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Just a little while ago, though, Apple released their earnings report for the second quarter of the 2012 fiscal year, and the news was quite good. Apple generated $39.2 billion in revenue for the quarter and sold 35.1 million iPhones, both figures beating Wall Street expectations. As a result, Apple’s stock surged in after-hours trading. The surge not only made up for losses during this morning’s worries over possible diminished iPhone sales, but also for declines earlier in the month.

Here are some other highlights from the earnings call:

Proview, the Shenzhen, China-based manufacturer of computer monitors and other devices, has long asserted that it owns the ‘iPad’ name in that country, and has sued Apple Inc. for roughly $2 billion in copyright infringement damages. Here is Proview’s basic take on the matter -

Proview Technology (Shenzhen) is the legal registrant of the trademark “IPAD” (No. 1590557, registered with the trademark office of the State Administration for Industry and Commerce) and shall enjoy exclusive rights to use the trademark.

Proview claims to have owned the iPad name since 2001, and has filed dozens of lawsuits, in attempts to block all iPad sales. A high court Guangzhou, China, has been reviewing the Proview case, and now Yan Xiaohong, Deputy Director of the National Copyright Administration, told reporters in Beijing that China generally regards Proview as being the true owner of the iPad trademark. So far, Apple has been able to bring iPads into China, but perhaps the tables will turn in Proview’s favor, yet again.

Xiaohong states, “The dispute between Apple and Shenzhen Proview concerning the iPad trademark is going through the judicial process – Proview is still the lawful representative and user of the trademark.” The statement is really nothing new for Apple, who has so far had to jump through all sorts of technicality hoops in China, which is somewhat ironic, considering that full-on fake Apple Stores have been popping up all around the country – fake to the point where employees believe their paychecks are actually coming from Cupertino. Still, Apple, being one of those real companies, has to fall in line with protocol, as China sorts out its image as an emerging power on the global scene.

Recent data suggests that Androids lead in smartphone market share may not be all it’s cracked up to be. According to analytics data published by Chitika Insights, Android’s share of actual mobile web traffic is far less than that of Apple’s iOS line.

Chitika Insights’s Mobile Dominance tracker measures the amount of web traffic from various devices based on hits to the company’s numerous ads across the web. In the past similar data has been used to measure iOS’s web traffic against OS X’s, and to track the adoption rates of the new iPad in real time. Chitika data showed that the new iPad rapidly came to account for 6% of all iPad web traffic, and more recently demonstrated that the adoption of the new iPad was heaviest in coastal states (where median income is higher).

According to the iOS vs. Android data, Android’s dominance in terms of market share does not translate into higher web traffic. Chitika’s data shows that the iOS platform enjoys a huge advantage over the Android platform in that area.

Is it possible that Android is on its way down? Does the difference in web traffic mean that iOS could take market share back from Android? Let us know what you think in the comments.

Facebook has revealed that its HTML5 site has twice as many users as its iOS and Android apps combined. But that’s actually a problem, because Apple and Google’s mobile browsers don’t support photo uploads or high-performance animation for HTML5 — features that are crucial to getting Facebook mobile site users sharing more and convincing app developers to port to HTML5 where Facebook can tax payments.

To encourage mobile browser advancement, Facebook formed the W3C community group, but Apple and Google, the two partners it needs most, have refused to join. Since these oft-rivals to the social network own the dominant mobile browsers Safari and Chrome, Facebook’s efforts may have little impact, HTML5 apps and games will stay inferior, and both Facebook and the end user will miss out.

The audience for great HTML5 apps could be huge. When Facebook stopped reporting the user counts of its iOS and Android apps to AppData, Android had 95 million MAU, iPhone had 105 million MAU, and iPad had 20 million MAU. Given their trajectory they could now have well over 235 million combined monthly active users, and so could its HTML5 site. As of a few months ago, Facebook was driving 120 million visits a month to HTML5 apps. This all means Facebook has a big financial incentive to push the advancement of mobile browser standards.

