Apple

A 3D model of Las Vegas Strip created by Apple purchased C3

Since the original iPhone’s debut in 2007, Apple’s iOS devices have made use of an Apple-built Google Maps application to provide users with a quick glance at driving directions, traffic, route guidance, current location information, and details about destinations. Like with most sections of Apple’s business, the company is continually innovating, looking to take products to the next level.

A few years ago, Apple set out to seemingly reinvent this iOS mapping experience. As 9to5Mac reported in 2009, Apple scooped up their own mapping software development company called Placebase. In the summer of last year, Apple went one step further in their obvious pursuit of a completely in-house mapping solution and acquired a 3D mapping firm called Poly9.

A third mapping company for Apple…

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The moment I read the “I’ve Cracked the TV” quote from the Steve Jobs bio, I knew what the subject of the next few months at the rumor mill would be. Here it is in context:

“‘I’d like to create an integrated television set that is completely easy to use,’ [Jobs told Isaacson]. ‘It would be seamlessly synced with all of your devices and with iCloud.’ No longer would users have to fiddle with complex remotes for DVD players and cable channels. ‘It will have the simplest user interface you could imagine. I finally cracked it.’”

That seems to be a lot more certain than Jobs was last year at the D8 conference when he took a question from an audience member. In it, he laid out some very important things that no one is really talking about.

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The whole clip is much more fascinating than much of what I’ve been reading over the past week. The interface that Jobs is talking about isn’t whether Apple will use Siri or 3D gestures or not. It is how to put a layer on top of everything else with a consistent UI. He gets down to the nitty gritty at 1:30-3:00:

Add a box on to the TV system. You can say well gosh I notice my HDTV has a bunch of HDMI ports on it one of them is coming from the set-top box I’ll just add another little box with another one. Well, you just end up with a table full of remotes, clutter of boxes, bunch of different UIs, and that’s the situation we have today. The only way that’s ever going to change is if you go back to step one and tear up the set top box and restart from scratch with a redesigned UI and present it to the consumer in a way they’re willing to pay for it. And right now there’s no way to do that. So that’s the problem with the TV market. We decided what product do we want the most, a better TV or a better phone? Well the phone won because there was no chance to do the TV because there’s no way to get it to market. What do we want a better TV or better tablet. Well a better tablet because there’s no way to get the TV to market. The TV is going to lose until there is a better go to market, or there’ll just be a bunch of TIVOs. That’s the fundamental problem. It’s not a problem of technology, it’s a go to market technology.

So the question becomes: How is Apple going to “tear up the set top box” and start over?

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The third quarter of 2011 marks a shift in the cell phone biz as Samsung takes the smartphone crown from Apple and China’s ZTE rises to become the world’s fourth-largest cell phone vendor by volume and Apple slides to fifth place. The bad news for Cupertino arrives just as the company for the first time in years missed Street expectations after shipping 17.07 million iPhones in the September quarter, a modest 21 percent annual growth and a notable 16 percent quarterly decline in units. As you recall, Apple in the June quarter sold 20.34 million iPhones, allowing them to beat Nokia and Samsung and become the world’s leading smartphone vendor, prompting Samsung to stop divulging smartphone and tablet shipments for competitive reasons.

Everyone was waiting for the new iPhone 4S.

Samsung today posted their quarterly earnings and they passed iPhone by an estimated ten million units. According to Reuters which cited a Strategy Analytics survey, Samsung shipped about 27.8 million smartphones, up nearly four times annually and 44 percent sequentially. This gave Samsung a 23.8 percent global market share in smartphones vs. 14.8 percent for Apple. Such a strong growth is attributed to their Galaxy smartphones, particularly the Galaxy S II model which sold ten million units in the five months since its introduction. Strategy Analytics attributed Samsung’s success to “a blend of elegant hardware designs, popular Android services, memorable sub-brands and extensive global distribution”, adding:

After just one quarter in the top spot, Apple slipped behind Samsung to second position and captured 15 percent share. Apple’s global smartphone growth rate slowed to just 21 percent annually in Q3 2011, its lowest level for two years. We believe Apple’s growth during the third quarter was affected by consumers and operators awaiting the launch of the new iPhone 4S in the fourth quarter, volatile economic conditions in several key countries, and tougher competition from Samsung’s popular Galaxy S II model.

