As we reported on Friday, the in-store pickup which appeared briefly on Wednesday last week has returned to Apple’s online store. The option allows customers to purchase a phone online and collect in a store. However, supplies remain extremely constrained with many stores already reporting that devices are “unavailable for pickup”, including Fifth Avenue.
With online orders reporting dispatch estimates of October, the in-store pickup option may prove lucrative for people still looking to get their hands on Apple’s flagship phone. It is currently unknown how often in-store pickup stock will be replenished.
The Boston Consulting Group’s annual list of the world’s most innovative companies has again named Apple as the leader of the pack, a position it has held since the survey began in 2005.
The list is based on a survey of 1500 senior execs across a range of industries, with five criteria applied:
The report singles out five factors that lead to strength in innovation: senior-management commitment, the ability to leverage intellectual property, customer focus, innovation portfolio management and well-defined and governed processes.
BCG also created a second list of up-and-coming companies that it feels to be innovative without having yet hit the big time. These companies include Groupon, Pinterest, Spotify, Rakuten, Netflix, Alibaba, Xiaomi Tech and WhatsApp.
Back in March, Apple retained the top spot in the JD Power phone satisfaction survey, also for the 9th year running, and earlier this month did the same for PCs in the American Customer Satisfaction Index for the 10th year in a row.
CNN reports that the childhood home of Steve Jobs could soon become a protected historical site as a Los Altos Historical Commission is set to perform an evaluation of the property today. The property, located at 2066 Crist Drive in Los Altos, California, was Jobs’ childhood home since the seventh grade and its garage later became the location where Jobs, Steve Wozniak and other early employees would build the first Apple computers before officially forming the company in 1977.
The seven-member Los Altos Historical Commission has scheduled a “historic property evaluation” for the single-story, ranch-style house on Monday… If the designation is ultimately approved, then the house on 2066 Crist Drive in Los Altos, California, will have to be preserved… Expand Expanding Close
The American Customer Satisfaction Index saw Apple take the top spot in the personal computers category for the 10th year running, with its score of 87 a full eight points higher than the industry average. Apple, which scored one point higher than last year, has topped the ranking since 2004.
The ACSI includes tablets in its ‘PC’ category, so the scores reflect both Mac and iPad. Factors feeding into the scores include customer expectations pre-sale, perceived quality, perceived value, customer complaint incidents and customer loyalty.
The iPhone took the top slot in the JD Power customer satisfaction survey for the ninth consecutive time back in March, and both iPhone and iPad even managed to beat Samsung on its home turf of South Korea.
The featured stations include Spin the Globe, Trending on Twitter, iTunes Top 100: Pop and the Pepsi-sponsored Pulse #Now.
iTunes Radio will be available on all iOS devices, including Apple TV, as well as in iTunes on both Macs and PCs, as a free ad-supported service. There will be one audio ad every 15 minutes, and one video ad per hour. However, iTunes Match subscribers will be able to listen to the service free from ads.
The chicken and egg adoption/price reductions of Thunderbolt haven’t yet made the devices accessible to most storage shoppers. That didn’t stop Thunderbolt’s inventor, Intel from Frankenstein-ing an otherworldly thumb drive with a Thunderbolt interface and 128GB of fast storage.
Internally, the drive has SanDisk SSD (why not Intel’s own?) storage and probably has a bottleneck giving the device somewhere between SATA 3 and 10GB/s Thunderbolt speeds. Intel is making a few for demo purposes and but doesn’t expect a consumer version until wider Thunderbolt adoption takes place and prices for the tech go way down. Expand Expanding Close
Bruce Tognazzini, Apple employee #66 and founder of Apple’s Human Interface Group, published his thoughts on a potential smart watch product from the company (via MG Siegler) yesterday. While we have seen the launch of several Bluetooth smart watch products from startups this year, Tognazzini thought a watch from Apple could “have a profound impact on our lives and Apple’s fortunes.” One of the many interesting ideas Tognazzini has about how Apple might take advantage of a wearable device is the ability to build better maps:
Using pressure data from millions of watches, Apple could build a precision altitude map of the world. This map would indicate true altitudes everywhere that iWatch wearers travel. The granularity would be several orders of magnitude greater than ever before attempted for a wide-area map at a cost several orders of magnitude less than Flyover.
