Before you can properly understand Apple News, it’s important to know its history. Apple was founded by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in 1976. In 1977, Apple’s sales were growing with the success of its early computers. Within a few years, Jobs and Wozniak hired designers and a production line crew. Apple went public in 1980 and was an instant success. Over the next few years, Apple shipped new computers featuring new graphical user interfaces, such as the original Macintosh in 1984. As the market for personal computers expanded through the 1990s, Apple lost market share to the cheaper Microsoft Windows on PC clones. Eventually, Wozniak and Jobs both left Apple. Jobs would go on to found NeXT and would return to Apple when NeXT was acquired in the late 90s. Apple then began a journey to the great second act in the history of the business world.
Since the release of the iPod in 2001, Apple has become a major player once again in the technology industry. After releasing the iPhone in 2007, the iPad in 2010, and the Apple Watch in 2015, Apple is now one of the largest companies in the world. Apple’s worldwide annual revenue totaled $274.5 billion for its 2020 fiscal year.
Today, Apple operates retail stores all across the world, has a growing services division, and an ever-expanding hardware lineup. The technology industry follows Apple news to see where the company is headed in the future.
Before Steve Jobs’ biography drops Monday, many news outlets have already gotten their hands on excerpts from the book. Huffington Post has posted tonight some excerpts from the biography regarding Steve Jobs’ harsh comments on Bill Gates. Steve said:
“He’d be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger.”
Bill said regarding Steve:
“He really never knew much about technology, but he had an amazing instinct for what works.”
Steve said:
“Bill is basically unimaginative and has never invented anything, which is why I think he’s more comfortable now in philanthropy than technology. He just shamelessly ripped off other people’s ideas.”
When it comes to Steve Jobs’ biological father, who we profiled a few months ago, Steve also harshly said..
The blurb from CBS seems to eerily echo a Quora post by a Harvard Cancer Doctor Ramzi Anri that basically said that his cancer was mild and treatable but spread while he was trying to treat it holistically.
While Mr. Jobs was trying all sorts of alternative [medicine] his tumor grew, and grew, and grew…
… and then it somehow grew beyond control.
Jobs waited so long before seeking normal treatment that he had to undergo a Whipple procedure, losing his pancreas and whole duodenum in 2004. This was the first alarming sign that his disease had progressed beyond a compact primary to at least a tumor so large his Pancreas and duodenum could not be saved.
Jobs seemingly waited long enough for the disease revealed to have spread extensively to his liver. The only reason he’d have a transplant after a GEP-NET would be that the tumor invaded all major parts of the liver, which takes a considerable amount of time. Years, in most neuroendocrine tumors. It could be that this happened before his diagnosis, but the risk grows exponentially with time.
We then saw the tumor slowly draining the life out him. It was a horrible thing to see him lose weight and slowly turn into a skin and bones form of himself.
Yet it seems that even during this recurrent phase, Mr. Jobs opted to dedicate his time to Apple as the disease progressed, instead of opting for chemotherapy or any other conventional treatment.
Isaacson also seems to imply that it spread during that time and obviously in hindsight, Jobs was regretful for not choosing to operate on it sooner. Isaacson said,
“I’ve asked [Jobs why he didn’t get an operation then] and he said, ‘I didn’t want my body to be opened…I didn’t want to be violated in that way,'” Isaacson recalls. So he waited nine months, while his wife and others urged him to do it, before getting the operation, reveals Isaacson. Asked by Kroft how such an intelligent man could make such a seemingly stupid decision, Isaacson replies, “I think that he kind of felt that if you ignore something, if you don’t want something to exist, you can have magical thinking…we talked about this a lot,” he tells Kroft. “He wanted to talk about it, how he regretted it….I think he felt he should have been operated on sooner.”
In the end, may prove the most compelling reason to forgive the brilliant CEO his many faults: Of all the people who suffered on the dark side of his headstrong, iconoclastic decisionmaking, it was Jobs himself who appears to have paid the biggest price.
Jobs also told Isaacson:
Jobs had actually met the man who turned out to be his biological father before he knew who he was. He also talks about the discussion he had with Jobs about death and the afterlife, explaining that for Jobs, the odds of there being a God were 50-50, but that he thought about the existence of God much more once he was diagnosed with cancer. Another aspect of Jobs’ character revealed was his disdain for conspicuous consumption. He tells Isaacson in a taped conversation how he saw Apple staffers turn into “bizarro people” by the riches the Apple stock offering created. Isaacson says Jobs vowed never to let his wealth change him.
