Mark is an award-winning journalist who worked at 9to5Mac for over six years. He covers Apple and other topics related to the consumer technology industry.
Mark is regarded as one of the go-to reporters for all Apple-related matters, one of Wired‘s top 16 people to follow in technology, and one of TIME Magazine‘s top 25 bloggers of 2013. Mark has also been profiled by CNN Fortune multiple times, NPR, the Los Angeles Times, LA Weekly, the Huffington Post, Business Insider, Columbia Journalism Review, Marketplace, Haaretz, and USA Today. Mark was also recently named to the 2015 Forbes 30 under 30 List.
In 2012, Mark published the first photos of the iPhone 5, broke the news about Apple’s switch to an in-house Maps application, revealed the first 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro, forecasted that Apple would update the iPad’s software with Siri support, and accurately revealed the iPad mini’s higher-than expected price point.
In 2013, Mark published the first photos of the original iPad Air, provided the first details about Jony Ive’s end-to-end iPhone and iPad software update called iOS 7, provided information about OS X Mavericks, and detailed Apple’s early work on the Apple Watch.
In 2014, Mark revealed Apple’s work on a new Health application for iOS 8 and the Apple Watch, Ive’s redesign of OS X called Yosemite, and details about the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus.
Mark started out 2015 with a significant scoop detailing Apple’s yet-to-be-released 12-inch MacBook with a Retina display, thinner design, and more advanced trackpad and keyboard. He has continued the year by reporting on several details about iOS 9, including the new Proactive Assistant, redesigned Siri, upgraded Maps with transit functionality, new system font, split-screen iPad apps, Swift 2.0, as well as predicting a performance focus for both that software upgrade and OS X El Capitan. Mark finished the year by reporting the majority of the details about the new Apple TV, iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, Apple Watch updates, the iPad Pro, the iPad mini 4, and iMacs.
Mark started out 2016 with exclusive reports on Apple’s work on a pair of completely wireless Beats headphones for the iPhone 7, details on the iPhone SE, iPad Pro 9.7-inch, Apple Watch updates, Apple’s March product event, new Apple retail initiatives, and Tim Cook’s Town Hall meeting with Apple employees.
Mark has also written long-form features on “Apple Anonymous,” a group of retail employees who discuss work over Twitter and the fascination of watches by Apple executives. Most significantly, in fall 2014, Mark published an extensive profile of Apple’s PR and Communications department that was compiled over two months into nine chapters. Mark also provides analysis on relevant technology industry topics, such as Apple’s recent executive shakeup. Mark kicked off his writing career at the end of 2009, and he had his first significant break in 2011 with a story detailing Siri and the iPhone 4S.
You can follow him on Twitter.
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Looks like someone figured out how to enable the iPad’s new mulitasking gestures on their iPhone. It looks pretty sweet and we hope it makes it to an official release sometime. Probably won’t be iOS 4.3, though. Oh, and the guy who made the video got his iPhone mute switch to act as an orientation lock too.
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Ping was Apple’s first attempt at the social networking but it pales in comparison to what they have coming. Hidden deep in the iOS 4.3 file system is a new folder titled “Media Stream.” Within that folder is some information about “Photo Streaming.” From the looks of different alerts and plists, it appears that Apple will let iPhone users set up “Photo Streams” that friends could “subscribe” to. Also, it looks like there will be some privacy preferences related to this, so you can choose who is allowed to view your “Streams.”
With Photo Streams, you will also be allowed to “invite” other users to view your pictures as you take them and upload them to a service. This service looks like it is connected to MobileMe, and we speculate that “Media Stream” can be directly connected to “Find my Friends.” We think Find my Friends will be another aspect of Apple’s social network, a part of a free MobileMe, where you can choose to view your friends’ “Photo Streams” all on that same map. Apple has a patent on something called iGroups relating to this. This would clearly tie into the Mac and iOS photo app’s Places feature. From looking at the SDK, it looks like “Media Stream” could very well also have a plugin counterpart, like AirPlay, in 3rd party apps.
From the actual operating system, not the SDK, we could only find references and graphics relating to the “Photo Stream” feature, not the “Media Stream” feature in general. We speculate that Apple is currently working on “Media Stream” and this is going to go way beyond photos in the future. We think Apple will expand this to music and videos, maybe like AirPlay between mobile iOS devices where you can watch or listen to your friends’ media and of course Apple will provide easy buy links to iTunes.
Speculating further, the Media Stream has to be stored somewhere, it isn’t just going to live on your iOS device. We believe this is where Apple’s Cloud infrastructure comes in. Apple will likely have a Kin Studio-type (I know!) of automatic upload feature that will allow you to tag your uploads for either private or public consumption (see video above).
