AllThingsD » iPod

Listen Up! Neil Young Joins Dive Into Media Next Week.

Peter Kafka — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 18:50:20 +0000

We’re a week away from the D: Dive Into Media Conference, which is going to feature a wide-ranging group of industry leaders who are going to have some very different takes on the way media and technology are colliding.

In light of this month’s SOPA/PIPA debate, for instance, it ought to be very interesting to compare and contrast what Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman and YouTube head Salar Kamangar have to say about copyright and piracy. (Not that they were on the same page to begin with.)

But in addition to executives who help distribute media for a living, we also wanted to make sure we heard from content makers at Dive. We’ll have several, but none more famous than Neil Young.

One of the nice things about having a music icon join you onstage is that you don’t need to spend much time introducing him (though it’s easy enough to get the official and unofficial takes; and, courtesy of Kamangar’s YouTube, plenty of audiovisual reminders, which you can see at the bottom of this post).

That’s going to give us more time to have a freewheeling conversation: The man has a 40-plus-year career and is still making music and movies today, so there’s a lot of ground to cover. One digital topic I imagine we’ll certainly touch on: His long-running campaign to fix the way modern music sounds – not the songs themselves, but the way they’re recorded and distributed.

That isn’t the easiest sell, when lots of people seem content to listen to super-compressed iTunes files bleeding out of tiny, tinny, laptop speakers. But perhaps things are changing a bit: Dr. Dre and company sure have sold a lot of sort-of high-end Beats headphones in recent years.

Dive kicks off on the evening of Jan. 30, and we’ll have complete coverage here. If you want to join us in person in Laguna Niguel, Calif., grab a seat.

Secondary iPhone Market a Boon for AT&T, Verizon -- and Apple, Too

John Paczkowski — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 11:55:09 +0000

Where do old iPhones go to die?

Some are thrown away. Others are forgotten. Still others are passed on to children and become iPods. But many find a new life with a new owner. Turns out that the secondary market for the iPhone is nearly as robust as the primary market. And it’s growing steadily larger and more important for Apple’s carrier partners, and for Apple itself.

Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP) recently surveyed the secondary iPhone market in the U.S. and found it to be thriving. Since the Oct. 14, 2011, debut of the iPhone 4S, 53 percent of new iPhone buyers have introduced their old phone into the secondary market. Of those, 49 percent were iPhones, 21 percent were BlackBerrys and 15 percent were Android devices.

Why does the secondary market skew so heavily toward the iPhone?

“We think the secondary market for the iPhone is more established, since iPhone has the longest track record for a single device/platform, and for many it is the aspirational entry-point smartphone,” CIRP co-founder Mike Levin told AllThingsD. “IPhones also had the advantage of having a useful second life as iPod touch substitutes, which made their used value a little clearer from the start. As a GSM phone, AT&T iPhones also could be [unlocked] for use on other GSM networks, so there was an early secondary market for iPhones on other carriers — though this was, of course, limited to more savvy and aggressive technology consumers.”

Now here’s where things get interesting: Among consumers who gave their old iPhone to someone else, 87 percent expected the recipient to activate it on a wireless carrier. Extrapolating from that, CIRP estimates that 11 percent of iPhone activations since the launch of the iPhone 4S, on Oct. 14, 2011, have been used iPhones.

That’s a significant number for a few reasons: It explains the discrepancy we sometimes see between carrier activation numbers and iPhone sales. And it allows CIRP to put a value on secondary market iPhone activations — activations for which AT&T and Verizon, the two carriers with the most legacy iPhones on their networks — aren’t subsidizing hardware.

The research firm believes that, for every used iPhone that carriers activate, they save around $400. In the fourth quarter of 2011 alone, CIRP figures that secondary-market activations saved AT&T and Verizon between $400 million and $800 million in subsidy costs.

So a thriving secondary market for iPhones, or any smartphone for that matter, is good news for the carriers.

But what about Apple? Every iPhone purchased on the secondary market is one that’s not bought at full retail price from Apple or one of its partners. There’s got to be some harm there, even if it’s only minor.

“We think the secondary market is both detrimental and beneficial to Apple,” said Levin. “It hurts Apple because it creates competition for new iPhones, which we see in the relatively modest sales of reduced-price iPhone 4 and free iPhone 3G units. But it also benefits the company because used iPhone customers aspire to own the newest and best iPhone, so they are likely future new phone customers. In fact, they are likely new entrants to the Apple ecosystem, who otherwise would not have found a way in.”

And every new entrant to the Apple ecosystem is another potential customer for the company’s iTunes Store. That, too, is good news for Apple, and for app developers and content creators.

“Secondary-market iPhone owners are new content and app consumers,” said Levin. “We don’t know if these customers have the same budget for content compared to new iPhone customers, but reactivated iPhones will more likely consume content and download apps than forgotten old phones left in drawers.”

In other words, the secondary iPhone market is doing far more good than bad for the broader ecosystem.

“It makes me think of an analogy from the used-car market: It’s not perfect, but it’s not bad, either,” said Levin. “In the early days, used cars cannibalized new-car sales, but now they create brand loyalty in customers that can’t afford new cars, and they create a new revenue stream in repairs and accessories for the original manufacturer.”

Sony Music Service Coming to iPhones

Peter Kafka — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 21:00:22 +0000

Sony says its “Music Unlimited” service will be available for Apple’s iPhones and iPods – but not iPads – within the next three months. The subscription service launched last year without any mobile options at all, then expanded to include some devices running Google’s Android operating system. Sony says the service now has a million users, but won’t disclose how many of them are paying monthly fees and how many are using a free trial.

Will That Be Sir Jonathan, or Sir Jony?

Arik Hesseldahl — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 03:49:04 +0000

Apple design guru Jonathan “Jony” Ive has been awarded a second knighthood by the Queen of England as part of her annual list of honors. Ive has been named Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, or KBE for short. When in England or any member of the British Commonwealth like Canada, he will be entitled to be addressed as Sir Jonathan.

Its his second honor from the Queen, who named him Commander of the British Empire, or CBE, in 2006. The new title will be conferred by the touch of a sword held by the Queen.

Interestingly, Ive is only one of two people being given this particular title this year, from the extensive list of other honors published in the London Gazette. (Ive’s name appears on page 24 of the announcement; there’s a PDF of that page here.) The other KBE recipient is the art historian John Patrick Richardson, who wrote a well regarded biography of Pablo Picasso.

The best profile of Ive that I know of is this 2006 BusinessWeek story by my former colleague Peter Burrows. It’s more than five years old, and so may be a bit dated, but it’s terrific.

The full announcement from the British Embassy is below.

Her Majesty the Queen honours Apple designer with knighthood

31 December 2011

Jonathan (Jony) Ive has been appointed by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II a Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (KBE).

The honour, for the lead designer at Apple Inc. of products like the iPod and iPad, was part of the New Year 2012 Honours List and was in recognition of Jonathan Ive’s services to design and enterprise.

“I am keenly aware that I benefit from a wonderful tradition in the UK of designing and making,” said Jony Ive. “To be recognized with this honour is absolutely thrilling and I am both humbled and sincerely grateful.”

“I discovered at an early age that all I’ve ever wanted to do is design,” Ive added. ” I feel enormously fortunate that I continue to be able to design and make products with a truly remarkable group of people here at Apple.”

The British Consul General in San Francisco, Priya Guha, said she was “delighted that Jony Ive has been granted this exceptional honour by Her Majesty The Queen. Through his design of the iMac, iPod, iPhone and iPad, his work has transformed the lives of a generation of people, revolutionising the way people interact with technology. He epitomizes the strengths of British design and innovation.”

British Honours are bestowed on merit for exceptional achievement or service to British interests. This is the second royal honour for Ive, who was awarded a CBE (Commander of the British Empire) in 2006 for his achievements in British design and innovation. The current Knighthood recognises his work on raising design standards generally in consumer, industrial and professional goods and for his championing of British design.

