With rumors around that Apple is interested in Twitter or Electronic Arts, there is debate whether either purchase would make sense. Apple has plenty of cash, and the argument is strong that Apple’s stockholders aren’t investing so Apple could just accumulate cash. So Apple probably should consider some sort of acquisition, in addition to its usual internal development.
I think the best potential lies with Facebook.
Why? Because Facebook can help sell more Macs and iPhones. And that is all that Apple needs to support the acquisition, upkeep and future development.
On the other hand, Facebook has a problem: how to make money. I seriously doubt that the current Facebook ad model will ever support the company.
So, if Apple bought Facebook, here’s what they could do with it. Leave the current feature set of Facebook that works on Mac and Windows through the Web browser and mobile apps. Then start tying iLife and other Mac applications to Facebook.
For instance, link iPhoto and Facebook photos as closely as possible. They’ve already started with this, but get even closer and create new features that only work from iPhoto.
The same can be done with iMovie for video, Address Book for managing your Facebook friends, and iCal for events. Start making new Mac application that tie into parts of Facebook is ways that Windows users cannot.
So, in other words, make it so that if you really want to be a Facebook power user, you should get a Mac.
They can also create a Facebook Pro, which would really be a merging of MobileMe and Facebook. That could make the entire Facebook division profitable, and the Mac marketing just a bonus.
It was all about the rumors this week. Rumor has it that Mac OS X 10.5.7 will get released before the end of the week. Not a major update, to be sure, but something that may bring little tweaks and bug fixes to Leopard.
Also, lots of talk this week about whether the iPhone will remain AT&T-only in the U.S. Speculation ranges from an open iPhone to Verizon sharing with AT&T. Some also think that Verizon talks could have to do with adding 3G connectivity to future MacBooks.
Apple is also speculated to be in talks with Twitter and perhaps Electronic Arts, the game publisher, as potential acquisitions. Both seem pretty unlikely, but Apple does have plenty of cash on hand to make such deals.
You can always keep up-to-date with all Apple rumors at the MacMost Apple rumors page.
Find out how to replace applications that you may have accidentally deleted from your Mac.
Last year the Apple World Wide Developers Conference sold out, something that had never happened before. It was due to the huge interest in iPhone development. This year, the event sold out even faster as that community grows.
The conference will be from June 8 to 12 and will focus on the iPhone 3.0 operating system which has been available for developers for some time but won’t be released until about the time of the WWDC.
Rumors this week have focused on possible talks between Apple and AT&T rival Verizon. The rumors are not about the iPhone, which is exclusive to AT&T in the U.S., but on the possibility of another device like a wireless tablet or iPhone nano. It would be an odd move for Apple to have some devices use AT&T and others use Verizon, especially considering how some of MobileMe’s functionality is to sync such devices, and users wanting to do so would have to sign up for service with multiple carriers.
Apple issued its quarterly report yesterday showing a $1.21 billion profit and an increase in iPhone and iPod sales. However, Mac sales were down three percent compared to the same quarter last year. More than 2 million Macs were sold in the quarter, with a majority being laptops.
iPod sales continue to be strong, with more then 11 million sold and a 70 percent market share. Almost 800,000 iPhones were sold as well, with more then 21 million iPhones in use today. Apple also had more than $1 billion in revenue from music and related products, probably mostly iTunes music sales.
In other news, several news agencies are re-reporting the existence of a trojan horse virus that was discovered months ago. The trojan came with hacked versions of iWork 09 found on bit torrent networks. While the trojan is real, it is only a concern if you downloaded an infected illegal copy of iWork 09. Those purchasing iWork from Apple or downloading the demo from Apple are not affected. This makes it a very different situation from Windows users getting infected with viruses through innocent acts of surfing or downloading seemingly legitimate software.
If you aren't using Time Machine to back up your Mac, then it is time to start. Here are some options for a Time Machine backup drive.
In news this week there are reports that Steve Jobs is still very much in charge at Apple, just like he said he would be. Apparently he approves anything major and is involved in design decisions for new and updated products.
One of those might be the upcoming release of Mac OS X 10.5.7, which seems like it could happen any moment now. Reports are that new beta versions are coming out quite often and the new version is expected to appear in Software Update very soon.
