iPad By Davis: “Apple reassures developers who didn't get WWDC tickets that videos, Tech Talks will be coming soon” plus 12 more |
- Apple reassures developers who didn't get WWDC tickets that videos, Tech Talks will be coming soon
- Fotopedia Reporter for iPad lets photographers publish their own photo stories
- Survey shows iPhone loyalty still beating out Android
- Smartphones out-ship feature phones for the first time, iPhone reaches Q1 high
- How to share a podcast with the Podcasts app for iPhone and iPad
- Bean - A Counting App for iPhone review: Keep track of counts for anything you'd like
- Price Drops: Gorilla Workout for iPad Free for 24 Hours
- New iPad App Store Featured Section: Learn More About In-App Purchase
- iPad Version of Popular Mailbox App Coming Soon
- Wall Street vs. sanity: Painting a clearer picture of AAPL
- XCOM: Enemy Unknown - Elite Edition ships for Mac
- Deal of the Day: 50% off Cruzerlite SPI-Force Case for iPad mini
- #AltWWDC offers and alternative to developers who couldn't score a ticket to Apple's event
| Apple reassures developers who didn't get WWDC tickets that videos, Tech Talks will be coming soon Posted: 26 Apr 2013 09:51 PM PDT With Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference -- WWDC 2013 -- selling out in under 2 minutes, Apple has published a shot news blurb on their News and Announcements for Developers hoping to assuage the disappointment of those who couldn't score a ticket by reiterating that videos will be coming quickly this year, and that Tech Talks will once again be following in the fall.
Tech Talk tickets have traditionally gone to developers who didn't attend WWDC, so no big surprise there. Videos have likewise been coming more quickly in recent years than previous years, though this year certainly looks to be even quicker still. If you missed out on a WWDC ticket, does any of this make you feel any better? Would even live streams of the sessions and a major increase in the amount of evangelists and Tech Talks make any difference? 
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| Fotopedia Reporter for iPad lets photographers publish their own photo stories Posted: 26 Apr 2013 04:48 PM PDT Fotopedia Reporter is a gorgeous app that lets you create your own photo stories and publish them to the popular social magazine. Whether it's a gallery from your last vacation, a tour of your garden, a review of your favorite restaurant, there's a place for your editorial creativity on Fotopedia. Creating a photo story is easy: start with a cover photo, choose a title and description, add a location, pull text from Wikipedia or add your own, and share for all to see! In addition to sharing your own stories, you can also browse stories posted by other people. Fotopedia has a featured page of great content as well as the most popular and new stories organized by category. Fotopedia is very social at lets you rate stories up to 5 stars as well as leave comments. You can also follow users and see all their work viewed as a list or thumbnails. The good
The bad
The bottom lineFotopedia Reporter is incredibly well designed and is a great way for photographers to showcase their work. I am in awe by some of the photos I've come across and it makes me want to pick a theme and take a stab at photojournalism.
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| Survey shows iPhone loyalty still beating out Android Posted: 26 Apr 2013 11:22 AM PDT A recent survey produced some fairly promising results for iPhone's future in the U.S. About half of respondents said they were using an Android phone, and only about 30% iPhone. The same amount (42%) said they would go with either Android and iOS for their next smartphone. Though that sounds a little dour, what's really interesting are the retention rates. Only 6% of iOS users were intending to switch to Android, with 91% intending to buy another iPhone. Meanwhile 24% of Android users planned to defect, 18% to iPhone. These results have led the researchers to project that there will be more iPhone owners in the U.S. than Android by 2015. The study, conducted by Yankee Group, spanned 16,000 Americans over the last 12 months, so you can expect that these results are fairly representative, if not their projections. There have been plenty of studies in the past which cement Apple loyalty, and it's good to see that the trend is keeping up. Let's be fair - the HTC One looks pretty sweet, and should appeal to many of the physical design sensibilities ingrained in iPhone users, but how many of you are seriously considering a switch for your next phone? What is it about the iPhone that keeps you coming back model after model? Via: AllThingsD 
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| Smartphones out-ship feature phones for the first time, iPhone reaches Q1 high Posted: 26 Apr 2013 11:07 AM PDT Smartphones outshipped feature phones for the first time in Q1 2013, with the iPhone reaching a new first-quarter personal high for shipments. Apple had the second-highest number of smartphones shipped, coming in behind Samsung. IDC noted that the iPhone did experience a slowdown in growth compared to the same quarter last year.
