GigaOM » MacBook Pro

How big an area would 1 billion televisions cover?

Om Malik — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 17:31:11 +0000

Editor’s note: The market-research company that put out the report on which this story is based, IHS, initially said that 1 billion TV sets would cover a country the size of Norway. That is, in fact, not accurate, and we’ve corrected our story to reflect that. (A special thanks to the commenters who helped flag the error.)

Over the past four years, TV makers have shipped about a billion television sets. If you combined them, that would be equivalent to a single TV set with a 330-million-square-meter screen, according to IHS, a market research company. That is about the size of a city. Of course, no one knows what screen size those sets have, but it’s still a fun (if unscientific) stat. As for me, I am about to move and so I am getting rid of all the screens in my house except for four: MacBook Pro (Retina), iPad (Original), Kindle Paperwhite and iPhone5. Everything else is going to eBay.

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Apple lowers price on 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro, MacBook Air

Erica Ogg — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 14:06:26 +0000

Just four months after Apple introduced its first 13-inch notebook with Retina display, the company has bumped up some of the specs while lowering some prices on its notebooks. On Wednesday, Apple announced that it is slashing $200 off its base model 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display. The 128GB version will now go for $1,499. The slightly bumped-up 256GB version will also be dropped down to $1,699.

The 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display isn’t getting a price adjustment, but Apple has thrown in a slightly faster 2.4 GHz processor, while the highest-end version now has a 2.7 GHz processor and 16 GB of memory. In addition, The 13-inch MacBook Air with 256GB of storage is now priced at $1,399. Overall, Apple made is a bit less expensive to upgrade to higher capacity storage, like 512GB and 768GB, by about $200 to $300.

Apple says the new models will be available starting Wednesday in Apple’s retail stores, at authorized resellers and on Apple’s website.

The Mac was a particular sore spot in the company’s quarterly results posted last month, as Apple sold about a million or 22 percent fewer during the last quarter of 2012 than it had during the same quarter in 2011. Apple officials blamed the unavailability of new iMac models until the end of the quarter.

This story was updated at 6:41 a.m. PT with additional detail about flash storage updates.

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Apple announces 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display

Eliza Kern — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 17:44:41 +0000

Apple executives announced Tuesday the arrival of the 13-inch MacBook Pro with a Retina display to join the 15-inch edition announced in June, bringing the popular thinner design and Retina display to its MacBook Pro line of laptops. The new computer is 20 percent thinner than the previous version, and weighs one pound less than the 13-inch edition, coming in at 0.75 inches and 3.57 pounds.

The new MacBook Pro has 4.96 million pixels, and will ship beginning Tuesday starting at $1699 with 128GB flash, 8GB RAM, 2.5 Ghz dual-core i5 processor. This makes the 13-inch about $500 less than the 15-inch, which was started at $2,199 to start for the base model. The company says it will have 75 percent less reflection and 28 percent higher contrast than the current generation.

Apple’s Phil Schiller said the new edition will come with a FaceTime HD camera, dual microphones, a backlit keyboard, and up to seven hours of battery life. It also comes with two Thunderbolt and two USB 3.0 ports, as well as a new HDMI port. Schiller emphasized the advantages of the Retina display, noting how attractively it will display photos and applications:

“Searching the web can be like a fine print magazine,” he said.

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And then there were two: what to expect from Apple’s iPad mini event

Erica Ogg — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 12:01:46 +0000

Over the past three years, Apple singlehandedly launched and has continued to dominate the modern, touchscreen tablet market. The company has sold 84 million iPads as of the end of June, and all of them featured a 9.7-inch display. Tuesday is looking like the day we’ll see Apple’s take on a smaller version of its best-selling tablet.

Apple is holding a press event in San Jose, Calif. on Tuesday morning where it is expected to introduce a smaller, thinner, lighter-weight iPad with a 7.85-inch display; one that is expected to be easy on the eyes, but not quite to the level of the Retina display found on its larger iPad sibling, according to many reports.

Though there is enthusiasm for a smaller iPad now, perhaps thanks in part to some demand for Android tablets of that size, it was never a guarantee that Apple would experiment in smaller sizes with its iPad franchise. The company has boasted about the iPad’s larger screen being ideal for viewing videos and photos and browsing the web. And Steve Jobs maintained publicly that going smaller was pointless — he called 7-inch tablets “dead on arrival.” He made that pronouncement on an earnings call almost two years ago to the day that Apple is holding this event.

Why Apple changed its mind

Outside of its design philosophy, Apple is a conservative company — it is borderline allergic to industry fads (keeping away from Blu-ray drives and NFC technology, for instance) and it doesn’t embrace technology until its been proven (Siri and its own Maps app notwithstanding). But it is very adept at spotting where the market is headed. The iPad’s small changes thus far illustrate that: Apple finally added 4G networking and a Retina display earlier this year.

But if you followed Jobs and his career long enough, you know he was extremely prone to changing his mind; a flip-flopper, even. So when it was revealed this summer that before his death, Jobs was “receptive” to the idea of a smaller iPad, it’s really not too big of a shock.

His attitude toward smaller tablets isn’t the only thing that’s changed in the last few years. Apple’s competitors have figured out that, yes, actually people do want a 7-inch tablets. Amazon found that out a year ago. Google released its first branded Nexus tablet this summer and nearly a million are estimated to have been shipped. Microsoft has completely rejiggered its Windows operating system and embraced a new world of integrated hardware and software. The first device it’s choosing to highlight those new products and strategies? A 7-inch touchscreen tablet.

In this light, it’s not surprising that Apple would get used to the idea of a smaller iPad: it can’t just let its biggest rivals lure current or potential customers away with smaller, more easily portable, and cheaper tablets. That would go against one of Jobs’ philosophies, to not allow companies to follow Apple into the market and let them undercut its products on price. As he said about the iPhone, “I think we have to be the best, and I think we have to not leave a price umbrella underneath us.”

The big questions

Though Apple’s plans for a smaller iPad have been a not-very-well-kept secret — this is a theme with Apple lately — there are still big questions we have going into the event. Here’s what we’ll be looking out for:

Price: Will it be more expensive than an iPod touch, but cheaper than an entry-level iPad? That would put it anywhere in the $300 to $498 range. But would Apple dare to go even cheaper than an iPod touch? John Gruber reasons that it may be priced starting at $249.
Screen size fragmentation: iOS runs on a variety of screen sizes: 3.7-inch iPod touch and older iPhones, 4-inch iPhone 5, and 9.7-inch iPad. How will a 7.85-inch display affect those developers who have to tailor their apps to even more screen sizes?
Name: The tech world has dubbed it the “iPad mini,” in a nod to the since-retired iPod mini. But Apple has been known to surprise with its somewhat unpredictable naming conventions.
Connectivity: In an attempt to differentiate a smaller iPad from the original, would Apple possibly make this product Wi-Fi only? Or will Apple offer 4G networking options identical to the larger iPad?
Spotlight on the Mac: This is not going to be an iPad-only show. I’ve heard there will be a new iMac (at long last) and a 13-inch version of the recently introduced MacBook Pro with Retina display. There have also been reports of a new Mac mini.
A new new iPad: Yes, the new (third-generation) iPad was just released in March. But there are reports that Apple will use Tuesday’s event to introduce a brand new 9.7-inch iPad that has been slightly tweaked: with a Lightning connector like the iPhone 5 and new iPod lineup, and new global LTE radios inside. Pricing is said to remain the same.
When can you start buying? It’s not clear when the Mac products would hit, though Apple is often ready to sell those on the day they’re announced. Leaked info indicates a Nov. 2 availability for a smaller iPad, which puts it on store shelves just in time to go head to head with the new Amazon and Microsoft tablets ahead of the holidays.

GigaOM will be live blogging the event Tuesday morning. We’ll kick things off a little before 10 a.m. PT.

