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Apple Conference Call: Six Things You Should Know
Unlike last quarter, today’s conference call regarding quarterly results did not include a cameo by iconic CEO Steve Jobs, who announced a leave on absence on Monday. In fact, his name did not even come up in a question, and that’s one of six things Apple watchers should know about today’s call.

The Steve Work Ethic

Considering the turbulence Apple faced yesterday and today, it’s difficult to imagine that every analyst would choose not to ask a question about the impact Jobs’ medical leave of absence would have on the company, yet none did, at least not directly. However, one question was posed about “long-term planning” about products.

“In my view, Apple’s doing the best work ever,” said COO Tim Cook, adding that the company was “very happy” with the product pipeline, and then he said this.

“The team has an unparalleled breadth and depth of talent and innovation that Steve has driven in the company, and excellence has become a habit, and so we feel very confident about the future of the company.”

Present or not, the influence of Steve Jobs still guides Apple.

Apple and the Dragon

When queried about how Apple can manage to sustain the insane growth of the present and the past, the answer that came up repeated was Asia, specifically China. It was stated that years ago Apple identified China among emerging as it’s “top priority” and the results are “absolutely staggering.” China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan generated some $2.6 billion in revenue for the quarter, quadrupling performance over last year. The number of visitors and sales at Chinese Apple Stores exceeded those of every other store, including flagship stores in the US and Europe.

Besides China, sales in Japan were up 83 percent year over year, with strong growth for the Mac, up 56 percent. Korea was also singled out as being very receptive to the iPhone and Japan, but clearly China is the focus of new markets for Apple going forward.

The Mac is Back

Actually, it never left. For a jaw-dropping 19 consecutive quarters, the Mac has grown faster than rest of the PC market. For the most recent quarter, the Mac achieved 23 percent growth, compared to a meager three percent for the rest of the industry. Apple sold more than 850,000 Macs in retail Apple Stores, and once again, for nearly ten years, “about half” of those purchasing Macs were doing so for the first time.

As to what people were buying, the biggest sellers were the MacBook Pro and the new MacBook Air. Apple executives described the Mac as a “phenomenal” part of their growth. That growth included 2.9 million laptops sold, representing 70 percent of Macs sold during the quarter. Consumers loved new features like “instant on” and the speed of solid-state drives according to Apple. Look for SSDs to migrate to other Mac portables soon, most likely with faster CPUs from Intel.

The Unstoppable iPhone

After being selling more than 14 million iPhones from July through September, Apple topped that by selling more than 16 million iPhones during the holiday quarter, and they could have sold more. More than six months after launch, the iPhone 4 is still supply constrained, and Apple executives have no idea when supply and demand equilibrium will be reached.

It will almost certainly not be this quarter with the launch of the Verizon iPhone. In fact, a question regarding expanding sales of CDMA iPhones to countries like China was only partially deflected. While Apple is “always looking for opportunities,” it was implied that current iPhone supplies preclude any major expansion in the short term. For the first time, Apple may be looking at an iPhone that sells out across the model year.

Other Tablets Still Suck

Trash-talkin’ Steve Jobs may not have been there to put the smack down on competing tablets, but Tim Cook filled those shoes admirably. According to Cook, competing tablets currently fall into one of three categories.
1. Window tablets that are “big, heavy, expensive, and have poor battery life,”and that require input devices like a stylus. Consumers are simply “not interested.”
2. Android tablets that, by Google’s own admission, run an OS not designed for tablets in sizes that are “less than reasonable,” failing to provide a “real tablet experience.” They are “scaled up smartphones” and Apple is ”not concerned” about them. I wouldn’t expect a 7-inch iPad this year.
3. Vapor. That would be tablets previewed at CES or earlier, and possibly the BlackBerry PlayBook, though RIM was never mentioned.
160 Million iOS Devices Sold

To put that number in perspective, the number of iOS devices passed 100 million last June. In September, that number was 120 million, and now it’s 160 million. By the time the next iPhone launches in June or July, it will be at least 200 million, perhaps as many as 250,000 million.

That’s the takeaway from this quarter’s conference call, six facts worth remembering.

