Posts Tagged ‘Apple’
Does Apple Deliberately Slow Down Its Old iPhones?
That’s the question that’s asked over in the New York Times, whether Apple deliberately slows down its old iPhones so that people will go out to buy a new model. And the answer is, well, you might think so, but probably not. For it’s true that there’s evidence that everyone complains about how slow their old phones are when a new one comes out: but that’s a function of technology, not active malevolence:
A new study is backing up long held suspicions that Apple slows down older models of its iPhones to encourage users to buy a new release.
The U.S. study analysed worldwide searches for ‘iPhone slow’ and found that the search term spiked significantly around the time of new iPhone launch.
It then compared those results with similar searches for the term ‘Samsung Galaxy slow’, and discovered the term was unaffected by new releases from Samsung.
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Posted: 8th, August 2014 | In: Money | Comment (1)
Steve Jobs Was Right: Apple’s iPhone 6 Is To Be Made By Robots
Workers are seen inside a Foxconn factory in the township of Longhua in the southern Guangdong province May 26, 2010. A spate of nine employee deaths at global contract electronics manufacturer Foxconn, Apple’s main supplier of iPhones, has cast a spotlight on some of the harsher aspects of blue-collar life on the Chinese factory floor.
THIS rather proves Steve Jobs’ point that “those jobs are never coming back”. For Apple’s iPhone 6 is to be assembled by robots rather than by hand as has been done with all previous generations of iPhone.
iPhone maker Foxconn has revealed Apple’s new iPhone 6 could be the first to be made using its ‘robot army’.
The firm has pledged to have a million robot workers by the end of the year – and CEO Terry Gou has revealed the robots, dubbed ‘Foxbots’, are in the final stages of testing.
It is believed Foxconn will install 10,000 robots as a test.
Jobs made the comment originally to President Obama. He was asking, well, all those jobs that are now in China, all those manufacturing jobs, when are they going to come back to America? The answer being “those jobs are never coming back”.
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Posted: 8th, July 2014 | In: Money, Technology | Comment
Watch The Video Of The New iPhone 6, Dummy
WHAT looks like the new iPhone 6, due for release this summer, can be seen in that video above. The information source is a French website, nowhereelse, and they’ve been pretty reliable in the past. For an English description of what’s going on:
We have already seen dozens of moulds, designs and claimed leaks of Apple new iPhone.
However, a new video provides the best look yet at the rumoured design for a larger, 4.7inch screen handset.
Apple is rumoured to be preparing to launch the handset in August, a month earlier than expected – with an even larger 5.5inch model following a month later.
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Posted: 29th, May 2014 | In: Money, Technology | Comment
Steve Jobs Biopic Stars Danny Boyle and Leo DiCaprio
Personal computer pioneer Steve Jobs of NeXT Computer Inc., shows off his NeXTstation color computer to the press at the NeXT facility in Redwood City, Calif., on April 4, 1991. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)
EVER looked at Steve Jobs and thought: “There’s a guy I’d like to watch a film about!” Imagine the thrills and spills as Jobs goes to the bank to get a loan! Gasp as Jobs does some soldering on a motherboard! Swoon as he buys 30,000 black turtle neck sweaters!
Good news! Danny Boyle and Leonardo DiCaprio could well be working together on a biopic of the Apple Honcho.
The film will be based on the biography by Walter Isaacson about Jobs, which was released in 2011. It follows on from the film ‘Jobs’, which starred Ashton Kutcher, which no-one watched.
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Posted: 22nd, April 2014 | In: Celebrities, Technology | Comment
Google, Apple, Intel – All Getting Sued For Screwing The Workers
YOU may or may not worry very much about some of the richest workers on the planet getting screwed over by the companies they work for. We tend to worry more about the poor getting so screwed. But Google, Apple, Intel and a number of other big Silicon Valley firms are getting sued by their engineers for the way in which they’ve screwed them over in recent years.
But next month, Google, Apple, Intel and Adobe will be in the dock to face the same opponent.
A group of technology executives is suing the companies for alleged collusion to suppress their wages, after they signed a series of “no-poach” pacts barring them from recruiting each other’s staff.
The companies, whose collective value tops $890bn (£530bn), could be forced to pay handsomely to compensate them for the losses, but they are likely to be far more worried about the details the case will expose.
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Posted: 22nd, April 2014 | In: Money, Technology | Comment
Dodgy Maths: Where Apple Goes Wrong In Calculating The Samsung Damages
YES! We’ve another exciting instalment of the Apple v. Samsung patents battle and this time Apple are asking for over $2 billion in damages from the Korean firm. The problem is that they’ve used a very dodgy indeed method of trying to calculate those damages.
