Posts tagged apple

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.

KONY 2012 More Popular than iPad HD on Twitter

Apple’s new iPad HD announcement yesterday could not keep pace with a documentary film about Uganda’s Invisible Children among users of Twitter. 

Uganda, Invisible Children and (hash)stopkony were among the top 10 trending terms on Twitter among both the worldwide and U.S. audience on Wednesday night, ranking higher than New iPad or Peyton Manning. Twitter’s top trends more commonly include celebrities than fugitive militants.

FJP: While social media may some day bring the fugitive Kony to justice, it’s remarkable that an online movement can usurp the spotlight from a giant like Apple, even if just for a day.

csmonitor.com

Is This What Siri Looks Like? Shapeways, a 3D printing company and community, recently held a competition asking people to imagine what Siri looks like. Yesterday, they announced the winning entry comes from SaGa Design: The androgynous face has a wry, elusive smile suggesting the machine knows something that the user does not. Behind Siri’s all-knowing gaze, the glow of the iphone screen is visible through the sculpture, and the main buttons are still accessible even when the screen is obscured. The design, when placed over the iphone, forces the user to interact with Siri instead of tapping on the screen to engage commands. For more complicated tasks requiring the screen however, the phone can easily be slipped out of the top of the case. Additional images can be viewed here.

Is This What Siri Looks Like?

Shapeways, a 3D printing company and community, recently held a competition asking people to imagine what Siri looks like.

Yesterday, they announced the winning entry comes from SaGa Design:

The androgynous face has a wry, elusive smile suggesting the machine knows something that the user does not. Behind Siri’s all-knowing gaze, the glow of the iphone screen is visible through the sculpture, and the main buttons are still accessible even when the screen is obscured. The design, when placed over the iphone, forces the user to interact with Siri instead of tapping on the screen to engage commands. For more complicated tasks requiring the screen however, the phone can easily be slipped out of the top of the case.

Additional images can be viewed here.

Forbes Blogger Steals $20,000 and 1 Million Pageviews from New York Times by Changing Headline Now how’s that for a grabber? If it got your attention it just demonstrates how important headlines are in online journalism. Sensationalism, link bait, and a little SEO can be worth tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars to your organization. The New York Times  got into a bit of a dustup over a piece of its investigative reporting that became a runaway hit only after it appeared Kashmir Hill’s Not-So Private Parts blog on Forbes.  Nick O’Neill writes: They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but how much is a title worth? If the story that proceeds is any indicator, a title is worth over 6700 words and months of research. It all began Friday when the New York Times published an article “How Companies Learn Your Secrets“. It was an extremely long article which discussed how large companies like WalMart and Target collect data about your individual consumption patterns to figure out how to most efficiently make you happy. It was a great piece but there was one problem: it didn’t have the title it deserved. The original title was “How Companies Learn Your Secrets.” Kashmir Hill, a writer at Forbes, realized this and quickly developed a condensed version of the article with a far more powerful title: “How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Father Did“. It cut out the crap and got to the real shocker of the story. As of the writing of this story, the New York Times article has 60 likes and shares on Facebook versus 12,902 which the Forbes article has. The Forbes article also has a mind boggling 680,000 page views, a number that can literally make a writer’s career. Even those numbers are a bit dated. The Forbes retelling will likely hit 1 million views before Monday morning. And beyond the pageview count, and prestige for the reporters involved, there’s a very real monetary cost associated with sloppy or overly-cautious headline writing. Let’s calculate. A June 2010 report from Econsultancy pegs the average CPM for all news sites at $7 industry-wide. CPM stands for cost per mille and represents the amount of money publishers receive from display advertisements for each thousand pageviews. According to the report, the New York Times brand was receiving 32.5 million monthly viewers and 719 million pageviews in May of 2010. An average CPM of $7 drags down the likely value of display advertisements on the NYT, the website for the paper of record. I tried to dig up some display advertising rates for NYT.com and I found a current rate sheet. That said, but I can’t conceive of anything less helpful. (The Times has a bit of attachment to opaque financial disclosures)  Assuming that the current CPM for the New York Times is $20,  the company forfeited $20,000 in potential advertising revenue to Forbes on the basis of a headline. My guess is that the Times has a much higher CPM than $20. Considering what staff journalists earn these days, a single headline cost The New York Times newsroom the equivalent several months of a reporter’s salary.  And the story no doubt  required the investment hundreds of man hours, and thousands of dollars in wages to. Unfortunately, it’s fair game and nothing will stop it from happening again. The whole episode reminds me of the story from the Steve Jobs autobiography. In the early 1980s Jobs asked Gates and Microsoft to create a version visual interface, BASIC, for Apple’s Macintosh computers. In November of 1983, before Apple was able to ship its Apple IIs with a graphical user interface, Microsoft had already released an early version of Windows for IBM compatible machines, based on the product originally developed for Apple. Jobs was furious at Gates for ripping off the Windows operating system from Apple and summoned him to Cupertino for a brow beating. In a boardroom packed with Apple minions Gates calmly explained to Jobs that both Apple and Microsoft had stolen the idea from Xerox research, which they had been too slow to commercialize themselves. Gates told Jobs, “I think it’s more like we both had this rich neighbor named Xerox and I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found out that you had already stolen it.” The rich neighbor is The New York Times in the news business. Almost every news outlet worth its salt rewrites original New York Times stories and tailors them for a specific audience. Parasitic properties like Gawker and Huffington Post would not exist were it not for the nourishment of a host like the Times. Today both are much larger and more robust organizations that publish plenty of original content. Unfortunately for The New York Times Company, it is still years away from realizing the dollar value of its editorial influence, and its considerable investment in original reporting. In the meantime, expect the break-ins to continue unabated. Image:Flickr

