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Apple invades France

2009-11-07T15:50:40Z

The opening of a retail store near the Louvre draws huge crowds in Paris

Apple staffers in the Carrousel du Louvre. From Yannvarenne's video.

Who says Parisians are blasé? Tout Paris, it seems, turned out Saturday morning for the opening of Apple's (AAPL) first retail outlet in France. The video posted below the fold shows lines of shoppers that stretched for blocks.

Planning for the store, located in the Carrousel du Louvre, an upscale shopping mall beneath the Tuileries garden and adjacent to the museum, began more than two years ago. A second store in Montpelier was actually ready before this one, but its opening was postponed, according to ifoAppleStore, in deference to the City of Lights.

There are several videos of the event, including a four-minute version suggested by reader Rick in San Jose, Calif. But we've selected piratec.net's because it's been edited down to less than two minutes:

[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped]

Inside Apple's industrial design lab

2009-11-07T15:45:35Z

A rare visit with the man who designed the iMac, the iPod and the iPhone

Jonathan Ive. From Gary Hustwit's "Objectified."

"I guess it's one of the curses of what you do," says Jonathan Ive, Apple's senior vice president for industrial design, "is that you are constantly looking at something and thinking 'Why why why is it like that? Why is it like that and not like this?'"

Ive's five-minute appearance in Objectified is the centerpiece of Gary Hustwit's 2009 documentary about contemporary industrial design. It's a follow-up to Hustwit's amazing Helvetica (2007), the only full-length film about a typeface. Objectified may not be as surprising or groundbreaking, but it does feature this rare inside look at Apple's (AAPL) secretive design lab, an inner sanctum on the Cupertino campus only slightly less guarded than Fort Knox.

"I remember the first time I saw an Apple product," says Ive as the camera pans across a busy Apple Store. "I remember it so clearly because it was the first time I realized when I saw this product I got a very clear sense of the people who designed it and made it."

Below fold, unless Hustwit has pulled it, a YouTube clip of that video.

Apple is coming to Broadway

2009-11-06T20:20:22Z

The Big Apple's newest Mac store is opening on the Upper West Side next Saturday

Source: Apple Inc.

Media invitations went out Friday for a press preview of the new Apple Store in Manhattan — the city's fourth — scheduled to be unveiled Saturday, Nov. 14.

The store, located on a nearly triangular site at Broadway and 67th Street, is well-positioned to get attention from the crowds and TV cameras heading for Central Park West to catch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade less than two weeks later.

New York City has been good to Apple (AAPL). The glass cube of its flagship store is believed to be the highest-grossing retail outlet on Fifth Avenue, bringing in an estimated $35,000 per square foot, nearly double the gross of Tiffany's sales floor and triple Harry Winston's, according to a New York real estate expert interviewed by Bloomberg reporters last summer.

Below the fold: Photographs showing the plastic faux curtain that's covering the building site and the curve of the store's unusual glass roof, courtesy of ifoAppleStore.com.

[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped]

Photo: ifoAppleStore

NOTE: An earlier version of this story had the Macy's parade route wrong. It's been changed. It will start this year at Central Park West and 77th St., pass through Columbus Circle and then head over to 7th Ave. See here.

Vista sold more PCs than Windows 7 did

2009-11-06T13:42:12Z

Microsoft moved a lot of install disks, but hardware makers got a bigger bump two years ago

Photo: Philip Elmer-DeWitt

When Microsoft (MSFT) launches a new operating system, as it did two weeks ago, PC manufacturers like Hewlett Packard (HPQ), Dell (DELL) and Acer are supposed to reap the benefits. And everything seemed to be in place on Thursday Oct. 22 for that to happen.

"Never before has the industry launched such a variety of new form factors, price points, technology upgrades, and design innovations at one time," wrote NPD's Stephen Baker just before Windows 7's release. "This past weekend I happened by a Best Buy store and there was not one single PC for sale with Vista on it. Lots of Windows 7 machines, however, all of which were marked 'not for sale until October 22.' Someone did a great job in the supply chain making this happen. This will give Win 7 a tremendous boost out of the gate." (link)

Two weeks later, Baker is singing a different tune. Microsoft got a big boost according to NPD's weekly tracking data, racking up sales of Windows 7 that were 234% higher than Vista's during its first few days of sales. (More on that below the fold.)

