Edible Apple

As Windows 8 sales figures continue to disappoint, the same can’t be said for Apple’s venerable succession of OS X releases. With each new OS X release, more and more folks are upgrading with greater frequency. And with consumers able to upgrade directly via the Mac App Store, the entire process has never been easier.

That said, new data released by Net Applications reveals that the majority of web traffic from Apple computers is now coming from OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion. This marks the first time that Mountain Lion web traffic has exceeded OS X Lion.

Snow Leopard continues to be very tenacious, with a 29 percent share of Mac web traffic, which makes it the second-most frequently used version of OS X over even Lion. But Mountain Lion’s growth is still impressive, and it seems to be attracting users faster than Lion was ever able to. Lion took until May 2012 to overcome Snow Leopard in terms of share of web traffic as measured by Net Applications, meaning it required nearly 10 months to unseat Snow Leopard as the dominant Mac OS. By contrast, Mountain Lion took around five months to reach the top spot, or about half the time.

Specifically, the data indicates that Mountain Lion accounted for 32.13% of all Macintosh-based web traffic during the covered time frame, compared to 29.28% for OS X Lion and 28.34% for Snow Leopard. And in case you’re curious, the web share for OS X Leopard and OS X Tiger (Tiger!!) check in at 7.93% and 1.94% respectively.

The rapid upgrade dynamic exhibited by Mac owners is something Microsoft can only dream of. What’s more, the fact that many Windows owners are content to stay with their current OS – even if it’s Windows XP! – is actually a significant problem for Microsoft as it detracts from the overall Windows ecosystem. Apple, in contrast, enjoys a position where its user-base can reliably be counted on to upgrade to the latest and greatest version of OS X.

via Techcrunch

A strange thing happened yesterday at Chicago’s Lincoln Park Apple Store when an elderly man driving a car lost control of his vehicle and crashed through the plate glass windows of said retail store. Reports have indicated that no one was seriously injured as a result.

The dark-colored sedan drove through the glass walls and made it about four or five feet inside, where it seemed to turn and rested near display cases holding headphones and other accessories, according to witnesses.

There were shards of glass strewn on the ground from the impact, according to witnesses.

Initially people refused treatment in the incident but paramedics were later called back to the scene and took an injured person to Advocate Illinois Masonic Hospital in good condition, said Roccasalva.

Reports indicate that the Apple Store may have already been closed at the time of the crash, which is fortiutitous given how packed Apple retail stores can get during peak hours.

via Chicago Tribune

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Apple recently notified its component suppliers that it will be halving its initial order projection for iPhone 5 screens for the first quarter of 2013.

The Cupertino, Calif., company has also cut orders for components other than screens, according to one of the people.

Apple notified the suppliers of the order cut last month, the people said.

The move indicates that sales of the new iPhone haven’t been as strong as previously anticipated and demand may be waning.

Is it perhaps possible that iPhone 5 demand is on the downward slope? It’s tough to say given how successful the iPhone 5 launch seemed to go. On the other hand, there’s no denying that Samsung’s line of Android smartphones are proving to be more than worthy competitors to the iPhone throne.

With Apple slated to release its earnings later this month, all eyes will be on its iPhone sales figures. Notably, shares of Apple are down below $500 for the first time since February of last year.

via WSJ

Following checks made at CES, Topeka Capital Markets analyst Brian White put out a new report claiming that Apple is planning to accelerate its upgrade cycle in 2013 and release new versions of the iPad and iPad Mini as early as March.

Our checks at CES indicate Apple will release the iPad 5 and the second-generation iPad mini this March. The iPad 5 is expected to be lighter and thinner than the iPad 4 that was released in October, while the form factor of the iPad mini should be similar to the first generation iPad mini that debuted in October.

That’s a rather accelerated turn around time and perhaps Apple is trying to keep pace, hardware wise, with the seemingly never-ending influx of new Android tablets into the marketplace. Perhaps, in an effort to prevent Android from gaining a foothold in the tablet space as it did with smartphones, Apple recognizes that it has to abandon its traditional 1-upgrade-per-year release cycle.

And while analyst reports should appropriately be taken with a grain of salt, it’s worth noting that the Japanese Mac Blog Macotakara – which has a rather strong record with respect to Apple rumors – also noted last month that Apple’s 5th gen iPad may hit store shelves as early as March.

Not mentioned in White’s report was whether or not Apple’s next-gen iPad Mini would get the Retina Display treatment.

via Mac Rumors

Xerox today announced that the company’s executive vice president and CFO Luca Maestri will be leaving the company for a position as Apple’s corporate controller.

