Inside Apple reveals the secret systems, tactics and leadership strategies that allowed Steve Jobs and his company to churn out hit after hit and inspire a cult-like following for its products.Based on numerous interviews, the book offers exclusive new information about how Apple innovates, deals with its suppliers and is handling the transition into the Post Jobs Era.
The book is available for pre-order from Amazon.
“If you use a MacBook, iMovie is the best way to do it.”
Couldn’t agree more.
Seriously, I love what people can do with CSS3.
Shakie is an expressive motion controlled percussion instrument for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Pellets create sounds and rhythms as you move and shake them. Shakie’s built in pellets include maraca, shakers, tambourine, castanet, bells and spoon.
Looks cool.
Apple on Wednesday sent out an invitation to The Loop and other media outlets to attend a special event being held in New York City next week.
Apple says the event will be about an education announcement and will take place on January 19 at the Guggenheim Museum. The event begins at 10:00 am ET and The Loop will have live coverage.
“Differentiation is positive, fragmentation is negative,” Schmidt said during an appearance here at the Consumer Electronics Show. “Differentiation means that you have a choice and the people who are making the phones, they’re going to compete on their view of innovation, and they’re going to try and convince you that theirs is better than somebody else.”
I’m a total loss for words.
Adobe took a lot of heat last year for its pricing of future versions of Creative Suite. The company responded and said it would have promotions to help customers purchase CS6.
This is what Adobe said today:
We’re very excited about the upcoming release of Adobe® Creative Suite® 6 software and Adobe Creative Cloud. CS6 will be a major new release of our creative desktop tools, with huge improvements for every type of creative professional. Adobe Creative Cloud will be our most comprehensive creative solution ever, giving members access to all of the CS6 desktop software plus additional services, new tools, Adobe Touch Apps, and rich community features. In addition, Creative Cloud members will receive continuous upgrades and updates to all products and services as part of their membership. With these great new releases coming in the first half of 2012, we want to make sure our customers have plenty of time to determine which offering is best for them. Therefore, we’re pleased to announce that we will offer special introductory upgrade pricing on Creative Suite 6 to customers who own CS3 or CS4. This offer will be available from the time CS6 is released until December 31, 2012. More details on this offer, as well as any introductory offers for existing customers to move to Creative Cloud membership, will be announced when CS6 and Creative Cloud are released later this year.
Details on upgrade pricing are available from Adobe’s Web site.
Federico Viticci:
No one is defending the argument that folks like Samsung copy everything that Apple does. Or that Apple doesn’t copy certain trends sometimes. But the amount of shameless copying and blatant efforts of coming up with unoriginal marketing jargon going on at CES are just too much for me.
I think Federico summed up many people’s CES experience.
The Atlantic:
We broke down the trajectories of 17 tablets from CES 2011. In the final tally, I think you could say one is a qualified success (the Asus Eee Pad Transformer), one did OK (the Motorola XOOM), and several flopped (Dell Streak, RIM Playbook) or made no impact (Coby Kyrus, Cydle M7 Multipad, Naxa NID-7001). Nine never were heard from again.This is why it’s OK to ignore CES. Most of the product announcements (the majority in this case) lead nowhere, and if some product is really important, you’ll hear about it via some other avenue.
Ouch.
Engadget:
In a roundtable with reporters at CES, Sony’s Kaz Hirai responded to a question about recent comments attributed to gaming division head Andrew House by stating that “Andy is absolutely right in that we are not making any announcements at E3.”
Sony has long held to a “10 year life cycle” philosophy for its home game consoles, which would push out the end of the PlayStation 3’s life to around 2016 (it was introduced in Japan late in 2006). Typically there’s overlap – the PSOne existed long into the PlayStation 2’s production run, as the PS2 did for the PS3 – so we can expect Sony to make announcements and product introductions long before then. But just not at this year’s E3, which happens in June.
AllThingsD:
“The key reason we didn’t have the iPhone in the past is we are on different band than globally the market was,” Humm said. “That is something which will change over time. Chipsets are also evolving to be able to allow for more bands.”
T-Mobile USA uses a different part of the GSM spectrum than AT&T and other GSM carriers.
In a separate article, T-Mobile CEO Philipp Humm told AllThingsD that “there is no second AT&T deal around,” though the company did net cash, spectrum and a data-roaming agreement.
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.