Mac News Feeds

In a report posted yesterday, TechCrunch points to a Twitter posting from Mike Pinkerton of the Chrome for Mac team noting that there were only eight bugs remaining to be addressed before the Mac beta of Chrome is ready for its launch expected for so...

Filed under: Apple Corporate, Retail, Apple Financial

With US consumers hesitant to buy big-ticket items and Apple's modest Black Friday discounts, it will be interesting to see retail reports from last weekend. The Wall Street analysts are starting to weigh in with their predictions.

Gene Munster with Piper Jaffray expects to see a year-to-year decrease from retail stores, though strong online sales should compensate for that discrepancy. He also notes that it's "...too early" to make predictions about the December quarter.

Meanwhile, Shaw Wu with Kaufman Bros. believes that 3rd-party retailers had a significant role in what will be seen as "strong" weekend sales for Apple. Amazon, Best Buy (a big box store in the US), and others were aggressive with discounts, many of which have extended to Monday, November 30th. Some retailers bundled free gift cards with purchases to entice buyers. Many retailers, like Amazon, were reporting low inventory or out-of-stock on Monday morning.

The Natick Apple Store, which I visited on Friday, was packed. In fact, shoppers had to wait outside for a signal to enter, and even then were only admitted in pairs.

Kaufman Bros. has maintained its price target of $235 for AAPL stock and reiterated its "buy" rating.

TUAWSpeculating on Apple's Black Friday sales originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 30 Nov 2009 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: Apple Corporate, Retail, iPhone

Apple has begun introducing the iPhone to Asia with varying results. After a slow launch in China, the iPhone and App Store are now doing well, despite the lack of Wi-Fi and an active black market. In Korea, however, enthusiastic customers are snapping them up.

Some customers lined up as much as 26 hours in advance, and were rewarded with balloons and a live band once sales began. According to CNNMoney, carrier KT Corp. received approximately 65,000 pre-orders. In addition, Korea Times reports that Korea's competivively priced iPhone -- KT Corp.is selling the 32 GB iPhone 3GS for $317US* with a $38 per month two-year contract and giving away free with a $112/mos. contract -- has prompted Samsung and LG to lower prices on some of their popular models. Let the price wars begin.

Above is a television ad currently running in Korea. For footage of the enthusiastic crowd, click below.

[Via MacDailyNews]

*US prices are accurate as of this writing.

Continue reading Found Footage: Koreans enthusiastically welcome iPhone

TUAWFound Footage: Koreans enthusiastically welcome iPhone originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 30 Nov 2009 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Apple has been accused by anonymous industry sources of utilizing "bully" tactics to manipulate NAND flash memory prices to the hardware maker's advantage.

Filed under: iPhone, App Review

Gee, I thought we had seen all the nav apps, but new ones keep popping up. NDrive, a new U.S. $32.99 app [iTunes link] is actually pretty good for the money, and has a reasonably complete feature set. I don't put it in the class of the TomTom, Navigon or Magellan apps, but they cost twice as much.

Here's what you get for your 32 bucks plus change:

• The maps are built into the app. No cell connection needed
• Auto day/night switching
• Alarms for speeding
• Portrait, landscape mode
• Alphabetical or QWERTY keyboard option
• POIs with favorites, descriptions, phone and website links

The app features voice instructions, but no text-to-speech until a Mid-December update. While driving around town it worked pretty well. The POI database was not better or worse than some of the more expensive apps, as I think most are drawing on the same sources. I found it to be reasonably complete. An added feature is some limited 3D landmarks in the larger cities.

The app has a strange syntax when announcing a turn, saying something like "in miles .3 turn right." The developer says that will be fixed in a couple of weeks.

IPod support is weak with no control of the music, it just keeps playing what you are already had on. That's going to be fixed too.

I thought the GUI was actually quite nice. Zooming is and out is done by pinching and squeezing, but if you zoom out too much you won't see many details.

The app was quick to get a GPS fix, but I found turn instructions came just a bit late. It needs to anticipate the upcoming turn in enough time that I can get in the correct lane.

Bottom line: A pretty good app for a reasonable price. If you are on the fence about a GPS app, and want to get something for holiday travel but don't want to sink $80 or more into some of the other offerings, NDrive is a pretty good app. With the update scheduled for a couple of weeks out, the app will get even better.

TUAWNDrive brings a low cost nav solution to the iPhone originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 30 Nov 2009 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

The Korea Times reports on growing complaints within the flash memory industry that Apple, which holds a dominant position due to its extensive use of flash in the iPhone and iPods, is using its increasing leverage to inappropriately manipulate the m...

Filed under: Software, Productivity

As part of our Back to School series last year, I covered some of my favorite writing tools. Many of the writing applications I've mentioned there and elsewhere have full-screen, distraction-free editing modes, ala WriteRoom, which gets plenty of mention here at TUAW. The full-screen editing feature now seems to be a standard, and most apps that offer the option do a fine job of implementing it. Therefore, if one was to write an app along the lines of WriteRoom, it would have to do something out of the ordinary to get any traction. Ommwriter, a new single-purpose writing app, does just that.

The whole idea behind Ommwriter is to provide a zen-like atmosphere, not just a blank screen. While conforming well to standard text controls in OS X, it creates an interface that's quite pleasing to the eye. The ears are not left wanting, though, and the app provides a choice of several background soundscapes to help block out distractions. You only have 3 fonts to choose from, and they cannot be intermingled. There's no access to the menubar, just a series of rather elegant controls to the side of the resizable writing area. The background is gray, with optional faded landscape scenery. It's quite pretty, and is quite conducive to concentration ... and writing, of course.

Continue reading Ommwriter, an extra helping of zen for writers

TUAWOmmwriter, an extra helping of zen for writers originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 30 Nov 2009 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments