Category: I-phone

Yesterday Apple (AAPL) hit an all-time intraday price of $422.86 and currently it is trading around $413. However, those prices seem cheap compared to what almost every analyst thinks AAPL will do in the next twelve months. DailyFinance has a roundup of analyst expectations for Apple’s (AAPL) stock price and it appears that the sky is the limit.

Forty-six analysts believe AAPL will hit a mean of $500 in the next twelve months (not much of a stretch since that’s only a 20% increase) while some believe the stock could hit as much as $666 a share in the same period. Their estimates are based on many things, including AAPL’s EPS (earnings per share) forecast of $27.53 for 2011, and $32.39 for 2012, compared to $15.15 in 2010.

It also doesn’t hurt that, as I tweeted a few days ago, this is the second year in the row in which the iPad has no viable competition for the holidays. That means that the iPad will dominate holiday tablet sales again. And this holiday quarter is a much more important quarter to do it in than last year as tablets are hitting the mainstream now and are sure to be popular gifts not just among the tech crowd, but among mom and pop consumers as well. That’s to say nothing of the iPhone 5 and rumored, cheaper iPhone 4S. Those three devices, plus the wild popularity of Apple’s MacBook Airs will be why Apple owns this holiday season and why I believe the stock is going to hit $500 by January 1st.

I know, I know, what does a blogger know about the stock market? But matter of fact, in 2009 when AAPL was trading at under $200 a share I wrote “I believe that AAPL could hit $300 by the end of 2010 and $400 the year later.” I was blasted in the comments for writing that but, as it turns out, I was absolutely right. So this time I’m going to stick with my $500 January 1st target and I think the analysts at the higher end of the spectrum are dead right. AAPL could be trading well into the $600s be the end of next year.

The sky’s the limit.

Disclaimer: This author owns shares in AAPL. Opinions in this post are those of the author only and should not be considered as investment advice.

AAPL: Analysts forecasting stratospheric stock price originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 21 Sep 2011 17:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I’m back from a 12,000 mile journey from the TUAW Studios in Highlands Ranch, CO to the Aegean Sea. As usual, travel held both joys and agonies — although most of the agonies had to do with slow and/or expensive internet connections, as well as the usual headaches of flying. Still, the joys of traveling from Venice to Istanbul with many fascinating stops in between far outweigh the few pains of traveling.

On today’s TUAW TV Live, I’ll talk about travel and technology in general, from Internet connections to power and from photography to blogging. You’ll hear about my favorite apps for travel, as well as whether or not my iPad will accompany me on my next vacation. I want to take this time to thank Kelly Guimont and Doc Rock for taking over the hosting duties in my absence.

Below, you’ll find a Ustream livestream viewer and a chat tool. The chat tool allows you to participate by asking questions or making comments. You can also join the chat through IRC, server chat1.ustream.tv, chat room #tuaw-tv.

If you’re driving somewhere and would like to watch TUAW TV Live while you’re stuck in traffic, please don’t — keep your eyes on the road! However, if someone else is doing the driving, you can watch the show on your iPhone and join the chat by downloading the free Ustream App. It’s a universal app and is wonderful on an iPad, both for viewing and participating in the chat.

We’ll start at about 5 PM ET, so if you’re seeing a prerecorded show, be sure to refresh your browser until you see the live stream. For those of you who are not able to join us for the live edition, you’ll be able to view it later this evening on our TUAW Video YouTube channel and as part of the TUAW TV Live podcast viewable in iTunes or on any of your Apple devices.

TUAW TV Live: Twixt travel and technology originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 21 Sep 2011 16:55:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Retuers is reporting that Apple has been granted 40 patents in China. The patents were awarded on September 9th and cover 37 of its products including the iPad, iPhone, and MacBook Air. Some of the patents also cover the architecture of its three Shanghai stores.

Most of the patents relate to the iPhone, however. These patents are especially valuable considering the litigious nature of smartphone manufacturers. The patents should also, in theory, help stave of the rampant counterfeiting of fake Apple products in the country.

PatentlyApple was the first to reveal the Chinese patents and they have a full listing of what all the patents cover here.

Apple gains 40 new patents in China originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 21 Sep 2011 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Much in the way that Apple has come to dominate the media shopping experience through iTunes, the company is now aiming to make purchasing of newspapers and magazines much easier through iOS 5’s Newsstand. The app is billed as a digital kiosk at which you can buy individual issues and subscriptions of periodicals. A group of French newspapers and magazines is hoping to get their own way by teaming up against Apple.

Reuters reports that eight newspapers and publications, including Le Figaro, Les Echos, le Nouvel Observateur and the sports daily L’Equipe, have launched their own digital kiosk to sell issues on the iPad. The group is also negotiating with Apple as a unified front, and has stated that they refuse to sell their products on Newsstand without major concessions.