To determine how much individual software features were worth as part of its multi-billion dollar lawsuit, an Apple-paid expert surveyed less than 1,000 consumers about imaginary smartphones and tablets, and included features that weren’t even on trial. Another expert then estimated billions in fees for theoretical negotiations that might have occurred between the two companies, as well as how many smartphones and tablets Apple might have sold in their place.
So, they’ve gone off and asked people theoretical questions about what they might have done. And economists insist that this just isn’t the way that you can gauge people and their actions. It’s an idea called revealed preferences. You don’t believe what anyone tells you, you most certainly don’t believe what they vote for. You look at what they actually do and then calculate back from their actions to tell you what they value.
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It’s EU, Stupid: Apple And Amazon Get Stung By Osborne In The Budget
THAT’S what the newspapers are reporting this morning, that Osborne has stung the big internet companies like Amazon and Apple by changing the rules on VAT rates. Although it’s not actually Osborne who has done this, it’s the EU:
Multinational companies such as Amazon and Apple will be forced to add VAT to all UK downloads including music, film, smartphone games and e-books from January 2015 in a move that may drive up the cost of music tracks from 99p to £1.19.
The move forms part of the Government’s “international efforts to develop tough, new global tax rules,” George Osborne said in his Budget address last week. From next year, download services will be subject to VAT in the country where the consumer is located.
According to the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), the change will attract an extra £300m in VAT revenues in the first year.
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Posted: 24th, March 2014 | In: Money, Politicians | Comment
Now You Can Lick Steve Jobs’ Arse!
THIS is, of course, the moment that all Apple fanboys have been waiting for, the opportunity to get up close and personal with their now departed icon. The ability, even, to give his arse a good licking:
While Steve Jobs probably didn’t send much snail mail in his later years, the US Postal Service intends to honor the late tech icon by putting his visage on a commemorative stamp.
Stamp subjects are normally kept secret until just before printing, but the Washington Post obtained a document outing approved stamps for the next few years. The Apple co-founder’s stamp is already in design development for 2015, alongside stamps for music legends Elvis Presley and James Brown.
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Posted: 21st, February 2014 | In: Money, Technology | Comment
Deliberate Planned Obsolescence In Apple’s iPhones? New York Times Spreads Conspiracy Theory
DOES Apple lace its products with deliberate planned obsolescence? Err, no, despite the claims there isn’t any deliberate planned obsolescence in Apple’s iPhones. So much so that it’s really rather amazing that the New York Times published a piece even suggesting that there is.
Apple could be deliberately making your iPhone slower when a new model comes out, an influential tech columnist has claimed.
Catherine Rampell, who writes in the New York Times, said that Apple could be engineering the new operating system so it only works properly with the newest version of the product.
She added her iPhone 4 became a lot slower when she downloaded iOS 7 – and that the only solution seemed to be to buy the iPhone 5.
Rampell accused Apple of having run out of ideas so was trying to ‘brainwash’ its customers into buying the new iPhone 5S and 5C because they look nice.
Rampell’s claims are likely fuel conspiracy theorists who have long held that Apple engages in ‘planned obsolescence’, a term which has been around since the Great Depression in the 1930s.
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Posted: 4th, November 2013 | In: Money, Technology | Comment
Apple Really Is Dodging Taxes You Know!
THERE’S been intensive debate….well, let’s call that screaming matches….about whether Apple is avoiding tax or not. Everyone points to the Double Irish with a Dutch Sandwich as irrefutable proof that they’re skiving swine.
The thing is that this isn’t tax avoidance. It’s most certainly not tax evasion for as all agree it’s wholly and entirely legal. But it’s not even tax avoidance: for this is how the corporate tax system is set up to work: this is how it was designed. Companies, when they sell overseas, are taxed on the profits they make in their home country. That’s it, that’s all. And Apple will indeed be taxed on their overseas profits as and when they take those profits back into the US. That’s also just it: there is no more to the story than that. At the very best the entire structure delays the payment of tax: but it most certainly does not mean that the tax has been avoided.
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Posted: 29th, October 2013 | In: Money, Technology | Comment
Should Apple Throw $150 Billion at Shareholders or Not?
ONE investor in Apple, Carl Icahn, has demanded that Apple should throw $150 billion of the company’s money at shareholders. It seems like a reasonable enough idea, given that the company’s money does actually belong to the shareholders, but there’s a couple of minor problems. The most obvious being that despite Apple having $150 billion in cash it would have to go and borrow to pay that amount to the shareholders:
Mr Icahn took to Twitter to disclose that he had used a dinner meeting to press the tech giant’s chief executive Tim Cook to carry out further share buybacks. He said he had “pushed hard” for more share purchases by the iPhone and iPad maker.
