Edible Apple

Check out this insightful interview with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg over at BusinessWeek. Say what you will about Facebook, but Zuckerberg seems to have a good head on his shoulders. For such a young kid, he has an impressive knack for focusing on longterm goals and not getting bogged down in the day to day FUD that has been hovering over the company in the wake of their sluggish stock performance.

How do you get to 2 billion users? And do you want to make a prediction of when you get there?
No. The big thing is obviously going to be mobile. There are 5 billion people in the world who have phones, and a billion people using Facebook. There are actually already 600 million people using Facebook on phones, so that’s growing really quickly. And as more phones become smartphones, it’s just this massive opportunity.

People at Facebook stress the company’s culture of moving fast and breaking things. At some point are you moving fast just for the sake of moving fast?
I actually think as we’ve gotten more mature, we’ve focused a little bit less on the “break things” part of “break things and move fast.” I would like Facebook to always operate as fast as a company that’s 10 times smaller than we are. So if we’re at 1,000 engineers, I’d like us to be moving as fast as a company that has 100 engineers. If we can do that sustainably, then when we get to the size of some of the biggest companies in the space, we’ll be moving at a much faster clip than them. It’s also more fun and it means you can learn more.

via Business Week

Though invitations haven’t been sent out yet, it’s largely believed that Apple’s special iPad Mini event will take place on Tuesday, October 23. In light of that, The Next Web is reporting that the event will have a strong focus on iBooks. Which, of course, shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise given that the device is meant to compete against smaller products like the Kindle Fire.

iBooks has been a success for Apple so far, but they’re not going to pull up now. If I was a betting man, I’d count on Apple also announcing iBooks 3, with expanded support for annotations and other tricks in order to keep apace with Amazon’s Kindle x-Ray feature and maybe even multi-mode support for audio and text-book syncing. Also look for an iBooks Author update that refines Apple’s authoring tool with support for the new mini and the iPhone 5′s new screen format.

While Steve Jobs famously said that smaller sized tablets would be dead on arrival, the marketplace has clearly indicated otherwise.

Remember that Jobs in 2010 remarked, “The reason we [won’t] make a 7-inch tablet isn’t because we don’t want to hit that price point, it’s because we think the screen is too small to express the software. As a software driven company we think about the software strategies first.”

But interestingly enough, it was revealed during Apple’s legal battle with Samsung this past Summer that Jobs had finally come around to the idea of releasing a smaller version of the 9.7-inch iPad.
In an email dated January 24, 2011 and introduced at trial, Apple executive Eddy Cue wrote:

Having used a Samsung Galaxy, I tend to agree with many of the comments below (except actually moving off the iPad). I believe there will be a 7-inch market and we should do one. I expressed this to Steve several times since Thanksgiving and he seemed very receptive the last time. I found email, books, facebook and video very compelling on a 7-inch. Web browsing is definitely the weakest point, but still usable.

(emphasis added).

Apple’s new iPad Mini will likely be thinner than the current iPad 3 and will feature a 7.85 inch screen, albeit without a Retina Display as Apple most likely wants to keep costs as low as possible. It’s also been rumored that the iPad Mini will be a wi-fi only device.

Back in late September, Apple received a lot of criticism after it was discovered that the clock design it used in iOS 6 on the iPad was essentially the same as a Hans Hilfiker design to which both the trademark and copyright were owned by the Swiss Federal Railways service.

But this was hardly an obscure design used exclusively by the Swiss Federal Railway service. On the contrary, the design has been licensed out to the Mondaine Group since 1986 and has since been used in countless clocks and wristwatches. What’s more, the design was even included in exhibits at both the New York Museum of Modern Art and the Design Museum in London meant to highlight exemplary 20th-century design.

And Apple, apparently, just decided to copy the iconic design without paying for it.

The Swiss Federal Railways service (SBB), naturally, wasn’t terribly excited to see their intellectual property taken without receiving proper compensation.

At the time, SBB spokesman Ret Kormann explained that the company wasn’t hurt by Apple’s actions, but that a financially and legally viable solution between the two companies should be hammered out.

And now a few weeks later it appears that it has.

The Verge points us to a press release from the SBB announcing that a deal between the two companies has been reached.

For the use of the SBB station clock on devices like iPad and iPhone, the Swiss Federal Railways SBB and Apple have agreed and signed a license agreement.

Details such as pricing and length of the contract were not disclosed.

All Things D reports that Apple plans to unveil the highly anticipated iPad Mini at a special event scheduled for October 23. It was initially believed that Apple would introduce the iPad Mini either in September or earlier in October, but recent reports suggest that a last minute design change may have forced Apple to delay things a bit.

