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Apple’s iPhone Business Alone Is Now Bigger Than All Of Microsoft
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Tech writer MG Siegler just noted a remarkable fact:
Apple’s iPhone business alone is now bigger than Microsoft.
Not Windows. Not Office. Microsoft.
Think about that.
Remember when Balmer said the iPhone would never amount to anything? Good times…
Apple Scotland
Watching Apple win the world
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Apple’s last quarter was the second most profitable quarter of any company ever in US history. Only ExxonMobile topped them slightly in 2008 when oil was at an all-time high. That’s an astounding and awe-inspiring accomplishment.
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Mobile Apps Put the Web in Their Rear-view Mirror
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Our analysis shows that, for the first time ever, daily time spent in mobile apps surpasses desktop and mobile web consumption. This stat is even more remarkable if you consider that it took less than three years for native mobile apps to achieve this level of usage, driven primarily by the popularity of iOS and Android platforms.
As a note of interest, Facebook has increasingly taken its share of time spent on the Internet, now making up 14 of the 74 minutes spent per day by consumers, or about one sixth of all Internet minutes.
The chart clearly shows that Games and Social Networking categories capture the significant majority of consumers’ time. Consumers spend nearly half their time using Games, and a third in Social Networking apps. Combined, these two categories control a whopping 79% of consumers’ total app time.
I think it’d be valuable to break out some of this data by age group; there’s a big question of how much of the additional time is from under-18yos. (e.g. people handing the iPad to their kids to keep them from fussing, teens spending time online, etc.)
So I’m not convinced that the following is actually fully right, but it’s thought-provoking and worth sharing, I think:
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What the headline should be is that consumers are leaving web developers behind. And so those that can follow quickly have a HUGE opportunity. Forget a few hundred thousand, there are going to be tens of millions of mobile apps available to consumers in the next few years. App goldrush over? Difficult to be visible on mobile? I don’t think so – not even close.
Apple, America and a Squeezed Middle Class – NYTimes.com
This article is about Apple and iPhone manufacturing, but it explains in general why people say “nothing is made in America anymore”. I’m quoting more extensively than we usually do, but I think it’s worth it. What that means, of course, is that I think you should read the whole article.
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Apple executives say that going overseas, at this point, is their only option. One former executive described how the company relied upon a Chinese factory to revamp iPhone manufacturing just weeks before the device was due on shelves. Apple had redesigned the iPhone’s screen at the last minute, forcing an assembly line overhaul. New screens began arriving at the plant near midnight.
A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day.
“The speed and flexibility is breathtaking,” the executive said. “There’s no American plant that can match that.”
(…)
“We sell iPhones in over a hundred countries,” a current Apple executive said. “We don’t have an obligation to solve America’s problems. Our only obligation is making the best product possible.”
(…)
In part, Asia was attractive because the semiskilled workers there were cheaper. But that wasn’t driving Apple. For technology companies, the cost of labor is minimal compared with the expense of buying parts and managing supply chains that bring together components and services from hundreds of companies.
For Mr. Cook, the focus on Asia “came down to two things,” said one former high-ranking Apple executive. Factories in Asia “can scale up and down faster” and “Asian supply chains have surpassed what’s in the U.S.” The result is that “we can’t compete at this point,” the executive said.
(…)
It is hard to estimate how much more it would cost to build iPhones in the United States. However, various academics and manufacturing analysts estimate that because labor is such a small part of technology manufacturing, paying American wages would add up to $65 to each iPhone’s expense. Since Apple’s profits are often hundreds of dollars per phone, building domestically, in theory, would still give the company a healthy reward.
But such calculations are, in many respects, meaningless because building the iPhone in the United States would demand much more than hiring Americans — it would require transforming the national and global economies. Apple executives believe there simply aren’t enough American workers with the skills the company needs or factories with sufficient speed and flexibility.
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Students’ math scores jumped 20% with iPad textbooks, publisher says
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On the heels of Apple’s e-textbook announcement in New York City this week, publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt announced the results of its “HMC Fuse: Algebra I” pilot program at Ameila Earhart Middle School in California’s Riverside Unified School District. The Algebra I digital textbook is touted as the world’s first full-curriculum algebra application developed exclusively for Apple’s iPad.
