As expected, this week’s news has been dominated by MacWord Expo rumors. Coming on strong as rumors of an update to the Mac Mini, including a new black and aluminum look and updates that match the video systems in the new MacBooks. This rumor actually makes sense and would fit the level of expectation connected to the keynote given, not by Steve Jobs, but by Apple VP Phil Schiller. A new Mini, along with Snow Leopard details would make sense.
There is also a new rumor floating around that iWork will be taken online as a set of Web-based apps and part of MobileMe. This seems far more unlikely, as the iWork apps have a lot of functionality that would be difficult to make into Web-based applications. Plus, Apple’s own iWeb, which would seem to be something that should have been Web-based, isn’t.
Outside of the rumors, the iPhone began selling this week at Walmart, giving Apple another 5,000 locations or so where you can buy the phone. Read my blog post about this strategy. Plus, AT&T began selling refurbished iPhones for only $99.
Buy an iPhone at Walmart, save $2!
$2? What’s the big deal? Why is everyone so excited about the iPhone being at Walmart?
After all, it has been available at 250 Apple Stores in the U.S. since mid 2007. And it can be found at even more AT&T stores. But Walmart does add one very interesting aspect — besides the $2.
Walmart grew to become the nation’s largest retailer by starting outside of cities. Instead, Sam Walton but his stores in the thousands of small towns and cities across the country. They went where others wouldn’t go. Even today, when there are plenty of Walmarts in the big cities too, Walmart can be found in just about every small city and town in the U.S.
So, for Apple and the iPhone, this means that they can now reach places that the Apple Store and AT&T can’t. For instance, in my home state of Colorado, there are six Apple Stores. Five are in the Denver/Boulder area and one in Colorado Springs. But go west across the mountains and you get to Grand Junction where there you are a four hour drive from the nearest Apple Store and you were previously left with only one choice: a single AT&T store that sells the iPhone (at least according to the AT&T site). But you have three Walmarts.
Now go south to Durango, Colorado. A great place. But no Apple Store, no AT&T store. But 2 Walmarts.
You get the idea. With 5,700+ Walmarts Apple has significantly extended its iPhone sales reach.
Walmart has been known to make or break small manufacturing companies by simply deciding whether or not to stock their product. Apple’s OK with or without Walmart, but with this deal they move one step closer to dominating the smart phone market.
It is finally time for the MacWorld rumors to start flying. We’re only two weeks away from the big show now, but it no longer seems like a big show with Steve Jobs sitting it out. Expectations for Apple announcements are low.
The most outrageous rumors have to do with Apple announcing a new mini-laptop netbook or an iPhone Nano. Other rumors tell of new iMacs or a new Mac Mini. But more sensible rumors say that Apple VP Phil Schiller will simply talk about Snow Leopard during his keynote.
Outside of the rumors, there is little news. In Britain, Mac users finally get the BBC iPlayer on Macs. This application is used to view BBC programs on computers and the BBC received criticism for originally making it Windows-only.
The MobileMe service seems to be receiving continuous attention from the developers as Mac OS X 10.5.6 introduced some speed improvements for syncing data — and the Web applications in MobileMe also received updates in the past week.
Some rumors are going around that Apple will release a netbook next year. But there are many reasons why this simply won’t happen. The rumors are the result of wishful thinking by people who love the concept of a netbook and would naturally like to see one from Apple.
A netbook is a small ultra-portable laptop that is very inexpensive. A typical one costs less than $500 and weighs less than 3 pounds. They have very small screens and slow, energy-efficient processors. They are called netbooks because they are primarily for email and Web surfing, not for processor-intensive applications or development.
I love them too, and wish Apple would come out with one. But here is why they probably aren’t even considering it.
So don’t hold your breath for a Mac netbook. I’m sure Apple has a iPod Touch “plus” or “pro” as a prototype somewhere, and maybe that will emerge one day. But I think the only budget Mac that will be available for a long time will be the Mini. Look for an update to that in January.
A quick look at eleven iPhone games, including Fieldrunners, Pac-Man, SinkSub, Touch Physics, Idle Hands, Ocarina and more.
Big news this week as Apple dropped a bomb on the Mac community by announcing that there will not be any Steve Jobs keynote at this year’s MacWorld Expo. Even more shocking was the fact that Apple won’t be at next year’s MacWorld Expo at all.
Not only is this the end of an era for Apple and our community, but it probably means there aren’t going to be any big announcements in January, either. See this blog post about it.
The Mac OS X team was busy this week with the release of Mac OS 10.5.6. This consisted of lots of bug fixes, and much faster syncing for MobileMe users. There were also some security patches involved, so make sure you run Software Update.
It’s also time for last-minute holiday shopping. You can get some good gift suggestions for Mac and iPhone users in our latest gift guide.
We’ve also released a new set of iPhone ringtones this week, featuring Los Angeles artist and podcaster Anji Bee.