That’s a Tuesday, not a Wednesday, so this is a bit of a break with recent tradition. It also happens to be just three days prior to the street date for Microsoft’s new Surface tablet.

Sources declined to specify where the event is to be held, and I’ve not been able to confirm a location.

But it’s likely to be at Apple’s Town Hall Auditorium. The company has debuted a number of important products there in the past — OS X Lion, a next-generation MacBook Air and the iPhone 4S — so there’s plenty of precedent.

We’ve also seen reports that Apple has put in component orders large enough to manufacture 10 million units for the upcoming holiday quarter. If true, Apple has high aspirations for its upcoming iPad Mini tablet, especially when measured against the reported 5 million unit order Amazon put in for the Kindle Fire for same quarter.

As has previously been reported, the iPad Mini will sport a 7.85-inch screen but will not necessarily house a larger form factor that smaller devices like the Kindle Fire and the Google Nexus 7. Recent reports have indicated that the device will feature Apple’s new lightning connector and we should also point out that the device will likely not come with a Retina Display as Apple is looking to keep costs down in order to compete with cheaper tablet devices out on the market.

One of the things you gotta love about Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, aside from his boyish goofiness and adoration for a good prank, is that he has no qualms about telling it like it is and trashing Apple when he thinks they’ve gone askew.

Recently, in an interview with TechCentral, Woz went so far as to call Apple arrogant with respect to its iPhone 5 design.

“Now why is Woz hating on the iPhone 5?”, you might be wondering. Could it be that he’s having a tough time navigating around with Apple’s homegrown Mapping application?

Not quite.

Apparently Woz is peeved that Apple chose to make the iPhone 5 screen longer and not wider. Even more infuriating to Woz is Apple’s assertion that this is an astute design choice, as evidenced by Apple’s iPhone 5 commercial dubbed “Thumbs” which touts how Apple’s take on the smartphone was sized to fit the average sweeping area of the human thumb.

Part of me wishes Apple had not been so arrogant and feeling like “We’re the only one with the right clue.” I wish they had made a wider version [of the iPhone 5]…

…I think Apple tricked itself by saying “Oh, you can reach everything with one thumb.” I don’t see anybody having trouble using the larger screen. But Apple said that as a defensive move because everyone else had larger screens…

…Not all people want the same thing. A lot of people really like big screens.

It’s a fair criticism. After all, some people do like larger screens. And though I love my iPhone, the overall larger display of various Samsung devices does look rather appealing at times. But calling Apple arrogant I think is a bit misguided. There’s nothing wrong with Apple effectively reaching a conclusion vis a vis the user experience and putting out the best product they see fit. Why would Apple release a device with a wider screen if they think it results in a subpar user experience?

Yes, a lot of people like really big screens but Apple has never been one to cater to the minority. What’s more, it’s absurd to blindly declare that bigger screens are innately bigger. Truth be told, and in spite of my Samsung screen envy, I’ve tried using larger-screened Android devices with one hand and the result is often comical. Taking a one handed picture with a wide-set 4.3 inch phone can potentially be a recipe for disaster.

So while yes, not all people want the same thing when it comes to smartphones, the overall success of the iPhone makes it hard to believe that Apple has made a wrong design choice and that it’s arrogant. Indeed, for a company that often doesn’t like to change things up, the larger iPhone 5 coupled with the impending release of the iPad Mini sort of shows that Apple is anything but arrogant.

Methodical. Careful. Sometimes slow to adapt. Sure, you can paint Apple with all of those brushes, but their ultimate goal is to create a product that users love and find easy to use.

A super-wide iPhone in that regard just doesn’t fit the bill.

You might also be interested in:

When Steve Wozniak put together a US Music Festival

Steve Wozniak, the Tetris Champion

via TechCentral

About a year ago, we reported on a second-hand story involving Steve Jobs wherein the late Apple CEO once touted that Apple had over 1,000 engineers working on chip technology. “Getting low power and smaller is the key to everything,” Jobs reportedly said.

And now Apple has an all-star addition to their chip team.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Apple has recently hired Jim Mergard, a former chip designer and executive at AMD before he recently took a new position working at Samsung.

The gadget maker has hired Jim Mergard, a 16-year veteran of Advanced Micro Devices who was a vice president and chief engineer there before he left for Samsung. He is known for playing a leading role in the development of a high-profile AMD chip that carried the code name Brazos and was designed for low-end portable computers.

Veteran technical talent is in high demand and there are many opportunities for top-flight engineers to move between companies. But any movement between Samsung and Apple comes at an interesting time.

According to former AMD executive Moorhead, who the WSJ quotes briefly, Mergard brings years of experience and expertise in PC chip design along with system-on-a-chip design. Consequently, Mergard could potentially help Apple out not only with its mobile efforts, but also with the company’s line of Macs which run on Intel processors. “He would be very capable of pulling together internal and external resources to do a PC processor for Apple,” Moorhead explained.