We’re receiving numerous reports from disgruntled users claiming iCloud deleted their documents from iWork apps on their iPhones, iPod touches and iPads after restarting devices. Worse, documents from the Pages, Numbers and Keynote iOS apps are also wiped out from the iCloud servers and cannot be found using the web interface. Sure enough, a bunch of threads on Apple’s Support Communities site (here and here) highlight the issue which affects an unknown portion of users.
A forum user NickFro describes the catastrophic bug:
I can reliably reproduce the error as follows. Create a document in Numbers on an iOS device, or upload to iCloud.com manually. Wait for sync. Restart iOS device. Launch Numbers. The document will be deleted. If you have iCloud.com open, the file will still appear but clicking on it generates a “File not present on server” error. Pretty serious bug, but I can’t tell if it’s in iCloud or the iWork apps. Or both.
He also offers this remedy:
Delete the iCloud account at both the main level of Settings (i.e., by selecting iCloud) AND by deleting the account in the Mail, Calenders, and Contacts section of Settings. Have it remove everything from your device. Once it’s done. Go to the main level, select iCloud, and re-enable your account there and set all settings there for sync. Let the sync happen.
If that didn’t help, try the solutions described here and here.
If you backup your iOS devices with iTunes instead with iCloud, you’re in luck: Just restore to a device backup containing your files and launch Pages, Keynote or Numbers on your device – but don’t enable iCloud in any of those apps. As you know, iTunes creates a device backup at each sync (unless iCloud backup is enabled in iTunes or Settings on your device). This lets you use Time Machine to go back in time and retrieve a specific backup file containing your device’s settings, app data, documents and more. The affected users who enabled iCloud Backup on their device (Settings > iCloud > Storage and Backup) are in a much worse situation as any document created on their device and synced with iCloud gets deleted from both places without a warning, as shown in the below clip.
For some, the problem stems from migrating MobileMe accounts to the iCloud ones so deactivating the “old” MobileMe account on every iOS device, Mac or PC should help.
As long as there is still one machine with a functioning “MobileMe” in the System Preferences, this will erase all files on startup. I found it out when I turned on my wife’s machine, having forgotten that I had created a temporary user account there to store some of my MobileMe information. As soon as I switched to that user account, zap!, all iWork files disappear. Now that all former MobileMe panels have been deactivated, the remote reset is no longer occurring. or at least so it seems.
For others, iWork documents are disappearing upon syncing with a computer, too. This happens after a document has been created on an iOS device or uploaded from the computer. Here’s one possible remedy… Expand Expanding Close
As always, the guys over at IHS iSuppli have just published analysis of their iPhone 4S teardown showing a BOM of $188 for the 16GB and in the process revealing some previously undisclosed suppliers.
The $188 BOM is of course for the entry-level 16GB model, which would also inflate to $196 if factoring in an $8 manufacturing cost. BOM for the 32GB model comes in at $207 (again, before manufacturing), and $245 for the 64GB variant.
The report describes the 4S’s insides as including a “wealth of innovation”, in contrast to the device’s feature set which was received as an incremental upgrade by most. Among the suprises revealed during the teardown– NAND flash memory supplied by Hynix Semiconductor (a first for iPhone) and a “unique custom” wireless module from Avago Technologies Ltd. The device torn down by iSuppli carried the same sony Sensor as the device X-Rayed by Chipworks but they postulate that Omnivision may also provide an 8-megapixel sensor as well for some of the devices.
Senior director of teardown services for IHS, Andrew Rassweiler, explains: Expand Expanding Close
I had a chance this week to demo a iPhone 4 and 4S case from a company called LifeProof that purports to offer 100% waterproof and military graded shockproof protection to iPhone 4 and 4S. There are other cases that offer this type of protection, but this one is relatively thin and also allows you to hear the speakers and use the mic thanks to micro-holed that are so small that water can’t get through but sound can. It also allows easy plugging in of a charging cable (forget docks) or headphone set with a convenient little O-ring adapter.
Well, it is certainly waterproof (even if it is really hard to let your iPhone go into the water the first time – what if you forgot to snap even one bit and it leaks?! There goes $600!). But it does work as advertised. At the showstoppers event, LifeProof were throwing them on the carpeted floor which didn’t seem all that harrowing. At home, I dropped it on hardwood from waist high (accidentally, incidentally) and the phone didn’t even see a scratch. The underwater images below were taken after the drop so the case appears to have weathered the storm as well.
Whenever my toddler gets the iPhone 4, he also gets the LifeProof case. You can pick up the LifeProof Cases at Best Buy for $79 in Black or White Expand Expanding Close
Fortune Magazine will have an exclusive excerpt of the Walter Isaacson biography Steve Jobs which is due for publication on Monday, the 24th. The excerpt is said to focus on the Frenemy relationship that Jobs had with Microsoft Founder Bill Gates.
