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- Apple Q1 2010: Mad Money and Macs
Earnings for the first fiscal quarter of 2010 were insanely great with Apple selling a record number of Macs, and plenty of iPods and iPhones, too. Of course, part of that comes from adopting new accounting standards, but money is money no matter how you count it.
Apple reported revenue of $15.68 billion and a net quarterly profit of $3.38 billion, beating even the most optimistic of six-figure analysts, not to mention the Wall Street consensus. Apple CEO Steve Jobs focused on the meaning of the accounting change and teased us all via press release.
"If you annualize our quarterly revenue, it's surprising that Apple is now a $50+ billion company," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "The new products we are planning to release this year are very strong, starting this week with a major new product that we're really excited about."
I wonder what that could be? As for the non-investor who just likes Apple products, the holiday quarter was another record for Macs and iPhones, while iPods remain dominant in the market, if declining slightly in sales.
Astounding as it may seem, Apple sold more Macs last quarter than for the entire year a decade ago. Also of note is the ratio between laptops and desktops. Apple sold 2.128 million laptops and 1.234 million desktops last quarter, 63.3 and 36.7 percent, respectively. Apparently, the new iMac has at least temporarily reversed the decline of the desktop slightly.
With an eight percent decline year over year, clearly saturation point has been reached for iPods. Of course, that saturation point is 50 million iPods a year, so it could be worse. Also, it’s important to remember that some of those iPod sales are now iPhone sales.
An important shift in iPhone sales took place last quarter with iPhones breaking out of new-model cycle. Up until now, sales rose and fell more or less in relation to the launch of new iPhones, albeit at significantly higher sales levels after each cycle. Increased sales in Europe, and launches in Korea and China are likely a big part of this, so this quarter and next there may be a drop off in anticipation of the next generation device.
With the Apple event and an expected tablet in the immediate future, and a new, possibly Verizon, iPhone in the summer, it’s hard to imagine 2010 not superseding last year’s records. Expect analysts to futilely attempt to pry more information from Apple during the conference call, and TheAppleBlog to duly report the obfuscations.
Переслать - How-To: Turbocharge Your Browsing With Greasemonkey
While the debate over Mac versus PC will last for eternity, one of the elements that many "diehard" PC users have thrown at Apple fanboys is the ability to really tweak their experience, through application add-ons and plugins.
Mac users who use Firefox have had a little taste of this with Greasemonkey, a Firefox add-on that allows support for on the fly changes to websites. If you haven't heard of Greasemonkey, this is a must read for you and if your browser of choice isn't Firefox, we'll show you how to install its equivalent, GreaseKit with Safari.
What Is Greasemonkey?
Greasemonkey is an add-on for browsers that allow users to install "scripts" that are fine tuned to affect how different websites function. For example, if you're a person who uses MySpace and really hates how the login page is full of ads, you can install a script that adjusts the display of the page when it loads and gives you a cleaner experience.
Cleaning up MySpace is just the beginning; there are scripts for just about everything. If you're not a fan of the default Gmail web interface, you can use a script that declutters it.
But it's not just about changing the look and feel of a website; there are scripts that remove content like ads and scripts that add functionality, like a script that lets you add notes to entries in your Netflix queue.
Installing GreaseKit in Safari
While Greasemonkey is an easy add-on if you use Firefox, you can also use similar add-ons in Safari. For Safari users, begin by downloading SIMBL and install it. Then download GreaseKit and install the bundle file inside to
~/Library/Application Support/SIMBL/Plugins. If this folder doesn't exist, just add it before dropping the file inside.Next, relaunch Safari and, provided things worked well, you'll see a new menu entry for GreaseKit. Now go find some scripts (see below) and click "Install This Script" to copy it into GreaseKit. You'll see the JavaScript flash on screen and eventually it should be added to your GreaseKit menu.
Getting Scripts
There are a variety of places to find the scripts that integrate with Greasemonkey or GreaseKit. Userscripts.org is perhaps the largest of these and an excellent place to start. I urge caution though as these scripts can become dated when the websites they affect are updated. Also, because you're not running the scripts in Greasemonkey on Firefox for Windows (where they are usually tested), the add-ons may not function exactly as described. This is likely to happen in Safari if the script is overly complex, requiring additional interfaces to manage it.
Here are the scripts I've discussed in this article:
You also might enjoy the Unfriend Finder for Facebook that lets you know when (and who) has unfriended you. This particular script doesn't work well in Safari, so I recommend using it in Firefox.
Have you found any good scripts? Feel free to use the comments below and let us know what you think.
Переслать - Saving Your Life: There's an App for That
Let’s face it, most iPhone apps probably won’t even get used more than once or twice, and even then, you won’t be using them for anything particularly important. But one app came in very handy for one very lucky iPhone owner. The phone and the app belonged to an aid worker trapped after the tragic January 12 earthquake in Haiti.
Max Woolley, a father working in the area with a humanitarian aid group prior to the disaster, was buried under rubble for about 60 hours after the earthquake struck. During the quake, Woolley received fairly serious injuries to both his head and his leg. Luckily, he also had an app that dealt specifically with how to treat and respond to such injuries.
The app was Pocket First Aid & CPR, created by the American Heart Association in tandem with Jive Media. It allows users to browse a variety of first aid techniques and practices, provides emergency numbers, stores medical info such as blood type, insurance providers and emergency contacts, and instructs users on what to do in various emergency situations. Techniques are demonstrated using a combination of text instructions and videos of the procedures being done correctly. Probably a better bet than depending on that vaguely-remembered first aid course you took five months ago.
Woolley used the app to look up the correct method of treating his wounds. He learned to bandage his leg with his shirt and then tie-off the wound with his belt to slow the bleeding. For his head injury, the app told him not to fall asleep in case of concussion, so he set his iPhone’s alarm to go off every 20 minutes. Of course, the iPhone’s battery wasn’t up to the challenge of being almost perpetually in use for 60 hours, but Woolley says then when he did have to turn it off to conserve what little battery remained, his body was used to the cycle and wouldn’t drift off to sleep for longer than a few minutes at a time.
The app is a $3.99 purchase, but Woolley clearly thinks the money was well spent. There are other, free first aid applications available, but it was the American Heart Association connection that gave Woolley the confidence to follow the advice contained within to the letter. According to CNN, he said his phone “was like a high-tech version of a Swiss Army knife that enabled me to treat my own injuries, track time, stay awake and stay alive.”
Переслать - Decline of the Desktop Mac
Strolling the mall with my wife, I was looking for an excuse to visit the Apple Store, but instead I found a reason: the disappearing desktop.
"Where have all the desktops gone?" I asked her pointedly.
She looked inside the glass front and pointed. "They're right there."
"Well, yeah, but why are there so few? I need to investigate."
She sighed. "Don't buy anything."
"Don't be ridiculous," I replied. "This is work. Anyway, no one in the know buys anything right before an Apple event."
Well, not usually.
Inside, a quick count of Macs tallied just thirteen desktops, ten iMacs, two Mac minis, and a single Mac Pro. That contrasted with 36 Mac laptops.
If that disparity surprises, it shouldn't. A look at a few other numbers tells the tale of the respective rise and fall of Mac laptops and desktops, and maybe what it means to you.
I asked a nice person in a brightly-colored shirt about the dearth of desktops, but he didn't know anything, not even that there was a brightly-colored Apple event imminent. The invitations were privately sent out from far above the local Apple Store, and thus could not even be officially acknowledged below. That might explain from whence the store layout came.
Luckily, Apple must still divulge at least some information to the public, like Macs sold. Over the last decade laptop sales have been waxing, desktops not quite waning. While it is true desktop sales have seen some growth since the nadir in 2004, desktops have yet to match the sales record set in 2000. While that's not exactly the end of the world, looking at models in percentage terms of Macs sold does seem a little more apocalypsish.
Those trend lines are no friend of the Mac desktop. For 2009, seven out of ten Macs sold were laptops, and in 2010 that ratio will likely rise to three out of four. While this may explain the single table of iMacs in the back of my local Apple Store, the question now becomes: is the Mac desktop doomed?
Steve Jobs once described Apple's business model as an uncomfortable piece of furniture, a three-legged stool. What he was getting at is where the money comes from: Macs, iPods and the iTunes Store, and the iPhone.
This is Apple's business model without the awkward furniture metaphor. Looking forward into 2010, the iPhone is surging, pulling along the iTunes Store, the iPod flattening out, and Macs are holding their own, or rather laptops are. In 2010, the desktop Mac will likely account for just a tenth of Apple's net sales.
However, it's important to remember Apple is a company that makes things, four major hardware product types, maybe five soon, but four now.
In 2009, desktop Macs, which include the Xserve, Mac Pro, iMac, and Mac mini had net sales of $4.3 billion on 3.18 million units. That works out to about $1,350 per desktop, and compares favorably with laptops at $9.47 billion in sales on 7.2 million units, around $1315 per laptop. There is no chance Apple is going to take that kind of money off the desktop anytime soon, but an increasingly portable world will continue to have consequences for desktop users.
