A group of Melbourne, Australia-based artists is incorporating the scent of a MacBook Pro laptop into an upcoming exhibit titled “Greatest Hits,” explained here with only a Wikipedia entry about the format wars between Blu-ray disc and HD DVD standards.

According to Macworld, “The scent created with Air Aroma … encompasses the smell of the plastic wrap covering the box, the printed ink on the cardboard, the smell of paper and plastic components within the box and, of course, the aluminum laptop which has come straight from the factory in China.”

For a better, shall we say, sense of the story, you can read the full entry here.

Unfortunately, for the time being, average consumers won’t be able to douse themselves in the scent of Apple magic. As Air Aroma, which worked with the artist trio to create the perfume, writes on its Web site, “The Apple unboxing scent was created for use at this particular exhibition only and is not available for purchase on our online retail store for personal use.”

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster reports that NPD’s data, which counts only U.S. sales, implies that Mac sales for the March quarter ended down 5 percent year over year. And if that proves to be the case, Apple could potentially miss its Mac number when it posts financials next Tuesday. Caveat: Last quarter, Apple beat NPD data by 14 percentage points — something to keep in mind while mulling Munster’s assertion.

Anyway … the Street is looking for worldwide Mac sales of 4.5 million; Munster figures Apple likely sold less than that — somewhere between 4.1 million to 4.4 million, with sales slowed by a core MacBook Pro and iMac lineup that hasn’t been refreshed in more than a year. Those two product lines alone likely account for about 50 percent of Mac sales, so it’s certainly conceivable that diminishing consumer interest in them might affect Apple’s sales numbers.

But is this really anything to worry about?

Munster himself acknowledges that strong iPhone and iPad sales will more than offset any Mac softness. He still expects the company to beat consensus EPS and revenue estimates and, like many Apple watchers, he sees new Macs headed into the pipeline soon, following on the heels of Intel’s new Ivy Bridge processors. Said Munster, “We believe that MacBook, iMac, and potentially MacBook Air, lines could all be refreshed during the June quarter, which we believe would result in a reacceleration of Mac sales.”

But the mobile Web is still so new — remember, the iPhone is less than five years old, and the iPad is just two years old — that marketers are still trying to figure out how people use it when they search, and what that means for search ads.

Right now, for instance, it appears that people are much more likely to click on a search ad when they’re using a tablet or smartphone. Marin says click-through rates on tablets are 31 percent higher on tablets than on PCs, and 72 percent higher on phones.

This could mean a bunch of things, but the easiest answer may be that when you’re searching on a mobile device, you’re more likely to see an ad than anything else.

As a reminder, here’s what a search result looks like on a MacBook (for visitors to Planet Earth, note that the shaded results are ads):

And on an iPad:

And on an iPhone:

So the smaller the screen, the more likely it is that you’ll see an ad when you search. By the time you get to a phone sized-screen, you need to do some work, via a finger flick, to see something that’s not an ad.

Which makes you wonder if perhaps a lot of the mobile ad clicks that marketers are seeing are accidental.

Maybe. Marin also notes that search conversion rates — the percentage of people who bought something (or did something else the marketer wanted them to do) after they click an ad — are lowest on phones, by a considerable margin:

Marin is more hopeful interpretation of that data — maybe people are doing their searches when they’re already in stores, so they do their buying in the real world, and that doesn’t get tracked. Or maybe it has something to do with shopping apps. “More research is necessary,” the Marin folks conclude. “Marketers should keep an open mind.”

Fair enough. Again, it’s early. But it’s still interesting.

I’m not pleased with Microsoft’s Ribbon interface for Office. Any way to revert to the old menu format instead?

A:

When Microsoft replaced the classic menus and toolbars with the tab-based “Ribbon” at the top in the 2007 version of Office for Windows, it didn’t offer an option to keep the old approach. It still doesn’t.

(Microsoft’s Mac version of Office is an exception: It lets you opt for the old interface.)

However, some independent companies make add-on products that restore the classic interface. I haven’t tested any, but you can find them by searching for “Office classic menu.”

Q:

I need to purchase a new MacBook to replace an aging machine. On the new machine I will need to run Windows. I was reviewing your article on Parallels Desktop for Mac. Will this application run adequately on a MacBook Air? Apple sales consultants suggest that it will not and that I should instead purchase a MacBook Pro.

A:

In my experience, Parallels Desktop 7 for Mac, which allows you to simultaneously run Windows and Mac programs, runs perfectly fine on a MacBook Air. I have used it on an Air many times to run Windows programs like Internet Explorer, Quicken and Microsoft Office for Windows.

Q:

It used to be that leaving a phone plugged in too long supposedly damaged the battery. But with the newer devices, I have gotten into the habit of plugging it in before bed and leaving it plugged in all night. In general is this OK for today’s batteries or do I need to get up in the middle of the night and unplug?

A:

I do the same thing with my phones and I don’t believe this damages the battery.