But PC makers didn't make out quite as well. Although they had a relatively strong week, with unit sales up 49% year over year and 95% from the week before, it was nothing like Vista's launch in Feb. 2007. Then, sales soared 68% year over year and 170% from the week before.

In a press release issued Thursday, Baker explained what happened:

“A combination of factors impacted Windows 7 PC sales at the outset,” Baker wrote. “Vista had a slight advantage at launch, as January traditionally has a bigger sales footprint than October. The other hurdle Windows 7 faced was sales of PCs with older operating systems (XP and Vista) were high, making up 20 percent of sales during the Windows 7 launch, compared to just 6 percent of older operating sales during Vista’s launch week.”

Another thing to remember about that Vista launch week is that it set a relatively low bar. Retail Vista sales were considerably below Microsoft's forecast — almost 60% lower than sales of Windows XP during its first week in 2001.

Ironically, it was the computer manufacturers who did best in Feb. 2007. Sales of new PCs with Vista pre-installed were up 67% the week that Vista launched compared with the same week in 2006.

Apple (AAPL), of course, sells both OS X and the Macs that run it, so when it launched Snow Leopard in August, it made money on both sides of the deal.

Fortune magazine names Apple's Steve Jobs CEO of the decade

2009-11-05T15:07:45Z

Runners-up include Gates, Buffett, Page, Brin, Winfrey, Stewart and — wait for it – Madoff

Photo: Time Inc.

Steve Jobs is the CEO of the decade, according to the new issue of Fortune magazine.

"Jobs is back," writes Adam Lashinsky in the cover story published Thursday. "It's as if his signature 'one more thing' line now applies to him as well. After a six-month leave of absence in the early part of this year, during which he received a liver transplant, he is once again commanding a 34,000-strong corporate army that is as powerful, awe-inspiring, creative, secretive, bullying, arrogant — and yes, profitable — as at any time since he and his chum Steve Wozniak founded Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500) in 1976."

The piece includes the revelation that Jobs twice considered taking Apple private, once in a leveraged buyout with Silver Lake Partners and once a few years earlier with financing lined up by his old friend Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle (ORCL).

Sure to stir controversy is Fortune's provocative list of also rans, which includes, along with some obvious contenders (Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, for example), two convicted felons: Martha Stewart and Bernie Madoff.

CNNMoney.com (which carries this blog) has put together an elaborate online editorial package that includes excerpts from Lashinsky's story, a video of him explaining the choice, praises of Jobs from the rich and famous, celebrities' favorite iPhones apps, an interactive timeline, rarely seen photographs and more. The entry point is here.

[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped]

Droid vs. iPhone: The reviews are in

2009-11-05T12:20:53Z

Motorola and Verizon invited comparisons, and that's what they got

Photos: Motorola, Apple

The Droid lands in stores Friday, and on Thursday the heavyweight reviewers — which is to say the Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg and the New York Times' David Pogue — weighed in.

Given that Motorola (MOT) and Verizon (VZ) pitched the Droid in its first TV ad as everything Apple's (AAPL) and AT&T's (T) iPhone was not, it was perhaps inevitable that every reviewer so far, including these two, treated its arrival as a grudge match.

Mossberg's review is positive but tepid — especially the video version. He plods through the comparisons item by item like a slightly boring homework assignment. His top-line summary:

"While it has some significant drawbacks, I regard it as a success overall. It's the best super-smart phone Verizon offers, the best Motorola phone I've tested and the best hardware so far to run [Google's (GOOG)] Android. I can recommend the Droid to Verizon loyalists who have lusted for a better smart phone, but don't want to switch networks." (link)

Pogue being Pogue has more fun with the assignment, even running a Twitter contest to come up with a new term for these newfangled gizmos. (He's going with "app phones"; Mossberg calls them "super-smart phones.") Pogue's bottom line:

Since Verizon seems to want a Droid-iPhone faceoff, here it is: the Droid wins on phone network, customizability, GPS navigation, speaker, physical keyboard, removable battery and openness (free operating system, mostly uncensored app store). The iPhone wins on simplicity, refinement, thinness, design, Web browsing, music/video synching with your computer, accessory ecosystem and quality/quantity of the app store." (link)

For a more thorough comparison, written by someone who actually seems to care, check out developer Greg Kumparak's 2,500 word review in TechCrunch. His conclusion: "At this point, I honestly feel that either choice would make any sane person incredibly happy."

