It shouldn’t come as any surprise when someone says that this year’s display, or phone, or what have you, is the best ever. After all, improving the category is what companies strive to do, right? So Apple’s claim (on Samsung’s behalf, really) that the new iPad’s display is the “best display ever on a mobile device” isn’t hyperbolic, just confident. DisplayMate’s battery of image quality tests, fortunately, agree with that assessment.
The new display is sharper than any screen its size and has better color representation than most home displays and HDTVs. It’s not perfect, of course, and the iPad is more than just a display (one has to take into account many things when reviewing or purchasing one), but it’s nice to know that the claims of superiority are, in this part of the iPad at least, justified. → Read More
For better or worse, we live in a society that discards broken items. The day of replacing a burned-out motor in a blender is past. Very few household items are designed to be fixed by the owner or even repair shop. HDTVs, microwaves, even benchtop woodworking tools purchased at big box warehouse stores are designed to be replaced, not serviced. Desktop computers are the main exception to this rule. This shift to disposable appliances has allowed manufacturers to more quickly innovate rather than supporting older products. They really don’t make them like the used to, but, in a way, that’s sort of good thing.
iFixit caused a bit of ruckus late last week when the service company awarded the new iPad with a 2 out of 10 on their user repairability score. iMore took it one step farther. They both noted that since the front glass is essentially glued onto the bezel, it greatly increases the chances of cracking the screen. That’s not good for the old school repair shop, but it’s awesome for the consumer. Making gadgets non-user serviceable is one of the best things Apple has done. → Read More
A group of women is re-entering the workforce today and reshaping how products are made across key tech sectors like health & wellness, commerce and social products. Not only do they have the experience of raising families, but they’ve been business and technology leaders earlier in life. They’re becoming founders and leaders at startups and in the very companies they’ve been buying products and services from.
Not only do women make most of a family’s health decisions but 48% of graduating physicians are women and women compose 73% of medical and health services managers. As a healthtech startup, we think heavily about the importance of what I call the Family Chief Health & Wellness Officer (aka “Mom”). Avado is not unlike many startups in that we have two male co-founders. We’d be fools to not figure out ways to bring the female perspective into our business. → Read More
Last night, the news broke that Apple would be holding an “impromptu” conference call to talk about just what it plans to do with that nearly $100 billion in cash reserves it has in Scrooge McDuck’s Money Bin. Of course, Slate told us that Apple’s decision would be “a really big deal.” And, albeit without pyrotechnics, it was a big deal. For existing and new shareholders alike.
The conference call this morning was designed to discuss Apple’s decision, which it had announced via sneaky press release earlier in the morning, revealing that it will be initiating a quarterly dividend of $2.65 per share, along with a $10 billion share repurchase program commencing in September 2012. At $2.5 billion per quarter and $10 billion over the year, Apple will become one of the largest dividend payers of all companies, according to Cook and CFO Peter Oppenheimer. → Read More
Today on Apple’s dividend and share repurchase program conference call Apple CEO Tim Cook touched briefly on the new iPad’s opening weekend sales. Exact sales numbers were not given at the time but Cook did state “[Apple] had a record weekend.” That brief statement likely means that the new iPad outsold the iPad 2. Last year Apple was mum on exact details for the iPad 2 but some analysts pegged its opening weekend sales numbers north of 1,000,000 units sold.
The big news of the day is that Apple just announced a dividend and $10 billion share repurchasing program. Cook and others on today’s call detailed that the intent is to provide income to long-time Apple stockholders while at the same time attracting new investors. The Apple bigwigs also constantly pointed out that the new programs will not disrupt Apple’s key goal to constantly innovate (and break sales records). → Read More
Apple’s sitting on a considerable pile of cash — nearly $100 billion — and they’ve scheduled an early morning conference call to discuss what they plan to do with it. Word of their financial machinations happened to break before the call though, as a release from the Cupertino company just hit the wires stating that they intend to issue dividends to their shareholders as well as kick off a share repurchase program later this year.
“We have used some of our cash to make great investments in our business through increased research and development, acquisitions, new retail store openings, strategic prepayments and capital expenditures in our supply chain, and building out our infrastructure,” said Apple CEO Tim Cook. “Even with these investments, we can maintain a war chest for strategic opportunities and have plenty of cash to run our business.” → Read More
Everyone has been wondering what Apple will do with its outsized cash reserves — currently at just under $100 billion. Tomorrow the company will hold a conference call to tell the world what that will be.
“Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, and Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO, will host a conference call to announce the outcome of the Company’s discussions concerning its cash balance. Apple will not be providing an update on the current quarter nor will any topics be discussed other than cash,” read a release from the company. → Read More
It seems that noted firebrand Mike Daisey’s story – the one about the crippled, underaged factory workers who unspooled tales of woe and torture at the hands of their evil Foxconn masters at Apple’s behest – was at least partially fabricated. He was outed as, at best, a bad journalist and at worst a fraud. To be clear, he’s a monologist and playwright and had no business telling this story (just as he really had no business telling Amazon’s story way back when) but he, like so many creatives, riffed on science and technology for popular effect and got both drastically wrong.
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I just got the new iPad in the mail, and naturally the first thing I did was load up a few of my old apps and throw some content on there. Oh god! Oh no!
One of my favorite apps, GoodReader, which opens a great variety of files and which I use to consume the enormous PDFs from Google Books, is a patchwork of pixels. My go-to Mahjong game, aliased to hell! Muji notebook – my pencil leaves a chunky trail!
Developers, I just want to tell you how critical it is that you upgrade your app to look at least passable on the new displays. The full-on big update can come later. But Apple has thrown your standard-def apps under the bus, and you need to drag yourselves out before your capricious iPad users lose faith. → Read More
Happy new iPad Friday! All of the new iPads are shipping already and for those of you who ordered a new one online, you should be getting them soon (if you haven’t already). So in light of that, and also because it’s St. Patrick’s Day weekend and what better way to send you off than this — we have a brand new iPad to give away.
Thanks to our friends over at Kabam, we have a new 32GB WiFi Black iPad. The contest will start now and go through this weekend, ending this Sunday at 9:30pm PT. That gives you three days to enter. Once the giveaway is over, we will make sure our winner followed the rules and contact them this weekend. Everyone can enter, as long as you can receive deliverable packages. → Read More
If you’re reading this right now, you already know what day it is: iPad day.
We headed down to the 5th Ave. flagship store in Manhattan this morning to see just how crazy things would get, but truth be told, the mood was quiet. In fact, the media seemed to be the most raucous, while soon-to-be iPad owners simply tried to keep warm in the freezing mist. → Read More
At over a million digital listens, “Mr. Daisey Goes To The Apple Factory” is This American Life’s most popular episode. That’s no small feat for one of the world’s most well-known radio shows. When it aired, it set off yet another firestorm of controversy regarding the ethics of Apple (and other large tech companies) using cheap Chinese labor through major manufacturers like Foxconn. Mr Daisey, who has been touring for years with a monologue about his visit to the factories there and the moral implications thereof, provided details to This American Life to put together what was really a powerful and attention-grabbing piece.
Unfortunately, in the words of This American Life host and producer Ira Glass, “We’ve learned that Mike Daisey’s story about Apple in China – which we broadcast in January – contained significant fabrications. We’re retracting the story because we can’t vouch for its truth.”
This week’s show will take a full hour to detail the errors and fabrications in Daisey’s report. → Read More
Meet Jean.
He’s one of a few very lucky owners of the brand new iPad. And he’s thrilled.
The new iPad nears. Apparently Walmart will be selling them in just a few short hours, well before Apple itself does tomorrow morning. Meanwhile, the first direct-to-consumer shipments should be hitting anytime now. Long story short, a lot of people are going to be getting the new Retina display iPad over the next several hours. Unsurprisingly, the Retina-ready apps are already flowing in.
