Posts tagged Apple

cnet: Apple passes 50 billion App Store downloads FJP: via CNET, “The person who downloaded the 50 billionth app will get a $10,000 App Store gift card from Apple, and the 50 people who downloaded apps right after that each will receive a $500 gift card.”

cnet:

Apple passes 50 billion App Store downloads

FJP: via CNET, “The person who downloaded the 50 billionth app will get a $10,000 App Store gift card from Apple, and the 50 people who downloaded apps right after that each will receive a $500 gift card.”

Smart Phones Shipped, First Quarter 2013 Researchers at IDC report that 216 million smart phones were shipped in the first quarter of 2013, up 63 million from the same period in 2012. Via Reuters: Sales of the iPhone 5 helped Apple’s volumes grow 6.6 percent to 37.4 million phones in the quarter from a year earlier, but that was not enough to stop its share of the market dropping to 17.3 percent from 23 percent, research firm IDC said. A flood of cheaper Android-powered devices from the South Korean maker lifted its shipments about 60 percent to 70.7 million, giving it a 32.7 percent of the market, up from 28.8 percent a year earlier. During the first quarter Samsung shipped more smartphones than the next four vendors combined, IDC said. Image: Smart phones shipped worldwide, first quarter 2013.

Smart Phones Shipped, First Quarter 2013

Researchers at IDC report that 216 million smart phones were shipped in the first quarter of 2013, up 63 million from the same period in 2012.

Via Reuters:

Sales of the iPhone 5 helped Apple’s volumes grow 6.6 percent to 37.4 million phones in the quarter from a year earlier, but that was not enough to stop its share of the market dropping to 17.3 percent from 23 percent, research firm IDC said.

A flood of cheaper Android-powered devices from the South Korean maker lifted its shipments about 60 percent to 70.7 million, giving it a 32.7 percent of the market, up from 28.8 percent a year earlier.

During the first quarter Samsung shipped more smartphones than the next four vendors combined, IDC said.

Image: Smart phones shipped worldwide, first quarter 2013.

Apple Pulls 500px’s Mobile Apps From The App Store, Claiming It’s Too Easy To Search For Nude Photos

Via TechCrunch:

Toronto photo-sharing startup 500px is reporting today that both of its applications, 500px for iOS and its recent acquisition ISO500, have been pulled from the Apple App Store due to concerns about nude photos. Combined, the apps have over 1 million downloads, 500px COO Evgeny Tchebotarev tells us…

The apps were pulled from the App Store this morning around 1 AM Eastern, and had completely disappeared by noon today. The move came shortly after last night’s discussions with Apple related to an updated version of 500px for iOS, which was in the hands of an App Store reviewer.

The Apple reviewer told the company that the update couldn’t be approved because it allowed users to search for nude photos in the app. This is correct to some extent, but 500px had actually made it tough to do so, explains Tchebotarev. New users couldn’t just launch the app and locate the nude images, he says, the way you can today on other social photo sharing services like Instagram or Tumblr, for instance. Instead, the app defaulted to a “safe search” mode where these type of photos were hidden. To shut off safe search, 500px actually required its users to visit their desktop website and make an explicit change.

Tchebotarev said the company did this because they don’t want kids or others to come across these nude photos unwittingly. “Some people are mature enough to see these photos,” he says, “but by default it’s safe.”

FJP: A few things to note:

Noted, Part One: as one commenter on the story writes, “Do they plan on removing Safari from iOS as well? And every other mobile web browser?”

Noted, Part Deux: God forbid they take a close look at what you can find with the Tumblr app.

Noted, the third: Here’s where you come across the very serious issue of a gatekeeping ecosystem where app developers and publishers are essentially at the whims of Apple. For example, last summer Apple refused to carry an app that mapped publicly reported drone strikes.

Photographing a Revolution with an iPhone Pretty self explanatory, but very good work: all of these photos were taken by photojournalist Benjamin Lowy last summer, before the rebels killed Gaddafi and long before the recent attacks on the US Embassy. See the rest here. From Mother Jones: Why didn’t he work with fancier gear? “Small mobile phone cameras are innocuous and enable a far greater intimacy with a subject,” Lowy says, noting that Libyans themselves have also done much to document their surroundings, thanks to the ubiquitous technology.