Facebook doesn’t view its HTML5 app support as a traditional mobile app platform like iOS or Android. Rather it thinks of itself as a social layer that’s integrated into iOS, Android, and HTML5, but that happens to support payments for mobile web apps. The core of Facebook’s business is advertising, but it still makes healthy revenues from the 30% Credits tax on its web game canvas. As more and more gaming shifts to mobile, though, it would help if HTML5 was good enough to support advanced apps that Facebook could then offer viral distribution for and monetize in return.

To fill us in on how it’s trying to jumpstart mobile browser progress, Facebook recently brought several journalists to its headquarters to meet James Pearce, head of mobile developer relations. This year Facebook released the open source Ringmark mobile browser testing suite that shows how many of the core capabilities necessary to build HTML5 apps does a browser support. To date, no browser or device has completed Ring 1, which includes camera access, DRM, and accelerated canvas for graphics-intensive games.

Safari and Chrome could probably become Ring 1-complete if Apple and Google really wanted them to, but they’re focused on their surprisingly successful native app platforms. Better HTML5 support would also mean developers could port their current iOS and Android apps to HTML5, giving users options beyond the app store where Apple and Google can’t monetize payments.

In hopes of persuading them to juice up their mobile browsers, Facebook created the WC3 community group to galvanize support from app developer, carriers, and OEMs, and the rest of the mobile industry. Mozilla and Opera are on board, but they don’t have enough distribution to make that significant. If Facebook can amass a enough rabble-rousers maybe it can get popular mobile browsers to do comply.

Pearce didn’t address the two other web giants with “Yo”, but he did tell us Apple and “Google [are] the audience for what this community group is producing. Its output is a series of prioritizations about what the browser vendors need to do. It’d be wonderful if in the future we saw Ring 1 browsers. Everyone in the industry has the motivation to see this be successful. We’re not swimming against the tide here. There’s not necessarily a need for us to beat anyone with a stick. They know this needs to happen.”

Apple and Google should put politics aside and the user first, devote more resources to mobile browser development, and bring mobile Safari and Chrome up to snuff. There’s certainly some shortcomings to HTML5, but Apple and Google employ some of the smartest people in the world. Even if it helps Facebook, it’s the right thing to do. Maybe one day an Instagram or even an Infinity Blade could run straight from your mobile browser.

Postscript: Unfortunately, despite their app sales revenue being dwarfed by Apple mobile hardware and Google mobile advertising, these two still have a vested interest in seeing HTML5 lag behind native apps. Don’t expect them to pour money into HTML5 until they absolutely have to.

Apple doesn't often use celebrities in its advertising. (Hodgman and Long don't really count—they were both largely unknown at the outset of "Get a Mac," and they played characters, not themselves.) But now, to freshen things up after 84 mostly product-demo spots, the marketer has injected a little star power into its iPhone campaign.

Two new spots from TBWAMedia Arts Lab, directed by Bryan Buckley, feature Zooey Deschanel and Samuel L. Jackson kicking around their respective homes, chatting with Siri to get things done. In Zooey's case, it's more about not getting things done—she's happily stuck inside on a rainy day, and prompts Siri to get tomato soup delivered and play some music on the stereo. (She also wants to be reminded to clean up her music room—but not until the next day.) Jackson, meanwhile, has a more romantic agenda. He's planning to cook dinner for his wife, and gets Siri to help him with the shopping and cooking. (He then gives this helper the night off.)

The new spots, which broke Monday night, are classic Apple—as clean, simple and classy as ever. But while previous Siri spots were somewhat chopped up, showing various people interacting with Siri, the new ones—by sticking with one person—perhaps give a better idea of how one individual could best make use of the personal assistant over the course of a day.

Deschanel and Jackson are inspired choices, too—the it girl of the moment on the one hand, and one of Hollywood's great personalities on the other. Apple never aims for second best. These spots uphold that tradition admirably.