Forbes Blogger Steals $20,000 and 1 Million Pageviews from New York Times by Changing Headline

Now how’s that for a grabber? If it got your attention it just demonstrates how important headlines are in online journalism. Sensationalism, link bait, and a little SEO can be worth tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars to your organization.

The New York Times  got into a bit of a dustup over a piece of its investigative reporting that became a runaway hit only after it appeared Kashmir Hill’s Not-So Private Parts blog on Forbes. 

Nick O’Neill writes:

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but how much is a title worth? If the story that proceeds is any indicator, a title is worth over 6700 words and months of research. It all began Friday when the New York Times published an article “How Companies Learn Your Secrets“. It was an extremely long article which discussed how large companies like WalMart and Target collect data about your individual consumption patterns to figure out how to most efficiently make you happy. It was a great piece but there was one problem: it didn’t have the title it deserved.

The original title was “How Companies Learn Your Secrets.” Kashmir Hill, a writer at Forbes, realized this and quickly developed a condensed version of the article with a far more powerful title: “How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Father Did“. It cut out the crap and got to the real shocker of the story. As of the writing of this story, the New York Times article has 60 likes and shares on Facebook versus 12,902 which the Forbes article has. The Forbes article also has a mind boggling 680,000 page views, a number that can literally make a writer’s career.

Even those numbers are a bit dated. The Forbes retelling will likely hit 1 million views before Monday morning. And beyond the pageview count, and prestige for the reporters involved, there’s a very real monetary cost associated with sloppy or overly-cautious headline writing. Let’s calculate.

A June 2010 report from Econsultancy pegs the average CPM for all news sites at $7 industry-wide. CPM stands for cost per mille and represents the amount of money publishers receive from display advertisements for each thousand pageviews. According to the report, the New York Times brand was receiving 32.5 million monthly viewers and 719 million pageviews in May of 2010. An average CPM of $7 drags down the likely value of display advertisements on the NYT, the website for the paper of record.

I tried to dig up some display advertising rates for NYT.com and I found a current rate sheet. That said, but I can’t conceive of anything less helpful. (The Times has a bit of attachment to opaque financial disclosures)  Assuming that the current CPM for the New York Times is $20,  the company forfeited $20,000 in potential advertising revenue to Forbes on the basis of a headline. My guess is that the Times has a much higher CPM than $20. Considering what staff journalists earn these days, a single headline cost The New York Times newsroom the equivalent several months of a reporter’s salary.  And the story no doubt  required the investment hundreds of man hours, and thousands of dollars in wages to. Unfortunately, it’s fair game and nothing will stop it from happening again.

The whole episode reminds me of the story from the Steve Jobs autobiography. In the early 1980s Jobs asked Gates and Microsoft to create a version visual interface, BASIC, for Apple’s Macintosh computers. In November of 1983, before Apple was able to ship its Apple IIs with a graphical user interface, Microsoft had already released an early version of Windows for IBM compatible machines, based on the product originally developed for Apple. Jobs was furious at Gates for ripping off the Windows operating system from Apple and summoned him to Cupertino for a brow beating. In a boardroom packed with Apple minions Gates calmly explained to Jobs that both Apple and Microsoft had stolen the idea from Xerox research, which they had been too slow to commercialize themselves. Gates told Jobs, “I think it’s more like we both had this rich neighbor named Xerox and I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found out that you had already stolen it.”

The rich neighbor is The New York Times in the news business. Almost every news outlet worth its salt rewrites original New York Times stories and tailors them for a specific audience. Parasitic properties like Gawker and Huffington Post would not exist were it not for the nourishment of a host like the Times. Today both are much larger and more robust organizations that publish plenty of original content.

Unfortunately for The New York Times Company, it is still years away from realizing the dollar value of its editorial influence, and its considerable investment in original reporting. In the meantime, expect the break-ins to continue unabated.

Image:Flickr

nickoneill.com

Page 39, FBI File on Steve Jobs Via New York Magazine: The FBI has released its file on Steven Paul Jobs, the late Apple founder, compiled mostly during the presidency of George H.W. Bush. According to the The Vault description, “In 1991, Jobs was considered for an appointed position on the U.S. President’s Export Council. This release consists of the FBI’s 1991 background investigation of Jobs for that position and a 1985 investigation of a bomb threat against him.” The background check includes tidbits like, “Several individuals questioned Mr. Jobs’ honesty stating that Mr. Jobs will twist the truth and distort reality in order to achieve his goals.” The file can be viewed here.