I was there at Macworld Expo 2005 when the Mac mini was introduced, and five years later it looks pretty much the same, even the new server model sans optical drive. From the outside, the Mac Pro of 2010 looks a lot like the PowerMac G5 of 2003, even though one could arguably create a lighter, more portable mid-tower case with Intel inside. Not going to happen.
While internal changes are required, external redesign of Apple's desktops would require R&D better spent on, say, a tablet. To that end, only Apple's flagship desktop, the iMac, has seen, and will likely see, further refinement. From polycarbonate to aluminum and glass, to maybe a dock/slot for a tablet, the iMac has effectively become the desktop Mac.
If you are the Panera Bread iMac Man, you probably won't notice, but for the rest of us desktop Mac users the future will pretty much look like the past.
Переслать - Rumor Has It: AT&T Losing iPhone Exclusivity this Wednesday
According to a report over the weekend on HotHardware.com, Apple may have more to announce at its special event this Wednesday than its mythical tablet.
We have been led to believe by an inside source that AT&T will lose their iPhone exclusivity on the same day, though it’s not yet clear what other carrier (or carriers) will be stepping in to also carry the phone.
It doesn't come as any great surprise to hear about the end of AT&T’s exclusive partnership with Apple, but I will be surprised if El Jobso deliberately announces it during his keynote. After all, if he did announce it, at what may become the most-watched-and-reported-on keynote in Apple’s history, the predictable whoops of delight from the attendees will be hugely embarrassing for AT&T. Will Jobs be so insensitive?
AppleInsider says AT&T's contract with Apple expires in June this year. Certainly, AT&T has recently been shoring-up its offering of smartphones to include Android-based handsets, but that’s hardly unusual for a mobile operator striving to remain relevant in a crowded and hugely competitive market.
While Apple may be looking forward to ending the exclusivity deal, I don't think the same is true of AT&T. They have attracted and retained millions of new subscribers with the iPhone since its launch in 2007. The press hasn’t been kind to it, and even its own CEO has criticized its bandwidth-chomping customers, but I’m sure AT&T doesn’t regret one single lucrative day of that almost-three-year partnership.
Brand Loyalty
Incidentally, this is pretty much win-win for Apple, who — I am sure — will see tremendous sales on other networks despite the relative age of the iPhone. For instance, here in the UK, O2 enjoyed high iPhone sales throughout its exclusive partnership period.
But as soon as O2's exclusive partnership with Apple ended, Orange reported record-breaking opening day iPhone sales. And more recently, a third major carrier, Vodafone, also started selling the iPhone and reported even higher opening day sales.
If this demonstrates anything, it is that significant numbers of customers remain loyal to their cellular networks, choosing to "make do" with whatever handsets are available to them, all the while quietly coveting the wares of competing operators. Personally, I have no such loyalty. Most of the operators here in the UK offer pretty much the same awful services at pretty much the same inflated prices, with only minor differences in tariffs. The biggest differences lie, as always, in the range of handsets they have to offer.
When I bought my iPhone back in 2007 I just happened to already be an O2 customer, but I readily admit, had I been with another carrier, I would have made the move without hesitation. I'm surprised, then, to learn that an awful lot of people are not so ready to switch. Apparently brand loyalty extends to products and services beyond Apple. Who'd have thunk it?
A Harsh Light
AppleInsider suggests this brand loyalty probably had something to do with the relative sales success of iPhone alternatives such as Motorola's Droid, which served as a "second best" choice for carrier-loyal customers who wanted an iPhone but weren't prepared to leave their existing network operator.
…an announcement this week might effectively preclude a large group of consumers from upgrading to phones they might otherwise be interested in because they know the iPhone will be hitting the relatively stable Verizon network in just a few months.
Verizon's network may be "relatively stable" right now, but wasn't AT&T's considered stable before the arrival of the iPhone in 2007? I don't know, of course, but — wasn’t AT&T always a bit rubbish? Didn’t it take the arrival of the iPhone to shine a harsh light on its patchy service?
Or was it the arrival of the iPhone that caused the degradation in service? HotHardware's Shawn Oliver thinks it was the latter.
The iPhone itself doesn’t really handle the switch from 3G to EDGE very well, so calls that are in-progress tend to fail… It seems that AT&T is tired of taking the heat for this, and at this point, they may be smart to just let another carrier take some of those customers who are most inclined to complain.
Did he just imply iPhone customers are a bunch of moaning minnies?
So who’s right? Will the inevitable opening-up of the iPhone to other carriers in the U.S. destroy Android sales? Will Americans enjoy the iPhone price wars that (sadly) never happened over here? Or will everyone be too busy cooing over the Tablet to even care?