CREDITS
Client: Apple iPhone (Siri)
Agency: TBWAMedia Arts Lab
Chief Creative Officer: Duncan Milner
Executive Creative Directors: Eric Grunbaum, Scott Trattner
Group Creative Director: Chuck Monn
Creative Director: Chris Ribiero
Associate Creative Directors: Niraj Zaveri, Mark Sloan
Copywriters: Kevin Butler, Brooks Jackson
Agency Producers: Mallory Gordon, Stephanie Gocke, Trang Huynh
Production Company: Hungry Man Films
Director: Bryan Buckley
Director of Photography: Scott Henriksen
Editorial Company: Nomad Editing Co.
Editors: Jared Coller ("Rainy Day"), Glenn Martin ("Date Night")
Postproduction Company: The Mill
Lead Flame Artist: Phil Crowe
Colorist: Adam Scott

It’s nice of Apple to always include a pair of those patented white earbuds with every iPhone and iPod. In a way, having a those two little small white protrusions hanging in your outer ear became a status symbol of The Cool in the aughts. However, for me and several other Apple customers I’ve known, there has always been one persistent problem: the damn things never want to stay in your ears.

AppleInsider discovered today a couple of new patent applications that Apple has filed, but don’t hold your breath because unless there’s some super secret, blindly sophisticated detail in the designs, they don’t appear to be an improvement in keeping the earbuds in your ears. Instead, the patents describe a design innovation Apple’s calling a “unibody” appearance wherein the seams created by all of the connecting parts – wires, jack, different pieces of the earbud itself – will be polished and welded down so as to create a seamless appearance. In other words, the earbuds will just look like one flexible, solid piece.

The second patent that Apple’s filed may have a better utility to its millions of consumers. Simply put, it’s a new design of the part of the earbud where the music comes out of that will hopefully prevent your grody earwax from clogging up the earbud’s holes, thus dampening the sound and clarity of the music.

At least now when the earbuds fall out of your ears while you’re on the treadmill or simply sitting still, nobody will know if you don’t know how to properly clean your ears out.

Will Apple make a 7 inch iPad? That’s the question being batted around yet again today. The true answer right now is easy: I don’t know. No one does. Most likely not even Apple. They’re undoubtedly thinking about it. And may even have to make a call soon. But it has probably not been decided just yet. But that’s a lame answer. Let’s sexy it up using history, logic, and common sense.

Will Apple make a 7 inch iPad?

Yes.

This topic came up today because of remarks John Gruber made during a podcast he records on a weekly basis with Dan Benjamin. When Benjamin asked Gruber about the possibility of Apple making a 7 inch tablet, Gruber responded: “Well, I don’t know. What I do know is that they have one in the lab. A 7.85 inch iPad that runs at 1024×768. It’s just like the regular iPad shrunk down a bit.”

This should surprise no one. Apple has many prototypes of various devices in different stages of the product lifecycle. They probably have a few other variations of the iPad as well, and they probably have for years (pre-dating the iPhone even). Most prototypes never see the light of day. But I believe this one that Gruber is talking about will.

Again, I have no actual inside information here. But just think about it for a second.

Apple views the iPad as the future of general computing. They already sell in far greater quantity than Macs (and every other PC). And Apple drops hints from time to time that the category may even eventually be bigger than the crown jewel of their entire kingdom: the iPhone.

Apple may or may not be able to take the iPad to such heights with one form factor. But it will be a lot easier if they have two.

Apple often starts product lines with the Henry Ford mentality: “You can have any color as long as it’s black.” Mac, MacBook, iMac, iPod, etc. As the product matures, so does the offering. New form factors. New sizes.

The one major exception, of course, is the iPhone. It has always had the 3.5 inch screen even as the competition has gone bigger — sometimes ridiculously so. But you can certainly make the argument that the iPhone exception is the right call. A mobile phone has to be portable enough to carry around all the time comfortably. And you want to be able to use it with one hand (thumb reach). And given Apple’s preference towards pixel-perfect design, keeping the screen the same size ensures apps are relatively uniform.

The iPad doesn’t have the same constraints. At 9.7 inches, you obviously can’t carry it in your pocket. Nor can you use it with one hand. The proportional design aspect remains true (the iPad ratio exactly doubled the iPhone ratio), but as Gruber points out, a 7.85 inch screen running at the original iPad’s 1024×768 resolution would keep things simple for developers. It could work. And it will.

But wait, won’t users have to whittle down their fingers with sandpaper to use a 7 inch screen? Steve Jobs did in fact suggest this a few times. But he said a lot of things. In fact, if you look throughout the history of Apple, you can often predict that Apple is eventually going to do something if Jobs implied in the past that they never would. Look at your iPad right now. There’s plenty of room to shrink things a bit. Apps and their attributes just have to remain basically in proportion.

But even at a high level, all of this is too technical. The bottom line is that there isn’t a week that goes by without someone coming up to me and gushing about the iPad, but wishing it was a bit smaller. Not everyone feels this way, of course. And that’s why Apple will keep the 9.7 inch model as well. But there are plenty of folks out there who want a smaller version.

The fact of the matter is that the iPad is great at many things and the list is constantly expanding. But it’s not great for holding up for prolonged periods of time in certain settings. This is problematic for say, reading in bed. It’s not that it’s too heavy, it’s not. But the large size does make it a bit clunky at times. A 7 inch iPad would be perfect in many of those situations.

Of course, that alone would not be enough for Apple to do the smaller iPad. But like the iPod mini (and nano), Apple understands the mentality that smaller is often better in the eyes of many. The mini and nano eventually became far more popular than the original iPod. (Some) options are important. None more so than pricing options.

The Kindle Fire has a 7-inch screen. It’s $199. By most accounts, it’s pretty poor when compared to the iPad. But that isn’t stopping millions of people from buying them. $199 to $499 (the entry-level new iPad) is a big jump. Even $199 to $399 (the iPad 2′s new price) is a big jump. If Apple can sell the iPad 2 at $399 with a healthy margin, imagine what they could do with a smaller-screen iPad? I wouldn’t rule out $299.

Paying $199 for a 7 inch Kindle Fire versus $299 for a 7.85 inch iPad would be a significantly harder call for many consumers. For many others, it would be an obvious one: get the iPad.

Also consider the forthcoming Google-branded tablet. While few details are known about it, everything leaking out suggest a very competitive price compared to the Kindle Fire, and as such, likely a similar form factor. In the two years since the iPad first launch, everyone has tried and failed to compete directly against Apple. The only avenue getting any traction is this smaller and cheaper Kindle Fire. And it’s only getting some traction because it’s a space where Apple is simply not competing. Yet.

Consider the 11-inch MacBook Air versus the 13-inch MacBook Air. I’ve had both models. The reality is that they’re not all that different. The 11 is (obviously) smaller and lighter, but the 13 is pretty damn small and light compared to just about any other notebook ever created. Still, Apple offers both. Consider also the MacBook Pro line. 13 inch. 15 inch. 17 inch. The reality again is that they’re not all that much different on a macro level. But Apple still offers all of them.

You could certainly argue that a 7 inch iPad versus a 9 inch iPad is a more meaningful difference since you have to be holding it all the time to use it. You’ll notice it more. Some people will prefer one size. Some will prefer the other. In some cases, it will depend on the circumstance. Plenty of folks will probably buy both. A 7 inch for the kids, a 9 inch for the grownups, for example. Or maybe a 9 inch for work and a 7 inch for home.

I also suspect that like the difference in laptop sizes, the smaller iPad would come less juiced-up in the spec category. Since the spec is dead, Apple probably won’t play this up much, but to keep costs down, maybe the smaller iPad would have a last-generation chip. Or maybe it would have a slightly less powerful one than the current generation 9 inch iPad.

Maybe it would also have less storage. Or maybe the high range of the storage options would simply be less. Apple will clearly soon move to a 128 GB option for the 9 inch iPad and drop the 16 GB option. Maybe a 7 inch iPad would start at 16 GB and only give the option to go up to 64 GB.

Maybe the 7 inch would have slightly less battery life due to less physical space for a battery. Or maybe it would be the same because the smaller screen would draw less power.

Lots of possibilities. The point is, I suspect that with the 7 inch iPad, Apple would vary more than just the screen size. It would be the most important difference, but not the only one. And it would result in Apple selling a ton of both models. And it would drive even more revenue and profit Apple’s way while keeping their rivals at bay.

I’m basically writing this post so that when Apple does release a 7 inch iPad at some point in the future, I can point back here and say “I told you so”. Cause I did. The option is just sitting on the table waiting for Apple to pounce. This is about the future of computing. It’s about expanding the brand. It’s about securing the stake. It makes sense. It will happen.

It’s a sin I know almost too well as a blogger. It’s slow going for news on a Friday night and the pageview gods send you a reprieve in the form of a tweet.

