With the iPhone 3GS now available for free with new cell phone contracts, are people still interested in the aging device? After all, the 3GS has been on the market for more than two years, eclipsed by the iPhone 4 and, most recently, the 4S. Turns out the answer is an emphatic yes, according to AT&T.
AT&T Mobility CEO Ralph de la Vega said in a statement that the iPhone 4S is selling like hotcakes. But in a discussion with analysts to talk about AT&T’s most recent financial report, de la Vega is also very positive about the contributions Apple’s iPhone 3GS continues to make to his company’s bottom line.
In a Q&A with analysts, de la Vega said:
I also mentioned in my notes that we have another device that I think is going to dramatically change those people that are on smartphones and quick messaging devices, the 3GS, which is free with a 2-year contract. We’ve seen a tremendous, tremendous demand for that device even though it’s a generation old. And actually, we’re getting more new subscribers coming on the 3GS on the average than other devices. So we also have an inventory sold out on that device. So I’m very, very optimistic on what the fourth quarter is going to look like in terms of smartphone growth.
Since Apple launched it last week in the latest version of its iOS operating system, its impact has been immediate and significant. Many Newsstand apps now rank among the top free apps overall, and magazine and newspaper apps are benefiting from a surge of downloads and subscribers.
And some people said the App Store wouldn’t impact magazine and newspaper subscriptions at all.
The Clip-Based Gain feature in Pro Tools 10 provides a much quicker and visually appealing solution. Using the clip gain line you’re able to adjust the gain for individual clips and match their relative levels. You’ll notice right away how the waveform view updates in real-time to reflect the clip gain changes. Very impressive!
There are some great looking features in Pro Tools 10 — this is just one of them.
I’d like to thank Smile and PDFpen for sponsoring this week’s RSS feed on The Loop.
PDFpen is a great application for editing your PDFs. You can add signatures to PDFs and email them back, instead of resorting to printing and faxing. You can even make corrections and edit images. There’s also OCR for scanned documents — essential for those going paperless.
An excerpt from Walter Isaacson’s book looking at a meeting between Steve Jobs and Eric Schmidt:
“I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong,” Jobs said. “I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this.”“I don’t want your money. If you offer me $5 billion, I won’t want it. I’ve got plenty of money. I want you to stop using our ideas in Android, that’s all I want.”
Avid on Thursday unveiled the next major version of its digital audio workstation, Pro Tools.
The company updated its Web site tonight with all of the information on Pro Tools 10, and there certainly looks like there’s a lot to be excited about.
Some of the new features are:
Speed up editing and mixing with Clip Gain, and easily adjust and match gain levels, pre-mixer
Use multiple audio formats in a session—including interleaved—without file duplication
Record higher resolution sound with more headroom in 32-bit floating-point format
Get great responsiveness on slower hard drives with the enhanced disk cache
Record in low-latency mode, with direct monitoring when using third-party audio interfaces
Get the sound of System 5 console EQ and dynamics with the Avid Channel Strip plug-in
Get access to over 500 additional Pro Tools commands when using EUCON controllers
Work more easily with AudioSuite-rendered clips with reverse processing, handles, and more
Create extra long-format projects for sequential versioning with the extended 24-hour timeline
Open fade-heavy sessions faster and get better responsiveness with real-time fades
Fold down 5.1 surround mixes to stereo with the Down Mixer plug-in
Export mixes directly to SoundCloud to share and promote your music to the world
Shop for virtual instruments, effects, and sound processing plug-ins in the Marketplace
I’ll post a more detailed look at Pro Tools 10 when I’ve had a chance to use it myself.
I’m asked to test quite a bit of software and give feedback to the developers. Sometimes that goes well, others times, not so well.
To me, making an app simple to use — whether on the iPhone, iPad or Mac — doesn’t mean stripping out all of the features. All that does is make the app less useful for the user.
Rather, making an app simple to use is about hiding all of the complicated pieces of the app in a way that the user can get things done easily and quickly. That way features, and the end result of those features, seem almost magical.
Of course, apps like Photoshop and Pro Tools can’t do this for everything because we want that control, but in recent years, even these apps are including some of these types of features.
Reader Matt tells the story of how an Apple store manager broke a little rule so as not to dash the hopes of his 10-year-old daughter, and, in the process, made a little bit of retail magic happen.