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iFixit joins Greenpeace in bashing EPEAT’s recyclability standards

Erica Ogg — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 20:19:30 +0000

A guy who takes computers and gadgets apart for a living is calling shenanigans on ultrathin notebooks getting the coveted EPEAT Gold rating from the green electronics ratings group. iFixit founder and CEO Kyle Wiens in a blog post on Tuesday called the recent findings of an independent EPEAT test, which certified notebooks like Apple’s MacBook Pro with Retina display with the highest possible rating for recyclability, “a clear case of greenwashing.” He added that the group’s environmental standards had been “watered down to an alarming degree.”

Wiens, whose job is to dissect gadgets and create easy-to-understand repair guides for users, is passionate about “sustainable technology” or the recyclability of products and their contribution to electronic waste, as I learned when talking to him for a story last month. His attitude is that when products are hard to repair or are not built to last more than two or three years, they are more easily tossed in the landfill, and contribute to e-waste. Hence his strongly worded opinion about EPEAT’s standards.

He’s suspicious of EPEAT’s investigation, which it outsourced to an independent lab, to reassess whether ultrathin laptops from Apple, Toshiba, Samsung and Lenovo, met the group’s standards for green electronics. The group’s rating is critical to large businesses’ and government agencies’ strict standards for purchasing green computers, so it wanted an outside opinion to back up its findings. It did find that the tools to take apart these notebooks are easy to buy, and that they can be taken apart in less than 30 minutes.

Wiens writes:

At best, the interpretation of the EPEAT Gold standard is laughably out of touch: it claims proprietary Pentalobe screwdrivers [which MacBooks require] are ‘commonly available tools’ and a USB thumb drive is an ‘upgrade.’ At worst, it may mean that recyclers a decade from now will be faced with a mountain of electronic waste they cannot affordably recycle without custom disassembly fixtures and secret manufacturer information.

Wiens isn’t the only high-profile voice to take issue with EPEAT’s recent findings. Greenpeace also voiced disapproval, saying in a press release on Friday, that the group’s decision “to include computers with difficult-to-replace batteries in its green electronics registry will result in less recycling and more e-waste.”

EPEAT did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the criticism.

Apple touched off this brouhaha over EPEAT standards when the company suddenly opted out of the EPEAT rankings earlier this summer. After an outcry from businesses and environmental groups, Apple backed down and admitted that opting out of the certification process that so many companies rely on was “a mistake.”

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Mac apps for a Retina display: Where to find them, and what to look for

Geoffrey Goetz — Sat, 25 Aug 2012 16:00:03 +0000

Having Apple’s new MacBook Pro with Retina display is like having 20/8 vision on the Grand Banks off the island of Newfoundland: the best human eyesight theoretically possible in the foggiest place on earth. You almost need to speak in terms of such absolutes and theoretical limits when measuring and comparing the displays that Apple is selling with the applications that run on its devices. The display technology is more advanced and the software needs to be updated to better accommodate the new abilities of the hardware.

As native applications on the Mac transition to a brighter, sharper world, some applications will appear to be a bit fuzzy around the edges when viewed on a Retina display. Here are some things to look for in the new age of Retina Mac.

Finding applications that support Retina displays

While Adobe has vowed support of Apple’s new Retina display standard from the beginning, other developers like Microsoft have not been nearly as forthcoming. When it come to supporting the Retina display, Apple’s own Mail, Safari, iCal, Address Book, iChat, FaceTime, Photo Booth and TextEdit fit the bill. Additionally, iPhoto, iMovie, iTunes, Aperture, Final Cut Pro X, and Motion all support the Retina display.

Some of my favorite non-Apple apps like Byword, MacJournal, MarsEdit, Pixelmator, SpellTower, MacJournal, 1Password, Day One, Evernote, Google Chrome, Parallels, Reeder and TextExpander all support the Retina display now as well. There are some websites like retinamacapps.com that are keeping track of which apps have been updated, and other sites that list apps they hope will be updated soon. Many app developers are indicating support for the Retina display in their release notes under “what’s new.”