Jonathan Ive becomes Sir Jonathan Ive, and the knighthood will be conferred by the touch of a sword by Her Majesty The Queen.

London-born designer Ive is the Senior Vice President of Industrial Design at Apple, reporting directly to the CEO. Since 1996, he has been responsible for leading a design team widely regarded as one of the world’s best.

Ive has demonstrated a life-long commitment to design. He has been recognized with numerous design awards including being named Designer of the Year by the Design Museum London and awarded the title Royal Designer for Industry by The Royal Society of Arts.

Ive holds honorary doctorates from The Royal College of Art, The University of Arts London, the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and Northumbria University (Newcastle Polytechnic) where he also received his Bachelor of Arts degree. He holds 596 design and utility patents in his name.

After graduating in 1989, he co-founded the London design agency Tangerine, where he designed everything from washbasins to televisions. In 1992, he moved to Apple and, after the return of Steve Jobs in 1997, became Senior Vice President of Industrial Design, designing the first iMac in 1998, its progressively sleeker successors, and then the iPod, iPhone and iPad.

The Queen chooses the recipients of Honours on the advice of the Prime Minister and other relevant ministers, to whom recommendations are made by their departments or members of the public. Private nominations–those made by individuals or by representatives of organisations to the Prime Minister’s Office–can also be made and account for about a quarter of all recommendations.

(Image is a screen grab from this Apple video on the MacBook Air.)

Apple Joins the Flash Madness Club With Anobit Deal

Arik Hesseldahl — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 19:58:39 +0000

Apple appears to have closed its deal for the Israeli flash-memory concern Anobit.

Apple isn’t commenting and is officially treating all this as rumor and speculation (it rarely comments on acquisitions, anyway). But the deal is being reported in Israeli newspapers, and the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tweeted a welcome message to Apple today, which sure feels like confirmation. So I’ll proceed under the assumption that the reports of this acquisition are true.

Welcome to Israel, Apple Inc. on your 1st acquisition here. I’m certain that you’ll benefit from the fruit of the Israeli knowledge.

December 20, 2011 2:55 am via webReply RetweetFavorite

@IsraeliPM

The PM of Israel

That makes this a cause for celebration. With the Anobit buy, Apple is now the latest member of the Flash Madness Club, which I created over the summer, in the wake of the Fusion-io IPO and other activities by notable flash-technology companies like Violin Memory, Pure Storage and Qwilt.

So why is Apple willing to throw down a reported half-billion dollars on this company? It’s because flash memory has a fundamental problem: As it ages, its ability to store data wears off. This problem is sometimes compared to the semiconductor equivalent of Alzheimer’s. Individual cells on the flash-memory chip lose their ability to store the individual ones and zeros that make up the pictures and music and other data they may be storing, especially after millions of read-and-write operations — the act of putting data on the chip and then loading it from the chip for use. After a lot of heavy use — this can vary depending on the chip — the chips begin to suffer problems with “endurance.”

As flash starts to show up in data centers and PCs and other places beyond consumer gear like iPhones and iPads, this becomes a more important problem. If your iPad gets old enough to suffer data-endurance problems, it’s a pretty simple matter to replace it. But in the more rigorous world of an enterprise data center, where millions of reads and writes will be done on a chip daily, data endurance is a potentially very expensive problem. In the enterprise, a solid-state drive is considered suitable only if it can stand up to five full-drive write cycles, where the drive is filled to capacity and then erased every day for five years.

Anobit’s solution to these problems involves techniques known as memory-signal processing and the use of some secret-sauce memory-processing error-correction algorithms, plus some management tricks for moving data around a flash chip in more efficient ways, in order to make them last longer.

It’s also the sort of problem that a company like Apple — which is the world’s largest consumer of flash memory, and has been for several years — would want to solve. Think of the many places where Apple uses flash — the iPad, iPhone, iPod, MacBook Air and Apple TV. And those are just the products we know about, so far. Flash can’t help but appear in many more products.

On top of that, flash technology plays a significant role in Apple’s data centers. Fusion-io, the company that builds flash-based insert cards that speed up garden-variety servers, has named Apple as a significant customer, so there’s plenty of flash inside Apple’s facilities in North Carolina. Flash endurance can’t help but be a problem Apple might face with its iCloud service, for example.

Israel has a big connection to the flash industry. SanDisk’s founder, Eli Harari, is Israeli; a few years back SanDisk acquired an Israeli company called Msystems, which, if my memory serves, was the first to popularize what we now call a thumb or keychain drive. So, historically, there have been a lot of useful innovations on flash memory that have come out of that country. Supposedly, the deal calls for Apple to open a research center there, so it will get the benefit of ongoing innovations on flash. Chances are it’s going to need a few.

Don't Browse and Drive

Voices — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 08:01:31 +0000

Our study of iPod distraction found that selecting a song on an iPod can degrade performance almost twice as much as dialing a cell phone. Even more surprisingly, selecting a song can degrade performance twice as much as watching a video on the iPod.

– Researcher Dario Salvucci, whose work focuses on multitasking and interruption, including driver distraction

From iPods to Thermostats: Nest CEO and Founder Tony Fadell Speaks! (Video)

Kara Swisher — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 19:02:43 +0000

When Tony Fadell left Apple for good in March of last year, the man who has been dubbed the “father of the iPod” said in an interview that his “primary focus will be helping the environment by working with consumer green-tech companies.”

Fadell has kind of kept that promise with the recent launch of Nest, his new start-up that is focused on super-smart, well, thermostats.

Before you drift off to dreamland at the thought of being even slightly interested in the mundane household device that you fight over with your family (along with the remote), Nest is indeed in keeping with the idea of making the home more digitally aware.

With a wheel user interface, a Wi-Fi connection, sensors aplenty and an ability to learn your behavorial patterns, Nest is a temperature-taking version of an iPod.

And it’s also pretty, clad in simple brushed stainless steel, and pricey too. And, also like most Apple products, it is selling like hotcakes.

Here’s the always affable Fadell talking about why he moved in this unusual direction, although he gives up little info about Nest’s funding:

[ See post to watch video ]

How Thrilled Is Texas Instruments to Have Its Chips in the Kindle Fire?

Arik Hesseldahl — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 18:03:18 +0000

This morning, I awoke to something I never thought I’d see. It was an email message, and what it contained was so rare that I thought I had to share it with you.

Yesterday, I published a story about the teardown analysis by IHS iSuppli of Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablet. And, as you may remember, the story related how, in the opinion of its analysts, it cost Amazon $201.70 to buy the parts and build the Fire — a sum which is only slightly above the $199 retail price of the device.

The other big news was how dominant the chipmaker Texas Instruments is among the suppliers. Its applications processor chip, wireless chips, and audio and power management chips add up to about $25, approximately 12 percent of the bill of materials (BOM), which is the aggregate cost of all the components. It’s a pretty solid victory for TI in the competitive tablet field, where, outside of Apple’s iPad, success has been rare.

Naturally, I asked Texas Instruments for a comment about this, and expected none. I’ve been writing teardown stories for six years (here’s the first I ever did); never once has the manufacturer of the device in question, nor any of its suppliers, given anything more than a “no comment.”

Manufacturers tend to hate teardowns because they’re invasive. Take a product apart and you find out who a company is working with — and you learn a lot about how they see things. With the Kindle Fire, for example, we learned that Amazon deliberately took a “less is more” approach to keep costs down, minimize its loss and pave the way to eventually selling the device at a profit.

Suppliers hate teardowns, too. There is nothing more secret — or more interesting to know — than what company is supplying a manufacturer with a key component. Companies can rise or fall on a strategic relationship with someone like Apple or HP — or Amazon. The first iPod, for example, put an otherwise unknown company named PortalPlayer on the map — until Apple replaced its chips with something else. Now that company is part of Nvidia.

