Edible Apple

Apple today announced plans to initiate a stock buyback and dividend with its ever growing stockpile of cash. The stock buyback program will be worth $10 billion while the dividends, set to be paid during the Q4 of 2012, will be $2.65 a share.

MacRumors has the full rundown of the conference call held earlier today with Tim Cook and Peter Oppenheimer.

Some noted points of interest include the data point that iPhone sales during the last quarter (37 million) only represented approximately 9% of all handset sales.

– iPhone. Eventually all handsets will be smartphones. Enormous potential
– We are innovated at an incredible pace. App ecosystem, iCloud, Siri.
– Used some for R&D, acquisitions, strategic pre-payments, retail, and building out of infrastructure. You will see more of these in the future.
– Innovation is our most important objective.

Lastly, during the Q&A portion of the conference call, Cook said that Apple’s new iPad experienced a record weekend with respect to sales. No specific numbers, however, were given.

Not everyone with the opportunity to do so made a fortune with Facebook. A number of folks who could have gotten in on the ground floor decided not to, losing millions in stock options as a result. Not surprisingly though, many of them are still doing more than okay.

Read about these “missing millionaires” over here.

Apple on Sunday night issued a media alert for a conference call set for 9AM eastern standard time. The topic? What Apple plans to do with its close to $100 billion in cash and securities.

WHAT: Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, and Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO, will host a conference call to announce the outcome of the Company’s discussions concerning its cash balance. Apple® will not be providing an update on the current quarter nor will any topics be discussed other than cash.

WHERE: Via conference call. The dial-in number for press is (877) 616-0063 (toll-free) or (719) 219-0041. Please enter confirmation code 592016.

WHEN: Monday, March 19, 2012 at 6:00 a.m. PDT/9:00 a.m. EDT

REBROADCAST: The conference call will be available as a continuous rebroadcast beginning Monday, March 19 at 9:00 a.m. PDT/12:00 p.m. EDT through Monday, April 2 at 9:00 a.m. PDT/12:00 p.m. EDT. The dial-in number for the rebroadcast is (888) 203-1112 (toll-free) or (719) 457-0820. Please enter confirmation code 6274937.

Dividend? Stock buyback? Nothing at all?

Suffice it to say, if they’re holding a conference call, we imagine it’s to announce something and not that they’re just going to continue sitting on it.

Remember Mike Daisey? The guy who gleaned a ton of publicity and money with his sensational reports of what life is like over in the factories where Apple products are manufactured? Well, it seems that he must have been a fan of McNulty from The Wire because he made a lot of his “information” up in an effort to sensationalize his story and, we gather, get his name in the news for his own benefit.

The This American Life blog today retracted their report about Daisey and his visits to China saying that they’re riddled with fabrications.

The China correspondent for the public radio show Marketplace tracked down the interpreter that Daisey hired when he visited Shenzhen China. The interpreter disputed much of what Daisey has been saying on stage and on our show. On this week’s episode of This American Life, we will devote the entire hour to detailing the errors in “Mr. Daisey Goes to the Apple Factory.”

Daisey lied to me and to This American Life producer Brian Reed during the fact checking we did on the story, before it was broadcast. That doesn’t excuse the fact that we never should’ve put this on the air. In the end, this was our mistake.

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The press release reads:

This American Life will devote its entire program this weekend to detailing the errors in the story, which was an excerpt of Mike Daisey’s critically acclaimed one-man show, “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs.” In it, Daisey tells how he visited a factory owned by Foxconn that manufactures iPhones and iPads in Shenzhen China. He has performed the monologue in theaters around the country; it’s currently at the Public Theater in New York. Tonight’s This American Life program will include a segment from Marketplace’s Rob Schmitz, and interviews with Daisey himself. Marketplace will feature a shorter version of Schmitz’s report earlier in the evening.

When the original 39-minute excerpt was broadcast on This American Life on January 6, 2012, Marketplace China Correspondent Rob Schmitz wondered about its truth. Marketplace had done a lot of reporting on Foxconn and Apple’s supply chain in China in the past, and Schmitz had first-hand knowledge of the issues. He located and interviewed Daisey’s Chinese interpreter Li Guifen (who goes by the name Cathy Lee professionally with westerners). She disputed much of what Daisey has been telling theater audiences since 2010 and much of what he said on the radio.

During fact checking before the broadcast of Daisey’s story, This American Life staffers asked Daisey for this interpreter’s contact information. Daisey told them her real name was Anna, not Cathy as he says in his monologue, and he said that the cell phone number he had for her didn’t work any more. He said he had no way to reach her.

