News/Rumors

Apple Stores vs Disney Parks and Resorts

According to the latest Wednesday news Apple’s retail stores now get almost as many visitors as Disney’s theme parks and resorts.

Disney’s parks and resorts get each quarter 125 million visitors. In Q1 2013 Apple said that a new record was set: 121 million people visited its stores. These figures are extreamly close. But let`s compare revenues and profits of Apple retail and Disney parks. Apple Stores have long been known for making the most money in retail per square foot, but everyone knows how expensive Disney parks are. Surely they make more money per visitor?

Taking data from each company’s recent quarterly earnings, this is how it stands out:

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Although Disney’s parks and resorts revenues were up 7% in the last quarter — to a whopping $3.4 billion — that pales in comparison to the $6.4 billion Apple got from its stores. Disney made $577 million in profit off of its Parks and Resorts division last quarter. Apple made $1.6 billion profit.

News/Rumors

Tim Cook: Apple has no limits

There are a lot of rumors about the products that Apple will never make, whether it’s a larger iPhone or a smaller iPad, but according to CEO Tim Cook, there’s only one thing Apple would never do: put out a real dog.

“The only thing we’ll never do is make a crappy product,” Cook said in his speach at the Goldman Sach’s annual Technology and Internet Conference . “That’s the only religion that we have, that we must do something great, something bold, something ambitious.”
The CEO was originally scheduled to appear at the event later in the day, but reportedly rescheduled to early Tuesday morning in order to attend the State of the Union tonight. Cook was sitting next to first lady Michelle Obama.

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It should be noted that this is the second year in a row that Cook spoke at the Goldman Sachs Conference, but his appearance now comes at a very different moment for the company. Nowadays, the company is trying to hold on to its title as the most valuable company in the world and prove to investors that it has more innovative products in its pipeline.

“Innovation is something you work decades for building this experience,” Cook said, noting that he is very confident about the tablet and smartphone markets that the company is already in. “I believe more on a longer-term basis, all phones will be smartphones. People love to upgrade their phones fairly regularly,” he said. ” I see a market that is incredible to be in — maybe one of the best markets of all-time.”

For all of Cook’s talk, it didn’t do much to sway investor’s opinion. Apple’s stock was down by nearly 2% on the day after the event.

News/Rumors

State of the Union address, Tim Cook&First Lady

 

Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook, a man who typifies American innovation, will have the best seat in the house at President Barack Obama’s Statue of the Union address tomorrow evening.First Lady has invited Cook to sit in her box while President Barack Obama gives his speech.
Michelle Obama also extended special invitations to victims of gun violence, immigration reform advocates, and middle class families whose lives will benefit from the policy proposals the president plans to discuss tomorrow night at the White House.

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This isn’t the first time an Apple elite has been invited to the President’s State of the Union address. Last year Obama invited Steve Jobs’s widow, Laurene Powell Jobs. When Steve Jobs died in 2011, Obama called the legendary Apple co-founder one of “the greatest American innovators.”

Though President Obama famously totes around a BlackBerry, The Telegraph reported last September that Obama spends hours every night on his iPad.

Cook, meanwhile, is gearing up for a busy couple of days. On Tuesday, he plans to give a presentation at Goldman Sachs’s technology conference.

Apple, News/Rumors

iWatch: from Apple with love

According to a new report from The New York Times Apple is secretly building an iWatch deep within the confines of its Cupertino headquarters . The device is supposed to use curved glass to bend with the movement of the human wrist. There’s no ETA on when the iWatch will make its debut. It sounds like Apple has found a new product category to revolutionize.

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Nick Bilton of The New York Times:
“In its headquarters in Cupertino, Calif., Apple is experimenting with wristwatch-like devices made of curved glass, according to people familiar with the company’s explorations, who spoke on the condition that they not be named because they are not allowed to publicly discuss unreleased products. Such a watch would operate Apple’s iOS platform, two people said, and stand apart from competitors based on the company’s understanding of how such glass can curve around the human body.”

To connect with an iPhone and show incoming messages an iWatch would presumably use Bluetooth 4.0 . As you can see in the featured image the device would have a small display and be more of a bridge device. The founder of Apple’s Human Interface Group has proposed that an iWatch would rely on Siri. Thus, you’ll ask your watch to tell you the weather, answer a call on your iPhone, reply to a text message, pay with Passbook, and make appointments.

News/Rumors

iPhone 5 helps Apple be №1 in smartphone market in Q4 2012

According to the stats Apple’s 4.8 million combined iPhone shipments for the last quarter of 2012 represented 22 percent of the global smartphone market, up from 15 percent in 2011.

