Also most likely to be next purchased phone

 

The iPhone made enormous strides in penetrating the enterprise in 2011, a new survey from iPass shows. The Apple handsets jumped from 31 percent share to 45 percent in a single year, while Android phones also did well, going from 11 percent to just over 20 percent, an even higher growth rate that put it in third place. The growth came at the expense of rivals, principally Symbian and Windows Phone, though the Blackberry suffered a small drop as well.

The rise of both iOS and Android in the business community is credited in part to the dropping median age of mobile employees, down five years to age 41 in this year's survey compared to last year, and also in part to a growing trend among companies to let employees self-select what smartphone they want. This policy was also reflected in the statistics that arose from the question of what the workers' next smartphone purchase would be. The iPhone dominated the responses with 18 percent, followed by Android at 11.2 percent and the rest in low single digits, with Blackberry trailing behind Windows Mobile (2.3 percent compared to 3.6 percent for Windows Mobile).

The survey also looked at tablet ownership, which has jumped a third from 2010 to 2011, with 44 percent of employees now saying they own one. More and more mobile workers now have what iPass calls a "mobile stack" of tools (notebook, tablet and smartphone) and are increasing choosing to do more work on the smartphones and tablets, leaving the notebooks or desktops to handle only the most complex or back-end tasks.

The number of mobile workers with smartphones has now climbed to 95 percent, up from 85 percent a year ago. Over 91 percent of those surveyed said they use their smartphones for work, compared to just 69 percent in 2010. 42 percent of the respondents said they leave their company-issued laptops at work and use the more mobile devices more when away from the office.

The survey questioned 2,300 mobile workers across 1,100 firms over a month-long period in September and October.

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Samsung Electronics Co., embroiled in patent disputes with Apple Inc. around the globe, won an early trial on its claim that the iPhone and iPad 2 in Australia infringe its patents on 3G wireless transmissions.

Australia Federal Court Justice Annabelle Bennett today ordered that a trial on Samsung’s claims be held in March. Cupertino, California-based Apple had opposed an early trial, with its lawyer Stephen Burley saying the company needed more time to prepare the case and favored a hearing in August.

Samsung, the world’s biggest maker of smartphones last quarter, dropped its bid for a temporary injunction barring Apple from selling the iPhones and iPad 2 and instead is seeking an early hearing. The Australian trial will be a prelude for Samsung in its U.S. case before the International Trade Commission on similar claims, which Burley said will be heard in May and June.

Burley had sought to delay the Australian trial to August, after the ITC hearing. The ITC has the power to block imports of products found to infringe U.S. patents.

The world’s two biggest makers of smartphones and tablet computers have widened their litigation to Europe, Japan and Australia since Apple sued Samsung in the U.S. in April, claiming the Suwon, South Korea-based company “slavishly” copied the designs of iPhones and iPads.

‘Informal Policy’

Samsung and Apple had a “very close relationship” until April, Samsung’s lawyer Neil Young told the judge today, with Samsung adhering to an “informal policy” not to pursue patent claims to maintain the relationship.

That was terminated in April, Young said. Apple never sought to obtain a license from Samsung, although “other major players” have, he said, without identifying the companies.

Samsung sued Apple in Australia in September, claiming the iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4 and iPad 2 infringed its patents for wireless transmission. The lawsuit was in response to Apple’s request for a court order barring the sale of the Galaxy Tablet 10.1 in Australia, claiming the device infringed its patents. Bennett granted Apple’s request for an injunction on Oct. 13.

Samsung has appealed the ruling, with a hearing before the full court of the federal court scheduled for Nov. 25.

Samsung also sought an order from Bennett declaring that Apple’s patents, at issue in the Galaxy tablet dispute, be revoked. Samsung claims the Apple patents on touch screen technology, sliding to unlock, scroll bounce and scrolling photos aren’t new.

The case is: Apple Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co. NSD1243/2011. Federal Court of Australia (Sydney).

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – Apple Inc. has named Arthur Levinson as its non-executive chairman, a move that rewards the longtime Apple board member who chose it over Google Inc. when the technology giants began competing with each other.

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  Kimberly White, AP

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fills the vacancy left when co-founder Steve Jobs died last month at age 56 after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. Jobs had been chairman for less than two months, a position created when he stepped down as chief executive in August.

Robert Iger, president and CEO of The Walt Disney Co., was tapped as a director.

The appointments were announced Tuesday.

Levinson is chairman of pharmaceuticals company Genentech Inc. He showed his loyalty in 2009 when a federal investigation pressured him to choose between keeping his board seat at Apple or at Internet search leader Google Inc. At that point, the me rivals in mobile devices and Web browsers.Levinson said in a statement that he was honored to be named Apple's chairman.

"Apple is always focused on out-innovating itself … and that is something I am very proud to be a part of," he said.

Levinson's allegiance may have been especially appreciated by Jobs, who had become convinced that Google stole iPhone's innovative touch-screen operating system to develop its own platform called Android.

Jobs' antipathy toward Google and its former CEO, Eric Schmidt, was well documented during interviews he gave with his biographer, Walter Isaacson. In the book, titled simply "Steve Jobs," Jobs called Android a "stolen product." Schmidt was an Apple board member for three years until he resigned in August 2009 as the rivalry between the two companies grew. Levinson resigned from Google's board two months later.

Levinson joined Genentech as a research scientist in 1980 and led it as chief executive from 1995 to 2009. Levinson has been co-lead director on Apple Inc.'s board since 2005, serving alongside Avon Products Inc. CEO Andrea Jung.

In the years after Levinson became an Apple director in 2000, the board was periodically derided for being too deferential to Jobs.

Some of the criticism centered on the touchy subject about how much information the board should have shared about Jobs' health problems, especially after he took a six-month leave of absence in 2009. Most shareholders didn't find out that Jobs had gotten a liver transplant until reading about it in The Wall Street Journal just before he returned to work.

During Levinson's tenure, the board also approved the manipulation of stock options that increased their value to Jobs and other executives. The options were backdated to a time when Apple's shares were worth less than when they were granted — a move that increased the potential windfalls for the recipients

If companies backdate options without properly disclosing and accounting for the move, it can cause profits to be overstated. That's what happened at Apple and dozens of other technology companies in a scandal that rocked Silicon Valley in 2006 and 2007.

The Securities and Exchange Commission reached a $2.2 million settlement with Apple's former general counsel in 2008, but never took action against Jobs or the company's board.

Disney's Iger repaired frayed relations between Jobs and Disney after he took the reins of the media company in 2005. He first made ABC shows available on iTunes, and then led Disney's acquisition of computer animated movie studio Pixar for $7.4 billion. The Pixar deal made Jobs Disney's largest shareholder.

Tim Cook, Apple's chief executive, said Levinson has made "enormous contributions" to the company since joining the board, saying "his insight and leadership are incredibly valuable."

Cook said that Iger, 60, was "a great fit for Apple" because his stewardship of Disney is based on principles that Apple shares — generating creative content, using new technology and expanding into new markets around the world.

Both men will serve on Apple's audit committee.

"I am extremely pleased to join the board of such a wonderful company," Iger said in a statement. "Over the years, I have come to know and admire the management team, now ably led by Tim Cook, and I am confident they have the leadership and vision to ensure Apple's continued momentum and success."

 

A teardown of Amazon's new Kindle Fire showed that the online retailer went with the 1GHz Texas Instruments OMAP 4430 processor for its entry into the media tablet market.

iFixit took apart the device, undertaking in the process the publication's first in-house chip unmasking. The Kindle Fire proved to be relatively easy to tear down and earned a score of 8 out of 10 for repairability. By comparison, Apple's iPad 2 received a 4 out of 10 during its teardown.

In addition to the TI OMAP 4430 chip, the teardown of the Fire found 8GB of Samsung Flash memory, 512MB of Hynix RAM and several other Texas Instruments chips on-board the Fire.

Earlier reports had suggested that Amazon would go with the same chip as Research in Motion's PlayBook tablet in order to keep costs down and move the project along. The PlayBook does, in fact, also use the TI OMAP 4430 chip.

The teardown also noted that the tablet's only button is a power button, a fact that has drawn some criticism from reviewers. Reviews for the device have been generally positive, with most noting that the Fire is a good deal but no "iPad killer."

 

According to the report, the capacity of the 3.7 volt battery stands at 16.28 Watt-hours, significantly less than the iPad 2's 25 Watt-hours. iFixit also pointed out that charging the Fire over a computer USB port will take longer than the advertised four-hour charge time for when the device is plugged into an outlet.

A recent survey of more than 2,000 developers found growing interest in the Kindle Fire, with 49 percent of those surveyed indicating they were "very interested" in developing for the device. Meanwhile, Apple maintained a dominant share with 88 percent of respondents interested in developing for the iPad.

 

As for consumers, 26 percent of Kindle Fire buyers say they delayed or put on hold an iPad purchase, according to a survey by ChangeWave and RBC Capital Markets.

Amazon revealed last month that it is building millions more Kindle Fires than originally planned. One recent report claimed the company is looking to build 5 million units by the end of the year.

But, Apple has said it is not worried about the Fire affecting iPad sales. Company executives recently indicated that they believe Amazon's tablet will further fragment the market because it is a fork off Android. Apple reportedly believes the more fragmentation the better, as it will drive customers toward its stable iPad platform.

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Samsung has successfully obtained a full hearing with an Australian court for its patent case against rival Apple's iPhone 4S, with the hearing scheduled to take place in March 2012.

Justice Annabelle Bennett told the court on Tuesday that the three-week hearing will begin next March, adding that she plans to fix the exact date on Friday. Apple had requested that the hearing take place next August, but Bennett said the timing was too late, Reuters reports.

"They [Samsung] are trying to expand the Android market. The longer it's left the harder it will be for Samsung," she remarked.

In the meantime, Apple will be allowed to continue sales of its latest iPhone, which launched in the country on Oct. 14. According to the report, Samsung's case against Apple in Australia accuses the company of infringing on three patents and carries more than 25 claims.

Samsung has opposed the iPhone 4S in several countries across the globe. For instance, the company filed preliminary injunction requests against the device in France and Italy almost immediately after Apple announced the handset. However, an Italian judge denied the South Korean electronics maker's request late last month and allowed Apple to launch its latest smartphone in the country.

 

Interestingly enough, Samsung has decided not to seek an injunction in its home country. A Korean newspaper revealed on Monday that the company opted not to file at the last minute because of public relations concerns.

"We concluded that we should engage in legal battles with Apple only in the global market," a spokesperson for Samsung reportedly said, "but not in order to gain more market share in Korea."

The two companies' fierce legal battle spans 10 countries and encompasses more than 20 complaints. Apple has seen some success against Samsung in Australia, winning an injunction against its rival's Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet in the region. But, Samsung is appealing the decision, arguing that it was based on "irrelevant considerations" and that the judge made "errors of law in her approach." A formal hearing regarding the injunction is expected to be held next week.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After erasing developers' iTunes Match accounts, Apple has supplied its developers with a new beta of iTunes 10.5.1 to test the new $24.99-per-year service.

The third beta of iTunes 10.5.1 is now available to members of Apple's developer program. The company said it includes "a number of important stability and performance improvements for iTunes Match."

All who are testing the iTunes Match service, which also remains in beta, must update to the latest iTunes 10.5.1 beta in order to continue using the subscription service. The last beta was supplied earlier this month, and brought iTunes Match testing to the Apple TV.

The first beta of iTunes 10.5.1 was supplied to developers in October, soon after the public release of iTunes 10.5. Apple originally promised that iTunes Match would become publicly available by the end of October, but that deadline came and went without comment from the company.

As Apple continues to attempt to work out kinks with iTunes Match, the company once again erased accounts Saturday morning. Developers were notified on Friday that their iTunes Match beta libraries would be erased as Apple continues to prepare for the forthcoming launch of the service.

When it is eventually publicly available, iTunes Match will support music collections of up to 25,000 songs for $24.99 per year. The service will scan users' personal music libraries, including songs obtained from ripped CDs or other locations, and match them up with tracks sold on the iTunes Store.

iTunes Match subscribers will be able to re-download any of their matched songs on other enabled devices, including iPhones and iPads. Those downloads will be 256Kbps AAC files, even if the original user-owned files are of lower quality.

