Apple

Asymco’s Horace Dediu has put together a couple of charts showing that while the number of visitors to Apple’s retail stores continues to climb, the rate of growth is flattening off.

The underlying reason appears to be a slow-down in the rate at which Apple is opening new stores, as the average number of visitors per store has remained stable for the past three years … 
Expand
Expanding
Close

In IDC’s report released today covering worldwide tablet market for the third quarter, the research firm notes that the market as a whole continues to grow thanks to strong growth from Android tablets. Apple shipments remained steady during the quarter compared to last year at 14 million units in Q3, but its share of the market drops from 40.2% last year to just 29.6% this year as Samsung, Asus, Lenovo, and Acer all post significant growth for the quarter compared to the same quarter last year.

Samsung is up from 12.4% last year to 20.4% of the tablet market in Q3 2013 (a 123% increase), while Asus is up 53.9% to 3.5 million units, Lenovo sold 2.3m (up 420.7%), and Acer recorded 1.2M (up 346.3%):
Expand
Expanding
Close

After bringing natural language input to the mobile calendar experience with Fantastical for iPhone last November, Flexibits today released a brand new version of what was already my absolute favorite calendar app.

Fantastical 2 delivers an all new design made just for iOS 7 as well as numerous new features like Reminders support, dark and light themes, landscape support for week view, and much more.

I’ve been using Fantastical 2 for the past few weeks, and below I’ll show you why it’s my go-to calendar for iPhone.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Apple’s claims that the iPad Air is around twice as fast as the iPad 4 have been validated by Geekbench scores posted by Primate Labs. The iPad’s multi-core performance score increased by 88 percent, while the single-core performance jumped by 90 percent … 
Expand
Expanding
Close

Apple’s new repair center (via Google Earth)

Apple has opened up a secondary dedicated AppleCare repairs warehouse in the United States in recent days, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the new center. The new warehouse is located in Carlisle, Pennsylvania and public records indicate that the facility comes in at just under 200,000 square-feet with an additional 2500 square-feet of space available for offices.

Apple will use this facility to conduct repairs and replacements and to manage, package, and ship repaired Apple devices to both customer’s homes and Apple Store Genius Bars across the country. When an Apple customer of a Mac computer, for example, needs aspects of their device replaced and fixed, their product is typically shipped to a similar warehouse in Elk Grove, California…

Expand
Expanding
Close

Following Apple’s earnings results for Q4 2013, which includes a record iPhone sales number for the September quarter, Apple CEO Tim Cook has emailed employees to congratulate them on the results. Cook says that Apple “has never been stronger,” and highlights the products being released this fall. “I am happy to report that Apple’s business has never been stronger, and we are heading into the holidays within amazing lineup led by the new iPhone 5s, iPhone 5c, the stunning iPad Air and iPad mini with Retina display,” Cook says in the memo…

Expand
Expanding
Close

<a href="http://news.yahoo.com/apple-iphone-5s-5c-line-around-the-world-132626546.html">Photo of iPhone line</a>

As planned, Apple today announced its financial results for Q4 2013. This is a quarter highlighted by iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c sales and is the quarter preceding the launches of several new Macs and the new iPads:

Expand
Expanding
Close

In contrast to the supply constrained launch of the iPhone 5s, Apple will offer Personal Pickup for the iPad Air beginning on the November 1st launch date, we’re hearing from sources. MacRumors is reporting the same. When the Apple Online Store goes live on November 1st at midnight Pacific Time (3 AM EST), customers will be able to order iPad Airs to be shipped to their addresses…

Expand
Expanding
Close

All concept visuals: martinhajek.com

Having recently speculated on what Apple might have planned in the way of 4K displays, I thought I’d build on that to think about what it might have in store on the television front.

If you didn’t read my 4K piece, the tl;dr version is I think Apple will launch a 4K Thunderbolt Display in about a year’s time, once it has a new generation of MacBook Pro models able to drive one (or preferably two) at a decent frame-rate.

