512 Pixels

Fron the Learning in Hand blog:

I thought it would be interesting to compare iPhone 3G S with one of Apple’s desktop computers from 20 years ago, Apple IIGS. The “GS” in IIGS stood for graphics and sound. However, it’s clear that today’s iPhone is much better with graphics and sound. The “S” in 3G S stands for speed. Compared to IIGS, 3G S certainly is the speedier computer. The similarities of these two computing devices pretty much stop at their names.

Hit the link for a table comparing the specs between the two products.

Kate MacKenzie:

Think about what a netbook really becomes. A shared email and browser that does IM, and frustrates everywhere else. Battery life? Low. Keyboard? Mushy. Multimedia performance? Slow. Disappointment? High.

My iPod touch functions pretty much like a very, very small netbook PC. I check email. I type out a few quick responses. I browse. I google ( no caps needed, it’s a verb now). I can also IM, play movies, play music, play games and do what no netbook PC can ever do.

Fit in my pocket.

After hacking OS X on two different netbooks (the HP Mini 1000 or Dell Mini 9), I agree. Not only am I totally over netbooks and their compromised hardware, but in the process, I discovered I already used my iPhone for anything the netbook could do — rendering the existence of a netbook in my life pretty much pointless.

Betanews:

According to NPD, in June, nine out of 10 dollars spent on computers costing $1,000 or more went to Apple. Mac revenue market share in the “premium” price segment was 91 percent, up from 88 percent in May.

That’s pretty damn good. And it reinforces Tim Cook’s statement the other day regarding netbooks:

Our goal is not to build the most computers, it’s to build the best. Whatever price point we can build the best at, we will play there. At this point, we don’t see the way to build a great product for this $399-$499, this kind of price point unit. And, as I’ve said before—and I think this is playing out in many areas—many customers become disappointed and disenchanted after they’ve bought one of these.

Updated come to Final Cut Studio, Final Cut Server and Logic Studio.

No update to my favorite, Aperture.

Check out the last item featured in Gizmodo’s weekly Photoshop contest.

If this were real, I’d be ordering one right now.

Between the laughs, Jon Stewart and Brian Williams make some good points about the news industry.

Macworld:

While Apple doesn’t usually break out sales figures for individual products, during Tuesday’s conference call with analysts, Apple Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer went out of his way to say that the iPod touch itself did “extremely well in the quarter, growing more than 130 percent” compared to the year-ago quarter. In other words, while iPod sales in general fell 7.2 percent compared to last quarter, the iPod touch was selling like gangbusters.

[…]

Oppenheimer admitted that the company saw these sales declines coming.

“This is one of the original reasons we developed the iPhone and the iPod touch,” he said. “We expect our traditional MP3 players to decline over time as we cannibalize ourselves with the iPod touch and the iPhone. However, we have a great business that we believe will last for many years and which we will continue to manage well and offer the world’s most innovative products.”

The iPod touch is the perfect device for most people — it has all the benefits of the iPhone without the AT&T contact. The iPod nano and iPod classic are like dumb phones — slowly being replaced by smarter, better devices.

I think the iPod classic’s days are especially numbered. The player’s best feature — its sheer storage capacity — will be matched by solid state iPods within a few years. At that point, I think Apple will stop shipping the Classic with its spinning hard drive, leaving the iPod nano and Shuffle to offset their bigger, more expensive, touch-based brothers.

Mac Rumors:

Apple shipped 2.6 million Macintosh computers during the quarter, a unit increase of 4 percent over the year-ago quarter. The company also sold 10.2 million Pods during the quarter, representing 7 percent unit decline over the year-ago quarter. Quarterly iPhone unit sales reached 5.2 million, up 626 percent from the year-ago quarter.

Damn.

Macworld has a nice play-by-play account of today’s event.

The subhead from the company’s press release says it all:

Best Non-Holiday Quarter Revenue and Earnings in Apple History

Apple still proves to be recession-resistant.

ifoAppleStore:

A key figure in achieving Apple’s ground-breaking retail store concept is now consulting with Microsoft on that company’s retail stores, the first of which are expected to open this fall. George W. Blankenship, 56, joined Apple in 2000, and his 20 years of experience as Gap Inc.’s vice president of real estate strategy helped fulfill the original concept developed by Apple Sr. V-P Retail Ron Johnson–position the stores at upscale, high-traffic locations to attract customers. As first reported by TechFlash, Microsoft has hired Blankenship to provide consulting services for its retail team, although the company refuses to say exactly what work he is performing. The consulting arrangement is probably meant to work around the non-competitive agreement (NCA) that Apple executives routinely sign when leaving the company. Much of the data that Blankenship might use to pick Microsoft store locations is held by third parties, so he won’t be handicapped by any NCA. As well, Blankenship’s assistance to Microsoft won’t create any peril for Apple, since after eight years of developing new Apple stores, the formula is hardly proprietary.

Blankenship was among the earliest of Apple’s retail store employees, arriving shortly after Johnson. He was there when Johnson began to clarify his vision of how the stores would operate and what they would look like, and where they should be located.