I have tested many, many phones in recent years and have never seen a warning against this practice. Some modern chargers and phones are designed to cut off the power once the battery is charged, both to protect the battery and to save energy.

You can check with the manufacturer to be sure.

Write to Walt at walt.mossberg@wsj.com

Among the headline features are deep integration with Apple’s iCloud service, and with Twitter. And several features from iOS devices, like Messages and Reminder, are making their debut on the Mac, and will create a more unified experience among Macs, iPads and iPhones.

The release, which is coming only a year after Lion debuted last summer, might just indicate a speeding up of the cadence at which Apple does Mac software upgrades. Usually there’s an interval of 18 months to 24 months between major OS upgrades. That makes this announcement a bit of a surprise. Does that mean we can expect another one about 18 months from now? We’ll see.

Here’s a quick rundown of the 10 new features:

iCloud built in: Mountain Lion will be the first version of OS X built with iCloud fully integrated. Documents in the Cloud is a new feature that will allow documents you create and edit on the Mac to sync up and readily be available on iPhones and iPads. Changes you make in the document on one device will automatically appear on the other. You’ll be able to use iCloud from the moment you start up your Mac and sign in with an Apple ID.

Messages: It’s crazy to think about it, but iMessage users on the iPhone and iPad have sent something like 26 billion messages in only the few months it has been available. Messages is the new instant messaging application that will replace iChat. It will unify the experience between the Mac and iOS devices, and will still be compatible with services like Google Talk, AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo Messenger and Jabber, but will also bring iMessages into the Mac. Conversations stay up to date across all devices. It supports photos and videos. Also? There’s a FaceTime button.

Twitter: Twitter is also deeply integrated into Mountain Lion. You’ll be able to tweet directly from within several applications, sharing Web site addresses, photos and videos. Central to this is something Apple calls the Tweet Sheet, which you call up from the Share menu. It grabs what you want to share on Twitter and you write your tweet from directly within the Mac OS. And as cool as this is, it’s notable also for what it’s not: Facebook integration. Expect lots of speculation around that.

Share Sheets: Sharing is kind of a big deal these days, so it makes sense that the ability to do it — whether on Twitter or via email or any one of the cloud services out there — would be available on the Mac. There’s a new Share button in Safari and in other applications that makes it easy to send a photo to a friend via email or to Flickr, or a video to Vimeo or to another computer via AirDrop.

Notification Center: The dashboard of notices saying what’s going on in iOS is coming to the Mac. Similar to how you reach it on the iPhone — a swipe down along the length of the screen — it will appear on the Mac with a two-finger swipe from the right edge of the trackpad, and the list will appear on the right side of the screen. When you get a notification from an application — say, an email has arrived, or a download is finished, or a calendar reminder is going off — you can see them all in one place. Also, short messages with notifications appear in the upper right-hand corner of the screen, and then fade away after a few seconds. It reminds me a great deal of a third-party application enhancer I use, called Growl.

Reminders: Another popular iOS app is being added to the Mac. Your to-do list remains synced across the Mac, iPhone and iPad, and you can add reminders that pop up throughout the day, so you don’t forget.

Notes: The all-purpose “take this down for later” application gets the Mac treatment. Soon you’ll be able to drag URLs into a note. And thanks to iCloud, they’ll be synced across Mac, iPhone and iPad. You’ll also be able to “pin” a note to your desktop, meaning it will stay open even if you close the main Notes application. Notes also has a Share button.

Game Center: Long a weakness on the Mac, gaming is getting stronger all the time. Games, it turns out, are the most popular software titles on the Mac App store. So it makes sense to bring the Game Center experience from iOS to the Mac. I saw a quick demo, where two people played a racing game against each other — can’t remember which game exactly — one was on the iPad, the other on the Mac. You’ll be able to challenge friends, keep track of your standings on a leaderboard and see what games your friends like. There’s also support for in-game voice chat, so you can talk trash.

Gatekeeper: Expect this feature to be controversial among Mac software developers. Basically, it’s an attempt by Apple to deal with the fact that the one serious security threat it faces is software that looks good at first but turns out to behave badly only after you’ve downloaded and installed it. The new scheme basically sets up a three-tier system, where the user can decide from where they will be allowed to download and install new software. In the most restrictive — or some will argue safest — case, you can set your Mac to allow only software from the Mac App store. As it does with the App Store on iOS devices, Apple vets the software sold there for safety. In the second case — this one not as restrictive — you can install software from sources other than the App Store, but only from developers who have signed up as a known developer. Here, Apple will not have checked the app for safety, but will at least vouch that the developer is known. Developers will have the option of signing up for a Developer ID. This is the part that I think they’ll find a little controversial. Anyway, in the third case, there are no restrictions. You can install software from any developer and any source, much as you can do today.

AirPlay Mirroring: If you have an Apple TV handy, you’ll be able to use your TV as a screen for your Mac — it’s super easy. If they’re on the same wireless network, the Mac will have a simple pulldown menu that makes your TV mirror what’s on the Mac.