The firm noted that while overall mobile phone shipments were flat for the three-month span at 438.1 million, the smartphone market grew 37 percent to reach 216.5 million units over the same period.

Apple’s iPhone has jumped +2% to 36.3% of the U.S. smartphone market share in December 2012, comScore’s latest data suggests.

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In that same period, Google’s Android rose +0.9% to 53.4%, retaining its first place by a large margin, while BlackBerry and Microsoft’s Windows Phone lost a good chunk of their market share: -2% and -0.7%, respectively.

It should be noted that during the most recent call, Apple reported 47.8 million iPhone sales, a figure Canalys noted above as units shipped. The exact number of Android handsets sold remains unknown as other OEMs, such as Samsung, do not traditionally release those statistics.

Apple, News/Rumors

One more Apple’s milestone: 25 billionth song

Yesterday Apple announced a newly achieved milestone : customers have purchased 25 billion songs from the iTunes store and downloaded more than 25 billion songs since the iTunes Store’s introduction in April of 2003. The milestone was marked by the download of “Monkey Drums (Goskel Vancin Remix)” by Chase Bush.

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The iTunes Store has a catalog of over 26 million songs and is available in 119 countries. The digital download destination is available on Mac and PC, as well as iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.

The downloader of the 25 billionth song was iTunes Store customer Phillip Lüpke of Germany, who will receive a 10,000-euro iTunes Gift Card.

“We are grateful to our users whose passion for music over the past 10 years has made iTunes the number one music retailer in the world,” Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services, said in the press release. “Averaging over 15,000 songs downloaded per minute, the iTunes Store connects music fans with their favorite artists, including global sensations like Adele and Coldplay and new artists like The Lumineers, on a scale we never imagined possible.”

iPad, iPad 3, News/Rumors

128GB iPad on the Apple Store

Yesterday Apple added its new 128GB iPad to the Apple Store . It`s supposed that any order will be shipped within 1-3 days.

The new device comes in two models: Wi-Fi only ($799) and Wi-Fi+LTE ($929). Previously, the 9.7-inch iPad with retina display was available only with 16GB, 32GB or 64GB of storage.

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Apart from the increased memory, the new iPad is identical to the other models in the line. There are two colors to choose from: black or white.

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Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing explained:

“With twice the storage capacity and an unparalleled selection of over 300,000 native iPad apps, enterprises, educators and artists have even more reasons to use iPad for all their business and personal needs” .

iPhone, Jailbreak, News/Rumors

Long-awaited “jailbreak” of Apple’s iOS 6

A new software tool promises deep system access to the inner workings of the iPhone 5, as well as Apple’s latest devices, running the newest iOS.For the first time ever, iPhone 5 and iPad mini owners can jailbreak their device with the release of Evasi0n, the new jailbreak for Apple’s iOS 6 mobile operating system. The software itself runs on Mac, Windows, and Linux and can be used on all iPhone, iPod touch, iPad and iPad mini models.However this new, much-awaited tool continues to work even if you restart your iPhone or iPad, and also works with the iPhone 5.

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Once installed, users can install applications on their phone outside of Apple’s App Store using such stuff like Cydia. Some of those same software tweaks can also be used to make major changes: reskinning the operating system, adding extra functionality to your iproduct .

Apple, News/Rumors

California credit card privacy case

California’s Supreme Court ruled on Monday that Apple can collect personal information when processing credit card transactions. It means that Apple did not break state law by requiring customers to provide personal identification information such as mailing addresses and phone numbers to complete online credit card transactions. As you remember the suit was initially brought against Apple by plaintiff David Krescent in June 2011. Krescent alleged that Apple required his telephone number and address to purchase media downloads.

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The majority of the justices found that a statute of the Song-Beverly Credit Card Act of 1971, which governs the use of credit cards and does not allow retailers to require personally identifiable information to complete transactions, applies only to brick-and-mortar businesses and is not applicable to online purchases, which means the ruling has favorable implications for online retailers other than Apple.

Apple, Mac, News/Rumors

Apple stops Mac Pro sales

Due to a new safety and electrical regulation Apple must stop sales of the desktop computer in some EU states and other countries.It should be noticed that this is the only Apple product affected by the regulation.It’s not surprising because the company has not upgraded the Mac Pro in more than two years. In 2011, reports claimed Apple was planning to update the computer, but that refresh never came.

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Today retailers and distributors in most European countries we told to stop selling the Mac Pro on March 1 because the desktop system doesn’t meet electrical regulations. The regulation affects the 27 countries of the European Union, which includes the U.K., Germany and France, and the four countries in the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) -Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland. Although Apple itself will stop its sales of the Mac Pro, Apple resellers will be able to sell any remaining inventory after March 1.