You remember T.J. Maxx and their brief iPad adventure, right? The popular apparel retail chain started selling iPads last week, at the curious price of $399 — which was $100 off Apple’s suggested price.
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They bought the iPads from retail (perhaps an Apple Store, who knows) at $40.000, they sold them at $32.000 generating a loss of $8.000 but they ended up on all major blogs and thousands of people visited their stores hoping to find a discounted iPad. With just $8.000, they gained a huge visibility that would have costed way more with standard advertising methods. Very clever.
Category: Apple
A Close Runner-up for Moron of the Week
Nick Dillon, with Ovum1:
With support for Flash 10.1 growing, users will become accustomed to a similar web browsing experience on both mobile and desktop devices; this will ultimately impact the attractiveness of Apple’s proposition. Flash certainly looks to be gaining ground with device vendors and Apple may need to re-evaluate its position if its dominance is threatened as a result. In addition to garnering support for Flash 10, Adobe has launched its own app distribution service for Flash and AIR applications. InMarket will help developers to sell their apps across various devices. This is clearly a big draw for developers and will threaten the dominance of platform vendors in the mobile apps market.
iOS 4.2 Drops Today
The Apple PR machine has the details. Also, MobileMe’s “Find my iPhone” feature is free for all iPad, iPhone 4 and current-gen iPod touch owners.
The release is the “4.2.1” release candidate that the company pushed to developers last week, and should be ready for download at 10 AM PST.
Steve Jobs, on Woz and LSD
From a 1985 Playboy interview:
I think Woz was in a world that nobody understood. No one shared his interests, and he was a little ahead of his time. It was very lonely for him. He’s driven from inner sights rather than external expectations of him, so he survived OK. Woz and I are different in most ways, but there are some ways in which we’re the same, and we’re very close in those ways. We’re sort of like two planets in their own orbits that every so often intersect. It wasn’t just computers, either. Woz and I very much liked Bob Dylan’s poetry, and we spent a lot of time thinking about a lot of that stuff. This was California. You could get LSD fresh made from Stanford. You could sleep on the beach at night with your girlfriend. California has a sense of experimentation and a sense of openness — openness to new possibilities.
The iTunes Music Store and Singles
Now that the John, Paul, George and Ringo have joined the iTunes revolution, what about the rest of the iTunes holdouts? Believe it or not there are still many famous bands and solo acts that refuse to put their music on Apple’s iTunes store. Most believe Apple’s policy of refusing to sell whole albums instead of single song downloads is the problem, while others object to how Apple pays artists.
iAds Headed to Europe
Apple today announced it will expand its revolutionary iAd mobile advertising network to the UK and France this December, with Germany to follow in January. iAd will launch in Europe with iAds from L’Oréal, Renault, Louis Vuitton, Nespresso, Perrier, Unilever, Citi, Evian, LG Display, AB InBev, Turkish Airlines and Absolute Radio.
According to Apple, user engagement times are averaging more than 60 seconds per visit. That’s pretty impressive, and it’s clear from Apple’s iAd webpage that the company is trying to position these ads as the best way to reach the “ Apple audience.”
Jobs at Home
‘The World Soundtrack’
Andy Ihnatko, on today’s iTunes/Beatles announcement:
The Beatles don’t need the money. What they really want is to make sure that “Hey, Jude” remains part of the world soundtrack. A move towards the iTunes Store is yet another move towards that goal.
Never Forget
‘Just Another Day’
iTunes 10.1 Adds Option to Disable Ping
On Delays
Dave Caolo, bringing some logic to the whole “iOS 4.2 is delayed” thing:
Here’s the thing. That November 12th release date was supplied by the rumor mill, not Apple. If iOS 4.2 fails to ship by then, it will still be on schedule.
Jobs said that iOS 4.2 will ship by November. Let’s not call the delivery “delayed” until it actually is.