Usually these suppliers are unwilling to rock the boat, and usually they’re covered by nondisclosure agreements. So when I do the typical reporter thing and call them for a comment, after a teardown clearly shows their chip or display or other component inside the product, the supplier always — 100 percent of the time, without exception — says, “No comment.” Probably they’d like nothing more than to brag about how their chip makes this or that product do amazing things, but usually they just can’t, won’t and just don’t say a word.

Until today. Today, in response to my questions of yesterday, I got a comment from Texas Instruments. And that meant I just had to share it. Here it is, courtesy of a company spokeswoman:

“We can confirm that TI’s OMAP4430 processor and WiLink 6.0 connectivity combo solution are inside of the Kindle Fire. … TI is thrilled to be a part of the Amazon Kindle Fire, which boasts powerful performance and engaging consumer experiences that are sure to make it a coveted device this holiday season.”

Not exactly riveting. But rare!

Apple Warns of Battery Overheating Risk with First Generation iPod Nanos

Ina Fried — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 09:57:00 +0000

Apple on Friday said that the battery in some first-generation iPod nanos could overheat and told users to stop using the devices and send them to the company for replacement.

It’s what you or I might call a recall, though Apple likes to call them “replacement programs” unless they are certain types of issues coordinated with the U.S. consumer product safety authorities.

The affected models are the kind with the white or black plastic front and silver back and were sold between September 2005 and December 2006. Apple said the issue is limited to that first generation iPod nano and doesn’t affect other models.

“This issue has been traced to a single battery supplier that produced batteries with a manufacturing defect,” Apple said in a post on its support Web site. “While the possibility of an incident is rare, the likelihood increases as the battery ages.”

The site provides instructions for checking the serial number and, if necessary, returning the units to Apple for a replacement, which is then waranteed for 90 days.

Apple Turns iPhone and iPod Touch Into World's Smallest GarageBand

Ina Fried — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 16:45:28 +0000

After already bringing GarageBand to the iPad, Apple said on Tuesday that it is bringing its music creation app to the iPhone and iPod touch.

The app will work on iPhones from the iPhone 3GS on forward as well as the third- and fourth-generation iPod touch. It’s free to those who have the iPad app and $4.99 for new purchases.

Among its features, the program will let users plug an electric guitar into their iPhone or iPod touch, or record voice and other acoustic sound via the device’s built-in mic.

Apple Hasn't Sold So Few iPods Since 2005

Liz Gannes — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 20:51:56 +0000

Sales of Apple’s iPod continue to decline in the face of the growth of its newer product lines. Apple sold 6.62 million iPods in its fourth quarter of 2011, a 27 percent decline on the year.

The last time Apple sold so few iPods was in the third quarter of 2005, when it sold 6.16 million. Quarterly iPod sales peaked in the first quarter of 2009 at 22.7 million.

Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer said that the iPod Touch accounted for more than half of iPods sold in the quarter.

The company did, however, see year-over-year increases in sales of iPhones, iPads and Macs.

Apple Results Fall Short of Consensus

Arik Hesseldahl — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 20:40:41 +0000

Here’s a quick first take on Apple’s quarterly results as released just moments ago. Apple shares fell $21.78, or more than 5 percent, in after-hours trading on the news.

Sales were $28.27 billion and per-share profits were $7.05, falling short of Wall Street consensus estimates of $29.45 billion and $7.28 per share.

Apple sold 17.07 million iPhones during the quarter, which is okay when you consider that the rumor mill about a new iPhone was seriously buzzing but good during the summer months, and yet didn’t seem to dampen demand entirely, but given the Street expected at least 20 million units sold, it’s a miss, though not an unprecedented one. That makes it 72.3 million sold during the fiscal year.

IPad sales hit 11.12 million, amounting to growth of 21 percent. Apple finished the year having sold 32.4 million iPads. That’s a solid beat on expectations.

Mac sales continued their their steady climb upward. Apple sold 4.9 million Macs during the quarter, bringing the fiscal year’s total sold to 16.8 million. This is yet another record quarter for Mac sales.

Apple exits the year with $81.5 billion in combined cash, short-term and long-term investments. Certainly, calls for Apple to do something with this enormous pile of wealth besides “preserving,” as it has been for a decade or more, will intensify.

Apple shares finished the day up $2.25, or less than 1 percent, and closed at $422.24 during the regular trading session.

Here’s Apple’s statement in full:

CUPERTINO, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)– Apple® today announced financial results for its fiscal 2011 fourth quarter ended September 24, 2011. The Company posted quarterly revenue of $28.27 billion and quarterly net profit of $6.62 billion, or $7.05 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $20.34 billion and net quarterly profit of $4.31 billion, or $4.64 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 40.3 percent compared to 36.9 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 63 percent of the quarter’s revenue.

The Company sold 17.07 million iPhones in the quarter, representing 21 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 11.12 million iPads during the quarter, a 166 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. The Company sold 4.89 million Macs during the quarter, a 26 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 6.62 million iPods, a 27 percent unit decline from the year-ago quarter.

“We are thrilled with the very strong finish of an outstanding fiscal 2011, growing annual revenue to $108 billion and growing earnings to $26 billion,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “Customer response to iPhone 4S has been fantastic, we have strong momentum going into the holiday season, and we remain really enthusiastic about our product pipeline.”

“We are extremely pleased with our record September quarter revenue and earnings and with cash generation of $5.4 billion during the quarter,” said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO. “Looking ahead to the first fiscal quarter of 2012, which will span 14 weeks rather than 13, we expect revenue of about $37 billion and we expect diluted earnings per share of about $9.30.”

Apple will provide live streaming of its Q4 2011 financial results conference call beginning at 2:00 p.m. PDT on October 18, 2011 at www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/earningsq411. This webcast will also be available for replay for approximately two weeks thereafter.

This press release contains forward-looking statements including without limitation those about the Company’s estimated revenue and earnings per share. These statements involve risks and uncertainties, and actual results may differ. Risks and uncertainties include without limitation the effect of competitive and economic factors, and the Company’s reaction to those factors, on consumer and business buying decisions with respect to the Company’s products; continued competitive pressures in the marketplace; the ability of the Company to deliver to the marketplace and stimulate customer demand for new programs, products, and technological innovations on a timely basis; the effect that product introductions and transitions, changes in product pricing or mix, and/or increases in component costs could have on the Company’s gross margin; the inventory risk associated with the Company’s need to order or commit to order product components in advance of customer orders; the continued availability on acceptable terms, or at all, of certain components and services essential to the Company’s business currently obtained by the Company from sole or limited sources; the effect that the Company’s dependency on manufacturing and logistics services provided by third parties may have on the quality, quantity or cost of products manufactured or services rendered; risks associated with the Company’s international operations; the Company’s reliance on third-party intellectual property and digital content; the potential impact of a finding that the Company has infringed on the intellectual property rights of others; the Company’s dependency on the performance of distributors, carriers and other resellers of the Company’s products; the effect that product and service quality problems could have on the Company’s sales and operating profits; the continued service and availability of key executives and employees; war, terrorism, public health issues, natural disasters, and other circumstances that could disrupt supply, delivery, or demand of products; and unfavorable results of other legal proceedings. More information on potential factors that could affect the Company’s financial results is included from time to time in the “Risk Factors” and “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” sections of the Company’s public reports filed with the SEC, including the Company’s Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended September 25, 2010, its Forms 10-Q for the quarters ended December 25, 2010; March 26, 2011; and June 25, 2011; and its Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended September 24, 2011 to be filed with the SEC. The Company assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements or information, which speak as of their respective dates.

Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and has recently introduced iPad 2 which is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices.

Now What? The Post-Jobs Era in Tech.