“Luca is a stellar finance executive whose contributions have brought great value to the transformation of Xerox into a services enterprise,” Xerox CEO Ursula Burns said in a press release. “He’s helped strengthen our financial foundation, which will serve his successor, our company and our shareholders well for the long term.”

The Italian born Maestri himself noted:  “I came to Xerox with a strong belief in its strategic direction and I leave with even greater confidence in the company’s rich opportunity as a leader in outsourcing services and document technology. It’s been an incredible learning experience to be part of this major business shift for such a respected brand. I’m proud of our progress, and I know Xerox is on very firm footing for sustainable success.”

According to Maestri’s official bio, he joined Xerox back in February 2011 after 3+ years as CFO at Nokia Siemens Networks. Before that he held a number of senior executive finance positions with General Motors, including CFO of GM Europe, GM Brazil, and GM Thailand.

via Xerox

Well this is somewhat strange.

Reuters today retracted its article which detailed Phil Schiller’s comments dismissing the notion of a cheaper iPhone.

Reuters has withdrawn the story headlined “Apple exec dismisses cheaper phone as a market share grab-report” which was based on a Shanghai Evening News report that was subsequently updated with substantial changes to its content.

It remains unclear if there was a problem with the translation from Schiller’s interview with the Shanghai Evening News or what. Equally confusing is that The Next Web yesterday confirmed the veracity of the original report with folks at Apple.

Perhaps, if I may don a conspiracy hat for a quick moment, the original stories pointing towards a cheaper iPhone were in fact true and Schiller, and by extension Apple, did not want to give Apple critics more ammunition to decry that Apple executives can never be trusted.

Odd, indeed.

As a quick reference point, Schiller allegedly said the following during his interview with the Shanghai Evening News.

“At first, non-smartphones were popular in the Chinese market, now cheap smartphones are more popular and non-smartphones are out. Despite the popularity of cheap smartphones, this will never be the future of Apple’s products. In fact, although Apple’s market share of smartphones is just about 20%, we own the 75% of the profit.

Steve Jobs was never a fan of music subscriptions, often saying that consumers want to own their music, not rent it and have it disappear once they stop paying periodic fees.

Nevertheless, Beats founder and famed music producer Jimmy Iovine recently discussed his efforts to sway Jobs to hop on board the music subscription bandwagon. In an interview with All Things D, Iovine intimated that Jobs wasn’t as adamantly opposed to such a dynamic as he appeared to be in public, but rather came to a head with record execs over monetary issues.

In 2002, 2003, Doug [Morris, former head of Universal Music] asked me to go up to Apple and see Steve. So I met him and we hit it off right away. We were really close. We did some great marketing stuff together: 50 Cent, Bono, Jagger, stuff for the iPod — we did a lot of stuff together.

But I was always trying to push Steve into subscription. And he wasn’t keen on it right away. [Beats co-founder] Luke Wood and I spent about three years trying to talk him into it. He was there, not there … he didn’t want to pay the record companies enough. He felt that they would come down, eventually.

I don’t know what [Apple media head] Eddy Cue would say — I’m seeing him soon — but I think in the end Steve was feeling it, but the economics…he wanted to pay the labels [for subscriptions], but [the fees were] not going to be acceptable to them.

So can Iovine make music subscriptions happen? The article attempts to portray Iovine as the man with the proper credentials to the extent that he was responsible for bringing expensive headphones to the mass market.

Iovine’s pitch: It took guys who know music and culture to sell high-end headphones to the mainstream. And it’s going to take the same skill set for music subscriptions, which have been around for about a decade but are only now getting some traction.

And Iovine sure knows music. He has produced albums for U2, Tom Petty, Stevie Nicks and more. He also helped established Interscope Records way back in 1990 and is the man hailed as having helped discover Eminem.

via All Things D

Over the past few days, there have been a number of reports pointing to Apple possibly releasing a lower-cost iPhone sometime in 2013.

To that end, Phil Schiller recently sat down for an interview with the Shanghai Evening News where he effectively dispelled the notion that Apple would produce a cheaply made iPhone.

“At first, non-smartphones were popular in the Chinese market, now cheap smartphones are more popular and non-smartphones are out. Despite the popularity of cheap smartphones, this will never be the future of Apple’s products. In fact, although Apple’s market share of smartphones is just about 20%, we own the 75% of the profit.