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Apple's initial unsuccessful attempt to build a modern operating system in preparation for the switch to Intel processors led to the company's realization that it needed to purchase NeXT, a move that led to Steve Jobs' return to the company he co-founded.

During a panel entitled "Steve Jobs: A Legacy of Vision and Leadership" hosted by the Churchhill Club last week, several former employees from Apple's early days offered an inside look at the process behind the move to Intel chips, as noted by Forbes.

Panelists included Bill Atkinson, the creator of MacPaint and HyperCard; Jean-Louis Gassée, former head of Macintosh product development; Andy Hertzfeld, who served as a developer on the original Macintosh team and now works for Google; Regis McKenna, former marketing veteran for the company and Larry Tesler, former VP of Advanced Technology and Chief Scientist at Apple. Deborah Stapleton, Pixar's former head of investor and public relations, also participated in the panel.

According to Tesler, the need to transition away from Motorola's PowerPC processors in favor of Intel's chips led to the company's decision to acquire NeXT.

"We had actually tried a few years before to port the MacOS to Intel, but there was so much machine code still there, that to make it be able to run both, it was just really really hard," he said. "And so a number of the senior engineers and I got together and we recommended that first we modernize the operating system, and then we try to get it to run on Intel, initially by developing our own in-house operating system which turned out to be one of these projects that just grew and grew and never finished."

 

As the team realized the project wouldn't work, Apple eventually decided to purchase an operation. The company considered both BeOS and NeXT, both of which would make the switch to Intel possible. Of course, Apple eventually went with the company that Jobs had founded, a fateful decision that led to his impressive comeback.

Even so, it took Jobs several years to eventually make the switch. He first focused on modernizing Mac OS, releasing Mac OS X in 2001. Then, after years of rumors that a switch was coming, he announced in June 2005 that Apple would move away from the PowerPC architecture to Intel.

Jobs had wanted to go with Intel at least five years earlier. He said during his 2005 keynote that Mac OS X had been leading "a secret double life" with parallel in-house Intel versions developed alongside each public PowerPC release.

To ease the transition, Apple developed a "Rosetta" emulator that allowed legacy PowerPC code to be run on Intel-based Macs. The company quietly retired Rosetta earlier this year with the release of Mac OS X Lion.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gorilla Glass

 

It is well known that most full touch-screen smartphones on the market today feature a scratch resistant display coating called the 'Gorilla Glass.' Made by a New York based company Corning Glass, the Gorilla Glass allows smartphone makers to feature a large piece of display on the front of their

device without the risk of excessive breakdowns or scratches. While this may seem like a easy fix today, back in 2006-2007 when Apple was gearing up for the original iPhone launch, this wasn't that simple.

Steve Jobs biography reveals his interactions with Corning Glass while creating a display for the iPhone that is "strong an resistant to scratches." While the logical place to look for any component is Asia, John Seeley Brown a friend of Steve Jobs, introduced him to Corning CEO Wendell Weeks. This marked the beginning of what went on to change Corning's fortunes and offer manufactures a tough glass not just for smartphones, but tablets, laptops and even TV sets.

In the 1960's Corning developed a chemical exchange process, which lead to the tough glass known as 'Gorilla Glass,' but Corning failed to find a market for the same and had quit making it altogether. Jobs jumped on the opportunity and offered to buyout all the Gorilla Glass that Corning could supply in the next six months, but since none of the plants that Corning operated were manufacturing this glass, the supply was in doubt. Jobs persisted and pushed Weeks to divert resources on the Gorilla Glass and eventually they were able to meet the demand in less than six months.

 

The first iPhone shipped in 2007 and the rest is history. It resulted in a mini-panic within the smartphone industry. While the entire industry jumped on the full touchscreen smartphone bandwagon, Corning made hay while the sun shined. Almost all smartphone makers looking for a good solution to strengthen their touchscreen ended up using the Gorilla Glass. We have seen the Gorilla Glass finding its way to notebooks and in all probability Apple might be using the same technology in its other product lines like the iPad and the MacBooks as well.

Wendell Weeks is quoted saying "We produced a glass that had never been made." And a prized possession that he has today is the memento framed on display, it is a message from Steve Jobs that reads "We couldn't have done it without you" ... sent on the day when the original iPhone was launched. Corning's website may not mention Apple as a client or the iPhones as a product featuring Gorilla Glass. Rather it features a long list of manufactures using the Gorilla Glass and dozens of products using the same. Apple's role was silent, away from public attention and never advertised. Yes Apple reinvented the Gorilla Glass, just one of the many small things that changed the face of the smartphone industry.

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Here is a timeline of the battle between consumer technology giant Apple Inc and software company Adobe Systems over the latter's Flash technology.

 

NEW YORK: Here is a timeline of the battle between consumer technology giant Apple Inc and software company Adobe Systems over the latter's Flash technology, which is widely used to view videos and play games on the internet.

January 2007: Apple unveils its blockbuster iPhone with a browser that was not compatible with Adobe's Flash player, dealing a blow to the software maker.

June 2008: Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen said the company was making internal progress on getting Flash to work on the iPhone but cautioned it was still in test phase.

Jan 2010: Apple unveils iPad tablet, which also doesn't run Flash software in browsers, and the company effectively asks developers not to work with Flash.

April 2010: Flash "platform evangelist" Lee Brimelow writes a blog post supporting Flash that ends with the words "Go screw yourself Apple."

April 2010: Apple cofounder and CEO Steve Jobs posts a blog on the company's website simply titled "Thoughts on Flash" where he criticizes the technology as unreliable, ill-suited for mobile devices, and for being a buggy battery hog.

"We have routinely asked Adobe to show us Flash performing well on a mobile device, any mobile device for a few years now. We have never seen it," he said in the unusual and nearly 1,700-word manifesto.

"Adobe publicly said that Flash would ship on a smartphone in early 2009, then the second half of 2009, then the first half of 2010, and now they say the second half of 2010. We think it will eventually ship, but we're glad we didn't hold our breath."

Jobs said the company prefers open standards for the Web and favors technologies such HTML5 for creating multimedia programs.