Kara Swisher — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 13:17:29 +0000

As Steve Jobs famously said to rival Bill Gates of Microsoft in a joint interview with Walt Mossberg and me in 2007, “You and I have memories longer than the road that stretches out ahead.” And perhaps what is most amazing about Jobs was his longevity.

Not in life, of course, which was cut tragically short at 56 years, with his last years focused a lot on the cancer that would ultimately defeat him.

Actually, by longevity, I mean how the iconic entrepreneur continued, until the very end, to have an enormous impact over all of technology and especially in Silicon Valley.

It is easy to see that Jobs has been the single consistent tech tastemaker and true-north icon — even in the frantically changing, what’s-new-is-best atmosphere that too often prevails in the industry.

The list of tech and media arenas he changed via innovative thinking and, more importantly, action, is long — from graphics to design to touchscreens to smartphones to tablets to animation to ease of use to apps to quality to, well, you get the idea.

The hits seemed nonstop: The Macintosh. The iPod. And iTunes. The MacBook. The iPhone. The iPad.

And it is no stretch to say that even the brightest lights in tech and media always watched what he did and were influenced by him, reacted to him, changed because he changed.

In many ways, it was because Jobs never seemed to waver.

Let’s be clear, this is not an easy thing to do, to keep sailing on your own course, often against the prevailing winds, and not be swayed.

Perhaps that is the thing that Jobs most exemplified — a stubborn unwillingness to adjust who he was, maintaining an integrity of purpose and vision when others could not.

It is certainly what has made him — and by extension, Apple — so special. Of course, it is not that he was not difficult, capricious and cutting at times. But even that he owned.

So who and what does tech look to now for that kind of inspiration?

Certainly, at this moment, there is no one leader to fill Jobs’s outsized shoes.

The founders of Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin? Quirky, curious, arrogant, but so, so prosaic.

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg? Still forming, so awkward and not yet the leader he might become.

Jeff Bezos of Amazon? Certainly creative and bold, but utterly lacking in the moxie and style of Steve.

I could go on and not get to anyone even slightly close — there’s no one with the kind of charisma that makes it impossible to look away.

It’s called inspiration, a quality so lacking in all parts of this world, making it hard to imagine any replacement for Jobs.

And, in a way, why should we try to find one?

As Jobs himself said in his memorable “Stay hungry. Stay foolish” speech at Stanford University, right after he recovered from his first bout with cancer:

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself, “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “no” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important thing I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life, because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

No reason at all. So, as we all wish Jobs could have done, let’s live on.

And so will Steve Jobs. As AllThingsD Web guru Adam Tow said about the innovative Siri voice control feature in the latest iPhone 4 — introduced earlier this week without Jobs being there to present — perhaps Siri stands for: Steve is right inside.

Yes, indeed. Because his DNA lives in all of Apple. And, of course, in Silicon Valley and in tech, forever and always.

But we move on, too, so here is a video I did yesterday with WSJ.com on what impact Jobs’s death may have on Apple and whether the company will remain an innovator and market leader:

[ See post to watch video ]

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Apple's iPhone 4S Event in Photos

Drake Martinet — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 00:55:14 +0000

Apple announced numerous product enhancements at the October 4 event at its Cupertino headquarters.

Among them were the new iPhone 4S, Siri voice commands, white iPod touches and a host of cloud services.

AllThingsD was on hand to capture everything in pictures, and we’ve compiled the gallery below from the best of those photos.

Commas, Zeros and the Number One: Apple's iPhone 4S Event by the Numbers

John Paczkowski — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 23:30:49 +0000

As Apple events go, today’s was as heavy on metrics as any in recent memory, with newly installed CEO Tim Cook kicking off his presentation with a victory lap full of commas and zeros. Below, a rundown of the numbers trotted out.

Apple currently has 357 retail stores in 11 countries.

More than six million copies of OS X Lion have been downloaded through the Mac App Store.

That’s 80 percent more than Snow Leopard.

It took Lion two weeks to reach 10 percent of its user base. It took Windows 7 20 weeks to do the same.

The Mac is the number one best-selling desktop and notebook in the United States; it’s approaching 60 million users around the world, and its growth has outpaced the PC market every single quarter for the past 5 years.

The iPod, which launched 10 years ago, is still the number one music player in the world.

Apple has sold more than 300 million iPods to date. It took Sony 30 years to sell 220,000 Walkman cassette players. (Note: it seems Apple is a bit off on the Sony portion of this metric)

The company sold 45 million iPods last year alone, and almost half of purchasers bought for the first time.

iTunes is the number one music store in the world.

There are now 20 million songs in iTunes; over 16 billion songs have been downloaded from it to date.

The iPhone is the number one smartphone in the world.

93 percent of the Fortune 500 companies are deploying or testing the iPhone.

The iPhone is number one in customer satisfaction.

J.D. Power has ranked it as the number one smartphone six times in a row.

Almost 1,000 K-12 schools have a 1:1 iPad deployment program.

More than 80 percent of hospitals in the U.S. are testing iPads.

92 percent of the Fortune 500 are testing or deploying the iPad.

The iPad is the number one tablet in the world.

Three out of four tablets sold in the U.S. are iPads.

There have been 250 million iOS devices sold so far.

There are more than 500,000 apps in the App Store. More than 140,000 are designed specifically for the iPad.

Customers have downloaded more than 18 billion apps to date.

There are about 1 billion apps downloaded per month.

Apple has paid out $3 billion dollars to developers so far.

The iPod touch is the number one portable game player.

By December, the iPhone will be in more than 70 countries on more than 100 carriers.

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Apple's Game Center Scores 67 Million Players

Tricia Duryee — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 18:18:33 +0000

Apple’s Game Center, which allows multiple people in different locations to play games together at the same time, has registered 67 million users since launching only a year ago.

The update was given by Apple’s Scott Forstall today on stage at its event in Cupertino, Calif.

Forstall also outlined new features coming in iOS 5, which will include improvements for the Game Center.

Game Center competes against other social network providers, like OpenFeint, which has an advantage because OpenFeint runs across both iOS and Android devices.

In April, OpenFeint said its gaming platform was reaching 100 million users worldwide after being acquired by Japan-based Gree for $100 million.

For developers, Apple’s Game Center is key because it is the dedicated multi-player platform on Apple devices; however, it’s also limiting because it only allows players to play against friends who also own Apple products. At 67 million players, however, the audience is obviously competitive.

Apple also said today it was adding the ability to discover friends on the game service, among other things.

In the iOS 5 update coming free on Oct. 12, Game Center will be adding turned-based game support, allowing players to play when they want and Game Center will manage each turn for them. Game Center will automatically send the next player a push notification when it is his or her turn and will manage multiple game sessions.

Other developer additions to Game Center include adding players to existing multi-player games, displaying achievement notification banners and support for distinct icons for each leaderboard.

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Apple Updates iPods With Cheaper iPod Touch and Nano

Ina Fried — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 17:57:34 +0000

Ahead of introducing its revamped iPhone 4S, Apple on Tuesday introduced a white version of its iPod touch and dropped the price on iPod nanos.

The company made only modest changes to the iPod line, but pledged its continued support for that business, which it says still accounts for more than three in four MP3 players sold.

“We’re going to continue making the world’s best music players,” Apple marketing chief Phil Schiller said.

The iPod touch stays largely the same, but now comes in white as well as black — both models will pack iOS 5 when they go on sale Oct. 12. The entry-level 16 gigabyte model drops by $30 to $199; there will also be a 32GB version for $299 and a 64GB model for $399.

The iPod nano drops a bit in price to $129 and $149, and also gets new features, including the ability to track walks and runs without additional sensors or software. Apple also added 16 new clocks to the iPod for those who like to use their iPod nano as a watch — there are retro-styled LED models and Disney options, including Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse designs.

Apple said it will continue to sell the 2GB iPod shuffle for $49. The company appeared to quietly ax the iPod classic.

The event is still going on, with talk having shifted to the new iPhone 4S. For live coverage, click here.

Update: Although Apple showed a picture sans iPod Classic on stage and called that “the fall lineup,” the company notes at the bottom of a press release that the lone hard drive-based model remains in its product line at the same price: $249 for the 160GB variety.

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Apple Talks iPhone, but It's the 4S, Not the 5

John Paczkowski — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 15:45:08 +0000

More than 15 months after it launched the iPhone 4 at WWDC 2010, Apple is finally ready to unveil its successor.

Later this morning, the company will debut its latest iPhone, the fifth in the handset’s history. Though it’s not precisely clear what form it will take, most observers expect the fifth-generation iPhone to boast a dual-core A5 processor, one gigabyte of RAM, an improved camera, a dual-band GSM/CDMA chip that will transform it into a so-called “world phone” that can support multiple wireless network standards, and a rumored virtual personal assistant that arose out of Apple’s 2010 acquisition of Siri.

Beyond that, we’re likely to hear more about iCloud (which may steal the show) and its promise of a simple, seamless sync, iOS 5 and its nearly 200 new features, and perhaps an update or two to the company’s long-running iPod line. We’ll also get to watch newly installed CEO Tim Cook make his first big product introduction, an event that may well set the tone for his new role.

So join us here for what promises to be an exciting morning. Our live coverage begins at 10 am PT.

Live Blog

8:50 am: We have arrived on the scene at Apple’s campus in Cupertino, Calif.

9:22 am: The real reason why they held the event in Cupertino: omelettes!

9:44 am: The doors have opened and attendees are filing into the auditorium to the sound of Eric Clapton’s “Let It Rain.”

9:48 am: Lots of tech luminaries in the audience here today. A quick scan of the room reveals Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, AT&T Mobility President Ralph de la Vega, Verizon chief marketing officer Marni Walden, longtime Apple analyst Charlie Wolf and newly minted Qualcomm COO Steve Mollenkopf.

9:54 am: Most of Apple’s executive team — Phil Schiller, Eddie Cue, Bob Mansfield, etc., are now seated down front. The auditorium’s pretty much filled to capacity. We should be starting any moment now.

9:58 am: Five minute warning.

10:00 am: The lights dim and here’s Tim Cook, ready to deliver his first big product announcement. Lots of applause.

10:02 am: This is my first product launch as CEO — I’m sure you didn’t know that. I love Apple, and I consider it a privilege to work here. I am very excited by this new role.

10:03 am: I want to welcome you to Apple and to this room, which has a particular significance for us. In this room we launched the MacBook Air and other products … this room reminds us of the innovations we’ve announced at Apple.

10:04 am: This is an extraordinary time for Apple, says Cook, before running through some metrics. He talks briefly about Apple’s new store in Hong Kong, which recently launched.

10:05 am: Tim Cook is using Steve Jobs’s playbook, beginning with a series of updates, starting with Apple retail. Apple just opened two stores in China — one in Hong Kong and one in Shanghai.

“There is amazing momentum here,” Cook said, showing the all-glass staircase. “Only Apple could do this.”

Also doing good business — it had the best Day One store performance of any store.

10:06 am: We sold more Macs on opening day in Hong Kong than we sold at any other store opening in the world, says Cook. Now a video documenting the launch of the Hong Kong store.

10:07 am: Cook steps back into the spotlight. “We now have six stores in China. We now have 357 stores in 11 countries.

10:08 am: Moving on now to product updates. First up, some thoughts on Lion. Cook cites Walt’s review of Lion and his remark that it’s one of the best operating systems ever. “I don’t think I could have said it any better,” says Cook. He adds that, to date, six million copies of Lion have been downloaded.

10:10 am: At the same time we announced Lion, we announced the MacBook Air. It’s wicked fast. Our customers love it and our competitors are desperate to copy it, Cook says. The Mac and MacBook are the number one best-selling desktop and notebook in the United States.

10:11 am: More metrics, the Mac’s installed base is approaching 60 million around the world.

In U.S. retail, says Cook, Macs are selling one out of four PCs.

10:14 am: Next up: Music. “It was only 10 years ago that iPod launched and it not only revolutionized the way we listen to music, but it revolutionized the entire music industry. It reminded us why we love music so much. It made music part of our lives again. … The iPod quickly became the number one music player in the world.” To date, Apple has sold more than 300 million iPods.

10:15 am: Cook notes that the iPod is still an important business for Apple and the halo effect still remains strong. “The iPod is still a lot of people’s first introduction to Apple.”

Sixteen billion songs downloaded on iTunes.

10:15 am: Moving on to iPhone now. “This is probably why most of you are in the room today.” Cook notes the device’s extraordinary growth. Ninety-three percent of the Fortune 500 are testing or deploying the iPhone.

Customer satisfaction for the iPhone is very, very high, says Cook. “The iPhone is pummeling the competition.” He cites the recent ChangeWave and J.D. Power customer satisfaction surveys.

10:18 am: Talking now about the iPad. “IPads are showing up everywhere. IPads in schools are helping kids learn in amazing new ways. … Every state in the U.S. now has an iPad pilot program or deployment. And almost 1,000 schools have a one-to-one program … About 1,000 universities across the U.S. have iPad programs.”

10:20 am: “IPads are also showing up in airplane cockpits and in hospitals. Over 80 percent of the top hospitals in the U.S. are either testing or deploying iPads. … 92 percent of the Fortune 500 are testing or deploying the iPad.”

A stunning metric considering the device has only been available for 18 months.

Three out of four tablets sold in the U.S. are iPads.

10:22 am: Nice. Cook name-checks ATD. “Consumers don’t want tablets, they want iPads.”

10:23 am: Cook welcomes Scott Forstall to the stage to talk about iOS.

“IOS is the number one mobile operating system with 43 percent of the market,” says Forstall. He also notes that the iTunes App Store is the number one store for mobile apps. Customers have downloaded more than 18 billion apps to date. There are one billion downloads per month. Apple has now paid out more than $3 billion to developers.

10:25 am: Forstall talking about a new app called Cards. Allows you to create greeting cards on your iPhone or iPad. Apple will produce them and distribute them. “You make the card. We do the rest. … We’ll even send you a push notification the day your card is delivered.”

10:26 am: Price: $2.99 in the States, $4.99 internationally.

10:28 am: Now, a broad overview of iOS 5. Developers love it, says Forstall. He notes the OS has more than 200 new features, though he’s only going to talk about 10. Notifications: iMessage, a new messaging service between iOS users. “IMessages are pushed to all your devices so you can start on one and pick up on another.”

Next up, a brand-new app called Reminders. Offers location-based reminders via geo-fence. “Remind me to pick up my laundry when I leave work.”

10:31 am: More: Twitter integration. “We’ve deeply integrated Twitter into iOS. You can tweet photos, Web sites from Safari, videos from YouTube.”

Next up: Newsstand. “There are a lot of publications that are now building subscriptions for the iPad — the New Yorker, GQ, Vanity Fair. Newsstand organizes your subscriptions and downloads new issues in the background.”

10:31 am: Moving on now to the camera, which Apple has also significantly updated. Better-quality photos and new ways to edit and improve them on your iPhone.

Next, Game Center: 67 million people are using Game Center. Apple has added friend discovery and game recommendations to the service, among other things.

10:34 am: Next up, Safari: Forstall talks briefly about Reader, which makes Web pages easier to read. He moves on quickly to tabbed browsing before jumping ahead to Mail, which has been enhanced with better search functionality, etc.

Now, PC-free. “There’s no need for a computer. You take your iPhone out of the box and you can set it up.” Also: wireless updates.

10:35 am: IOS 5 will be available as a free update on October 12.

10:36 am: Eddie Cue takes the stage to talk about iCloud. Quick overview of how iCloud manages photo storage and distribution. “It just works.”