A former Apple engineer is berating the company’s design ethic in the post-Jobs era in less than 140 characters?

Score! Suddenly one story becomes another story then another story then another story then another story.

Until it’s a crisis! ZOMG! Apple is over! The company is finished!

Interested in the actual story, I talked with former Apple TV engineer Mike Margolis about the tweet that launched a thousand blog posts.

So here’s what he said on Twitter.

@aral Fun fact – those new designs were tossed out 5 years ago because SJ didn’t like them. Now there is nobody to say “no” to bad design.

— Michael Margolis ッ (@yipe) March 24, 2012

Here are his thoughts with far more context:

I woke up this morning with hundreds of new followers on Twitter and two dozen text messages from friends – many of them Apple employees past and present. Turns out a few of my tweets were being blogged about. I wouldn’t mind, except many people were misquoting and painting doom and gloom scenarios for Apple and making false claims about the design teams at Apple. I have not been present for any of the Apple TV product discussions for more than four years, so I’m a bit surprised that everyone is all atwitter about what SJ rejected so long ago and what that means today.

Specifically, I stated in a tweet that Steve did not like the grid design five years ago. That is absolutely 100% true. It’s also true that five years ago the iPad didn’t exist, Apple users weren’t in love with app-grid interfaces like they are now, a streaming-only iCloud connected device was a pipe dream, and AppleTV did not have great new third party content like YouTube, Netflix, Vimeo, NBA, NFL, and more. The UI didn’t make much sense back then but it makes much more sense now. If you compare Front Row to AppleTV 1.0,  ”AppleTV Take 2″, and the new AppleTV UI it is clear that the product is continually improving. The new UI is no doubt cleaner, simpler, easier to use, and more in line with the now-popular iPad UI and Lion’s Launchpad.

Timing and context are crucial – both on Twitter and in product design.

Steve rejecting a design five years ago isn’t a huge deal. Steve was well known for rejecting ideas, tweaking them, and turning them into something even better. And that’s a very good thing. One of my favorite parts of working at Apple was knowing that SJ said “no” to most everything initially, even if he later came to like it, advocate for it, and eventually proudly present it on stage. This helped the company stay focused and drove people to constantly improve, iterate, and turn the proverbial knob to 11 on everything.

A quick clarification: many sites are now worried that there is only a single designer in the consumer apps team. That is absolutely not true. I simply stated (in 140 characters) that one designer from the consumer apps team was largely responsible for the Apple TV visual design, not Jonathan Ive.

Margolis adds that he no longer owns any Apple stock and hasn’t been employed by the company since 2008.

The latest in its series of discussions about the future of the internet, the Pew Internet Project released a new report this morning that wades into the mobile “apps vs. web” debate. It’s positioned as a metaphor or surrogate for a larger argument about the battle of platforms…



Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.

Address-gate is just getting started in Washington. Two leading Democrats launched an inquiry Thursday into the data collection practices of social apps for Apple devices, a big privacy issue that flared up last month when it was discovered that some mobile apps were collecting user's address books and accessing photos without permission and in violation of Apple's guidelines.

The lawmakers launching the probe are Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), ranking member of the Energy & Commerce Committee; and G.K. Butterfield (D-N.C.), ranking member of the Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade. They intend to build a record of the privacy and security practices in the app marketplace as the subcommittee continues to hold a series of privacy hearings.

The 34 companies that received the letter include Facebook, Twitter, Apple and Foursquare. All are listed in the "social networking" subcategory in the iPhone essentials area of Apple's App Store. They have until April 12 to answer nine questions detailing the companies' privacy policies, data collection and sharing practices.

The pair of lawmakers began looking into the privacy and data collection of social apps with a letter to Apple when the news broke in February that social networking app "Path" had been accessing consumer's address books without permission.

Lawmakers also asked the companies to list membership to any industry self-regulatory organizations. The Mobile Marketing Association's guidelines specifically require social networking platforms to obtain prior consent from the user before pulling contact information, friend lists, login information, photos or check-ins.

"Congressman Waxman and Butterfield are right to ask these questions," said Greg Stuart, the CEO of MMA. "Apps developers and sellers should realize that it's time to adopt privacy policies that provide apps customers with transparency, notice and choice."