Saturday, October 27, 2007

The Apple Blog (5 сообщений)

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The Apple Blog, published by and for the day-to-day Apple user, is a prominent source for news, reviews, walkthroughs, and real life application of all Apple products.
http://theappleblog.com
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  • How to launch an astronomically successful operating system

    Step 1. Announce a device running a version of said operating system with proper modifications for the device’s interface and applications.

    Apple Announces iPhone, Stock Soars. Jan 9 2007
    There have been very few times in Apple’s history where investors bought on the news. When Jobs started to introduce the phone, before calling it a phone, the numbers were climbing. He tells the crowd the iPhone prices $499 for the 4Gb model and $599 for an 8Gb model, making it one of the most expensive devices on the market. But no one seems to care because it is that cool and that revolutionary. Even if you’ve changed your mind now, I know very few people who saw it and thought it was going to fail.

    Step 2. Build up tension through product delay, mention undisclosed secret features, in order to release the iPhone on schedule.
    Apr 12th, Apple made a big statement that day. Jobs was betting that the iPhone was going to be a cash cow and worth the trade off. Marketing and PR went to town and made the bad news good, and I don’t think too many third party developers were upset. It was pretty clear, in my opinion, that the WWDC disks handed out during the conference were a clue that it might get delayed.

    A few months later, the iPhone goes on sale June 28th just before the end of Q3. "We are very pleased to report strong financial results including cash flow from operations exceeding $1.2 billion for the quarter," said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple's CFO. "Looking ahead to the fourth fiscal quarter of 2007, we expect revenue of about $5.7 billion and earnings per diluted share of about $.65." I think the growth projections speak for themselves!

    Step 3. Cash in on your hard work for the device and software.
    Oppenheimer Cashes In. July 30
    http://investing.businessweek.com/businessweek/resea…

    Jobs Cashes In. Aug 17
    On Monday, the iconic leader exercised 120,000 that were set to expire this week. Apple gave Jobs the options, which carried a strike price of $5.75 a share, in August 1997 when he rejoined the company’s board as part of his official return the company.
    http://www.macnewsworld.com/story/58895.html

    Apple announces price cuts for iPhone. Sept 5
    http://www.engadget.com/2007/09/05/apple-cuts-iphone-price-to-399/

    Step 4. Slash the price on a successful product 68 days after release and offer early adopters $100 store credit.

    And as we know, Mac OS X Leopard is $129 which means most of you probably held onto your credit to get Leopard for $30. Which for $30 is a steal, making 10.5 the most successful product launch on the planet. With Apple’s market share literally doubled since 10.4’s release combined with market data showing people buying new Macs regardless of the upcoming release, one can deduce that Apple has put themselves on a short time line to make enough copies to meet demand. As one reader said earlier when he asked the Fedex guy, “I’ve got a ton of these things”.

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  • Leopard Launch at Apple Store SoHo

    Apple SoHoTonight, my wife and I went over the Apple Store in SoHo to pick up Leopard. It was a dark and rainy night, but the line still extended around the block. The store had crowd control (they looked like bouncers to me) so everyone would line up orderly and around the block. You could only get in one way through the store’s double doors.

    Someone asked me, “Who is in there?” I explained to him that no one was in there and that these people were standing in the rain for an operating system. He scoffed and went on his way. As my wife and I were standing in line, a car pulled up and a woman yelled, “What’s the line for?” Someone from the line politely explained the line is for the Apple Store and we were waiting for the operating system. The woman in car seemed shocked and moved along. Several others asked the same questions, but responded with an knowing “Oh, yeah!” There was a rather communal feel on the line as someone suggested we just tell everyone that John Mayer is in there. It was a very friendly bunch. Additionally, some people from Parallels were handing out mints (or it could have been some nut handing out who-knows-what — this is New York, after all).

