Anything promising to simplify a ubiquitous, and often frustrating, activity—like email—is sure to have people salivating. For the new iOS app Mailbox, this promise was effectively hyped with the help of a lovely video back in December. The app has finally dropped, and you know what? It might just live up to the hype. More »
This week in speaking with the crowd at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference, Tim Cook let it be known that Apple has reached a new high mark in cash paid out to developers. While Apple announced back in early January that they’d paid around $7 billion dollars to developers in all, Tim Cook announced today that Apple has paid out more than $8 billion. That’s one massive up-swing in a very short amount of time!
It was also made clear by Cook that it’s not just with developer payouts that Apple is succeeding. China was spoken about as well, with Cook saying “when I look at what Apple has done in China, I think it is hard for anyone to evaluate, and say it’s not impressive. Apple has gone from a few hundred million in revenue in one year to $3 billion in the next, to $13 billion the next – we’re adding over $10 billion every year!” Cook was more than willing to let the audience know that he was pumped up about Apple’s current path.
Speaking also about what Apple would and would not do to earn cash, specifically with “affordable” products, Cook let it be known that the company’s “North Star” is “a great product.” Cook continued speaking about how they’d actually tried to make cheaper products, but found that instead of creating a Mac for under $500, it made more sense to make the iPad. Thus that product ecosystem was born.
Cook also had a question asked of him about limits in each of their most important “categories” of products. The Apple CEO spoke simply: “There’s that word limit. We don’t have it in Apple’s vocabulary.” Cook continued, “When I zoom out and look at the smartphone market in particular, what I see is a market that is projected to double in the next few years.” A mighty powerful claim for the company that’s been so very undeniably present in the smart device market since its inception.
Read more about these and additional subjects spoken about by Cook this week at the conference via the timeline below – and let us know what you think!
Apple developer payout jumps to $8 billion is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
As Tim Cook spoke at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference this week, a question of “cannibalization” came up, prompting the Apple CEO to speak about the first time he’d ever been asked such a question. Believe it or not, it wasn’t when the iPad mini was introduced – it wasn’t even when the iPhone or the iPod nano was introduced. In fact it was back when the iBook was revealed back in 1999.
The question asked of Tim Cook was about market share – about what the trade-off is for working to keep a product like the iPad the hero of the market. Cook made it clear – Apple is here to win. Cook noted that “the truth is the first time I got asked about cannibalization was when Apple came out with the iBook. Portables went on to be three quarters or more percentage of the Mac and Mac did an all-time record last year.” Cook made clear that information like the analysis reported last month that the iPad was 1 out of every 6 PCs sold in the fourth quarter of 2012 is particularly striking.
Cook continued, speaking about the iPad: “If you look at when we came out with iPad, what did people worry about: they worried, oh my god you’re going to kill the Mac. The cannibalization question raises its head a lot. The truth is, we really don’t think about it that much. Our basic belief is, if we don’t cannibalize, someone else will.” Continuing to speak on the market working with PCs and computing power in general, Cook spoke: “In the case of iPad particularly, I would argue that the Windows PC market is huge and there’s a lot more there to cannibalize then there is of Mac, or of iPad.”
Note also that the iPad mini has been projected to both cannibalize AND drive iPad sales through 2013 – doesn’t seem possible, does it?
Then came the big hit – a gouge at future companies looking to swallow up the industry by following alone: “I think if a company ever begins to use cannibalization as a primary or even a major factor of what products to go to, it’s the beginning of the end.” Have a peek at the timeline below for more information on what Tim Cook spoke about at the conference and be sure to hit up our massive Apple portal for more iPhone, iPad, and Mac than you can handle!
Apple CEO: “if we don’t cannibalize, someone else will” is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
This week Tim Cook spoke at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference about the affordability of Apple products. Having been asked a question about prepaid customers working with smartphones and other smart products in emerging markets, the same commenter suggesting cheaper iPhones, Cook let it be known that Apple was already there – so to speak. Cook made it clear, “we lowered the price of iPhone 4, we lowered the price of iPhone 4S, [and] in the most recent quarter we didn’t have enough stock of iPhone 4 after we lowered the price. It surprised us … so we are making the move to make things more affordable.”
Cook continued by speaking about the “North Star” aim of Apple, that being “great products” from start to finish. Cook noted, “instead of saying how can we cheapen this iPod to make [it’s price] even lower, we said how to we make this a great product.” He continued by speaking on how Apple worked on creating a Mac computer for a cost lower than average. Cook: “People were asking ‘why don’t you have a Mac thats less than 500 dollars, or less than 1000 dollars, and frankly we tried.’”
But not all was in vain, as Cook continued, “we couldn’t do a great product [for that price], we concluded, so what did we do? We created iPad – and it’s a great product, and it starts at $329! So you can look at an issue – or what you’d call an issue – and you can solve it in different ways. … And our north star continues to be a great product.”
Sound like a good idea to you? Apple is a massively successful company that’s more than once adjusted their pricing scale in a way that doesn’t sell a product out, but creates an environment where a great product is sold for a price that the public can’t resist. Would you agree?
Tim Cook talks Apple product price chopping is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
This week we’re hearing quite a bit about a stockholder issue with Apple surrounding a lawsuit headed by David Einhorn’s Greenlight Capital – and today Tim Cook has fired back. In a talk at this year’s Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference, Tim Cook spoke about how Apple’s biggest shareholder Greenlight Capital is suing the company, saying Apple should be dishing out more money to investors than they already do, saying that Preferred Stocks would be a good idea for the company. Cook spoke up today saying that the issue is being “considered” by Apple, but that in the end, it’s all a bit of a waste of time.