One of the issues that the group has with Newsstand is Apple’s 30 percent commission and refusal to share customer information with the publishers. L’Equipe’s Xavier Spender said that the publication would “make less money selling a digital edition of the newspaper” than it would with the printed version. The group has signed with Google to sell subscriptions via Android’s digital kiosk, since Google charges only a 10 percent commission and allows publishers to set their own prices and capture customer data.

The group’s digital kiosk is already live at Relay.com and sales of subscriptions will begin in November.

French papers team up to oppose Apple’s Newsstand originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 21 Sep 2011 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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With Apple (AAPL) having a market cap of roughly US$387 billion, it becomes the most valuable company in the US. Matter of fact, it currently has a $30 billion lead over the next most valuable company, Exxon Mobil (XOM). However, market caps are boring. What’s fun is to look at how much Apple is worth compared to other things. Like drugs, the Star Wars franchise and Denmark.

That’s exactly what the Things Apple is Worth More Than tumblr does. It turns out that at a market cap of $380 billion+, Apple is worth more than:

• All the illegal drugs in the world ($321 billion)
• The Star Wars, Harry Potter, Star Trek, Steven King, and Twilight franchises combined ($49 billion)
• The GDP of Denmark ($337 billion)
• and my personal favorite, the American obesity epidemic ($300 billion)

The tumblr blog has more gems Apple is worth so be sure to check it out. It’s an interesting list that really puts it in perspective just how much the Mac, iPhone and iPad maker is worth.

Apple is worth more than all of these things originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 21 Sep 2011 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I enjoy integrating Pandora into my music rotation along with my iTunes library and Spotify, but doing so on the desktop either means keeping another web browser window up or downloading Pandora’s desktop client for OS X. Pandoras Box does a good job in condensing the service down to a menu bar app, but there are a few caveats.

Pandoras Box is a recent arrival to the Mac App Store, but the first version turned away many potential users by requiring both a paid account for Pandora and downloading the desktop client. However, a recent update eliminates both those requirements, turning it into a more useful utility for casual and power Pandora users.

It’s easy to give a thumbs up/thumbs down rating from the app, or undo it, and toggle among your pre-established stations. However, creating a new station involves using an existing official Pandora client or the website. You can tweet what you’re listening to in Twitter and links are provided to iTunes and Amazon for purchases.

There is the option to match songs with those in iTunes to increase play count there. Other options include integration with Last.fm, using keyboard media keys, enabling Growl notifications and launching at login.

US$4.99 might be a little high for Pandoras Box. Similar apps run around $2.99, and I think that’s a fair amount to charge for features that it has.

Daily Mac App: Pandoras Box originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 21 Sep 2011 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Forbes has published four pages from the upcoming Zen of Steve Jobs graphic novel. The 60-page book is brought to you by Forbes and the people at JESS3, who specialize in data visualization. The Zen of Steve Jobs is a re-imagining of Steve Jobs’ life during the mid-1980s after he left Apple and before he founded NeXT.

During that time Jobs befriended Kobun Chino Otogawa, a Zen Buddhist priest. The two shared a passion about art, design and innovation. The graphic novel imagines how their friendship influenced Steve Jobs’ later decisions when he returned to Apple.

Yeah, it’s a little weird that Forbes is publishing fictional Steve Jobs comic books, but I’m sure it’ll be a best-seller. The graphic novel will have its digital release in late fall. In the mean time you can check out four preview pages by clicking the link above and another page here.

Preview: 4 pages from forthcoming Steve Jobs graphic novel originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 21 Sep 2011 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You’ll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes, which is perfect for a quick review of what’s happening in the Apple world.

You can listen to today’s Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for listening through iTunes, click here.

No Flash? Click here to listen.

Daily Update for September 21, 2011 originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 21 Sep 2011 14:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Earlier this year, Crunchy Logistics unveiled an interactive, multi-touch table to rival Microsoft’s surface devices. The LED table had 36 touch-points and supported common gestures like swipe and pinch-to-zoom. It’s literally the size of a conference table. Best of all, the Florida company has taken this display technology and adapted it to work with the iPhone and iPad.

Appropriately named Padzilla, the display ranges in size from 70-inches up to 150-inches and has an equally large price tag. The 70-inch model, shown in the video below, starts at US$30,000 and includes an iPad. If you don’t have an iPad, you can always connect your iPhone 3GS or iPhone 4. You can use it on the wall as shown above or in a mount that turns it into a wild and crazy table.

Plug your iPad into a 150-inch touch display originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 21 Sep 2011 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ve been impressed with the MacTech Conference (coming up again soon) and this week the organizers announced a series of one-day seminars laser focused on a single topic and dedicated to going “in depth” on that topic. The seminars will be different each time, and they will be in different cities. You can see what’s being planned for MacTech In-Depth here. Keep in mind theses are designed for IT pros, not the average home user.