April 2010: Adobe Chief Executive Shantanu Narayen calls the technology problems noted by Jobs "a smokescreen," labels Jobs' letter an "extraordinary attack."

June 2010: Jobs snipes again at the "waning" Flash technology at the annual All Things Digital conference. "We didn't start off to have a war with Flash or anything else. We just made a technical decision," he said.

Sept 2010: Bowing to pressure from app developers, Apple eases restrictions for building iPhone and iPad applications, a move that allowed for the use of Flash software.

Adobe responds by saying it was "encouraged to see Apple lifting its restrictions on its licensing terms, giving developers the freedom to choose what tools they use to develop applications for Apple devices."

Oct 2010: Apple says will no longer ship Mac computers with Adobe's Flash player pre-installed but the decision does not ban Flash software from its computers.

Nov 2011: Adobe says it is halting development of its Flash Player for mobile browsers and conceded that HTML5 has become the preferred standard for creating mobile browser content. Adobe plans to infuse HTML5 technology across its entire product line over the coming years

After seeding a beta of an update to its iOS 5 operating system to developers, Apple Inc. has started seeding the update to a few selected end-users, an enthusiast site reported late Wednesday.

Enthusiast site 9to5mac.com said the lucky few who got the iOS 5.0.1 update included customers who "complained" about battery life issues in iOS 5.

It said the update also includes improvements to Siri, the voice-activated assistant in the iPhone 4S.

Last week, tech site Boy Genius Reports said Apple seeded the beta form of iOS 5.0.1 but only to developers.

On the other hand, Apple cautioned the end-users getting this week's update that their devices will not be able to be downgraded to iOS 5.0, although they will be allowed to upgrade to the final release of iOS 5 when it comes out in the next few weeks.

The 9to5mac.com article hinted the improvements to Siri are particularly for Australian users.

Other enhancements in the update include multitasking gestures to the first generation iPad, and other bug fixes.

Meanwhile, 9to5mac.com said Apple Stores have received memos of how to deal with battery life issues.

“Basically, stores are not to replace phones with battery life issues and are supposed to tell customers to wait a few weeks unit Apple releases a software fix. Basically, if your battery is not working properly: deal with it,” it said

Apple tried to persuade the voice of Siri, its new voice control software, to remain silent about his role as personal assistant to millions of iPhone 4S users.

 

Jon Briggs, a British voiceover artist, reveals today in an interview with The Telegraph that he received a phone call from the notoriously secretive company after the launch of the handset last month.

The caller, who identified herself as an Apple public relations representative, told Mr Briggs that he should not talk publicly about Siri. Apple employees were not authorised to discuss its products, she warned.

“We’re not about one person,” the caller said.

Mr Briggs however pointed out that he had recorded the thousands of sentences used to create the British Siri persona “Daniel” six years ago for another company and had never had a contract with Apple.

The firm has not been in touch since, Mr Briggs told The Telegraph.

He recorded 5,000 sentences over three weeks for a firm called Scansoft. In 2005 it merged with a company called Nuance, which now provides the voice recognition technology for Siri.

“I did a set of recordings… spoken in a very particular way and only reading flat and even,” Mr Briggs said.

“Then they go away and take all the phonics apart, because 'I' have to be able to read anything you want, even if I’ve never actually recorded all those words.”

The same set of recordings is also used to create the announcements at Kings Cross railway station, among many other applications. Mr Briggs received one-off payment for the recordings and only discovered he was the voice of Siri when he saw it the software demonstrated on television.

The former BBC journalist is also familiar as the voice of the BBC quiz series The Weakest Link.

Siri was viewed as the most significant innovation introduced with the iPhone 4S, allowing users to ask their handset for information hands-free. The system uses different voices in different territories; in the United States the default option is female with an American accent.

Users in this age of personal IT know quality tech and are too smart to fall for bull from vendors or the press

 

I never quite understood the "selling like hotcakes" metaphor for a product that was in great demand. However you phrase it, demand for Apple's new iPhone 4S is so high that the company can't keep enough of them in stock, and customers at Apple stores, AT&T stores, Verizon Wireless stores, and Sprint stores are leaving empty-handed if they haven't reserved an iPhone 4S in advance. Lack of inventory is never a good business strategy, but in this case, the red-hot demand comes despite a barrage of negative publicity about problems, and alleged problems, with the iPhone 4S's software.

The news comes from a survey by Deutsche Bank analyst Chris Whitmore, who found that nearly all of the 30 Apple stores he checked were running out of phones every day. Demand that heavy is even more striking given that more than 4 million were sold in the first three days the new iPhone was available.

[ InfoWorld picks the best office apps for the iPad and the best office apps for the iPhone. | Keep up on key technology news and insights via Twitter and with the InfoWorld Daily newsletter. ]

There's no doubt that a software glitch is trashing iPhone 4S's battery life; after all, Apple has a patch on the way. And Siri, which Apple forthrightly calls a beta service, still has rough edges and odd quirks. But consumers apparently have a lot more faith in Apple than they do in the Chicken Little tech press that seemingly panics any time a user files a complaint on a vendor website -- and despite my ink-stained DNA, I have to agree with them.

Indeed, as the consumerization of IT -- the move of user-owned and -selected devices into the enterprise -- takes hold, we must assume that users aren't stupid and in fact often exhibit better judgment than the companies trying to foist off inferior products. Or that IT gives them credit for.

Note that Adobe said yesterday it is pulling back from mobile Flash development, and remember how much grief Apple got because it said the technology was too buggy and too resource-intensive to support within iOS. That decision to ban Flash didn't slow iPhone or iPad sales, and even more to the point, the inclusion of Flash didn't help sales of RIM's BlackBerry PlayBook or Hewlett-Packard's TouchPad, whose developers made a big deal of their ability to access Flash content.

Tech writer Harry McCracken's description of watching those devices play (or try to play) a mobile Flash video is dead on: "The experience has always ranged from unimpressive to excruciating. Watching video was frequently like going to see a movie at a theater with a projector that keeps breaking down."

Apple’s Siri personal assistant service for the iPhone 4S is back online, with users having experienced network outages of the voice-controlled system yesterday reporting that it is now functional again. Yesterday, users across the US found that Siri was unable to answer their requests, citing a network connection problem, although their iPhone 4S did indeed have a data connection.