Going back to Find my Friends, according to some people in the know, Apple has been working on Find my Friends for quite some time and has been ready to launch at a basic stage for some time. This would be what the name implies, a map with your friends on it like Google Latitude. It looks like Apple might be waiting on Find my Friends until their dream social network is ready to launch. Perhaps with a huge cloud focus.
Why iOS 5? Well the files are pretty hidden and not as informative as other features we’ve found like the iPad 2 having dual cameras and Photo Booth coming to iOS. We also feel iOS 4.3’s launch is nearing and Apple wants to get the service working with their new North Carolina data center; we wouldn’t doubt Apple’s social being heavily cloud-based. Check out some SDK screenshots after the break. Oh, and the Kin?
We recently reported that three new iPad SKUs popped up in Best Buy‘s online and internal inventory databases, and today we have received multiple tips claiming this SKUs are place holders for the Verizon iPad + MiFi bundle. Apparently, the incorrect price points were place holders too. Although this is unconfirmed, we believe Best Buy selling the bundles makes total sense given their relationship with both Verizon and Apple.
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Apple has informed developers that the shiny new Multi-Touch gestures for the iPad will not be launching in the public release of iOS 4.3. They say these gestures are simply a developer preview, for now, to see how they work with the iPad’s third-party-apps. iOS 5, perhaps?
This feature will not be enabled in iOS 4.3 for customers, but we are providing this preview to gather input on how these gestures work with your apps.
Apple has just seeded the second beta of iOS 4.3 to developers. This includes to actual operating system for mobile iOS devices (iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch) in addition to an update for Apple TV and the actual SDK. Stay tuned for full coverage! Let us know if you find anything…
Just yesterday Apple’s earnings report discussed iPhone 4 supply constraints, specifically in China, and today the iPhone 4 is “currently unavailable” in the China, Hong Kong, and Singapore online stores. We know their comments yesterday are not probably related to what is happening now, but it is still interesting. Anybody notice the iPhone 4 as unavailable in any other countries?
John Gruber over at Daring Fireball put together a rumor-roundup regarding the next-gen iPad’s display and everyone seems to be saying something different. Mac Stories found evidence for a 2048 x 1536 resolution display, Engadget says it will be “super-high resolution”. For what it is worth, we found some evidence that the iPad 2’s display will stick with the current one’s 1024 x 768.
Gruber spoke to his sources and is reporting that the iPad 2 does not have a Retina Display and believes that the display will have the 1024 x 768 resolution. Gruber would even “wager heavily” on this.
Reader HGW27 has been keeping tabs on Apple’s earnings calls and created the graph above. It looks like Apple has sold over 90 million iPhone since the product’s launch on June 29, 2007. Apple will most likely hit their 100 millionth unit sale this quarter with the Verizon iPhone 4 launch
The call is starting in about 10 minutes. We’ll be noting the important details, that are not on the press release, here.
-Oppenheimer speaking: $26.7 billion dollar quarter. Record iPhone, iPad and Mac sales. Net income $6 billion. $6.43 earnings per share.
-50% growth for Macs in Asian region: thanks MacBook Air and Pro.
-Mac App Store: 1 million downloads on the first day
-iPod touch grew 27%. iPod touch accounted for 50% of iPod sales. iPod is still top-selling MP3 player in most countries. 70% market share
-iTunes revenue: $1.1 billion. Renting and purchasing 400,000 TV shows per day
-iPhone and iPhone accessories: $10.7 billion. 185 world-wide carrier partners. 88 of Fortune 100 companies are testing/deploying iPhones. Starbucks, Nissan, Wells Fargo… deploying iPhones now.
-Thrilled with iPads. 46 countries for distribution. Employee demand for corporate companies “remains strong.” 80% of Fortune 100 are already deploying or piloting iPads.- up from 65%. Increased supplies of iPads and distribution channels.
-Added 160 million iOS users in Q1 2011. Pleased with iAds: Europe and Japan now have iAds.
-Retail revenue increase:
Apple just announced their first quarter 2011 results and they are Apple’s best results yet. Apple sold: 4.13M Macs, 16.24M iPhones, 19.45M iPods, and 7.33M iPads. This compares to a $15.68 billion first quarter 2010.
CUPERTINO, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Apple® today announced financial results for its fiscal 2011 first quarter ended December 25, 2010. The Company posted record revenue of $26.74 billion and record net quarterly profit of $6 billion, or $6.43 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $15.68 billion and net quarterly profit of $3.38 billion, or $3.67 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 38.5 percent compared to 40.9 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 62 percent of the quarter’s revenue.