Photographing a Revolution with an iPhone

Pretty self explanatory, but very good work: all of these photos were taken by photojournalist Benjamin Lowy last summer, before the rebels killed Gaddafi and long before the recent attacks on the US Embassy. See the rest here.

From Mother Jones:

Why didn’t he work with fancier gear? “Small mobile phone cameras are innocuous and enable a far greater intimacy with a subject,” Lowy says, noting that Libyans themselves have also done much to document their surroundings, thanks to the ubiquitous technology.

Polaroid Wired: Steve Jobs considered [Polaroid Founder Edwin] Land one of his heroes. They both had a single-minded vision; they both paired a strong design sense with technology. Christopher Bonanos: They were both artist-technologists, and both really believed in the importance of the product itself, instead of just filling a market segment or carving off some market share. You know, there were lots of MP3 players around before the iPod, and they were ugly or annoying to use or bulky or otherwise flawed–and then here came this perfect little white brick, and when you got it in your hand, you went aaaah. It went the same way with Land’s ultimate achievement, the SX-70 camera — it’s a marvel even now, because it’s a single-lens reflex camera that folds down flat to something barely bigger than the film pack inside. As perfect a little object as it could be. Wired, Why Polaroid Was the Apple of Its Time. Bonanos’ new book, Instant: The Story of Polaroid tracks the rise and near fall of the company. Image: 1986 Polaroid booth near the New York’s World Trade Center introduces the Spectra system, via Wired.

Polaroid

Wired: Steve Jobs considered [Polaroid Founder Edwin] Land one of his heroes. They both had a single-minded vision; they both paired a strong design sense with technology.

Christopher Bonanos: They were both artist-technologists, and both really believed in the importance of the product itself, instead of just filling a market segment or carving off some market share. You know, there were lots of MP3 players around before the iPod, and they were ugly or annoying to use or bulky or otherwise flawed–and then here came this perfect little white brick, and when you got it in your hand, you went aaaah. It went the same way with Land’s ultimate achievement, the SX-70 camera — it’s a marvel even now, because it’s a single-lens reflex camera that folds down flat to something barely bigger than the film pack inside. As perfect a little object as it could be.

Wired, Why Polaroid Was the Apple of Its Time.

Bonanos’ new book, Instant: The Story of Polaroid tracks the rise and near fall of the company.

Image: 1986 Polaroid booth near the New York’s World Trade Center introduces the Spectra system, via Wired.

Google Takes Mapping Underwater

Google added its first underwater panoramas to Google Maps yesterday.

From their blog:

With these vibrant and stunning photos you don’t have to be a scuba diver—or even know how to swim—to explore and experience six of the ocean’s most incredible living coral reefs. Now, anyone can become the next virtual Jacques Cousteau and dive with sea turtles, fish and manta rays in Australia, the Philippines and Hawaii.

See the camera details here.

ReadWriteWeb brought up the other news this week:

Since Apple’s lukewarm launch, the press has begun to wonder whether Google will deliver a standalone mapping app for iOS to compete with Apple’s. Google appears to be buying time by showing off this undersea Reef View as a demonstration of its planet-wide prowess.

FJP: I really need to get outside more. — Blake.

Undercover Chinese Reporter Works in iPhone 5 Factory, Exhausts Himself A reporter for the Shanghai Evening Post recently went undercover to a Foxconn factory, got a white coat, a room in the dorms, and a job placing oil marks on the back-plates of the new iPhone 5, which should be announced today. His conclusion: abysmal. Not the iPhone 5, but the conditions. Foxconn has had controversies in the past — there was a suicide protest early this year, a factory explosion in 2011, and several suicides in years past, all related to the working conditions, poor food and dirty living quarters workers are often pushed into. This story highlights the low quality of everything at Foxconn, except for perhaps the products they’re making. via a translation by micgadget: An iPhone 5 back-plate run through in front of me almost every 3 seconds. I have to pickup the back-plate and marked 4 position points using the oil-based paint pen and put it back on the running belt swiftly within 3 seconds with no errors. After such repeat action for several hours, I have terrible neckache and muscle pain on my arm. A new worker who sat opposite of me gone exhausted and laid down for a short while. The supervisor has noticed him and punished him by asking him to stand at one corner for 10 minutes like the old school days. We worked non-stop from midnight to the next morning 6 a.m but were still asked to keep on working as the production line is based on running belt and no one is allowed to stop. I’m so starving and fully exhausted. The article notes that it cannot verify the honesty of its reporter, but it’s interesting nonetheless. H/T: The Atlantic Wire