“Over a third of the music we sell in the iTunes store is purchased on iOS devices,” says Cue. He notes that once iCloud launches, “songs purchased via iPhone or iPad on iTunes will automatically be downloaded to a user’s Mac for no additional charge.”

Moving on now to PhotoStream. “With PhotoStream, photos taken on your iPhone are automatically sent to iCloud and then pushed to your other devices. They even download right to iPhoto on your Mac.”

10:38 am: Now, Documents In The Cloud. Same scenario. Documents synced to iCloud are updated across devices. Start editing on your Mac, continue on your iPad and finish on your iPhone.

10:39 am: More from Cue: “Buy a book on your iPad, start reading it, move to your iPhone and continue right where you left off.”

Contacts and Calendars work the same way. Update once, update everywhere.

10:40 am: Find My iPhone has been updated to find Macs as well.

New app: Find My Friends. Locates family and friends via same sort of Find My iPhone mechanism. Timed location sharing. Easily locate friends and family, temporary sharing option, simple privacy controls and great parental restrictions.

10:42 am: Moving on now to iTunes Match. “With over 20 million songs, Apple has the largest music store in the world. We’ll scan your music library and match it, and if we find something we don’t have, we’ll upload it.” Again, the goal here is data ubiquity across devices.

ITunes Match is $24.99 per year.

10:45 am: Cue wraps up with a broad overview of all the iCloud services he just mentioned. ICloud ships on October 12. ITunes Match goes live closer to the end of the month.

Now, a video break. Promo for iCloud that touts the same features Cue just described.

10:46 am: Phil Schiller takes the stage to talk about iPod.

10:47 am: “We’re still making great iPods. In fact, it’s the best lineup we’ve ever made.”

Apple’s rolling out a few updates to the line today. First, the iPod nano, which has been made easier to navigate and enhanced with some fitness-related improvements, plus UI additions (new clocks, etc.). Mickey Mouse watch!

New prices, $149 for 16GB, $129 for 8GB.

10:50 am: Next up: the iPod touch. Schiller notes that the device is now the most popular portable game player in the world.

10:51 am: Schiller says iOS 5 and iCloud will bring tremendous upgrades to the iPod touch.

Apple’s now offering a white version of the touch.

$399 for 64GB, $299 for 32GB, $199 for 8GB. They’ll be available on the 12th.

10:53 am: Here we go. Moving on now to the iPhone.

10:54 am: “Despite competitors trying really hard to copy the iPhone,” says Schiller, “they just haven’t been able to do it. … How do you follow up a hit product like the iPhone 4? … With the iPhone 4S.”

Retina display. Same design with metal band around exterior.

10:55 am: IPhone 4S will run on the same A5 chip that’s in the iPad. Also up to seven times faster graphics, which will do some amazing things for games.

Mike Capps from Epic Games takes the stage. Talks about Infinity Blade and its forthcoming successor Infinity Blade 2. Amazing graphics. Dynamic Light Rays, something the company used in Gears of War, has been brought to the iPhone.

This is really impressive. Very cinematic, but running in real time.

10:58 am: Infinity Blade 2 will be available December 1.

10:59 am: Schiller returns to talk about battery life. Eight hours of 3G talk time, 10 hours of video, etc.

11:00 am: Moving on to the antenna, which now intelligently switches between two antennas to transmit and receive. Better call quality and faster data. Downlink speeds are double the iPhone 4: 5.8 up, 14.4 down.

Heard these numbers before? Schiller says these are the same numbers that rivals often claim are 4G.

11:02 am: As expected, Apple has unified its CDMA and GSM devices into a single world phone.

11:03 am: There’s a new camera system as well.

“For the iPhone 4S, we set our sights on competing not with other phones, but with point-and-shoot cameras. … So we’ve added an eight megapixel sensor that shoots 3264×2448. … we’ve also added backside illumination with a sensor that gathers 72 percent more light. … On top of that we’ve placed a hybrid IR filter for better color accuracy … and we have a five-element lens that offers 30 percent more sharpness, f/2.4 aperture.”

11:06 am: Built in to the camera: Face detection and better auto-white balance. The new camera is also significantly faster. Takes just 1.1 seconds to take a first picture and .5 seconds more to take a second.

“I don’t know what Droid Bionic users do between pictures,” says Schiller. “Get coffee, I guess.”

11:08 am: Showing some photo examples now. Great sharp colors and detail.

11:09 am: Moving on now to video. The 4S shoots 1080p HD video. Some applause for that. Also features video image stabilization, temporal noise reduction.

Quick video demo. Hot air balloon ride.

11:11 am: Moving on now to AirPlay. Quick overview of the technology and then the news: Apple is bringing AirPlay mirroring to the iPhone.

11:12 am: Schiller wraps up by rehashing the announcements he’s just made. He’s really stressing iOS 5 and iCloud.

11:13 am: “But we really haven’t discussed the best feature yet … it’s all about voice.”

New feature: Siri, an intelligent assistant that helps you get things done just by asking.

“What we really want to do is just talk to our device and we want to talk to it any way we’d like.”

11:14 am: Schiller invites Forstall back on stage to do a Siri demo, but cautions that it’s still in beta so things could go awry.

Forstall asks Siri, “What is the weather like today?” The phone replies with, “Here is the weather for today,” and a screen detailing the weather.

11:16 am: “Do I need a raincoat?”

Siri: “It sure looks like rain today.”

Siri actually understands the concept of “raincoat” and how it relates to weather. Pretty sweet.

11:16 am: “What’s the time in Paris?”

Siri gives an accurate time and shows a clock.

“Wake me up tomorrow at 6 am.”

Siri sets an alarm and tells the user that it has done so.

11:17 am: “How’s the Nasdaq doing today?”

Again, an accurate vocal reply and a screen showing a market chart.

Apple has partnered with Yelp to integrate restaurant reviews. It has also integrated maps. “Give me directions to Hoover Tower.” Siri provides them.

11:19 am: You can also ask Siri to read your text messages.

Forstall demonstrates an exchange in which he receives a lunch invitation, checks his calendar, and sends a reply to the original sender with a suggested date for lunch. This is all done hands-free, simply by talking to the phone.

11:21 am: “Remind me to call my wife when I leave work.”

Siri creates a reminder with a geo-fence so that when he leaves work, it will remind him to call his wife.

11:22 am: “Search Wikipedia for Neil Armstrong.”

Siri heads right for Safari and pops the Armstrong page on Wikipedia.

Apple has also partnered with Wolfram Alpha to do dictionary searches, calculations. “Define mitosis.” “What’s the exchange rate on the Euro right now?”

11:24 am: “How many days until Christmas?”

Eighty-two, in case you were wondering.

11:24 am: Forstall notes that you can’t use Siri to do everything, but you can use it to do a pretty broad spectrum of things — call people, create reminders, compose and dictate email, traffic and directions, weather, stocks, set timers, contacts, search Web, create notes, search “wolfram alpha.”

“Who are you, Siri?”

“I am a humble personal assistant.”

11:27 am: Schiller returns to the stage. He adds that Siri takes dictation, before noting that the service is both contextual and conversational.

When iPhone 4S launches, Siri will be available in English, French and German, with more languages to follow.

11:28 am: Now, another video.

Typical Apple reel with the company’s executive bench talking about the design and development of the iPhone 4S.

11:32 am: For more on Siri, check out this story.

11:30 am:

iPhone 4S
64GB for $399
32GB for $299
16GB for $199

iPhone 4 will now be available for $99, 8GB only.
iPhone 3GS, 8GB for free.

Very aggressive pricing.

IPhone 4S preorders begin Friday. The phone will ship on October 14.

11:35 am: IPhone 4S will be available on AT&T, Verizon and, yes, Sprint.

When the rollout is done the iPhone will be in 70 countries, on 100 carriers.

11:36 am: Cook returns to wrap things up with another overview of the morning’s news.

