Apple Thoughts - News & Reviews on all things Apple

"Though Apple carries just 5 percent of the total worldwide home PC market, the Mac commanded 10.5 percent of the market's dollar share during the holiday buying season."

So having a strict pricing structure appears to make sense. If you split the markets, in the US the market share is around 10 percent while the dollar share is about 20 percent, compared to Europe where Apple has 6.4 percent marke share but a 14.2 percent dollar share. Along with this news is that the educational market is also coming back after a decline. Last quarter Apple had 20 percent market share and a 40 percent dollar share of that market.

"Google released a new version of Chrome for Mac OS X on Thursday that restores a key feature, extensions, that had been missing for weeks."

According to Chrome programmer Mark Mentoval, "With this new version, you'll be able to install any of over 2,200 extensions (and counting!) currently available in Chrome's extensions gallery." This version also fixes some Adobe stability issues as well as including some new multitouch support. The new beta version should get some Firefox users to switch now that it has extensions I would imagine. You can download the latest beta version here, and if you currently are using Chrome, they expect an automatic update within the next few days. Still not sure? Check out the Macworld run through of the latest beta here.

"You've caught the buzz. You've been watching the weather, seeing how the wind blows. You've moved or you're moving to the Mac, because Windows blows. Where can you get the advice you need to help you with this transition?"

Several good choices, the best one being "Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual" by David Pogue in my opinion, mainly because it has the most up-to-date information and covers pretty much all you need to know when switching. Well, if you are switching to Snow Leopard. If you are switching to an older version of OS X, then try one of the other books listed.

"Although Guy Day is about as far away from the hard boozing, womanizing, red-meat-eating Don Draper type as a 70s-style pompadour will get you, he was one of the country's quintessential ad men for decades. Everyone reading this blog knows his work: as the president of the acclaimed Chiat / Day advertising agency, Day was responsible for bringing together the team that created the hyper-Orwellian 1984 Super Bowl Macintosh ad."

Sadly, this past Saturday Mr. Day passed away in Los Angeles of natural causes. I remember watching this commercial during that Super Bowl, and it really piqued my interest in what the heck this Mac thing was going to be, which I'm sure was the intent of it all. Here is a link to a modified version of the "1984 Mac ad that has the heroine wearing an iPod. 

"Despite all odds, the Mac has survived to its 26th birthday. On January 24th, 1984, Steve Jobs pulled a 128K Mac out of its case in front of a crowd of reporters, turned it on, and let the computer introduce itself to the world. The rest, as they say, is history."

Wow, 26 years. Seems like only yesterday doesn't it? This was the first Apple product I ever owned, although I had used the IIe that a friend owned. What was your first Apple product?

"The MHA, a Kentucky-based software company with a name that can be tough to work into sentences, released Airlock on Tuesday. Airlock unlocks your Mac when you approach it, and locks it again when you walk away, using the magic of Bluetooth to detect your proximity by looking for your iPhone (or later-gen iPod touch). Always assuming you don't forget your phone at your desk, of course."

This is something I'm interested in trying out, since I have to really be diligent on locking my laptop at work as my fellow employees are practical jokers that love to mess with an unprotected laptop, or iPhone for that matter. The program costs $7.77 USD and can be used on up to 3 Macs. There is also the failsafe manual password option in case your iPhone or iPod Touch runs out of juice. They do note, however, that there has been a recent compatibility issue with the wireless mouse and keyboard, and are working with Apple to correct it. More info can be found at the MHA website.

"We know that a beta version of Chrome for Mac is due at least by the end of December, but today brings more confirmation that it may be even closer than that. Mike Pinkerton, the guy leading the Chrome for Mac team, has just tweeted out that there are only '8 remaining M4 Mac beta blockers! Go team!'"

Even better now, if you check out the status page it only shows 5 bugs remaining. So it appears that it is on track for the December, correction "early" December release that was talked about on the Google Groups page. Anyone out there going to switch and move to Chrome, or at least give it a try?

