Linked List: April 23, 2013

Tuesday, 23 April 2013

Macworld’s Transcript of Tim Cook’s Remarks on Today’s Earnings Call ★

Tim Cook:

Our teams are hard at work on some amazing new hardware, software, and services that we can’t wait to introduce this fall and throughout 2014. We continue to be very confident in our future product plans.

Translation: no new iPhone or iPads until fall. Pretty unusual thing for Apple to forecast publicly. Clearly, they’re seeking to adjust expectations regarding WWDC in June. Another one getting some attention (emphasis added):

We will continue to focus on the long term, and we remain very optimistic about our future. We’re participating in large and growing markets. We see great opportunities in front of us, particularly given the long-term prospects of the smartphone and tablet markets, the strength of our incredible ecosystem which we plan to continue to augment with services, our plans for expanded distribution, and the potential of exciting new product categories.

Tablets, phones, and computers are “product categories”, in Apple parlance. So he’s not talking about a new iPad or iPhone, he’s talking about an entirely new leg on the stool.

Volkswagen 2014 iBeetle ★

Benjamin Preston, writing for the NYT Wheels Blog:

The world has seen plenty of cars equipped with iPhone connectors, but vehicles incorporating iPhone features into the car’s infotainment system are still pretty rare. Volkswagen said that its 2014 iBeetle, to be unveiled at the Shanghai auto show this weekend, is the company’s first model offered with a built-in iPhone dock, custom Beetle app and smartphone functions intertwined with the car’s onboard electronics.

Volkswagen said it collaborated with Apple to create the iBeetle, making it possible to use an iPhone to listen to music, navigate, make hands-free calls and even monitor the car’s engine functions.

Sounds cool. Hope it’s not the Volkswagen Rokr.

Just How Did Apple ‘Journalism’ Get This Bad? ★

Ian Betteridge destroys the latest nonsense from long-time Apple jackass David Gewirtz.

Which Drugs Actually Kill Americans ★

“Hint: not pot.”

Apple Increases Stock Buy-Back and Dividend ★

Apple:

“We are very fortunate to be in a position to more than double the size of the capital return program we announced last year,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “We believe so strongly that repurchasing our shares represents an attractive use of our capital that we have dedicated the vast majority of the increase in our capital return program to share repurchases.”

Pretty much exactly what Warren Buffett recommended.

Update: Initial reaction in after-hours trading has the stock up over 4 percent. Update 2: As the dust settles two hours later, the stock is simply even in after hours trading.

Apple Q2 2013 Results ★

Revenue up year over year, but earnings (as expected) down, due to margins dropping from 47 to 37 percent:

The Company sold 37.4 million iPhones in the quarter, compared to 35.1 million in the year-ago quarter. Apple also sold 19.5 million iPads during the quarter, compared to 11.8 million in the year-ago quarter. The Company sold just under 4 million Macs, compared to 4 million in the year-ago quarter.

iPad growth remains tremendous, but iPhone sales are up only 6.5 percent.

The Paris Time Capsule Apartment ★

Messy Nessy:

The owner of this apartment, Mrs. De Florian left Paris just before the rumblings of World War II broke out in Europe. She closed up her shutters and left for the South of France, never to return to the city again. Seven decades later she passed away at the age of 91. It was only when her heirs enlisted professionals to make an inventory of the Parisian apartment she left behind, that this time capsule was finally unlocked.

Android and Security ★

Chris Nerney, CITEworld:

So security is the main reason why Android trails Apple’s iOS in the enterprise mobile market, even as it dominates in the consumer space, and clearly Google bears the greatest responsibility for Android’s vulnerabilities.

Zero evidence of this assertion in the article. Zero. And where by “dominates in the consumer space” he means “accounts for 30 percent of handset profits, all of that going to Samsung”. What I see is that the enterprise has money. And just like consumers with money to spend, enterprise buyers are more likely to choose the iPhone and iPad. Android’s unit sale market share dominance stems from price-sensitive buyers.

Would be good for Android to get that malware situation under control though, that I agree with.

SpaceX Grasshopper 250-Meter Test Flight ★

Amazing video; so good and so cool it almost looks fake.

19-Year-Old Entrepreneur Who Claimed to Have Sold 10 Percent Stake in Her Future Salary Looks Like a Hoax ★

Taylor Soper, GeekWire:

But soon after publishing, we became suspicious.

Pretty sure that’s the wrong order.

Identity Crisis, Indeed ★

Jessica Lessin, writing for the WSJ. Headline and sub-head: “Apple Has an Identity Crisis: Is It a Hardware Company or a Software Firm?”

It’s not Apple that is confused. It’s investors. They could have run this headline/subhead at any point in the last 37 years.