MacRumors

NewImageAmazon is developing a set-top box to stream video over the Internet via its Amazon Prime and Instant Video services, according to Bloomberg Businessweek.

The box will compete with similar offerings like the Apple TV and the Roku, though both Microsoft's Xbox and Sony's Playstation have moved into the streaming video arena in recent years.

The set-top box is being developed by Amazon’s Lab126 division, based in Cupertino (Calif.), which has toyed with building TV-connected devices for several years, the people familiar with the effort say. The project is being run by Malachy Moynihan, a former vice president of emerging video products at Cisco who worked on the networking company’s various consumer video initiatives. Moynihan also spent nine years at Apple during the 1980s and 1990s. Among the other hardware engineers working at Lab126 with considerable experience making set-top boxes are Andy Goodman, formerly a top engineer at TiVo and Vudu, and Chris Coley, a former hardware architect at ReplayTV, one of Silicon Valley’s first DVR companies.

Amazon has stepped up its streaming content offerings recently, producing 14 original television pilots and using customer feedback to decide which get made into full shows, as well as spending significant amounts of money to secure exclusive rights to shows like Downton Abbey and The West Wing. The tactic takes on both Netflix's subscription streaming service and Apple's iTunes content store.

Currently Amazon's Instant Video service is available on iPads and iPhones, the Xbox 360, the Nintendo Wii, the Sony Playstation 3, smart televisions from LG, Panasonic, Samsung, Sony, and Vizio, TiVo, the Roku box, as well as a number of Blu-ray players.

With the 10th anniversary of the iTunes Store coming up on Sunday, April 28, Apple has posted a new iTunes Store feature honoring the event. The feature is an expanded version of the iPod + iTunes Timeline that has long been available on the company's site.

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The feature walks through a number of important events over the ten-year history of the iTunes Store, from the launch day when U2's "Stuck in a Moment" and Beck's "Sea Change" topped the sales list to the 2010 launch of The Beatles on iTunes to new milestones of 40 billion app downloads and 25 billion songs reached earlier this year.

iTunes has maintained its dominance in both the music and video markets in the United States and other countries for many years, with the music store now available in 119 countries following a major expansion last December. Apple's App Store is even larger, with Apple noting in yesterday's earnings conference call that the marketplace is now available in 155 countries covering 90% of the world's population.

Related Forum: Mac Apps

The reviews for the Samsung Galaxy S4, Samsung's next flagship Android smartphone, are out. The company announced the device at an event in mid-March and boasts a 5" screen, a 1080p display that Samsung calls "Full HD Super AMOLED" and more.

The overall consensus is that the Galaxy S4 is a solid upgrade over the previous S3 but that its plastic casing and minimal upgrades keep it from being great.

galaxys4Image via Engadget

Here is a collection of some of the early reviews:

AllThingsD

- "I found Samsung’s software often gimmicky, duplicative of standard Android apps, or, in some cases, only intermittently functional."
- "Its screen and camera resolution beat the iPhone 5’s and I found its pictures to be slightly better than those from the Apple phone, which is nearly a year old."
- "Still, compared with the iPhone 5, with its 4-inch screen, the S 4 is 30 percent larger and 17 percent heavier."

Gizmodo

- "It retains the same rounded-rectangle look, with metal edges and a slippery, finger-print-trapping plastic back that looks like it belongs on a far more downmarket phone."
- "Battery performance on the S4 is among the best we've seen from smartphones this year, though it's still not anywhere near as everlasting as the RAZR MAXX HD."
- "Sound on the S4 is another problem. It still has just one tiny, tin-can-sounding speaker on the bottom back of the phone."


Engadget

- Smart Scroll, which tracks the movement of your head to scroll through pages, is a "great idea" in theory but is "frustrating for several reasons" including limited compatibility with apps and bad tracking in badly lit areas.
- "Many of [the new camera modes] are great for showing off at parties with little usefulness elsewhere, but we found ourselves using a few of them on a more regular basis."
- "In general, the GS 4 performs amazingly well, but there's a catch: when Air View and Air Gestures were enabled, we noticed the phone acting a little sluggish even in the most basic of tasks."