Or — worse — what’s the chance that Apple will have an AT&T-related announcement this Wednesday, but rather than confirming the end of the exclusivity deal, could Jobs announce a new, extended exclusivity partnership that includes the iPhone and the Tablet? What fresh horrors could such a partnership bring?
Related GigaOM Pro Research: Why Apple Should Choose Sprint Before Verizon Wireless
Переслать - Apple to Time Capsule Customers: All Your Files Are Belong to Us
Back In October ‘09 I wrote an article about a disturbing failure-rate in Apple’s Time Capsules that was starting to gain some attention in the press. An apparent design flaw in the device was causing some units to die after about 12-18 months in operation. Reports on the Apple discussion forum at that time suggested the same flaw also affected Apple's Airport Extreme, a device that shares an almost identical form factor.
In what would prove disastrously precognitive, I wrote:
Imagine, then, the pain when a well-used Time Capsule croaks, taking up to 18 months' worth of incremental backups with it. I don't mind admitting that the thought of it strikes fear into my heart. I use two Time Capsules every hour of every day.
I can't help thinking that I don't own two Time Capsules; I own two ticking Time bombs.
Fast forward to early last week when my Mac Pro's 1TB Time Capsule breathed its last and died a sudden — if not entirely unexpected — death.
I called Apple Support and the guy on the other end of the phone asked me for the TC's serial number. A moment later he confirmed Apple was aware of "a fault" with that model and offered to replace it for free. So far so good.
The process was explained to me; I would receive the replacement TC in a few days, whereupon I had to return the dead TC to Apple. Immediately alarm bells rang in my brain.
"But what about my stuff?" I asked. There was a year's worth of data stuck on that thing. Finances, contacts, personal and shared calendars, photographs, email… I didn't relish the thought of sending all of that data to someone I didn't know. Not even if it was an Apple technician.
"Don't worry, we will wipe the drive thoroughly for you," offered the support guy, "It's safe with us."
No it isn't, I worried. "Can't I just remove the drive and wipe the data? I'll put it back if necessary, only, I'm concerned about–"
"No. You must not open the unit. If you do, you will void the warranty."
"It's already out of warranty," I replied as politely as possible, not wanting to sound like a jerk. "You're replacing it because of a design flaw, right?"
The Apple Support guy wouldn't budge. "If you open the case we will charge you the full price of a new Time Capsule."
The bottom line; Apple forbade me from retrieving my data from their Time Capsule. Doing so would somehow make me responsible for its death, even though they admitted the product was already faulty.
Now, I understand Apple wanting to retrieve faulty gear for study. Doing so helps them improve their products. But this isn't a broken mouse or keyboard. This is a device that stores a lot of valuable personal information. In this instance, shouldn't Apple exercise a higher degree of flexibility and sensitivity to customers?
I know what you're thinking; maybe they'd wipe it right before my eyes at the Apple Store? So I asked. He replied, "No. They'll give you a replacement but they will send the faulty device back to us for wiping."
So, either way, I get a replacement Time Capsule… but I have to surrender my personal data to Apple.
Trust
Apple sells a Time Capsule as part of a complete backup solution. Time Machine + Time Capsule = Backup. Right? The Time Capsule website even proclaims, "…you never have to worry about losing your important files." I guess the small print needs to add "…except when you're handing all your data to us."
Apple's bold promise on their Time Capsule website
What's more, in the days it took for the replacement to arrive, I had no satisfactory backup solution. Of course, it's not Apple's responsibility to ensure I always have a complete and reliable backup strategy in place, but it sure felt like Apple had let me down. (Yes, now I’m just ranting.)
Thankfully, Apple is doing the right thing by replacing (most) affected units, even if they're out of warranty and not covered by AppleCare. Yet I can't help feel that there's more they could have done; starting with permitting me to take responsibility for my own data, rather than threatening me with a hefty charge to my credit card if I did so.
Apple normally pays close attention to the little details other companies miss, but here it feels like they failed to appreciate the single biggest issue – the proper handling of customer's valuable personal data. If they had paid closer, more careful attention to that detail, I might not feel so indignant today… and I might still be recommending the Time Capsule to my friends. As it stands, the Time Machine + Time Capsule solution is great when it works. But if it breaks, customers may have to face zero backup functionality and a worrying lack of perspective from Apple when it comes to allowing them to take steps to secure their personal data.
Am I overreacting? Should I simply trust Apple with all my personal files, no questions asked? Leave a comment below to tell me I'm a shameless drama queen and how, like you, I should be using an offsite RAID array if I’m serious about backup.
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