Tag Archives: apple tv

My predictions for 2013 – revisited.

On January 4th of this year I made my Apple predictions for 2013. Let’s have a look how I did, shall we?

Q1 FY13 will be Apple’s best quarter. Ever. Q2, will be lower, Q3 will be bigger than Q2, and Q4 will be lower than Q1, but larger than Q2 and Q3.

Q1 FY13: Revenue of $54.5 billion and record quarterly net profit of $13.1 billion, or $13.81 per diluted share.
Q2 FY13: Revenue of $43.6 billion and quarterly net profit of $9.5 billion, or $10.09 per diluted share.
Q3 FY13: Revenue of $35.3 billion and quarterly net profit of $6.9 billion, or $7.47 per diluted share.
Q4 FY13: Revenue of $37.5 billion and quarterly net profit of $7.5 billion, or $8.26 per diluted share.

Source: Apple Investor Relations.

I was right about Q1, and Q2, not right about Q3, and partially right about Q4.
Score: 60%

OS X will see an update at WWDC, so will iOS.

Yep, we got Mavericks aka OS X 10.9, and iOS 7.
Score: 100%

There will be a new Mac Pro, and new iPods.

Yep, the new Mac Pro is imminent, but we didn’t get new iPods.
Score: 50%

iMac and Macbook (Air, Pro) will see updates. No touchscreen for Macs, no ARM-based Mac. No Retina for the Air.

Yep, all got Haswell and other significant upgrades. No touchscreens, no ARM-based Macs, and no Retina Display for the Air.
Score: 100%

There will be an new iPad (9,7″). It will be thinner.

iPad Air.
Score: 100%

The iPad Mini will go Retina.

Score: 100%

Maps will improve dramatically over the year, with incremental updates to the back end.

No arguing that.
Score: 100%

There will be no NFC in any Apple product.

Score: 100%

The Mac Mini will be manufactured/assembled in the US.

Nope. It’s the Mac Pro.
Score: 0%

The new iPhone will be the iPhone 5S. It will come in black and white, and it will have a 4″ screen.

Didn’t see the gold one coming in January, but my predictions were correct…still…
Score: 90%

There will be no dedicated television set. Apple has the Apple TV, which will see an upgrade.

I guess there was no upgrade to the current (3rd gen.) Apple TV, but there sure as hell was no television set.
Score: 50%

No entirely new product will be introduced.

Score: 100%

No unicorns with fairy dust.

Score: 100%

So, it seems that my overall score for my 2013 predictions is at around 80,77%. Not bad, not bad at all.

My Apple predictions for 2013.

Since everybody makes them, who am I not to make a few of my own, right?

So here goes:

– Q1 FY13 will be Apple’s best quarter. Ever. Q2, will be lower, Q3 will be bigger than Q2, and Q4 will be lower than Q1, but larger than Q2 and Q3.

– OS X will see an update at WWDC, so will iOS.

– There will be a new Mac Pro, and new iPods.

– iMac and Macbook (Air, Pro) will see updates. No touchscreen for Macs, no ARM-based Mac. No Retina for the Air.

– There will be an new iPad (9,7″). It will be thinner.

– The iPad Mini will go Retina.

– Maps will improve dramatically over the year, with incremental updates to the back end.

– There will be no NFC in any Apple product.

– The Mac Mini will be manufactured/assembled in the US.

– The new iPhone will be the iPhone 5S. It will come in black and white, and it will have a 4″ screen.

– There will be no dedicated television set. Apple has the Apple TV, which will see an upgrade.

– No entirely new product will be introduced.

– No unicorns with fairy dust.

Let’s revisit in December 2013, shall we?

The Verge reviews Google TV.

Dieter Bohn for The Verge:

Eric Schmidt famously predicted that “By the summer of 2012, the majority of the televisions you see in stores will have Google TV embedded.” Luckily for anybody who has ever held a remote control, he was wrong.

How can a company with so many smart people come up with such a dud…over and over again?

At the end of the day, Google TV is a jack of all trades, but it fails to be competent at any of them, let alone master one.

No, Apple will NOT build a dedicated TV set.

TheTechBlock reports that the mystical Apple TV is right around the corner, because Apple shifted the iPad to a fall schedule, which leaves a “glaring” hole in the spring.

Again: No.

The TV business is a 3 billion dollar venture – worldwide, with almost all players actually losing money on it. That’s not a business Apple wants to be in.
I’m willing to bet money on that, and I only bet when I’m sure that I’ll win.

Apple to stream today’s event to your Apple TV.

MacRumors reports that Apple will stream tonight’s event live to your Apple TV.

I can’t confirm this right now, as I’m at work, but several people have fired up their Apple TV’s and they’re seeing a new “Apple events” app.

Edit: Apple will stream it to your iOS device and Mac too via http://www.apple.com/apple-events/october-2012/

Is iTunes broken? @jsnell thinks so…

I disagree with Jason’s view.

Every now and then someone comes along and complains publicly about iTunes. Sometimes you can read that it’s outright broken, other times it’s bloated, and so on.

