As usual, iSupply has dissected the component used in the new iPod Shuffle in order to evaluate its true manufacturing cost as well as Apple's margin. According to their evaluation, Apple could save 72% out of the current retail price. In details, the 4 GB memory chip will cost 6 USD, while the entire electronic part will be less than 6 USD. Once assembled, equipped with the earphones and properly packed, it should not cost more than 22 USD... So it is a rather substantial margin for Apple, even if you add the not evaluated shipping, localization, design and R&D costs. For sure such figures will give ammunition to the usual suspects prone to attack Apple for any piece of information. We indeed would have preferred to have a cheaper new iPod Shuffle if Apple's margin is so ... substantial...
New iPod Shuffle Contains $22 Worth of Parts
BusinessWeek reports on a teardown of the new iPod shuffle by research firm iSuppli, revealing that Apple's diminutive player contains approximately $22 worth of parts.
All told, the cost of the shuffle's components, the headphones, a...
Nehalem EX in Action
During the IDF 2009, Intel made a demo of a hardware based on Nehalem EX. The current Xeon Nehalem powering the new Mac Pro belongs to the EP series. The Nehalem EX will be available up to 8 core CPU, but one can install 4 or 8 units on the same motherboard. Hereafter is the task manager on Windows for a computer powered by four Octo Core Xeon Nehalem EX; in other words, 32 physical cores or 64 logic cores thank to hyperthreading. In order to feed such CPUs, there are interconnected with 4 QPI link, and each CPU is able to manage simultaneously 4 RAM modules (for a total of 16 in the current example)
One can now better understand the dilemma and the problem currently faced, and to be a growing concern in the forthcoming months, for application and OS developers: how to code and/or design their software/OS in order to fully benefit from such raw power? It will also be true for Larrabee, the graphical solution developed by Intel, initially based on 8 to 64 cores, and which will need to be managed and feed with data/request to be fully effective and to fully deliver.
Billboard: iTunes prices up, sales down
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, iTS, Multimedia, iTunes
I coulda told you this, though I am a little surprised that we've seen the results so fast. Despite iTunes having put the new tiered pricing into effect just last week, Billboard is reporting that they've already seen sales drop on the higher-priced tunes. The iTunes Top 100 chart has 40 different songs with a new price of $1.29, and one day after the changes, those songs dropped an average of 5.3 places on the chart, while cheaper songs moved up on average. And on the second day of the price change, ten of the tracks that saw their prices rise within 24 hours dropped a huge 12.4 chart positions on average.Of course, we're talking only a matter of days here, and there are all kinds of things that could have affected this average drop -- lots of the tracks that became expensive were from a Rascal Flatts album, and it could be just that the album has lost popularity, bringing the average down. And don't forget that even though these sales figures may be dropping, they haven't dropped nearly enough to show a loss of revenue (though fewer songs may be selling, they're still making more money).
But for those convinced that higher prices mean lower sales numbers, these first few days of figures will seem to connect all of the right dots. We'll have to wait and see if the long-term effects match up to the figures Billboard has seen so far.
TUAWBillboard: iTunes prices up, sales down originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 13 Apr 2009 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Apple to Stock 4 Millions of the New iPhone Prior its Launch in June
According to Slashphone, quoting sources from manufacturers, Apple has ordered 4 millions units of its new iPhone. Three models will be available: one EDGE, one 3G and one dedicated to the chinese market, compatible with the TD-SCDMA format. The new iPhone should be launched mid-June (might be during the WWDC).
TUAW First Look: Gas Cubby 2.0
Filed under: Software, iPhone, App Store, iPod touch, First Look, App Review
With more than 25,000 apps in the App Store (as of this writing), it's not easy to find the standouts. One such app is Gas Cubby from App Cubby (we're written about it before), and I'm very happy to have spent a week with version 2.0. It's in my top five iPhone applications (along with its sibling, Trip Cubby. But that's another post entirely). My day job requires me to keep track of automotive expenses. Before I found Gas Cubby, I was unsuccessfully trying to do so with pen and paper. I'd either take the pen out of the car and forget to return it or do the same with the notebook. I'd end up scribbling on anything I could find and promptly lose whatever it was. My accountant wasn't happy.
Gas Cubby solved the issue and actually made it fun for me to keep track of my expenses. That's right, fun. You can collect data on gas and service. First, I'll look at gas.
