In the days following Apple's announcement of the second best quarterly earnings in the company's history, the stock price predictably soared after taking a huge dive. This came in the wake of fears that wireless carriers may be revolting against the high subsidies they have to pay for an iPhone compared to the competition. Certainly the fact that smartphone activations were much lower at AT&T during the last quarter stoked some of those fears, except that 78% of those activations were iPhones. You'd think the other handset makers would be really frightened.

Certainly, the sales figures looked encouraging, since they mostly met or exceeded industry analyst expectations. Take the 35.1 million new iPhones sold in the March quarter. Yes, maybe sales slowed in the U.S., but they were going gangbusters elsewhere, particularly in developing nations such as China. Gone are the days when Apple would depend on the good old U.S.A. for the lion's share of sales of Macs and mobile gear.

Continue Reading...

You just know that when Apple calls on the press to travel to New York or California to attend one of their special events, you can expect a long session with loads of flashy, but often tedious demonstrations. Usually the presentations are 60 to 90 minutes long, and start reasonably on schedule. That was true even when Steve Jobs was master of ceremonies, and he was famous for lengthy introductions with loads of suspense before rolling out the main course.

Well CEO Tim Cook is nothing if not efficient. He hit the stage a few minutes early, briefly recounting Apple's great sales profile, and how the iPad, all by itself, exceeded the sales of any single PC maker in the last quarter. He then got down to business. First came the third-generation Apple TV, still $99, but with a slicker interface, and 1080p capability. This means you can download newly encoded movies and get picture quality equivalent to Blu-ray, or from such on-demand services as DirecTV. You'll even be able to download the movies and TV shows you've already purchased all over again, assuming the studio has given Apple permission to do so.

Continue Reading...

There is a growing amount of speculation that a third generation Apple TV will make its debut during this week's rollout of the next iPad. A key clue is the fact that stocks of Apple's "hobby" set top box are drying up, at least at third-party resellers. You can still get them from Apple's online storefront.

The revision is expected to add a more powerful chip (an A5, A5x or A6), which will allow for 1080p high definition video streaming, the same as Blu-ray. That also means, I suppose, that Apple will begin to offer better quality movies over time, perhaps at a slightly higher price. Compare to DirecTV and other services, which typically offer the higher resolution video-on-demand selections for $1.00 extra. I would expect the movie industry to approve a similar deal with Apple.

Continue Reading...

All right, so I wasn't the first person on this block (or any other block) to get an iPhone 4S. I felt no rush to upgrade, but finally decided that I might as well get one, inasmuch as my two-year contract with AT&T was up, I was enriched with a new ad deal, and they were bugging me with regular pitches to buy a new handset.

Since they are now supposedly available everywhere, more or less, I drove over to the nearby AT&T factory store, pleased to discover they had the one I wanted in stock, the 16GB version. It's more than sufficient for my needs, since most of my stuff is in the cloud, and I'm only using a small part of the storage capacity. Please note that the closest Apple Store is another mile or so away, and a Best Buy, a Wal-Mart and a Sam's Club are another few miles distant. It's not as if I wouldn't have choices if AT&T's stocks were dry.

Continue Reading...