Undercover Chinese Reporter Works in iPhone 5 Factory, Exhausts Himself

A reporter for the Shanghai Evening Post recently went undercover to a Foxconn factory, got a white coat, a room in the dorms, and a job placing oil marks on the back-plates of the new iPhone 5, which should be announced today. His conclusion: abysmal. Not the iPhone 5, but the conditions.

Foxconn has had controversies in the past — there was a suicide protest early this year, a factory explosion in 2011, and several suicides in years past, all related to the working conditions, poor food and dirty living quarters workers are often pushed into.

This story highlights the low quality of everything at Foxconn, except for perhaps the products they’re making.

via a translation by micgadget:

An iPhone 5 back-plate run through in front of me almost every 3 seconds. I have to pickup the back-plate and marked 4 position points using the oil-based paint pen and put it back on the running belt swiftly within 3 seconds with no errors. After such repeat action for several hours, I have terrible neckache and muscle pain on my arm. A new worker who sat opposite of me gone exhausted and laid down for a short while. The supervisor has noticed him and punished him by asking him to stand at one corner for 10 minutes like the old school days. We worked non-stop from midnight to the next morning 6 a.m but were still asked to keep on working as the production line is based on running belt and no one is allowed to stop. I’m so starving and fully exhausted.

The article notes that it cannot verify the honesty of its reporter, but it’s interesting nonetheless.

H/T: The Atlantic Wire

Apple Rejects App That Tracks U.S. Drone Strikes

It seemed like a simple enough idea for an iPhone app: Send users a pop-up notice whenever a flying robots kills someone in one of America’s many undeclared wars. But Apple keeps blocking the Drones+ program from its App Store — and therefore, from iPhones everywhere. The Cupertino company says the content is “objectionable and crude,” according to Apple’s latest rejection letter.

It’s the third time in a month that Apple has turned Drones+ away, says Josh Begley, the program’s New York-based developer. The company’s reasons for keeping the program out of the App Store keep shifting. First, Apple called the bare-bones application that aggregates news of U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia “not useful.” Then there was an issue with hiding a corporate logo. And now, there’s this crude content problem.

Begley is confused. Drones+ doesn’t present grisly images of corpses left in the aftermath of the strikes. It just tells users when a strike has occurred, going off a publicly available database of strikes compiled by the U.K.’s Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which compiles media accounts of the strikes.

FJP: A short demonstration of how the app works (both text alerts and a map-based visualization) can be seen on Vimeo.

In a recent article at the Columbia Journalism Review, Dan Gillmor reminds us how news organizations’ reliance on technology companies is increasingly problematic. For example, and sticking with Apple:

Governments and businesses are creating choke points inside that emerging ecosystem—points of control where interests unfriendly to journalism can create not just speed bumps on the fabled information highway, but outright barricades…

…Consider Apple. The news industry’s longstanding love affair with what has become the most valuable company on Earth expanded with the death of Steve Jobs. But Apple has a long history of controlling behavior. If you create a journalism app to be sold in the iPhone or iPad marketplace, you explicitly give Apple the right to decide whether your journalism content is acceptable under the company’s vague guidelines. Apple has used this to block material it considers improper, including (until the company came under fire for this) refusing for a time to allow Mark Fiore, who has won a Pulitzer Prize for his cartoons, to sell his own app. Given the dominance Apple now enjoys in the tablet market, journalists should have a Plan B. Apple’s paranoia (not too strong a word) and secretive ways have led it to attack journalism itself. In 2004 the company tried to force several websites to disclose their sources in their Apple coverage; the case was a direct challenge to fundamental business-journalism practices. (Note: I played a small role in that case, filing declarations on behalf of the websites that they were engaged in protected journalism.)