The first In-Depth covers mobile device management (MDM) and topics include what you’d expect from an IT-department’s needs:

o. Security and Mobility
o. Solutions Requirements
o. Asset risks and security threats
o. Mobility Business Drivers
o. Monitoring and Control
o. Protecting the Enterprise, business, and the organization
o. Enabling Employees
o. Protecting data and devices
o. Mobility creating new business intersections
o. How to develop a mobility strategy for your organization
o. Securely supporting social media, commerce and sales
o. Defining Technology Initiatives

If you register for these early, you’ll get a substantial discount. Normally US$495, if you register by October 31 you pay $295 instead for the Mobile Device Management seminar.

MacTech In-Depth events focus on a single topic originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 21 Sep 2011 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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They say travel is broadening, and in my case, that’s true. I mean, take a look at the picture here — I’ve gained a bit of weight on this trip! My wife and I have just returned from a 17-day trip that took us from Denver to such fascinating destinations as Venice, Debrovnik (Croatia), Chios (Greece), and Istanbul. As usual, I used the trip to reflect on travel and technology, and that is the topic of today’s TUAW TV Live.

I want to thank Kelly Guimont and Doc Rock for filling in for me the last two weeks. I’m sure the two of ’em did a great job and kept you entertained!

As usual, I’ll be starting the show at 5 PM EDT (2 PM PDT / 10 PM BST) sharp, and we’ll take a few minutes to chat before the demos start. To join in on the chat and watch the live streaming video, drop by TUAW about five minutes before the start time to get your instructions on how to participate. If you’re unable to join us for the show, remember that you can always subscribe to the video podcast and watch the show at your leisure in iTunes or any other favorite podcatching app. The past shows are also available on the TUAW YouTube channel.

TUAW TV Live at 5 PM EDT: (Not) on the road again originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 21 Sep 2011 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple’s stock recently crossed the $400 threshold, leading to speculation that the company could join the elite group of companies on the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

This speculation might be premature, as Eric Savitz writes for Forbes. There are financial hurdles preventing Apple from easily hopping on the DJIA. First, the DJIA is price-weighted, so any change in Apple’s $400 stock would have a huge impact on the index. So much influence that Bespoke Investment Group said the DJIA would need to be renamed to the Dow Jones Industrial Apple.

Even a small US$1.82 change would cause the Dow Jones average to jump by 14 points. Imagine the boost the DJIA would get from Apple’s stock price, which has climbed $90.89 in the past.

To lessen its impact, Apple could split its stock, but that’s a move the company shows no interest in making. Apple has had ample opportunity to split its stock in the past and has not done so. It’s not very likely Apple would do it now just to join the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

Why AAPL can’t just hop into the DJIA originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 21 Sep 2011 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Anyone who has spent time around an airport recently has probably noticed that Apple devices — particularly the iPhone and iPad — seem to be everywhere. Ina Fried at the Wall Street Journal reports that Wi-Fi hotspot provider Boingo has the stats to prove that Apple devices are now dominating mobile device Wi-Fi connections at airports.

The figures from June, 2011 show that the iPhone makes up 42.1 percent of the mobile device connections to Boingo’s airport hotspots, while the iPad is second at 23.5 percent. Don’t count out the iPod touch — it’s the third most popular device at 17.5 percent. For mobile devices, that means that Apple products make up a whopping 83.1 percent of all of the connections to Boingo’s hotspots. Android? It’s taking a very small back seat to iOS at 11.5 percent.

Fried notes that the figures reflect a trend that inflight Wi-Fi provider Gogo has also noticed. In a recent report, Gogo said that the iPad (a device that didn’t even exist two years ago) now accounts for one-third of all inflight Wi-Fi connections, with Macs near 20 percent and Windows PCs leading at about 41 percent.

Boingo states that mobile devices like the iPhone and iPad have come to dominate the connections at airports, accounting for 60 percent of total traffic with the other 40 percent coming from traditional laptops.

Apple devices dominate airport Wi-Fi originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 21 Sep 2011 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple has taken the wraps off its flagship Hong Kong store, 9to5Mac reveals, and underneath is a gorgeous store at the International Finance Center, with a (now familiar) glass staircase running through the center.

The store was confirmed on Sept. 5 after pictures were uploaded to Facebook. It is scheduled to open Saturday.

Apple unwraps flagship Hong Kong Apple Store originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 21 Sep 2011 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This isn’t the issue from last fall, but Apple addressed questions regarding FaceTime security to ZDNet. An Apple representative assured the site that the FaceTime conversation stream is encrypted from end to end, and each FaceTime session has unique session keys for each user.

What this does is make FaceTime HIPAA compliant as long as the wireless network being used utilizes WPA2 Enterprise security with 128-bit AES encryption. HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) is the U.S. standard for electronic health care transactions designed to keep these records secure and protect patient privacy. With the protocols being followed, those in the healthcare industry can apply for grants for Apple gear since HIPAA compliance is required.

FaceTime calls are encrypted, HIPAA compliant originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 21 Sep 2011 10:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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