Dan worked as a journalist covering the tech industry, and in particular Apple, for more than 15 years. He's contributed to AppleInsider since 2005. Prior to that, he managed Information Technology teams and handled technical operations ranging from startups to enterprise organizations including U.S. government, higher education, and healthcare research organizations.
Consider Apple's release of a new music-oriented device priced higher than its perceived competitors—which have already established an enthusiastic audience base over the past few years. How can it possibly survive in such a difficult position? The answer was: by being better in key ways that matter to users. iPod went on to become a legendary franchise in personal audio. Now Apple is doing the same thing again in home audio with HomePod.
Apple has made solar energy a key part of its commitments to achieve 100 percent renewable energy use across its corporate, retail, production and even its data center facilities. However, a steep new American tariff slapped on all solar components threatens to derail the rapidly-growing American solar industry and kill tens of thousands of desirable jobs.
Just one week after delivering a widely-distributed report speculatively suggesting that 'weak demand' might result in Apple canceling production of iPhone X this summer, analysts are now lining up to shift their stories in the days before Apple releases its actual fiscal Q1 performance data for the winter quarter. In a remarkable turn, iPhone X is suddenly said to be selling well, and scuttlebutt about slashed component orders is again looking uninformed.
Cryptocurrency volatility has generated sensationalized headlines over the past year, with cyclical valuation drops and surges that make even Apple's stock price look relaxed in comparison. Here's a look at how cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum's "Ether" work, and how you can get involved in trading them at their current lows with Coinbase, a popular and easy-to-use iOS app.
Apple is the only PC or smartphone vendor to have full control over the user experience it provides to its customers, thanks to its positioning as an integrated platform vendor. This is a key—often overlooked—advantage for the company that is driving customer satisfaction and trust as well as attracting serious attention from the enterprise at a time when Google's Android is doing neither one.
Apple is vexed with the problem of excessive customer satisfaction, particularly in the troublesome demographic of young users. That's the latest hot take reaction to the issue of kids being given permissive parental approval to stay up all night on their iOS devices, leaving them sleep deprived and distracted. Apple's parental controls on iOS are focused on limiting access to content and specific apps, but the company already has tools in place to enforce parents' wishes on the Mac. It just needs to bring these to iOS.
After working hard to dismiss iPhone X as too expensive, AirPods as a very minor success and HomePod as far-off vaporware missing the window of opportunity afforded to smart speakers, the low-paid writers hired by the Associated Press, Bloomberg, CNET and Reuters to fill the gaps that regular staff can't get to are again converging on Las Vegas to depict the really big prototype TV concepts of CES as being potentially affordable, commercially significant at some point in the future—and anything but vaporware.
A consumer sentiment report of early iPhone X adopters indicates that its TrueDepth camera is a "major driver among positive ratings," and that the features it enables—including Face ID and Animoji—are key market differentiators driving interest in the high end phone.
Introduced this summer at WWDC17, Apple's HomePod was immediately positioned next to Amazon Echo and Google Home by bloggers as a "smart speaker" serving primarily as a way to chat with a voice assistant. But that's not how Apple introduced it.
When Apple announced it was acquiring Beats in 2014, lots of critics scoffed and some even suggested the purchase was evidence that Tim Cook was just grasping at straws, with a good measure of racist-tinged denigration of the value of the LA-based music firm on the side. Why was the most valuable, competent and profitable tech company on earth prepared to spend $3 billion—by far the most it had ever paid in an acquisition—to get Beats?
Throughout this miserable year we suffered a series of horrific tropical storms and deadly wildfires; a year of ugly, divisive politics, nonstop fake news and a new broader realization that many of the people we formerly respected have actually led terrible abusive lives of harassment, assault and even predation of children. We can take some comfort in the fact that at least our technology improved dramatically.
On Thursday, Apple paid its shareholders of record (as of November 13th) a quarterly dividend of $0.63 per share, totaling $3 billion in dividends on its outstanding shares for the quarter, on stock that has appreciated 46.5 percent so far in 2017.