“At that point, we should’ve killed the story,” says Ira Glass, Executive Producer and Host of This American Life. “But other things Daisey told us about Apple’s operations in China checked out, and we saw no reason to doubt him. We didn’t think that he was lying to us and to audiences about the details of his story. That was a mistake.”

The response to the original episode, “Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory,” was significant. It quickly became the single most popular podcast in This American Life’s history, with 888,000 downloads (typically the number is 750,000) and 206,000 streams to date. After hearing the broadcast, listener Mark Shields started a petition calling for better working conditions for Apple’s Chinese workers, and soon delivered almost a quarter-million signatures to Apple.

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Before Apple officially entered the phone business and the iPhone was nothing more than a rumor, people were skeptical of Apple’s ability to enter the phone business and succeed. After all, what the hell did Apple know about phones?

Of course, the revolutionary iPhone made instant believers out of everyone and changed the smartphone landscape forever.

Similarly, we’re now inundated with rumors of an Apple HDTV and folks are skeptical yet again that Apple can do anything to succeed in a market where margins are slim and the quality of TVs have never been better.

That said, one rumored initiative Apple is working on involves a TV with a’la carte programming. So instead of paying a ginormous cable bill each and every month, users could casually pay only for the channels they want to watch.

To that end, the Hollywood Reporter recently caught up with CBS CEO Leslie (Les) Moonves who reiterated a story he had previously told investors back in November – that Steve Jobs had approached him to discuss working together on an Apple HDTV.

CBS CEO Leslie Moonves said Saturday that he was approached about a year ago by Steve Jobs to provide content for Apple’s long-rumored television service but he declined to participate.

Moonves told a conference audience that he met with Jobs, the late Apple CEO, and heard a pitch for what was billed as a subscription content service, but ultimately he said he wasn’t interested in providing CBS shows or films to the venture.

“I told Steve, ‘You know more than me about 99 percent of things but I know more about the television business,’ ” Moonves said, citing his concerns about providing content to a service that could disrupt CBS’ existing revenue streams. Moonves said Jobs, in characteristic fashion, strongly disagreed with his assessment.

This of course isn’t new but tends to highlight how Apple views their HDTV offering, should it ever come to market. The most recent Apple HDTV rumor points to a release date in late 2012, though Apple may have to cross some negotiation standstills before then.

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The antenna problems associated with the iPhone 4 were largely overblown. Nevertheless, the ongoing media frenzy that surrounded the iPhone 4 back in the Summer of 2010 was so negative that Apple was forced to act – and it did by offering free bumper cases to all iPhone 4 users.

The reality is that customer complains regarding reception problems and the like were actually lower for the iPhone 4 than they were for the iPhone 3GS. But Apple makes a great story for scandal so the press took the story and ran with it.

In Steve Jobs’ biography, Walter Isaacson briefly describes Jobs handling of the matter, mentioning that he called longtime friend and famed marketing expert Regis McKenna for advice.

In a recent interview with AdAge, McKenna describes the advice he gave to Jobs when called in for his advice regarding antennagate.

Steve called me from Hawaii and told me he had a big problem. I knew what it was because I had been reading about it. He asked if I would meet him at Apple the next day, where he led a group discussion. I looked at the data, which was really interesting. They had more complaints and service calls on the phone before it than they did on the iPhone 4. Because of that, I did not think it was a significant problem. I thought it was a media-cycle issue and that they should address it with the data they had and be confident about the outcome rather than be apologetic. That’s what Steve did. The issue vanished within probably 10 days.

Jobs held a media event in mid-July of 2010 to address the iPhone 4 controversy and as McKenna suggested, Jobs stuck strictly to the data. Jobs, for instance, noted that .55% of users had called AppleCare about reception problems (not a large number for Apple historically) and that return rates were lower than they were for the iPhone 3GS.

Jobs also received special permission from AT&T to release the rate of dropped calls.

How many additional calls are dropped per additional 100 calls you make, and I can tell you, since we’re being transparent.. that even though we believe the antenna is superior, I must report to you that the iPhone 4 call drops more calls per 100 than the iPhone 3GS. That’s what the data says. So how many more calls per 100 does the iPhone 4 drop than the iPhone 3GS? Again, listening to antennagate, it must be dropping nearly half the calls… This is the hard data. The iPhone 4 drops less than 1 additional call per 100.

Killin’ em with data.

via AdAge

Yelp went public two weeks ago, and as these things tend to go, the stock quickly rose up to $25ish a share, giving the online review site a valuation of $1.5 billion. Not too bad for a company still looking to deliver positive earnings.

But we’re not here to talk about the merits of Yelp’s valuation or anything of the like.

Rather, we’re here to point out that Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppleman looks remarkably similar to George Clooney, at least in this picture. Other photos of Stoppleman look nothing like Clooney, but the resemblance in this photo is so stark we thought we’d pass it along.

