Taking a look back at another week of news from Cupertino, this week’s Apple Loop looks at the industrial design strength of the iPhone, Apple’s Q2 earnings call, the iPad numbers in the tablet market, new hires from BBC Radio 1, tearing down the Apple Watch, eclipsing Android Wear, echoes of Roger Moore, and secrets of the Voice Memo icon.
Apple Loop is here to remind you of a few of the very many discussions that have happened around Apple over the last seven days (and you can read our weekly digest of Android news here on Forbes).
Industrial Design Is The Winning Move
The discussions of iPhone vs Android (and specifically the Samsung Galaxy S6) continue to power many debates in the smartphone world, and the current range of handsets are close enough in capability and specifications to keep those conversations going.
It’s only when you switch to the industrial design aspect that there is clear air between Apple and the competition, as Rene Ritchie discusses on iMore - does it matter that ports, doors, ejection pins, and speaker grilles are not perfectly lined up?
To align everything along the edge of a device takes designing and mounting the boards in a certain way, and the ports and speakers, and the buttons and jacks, and the grills and every other detail so they all line up at exactly the right place at the end. Painstaking is likely an understatement…
I had the chance to spend several evenings with the Galaxies S6 recently and while Samsung ditched a ton of differentiation to offer a more iPhone-like product. Android stalwarts will bemoan the lack of removable battery , the lack of SD card support, and the lack of waterproofing. My reaction was to bemoan the lack of deep, detail oriented design culture and pride in craft.
Because once you know the back of the fence wasn’t painted, not only can you never un-know it, you can never stop wondering what else wasn’t given that same care and consideration.
Is the workmanship of the iPhone the winning move from Apple?
Another Monster Quarter From Apple
Apple’s quarterly earnings report was released on Monday, and while they might not match the record-breaking Q4 2014 numbers, Q1 2015 was another strong period for Cupertino. Headline numbers include sales of over 60 million iPhones (a forty percent increase year on year), 4.56 million Macs (up ten percent year on year), and $13.5 billion in profit (reports Apple Insider and others).
Almost every number is impressive, but looking at the revenue numbers there’s a great note from GeekWire - if you add the quarterly revenue of Microsoft… and Google… and Yahoo… and Facebook…. you ’d still be $14 billion short of Apple’s $58.1 billion revenue.
As for the iPad, the raw numbers from Apple are dropping, with a twenty-three percent drop in units sold compared to last year. That said, those 12.6 million units still captured twenty-seven percent of the tablet market, and continued Apple’s reign as the number on tablet manufacturer. Samsung reached second place with 19 percent, and every other manufacturer was under five percent.
Those numbers are from IDC, who also noted that tablet sales as a whole have continued to fall, with an overall six percent drop year-on-year. It also noted that cellular-enabled tablets are becoming more popular in the mix of equipment.
Apple Reaches Into BBC Radio 1
Apart from some changes in on the retail side of things, many Apple watchers are still wondering what big move Tim Cook and his team will make with the Beats acquisition. While there is no definitive answer just yet, there is a lot of speculation around some of the recent hires that Apple has made in the UK.
Following on from Apple’s hiring of the former BBC Radio 1 DJ Zane Lowe, a number of BBC back room staffers have also been hired (reports Music Business World):
One of this foursome is believed to be Lowe’s old producer at Radio 1, James Bursey. Bursey is understood to have left the Beeb on Friday and is now headed to Los Angeles to team up with Lowe.
Three more BBC producers are set to join him at Apple – but working from the company’s London office. They will enter Apple’s doors after the completion of Radio 1’s One Big Weekend event, which takes place on May 23-24. Names rumoured to be on Apple’s shopping list include Natasha Lynch and Kieran Yeates – both considered star producers at Radio 1.
Curiouser and curiouser…
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