The magazine has secured exclusive rights to the sections in Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs devoted to Jobs’ relationship to Bill Gates.
The excerpt will hit newstands and the Fortune iPad app on Monday and an ‘excerpt of the excerpt’ will be published online. Most 9to5Mac readers will probably prefer the book which will be released to the public the same day in both hardcover and electronic formats.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPuYWwBDHHQ]
AT&T just issued a press release saying they activated one million iPhone 4S units, or one-quarter of the four million devices Apple sold during the launch weekend. It’s the most successful launch in AT&T’s history, the company wrote in the release:
AT&T today announced it activated more than 1 million iPhone 4S’ as of Tuesday, making it the most successful iPhone launch in the company’s history. AT&T was the first carrier in the world to launch iPhone in 2007 and is the only U.S. carrier to support iPhone 4S with 4G speeds. “It’s no surprise that customers are clamoring for iPhone 4S and they want it to run on a network that lets them download twice as fast as competitors’,” said Ralph de la Vega, President and CEO, AT&T Mobility & Consumer Markets. AT&T’s speed advantage, and the unique ability to talk and surf at the same time, has been roundly praised by industry pundits.
About those “4G speeds”…
AT&T is reportedly pushing Apple to put a “4G” cellular icon on iPhone 4S to represent its faster Internet connection, which theoretically hits 3G HSPA 14.4 Mbps speeds (lawmakers wouldn’t approve of that). The carrier also released a customer testimonial video, included above, with people explaining why they opted for an iPhone 4S on the AT&T network (hint: because it’s “super-fast”).
Taking into account September quarter earnings, iPhone 4S sales in just a few days since last Friday’s launch hit nearly one-third of the 2.7 million iPhones activated in the last quarter which was down from the 3.2 million iPhones from the year ago September 2010 quarter (which included the iPhone 4 launch).
Note that this is one million iPhone 4Ss only, excluding the newly price-reduced iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS units.
Best Buy takes 15% off all Apple iTunes Gift Cards. With free shipping, that’s the best deal we could find on these cards and the first time we’ve seen them discounted since June, when Target took 20% off in-store only. After the discount, a..
Apple’s homepage returned to normal with the iPhone 4S headlining last night (US only atm). Apple had the Steve Jobs memorial picture up for two weeks following his passing.
There is still a Remembering Steve link at the bottom of the page which leads to the thousands of words of condolence taken from the millions of submissions following his death. In fact, it appears that Apple has purchased the RememberingSteveJobs.com domain.
AT&T just released its earnings and showed strong iPhone sales despite having a 16-month old device on hand with updates looming. The carrier reported activating 2.7 million iPhones in the quarter out of a total of 4.8 million total devices. Android device sales doubled year over year.
Non-iPhone Smartphone Sales Increase.AT&T continues to deliver robust smartphone sales. (Smartphones are voice and data devices with an advanced operating system to better manage data and Internet access.) In the third quarter, the company sold 4.8 million smartphones, representing nearly two-thirds of postpaid device sales. Sales of Android devices more than doubled year over year, and almost half of all smartphone sales were non-iPhone devices. During the quarter, 2.7 million iPhones were activated.
Our polls show that significantly more than half of all US iPhone users go with AT&T, due mostly to the higher data rates and ability to talk and use data at the same time.
Tommy Ljunggren is senior vice president of Swedish wireless operator TeliaSonera and he’s got some “nice” words about mobile prospects of his valued partner, Apple. Ljunggren told Telecoms.com that Apple is no longer as relevant a factor in mobile as it used to be, saying the company is set for failure unless the next iPhone adopts chips that support fourth-generation cellular networks based on Long Term Evolution radio technology, being deployed by carriers around the world:
If you asked me two years ago I would have said Apple would be very important. But now it will be a bad mistake not to include LTE in the iPhone 5 as otherwise they will really be run over by the others. Apple are not unique enough and there is disappointment over the 4S – it was too small step for them.
He then slammed Apple over LTE, admitting that the current batch of 4G LTE chips consume too much power:
I don’t think Apple will decide if LTE will fly or not. My expectation is that in 2013/14 we will really see low-end smartphones having LTE as well. The big question is what frequency bands they will put in for smartphones. They will be true LTE smartphones – not the ones that the US has right now with two radios. These drain the batteries flat very quickly as they have one LTE terminal for data and a CDMA voice terminal. It’s basically a dongle and phone that they glue together. They work – just not for long.