Apple sold 4.13 million Macs during the quarter, a 23 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. The Company sold 16.24 million iPhones in the quarter, representing 86 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 19.45 million iPods during the quarter, representing a seven percent unit decline from the year-ago quarter. The Company also sold 7.33 million iPads during the quarter.
“We had a phenomenal holiday quarter with record Mac, iPhone and iPad sales,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We are firing on all cylinders and we’ve got some exciting things in the pipeline for this year including iPhone 4 on Verizon which customers can’t wait to get their hands on.”
“We couldn’t be happier with the performance of our business, generating $9.8 billion in cash flow from operations during the December quarter,” said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO. “Looking ahead to the second fiscal quarter of 2011, we expect revenue of about $22 billion and we expect diluted earnings per share of about $4.90.”
Apple’s iPod sales declines 7% overall from Q1 2010 but the earnings are still way up do to the substantial growth of the iPad and a 23% increase on Macs and a whopping 86% increase for the iPhone. Official documents are after the break.
Dow Jones reports that although Apple CEO Steve Jobs has taken a medical leave of absence from Apple, he will be staying on Disney’s board for the time being. Jobs is still Apple’s CEO, even though Tim Cook is leading day-to-day operations, so he will be staying on Apple’s board as well. Jobs owns currently owns 7% of the Disney company and became the largest share holder when Disney acquired his Pixar in 2006.
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Our friend Chris from the iFixYouri iPhone repair shop points us to a shady Chinese part supplier website claiming to have the scoop on the next-gen iPad’s specs. The first is the iPad 2’s screen resolution. The site claims it’s a whopping 1920 x 1280, which is certainly hard to believe from a developer scaling standpoint.
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It’s no surprise that Best Buy will be selling the Verizon iPhone 4 eventually, as they sell the AT&T version, but Apple and Verizon announced that Verizon iPhone sales would only occur at Apple and Verizon retail and online stores at launch. Today, the Verizon iPhone 4 showed up in Best Buy’s internal inventory database meaning the Verizon iPhone 4 may be available at Best Buy at launch or soon after. Information about Verizon’s data plans is not yet available. Another shot is after the break.
Three Guys and a Podcast claims that Apple is preparing to discontinue the iTunes software application found on Macs and PC’s and replace it with a web-only application that is exclusive to Safari. The move is said to incorporate Apple’s new technology from Lala and leverage their new North Carolina data center. You will potentially download all your iTunes content from the web and play it through new iTunes controls in Safari. The move would bring a large new market to Apple’s Safari web browser, and the browser’s market share will probably climb significantly.
The report claims the new iTunes/Safari application will be unveiled later this year at Apple’s annual Fall music event. The report’s source claims “moving iTunes organizational side-bar into Safari isn’t a monumental task.” We personally don’t see this rumor becoming completely true. Some new cloud-based iTunes features are very probable, but the discontinuation of the much-loved (except for the icon) iTunes application seems like a stretch. Let us know what you think in the comments.
ReadWriteWeb reports that according to two high profile app developers, around 90% of iOS device users are running iOS 4.0 or above. The first developer, Bump, says 89.73% of its users are on iOS 4.x, 10.25% are on iOS 3.x, and 0.02% of users are running iOS 2.x- the first iOS to support the App Store and third-party applications. Bump’s user-base is a very good indication of the iOS version breakdown, in general, with 25 million downloads across and iOS and Android.
The report also spoke to an engineer at Loopt (location-based social networking app) who says their figures are similar to Bump’s “but with even a little more of its users on iOS 4.” These new statistics represent how incredibly fragmented Android is as only 0.4% of Android users are running the latest release of the operating system. If any developers reading this want to share their iOS version breakdown, feel free to comment or contact us.
AdAge reports that although News Corp. and Apple are working together on The Daily iPad newspaper, the service will not utilize Apple’s iAds but instead use the New York-based Medialets as the provider. The report also claims The Daily will run on an App Store-based subscription model, and News Corp. will be charging $0.99 per day to view The Daily’s content (not $0.99 per week?). A two week free trial will be available for those who want to give the paper a run before subscribing and this may represent Apple adding some free-trial features to their App Store. This is something they have been reluctant to do for some time.
Some new details about the actual newspaper have also emerged with a top Virgin America marketing executive stating:
We saw it in the development stage and thought it was highly innovative in terms of their use of imagery.
The Daily is said to utilize a traditional “multi-story front page” with magazine style interfaces for the viewing of news reports. This sounds just like the leak from the other day. The Daily will also welcome Multi-Touch and you’ll be able to swipe, pinch, and rotate through different parts of the articles, including many videos from across the News Corp. empire. The Daily was said to be launching this week but has since been delayed into next month.