Buybacks reward investors by lifting earnings per share and Apple shares rose 2.4pc on the news the influential investor was pressing the company over its share purchases.
“Had a cordial dinner with Tim last night,” Mr Icahn said on Twitter. “We pushed hard for a $150bn buyback. We decided to continue dialogue in about three weeks.”
Mr Icahn later told CNBC that he had invested $2bn in Apple. He added that the tech group’s finance chief had also attended the meal with Mr Cook.
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Posted: 22nd, October 2013 | In: Money, Technology | Comment
The Daily Mail defines Apple’s massive iPhone 5c failure for us
OR rather, the Mail might want to try and find a different measure of failure. For Apple has, as we all know, released two new iPhones, the iPhone 5c and the iPhone 5s. Which seem to be selling pretty well: they shifted 9 million pieces over their first weekend which is many, many, more than they’ve done in the first few days of any other iPhone model. But here’s the Mail:
Is the iPhone5C a failure? Apple ‘halves’ production and slashes the price of its handset in China due to ‘dismal sales’
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Posted: 15th, October 2013 | In: Money, Technology, The Consumer | Comment
It’s not just Apple’s iOS 7 that causes motion sickness
FOLLOWING on from last week’s news that users of Apple’s new operating system, iOS 7, were starting to feel motion sickness as a result of using it (and yes, up to the point of falling over and even vomiting) we’re getting the news that there are some people who are pretty much allergic to our bright new digital future. Quite simply some cannot deal with modern digital graphics and 3D effects and so are always going to be locked out: or on the floor throwing up of course.
The initial news that iOS 7 was causing problems came up in the Apple user forums:
The zoom animations everywhere on the new iOS 7 are literally making me nauseous and giving me a headache. It’s exactly how I used to get car sick if I tried to read in the car.
How do I turn them off? Do I have to revert to 6?
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Posted: 30th, September 2013 | In: Technology | Comment
Apple’s competition is really Apple
IT may have passed you by but the best economist you’ve never heard of, Ronald Coase, passed away last week. One of the reasons he was so highly regarded within the profession was that he brought out into the open things that no one had seen before: but which once they were out in the open became immediately obvious. And it’s this that leads to the observation that Apple’s biggest competitor is really Apple itself.
Had I had room, I would have quoted a question that my former University of Rochester colleague, Ron Schmidt, a master teacher, posed in about 1976 and that I got the wrong answer to. The question: “What is General Motors’s biggest competitor?” [Remember that this was before the Japanese producers were a large part of the market.] My (wrong) answer: “Ford.” Ron Schmidt’s answer: “The used car market.”
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Posted: 24th, September 2013 | In: Money, Technology | Comment
Face of the day: iphone 5s fan Gad Harari sets up camp on the Regent Street iQ
FACE of the day: Gad Harari aged 17, from London, sits in his plastic greenhouse which is the only shelter for himself as he waits to buy the new iPhone in Regent Street central London, which goes on sale in the UK this coming Friday.
Gad, who sits at the head of the iQ, assembles his tent by pressing a single large button and installing an app.
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Posted: 18th, September 2013 | In: Technology, The Consumer | Comment
Security flaw in new iPhone 5s means your fingerprints are not your own
THE new Apple iPhone 5S turn your old – oh, so old – Apple 5 into a retro piece of vintage tat. The iPhone 5s contains a fingerprint scanner, meaning that Apple will soon have a huge store of your fingerprints. Look out for the Apple 6 which will access your DNA and the Apple 13 which will profile you and render you incapacitated with tube-tying electric shocks to your genitals should you be thought to be thinking about committing a crime.
The software is not safe, however, as this Reddit user proves.
Look out for your iPhone5s linking you to crime scenes:
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Posted: 12th, September 2013 | In: Technology | Comment (1)
Apple’s still being complete bastards to the Chinese workers
APPLE’S being complete bastards to Chinese workers. Well, so says a new report out today from China Labor Watch: Apple’s still being entirely bastardly towards the workers in China that make so much of their kits. After all that stuff over the suicides at Foxconn a couple of years back, this new report insists that everything is still terrible at the new company, Pegatron, that Apple is using.
The heinous crimes against worker rights include:
For example, at AVY there are 10 showerheads for about 120 workers.
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Posted: 4th, August 2013 | In: Money, Technology | Comment
Apple conspired to keep e-book prices artifically high as libraries die
BOOKS are not just objects to buy and trade. The BBC reports on a ruling that Apple “conspired with publishers to fix the price of electronic books”.