The takeaway from this, of course, is that Apple  is more concerned with profits than they are with marketshare. This is nothing new, but let’s not confuse cheap smartphones with more affordable.

The iPad Mini is by no means cheap, but it’s certainly more affordable than the flagship iPad 4th generation. Similarly, a more economical iPhone might be a boon for Apple to the extent that they make more money per device sold than they currently do selling older generation models at steep discounts.

The looming question is whether or not Apple can make an iPhone for cheap and not have it suck. Remember that the iPad Mini’s pricing matrix was somewhat higher than folks were anticipating simply because Apple wasn’t willing to make a tablet that was second rate. What’s more, Apple has admitted that its profit margins on the iPad Mini are much lower than what it’s accustomed to with the rest of its product line.

All that said, perhaps this indicates that Apple is simply not willing to copmromise on materials in the interest of releasing a cheaper iPhone to attain marketshare and generate profits via volume.

John Gruber directs us to the following quote from Steve Jobs circa 2008.

There are some customers which we chose not to serve. We don’t know how to make a $500 computer that’s not a piece of junk, and our DNA will not let us ship that. But we can continue to deliver greater and greater value to those customers that we choose to serve. And there’s a lot of them. We’ve seen great success by focusing on certain segments of the market and not trying to be everything to everybody. So I think you can expect us to stick with that winning strategy and continue to try to add more and more value to those products in those customer bases we choose to serve.

An apropos quote, to be sure, but there’s no denying that in a market that is becoming increasingly saturated with “me-too” devices, consumers are largely becoming more cost conscious than ever before. The differences between the current-gen iPhone and the latest and greatest from Samsung are smaller today than they’ve ever been during the last 4 years. Indeed, the very reason why the iPad Mini has been flying off the shelves is because many consumers nowadays expect a premium experience at a non-premium price.

My take?

A lower cost – read: not cheaply made – iPhone will hit stores sometime in 2013.

via The Next Web

A recent story from Bloomberg shines some light on Steve Jobs’ efforts to save the job of Mark Hurd, the former Hewlett Packard CEO who resigned following reports of inappropriate conduct with respect to a sexual harassment claim. A company probe uncovered no sexual harassment claim but found that Hurd’s actions were not in line with teh company’s standard of business. Hurd subsequently resigned on August 6, 2010.

In the wake of Hurd’s dismissal, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison sent an email to the New York Times which read in part:

The HP Board just made the worst personnel decision since the idiots on the Apple Board fired Steve Jobs many years ago. That decision nearly destroyed Apple and would have if Steve hadn’t come back and saved them. HP had a long list of failed CEOs until they hired Mark who has spent the last five years doing a brilliant job reviving HP to its former greatness.

And now we’re finding out that Ellison’s long time buddy Steve Jobs also was shaken by Hurd’s resignation and did all he could to save his job.

Hurd met Jobs at his home in Palo Alto, according to people who know both men but did not wish to be identified, compromising a personal confidence. The pair spent more than two hours together, Jobs taking Hurd on his customary walk around the tree-lined neighborhood. At numerous points during their conversation, Jobs pleaded with Hurd to do whatever it took to set things right with the board so that Hurd could return. Jobs even offered to write a letter to HP’s directors and to call them up one by one.

Apple board member Bill Campbell explained that Jobs’ passion to save Hurd’s job wasn’t solely to provide help to a friend, but also to help preserve the legacy of Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard. Indeed, HP had long held a special place in Jobs’ heart, with Campbell noting that Jobs felt that a healthy HP “was essential to a healthy Silicon Valley.”

Jobs had long considered HP’s founders – Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard – to be personal heroes. In fact, when speaking before the Cupertino Town Council about Apple’s plans to build a new campus, Jobs referenced his roots in the Palo Alto area while discussing Hewlett and Packard.

When I was 13, I think, I called up—Hewlett and Packard were my idols—and I called up Bill Hewlett because he lived in Palo Alto, and there were no unlisted phone numbers in the phone book, which gives you a clue to my age.

“And he picked up the phone, and I talked to him and I asked him if he’d give me some spare parts for something I was building called a frequency counter, and he did. But in addition to that, he gave me something way more important, he gave me a job that summer … at Hewlett-Packard right here in Santa Clara off (Interstate)280, (the) division that built frequency counters, and I was heaven.

You might also remember an interesting tidbit about Jobs and HP from Walter Isaacson’s biography of Jobs. Isaacson recounts attending one of Jobs’ last meetings with Apple staffers in the Summer of 2011. There, the topic of HP’s failed HP Touchpad tablet was discussed amidst celebration from Apple employees.