"Apple's fiscal results are out and they are, as expected, quite good. The company reported profits of $9.87 billion compared to $7.9 billion in the year ago quarter."

Apple also sold 3.05 million Macs which was a 17% increase from last year. On the iPod front, down 8% at 10.2 million sold while the iPhone sales hit 7.4 million, which was a 7% increase from the same time last year. Pretty hefty profit especially in these economic times, and Steve Jobs said they had a "great lineup" for the holidays and some "new products in the pipeline for 2010." Hmmm, let the rumors begin! More info can be found on the Apple investor site, or from their press release.

"BlackBerry owners can now sync their contacts, calendar notes and more with their Mac systems, via the newly released Desktop Manager for Mac."

We reported on the upcoming release of this program in September, and now it is here. You can get the free program right from the Blackberry site, and it requires the following:

• Mac OS X v10.5.5 and above (Only 32-bit mode is supported on Mac OS X v10.6);
• BlackBerry® Device Software v4.2 or higher;
• iTunes v7.7.1 or later.

Seems like a no-brainer if you have a Blackberry and a Mac, however I haven't read any reviews on it so downloader beware.

"Mac ownership is up 33 percent over 2008 among US households, according to the latest NPD survey. Though at least twice as likely to have the latest consumer electronics gear, plenty of Mac users are also using Windows PCs as well."

Macs are now in 12% of US households, up from the 2008 figure of 9%, and in 85% of the households that have Macs they also have PCs. As part of these stats, only about 1.8% of households that have a computer are Mac only. I count myself amongst the 85% group, although we don't use the PC for much other than a few kids games. How about you? Do you have both in your house or are you ?

Apple this week unveiled a new "Get a Mac" ad, entitled "Top of the Line,"featuring actor Patrick Warburton.

I love Warburton's comedic style, this ad is no different.

So why do you use a Mac?

"More good news for Apple this week: if consumers are going to buy an expensive computer, they're choosing the Mac maker."

According to the NPD Group, Apple has 91% of the market (up from 88% in May of this year) for computers over $1,000.00 USD. Not surprisingly the drop in price recently of the MacBook line didn't hurt. According to NPD, for Apple to continue it's sales trend, they will eventually have to price more of their products below the $1,000.00 USD mark (currently only the Mac Mini and white MacBook are under this price point). I'm not so sure, they don't seem to have any trouble selling product at the levels they are currently priced, and as long as they remain innovative I think they will continue the trend. I guess it boils down to what market they want to be in, what do you think?

"If attending this year's Worldwide Developers Conference just wasn't in the cards, Apple has produced a collection of videos that cover all 126 instructional sessions from the conference. While WWDC ticket holders get free access, those who missed out can buy the videos via ADC on iTunes."

The videos were divided into two groups, one on Mac development and the other on iPhone development. Each group is $299.00 USD, but you can buy all the videos for $499.00 USD. To do this, however, you have to be a registered ADC member or iPhone developer, which isn't too hard since you can become an online-only ADC member for free. The Mac sessions total 13GB, the iPhone ones total 17GB so prepare yourself for some long download times unless you have a FIOS connection or something fast like that.

"The wait is over for professional photographers who want a faster, affordable, all-in-one photography workflow system to use on their Macs. ACD Systems International Inc. today opened beta testing for its new ACDSeeTM Pro Photo Manager for Mac, the first version of the company's acclaimed Pro Photo Manager software for Mac applications."

Well, honestly, I'm not the biggest fan of ACDSee's pro offerings, but that's honestly more because I tend to need more organization than manipulation. That being said, they're usually insanely powerful, fully featured, and usually can replace a photo processor (like Bridge or Lightroom) and an organizer (like iPhoto or Picasa). I may jump on the beta just to see what this one is like. Any of you guys about to jump or already in on the beta? If so, how's it going?

