Philip Elmer-DeWitt, writing for Fortune:
Last quarter, Apple finally made a major acquisition. And what did it buy?
It bought Apple.
By my calculation, the company spent $16 billion last quarter ($4 billion in cash, $12 billion through the so-called accelerated share repurchase program) to purchase 36 million of its own shares at an average price of just over $444.
For that amount, Apple could have bought three Nokias or three BlackBerrys...
As often, MG Siegler hits the nail about Apple's nonexistent lack of innovation:
One question during the D interview was about if Apple had stopped innovating. After all, it’s been so long since the last truly innovative product, the iPad, came out. Um, the iPad came out three years ago. Three years! Guess how much time there was between that product and the last “truly innovative” product, the iPhone? Three years. Guess how much time there was between that product and the last “truly innovative” product, the iPod? Five and a half years.
Newsflash: true innovation takes time. Apple has by far the best track-record in recent history when it comes to such products. But how quickly we forget how long each one took to come to market. There needs to be a Turn so we can appreciate the Prestige. But screw that. We want more, better, faster. Cue Louis CK.
Two big numbers were coincidentally dropped yesterday. First, Google announced 48 billion applications had been downloaded from the Google Play Store. Shortly after, Apple announced that its App Store had seen 50 billion downloads so far. Big numbers indeed, but how exactly do Apple and Google count app downloads? The Next Web Managing Editor Matthew Panzarino asked both companies and this is what he found:
Both Apple and Google tabulate unique downloads of apps per user account. This means that they count only one download of an app no matter how many devices that you install that app on after you purchase it. Neither company counts updates in its app download numbers. These are purely single downloads from their stores.
Read the full article at The Next Web.
In their review of the new Samsung Galaxy S4, CNET found out the following:
Nearly half of the S4's storage space (after a factory reset, our 16GB Galaxy S4 showed 8.49GB of available room) is taken up with the phone's operating system and built-in apps, limiting the amount of data you can store on the company's quad-core monster.
Now the question is, should Samsung sell it as an 8GB phone?
BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins said the following in a recent interview:
In five years I don’t think there’ll be a reason to have a tablet anymore. Maybe a big screen in your workspace, but not a tablet as such. Tablets themselves are not a good business model.
But of course, what would BlackBerry know about a good business model?
Last week Google was caught overriding Safari users' privacy settings, and now US lawmakers want the Federal Trade Commission to probe the company over it, as reported by Computer World:
Three lawmakers from the U.S. House of Representatives have asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether last week's report of privacy violations of Safari users by Google violated a consent agreement the company had reached with the FTC last year.
Google's alleged circumvention of do-not-track controls on Apple's Safari browser could have a wide sweeping impact because Safari is a major web browser used by millions of Americans, according to a letter to the FTC on Friday from Republican Representatives Cliff Stearns of Florida and Joe Barton of Texas, and Democrat Edward Markey of Massachusetts.
That's definitely something we'll be following.
Blogger Arun Thampi accidentally discovered that Path uploads your entire address book to its servers. Path CEO quickly explained why the company chose to take this path (pun intended):
We actually think this is an important conversation and take this very seriously. We upload the address book to our servers in order to help the user find and connect to their friends and family on Path quickly and effeciently as well as to notify them when friends and family join Path. Nothing more.
We believe that this type of friend finding & matching is important to the industry and that it is important that users clearly understand it, so we proactively rolled out an opt-in for this on our Android client a few weeks ago and are rolling out the opt-in for this in 2.0.6 of our iOS Client, pending App Store approval.
The app that everybody loved a few months ago is now the app that everybody loves to hate. I'm sure it won't last long though. Path will fix "the glitch" and get praised by everyone for how quickly they came through. But that's only assuming MG Siegler or Gruber don't put them on the gallows first.
Fortune's editor Adam Lashinsky is about to release a new book about Apple next week titled Inside Apple. In the book, we learn that Scott Forstall, the head of iOS, might be in the best seat to become Apple's CEO when Tim Cook steps down:
"He's a sharp, down-to-earth, and talented engineer, and a more-than-decent presenter," one entrepreneur told Adam Lashinsky. "He's the total package."
According to Lashinsky's new book Inside Apple: How America's Most Admired -- and Secretive -- Company Really Works, senior vice president Scott Forstall stands out among the rest of Apple's executive team as the most likely to succeed Steve Jobs once the Tim Cook era is over.
Theoretically, we're still years away from a CEO swap as Tim Cook recently got appointed following the passing of Steve Jobs. And word on the street is that he got some big incentives to stay for at least 10 years. Things can change fast in Silicon Valley though.
Google has always touted its Android operating system as being "open" when compared to Apple's "closed" iOS platform. In MG Siegler's recent blog post, the TechCrunch writer/Apple pundit explains why he hates Google for ultimately turning its back on the customer:
All of this backstory knowledge fuels my rage. When I see Google talk about how “open” the platform is, setting it up as the foil to the “closed” (and framed as “evil”) iPhone, I want to scream and rip someone’s head off. It’s not only the most extreme example of being disingenuous that I can ever recall seeing. It’s nuclear bullshit.
Apple, for all the shit they get for being “closed” and “evil”, has actually done far more to wrestle control back from the carriers and put it into the hands of consumers. Google set off to help in this goal, then stabbed us all in the back and went the complete other way, to the side of the carriers. And because they smiled the entire time they were doing it and fed us “open” bullshit, we thanked them for it. We’re still thanking them for it!
2011 wasn't a bad year for Apple newly appointed CEO Tim Cook, who made almost $378 million:
According to Apple’s 2012 Proxy Statement, Cook received a jaw dropping $377,996, 537 million in total compensation last year — which is $377,996,536 than his late predecessor made.
Cook made a little over $900,000 in salary in 2011, but a massive bonus in restricted stock units vesting in two five-year increments and doled out with his appointment to the CEO slot, sent his total compensation into the stratosphere.
The legal battle between Samsung and Apple might be fierce, but it didn't prevent the Korean electronics giant to submit ChatON, its own messaging application in the App Store. The main benefit of ChatON is that it is a cross platform app that will work on iOS, Android, Bada, Samsung Feature and will support Blackberry, Window mobile, and web soon.
ChatON is a Global Mobile Communication Service that enables you to have better relationships with your buddies or groups.
ChatON brings together all of these methods of communication, expression, and sharing in one place.
Download ChatON in the App Store for free. Or don't!
Sprint, the carrier that touts itself as the only one to offer "truly unlimited data", actually has nothing on AT&T and Verizon, as CEO Dan Hesse confirmed today that his company is doing exactly the same thing:
"For those that want to abuse it, we can knock them off," Hesse said at an investor conference Thursday. He said Sprint pares back data use for about 1% of users, a practice known as throttling.
Both AT&T and Verizon have been throttling top data users for a few months now. The difference is that AT&T and Verizon weren't misleading about it. Bad Sprint!