I’m kinda sick of the moaning to be honest.

iTunes has evolved from a pure music player for our Macs, to the center of our entertainment world, connecting all our iOS devices (iPhones, iPads, Apple TVs, iPods) to our Mac, and to iCloud, iTunes Match, etc. All this while weighing in at roughly 222 MB.

Let’s dive in:

Apple has packed almost everything involving media (and app) management, purchase, and playback into this single app. It’s bursting at the seams. It’s a complete mess. And it’s time for an overhaul.

Like I said above: Apple is chosing to use one app to manage our digital lives, excluding photos. I wonder how many would scream if they had to use, say, four apps instead. One for music, one for movies, one for iOS sync…you get the idea. That would be a mess.

I use iTunes every day to listen to music on my Mac at work, and it works just fine. It’s not perfect, but it’s good. My issues are not with the core feature of iTunes, the music player. My issues are with all the other junk that has been grafted on since then.

Define “perfect” music player. I mean, what exactly do you need a music player to do, except…you know…play music? I don’t mean to sound harsh, but come on…
I also doubt that the 99% would call iTunes capabilities “junk”, actually I’m pretty sure they’re very happy they don’t have to deal with several apps.

iTunes syncs the media and apps on all your iOS devices, and I haven’t found it to be either flexible or reliable. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to delete everything and re-sync music, or videos, or apps because iTunes got confused about whether it had synced to that particular device before.

I’m seriously at a loss here. I’ve been using iTunes for many years now, and I never had problems with it. At all. Currently we have three iPhones (3G, 4, 4), two iPads (2, 3), two Macs (iMac 2011, Air 2011), one iPod Touch, and one Apple TV (2nd gen) connectd to iTunes. Different profiles on all of them. No issue. Ever.

Recently I connected my wife’s iPad to our Mac at home to add some videos for my kids to watch. The iPad had never been synced with the Mac before, because it was using iCloud and the App Store. The moment I plugged it in, iTunes attempted to sync its own parallel collection of apps to this iPad, which I didn’t want. When I tried to turn off this feature, it offered me a decision I’d never seen before: To delete all the apps on the iPad, or keep them and stop syncing. The second option was exactly what I wanted to do. So I chose it, and watched as iTunes proceded to delete all the apps on the iPad anyway.

I don’t doubt that this happened. It’s supposed to happen. When I set up my 3rd gen iPad a few weeks ago, I synced it wirelessly with iCloud. Several days later i wanted a local backup, so I plugged it into my iMac, and the exact same dialogue popped up. I was expecting this. My iMac didn’t know this new iPad, so it wanted to delete all apps and resync with it to back it up. If there were an easy way for Apple to fix this, don’t you think they would have done so by now?
Besides, wasn’t it possible to just download the movies from iCloud? I’m serious. If you right-click a movie in iTunes it gives you the option to upload it to your iCloud. End of story.

Given that all apps are available in the cloud these days, I’m not sure why iTunes is aggressively trying to sync apps with devices. In fact, given Apple’s aggressive moves with iTunes Match and iTunes in the Cloud, even Apple seems to realize that syncing media with a Mac or PC running iTunes is kind of a mess.

No, what they do realize is that people want the option to have all their stuff on a local drive, and that broadband internet is not available everywhere.

And let’s be honest: iTunes is at its worst when it comes to app management. The app-management interface in iTunes is ridiculously slow. iTunes can fill up your hard drive with tens of gigabytes of iOS apps that can easily be downloaded from Apple. Syncing apps frequently destroys folders and makes app disappear. The interface that shows where the app icons will appear on your iOS device is unstable, unreliable, and inefficient.

I’m sorry to be blunt, but this is a rant. A whiny one at that. Even my Core2Duo, 4GB RAM iMac from 2008 running on Lion (before I bought the new iMac), had no problem at all doing the things Jason describes. Nothing of the sort has happened to me, or anyone I know for that matter.

If Apple’s going to embrace the cloud wherever possible, it needs to change iTunes too. The program should be simpler. It might be better off being split into separate apps, one devoted to device syncing, one devoted to media playback. (And perhaps the iTunes Store could be broken out separately too? When Apple introduced the Mac App Store, it didn’t roll it into iTunes, but gave it its own app.)

I’ll refer you to the mess I mentioned above about several different apps to accomplish what one app does now.
The reason the Mac App Store is seperate is pretty simple: Apple recognizes that not everyone will use iTunes, but everyone needs OS X updates, and OS X app updates.

The iTunes we’ve all come to know has had a good run, but it’s reached the point where it is a crazy agglomeration of features and functionality. If someone were to design it today, it wouldn’t remotely resemble its current state. And as a portal to iOS devices and the iTunes Store, iTunes is too crucial to Apple’s business to ignore or run on auto-pilot.

Again, where exactly is this “crazy agglomeration of features and functionality”? iTunes is well structured, and easy to use.
Sure, if someone were to design it today, and I’m sure Apple is on top of that, iTunes would look different. No argument there, and I’m sure they will evolve it into something different over time – maybe even soonish, but it’s not their M.O. to radically change things, so I expect gradual changes, which is a-ok by me, and probably by most of you.