    We stood in the rain for a couple of minutes and eventually were let in by security. Several Apple Store employees were lined up handing out Leopard t-shirts. We were then sent upstairs to pick up Leopard. I also wanted a copy of iWork and an Apple Store employee told us to wait in line while he fetched it. The line moved so quickly, that we were next in line before the employee got back with our copy of iWork. We went over the Genius Bar which was a makeshift cashier counter where Apple Geniuses were acting as cashiers. There was a slight hitch in getting my education discount, but everything worked out. Plus, any time out of the rain was rather nice. It took us about 40 minutes to get through the whole excursion; now, I’ll be installing Leopard on my machines at home.

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  • Apple tells FedEx to delay shipments of Leopard

    Well this is interesting. I pre-ordered my copy of Leopard the first day it was available to do so. Apple guaranteed shipment on October 26 (today).

    The package was shipped via FedEx Priority Overnight which has a guaranteed delivery time of 10:30AM (unless you live in a remote area…which last time I checked Denver, CO wasn’t a “remote area”).

    I woke up this morning giddy like a 5 year old boy at Christmas to see that my copy of Leopard was on a truck and out for delivery still, according to FedEx, scheduled to be delivered by 10:30AM.

    Well, at about 10:15AM I checked the packaged status and it had the message “Delivery Exception - Future delivery requested.” I certainly didn’t request a “future delivery.”

    So I gave FedEx a call to see who requested it. I had a hunch that Apple might have done it. Sure enough, the support agent confirmed my hunch with the following message:

    This morning Apple made a request to us that FedEx disregard any guaranteed delivery times and instead deliver them end-of-day today as opposed to by 10:30AM.

    Awesome. I must now wait an additional 6-8 hours for my beloved Leopard because Apple doesn’t want people to get their copies before the 6PM launch parties tonight.

    Yes, I am aware that people have been getting their copies as early as Wednesday. No, I don’t really care that much that I’ve got to wait another few hours.

    I do have to say that this seems to be a bit of a sleazy move on Apple’s part, though. It seems, if anything, the people that pre-ordered it should somehow be rewarded for forking over money for something we haven’t really even seen or used yet as opposed to intentionally delaying things.

    Again, I’m being somewhat facetious about this. I just find it to be an interesting move on Apple’s part to micromanage things this far down the line.

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  • Apple ticks off 3rd-party developers (as usual)

    I haven’t agreed with a lot of what John Gruber has been posting lately, but I do agree with this point he makes. He points to Steven Frank’s post about not getting access to the Gold Master (final version) release of OS X Leopard before the general public. It’s pretty bad when developers are contemplating pirating your OS just to get their next release out the door on time.

    What’s really annoying is that they give it to Pogue and Mossberg, but not even their key (award-winning) developers. Pogue could be brutally beaten to within an inch of his life by Steve Jobs personally, and Pogue would still sing the praises (he sure drank the iPhone Kool-aid), but Steven Frank is some true talent that Apple could potentially lose (along with many other developers), and it might be hard to win them back. Sure, marketing for your new flagship OS product is important, but if you don’t have any new/updated 3rd-party software to join in the celebration on launch day (or happy developers to keep creating new products for it), what good will it do you? Apple has been known to stab developers in the back before, but if they don’t stop, it will cause them problems in the future.

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  • Review: B-Flex 2 USB Speaker

    JLab Audio carries a handful of products centered around audio - iPod Nano speakers, earbuds, iPod/iPhone cases, and USB speakers. I’ve had the opportunity to tinker with the latter of their offerings - the B-Flex 2 Hi-Fi Stereo USB Speaker. Now that’s a bit of a mouthful, so we’ll just call it the B-Flex 2 for our review purposes here.
    maxell blown away
    The B-Flex 2 is small, dual set of speakers (with dual, Hi-Fi drivers) that fit in the palm of your hand. The speakers (housed in a single shell) are mounted on about a 6 inch flexible ‘cord’ with a USB plug at the end. At first glance, the design is slightly odd, and the size of the speakers made me wonder exactly what the point of adding these to my MacBook really was. (Or in Josh’s keen observation, “They’re small speakers for computers with small speakers.” Well said Josh!)
    (more…)

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