The Verge

- "The GS4's 5-inch, 1920 x 1080 display is big, beautiful, and seriously eye-catching."
- "Samsung’s Galaxy S lineup has never wanted for power, and neither does the Galaxy S4 — it’s an impressively fast and powerful phone, capable of handling anything I threw at it."
- "For some reason, Samsung has always had trouble with screen brightness settings — the GS4 can never seem to decide how bright its screen should be, changing suddenly and drastically often and without warning."

The Samsung Galaxy S4 launches on April 26 for AT&T and a couple of days later for T-Mobile. The 16 GB base model will retail for $200 with a two-year contract for AT&T and $149.99 down with monthly payments on T-Mobile's unsubsidized smartphone pricing. The device is also set to launch on Verizon and Sprint, but launch details for those carriers have yet to be announced.

Apple today announced that its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) will take place June 10-14 at the Moscone West convention center in San Francisco. The company also announced that tickets for the event, which will be priced at $1599, will go on sale tomorrow at 10:00 AM Pacific Time.

“We look forward to gathering at WWDC 2013 with the incredible community of iOS and OS X developers,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “Our developers have had the most prolific and profitable year ever, and we’re excited to show them the latest advances in software technologies and developer tools to help them create innovative new apps. We can’t wait to get new versions of iOS and OS X into their hands at WWDC.”

wwdc_2013In past years, Apple has put tickets on sale simultaneously its announcement, but with tickets selling out in shorter and shorter amounts of time, it appears that Apple has decided to announce the on-sale time a day early in order to give developers equal chances at obtaining tickets. Tickets for WWDC 2012 sold out in less than two hours.

As was the case last year, Apple's requirements for purchasing a ticket to WWDC include membership in one of the company's paid developer programs. With the advance notice of ticket sales, Apple is also requiring that developers have been members of a paid program prior to today's announcement, preventing last-minute signups.

Developers between the ages of 13 and 17 must also have their tickets purchased by a parent or guardian who is also a member. Tickets are limited to one per person and five per organization.

For developers who are unable to obtain tickets to WWDC, Apple notes that it will be posting session videos during the conference rather than afterwards as it has in the past. Apple previously charged hundreds of dollars for access to the session videos, but made them free for registered developers several years ago and by last year had shortened the time lag between the end of the conference and the video launch to just a few days.

apples-app-store-icon-oDuring today's Q2 earnings call, Apple announced that it had hit a milestone of 45 billion total app downloads, up five billion from the 40 billion downloads that it reported in January.

There are now 850,000 iOS apps in total, with 350,000 of those being iPad-only apps. 800 apps were downloaded per second during the quarter, representing almost 70 million downloads a day.

Apple has now paid out a total of $9 billion to developers, a $1 billion increase since mid-February. According to Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer, Apple is now paying developers more than $1 billion per quarter, with approximately $4.5 billion being paid out in the last year alone.

In total, Apple's digital storefront includes music stores in 119 countries with 35 million songs, movies in 109 countries, the iBookstore in 155 countries and the App Store in 155 countries, covering 90 percent of the world's population.

The second quarter of 2013 brought record earnings for iTunes, with a revenue of over $4.1 billion, a 30 percent increase year-over-year.

Uclick has released GoComics, an app that allows users to download classic comic strips to their iPad or iPhone for free. Like the accompanying website, the app includes 20 years of back issues of comics from notable strips like Calvin and Hobbes, Garfield, and Dilbert.comics

Want funny? Love comics? We’ve got your fix. The GoComics app, from Universal Uclick, is the mobile comics portal for many of the most popular comic strips worldwide. From iconic favorites like Calvin and Hobbes, Peanuts, Garfield, Doonesbury, Dilbert and Marmaduke to modern favorites like FoxTrot, The Boondocks, Big Nate, Pearls Before Swine and Get Fuzzy, we offer the most diverse set of comic strips and panels in one single app for FREE.