 

While Siri’s interface is on the iPhone 4S, and the service can interact with some of the apps, data and multimedia stored on the smartphone, the heavy work processing spoken commands and figuring out what to do with them actually takes place in Apple’s remote servers. Because of that, Siri demands a network connection to those servers, even if the commands relate to solely local content.

Apple is yet to comment on the outage, though customers services representatives at the company were supposedly confirming issues with overloaded servers. Apple was keen to stress that Siri is being seen as a “beta” release, an unusual step for a company known for pushing out products and services only when they’ve achieved a high degree of polish. So far, the extent of the service depends on where it is being used: in the US, users get access to local business and mapping information, something international users won’t see until 2012.

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Apple needed lasers, and lots of them. The team found a US company that made laser equipment for microchip manufacturing which, after some tweaking, could do the job.

SAN FRACISCO: About five years ago, Apple Inc design guru Jony Ive decided he wanted a new feature for the next MacBook: a small dot of green light above the screen, shining through the computer's aluminum casing to indicate when its camera was on. The problem? It's physically impossible to shine light through metal.

Ive called in a team of manufacturing and materials experts to figure out how to make the impossible possible, according to a former employee familiar with the development who requested anonymity to avoid irking Apple. The team discovered it could use a customized laser to poke holes in the aluminum small enough to be almost invisible to the human eye but big enough to let light through.

Applying that solution at massive volume was a different matter, Bloomberg Businessweek reports in its November 7 issue. Apple needed lasers, and lots of them. The team found a US company that made laser equipment for microchip manufacturing which, after some tweaking, could do the job.

Each machine typically goes for about $250,000. Apple convinced the seller to sign an exclusivity agreement and has since bought hundreds of them to make holes for the green lights that now shine on the company's MacBook Airs, Trackpads and wireless keyboards.

Most of Apple's customers have probably never given that green light a second thought, but its creation speaks to a massive competitive advantage for Apple: operations.

'Nevers seen before'

This is the world of manufacturing, procurement and logistics in which the new chief executive officer, Tim Cook, excelled, earning him the trust of Steve Jobs. According to more than a dozen interviews with former employees, executives at suppliers and management experts familiar with the company's operations, Apple has built a closed ecosystem where it exerts control over almost every piece of the supply chain, from design to retail store. Because of its volume -- and its occasional ruthlessness -- Apple gets big discounts on parts, manufacturing capacity, and air freight.

"Operations expertise is as big an asset for Apple as product innovation or marketing," says Mike Fawkes, a former supply-chain chief at Hewlett-Packard Co and now a venture capitalist with VantagePoint Capital Partners. "They've taken operational excellence to a level never seen before."

Nitty-gritty details

This operational edge is what enables Cupertino, California-based Apple to handle massive product launches without having to maintain large, profit-sapping inventories. It's allowed a company often criticized for high prices to sell its iPad at a price that very few rivals can beat, while still earning a 25 per cent margin on the device, according to the estimates of Gene Munster, an analyst at Piper Jaffray Cos.

And there is speculation that Apple's operational expertise is likely part of what gives the company enough confidence to enter the notoriously cutthroat television market by 2013 with a TV set that would tightly integrate with existing Apple software like iTunes. The widespread skepticism over Apple's ability to compete in such a price-sensitive market, where margins are often in the single digits, is "exactly what people said when Apple got into cell phones," says Munster.

Apple began innovating on the nitty-gritty details of supply-chain management almost immediately upon Jobs's return in 1997. At the time, most computer manufacturers transported products by sea, a far cheaper option than air freight. To ensure that the company's new, translucent blue iMacs would be widely available at Christmas the following year, Jobs paid $50 million to buy up all the available holiday air freight space, says John Martin, a logistics executive who worked with Jobs to arrange the flights.

Handicapping Compaq

The move handicapped rivals such as Compaq Computer Corp. that later wanted to book air transport. Similarly, when iPod sales took off in 2001, Apple realized it could pack so many of the diminutive music players on planes that it became economical to ship them directly from Chinese factories to consumers' doors. When a Hewlett-Packard staffer bought one and received it a few days later, tracking its progress around the world through Apple's website, "It was an 'Oh s---' moment," recalls Fawkes.

That mentality -- spend exorbitantly wherever necessary, and reap the benefits from greater volume in the long run -- is institutionalized throughout Apple's supply chain, and begins at the design stage.

Ive and his engineers sometimes spend months living out of hotel rooms in order to be close to suppliers and manufacturers, helping to tweak the industrial processes that translate prototypes into mass-produced devices. For new designs such as the MacBook's unibody shell, cut from a single piece of aluminum, Apple's designers work with suppliers to create new tooling equipment.

The decision to focus on a few product lines, and to do little in the way of customization, is a huge advantage.

 

In his recent biography of Steve Jobs, author Walter Isaacson says the Apple visionary revealed to him that he had finally “cracked” the problem with TV and was working on what he called an “integrated television set.”

Dubbed “iTV” by the tech press, the late Jobs’s final project appears to be the creation of Apple’s own TV product and content solutions to compete with cable.

 

 

An authoritative voice on technology and consumer electronics, Joshua Topolsky is the founding editor-in-chief of The Verge, a technology news and information Web site debuting this Fall, and the former editor-in-chief of Engadget.  He is the resident tech expert for NBC’s “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon” and has appeared on CNN, Fox News, Bloomberg TV and G4’s “Attack of the Show.”  A lifelong gadget enthusiast, Joshua used his first computer at age 6 (a Texas Instruments TI-99/4A), and has been breaking apart and reassembling gadgets since phones had rotary dialers.

Analysts have been speculating for years that Apple would move into the living room in a big way, but until now the company has been content with the Apple TV, a set-top box that is modest in functionality, hasn’t been marketed aggressively and as a result has not caught on with the mainstream. Jobs himself once referred to it as a “hobby.”

If Apple is seriously looking at the living room as its next battleground, that could be great for consumers. But more selfishly, it could be great for me.

I live in an area of north Brooklyn called Greenpoint. In my neighborhood, there is only one option for wired cable television: Time Warner Cable.

