Articles about Apple

It's becoming a familiar story. A big name company decides to reveal figures about the number of requests for data that have been received from the government, apologizing straight away for the lack of detail it can provide. Microsoft has already done it, as has LinkedIn and Google. The latest figures come from Apple, and they make for interesting reading.

The report starts off by stating that Apple is revealing as much information as it is legally allowed to, and then immediately goes on the defensive:

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Worldwide, Windows Phone may hold a distant third-place spot in the smartphone market, but in Europe handsets running the mobile tiled OS are closing in on Apple's iPhones through huge share gains. According to a new Kantar Worldpanel ComTech report, in five key local markets Windows Phone sales more than doubled in Q3 2013, compared to the same period from last year. Meanwhile, iPhones lost market share.

In France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy and Spain combined, Windows Phone's market share grew to 9.8 percent in Q3 2013 from 4.6 percent a year earlier. The highest market share gains happened in France (to 10.7 percent from 5.2 percent), Germany (to 8.5 percent from 2.5 percent) and Great Britain (to 11.4 percent from 4.2 percent), with Italy and Spain posting more moderate growths (to 13.7 percent from 10.8 percent and to 3.7 percent from 2.2 percent, respectively). By contrast, in the said local markets iPhone's market share decreased to 14.6 percent in Q3 2013 from 16.8 percent a year earlier.

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Sometimes there is revolution in evolution. That's my surprising reaction to iPad Air, which Apple started selling on November 1. This is simply the best tablet I have ever used. Period. The fruit-logo company wisely chose to resist reinventing the wheel and build a vehicle around four instead.

For people who complain -- and there are many -- that Apple's newest 9.7-inch tab shows waning innovation, let me correct the record. You are oh-so wrong. iPad Air is an amazingly refined piece of art -- like a sculpture chiseled to perfection. iPad 3 and 4 are unpolished bricks by comparison. More importantly, anyone looking for a tablet to largely, or completely, replace a Windows PC or Mac, Air is it.

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This week Google put an end to all the speculation and finally launched not only the Nexus 5 but also the new version of Android -- KitKat. There were no great surprises as there had been so many leaks prior to launch that we knew pretty much everything there was to know, but it was good have the rumors confirmed. Expect a full review in the very near future. The Nexus 5 comes with KitKat preinstalled, but it will also be available as an upgrade for a number of other handsets. As it this wasn't quite enough for Google, the company also donated 17,000 Nexus 7s to communities affected by Hurricane Sandy.

After the recent announcement, the iPad Air went on sale, and Logitech was ready with a series of cases.

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The Lumia 1020 is famous for its camera. The Nokia smartphone offers a 41 MP shooter with Xenon flash, Zeiss lens and OIS (Optical Image Stabilization). It’s capable of producing photos at a whopping 7712 by 5360 resolution and recording 1080p video at 30 FPS.

Apple’s 8 MP iSight camera on the iPhone 5s is much weedier in comparison, although it does have some tricks up its sleeve, including a sensor that increases the area available for pixels by 15 percent. But even so, pitted head-to-head you’d expect the Nokia phone to win easily right? Apparently not. According to Laptop Mag, it’s Apple’s new phone that takes the crown.

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Google groupies make too much of third quarter tablet shipment estimates released yesterday. By IDC's reckoning, Apple's global share fell from 40.2 percent to 29.6 percent year over year. Meanwhile, Samsung soared from 12.4 percent to 20.4 percent share. The whole Android market grew at iPad's expense -- that's the popular contention smirked across the InterWebs. Yeah, right.

Apple apologists are quick to give the money rebuttal whenever market share tides turn against the products -- that the fruit-logo company earns more per device than rivals, sometimes all of them combined. The revenue rebuttal is exhausting for being so predictable but often also it's right and no truer than the tablet market. Q3 share numbers make lots of sense behind CEO Tim Cook's shocking decision to raise iPad mini 2 prices by $70 over the original -- that's about 22 percent. Profit share is his priority.

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It was only two weeks ago that Microsoft shocked the world and made Microsoft Remote Desktop a cross-platform affair. Today, Microsoft shocks us again and announces that over one million people have downloaded the app.

In other words, over a million people found OS X or their mobile devices to be insufficient in meeting their needs. After all, if a user can satisfactorily accomplish one-hundred percent of their needs on an iPad or Android tablet, there would be no reason to download the app and connect to a Windows machine.

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One of the biggest advantages to owning a Mac, and one of the main reasons why I purchased a 2013 Apple MacBook Air, is the option to run both OS X and Windows natively, without using virtualization software. Apple actively supports Microsoft's PC operating systems by releasing drivers, firmware and documentation, that Mac users can leverage to install Windows and make the best out of a different situation -- after all, Windows is not designed to work on Macs.

