Tag Archives: news

‘The Daily’ Reports 100,000 Paying Subs on One-Year Anniverary [iOS Blog]

Posted on February 2, 2012 by admin

One year ago today, News Corp. launched its iPad-only newspaper called The Daily . It was the first app to take advantage of the “In-App Subscription” feature that Apple launched the same day. The Daily is available to subscribers for $0.99/week or $39.99/year and Mashable reports that the newspaper currently has more than 100,000 paid subscribers on the iPad alone. Rupert Murdoch, head of The Daily’s parent company News Corp. said when the paper launched that it would take 500,000 paying readers to break even, though publisher Greg Clayman told Mashable that profitability is in sight: From what I’ve seen, the average time it takes for a new magazine publication to get profitable is five to seven years. We’re on track to be ahead of that, which is great. When you calculate magazine profitability, you have to take into account the rising costs of paper and ink. We don’t have any of those costs. We’re in a very good place. The Daily recently launched its first Android edition for Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablets, and is preparing to release a version for iPhone and Android phones “in the next month or two”. The Daily for iPad is a free download on the App Store. [ Direct Link ] Continue reading →

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Apple’s Stock Off to Fast Start in 2012 with 50-Point Gain in January

Posted on January 31, 2012 by admin

With stock trading for January coming to a close today, Apple’s performance for the first month of 2012 has been notable, with the company’s stock riding strong earnings to a monthly gain of over 50 points that has increased its price by nearly 13%. Much of that gain came alongside Apple’s stellar earnings release one week ago, but Apple has continued to drift upward since that time and closed at yet another record high of $456.48 today after touching $458.24 early in the day’s trading. Apple’s market capitalization now tops $425 billion, and a weakening of Exxon Mobil’s stock price over the past week has enabled Apple to open up a nearly $25 billion lead in the race for world’s most valuable publicly-traded company. Continue reading →

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How Apple’s Organizational Structure and Policies Contribute to Company’s Strict Secrecy

Posted on January 18, 2012 by admin

Fortune publishes a lengthy excerpt from Adam Lashinsky’s forthcoming book, Inside Apple: How America’s Most Admired — and Secretive — Company Really Works , highlighting the company’s famous secrecy and how its organizational structure and policies foster that security. Those readers interested in reading the book from cover to cover when it debuts next week may want to avoid the excerpt, but for others the piece is an interesting look into how Apple keeps its employees on a need-to-know basis with a patchwork of clearances to ensure that very few know the company’s full plans for a given project. Secrecy takes two basic forms at Apple — external and internal. There is the obvious kind, the secrecy that Apple uses as a way of keeping its products and practices hidden from competitors and the rest of the outside world. This cloaking device is the easier of the two types for the rank and file to understand because many companies try to keep their innovations under wraps. Internal secrecy, as evidenced by those mysterious walls and off-limits areas, is tougher to stomach. Yet the link between secrecy and productivity is one way that Apple (AAPL) challenges long-held management truths and the notion of transparency as a corporate virtue. The excerpt discusses Apple’s command and control structure in which there is reportedly relatively little political maneuvering, with the company’s “unwritten caste system” placing Jonathan Ive’s industrial design team among the “untouchable” and the status of many other teams fluctuating relative to the prominence of the products they are working on. Inside Apple debuts on January 25 and will be available from retailers such as Amazon (hardcover, Kindle e-book, and CD audiobook) and Apple’s iBookstore [ iTunes Store ]. Continue reading →

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Remains of the Day: Ebook learnin’

Posted on January 18, 2012 by admin

Apple’s education announcement is all over the news, with suggestions ranging from interactive textbooks to ebook publishing tools. Some, however, say that it’s all over-hyped–so clearly we should be looking forward to the next next Apple announcement. Continue reading →

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Display Panel Shipment Plans Suggest Apple Will Offer iPad 2 Alongside iPad 3

