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Posts tagged with "apple"

‘All About Apple’ Museum Launches Crowdfunding Campaign→

All About Apple, an Italian non-profit organization that’s been operating for over a decade, has launched a crowdfunding campaign for All About Apple Museum, the “most comprehensive” exhibition of Apple and Apple-related products with over 9,000 pieces in its collection. The organization has assembled a team of volunteers and has been granted permission to use a new location in Savona, Italy, and they’re seeking funds to finish the project.

All About Apple has shared a video detailing their goals for the museum (in Italian, with English subtitles).

As seen in the video and campaign page (English version here), All About Apple has been curating pieces that range from classic Macs and NeXT workstations to old Apple marketing material, iPods, accessories, and even Steve Wozniak’s original toolbox from the 70’s.

I didn’t know this organization before, but it sounds like an incredible effort and an interesting project. You can read more about All About Apple here and back the project on Italian crowdfunding platform Eppela.

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The New Yorker Profiles Jony Ive→

Earlier today, The New Yorker published an extensive profile of Jony Ive. The in-depth article covers a wide range of topics, including Ive’s early life and career, thoughts on design, Apple Watch, relationship with Steve Jobs, and more.

It’s a must-read. Instead of pulling out relevant bits to reprint them here with fancy headlines, I’m going to use one paragraph about Ive’s sense of care and ask you to enjoy the full story over at The New Yorker.

We were in the fast lane of I-280, in squinting low sunshine. When I asked for examples of design carelessness, Ive cranked the conversation back to Apple. He has the discipline to avoid most indiscretions, but not always the facility to disguise the effort. “At the risk of sounding terribly sentimental, I do think one of the things that just compel us is that we have this sense that, in some way, by caring, we’re actually serving humanity,” he said. “People might think it’s a stupid belief, but it’s a goal—it’s a contribution that we can hope we can make, in some small way, to culture.”

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Apple Q1 2015 Results: $74.6 Billion Revenue, 74.5 Million iPhones, 21.4 Million iPads Sold

Apple has published their Q1 2015 financial results for the quarter that ended in December 2014. The company posted revenue of $74.6 billion. The company sold 21.4 million iPads, 74.5 million iPhones, and 5.5 million Macs, earning a quarterly net profit of $18 billion.

“We’d like to thank our customers for an incredible quarter, which saw demand for Apple products soar to an all-time high,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “Our revenue grew 30 percent over last year to $74.6 billion, and the execution by our teams to achieve these results was simply phenomenal.”

The quarter sets a new record for Apple: before today’s results, the company’s record was $57.6 billion revenue reported for Q1 2014.

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Balance

When I started MacStories in 2009, two pillars sustained the narrative around Apple: its “attention to detail” and the “just works” aspect of its software. Since iOS 7, it feels like those pillars have begun eroding at a quicker pace.

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The Story Behind “The Song”→

Last week, Apple released a holiday commercial called The Song that tells a beautiful and simple story where Apple software and devices aren’t the main characters.

Today, Apple has posted a “behind the scenes” video that shows how the song was recorded with a voice-o-graph and ported to GarageBand.

There’s a few things I like about these two videos. The ad is powerful, and it focuses on what you can do with technology rather than what technology is. That’s a strong message, and it’s carried out subtly and elegantly through the video.

And I like that the Making Of shows Dana Williams’ real dock (with Spotify in it) and the BioShock Infinite vibe of the voice-o-graph. This is a good follow-up to last year’s video.

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Apple to Live Stream October 16 Event

With an update on their website, Apple has confirmed that they will offer a live stream of the October 16 event, rumored to feature the introduction of new Macs and iPads.

Join us here at apple.com/live on October 16 at 10 a.m. PDT to watch our special event live.

In addition to new iPads, Apple is also expected to provide an official release date for Yosemite – the next major version of OS X. Last year, Apple surprised the tech press by releasing OS X Mavericks on the same day of its October event.

Last month, Apple offered a live stream of its iPhone 6 and Apple Watch event, which ran into a variety of technical issues due to the scale of Apple’s announcements. Apple also provided a live blog of the event with official photos and status updates.

The October 16 event will be streamed live at apple.com/live, with an Apple TV channel likely to be added a few hours ahead of the event.

The Future of Apple and Google→

A thoughtful article by Steve Cheney. This point was particularly interesting:

New frameworks for devices to interact with the physical world have arrived and will further Apple’s lead. These are important to the growth of the platforms. These include BLE, iBeacon, NFC and other areas adjacent to discovery and the purchase funnel. These short range technologies (when made developer-friendly through APIs) allow phones to connect with the nearby world (the ‘edge’ or last 50 feet), much like GPS allowed phones to connect with the outdoor sky 10 years ago. This short range RF stack is maturing rapidly, but it’s still a little bit like GPS was 5-10 years ago. Back then the apps sucked—remember the first Garmin device you had to plug in to your cigarette lighter, which had no real apps or expansion capability? Or the first time you used maps on a Nokia series 40 phone? The applications were bad, the devices sucked, and the developer tools were non-existent. Now every single app you download uses location and you can get a car delivered to your house in 5 minutes, all enabled by GPS.

It took years for GPS to become widespread, but it has changed how we live. Seems clear that near-field discovery and communication will do the same.

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Apple Announces Q4 2014 Conference Call for October 20

In an update to the Investor Relations website, Apple today announced their Q4 2014 earnings call, which will be held on Monday, October 20. As usual, Apple will provide a live webcast of the conference call.

Apple plans to conduct a conference call to discuss financial results of its fourth fiscal quarter on Monday, October 20, 2014 at 2:00 p.m. PT / 5:00 p.m. ET.

Apple’s Q4 2014 earnings call will likely provide another insight into the launch of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. Released in 10 countries on September 19 and subsequently rolled out in 22 additional countries on September 26, the iPhone 6 line set a new record for Apple by topping 4 million pre-orders in 24 hours and over 10 million units sold in the opening weekend. It’s also possible that the company may share details about iOS 8 adoption numbers (currently at 41%) and the launch of Yosemite, the next version of OS X that graduated to Golden Master status for registered developers today.

In the third quarter, Apple posted revenue of $37.4 billion. The company sold 13.3 million iPads, 35.2 million iPhones, and 4.4 million Macs, earning a quarterly net profit of $6.9 billion. In the year-ago quarter (Q4 2013), Apple posted revenue of $37.5 billion and sold 14.1 million iPads, 33.8 million iPhones, and 4.6 million Macs. For the fourth quarter of 2014, Apple has set its guidance to “between $37 billion and $40 billion” of revenue.

We will provide live updates from the conference call on our site’s homepage on October 20 starting at 2 PM PT.