Time Warner isn’t exactly best cable service I’ve ever seen — and why should it be? It has a monopoly in lots of areas in New York. There is no pressure on the company to innovate or even provide decent service, because consumers don’t really have a choice.

If you get frustrated, you can sign up for a satellite service such as DirecTV or Dish Network. In fact, I did just that a few weeks ago, after a particularly bad outage of Time Warner’s service.

But those providers have their own sets of problems. With DirecTV you can’t really get on-demand TV (on-demand content has to download over your Internet connection), and the company has found it hard to strike deals with certain channels. That means sometimes you can’t get a channel at all, or it’s offered only in standard definition. Oh, and during bad storms it goes out completely.

Sometimes it feels like I’m using rabbit ears to get a picture.

Of course, this isn’t just a Brooklyn problem. It’s a problem all over the country.

So the evidence that Apple is about to venture into home entertainment is pretty exciting.

The company has been slowly but surely working on a collection of products and software that is beginning to focus more on stationary experiences.

In the latest version of its mobile operating system (iOS), Apple expanded a technology called AirPlay to include device “mirroring” between the $99 Apple TV and the iPhone, iPod touch or iPad. The technology allows you to beam content from your mobile devices to your television, including video, audio and even games in real time. Suddenly, what you can do with your TV is a much larger offering.

Apple is making the device in your hands the hub in your living room simply by interfacing through the Apple TV. Imagine if the company decided to produce a line of televisions with similar technology built in. The Apple TV already runs the same mobile OS as the company’s phones and tablets — why wouldn’t a TV set?

That could mean that not only would those devices be able to talk to and interact with one another, but they would be able to run the same or similar apps.

Why are apps important? For starters, it’s possible that the solution to our TV problem is to start offering apps instead of channels. John Gruber — a popular Apple-focused blogger — has suggested that very thing. What if apps were channels? Instead of subscribing to those hundreds of channels you skip past when you’re trying to find something to watch, you could select a la carte options specifically tuned to your tastes.

Already, channels such as CNN provide apps that let you view live broadcasts, and great content-makers such as HBO give you the option of watching their shows and movies on your iPad and iPhone. Why stop there?

If Apple can bring these kinds of partnerships to the next level, it could change the entire paradigm of TV-watching and home entertainment. Instead of being locked into big, messy plans on big, messy devices, you may find yourself picking and choosing your services like you pick your apps, perhaps paying a small fee each month to keep the fresh content coming in.

Of course, Comcast and Time Warner aren’t going to go quietly into the night. To stream all of that great content, you need bandwidth. And guess who owns those pipes?

Getting all those content providers and cable companies to play nice is a gargantuan task, but if there’s any company that can do it, it’s Apple. If Apple pulls it off, it could do for our TVs what it did for our phones. Needless to say, I’m keeping my fingers firmly crossed.

Joshua Topolsky is the founding editor in chief of the Verge, a technology news Web site debuting this fall, and former editor in chief of Engadget.

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Apple’s Siri is beginning to eat Google's lunch. Google has spread its wings, but Google's bread and butter is still selling advertising on search pages. Siri from Apple is the start of disintermediation from Google search.

Siri is a voice controlled virtual personal assistant from Apple /quotes/zigman/68270/quotes/nls/aapl AAPL +0.09%  that relies on artificial intelligence. When I asked Siri to find the best Indian restaurant nearby, it came up with the right answer. It did not answer with the nearest restaurant but found the highest rated restaurant nearby. Before Siri, I would have gone to Google /quotes/zigman/93888/quotes/nls/goog GOOG -0.14%  and searched for an Indian restaurant. Google would have made money if I clicked on any one of a number of advertisements for restaurants on the search page. Siri completely bypassed Google and went to a data base called Yelp.

In a small study at The Arora Report , the evidence is mounting that users of Siri are consistently bypassing Google. If the results from the small study are extrapolated, in due course as Siri becomes widely available, it will change people's habits. The new habit will be using voice to find exactly what one wants without having to comb through a large number of results, some of which may not be relevant. Further, the display space on mobile devices is limited. Who needs the distraction of side advertisements like those from Google on the small screen?

Natural language interface has long been the holy grail of computing. Natural language is simply a fancy phrase for ordinary language. Most of us communicate with each other in natural language.

Asking a question in ordinary language and quickly finding the answer in Siri makes a Google search look like a horse and buggy compared to a car. At present, Apple seems to be using three data bases: Yelp, Wikipedia, and Wolfram Alpha. In due course, Apple will start using other specialized data bases giving better results for search queries in a much more natural way than what Google provides today.

The day is not far, when third party apps will filter the results from Google to provide the user with the right answer without showing ads from which Google makes money.

The way most searches are done at present is merely a temporary phase that will disappear. The business model of Google is at risk. There will always be a need for an index search like Google performs, but the most common search activities will drift away from Google. The problem for Google is that it makes most money from the most common searches.

Apple has done an incredible job of integrating Siri with other apps such as contact list and calendar. This increases the stickiness of Siri. High stickiness means that the users of Siri are unlikely to switch. When I asked Siri to call my wife, it asked which one of my contacts was my wife. The day after Siri knew who my wife was. To accomplish the task, I did not need to enter commands or go through a menu it was all very simple and natural.

It is only a matter of time before Siri shifts search revenues from Google to Apple. Google recently reported much better than expected earnings. As a result, the stock moved up. There is no telling as to what will happen to Google and Apple stock prices in the short term. But for the long-term, the handwriting is on the wall. Holders of Google stock are well advised to lighten up on bounces and use the proceeds to invest in companies that will benefit from the coming tsunami of natural language interface to computing devices.

Full disclosure: I am long Apple from an average of $131. I took profits on 50% of the position at an average price of $360. Subscribers to ZYX Buy Change Alert may have a similar position and may have taken similar actions. I also recently took profits on Nuance /quotes/zigman/98548/quotes/nls/nuan NUAN +3.42% , a company known for voice engines. Subscribers to ZYX Buy Change Alert may have taken similar action.

While information about Apple’s new iOS app and retail plans have leaked out in various forms over the past few weeks, we now have the whole story thanks to a trusted source. On Thursday, Apple’s new retail store app for iOS will launch, and it will bring two major features with it. First, it will enable online ordering with retail store pick up. This has already started happening in a few stores in California and New York City Apple stores as well, and more stores will go live on Thursday. Hit the jump for details on what happens when you place an order through the app to pick up in a retail store nearby. 