Apple also slid to fifth place in Strategy Analytics’s worldwide cell phone rankings as ZTE shipped 18.5 million handsets for a five percent global market share. Apple CEO Tim Cook said at the October 4 iPhone 4S introduction that iPhone had five percent share of the global cell phone market, hinting at Apple’s phone strategy:

via Fortune

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Apple announced on Mac OS Forge today that they have open sourced their Lossless Audio Codec (ALAC). ALAC was introduced in 2004 as OS X’s core audio codec to compress audio files 40-60 percent without losing any quality. The codec is currently supported by Macs and the latest iOS devices.

The Apple Lossless Audio Codec (ALAC) is a lossless audio codec developed by Apple and deployed on all of it’s platforms and devices for some years now. Apple is making the Apple Lossless Audio Codec (ALAC) available as an open source project. Full details can be found on the Apple Lossless Audio Codec project page.

ALAC was reversed engineered in 2005, but more and more applications could begin to adapt the codec now that it’s open sourced. Currently Plex, VLC, Boxee, and XBMC feature the codec, and there are sure more to come. ALAC has been open sourced under the Apache license.

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Apple has today updated Thunderbolt (again), printer drivers, and Aperture.

• Thunderbolt has been updated to 1.1 providing a slue of bug fixes for OS X Lion users.
• HP Printer Drivers v.2.8 and Epson Printer Drivers v.2.9 bring the latest printing and scanning to OS X users.
• Aperture has been updated to 3.2.1 fixing force closing and cropping issues.

Today’s updates come after yesterday’s MacBook Pro EFI update firmware 2.3.

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IT managers’ thinking is influenced by a myriad of business factors, including research studies advising them not to adopt Apple’s computers. But their attitude is changing as Forrester Research, one of the most outspoken proponents of the Mac-free business environment, now backpedals on their 2008 report which called for a total banishment of Macs in the workplace – even for the most mundane tasks such as handling email.

According to the Fortune’s Philip Elmer-DeWitt, a new Forrester survey (available for sale on the corporate card here) of 590 IT managers, Mac users comprise “the 17 percent of information workers who use new technologies and find innovative ways to be more productive and serve customers more effectively”. Wow, talk about change in stance. But wait, there’s more. “Mac users are your HEROes and you should enable them not hinder them”, the report concludes, HEROes being a Forrester acronym for Highly Empowered and Resourceful Operatives.

Just like with iPhone, “Macs are being freewheeled into the office” by corporate higher-ups – typically executives, sales reps and other workaholics – who rely on MacBook Pro machines rather than Windows notebooks which “are slowing them down”:

Employees want their PCs to boot in 10 seconds, not 10 minutes, and they don’t want to have to get a cup of coffee while opening a 20 MB spreadsheet in Excel. They’re drawn to uncluttered Macs — especially those with solid-state drives, which are more responsive and boot in seconds.

That, and the looks…

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=jaIhEXZ7WW4]

Another nail in the PC coffin? So this year Adobe CS apps are starting to make their way to the iPad, Office docs are headed toward the Cloud and now Visual Programming tools are becoming a real possibility with the release today of ‘Codify’:

Codify for iPad lets you create games and simulations — or just about any visual idea you have. Turn your thoughts into interactive creations that make use of iPad features like Multi-Touch and the accelerometer.

We think Codify is the most beautiful code editor you’ll use, and it’s easy. Codify is designed to let you touch your code. Want to change a number? Just tap and drag it. How about a color, or an image? Tapping will bring up visual editors that let you choose exactly what you want.

Codify is built on the Lua programming language. A simple, elegant language that doesn’t rely too much on symbols — a perfect match for iPad.

You can’t export your creations to the App Store or even share them as executables yet (though they are making attempts to enable sharing if Apple lets them). But it looks like a lot of fun for now and maybe it nudges Apple to build a touch version of XCode down the road. 8 Bucks.

Two Lives Left via Daring Fireball.

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CNET’s Brooke Crothers has heard some information about the iPad 3’s upcoming 264PPI display. As we’ve heard a lot in the past, it will be a 2048×1536 resolution display as long as the Korean display manufacturers, Samsung and LG, can produce them in large numbers. According to his source, there could be some problems building it in the monstrous quantities that Apple demands.

The closest that iPad display manufacturers like LG Display and Samsung can get is 2048×1536 resolution display, according to the source. That’s a PPI of 264, twice the 132 PPI on the iPad 2.