Check out some gift ideas for Mac and iPhone users that cost less than $50: headphones, headsets, cooling pads, media readers and even a game.
The MacWorld Expo will go on next month as usual, but without Steve Jobs. Instead Apple Senior VP Phil Schiller will make an address. I’m sure nothing ground-breaking will be announced.
In addition, Apple said this is the last time they will participate in the MacWorld Expo, which is, after all, an independent event, not something Apple owns.
Apple stated today:
…trade shows have become a very minor part of how Apple reaches its customers. The increasing popularity of Apple’s Retail Stores, which more than 3.5 million people visit every week, and the Apple.com website enable Apple to directly reach more than a hundred million customers around the world in innovative new ways.
So why this change? I think it is simply that Jobs and Apple are growing tired of having to conform to an annual schedule of producing huge announcements. Instead, they’ve been working hard to prove that they can have their own “MacWorld keynote” whenever they want, as Jobs did several times over the last few years with special events held at the Apple campus.
This is probably a good year to start, too, as the lack of rumors and the recent refresh of most of the Apple Mac line and iPhones makes it obvious that Apple didn’t have anything to announce. They can’t have Jobs going up there to announce “Snow Leopard is still coming” or a new video adapter cable.
I think what we’ll see from now on is periodic events held at Apple that are also broadcast to Apple stores worldwide.
Oh, and then there will still be the WWDC — the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference. But that is something Apple has complete control of. They’ve shifted the dates around for that many times, and can even be expected to skip a year here or there, as Microsoft has done with their comparable conference.
So this is probably all about Apple taking even more control over their message. Not just what that message is, but when it arrives as well.
Another slow news week as Apple probably isn’t going to announce anything new until the MacWorld Expo in early January.
But the iPhone sales division does seem to be busy. AT&T is now allowing customers to order iPhones online, and then activate them at home. Apple started allowing people to purchase iPhone gift certificates a few weeks ago as well, giving you two ways to surprise someone with an iPhone under the tree this year.
In addition, rumors are flying that Walmart will soon start offering iPhones. This may be a good place to put iPhones since a lot of medium-sized cities and towns in the U.S. don’t have an Apple store, but they usually have a Walmart.
Iconfactory engineer Craig Hockenberry, who worked on the iPhone apps Frenzic and Twitterific, wrote an open letter to Steve Jobs complaining about how there are so many free and 99 cent applications in the iPhone App Store that developing more useful and complex apps is becoming uneconomical. He has a point. You can read his letter here.
If you were lucky enough to get an new MacBook of any flavor in the last few months, Apple has a firmware update available through the Software Update feature of Mac OS X. Looks like it mostly fixes issues with the power adapter and battery indicator lights.
Surveys of market share come out all the time. This week, one appeared that put Mac at almost 9 percent of all the users out there. That’s a pretty high number, considering that it wasn’t too long ago we were under 5 percent.
Even more surprising is that on the Web, Internet Explorer, the main Windows-only browser, is now under 90 percent in browser share. This means that Firefox is gaining and has a real foothold.
So looking just at the first number, consider that 9 percent. That might not be too impressive if you look at it from an OS stand-point. It means that Windows has around 90 percent. That’s extremely dominant.
But if you look at it from a hardware stand-point, it is interesting. Pretty much all of the 9 percent is Apple hardware. But of the other 91 percent, the hardware is divided into a number of manufacturers: Dell, HP, Lenovo, Acer, Toshiba, and so on. I haven’t seen any recent numbers, but I’d have to imagine that Apple is near the top of that list as far as machines sold.
But what the increasing Mac market share, and decreasing IE dominance, mean for us is that hopefully Windows-only Web sites and applications will be a thing of the past. Microsoft itself has shown a great commitment to this with the latest release of Office for Mac. And Electronic Arts at least seems to be trying hard to include Macs as an available platform for every new game.
I think the software industry is doing a good job of including Mac versions right alongside their Windows ones. In addition, hardware is getting better too. There are still some manufacturers that don’t seem to provide Mac drivers or support. And then there are some that do strange things like Fujitsu who offer Mac-specific scanners instead of making their scanners compatible with both Mac and Windows.
Even online media seems to be paying attention to Mac more and more — for instance both Amazon and NetFlix made sure to work on versions of their media players that work on Mac.
But Apple still has work to do to get the word out about this. For instance, I tried to convince a friend of mine to get a Mac instead of a new PC and his biggest fear is that he won’t be able to open his old Word and Excel files, even though I told him about how TextEdit can do it, iWork can do it, OpenOffice and NeoOffice can do it, and he can also get Microsoft Office for Mac for probably less cash than Office for Windows.
Until perceptions like this change, it will be harder and harder for the Mac to gain market share.
Learn how to control the Mac OS X Finder using only the keyboard. You can navigate through the menu bar, menu bar status items, Finder windows and even the Dock.