And those are the electronic books that thanks to convoluted copyright rules you are not permitted to pass on to friends, as you can with an actual paper book.
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Posted: 10th, July 2013 | In: Books, Money, Technology | Comment
Apple pays no UK tax yet again – this is why
SO, someone’s gone and had a look at the Apple UK tax filings and once again we find that the company has paid no UK corporation tax whatever. Which really shouldn’t some as all that much of a surprise:
The US technology giant used tax deductions from share awards to employees to help wipe out the corporation tax liabilities of its UK businesses.
Accounts filed by one of Apple’s two main UK divisions, Apple Retail UK Ltd, showed the company made a pre-tax profit of £16m on sales of almost £1bn in the year to September 29.
Another subsidiary, Apple (UK) Ltd, made a pre-tax profit of £43.8m on sales of £93m, according to accounts filed at Companies House, while a third, Apple Europe, made a pre-tax profit of £8m.
However, the company offset tax deductions relating to share schemes of £27.7m against its corporation tax liabilities in the UK. The move also enabled it to claim a tax credit of £3.8m to carry forward to future years. Experts have also suggested Apple’s total sales in the UK are far higher, as many are logged elsewhere.
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Branding A Rotten Apple: Stormfront Opens Outlets (Chapters) All Over The UK
BRANDING. There is much in a name. Which makes us wonder why the chain of Apple resellers is called STORMFRONT? The Exeter-based retailer has 24 stores across the UK.
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New Apple website fails to work on Macbooks (laughs)
THE Apple website – motto: “This is what matters… We don’t believe in coincidence or dumb luck”– fails to work on Macbooks. Something to do with a QuickTime permission issue.
Given the pomposity of its mission statement (see below), we find it rather amusing:
Posted: 11th, June 2013 | In: Technology | Comment (1)
Apple’s Bond deal is the most glorious tax avoidance ruse
CERTAIN people are getting rather angry about yesterday’s bond deal by Apple:
As is par for the course, the financial media is telling a story about a major US company from the perspective of the investing classes, rather than the broader public.
The poster child is the New York Times’ Dealbook, in a story titled “To Satisfy Its Investors, Cash-Rich Apple Borrows Money.” It third paragraph reads:
Apple’s return to the debt markets raises a riddle: Why would a company with so much cash even bother to issue debt?
A full seven paragraphs later, the article gets around to the last, and arguably the most important reason:
By raising cheap debt for the shareholder payout, Apple also avoids a potentially big tax hit. About two-thirds of Apple’s cash — about $102 billion — sits overseas in lower-tax jurisdictions. If it returned some of that cash to the United States to reward its investors, it could have significant tax consequences for the company. In some ways, the bond issue is a response to that tax situation.
Posted: 1st, May 2013 | In: Money | Comment (1)
Woo Hoo! Apple’s new iPhone is coming!
THE new iphone. It’s coming! Aren’t you excited too? I know I am because it’ll be just fabulous allowing me to pose even more effectively as a cool and in touch sort of person. You know, rather than the fat middle aged man I actually am.
The knowledge that the new iPhone is coming is revealed to us by the Wall Street Journal:
TAIPEI—Foxconn Technology Group has resumed hiring assembly-line workers in China after a postholiday freeze, in the latest sign that customer Apple Inc. is gearing up for production of a new iPhone.
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Posted: 16th, April 2013 | In: Money, Technology | Comment
Apple device makes cracked screens impossible
BEHOLD! The “Protective Mechanism for an Electronic Device” will make it impossible for your iPhone, iPad or iPod to fall corner-first down and shatter the screen. It works on any device – including TVs in rock star’s hotel rooms.
Files at theU.S. Patent and Trademark Office illustrate a mechanism that shifts the centre of balance as the device falls. Before it hits the ground, the mechanism causes the product to twist in mid-air. The crash will result in minimum damage.
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Posted: 25th, March 2013 | In: Technology | Comment
Apple’s the best damn thing that’s ever happened to Chinese workers
YES, we all know the complaints. That those Chinese workers assembling the Apple products are paid a pittance, it’s all a shame and the company are capitalist bastards for exploiting the poor so.
Or we could look at the actual facts and decide that Apple’s the best thing that’s ever happened to the denizens of the perfumed east. For it is exactly that Apple and other companies expanding their operations there that is pushing up wages. Which is, I hope we’d all agree, what we’d actually like to happen? That the poor get rich?
Wages in Sichuan and Henan have surged 120 percent in six years because of economic growth, increasing local competition for labor and slower population-growth nationwide.
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Posted: 4th, March 2013 | In: Money, Technology | Comment