[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped]

The man who put the 'i' in iMac

2009-11-04T20:46:54Z

Meet the creative director who named a generation of Apple products

Photo: Apple

The TBWA\Chiat\Day creative team was horrified in 1998 when Steve Jobs pulled back a cloth and revealed the bulbous teardrop that came to be known as the Bondi-Blue iMac.

But then Jobs wasn't so crazy at first about the name they proposed for it.

No one had ever seen anything like the new computer, veteran creative director Ken Segall tells Cult of Mac's Leander Kahney in an exclusive interview published Tuesday evening.

"We were pretty shocked but we couldn’t be frank," Segall recalls. "We were guarded. We were being polite, but we were really thinking, 'Jesus, do they know what they are doing?' It was so radical."

Segall eventually came up with "iMac," a name that connected the original 1984 Macintosh with the rapidly expanding Internet. But Jobs took some convincing.

Below the fold, excerpts from the story as Kahney tells it:

Photo: Ken Segall

Jobs said he was betting the company on the machine and so it needed a great name. He suggested one at the meeting, Segall says, but it was terrible. It would “curdle your blood.” …

Segall says he came back with five names. Four were ringers, sacrificial lambs for the name he loved — iMac. “It referenced the Mac, and the “i” meant internet,” Segall says. “But it also meant individual, imaginative and all the other things it came to stand for.” It “i” prefix could also be applied to whatever other internet products Apple was working on.

Jobs rejected them all, including iMac.

“He didn’t like iMac when he saw it,” Segall says. “I personally liked it, so I went back again with three or four new names, but I said we still like ‘iMac.”

He said: ‘I don’t hate it this week, but I still don’t like it.’”

Segall didn’t hear any more about the name from Jobs personally, but friends told him that Jobs was silk-screening the name on prototypes of the new computer. He was testing it out to see if it looked good.

“He rejected it twice but then it just appeared on the machine,” Segall says, laughing. “He never formally accepted it.” …

Segall is delighted that iMac grew on Jobs. “It’s a cool thing. You don’t get to name too many products, and not ones that become so successful. It’s really great. I’m really delighted. It became the nomenclature for so many other products. Millions of people see that work.”

Segall says over the last few years, the debate about dropping the “i” prefix has come up several times at Apple. “They’ve asked: ‘Should the company drop the “i”?’ But there’s a desire to keep it consistent: iMac, iPod, iPhone. It’s not as clean as it should be, but it works.”

You can read more of the interview, including the story of how the "Think Different" campaign got started, at Cult of Mac here.

Also worth visiting: Segall's own blog, Observatory, with his commentary on everything from Motorola's (MOT) Cliq ads (he loves them) to Research in Motion's (RIMM) appropriation of The Beatles' All You Need Is Love (hates it; "they’ve successfully broken the gall barrier.").

Kahney, the former news editor of Wired.com, is the author of several books about Apple (AAPL), including most recently Inside Steve's Brain.

[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped]

The iPhone's first 100,000 apps

2009-11-04T16:47:57Z

Games dominate with nearly 17% of titles. Entertainment, books and travel are close behind.

Click to enlarge. Source: 148Apps.biz

Less than 16 months after it opened for business, the App Store now offers more than 100,000 applications for the iPhone and iPod touch, according to an Apple (AAPL) press release issued early Wednesday.

Two independent sites, AppShopper.com and 148Apps.biz, which track listings in the U.S. App Store, count 97,026 and 96,161, respectively. [UPDATE: A third, apptism.com, lists 100,699.]

