Topic Archive: apple

Will Q4 iPhone Sales Surpass Expectations?

Bernhard Kappe, Monday, October 20, 2008 @ 6:25 pm

I went to the AT&T store on Friday to buy another testing phone for our developers, who are busily churning out more iPhone applications, and to switch one of my cell lines over from T-Mobile to my iPhone.  It was an interesting experience, with T-Mobile's very friendly and courteous customer service reps pitching me strongly on the G phone, and my service getting switched over in the middle of a business call.  I asked the AT&T store manager what percentage of their sales were iPhones, and after a bit of thought, he said about 65%.

Granted, that's only one location, but based on all of the annecdotal evidence I have, as well as how well the T-Mobile folks were trained to deal with the iPhone switch (not only on my request, but on my wife's similar call last week) I am expecting some pretty strong numbers form Apple tomorrow.

I'm also expecting decent G phone numbers for Q4, but I'm not sure how well they'll hold up later.

Update: It looks like Apple's Q4 iPhone sales topped 6.9 million, about 800,000 units more than RIM's 6.1 million in the equivalent period, beating most analyst expectations by a mile.

Interesting discussion on this over at Daring Fireball (of course) as well as a piece on Fortune on traditional analysts versus bloggers on Apple sales and earnings.  The bloggers got the iPhone numbers better than the analysts, but everyone missed on mac sales.

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Where minimalism fails: The problem with Apple’s less-is-more approach

Brian Dillard, Tuesday, October 14, 2008 @ 1:26 pm

So I'm watching the big Apple notebook event and getting totally excited about the impressive new graphics capabilities. Finally I'll be able to get decent visuals on World of Warcraft on a Mac laptop. Then we get to the part about the new trackpads and my excitement wanes. Once again, Apple is opting for ultra-minimalist hardware and then using software to compensate (poorly) for that design choice.

Here's Steve Jobs:

We've got a new trackpad for notebooks. It's a gorgeous, large, multitouch glass trackpad for notebooks. It's 39 percent larger tracking area than before, it's multi-touch for gestures, it's glass for silky-smooth travel. And we've optimized the coefficient of friction on the glass, so it's really beautiful. And the entire trackpad is the button. It gives you more area on the trackpad and keeps you from hunting for that button. You can get multi-button support from software. And we've added some new four-finger gestures that are really nice.

Four-finger gestures may be really nice, but I'd opt for two hardware buttons any day. Whether you're playing video games or simply using productivity and development apps, you should be able to summon context menus without having to resort to arcane gestures. Apple's obsession with scaling hardware down to its essence may result in beautiful products, but usability almost always suffers. Need some more examples?

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