And so a former AMD executive steps into Apple just a few months after one recently left. Back in early August AMD announced that Jim Killer would be returning to work for the company after having spent the previous few years working at PA Semi and later at Apple.

via WSJ

Earlier this Summer, Apple was granted a preliminary injunction against Samsung’s flagship Android device – the Galaxy Nexus. That turned out to be a short-lived victory for Apple as the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit soon thereafter granted Samsung’s request for a stay.

You might remember that the root of Apple’s initial success in attaining an injunction against the Galaxy Nexus was the device’s use of “universal search.” As a quick reminder, universal search enabled users who typed a query into the Android search bar to scour not only results from Google but data from the device itself. For example, a query for “Taylor Swift” would return search results from a device’s music library, email program, and of course from the web.

In the wake of Apple’s short-lived permanent injunction, Samsung event went so far as to issue an over the air update for its Galaxy S3 users whereby they removed the universal search feature.

Now, a few months later, a Federal Appeals Court reversed the injunction completely, explaining that even if the Galaxy Nexus is found to be infringing, Apple would not suffer irreparable harm in the interim if the device continues to be available in stores.

Reuters reports:

In this case, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit was considering an injunction ordered before the trial began but which was quickly stayed. The appeals court reversed the injunction entirely on Thursday, saying that the “district court abused its discretion.”

Apple failed to prove, the court said, that consumers purchased the Samsung product because of the infringing technology. The court considered a single patent – one which allows the smartphone to search multiple data storage locations at once. For example, the smartphone could search the device’s memory as well as the Internet with a single query.

What’s more, Samsung went so far as to point out that sales of the Galaxy Nexus weren’t all that impressive. That being the case, the Court also explained that the Nexus would likely sell “almost as well” with or without the universal search feature. Consequently, even if the feature is found to infringe upon Apple’s patents, the “harm that flows from the alleged infringement” is not great enough to warrant the issuance of an injunction.

Nevertheless, the case -which is separate from the case that was decided in Apple’s favor this past Summer – remains on track for trial in 2014.

Now that the latest models of the iPad Touch, Nano and Shuffle are finally shipping, Apple yesterday began running a new advertisement to remind people that, you know, there’s more to Apple than just the iPhone. T

he ad is dubbed “bounce” and originally premiered during Apple’s iPhone 5 special media event a few weeks ago. Either way, its pretty solid and dare we say a bit nostalgic in the sense that it’s been a while since we’ve seen Apple flex its advertising muscle for the iPod.

It may seem like ancient history at this point, but well before Apple sued Samsung over its implementation of Android, Apple fired its legal ammunition at HTC back in March of 2010.

Since then, Samsung has withstood the full impact of Apple’s legal attack and has nonetheless posted a number of impressive and record beating quarters.

But HTC, on the other hand, hasn’t been as lucky. On the contrary, they’ve been downright unlucky amid  increasingly disappointing and shrinking sales.

Earlier this week, HTC released its Q3 2012 numbers and things aren’t looking particularly rosy. Quarterly revenue came in at $2.4 billion while profits checked in at $639 million. During the June quarter, in contrast, revenue came in at $3.1 billion while the company posted a profit of $225 million.

Unwiredview adds:

HTC decline has accelerated again. Sales dropped 12% in just one month, 23% in 3 months and 48% in a year. Profits are now evaporating even faster – 47% decline in 3 months and down a whopping 79% in a year. One or two more quarters like this and HTC will join the crowd of money losing Android smartphone makers like Motorola, LG and Sony.

This all in spite of the fact that HTC does put out some quality Android-based smartphones, and arguably has some of the sleekest hardware on the market. But with Apple doing what it does, and with Samsung seemingly lapping HTC, the company just can’t seem to find its footing as the premier purveyor of Android-based handsets. And we imagine that the release of the iPhone 5 certainly won’t help things as we steadily approach the busy holiday shopping season.

So in the interim, they still have their Windows Phones, but in case you haven’t noticed, they aren’t exactly selling like hot cakes, if at all.

What you’re looking at below is a chart overlaying Apple’s yearly share price over its revenue (broken down by product line) and its quarterly expenditures. The chart, expertly put together by Horace Dediu of Asymco, shows that Apple’s share price has effectively gone up in conjunction with Apple’s revenue. Not a huge shocker there.

But what’s worth taking note of is that the more Apple puts into expenditures the greater the output. In other words, as Apple lays out more and more cash for the materials and equipment used to manufacture its products, it’s enjoyed a sizeable return on investment both with respect to its share price and its overall revenue.

“The scale, Dediu writes, “gives an approximation of the relationship where $50 billion in quarterly revenue roughly yields a share price in the $700 to $800 range.”

