The Computer History Museum (CHM) announced today that it has, with the collaboration of the Digibarn Computer Museum and with permission from Apple Inc., posted the historic original 1978 source code for the Apple II DOS "Disk Operating System."
Pretty cool. More on the Apple II can be found at the Computer History Museum's blog.
Since my contract renewal was up, I had the option to renew it and buy a new phone alongside with it. Since I have an unofficial policy of never buying into the same platform twice in a row, and because it has been a long time since I bought something from Cupertino, I decided to go with the newest iPhone, the 5S. I'm planning on a more thorough review sometime later this year after more thorough use, but here are a few short first impressions.
This fascinating documentary was filmed from December 1985 to March 1986 at NeXT's team retreat in Pebble Beach. It offers a rare glimpse of Steve's vision, aspirations and managerial approach.
Remarkable documentary - several planning meetings and discussions during NeXT's early days, with Steve Jobs and his team, many of which also worked on the Macintosh. You have to see this.
Apple has told two suppliers of its lower-cost iPhone 5C that it is reducing orders in the fourth quarter, according to a report by Dow Jones news agency Wednesday, raising concerns about weaker-than-expected demand for the new product.
Apple began selling it's the new low-price option last month in 11 markets, including the U.S. and China, but consumers have focused on the more expensive 5S model, which was launched at the same time.
While demand for the costlier version, that comes with a fingerprint sensor and faster chips, outstripped expectations - especially the gold-colored version - the iPhone 5C has failed to generate as much interest.
Leave it to the media to turn higher-than-expected demand for the more expensive model into bad news.
Insightful article by John Gruber.
So the irony here is that iOS vs. Android (or, if you prefer, iPhone and iPad vs. commodity smartphones and tablets) is in fact a replay Mac vs. Windows - but not in the way that most who make the comparison would have you believe. Judging by its actions, Apple is keenly aware of the lessons to be learned from 20 years ago. To wit, this has nothing to do with focusing on raw market share, and everything to do with keeping the pedal to the metal on design and quality. If Apple maintains a lead over its rivals in those regards, the Mac suggests that Apple can occupy a dominant, stable, long-term position as the profit leader in the mobile market as well - a market that is already bigger than the PC market ever was, and unlike the PC market, is still growing.
As insightful as the article is, it does pivot on the assumption that Apple does, indeed, " a lead over its rivals" in design and quality. Design is largely a matter of taste, but as far as quality goes, Apple has, in my view, been surpassed in almost every aspect by Android - at least, when it comes to software. And let's not even get started on internet services, where Apple is a complete and utter joke compared to its competitors. As far as hardware goes, however, Apple's supposed lead is harder to debate - I've held a lot of phones and tablets in my hands over the years, and while many come close to Apple's, I've never held anything that outright surpassed it (save for maybe the HTC One which no one is buying).
Unsurprisingly, Gruber believes Apple does maintain that lead, and as such, arguing his point becomes relatively easy. However, if you ascribe to the view that Android has surpassed iOS in quality (and certainly in design, in my view), it becomes a lot harder to accept that Apple can, this time, avoid the trap it fell into in the '90s.
Now, before people will twist and turn this into me saying Apple is doomed - I don't believe for a second that it is. However, that doesn't mean a repeat of the '90s is somehow magically off the table - Apple has a lot of work to do in order to avoid it. As Tom Dale stated so aptly almost a year ago, "Google is getting better at design faster than Apple is getting better at web services". With Motorola and the Moto X, design might not be the only thing Google is getting better at faster.
This wasn't Grignon's typical route to work. He was a senior engineer at Apple in Cupertino, the town just west of Campbell. His morning drive typically covered seven miles and took exactly 15 minutes. But today was different. He was going to watch his boss, Steve Jobs, make history at the Macworld trade show in San Francisco. Apple fans had for years begged Jobs to put a cellphone inside their iPods so they could stop carrying two devices in their pockets. Jobs was about to fulfill that wish. Grignon and some colleagues would spend the night at a nearby hotel, and around 10 a.m. the following day they - along with the rest of the world - would watch Jobs unveil the first iPhone.
I've been thinking a bit more about those iPhone 5C/5S weekend sales figures, and while it is certainly impressive, if you compare it to the iPhone 5's first weekend sales figures, it's actually quite a step backwards for Apple. The issue here - something many sites and even Apple itself doesn't want to focus on - is that the iPhone 5C/5S is available to a lot more people than the iPhone 5 was.
The iPhone 5 was available to 720 million people at launch, and sold 5 million units. This is a penetration of 0.69%. The iPhone 5C and 5S, however, are available to 2078 million people, and sold 9 million units, which constitutes a penetration of 0.43%. So, Apple has two new models to advertise and lure consumers with instead of one, and has a huge additional market (China) to address, yet it failed to capitalise on either of these two factors.
What this shows is that while the sales figure is still pretty darn impressive, it's not nearly as groundbreaking if you put it in perspective. Looking at it this way, the so-called record breaking 9 million figure can easily be explained away by Apple almost tripling its launch weekend audience, instead of an increasing popularity of the iPhone.
The only reason I'm writing this is to illustrate how numbers are entirely arbitrary, and it's easy to make silly comparisons and claim an arbitrary victory - or, change perspective a bit and claim arbitrary defeat, as I've done here.
The 2012 patent trial that grabbed the most headlines was Apple's $1 billion win (since reduced) against Samsung. But Apple also suffered a major patent setback of its own last year when a patent-holding company called VirnetX won a $368 million verdict against the tech giant.
The consequences of Apple's loss are now starting to become clear. This month, testimony in a court hearing showed that not only is Apple facing royalty payments that could cost it many millions more, but it has already made changes to one of its premiere products, FaceTime - changes that reportedly have degraded the service's quality.
While I won't shed a tear for Apple losing a patent lawsuit, this does illustrate once more why the system is broken.
Apple today announced it has sold a record-breaking nine million new iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c models, just three days after the launch of the new iPhones on September 20. In addition, more than 200 million iOS devices are now running the completely redesigned iOS 7, making it the fastest software upgrade in history.
Impressive.
Great interview with Apple's executives.
When Apple got into the mobile business, it was Nokia’s world. The Finnish company was considered something of a miracle worker. "I'm old enough to remember when Nokia had margins of 25 percent, and there was absolutely no way they were going to be dislodged from their leadership position," says Kuittinen of research firm Alekstra. Says Cook, "I think is a reminder to everyone in business that you have to keep innovating and that to not innovate is to die."
Quite true. If a fingerprint scanner and a 64bit ARM chip are innovation, time will tell, but for now, Apple is surely still atop of its game. The amazing load of iOS 7 application updates and the rapid adoption of Apple's latest is testament to that.
The only review of the iPhone 5S you'll need to read - AnandTech's.
At the end of the day, if you prefer iOS for your smartphone - the iPhone 5s won't disappoint. In many ways it's an evolutionary improvement over the iPhone 5, but in others it is a significant step forward. What Apple's silicon teams have been doing for these past couple of years has really started to pay off. From a CPU and GPU standpoint, the 5s is probably the most futureproof of any iPhone ever launched. As much as it pains me to use the word futureproof, if you are one of those people who likes to hold onto their device for a while - the 5s is as good a starting point as any.
It's a crazy world where the future of Apple becomes apparent not in its software, but in its hardware. The 5S looks like a significant step forward, and in my view, hints at a future where Apple's laptops and maybe even desktops will be powered by ARM, not x86. If I had the spare cash, I'd plonk it down for a 5S in a heartbeat - as it stands now, I have no way of testing iOS 7 myself.
Today, as it rolls out to users everywhere, iOS 7 is still on most levels the same operating system it's been for six years. Meanwhile Android has become a fun, efficient, flowing operating system that makes it easy to move data between apps, easy to share things, and easy to see only the information you need at the moment. Where iOS 7 still feels like jumping in and out of a series of apps, the best moments of using Android make it feel like a cohesive, unified platform. There's no question iOS 7 has the foundational strength to match that experience, but Apple has to throw open the doors and let its huge ecosystem build on that potential.
iOS has always been an excellent operating system, and iOS 7 remains an excellent operating system. But if Apple's goal was to match the power and flexibility of its rivals, iOS 7 feels very much like the beginning of a project rather than its conclusion.
Interesting site that compares iOS 6 applications to their iOS 7 counterparts.
A few things stand out. First, while I dislike the look of iOS 6 applications, they at least look a lot less confusing than their iOS 7 counterparts - easier to read, clearer buttons, better contrast in the colour palette, that sort of thing. Second, many of them, like iOS 7 itself, are quite bright. I'm used to the darker colours of Windows Phone and Android, and iOS 7 is a heck of a lot brighter. Three, there's a lot of Holo and Metro influences in there.
I have actually played with several of the iOS 7 betas, and found none of them particularly convincing. This look has a lot of growing up to do.
Apple's new iPhone 5S, which comes with a fingerprint scanner, won't store actual images of users' fingerprints on the device, a company spokesman confirmed Wednesday, a decision that could ease concerns from privacy hawks.
Rather, Apple's new Touch ID system only stores "fingerprint data", which remains encrypted within the iPhone's processor, a company representative said Wednesday. The phone then uses the digital signature to unlock itself or make purchases in Apple's iTunes, iBooks or App stores. In practice, this means that even if someone cracked an iPhone's encrypted chip, they likely wouldn't be able to reverse engineer someone's fingerprint.This seems relatively safe - but then again, only if you trust that government agencies don't have some sort of backdoor access anyway. This used to be tinfoil hat stuff, but those days are long gone.
I dislike the characterisation of privacy "hawks", though. It reminds me of how warmongering politicians in Washington are referred to as 'hawks", and at least in my view, it has a very negative connotation.
The fingerprint sensor in the 5S is interesting, but I wonder how accurate it will be in the real world; on top of that, with all the NSA news, I'm not particularly keen on Apple reading my fingerprint all the time. Supposedly, applications don't have access to it and it's not stored in the cloud, but I have little to no trust for companies.
The biggest news for me is the fact that the iPhone 5S has a new chip - the A7 - which has the honour of being the first 64bit chip inside a smartphone. iOS7 and first party Apple applications are all 64bit, and Xcode obviously supports it. While this obviously future-proofs the platform for more RAM, I wonder what other motives are involved here. ARM desktops and laptops, perhaps?
I doubt 64bit will provide much benefit today, but you have to hand it to Apple: at least they're done with the transition before it's even needed.
The Hacker School space has an old Apple //e sitting around.
Due to the fact that we are hackers, my friend Martin Törnwall and I decided to turn it into a lisp machine.
Quite cool.
The U.S. Department of Justice and 33 U.S. states and territories proposed those changes after U.S. District Judge Denise Cote in Manhattan last month found in a civil antitrust case that Apple played a "central role" in a conspiracy with the publishers to raise e-book prices.
The DoJ also requires that competitors such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble be allowed to include links to their own stores in their iOS applications, which Apple had prohibited.
Submitted by 
Guest post by 
Submitted by