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Apple Q1 2011: Apple Wins Christmas
For the holiday quarter, Apple reported revenue of $26.74 billion and a net quarterly profit of $6 billion, or $6.43 earnings per share, breaking the most recent record of $15.7 billion earned the previous quarter. Apple’s revenue surged past Wall Street estimates of $24 billion, and for the third year in a row, revenue has risen $5 billion or more during the first fiscal quarter. Although Steve Jobs is currently on a leave of absence, the obligatory press release quoted the CEO:

We had a phenomenal holiday quarter with record Mac, iPhone and iPad sales. We are firing on all cylinders and we've got some exciting things in the pipeline for this year including iPhone 4 on Verizon which customers can't wait to get their hands on.

The resurgent Mac also set a new sales record: 4.13 million units, breaking last quarter’s record of 3.9 million, and more than 750,000 Macs than the company sold a year ago. To put that number into even greater perspective, Apple sold 4.5 million Macs during all of 2005. Nine months after the launch of the iPad, it appears concerns of Mac cannibalization are groundless, though concern for desktop Macs might be warranted.

In 2010, two out of three Macs sold were laptops. For the first quarter of this fiscal year, Mac laptops represented 70 percent of sales. Mac desktop sales were actually down year-over-year, from 1.23 million to 1.28 million, while laptops surged to 2.9 million during the holiday quarter. While Apple doesn’t break out sales by individual model, the new MacBook Air appears to be having an impact. Apple has indeed become the “mobile devices company” Steve Jobs described last January during the iPad introduction, and the iPod remains the best-selling of Apple’s mobile devices.

Apple sold 19.4 million iPods in the first quarter, compared to nearly 21 million last year, a decrease of 7 percent. For the last four years, Apple has regularly sold between 20 and 25 million iPods during the holidays, indicating the iPod may have reached market saturation. Revenue, which had been increasing despite decreasing sales, is now flat, up just 1 percent. While Apple also doesn’t break out iPods by model, it’s been thought that increasing sales of the higher-priced iPod touch were offsetting an overall iPod sales decline. The change in revenue may indicate that the combination of the iPhone and the iPad are negatively impacting iPod touch sales.

As for the iPhone, after selling 14.1 million units during the first full quarter of iPhone 4 availability (July through September), Apple sold 16.2 million iPhones during the holidays. That’s up an astonishing 86 percent year-over-year, and since 2008, iPhone sales have approximately doubled during each subsequent year’s first quarter. The iPhone earned nearly $10.5 billion for Apple, some 40 percent of all revenue.

Looking forward to next quarter, it’s hard to imagine Apple beating sales for the last two quarters, especially since the next iPhone isn’t expected to arrive until June or July. However, Apple will have the Verizon iPhone, and could finally manage to ship the white iPhone, so another record quarter is possible.

Another sequential record quarter is a little harder to imagine for the iPad. Launched just over nine months ago, the iPad sold 7.33 million units during the holiday quarter, up from 4.19 million the previous quarter. It appears the iPad, like the iPod, has great seasonal cache as a Christmas present. That makes one wonder if the yearly launch may at some point be moved from spring to fall, when new iPods are traditionally unveiled.

That question may come up during Apple’s conference call today, along with the expected queries about Steve Jobs and his medical leave of absence. As always, TheAppleBlog will have highlights and commentary immediately following the call.

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Getting Around Apple's AirPrint Restrictions
New iPad ads show users effortlessly printing with the tap of a finger. Unfortunately, the reality doesn't match the ads: AirPrint, introduced in iOS 4.2, only works with 16 printers, all from HP. If you don't have one of these higher-end printers, you’re out of luck. Or you would be, if it weren’t for third-party solutions.

Enabling More Printers for AirPrint With Printopia

For those user who’ve upgraded to iOS 4.2, Ecamm Network provides an effective and reliable solution with Printopia. For $9.95, Printopia enables AirPrint on any printer your Mac can connect to and works with both Leopard and Snow Leopard (great for those still using PowerPC-based Macs). Not only does it allow printing, but it will also convert files to PDF or JPG for storage on your local Mac or on Dropbox.

Printopia has three key requirements: your iPad must be on the same network as your Mac, you must be running iOS 4.2 or higher, and the application you’re using must support AirPrint. If you don’t meet all those requirements, other options exist and I detail them below.

Pinnacle of Printing: Print Bureau

Eurosmartz has nine different printing apps ranging in price from $2.99 to $12.99. Print Bureau ($12.99) encompasses the features of all each in a single app and can print emails, contacts, calendars, pictures, clipboards and both local and cloud-based files. If it's on your iPad or accessible via your iPad, Print Bureau should be able to print it. I was able to directly access iDisk, Google Docs, Dropbox, box.net, FTP, and WebDav with the app.