In its test run, the “HMH Fuse” application helped more than 78 percent of students score “Proficient” or “Advanced” on the spring 2011 California Standards Test. That was significantly higher than the 59 percent of peers who used traditional textbooks.
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Apple’s mind-bogglingly greedy and evil license agreement | ZDNet
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I read EULAs so you don’t have to. I’ve spent years reading end user license agreements, EULAs, looking for little gotchas or just trying to figure out what the agreement allows and doesn’t allow.
I have never seen a EULA as mind-bogglingly greedy and evil as Apple’s EULA for its new ebook authoring program.
(…)
Exactly: Imagine if Microsoft said you had to pay them 30% of your speaking fees if you used a PowerPoint deck in a speech.
(…)
The nightmare scenario under this agreement? You create a great work of staggering literary genius that you think you can sell for 5 or 10 bucks per copy. You craft it carefully in iBooks Author. You submit it to Apple. They reject it.
Under this license agreement, you are out of luck. They won’t sell it, and you can’t legally sell it elsewhere. You can give it away, but you can’t sell it.
The positive spin would be that this is exactly like the well-accepted iOS App Store: you’re gambling that Apple will accept your app(/book), and if they don’t then you’re completely out of luck as you have no other way to sell it without rewriting it entirely for another platform. It’s not as simple as copy/pasting text and pictures into another authoring tool if you’ve done anything interactive that involves iOS code.
You could also say “well, that’s what you give up to get iBooks Author for free.”
But is this the world we want to move into? Where Amazon controls whether you can continue to read the books you’ve bought from them? And where Apple can reject your work after months of effort and leave you stranded?
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CEO of FoxConn: ‘Managing One Million Animals Gives Me A Headache’
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According to WantChinaTimes, Terry Gou, the head of Hon Hai Foxconn, the largest contract manufacturer in the world, had this to say at a recent meeting with his senior managers:"Hon Hai has a workforce of over one million worldwide and as human beings are also animals, to manage one million animals gives me a headache," said Hon Hai chairman Terry Gou at a recent year-end party, adding that he wants to learn from Chin Shih-chien, director of Taipei Zoo, regarding how animals should be managed.
Apparently there are no psychologists in China.
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‘Time to Sell Apple’
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Let me get this straight. Apple entered the phone business five years ago with a strategy completely different than any other handset maker: treating the user as the customer, rather than the carriers. With this strategy, Apple has now captured two-thirds of the profit in the worldwide handset market. And but now, according to Lee, what Apple should do is start acting like all the other handset makers.
Where do they find these guys?
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Google IP Vandalizing OpenStreetMap
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Preliminary results show users from Google IP address ranges in India deleting, moving and abusing OSM data including subtle edits like reversing one-way streets.
Two OpenStreetMap accounts have been vandalizing OSM in London, New York and elsewhere from Google’s IP address, the same address in India reported by Mocality.
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Update: Google sent the following statement to ReadWriteWeb on Tuesday morning. “The two people who made these changes were contractors acting on their own behalf while on the Google network. They are no longer working on Google projects.”
Well – that must have been an awkward conversation…
Pakistan mourns young genius Arfa Karims demise
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In what could simply be described as an enormous loss for Pakistan, Arfa Karim, the world’s youngest Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP), Saturday night, lost the battle of life after remaining admitted here at Combined Military Hospital for 26 days, Geo News reported.
Arfa Karim was only sixteen years old.
Her funeral prayers will be offered on Sunday at 10 AM in Cantt area.
Arfa Karim remained in intensive care at Combined Military Hospital (CMH) after suffering an epileptic seizure and cardiac arrest a few weeks ago. After battling for life for 26 days, one of Pakistan’s brightest brains left this world for good.
Microsoft Bans Linux On ARM PCs
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When I talked to Linus Torvalds he said that Secure Boot is a good thing, but can be used in a bad ways. That’s proving to be true.
When Microsoft published The Certification Requirements for Windows 8 it was evident that the company wanted to use the secure boot to lock Linux out of such hardware, thus creating a Windows only hardware. The discovery lead to a strong protest from the FLOSS community. Microsoft allowed the non-ARM hardware to be able to run Linux if the hardware vendors chooses to allow that. But as we saw the arrival of ARM on desktop Microsoft “wasted no time in revising its Windows Hardware Certification Requirements to effectively ban most alternative operating systems on ARM-based devices that ship with Windows 8.”
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Google, what were you thinking?
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Since October, Google’s GKBO appears to have been systematically accessing Mocality’s database and attempting to sell their competing product to our business owners. They have been telling untruths about their relationship with us, and about our business practices, in order to do so. As of January 11th, nearly 30% of our database has apparently been contacted.
Furthermore, they now seem to have outsourced this operation from Kenya to India.
“Do No Evil” apparently doesn’t apply to Africa?
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Businessweek: “Steve Ballmer Reboots”
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Steve Ballmer Reboots
With the stock hung for 10 years, no one thought to reboot Ballmer until now?!
Misdirection, Doublespeak, Non-Answers, and Straight-Up Bad Decisions
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It’s one thing for Google to tightly integrate their own social network with their web search results, using their monopoly (or, if you prefer, monopsony) to give Google Plus a significant competitive advantage over Facebook and Twitter. Some see this as anticompetitive behavior; others see this as good clean competitive hardball. Are they unfairly abusing a monopoly, or fairly using their best strength to their own advantage? That’s up for debate.
But to deny that they’re doing it at all? It defies belief.
I honestly don’t know what’s worse: if Google is so institutionally delusional that they actually believe this isn’t giving Google Plus a tremendous advantage (fair or unfair) over every other social network in the world, or if Google thinks so poorly of everyone outside the company that they think anyone is actually going to buy this line of bullshit. The best case scenario for Google is that Eric Schmidt, in his new role as chairman, has turned into a loose cannon who should just shut the fuck up.
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Tim Cook’s stock grant
You’ve probably seen those headlines about Tim Cook making $378 million in Apple stock last year. Those articles are mostly a bit confused. He was awarded restricted stock, to vest over the next 10 years. Apple is just reporting the whole grant to the SEC in the year it was made.
OK, that seems a bit more reasonable than a $378 million payday, right?
Well, let’s do a thought experiment to see how much Cook actually might make with those 900,000 shares he will receive if he doesn’t get fired or leave before then.
I’m sure Apple’s Board would be happy if Cook kept Apple growing as much as it has the last 10 years. That seems like a good benchmark.
From Fall of 2001 to Fall of 2011), Apple stock increased from about $9 to $378, or 42x.
If Cook is successful and the stock tracks along, then in the Fall of 2021 his stock price will be 42 * $378, and Cook was not given options (where you only make money if the stock goes up) but actual stock, so he makes the full value, or 42 * $378 * 900k.
Per year Cook would make 1.4 billion dollars.
PER YEAR.
Minus tax.
(He only has to do roughly 1/4th as well as the past 10 years to make roughly $378 million per year.)
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Apple, RIM deny claims of data backdoor for Indian government
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Apple and RIM have denied providing the Indian government with backdoor access to customers’ data, after the release of a memo that appears to suggest that they and Nokia did a deal in exchange for access to the Indian smartphone market.
Open Letter to Apple Shareholders
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Paying a dividend and burning down our war chest would jeopardize all of that.
You see, one day a competitor will come along and cut our core product line out from underneath us. We will need all the cash we can muster to fend them off. When that cash is done, we will mortgage the company. The first several times we may be successful. However, as is always the case, eventually time will get the best of us and we will be unable to meet our creditors demands.
We will go bankrupt. Our creditors will seize the equity and the shareholders will be left with nothing and having made zero return on their investment.
Right. Makes total sense. And I want some of the same glue this guy is sniffing, it must be great!
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‘The Sims’ Designer Creating New Game for Real Life
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“It’s kind of remarkable. I’ve set up a couple of PCs and a few TVs over the last couple of years. Buying a new television and setting it up is far more complicated now than buying a computer and setting it up.”
No wonder people expect Apple to start selling TV sets.
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Domo Arigato, Mr Roboto
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“I can’t wake up one morning and say, ‘Screw the letter B,’” type designer Matthew Carter told me last year when I interviewed him for the Economist, just after he had received a MacArthur Foundation “genius” fellowship. Carter, arguably the leading living creator and adapter of fonts in the Western world, was talking about the limits of pushing legibility and readability.
I thought of his comment when a recent furor erupted over the new “house” font for Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich), called Roboto. Roboto is a bespoke sans-serif font, created by a Google employee and used throughout Android’s user interface (UI) as part of the larger user experience (UX) overhaul. The intent is to make Android more intuitive, cohesive, and fluid, and work better on a variety of screen sizes, especially tablets.
Roboto was almost immediately branded a Frankenfont, a multi-headed hydra, and many other names by font purists and tyros alike, because of what seems to be a borrowing of identifiable features of several well-known fonts, including Helvetica. Stephen Coles at Typographica singled out characters he felt quite similar in form from Helvetica, Myriad, Universe, FF DIN, and Ronnia.
Nokia Lumia 800
Just got myself one, and I’ve been playing with it for 10 minutes, and I’m pleasantly surprised. Microsoft managed to create a decent user interface, and I like it. Now there’s an unexpected thing for me to say, right?
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Bullshit
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Programmers
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Jonathan Ive is knighted in New Year Honours list
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Apple’s chief designer Jonathan Ive has been appointed a Knight Commander of the British Empire (KBE) in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours list.
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Norton
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The Definition Of Open Is… Missing
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A few minutes ago, Android chief Andy Rubin sent out his 6th tweet. A milestone. Never mind that they’re all self-serving promotion with Rubin never responding to anything or really giving anything in the way of context. They’re all awesome. Kudos.But wait. I thought this was his 7th tweet…
That was the response I kept getting after noting Rubin’s milestone. But I counted and counted again. Six.
Not so fast.
Turns out, the people are right. This was actually Rubin’s 7th tweet, but he deleted one of them…
Interesting. Okay, so which one? One Twitter follower, MentionOnly noticed it and appropriately, Google cache confirms:
the definition of open: “mkdir android ; cd android ; repo init -u git://android.git.kernel.org/platform/manifest.git ; repo sync ; make”
Yes, Rubin for some reason has deleted his most famous tweet. His first tweet! One that led to stories by myself and others.
That tweet no longer exists. His first one listed is now from December 2010, trumpeting, what else: Android activations!!!!
Where did the initial tweet go? Who knows. But it sure looks like he deleted it. Deleted it in an “open” way, I’m sure.
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Samsung: no ICS upgrade for Galaxy S and Galaxy Tab because of TouchWiz
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Samsung has just distributed the worst news of this Ice Cream Sandwich upgrade cycle: the popular Galaxy S smartphone that sold 10 million units last year and the 7-inch Galaxy Tab tablet won’t be upgraded to Android 4.0.
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it’s a development platform, not a computing platform. That’s why tech commentators can’t see the difference.
iOS for iPhone and iPad is a platform. Android is not. Android is something companies use to develop products. Anything done on Android after release of a product that has no relation whatsoever to the product. This is no different from iOS, except the company who developed iOS and the product is one and the same, and that has effects on what they think customers may expect from them. No wonder people are more loyal to Apple.
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Mozilla and Google Sign New Agreement for Default Search in Firefox
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The specific terms of this commercial agreement are subject to traditional confidentiality requirements, and we’re not at liberty to disclose them.
It’s a good thing Firefox is “open”, just like Android.
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RIM now worth less than Apple’s App Store alone
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Research in Motion’s struggles in the smartphone market have driven its stock price so low that the company is worth less than the estimated value of just Apple’s App Store.
British Telecom sues Google over six U.S. patents allegedly infringed by Android and various Google services
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After Apple, Oracle, Microsoft, and eBay, British Telecommunications plc (commonly referred to as "British Telecom" or simply "BT") has just become the fifth large publicly-traded company to bring patent infringement litigation against Android.
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Burnistoun Eleven.
Rofl thats hilarious