Finally, Apple added a lot of new features for the Chinese market. Text input has been improved, and several popular Web services — like Baidu for search, integration with Sina Weibo for Twitter-like sharing and video-sharing with Youku and Tudou — have been built in, in order to make the Mac OS experience a lot more China-friendly than it has been before. Given the Apple madness that has struck that country in recent months, it will certainly find a happy audience.

It’s official: The white MacBook is now really, truly dead. Apple is said to have notified resellers that its white plastic 13-inch laptop will no longer be available to educational institutions. MacRumors first reported the news on Wednesday.

The white MacBook’s availability to the public actually ended last July, on the same day Apple introduced its new MacBook Air for just $999, but Apple had kept the distribution channel open for schools.

(Now, it seems, Apple would rather have those schools buy lots of iBooks-equipped iPads – or stripped-down MacBook Airs!)

As I sat here writing this, I realized that I have one of these relics lying unused on the desk next to me — or rather, next to my shinier, newer laptop.

First launched in 2006, the MacBook was, as AllThingsD’s Walt Mossberg put it, a “low-end portable computer aimed at average consumers” — and the best-selling Macintosh in history.

I bought a 2007 model of the white plastic MacBook in early 2008, and it was the first Apple computer I’d used since my elementary-school computer classes, in which we used (I’m fairly certain) the Apple II. It had a 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor! A glossy display! A built-in iSight camera! Six hours of battery life! Smooth, clean keys — and at five pounds it seemed so light (though hardly by today’s laptop standards).

But things change. And I eventually graduated to other laptops.

Oh, white MacBook: You couldn’t handle heavy video editing, and after a while, your battery wouldn’t hold a charge and your keys never, ever looked clean, no matter how hard we tried. But we did have some good times. Au revoir.

The company is expected to sell $10 billion worth of iPads and $9 billion of Macs to business customers in 2012, according to Forrester’s latest Global Tech Market Outlook. Those are 68 percent and 45 percent increases, respectively, over 2011.

And in 2013, spending on iPads and Macs could hit $16 billion and $12 billion respectively. Slowly but surely, Apple is making inroads into enterprise, a sector traditionally dominated by Microsoft. And, as Forrester notes, that is somewhat unexpected.

“The biggest disruptive force in the computer equipment market thus is … Apple,” the research outfit says in its report. “This is a surprise, because Apple has not and does not directly address the corporate market, while turning a wide variety of consumer technology markets upside-down. But its rapid growth in the corporate market has been the big surprise of 2011, and it will be even more of a factor in 2012.”

How can that be, when we so rarely hear stories about big enterprise deployments of Apple hardware? As Forrester explains, “The Apple assault on the corporate market has so far taken place without much formal Apple support, and probably without Apple itself understanding its full extent. That’s because corporate adoption of Apple products has been largely clandestine.”

Clandestine? If Apple’s not aggressively pushing its hardware into the enterprise market, how is it getting there?

Carried in by the rank and file. Employees are buying iPhones and iPads, and sometimes even MacBooks, as well. And enterprise is increasingly supporting them on the back end. Sometimes, it’s even subsidizing them or their use. This is the “consumerization of IT” we’re hearing so much about these days, and clearly it’s working very much in Apple’s favor.

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.)

Come Friday, the company will offer discounts of $101 on the iMac, MacBook Air and MacBook Pro; $21-$41 on the iPod touch; and $11 on the iPod nano. Discounts on the iPad 2 will range from $41 for the basic WiFi-only models, to $61 for the higher-end version of the device with 3G support.

Most of Apple’s deals fall in the 5 to 10 percent off range, which isn’t exactly steep. That said, they’re probably more than enough to get Black Friday shoppers flocking to the company’s stores — those who weren’t headed there already. All told, Apple’s retail stores generated $3.6 billion in revenue last quarter.

Buoyed by increasing sales in enterprise and explosive growth in the Asia Pacific, the company’s share of the global PC market passed the 5 percent mark last quarter, for the first time in 15 years, according to analyst Charlie Wolf of Needham & Co.

Mac shipments grew 24.6 percent in the September quarter, a period during which the broader PC market grew just 5.3 percent. It was the 22nd consecutive quarter that the growth of Mac shipments has outpaced the market. And beyond this, shipments for the past year represented 20 percent of the growth in worldwide PC shipments.

The Mac’s got serious momentum.

In the business market, its growth was a staggering 43.8 percent, more than nine times greater than the 4.8 percent growth posted by the rest of the business market.

And in the home market? There, the Mac saw 25.6 percent growth, compared to overall growth of only 4.0 percent.

Interesting, because in the home market, the iPad was expected to cannibalize at least some Mac sales. In fact, during Apple’s third-quarter earnings call, CEO Tim Cook conceded that point. But evidently that cannibalization is minor at most, and far worse for Apple’s rivals. As Wolf observes, Mac sales in the home market have continued to increase, while sales of Windows notebook PCs have slowed.

