Apple Inc

613 'Apple Inc' stories April 2013 - January 2015

Angela Ahrendts recruiting U.S. employees for China as new stores & initiatives revealed

Mark Gurman Jan 26 2015 - 7:24 am PT

Apple Senior Vice President of Retail Angela Ahrendts is continuing to go all in on growth in China. In video messages to employees in recent days and weeks, Ahrendts has been recruiting employees from United States-based Apple Retail stores to relocate to China to help build up Apple’s retail efforts in the region. In a note to employees late last week, sources say that Ahrendts reported that approximately 200 Apple retail workers from the U.S. have already offered to make the move. Ahrendts added that the offer to move to China “has no expiration date because as the business grows, our needs will only become greater, so as your personal and professional life changes, just always keep China at the top of your mind, because we’re going to need you…”

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Apple’s purchase of AuthenTec cost the Nexus 6 its fingerprint reader, reveals former Motorola CEO

Ben Lovejoy Jan 26 2015 - 5:35 am PT

14 Comments

The recessed Motorola logo was originally slated to be a fingerprint sensor

When Apple bought AuthenTec back in 2012, it did more than grab the best fingerprint technology available for itself – it also stopped Google including a fingerprint sensor in the Nexus 6, revealed former Motorola CEO Dennis Woodside. Speaking to the Telegraph, Woodside said that the dimple on the back of the handset was originally intended to be a fingerprint reader.

Indeed, the 6-inch Nexus 6, he can now admit, was stymied by just one of those big players. A dimple on the back that helps users hold the device should, in fact, have been rather more sophisticated. “The secret behind that is that it was supposed to be fingerprint recognition, and Apple bought the best supplier. So the second best supplier was the only one available to everyone else in the industry and they weren’t there yet,” says Woodside.

A fingerprint scanner had been widely rumored prior to the launch of the Android smartphone originally code-named Shamu, and it’s believed one was included in internal prototypes, before it was abandoned. Woodside’s comments provide the explanation, Motorola originally intending to buy or license the sensor from AuthenTec.

Apple now selling more iPhones in China than in US, say analysts

Ben Lovejoy Jan 26 2015 - 4:48 am PT

6 Comments

Tim Cook said in October that it was “just a matter of time” before China overtook the USA as its biggest market, and it seems that time may be arriving sooner than expected – at least as far as the iPhone is concerned. The Financial Times reports that analysts expect tomorrow’s Q1 earnings call to confirm that Apple sold more iPhones in China than in the US.

Analysts at UBS estimate that China accounted for 36 per cent of iPhone shipments in the most recent quarter, compared with 24 per cent for the US. During the same period last year, 29 per cent of units were sold in the US and 22 per cent were in China, UBS said.

The view was supported by Creative Strategies, which forecast that Apple has sold around 2M more iPhones in China than in the US in the final calendar quarter of 2014 (Apple’s financial Q1) …
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Korean report supports KGI prediction that Samsung will make 75% of A9 chips for next iPhone

Ben Lovejoy Jan 26 2015 - 3:59 am PT

2 Comments

Korean news site MK Business News (via Reuters) is reporting that Samsung will make 75% of the A9 chip for the next iPhone. This matches an earlier detailed prediction by KGI Research, which stated that the balance of the chips would be made by Global Foundry, and is in line with a statement by Samsung which last year confirmed it as a major supplier of the new chip.

The Samsung-fabbed chips will, says the report, be made in the USA …
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Apple hires Burberry’s VP of Digital Retail initiatives ahead of Watch launch

Mark Gurman Jan 23 2015 - 7:58 am PT

5 Comments

Apple has made yet another key hire from the fashion industry: Chester Chipperfield, the Vice President of Digital and Interactive Design at Burberry. Chipperfield was “responsible for User Experience and Digital Design for all channels” and was “highly involved in digital retail initiatives” at Burberry, according to his LinkedIn profile. He confirmed the move to Apple on his profile as well as on Twitter…

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Tim Cook agreed to allow Chinese government to conduct security audits on Apple devices – local media

Ben Lovejoy Jan 23 2015 - 5:45 am PT

6 Comments

Beijing News reports that Tim Cook has agreed to allow China’s State Internet Information Office to carry out security audits of Apple products sold in the country. Cook reportedly made the offer during his meeting with China’s Cyberspace Administration minister Lu Wei in December.

China has long expressed suspicion over the security of Apple products, seemingly resulting from frosty relations with the U.S. Government. A state-run TV station in China described the iPhone as a “national security concern” last July due to its location-tracking capabilities. Apple responded by pointing out that location data is stored on the phone, not on Apple’s servers, and is encrypted …
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$73M payout to Angela Ahrendts reflects the Burberry stock she sacrificed, explains Apple

Ben Lovejoy Jan 23 2015 - 4:58 am PT

26 Comments

If you were puzzled by the fact that the $73M compensation package paid to retail head Angela Ahrendts dwarfed those awarded to other senior Apple execs, including Tim Cook’s $9.2M, Apple explained that it was in large part to compensate her for unvested Burberry stock she lost by leaving the company …
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Apple extends sanctions-compliance in Crimea by blocking sales of all Apple products & services

Ben Lovejoy Jan 23 2015 - 4:11 am PT

1 Comment

Apple has ordered resellers to cease all sales of Apple products and services in Crimea as of 1st February. This follows the termination of agreements with app developers in the region earlier this week. Apple states that both moves are to comply with sanctions on the Crimea region of the Ukraine imposed by the US Government. The company informed retailers of the decision by letter.

With reference made to Section 5G, «Export Compliance» of Apple Authorized Service Provider Agreement dated 01.04.14, please be informed that in accordance with the new sanctions on the Crimea Region announced by the US Government on December 19, 2014 you shall not sell Apple products and/or provide services related to Apple products in the Crimea Region as of February 1, 2015.

The US joined the EU in imposing economic sanctions in protest at Russia’s annexation of the Crimean peninsula, which legally remains part of the Ukraine. Google has likewise started to block AdSense and Adwords accounts in the region, and Google Play services will cease on 1st February.

TechCrunch notes that the political conflict could escalate, with the possibility that Russian government may retaliate by blocking the sale of US imports into Russia–an important market for many US companies, including Apple.

Apple recently responded to a dramatic fall in value of the Russian ruble by temporarily halting online sales before returning with a 35% increase in prices to reflect the current dollar exchange rate. It also increased the prices of apps in the Russian App Store.

Apple targets for Apple Watch battery life revealed, A5-caliber CPU inside

Mark Gurman Jan 22 2015 - 11:40 am PT

109 Comments

Although Apple has said that the Apple Watch will need to be charged nightly, the company has not disclosed any details on how long the wearable’s battery will last. For the first time, people with knowledge of the Apple Watch’s development have provided us with the specific performance targets Apple wants to achieve for the Apple Watch battery, but the actual numbers may fall short of those targets.

According to our sources, Apple opted to use a relatively powerful processor and high-quality screen for the Apple Watch, both of which contribute to significant power drain. Running a stripped-down version of iOS codenamed SkiHill, the Apple S1 chip inside the Apple Watch is surprisingly close in performance to the version of Apple’s A5 processor found inside the current-generation iPod touch, while the Retina-class color display is capable of updating at a fluid 60 frames per second.

Apple initially wanted the Apple Watch battery to provide roughly one full day of usage, mixing a comparatively small amount of active use with a larger amount of passive use. As of 2014, Apple wanted the Watch to provide roughly 2.5 to 4 hours of active application use versus 19 hours of combined active/passive use, 3 days of pure standby time, or 4 days if left in a sleeping mode. Sources, however, say that Apple will only likely achieve approximately 2-3 days in either the standby or low-power modes…

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Be My Eyes iPhone app allows sighted people to lend a helping hand to blind people

Ben Lovejoy Jan 21 2015 - 5:42 am PT

16 Comments

[vimeo 113872517 w=704 h=396]

The National Federation of the Blind said last year that Apple has “done more for accessibility than any other company,” and with the help of a new app, iPhone and iPad owners can take things even further. Be My Eyes is an app that allows blind people to request remote help from a sighted person when needed.

Requests for help might range from checking the expiry date on a container of milk to looking at an airport departure board for a gate number …
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State of the Union press gallery “looks like a damn Apple ad,” observes political reporter

Ben Lovejoy Jan 21 2015 - 4:46 am PT

22 Comments

We’re used to seeing row upon row of Macbooks at tech press events, but the popularity of Apple’s laptop seems equally strong among mainstream journalists. The Huffington Post’s senior congressional reporter Michael McAuliff tweeted that the press gallery at last night’s State of the Union address “looks like a damn Apple ad.”

By far the majority of the laptops visible in the photo of the press gallery above the House floor have the familiar glowing Apple logo.

[tweet https://twitter.com/mmcauliff/status/557715212858839040]

The White House also embraced technology by posting the full text of the speech as a blog post on Medium before the President got up to speak. As last year, though, there were few references to technology in the address, the main one urging Congress “to finally pass the legislation we need to better meet the evolving threat of cyber-attacks, combat identity theft, and protect our children’s information.”

Microsoft also had to look out at a sea of glowing Apple logos when launching Windows 10 …

[tweet https://twitter.com/AustenAllred/status/558029756277743616/]

Apple teases soon-to-open Apple Store in Hangzhou, China, with stunning mural

Ben Lovejoy Jan 20 2015 - 4:19 am PT

11 Comments

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MAsPtCNMTI]

Update: Apple has posted a version of the video with English subtitles on YouTube (embedded above).

Apple is certainly not thinking small when it comes to China, with 25 new retail stores promised within a two-year period, and its latest soon-to-open store in Hangzhou features a massive mural covering the entire front of the store. The store is due to open on Saturday, January 24th, the second of five new stores Angela Ahrendts said would be opening by the Chinese New Year on February 19th.

Featuring a poem written around 2000 years ago celebrating the importance of the city—a provincial capital—the stunning calligraphy was hand-painted by Wang Dongling, a famous modern calligrapher. Apple has released a video of its creation …
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iOS developers share their earnings, and the lessons they’ve learned along the way

Ben Lovejoy Jan 19 2015 - 5:44 am PT

15 Comments

If you write iOS apps and wonder how your earnings compare against those of other developers – or you have an idea for an app, and are wondering whether it’s worth pursuing – it can be tough to find any hard information. We hear occasional stories about hugely successful apps like Flappy Bird making hundreds of thousands of dollars per day, and we know there are some apps with literally zero downloads to their name, but what about the middle ground?

Jared Sinclair, developer of the RSS reader Unread, decided last year to share both his earnings from the app, and the lessons he’d learned along the way. It’s taken six months, but several other developers started the new year by following his example, with numbers and lessons shared for podcast player Overcast, graphical game Monument Valley and developer aid Dash …
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Samsung brings in new design chief from Apple designer Jony Ive’s former firm

Chance Miller Jan 15 2015 - 6:59 pm PT

13 Comments

Samsung announced last year that, after negative reviews of the design of its Galaxy S5, its head of mobile design Change Dong-hoon was being replaced by then VP of mobile design Lee Min-hyouck. Today, however, it was revealed that the company is bringing in an outside designer to help refresh its product lineup. A report from the Korea Herald states that Samsung has hired Lee Don-tae to be its new head of design. Don-tae would lead design of all Samsung gadgets, including smartphones.

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Apple patent shows spring-loaded pop-up home button that doubles as a gaming joystick

Ben Lovejoy Jan 15 2015 - 7:56 am PT

12 Comments

An Apple patent spotted by Patently Apple shows a spring-loaded pop-up iPhone home button that acts as gaming joystick when in the raised position. Or, in patent language:

An electronic device includes a surface and a multi-function input device. The multi-function input device is operable in at least a first mode and a second mode. In the first mode, an input portion of the multi-function input device is flush with the surface or recessed in the surface and is operable to receive z axis press input data. In the second mode, the input portion is positioned proud of the surface (i.e., project from the surface) and is operable to receive x axis input data and/or y axis input data. The input portion may also be operable to receive z axis input data in the second mode. In one example, the multi-function input device may have a button mode and a joystick mode.

It’s a fun idea, for sure, but personally I think Apple is more likely to head in the opposite direction over time: to find ways of losing a physical home button and turning it into either a touch-only device, perhaps eventually embedding it into the screen in order to lose the extended bezel at the bottom of the device. Bluetooth gaming controllers, especially with improvements, may better serve serious gamers, regardless.

Are you a gamer who’d love to see this? Or would you rather see Apple working to lose the bezel? As ever, let us know in comments.

Apple chip supplier TSMC announces record profits, migrating to more advanced technology

Ben Lovejoy Jan 15 2015 - 4:02 am PT

3 Comments

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company – better known as TSMC – has posted record Q4 profits after taking around 60% of the orders for the A8 chip in the iPhone 6/Plus. Nasdaq reports the company’s net profits for the quarter rose 79% year-on-year.

TSMC, the world’s largest contract chip maker by revenue, said Thursday that net profit for the three months ended Dec. 31 was 79.99 billion New Taiwan dollars (US$2.51 billion), up from NT$44.81 billion a year earlier.

TSMC’s move into 20-nanometer chip production enabled Apple to reduce its reliance on Samsung for the A8 chip, with the chipmaker saying that it is making further investment in more advanced chip-making technology. It plans to increase its capital expenditure this year to $11.5-12B, up from $9.52B last year.

A KGI report yesterday predicted that TSMC would pick up 100% of orders for the A9X chip expected to be used in the next-generation iPad, as well as making all of the A10 chips for the nominal iPhone 7, and all the S2 chips for the second-generation Apple Watch.

Five Apple logins remain unprotected by two-factor authentication when using an unknown device

Ben Lovejoy Jan 14 2015 - 5:50 am PT

9 Comments

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKKZfZUqk3I]

More than four months after Tim Cook promised emailed login alerts and the reintroduction of two-factor authentication in the wake of the high-profile celebrity iCloud hacks, five Apple logins remain unprotected by the system. Hackers of NY founder Dani Grant used videos to demonstrate each of the vulnerabilities in a blog post.

Grant showed that two-factor authentication isn’t needed when using an unknown Mac to login to iMessage, iTunes, FaceTime, the App Store or Apple’s website. According to Grant, only one of the five services sent an email notification advising that an unknown device was used to log in …
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Market goes crazy over spurious Apple action camera patent, GoPro shares take a dive

Ben Lovejoy Jan 14 2015 - 4:58 am PT

4 Comments

We’ve cautioned many times that Apple patents a huge number of inventions that will never see the light of day. Last year alone, the company was awarded 2,566 ‘utility’ patents–those covering actual technologies, rather than mere designs. The fact that Apple has patented something tells us absolutely nothing about its future product line.

But that didn’t stop traders going crazy yesterday over a patent awarded for a GoPro-like action camera: GoPro shares fell as much as 15% as panicking traders dumped the stock. The ‘thinking’ was that if Apple was entering the action camera market, GoPro was doomed. The slump was so dramatic that it even tripped a Nasdaq safeguard at one point, reports MarketWatch.

It’s even more absurd in this case: not only is the patent one of thousands of things that Apple probably won’t do, it isn’t even an Apple patent in the first place–it was, as Fortune notes in passing, just one of a number of patents acquired by Apple from Kodak.

Yep, if Apple really were moving into a new market, established players would indeed be sweating. But there is precisely zero evidence that Apple has any plans to move into GoPro’s territory.

That’s not to say competition isn’t heating up in the space however. HTC introduced the Re late last year ($99-199) as an iOS and Android connected camera and many others have been joining in starting at much lower prices.

Survey of Apple Watch purchase intentions suggests first year sales of 35M

Ben Lovejoy Jan 14 2015 - 4:29 am PT

13 Comments

A Credit Suisse survey of iPhone 6/Plus owners found that 18% of them would ‘definitely’ buy an Apple Watch, with a further 11% saying they would probably buy the upcoming smartwatch, reports Business Insider.

