“So, that was quite a quarter Apple had–and not in a good way. But just after the raw financial results, Apple gets a chance to tell its story, to add “more color” to the proceedings, in an hourlong conference call with financial analysts.”
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Month: April 2016
This is Tim: Apple’s CEO on the company’s 2016 Q2 earnings
“In which Cook goes through numbers from Apple’s second quarter, the first year-over-year decline the company has seen in over a decade. Apple CEO Tim Cook and CFO Luca Maestri spoke with analysts during the company’s Q2 2016 earnings call.”
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Logitech’s Logi Base stand brings wireless charging to the iPad Pro
“When Apple unveiled the 12.9-inch iPad Pro last November, one of its most interesting assets was a small three-dot imprint on one side of its aluminum chassis.”
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Apple Watch 2 rumors: Cellular connectivity could be a game-changer
“The Apple Watch is either a total flop or the second coming of the iPhone, depending on how you look at it. On one hand, Apple has sold around 12 million watches so far, according to the Wall Street Journal, which is twice as many units as Apple sold iPhones in that device’s launch year.”
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Apple just laid down the law on Apple Watch, requiring native apps by June 1
“When the Apple Watch launched, developers had to build extensions of their iOS apps to run on the new device. It wasn’t the most elegant solution—apps were incredibly sluggish because they relied on the iPhone to power them.”
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Microsoft Word Flow keyboard goes live and free for all iPhone users
“Microsoft’s Word Flow keyboard for iPhone is now ready for public consumption after a brief private beta period. iPhone users can download the alternative keyboard for free from the App Store.”
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Government withdraws from New York iPhone unlocking case
“The Justice Department has withdrawn from its legal dispute with Apple over a locked iPhone in New York, the government said in a court filing made late Friday.”
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Siri and Liam disagree about how to best celebrate Earth Day in new video
“Apple continues its Earth Day celebrations with another new video, this one starring Siri and Apple’s new iPhone-disassembling robot, Liam. As you can see, the two have different thoughts on how to best celebrate Earth Day.”
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Mac App Store needs to support software demos and upgrades
But two things are missing from the Mac App Store: demo versions and paid upgrades. (This also applies to the iOS App Store, but I’ll just focus on the Mac in this article.) You can’t download an app to try it out for a week or a month, and then pay for it if it suits your needs. And you can’t get a discount on an upgrade to an app you bought a year or two ago, or even last week.
Valid point from Kirk but it’s not just those 2 examples that the Mac App Store needs. It’s been well publicised that notable Mac third party developers of software such as Sketch and BBEdit have removed their participation mainly due to the constraints placed upon them by Apple when selling their software through the Mac App Store. Will Shipley wrote a long post in 2012 on why the App Store needs paid upgrades which hasn’t happened as yet also.
Romain Dillet pointed out for TechCrunch in December:
Many developers don’t bother releasing their new OS X apps in the Mac App Store.
These aren’t insignificant apps. These are professional apps, and many power users rely on them every day. Fortunately, all these companies found a way to issue new license numbers for existing Mac App Store users. Nobody is getting left behind. But Apple should dedicate more resources toward the Mac App Store.
There are some stricter guidelines on the Mac App Store as well. Apps need to be sandboxed for improved security. But it isn’t always possible for apps with low-level implementations. You won’t see the Dropbox app in the Mac App Store anytime soon for example.
It’s as if the Mac App Store has been abandoned because it’s not spoken about in their keynotes, no new changes or improvements are announced and as far as we know, nothing is being done to entice developers to come back to the Mac App Store. Apple is known to have small teams of developers and engineers working on different parts of their software and are moved about to concentrate on other areas and if this is the case here with the Mac App Store, then it definitely needs revisiting. There have been rumours just this week that Apple has a team working on potentially introducing paid search into the App Store but whether this is the iOS App Store or Mac App Store or both is not clear.
Back in December, Apple announced a shake up of responsibilities for Jeff Williams and Phil Schiller with the latter now overseeing changes and improvements for to the App Store and now that the developer conference was announced this week to take place in June, it will be interesting to see what changes if any will be made to the Mac App Store.
Opera’s browser now comes with a free VPN service
“Opera is rolling out an update to its desktop browser that adds a major feature. The browser now features an integrated VPN service that can be accessed by a single click through a toggle in the address bar.”
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