Printing directly from Print Bureau can produce inconsistent results, since it communicates directly with printers. Fortunately, Eurosmartz also offers an alternative method using a companion application called "WePrint."

WePrint works on Macs running OS X Tiger and above, as well as on XP, Vista, and Windows 7. Instead of having Print Bureau (and any other Eurosmartz apps) print directly to the printer, WePrint intercepts the file and routes it through the desktop's native printer software, ensuring near-perfect compatibility.

Moreover, WePrint will monitor an email address for you and print any files you send it via the iOS app, thereby enabling printing from outside your local area network. They call it "Printing Over 3G", but you can be on any type of network to use it.

Other Alternatives

For basic photo printing, a majority of manufacturers have their own printing apps, which are usually free. I've tried both HP iPrint Photo 3 and Epson's iPrint. Both print pictures very well (including screen shots from other iOS apps). Considering these manufacturer-based apps are free, having them all in case you happen to need them is probably a good idea.

Other apps I tested such as Wella's Print Magic, Avatron's Air Sharing Pro, and Microtech's ePrint weren't always compatible with every printer in every situation. The key advantage of these apps is that they don't require a "helper" application to be installed on a separate computer. In public environments like a computer lab or hotel, Wella's ePrint was the most reliable. I was able to walk into a Wi-Fi network and simply print to an available printer. Great for printing a boarding pass at the last minute!

Developers Picking Up Where Apple Left Off

While we've come to expect the ability to print from any program on our Mac, it’s sadly still not fully baked in to the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch. Fortunately, programs like Printopia and Print Bureau are helping users bridge the gap between Apple's printing hype and the iOS reality.

Any other solutions you’ve found that aren’t listed here?

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Two Vintage Movie Making Apps Vie for an Audience
Apple is finally bringing AirPlay to home movies shot on the iPhone or iPod touch in iOS 4.3, which got me thinking that when it does arrive, I’d like to have some actual videos to show friends and family using the feature. Home movies tend not to be too thrilling, but a couple of new apps promise to at least make them visually interesting.

8mm Vintage Camera and Super 8 aim to do for iPhone video what Hipstamatic and Instagram did for iPhone photography. Both apps let you use filters to give video shot using your iPhone’s camera a retro look, but they go about it in different ways. 8mm applies the filter as you shoot, providing a live preview of how the end product will look while filming. Super 8 lets you film first, and then lets you choose which filters and effects to apply after the fact. Which will I use to document my excesses then share with friends and family? Let’s find out.

User Interface

Both apps feature a user interface in keeping with the concept behind their purpose, meaning they mimic the lock of old-school camera hardware. It’s cute, but it isn’t ideal from a UX perspective. While the built-in camera app features very little beyond a nearly full-screen preview of what your video will look like, both Super 8 and 8mm cut down considerably on how much of the screen is devoted to showing what you’re recording. At first glance, Super 8 seems to offer only a tiny viewfinder, but when you hold down the record button, the view expands to mostly fill the screen. Compared to Super 8, 8mm displays less of the video while actually recording, but it has to accommodate a variety of onscreen controls you can make use of while recording. Of the two, I prefer 8mm despite its smaller preview screen, since it doesn’t require you to hold the record button down to capture video.

Features

Speaking of those onscreen controls, they make for much more on-the-fly creative play from 8mm. You can switch lenses or film while recording with 8mm, and add authentic-looking frame jitter. The end result might not always work out with such a range of experimentation abilities, but it’s a lot more fun than Super 8, which just lets you record without the opportunity to add or change effects until you’ve finished recording.

Once you’re done recording, 8mm has basically done its job. You can share your videos via email or YouTube, or save them to your iPhone’s camera roll. Super 8, on the other hand, is just getting started. The edit suite is where you apply your vintage effects. You can choose from Light, Medium or Heavy effects, and adjust the color filter of your video from cool to warm using a slider. Hit the Process button, and Super 8 outputs the resulting video to your camera roll, while preserving the original unedited.

8mm offers more customizability, and Super 8 only lets you record snippets of up to 20 seconds at a time. I wish 8mm had an option to change or apply effects post-recording, and I wish both apps could import video already recorded to add effects after the fact, but I still think it offers the better feature suite overall.

Results

For my money, 8mm does the better job of delivering an awesome finished project with very little effort. I’ll let you check out the videos below, though, and judge for yourself.