Read through to Gillmor’s article for more about how telecommunications providers, government, and entertainment and technology companies threaten journalism and innovation.

DOJ Sues Apple & 5 Publishers for Fixing E-Book Prices

The antitrust lawsuit accuses Apple and five separate publishers of colluding to fix the price of e-books in violation of federal antitrust law. Hachette, HarperCollins, and Simon & Schuster have settled with the Justice Department, but the remaining three defendants—Apple, Penguin, and Macmillan have not.

Apparently, the price-fixing scheme began a few months prior to the release of the first iPad, and the publishers reportedly took steps to conceal secret communications with each other. 

via Talking Points Memo:

The publishers and Apple ended up entering into an agreement. Jobs’ own email to a publisher proves to be quite damning with Jobs stating that the publishers could work with Apple or pursue one of two other choices: “Keep going with Amazon at $9.99” or “hold back your books from Amazon.”

In April 2010, publishers began charging $12.99, $14.99 or $16.99 for e-book versions of new hardcover titles.

Previously, the DOJ points out, e-book pricing occurred in a “wholesale model,” wherein publishers sold their books to retailers at varying prices, then retailers were free to charge whatever they wanted for them.

The “agency model” that Apple and the five publishers implemented involved agreeing to fixed prices prior to selling the books through Apple’s iBookstore, according to the DOJ.

If approved by the court, a settlement will grant retailers such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble the freedom to reduce the price of their e-books. They would also be required to “terminate their anticompetitive most-favored-nation agreements with Apple and other e-books retailers.”

Chinese Teen Sells Kidney to Buy iThings

In the United States 34% of teenagers have an iPhone and another 40% hope to buy one sometime in the next six months.

If you’re in the market, don’t do it this way:

Five people in southern China have been charged with intentional injury in the case of a Chinese teenager who sold a kidney so he could buy an iPhone and an iPad, the government-run Xinhua News Agency said on Friday.

The five included a surgeon who removed a kidney from a 17-year-old boy in April last year. The boy, identified only by his surname Wang, now suffers from renal deficiency, Xinhua quoted prosecutors in Chenzhou city, Hunan province as saying.

According to the Xinhua account, one of the defendants received about 220,000 yuan (about $35,000) to arrange the transplant. He paid Wang 22,000 yuan [about $3,500] and split the rest with the surgeon, the three other defendants and other medical staff.

When it comes to customers, Apple is a bold innovator that leads the industry into new directions and forces others to follow. However, when it comes to the management of its supply chain and treatment of workers in the Chinese factories that make its products, it hides behind the constraints of prevailing industry practices. What is even more disconcerting is the fact that these practices are in violation of not only local and national laws, but also of Apple’s own voluntary self-imposed code of conduct. It is important to note that this voluntary code of conduct breaks no new ground. It is at best a modest attempt to ensure that workers will be treated fairly and provided with a safe work environment.

S. Prakash Sethi, Professor, Baruch College, and President, International Center for Corporate Accountability. Carnagie Council, Two Faces of Apple

Sethi writes that the Apple brand is divided with its hyperfocus on the finished product but lazy glance factory conditions.

iPhones, iPads, iMacs and Powerbooks are innovative works of wonder. Operations at suppliers like Foxconn? Lowest common denominator.

Sethi challenges Apple CEO Tim Cook to change the company’s split culture.

“This would call for Apple to play a leadership role and thereby solidify its reputation not only as a leading corporate innovator, but also as a leading socially responsible corporate citizen,” he writes.

“One hopes that Apple will once again astonish the world by showing a new approach to building better bridges between private profit and public good.”

An important read as the business press hypes a potential trillion dollar valuation for Apple.