Samsung, of course, sells many different models of phones, while Apple only sells three, and Samsung doesn't sell every phone in every country. Apple may have the lead in the United States, but Samsung continues to fulfill a demand in countries where the iPhone has no presence or is more expensive than anything Samsung offers. Apple may be looking to compete in these countries with the rumored low-cost iPhone, bringing a more affordable device to places where phone subsidies are either uncommon or non-existent, and threatening Samsung's position as the world leader in smartphones. Source: IDC 
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| How to share a podcast with the Podcasts app for iPhone and iPad Posted: 26 Apr 2013 10:33 AM PDT If you regularly use the Podcasts app for iPhone or iPad to keep up with your favorite episodes and playlists, you may occasionally come across a podcast series that you think someone you know may be interested in. Instead of sending them a link to iTunes or just giving them a title to look up, the Podcasts app actually gives you the option to share them directly without ever leaving the app. Here's how:
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| Bean - A Counting App for iPhone review: Keep track of counts for anything you'd like Posted: 26 Apr 2013 10:17 AM PDT Bean for iPhone is a counting app that allows you to loosely count any item you'd like and name them accordingly. How you use Bean is completely up to you. You can use it to count silly things, habits you'd like to become better at performing, or anything else you could possibly think of. The interface of Bean is not only unique, but rather beautiful making it a delight to use. Once you launch Bean for the first time, you'll be taken through a short tutorial of how to use it. It's one of those apps that's easy enough you'll be creating and counting things in a matter of seconds. Bean operates by utilizing a series of tiles that you can title and tap to add counts. A double tap will take the count down by an increment of one. You can pinch to zoom in order to view things closer or zoom in on a tile in order to edit it. To name a specific tile within Bean, just zoom in on it so it is the only tile viewable on the screen. You will then see an edit button appear in the upper right hand corner. Tapping on it will allow you to give that tile a name, change its color, and edit the count directly. Once you're done, you can return to the main mosaic screen that shows all your counts by zooming out again. The good
The bad
The bottom lineBean isn't overly complicated and extremely easy to use, which is what makes it great. The interface allows for easy editing and easy creation of counts which makes it simple to use on the go. Since there are no requirements for a count, Bean can be used for virtually anything you'd like from funny items or more serious ones that you'd like to track. If you don't need anything overly complicated and prefer something simple with a great interface, Bean is just that.
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| Price Drops: Gorilla Workout for iPad Free for 24 Hours Posted: 26 Apr 2013 09:14 AM PDT The Gorilla Workout iPad app is available for free for 24 hours. This is one of the best fitness apps I've seen for the iPad. It has received rave reviews and been featured by Apple as well. Here's a slice of its App Store description:
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| New iPad App Store Featured Section: Learn More About In-App Purchase Posted: 26 Apr 2013 08:20 AM PDT
Apple Is Trying to Make Users More Aware of the Pitfalls of In-App Purchases This week the iPad App Store has added a new section to help users understand In-App Purchases. The section is called Learn More About In-App Purchases and it's included in the iPad App Store Featured area, in the section just below What's Hot. The new section provides a good, concise overview of In-App purchase, the different types of In-App purchases and how they work, and how to setup parental controls to disable the ability to make use of them. Just a few weeks ago Apple made the 'warning' symbol for apps that contain In-App purchase options more prominent. It's good to see their continuing efforts to raise awareness on this subject and try to avoid some of the sad stories we see so often where kids unwittingly rack up huge credit card bills for unsuspecting parents. © patrickj...  Related Stories
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| iPad Version of Popular Mailbox App Coming Soon Posted: 26 Apr 2013 07:46 AM PDT This week the developers of the popular Mailbox app have confirmed that an iPad version of the app is already 'in the works' and coming soon. As 9to5Mac reported recently, the developers confirmed this in response to questions from users on Twitter. Mailbox had an enormously long waiting list when it was initially released as an iPhone app, but is now open to all. It offers a clean, minimal UI that makes ample use of multitouch gestures:
The app supports Gmail only at the moment, but as far as I know it does not support Gmail labels. I...  Related Stories
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| Wall Street vs. sanity: Painting a clearer picture of AAPL Posted: 26 Apr 2013 07:20 AM PDT In the few days that have passed since Apple's latest quarterly results, people can't seem to stop writing about the so-called stalled growth and "margin collapse" that hit the company. Ok, the term "collapse" is excessively stupid (you know who you are, stop it). Apple's revenue is still growing, but profitability is down year over year. The profit decline is due to undeniably lower gross margin. But what does that mean? If you look at a the last 5 quarters and put it in graph form, it looks ugly. It looks scary. It makes you wonder why anyone would own the stock. And looking at 5 quarters is a pretty typical thing to do on Wall Street. People think of this as a longer term view of things, as crazy as that sounds. Apple just reported Q2, so looking at 5 quarters means you see Q2 from last year on the left, and Q2 from this year on the right. Newsflash: Looking at a year over year comparison in isolation doesn't paint a very clear picture of what's really happening. And because Wall Street suffers from attention deficit disorder, it