“The iPad is undoubtedly cannibalizing some Mac sales,” Wolf writes. “But it appears to be cannibalizing PC sales a lot more. In our view, this underscores the power of the halo effect in overwhelming the impact of any cannibalization the Mac might have experienced following the launch of the iPad.”

Which is essentially what Tim Cook said, back in July.

“Some customers chose to purchase an iPad instead of a Mac, but even more decided to buy an iPad over a Windows PC,” he remarked at the time. “There are a lot more Windows PCs to cannibalize than Macs.”

The one getting all the attention is an offering in the Ultrabook category that’s priced at $900. It’s called the HP Folio¹³, and aside from its price, its headline feature is that it delivers a full nine hours of battery life.

The Ultrabook is a concept primarily being pushed by Intel, so much so that Intel even owns the trademark rights to the name. Inside the Folio¹³ are the latest Intel Core processors. It represents the hopes of a PC industry that has seen anemic sales with little sign of a bounceback, though that depends on whom you ask.

Major challenges have been the continued popularity among consumers of Apple’s iPad, and to a lesser extent other tablets, and the impressive sales of Apple’s MacBook Air, which now accounts for nearly a third of Apple’s notebook sales. It may not be an Ultrabook technically, but conceptually the similarities are substantial: Thin, light, sporting solid-state drives and speedy boot-up times.

And while the MacBook Air is a big winner for Apple, there’s as yet little evidence that there’s much demand for a similar product running Windows. Last month, it emerged that Acer and Asus expect to sell only 100,000 each by the of 2011, which would amount to between one third and one half of what they originally hoped.

Yes, it’s early days for Ultrabooks — machines that support Intel’s full design vision won’t be on the market for another several months. And the industry is just now starting to bang the drum seriously for the Ultrabook. Asus Chairman Jonney Shih talked about the category in an interview with Walt Mossberg at AsiaD last month.

In its press releases, HP expressed the hopes of an entire industry when it quoted IDC analyst Crawford Del Prete saying he expects PC makers — including HP — to sell 95 million Ultrabooks by 2015. At their current levels, there’s nowhere to go but up.

That’s a 20 percent increase over the first half of the year. And, as you can see from the chart below, the spike in sales occurred with the July launch of the new hardware and has been trending upward ever since. So in four months the Air has gone from less than 10 percent of Apple’s notebook business to nearly a third of it. How much will it comprise by 2012?

Close to 50 percent? That might seem like a stretch, though some analysts have been forecasting it for a while. Back in July, Deutsche Bank’s Chris Whitmore predicted that sales of the Air could ramp to as high as 1.5 million per quarter, which is indeed about half of Apple’s MacBook business. Obviously, they’ve still got a way to go. But we haven’t yet hit the holiday consumer binge. And 2012 could bring with it a new 15-inch Air, destined to drive sales of the machine higher still …

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:

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111006/now-what-the-post-jobs-era-in-tech/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110525/macbooks-sweep-consumer-reports-laptop-ratings/ http://allthingsd.com/20110525/macbooks-sweep-consumer-reports-laptop-ratings/#comments Wed, 25 May 2011 08:10:42 +0000 John Paczkowski http://allthingsd.com/?p=77821 Consumer Reports may have twice declined to recommend Apple’s iPhone 4, but it has no such compunctions about endorsing its laptops. The product evaluation company recently added Apple’s newest MacBooks to its online database and they dominate the entire class, scoring top ranks in literally every size category.

Among the 11-inch laptops Consumer Reports reviewed, the MacBook Air scored a 62 out of 100 possible points, besting a Gateway machine that scored 52.

Among 13-inch laptops, the MacBook, MacBook Air and 3 models of the MacBook Pro took first through fifth place with scores that began at 76 (MacBook Air) and ended at 67 (MacBook).

Among 15- to 16-inch laptops, the MacBook Pro took first, second and third place, with scores of 78, 77 and 76, beating out Dell’s MacBook Pro-esque XPs 15 and HP’s Pavilion.

And, finally, among 17- to 18-inch laptops the MacBook Pro took first and second place with scores of 81 and 80. HP’s Pavilion ranked a close third with a score of 79.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110525/macbooks-sweep-consumer-reports-laptop-ratings/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110517/for-2011-mac-sales-april-2010-is-the-cruelest-month/ http://allthingsd.com/20110517/for-2011-mac-sales-april-2010-is-the-cruelest-month/#comments Tue, 17 May 2011 11:03:58 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=63055 The lack of any big hardware Mac updates in April made for a comparatively slow sales month, according to the latest domestic data from NPD.

The research house says the Mac saw a year-over-year sales increase in April 2011 of 9 percent. That’s nowhere near the 22 percent Y-O-Y growth Wall Street is looking for in the entire June quarter.

Why the descrepancy? Simple. April of 2010 is a hell of a tough comparison month.

The refresh of the MacBook Pro line on April 13 drove a 39 percent spike in Mac sales for the month. With no similar refreshes juicing demand in April of 2011, sales aren’t up quite as much.