When Mike Daisey lied to national radio audiences on This American Life, lied to the 888,000 people who downloaded the podcast (the most in the show’s history), and lied to who-knows-how-many theater audiences over two years of performing his one-man show The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, he wasn’t wrong about the Chinese labor abuses that go into making iPads and other beloved American gadgets. He wasn’t wrong that Chinese workers are often subjected to horrific conditions, wasn’t wrong that Apple’s supervision of its contractor’s factories has been problematic, and wasn’t wrong that we American consumers bear an indirect but troubling moral responsibility for these abuses.

Most importantly, Mike Daisey wasn’t wrong that it is possible for Chinese authorities and Apple to substantially improve labor conditions — without making their products any more expensive or less competitive — and that American consumers can help make this happen. But he was wrong that embellishing his story would help, that bad behavior in service of a good cause ever does.

Max Fisher, The Atlantic. The Tragedy of Mike Daisey’s Lies About China.

Background.

This American Error

In January, This American Life broadcast an episode that explored labor practices at Foxconn, the world’s largest electronic component maker.

Turns out, there was a lot there that wasn’t true.

Via Public Radio International:

This American Life and American Public Media’s Marketplace will reveal that a story first broadcast in January on This American Life contained numerous fabrications.

This American Life will devote its entire program this weekend to detailing the errors in the story, which was an excerpt of Mike Daisey’s critically acclaimed one-man show, “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs.” In it, Daisey tells how he visited a factory owned by Foxconn that manufactures iPhones and iPads in Shenzhen China. He has performed the monologue in theaters around the country; it’s currently at the Public Theater in New York. Tonight’s This American Life program will include a segment from Marketplace’s Rob Schmitz, and interviews with Daisey himself. Marketplace will feature a shorter version of Schmitz’s report earlier in the evening…

…Some of the falsehoods found in Daisey’s monologue are small ones: the number of factories Daisey visited in China, for instance, and the number of workers he spoke with. Others are large. In his monologue he claims to have met a group of workers who were poisoned on an iPhone assembly line by a chemical called n-hexane. Apple’s audits of its suppliers show that an incident like this occurred in a factory in China, but the factory wasn’t located in Shenzhen, where Daisey visited…

…In Schmitz’s report, he confronts Daisey and Daisey admits to fabricating these characters. “I’m not going to say that I didn’t take a few shortcuts in my passion to be heard,” Daisey tells Schmitz and Glass. “My mistake, the mistake I truly regret, is that I had it on your show as journalism, and it’s not journalism. It’s theater.”

We wrote about Foxconn at the time and have updated the post to reflect this retraction.

Om Malik reviews all the iPad reviews: The new iPad reviews are out and here is my summary of those reviews:  LTE is fast, the retina display is stunning and immersive, the new processor is speedy, the camera takes great pictures now, and the more (1 GB) memory makes the iPad awesome. In short, it is totally worth buying and upgrading. The new iPad is a little fat and little heavy, but don’t worry — wear an untucked shirt and no one would notice. Oh, but the way, bulk or not, it is still the tablet king and it totally kicks Android’s derriere. It is a little expensive, but don’t worry, it is worth it. Depending on the reviewer, the review lengths range from 787 words to 4,968 words. Here are they ranked by least amount of words, so take your pick. Rich Jaroslovsky: 787 words Jim Dalrymple: 1030 words Walt Mossberg: 1279 words David Pogue: 1345 words Ed Baig: 1,571 words. John Gruber: 1822 words Vincent Nguyen: 2393 words MG Siegler: 2523 words Josh Topolsky: 3646 words Jason Snell: 4,968 words

Om Malik reviews all the iPad reviews:

The new iPad reviews are out and here is my summary of those reviews:  LTE is fast, the retina display is stunning and immersive, the new processor is speedy, the camera takes great pictures now, and the more (1 GB) memory makes the iPad awesome. In short, it is totally worth buying and upgrading. The new iPad is a little fat and little heavy, but don’t worry — wear an untucked shirt and no one would notice. Oh, but the way, bulk or not, it is still the tablet king and it totally kicks Android’s derriere. It is a little expensive, but don’t worry, it is worth it.

Depending on the reviewer, the review lengths range from 787 words to 4,968 words. Here are they ranked by least amount of words, so take your pick.