• If a customer orders an in-stock product, pick up will be available approximately 12 minutes after completing the order. Why 12 minutes? Well, the order goes through the system to the designated Apple Store in about 3 minutes. Apple’s back-of-house employees have 2 minutes to set all of the products aside on a shelf from the minute it was ordered. There is then a 7-minute grace period for employees to get everything else in order. Around 12 minutes after purchasing, customers will be able to walk into the Apple Store, skip lines, skip registers, get their products, sign for them and leave. We’re told Apple is really excited about this, and it’s something customers have been seeking for a while.
• If a customer orders something that a retail store does not have in-stock, like a custom-configured machine, an accessory the store does not carry, or something like an engraved or gift-wrapped device, the customer will be a given a pick-up date right after the purchase is completed. Everything will have free shipping when sent to an Apple retail store. Once the order arrives at the Apple Store and is available for pickup, a push notification will be sent to the customer through the Apple Store app, letting him or her know the order is ready. We’re told the same 12-minute timeframe applies here as well: 12 minutes from the time the push notification is received, the customer’s order should be waiting to be signed for.
• We have been told customers who opt to purchase online or through the app will be given priority when they walk into the store over a customer waiting for a retail specialist, and that Apple expects the majority of customers over the next few years to use the in-store pick up option as their default method of buying products. This will help with foot traffic in retail stores while also reducing the cost of shipping for Apple, and possibly even reducing the number of stores Apple needs to open to accommodate sales.
• Apple will offer customers the ability to return items purchased online to retail stores.
• Lastly, we’re told that Apple will be attributing revenue from items purchased in this manner to the retail store where the items are delivered and retrieved. This should help create new job opportunities since hiring at Apple Stores is based on sales. Apple is reportedly expecting a 30% increase in sales at retail stores from this program, and it will only be available in the U.S. for now.

The other major feature coming in Apple’s new app? Customer self check-out at retail stores. This is a huge deal and Apple is the first to be able to put it together. Here is how this will work: after you find the item you want to buy, like an accessory, you launch the Apple Store app on your iOS device and there will be an option to buy a product in the store. You scan the product with the camera on your device in the app, click purchase, and it will charge whatever credit card is associated to your Apple ID. You then just walk out of the store. Yes, we have been told that Apple will not be checking purchases which seems hard to believe, but this self check-out option will launch Thursday worldwide at all Apple retail stores.

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Tim Cook promised that Apple Inc. wouldn't change when he took over the company's helm from Steve Jobs in August.

But the low-key Mr. Cook has already put his operational mark on Apple in ways that suggest the company won't be entirely the same as under its intense and tempestuous co-founder.

Tim Cook promised that Apple wouldn't change when he took over from co-founder Steve Jobs in August but the low-key executive has already put his operational mark on the company. Jessica Vascellaro has details on The News Hub.

In recent weeks, Mr. Cook has tended to administrative matters that never interested Mr. Jobs, such as promotions and corporate reporting structures, according to people familiar with the matter. The new chief executive, 50 years old, has also been more communicative with employees than his predecessor, sending a variety of company-wide emails that address Apple employees as "Team," people close to the company said.

Apple chief executive Tim Cook speaks in front of an image of an iPhone 4S.

Mr. Cook has also displayed some different corporate philosophies from Mr. Jobs. The new CEO recently announced a charitable program promising Apple would match employee donations to non-profits of up to $10,000 a year, starting in the U.S. In contrast, Mr. Jobs said at a company off-site meeting last year that he was opposed to giving money away, according to a person who attended.

Much about the technology giant hasn't changed and isn't expected to. Mr. Cook, an Apple veteran who became chief operating officer in 2005 and who ran the company during Mr. Jobs's multiple medical leaves, isn't a fan of reorganizations, said a person familiar with the matter. He is also a fierce believer in Apple's culture, which prizes product development and design and preaches intense secrecy.

But the moves Mr. Cook has made since he officially took over the CEO title on Aug. 24 provide signs of how he will seek to run Apple in the years ahead, imposing more discipline on a place that for years was guided by Mr. Jobs's gut.

An Apple spokesman declined to comment and said Mr. Cook wasn't available for an interview.

A supply chain whiz fluent in sales charts and forecasts, Mr. Cook is a disciplined manager and a contrast to Mr. Jobs, who had little patience for management matters, according to friends and colleagues of both.

Mr. Cook is accessible, and over the years served as a sounding board for executives who wanted advice on approaching Mr. Jobs, former Apple employees say.

In recent weeks, Mr. Cook has restructured Apple's big education division that deviated from the company's overall organizational structure, according to a person familiar with the matter.

For years, that business had operated fairly independently. Mr. Cook split the business into a sales arm and a marketing arm and incorporated the groups into their respective company-wide divisions, said this person.

The move streamlined Apple's structure and increased the responsibilities of senior vice president of world-wide product marketing Phil Schiller and John Brandon, a vice president who oversees many of Apple's sales channels and has worked closely with Mr. Cook for years, this person said. Apple's education head John Couch, who had reported to Mr. Cook, now reports to Mr. Schiller.

Tim Cook's Career

 

Apple's Inner Circle

 

Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images

Apple's CEO Tim Cook spoke in Cupertino, Calif.

The Apple Evolution

 

Within days of taking over, Mr. Cook also promoted vice president Eddy Cue to Apple's senior vice president of Internet software and services, bumping up the title of one of the company's most visible executives.

Former executives and people close to Apple say they also expect Mr. Cook to be more open with shareholders and customers than Mr. Jobs, citing Mr. Cook's willingness to meet fairly regularly with investors over the years.

"Steve thought he had all the answers," said Toni Sacconaghi, a research analyst who covers Apple for Sanford Bernstein & Co. "I am not sure Tim thinks he has all the answers." Mr. Sacconaghi also describes Mr. Cook as "surprisingly candid" about parts of the company, such as its iPhone expansion strategy.

One area people expect Mr. Cook to eventually focus on is what to do with Apple's $81.6 billion in cash and cash equivalents. Mr. Jobs was opposed to stock buybacks, according to former Apple executives.

But Mr. Cook seems open to more traditional options for Apple's cash hoard, such as dividends or a buyback, say people who have discussed the matter with Apple executives.

On the company's fiscal fourth quarter earnings call last month, Mr. Cook said, "I'm not religious about holding cash or not holding it."

Any such moves would be up to all of Apple's directors, of which Mr. Cook is one, and wouldn't likely happen soon, according to one of these people.

One other difference with Mr. Jobs: Mr. Cook is "not a product guy," his colleagues and friends often say. That's a sentiment Mr. Jobs himself echoed to author Walter Isaacson in a recently published biography.

People close to the company question whether Mr. Cook can continue the string of hits that have made Apple the world's largest technology company.

In the past, Mr. Cook once asked an employee briefing him on a new service, "tell me again how this helps me sell more phones," according to this person.

 

It was perhaps the worst kept secret in Apple's recent history; Apple announced iPhone 4S on the 4th of October, but leaks within Apple's own iTunes code and from Vodafone Germany had all but given the game away. Early in the day on the 4th, before the launch, even Apple's own Japanese website was getting in on the leaks game.

Apple wasn't playing the delay game - the iPhone 4S was made available just two weeks after the announcement and not just in the United States. Australia was amongst the launch countries and the nature of the international dateline meant that that Sydney schoolboys Wil Batterham and Tom Mosca may have been the first two people sold an iPhone 4S after a 63 hour wait outside Sydney's Apple store. That can only be a "may", as carriers opened their doors at the same time with widespread walkup availability on launch day. Batterham's queuing was easily the most publicised, though. The iPhone 4S didn't quite live up to the rumour hype - although Stephen Fry did rather like it. The rumours centred around an iPhone 5 rather than the iPhone 4S, but that didn't stop it selling extremely well both internationally and locally, although there was frustration that one of its most-hyped features, the voice control system Siri had limited location functionality outside of the United States. It did a fair job of understanding the Australian accent, however. Equally, there was some frustration with carriers who offered pre-orders for the iPhone 4S and had issues dealing with customers not receiving phones before those who queued up.

New Apple CEO Tim Cook did the honours introducing the iPhone 4S, and a day later it was clear why Steve Jobs didn't make an appearance, as the former CEO and one half of the original Apple duo (if you discount early shareholder/deliberate vote-breaker Ronald Wayne) sadly passed away on the 5th after a long battle with cancer. Tributes to Jobs flowed from all over the planet. It was announced that Walter Isaacson's authorised biography would make its debut almost a month early on the 24th of October on the back of the Jobs' passing. Isaacson made an appearance on the US version of 60 Minutes, and the hype appears to have paid off; his biography of Jobs is tipped to be Amazon's best-selling book of the year.

iPhone 4S wasn't Apple's only launch in October, although it was easily the most hyped; later in the month Apple refreshed its Macbook Pro lines with processor and storage upgrades the notable new inclusions. While the iPhone 4S has arguably the same kind of thing happening, Apple made much less fuss about the new Macbook Pro lines.

Apple's long-standing legal spat with Samsung continued apace in the Australian courts. Samsung announced early in the month that it might scrap plans to sell its Galaxy Tab 10.1 product in Australia if it didn't win the court's approval. Samsung was rather left with egg on its face in a US court after its representatives couldn't tell the Tab and iPad apart at a distance, and locally Samsung did find itself subject to a temporary injunction on selling the device, although a hearing into its appeal against that injunction has been fast-tracked http://www.zdnet.com.au/samsung-contests-galaxy-tab-injunction-339325074.htm in recent days. Samsung, for its part has sought injunctions against Apple selling the iPhone 4S in Italy, France Japan and Australia. Apple's disputes with Samsung are largely at the patent level, and those who don't like Apple's leveraging of its patents would have been unhappy to hear late in the month that Apple had been granted a patent on the slide to lock function of iOS. Still, if you ever wanted proof that big companies can be, shall we say, a touch contradictory, it's also worth noting that Apple CEO Tim Cook and Samsung COO Lee Jae-yong met during the month to discuss long-term parts cooperation arrangements. Or in other words, Apple's seemingly happy with Samsung making some of the innards of its devices, but not ones that may look like them or possibly infringe patents.

Rumour Mill

With the iPhone 4S out of the way, the rumour mills had little to go on besides trying to work out when the new Macbook Pro models would launch, which happened towards the end of the month. The Mac Pro line is still waiting for updates - now suggested to be early next year. The Macbook Air is the new entry level, the Pros just got updated and the Mac Pro is not likely until next year, so where did that leave the rumour cycle? Floundering around for a while, aside from inevitable iPad 3 speculation until it latched onto an on-again off-again prospect - that of an Apple TV. Not the small box that Apple currently sells, but a fully-fledged Apple-branded television set.

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Stanford med student Raymond Tsai spent five hours carving a jack-o-lantern tribute to Steve Jobs. (Photo courtesy of Raymond Tsai)

Since the Oct. 5 death of Apple co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs, admirers the world over have memorialized him on posters and post-it notes, with flowers and apples. But Stanford medical student Raymond Tsai had a different tribute in mind.

Tsai has been carving intricate pumpkins since 2006 and decided to pay tribute to Jobs with this year’s jack-o-lantern creation. He has only tried carving a person’s likeness one other time, in 2009, after Michael Jackson died.

“I usually only carve people that I am inspired by or touched by,” Tsai said. “Steve Jobs, I think, is just an inspirational person for a variety of reasons. I’m not sure how to put it into words yet… but he’s like the epitome of resilience in terms of overcoming barriers to succeed. He was so talented and such a visionary and was able to change an entire industry.”

Tsai estimates that he spent five and a half hours creating his pumpkin masterpiece: two hours mapping the cuts and three and a half hours actually carving.

“It is just amazing, and such an inspiration, to be so good at something, and to love something so much that you persevere no matter what anyone else says about your work,” Tsai said of Jobs.

“As someone who is still trying to figure out what to do in my own life, [Jobs] is a great role model in terms of finding what you love to do, what you’re passionate about, and excelling at that so much so, that you make a really impact on society.”