Which doesn’t mean Apple won’t post that 22 percent increase investors are hoping for. As Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster notes, it’s far too early to make a call on the June quarter, particularly given the launch of new iMacs earlier this month.

In fact, according to NPD weekly data, Apple saw Y-O-Y unit growth in Macs of 35 percent during the first week of May following the May 3 launch of the new quad-core, Thunderbolt iMacs.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110517/for-2011-mac-sales-april-2010-is-the-cruelest-month/feed/ 5 http://allthingsd.com/20110420/thar-she-blows-a-whale-of-a-quarter-for-apple/ http://allthingsd.com/20110420/thar-she-blows-a-whale-of-a-quarter-for-apple/#comments Wed, 20 Apr 2011 20:31:41 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=60773
Apple’s March quarter saw, among other things, the iPhone’s debut on Verizon, the launch of the iPad 2 and the new Thunderbolt-equipped MacBook Pro line as well.

No wonder it was a blowout.

Posting second-quarter results after the bell Wednesday, the company reported earnings per share of $6.40 on revenues of $24.67 billion–an 83 percent increase over the same period a year ago. The Street had been looking for Apple to report earnings of $5.36 on sales of $23.34 billion, while unaffiliated analysts polled by Apple 2.0 had been looking for earnings of $6.33 on sales of $25.34. Gross margin was 41.4 percent compared to 41.7 percent a year ago.

It was the biggest non-holiday quarterly revenue and earnings in Apple history.

The company sold 3.76 million Macs during the quarter, a 28 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. It sold 18.65 million iPhones–113 percent more than it did a year ago. And it sold 2.8 million MacBooks. (see chart below).

But it sold just 4.69 million iPads; the Street had been looking for 6.2 million. Evidently the tsunami disaster in Japan and production shortages hamstrung sales. (Worth noting: the iPad 2 launched on March 10, 2011 in the States and on March 25, 2011 in 25 additional countries. Apple’s second quarter ended on March 26, 2011.)

“With quarterly revenue growth of 83 percent and profit growth of 95 percent, we’re firing on all cylinders,” CEO Steve Jobs said in a statement. “We will continue to innovate on all fronts throughout the remainder of the year.”

Looking ahead to the June quarter, Apple offered its typically conservative guidance: earnings of $5.03 per share on revenue of $23 billion. Analysts had been expecting earnings of $5.25 per share on revenue of $23.8 billion.

NOTES FROM THE EARNINGS CALL

• CFO Peter Oppenheimer: This is the highest March quarter revenue and earnings in Apple’s history. “We’re thrilled with the iPad’s momentum.”
• Mac sales for the March quarter were up 28 percent year over year, a new record. This was the 20th quarter that the Mac outperformed the broader PC market.
• Wow. iTunes hit $1.4 billion, another new record.
• There are now over 100 million books in the iBooks store.
• iPhone is now on 186 carriers in 90 countries.
• 18.65 million iPhones sold during the quarter represent 113 percent growth, year over year.
• 88 percent of the Fortune 500 are testing or deploying the iPhone.
• “We sold every iPad 2 we made during the quarter.”
• There have been well over 10 billion app downloads to date and Apple has made some $2 billion in payments to the developers who created them.
• Apple Stores continue to do very, very well. Retail revenue is up 90 percent. Apple Stores sold 79,000 Macs during the quarter, up 32 percent. A new record.
• In the next few days, Apple expects the 1 billionth visitor to its retail stores.
• Tim Cook on Japan/supply constraints: We’re very saddened by the situation in Japan and our hearts go out to everyone there….We source many components from Japan–LCDs, optical drives, NAND flash, resin coatings, foil. The earthquake and tsunami caused disruption to many of these suppliers….But as a result of outstanding teamwork we did not have any supply or cost impact from Japan quake in Q2 and we don’t anticipate any in Q3. We’ve been working around the clock with our supplier partners in Japan to ensure there are no supply chain disruptions….We do need to caution that the situation remains unpredictable, though.
• Cook on iPad 2: Demand has been staggering. We’re amazed that we are still so heavily backlogged. Really, this is the mother of all backlogs … but we’re pleased with our manufacturing ramp-up and confident we’ll be able to produce a great number of iPad 2s during the quarter.
• Cook on the prospect of an LTE iPhone: The first generation of LTE chipsets forced a lot of design compromises that we are just not willing to make.
• Cook on the Mac’s international penetration: The Mac has seen enormous growth in Asia. Sales are 76 percent in Asia-Pacific. Doing very well in Japan as well.
• Cook on iOS devices creating an opportunity for the Mac in enterprise: The iPhone and the iPad clearly seem to be creating a halo effort for the Mac. In part that’s why we’re seeing such growth in Mac sales.
• Cook on future CDMA iPhone carriers: I don’t want to get into specifics about CDMA or GSM. But we’re constantly looking to add new carriers where it makes sense.
• Cook on Android: I read yesterday that the iOS platform outreaches Android by 59 percent in the US….IPhone’s integrated approach is inherently better than Android’s fragmented approach…Android turns users into system integrators…we feel very good about where we are and our future product plans.
• Cook on Steve Jobs:He’s still on medical leave, but we see him on a regular basis. As we’ve said before, Steve continues to be involved in major strategic decisions. I know he wants to be back full time as soon as he can.
• Cook on demand for the iPad 2:I wish we could have produced more iPad 2s because there were certainly a lot of people waiting for them.
• Cook on the Samsung suit: We are Samsung’s largest customer and we value them as a component supplier. I expect the relationship with them to continue. But we felt their mobile communications division crossed the line. We tried to work it out, but ultimately decided we needed to turn to the courts.