Jobs, however, was not overjoyed.

“Hewlett and Packard built a great company, and they thought they left it in good hands,” Jobs told his colleagues. “But now it’s being dismembered and destroyed. It’s tragic. I hope I’ve left a stronger legacy so that will never happen at Apple.”

Ultimately, Jobs was unable to do anything about Hurd’s departure.

When Hurd resigned, HP shares were trading in the low $40 range. Today, HP shares are trading at around $16.

via Bloomberg

Well Tim Cook sure does love China. Not only is he optimistic about Apple’s business prospects in the country, he also happens to be a big fan of the country and the culture, having visited there over 20 times over the years.

In a wide-ranging interview with Sina Technology, Cook opened up about all things China.

As tends to be the case with any interview involving an Apple executive, a question regarding Apple’s future products was raised, only to be skillfully danced around by Cook.

“I cannot talk about the current product roadmap but can reveal that I am very excited about the products we have in research and development. At Apple, innovation is never scarce.”

As for China itself, Cook had this to say:

I’ve come at least 20 times, and I remember the first time was in 1996, when I not at Apple. Over the years, I have witnessed the tremendous changes in China, a country that has a huge dynamic. I love Chinese culture and have very deep feelings, my sister-in-law is Chinese.

Cook also explained that Apple is working hard behind the scenes to speed up the approval process that often results in new Apple products hitting the Chinese market later than in other countries.

Cook also expounded on Apple’s issues with respect to employee working conditions, explaining that the company has very strict vendor standards and has worked hard to raise workers’ wages and improve the working environment as well.

via techstorm

Yesterday we reported that Apple CEO Tim Cook travelled to China this week, marking his second visit to the country in just 10 months.

With Cook’s trip presumably still underway, we’re starting to hear just what dear ole’ Cook has been up to over the past few days.

First off, Cook revealed in an interview with Chinese reporters that a cellular version of the iPad Mini will be hitting mainland China sometime in late January.

Also worth mentioning is that Cook lauded China as the country that will soon become Apple’s largest market, with the Apple CEO anticipating nearly 25 retail outlets eventually landing in the country.

Cook also noted that he’s a big fan of Chinese culture and has visited many times over the past few years.

Lastly, Cook also met with China Mobile chairman Xi Gouhua on Thursday, a noteworthy factoid given that China Mobile is the largest carrier on the planet and still doesn’t officially carry the iPhone. Should able be able to strike a deal with China Mobile, it would represent a tremendous growth opportunity for the company.

Gaining access to China Mobile’s more than 700 million subscribers would be a big step forward in Apple’s efforts to expand in China, the world’s largest smartphone market. The move also could provide Apple with another bulwark against competition from smartphones that run on other operating systems, especially Google’s Android system.

Keep in mind, though, that this isn’t the first time Tim Cook has met with China Mobile executives. Indeed, even Steve Jobs was said to have had detailed and high-level discussions with China Mobile in an effort to bring the iPhone to China Mobile.

Meanwhile, China’s other two carriers – China Telecom and China Unicom – have carried the iPhone for many months now.

China Mobile executives have said iPhone subscriptions likely would come only after the company introduces its 4G platform, which the carrier hopes to begin operating in the second half.

This holiday quarter, Apple’s iPhone sales were given a tremendous boost by the release of the iPhone 5. And while analysts might be quick to anticipate an iPhone sales slowdown, the opportunity presented by a deal with China Mobile could really take Apple’s iPhone sales into the stratosphere.

via WSJ

In a welcome move designed to thwart the efforts of scamware on the iTunes App Store, Apple announced yesterday via its Developer Portal that app screenshots uploaded and approved by the app review team will remain locked.

Apple notes:

Beginning January 9, app screenshots will be locked in iTunes Connect once your app has been approved. New screenshots may be uploaded when you submit a binary for an update to an existing app or a new app.

The move is designed to stop a growing problem that saw developers upload benign photos only to replace them with copyrighted images of already popular games once an app passed the approval process.

In a video illustrating the problem, a rip-off app titled Mooncraft (supposedly a clone of Minecraft) has app photos that couldn’t be more different than the actual game within.

And in another example, one company uploaded an unofficial Pokemon app that skyrocketed up the paid apps list on iTunes after the company replaced its initial app screenshots with those from the legit Nintendo game. Countless consumers were bilked out of their money as a result.

via MacRumors