But whether manufacturers can make them in volumes that Apple demands is the question. “They have production plans for 2,048×1,536 displays. Starting in November. But those are only plans at this point,” said the source, referring to LG and Samsung.

“It’s not a question of making just one. That, of course, can be done. The challenge is making lots of them,” the source said. “This is a quantum leap in pixel density. This hasn’t been done before.”

If manufacturers are not able to hit the volumes necessary for the higher resolution, there is an interim option of 1,600×1,200, according to the source.

The display is also expected to have a brightness of 550 nits. That’s pretty bright, as the typical laptop display panel tops out at about 350 nits.

I don’t think it is as easy as dropping the resolution down to 1600×1200. Apps don’t scale that easily even if the aspect ratio is the same. If for some reason, they can’t pump out the 2048×1536 in sufficient numbers (and Samsung is already testing better ones), Apple will continue with the same resolution….or wait until they can produce enough high resolution displays.

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Apple issues its 10-K report with the SEC at the end of every fiscal year and this year’s (via MacRumors, TNW) is full of growth. Numbers grew across the board from the end of fiscal 2010 to 2011:

1. Full time employees went from 49,400 to 60,400. Retail was the bulk of that which went from 25.6K to 36K.
2. Retail Stores up 40: 317 to 357.
3. Ad spending up 35% from $691 million to $933 million.
4. R&D spending up 36% to $2.4B.
5. Leases 7 million square feet of building space 3 million of those are for retail.
6. Apple owns 584 acres of land in various locations (including a future solar farm in North Carolina).
7. Finally, Apple ended the year with $81.6B in cash, marketable securities and cash equivalents.

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Here’s the Daily Show link for non-Flash and international (still has ads). “One guy made the Zune, another guy made the iPod”.

Colbert talks about the book as well, below…

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4dxoH9DViQ]

Rupert Murdoch on Fox News talking about the iPad and Steve Jobs (2 minutes in)

Reuters points us to a section of Walter Isaacson’s ‘Steve Jobs’ bio detailing the relationship between Jobs and New Corp.’s Rupert Murdoch. News Corp. is behind the iPad-only publication, The Daily, which Jobs was originally supposed to introduce with Murdoch on stage prior to taking medical leave before the app’s February 2nd launch.

Isaacson writes about a conversation between the two men following New Corp.’s annual management retreat in June 2010 where Jobs tells Murdoch he’s “blowing it with Fox News” while calling it a “destructive force in our society”.

“The axis today is not liberal and conservative, the axis is constructive-destructive, and you’ve cast your lot with the destructive people. Fox has become an incredibly destructive force in our society. You can be better, and this is going to be your legacy if you’re not careful.”

During the conversation, Jobs apparently asked Murdoch to create a video reel consisting of Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity shows, to which Murdoch agreed. Jobs later revealed to Isaacson plans to have a similar reel made by Jon Stewart’s Daily Show team, a show known for calling out Fox News frequently. Isaacson quotes Murdoch, prior to Steve’s passing, as saying, “I’d be happy to see it, but he hasn’t sent it to me”.

Jobs told Isaacson he believed Murdoch didn’t like the direction Fox News had gone saying, “Rupert’s a builder, not a tearer-downer, he said. I’ve had some meetings with James, and I think he agrees with me. I can just tell.” Although, Isaacson quotes Murdoch as shrugging off Jobs’ complaints saying “He’s got sort of a left-wing view on this”.

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Following the outpouring of grief over Steve Jobs’s October 5 passing and the subsequent October 19 event Apple organized to celebrate its co-founder and visionary, the news has arrived of a musical tribute featuring rockers the Flaming Lips. The band will perform a cover of the Beatles’ “Revolution” at the MTV O Music Awards 2 and their performance will be recorded with an iPad and broadcast on OMusicAwards.com, according to the official blog post.

The O Music Awards broadcast kicks off on October 31 at 8:30 p.m. PDT/11:30 p.m. EST. It is a fitting tribute to Jobs for much more than a choice of song. Steve was a big fan of the English rock band (and pop culture in general). In fact, he regarded The Beatles as being his model for business:

My model for business is The Beatles: They were four guys that kept each other’s negative tendencies in check; they balanced each other. And the total was greater than the sum of the parts. Great things in business are never done by one person, they are done by a team of people.