"Microsoft's "Laptop Hunters" ad campaign focuses on the price difference between Windows PCs and expensive Apple Macs. The commercials have raised consumers' perception of Microsoft's "value" -- and have hurt Apple -- according to YouGov BrandIndex, a research service."

Something struck me as odd, and reading the comments on the post, I found it:

"Yeah, good point, Dan, the wild swings in the graph from one extreme to the other, would tend to make this graph somewhat questionable. Honestly, does perception of value change THAT much over such a short period of time? Can we see other comparative graphs of other companies? Can they correlate it to anything?"

That is indeed an interesting question because the run of the ads doesn't seem to correlate with the "dip" in value perception. I'd be interested to see other value perception charts as well. I'm not saying the interpretation of the data is wrong, I'm just not sure if that interpretation can be made with the amount of data given.

"Late Wednesday, Sling Media announced the release of SlingPlayer 1.0.8, the newest version of its software packages that allows Mac users to access their television content on their computer."

Almost everyone I know that owns a Slingbox owns a Mac, and yet Sling Media still hasn't released the Mac version of the 2.0 client yet. What's the problem, guys? You don't like us or something?

I'm starting to feel like Sling just doesn't care about its Mac customers. 1.0.8 is nice, but 2.0 has been out for Windows since at least August of last year.

"Here's something that should get Mac fan boys foaming at the mouth. Pictured above is the office of Alex Bogusky, the brains behind Microsoft's new Laptop Hunter commercials. Sure enough, those are two MacBook Pros sitting on his desk."

Sure this doesn't say a whole lot. I mean, I'm sure there are companies that produce ads for Honda that have employees driving around Dodges. It's just really funny that the company making one of the most hated strings of ads ever is using a product they make a point of bashing in each and every one of them.

I've always thought Microsoft was missing a huge opportunity with these stupid ads, and that's the opportunity to show that the ad itself was made on a Windows PC. If you go to any site created with Apple's iWeb, you see a "Made on a Mac" logo on the bottom of it. Microsoft should've employed a company using Windows for their ads, and made a huge deal about how the ads were made on Windows PCs. If nothing else, it would provide some fodder for the Windows folks who insist that everything done on a Mac can be done on a PC. They could've even hired Sheila! I hear she wanted a laptop that could cut video and that's what she got at Fry's...

"Once your paper is digitized, NeatWorks for Mac uses "Intelligent Text Recognition" technology to extract key data from your documents and populate key fields automatically in this robust digital filing system. By eliminating much of the data entry, you can turn a pile of receipts into an expense report in mere minutes. Or turn that stack of business cards into digital contacts and import them directly to Address Book. You can even scan any kind of document to produce a fully-searchable PDF file."

Okay... Simply put, this looks flat out awesome. I've always been interested in NeatReceipts, but I don't deal with enough receipts to make a receipts-only solution worth it for me. I do, however, have a ton of paper floating around all over my desk and this kind of digital filing system is something I might actually use. It's a tad pricey at $399, but if it works anywhere near as well as I've heard NeatReceipts does, it should be a huge hit with the Mac faithful.

"Apple said Wednesday that second-quarter profits rose more than 15 percent to $1.21 billion, or $1.33 per diluted share, on record non-holiday quarter sales of $8.16 billion for the three-month period ended March 28, 2009. These results compare to revenue of $7.51 billion and net quarterly profit of $1.05 billion, or $1.16 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 36.4 percent, up from 32.9 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 46 percent of the quarter's revenue."

Apple didn't disappoint, beating the projections we posted yesterday, although they did have a 3% decline in the sales of computers with sales of 2.22 million units when compared to last years numbers. Both the iPod and iPhone categories increased by 3% and 123% respectively, with sales of the iPods just over 11 million units and iPhones at just under 3.8 million units. Pretty good quarter overall. They also had some interesting things to say during the conference call. We'll see how the next one is, think there will be a drop based on the anticipation of what may be announced at WWDC?