Posted on January 17, 2012 by admin

The question of whether Apple will continue to offer the existing iPad 2 as a lower-cost option alongside the forthcoming iPad 3 has been the subject of a fair amount of rumor and speculation, but if new display panel shipment plans provided to Digitimes are correct, it appears that the iPad 2 will indeed live on. According to the report, production of the “Retina” resolution iPad 3 display panels at 2048×1536 pixels will surpass that of the lower-resolution 1024×768 iPad 2 panels by the second quarter of this year, but Apple’s suppliers will still push out approximately 25 million iPad 2 panels in 2012. That will be down from an estimated 48 million panels in 2011, but still a substantial number. Sources suggest that Apple’s suppliers will also be pushing out approximately 40 million iPad 3 panels this year for a total of 65 million iPads between the two models. With fewer than one million panels shipped in the fourth quarter of 2011, Apple will keep increasing the shipment volume of panels for use in the new version of iPad to 6.0-7.0 million panels in the first quarter and 10.0 million units in the third quarter of 2012, the sources pointed out. In the meantime, Apple has downwardly adjusted shipments of iPad 2 panels from the peak of 16.0 million panels in the third quarter to 10.0 million units in the fourth quarter of 2011 and further to 7.0-8.0 million units in the first quarter of 2012, the sources indicated. Thus, the shipment volume of panels for use in the new version of iPad will surpass that of iPad 2 panels in the second quarter of 2012, the sources noted. Digitimes has had a spotty record regarding Apple’s product plans, but it does sometimes offer at least reasonably accurate information on production volumes from the company’s supply chain. Consequently, it does seem likely that any volume of iPad 2 display panels approaching the rumored number would be indicative of continued iPad 2 production well beyond the introduction of the iPad 3. Several reports have indicated that the iPad 2 will carry on at a lower entry price of $399 or perhaps even lower, a move rumored to be planned in part to counter Amazon’s smaller Android-based Kindle Fire priced at $199. The iPad 3 is said to be set for a March debut and will reportedly offer LTE connectivity, a quad-core processor, and the high-resolution Retina display. Continue reading →

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Report of Hands-On with iPad 3 Rear Shell and Other Components

Posted on January 10, 2012 by admin

iLounge , which just last week updated its claims regarding details of the next-generation iPad with mention of improved cameras, today reports that it has viewed what appear to be at least prototype parts for the device. The parts, which seem to include the rear shell and front glass bezel, reportedly corroborate iLounge ‘s earlier claims of an almost imperceptibly thicker body and an upgraded iPhone-like rear camera. The new iPad’s body is so slightly thicker than the iPad 2 that the change is unnoticeable on first inspection; a roughly 1mm increase will barely be perceptible to users. We’ve heard that the only accessories that might have issues are cases, and then, only cases that were precisely contoured to fit the iPad 2’s back. On the rear, the camera in the upper left corner has become bigger—noticeably so when placed alongside the iPad 2, but not so huge that anyone would think they were different at a distance. The new camera hole is silver-ringed, and does in fact look the same size as the iPhone 4S’s much-improved rear camera system, minus the LED flash. iLounge ‘s Jeremy Horwitz reports that some accessory manufacturers are claiming that the iPad 3 will come with a slightly smaller screen, but a front glass bezel seen by Horwitz fails to support that notion. Otherwise, the locations of all external features of the iPad 3 remain identical to those on the iPad 2. Previous leak of claimed iPad 3 display Horwitz cautions that the rear shell part he was able to view seems to have been produced at least six months ago and thus may not represent the final design for the next-generation iPad, which he notes could be called the iPad 3 or perhaps some variation on the iPad 2 name. But the parts do apparently support iLounge ‘s existing claims of Apple’s design tweaks for the next-generation iPad, which many are expecting to debut around March of this year. Continue reading →

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Nuance Bringing Voice Recognition to Televisions and Intel Ultrabooks

Posted on January 9, 2012 by admin

With the popularity of Siri on the iPhone 4S and rumors of a voice-controlled Apple television set, voice recognition and control have leapt to the forefront of the technology industry as companies seek to revolutionize the way users interact with their devices. Nuance Communications has long been a leader in the the field of voice recognition, and quietly provides that back-end functionality for Siri and other Apple products. Rumors of an Apple television set have centered around Siri voice control , fueled in no small part by Steve Jobs’ comments to biographer Walter Isaacson regarding his idea for a television set interface being “the simplest user interface you could imagine”. In seeking to open up some of that vision to a broad array of television manufacturers, Nuance today announced the launch of Dragon TV, a natural language recognition platform specifically tailored for the television experience. Leveraging Nuance’s voice and natural language understanding capabilities, Dragon TV creates the “lean-back experience” consumers demand, with the ability to easily find content by speaking channel numbers, station names, show and movie names. People can even search for content by actor and genre, and stay connected via Twitter, Facebook and Skype. Nuance’s list of commands understood by the platform also include requests for guide/schedule information and DVR playback control. In addition to Nuance’s push into television, the company today also announced the launch of a partnership with Intel to bring voice recognition technologies to the chipmaker’s new “Ultrabook” platform for ultra-light notebook computers. While Nuance already offers a number of voice-related applications for PCs, the new partnership will reportedly deliver greater integration of the functionality for core system features. Nuance’s Dragon voice recognition technology, which is at the core of the renowned Dragon NaturallySpeaking software used by millions, will be deeply integrated into the new Intel application. Using this new capability, consumers will be able to control their Ultrabook just by using their voice. Consumers will be able to quickly and easily launch applications, play media, interact with social media sites and control their email and calendars with natural voice commands. Additional details on the Ultrabook integration will be available later this year. Continue reading →