Interestingly, this is the very reason Apple CEO Tim Cook dismissed a 4G LTE iPhone. Ljunggren, of course, is confused and here’s why.
As we reported over the weekend and others reported yesterday, Apple Store will be closed for three hours today to view the celebration of Steve Jobs’ life stream coming from AppleHQ.
Since the release of the iPhone 4S, artificially intelligent Siri has amazed, surprised, and in some cases, disappointed when it comes to just how intelligent it is. While it seems to handle singing duets pretty well, many have pointed to issues with thick accents, lack of Maps and local service support in UK, and its ability to dial emergency services. Most of the time Siri understands what you’re saying, but if it doesn’t, it most often provides a simple response letting you know. However, when the guys over at Electricpig asked Siri to perform some tasks they knew it couldn’t, they came up with some interesting results:
As you can see in the image above, after asking Siri to “Make a voice memo”, it responded:
“I haven’t yet learned to take dictation, James. You’ll have to use the Voice Memos app for that.”
Obviously “yet” is the key word here. Could this be a hint at Apple’s plans to bring new features to Siri in future updates? Possibly incrementally through the cloud rather than waiting for a major iOS update? The guys also asked Siri a number of other similar questions from “Update my Facebook status” to “Send a tweet” and “Open in iTunes”. When they asked it to “Download an app”, Siri responded:
Samsung manufactures the Apple-designed A5 chip found inside iPhone 4S and provides 512MB DDR2 RAM for the processor.
Samsung and Apple are working towards a resolution to the differences that have been plaguing their long-standing relationship, which culminated with some twenty patent infringement claims filed before courts in a dozen countries around the world. Quoting industry sources, Korea Times, asserted Monday that Samsung might provide Apple with custom-built A6 chips for upcoming new iPhone and iPad models.
Today, Yonhap Newsreports that Samsung COO Lee Jae-yong said his company would continue to supply the Cupertino, California client with crucial components, including Apple’s in-house designed A-family of chips powering their iOS devices. The supply chain ties with Apple, he told reporters upon arriving at a Seoul airport, continue to be long-term. The executive sat down the previous day with Apple CEO Tim Cook following a private memorial service for Steve Jobs, to which he had been invited. His two-hour meeting with Apple’s boss touched on parts for the 2013-2014 period, he told journalists:
For the 2013-2014 period, we discussed how best to supply even better parts.
The executive, pictured below the fold, also spoke of “a need to compete in a fair manner for the benefit of the consumer”, adding “this stance existed in the past, is taking place now and will occur in the future”. Another indication of attempts to diffuse the ugly legal brawl comes in another report quoting Samsung’s mobile chief Shin Jong-kyun as saying that the Galaxy Nexus smartphone, which was unveiled yesterday with great fanfare, is designed to bypass potential legal attacks from Apple:
Now we will avoid everything we can and take patents very seriously. We will see if it will be 100 percent free [from Apple lawsuits]. I think it is just a start and [the lawsuits] will last for a considerable time. I don’t think there is much gain [from lawsuits against Apple]. What we are losing is the pride in our brand.
Now, despite Apple’s rumored chips deal with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), Apple reportedly isn’t taking risks. The company sold a quarter billion iOS devices to date and hopes to grow sales even faster in the years ahead.
Apart from Samsung’s semiconductor fab in Austin, Texas, other chip vendors may not be capable of producing mobile processors for Apple in volume, without affecting quality and all the while meeting Apple’s high standards. Remember, we’re talking up to 200 million chips for iPhones, iPads and iPods in 2012. As for Apple cozying up to TSMC… Expand Expanding Close
There have been signs and indications of China’s growing importance to Apple’s bottom line before. In the June quarter the company grew China revenues sixfold, to an astounding $3.8 billion, or nearly eight percent of its total revenue for the quarter. Just three months later, however, the business in China has ballooned to $4.52 billion, an impressive sixteen percent of Apple’s total $28.27 billion revenue for the September quarter. China contributed with twelve percent in the more than $108 billion of fiscal 2011 revenue, or about fifteen billion dollars. Last year revenue from China was just three billion dollars and in 2009 only two percent of Apple’s total revenue.
In other words, one in six dollars of Apple’s quarterly revenue came from China (almost one-in-eight looking at fiscal 2011). The 1.33 billion people country is now Apple’s second-best revenue market. Moreover, revenue for the entire Asia Pacific region grew by 139 percent year over year to $6.53 billion, with CPU units climbing by 61 percent (three percent revenue and eighteen percent CPU units sequential growth). Compared to a 34 percent annual revenue growth in the Americas ($9.64 billion) or a 36 percent growth in Europe ($7.39 billion).