You might recall that Google at one point reportedly made a $500 million offer to Yelp, an offer which Stoppleman refused. Looks like he made the right call.

Not every medium lends itself to advertising, even if we’re talking about tends if not hundreds of millions of active users.

Sir Martin Sorrel insightfully points out:

The point is that Facebook is a social medium, not an advertising one, like search or display. It certainly is one of the most powerful, if not the most powerful branding medium. It is, however, a word of mouth or PR medium. You interrupt social conversations with commercial messages at your peril.

I think this is especially true with respect to Twitter. With all of the personal data Facebook has on its users, advertising there can be laser targeted. That’s not to say it’s a winning strategy, but there’s something there.

via Gigaom

Quite fascinatingly, Liz Gannes reports that Digg founder and all-around Web 2.0 maven Kevin Rose has been hired by Google.

It remains unclear what Rose’s role within the company will be, but something social is undoubtedly a safe bet. The hiring comes at an interesting time, or perhaps not, given that Rose’s latest venture – the app incubator Milk – announced yesterday that its first app (Oink) would be discontinued. Notably, Oink netted 150,000 downloads in its first month of availability.

Google is not outright buying or “acquiring” Milk, the sources explicitly said, but Rose and some others from the company have been hired. It’s not clear what will happen to Milk after Rose joins Google.

Google declined to comment and Rose did not reply to multiple requests.

Rose’s first day at Google is to be this Monday, the sources said.

Also note that Google Ventures was an investor in Milk.

Rose of course is a tech web celeb stemming from his involvement with Digg and the uber-popular Diggnation podcast he co-hosted with Alex Albrecht. Could Rose’s new job at Google be a play to leverage Rose’s popularity to help increase visibility for Google+?

Gannes also points out that Google, back in 2008, actually made moves to acquire Digg before the deal ultimately fell through.

via All Things D

During Apple’s iPad unveiling last week, Epic Games president Mike Capps took a few minutes to demo Infinity Blade: Dungeons, the latest installment of the exceedingly popular Infinity series.

During the course of the demo, Capps mentioned that the new iPad “has more memory and a higher resolution than the Xbox 360 or the PS 3.”

Capps’ statement expectedly set off a series of online debates amongst gamers who challenged the implications of Capps’ assertion. After all, the platform with more memory, for example, doesn’t necessarily transform it into the best gaming platform.

The reality is that console to console comparisons are pointless. The fact is that the iPad has emerged as a bone fide gaming platform, and now that iOS has already taken a significant amount of marketshare from Nintendo, is it possible that Apple’s new iPad will now be able to compete with the big boys of gaming?

Epic Games president Mike Capps believes so quite emphatically.

Speaking to Reuters, Capps said:

Apple is definitely building their devices as if they care a lot about ‘triple-A’ games. It is quite easy to imagine a world where an iPad is more powerful than a home console, where it wirelessly talks to your TV and wirelessly talks to your controller and becomes your new console.

And Electronic Arts, or EA if you’re so inclined, is also keeping a close eye on what Apple’s up to in the gaming space.

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Jesus Diaz put up a fascinating comparison of the 512×512 icons Apple currently uses on the Mac and iOS devices and the 16×16 icons Apple used on the original Mac.

Absolutely incredible.

Here are some more staggering numbers: 28 years ago, a monochrome icon on the Mac was 16 x 16 pixels. It only took 32 bytes of memory. Compare to the 512 x 512 pixels of each iOS’ icon (required to go on the App Store). It takes four times the total video memory of the original Mac to represent a single icon in iOS at full size. Of course, iOS’ icons are not shown on screen at that size. They are much smaller—114 x 114 on the iPad. Eventually, however, you can be sure that there will be displays that would require that insane pixel density.

via Gizmodo

You won’t find a more thorough review of the new iPad than Josh Topolsky’s piece for The Verge:

Yes, this display is outrageous. It’s stunning. It’s incredible. I’m not being hyperbolic or exaggerative when I say it is easily the most beautiful computer display I have ever looked at. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that you hold this in your hands, or maybe it’s the technology that Apple is utilizing, or maybe it’s the responsiveness of iOS — but there’s something almost bizarre about how good this screen is. After the launch event, I described the screen as “surreal,” and I still think that’s a pretty good fit.

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Let’s be clear: the new iPad is in a class by itself, just as its predecessor was. As the latest product in a lineage of devices that defined this category, the iPad continues to stand head and shoulders above the competition. With the addition of the Retina display, LTE, more memory, and a more powerful CPU, Apple has absolutely held onto the iPad’s market position as the dominant player and product to beat.

via The Verge