Update: Yes, this will be a free upgrade for current owners.
Continue reading TUAW First Look: Gas Cubby 2.0
TUAWTUAW First Look: Gas Cubby 2.0 originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 13 Apr 2009 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
iPhone found ready for enterprise, better than BlackBerry
A close study has shown that opening the doors to iPhones at large-scale business has not only made workers happier but has often saved money over competing smartphones in the process.
iPhone developers will need servers to push
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, iPhone, App Store, iPod touch
Former TUAW blogger Erica Sadun has a cautionary post for developers regarding the pending push notifications coming to iPhone OS 3.0: better get yourself some reliable servers. The implication, delivered via headline, is that smaller developers won't be able to afford push notification. Indeed, as Erica says, coding for an app that can run in the background is one thing -- you may need to scale things down a bit for resource management -- but deploying a reliable push notification system is a tall order by comparison.Instead of coding once and deploying, developers will now have to manage servers to handle the load of users who will be receiving push notifications. This ongoing server maintenance issue is the sort of thing we used to laugh about when digg first started, or Twitter, or MySpace, or any number of services that grew a little ahead of server capacity. After speaking to one of the network engineers at Twitter during SxSW this year, I don't envy the task of staying ahead of these curves. But push, in my opinion, isn't as onerous as that.
Push notifications aren't serving entire pages. The difference in data throughput overall is much slimmer than even the light pages Twitter serves. Erica correctly points out that in aggregate, the push server might be hit pretty frequently; however, and there's more of a concern with reliability for a finance or medical app than something like Twitter or digg. But even when you throw in the added hurdle of security I'm guessing the resources for this are available at a reasonable cost.
I get that this is more work for developers, but Erica makes it sound a little threatening, like developers' only resolution will be to cobble together a mighty datacenter from spare computer parts. My assertion is that developers who wish to play the push game will simply need to look for outside resources and factor that into their price. Maybe fewer $.99 apps is a good thing? You certainly don't need 30 apps trying to alert you during the day -- how would you get anything done?
In the end, push notifications are welcome, and I'd rather have that than a one-hour battery life for the day. Plus, I would agree that some smaller developers will have to forget push because the potential costs are too high. Guess what? That's as it should be. If your product requires it, your cost should reflect it. There's no shortage of service providers out there, and as we've seen in the past (look at the podcast services that popped up when that blew up a few years ago) the market will fill the needs of the developers if they aren't in the business of making their own server farms. It's certainly a new twist to the iPhone dev game, and it's an opportunity for someone who can deliver a reliable push framework at a reasonable price -- perhaps one running atop Amazon's EC2, Google's App Engine or even Microsoft's Azure cloud service.
TUAWiPhone developers will need servers to push originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 13 Apr 2009 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Apple placed chip order for 32GB iPhones
Apple has reportedly ordered 100 million units of 8 gigabit and 16 gigabit NAND flash chips, with the majority of the sizable order is expected to be applied toward the 16 gigabit (Gb) NAND, signaling that a 32 gigabyte (GB) iPhone is in the works to debut in June, said Daniel Amir, a Lazard Capital Markets analyst.
Bluetooth 3.0 to Be unveiled on April 21st
According to the last information from the web, the Bluetooth Special Interest Group will officially unveil the third version of this wireless format on April 21st. The main improvements are based on the software, and only minor modifications have been made on the hardware part. Indeed, the version 3.0 will work on the hardware currently used in version 2.1, and the new software layer will allow access to the Wi-Fi chips of computers and devices to optimize the transfer speed. It will be possible to use both wireless protocols depending on the amount of data to be managed as well as on power consumption settings.
The BT 3.0 should be quickly integrated in all devices, eventhough its main interest will be to take advantage of Wi-Fi larger bandwidth and data transfer speed, so it will not make sense for all devices, so customers will have to pay attention not to consider it as a must have as it could of course be used as a strong marketing point to extend lifetime of aging products.
We now have to wait for Apple to update/upgrade to BT 3.0. new models as well as current models should be ready to get it, as soon as Apple release a compatible BT firmware version. It could give users the ability to get ride of their wire-based connection to synchronize their iPhone/iPod Touch, if Apple is finally ready to allow it...