A really sweet story about a girl who wanted an iPod when the Apple Store was closed, and the Apple Store manager who helped make it happen.
2011 marks the 30th anniversary of Blizzard Of Ozz (U.S. release) and Diary Of A Madman. Both landmark albums took metal in a new direction in the early 1980’s, inspiring new generations of rock bands and fans. Both of these Hard Rock Masterpieces showcase Ozzy’s musical collaborations with late guitar hero Randy Rhoads. These Limited Edition Picture Disc LPs have been restored and remastered from the original source tapes and feature the original cover artwork printed on the LP itself.
The MobileMount is a universal mount/kickstand for virtually any hand held device with a flat surface, like smartphones and tablets. Comprised of two twist-to-lock suction cups and one ball joint, this device’s unique design allows for superior suction and durability. The “Patent Pending” Twist-to-Lock suction cups can hold devices for weeks at a time rather than simply a few hours like other competing mounts. Additionally, the universal design allows for users to mount their phone without removing the case.
This is the best looking idea for a mount I’ve seen. Support the project if you can.
Usability and user experience testing is vital to creating a successful website, and only more so if it’s an e-commerce website, a complex app or another website for which there’s a definite ROI. And running your own user tests to find out how users are interacting with your website and where problems might arise is completely possible.
Great list of tools. I didn’t know about most of the services and tools on the list.
In just the three episodes that have aired thus far, it has become clear that Bloomberg had a character in mind for each of us – and edited footage according to the story they choose. I happened to get it the worst in Episode 3, but I’m sure another victim will emerge in future episodes.
iZotope has greatly expanded Ozone 5’s modules with a focus on pristine sound, enhanced DSP, optimized workflow, and an updated interface. Ozone 5 Advanced builds on the product line’s reputation for superior sound quality with extended features and controls, including new innovations in visual feedback.
I know a lot of people that use Ozone and like it a lot.
Good technology on Thursday released a report comparing activations of Apple products to Android-based devices. Among its customers, Apple is still in the lead.
The report, which focuses on the third quarter of 2011, counts thousands of enterprise and public sector companies. According to the data, Android did gain some ground in total activations, but Apple held onto its lead.
John Herrema, senior vice president of Corporate Strategy at Good Technology, blamed “consumers holding back purchases of new iPhones in anticipation of Apple’s latest release,” for the dip in iOS activations in the quarter.
Backing up that theory, Good found a 25 percent daily increase in iPhone activations since the iPhone 4S was released.
If you look at the the iPad and iPad 2 specifically, Android isn’t even providing any competition for Apple.
“To say iOS tablets (iPad and iPad 2) dominated adoption in the enterprise is to understate the case,” wrote Good in its report. “While more and more devices running the tablet-tuned Honeycomb version of Google’s Android operating system have been released, Android tablet activations within Good’s customer base remain in the realm of a rounding error compared to what we’re seeing with iPad and iPad 2.”
While Android continues to gain market share overall, Good’s enterprise end users are showing clear preference for Apple products
Among the top 10 industry verticals, financial services continued to see the highest level of iPad activation, accounting for 46 percent for the quarter—more than tripling the amount of activation in any other industry
The iPad and iPad2 represent over 96 percent of total tablet activations
Android tablets increased slightly to 4 percent of overall tablet activations for the quarter
Android smartphones represented nearly 39 percent of all smartphone (non tablet) activations compared to iPhone’s 61 percent, despite Android’s overall market share growth
iOS devices (iPhone, iPad and variants), accounted for over 70 percent of activations in Q3
Son said, “I visited Apple for the announcement of the iPhone 4S [at Apple headquarters in Cupertino, California]. When I was having a meeting with Tim Cook, he said, ‘Oh Masa, sorry I have to quit our meeting.’ I said, ‘Where are you going?’ He said, ‘My boss is calling me.’ That was the day of the announcement of the iPhone 4S. He said that Steve is calling me because he wants to talk about their next product. And the next day, he died.”
Face Unlock seems pretty cool, but it seems to take an inordinate amount of time to actually unlock. It’s one of those features that’s cool, but you probably wouldn’t use much. Google outlined some of the new features on its Website.
A new bill in Congress makes posting a video containing any copyrighted work a felony — with up to 5 years in prison.But wait… didn’t Justin Bieber get famous by posting YouTube videos of himself singing copyrighted R&B songs? Yep. If this bill passes, he could get 5 years in jail.