According to HardMac‘s “reliable sources” Apple will follow their discontinuation of the Xserve, by dropping support for both Final Cut Server and Xsan. The move would represent Apple leaving the server/enterprise business and instead focusing more on the consumer and professional side of software. Even more surprising, the report also claims that the upcoming Mac OS X Lion Server will be the final iteration of Apple’s server-based operating system. HardMac‘s report is completely unconfirmed so take it with a pinch of salt. HardMac correctly predicted the iPhone 3GS would keep the same exterior design as the iPhone 3G in addition to the 5th-generation iPod nano gaining a camera.
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Since the release of iOS 4.3 beta last week, I have been testing out the iPad’s new Multi-Touch gestures and have tried my hardest to not touch the home button. With these new Multi-Touch gestures in play, Apple is rumored to be testing prototypes of iPads and iPhones without the hardware home button. Some people say Apple would never remove the home button but some think it’s a particularly interesting idea. In my use of an iPad “without a home button” I can attest that the button is absolutely not needed.
Even in beta form, Apple has done a phenomenal job with their implementation of the new Multi-Touch gestures. In many cases, using four or five fingers is quicker than reaching over to hit the home button. The pinch to the home screen gesture just feels more natural; like it should have been that way since the beginning. Back to the discussion about betas. Apple has been seeding betas of iOS for a couple years now and for the most part, early betas have been unstable and unreliable. The first beta of Apple’s new Multi-Touch gestures is the opposite though. They have been smooth and absolutely reliable every time. It should only get better in future betas and in the golden master version.
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The Apple Store in Naperville, Illinois has not had the best of luck lately. Just about five months ago that Apple Store on West Jefferson Avenue was robbed and this morning it was robbed again. This time for $30,000. Police are after two suspects who wore ski masks and gloves. They carried the stolen items out of the store in containers. If you know anything follow the information at Chicago Breaking News. Above is a blurry photo that we obtained from an eye-witness.
Reuters reports that four schools in Singapore have teamed up for a pilot program that gives 140 students and 10 teachers their own iPad. These iPads are meant to replace a student’s normal note taking and text materials. The project, at this stage, has already touched the $100,000 mark and this will rise if the program expands to more students and teachers in the school district.
Student Chloe Chen remarks on how convenient learning with the iPad is:
Teachers can just tell us to go a website, and we can immediately go and do our work.
One of the school deans, a part of the program, notes how well the iPad works with the school’s curriculum:
The iPad was chosen because it complemented a new method of teaching under which students are given more freedom to learn themselves, instead of relying solely on the teacher in traditional classrooms.
Schools adopting iPads as a core class material is not a new concept. Earlier this month we reported that the state of New York ordered more than 2000 iPads for distribution within their school systems. It would be interesting to see what apps these schools are loading on to the iPads for the students. Maybe iWork? Let us know in the comments if your school or place of work is adopting the iPad too.
Just the other day Angry Birds was sitting as the king of the App Store’s free section but today, 14 year old Robert Nay is number one. His app Bubble Ball is a physics puzzle game and it has been downloaded more than 2 million times. Check out the video at Yahoo and let us know what you think below. Oh the things kids can do…
Best Buy has added three new iPad SKUs to their online store database and we have no firm conclusion as to what this means. Two of the SKUs list a $599 price point while the third is listed for $699. Could Best Buy begin carrying the Verizon iPad + MiFi bundle? Are these the three models of the upcoming CDMA Verizon iPad? Are these iPad 2s? Probably not, but discuss in the comments!
Update: These three new iPad SKUs are showing up in Best Buy’s internal store database, as well, as “unreleased products.”
Update 2: Best Buy has removed the three iPad listings from their website and internal database.
Discovered deep inside the first beta SDK for iOS 4.3 is a driver for Imagination Technologies’ POWERVR SGX543 GPU. Starting with the iPhone 3GS, Apple’s iOS devices have leveraged the POWERVR SGX535 graphics processor. MacRumors summarizes the benefits of the SGX543 over the SGX535:
The SGX543 is said to deliver performance of 35 million polygons per second and a filtrate of 1 billion pixels per second when running at 200 MHz, compared to 28 million polygons per second and a filtrate of 500 million pixels for the SGX535 running at the same clock speed. In addition, the SGX543 offers support for the Apple-backed OpenCL specification that allows applications to harness untapped potential of both CPUs and GPUs for processing purposes. Finally, the SGX543 support multi-core configurations allowing for even greater performance.
This new chip will most likely work in conjunction with Apple’s upcoming A5 system-on-a-chip for iOS devices.