In the article, Tognazzini explained what he thought will be the standout features of an iWatch from Apple. While outlining the some of the apps you might expect like fitness and remote control applications, he said Passcodes and enhanced Find My iPhone features would be the two killer apps:
Polygon covered a recent talk today given by Valve’s Gabe Newell at the University of Texas, where he said Apple, not the big gaming console makers, is the biggest threat for the company’s upcoming Linux-based Steam Box hardware. Newell said he thought the biggest challenge for bringing the massively popular Steam service to the TV will be if “Apple moves on the living room before the PC industry sort of gets its act together.” He also said Apple could “shut out the open-source creativity” that Steam hopes to bring to the living room:
“The threat right now is that Apple has gained a huge amount of market share, and has a relatively obvious pathway towards entering the living room with their platform,” Newell said. “I think that there’s a scenario where we see sort of a dumbed down living room platform emerging — I think Apple rolls the console guys really easily. The question is can we make enough progress in the PC space to establish ourselves there, and also figure out better ways of addressing mobile before Apple takes over the living room?”
He continued:
“The biggest challenge, I don’t think is from the consoles,” Newell said. “I think the biggest challenge is that Apple moves on the living room before the PC industry sort of gets its act together.”
Microsoft officially took the wraps off the latest updates to Office and its new Office 365 online offering yesterday, but many were focused on the lack of an iOS announcement. Although we’ve seen several references to Office mobile apps for iOS devices, we’ve yet to get official word from the company. Speaking with Bloomberg, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer commented on the Office launch and possible iPad app:
I have nothing to say on that topic. We’re very glad with the product, very happy with the product that we’re putting in market. It makes sense on the devices like the Mac and the PC. We have a product that we think makes a lot of sense. We do have a way for people always to get to Office through the browser, which is very important. And we’ll see what we see in the future.
At Apple’s Q4 earnings call today, Apple CEO Tim Cook was asked his thoughts on Microsoft’s new Surface tablet PC. Cook called it “a fairly compromised, confusing product,” and he compared it to a car that flies and floats:
“I haven’t personally played with a Surface yet… what we’re reading about it is… it’s a fairly compromised, confusing product… the toughest thing you do with a product is make hard trade offs.. we’ve really done that with the iPad.. the user experience is absolutely incredible… i suppose you could design a car that flies and floats, but i don’t think it would do all of those things well.. i think when people look at the iPad over competitive offerings they are going to really want an iPad
Cook also noted that iPhone 5 is still seeing delays but supplies are getting better: Expand Expanding Close
Both IDC and Gartner are out with their reports for PC shipments in the third quarter today. While Apple is not in the top five vendors for worldwide shipments, estimates from the two firms place Apple’s share of the United States market at 12.5-percent to 13.6-percent.
According to IDC’s numbers (above), Apple captured 12.5-percent of U.S. PC shipments in the third quarter. This is up from 11.8-percent in the same quarter last year. Apple faced a year-over-year unit decline of 7 percent, but market leaders HP and Dell posted shipment declines of 18.8-percent and 16 percent, respectively. Meanwhile, shipments for the U.S. market in total were down 12.4-percent.
In comparison, the same numbers from Gartner have the total market decline at 13.8-percent. Apple hit 13.6-percent of the U.S. market, where as it had a 12.5-percent estimate for Q3 2011. Estimates from both firms put Apple’s market position firmly behind HP and Dell, despite IDC estimating fourth-place Lenovo’s growth at over 9 percent for the quarter:
Four of the top 5 vendors in the U.S. market experienced shipment declines. HP maintained the No. 1 position in the U.S. market despite a shipment decline of 19.3 percent (see Table 2). Lenovo was the only vendor among the top 5 to increase shipments. Both Acer and Toshiba shipments declined significantly due to the tough environment in the consumer market. Apple expected to have a PC shipment decline due to softness in the public market, but the company faced a slowdown in the consumer market.
9to5Mac readers who migrated from MobileMe are reporting that their complimentary extra storage has been extended an extra year. Apple’s support doc is here.
From: iCloud <noreply@icloud.com> Date: October 5, 2012, 3:38:18 PM PDT To: 9to5mac Subject:Your complimentary iCloud storage upgrade has been extended at no charge Reply-To:no-reply@apple.com
When you moved your MobileMe account to iCloud, we provided you with a complimentary storage upgrade beyond the standard 5GB that comes with an iCloud account to help you with the transition. Originally, this storage upgrade was set to expire on September 30, 2012.