Patents are very complicated and can be difficult to identify, Shin [Jong-kyun, Samsung’s mobile president] said, but Samsung tried to ensure that no known patent by Apple is included in the new Android smartphone.Despite such efforts, he could not say with certainty that the Galaxy Nexus, dubbed by media as Google and Samsung’s answer to the iPhone 4S, would be entirely safe from Apple’s legal offense.“We will see if (the Galaxy Nexus) will be 100 percent free,” from Apple lawsuits, he added.
The Galaxy Nexus was unveiled this week; it’s a new Android phone that uses Android 4.0, code-named “Ice Cream Sandwich” – the first version of Google’s Android operating system that merges tablet and cell phone code forks. The Galaxy Nexus is the first phone to run the new OS.
Samsung is in the midst of legal wrangling with Apple in several international courts over alleged patent violations, and so far Samsung has come up short. Shin seems to suggest that he knows fighting with Apple is a losing proposition:
“I don’t think there is much gain (from lawsuits against Apple). What we are losing is the pride in our brand.”
It’s the job of analysts to make sure that they set reasonable parameters to their estimates based on how Apple guides. Everyone knows that Apple is conservative, but they are consistently conservative. They do offer a clear-cut range, which should be the upper and lower parameters based on the quality of the quarter. This quarter, Apple harped on the fact that this would be a transition quarter. Yet, analysts didn’t seem to take the hint.
But Generation X is tired of your sense of entitlement. Generation X also graduated during a recession. It had even shittier jobs, and actually had to pay for its own music. (At least, when music mattered most to it.) Generation X is used to being fucked over. It lost its meager savings in the dot-com bust. Then came George Bush, and 9/11, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Generation X bore the brunt of all that. And then came the housing crisis.Generation X wasn’t surprised. Generation X kind of expected it.
As someone who strongly identifies with this demographic (I was born in late ’69, right at the trough of the “baby bust” that followed the Boomers), I couldn’t disagree with a single thing Mat says here. Especially this part:
Right now, Generation X just wants a beer and to be left alone. It just wants to sit here quietly and think for a minute. Can you just do that, okay? It knows that you are so very special and so very numerous, but can you just leave it alone? Just for a little bit? Just long enough to sneak one last fucking cigarette? No?
Mat’s rant is response to (and links to) an editorial from a twentysomething Millennial posted in New York magazine. Read both.
I thought it would be interesting to compare Android and iOS not by a checklist of features, but rather by a checklist of the words their developers choose to use on their presentation slides. From that alone so much can be inferred. For example, here are what I think the boldest statements Apple and Google made during their keynote.
I’ve been using iOS 5 for a few months and I never noticed a change to Apple’s built-in Weather app. A friend sent me an iMessage this morning and asked if the hourly was new. Sure enough, there it is.
It’s a handy little addition to the app, especially if the weather is going to change. Typically the Weather forecast will just show rain, but you don’t know when it’s going to start. Now you do.
It’s also important to note that the app knows where you are automatically now, so you don’t need to enter in a specific city or place to get the weather. If you’re there, it knows.
Kara Swisher, co-executive editor of the All Things D blog owned by Dow Jones, suffered a Transient Ischemic Attack (TIA) traveling to All Things D’s AsiaD event in Hong Kong earlier this week.
AsiaD is the organization’s first international conference, after holding them for eight years in the United States (Steve Jobs was a frequent guest). The event includes appearances by C-level executives and founders of companies ranging from Airbnb (the community marketplace for people looking for non-hotel travel accommodations) to Sony Corp., graphics and mobile chip creator Nvidia, HTC, Alibaba and many others.
A TIA – sometimes called a “mini-stroke” – is caused when blood flow is temporary disrupted to part of the brain. In Swisher’s case, she says she felt a migraine-like headache and lost the ability to speak temporarily. She blames the problem on “a not-uncommon but undetected-until-now heart condition” and 14 hours of intercontinental plane travel exacerbated by cramped seating conditions.
Swisher has posted some comments from her hospital room in Hong Kong, and she’s even posted a short video. Swisher’s sense of humor certainly hasn’t diminished; she warned Silicon Valley, “I’m still watching you very closely,” then donned a pair of aviator sunglasses and repeated, “VERY closely.”
We at The Loop wish Ms. Swisher a speedy and complete recovery.