PREVIOUSLY

• iPad Will Rule Tablet Market For Years, Says Goldman
• Second-Quarter Mac Sales Likely to Be Magical, Revolutionary
• Apple Earnings: Expect Another Barn Burner
• Steve Jobs’s Finest Product–Apple–Won’t Break Down

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110420/thar-she-blows-a-whale-of-a-quarter-for-apple/feed/ 17 http://allthingsd.com/20110323/deleting-a-facebook-account/ http://allthingsd.com/20110323/deleting-a-facebook-account/#comments Thu, 24 Mar 2011 01:19:03 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://mailbox.allthingsd.com/?p=875 Q:

How can I permanently delete my Facebook account?

A:

Facebook doesn’t make it easy. The company tries to hang on to defecting users by promoting a halfway measure called “deactivating” an account, which merely hides you from the Facebook membership but keeps your information on the social network’s servers in case you wish to “reactivate” later. This process can be performed with a few clicks. Facebook says this is the default choice because “many users deactivate their accounts for temporary reasons” and then wish to restore them. But permanent, irreversible deletion of an account requires you to submit a request and wait for Facebook to act on it. The company deliberately delays acting on such requests “in case you change your mind,” according to the site. Details are at: http://on.fb.me/5NCCC0.

Q:

Our daughter will be entering a middle-school program next year which will allow her to do a lot of independent work with assignments completed in a word-processing program and turned in online. Can you recommend a durable, inexpensive, user-friendly first laptop or netbook?

A:

I’d recommend either the 13″ MacBook or the 11″ MacBook Air, which are very durable, easy to master, speedy and highly unlikely to ever get infected with malicious software. Each costs $999. They come with the best built-in suite of software in the industry and a superb operating system, plus Apple’s support is highly rated. If they cost too much, there are similar-sized Windows alternatives for less, hovering around the $600-to-$700 range. Netbooks, of course, can be even cheaper, but there are fewer of them these days, and their reliability can be iffy.

You can find Mossberg’s Mailbox, and my other columns at the All Things Digital website, http://walt.allthingsd.com. Email mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110323/deleting-a-facebook-account/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20110223/intels-light-peak-io-due-thursday/ http://allthingsd.com/20110223/intels-light-peak-io-due-thursday/#comments Wed, 23 Feb 2011 15:15:00 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=58229 It’s been about three years since Intel announced its Light Peak high-speed optical interconnect technology. Now the company appears to be ready to finally ship it–evidently in Apple’s new MacBooks.

Intel is hosting a press briefing tomorrow at which it will “discuss a new technology that is about to appear on the market” and according to CNET that new technology is Light Peak, a single universal replacement for the clutter of cables we currently use to connect our computers to their peripherals and one capable of carrying data at 10 gigabits per second in both directions simultaneously.

The event is rumored to coincide with an update to Apple’s MacBook Pro line, which is further juicing speculation that the new hardware will be the first to implement Light Peak. Apple’s reported name for the standard? Thunderbolt.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110223/intels-light-peak-io-due-thursday/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20110218/your-next-laptop-may-not-be-a-macbook-air-but-it-will-probably-look-like-one/ http://allthingsd.com/20110218/your-next-laptop-may-not-be-a-macbook-air-but-it-will-probably-look-like-one/#comments Fri, 18 Feb 2011 12:00:01 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=58066 It might not run Mac OS X or the sport the Apple brand, but chances are your next laptop will look a lot like the MacBook Air. This according to Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang, who thinks the future of laptop design looks a lot like the one Apple revealed last October.

“You’ll have trouble finding one that doesn’t look like the MacBook Air,” he told Cnet. “I think the Macbook Air is a good mental image of what a clamshell laptop will look like. They’ll be thin because you won’t need any heat pipes, the fan, and extra batteries to lug around.”