Unfortunately there is no easy way to tell which applications that you already have installed on your Mac do have Retina support. One thing you can do is check out each application’s information by right clicking on the application icon in the Applications Folder, and selecting Get Info. Here you will see a new setting titled, “Open in Low Resolution.” While this is not an indication of whether or not the developer has updated the application, you can see if the application is being forced to run in low-resolution mode. If you are experiencing difficulties with a particular application, or just want to see if you can improve things a bit, you may want to try to adjust this setting manually.

Scaling your Mac’s screen in the meantime

One thing you do not get with the new Retina displays is more screen real estate. In fact, because of the added pixel density, it may just appear that you are dealing with less screen real estate than you are used to on other non-Retina display screens like the Apple 27-inch LED display. With the new MacBook Pros that have Retina Displays, there is a new way of configuring your screen’s resolution.

You can either make the text on the screen appear larger, or give your applications more space by making everything a little bit smaller. Changing this particular setting for all applications sort of defeats the purpose of purchasing the Retina display in the first place. But if you bought the new Macbook Pro with Retina display for other reasons, like its slim design, or if you can’t stand some apps looking great and other apps looking a bit fuzzy, then you may want to try to adjust the resolution to a setting more to your liking.

What developers are doing about Retina displays

What developers are faced with when it comes to Apple’s new Retina displays, in most cases, is not so much a difficult task as it is a tedious task. Going back and re-cutting all of your graphics to accommodate a new resolution is more time-consuming for applications that have a lot of graphical content to display. This goes beyond simply resizing images. As an example, shadows and borders can become over emphasized on the Retina display. Fixing this would require some fine tuning of image resources beyond what simply scaling an image can provide.

Apple has put tougher some guidelines for developers that are looking to update their apps to support Retina displays. But for the most part, it the subjective task of looking over every graphic in your application to ensure that is looks the way you want it to look on both the Retina and standard displays can be a lot of exacting work. For many, this means adjusting project timelines to accommodate the update to support the Retina display.

On the positive side, apps that do update quickly will be included in various lists like this one, before supporting Retina display becomes more routine.

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Retina Display brightens Apple’s profits

Rags Srinivasan, management consultant — Sun, 24 Jun 2012 19:00:27 +0000

If you’re like me you ordered the 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display, and you’re anxiously tracking its shipping status. What does this new product mean for Apple? How about another $1 billion in pure profit.

Apple made a gross margin of $18.5 billion just in the last quarter. If you peel back the layers and look at how its different product lines contribute to this margin, you will find its MacBook lines account for $1.65 billion.

Apple’s profit from MacBook lines declined from 2011 to 2012, and the average selling price (ASP) of MacBook line dropped by $40.

It may not sound like much, but at 47 percent unit margin, that number meant $52 million in forgone profit. All because their product mix changed from selling higher priced MacBook Pros to lower priced MacBook Airs and 13-inch MacBook Pros.

That is about to change with its new product refresh, especially with the MacBook Pro with Retina Display. Let us do some math.

What can we say from distribution of sales between the different MacBook versions from the $1,245 ASP numbers? For simplicity, let us treat the MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Pro as one category with an ASP of $1099, and the 15-inch MacBook Pro as another category with an ASP of $1799. Solving for these numbers tells us that the 15-inch MacBook Pro accounted for less than 23 percent of MacBook units sold. In other words, three in four MacBooks sold are either MacBook Airs or the 13-inch version.

Shifting more of the sales to the higher priced MacBook Pro is one clear way to increase profits. Enter the new 15-inch MacBook Pro with its $2,199 price tag and two compelling value propositions — 256GB SSD (solid-state drive) and Retina Display.

For $400 more, customers get both 256GB SSD and Retina Display. And if anyone should insist on getting just SSD, they can pay $500 more instead of $400 more. That is the decoy option put in place just to make the 15-inch retina display far more attractive than it would have been by itself.