A general rule of thumb when interpreting purchase intention claims is to count only those who say they will ‘definitely’ buy (some of them won’t, but that’s balanced out by the fact that some of the ‘probably’ and ‘maybe’ categories will). That would suggest around 35M sales in the first year …
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2TB Mac mini quietly made its return over Christmas holidays

Mark Gurman Jan 13 2015 - 2:57 pm PT

7 Comments

Following the launch of the current Mac mini in October of last fall, we noted that Apple had removed an option to purchase the entry-level Mac with 2TB of storage. It appears Apple has listened to feedback, and now users can, once again, buy a Mac mini with 2TB of storage. According to our digging into web archives, the 2TB option returned for the priciest Mac mini model in mid-December, right around the Christmas holidays. The 2TB Fusion Drive upgrade costs a $100 more than the 1TB drive, and it requires the machine to be built-to-order. Thanks, Bartosz for the initial find.

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Apple apparently cutting back on the freebies, Single of the Week the latest casualty

Ben Lovejoy Jan 13 2015 - 6:14 am PT

23 Comments

There was surprise expressed when Apple quietly dropped its annual 12 Days of Christmas promotion this past year, just one year after it first reached the US. The app provided a free digital gift–which could be a song, app, book, TV show or movie–for each of 12 days, starting on December 26th.

A number of our readers noticed that it has now apparently done the same with the Single of the Week, which has offered a free music track on iTunes every week since 2004. No track was offered last week, and a participant in a support communities thread spotted by Business Insider says he’s been told by an Apple employee that the promotion has been discontinued …
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LA Unified School District ‘iPad for every student’ plan doomed from the start, says federal review

Ben Lovejoy Jan 13 2015 - 4:08 am PT

0 Comments

A federal review of the Los Angeles Unified School District’s plan to give an iPad to every one of its 640,000 students concluded that it was plagued by problems right from the start, reports the LA Times.

The report criticizes the scheme for unclear goals, use of school construction bonds to fund the scheme, failure to consider cheaper options, lack of teacher training, failure to upgrade Internet connections, poor security and poor support for lesson-planning around the iPads. So, er, pretty much everything, really.

“Among the most significant gaps we identified was the absence of district-wide instructional technology leadership,” the report stated.

The first public glitch in the program was when students figured out how to bypass the security restrictions designed to limit the devices to educational use. Next it was suggested that the school district had gotten its sums wrong on the true cost of the scheme.

A subsequent review backtracked on the plan to standardize on iPads, before the program was suspended and then permanently closed as the FBI opened an investigation into whether any laws had been broken.

Apple remains strongly committed to the education sector, last October creating a microsite to highlight its support for the ConnectED program focused on bringing Internet access and technology to schools in need. Tim Cook said in July of last year that Apple has an 85% share of the tablet market within US education.

IDC: Q4 2014 PC growth better than expected, all-time high for Macs predicted

Mark Gurman Jan 12 2015 - 2:00 pm PT

3 Comments

Analysis firm IDC today put out its projected numbers for PC growth in Q4 of 2014, and these results are better than projected. IDC initially predicted that unit sales for PCs would fall 4.8% year-over-year in Q4, but, instead, the market only fell 2.4%. While the decrease in growth is not as weak as expected, IDC still notes that 2014 is the third consecutive year of slow-down in the PC market. Many analysts have attributed the lack of recent growth to the uptake in purchases and usage of both tablets and large-screen smartphones…

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Latest iOS 8.2 iPhone beta adds Apple Watch Bluetooth support, confirms app

Mark Gurman Jan 12 2015 - 10:38 am PT

18 Comments

The latest iOS 8.2 beta for the iPhone adds support for Apple’s next major product launch: the Apple Watch. Inside of the Bluetooth Settings menu is a new panel specifically for pairing an iPhone with the Apple Watch. Additionally, the instructions inside of the Bluetooth menu specifically indicate that Apple will release a dedicated “Apple Watch app” for setting up and controlling the wearable device. An early preview of the Watch explained the standalone app as follows:

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