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Yesterday it was revealed that Apple would begin to offer a ship to store option on its online store and it appears that it has just gone online. We heard it would be hitting San Francisco first:

…now we’re hearing it’s going live tonight/tomorrow (depending on your time zone) in the San Francisco area. The pilot program will reach other parts of the Bay Area within the next couple of days or so, and will gradually make its way throughout the United States over the upcoming weeks and months.

As you can see from the screenshot above, it is now live. Apple Store online shoppers now have the option of sending their item(s) to a physical Store in San Francisco. Others soon will follow leading up to the holidays.

Can you imagine how great this will be for the new Apple Store inside Grand Central Terminal?

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Charlotte Observer is reporting that Apple has begun work building a 174 acre solar farm to power their new Maiden, North Carolina data center. The data center, located in Catawba County, was revealed by Steve Jobs during the iOS 5 keynote at WWDC this year, and will be partly responsible for powering iCloud. It was revealed earlier this year that Apple was purchasing land around the data center. Now we know why.

Permits issued by Catawba County show that the Cupertino, Calif., company has been approved to reshape the slope of some of the 171 acres of vacant land it owns on Startown Road, opposite the data center, in preparation of building a solar farm.

The solar farm will spread across 171 acres outside of the data center, which originally cost Apple $1 billion to build.

The plans are called “Project Dolphin Solar Farm A Expanded.” Project Dolphin was the code name given Apple’s plans to build a $1-billion data center in Maiden.

There are no specific details on who exactly will be building the solar farm. For Apple, and many other companies, it has become important to build data centers with clean energy. Google is one of the companies that does this very well, and it looks like Apple is headed that way too.

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The United States Patent & Trademark Office this morning issued a patent grant to Apple pertaining to the familiar Slide to Unlock gesture. Remember, the now ubiquitous sliding move debuted on the original iPhone as a fun way to keep your device secured while in your pocket. “To unlock the phone, I just take my finger and slide it across. Wanna see that again? We wanted something you couldn’t do by accident in your pocket. Just slide it across – BOOM.”, Steve Jobs said entertaining the invitees at the phone’s unveiling in January of 2007.

The iOS chief Scott Forstall is credited as one of the inventors, in addition to Apple engineers Imran Chaudhri, Bas Ording, Freddy Allen Anzures, Marcel Van Os, Stephen O. Lemay and Greg Christie. Apple actually filed a patent application in December of 2005, a little over a year ahead of the iPhone introduction at the Macworld Expo. Of course, the work on the iPhone had begun a few years earlier.

It’s a bit silly, really, but blame it on the patent system. Be that as it may, nobody now gets to use the popular ‘Slide to Unlock’ without infringing on Apple’s patent unless a court rules it is invalid or prior art. Here’s a video of the 2004-5 Neonode N1m, showing a similar Slide to Unlock that existed before the iPhone (4 minutes in):

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Interestingly, a Dutch court ruled that the slide to unlock patent was invalid because of this very device.

The company explains in the granted patent document:

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Like everything else Apple, the Macworld Expo is moving in the direction of iOS devices with a new name: Macworld|iWorld, “the ultimate iFan event”. Today, Paul Kent, the event’s vice president and general manager said:

“The brand is evolving from Macworld [Expo] to Macworld|iWorld to illustrate that the show is about the whole ecosystem of Apple products” The exhibits and conference sessions that have characterized past expos remain with Macworld|iWorld. But show organizers are also adding elements aimed at providing what Kent characterized as a “dynamic culture experience. We have a great core audience, but there’s a great opportunity to evolve the event.”

While there will be added focus on the iOS device ecosystem, Kent was adamant about saying the show was still heavily focused on the Mac Platform. In fact, there is added attention to Mac Developers with the introduction of a new package for OS X developers “to encourage them to display their wares at the show without the expense of having an elaborate booth”.

The event will also retain its training sessions under the new moniker “Tech Talks” and have film and music venues as well.

Apple stopped participating in Macworld Expos in 2009 which changed the dynamic of the show. This move is another major shift.

The event kicks off on January 26th. You can register at the prices listed below. (Note that you’ll need to enter your information to see prices.) That’s up to $100 off and the same as last year’s early pricing model. Discount expires December 5. The prices:

• Exhibits Only Pass for $25
• iFan Pass for $75
• Pre-Conference Workshop Pass for $275
• All Access Pass for $750

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5LGxDQVXew]

As we tweeted last night, Conan adds some flavor to the original.