The portal to running Windows on Macs is Boot Camp. The OS X software is designed to simplify the process for users, by offering an easy to follow wizard that can be used to create bootable Windows USB drives (and DVDs for older Macs), download drivers, partition the internal drive to make room for the new OS and kick off the installation process. It is very, very user-friendly. Well, most of the time...

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According to new quarterly reports from IDC and Strategy Analytics, Samsung has increased its lead on the smartphone market in Q3 2013. The South Korean maker's shipments were higher than those of the next four-largest vendors, combined, according to the IDC data.

Samsung's smartphone shipments surpassed 80 million units (IDC -- 81.2 million; SA --88.4 million), leading to a market share above 30 percent (IDC -- 31.4 percent; SA -- 35.2 percent). Once again, the two research firms, both of which count shipments, provide different data sets for both shipments and market share. However, both reports say that in Q3 2013 smartphone shipments reached record levels (IDC -- 258.4 million; SA -- 251.4 million).

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I have been having a great time using the Surface 2 in my "all-in on Microsoft" experiment. Microsoft's tablet works great on its own, but the keyboard accessories (Touch 2 and Type 2 covers) enhance the overall functionality. While the iPad is a great tablet too, Apple simply does not provide a physical mobile keyboard solution. Instead, the iPad community relies on third-party offerings to supplement the deficiencies of the Apple tablet in this regard.

While third-party accessories can be hit-or-miss, Apple fans need not worry; Logitech has their back. Yes, the renowned manufacturer has been making Apple accessories for many years. Today, the company announces four new cases for the recently announced iPad Air -- three of which are keyboard-variants.

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Apple took center stage this week. At a special event the new iPad Air, iPad mini, Mac Pro and a raft of free software were all revealed, and we liveblogged through the whole thing. Not to be outdone by Microsoft, Apple decided to give Mavericks away free of charge along with iWork and iLife. But it was the iPad Air and mini that stole the show, sharing the same innards as the recently announced iPhone 5s, but boasting a redesigned exterior -- at least in the case of the Air.

Of course, no tablet launch would be complete without matching cases. There was also the interestingly designed Mac Pro which looks delightful and is a serious powerhouse, but has a price tag to match. After the big launch of the iPhone 5s, Apple showed off the latest addition to the iPhone range in a TV commercial.

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Apple's long-awaited iPad refresh is finally a reality. Apple's new full-size iPad, rebranded as the "iPad Air", starts at the usual $499 price. Apple also unveiled an iPad mini with retina display, with a higher starting price of $399 and retained the original iPad mini at $299. Finally, the aging iPad 2 was also retained with the price unchanged at $399. This essentially proves my theory that Apple's pricing strategy has nothing to do with a "price umbrella" and everything to do with margins.

Apple's primary business model is selling high-margin hardware, so this should come as no surprise. While many like to draw comparisons to the iPod, the limited set of "jobs to be done" allowed Apple to aggressively slash BOM costs, thereby allowing lower prices at higher margins. This approach is no longer viable for the iPhone/iPad because of broader use cases and competition from modular vendors. Based on this, let's take a look at the iPad product portfolio and gauge its impact on Apple's holiday quarter.

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New iPads reveal much about Apple's current and long-term device dilemmas. Full-size iPad cannibalizes Mac sales, while mini does the same to the larger tablet. Those are the clear takeaways from yesterday's product launches.

CEO Tim Cook is no Steve Jobs, and perhaps that's a good thing. Where Jobs championed grammatically incorrect "think different" -- as a marketing and product development strategy -- Cook thinks differently, making fundamentally difficult branding and pricing decisions to preserve current and future Apple crops. There's great risk in the strategy and greater by doing nothing.

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Yesterday was unquestionably the day of the tablet. Nokia unveiled the Lumia 2520, its first Windows RT 8.1 slate, Apple announced the iPad Air and iPad mini with Retina display, and Microsoft’s Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2 went on sale.

It was unfortunate timing for Microsoft. On a day when Steve Ballmer and co. would have hoped people would be talking about Surface, they were salivating over Apple instead. The fruit logo company inflicted more damage on Microsoft than just drawing focus for a day however.

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Historically, the Mac Pro has been a beast of a machine -- a giant footprint on the desks of professionals. When it was originally released in 2006, it became an iconic fixture among artistic professionals. However, it was not just the outward appearance that was so pleasing to consumers, it was the inside too.

When the first generation was released, I was working at CompUSA. The store had an Apple section with a dedicated representative -- a precursor to the Apple store and its geniuses. We would often open up the machine to show off the internals because it was just that amazing. At the time, the inside of a typical Windows machine was just a mess of wires and poor design. The inside of the Mac Pro was organized and well thought out. Today, in continuing with this tradition, Apple officially launches the all-new Mac Pro. While things change, they also stay the same.

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