Posted by: Peter Burrows on August 24, 2010
The blogosphere has been buzzing with talk of a radically updated version of the Apple TV set-top box. It turns out Apple plans to unveil the $99 device at an event on Sept. 7, my Bloomberg colleagues and I reported today . But that's not the big video news Apple wants to impart.
Rather, look for CEO Steve Jobs to focus on the ability for customers to watch their favorite TV shows and movies on their iPads, iPhones, and iPod Touches, says a person familiar with the plan. The company will announce that customers can rent many TV shows for 99 cents--the same low-enough price that convinced millions of people to buy iPods to play songs purchased from iTunes (Also, thousands of 99-cent iPhone apps helped make the iPhone a hit, by making it popular for mobile gaming and other things). And Jobs will also show off a new iPod Touch that features a high-resolution screen like the one in the iPhone 4. That's important, because the company can now say that all of its products are capable of near-HD quality video. Rent a TV show once, and you'd be able to enjoy it on your iPhone during the morning commute, on your PC during a lunchbreak, or on your iPad after dinner.
Making Apple TV the tail on Apple's video strategy makes sense. Kaufman Brothers analyst Shaw Wu estimates that Apple has sold fewer than three million Apple TVs since the product was introduced three years ago. Even with the refresh, Jobs isn't convinced the new version will be a mainstream hit, says the person familiar with Apple's plans. Most consumers aren't ready to cut the cord to their cable company, or put up with the tech-nastics required to stream content from the iTunes collection on their PC to their living room big-screen TV. In other words, it's a product that at best will delight some of the "hobbyists" that have always been interested in the product.
Some analysts do have higher hopes. Assuming the new Apple TV will run on the same IOS software that powers the iPhone and iPad, it will be able to run Apps. In that case, Kaufman's Wu thinks it could be a popular, low-cost game console for people who don't care about running the most cutting-edge, graphics intensive games. "I think the Apple TV would have the potential to be a million-unit-a-year seller on the basis of that alone," he says.
Making TV-watching a routine use of its portable devices would still be far more important to the company's stated goal of being the world's leading "mobile devices company." The company could sell as many as 79 million of its iDevices this year, and 102 million in 2011, Kaufman Bros. analyst Wu says. Apple isn't going to give up on Apple TV, but the real innovation is happening inside iTunes, says the person.
My sense is that Apple doesn't plan to overplay its hand, by making too much of this mobile TV opportunity. This isn't another "revolution" in the making. Even if Apple wanted to try for that, studios have all but nullified the possibility by refusing to let Apple sell subscriptions to your favorite shows, to be watched whenever and as many times as you like. That might have appealed to consumers who just like a few shows, and don't want to pay those hefty monthly cable bills.
Instead, the person familiar with Apple's plan say executives see the rental service as useful primarily for "catch-up viewing"--the ability to watch that episode you missed, or on a lark check out some show recommended by a friend. Apple's pitch to studios and networks is that the rental service could ultimately bring in billions of incremental dollars, without threatening the lucrative contracts they have with cable companies.
Still, if the rental service works well, owners of Apple's devices may soon be calling up episodes of "Glee" or "Lost" as routinely as they fire up Pandora's music service or a restaurant review site. That would give millions of current and prospective customers more reasons to buy into Apple's ecosystem--and not into anyone else's.
Posted by: Arik Hesseldahl on August 23, 2010
A little less than two years ago I took a great deal of heat from a pack of readers who were irate, nay, irrationally incensed, about a column I wrote. My sin? Arguing that Apple, the company that made the world familiar with the multi-touch interface found on the iPhone and the iPad, was at the time behind the curve with regard to touch technology on the PC. A new touch-friendly HP notebook, I argued at the time, had beaten Apple to that punch.
Today HP offers four desktops and at least one notebook with touch-enabled screens. You may argue the ergonomic merits of raising your arms to touch a screen that's placed before you, and debate whether it's an effective option for an interface. Yet Mathematically speaking, five is more than zero, making HP, by that simple measure, still ahead. Apple has yet to bring touch-enabled displays to the Mac. Yes the glass track pads on the MacBook Pro are , as is Apple's terrific Magic Trackpad.
Now the evidence is mounting that the displays on Macs and MacBooks may soon be getting the touch-treatment. The Patently Apple blog has un-Earthed what it describes as the "Mother Lode" of patent applications: "The iMac Touch."
It's a fascinating application which the blog's author, Jack Purcher, describes like so: "Imagine having an iMac on your desktop one minute and a gigantic iPad the next," meaning you'll be able to switch between running Mac OS X one minute, and iOS4 the next. The stand holding the display is shown with the ability to collapse and flatten allowing the screen to face up in order to more easily allow touching and thus solving that ergonomic issue.
And it's not the only Apple patent filing suggesting touch displays on the Mac. Another surfaced recently pointing to touch displays on the MacBook line.
Previously Apple has been known to dismiss the idea of touching the screen, at least within the context of a personal computer. Touchscreens for notebooks, as CEO Steve Jobs said once in 2008, hadn't "made a lot of sense to us." As has often been his practice, Jobs disparages something only a few years before he embraces it. Examples include video on the iPod and digital books. We know how those turned out. Touching the screen on the Mac appears it could be next.