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According to the newly-released DisplaySearch Tablet Quarterly report, shipments of tablets powered by chips based on ARM’s CPU designs will grow by a projected 211 percent in 2011 to nearly 60 million units. At the same time, mobile devices using Intel’s x86 architecture are not expected to pick up steam until 2013. Meanwhile, Apple sold 11.12 million iPads in the September quarter, a 166 percent annual unit growth, grabbing a Strategy Analytics-estimated 67 percent market share of all quarterly tablet shipments, down from 96 percent in the year-ago quarter when the company took the market by surprise and left competitors flabbergasted.

ARM’s domination in mobile stems from the tremendous growth of smartphones and tablets, the vast majority of which come with chips based on ARM’s blueprints. With iPad accounting for more than two-thirds of tablets and their A-series of chips being based on ARM’s designs, it’s really not surprising that tablet PC architectures are now feeling the heat by ARM and iOS.

In retrospect, the mobile landscape might have looked a lot different had Apple’s deceased co-founder Steve Jobs not listened to the iPod Godfather Tony Fadell. I found this incredibly interesting anecdote yesterday in the authorized Steve Jobs bio by Walter Isaacson…

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mOzcZUA7AQ]

Bloomberg is reporting that the rumored Apple HDTV is being led by iTunes creator Jeff Robbin (introducing iTunes 9, above). Jeff Robbin led Apple to create both the original iPod and iTunes — so obviously he’s the man for the job.

Apple Inc. is turning to the software engineer who built iTunes to help lead its development of a television set, according to three people with knowledge of the project. Jeff Robbin, who helped create the iPod in addition to the iTunes media store, is now guiding Apple’s internal development of the new TV effort, said the people, who declined to be identified because his role isn’t public.

Bloomberg also quotes Piper’s Munster who believes that the HDTV is in prototype, due out late next year or 2013. He also postulates that the Apple TV will have Siri and iCloud functionality. Siri would act as the controller (think Kinect) and iCloud would help deliver user’s content.

In Steve Jobs’ biography, Jobs told Isaacson “that he cracked the code for building an HDTV.” Robbin is an interesting character. Bloomberg explains:

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Update: Full statement from Sprint below.

The Next Web is reporting that an internal email has been going around that both Sprint and Apple are working on a fix to the slow data speeds that are plaguing Sprint iPhone 4S owners. Sprint customers with an iPhone 4S have been experiencing slow data speeds since the iPhone 4S landed on the Sprint network October 14th. Ironically, many customers switched to Sprint for the fast unlimited data plan.

One possible temporary solution, as Don Southard points out, is a free AirRave 3G Airvana offered by Sprint to help with data speeds on the device.

Sprint (and Apple) also had a slip up today by offering the iPhone 4S off-contract for only $199 (supposed to be $650). A forum user explained earlier:

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The world’s most famous industrial design lab is found at the ground floor of Apple’s corporate campus at 1 Infinite Loop in Cupertino, California. It’s arguably one of the most closely guarded offices on the planet. Even Steve Jobs’ biographer Walter Isaacson was asked to interview Apple’s leading designer elsewhere most of the time. But one day in 2010, Jonathan Ive took the writer for a tour inside his design bunker. It holds “the future for the next three years”, the Briton told Isaacson. According to the just-released biography, the facility is as cutting-edge as cutting-edge gets.

Nobody gets past the guards without special access cards. The office has heavy locks and tinted windows. It features metallic gray decor and has powerful boom boxes that pump out techno and jazz music for a bunch of designers developing future design ideas. Expensive prototyping equipment can be seen inside and various machines to apply paint and make countless foam models of future products are everywhere.

Jobs would often visit Ive’s design lab to actively participate in the design process and his artistic sensibilities were crucial for Apple’s design prowess, Ive said:

In so many other companies, ideas and great design get lost in the process. The ideas that come from me and my team would have been completely irrelevant, nowhere, if Steve hadn’t been here to push us, work with us, and drive us through all the resistance to turn our ideas into products.

Apple’s design guru also tells how they often obsessed over the packaging for Apple products:

Steve and I spend a lot of time on the packaging. I love the process of unpacking something. You design a ritual of unpacking to make the product feel special. Packaging can be theater, it can create a story.

But it wasn’t all peachy. The designer would at times get upset with his late boss for “taking too much credit”, which didn’t sit well with Ive’s introvert personality and especially his careful consideration to always put his team’s efforts first and foremost:

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