When I asked Apple for a list of third-party Retina-ready apps (all of Apple’s apps are already upgraded) a few days ago for my iPad review, I was told that there would be a list ready to go for the actual launch on Friday. Sure enough, today Apple came back with an early list of apps. And they’ve pushed a new section of the App Store devoted to the new Retina apps. But I’ve also found several others that aren’t on their list yet. Below, find a list of the new apps you’ll want in order to take full advantage of the new screen. → Read More
I remember watching the HD DVD vs. Blu-ray wars closely a few years back. I wanted one to win so I could go out and buy a next generation movie player. But the battle went on and on, and by the time Blu-ray won, I had set my sights on a new frontier: digital distribution. I never did get that Blu-ray player. And now I’m quite certain I never will. The new 1080p Apple TV is here.
To be clear, because of the way it’s compressed, iTunes 1080p content is not equal to the 1080p picture you’ll get from a Blu-ray disc. It’s very close, but it’s not quite there yet. I imagine it will get there as digital compression technology continues to improve. But even if it doesn’t, this is something that won’t mean a thing to the vast majority of consumers. Thanks to the marketing of television sets over the years, they know “1080p”. They don’t know that the quality can be inconstant. Fair or not, it won’t matter. → Read More
Even if you have perfect vision, indulge me here for a second. You know when you go in for an eye exam and you’re asked to look at a combination of letters and numbers on a chart against a far wall? You read the first few lines, then realize you actually can’t go any further. Then you get prescribed glasses (or contacts) and you can all of a sudden read every letter and number. And even the ones you could read before are now so much clearer.
That’s what it’s like looking at the new iPad versus the older iPads.
It’s weird because I was never one of those people who thought the original iPad’s and the iPad 2′s screen was poor (but there were plenty of those people in the post-iPhone Retina world). I guess it’s just like a pre-glasses world — you never realize how blurry things are because that’s just how you’ve always seen everything. And then you put the glasses on and you wonder how you ever managed without them.
Once you see and use the new iPad, there will be no going back. → Read More
If you’re looking to get a new iPad and happen to have an old one (and by old, I mean the iPad 2), Apple just made it that much easier.
Apple’s Reuse and Recycling Program has been updated today to reflect the values for various models of the iPad 2. The program offers Apple gift cards in exchange for your old gadgetry, which will hopefully entice you to trade-in instead of lopping your perfectly good components into a land fill. Not only are you saving a few bucks, but you’re being green.
And more importantly, the savings you’ll get by trading in your iPad 2 for a new one are pretty great. → Read More
Good news, everyone! It’s confirmed that the new iPad is indeed slightly “faster” than the iPad 2. Early benchmarks of the new iPad show that the actual clock speed of the A5X SoC is still set at 1GHz, the same speed as the iPad2. But the new model also rocks 1GB of RAM, which should make for a smoother and faster experience. Plus, as Apple stated in the announcement keynote, the A5X rocks a quad-core graphics chip for better graphic performance.
Apple rarely talks nerd-level specs. The company would much rather talk about marketable improvements based on user experience — you know, general arbitrary nonsense. That’s why Tim Cook & Co. just glazed over the technical improvements during the new iPad’s launch and instead focused on new features. It was mentioned that the new tablet has an updated A5X SoC but the actual clock speed and amount of RAM was never mentioned. In many ways Apple’s method is right. The spec is dead — but just for Apple. Listing specs is only important when comparing competing products. There is no direct competitor to the iPad. → Read More
Most of the news around Austin this week is centered around SXSW, naturally, but Texas Governor (and erstwhile presidential candidate) Rick Perry broke some news today that’s unrelated, but still Austin-relevant. Apple, it seems, which has been slowly growing its presence in the state’s tech oasis, chose SXSW weekend as an auspicious time to announce a major new campus in Austin. → Read More
Apple was surely riding high after the announcement of their new iPad yesterday, but that doesn’t mean that everything is OK in CA if a Wall Street Journal report published today holds true.
According to “people familiar with the matter,” Apple along with HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Penguin Group, Hachette Book Group, and Macmillan are on the verge of being slapped with a Department of Justice lawsuit that alleges they colluded to raise e-book prices. → Read More
San Francisco, CA