Conflicting reports suggest that Mac sales slowed a bit in the first quarter. One report states that market share dropped from 8 to 7.4 percent, while another claims a growth of 7.4 to 7.6 percent. Everyone seems to agree that Apple didn’t gain any ground on its PC rivals. The difference may be in the continued strong sales of netbooks, of which Apple doesn’t have a competitor.
In iPhone news, reports say that Apple and AT&T are working on an update to their original exclusive contract. Some suggest that Apple may make the iPhone non-exclusive to AT&T, while other reports say that the exclusivity will be extended.
I think one of the greatest strengths of the Mac is the software that comes with a new one. Along with standard Mac OS X applications like Mail, Safari, iCal, Address Book and TextEdit, you also get the iLife suite with iMovie, iPhoto, iDVD, GarageBand and iWeb. This takes care of a lot of needs right out of the box. For instance, you can audio and video podcast and make home DVDs without investing in any other software.
But Apple can still do better, and without much effort. Here are a few programs that I think can be easily added to new Macs to sweeten the deal.
1. Since the death of MacPaint, Macs have come without any way to simply draw. A simple program that allows one to draw lines, shapes and edit bitmaps would be a huge plus. Pros would still go to pro software for this, but a casual user could have lots of fun drawing and editing clipart. So I would suggest ImageEdit as a companion to TextEdit.
2. Seems like a lot of people need a very simple FTP program. I just did a video podcast on FTP with Cyberduck, an open source option. But the Finder can actually be used to download from FTP servers. It would be a logical extension of the Finder if you could open a window that was a full FTP connection to a server, as you can do with afp, smb and iDisk. Then you wouldn’t need an FTP program for a quick upload. Support for SFTP amd FTP with SSL would be a mist as well.
3. The Apple II was fascinating because it has Apple Basic. You could program it. The original Mac had Hypercard, which allowed aspiring developers to get their feet wet. The current Macs have Xcode, which is for serious and experienced developers only. Or, you could drop down into Terminal and do some hard-core programming there. But a simple Hypercard-like programming environment would go a long way to getting young people and “tinkerers” hooked on Macs. Since Safari and the Dashboard use JavaScript, and that is a well-documented and supported language, it seems that this would be a natural choice. So some sort of JavaScript programming environment that could produce stand-alone apps and Dashboard Widgets would be a huge plus for Macs both at home and for schools.
4, 5 and 6. Wouldn’t it be great if all Macs came with a word processor, spreadsheet program and presentation software? Well, they almost do. You just have to pay a little extra for iWork. But what if iWork came with every Mac? Which would make more money for Apple: ask people to pay $79 to get iWork, or give iWork away like they do iLife and ask people to pay for the next version. I think they would get more with the “first one is free” iLife model. Plus they would sell more Macs by being able to advertise that Macs come with the pro office suite while PCs charge extra for it.
Also, I think iWork is actually more iEducate. Those three applications probably get as much if not more use among students than among office workers. Pages is used to write papers, and Keynote is used throughout education. Apple even teaches Pages to elementary school students at its “camp” programs.
So there are my six picks. What apps would you like to see come standard with all Macs?
Here at MacMost we get questions all the time: questions about how to do things on Macs, iPods and iPhones, questions about the latest news and rumors, and questions about problems people are dealing with. We figured out a long time ago that we can’t answer all of the questions on the video podcast. Answering the questions by replying to email messages or comments doesn’t really reach others who may also have the same question.
So we’ve started a new podcast called MacAnswers. This is a short audio podcast where each episode answers one simple question.
You can subscribe to the podcast using iTunes and receive new episodes as they are released. We hope to produce about 5 episodes per week.
You can also participate by asking questions. We look forward to answering them!
This week Apple completed the transition of the iTunes store to DRM-free music. So now all music you purchase is without DRM that will lock it only to your computers and iPods. With this change comes variable pricing, meaning that many new songs are now $1.29 instead of the traditional $0.99.
At first, many complained that these same songs were available from other sources like Amazon.com without DRM for only $0.99. But soon Amazon also increased their prices making the two stores in parity.
Anyone who bought copy-protected music at iTunes in the past can now upgrade those songs to the DRM-free versions for a price. Log onto the iTunes store in the iTunes application to see if any of your music is available for upgrade.
It looks like in order to make the music store completely DRM-free, some music has been removed. One can speculate that Apple was unable to get the rights to distribute those songs without DRM.
In other news, Apple released new server hardware this week. The new rack-mountable Xserves feature new processors, drives, memory and lots of options.