Page 39, FBI File on Steve Jobs

Via New York Magazine:

The FBI has released its file on Steven Paul Jobs, the late Apple founder, compiled mostly during the presidency of George H.W. Bush. According to the The Vault description, “In 1991, Jobs was considered for an appointed position on the U.S. President’s Export Council. This release consists of the FBI’s 1991 background investigation of Jobs for that position and a 1985 investigation of a bomb threat against him.” The background check includes tidbits like, “Several individuals questioned Mr. Jobs’ honesty stating that Mr. Jobs will twist the truth and distort reality in order to achieve his goals.”

The file can be viewed here.

Ed Bott read the 2011 SEC filings for Apple, Google, and Microsoft and put together these handy pie charts to understand what drives each companies business.

Three companies are at the forefront of modern personal computing: Microsoft, Apple, and Google.

After reading through the most recent SEC-mandated financial reports for each company, I was inspired to put together these three pie charts. The data paints a vivid picture of where each company’s revenue comes from.

Microsoft is a software company. Apple’s a hardware company. But what business is Google in?

Riffing on Ed’s charts, MG Siegler pointed out that:

Last quarter, Microsoft brought in $20.89 billion in revenue. Apple brought in $46.33 billion. 

Put another way: Apple’s iPhone business alone is larger than all of Microsoft’s businesses combined.

And — just as remarkably — if you took away Apple’s iPhone business from the chart, the remaining Apple businesses would still be larger than Microsoft’s total business. And Apple’s earnings would look a lot more evenly distributed then.

zdnet.com

[Apple] CEO Tim Cook should launch a long-term plan to completely remake Chinese contract manufacturing—a plan that improves factory conditions, raises wages, and, over the long run, reduces the number of workers needed to make electronics. He should do so publicly, telling the world exactly what’s wrong with how we make gadgets now, and how Apple plans to fix the system. And he should do so with the same commitment to excellence that Apple brings to its products—setting high standards, and meting out severe punishment for contractors who fail to meet them.

Farhad Manjoo, Slate. Introducing the iFactory: Apple reinvented gadgets. Now it should reinvent how gadgets are manufactured.

Background: Manjoo writes in response to Apple’s incredible last quarter where it recorded  the largest profits of any company ever aside from Exxon Mobile in 2008, and the ongoing troubles at Foxconn, one of its Chinese manufactures, where workers recently threatened mass suicide. 

Related: “Conflict iPhones,” a new term I hadn’t heard before but something tells me I’ll be hearing more of, eg., “Conflict Gadgets.”

Also related: Foxconn is in the process of automating its factories, believing it can bring on up to a million robots in the next three years to automate the manufacture of phones, tablets, game consoles and the other gadgets we brush up against every day. 

Apple Launches iBooks Author Via iTunes: Now anyone can create stunning iBooks textbooks, cookbooks, history books, picture books, and more for iPad. All you need is an idea and a Mac. Start with one of the Apple-designed templates that feature a wide variety of page layouts. Add your own text and images with drag-and-drop ease. Use Multi-Touch widgets to include interactive photo galleries, movies, Keynote presentations, 3D objects, and more. Preview your book on your iPad at any time. Then submit your finished work to the iBookstore with a few simple steps. And before you know it, you’re a published author. Caveat: Books may only be sold through the iBookstore; additional terms and conditions apply. Comment: We hoped it would also publish standards-complient ePub formats for wider (read: non-Apple) distribution. But, we’re downloading and about to give it a run through. Image: Template chooser when launching the iBooks App.

Apple Launches iBooks Author

Via iTunes:

Now anyone can create stunning iBooks textbooks, cookbooks, history books, picture books, and more for iPad. All you need is an idea and a Mac. Start with one of the Apple-designed templates that feature a wide variety of page layouts. Add your own text and images with drag-and-drop ease. Use Multi-Touch widgets to include interactive photo galleries, movies, Keynote presentations, 3D objects, and more. Preview your book on your iPad at any time. Then submit your finished work to the iBookstore with a few simple steps. And before you know it, you’re a published author.

Caveat: Books may only be sold through the iBookstore; additional terms and conditions apply.

Comment: We hoped it would also publish standards-complient ePub formats for wider (read: non-Apple) distribution. But, we’re downloading and about to give it a run through.

Image: Template chooser when launching the iBooks App.

A Garage Band for E-Books? So Many Questions

Word on the street is that Apple will announce something along the lines of a “Garage Band for e-Books” this Thursday. That is, a drop dead simple way to create, package and digitally publish books.

At Nieman Journalism Lab, Joshua Benton thinks this could lead to a tremendous content explosion similar to what happened when blogging platforms appeared in the early 2000s. 

Sill, he asks: 

Will ease of ebook authoring come with greater ease of ebook publishing?

Will there be an iBooks for Android?

Will this new tool publish in multiple formats or simply create iBooks?

If ebook publishing really does become super easy, how should news publishers fit it into their workflows?

Click through to read his thoughts on each of these questions.