Below, you can see that Apple’s estimated FQ4 budget for 2012 is at least a quarter more than it was during the previous quarter. This therefore begs the question – just how high will Apple’s shareprice go?

Dediu adds:

Recall that expenditures are booked ahead of output and therefore we have this apparent view into the future. The fourth fiscal quarter’s spending has just ended and the output will be produced during October-December period.

…

It takes money to make money. The relationship seems to be that $1.5 billion of CapEx per quarter yields a share price of $800. With spending reaching $3 billion per quarter will the share price reflect a similar ratio?

A similar ratio would imply a share price of $1600, which believe it or not some analysts see as possible over the next 2-3 years. For the time being though, the next great stock target for Apple shares is $1000, which some feel will be reached before the end of 2013.

Clearly, with the release of the iPhone 5 and the rumored iPad Mini looming over head, not to mention a completely revamped iPod lineup along with relatively new MacBooks, Apple’s upcoming holiday quarter is looking to be absolutely monstrous. At the time of this writing AAPL shares are trading at about $640 with a P/E of 15 or so. Might be a good time to buy in if you see Apple climbing back up as we embark on the busiest shopping season of the year.

Just a few days ago, Samsung posted record earnings that topped analyst estimates, largely thanks to healthy sales of its Galaxy lineup of smartphones. All told, operating profit increased by 91% while earnings increased by 93%.

Not bad at all, and the company’s patent issues with Apple aside, the Korean electronics giant – which makes everything from smartphones to washers and dryers – is raking in money hand over first.

All that said, Patently Apple recently highlighted a report titled “Samsung Factory Exploiting Child Labor” put together by the China Labor Watch. The report notes that Samsung routinely employs young children in its factories to help put together phones, DVDs, and other electronic eqiupment.

As part of their two-month investigation, members of the China Labor Watch specifically identified 7 children under the age of 16 working in Samsung factories. The exact number, however, remains unknown since investigators didn’t have access to all areas of Samsung’s factories.

The report went on to state that CLW’s research indicated that student laborers amount to 80% of the total workforce in the factory. During their follow up investigations, their investigators suspected that there were a large number of child laborers in other departments of the factory, estimating that there may be 50 to 100 children working there. These children were working under the same harsh conditions as adult workers, but were paid only 70% of the wages when compared with the formal employees. Moreover, these child workers were often required to carry-out dangerous tasks that resulted in injury.

What’s particularly startling is that the company responsible for auditing Samsung’s factories, Intertek, reportedly is prone to accepting bribes in return for letting various violations slide.

Being that Wall Street is so enamoured with Samsung of late, perhaps it’s time to highlight that Samsung’s phenomenal profit spike is coming in part from the cruel conditions imposed on their labor force. Not that I like what I’m hearing out of Foxconn either, but Apple has already been taken to the woodshed for their sins and is at least on paper trying to improve worker conditions. But Samsung a different cat; they want to pretend that they’re the “good guys” in the press and point fingers at Apple as being the defender of patents instead of innovation. What a bunch of bunk. Today we see Samsung’s true colors and they’re simply greedy bastards with little care for conditions that their workforce is under each and every day. Maybe that’s why Wall Street loves these guys so much.

There’s a lot more in the full article which you can check out here. And of course, it goes without saying that Apple has itself run afoul of, shall we say moral, practices in factories that put together its products. It’s just strange that those stories involving Apple make international news when equally abhorrent stories involving other large companies like Samsung are seemingly ignored. Labor abuses by any company should be focused on in an attempt to remedy it. Point blank.

While some companies are trying in vain to hasten the proliferation of NFC enabled smartphones, Apple, per usual, has chosen to go its own route. Rather than release an NFC-equipped iPhone, the company instead introduced a new feature dubbed Passbook in iOS 6.

Passbook enables users to store tickets for various activities and events, from airline boarding passes to tickets for sporting matches. Essentially, Passbook provides a one-stop shop for any type of coupon or ticket a user might need.

Though iOS 6 is still relatively new, Major League Baseball wasted no time in giving it a test run and thus far they’ve been blown away by the results, noting that they’ve been “floored” at the number of fans who have used the Passbook service to redeem their tickets.

Speaking to MarketWatch, MLB Advance Media CEO Bob Bowman said that they tried out Passbook ticketing for four teams during the final two weeks of the season and that 1,500 ticket buyers chose to have their tickets delivered digitally via Passbook. All told, that amounts to 12% of ticket buyers, according to Bowman.

“That adoption rate really floored us — there is no question our fans want digital tickets,” Bowman said. “Fans can use the tickets, forward them to a friend, resell them, or even donate them to charity — and they never get lost or left at home.”

via Marketwatch