Cook spoke up today responding to a question about the Greenlight Capital situation saying, “I don’t think this is well understood. The disagreement centers around a question on Apple’s policy. We filed this back in February, it’s called Prop 2. It’s not about whether Apple returns cash to shareholders, it’s not about the mechanism Apple uses to return cash to shareholders … what this proposal is about is the rights of shareholders.”
With the Greenlight letter which you can see here, you’ll find that the hedge fund recommends that Prop 2 be turned down. This proposal would “impede Apple’s ability to unlock shareholder value” according to its authors. Cook has responded today saying, “I find it bizarre that we would find ourselves being sued for something that’s good for the shareholders. It’s a silly fight show, honestly. My preference would be that people on both sides take the money they’re spending on this and donate it to a worthy cause.”
Needless to say, Cook is voting yes, but isn’t encouraging either side of the argument to be pushing harder than they need to with campaign dollars. Cook continued, “You’re not going to see a ‘Yes on 2″ sign in my front yard. I support it, I’m personally going to for it. I encourage others to vote for it. … But it’s not something we’re going to spin cycles on.”
[via Apple]
Cook assures Apple wont “spin cycles” on proxy fight is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
The Real Racing series has been a staple of mobile gaming, at least in some circles. However, EA now sees the game as big enough to matter for the entire brand, full stop — and it’s willing to make Real Racing 3 a free-to-play release to snag as wide an audience as possible. When the Firemonkeys-built sequel reaches Android and iOS on February 28th, it will follow the stereotypical freemium model, where any purchases are solely to unlock content sooner, including repairs now that there’s a damage element. The team suggests that free-only play won’t be a grind, however, and a rare I-go-you-go multiplayer racing mode should keep many of us entertained without a cash outlay. It’s doubtful that RR3 will suddenly take on the stature of a perennial blockbuster like Madden, but the switch in business models shows EA treating mobile as more than just a sideshow.
Filed under: Cellphones, Gaming, Tablets, Mobile
Via: Joystiq
Source: Firemonkeys
The iOS 6.1.1 update Apple released yesterday has fixed the iPhone 4S connection problem users of some European carriers were reporting, with Vodafone giving subscribers the green-light to upgrade if they hadn’t already. “Please download the latest version from Apple as soon as you can” Vodafone said in an advice statement to customers today, ZDNet reports, “as this will deal with these issues.” Vodafone UK users, among others, had complained that since updating to iOS 6.1 late last month, they’d experienced problems with calls, texts, and internet access.
3 Austria users with the iPhone 4S also encountered similar problems, and the carrier said that it and Apple were working on a fix for imminent release. That update came sooner rather than later, in fact, with Apple pushing it out OTA to iPhones yesterday.
“Apple has released a new version of its iPhone software that fixes the 3G performance issues that have been affecting users of the iPhone 4S who had installed iOS 6.1″ Vodafone said today. There are no other known features to the new version.
Where Apple is with addressing some of the companion concerns of enterprise system managers, who have complained that iOS 6.1 devices have been creating vast database logs, is unclear. That problem, believed to be connected with how Exchange calendar invitations are handled, has seen some devices spawning 50GB+ log files and forcing admins to block them from the system.
iOS 6.1.1 gets Vodafone all-clear for iPhone 4S problem is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Innovation is problem-solving. Radical innovation is seeing normalcy as problematic, and solving it. That level of invention, which solves a generally unrecognized problem to create a new product category, or user experience, can be difficult to recognize in the conceptual stage. A far-reaching idea can seem trivial if it solves routineness. Sometimes it takes the product itself, the manifested experience, to demonstrate how to rise above the customary. Email solved postal mail, which died another incremental death last week by announcing a proposal to end Saturday letter deliveries. Cell phones solved the disconnect between phones and the walking-around life. Mobile apps solved the gap between computers and cell phones. Perhaps HTML5 will solve apps.
So forgive me if I’m being small-minded, but Bruce Tognazzini’s speculative manifesto about an Apple iWatch fails to make a convincing futurist case for the imagined device — despite whipping up a whirlwind of attention. What is the future of wearable computing?
Filed under: Apple
This afternoon an over-the-air update to the iPhone has been appearing for users across the USA, this upgrade including an issue “that could impact cellular performance and reliability” in the device. At this very moment it appears that the iPhone 4S will be included in the first wave of upgrades and that no other issues are being listed by Apple as the software change comes about. This update comes through less than a month after the initial iOS 6.1 update hit iPhones around the world.
If you’re wondering if your iPhone has an upgrade available, you’ve only to go to your settings and head to “Software Update”. From there you’ll find either an update available to you or a wait in front of you. Don’t fret if nothing is up for you right this minute as the upgrade has just begun to roll out this afternoon – no worries!
This update also comes just days (or hours, in some cases) after a set of warnings and/or messages urging users to skip the iOS 6.1 upgrade were released by carriers like Vodafone. Also in the mix was (and is) evasi0n 1.1, a rather popular jailbreak system that works with iOS 6.0 and 6.1 specifically. Now we get to see if this update breaks that break and that team has to break it all over again.
Meanwhile it appeared that iOS 6.1.1 started to be released back on the 6th of this month, so we’re not long for a wide release without a doubt. Have a peek at the timeline below for additional iOS news from this past week and keep up to date on your devices – update and upgrade daily!
Thanks for the tip, Jake!
iOS 6.1.1 revealed: cellular performance fix aboard is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
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