iPod

Recently, I've noticed two interesting changes at my local Apple Store, both evidence of Apple's mastery of retail.

A few months ago, they remodeled to get rid of the large screen and seating area they used for in-store workshops. I liked the few classes I happened in upon during the weekend, but most of them were sparsely attended, and the workshops I really wanted to take--like Garage Band--were during normal work hours. In place of the demo area, they more than doubled the size of the Genius Bar, Apple's in-store customer support desk. The end-result: a mass … Read more

Maybe Apple really is recession-proof.

When Shaw Wu of American Technology Research made that claim earlier in the year, I concurred with my colleague Charlie Cooper, who wondered what expensive strain of finely cultivated California parsley was in Mr. Wu's pipe when he wrote that report.

Even Wu recanted just before Apple's earnings report Wednesday, cutting his expectations for the company amid concerns about the economy and the fact that Apple isn't expected to release any significantly new products until the 3G iPhone.

It seems, however, that people like Apple's current products just fine. Apple's … Read more

At about 2 p.m. Pacific Time, Apple executives began to recap the company's second quarter. This is a record of the call with updates as they came. You can also check out the numbers here. The Mac had a stellar quarter, and the iPhone and iPod divisions made solid contributions.

2:01 p.m. PDT: We're waiting for Apple executives to come online to discuss their second-quarter earnings, which they'll probably enjoy. If you haven't seen the numbers yet, Apple's revenue increased by 43 percent compared to last year, while profits were up 36 … Read more

Recession fears, rampant iPhone unlocking, and a pessimistic outlook dinged Apple at the beginning of this year, but surging Mac shipments appeared to have the company in good shape as it closed out the quarter.

Apple is set to announce its financial results for its second fiscal quarter on Wednesday after the close of the stock market. The company has not appeared overly bullish on this particular quarter, issuing guidance well below its usual conservative outlook in January and admitting at its shareholder meeting in March that the industry is going through "concerning times" right now amid a … Read more

Apple has reportedly made a rare acquisition, snapping up low-power chip company PA Semi one day before reporting its quarterly earnings.

Forbes reported late Tuesday that Apple has agreed to purchase the company for a middling $278 million, quoting Apple spokesman Steve Dowling as confirming the deal. PA Semi made its debut a few years back designing low-power chips based on Apple's old friend, the Power architecture.

It's not clear what Apple might have in mind for PA Semi. I'd doubt Apple plans to get into the chip design game anytime soon, although having low-power chip experts … Read more

IBM researchers have reportedly demonstrated technology that will increase hard drive capacity 100-fold, as well as offer major improvements in energy consumption (leading to much longer battery life) and better reliability. Production is estimated in seven to ten years.

The reports summarizing the researchers' findings, which were published in Science (subscription required), use the shorthand "500,000 songs on a portable MP3 player" to describe the advance.

Today's iPod lineup contains no product advertised to hold 5,000 songs, so I'm not sure where the 500,000 figure came from. In fact, the current highest-capacity iPod is 160GB, … Read more

Apple has cut its 2008 flash memory orders by $200 million, according to iSuppli, setting up a down year for flash vendors.

In February, iSuppli reported that Apple was slashing its orders of flash memory amid a weakening economy, but iSuppli wasn't sure exactly how far the cuts would go. After crunching the numbers, iSuppli now expects Apple to spend $1.4 billion on flash this year for iPods and iPhones, up 12 percent from $1.2 billion last year. But the analyst firm, and the flash memory industry, had been expecting much more purchasing out of Apple, at … Read more

Apple is an Intel customer. Intel has a new chip. Therefore, Apple will use Intel's new chip.

Such leaps of logic are easy to make when you need to construct an SEO-friendly headline, or to attach a news hook to an announcement of a chip that has already been announced five or six times but still won't appear in any devices for another couple of months. Intel is talking up its Atom processor halfway around the world at its Intel Developer Forum in Shanghai, prompting Forbes to resurrect the "Apple will use Silverthorne" rumor from a … Read more

Expect to see new iPods arrive around the usual time later this year, say around September or so.

Wolfson, a high-end audio chipmaker, notified shareholders Thursday that it "has not been selected by a major Tier 1 customer for inclusion in the next generation of its portable media players, expected to be launched during the third quarter of 2008." Sources told Reuters that "major Tier 1 customer" was Apple, and that the snub came from new versions of the iPod Nano and iPod Touch.

Apple has held a third-quarter iPod event for the last three years, … Read more