As a thank you to our former MobileMe members, we will continue to provide you with this complimentary storage upgrade at no charge, for an additional year, until September 30, 2013. No action is required on your part. For complete details, please read this article.
iCloud Team
The American Customer Satisfaction Index is out today with its September report for appliances, computers, televisions and video players/recorders. Not surprisingly, Apple is able to maintain its lead among personal computers despite a drop of 1-point to 86 over previous reports. While the report noted Apple continued to lead the category by a margin of 5- to- 9 points, Apple’s lead is slightly smaller than previously, according to the report, “due to an across-the-board customer satisfaction increase for Windows-based computers.” Apple’s score comes as the PC industry as a whole gains 2.6-points and hit all-time high satisfaction score of 80.
Skipping past HP, Acer and Toshiba, the aggregate of smaller PC makers (including tablet producers Samsung and Amazon) improves customer satisfaction by 4% to 80 while simultaneously gaining market share at a pace that outstrips even Apple… “What may be occurring is that the defection of the least satisfied customers of traditional PC brands such as Dell, HP and Acer to Apple and other smaller tablet makers actually may be boosting customer satisfaction for all,” says Fornell. “The companies that lose market share will maintain their most loyal and happy customers, while those who migrate to other companies in search of new products are more pleased as well.”
This ‘Little Printer’ thing is making the rounds today (right). It is a cute $259 (plus $30 shipping to U.S.) Cloud printer that prints on a receipt-size roll of paper from a smartphone using some special software.
I am not feeling it, but I imagine there will be some special use cases. As The Verge notes in an interview with Berg cofounder Matt Webb, you could put one of these at your grandma’s house and just send her black and white notes/receipts all day. You can even have it set up to print news on a smartphone-sized scroll of paper. :/
Amazon Cloud Player is a service that enables customers to securely store music in the cloud and play it wherever they are on a Kindle Fire, Android phone, Android tablet, iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, Mac, or PC. Amazon Cloud Player now has more benefits, including:
Faster music import for Cloud Player using scan and match technology
Upgrade of matched files to high-quality 256 Kbps audio
Delivery of future Amazon MP3 purchases directly to Cloud Player
Delivery of eligible past Amazon MP3 purchases to Cloud Player without having to import them
Ability to edit song and album information (such as title and track number), and the ability to import that information for matched files directly from Amazon’s catalog
We are starting to see the “Cars and Trucks” model unfold as PC sales are starting to slip dramatically.
Among the top 5 vendors in the U.S. PC market, all but Apple experienced a decline in shipments according to a Gartner report late this evening. This is not your average “Apple beat the PC industry every quarter for the past 5 years.” It is a dramatic fall. Apple pulled to within 500,000 units of Dell from double that a year ago.
The Wall Street Journalreported that travel-recommendation website Orbitz discovered that those of us who own a Mac are spending as much as $20 to $30 more a night on hotel rooms than PC users on average. That is a whopping 30 percent difference, and the smart folks over at Orbitz are looking to take advantage by changing what listings they show Mac users.
According to the WSJ, Orbitz has a new platform that tracks its visitors habits to recommend a room to match their spending habits, which can be oh-so expensive for those who own a Mac. The company is currently experimenting with a platform that shows hotel rooms matching a Mac user’s spending taste a little better, but Orbitz executives stressed that it is not showing the same room to different people for a different price. For example, the WSJ found listings for a Baton Rouge hotel room were 13 percent more expensive on a search from a Mac compared to a PC. In essence, Mac users are shown the nicer rooms.
In a Forrester research note released last October, the firm noted that Mac users are falling into the “power laptop user” range, or people who work 45 hours a week on average and have a solid 44 percent more income. They put it: “Most of the Macs today are being freewheeled into the office by executives, top sales reps, and other workaholics.” I certainly think that stands true, because owning an Apple product is an expensive investment. The lowest priced Mac laptop costs $999, which certainly is not cheap and not something everyone can buy. Despite the high price, you are buying a quality product.
To be clear, Orbitz is not putting an “Apple Tax” on the price of hotels. It is just defaulting the higher-end stuff to Mac users, because Orbitz believes Mac users are more likely to choose higher-end hotels.
It is a risky strategy and may put some people off, however. Moreover, as Mac users, it is very easy to get smug about something like this. But does it make good business sense?
AOC touts its new Aire iPlay monitor with a built-in iPhone dock as a great gift Father’s Day, and Amazon is now carrying it for $50 off its launch price.
The 60-year-old Taiwan-based display manufacturer integrated a 30-pin docking station at the base of the 12.9 mm-thin, full HD 23-inch screen. It also included 10-watt SRS Sound speakers to allow seamless video, audio, and photo playback from an iPhone or iPod in 1080p resolution.
