Tag Archives | Apple

Your Take on iPhone 4 "Antennagate"

Posted by Harry McCracken on July 21, 2010 at 2:39 am

It’s always nice when a survey shows a clear consensus–hey, it sure makes things easier if you’re trying to draw conclusions about the results. But the survey we conducted on the controversy over the iPhone 4’s reception and Apple’s response to it defies easy analysis.

The results to nearly every question we asked are a split decision. We heard from lots of happy iPhone 4 owners, and lots of unhappy iPhone 4 owners. People who think Apple’s handling the situation well, and people who found last Friday’s press conference profoundly unsatisfying. If you think this whole affair represents a catastrophe for Apple, you may be surprised by the percentage of respondents who say it’s no big deal. Then again, if you believe it’s a non-issue, you may be surprised by the percentage who are still bothered by it all.

Here’s a telling snapshot of the survey’s conflicted results: About two-thirds of respondents who have iPhone 4s say they’ve noticed the grip of death themselves…and about two-thirds say they have no plans to return their phones. In other words, the majority seems to be saying that the problem is real, but outweighed by everything that’s right about this phone.

Almost five hundred people participated in this survey over the past two days, eighty-two percent of who live in the US. Two-thirds have already bought iPhones–a handful of who have already returned their phones–and ninety percent either watched Apple’s Webcast of its press conference or followed liveblogs and other reports closely.

The standard disclaimers apply: The results you’re about to read represent unnormalized data from a pool of respondents whose opinions don’t necessarily map to those of iPhone owners and iPhone watchers at large. As usual, I still find what you had to say interesting…

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Apple: Full Steam Ahead With Another Record Quarter

Posted by Ed Oswald on July 20, 2010 at 2:45 pm

As expected, Apple reported its best quarter ever, posting $15.7 billion in revenue, up 61 percent year over year. This was well above the $14.62 billion that analysts polled by Reuters expected, and at least for the moment puts it in a position to possibly match or exceed Microsoft’s results when they report on Thursday.

A record quarter was seen for its Macintosh line of computers, which sold 3.47 million Macs during the quarter and was up 33 percent. 8.4 million iPhones were sold, representing a 61 percent growth over the year ago quarter. iPads which launched during the quarter sold some 3.27 million, essentially maintaining the million per month sales rate it has enjoyed since launch.

“High demand is never a problem,” chief operating officer Tim Cook said of the iPad during a conference call with analysts. “We’re increasing capacity as quickly as we can,” he added, noting that iPad shortages had nothing to do with any particular component shortages.

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Buy Movies Once, Watch Them Anywhere. Unless It's a Disney Movie or You Own Any Apple Devices

Posted by Harry McCracken on July 20, 2010 at 2:23 pm

The Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem, a consortium of sixty Hollywood content owners, hardware makers, and software companies I wrote about back in January, has given a name to its  theoretically-universal copy protection scheme, which aims to let you pay for a piece of content once and then watch it on an array of gadgets. It’s called UltraViolet. It if works like it’s supposed to work, it could be neat–but it’ll have to overcome the tendency of ambitious copy-protection systems to be confusing, annoying, and/or unreliable. And there’s still one major gotcha standing in the way of its big dreams: Disney and Apple aren’t on board.

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Apple Could Beat Microsoft in Revenue This Quarter

Posted by Ed Oswald on July 19, 2010 at 11:46 am

In terms of market capitalization, Apple has been ahead of Microsoft since May. In terms of real dollars made however, Redmond still is king. That may not be true for much longer: Apple is making strides that could put it ahead of Microsoft in terms of revenue, and highlight the company’s decade long rise from the ashes.

According to Fortune, analysts polled by Reuters expect Apple’s earnings revenues — which it reports Tuesday — to come in at about $14.62 billion for the quarter. On the other hand, analysts expect Microsoft to report $15.26 billion in revenues when it gives its quarterly numbers on Thursday.

Apple seems to have a habit of beating Wall Street expectations rather handily (last quarter, revenue numbers were some $1 billion higher than expected). So does Microsoft — but not to the extent that Apple manages to do. This all means it is a very real possibility that the Cupertino company may have made more money overall for the first time in history.

Does this really mean anything though? I’d argue it does. What it shows is Apple is a company that still appparently has upward potential, while Microsoft continues to be mired in the morass that it seems to have been in financially for much of the past decade. Look at some of the graphs in the Fortune article and you’ll see why.

Apple is certainly the darling of the tech press — we all can agree on that. But the data is now finally catching up to the hype that some of us journalists have heaped upon it I think. What remains to be seen is if there is anything that Microsoft can do in order to stay competitive.

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Please Take Our Survey on the iPhone 4 and Apple's Press Conference

Posted by Harry McCracken on July 19, 2010 at 2:13 am

So did Apple mollify the world with the press conference it held on Friday to respond to charges that the iPhone 4’s antenna design is seriously flawed? Fortune’s Philip Elmer-DeWitt has rounded up a bunch of reactions from journalists, bloggers, and analysts, and they range from enthusiastic thumbs up for Steve Jobs’ performance to severe unhappiness with it. One way or another, we’re not done talking about this.

As usual, I’m curious about what you think. So Technologizer is conducting a little survey that’s open to all interested parties–iPhone 4 owners (or people who bought and returned an iPhone 4), prospective iPhone owners, and anyone who paid attention to Apple’s press conference on Friday and formed opinions of it. If you have an iPhone 4, we’ll ask you some questions about it; if you have an opinion about Apple’s response, we’ll ask you to share it.

The survey will take just a few minutes to complete, and we’ll report on the results in a future story.

Take Technologizer’s iPhone 4 survey.

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PCWorld Yanks iPhone 4 From Top Spot in Smartphone Chart

Posted by Harry McCracken on July 18, 2010 at 11:37 am

At Apple’s iPhone 4 press conference on Friday morning, Steve Jobs included PCWorld’s ranking of the handset as the top smartphone in his list of iPhone 4 achievements. But Jobs’ presentation and the measures Apple is taking to respond to the antenna controversy didn’t leave my former coworkers at PCW confident that its original recommendation had been validated.

Actually, they found the latest developments so lackluster that they bumped the iPhone 4 off the chart entirely. Its rating is now “pending,” and HTC’s EVO 4G is the #1 phone. (The iPhone 3GS remains on the chart, in the #8 slot.)

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Apple's Antenna Response is Online

Posted by Harry McCracken on July 16, 2010 at 2:00 pm

Apple has made a Web replay of this morning’s iPhone 4 press conference available on its site–plus a page that walks through its tests of the iPhone 4 and other phones and how holding them near their antennas impacts reception.

(One question which I don’t think Apple answered: Were these all the phones it tested? Did any fail to, um fail no matter how they were held? Apple’s explanation says that “nearly every smartphone” has issues, which suggests that some don’t.)

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Consumer Reports Responds

Posted by Harry McCracken on July 16, 2010 at 11:40 am

Consumer Reports on Apple’s iPhone 4 press conference–sounds like Steve Jobs didn’t convince them that the iPhone 4 has no unique issues:

Consumers deserve answers and fairness.  Providing free bumpers and cases is a good first step toward Apple identifying and finding a solution for the signal-loss problem of the iPhone 4.

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