That’s not a particularly original observation; Apple’s been touting the Air as the “Next Generation of MacBooks” since it first debuted. But it’s interesting that we’re now hearing it from C-level executives outside of Apple who seem perfectly willing to concede that the Air has redefined the concept of portable computers and parrot a theory put forth by Steve Jobs when he introduced the Air’s latest iteration: “We think all notebooks will look like these one day.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110218/your-next-laptop-may-not-be-a-macbook-air-but-it-will-probably-look-like-one/feed/ 15 http://allthingsd.com/20110216/starting-a-blog-and-sleep-versus-shut-down/ http://allthingsd.com/20110216/starting-a-blog-and-sleep-versus-shut-down/#comments Wed, 16 Feb 2011 23:20:02 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://mailbox.allthingsd.com/?p=851 Q:

I’ll be starting a two-year assignment with the Peace Corps in the near future. I would like to start a blog where I can record my daily activities for my friends and family to read. Do you have any suggestions?

A:

There are numerous free blogging services that offer templates, simple tools and a free address your friends and family can use to view your reports. Two that I have used and can suggest are Blogger, owned by Google, at blogger.com; and the independent WordPress, at wordpress.com.

Q:

In terms of battery life, does it make any practical difference if I leave my common programs on my MacBook Pro running when dormant versus shutting them down when I’m not using them and then firing them up as needed?

A:

I asked Apple about this, and the company said an open, but idle, application on a Mac notebook generally won’t use any or many processor resources, which means almost no impact on battery life, even if it performs periodic background actions like fetching mail.

Exceptions would be programs that do heavy-duty things in the background, like rendering videos. The company strongly advises making sure the laptop is in sleep mode when not in use, and keeping the screen at the lowest brightness level that works for you.

Also, you can check how much demand a program is placing on the processor by running the Activity Monitor, located in the Utilities folder in Applications.

Q:

Why would a GSM phone run in 3G-mode only on AT&T and not on T-Mobile?

A:

It’s true that both carriers use the same basic technology, called GSM. But, in some cases, phones (like the AT&T iPhone) are locked so that, unless you do serious hacking, you can use them on only one of the two networks.

In other cases, it might have to do with the frequencies used by a carrier. T-Mobile and AT&T use different frequencies for their 3G networks, and a phone might simply be built to support only the 3G frequencies used by one of the carriers and not the other.

You can find Mossberg’s Mailbox and my other columns at the new All Things Digital website, http://walt.allthingsd.com. Email mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110216/starting-a-blog-and-sleep-versus-shut-down/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20110216/apple-king-of-all-mobile-pcs/ http://allthingsd.com/20110216/apple-king-of-all-mobile-pcs/#comments Wed, 16 Feb 2011 18:31:52 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=57916 If the iPad truly is a PC and not the “media tablet” that some claim, then Apple is the largest mobile PC vendor in the world.

According to DisplaySearch, Apple shipped 10.2 million mobile PCs in the fourth quarter of 2010–iPads, MacBooks and MacBook Pros–to claim a 17.2 percent share of the mobile PC market. That makes it the new global leader, a title it wrests from Hewlett-Packard, which shipped 9.3 million units during the same period for a 15.6 share and a second-place ranking. Acer ranked third, with 14 percent of the market and 8.4 million units shipped. Dell ranked fourth, with 5.9 million units shipped and a 9.9 percent market share.

An interesting rebalancing of market power and one that DisplaySearch believes is the result not just of first-mover advantage from the iPad, but notebook shipment growth that exceeds the industry average. Said Richard Shim, senior analyst at DisplaySearch, “Apple is currently benefiting from significant and comprehensive growth from both sectors of the mobile PC spectrum, notebooks and tablet PCs.”

[Image credit: Gizmodo commenter Ahubbuch]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110216/apple-king-of-all-mobile-pcs/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20110124/tk-3/ http://allthingsd.com/20110124/tk-3/#comments Mon, 24 Jan 2011 12:55:56 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=56223 Asked last October about Apple’s plans for the nearly $60 billion in cash it had on hand, CEO Steve Jobs suggested the company intended to allocate some to future big-ticket purchases.

“We strongly believe that one or more very strategic opportunities may come along, that we are in a unique position to take advantage of because of our strong cash position,” he said. “You know, we’ve demonstrated a strong track record of being very disciplined with the use of our cash. We don’t let it burn a hole in our pocket, we don’t allow it to motivate us to do stupid acquisitions. And so I think that we’d like to continue to keep our powder dry, because we do feel that there are one or more strategic opportunities in the future. That’s the biggest reason.”

That remark spurred all sorts of speculation about what sensible large-scale acquisitions Apple might make. And while it was certainly reasonable to conclude from Jobs’s remarks that Apple is preparing itself for some big M&A plays in the future, there was another equally plausible conclusion: What if by “strategic opportunities,” Jobs was referring to supply chain investments–money spent to overcome impediments to growth? Apple has done this before, most notably in 2005, when it arranged to purchase up to 40 percent of Samsung Electronics’ holiday NAND flash output for use in it iPods. It inked a similar iPhone-related deal in 2008, forcing Samsung to reduce its supply to other customers to fulfill its obligation to Apple. And there was another half-billion-dollar deal with Toshiba is 2009.

And according to COO Tim Cook, Apple just did it again–but on a much grander scale. During the first-quarter earnings call last week, Cook said the company had invested $3.9 billion to secure component supplies and capacity.

“We’ve historically entered into certain agreements with different people to secure supply and other benefits,” he said. “And the largest one in the recent past has been we signed a deal with several flash suppliers back at the end of 2005 that totaled over $1 billion because we anticipated that flash would become increasingly important across our entire product line and increasingly important to the industry. And so we wanted to secure supply for the company, and we think that, that was an absolutely fantastic use of Apple’s cash. And we constantly look for more of these. And so in the past several quarters we’ve identified another area and come to some recent agreements that [CFO Peter Oppenheimer] talked about in his opening comments, in that these payments consist of prepayments and capital for process equipment and tooling. And similar to the flash agreements, they’re focused in that area we feel is very strategic. And so I’d prefer not to go into more detail about what specific area it’s in, but it’s the same kind of thinking that led us to those deals that led us to the flash deal.”

For what particular components, he wouldn’t say. There are some likely candidates, though: The high-res LCDs used in the iPhone 4 and iPad; solid-state drives like the ones in the new MacBook Air, which are presumably headed to other portions of the MacBook line as well; or perhaps some new system on a chip that will infuse the next-generation iPad and iPhone with significant performance gains. I’m sure there are others as well. And all fit quite nicely into Jobs’s vision of “strategic opportunities.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110124/tk-3/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20110112/200-million-facetime-enabled-devices-in-2012/ http://allthingsd.com/20110112/200-million-facetime-enabled-devices-in-2012/#comments Wed, 12 Jan 2011 17:40:49 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=55653 By the end of fiscal 2011, Apple will have an installed base of some 85 million FaceTime-enabled devices as the company’s nascent video conferencing platform gathers momentum. This according to Barclay’s analyst Ben Reitzes, who expects Apple to sell about 50 million FaceTime-compatible iPhones in fiscal 2011 along with 15 million FaceTime-compatible iPods, 12 million FaceTime-capable Macs and 10 million FaceTime-compatible iPads.

And by the end of fiscal 2012, said Reitzes, that installed base will have reached over 200 million devices, driven by what he called the “FaceTime networking effect” that encompasses the better part of Apple’s consumer product line–something the company’s rivals may not be able to duplicate with video conferencing apps of their own.

“While Android and competitive devices either have or are working toward incorporating a similar feature, we believe this particular feature benefits from Apple’s vertically integrated model,” Reitzes said. “Experiences across disparate hardware platforms tend to vary–with Apple’s one of the most reliable in our trials. Also, this feature allows Apple to mine the millions of iTunes users who have Apple ID’s–and provide an attractive feature across devices that can be put into use immediately. We believe the ‘FaceTime networking effect’ could enhance a halo effect on Macs and iPads as the feature becomes available.”

Oh, and that FaceTime-compatible iPad that Reitzes says Apple will sell 10 million of? He expects it to be announced over the next month with a shipping date near the end of March or early April. And like most folks, he assumes it will include a thinner and lighter design, front and rear-facing cameras, a USB port, and an iPhone-like high resolution display.

[Image credit: FacePlant]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110112/200-million-facetime-enabled-devices-in-2012/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20101214/year-of-the-mac-how-about-years-of-the-mac/ http://allthingsd.com/20101214/year-of-the-mac-how-about-years-of-the-mac/#comments Tue, 14 Dec 2010 11:32:18 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=54311 Back in January, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster proclaimed 2010 the “Year of the Mac.” Now, with the year nearly over, it’s looking like he was right.

The latest domestic sales data from NPD shows Apple on pace to sell between 4.1 million and 4.3 million Macs in the December quarter. Which would make for another record breaker in an ever-lengthening string of them. After all, Apple’s U.S. Mac sales are up 20 percent year-over-year for the first two months of the current quarter. And with international sales growing faster than domestic, the company will likely see between 22 percent and 28 percent year-over-year growth.

If that trend continues–and with the recent refresh of the iMac and MacBook Air lines, there’s no reason to think it won’t–2011 could end up being the “Year of the Mac” as well.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101214/year-of-the-mac-how-about-years-of-the-mac/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101208/ipad-2-start-the-100-day-hype-countdown/ http://allthingsd.com/20101208/ipad-2-start-the-100-day-hype-countdown/#comments Wed, 08 Dec 2010 17:54:29 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=54020

Industry sources are telling the occasionally reliable DigiTimes that Foxconn, Apple’s Chinese manufacturing partner, will begin shipping the next-generation tablet within the next 100 days in preparation for a spring debut that will follow the launch of the original iPad by about a year. The iPad 2 is expected to be thinner than its predecessor and manufactured with the same unibody approach Apple’s been using for the MacBook. It’s also expected to feature an LCD backlit display, a front-facing camera and Facetime video chat support. Finally, some reports suggest it is powered by one of Qualcomm’s multimode chips and will run on both GSM and CDMA-based networks around the world.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101208/ipad-2-start-the-100-day-hype-countdown/feed/ 0