New iPod Shuffle: 72% Margin for Apple!?
As usual, iSupply has dissected the component used in the new iPod Shuffle in order to evaluate its true manufacturing cost as well as Apple's margin. According to their evaluation, Apple could save 72% out of the current retail price. In details, the 4 GB memory chip will cost 6 USD, while the entire electronic part will be less than 6 USD. Once assembled, equipped with the earphones and properly packed, it should not cost more than 22 USD... So it is a rather substantial margin for Apple, even if you add the not evaluated shipping, localization, design and R&D costs. For sure such figures will give ammunition to the usual suspects prone to attack Apple for any piece of information. We indeed would have preferred to have a cheaper new iPod Shuffle if Apple's margin is so ... substantial...
New iPod Shuffle Contains $22 Worth of Parts
BusinessWeek reports on a teardown of the new iPod shuffle by research firm iSuppli, revealing that Apple's diminutive player contains approximately $22 worth of parts.
All told, the cost of the shuffle's components, the headphones, a...
Nehalem EX in Action
During the IDF 2009, Intel made a demo of a hardware based on Nehalem EX. The current Xeon Nehalem powering the new Mac Pro belongs to the EP series. The Nehalem EX will be available up to 8 core CPU, but one can install 4 or 8 units on the same motherboard. Hereafter is the task manager on Windows for a computer powered by four Octo Core Xeon Nehalem EX; in other words, 32 physical cores or 64 logic cores thank to hyperthreading. In order to feed such CPUs, there are interconnected with 4 QPI link, and each CPU is able to manage simultaneously 4 RAM modules (for a total of 16 in the current example)
One can now better understand the dilemma and the problem currently faced, and to be a growing concern in the forthcoming months, for application and OS developers: how to code and/or design their software/OS in order to fully benefit from such raw power? It will also be true for Larrabee, the graphical solution developed by Intel, initially based on 8 to 64 cores, and which will need to be managed and feed with data/request to be fully effective and to fully deliver.
Billboard: iTunes prices up, sales down
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, iTS, Multimedia, iTunes
I coulda told you this, though I am a little surprised that we've seen the results so fast. Despite iTunes having put the new tiered pricing into effect just last week, Billboard is reporting that they've already seen sales drop on the higher-priced tunes. The iTunes Top 100 chart has 40 different songs with a new price of $1.29, and one day after the changes, those songs dropped an average of 5.3 places on the chart, while cheaper songs moved up on average. And on the second day of the price change, ten of the tracks that saw their prices rise within 24 hours dropped a huge 12.4 chart positions on average.Of course, we're talking only a matter of days here, and there are all kinds of things that could have affected this average drop -- lots of the tracks that became expensive were from a Rascal Flatts album, and it could be just that the album has lost popularity, bringing the average down. And don't forget that even though these sales figures may be dropping, they haven't dropped nearly enough to show a loss of revenue (though fewer songs may be selling, they're still making more money).
But for those convinced that higher prices mean lower sales numbers, these first few days of figures will seem to connect all of the right dots. We'll have to wait and see if the long-term effects match up to the figures Billboard has seen so far.
TUAWBillboard: iTunes prices up, sales down originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 13 Apr 2009 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Apple to Stock 4 Millions of the New iPhone Prior its Launch in June
According to Slashphone, quoting sources from manufacturers, Apple has ordered 4 millions units of its new iPhone. Three models will be available: one EDGE, one 3G and one dedicated to the chinese market, compatible with the TD-SCDMA format. The new iPhone should be launched mid-June (might be during the WWDC).
TUAW First Look: Gas Cubby 2.0
Filed under: Software, iPhone, App Store, iPod touch, First Look, App Review
With more than 25,000 apps in the App Store (as of this writing), it's not easy to find the standouts. One such app is Gas Cubby from App Cubby (we're written about it before), and I'm very happy to have spent a week with version 2.0. It's in my top five iPhone applications (along with its sibling, Trip Cubby. But that's another post entirely). My day job requires me to keep track of automotive expenses. Before I found Gas Cubby, I was unsuccessfully trying to do so with pen and paper. I'd either take the pen out of the car and forget to return it or do the same with the notebook. I'd end up scribbling on anything I could find and promptly lose whatever it was. My accountant wasn't happy.
Gas Cubby solved the issue and actually made it fun for me to keep track of my expenses. That's right, fun. You can collect data on gas and service. First, I'll look at gas.
Update: Yes, this will be a free upgrade for current owners.
Continue reading TUAW First Look: Gas Cubby 2.0
TUAWTUAW First Look: Gas Cubby 2.0 originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 13 Apr 2009 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
iPhone found ready for enterprise, better than BlackBerry
A close study has shown that opening the doors to iPhones at large-scale business has not only made workers happier but has often saved money over competing smartphones in the process.
iPhone developers will need servers to push
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, iPhone, App Store, iPod touch
Former TUAW blogger Erica Sadun has a cautionary post for developers regarding the pending push notifications coming to iPhone OS 3.0: better get yourself some reliable servers. The implication, delivered via headline, is that smaller developers won't be able to afford push notification. Indeed, as Erica says, coding for an app that can run in the background is one thing -- you may need to scale things down a bit for resource management -- but deploying a reliable push notification system is a tall order by comparison.Instead of coding once and deploying, developers will now have to manage servers to handle the load of users who will be receiving push notifications. This ongoing server maintenance issue is the sort of thing we used to laugh about when digg first started, or Twitter, or MySpace, or any number of services that grew a little ahead of server capacity. After speaking to one of the network engineers at Twitter during SxSW this year, I don't envy the task of staying ahead of these curves. But push, in my opinion, isn't as onerous as that.
Push notifications aren't serving entire pages. The difference in data throughput overall is much slimmer than even the light pages Twitter serves. Erica correctly points out that in aggregate, the push server might be hit pretty frequently; however, and there's more of a concern with reliability for a finance or medical app than something like Twitter or digg. But even when you throw in the added hurdle of security I'm guessing the resources for this are available at a reasonable cost.
I get that this is more work for developers, but Erica makes it sound a little threatening, like developers' only resolution will be to cobble together a mighty datacenter from spare computer parts. My assertion is that developers who wish to play the push game will simply need to look for outside resources and factor that into their price. Maybe fewer $.99 apps is a good thing? You certainly don't need 30 apps trying to alert you during the day -- how would you get anything done?
In the end, push notifications are welcome, and I'd rather have that than a one-hour battery life for the day. Plus, I would agree that some smaller developers will have to forget push because the potential costs are too high. Guess what? That's as it should be. If your product requires it, your cost should reflect it. There's no shortage of service providers out there, and as we've seen in the past (look at the podcast services that popped up when that blew up a few years ago) the market will fill the needs of the developers if they aren't in the business of making their own server farms. It's certainly a new twist to the iPhone dev game, and it's an opportunity for someone who can deliver a reliable push framework at a reasonable price -- perhaps one running atop Amazon's EC2, Google's App Engine or even Microsoft's Azure cloud service.
TUAWiPhone developers will need servers to push originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 13 Apr 2009 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Apple placed chip order for 32GB iPhones
Apple has reportedly ordered 100 million units of 8 gigabit and 16 gigabit NAND flash chips, with the majority of the sizable order is expected to be applied toward the 16 gigabit (Gb) NAND, signaling that a 32 gigabyte (GB) iPhone is in the works to debut in June, said Daniel Amir, a Lazard Capital Markets analyst.
Bluetooth 3.0 to Be unveiled on April 21st
According to the last information from the web, the Bluetooth Special Interest Group will officially unveil the third version of this wireless format on April 21st. The main improvements are based on the software, and only minor modifications have been made on the hardware part. Indeed, the version 3.0 will work on the hardware currently used in version 2.1, and the new software layer will allow access to the Wi-Fi chips of computers and devices to optimize the transfer speed. It will be possible to use both wireless protocols depending on the amount of data to be managed as well as on power consumption settings.
The BT 3.0 should be quickly integrated in all devices, eventhough its main interest will be to take advantage of Wi-Fi larger bandwidth and data transfer speed, so it will not make sense for all devices, so customers will have to pay attention not to consider it as a must have as it could of course be used as a strong marketing point to extend lifetime of aging products.
We now have to wait for Apple to update/upgrade to BT 3.0. new models as well as current models should be ready to get it, as soon as Apple release a compatible BT firmware version. It could give users the ability to get ride of their wire-based connection to synchronize their iPhone/iPod Touch, if Apple is finally ready to allow it...
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