“The Aire iPlay displays photos and video content from your iPhone and iPod on a screen that is 37 times larger than the device it comes from,” said AOC’s Marketing Manager Robert Velez in a press release. “Whether you are playing videogames, watching movies on Netflix or videos on YouTube, or charging your iDevice, the Aire iPlay brings multimedia functionality to your monitor.”
Sharp revealed today that it began assembling high-performance LCDs last month with increased production in April to meet market demand.
Jefferies & Co.’s Peter Misek is a very outspoken analyst regarding Apple’s rumored HDTV. He first claimed in November that Sharp is preparing production lines for the “iTV,” but he later said the company plans to build roughly 5 million units beginning this spring with a product launch slated for Q4 2012.
According to Sharp, the LCDs will help the company contribute to “creating markets for attractive new products”:
Sharp will encourage the application of its new high-resolution LCD panels to high-definition notebook PCs and LCD monitors—which are both expected to grow in demand—as well as to mobile devices. Sharp will also contribute to creating markets for attractive new products.
Apple’s $46.33 billion dollar holiday quarter and the 73+ million shipped Macs and iOS devices are clear standouts in the newest NPD research note exposing Apple as the only brand to have grown sales in the all-important holiday quarter. The same cannot be said for rivals Hewlett-Packard, Samsung, Sony, and Dell, which all experienced missteps in holiday-quarter gadget sales. Five consumer electronics categories (PCs, TVs, tablets/e-readers, mobile phones and video game hardware) drove nearly 60 percent of all sales in 2011. Apple’s share of total revenue across these five important categories rose 36 percent year-over-year, according to NPD.
As a result, Macs, iPhones, iPods, iPads, Apple TVs and the company’s other consumer electronics gear accounted for 19 percent of all sales dollars. That is almost twice as much as No. 2 Hewlett-Packard. HP’s, Samsung’s, Sony’s and Dell’s sales dipped 3 percent, 6 percent, 21 percent, and 17 percent, respectively. Apple Retail was No. 3 in terms of revenue, right after No. 1 Best Buy and second-ranked Walmart. Staples and Amazon tied for fourth place to round out the top five—a repeat of 2010.
By the way, did you notice which two consumer electronics categories lack a dedicated Apple offering?
An interesting occurrence happened this morning: In a run up to Apple’s Q1 2012 earnings call, and amid a steady flow of 2012 Consumer Electronics Show announcements where Apple traditionally does not exhibit, the company’s share reached an all-time high by passing $427 a share for a market valuation of $398 billion (Exxon Mobile is at $408.86 billion). As noted by Fortune’s Philip Elmer-Dewitt, the company passed the $426.70 mark it hit briefly one day in mid-October
Interestingly, several analysts boosted their iPhone estimates for the December quarter. Goldman most notably upped their iPhone estimate to 31 million quarterly units, up from the previous 30.2 million estimate. Needham significantly increased their previous 28 million units projection to 32 million units.
By the way, the Apple iPhone turned 5-years-old today. On this very day five years ago, Steve Jobs took the stage at MacWorld Expo to announce the original iPhone. The rest, as the saying goes, is history…
Logitech first started producing solar wireless keyboards for PCs earlier this year but didn’t make a Mac version until a few months ago. The PC version got incredibly solid reviews at Amazon so I thought this would be a good pick up for my Mac workstation when it was released. As a veteran of Apple’s original Wireless Keyboard, I was sick of dealing with battery and connectivity issues plus I wanted the full layout with numeric keypad, extra function keys extra and full arrows. I’ve been using it almost exclusively for the past three months.
First, I’ll say that the solar panels make the footprint about 25% bigger than a standard full Apple keyboard. That can be a hassle if you are cramped for space at your desk. On the other hand, the keyboard feels a bit more solid, perhaps because of the increased size and weight. Keystrokes are very similar feel to Apple’s standard keyboards and spacing and layout are all but identical. Logitech adds a power switch and battery tester at the top right.
I got the piano black version because it matches my monitor and my Logitech Mouse (which also works with this USB dongle) but there are 5 colors to choose from. I imagine the standard “silver” will be the most popular.
As far as the solar is concerned, I never had a single problem with charging or connection. I have a florescent lit basement office and a workspace with natural light from a shaded back yard and both kept the keyboard charged at all times. The keyboard usually sits in front of a large 30″ monitor, so that probably helps. But from reviews I’ve read, almost no one has a problem keeping this charged with normal office lighting so I don’t think this is a concern.
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