By design, the Retina Display is not available in the MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Pro. This way, those who want the insanely-high screen resolution will have to pay up at least $2,199 to get it.

This clever price discrimination will result in two positive effects on the units sold. One, some who would have settled for a MacBook Air or the 13-inch MacBook Pro will upgrade to the $2,199 MacBook Pro. Two, it will push some who preferred the 15-inch MacBook Pro to the $2,199 version with Retina Display. The net result is a higher ASP than the current $1,245 number. Even if one in ten customers of first category and one in five in the second category upgrade to Retina Display, Apple will see the MacBook ASP go up to $1,363.

If Apple sees no change in total number of units sold from the current quarter, this ASP bump will still result in a minimum additional profit of $200 million. If you include net new purchases and higher percentage up-sells, this number could easily become $1 billion in additional profit.

That is one amazing and magical product.

Rags Srinivasan is a management professional who specializes in product strategy and strategic marketing. He is currently working on big data products. He blogs at Iterative Path and tweets at @rags.

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New Mac hardware line adds Retina Display MacBook Pro

Kevin C. Tofel — Mon, 11 Jun 2012 18:03:47 +0000

At its WWDC event on Monday, Apple took the wraps off of new hardware in the form of a total revamp across its entire laptop line. The hardware upgrades, which are available today, will better support new features in OS X 10.8, also known as Mountain Lion.

The sought-after Retina Display comes not as an option but as part of a next-generation laptop. Here’s a brief look at the new changes across the models:

MacBook Air and Pro

The new MacBook Air devices stay in the same 11- and 13-inch configuration, but will see new Intel Core i5 and i7 processors up to 2 GHz for each of the two cores. These are the new Ivy Bridge platform from Intel which are paired with the Intel HD Graphics 4000 solution. Models are available with up to 8 GB of memory and 512 GB of flash storage.

USB 3 ports are added — and are backwards compatible with USB 2, of course — and the integrated FaceTime camera jumps up to capture 720p video. Perhaps the best aspect here among the updates: The 11-inch models drop in price by $100 over the prior versions.

Apple’s MacBook Pro also sees new internals, but at the same price points as last year. Intel dual-core i5 and i7 chips power the new 13-inch Pros up to 2.9 GHz while the 15-incher goes quad core i7 up to 2.6 GHz. Traditional hard drives up to 750 GB are on the standard models. The same USB 3 and FaceTime upgrades from the Air are here and screen resolutions are kept at 1280 x 800 and 1440 x 900 for both models. The 15-inch MacBook Pro opts for Nvidia’s GeForce GT 650M graphics.

Wait, there’s a next-generation Pro!

This is the Retina Display model people have been waiting for. The entire design of this MacBook Pro looks like an iPad and keyboard; just 0.71-inches thin. Screen resolution is 2880 x 1800 on a 15.4-inch display, showing 5.148 million pixels. Apple says with the internals, the device can run for 7 hours on a single charge and standby for up to 30 days.

How is this possible? Flash storage up to 768 GB, Nvidia’s Kepler GT 650M graphics, Intel’s quad-core Core i7 processor up to 2.7 GHz and a big power pack. Other features include a 720p FaceTime camera, dual microphons, two Thunderbolt ports, SD card slot, a pair of USB 3 ports, Bluetooth 4.0, backlit keyboard and, of course, multi-touch keyboard.

So how much will the next-generation MacBook Pro with Air-like features cost in a 4.46 pound package? Apple is charging $2,199 to start for the base model with 8GB of memory and 256 GB of flash storage with availability today.

And why would you want the new MacBook Pro? Because some Mountain Lion native apps are optimized for the display and third-party apps are expected to follow. You don’t want to see pixels, do you?