In addition to offering classic content, GoComics also features comics from emerging artists and modern cartoonists. The app’s content is updated on a daily basis to add new comics and users can both bookmark favorites and share comics via social networking sites or email.

GoComics is a free universal app that can be downloaded from the App Store. [Direct Link]

Tim Cook was asked during today's earnings call about his feelings regarding the mobile payments market. While he didn't address the topic directly, he did note that the mobile payments were "just getting started" and still "in its infancy."

In a different part of the call, Cook said Apple would continue to augment the existing "iTunes ecosystem with new services and make existing ones even better."

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There have been persistent rumors for several product cycles that the iPhone would gain some sort of mobile payments system, perhaps through near field communications (NFC). Passbook, the system that Apple released last year to make it more convenient for customers using gift card or ticketing apps, could be a precursor to a larger mobile payments play by the company.

Apple already has a mobile payments system of sorts, allowing Apple Retail Store customers to self-checkout with the Apple Store app. The company has hundreds of millions of credit card numbers stored in its iTunes system, providing a natural groundwork for a possible future payments system.

Related Roundup: Apple Pay

During the Q&A portion of today's earnings call, Apple CEO Tim Cook was asked about the number of product releases in the fall of 2012 and whether he wished Apple had done things differently.

His answer was somewhat revealing, as Apple is usually hesitant to disclose internal discussions and deliberations, but Cook said that looking back, he would have delayed the release of the new iMac until 2013 to avoid some of the delays that many customers experienced after ordering a new Mac.

newimac.jpg

I don't spend a lot of time looking back except to learn from it. If we could run it over, I'd announce the iMac after the turn of the year. We felt customers had to wait too long for that specific product.

Apple's new iMacs, first announced in October, experienced significant delays in shipping, presumably due to the thinness of the machine. The displays required a new manufacturing process along with advanced welding techniques, causing some customers to wait for weeks before receiving their orders.

During Apple's Q1 earnings call, Tim Cook admitted that the iMac was constrained for the entire quarter, resulting in a "significant shortage".

The above quote is from a rough transcript of the earnings call

iphone_5_black_frontThere have been numerous rumors claiming that Apple is working on an iPhone with a larger screen to compete with phones from competitors like Samsung, but Tim Cook's comments during today's Q2 financial results call indicate that the company is not quite ready to make a phone with a 5-inch screen.

My view continues to be that iPhone 5 has the best display in the industry. We always strive to create the very best display. Some customers value large screen size. Others value other factors such as resolution, color quality, white balance, reflectivity, power consumption, compatibility of apps, and portability. Our competitors have made some significant tradeoffs in many of these areas to ship a larger display. We would not ship a larger display iPhone while these tradeoffs exist.

It appears that Apple will not be releasing an iPhone with a larger screen until the company's manufacturing partners can supply it with a 5-inch screen that meets its demanding criteria.

The above quote is from a rough transcript of the earnings call

icloud-icon-399x400During today's Q2 2013 quarterly earnings call, Apple revealed that iCloud now has more than 300 million users, a 20% increase from the 250 million that it reported during its Q1 earnings call in January. A year ago, iCloud had just over 100M users.

Apple's iCloud originally launched in late 2011, as a replacement for the company's MobileMe service.

iCloud, which is designed to allow users to store data from games and music, among other things, lets users sync content between multiple Apple devices. Recently, iCloud has experienced a number of service outages, with the latest occurring this morning.

During today's second quarter earnings release, Apple revealed that it continues to see high revenue growth in China, with an increase to $8.2 billion or 8 percent year-over year with Apple's Chinese retail stores included. Greater China (without the retail stores included) represented 18.8% of Apple's total overall revenue, down slightly from 19.5% in the same quarter last year.

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According to Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer, iPad sales more than doubled year-over-year in Greater China, and Apple is delighted with the adoption rate of the iPad in emerging countries.

When asked about China's single digit growth and the fact that Apple is not China's largest carrier, Cook reiterated that Apple saw significant growth during Q2.

Greatest quarter for China ever, $8.8 billion including retail stores, up 11% year on year. Same as Apple's growth. Highlights included iPad growing 108% y/y, new records for sell through for iPad and iPhone. Significant y/y timing differences related to iPhone.