Apple's iPhone X is drawing compliments from some unlikely places, ranging from the official Twitter account of Steven Sinofsky, the former President of Microsoft's Windows Division, to diehard Android fans sharing their unvarnished opinions on Reddit. However, it can't please embittered bloggers who wanted Apple to fail.
Freelancer site Upwork published a listing of the top twenty fastest growing skills of the more than 5,000 it tracks. The list cited Apple's Final Cut Pro X, Swift and Objective-C, along with nod toward new technologies in iOS 11, including Augmented Reality and Machine Learning.
In a rare blog posting, Apple listed a series of inaccuracies in the "Paradise Papers" tax story reported by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, while outlining its business in Cork, Ireland; emphasizing that the company is the "largest taxpayer in the world" and repeating that it "pays every dollar it owes in every country around the world."
In evaluating the new iPhone X display, Dr. Raymond M. Soneira of DisplayMate called it the "most innovative" and "best performing smartphone display we have ever tested," noting in particular its leading absolute color accuracy, the highest full screen brightness for an OLED smartphone, highest full screen contrast rating in ambient light and highest contrast ratio, with the lowest screen reflectance and smallest brightness variation with a viewing angle.
With a vibrant, full-faced OLED screen sporting handsomely-rounded corners edged in polished stainless steel, passive biometrics that "just work" to authenticate you without conscious effort, buttery smooth swipe navigation for multitasking and a simple side control to invoke Siri and Apple Pay, iPhone X is nothing like other phones. But it's exactly like Apple Watch, which began paving the way for a generational iPhone leap back in 2014 at its introduction next to the more basic styling of iPhone 6 and 6 Plus.
One month after the earlier launch of iPhone 8 and 8 Plus drew lines of its own, buyers excited for iPhone X again flocked to Apple's retail stores to be among the first to get the new phone. At San Francisco's flagship Union Square location, a line of over 200 were waiting when the doors opened, and even hours later there were new arrivals joining a line down the block in the early afternoon.
Apple's iPhone X introduces the next decade of iOS. It pairs an advanced, full-face display with a strikingly beautiful glass and steel design. It invents new multitouch alternatives to the Home button and introduces an advanced TrueDepth 3D camera system, fast Face ID authentication and futuristic augmented reality effects from Portrait Lighting selfies to Animoji, further expanding its role in defining affordable luxury in mobile devices.
Apple's iPhone X is the company's most dramatic rethinking of the established form, features and functionality of its iconic phone. It packs the highest resolution—and best looking—iPhone display ever into a smaller outline, radically rethinks iOS navigation and authentication and introduces a sophisticated 3D imaging sensor array that enables Face ID and facial tracking for Animoji, gaze detection, Portrait selfies and an advanced new frontier of augmented reality.
Apple's expansion in Mac enterprise sales to large corporate customers has greatly accelerated with the arrival of mobile iOS devices. But there's also new interest emerging for Apple TV's tvOS platform among enterprise buyers.
As Apple cements itself as the dominant vendor of premium PCs and mobile devices, corporate IT is increasingly welcoming support for Macs as part of their business. Representatives from SAP and Capital One recently discussed what's involved in bringing Mac choice to their organizations.
As the world's largest retailer, Walmart is known for its "Everyday Low Prices" slogan. It's now in the planning stages of implementing 'employee choice' computing options for its associates in an effort to reap long term cost savings while enhancing the productivity of its employees.
Addressing 1,500 attendees at its Jamf Nation User Conference, Jamf CEO Dean Hager announced an October 31 general availability of Jamf Pro 10, the latest version of the company's enterprise device management suite for Macs, iOS devices and Apple TV.
A new review looking at camera images captured by Apple's iPhone 8 and Google's HTC-built Pixel 2 declared iPhone the overall winner in a series of shots where both phones actually performed well. But despite Google's framing of 'camera score' as the only criteria for modern smartphones, there's a lot more of interest to buyers than just a phone's still camera.
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