Super Bowl Ads 2012

BY THE APPLE GIRL Here’s a roundup of Android/Apple commercials from this year’s Super Bowl. Samsung took a jab at Apple with its new Samsung Note. In short the Note is a giant phone that meets a tablet with a stylus. As Steve Jobs said ” If you see a stylus, they blew it”. Then there was the Motorola Droid RAZR ad – featuring new colors on the phone ?! There was Suzie (Siri) in the Doritos ad. Make Siri mad and she will pull out her metal tentacles to get to the chips 🙂 Super Bowl time reminds me of Apple’s 1984 iconic commercial, check it out if you haven’t already. Super Bowl 2012: Samsung Note Super Bowl 2012: Motorola Droid RAZR Super Bowl 2012: Doritos Super Bowl 1984: Apple Macintosh Source: MacRumors, HuffingtonPost, Engadget

Apple’s $100 Billion cash reserve

BY THE APPLE GIRL Infographics seem to be the new norm to convey outlandish information. Here’s one on Apple’s cash reserve.. [Source]: DesignTAXI

Find me a simple mobile phone!

It’s probably too early in the smart phone life cycle to be looking for a retro cell phone, but John’s Phone thinks different. Remember those days when we were excited about using the cell phone to just talk?

John’s Phone offers the world simplest and basic cell phone with no extra features or processes. You can make and receive calls, adjust volume, lock the phone and speed dial ..all for $100. It’s an unlocked cell phone, water-resistant, 6 hour talk time with 3 week standby and it comes with earphones, a “physical” address book and pen, and a USB cable. LOL.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Source: AhaLife, John’s Phone

Apple’s Best Quarter yet!

BY THE APPLE GIRL This week Apple announced its best quarter in the history of the company. The fourth calendar quarter of 2011 showed a $46.33 billion dollar revenue and net quarterly profit of $13.06 billion. Gross margin was 44.7 percent compared to 38.5 percent a year ago and international sales accounted for 58 percent of the quarter’s revenue. Apple single-handedly erased  a drop in S&P’s 500 Index earning for the December quarter turning a 4.2 percent decline to a 4.4 percent gain. To put it in perspective, for the same quarter, Samsung posted $42 billion in sales and a $4.7 billion operating profit – Samsung mobile contributed to 40 percent of the company sales. Again for the same quarter, Motorola reported a net revenue of $3.4 Billion and a net loss of $80 Million (Google acquired Motorola Mobility last year for $12.5 Billion in cash! Ouch!)

Apple’s new textbook venture

BY THE APPLE GIRL Amidst all the CES news this week, Apple has some news too. Apple is expected to make its big education announcement at New York’s Guggenheim Museum on Jan 19. The word is that there may not be any device launch but Apple will discuss its new digital textbook business.  After music, movies, apps, books , magazines, will textbook industry be the next to be dominated by Apple?

CES 2012: iOS Accessories

BY THE APPLE GIRL There are some pretty cool accessories on the CES floor this year. And many are designed for iOS devices. Here are some we thought would interest you 1. Altona LinkCast Wireless HD Audio/Video System Altona’s Linkcast provides what is called the “wireless HDMI” – peripheral plugs between your media system’s HDMI output i.e. tablets, PS3, DVD players and your TV’s HDMI input. Altona’s solution is getting us closer to a wireless world & your media room free of that wire mangle. The LinkCast is expected to cost $300 and expected to arrive in February. 2. Cellulon’s Prodigy Case with infrared keyboard Cellulon has improved on its previous keyboard solution by building an iPhone case which projects a full sized keyboard onto the nearest flat surface. It’s expected to cost $190. 3. Targus iNotebook The iNotebook does handwriting and drawing recognition by wirelessly transferring to the iPad anything you jot down on the notepad. Pretty nifty for those old school types who love hand writing. [Source]: 9To5Mac

CES 2012: Samsung debuts its Siri TV

BY THE APPLE GIRL Samsung unveiled its newest TV at CES in Las Vegas. With a dual core processor and a 1080p resolution, the flagship ES8000 LED TV comes with Siri like voice control features and Kinect like motion sensor technology. The TV’s built-in cameras that use face technology to sign users into the personal profiles.  Extremely thin & good-looking, 3D, voice control, motion control, face recognition, web browsing, Apps .. Awesome right? Did Apple just get jumped?  Gizmodo’s review just trickled in from the CES floor, and it’s not so good, but hey that’s just one review ..

CES 2012: Nokia Lumia 900

BY THE APPLE GIRL At CES today, Nokia officially announced the launch of its latest in the Lumia series, the Nokia Lumia 900 – first 4G LTE Windows Nokia phone, in the United States. Like the Lumia 800, the 900 uses Super AMOLED technology, but has a slightly larger display at 4.3 inches as opposed to the 3.7 inch Lumia 800. The phone has 512 MB RAM & uses Microsoft’s Mango OS. With a single core 1.4 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, the Lumia 900 is expected to arrive in the US in a couple of months. The exterior comes in the single polycarbonate matte plastic build like the Lumia 800 and reportedly gives a sturdy feel. Lumia 900 will be sold in two colors – Cyan & Black. It has a 8 MegaPixel camera with f/2.2 Carl Zeiss lens with a dual LED flash  and a front facing f/2.4 wide angle lens. Expected to provide 7 hours of battery life and will be available on AT&T. Nokia hasn’t yet released the price and the phone is expected to hit AT&T and Windows stores in a few months. Finally Microsoft & Nokia have come out with a phone of value. The Lumia 900 is ready to compete with the likes of Samsung Galaxy LTE phone & the iPhone 4S (the iPhone was released five years ago on this day – a nice bit of trivia there by MG Seigler) Check out the full specification of the Nokia Lumia 900 & our comparison of the iPhone 4S, Motorola Droid Razr, Samsung Galaxy SII and Nokia 800.

Fancy a Facebook Business Card?

BY THE APPLE GIRL Facebook has partnered with MOO cards to bring Facebook Timeline to the real world, by introducing personalized business cards. The cards will be made from a template, using users’ Facebook cover picture and information from their profiles and costs about $15 for 50 business cards (MOO was also giving away the first 200,000 cards for free!) Richard Moss CEO of MOO says “It’s clear that consumer habits of sharing business and personal information are evolving, and the lines between online social networking and offline business networking are not just blurring, but vanishing”. As always is the case when Facebook announces a new feature, I have heard a lot of “are you crazy to push it so far?”s, but I think Facebook wouldn’t do it without a future road map. Facebook has filed for a trademark on the usage of “Facebook” on business cards and non-magnetically encoded ID cards. The non magnetic ID cards brings NFC to my mind.  As much as one would want to deny it, Facebook has done an extremely good job at being the best at its own game and harnessing future trends. Meshing social and business might just be one of them..  [Source]: Design TAXI, TechCrunch, TradeMarkia, MOO

The Zen of Steve Jobs – A graphic novel

BY THE APPLE GIRL Creative agency Jess3 has collaborated with Forbes to produce a 80 page graphic novel of Steve Jobs when he was fired from Apple. The book goes in detail about the relationship of Jobs with the Zen Buddhist priest Kobun Chino Otagawa, who was a maverick himself. It focuses on Jobs’ intensive study with Kobun and the impact it had on Steve’s career and design philosophy. The book explores how Jobs’ might have honed his design aesthetic via Eastern religion to identify only what he needs and leave the rest behind. It sounds to me as an interesting read! Click on the slide show below for a few sample pages & you can buy the novel here. Slideshow [Source]: LaughingSquid, DesignTAXI