iFixit yesterday announced that it had completed a teardown of Apple's new 15" Core i5 MacBook Pro released earlier this week. Unsurprisingly, the teardown reveals few significant changes to Apple's well-refined notebook computer, although it does show a number of minor tweaks that point to Apple's continuing evolution of its designs.
AirPort/Bluetooth card with antenna routed along optical drive opening
Among the changes are a redesign and repositioning of the AirPort/Bluetooth card to more closely match that of the MacBook, with the company also placing an antenna for the card along the frame of the optical drive slot to allow for better reception in the metal casing. The report notes that while the card design and placement is similar to that of the MacBook, the MacBook lacks the antenna placement found in the MacBook Pro, likely due to the plastic construction of its shell reducing the need for such an antenna.
Otherwise, iFixit notes a slight redesign to the speaker casing and the lack of heat sink contact for the chipset hub, as well as the slightly increased capacity of the battery, but otherwise finds the internals extremely similar to that of the previous-generation MacBook Pro.
Israeli newspaper Haaretz notes that the country's Communications Ministry has blocked the import of all iPads into the country pending an assessment of whether the device meets the country's power standards for Wi-Fi signals. In addition, customs officials have been instructed seize the devices from travelers attempting to bring them into the country.
"The iPad device sold exclusively today in the United States operates at broadcast power levels [over its WiFi modem] compatible with American standards," explained the officials. "As the Israeli regulations in the area of WiFi are similar to European standards, which are different from American standards, which permit broadcasting at lower power, therefore the broadcast levels of the device prevent approving its use in Israel," said the officials.
The report cites a customs official at Tel Aviv's Ben-Gurion International Airport who claims that his staff has confiscated ten iPads from travelers, even from those who declared that they were carrying them and offered to pay import taxes as required by law. One affected user reports that he was told to send the device back, while being charged daily fees for storage at the customs warehouse.
The Associated Press has picked up on the story and notes that while Israel hold similar power standards to European countries, it is the only one so far to have banned import of iPads.
Research firms Gartner and IDC yesterday both released preliminary reports detailing U.S. and worldwide PC shipments for the first quarter of 2010, and the two firms interesting offer very different pictures of Apple's U.S. performance during the quarter.
According to Gartner's report, Apple placed fifth among U.S. computer shipments with an 8.0% market share on unit growth of 34.0% over the year-ago quarter. Apple's market share was up significantly from the previous quarter's 7.5% share and from 7.2% in the year-ago quarter. The year-over-year increase moved Apple to its highest share first-quarter market share in recent years, in what is traditionally a light quarter for industry sales.
Apple's U.S. Market Share Trend: 1Q06-1Q10 (Gartner)
Overall, Gartner saw a healthy 20.2% gain in U.S. PC shipments over the year-ago quarter. The top five performing manufacturers broke down into three groups, with leaders HP and Dell showing slow growth of only approximately 7% while Acer and Toshiba continued to ride the wave of netbook popularity with 50% year-over-growth. Apple's 34% growth places it firmly in front of the industry average, but continuing to lose ground to those directly ahead of it in the charts.
Gartner's Preliminary U.S. PC Vendor Unit Shipment Estimates for 1Q10 (Thousands of Units)
For its part, IDC takes a much more dismal view of Apple's U.S. performance during the quarter, calculating Apple's market share there at only 6.4% on shipments of just over 1.1 million Macs, well below Gartner's estimate of nearly 1.4 million units. IDC's numbers have Apple's U.S. shipments growing only 8.3% year-over-year, significantly below the industry's overall growth rate of 16.9%.
It is unclear from where the discrepancy in data for Apple's shipments comes in the two reports, although most research analysts are expecting in the range of 25-50% year-over-growth in Mac sales for the quarter. While Apple's U.S. sales growth measured by Gartner and IDC may differ from global sales growth being predicted by the analysts, Gartner's analysis appears at this time to be a more realistic assessment of Apple's performance. We should learn more on Apple's sales next Tuesday, when the company releases its quarterly earnings report.
We have received a set of images purportedly depicting an iPad-inspired rear shell design for the next-generation iPhone. While we have questions about the validity of the images given their claimed origins and other issues, they are interesting enough that we have decided to publish them here on Page 2 for discussion purposes.
Text on the back of the claimed shell indicate that it is a 64 GB model, and the first line of small text includes Apple's traditional "Designed by Apple in California Assembled in China" information. Unfortunately, the images are not of high enough quality to interpret the second line of text, which would contain the model number and FCC and IC ID numbers.
The images also show cutouts for the same physical features found on existing iPhone models, with a circular camera lens hole at the top left of the rear shell, space for a ring/silent switch and volume rocker along the side, and dock connector, microphone, speaker, and a pair of screw holes along the bottom.
Metadata included with the images indicates that they have passed through Photoshop CS4, with the first two images carrying yesterday's date while the third carries a date of March 23rd.
Update: Unsurprisingly, the pictures have been confirmed to be fake.
Fortune today released its 2010 list of Fortune 500 companies, ranking the United States' largest companies by revenues. Apple placed 56th in this year's rankings, up from 71st in last year's edition. Apple's 2009 revenues of approximately $36.5 billion were enough to place it one spot ahead of Disney, which features Apple CEO Steve Jobs as its largest individual shareholder.
With 2009 profits of $5.7 billion, Apple also ranked 26th overall by that metric. And in the Computers and Office Equipment category, Apple ranked third behind Hewlett-Packard and Dell according to revenue. Apple also scored highly in several other categories, including easily taking the top spot in shareholder returns over the past five years with an average return of 45.6%.
Wal-Mart topped this year's list, displacing Exxon Mobil at the head of the pack. One of those two companies has led the rankings every year since Exxon Mobil grabbed the top spot from General Motors in 2001.
Opera today announced that its Opera Mini browser for the iPhone and iPod touch, released just days ago, has already surpassed one million downloads and is the #1 downloaded free app in all 22 of Apple's featured country App Stores.
Apple said "Yes", and iPhone users around the world said, "Yes, please". Opera Mini was downloaded more than one million times in its first day of availability in each market. Opera Mini is currently the number one iPhone app in the 22 featured Apple App Stores on their site, as of 8 a.m. CET today.
Opera Mini was submitted to Apple late last month, and some observers had questioned whether the company would approve it for inclusion in the App Store, given its direct competition with Apple's mobile Safari browser that comes pre-installed on all iPhones and iPod touches. Apple has in the past denied applications for "duplicating" the functionality of core iPhone OS applications, although the company appears to have backtracked somewhat on its consideration of that criteria in recent months in the face of criticism over its appearance of limiting competition.
Ilya Vedrashko of advertising agency Hill Holliday yesterday published an interesting blog post discussing a visit to his firm by Apple's iAd team where the parties talked over details of Apple's forthcoming plans for mobile advertising. Among the items discussed in the meeting were Apple's philosophy and approach to targeting consumers, ad pricing, and the user experience.
On the pricing front, Vedrashko is unable to share specifics but notes that Apple will unsurprisingly position the iAd platform as a "premium" service, offering its innovative system to those with high-quality ads who are willing to pay for the privilege.
To answer the burning question -- yes, we did talk about the price. Unfortunately, we can't share much on this either. The pricing isn't that of remnant inventory, obviously -- it is what you would expect from a premier online property. The pricing scheme struck me as very straightforward and elegant.
The report also hints at Apple's plans for targeting consumers. With access to significant amount of users' data from their devices such as iTunes content, App Store downloads, and more, Apple has a unique opportunity to build thorough profiles of its users and use behavioral targeting to more efficiently connect advertisers and consumers with similar interests.
The Hill Holliday team appears to be excited by Apple's plans for iAd and the company's willingness to move beyond what has been perceived as stagnant mobile ad development from Google and others and create a true integrated advertising system within applications that can harness the power of the iPhone OS.
As Apple's iAd platform begins to spin up, however, observers are interested in how other advertising networks such as Google will be affected by the move. MediaMemo reports on another change to Apple's developer terms that has the potential to cripple competing ad networks by preventing analytics companies such as AdMob and Flurry from receiving data on customer ad usage.
As I understand it, Apple is arguing that app makers can't pass along information that incorporates each phone's "unique device identifier" to ad networks and measurement companies.
This doesn't expressly prohibit ad networks from selling ads, but it prevents them from selling targeted advertising, which is close to the same thing when it comes to mobile devices. The same problem would plague analytics companies, which might be able to compile very broad usage info about apps, but little else.
Analytics are a crucial tool for mobile advertising companies that allow them to measure performance. As one mobile executive quoted in the report notes, "Can't measure it, can't bill for it."
For the moment, mobile analytics companies are still trying to figure out just what the change in Apple's terms means and how they might be able to work with Apple on the issue, and it remains to be seen how things will play out.
Create Digital Music reports that the iPad may be able to support the use of USB audio interfaces via the Camera Connection Kit offered as an accessory by Apple and set to begin shipping later this month. Such a move would make the iPad much more appealing to music professionals looking for a portable device to interface with their equipment.
According to second-hand sources and a post to a public mailing list, the upcoming Apple iPad accessory adapter for cameras, the iPad Camera Connection Kit, will support audio interfaces that are compatible with the USB Audio Class. I don't have official confirmation from Apple, and the adapter itself appears not to be shipping until later this month, so file this as "likely, but unconfirmed." But it's one to watch, and comes as a surprise to me. (Generally, camera accessory kits aren't a way of providing audio expansion.)
The report points to a mailing list posting apparently from Apple software engineering manager Bill Stewart outlining his team's efforts in this regard.
While the report notes that most pro audio interfaces are not compatible with USB Audio Class and instead use custom drivers, there are a few devices on the market that should be compatible and more would be likely to come in the future as a market for class-compliant interfaces becomes established.
Apple today continues its barrage of updates with the release of a pair of firmware updates for its 27-inch iMac models addressing a trio of issues.
27-inch iMac EFI FW Update 1.0, weighing in at 2.1 MB and requiring Mac OS X 10.6.3, is recommended for all quad-core 27-inch iMacs and addresses a pair of issues related to high processor usage and display backlighting.
- Resolves an issue that sometimes caused high processor utilization while playing audio through the headphone output mini-jack.
- Resolves an issue that prevented the display backlight from turning on after powering on the iMac.
The 27-inch iMacs are not the only current Mac models to have experienced problems with processor performance during audio-related tasks, as Apple's Mac Pro line received a software update in mid-February to address its own issues with heat and performance while handling audio-related tasks.
Apple's other firmware release for the 27-inch iMac today, known as 27-inch iMac SMC Firmware Update 1.0, makes unspecified compatibility fixes to Target Display Mode. The feature, currently available only on 27-inch iMacs, allows the machine to be used as a secondary display via its Mini DisplayPort connector. The update weighs in at 397 KB and requires Mac OS X 10.6.3 and the 27-inch iMac EFI Update 1.0 also released today.
Apple today released a series of security updates targeting users of Mac OS X Snow Leopard and Leopard. According to the support document for the release, the updates address a single vulnerability related to handling of embedded fonts by Apple Type Services. Discovery of the vulnerability is credited to noted cybersecurity researcher Charlie Miller, who last month disclosed his discovery of 20 new zero-day holes in Mac OS X.
The Leopard versions posted to Apple's site incorporate previous security updates, explaining their large file size relative to the Snow Leopard version.
Apple also released Server Admin Tools 10.6.3, an update to Apple's package for installing remote administration tools to non-server machines. The update delivers 16 documented improvements to several of the package's components.
The Wall Street Journal takes a look at ABC's application for the iPad ten days after the device's launch, revealing that users have streamed at least part of 650,000 television episodes in what the network deems a very successful launch.
The network said that in the 10 days since the iPad's debut, its TV-show watching app has been downloaded 205,000 times, giving the Walt Disney Co. unit a presence on nearly half the 450,000 devices that Apple says it has sold. Moreover, users have watched at least part of 650,000 television episodes using the app, generating "several million" ad impressions, according to an ABC spokesman, although the precise number is still being calculated.
The report notes that ABC has been offering on the iPad the same traditional 30-second ads from a host of advertisers that are seen by television audiences. By fall, however, ABC plans to roll out special interactive ads for users of its iPad application. Additional plans involve allowing local affiliates to offer targeted advertising to users based on their location.
Also provided in the report is an interesting look at the development of ABC's iPad application, which was undertaken by a team of twelve ABC engineers. Development is reported as having occurred "in the five weeks between the Jan. 27 announcement of the iPad and its commercial release on Saturday" despite that fact that that time interval was over nine weeks in length. And somewhat surprisingly given Apple CEO Steve Jobs' position as the largest individual shareholder of ABC parent company Disney, ABC's engineers were not provided with a pre-release iPad for development purposes and had to rely on the simulator included in Apple's development tools for the platform in order to build the application.
Application developers have been able to ride along with strong sales of the iPad, with Apple today announcing that strong U.S. sales of over 500,000 already have forced the company to push back international launch by one month to late May as it struggles to keep up with demand.
This update is recommended for all 15-inch and 17-inch MacBook Pro mid 2010 models and contains improvements for graphics stability for high-performance video and gaming applications as well as various bug fixes.
The update weighs in at 258.32 MB and requires Mac OS X 10.6.3, which comes preinstalled on all affected machines.
Apple yesterday released MobileMe Backup v3.2, bringing several improvements to MobileMe users who use the application to back up data to their iDisk accounts.
Backup 3.2 is recommended for all users of Backup 3. This update improves the reliability of backup restore and uses space more efficiently on your iDisk or local storage (e.g. external hard drive or DVD).
Apple provides additional information on how Backup 3.2 recycles backups over time for various backup frequencies and media options.
Backup 3.2 weighs in at 6.73 MB and requires Mac OS X 10.4.11, 10.5.8, or 10.6 or later. A MobileMe account is also required.
Apple earlier this week released revised "1.1" versions of Mac OS X 10.6.3 for both standard and server editions. The company has not specified what changes were made in the update, although such changes are typically minor and focus on addressing issues with the update that had gone undetected before launch rather than adding new features.
- Mac OS X v10.6.3 v1.1 Update (Combo) weighs in at 785.29 MB and as a combo update can be applied to any previous version of Mac OS X Snow Leopard.
Mac OS X 10.6.3 was initially released in late March and addressed a number of issues with Snow Leopard.
Update: A support article on the release notes that the revised version is targeted at users who updated directly from the original Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard to 10.6.3 using the combo updater. Users who updated from 10.6.1 or 10.6.2 are not required to apply this update.
The Supplemental Update is for any system that was updated from Mac OS X v10.6 using the Mac OS X Update Combined v10.6.3, build 10D573. It is not needed on systems that were updated from Mac OS X v10.6.1 or 10.6.2, and it is not needed on systems that were updated from Mac OS X v10.6 using the Mac OS X Update Combined v10.6.3, v1.1.
A report from ModMyi claiming that Apple may be preparing to launch the next-generation iPhone on June 22nd has been generating some attention despite apparent confusion from a number of rumor sites. According to the report, Apple has booked a venue for the launch on that date.
Although no confirmations have yet come from Apple (naturally), there is speculation that the big reveal could take place on June 22nd. For this particular occasion, Apple has once again reserved the very conference center where the company announced the three previous versions of the iPhone. So all signs, indeed, point to June 22nd proving the 4th gen iPhone's "big day."
A number of sites (one, two, three) have taken the report to mean that Apple has booked the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, site of many Apple special media events in the past, for the unveiling. Nowhere in the original report, however, does it mention what the venue is or what the evidence for the claim that Apple has booked it is.
In fact, Apple's recent pattern has been to introduce new iPhone models as part of the keynote address for its Worldwide Developers Conference in the Moscone West convention center in San Francisco, so it appears that the report may be referring to WWDC.
In the absence of evidence or a source for the claim that Apple has booked a venue for June 22nd, we're taking this rumor with a grain of salt. It does match with an earlier report of a June 22nd launch date, but multiplehints have suggested that Apple is planning to hold WWDC a week later than that.
Regardless, Apple is expected to officially announced the dates for this year's WWDC in the near future, and, given past history, it would be a significant surprise if the new iPhone was not announced directly in conjunction with the conference.
Apple announced this morning that due to strong sales of the Apple iPad, they have delayed international delivery for about a month.
Although we have delivered more than 500,000 iPads during its first week, demand is far higher than we predicted and will likely continue to exceed our supply over the next several weeks as more people see and touch an iPad. We have also taken a large number of pre-orders for iPad 3G models for delivery by the end of April.
Apple reports that the high demand is responsible for the delay in international shipments. International delivery will take place at the end of May. Details and pre-orders will be announced on May 10th.
In the United States, upgrading from the standard 4 GB configuration of 2 x 2 GB to an 8 GB configuration of 2 x 4 GB modules now carries a $400 price hike, down from a $600 charge previously. Upgrading all the way to the maximum of 16 GB in a 4 x 4GB configuration now costs $1000 compared to the previous $1400 charge.
Old RAM upgrade pricing for 27-inch iMac models
While the smaller 21.5-inch iMac can support 4 GB RAM modules in its four slots for a total of 16 GB, Apple's build-to-order options only permit customers to upgrade to a total of 8 GB of RAM in a 4 x 2 GB configuration. Consequently, Apple pricing for 21.5-inch iMac configurations remains unchanged.
Ars Technica reports that Apple's new MacBook Pro models released today now support transmission of both audio and video via a single Mini DisplayPort output. The news comes following speculation that Apple might be preparing to release a Mini DisplayPort-to-HDMI adapter of its own after a reference to such an adapter appeared in the tech specs for the new MacBook Pro. According to the latest report, however, Apple has denied that it is planning its own adapter, meaning that users will need to rely upon third-party solutions.
Apple confirmed to Ars that the just-updated MacBook Pros will pass both video and audio signals to an HDTV or receiver when using an miniDP to HDMI adapter. Apple sells one such adapter from Griffin online, though alternative from suppliers such as Monoprice are also available. Apple doesn't have any plans at this time to make its own adapter, contrary to earlier speculation.
Mini DisplayPort-to-HDMI adapters have been around for over a year now, and many MacBook Pro users have used them to connect their notebooks to external displays or televisions. Those users wishing to route audio to the external devices have been required to use a separate cable connected to the computer's audio line out minijack or a combination HDMI cable supporting Mini DisplayPort for video and USB for audio.
HDMI, a popular connector standard for home theater applications, has been rumored to be included on the next-generation Mac mini. That report also indicated that Apple had developed its own Mini DisplayPort-to-HDMI adapter that could handle both audio and video, but today's statement from Apple suggests that the company has no plans, or doesn't wish to reveal plans, to release such a device.
Update: An Apple support document suggests that the company's latest iMacs also offer this functionality when used with compatible Mini DisplayPort-to-HDMI adapters.