It’s clear now that the Asia Pacific region is Apple’s fastest-growing market, outpacing Europe and the Americas by nearly four times. In fact, Asia Pacific raked in nearly two-thirds of the Americas’ revenue, Apple’s top revenue market. And at four times larger growth, the Asia Pacific region could become Apple’s #1 revenue generator by this time next year.
Click for larger
CEO Tim Cook said in a conference call with Wall Street analysts that “the China progress has been amazing”, calling it an “enormous opportunity” for Apple. It’s bound to grow even bigger as Apple builds more stores to increase its distribution footprint there. Apple operates five flagship retail stores in China which combined had the most traffic in the quarter. The company has managed to build an impressive thirty retail stores worldwide during the quarter, including massive outlets in Hong Kong and Shanghai, the latter being pictured below.
There were as of this writing more than seven thousand points of sale for the iPhone in Greater China. In total, iPhone has 120,000 points of sale around the world and iPad and iPod are now carried in 40,000 and 50,000 points of sale, respectively. They should open at least 25 new stores in China within the next few years and 40 outlets around the world in the next quarter, with 30 outside the United States.
Apple has updated its homepage with tributes from fans received at a special email address rememberingsteve@apple.com. The company says that over a million fans worldwide wrote to express their feelings regarding the company’s late co-founder who died October 5 at his home at the age of 56, just a day following the iPhone 4S media event. The page, available here, features a continuously scrolling wall of users’ tributes to Steve.
The company wrote:
Over a million people from all over the world have shared their memories, thoughts, and feelings about Steve. One thing they all have in common — from personal friends to colleagues to owners of Apple products — is how they’ve been touched by his passion and creativity. You can view some of these messages below.
Among the many thoughts shared by Apple fans, this one titled “Steve Jobs is a hero” was particularly moving:
Live from Apple Q4 2011 earnings call, Tim Cook is answering questions from the press and just discussed, among other things, his thoughts on Siri, patents disputes, and the disaster in Thailand.
Of course Cook was asked to comment about Siri and did so using the words “amazing” and “incredible” calling it a “profound innovation” and saying, “over time…many, many people will use it in a substantial way”.
Talking on patent disputes, Cook of course wouldn’t discuss specific cases but did note:
“We spend a lot of time and money and resource on coming up with incredible innovation…we dont like it when someone else takes those”, he continued, “unfortunately we’ve been pushed into the court system as a remedy.”
When asked to talk about the potential unibody enclosure shortage we reported yesterday, he mentioned it’s being treated as a concern and that Apple is “currently investigating”. He also talked about the recent disaster in Thailand and its potential impact (quote viaThis is my next):
During their earnings call happening right now, Apple has just announced that 180 million e-books have been downloaded from the iBookstore. That’s a big number!
Apple has just posted their FYQ4 earnings prior to their call at 5 PM. Apple is reporting a quarterly revenue of $28.27 billion and quarterly net profit of $6.62 billion — both records for the company. Apparently, investors don’t like records. The stock is down over 5% or 22 points in after hours trading.
Apple also announced that they sold in Q4:
4.89 million Macs
17.07 million iPhones
11.12 million iPads
(only) 6.62 million iPods
…Records for both Macs and iPads. The only decline across the board was 6.62 million iPods for Q4, a 27 percent unit decline from Q3 2010.
Apple is now over $100 billion in revenue for fiscal 2011. International sales contributed to 63% of this quarter’s earnings. Tim Cook and Peter Oppenheimer’s thoughts?
“We are thrilled with the very strong finish of an outstanding fiscal 2011, growing annual revenue to $108 billion and growing earnings to $26 billion,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “Customer response to iPhone 4S has been fantastic, we have strong momentum going into the holiday season, and we remain really enthusiastic about our product pipeline.”
“We are extremely pleased with our record September quarter revenue and earnings and with cash generation of $5.4 billion during the quarter,” said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO. “Looking ahead to the first fiscal quarter of 2012, which will span 14 weeks rather than 13, we expect revenue of about $37 billion and we expect diluted earnings per share of about $9.30.”
We’ll be following along with Apple’s earnings call in a few minutes here. Also expect some separate posts for the “Best Quarter Ever” Press Release and any other news that comes our way.
We were all ready to start making fun of these guys for being wacko gun nuts and wasting a perfectly good $650 iPhone until the slo-mos came in about halfway through the video. OK, that was cool. Where’s the Android version? Via Giz (of course)
Copyright © 2011 Apple Inc. All rights reserved.
