Marco Arment on his experience at a Microsoft Store:
The store is creepy: so many elements are embarrassingly similar to the Apple Store on the next floor. Microsoft even ripped off trivial elements that easily could have been different, such as the employee uniform. There’s a huge elephant in the room, and we can all see it, but Microsoft still implicitly denies it.
Paul Graham on the next hardware startup:
It wouldn’t be the first time something was a bad idea till it wasn’t. And it wouldn’t be the first time investors learned that lesson from founders.
David Talbot, MIT Technology Review:
Academic researchers have improved wireless bandwidth by an order of magnitude—not by adding base stations, tapping more spectrum, or cranking up transmitter wattage, but by using algebra to eliminate the network-clogging task of resending dropped packets of data.
Very interesting. This sounds like it has great potential. As we transition to a wireless world, every speedup counts.
Today, Apple released financial results for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2012.
Apple sold 26.9 million iPhones, representing an increase of 58% year-over-year. The iPhone accounted for $17.1 billion in revenue - an increase of 56% year-over-year - and comprised 48% of the total quarterly revenue. Keep in mind, the iPhone 5 was only on sale for four days in the fourth quarter.
Apple sold 14 million iPads in the quarter, an increase of 26% year-over-year. The iPad accounted for $7.5 billion in revenue - an increase of 9% year-over-year - and comprised 21% of the quarterly revenue.
The iPod again saw declining sales. Year-over-year sales dropped 19% to 5.3 million units. Despite the decline, Apple still claims a 70% market share in music players.
Apple sold 4.9 millions Macs - 1.3 million desktops and 3.6 million laptops - representing a tepid 1% year-over-year increase. This is the 26th consecutive quarter that Apple has outpaced the PC market.
The Apple TV saw sales of 1.3 million units. This thing is still described as a “hobby.”
News organizations that report this quarter as a “miss” because Apple didn’t meet expectations of analysts - err, external guessers - even when the company met internal expectations and had record sales are hereby banished to redemption island.
Holy crap that’s a lot of money!
David Sparks:
Jason Snell said it best in this week’s Macworld podcast, “Is there a cheap tablet market or is there a small tablet market?” I think the latter and so does Apple. I’ll also go out on a limb and say that, with the iPad mini’s sales starting tonight at midnight, they’ll be sold out before I wake tomorrow.
Sparks nails it. Admittedly, I feel pretty stupid having ever thought that Apple would enter a race to the bottom. Like the price or not, it is entirely consistent with Apple’s philosophy.
I try to keep this site mostly free of politics. For that, you can follow me on twitter. While this story is relevant to the current election, the overarching theme is much larger.
In case you missed it, conservative commentator Ann Coulter tweeted the following after the final debate between Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama:
I highly approve of Romney’s decision to be kind and gentle to the retard.
Beyond the childness of the tweet, the use of retard is beyond reproach in 2012. I don’t say that from a high horse. My generation routinely used that word as a generic putdown. I have used that word more often and more recently than I would like to admit. I have made an effort over the past year to extinguish that word from my vocabulary. I hope you do the same.
In response to Ms. Coulter’s tweet, Special Olympics athlete and global messenger John Franklin Stephens wrote an open letter. Mr. Stephens happens to suffer from Down syndrome:
I’m a 30 year old man with Down syndrome who has struggled with the public’s perception that an intellectual disability means that I am dumb and shallow. I am not either of those things, but I do process information more slowly than the rest of you. In fact it has taken me all day to figure out how to respond to your use of the R-word last night.
His words are touching and I encourage you to read it in full
Ben Kersey, The Verge, shares a video of a robot making its way across a tightrope:
Japanese robotics expert Masahiko Yamaguchi - aka “Dr Guero” - modified the feet of a small biped robot to accomplish the task, adding grooves to hook onto the curve of a steel wire. That allows the robot to slowly shuffle its way to safety, with custom arms also helping to maintain balance for the not quite death-defying act.
It won’t be long before they take over.
Dan Moren, Macworld, on Apple’s Passbook:
In just four short weeks, iOS 6’s Passbook feature has totally revolutionized the life of you, me, and everybody we know.
Okay, not so much “revolutionized” as “very mildly altered, maybe.”
Despite impressive early use for Major League Baseball, Passbook’s adoption has been relatively slow. I can echo the experiences described by Moren. My wife and I loaded $20 onto our Starbucks card to give Passbook a try. The first time worked great, although the remaining balance took awhile to update. The second time was less positive because the Starbucks location my wife visited hadn’t charged their scanner. Now, that’s not Apple’s fault, but when you depend on partners to advocate a feature on your platform, you are implicitly aligned with anything that happens - positive or negative. That experience left my wife ticked off and hesitant to load any more money on the card. Ultimately, Passbook’s success will depend on the support and experience offered by Apple’s partners. One month in, they have a long way to go.
Brent Simmons on angry customers:
I don’t handle support these days, but I did it for years, and I have a few rules I follow in this situation.
I agree with the list given by Simmons, but the most important part is at the end:
Sometimes you have to know when to stop — a person wants to make a point, and then they’re finished. You take the point and move on.
Dave Stopera, BuzzFeed:
Hey, are things getting awkward for you? Trust me, it could always be worse.
My favorites are the “Ryan Seacrest Trying To High-Five A Blind Man” situation and the “Falling Down Right In Front Of The Google Maps Car” situation.