Last year, increased channel inventories by 2.6 million. 1.6 of that occurred in Greater China. If you look on a sell through basis, Greater China was up approximately 18%.

Going forward, we see a significant opportunity in China. It's a great market. Expect to double number of stores from 11 to 22 in less than 2 years. Added 8k iPhone point of sales to 19k. Have a plan to add more and further grow our distribution. This is too low currently.

Innovating in our online store there, adding different functionality to the store. China has an unusually high number of first time smartphone buyers. We've seen significant interest in iPhone 4 there and recently made it even more affordable to make it more attractive to those first time buyers.

China has become an increasingly important market for Apple. Earlier this year, Tim Cook visited China where he met with both government officials and representatives from China Mobile to discuss Apple’s growth in the country.

Apple currently operates 11 stores in the Greater China area with plans to double the number of locations over the next two years.

The above quote is from a rough transcript of the earnings call

applelogo.jpgDuring today's second quarter earnings call, Apple CEO Tim Cook reiterated Apple's commitment to creating innovative products:

Work we do to produce truly innovative products is very hard. Challenges that we'll face in the future, but we're working very closely with our manufacturing partners and we are executing a very exciting roadmap.

According to Cook, Apple has a lot of surprises in store for late 2013 and 2014, stating that "amazing new hardware, software, and services" will be coming this fall and "throughout 2014."

Apple is expected to release an updated fifth generation iPad with an iPad-mini like design along with the iPhone 5S later this year. An upgraded mini with a Retina display is also rumored to be in the works, along with iOS 7 and Apple's rumored streaming music service.

When asked to reiterate on the fall announcements, Cook had this to say:

We don't want to be more specific, but we have some really great stuff coming in the fall and across all of 2014.

In addition to its standard product lines, Apple is also rumored to have projects like the long rumored iTV and the iWatch in pipeline. Cook confirmed that future growth could come from "potential new categories." From the Q&A session:

Q: Did you mention new product categories in the introduction?
A: One of our areas for growth are potential new categories.

Q: Would that be in the next year?
A: We didn't announce a specific time frame.

In emphasizing a fall timeline for Apple's product updates, Cook is downplaying the potential for summer 2013 releases, possibly hinting that new versions of the iPhone and the iPad may not come until September or later.

The above quotes are from a rough transcript of the earnings call

Related Roundup: Apple TV
Buyer's Guide: Apple TV (Don't Buy)

apple_logoAlongside today's earnings release, Apple also announced a major increase in its capital return program, boosting the previous $45 billion program to $100 program.

The company announced a 15% increase in dividend payments, but Apple is making a significant increase in its stock buyback initiative, taking advantage of the company's depressed stock price to reduce the amount of stock available on the market.

The Company expects to utilize a total of $100 billion of cash under the expanded program by the end of calendar 2015. This represents a $55 billion increase to the program announced last year and translates to an average rate of $30 billion per year from the time of the first dividend payment in August 2012 through December 2015.

As part of this program, the Board has increased its share repurchase authorization to $60 billion from the $10 billion level announced last year. This is the largest single share repurchase authorization in history and is expected to be executed by the end of calendar 2015. Apple also expects to utilize about $1 billion annually to net-share-settle vesting restricted stock units.

As part of the newly-expanded capital return program, Apple does plan to take on debt and will announced its plans on that aspect of the program at a later date.

“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.”

Apple notes that it will continue to evaluate its capital return strategy on an annual basis and will look to optimize the use of excess cash through its mix dividends, stock buybacks, and settling of restricted stock unit grants to employees.

Following Apple's announcement, Moody's gave Apple an Aa1 credit rating with a stable outlook, indicating that the company's obligations should be considered of high quality and hold low credit risk.

ApplelogoApple today announced financial results for the first calendar quarter of 2013 and second fiscal quarter of 2013. For the quarter, Apple posted revenue of $43.6 billion and net quarterly profit of $9.5 billion, or $10.09 per diluted share, compared to revenue of $39.2 billion and net quarterly profit of $11.6 billion, or $12.30 per diluted share in the year-ago quarter.