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CES 2012 Kicks off Next Week: Gorilla Glass, Vizio, Windows Phone, Ultrabooks

Posted on January 8, 2012 by admin

The 2012 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) kicks off next week in Las Vegas, Nevada. The January show has traditionally introduced new products and trends in the consumer electronics market. The LA Times notes, however, that there seems to be no single theme for this year’s show. This year, though, the Next Big Thing remains elusive. Despite what is expected to be a record number of exhibitors and attendees, many analysts agree that no single device or technology has emerged to define the show. While Apple has never had a presence at CES, their general influence on the industry has been apparent in past shows. Third party vendors, of course, will be showing their Apple-related wares in the 80,000 sq. foot iLounge pavilion. Here are a few early items of interest that we’ve seen in the news leading into the show. Gorilla Glass 2 Corning will be showing off their next generation of Gorilla Glass at the show. Apple is known to have used the damage-resistant Gorilla Glass in its original iPhone, and the company is believed to still be using it for their iPhone products. Corning was vague about what improvements have been made to the glass, but hinted that it would allow for thinner designs. A full product announcement is planned for Monday, Jan 9th. Vizio The Wall Street Journal reports that television manufacturer Vizio Inc is planning to enter the PC market this year to compete against Apple on both price and looks. Vizio, which also produces Blu-ray players and a tablet, says it worked on its computer designs for two years in attempts to offer an aesthetic that competes with Apple Inc.’s popular products but at a lower price. Vizio says it spent months, for example, shaving millimeters from its desktop computer so the central processing chip could hide in a sleek base while the screen stands attached to its thin aluminum neck. The company plans on unveiling 24- and 27-inch desktop models, a 15″ laptop and 14 and 15-inch ultralight models at the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show (CES). Engadget has a full gallery of their upcoming product line. The company claims that their products will be priced ‘substantially less” than corresponding Apple products. Nokia’s Windows Phone Nokia is expected to unveil their new Lumia 900 Windows Phone. A NYTimes article details some of the challenges and sees 2012 as a crucial year for Microsoft’s Windows Phone strategy. Ultrabooks Intel’s Ultrabook initiative is expected to be highlighted at CES with new models being introduced. The MacBook Air-like design is expected to make up a large percentage of laptop designs in the near future. Continue reading →

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Samsung’s New Galaxy Tab TV Ad Feels a Lot Like an Apple iPad Ad

Posted on December 30, 2011 by admin

The legal battle between Samsung and Apple has going on around the world with Apple claiming that Samsung had “slavishly” copied the iPad design. Apple and Samsung have traded lawsuits in a number of countries trying to get each other’s products banned from sale. Outside of the lawsuits, Samsung has been aggressive with their recent set of U.S. TV ads openly mocking iPhone users. Their newest Korean ad, however, seems to take cues from Apple’s own advertising style, focusing on a more emotional connection with the viewer. The ad depicts a father and daughter playing with a Galaxy Tab in a sequence of shots reminiscent of Apple’s own iPad ads. The voice over says (rough translation): You try to have fun with me, you try to win against me, you ask me millions of questions, you sit on my lap, you want to stay beside me all the time, strangely, when I stay with you time passes very quickly. This is a precious time. The ad was posted to YouTube on December 14th. For reference, Apple’s own ads have long followed a similar style, focusing on experience than specs: We’ll Always , Love , and Learn . While Apple doesn’t have an exclusive claim to this style of ad, it just shows how Samsung is trying to position their products comparably to Apple. The song in the background of the ad is Blue Sky by Rabbit! Continue reading →

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Microsoft to End Participation in CES Keynotes After 2012

Posted on December 21, 2011 by admin

Following Apple’s lead in pulling out of Macworld Expo several years ago, Microsoft today announced that next month’s keynote presentation at CES in Las Vegas will be the company’s last at the major consumer electronics show. In its announcement, Microsoft cites many of the same factors addressed by Apple as reasons for its ending of trade show participation. Most notably, trade shows have become less relevant for new product announcements given the increasing connectedness and interactivity offered by the Internet and social media, and in many cases the scheduled nature of trade shows imposes undesired rigidity on timeframes for new product announcements. Our industry moves fast and changes faster. And so the way we communicate with our customers must change in equally speedy ways. To ensure it does, we constantly challenge our assumptions. For example: – What’s the right time and place to make announcements? – Are we adjusting to the changing dynamics of our customers? – Are we doing something because it’s the right thing to do, or because “it’s the way we’ve always done it”? Microsoft points to its own media and developer events, social media tools, and even its retail stores as venues for connecting with customers that provide better opportunities than trade show keynotes. Microsoft will maintain a presence at CES going forward with its employees attending the event, but the company will no longer participate in the opening keynote as it has routinely done, and will not sponsor a booth on the exhibition floor after 2012. Continue reading →

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