needs to form rapid-fire decisions on things. Most analysts do not publish long term performance charts in their reports. I don't know why, but it's true. Sure, they all have the data in their models. They probably all have long term charts built in Excel, but they don't get published. Well, I'm publishing the one I keep in my model. This chart goes back to Q3 2007, which is the first quarter of iPhone shipments. I could have gone back further, but I don't think it would be as relevant because the business truly has changed ever since iOS was built. So in blue we have a line graph representing revenue. You can see that it took a while for the iPhone to make a massive impact on the overall revenue, but in 2010 things just started to rocket upwards. Then in the last two years, you can see that the holiday quarter has stood out as massively important. There have been two such holiday quarters so far, and they define the new peaks for revenue. In other words, Apple revenue has become much more seasonal. This means the quarters in between the seasonal peaks are less important. They are not unimportant. They are just less important. Think of it this way. When you watch a storm build in the ocean, you can see each wave becoming bigger, crashing harder onto the beach. It doesn't make a lot of sense to evaluate each wave on it's way down. It makes a lot more sense to think about how high each wave crest goes. And right now, Wall Street is looking at a falling wave. Revenue could easily rocket higher again. China Mobile deal? Potentially a less expensive iPhone? Continued growth of the iPad, where sales nearly doubled year-over-year? Now let's look at gross margin, because this is what really has Wall Street bothered. I showed margin on the green bar chart, because somehow it just seemed easier to look at in bar format. Apple had gross margin above 40% for 8 quarters since the iPhone launch. And a full 6 of these quarters were consecutive, from the March 2011 through to June 2012 quarter. For rear-view-mirror observers, it's horrible to see that the gross margin peak happened in March 2012, which is the year ago quarter relative to this week's earnings report. But Apple does not have a history of margins above 40%. The mid to high 30% range is much more common, and it seems the company is moving back into that zone. Yes, the iPhone has higher margin than the Mac or even iPad. And that's great. But I think we all realize that Apple can't continue to gain global market share with a product that is out of reach for most global consumers. So Apple has done the smart thing. They've taken more aggressive action on the iPhone 4 in places like China. It's quite obvious that this makes the year-over-year margin comparison look like a case of Apple failure. But if you zoom out and look at the bigger picture, the margin moves really don't look that shocking. If anything, it's shocking to see how bloody high they climbed in the first place. This seems more sustainable. And what if Apple had been more aggressive on pricing in the first place? The margin never would have climbed so high, and last year's Q2 quarter never would have been as insanely profitable as it was. And we'd be looking at the most recent Q2 result saying, "Wow, Apple keeps growing. Amazing!" The stock market is all about comparisons. And unfortunately, the comparisons are fairly short term in nature. But even the "fast moving" (I use that term loosely) technology sector requires a longer time frame for analysis. Apple did not build its iOS empire in a year, or even two years. Android did not grow to dominate the scene in a couple of years either. BlackBerry did not collapse in a year (and it's potential comeback will not take one year). Things still move a lot more slowly than we all seem to think. Apple is growing quite nicely. And if gross margin normalizes here, which seems reasonable, then next year we'll be looking at a growth stock again. Everyone will forget about the supposed gross margin "collapse" that we apparently just witnessed. Since I happen to have my DSLR camera beside me right now, this metaphor seems appropriate. You don't need to constantly take pictures with your telephoto lens set to 300mm. Sometimes the wide angle shot is better, and provides more context. 
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| XCOM: Enemy Unknown - Elite Edition ships for Mac Posted: 26 Apr 2013 07:19 AM PDT
XCOM: Enemy Unknown is a brand new game inspired by the classic X-COM: UFO Defense. New story, new enemies and new technologies, hostile aliens, what's not to love? You must defend Earth from a global alien onslaught. The game also features LAN and online multiplayer support. System requirements have been posted to Feral's Web site - make sure to check them out before you drop money on the game.
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| Deal of the Day: 50% off Cruzerlite SPI-Force Case for iPad mini Posted: 26 Apr 2013 06:54 AM PDT | ||||||
Feral Interactive has released 
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#AltWWDC offers and alternative to developers who couldn't score a ticket to Apple's event
Posted: 26 Apr 2013 05:34 AM PDT
#AltWWDC is a free, independent alternative to Apple's WWDC 2013 scheduled to take place the same week, just down the street of Moscone Center at SF State Downtown Campus. Since WWDC 2013 sold out in under 2 minutes yesterday, AltWWDC could be of interest to anyone who didn't score a ticket to WWDC, but still plans to be in San Francisco that week and wants something more formal than just hanging out and bar hopping. Here's the abstract from the AltWWDC:
Join us for AltWWDC - a free and open alternative to Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference - June 10th-14th, 2013. Five days of talks, food, co-working, and mingling with other developers all without the bar noise. Got a WWDC ticket? Didn't get a WWDC ticket? Doesn't matter - the conference happens outside the conference.
There are a bunch of great speakers lined up, including Including Mike Lee, Victor Agreda, Jr., Brett Terpstra, Brent Simmons, Saul Mora, and more. Registration is first-come, first-served, so if you're planning to be in SF the week of June 10, and it interests you, go sign up!
Source: AltWWDC
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