Apple's total includes 3,000 or 4,000 apps available only in its 76 overseas stores. Another nearly 9,000 apps have been approved by Apple but for one reason or another are no longer available for download.

The distribution of applications remains roughly the same as it was a year ago. According to 148Apps' count, the U.S. App Store carries, among other offerings, more than 16,000 games, 13,000 books, 2,700 navigation programs, 1,200 medical applications and 442 weather apps.

Below the fold: A bar chart comparing the App Store's 100,000 with the numbers available at the official application markets for Google's (GOOG) Android platform, Research in Motion's (RIMM) BlackBerry, Nokia's (NOK) Symbian, Palm's (PALM) Pre and Microsoft's (MSFT) Windows Mobile phones.

Sources: Apple, AndroLib.com, Computerworld, PCMag, Palm

Note, in some cases a lot more apps have been written for the platform than are available on its online store. For example, Microsoft's Robbie Bach told PCMag last month that there were 20,000 Windows Mobile apps on the market; fewer than 250, however, are listed on Microsoft's Mobile Windows Marketplace.

[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped]

33% of U.S. touchscreens are iPhones

2009-11-04T16:27:01Z

Touchscreen phones are on fire, comScore reports, and Apple is leading the pack. For now.

Three months ending Aug. 2009. Source: comScore MobiLens

There's a thundering herd of imitators behind it, but Apple's (AAPL) iPhone still dominates that fastest-growing segment of the U.S. smartphone market, according to a comScore report issued Tuesday.

Touchscreen mobile phone adoption in the U.S. grew at a breakneck 159% rate last year, comScore reports, easily outpacing the 63% growth of the broader smartphone market.

By last August, nearly 34 million Americans were carrying smartphones, 23.8 million of them touchscreen devices. And of those touchscreen phones, 32.9% were iPhones.

“The iPhone clearly set the trend in the industry for touchscreen devices, so it’s no surprise that it has the largest share of the market,” said comScore VP Mark Donovan. “But as other players have entered the touchscreen market with compelling devices, competition is clearly heating up.”

Donovan mentioned Google's (GOOG) Android platform in particular, although the closest Android contender in August was the T-Mobile (DT) G1 running a distant seventh after two proprietary LG phones, the BlackBerry (RIMM) Storm, the Palm (PALM) Pre and the Samsung Instinct.

Below the fold, comScore's spreadsheets, including one that shows preference by age group. (The smartphone sweet spot seems to be ages 24 to 34.)

China iPhone launch a 'disappointment'

2009-11-03T20:30:03Z

Analysts adjust their Chinese iPhone estimates following sales that one describes as "soft"

iPhone buyers in Guangzhou. Photo: iPhonAsia

Following press reports that China Unicom (CHU) only managed to sign up 5,000 new iPhone subscribers after four days of sales, Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster and Barclays Capital's Ben Reitzes each issued notes to clients Tuesday that tried to put a positive spin on the news.

"The China launch is a disappointment," Munster acknowledged. But he added that it reminded him of the launch of the original iPhone in June 2007, when reports that AT&T had activated only 146,000 iPhones in two days caused "unfounded concerns among investors" about the device's long-term potential.

Doing some quick back-of-the-envelope calculations, Munster estimates that 1,500 iPhones per day works out to 550,000 per year — considerably less than the 1 to 2 million iPhones he had expected Apple (AAPL) to ship to China in 2010. But he anticipates that the cost of unsubsidized iPhones in China (currently about $800) will come down, and he's sticking with his prediction that Apple will sell 9.2 million iPhones worldwide in the current quarter and 36 million in calendar 2010.

Similarly, Barclays' Reitzes expressed confidence in his report that with additional carriers, demand for the iPhone in China could "ramp up to multiple millions" over time.

Meanwhile, iPhonAsia's Dan Butterfield, sampling Chinese language press reports from the 30 provinces where the iPhone went on sale last weekend, suggests that the launch might not have been the bust it's being portrayed as.

"Despite western media predictions that the iPhone launch in China would be met with a yawn," he writes, "there were many enthusiastic buyers at iPhone retailers. The Suning store at Nanjing Commerce Plaza had some 1,000 visitors on launch day."

[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped]