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Archive for the ‘Apple News’ Category

May 201321

AT&T Bringing FaceTime to all cellular plans

by Shane Roberts

I know I love to FaceTime friends and family. Sometimes when you’re away from WiFi, you need to have a quick FaceTime conversation with someone to help you out visually.

Well if you’ve been an AT&T customer, you may not have had this service available to you. AT&T has been gradually rolling out FaceTime over cellular since iOS6 was released. First it was you had to have a mobile share plan, then if you had an LTE device (unless you had unlimited data), now it appears that AT&T is going to open up FaceTime over cellular for everyone. Here’s what AT&T had to say:

For video chat apps that come pre-loaded on devices, we currently give all OS and device makers the ability for those apps to work over cellular for our customers who are on Mobile Share or Tiered plans. Apple, Samsung and BlackBerry have chosen to enable this for their pre-loaded video chat apps. And by mid-June, we’ll have enabled those apps over cellular for our unlimited plan customers who have LTE devices from those three manufacturers.

Throughout the second half of this year, we plan to enable pre-loaded video chat apps over cellular for all our customers, regardless of data plan or device; that work is expected to be complete by year end.

Today, all of our customers can use any mobile video chat app that they download from the Internet, such as Skype.

This probably should have been offered to all customers from the get go, but at least it is finally going to show up for AT&T customers. Good news for all AT&T customers!

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filed under: Apple News
tags: apple, at&t, facetime, iOS, iPad, iPhone, lte

May 201320

Will we see ‘iRadio’ streaming service at WWDC ’13?

by Shane Roberts

Every Apple fanboys favorite event is just around the corner. The World Wide Developers Conference, or simply WWDC, starts June 10. Usually headlined by Tim Cook as the keynote speaker at the opening keynote address, everyone is wondering what Apple may have up their sleeves this time around.

One service that has been rumored for years, and only seems like a logical next step for Apple, is a Pandora-like streaming service. This service has been called by the media ‘iRadio.’ Chances are, if we are going to see this service in 2013, it will be unveiled at WWDC.

However, due to some recent reports and rumors, it sounds like the negotiations between Apple and Sony, for the rights and costs of song royalties, are really slowing everything to a halt.

CNET ran a report stating that all the other music companies are on board, just Sony is playing hardball. Here’s what CNET had to say about the situation:

Apple and Sony Music, the world’s second-largest music label, are still trying to hammer out details over how much Apple would pay for songs that people listen to a fraction of and then skip, according to people familiar with the negotiations.

According to CNET, the other music leaders are frustrated with Sony, because this could make everyone a lot of money.

That skipping has become an issue is frustrating executives at the other labels because they see Apple’s free radio service as a potential boon for the music industry overall and are eager to help the company get it launched. Streaming music is the fastest-growing segment of the recorded music industry, and Apple’s offering, designed for the iPhone and linked to iTunes, could speed the growth of Internet radio that much faster.

If Apple is working on this project and if they could get it off the ground, it will be great. With the decade of experience with iTunes and the iTunes Store, Apple making a streaming service just makes sense. In the world of big business, especially in the technology world where egos may be bigger than most, this will be no small task for Apple to accomplish.

To see the rest of the story from CNET, click here. It’s fascinating.

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filed under: Apple News

May 201308

PC management service company finds a Mac is the #1 Windows machine

by Shane Roberts

One of my favorite lines as a salesman of Macs was, “This computer can run two operating systems better than PC’s can run one.” Once again, it turns out that I was correct. A PC management services company called Soluto, ran some testing, and they found that the 13″ MacBook Pro is the best Windows laptop available.

It rated the machines based off of what they called ‘frustration analytics.’ That includes crashes, freezes, long boot-ups, and more. The funny thing is the 15″ MacBook Pro with Retina Display is listed at number six on the list, and it’s actually the more powerful machine. It’s possible the high resolution display doesn’t mesh as well with Windows, or maybe it’s not as efficient with a solid state drive, regardless, it’s funny to see Apple has two of the 10 best Windows machines out there.

Source: Soluto via AppleInsider.com

AppleInsider.com pointed out a really interesting point about the comparison:

The report notes that comparing a Windows install on a MacBook Pro with one from Acer or Dell is a bit unfair, as Apple’s version is “clean,” or devoid of bloatware usually pre-loaded by PC OEMs. The company points out that a future analysis will take this discrepancy into account, but for now the “frustration” data looks to highlight real life use, not lab testing.

Another major perk of getting a Mac over a PC? There is no bloatware, you know you’re getting a much cleaner computer.

If you want to check out more of what AppleInsider.com had to say on the matter, click here.

I’m not 100% sure about Windows 7, but I know with Windows Vista this news came up once before:

Courtesy of PCWorld.com

So with at least two of the last three Windows operating systems, a Mac has been named the best to run Microsoft’s flagship software.

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filed under: Apple News, News, Random Apple Goodness

Apr 201330

iPad #1 in JD Power Customer Satisfaction

by Shane Roberts

Image courtesy of CultofMac.com

Add another trophy to the Apple trophy collection. JP Power came out on Monday and listed the top tablets on the market, in customer satisfaction. Apple for the second consecutive year was named the top tablet, by consumers, for overall customer satisfaction. Other tablets on the list, like the Amazon Kindle Fire, and Samsung came in behind Apple.

CultofMac.com had a nice write up on the award, here is an excerpt:

The J.D. Power customer satisfaction award for tablets is now its second year, which means the iPad is the only device to have secured one to date. It beat the Kindle Fire, which scored 829 points, to the top spot. Amazon’s device ranked better in the cost category, but the iPad was the only device to be ranked “among the best” with five out of five J.D. Power circle ratings.
Read more at http://www.cultofmac.com/225419/ipad-tops-j-d-power-customer-satisfaction-survey-for-second-year-running/#2HSlzl1uQoeJxZfS.99

The categories that the tablets are rated on were, performance, ease of operation, styling and design, features, and cost. The two areas that I see Apple having on lock down for the foreseeable future are, ease of operation and styling and design. The tablet market will become extremely competitive in the other areas, if not already, but those other two areas Apple has always been the leader of the pack.

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filed under: Apple News

Apr 201329

WWDC 2013 sold out within minutes!

by Shane Roberts

Apple’s WWDC, the World Wide Developers Conference, 2013 tickets went on sale last week to the developer community. Within two minutes, the conference had sold out.

The question a lot of people have is, what is WWDC? It’s an event, a conference, that Apple holds to show the app developers, for Mac OS and iOS, how to utilize the new tools that Apple has created over the year. It always starts with a bang, by Tim Cook making a major keynote address. It has commonly been known as the iPhone event. WWDC is where Apple has made a majority of iPhone announcements, whether it was hardware or software. The iPad has also seen its fair share of major announcements during past WWDCs.

This years WWDC is scheduled for June 10-14, at the Moscone West convention center in San Francisco. Tickets go for $1499 a pop, and it gives access to all the workshops over the four days.

The question now is… what will we see at that keynote address? I doubt we’ll see any hardware announcements. It seems the fall is the new home for major announcements of hardware. I believe we’ll see iOS7, now headed by Jony Ive, as well as Mac OS 10.9. Regardless, we now have a date on the calendar to circle for some cool Apple news!

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filed under: Apple News

Mar 201312

Wired article from 1997 on how to save Apple

by Shane Roberts

There was a time, at the end of the ’90s and the beginning of the millennia, when Apple was in some serious trouble. They were on the verge of bankruptcy, and even Steve Jobs, before he was back with Apple, thought Apple was going to fold.

Wired magazine ran an article back in 1997 called, ’101 Ways to Save Apple’. It had ideas and suggestions of all types that Apple should consider to save themselves as a company. These are all individual ideas, and not a cohesive list of recommendations for Apple, as you’ll see near the end of the list, some are very tongue in cheek. Some of the ideas now, we would consider crazy with the benefit of hindsight. Here are just a couple:

“1. Admit it. You’re out of the hardware game.Outsource your hardware production, or scrap it entirely, to compete more directly with Microsoft without the liability of manufacturing boxes.

2. License the Apple name/technology to appliance manufacturers and build GUIs for every possible device – from washing machines to telephones to WebTV. Have them all use the same communications protocol. Result: you monopolize the market for smart devices/homes.”

There were some ideas in there that Apple did apply, and pulled their company out of the doldrums.

“15. Dump (or outsource) the Newton, eMate, digital cameras, and scanners.

25. Portables, portables, portables. Pick the best-of-breed Wintel in each of the portable categories and then better it. Wintel has a fantastic range.

50. Give Steve Jobs as much authority as he wants in new product development. Let Gil Amelio stick to operations. There’s no excitement at the top, and Apple’s customers want to feel like they’ve joined a computer revolution. Even if Jobs fails, he’ll do it with guns a-blazin’, and we’ll be spared this slow water torture that Amelio has subjected us to.”

These ideas really stood out to me, because I’d say these were the A,B,C steps that Apple took to achieving the dominance they currently own.

Apple went back to the brain child and brought Steve Jobs back on board. Once Jobs was able to get ahold of the company again, he wanted to consolidate the product line. So he killed off products like printers and the Newton. He wanted to focus on a hand full of great products and make them the best on the market.

The next thing he did was look at the MP3 market, see that it was weak and saw an opportunity for Apple. So he took the existing portable market and created the iPod, then the iPhone, and lastly the iPad. He took existing portable products and made them better.

From the time of this article to now, Apple has continued to reinvent itself as a company to establish an identity.

For the rest of this cool article from Wired, click here.

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filed under: Apple News, Random Apple Goodness

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