Posted by: Peter Burrows on August 3, 2010
Skyhook Wireless, which makes location-tracking software used in smart phones and other mobile devices, announced today that it has been granted four new patents to go along with the eleven it already has. The announcement comes days Apple Inc. revealed that it was no longer using the Boston-based company's technology in its new products, including the five-week-old iPhone 4.
[CORRECTION: The original version of this post improperly said that Skyhook announced it had been granted five new patents. The company said it received four new patents.]
The patents, which were all granted within the last month, could prove crucial to Skyhook's ability to deal with increased competition in the coming years, or to possibly force would-be competitors to license its technology rather than face lawsuits.
Apple's decision to rely on its own database of WiFi hotspots rather than Skyhook's isn't likely to have an immediate financial impact on the company, say two people familiar with Skyhook's dealings with Apple. The people, who both requested anonymity because they did not have approval from the companies to comment, say they believe Apple will continue to pay Skyhook through the end of a long-term contract first agreed upon before the iPhone was introduced in 2007, as if it was still using Skyhook's technology.
This might explain the riddle suggested by public comments made by Apple and Skyhook. While Apple spokeswoman Natalie Kerris confirms that "we're not using Skyhook technology anymore," Skyhook CEO Ted Morgan tells Bloomberg Businessweek that Apple "remains a customer of the company."
Still, Apple is one of the Skyhook's largest and best known customers, and was a primary growth opportunity given Apple's rising market share in key mobile device markets. And Skyhook faces potential long-term competition winning business from the other camp that's gaining share: devices built around Google Inc's Android mobile software platform. That's because Google offers its own location-tracking technology to Android licensees. While Skyhook announced contracts with Android licensees Motorola in April and Samsung in July, these and other Android licensees may opt to use Google's homegrown technology in the future. One reason is price. While Skyhook's revenues come from the sale of its technology to handset makers, Google doesn't charge extra for its location service, say the two sources. [UPDATE: Google spokeswoman Katie Watson confirms that Google does not charge for the location service.]
Faced with such competition, Skyhook may need to increasingly rely on its patents to maintain, or protect, any lead in innovation. While Skyhook was the first to send electronics-laden cars out to record the location of Wifi hotspots throughout the United States, Google now has its own fleet of cars, both in the US and abroad. Also like Skyhook, Google makes software that can be embedded into mobile devices; that way, the devices can ascertain their precise location relative to their distance from hotspots listed in the database. (Handsets also use coordinates obtained from GPS satellites and cell towers, but Wifi hotspots tend to be more accurate in crowded urban areas or inside homes and office buildings).
Posted by: Arik Hesseldahl on July 23, 2010
Why is it so hard to build a white iPhone 4? Today Apple announced its second delay of the white unit. Its statement in full: "White models of Apple's new iPhone 4 have continued to be more challenging to manufacture than we originally expected, and as a result they will not be available until later this year. The availability of the more popular iPhone 4 black models is not affected."
No hints or clues from Apple as to what the trouble may be. Since the electronics are identical to those on the black model, it has to be something cosmetic. The best theory I've seen on this so far emerged on July 18 when Engadget summarized a report from a Chinese newspaper saying that workers at a glass supplier are struggling with finding the right combination of materials to accommodate manufacturing process while at the same time getting the color just right.
In a related development, Apple got its case program under way. Those who buy iPhones by Sept. 30 get free bumpers or cases. To get it you download an iPhone app, sign in with your iTunes store account or Apple ID, and pick the bumper or case you want. And if you already bought one? You're eligible for a refund.
Posted by: Arik Hesseldahl on July 21, 2010
I just got an email from Andy Hertzfeld, the member of the original Mac development team who was instrumental in engineering Apple's donation of the MacPaint source code to the Computer History Museum.
Several people wrote in comments wondering about the disk format on the original floppies from which the source code was extracted. Hertzfeld has the answers:
"We used the Lisa to develop the Macintosh system software and original applications because it had a hard disk and enough RAM to run development tools like the Pascal compiler, which the Mac did not. The development system we used was called the "Lisa Monitor," which was a port of the UCSD Pascal system done for the Lisa by Rich Page in 1979, so the disks were in the Lisa Monitor format."
He goes on to say that the Lisa Monitor format didn't use plain ASCII text format because disk and memory space were so precious. Instead it used an encoding scheme to compress the blank spaces in the code at the beginning of each line. This made it difficult to recover the source code from these disks. "When I first extracted the files, they looked messy, with the indentation all screwed up, because I had forgotten about the compression scheme," he writes. "Once I realized what was going on, I wrote a Perl script to expand the compress blanks to correct the problem."
Hertzfeld also corrected a couple of points in yesterday's post. He didn't use a Lisa to extract the files. "I needed a machine with a unique Apple 3.5-inch floppy drive that had motor-speed control to fit more information the disk, so a standard floppy drive wouldn't work, and an Ethernet port to transfer the data to a modern machine," he writes. "I ended up using a 1996 Macintosh that I had that fit the bill."
He also clarified that the panel discussion and the ensuing search that turned up the disks in Bill Atkinson's attic took place during the first half of 2004, which was before he had started at Google in mid-2005.