Gross margin for the quarter was 37.5 percent compared to 47.4 percent in the year-ago quarter, with international sales accounting for 66 percent of revenue. Apple also declared a increased dividend payment of $3.05 per share, payable on May 16 to shareholders as of the close of trading on May 13. The company currently holds $145 billion in cash and marketable securities.

In addition to the increase in the dividend payment, Apple said it will dramatically increase its share repurchase authorization to $60 billion from $10 billion. The company says it expects to spend $100 billion in cash under its capital return program by the end of 2015. Apple is now paying $11 billion per year in dividends to shareholders.

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Quarterly iPhone unit sales reached 37.4 million, compared to 35.1 million in the year-ago quarter, and the company sold 19.5 million iPads, up from 11.8 million in the year-ago quarter. Apple sold just under 4 million Macs compared to 4 million in the year-ago period.

“We are pleased to report record March quarter revenue thanks to continued strong performance of iPhone and iPad,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “Our teams are hard at work on some amazing new hardware, software and services, and we are very excited about the products in our pipeline.”

Apple's guidance for the third quarter of fiscal 2013 includes expected revenue of $33.5-35.5 billion and gross margin between 36 and 37 percent.

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Apple will provide live streaming of its Q1 2013 financial results conference call at 2:00 PM Pacific, and MacRumors will update this story with coverage of the conference call highlights.

Apple's stock price is trading up more than five percent after hours as the market reacts to the earnings news.

Conference Call Highlights and Q&A after the jump:

➜ Click here to read rest of article...

AppletoreApple has updated its Apple Store for iOS app, adding push notifications for order shipment and delivery as well as new notifications for when an iPhone is eligible for upgrade pricing.

What's New in Version 2.6

- Choose to receive notifications that let you know exactly when you’re eligible for upgrade pricing on a new iPhone. And since all you need to complete the order is your Apple ID and password, buying your new iPhone is fast and easy (US only).

- Stay on top of your delivery with notifications. We’ll let you know when your order ships, keep you informed of any updates, and notify you when it’s delivered.

Apple Store is a free download from the App Store. [Direct Link]

WaviiGoogle has bought aggregation and summarization startup Wavii for more than $30 million, winning a bidding war with Apple over the firm. TechCrunch is reporting that Apple wanted to integrate the company with its Siri division.

Both Apple and Google were competing for the Seattle-based startup, and Google eventually won. Apple wanted the company, which developed its own aggregation technology and natural summarizaton algorithms, for its Siri division. The 25-person-strong team including founder Adrian Aoun will be moving down from Seattle to join Google’s Knowledge Graph division.

With more than $135 billion in cash, the $30 million price tag would not have been a significant outlay for Apple, but it appears the company did not value Wavii enough to outbid Google. Wavii had raised $2 million in venture funding.

Wavii
Wavii's iOS app automatically delivers news and status updates on customized topics to users and is available free for iPhone on the App Store. [Direct Link]

FocusTwist, from developer Arqball, is an app that allows iPhone users to take pictures with variable focus points. Photographs captured with the app use multi-image functionality to refocus specific areas in the snapshot, producing an end result that is similar to the refocusable images that can be created with the Lytro Light Field Camera.

To create a refocusable photograph, FocusTwist takes several different images of an object at once, each with a different focal point. Because the camera is capturing multiple photographs, the app requires a steady hand or a tripod to produce accurate results.

focustwist

Capture and share images that can be refocused later!

Add a cool and fun dimension to your photographs and impress your friends and family.

Twists are great for food, toys, fashion, nature, architecture - any scene with multiple elements to focus on.

The developers suggest composing scenes with an object that is three to four inches away from the iPhone's camera and another object that is positioned further in the background for optimal results.


With multiple images captured, users can click through images to choose different focus points after an image has been taken. Focus shifting is done through the company's servers (which also compensate for shaking) and finished images can be shared with a link.

FocusTwist for the iPhone can be downloaded from the App Store for $1.99. [Direct Link]