Posts tagged with "apple"

A Tale Of Two Mac App Stores

In our previous Mac App Store coverage we focused on how, among other things, it will be very likely that Apple won’t allow the release of “trials” and “demos” in the new Store for Mac. As Mac developers also noticed and wrote in blog posts, it’s unknown at this point whether Apple will introduce new rules for volume licensing, educational discounts and other purchase systems Mac developers have been using for years on their websites.

The fears and doubts of Mac developers are worth our consideration as Apple has a huge deal on its hands, and nobody wants to see Apple “screw up” with an App Store on the Mac. So let’s just consider this: what if Apple doesn’t change the rules and understands that the Mac is ultimately different from iOS when it comes to customer experience? What if the first version of the Mac App Store that will roll out in January will be a simple “copy” of the one seen on iOS? In that case, there’s a chance for developers’ websites to stay in the game and become the real alternative to the Mac App Store, and not a “system from the past” headed to disappear. Read more

Apple Confirms Macs Won’t Come with Flash Pre-Installed In The Future

So, about the new MacBook Airs shipping without Flash pre-installed: Apple PR just confirmed to Engadget that the same will happen with other Macs in the future, in order to allow customers to go download the most recent version of Flash on Adobe’s website on their own.

We’re happy to continue to support Flash on the Mac, and the best way for users to always have the most up to date and secure version is to download it directly from Adobe.

Simple answer. Of course Apple cares about its customers and computers running software up to date, but there’s clearly more than ” the best way for users” in this story. By keeping Macs Flash-free out of the box, Apple wants users to lack the need of installing Flash, as the web is slowly moving to a broader HTML5 adoption.

Perhaps this won’t happen in a matter of a few months, but that’s a first step.

Apple’s North Carolina Data Center: 1 Million Square Feet?

Interesting tidbit from John Paczkowski at Digital Daily this morning: according to his sources, Apple is considering doubling the size of the massive data center they’re building in Maiden, North Carolina, thus bringing it to 1 million square feet.

Steve Jobs says the MacBook Air is the future of the MacBook and the future of the notebook as well. But if that’s to be the case, the machine — and Apple’s ecosystem — needs to evolve a bit more to appeal to that strata of user tethered to the high capacity hard drives that the Air has summarily dispatched.

This being Apple we’re talking about, that evolution is likely already well underway and perhaps — perhaps — being engineered at the company’s massive new North Carolina data center. With its 500,000 square feet of data center space (currently, sources tell me that Apple is considering doubling that) that facility has been built for something. And what better use to put it to than the cloud services that might completely eliminate the need for high capacity hard drives and give the Air storage to match its performance characteristics.

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RIM Losing Both Inches and Enterprise To Apple

With its upcoming “Playbook”, RIM aims at redefining the rules of tablet devices and ship a tablet that’s both fun and focused on “serious” productivity tasks for businesses.

Many things had happened before RIM finally realized it was about time to take a second look at the mobile in Enterprise, and Apple has taken off.

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So This Would Be Steve Jobs’ Business Card in 1979

Business cards used to be simpler, and even Steve Jobs used to have one. This comes straight from the 1979 archives, discovered by a couple of techies somewhere in California.

Mozilla Labs director and tech-enthusiast Pascal Finette photographed Jobs’ groovy card after a colleague brought it into the office. According to Finette, Apple still uses the phone number seen on the card, but don’t give it a ring thinking you’ll get a direct line to Steve.

I can confirm that number is still active, but it’s definitely not Steve’s number anymore. As Finette also reports (but you can’t notice by the photo), Steve wanted an embossed Apple logo in the business cards.

Apple Forums Reveal iLife ’11, New MacBook Air, Mysterious Product

Spider Web dug through the Apple discussion boards and found out what we all imagined: confirmation of a new iLife, a MacBook Air and, wait, a “reserved” product to be announced today.

It turns out Apple has already set up some discussion boards for the new stuff as placeholders:

Category 277 - Reserved 10 20
Category 278 - iMovie ‘11
Category 279 - GarageBand ‘11
Category 280 - iPhoto ‘11
Category 281 - MBA (Need official name)

I have no idea what “reserved” could ever be, and it’s strange that the MacBook Air, which already has its own category, is getting another one.  [via MacRumors] Read more

Apple in Business Land→

Apple in Business Land

Rex Hammock:

I’ve watched closely (as both a customer and writer) as Apple has made attempts to better serve small business and corporate customers.

But I have a hard time believing Steve Jobs has ever obsessed over the B2B marketplace the way he’s obsessed over the materials that go into the glass staircases of major Apple Stores.

Perhaps because he has (in my opinion, brilliantly) focused the company’s products so much on great design that delights consumers, Apple’s varsity squad of product designers may have lacked the bandwidth to apply such attention to designing products that display such a deep understanding of how businesses use technology.

I just wonder if Jonathan Ive has ever sat in on a meeting where a discussion was taking place on how small business managers want to share contacts and calendars among their employees, for instance?

It’d be nice to see an update to this tomorrow, but I think the whole event will be focused on “OS X Lion Sneak Peek”.  Just for the sake of comparison, this is how Apple promotes the upcoming enterprise features in iOS 4.2 for iPad, business apps, iPhone in business and profiles.

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Who’s The Best Apple Analyst?

They predicted. They estimated. Many of them failed, some of them got the facts right. Being an analyst predicting numbers about a fast moving company such as Apple is not easy, but these guys get paid for this, right?

So here’s a chart for you to see who did well, who miserably failed at estimating Apple’s sales, and who to keep an eye on in the future. Read more