Open File By Name feature, enhancements to projects, and contains fixes for reported issues in this award-winning HTML and text editor.
I’ve been using BBEdit since about 1996. Love it.
MG Siegler on what he hates about Android:
But I cannot respect their decision to continue to work on this platform that perpetuates our imprisonment. I have to believe most simply chose not to think about these things. But they should. They really should.
MG goes through some of the history of Android and why he really dislikes some of the things that Google does.
I was reading an article on Macworld UK this morning about the flood of Ultrabooks being released at CES this year and how Apple would respond. The answer is very simple — they won’t.
According to the article, Ultrabooks are “lightweight notebooks that rely on solid-state storage (SSD) in lieu of a traditional platter-based hard disk drive and forgo an optical drive.”
In other words, it’s a MacBook Air.
Why would Apple need to respond to its competitors releasing a lightweight notebook to compete with one of its existing computers? Apple is the company that started the category, much the same as it started the modern version of MP3 players with the iPod, the modern smartphone with the iPhone, and the modern tablet with the iPad.
Would anyone expect Apple to respond to a new tablet copying the iPad? No.
The difference between Apple and its competition is simple. Apple takes a concept, improves it and releases a product that consumers understand and want to purchase.
Apple’s competition sees its success with said product and copies it.
There will be more than 75 Ultrabook models released at CES this year and they are all in response to the MacBook Air. Yet another product category that Apple is leading.
Daniel Ionescu:
Apple is not taking part in the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas but is present at the trade show through rip-offs of its products. From MacBook Air-inspired ultrabooks, to iPad-like tablets, smart TVs, and cloud computing technology, you will find clones of Apple’s product lineup at CES 2012—and this is just a taste of what’s coming up at the show this week.
If there is any doubt about how much influence Apple has in the industry, this should put it to rest.
That pain execs at HTC, Samsung, Google and RIM get when Apple announces a new product or initiative.
These are things they don’t want to blatantly copy, but because they want to keep up with Apple, they blatantly copy them anyway.
Dave Caolo over at 52Tiger.net opened up memberships on his site today. I really like Dave’s writing and already signed up for my membership.
Every time you mention the fact that another loser competitor copied Apple, you always get the argument that “Apple didn’t invent that.” That may be true, but let’s look at some of the things that Apple didn’t invent, but made better.
Apple didn’t invent the smartphone, but it made it better.
Apple didn’t invent the mobile OS, but it made it better.
Apple didn’t invent the computer, but it made it better.
Apple didn’t invent the laptop, but it made it better.
Apple didn’t invent the ultra thin laptop, but it… oh wait, yes it did.
Apple didn’t invent the tablet, but it made it better.
Apple didn’t invent the cloud, but it made it better.
Apple didn’t invent consumer software, but it made it better.
Apple didn’t invent the computer operating system, but it made it better.
Apple didn’t invent the MP3 player, but it made it better.
Apple didn’t invent online purchasing, but it made it better.
New to the series is the Vintage Modified ’70s Stratocaster, a sweet-looking model that delivers the distinctive look of the 1970s workhorse Fender guitars. Available in all-Black maple-fingerboard and Vintage White rosewood-fingerboard, both models feature a large headstock, vintage-tint gloss neck and black plastic parts typical of that era.
The Squier line of guitars are typically less expensive than the Fender guitars, but I’ve had a Squier Strat since 1985 and love it. Being less expensive doesn’t mean it’s cheap.
Apple makes products that people want. Unlike their competition, they also make products that work and last. Evidence of this is in the latest ChangeWave customer satisfaction survey results.
According to the survey, 75 percent of respondents said they were very satisfied with their iPhone. That compares to only 47 percent for Samsung and HTC.
Only 45 percent of Motorola customers are satisified with their smartphone, while LG (31 percent), Nokia (23 percent) and RIM (22 percent) round out the list.
Customer satisfaction for Apple’s iOS tops the list of the 4,000 North Americans that took part in the survey too. iOS took a 75 percent satisfaction rating with Android coming in a distant second at 47 percent. Windows OS (32 percent) and RIM (22 percent) were last on the list.
A new survey of 4000 North American consumers has led ChangeWave Research to conclude that Apple and Samsung are seeing “explosive momentum.”
Of those planning to purchase a new smartphone in the next 90 days, 54 percent said they would choose an iPhone. A total of 13 percent said they would choose a Samsung. That’s down 11 points for Apple and up 8 points for Samsung.
ChangeWave said Apple has not dominated the intent to buy this long after releasing a new product.
RIM came in at 2 percent, HTC 3 percent and Motorola 7 percent.
Acer came up with a good idea. Let’s put pics, documents and media in the cloud and make them available to all of your devices… oh wait, that’s called iCloud. No matter, we’ll just steal the idea and call it AcerCloud. Oh, and to save time, we might as well steal Apple’s presentation slide too.
Acer’s AcerCloud image:
Apple’s iCloud presentation from The Verge:
Thanks to Bare Bones Software and BBEdit 10 for sponsoring this week’s RSS feed on The Loop.
BBEdit 10 from Bare Bones Software — The leading professional HTML and text editor for the Mac just keeps getting better, with more than one hundred new features. Download the demo and see for yourself!
Paidcontent.org:
A UK newspaper caused a stir yesterday when it reported that Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) had threatened legal action against a Chinese company that plans to sell an eerie replica of its late founder starting next month. The Daily Telegraph said Apple claims to own rights to Jobs’ likeness…But there is a huge problem here—Apple’s legal claim is largely bogus. While people can indeed own rights to their likeness, those rights usually apply only to living people. Unlike other forms of intellectual property like patents or copyrights, image rights do not survive beyond the grave in most places.
If your dream is to have a posable “action figure” of Steve Jobs of your very own, you may be in luck. I still think you’re creepy as hell, though.
Gameindustry.biz:
Infinity Blade developer Chair, owned by Epic, has made over $30 million from the franchise in just one year since the original game’s launch on iOS.Infinity Blade II, which runs only on the new iPhone 4s and the iPad 2 thanks to their A5 graphics chips, has made over $5 million in just one month since its 1 December launch.
A stunning success story which reinforces the idea that there’s a lot of money for AAA game makers to net on the App Store.
Apple Asia’s one-day Lunar New Year sales event has begun in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, Singapore and Thailand. According to YJ, who sent me the info from Singapore, this sale is like the annual Thanksgiving sale in the U.S.
Joshua Schnell:
In an article about Apple’s attempts to thwart piracy on the internet, Grant apparently made the mistake of starting his post off with, “Avast! Apptrackr, a repository for cracked iOS apps, is under attack from Apple’s legal team.” For those not schooled in grammar-fu, the word literally means stop, cease. Apparently our usage of the word avast has incensed the Avast AntiVirus team so much that they’ve taken to tracking down our writer and tossing obscenities at him on his personal blog, as well as badgering him in his email inbox.
Wow, that’s pathetic.
