iPhone

Apple: iOS 7 on 74% of devices

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Apple on Thursday answered a question that many people have wondered: How is the adoption of iOS 7 going? According to data on Apple’s Web site, I’d say pretty well. […]

Why Obama can’t have an iPhone

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US President Barack Obama admitted Wednesday he was not allowed to have an iPhone owing to security fears — explaining why he is sometimes seen with a bulky super secure Blackberry.

“I’m not allowed for security reasons to have an iPhone,” Obama told a group of young people at the White House for an event promoting his health care law.

He added that his daughters Sasha and Malia spend a lot of time on their iPhones.

I didn’t think that was the case any more.

iOS app opportunity in Iceland

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A problem that occurs in small island nations:

There are only about 320,000 people living in Iceland. A small island nation, it’s also isolated from the rest of the world, so you don’t have a lot of immigration, historically, and therefore, you don’t have a lot of genetic diversity. In some sense, the vast majority of Iceland’s population are branches from the same family tree.

Customize the iOS Music app

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Did you know you can customize the tab bar at the bottom of the iOS Music app? By default, it offers tabs labeled Radio, Playlists, Artists, Songs, and More. Want to replace the Radio tab with a Genre tab? Easy. Follow the link and Kirkville will show you how.

Siri and flight status

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I love Siri. There are so many positives, I hate to gripe. But flight status is low hanging fruit and something Siri should be able to do quite easily. Here’s an example.

Bring up a Google search and type:

united airlines flight 12

In reply, you’ll see something like this:

flight status

This is very helpful. When I press-and-hold for Siri, say, “united airlines flight 12” or “flight status united airlines flight 12”, I get a list of web searches. Even if one of those web searches led me to the exact search I was looking for, this is an unambiguous query. To me, Siri should know that I want the flight status of a specific flight and go get it.

To be fair, I can say this to Siri:

Google search united airlines flight 12

This will, indeed, give the results I seek. But Siri shouldn’t need that sort of assistance. At the very least, when I say “flight status”, Siri should know what I want and how to get it. More importantly, Siri should not have to depend on Google for this type of request.

All that said, Siri is still a marvel and does an awful lot that I find useful. Perhaps file this one under suggestion instead of complaint. But please fix it either way. I’ve got flights to track.

The real story behind tablet market share reporting

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This is some incredible compelling analysis. I would urge anyone interested in the methodology behind PC/tablet/phone market share “reporting” (and I do use that term loosely) to read this top-to-bottom.

Things start off with a bit of history.

Following a routine that began in the 1990s, Gartner and IDC spent the 2000s noting that Apple’s Mac market share was virtually irrelevant, afloat in an ocean of PC sales without giving much regard to the fact that Apple enjoyed very high share in some market segments (such as education and graphic design) and essentially none in others (such as enterprise sales, kiosks and cash registers).

Then came the iPod, then the iPhone, then the iPad, with Mac sales rising as the Mac-iOS ecosystem evolved and expanded.

And that’s when this article really gets interesting. In a nutshell, a case is made that IDC, Gartner, and Strategy Analytics (the big three) set out to torpedo Apple’s perceived market share.

There’s little mystery of who shot down the iPad’s market share or what weapon they’re using: all three major market research firms rapidly fire off headline bullets clearly aimed at wounding the perception of Apple’s tablet. One can, generally, only speculate about why this is occurring.

However, Strategy Analytics has offered some unusual transparency regarding its motive for carving out a very specific market and then stuffing the pie chart with “tier two” volume to the point where the world’s best selling tablet is crushed down into an embarrassing statistical sliver of shrinking “share.”

Read the article. Fantastic.

The evolution of the iPhone

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Interesting infographic. Take a look, see if it all looks right to you, then read the comment below it.

Apple Stores to offer limited range of in-store iPhone 5s & 5c repairs

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Traditionally, if you brought your damaged iPhone in to an Apple Store for repair, they would have to give you a brand new (to you, at least) phone, then send your damaged phone out for repair or recycling.

According to 9to5 Mac (see the headline link), that process has changed for the iPhone 5c and 5s.

Apple is gearing up to soon begin hardware repairs for the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c in its chain of retail stores, according to sources with knowledge of the upcoming initiative. These sources say that Apple Stores will be able to replace several parts of the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c on-site, meaning that Apple will no-longer need to fully replace iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c units with damage or other problems…

The sources say that Apple will be providing its stores with special machinery to replace the touchscreens on both the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c. These machines will be used specifically to calibrate the displays. The screen replacements cost $149 for each device, and this price point is significantly more affordable than the several-hundred dollars required to completely replace a device with a damaged/cracked screen.

In addition to displays, Apple will have the capability to replace the volume buttons, vibrating motor, rear-camera, and speaker system on the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c. Apple Stores will be able to replace the conventional Home button on the iPhone 5c, but it does not appear that Apple will be able to conduct swaps for the Touch ID-based button on the iPhone 5s

This is good news all around. Better for the environment, and a potentially cheaper and faster path for an out of warranty problem with your phone.

The big picture on Samsung’s smartphone sales

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Thoughtful analysis on the nature of Samsung’s smartphone sales.

In a meeting with its concerned investors on Wednesday, the head of Samsung Mobile revealed numbers illustrating that the company sold fewer high end smartphones than Apple this year, and that only about a third of the company’s total “smartphone” shipments are of a class really comparable to the iPhone.

This is a problem for Samsung. They are seeing the beginning of market saturation for their high-end smartphones, are relying on older/lesser model sales to bolster revenues. With minimal exceptions, all of Apple’s phone sales are high-end smartphones. And that’s where the margins are. Hard for Samsung to keep this going, especially without making inroads on battery life and processing power (still no 64-bit devices).

Lots to absorb, worth a read.

Nike Move+ app goes live, takes advantage of iPhone 5s M7 motion chip

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First shown off in October’s iPhone 5s rollout, the Nike Move+ app went live yesterday. If you’ve got an iPhone 5s, you can take advantage of the app to see where and how much you move during the day. I suspect this is the first of many such apps that will take advantage of the M7 motion coprocessor. Another marketing discriminator for the iPhone 5s.

iPhone now available on contract for first time in world’s second largest wireless market

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The iPhone has long been available in India, but only at its full, unsubsidized price.

The contract system, which is widely prevalent in other parts of the world, is a rarity in India. Telecom operators in India don’t subsidize the handset for their subscribers as the lack of a universal data base–such as the U.S.’s social security number–makes it difficult to track users and determine their credit worthiness.

Reliance Communications, then known as Reliance Infocomm Ltd., had partnered with LG Electronics Inc., Samsung Electronics Co., and Nokia Corp., to offer subscribers a handset at a huge subsidy. A Nokia handset that cost about 10,000 rupees ($161) in the retail market was given to users for an upfront payment of a mere 501 rupees. The offer drew about a million new subscriptions within 10 days of the launch, but consumers dumped the phone and switched service providers) after a few months, leaving Reliance Communications with massive losses.

This time, Reliance Communications is minimizing its risks by tying up with credit card companies, which will be responsible for the billing. People without credit cards can’t sign up for the offer.

If this succeeds, this could be a big win for Apple.

Apple confirms iPhone 5s battery issue

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“We recently discovered a manufacturing issue affecting a very limited number of iPhone 5S devices that could cause the battery to take longer to charge or result in reduced battery life,” said Apple spokesperson Teresa Brewer. “We are reaching out to customers with affected phones and will provide them with a replacement phone.”

Microsoft’s Frank Shaw calls out Apple and the Reality Distortion Field

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I feel compelled to add to John Gruber’s take on Frank Shaw’s blog post. I think John is being too charitable.

Frank starts with some twisty little prose, criticizing Apple for giving away iWork with all new iOS devices:

Surface and Surface 2 both include Office, the world’s most popular, most powerful productivity software for free and are priced below both the iPad 2 and iPad Air respectively. Making Apple’s decision to build the price of their less popular and less powerful iWork into their tablets not a very big (or very good) deal.

I am not a fan of snark, and this was snarky. Frank didn’t say, “throw in the iWork apps for free”, which is what happened. Instead, he implies that Apple raised the price of the iPad so that us hapless customers have no choice but to pay for something we don’t want. That might be considered true if the price of the iPad went up, even one penny. But the iPad Air added a bunch of new features, found a way to slim down significantly, and kept the price the same. Oh, and, we’ll throw in our productivity apps, too.

There was no decision to build the price into their tablets. That’s just snark.

And so it’s not surprising that we see other folks now talking about how much “work” you can get done on their devices. Adding watered down productivity apps. Bolting on aftermarket input devices. All in an effort to convince people that their entertainment devices are really work machines.

In that spirit, Apple announced yesterday that they were dropping their fees on their “iWork” suite of apps. Now, since iWork has never gotten much traction, and was already priced like an afterthought, it’s hardly that surprising or significant a move. And it doesn’t change the fact that it’s much harder to get work done on a device that lacks precision input and a desktop for true side-by-side multitasking.

Really Frank? How many tablets in the world have Word on them? How many have Pages? I would wager that any iPad productivity app will have more “traction” than any comparable Surface app.

And I use my iPad every single day, all without a single bolted on aftermarket input device, just the ones I was born with.

As to precision, I would love to see a side by side comparison of the iPad and Surface touch precision. I can’t imagine the Surface even coming close. Yeesh.

Apple releases iOS 7.0.3

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Lots of good stuff in this update, including a calibration fix for the iPhone 5s accelerometer.

The soup to nuts of iOS photo sharing

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This article covers a lot and does it well. If you like to share photos and are not already an expert at the process, take a read.

On quitting background apps

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Kirk McElhearn argues that quitting an app might not speed up your iOS device, but it might make a difference to your battery life.

There is definitely room for improvement in the information Apple presents on background apps. As is, all you get is binary information, a scrolling list of apps that are running, in some form or another. At the very least, some kind of indicator that tells you that the background app is partaking in some battery sucking activity would be useful.

Got an original iPhone new in a box? Save it!

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There’s an emerging collectible market for new-in-a-box versions of the original iPhone 2g. I wonder where those units are coming from. Who buys an iPhone and doesn’t immediately use it? Visionaries, that’s who!

WSJ backpedals on alarmist iPhone 5c supply chain story

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Amazing to me that journalists (take the term with a grain of salt) like this keep their jobs.

In Apple’s January quarterly earnings conference call, Cook warned analysts, “the supply chain is very complex, and we obviously have multiple sources for things. Even if a particular data point were factual, it would be impossible to interpret that data point as to what it meant for our business.”

Cook continued to recommend that analysts not base their predictions on supply chain “checks” throughout 2013. However, a series of analysts have continued to issue “supply chain check” reports that fueled headlines despite being, more often that not, completely wrong.

And yet this habit continues. Yeesh.

AuthenTec co-founder talks about origins of Touch-ID

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I’ve been living with my iPhone 5s for about a week now. I have to say, the fingerprint scanner is incredible. I have two fingers registered, my left thumb (I am left-handed) and my right index finger (for when I use a two handed approach). About 80% of the time, I press and release the home button, and my phone recognizes my touch, opens up instantly. The other 20% of the time, I have to reposition my finger once or twice, and that does the trick. Even in that worst case, I’m in quicker than if I typed in my access code. This is some really well designed technology.

As has been widely reported, Touch-ID is based on technology developed by AuthenTec, a company Apple purchased in July, 2012 for about $356 million.

AuthenTec cofounder Scott Moody gave a presentation this week on the technology behind TouchID.

“We’re looking at pores, structures of ridges and valleys, and instantaneously tell who you are,” Moody said. “Every time you use it, it learns more about you. Because it knows, ‘This is Alex,’ every time you use it gets easier and easier.”

If you’ve ever played with any other fingerprint sensors, you can really appreciate the elegance of the AuthenTec solution. There’s no swiping, no awkward angles. As with all the best tech, it just works.

iPhone 5s camera review

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Professional photographer Austin Mann took an iPhone 5s and iPhone 5 to Patagonia and put both phones through their paces. A good number of side by side shots really tell the story.

The 5S dynamic range… that is, the ability to pull detail out of the shadows & highlights in editing, is remarkably better. I’m constantly sculpting images to bring out the details I want to see… that means bringing up shadows, recovering detail in skies, sharpening where needed and more.

If the camera part of your phone is important to you, read the review, look closely at the pictures. This is a realistic review.

Apple iWorks apps free with new iOS devices

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Apple sent out a $20 iTunes credit to folks who bought a new iOS device after September 1st and then went on to purchase iMovie, iPhoto, Numbers, Pages, or Keynote, effectively making those purchases a true bargain.

Leaving aside the mathematics of $20 versus the regular price of those apps, I wondered if those apps are now free, did a little digging.

Interesting. I launched iTunes on my Mac, went to the App Store in iTunes, and did a search for Pages (I did not own a copy of Pages at this point). As expected, Pages showed up on the iTunes account on my Mac showing the full price of $9.99.

I pulled out my new iPhone (activated in the past week) and searched for Pages in the App Store on my phone. Huzzah! On my phone, Pages was free. Quick, before Apple could change their minds, I downloaded Pages.

Back on my Mac, in iTunes, the price of the app changed from $9.99 to “Downloaded”, showing that I now own the app. Cool!

Pages

I repeated the process and now have all 5 of these apps on my iPhone and, soon, will have them on my iPad as well. Way to go Apple.