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Chips say a thinner, lighter Macbook Pro is coming

Om Malik — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 12:43:07 +0000

If the Apple rumor machine is to be believed then we might soon see a lighter, skinnier and bigger brother of the current Macbook Airs in the market. A report from CPU Central, a blog covering computer processors, points to the April 8 launch of a new range of chipsets from Intel followed by the end-of-April launch of Ivy Bridge processors, which points to a new Macbook Pro.

CPU Central:

On April 8 Intel will announce Z77, Z75, H77 and B75 chipsets. On the same day we should see numerous reviews of 75 and 77 boards with, well, Sandy Bridge CPUs. Ivy Bridge processors will be announced in the 4th week of April, between April 22 and April 28. The announcement will include only quad-core models: mobile Core i7 and Core i7 Extreme families, desktop Core i7, Core i5-3570K, i5-3570T, i5-3550, i5-3550S, i5-3450 and i5-3450S. The announced chips will be available for sale on April 29.

What does this all mean? An iMac upgrade? Sure, why not. But my best guess is that sometime in early summer we will see the launch of a new 15-inch Macbook Pro that is thinner and lighter. Frankly, the current generation of Macbook Pros are long in the tooth. After you have used the 13-inch Macbook Air, switching back to even the fastest Macbook Pro feels like a step back — it is heavy and feels like a brick. Instapaper creator Marco Arment thinks that there could be two 15-inch machines, a Pro and an Air:

My guess is that they pick two: they make a 15″ Air that drops the Pro’s discrete GPUand downgrades to dual-core 17-watt CPUs, effectively pairing Air-class performance with a larger screen. In a 15″ Air-like chassis, this could be very cool-running and quiet with a great battery life and a significant weight savings from the 15″ MacBook Pro. Apple could plausibly launch such a 15″ Air in June with the 1.8 GHz i5-3427U and 2.0 GHz i7-3667U, also bringing those CPU options to the 11″ and 13″ Airs in a minor simultaneous update. To placate pro users and buy some time until Intel makes lower-wattage quad-core CPUs, Apple could keep selling the current-style 15″ MacBook Pro with fast, hot CPUs and GPUs alongside the 15″ Air.

Earlier this year, after reading a report on Electric Pig, Erica Ogg argued that it makes sense for Apple to merge the Air and Pro line-ups, and they would be better off simplifying things even further for mainstream consumers. What do you guys think?

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Will Apple merge the MacBook Pro and Air lineups?

Erica Ogg — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 16:43:30 +0000

Right now if you want a 15-inch or larger notebook from Apple, you have to go MacBook Pro — the thinner, lighter MacBook Air notebooks come only in 11-inch and 13-inch sizes. But that could change in the next few months.

It’s been rumored before, but on Wednesday a new report is saying that not only will Apple introduce a 15-inch Air, it will replace the 15-inch Pro, or as Electricpig’s source put it, “effectively killing the Pro for the average consumer.” That is, the 17-inch MacBook Pro might hang around for professionals who need that larger screen. They place the timing of the rollout of new MacBook Airs in April.

The source is a “premium Mac accessory maker” involved in docking solutions. That they would have direct knowledge of Apple’s plans isn’t too likely, but that they would be planning for an updated MacBook would be very much expected.

But whether the source does have direct knowledge or not, expanding the MacBook Air lineup is a very logical step for Apple to take. After using an Air for any amount of time, the Pro, while more powerful and with more ports, feels bulky by comparison.

The Air is no longer an expensive, niche device: the 13-inch Air starts at $1,299 and the 13-inch Pro starts at $1,199. It’s one of Apple’s best-selling laptops — as of last fall, it accounted for nearly a third of MacBooks sold. That’s a good demonstration that Air characteristics that were once considered trade-offs (no optical drive, no ethernet port, less local storage) aren’t barriers for everyone, especially in today’s cloud- and iCloud-centric computing era.

For these reasons it’s fairly easy to see why Apple would want to expand the Air lineup to larger screen sizes and potentially more buyers. But it’s true that the Air isn’t for everybody. Would you be disappointed if Apple discontinued the 15-inch MacBook Pro?

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