Apple

I love my Apple products. I’ve used Macs since day one. My desk right now has on it my MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, iPad Air, Thunderbolt Display and iPhone. Oh, and an Apple Bluetooth keyboard and Magic Trackpad, of course.

My friends are convinced that I’m incapable of leaving the house without my iPad, and I have to confess that the evidence is on their side. My car has an iPhone dock so I can listen to music and podcasts. If I’m on a plane, train or tube, it’s a near-certainty that I’ll be using my iPad or listening to music on my iPhone – or both.

I love Apple hardware design. Sleek, minimalistic, beautiful. There aren’t that many other really attractive laptops out there, and most of the ones that are have essentially copied Apple’s designs … 
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Those ongoing analyst predictions that Apple would buy Tesla may have been based on some sort of reality.  According the the SF Chronicle, Adrian Perica, Apple’s head of mergers and acquisitions, met with Tesla CEO Elon Musk last spring.

A source tells The Chronicle that Perica met with Tesla CEO Elon Musk in Cupertino last spring around the same time analysts suggested Apple acquire the electric car giant…

Six months before Ahmad’s letter, Musk met with Perica and probably Cook at Apple headquarters, said the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect business relationships. While a megadeal has yet to emerge (for all of its cash, Apple still plays hardball on valuation), such a high-level meeting between the two Silicon Valley giants involving their top dealmakers suggests Apple was very much interested in buying the electric car pioneer.

But it is unlikely that Apple wanted to buy the car company and even more unlikely that Musk would sell it. In response to the acquisition rumors at the time, he tweeted the following:

Forgot to say one thing at Tesla annual shareholders meeting: just as my money was the first in, it will be the last out.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 5, 2013

But it’s highly likely that Apple would want to buy into one of Tesla’s major upcoming projects.

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KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi-Kuo, who has a strong Apple product prediction track record, is out with a new report today with his expectations for the iPad line in 2014:

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As our families grow, so do our device charging needs. Where we just used to need 2 USB ports to charge our iPhones, we now have iPads, cameras, Bluetooth speakers, portable flashlight/batteries and even a few Android devices laying around that constantly need to be chargers. Our excellent 2-port ZaggSparq just couldn’t handle all of the stuff anymore. Time to step up to something more substantial.

We’d heard great things about the new Anker IQ 40W 5V / 8A 5-Port Family-Size USB power supply. In fact, at Amazon where it can be nabbed on sale for $26, it gets almost exclusive 4 and 5 star ratings.

Anker hooked me up with a unit to test out at CES and I’ve relied on it since to keep our house full of devices charged. What’s particularly impressive about this one is that it has 40W of power to distribute through the 5 USB ports (a 25W one is a few bucks less). Anker’s new IQ does one better by recognizing high power requirements in devices like iPads, other tablets and even HPs new Chromebook and giving those devices the full 2-3 Amps of power they need to get charged quickly. Anker explains it thusly:

Not all USB ports are equal. Where past USB ports were hard-wired to exclusively charge iOS OR Android, we’re introducing Smart Port technology to create a truly universal charger. Dynamically adjusting to any device’s unique maximum charging speed, the Smart Port takes the brainwork out of compatibility.Just plug in and it’ll do the rest.

Were the reviews right? Was this the end to my USB charging woes?

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Image: jobsplane.in

Apple has now been overtaken by Google in ‘Enterprise Value,’ a key measure of the value of a company, despite generating four times as much cash flow, reports Seeking Alpha.

While Apple’s market capitalisation (the total value of all its shares) remains higher, this value includes $141B in cash. Enterprise Value deducts any cash held by a company as – if you were wealthy enough to buy Apple – you effectively immediately get that back from the price you paid. EV is thus considered a better measure of the underlying value the market places on a company. By this measure, the market reckons Apple is worth $339B, while Google is now valued at $342B … 
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Alongside the release of Apple’s supplier responsibility report today highlighting working conditions within its supply chain, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Operations Jeff Williams has also sent out a letter to employees. In the past, CEO Tim Cook has been known to send out an email to employees following the supplier report. In today’s letter, Williams went over some of the key points from the supplier responsibility report and noted, “to drive accountability, we are now publishing a quarterly list of the names, countries, and participation status of the smelters and refiners in our supply chain.” Williams also mentioned new education programs, the launch of the Apple Supplier Environment, Health, and Safety Academy, and more.

The full letter from Williams only accessible to employees is below:
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Market analyst Canalys reports that 1.6M fitness bands and smartwatches combined were sold in the second half of last year, and is predicting that more than 17M devices will be sold this year, driven largely by forecast sales of 8M smartwatches.

Though currently a relatively small market serving fitness enthusiasts, wearable bands represent a massive opportunity in the medical and wellness segment. 2014 will be the year that wearables become a key consumer technology, as the smart band segment is estimated to reach 8 million annual shipments. Canalys estimates that this number will grow to over 23 million units by 2015, and over 45 million by 2017 … 
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Apple’s eighth annual Supplier Responsibility Progress Report highlights the progress made on reducing child labor and enforcing working hour limits, and shows a significant increase in the environmental standards Apple’s suppliers are expected to meet.

The number of cases of underage workers fell from 106 last year to 11 this year. Compliance with Apple’s requirement of a maximum working week of 60 hours hit 95 percent, with 97 percent meeting the requirement of at least one day off a week. Apple reported that the average working week of a supply chain employee was less than 50 hours … 
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The Wall Street Journal has published a report that largely corroborates what Bloomberg said earlier; a new Apple TV is under development with Apple currently in negotiation stages for content deals, with at least Time Warner Cable. However, the Wall Street Journal adds some new information about what these talks entail.

Initially, it appears that Apple wanted an independent Apple TV product to offer TV shows and films exclusively over the Internet. However, now it appears that Apple is scaling back some of its ambition due to resistance from content companies.

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Research firm IDC is out today with its latest report on the worldwide smartphone market highlighting shipments and marketshare by operating system for last quarter and all of 2013. Together Android and iOS made up around 95.7% of all smartphone shipments in the last quarter of 2013 (up from 91.2% in the year ago quarter), but the real story is how much Android has grown compared to iOS. As of last quarter, Android made up almost 80% of that 95.7% and shipped close to 800 million of the billion smartphones shipped during 2013.
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CNET reports that JP Morgan analyst Mark Moskowitz forecasts that Apple will release a converged iOS/OS X device he has dubbed the iAnywhere.

While not a new idea, our global tech research team believes Apple could be on the cusp of introducing a new category with iAnywhere, a converged MacOS-iOS operating system that allows an iPhone or iPad to dock into a specially configured display to run as a computer

This is a variation on earlier claims that a larger iPad – widely dubbed the iPad Pro – could also run both operating systems. I’ve written at length about this idea, so won’t rehearse the arguments again here, I shall simply counter with a few quotes from Apple … 
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In January, we exclusively detailed a major upcoming Apple initiative: Healthbook. Healthbook is the working codename of  an app currently planned to ship with iOS 8. It is an app that stores and reads health and fitness data from wearable devices (such as the sensor-laden “iWatch” Apple is developing).

Since our initial report, some more speculation and mockups have emerged online about the app. Above are a pair of mockups posted to Behance earlier today. The mockups follow some of the details presented in our original article:

The “Healthbook” application is said to take multiple user interface cues from Apple’s own Passbook app, which is software for storing loyalty cards, coupons, and other materials normally stored in physical wallets.

The new health and fitness application’s interface is a stack of cards that can be easily swiped between. Each card represents a different fitness or health data point. The prototype logo for “Healthbook” is similar to Passbook’s icon, but it is adorned with graphics representing vital signs.

According to sources, the mockups are “vaguely” the right idea. Of course, Apple is likely testing multiple different user-interfaces for this software, and since we are several months out from an official introduction, things can and likely will change (even drastically)…

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According to a report from Bloomberg, Apple has promoted its Vice President of Global Retail Stores Denise Young Smith to a new position as head of human resources for all of Apple. Smith previously lead HR for retail and replaces the old head of human resources, Joel Podolny, who Apple says will now “focus full-time on Apple University.” Interestingly, in Apple’s statement it noted that “Apple University is an increasingly important resource” and that Podolny will focus “full-time on developing and scaling the University.”

Apple provided the comment below to Bloomberg on Smith’s new position, noting the promotion “will expand her role to lead Apple’s worldwide human resources organization.” The full statement from Apple below:
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Rita Lane, Apple’s vice president of operations for the iPad, Mac desktops, and Mac accessories, has retired from the company, according to her public LinkedIn profile. As vice president of operations, Lane was in charge of the supply chain and manufacturing for iPads, computers like the iMac, and Apple’s Mac accessories.

Due to her position, Lane was likely instrumental in the iPad’s rapid growth as a product and emergence in society over the past few years, making the departure a significant loss for Apple. However, the company likely has other experienced operations managers who could fill Lane’s role. Her exact successor is unknown…

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Asymco has calculated that if iTunes were a standalone business, it would be ranked 130 in the Fortune 500 list of top U.S. companies after its gross annual revenue grew 34 percent year-on-year to $23.5B. This would put it between Alcoa and Eli Lilly in the rankings, and is almost half of Google’s core search business – not bad for what was originally intended to be a break-even operation …

Growth was driven by increases in revenue from App sales reflecting continued growth in the installed base of iOS devices and the expansion in the number of third-party iOS Apps available. Net sales of digital content, including music, movies, TV shows and books, from the iTunes Store was relatively flat in the first quarter of 2014 compared to the first quarter of 2013.

Asymco also calculated the cost to Apple of making both the Mavericks update and iWork software free … 
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