Apple News, Analysis and Podcasts

Episode 80: Quit Your Crunching: Listen as Mark, Karl and Werner crunch their way through another entertaining podcast. Topics: 20mm chips in 2014, iPhone 5 with 4 inch screens, New iOS mapping, iMacs and MacBook Pros get retina displays next round, Google's Chrome browser for iOS, Zune player should have been skipped, Tim Cook with Speaker Boehner, Nanny Computing and Unlimited Data plans. All this and much, much more in Episode 80: Quit Your Crunching! 

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Facebook is the dominant social media service today. It currently has about 750 million users worldwide. It took the top spot from MySpace many years ago. While MySpace is still a social media player with 100 million users, it no longer has the same influence on the industry.

Is Facebook too big to be replaced? History has shown that no tech company is too big to be replaced. There are many dark clouds on Facebook’s horizon. Can Facebook weather the storm or will a new social media player rise up to replace them like they did to MySpace.

Phillip Elmer-DeWitt of Fortune gave AAPL investors food for thought today, with his reasons as to why AAPL has been rotting to it's investment core. Apple's stock value has fallen nearly $96 billion since it's peak of $644 on April 9th. There will always be Wall Street power players able to flex their financial muscles pushing stocks one direction or another. But why is it that these brilliant financial investors sometimes talk as dumb as a box of rocks, spewing forth financial rhetoric that makes no sense? Something doesn't seem right.

Yesterday, DoubeLine's CEO, Jeffrey Gundlach, told a large group of investment managers he was shorting Apple. "I just wonder how many people will queue up around the block for an iPad 87." It's a dumb statement. In fact, it makes no sense at face value:

This photo of Tim Cook with Speaker Boehner was released a day or so ago and there has been much discussion around it. Many are talking about the Chinese dog on the table, the "mystery" man in the chair next to Tim Cook or even about what the discussion was between these powerhouses.

As HTML 5 continues to evolve, web developers are liking their new tools more and more. The question is whether the HTML 5 standard will ever be completed and browsers adjusted to tackle this brave new world.

Apple's next Mac OS X update, Mountain Lion, is just around the corner. However is this OS update worth the fuss or upgrade? We expect the price to be $29 USD, like it was for Snow Leopard and Lion. We also expect it will be easy to download and install via the Mac App Store. We also don't see any big technology changes (32bit to 64 bit, PowerPC to Intel, removal of Rosetta, etc), so compatibility with apps that run in Lion shouldn't be a big deal either.

Senator Tom Coburn was livid (and probably still is). He's angry at Apple Inc. and other big corporations that are using completely legal means to protect their hard earned profits from the United States government greedy "give me more!" claws – which has the highest corporate income tax in the world.

I have one thing to say to Senator Coburn and others like him. You've been in politics far too long. Get out, run a company and see how Washington is punishing and actually demonizing success like never before. Come 2013, when the accredited "Bush tax cuts" expire, companies will pull back even further, hiring less and laying off more, as taxes move north across the board. And if you've been paying attention, it's already happening.

Apple continues to simplify its product line-up to help consumers make simpler decisions. Some of the latest changes have been to remove the version number from the iPad name. The next version of the iPhone will also not include the version number. This simplification process will not end with iOS devices. The Mac product line-up will also see some changes.

While the Mac Product line-up is simple, it is about to get even simpler. Apple removed the standard MacBook a while back, which left just the MacBook Pros and MacBook Airs. These two lines do create some confusion to customers on what to buy, as there is some overlap. That confusion is about to end.

On March 20, 2011, Sony shuttered 11 of it's Sony Style retail stores nationwide. Today T-GAAP confirmed another Sony Style store closure at the Washington Square Tigard, OR location. T-GAAP is working to determine whether the Washington Square store is an isolated closure or if Sony has more planned.

The closure is not likely to be Sony's last, based on Sony's new CEO Kazuo Hiraio statement on April 12th, when he announced the company would be shedding 10,000 employees in an aggressive move to turn around the ailing tech giant's fortunes. The announcement was light on specifics, but there is little doubt that Sony Style stores falling below the profitability are no longer going to be viewed as a mere marketing tool for the company.

Demo or trial software is a great way for users to try out the software before buying it. It may not be a big deal for software that costs less than $5, but it is for software that costs more. Shareware software has been doing this for more than a decade. Trial software would also greatly clean up Apple’s Mac and iOS App Store that has multiple versions of the same software.

Apple could clean up the Mac and iOS App Stores by offering users a trial version of each software application. It could be built into the App Store and could have a 5 or 15 day trial period, much like renting movies on iTunes. Users would also benefit from such a feature by letting them try out the software before they buy it. Developers would not have to build multiple versions to convince users to purchase their software. Will Apple add trial software to the App Stores?