The question then is: what form might the long-rumored Apple Television take? After all, plug an upgraded Apple TV box into an Apple 4K display and you’d have an Apple Television right there. Why would we need anything more … ? 
Expand
Expanding
Close

Following the debut of the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c in several new countries late last week, Apple will begin rolling out the new devices in several countries during the month of November. Apple previously indicated that it would ship the devices on November 1st in Albania, Armenia, Bahrain, Colombia, El Salvador, Guam, Guatemala, India, Macedonia, Malaysia, Mexico, Moldova, Montenegro, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and UAE…

Expand
Expanding
Close

Update: The analysts were right to be optimistic, but not optimistic enough

As we wait for Apple to announce its Q4 results in this afternoon’s earnings call, more than half of the analysts included in Fortune’s survey expect the company to beat its high-end guidance of $37B. The average is driven up by the amateurs, who come in at $37.38B, while the professionals expect just a touch under the top end at $36.95B.

Predictions on both revenues and earnings do vary markedly, however. While the consensus view is that year-on-year revenues will be up 3 percent and earnings down 6 percent, even among the professionals the earnings estimates span a 15 percent range.

Top: FBN’s Shelby Seyrafi: $39.18 billion (up 9% year over year)
Bottom: Cantor Fitzgerald’s Brian White: $34.57 billion (down 4%)

Apple beating its own guidance wouldn’t have been remarkable in the days when Apple gave absurdly pessimistic guidance and then blew it away, but would be impressive since Cook started offering realistic ranges … 
Expand
Expanding
Close

<a href="http://www.skyscraperlife.com/ciudades-y-arquitectura-la/80727-andares-guadalajara-vs-village-mall-rio-de-janeiro.html">Image of the mall</a> where the Apple Store will be located

Apple currently plans to expand its retail store presence to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil early next year, according to information provided by a source. This person says that Apple is targeting a store opening between February and March 2014, but delays due to construction and staffing are always possible.

Approximately one year ago, Apple confirmed to various media outlets in Brazil that it is planning to open a store in the country. However, Apple has remained mum on when this store would open. “We look forward to the opening of the first Apple Store in Brazil, where we have long standing customers and hope to win many more each day,” the company said last year…

Expand
Expanding
Close

We’ve been maintaining a running list of the best new iPad Air cases ahead of its upcoming Nov. 1st launch date, and today Logitech announced four new products for the device with a new line of Ultrathin cases, covers and keyboard folios.

Available starting next month, the company will be offering The Logitech® FabricSkin Keyboard Folio, Logitech® Ultrathin Keyboard Cover, Logitech® Ultrathin Keyboard Folio and Logitech® Folio Protective Case all for Apple’s new iPad Air. Most of the products are similar to Logitech cases already available for previous generation iPads:
Expand
Expanding
Close

Following the introduction of Apple’s new iWork apps at its iPad Air event earlier this week, an increasing number of users have taken to Apple’s support forums to voice concerns over the removal of features as the apps receive new simplified user interfaces that bring them more in line with the iOS versions. Several pages of complaints from users in Apple’s forums point out that many features, those mostly used by power users, have been removed from Apple’s new redesigned version of Pages:

Why does Apple get rid of so many useful features in new pages? iWork 13 has been a huge disappointment and nothing more than a downgrade to match the capabilities of the iOS iWork apps.  If Apple simply made performance upgrades to iWork 09 I would have been happy.  I hope there is a way to get back to the most up to date version of iWork 09.

—

It comes down to this. Apple has discontinued Pages in its entirety. You can no longer download it or purchase it, and Apple won’t support it. Apple has simultaneously introduced a completely new and different product, also called Pages, that is designed for different users and different use cases. Despite the name, it is not a successor to Pages (old), except in the licensing terms, it is completely a completely different species of animal. Those of us who depended on Pages (old) cannot use Pages (new). We have to save all our Pages files in a widely used format and import them into a new word processor that supports the formatting.

Pages isn’t the only app, users are also hitting Apple’s forums to list features that have been removed from the redesigned versions of Keynote, Numbers, and iMovie:
Expand
Expanding
Close

Ahead of next week’s iPad Air launch, dozens of countries across the world, regional carriers within the United States have begun announcing their plans for carrying the LTE-capable version of the tablet. While major carriers AT&T, Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile, and Sprint will begin selling the iPad Air on Friday, November 1st, these smaller, region-specific networks say that they will start selling the device in the “coming weeks.”

So far, Bluegrass Cellular and C Spire are the two regional carriers to announce iPad Air plans, and other carriers will likely share their own announcements in the coming days and weeks. Bluegrass Cellular operates in Kentucky while C Spire is based in Mississippi. Both of these carriers began carrying the new iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c earlier this month alongside several other regional providers…

Expand
Expanding
Close