Conclusion

At $1.99 for 8mm Vintage Camera, and $0.99 for Super 8, neither app is going to break the bank. But for my money, 8mm is hands-down the best buy in this category. The lack of a limit on the length of your video, the ability to switch and experiment on the fly, and the look of the final product put it well ahead of Super 8.

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iPad 2 Picture Getting Clearer as Rumors Ramp Up
The iPad 2 is said by some to be arriving as early as February or April (at least in the U.S.), and as is always the case when Apple hardware nears the end of a product cycle, the rumor mill starts working overtime. As consensus grows and independent reports start coming in from multiple sources, we end up with a much better picture of what to expect from Apple’s next iPad.

SD Card Slot

The latest rumor making the rounds is that the iPad will indeed have an SD memory card slot. This isn’t the first time such expansion is a possibility for the iPad 2, but now it’s been reported by a “trusted source” talking to Engadget, and it’s showing up in case designs from multiple manufacturers, as identified separately by AppleInsider and MIC Gadget. Since Apple already offers a way to access SD cards via the iPad Camera Connection Kit, there’s no good reason the company would object to building in the same functionality. In fact, it’s possible the only reason an SD slot wasn’t included the first time around was that it wouldn’t fit in the case.

Mini DisplayPort

The same case designs that back up the SD card slot rumor also indicate that another port will be introduced at the top of the device. The cutout for this alleged port is quite small, leaving few options for what it might be. Mini DisplayPort is a likely candidate, since even though it would eliminate the need for the iPad dock connector-to-VGA adapter, Apple could still sell various Mini DisplayPort converter accessories. A far less likely possibility for the spot is a micro-USB port, but there’s no way Apple would include that and still keep the dock connector.

“Retina” Display

The iPhone 4 introduced the world to the Retina Display, a 960×640 pixel screen with 331 ppi, a pixel density apparently beyond the threshold of human detection that makes for super crisp text and graphics. According to recent rumors stemming from resources found in the latest version of Apple iBooks app (1.2), the iPad will get twice the resolution it currently enjoys, bringing the total from 1024×768 to 2048×1536. As Kevin notes, that only adds up to a pixel density of 265 ppi, which, while not at the same level as the iPhone, is still a massive improvement, and will probably still be granted the “Retina” from Apple’s marketing department. Simply doubling the display resolution makes sense, since it’ll allow existing iPad apps to be compatible with the iPad 2 through zooming, though image quality will be somewhat degraded.

Front and Back Cameras

If there is any “sure thing” for the iPad 2, it’s that it will have two cameras: one in front for FaceTime, and one in the back for… well, actually, on a 9.7-inch tablet, probably mostly for occasional FaceTime use, too. Using it for general photographic and film-making seems incredibly awkward, even if the iPad 2 does sport a lighter, smaller body design.

Lighter, Smaller Body Design

Case designs and an actual iPad 2 mock-up used by a developer at CES earlier this month seem to support the idea that the next iPad will be smaller and slimmer than its predecessor. This is a standard improvement for new iterations of Apple gadgets, and it could help appease customers asking for a 7-inch iPad, something the company seems unwilling to provide. AppleInsider recently reported on an Apple patent that would allow the company to reduce the thickness and power consumption of capacitive touchscreens, which could be partially responsible for a new, smaller physical footprint in iPad 2.

Improved Processing and Graphics Power

The iPad 2 (along with the iPhone 5) is expected to get a new version of Apple’s custom A4 system-on-a-chip. According to a source talking to AppleInsider, the new version will have dual graphics cores to support the new Retina Display, and to allow for 1080p video playback (the current version tops out at 720p). The new graphics cores support OpenCL to share the burden of general purpose computing tasks with the GPU. The new chip will also pair the dual graphics cores with a dual core ARM Cortex-A9 chip for general processing. With a huge crop of potential iPad competitors unveiled at CES, these kinds of performance improvements are almost a necessity, but as is always the case with Apple products, hardware specs take a backseat to actual user experience, so if we see more modest improvements I won’t be surprised.

The iPad, Only Better

That’s the rumor picture of the iPad 2 as it currently stands. While all of these might not pan out, it’s worth remembering that no matter what the predictions made prior to an Apple product launch, and whatever the initial reaction to what does get announced, Apple consistently delivers a product that’s much better than the one that preceded it. Whatever its features, rest assured that the iPad 2 won’t be an exception to this rule.

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