“When you look at each of these things, they’re industry-leading in and of themselves, but what puts them out front is how they’re engineered to work together so well. Only Apple can make such powerful hardware and services like this and bring them together. I am so proud of Apple and all the people that worked so hard to make these things a reality.”

And with that, he leaves the stage.

And so ends a workmanlike job by Cook in his first big product introduction. But you can’t help but miss the showmanship that Jobs always brought to these events; he would have made the Siri technology explanation really sing.

The event’s over. Thanks for reading.

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Samsung's Android-Based Answer to the iPod Touch Finally Headed to U.S.

Ina Fried — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 12:00:21 +0000

After shipping models elsewhere for some time, Samsung is finally ready to bring its Wi-Fi-based Galaxy Player line of products to the U.S.

The devices, which are to the Samsung Galaxy line of phones what the iPod touch is to the iPhone, will hit retail shelves on Oct. 16. A model with a five-inch screen will sell for $269, while a similar device with a four-inch screen is priced at $229. Both include a 3.2 megapixel rear camera, a VGA front camera and eight gigabytes of memory, which can be expanded with a microSD card. The five-inch model weighs just over six ounces, while the four-inch model weighs 4.27 ounces; the former has a significantly larger battery.

Samsung showed the devices at the CTIA trade show in Orlando in March and said then that it expected the devices to ship in May.

The Wi-Fi models represent an interesting option for those looking to try Android without committing to a phone (and accompanying two-year contract). While the iPod touch has clearly found a significant market, it is unclear how large the demand is on the Android side of things.

Also yet to be seen is if these products, like other Android models from Samsung, draw the ire of Apple’s legal department.

Google's Cloud Music Service Now Works on iPhones, iPads

Peter Kafka — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 21:28:19 +0000

Google’s “Music Beta,” the search giant’s newish cloud locker service, now works on Apple’s mobile devices via a new Web site designed to work on iOS machines. Amazon’s competing Cloud Player works on iPads, but not on any other Apple mobile device. The Google service, which is still in a semiprivate trial phase, is free for the time being.

Surprise! Muve, the Music Subscription Service You Never Think About, Is Doing Okay.

Peter Kafka — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 14:38:57 +0000

If you’re a member of the musical digerati, Muve’s subscription service sounds a lot like other subscription services, but less attractive: For a monthly fee, you get all-you-can-eat music, but only if you’re using a nonsmartphone from third-tier wireless carrier Cricket.

To spell that out: Muve won’t work with your iPhone or iPod. And there’s no Web version, either.

No thanks, right? Not exactly: Cricket parent company Leap Wireless says that so far this year it has signed up 200,000 subscribers for its $55 a month plan, which includes unlimited voice, data, etc.

Those numbers make Muve either the second- or third-biggest music subscription service in the country: Rhapsody, which has been at this for years, says it has about 800,000 subscribers. And a month ago, Spotify had racked up 175,000 subs after just a few weeks in the U.S.

So Muve is doing something right, for someone. How are they doing it? Hard to tell from a distance, but the big take-aways seem to be:

Not everyone needs the full experience: Again, it’s worth noting that, until today, Cricket — which often targets less affluent customers — hasn’t offered the service for smartphones at all (it’s also now available for Android handsets for $65 a month). That means just about everyone who reads this story would turn their nose up at the offering from the get-go. But folks who read sites like this one tend to forget that there are lots and lots of people who don’t have cutting-edge tech, and lots of them don’t have smartphones. So for them, a feature phone with all-you-can-eat music is a big step up from their previous options, which were zilch.

Bundles really can work, and confusion isn’t a terrible thing: I spent the morning trying to compare and contrast Cricket’s $55-a-month Muve offer with its regular $55 a month offer. The big difference is that one works on smartphones and the other doesn’t, but you have to work at it to figure that out. I bet that many of Cricket’s customers don’t actually know what they’re getting. But if they’re happy, they’re happy.

Fortune's Lashinsky Penning an "Inside Apple" Book

Kara Swisher — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 20:16:38 +0000

Adam Lashinsky, Fortune magazine’s high-profile Silicon Valley reporter, will be penning a book titled “Inside Apple: How America’s Most Admired — and Secretive — Company Really Works.”

An expansion of a well-read article that Lashinsky wrote for the publication earlier this year, the book will be available on Jan. 18, 2012 from Business Plus, an imprint of Hachette Book Group.

Lashinsky’s will be the second Apple tome to be coming out that will shed more light inside the workings of Silicon Valley’s most iconic company.

In November, former Time Inc. writer and editor Walter Isaacson’s much anticipated biography about Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs will be released by Simon & Schuster.

“Steve Jobs” has been written with cooperation from Jobs, who has not done so in the past.

Lashinsky said in an interview today he did not garner Jobs’s help on the book, but did manage to get a deep inside look at the company.

“Doing an unauthorized book is harder,” said Lashinsky. “But what you get is well-reported information, which is outside the message Apple wants to deliver, and there is so much good stuff, this company is worth far more than an article.”

Lashinsky has been a longtime reporter in tech, including covering Apple, a company that is notoriously secretive and difficult to report about.

Still, Lashinsky has written a lot about the maker of the groundbreaking Mac, iPod, iPhone and iPad devices, including a piece in 2008 about recently installed CEO Tim Cook, titled “The Genius Behind Steve: Could the Operations Whiz Run The Company Someday?”

Inside Apple will be more about the entire company, which has vaulted from near death only 15 years ago to become one of the most highly valued companies in tech and, in fact, globally.

The publisher promises a lot of insidery facts, including, “how Apple creates killer products, forges intense bonds with consumers, and gets what it wants from suppliers … the lessons about leadership, product design and marketing are universal, and they should appeal to anyone hoping to bring some of that Apple magic to their own company, career or creative endeavor.”

Lashinsky said these are important lessons for others to explore.

“So much of what Apple does stands decades of business teaching on its head, because they just don’t do things the way other companies do,” he said. “The rest of the business world might want to pay attention.”

Indeed, they should.

10 Million Downloads Later, Doodle Jump Makes the Leap to the iPad

Peter Kafka — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 20:50:16 +0000

The iPhone has already made millions for Igor and Marko Pusenjak. Time to see what the iPad can do.

The Pusenjak brothers are the guys behind Lima Sky, which is the company behind Doodle Jump, one of the breakout hits at Apple’s iTunes store. Since March 2010, they’ve sold more than 10 million copies of the simple and addictive game for the iPhone and the iPod, at 99 cents a pop.

Subtract Apple’s 30 percent take and that means the brothers have cleared more than $7 million from the game. And since they’ve kept their overhead very, very low, they’re likely keeping the majority of that.

Now they’re finally trying out the iPad, with an app that should hit the store later today. Like just about every other iPad port, this one will cost more than the original, but it’s still going to be a relatively modest $2.99. And just about everything else in the game remains the same: Igor Pusenjak tells me that the game has new graphics created specifically for the iPad’s bigger screen, but during my brief tryout this afternoon, I was hard-pressed to see any big differences. Still plenty of fun, though.

I’ve got a soft spot for the Pusenjaks, but I think their “little guys make it big” story would appeal to just about anyone. I also think it’s important for Apple to make sure that it gets to tell new versions of these stories from time to time, for obvious reasons. (The brothers have also started selling a version for Google’s Android platform.)

Here’s a (long) interview I conducted with Igor Pusenjak inside his New York City apartment in April 2010, the first weekend that iPads became available. As I recall, he was disappointed when I showed up, because he thought I was the UPS guy bringing him his new toy. I didn’t take it personally, though.

[ See post to watch video ]

What Happens Next at Apple?

Arik Hesseldahl — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 02:20:25 +0000

Two things will happen tomorrow in the wake of today’s news that Steve Jobs has resigned as the CEO of Apple.

First, Apple investors will freak out.

Second, Apple will do what Apple has planned to do for all these years.

For years, since Jobs’s first bout with pancreatic cancer was disclosed, Apple has taken a lot of criticism from analysts, shareholders, activists and tech and business columnists on the subject of succession planning. The main complaint has always revolved around the fact that Apple seemed not to have a plan for the day that Jobs would cede the helm either by choice or happenstance.

The fact is that Apple does have a plan, and chose, I think wisely, to keep most of the details related to it confidential. On the very last page of Apple’s Corporate Governance Guidelines (PDF here) you find that the company designates its compensation committee, a subset of its board of directors, as the body responsible for succession planning.

Here’s what the text says (emphasis mine):

XIX. Management Review and Succession Planning
The Compensation Committee should conduct, and review with the Board, an annual evaluation of the performance of all executive officers, including the CEO. The Compensation Committee is expected to use this review in the course of its deliberations when considering the compensation of the CEO and senior management. The Board also reviews the CEO performance evaluation to ensure that the CEO is providing effective leadership of the Corporation. As part of the annual evaluation, the Board and the CEO should conduct an annual review of management development and succession planning for senior management, including the CEO.

And for the record, the members of the compensation committee are as follows: Millard Drexler, the chairman and CEO of retailer J. Crew; Al Gore, the former vice president of the United States; and Andrea Jung, the CEO of Avon, is the committee’s chair.

All of them, Gore especially, know a little something on the subject of succession planning. Yet the market has over the years generally assumed that Apple has had no plan for a post-Jobs Apple.

Expect that assumption to be the order of the day when the markets open tomorrow. Apple shares have already taken a 5 percent hit, dropping $19.08 in after-hours trading tonight, and you can bet that’s just a precursor for what’s coming tomorrow. Over the coming days, the so-called “Jobs premium” will be erased.

So what happens next? First off, tomorrow will be Tim Cook’s first day as CEO — not acting CEO, but as the actual CEO of Apple. Long credited as the man who brilliantly runs Apple day to day, he’s now in charge.

And that’s an encouraging thought. Formally designated Apple’s number two in 2005, he has overseen it during its most exciting and world-changing years. On his first business day as COO, Apple shares closed at $54. Today before the news broke, it closed at nearly seven times that price.

During those years Apple has largely remade much of the world around it: Music, media, communications are all indelibly and fundamentally different because of the work that has come out of Apple during this six-year period. To assume that this stops because Steve Jobs doesn’t show up at the office tomorrow or next week is failing to understand the Apple way.

If you follow Apple long enough, you know that Apple has a long-term vision. I think enough time has passed that I can share the following anecdote. In 2007, right after the introduction of the first iPhone, I attended a meeting with Jobs and the editors of the magazine I was working for at the time.

The meeting included a Jobs-led, hands-on demo with prototype iPhones, during which I asked Jobs a question: “Will you do a version of this without the phone?” The answer — which surprised me that he even gave it — was yes. In that moment I got a very tiny glimpse of the long path that lay ahead. I could see way off in the distance the logical progression leading first to the iPod touch and from there to the iPad. It was a revelation.

And we all know exactly what the iPad is doing to the established order of the PC industry: It is tearing it down. Hewlett-Packard’s decision to get out of the PC business is just one very big and recent example of the degree of that change.

That in mind, I find it hard to accept the argument that there isn’t a similar long-term vision that Apple is executing on at this very moment. My suspicion has long been that a pipeline of products — some of them incremental improvements on existing ones, others radically new and disruptive — are in various stages of the design process. I think it is a safe bet that Apple’s strategic plans for the next five years are more or less mapped out. Beyond that, it’s harder to see, and circumstances can certainly change a great deal in that amount of time.

But consider where Apple was five years ago and what has happened since. Yes, the Apple story was interesting in 2005 and 2006, but who could have predicted that Apple would become the biggest company by market capitalization in the entire world, eclipsing ExxonMobil, if only for a few days.

Markets will do what markets must do. And so must Apple. The next phase of what has turned out to be the most interesting business story in living memory has begun.

Essay: Jobs's Departure as CEO of Apple Is the End of an Extraordinary Era

Walt Mossberg — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 01:18:37 +0000

Steve Jobs’s resignation as chief executive officer of Apple is the end of an extraordinary era, not just for Apple, but for the global technology industry in general. Jobs is a historic business figure whose impact was deeply felt far beyond the company’s Cupertino, Calif., headquarters, and who was widely emulated at other companies.

And now, for the first time since 1997, he won’t be the company’s chief executive.

To be very clear, Jobs, while seriously ill, is very much alive. Extremely well-informed sources at Apple say he intends to remain involved in developing major future products and strategy and intends to be an active chairman of the board, even while new CEO Tim Cook runs the company day to day.

So, this is not an obituary. But his health is reported to be up and down, and even an active chairman isn’t the same as a CEO.

CEOs resign every day, so why is this departure so meaningful?

Most people are lucky if they can change the world in one important way, but Jobs, in multiple stages of his business career, changed global technology, media and lifestyles in multiple ways on multiple occasions.

He did it because he was willing to take big risks on new ideas, and not be satisfied with small innovations fed by market research. He also insisted on high quality and had the guts to leave out features others found essential and to kill technologies, like the floppy drive and the removable battery, he decided were no longer needed. And he has been a brilliant marketer, personally passionate about his products.

In his first act at Apple, the company he co-founded in 1976, he helped envision and catalyze the personal computer revolution. The Apple II computer he developed with Steve Wozniak wasn’t the only mass-market PC released in 1977, but it was the one that had the most enduring impact.

In 1984, he again upended computing by leading the development of the Macintosh, the first commercially successful computer to use a mouse and graphical user interface. It cemented the template for how every computer works today, even though Apple was handily bested in the PC sales wars by archrival Microsoft.

After being forced out of Apple in 1985, it’s well known that Jobs ran an unsuccessful computer firm called NeXT. But he also did a couple of game-changing things during that exile. First, NeXT developed an operating system that later morphed into the excellent Macintosh operating system, called OS X, and also the operating system that drives Apple’s mobile devices, called iOS.

In addition, he purchased Pixar, a small computer animation firm which he was able, over years, to turn into one of the world’s most successful movie studios and later sell to Disney for billions. It changed animation forever.

In his most recent act, he returned in 1997 to take over as CEO of Apple as part of that company’s purchase of NeXT. What he found was a diminished company which was reputedly only months from bankruptcy and saddled with mediocre products.

Fourteen years later, the company is a highly profitable behemoth, the most financially valuable and influential technology company in the world, whose every product is eagerly anticipated, snapped up quickly by consumers, and aped by competitors, even though they are often priced higher than rival devices.

While CEO of the revived Apple, he introduced the dominant digital music player, the iPod, and created the most successful digital media service, iTunes. He introduced the first super-smartphone, the iPhone, and the only truly successful tablet computer, the iPad, which is in the process of replacing the laptop, at least in part. And he built the world’s largest app store.

One almost forgets that he built a phenomenally successful chain of retail stores, too.

Apple’s devices and software services have dramatically changed the mobile phone industry, the music industry, the film and TV industries, the publishing industry and others.

Meanwhile, even while declaring that we are in the “post-PC era,” Jobs resuscitated his early baby, the Mac. While it may never become the world’s biggest selling computer, it is lusted after worldwide, and its sales have outgrown those of the overall PC industry for five years running. Plus, with models like the sleek, solid-state MacBook Air, he’s actually merging the tablet and the PC.

Now, rumors are rife that Apple is working on re-inventing another common device: the TV. The secretive company won’t say a word about that, but nobody should be surprised if it happens, just based on Jobs’s track record.

And that’s why the day Steve Jobs resigns as CEO of Apple isn’t like the day a typical CEO resigns.

Here is a video of me taken recently, talking about Jobs’s career:

[ See post to watch video ]

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