Entries Tagged 'Apple' ↓

MacHeist is back with a new deal. In years past, there has been plenty of controversy over just how much of the MacHeist bundle money goes to software developers. The new MacHeist deal, which is actually free, should lay that controversy to rest once and for all. MacHeist has never been about the money made from the software bundles. It’s been a matter of exposure, upgrade sales, and sales of companion products.

Alas, for me, this particular bundle doesn’t really have any software I want. Maybe next bundle…

But while Apple caused a revolution, it is unlikely to become dominant in the market. It has sold just over 20m iPhones since the first device appeared in 2007; in that time more than 1.5bn phones have been shipped by everyone else. A similar thing happened with the personal computer market. The concept was championed by Apple when it launched Apple II, the world’s first personal computer, in 1977, and the first Macintosh in 1984, but other players now lead the market.

From Sound familiar? Apple launches a revolution – and then gets overtaken

Apple sure is fun to write about, isn’t it?

From what I can see, Apple likes to make neat products that they would personally enjoy using and that can be sold for a reasonable profit. The Observer article chose to mention how Apple lost a tremendous amount of market share in personal computers within a few years of the Mac’s debut (let’s ignore the fact that that also occurred within a few years of Steve Jobs’ departure). The Observer did not choose to focus on portable music players, a market that Apple stepped into and still holds a dominant position in.

In the case of music players, Apple’s cheapest iPod is $50. I’ve seen MP3 players with comparable features for $20. Apple competes in music players not by driving prices down, but by driving features up. There is a low end that they will not touch. They same is true of Macintosh computers: Apple will compete only in price segments in which they can compete profitably. Though they ensure that their prices are not insane, they also don’t worry too much about competing on price. They compete instead on fit and finish and the software.

What does this tell us about Apple and phones? Unlike music players, the cell phone market is already quite established. As the Observer points out, Apple has had only about 1% market share. Apple doesn’t care. They may have only 1% market share, but they have a product that is generating billions a year for them. As the iPhone line expands and improves over time, Apple’s market share will likely expand as well. But, that’s not the goal: the goal is making profitable products that people want to use.

So, back to the Observer article: they say that Apple started a revolution but will be overtaken. While I am pretty sure that Apple will never have a dominant market share position in cell phones (say more than 30%), I don’t think it’s certain that they will be overtaken in the new segment that they have created: portable computing and communication devices. They have first mover advantage with the App Store and have already built a thriving ecosystem around the iPhone. Those 20 million phones sold, plus some number of iPod Touches, represent a platform for Apple to grow, rather than “just a phone”.

Apple’s ultimate success (or failure) with the iPhone should not be measured relative to cell phone market share, but relative to ultra portable computing devices in general.

“When the iPhone came out, it was so far beyond what was out there on the market, pretty much up until now,” said Edward Zabitsky, analyst with ACI Research. “But with what’s coming out from competitors, that advantage is going away. For the first time, Apple’s going to be faced with a serious growth challenge.”

via Apple: 123% surge in iPhone sales – Apr. 22, 2009 .

Yeah, the gizmos coming out from competitors are going to kill Apple, since Apple hasn’t been working on anything new.

The analyst started off on the right track: the iPhone was indeed way ahead of the pack. A year later, Apple introduced the iPhone 3G and, more importantly, the App Store. Which put Apple even farther ahead of the pack (don’t underestimate the power that the App Store gives Apple for the time being!). At this point, we already know that iPhone OS 3.0 is coming out the summer with more goodies, and it would be fair to guess that Apple is not sitting around letting the iPhone hardware languish.

Perhaps the iPhone 3G’s advantage is going away, but I sincerely doubt this will be the year that the iPhone starts to fall.

Recently, I recorded a new screencast (an introduction to Bespin’s Python backend), and I got to use the new ScreenFlow 1.5. It’s a great update to an already awesome product. The ability to add text layers from within ScreenFlow is a very welcome addition.

Beyond that, one of the lesser features is a actually a big deal for me: mics that are recorded in mono are automatically played back in stereo. Lately, I’ve had to record screencasts using my Blue Snowball USB mic. The Snowball sounds OK and all, but it’s very quiet, even with the firmware update that increases the gain. With ScreenFlow 1.5, I can use my Audio-Technica large condenser mic instead of the Snowball. I used that mic on my latest screencast and did not need to adjust the gain after the fact at all. The relatively small improvement of making a mono signal come out in stereo makes a big difference for me.

Speaking of audio, ScreenFlow 1.5 added audio effects. I found them to be largely useless, because I don’t think a screencast sounds very good with reverb. I had expected the effects to be something more along the lines of compression and normalization rather than reverb. Maybe next release…

Beyond that, The Omni Group has released OmniDazzle for free!

The Omni Group – OmniDazzle

Introducing OmniDazzle, a set of fun and useful enhancements that help you highlight certain areas of your screen, create visual effects, and track the location of your mouse pointer.

It’s not the kind of product I would pay for, but for free it looks like a nice addition to a screencaster’s toolbox. Highlighting portions of the screen with OmniDazzle looks lot better than normal text highlight. OmniDazzle’s price change didn’t happen until after I recorded my latest screencast, so I’ll have to use that one next time.

Camtasia for the Mac is still vaporous at this point, but I know that TechSmith is working hard on it, so the competition will be heating up.

A company called OLO Computer is working on a small laptop that’ll cradle your iPhone and allow you to use it with a large screen and full keyboard.

[From DVICE: OLO to turn your iPhone into a laptop]

This thing looks cool. It just needs to:

1. Come into existence
2. Work
3. Not cost a fortune
4. Not somehow get shutdown by Apple

I was thinking that the eeePC looks pretty neat, but this could be even nicer.

Fantastic-looking new Mac-only, WebKit-based web browser from the creator of Fluid: Mecca.

User scripts and plugins make it more like Firefox. It has some really nice looking UI features.

While I generally agree that there is more than just openness to choosing between iPhone and Android, I do take issue with this quote in an article that compares iPhone development and Android development:

The first generation iPhone sold pretty well, but was only after the debut of tools like push email — intended for business use — that sales of the iPhone 3G soared.

[From Macworld | iPhone Central | Opinion: iPhone trumps Android]

To try to make the connection that the iPhone sales increased because of features like push mail completely ignores the fact that iPhone sales increased after the price dropped to $199. The ability to install new applications and a huge price drop undoubtedly did a lot more to grow iPhone sales than push email.

ScreenAction Studio is a $16 screencasting tool that sounds like it has a lot of features. I find it a little disturbing, though, that they don’t have any screencasts or even screenshots. But take a look at that feature list:

Screen Capture:
– Captures & records on-screen actions
– Highlight key points using a fixed, smooth, auto panning, or scrolling camera
– Change cameras live during capture
– Record with date & time
– Record with audio, or add voice-overs & music
– Control the size & frame rate of your movie capture
– Splice multiple segments into one full length movie
– Add transitions for a smooth project flow
– Supports all popular movie & audio formats

Video Editing:
– Select any spot in your Action History to revert your project to that point
– Special effects & filters make your project a “big budget” production
– Widescreen & Fullscreen movie settings
– Add text, captions & credit effects
– Audio scrubber & mixer
– Loop & repeat options
– Paint & Draw directly on your frames
– Group & ungroup your project clips
– Blending modes
– Unlimited undos
– Color & lighting control
– Picture-in-Picture (PIP)
– DV & FireWire support
– Script & brush editor for advanced users

[From Mien Software]

I’ll probably have to give it a try one of these days, but it will be hard to convince me to move away from ScreenFlow.