July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Google released a major new education program today that organizes and manages the way teachers push apps, books, and other learning content to student tablets.

Technology changed the way we socialize, find new things to do, get directions, play games, date, work, read news, take pictures, and so much more. But some feel it hasn’t done enough for education. We’ve seen attempts to get new PCs in classrooms, and now there’s a big push for tablets in the hands of every student. But device costs along with theft and content management cause schools to shy away. Google’s Play for Education program may dramatically change all of this.

“When I go visit my kids’ classrooms, it looks pretty much exactly like it did when I went to school,” said Chris Yerga, Google’s engineering director at Google I/O. “Teachers told us that in education, there’s a huge gap between what’s possible with technology and what’s practical, especially with mobile technology. And then they told us it was Google’s job to fix this.”

He explained that teachers said Google should make an affordable Android tablet, content management tools, and app discovery tools. So Google is starting with the last two.

Google Play for Education is like an app store designed especially for teachers with some powerful management tools built-in. Teachers will be able to visit this app store and search by categories such as age-range and subject matter. If you are trying to teach math to a bunch of first graders, you can plug in those refinements and get back a list of apps made specifically for that group.

Teachers will also be able to see reviews from other teachers. After instructors select an app, Google Play for Education will push it out automatically to all the tablets associated with a defined Google Group of students.

That’s the catch — you’ll need to set up your entire classroom on Google Apps, buy Android tablets for all the students, and create a Google Group with the tablets hooked up. The only real issue here might be cost, as Google Apps are fairly easy to set up and many education institutions are already using them.

Schools are able to load accounts with funds for the app store, so a teacher can automatically deduct from that balance if they wish to license a classroom-amount of paid apps. Teachers will also be able to push out YouTube videos and books in the same way they do apps.

Apple over the last year has put a lot of emphasis on the role of iPads in schools. It has tested a number of different markets, and developers have created some very beautiful apps for interactive books and other learning software. But the program is lacking structure and, of course, iPads are also cost prohibitive for many schools.

Google Play for Education could have the right kind of management capabilities to make Apple step up its game, but only if it’s actually as easy to use as it seems.

The program will be available this fall, but app developers can start submitting apps by this summer.

Educators, we would love to hear your thoughts on whether Google Play for Educations is what you wanted from Google. Send us an e-mail!

Chris Yerda image via Google I/O livestream

The Federal Aviation Administration is thinking about relaxing rules for using electronic gadgets while aboard planes. Rather than requiring passengers to turn off their devices during takeoff or landing, the U.S. federal agency may now merely require passengers to put their reading devices into “airplane mode.”

The FAA set up a working group last year to study to the use of portable electronics on planes, and the agency may announce the recommended change during takeoff and landing regarding “reading devices.” That includes devices like the Amazon Kindle, but it apparently will not include cellphones. An Apple iPhone or Google Android mobile phone can’t be used, but an iPad might be OK. The group is expected to announce findings by July 31.

The New York Times reported that one FAA official, who asked for anonymity, said the agency was under a lot of pressure to either allow reading devices on planes or provide scientific evidence for why they cannot. The concern has been that the devices might interfere with a pilot’s ability to control the electronic gear in a plane. Right now, it is OK to use electric razors and audio recorders in a flight. The FAA declined comment to the New York Times.

Sept. 9 - 10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Dropbox vice president Sujay Jaswa says people should think of Dropbox like the iPad: a technology that was aimed at consumers but wound up infiltrating the work world.

“The idea that work will be done the same way five years from now is just impossible,” said Jaswa during the CloudBeat conference in Redwood Shores, Calif. “We have some awesome ideas that we will talk about in the next several months.”

He suggested that Apple probably thought of different use cases for the iPad but didn’t imagine customers would start taking them into work and schools, transforming the way we work. Bringing the analogy full circle, Dropbox has tablet-related announcements to come soon.

Currently, the company has 95 percent of the Fortune 500 companies as clients, and according to research by firewall company Palo Alto Networks, Dropbox’s customer usage amount is 204 times higher than that of competitor Box.

When asked about security, Jaswa skirted the issue, saying Dropbox would love to hear from its customers. IT departments in a number of companies have blacklisted Dropbox because of the fear that proprietary information will get leaked.

Dropbox was hacked earlier this year, causing the company to take on new forms of security. Now Dropbox uses two-factor authentication and encrypts your files both in transit and in storage. You data, however, is kept in a hybrid of Dropbox’s servers and Amazon S3.

“We’ve recgonized that from hearing from customers that the administrative side is really important,” said Jaswa.

While Apple finally put its iPad mini commercial out for public consumption over the weekend, some fans of Microsoft’s new line of tablets have already started to produce spoofs.

The video above parody’s the Apple commercial that starts our with someone playing a piano via Garage Band. However, the iPad mini is replaced with a Surface tablet, which starts blaring some upbeat music. It then starts zipping around the screen, breaks the iPad’s screen as well as the mechanical hand that was playing the piano. The video ends with a warning sign that reads “Caution: Hot Surface, Do Not Touch,”

The video, created by Seattle-based creative firm Cinesaurus, is better than any of the commercials we’ve seen from Microsoft thus far.

Just to be certain, we’ve contacted the creative team to find out if Microsoft hired them. Either way, the video (embedded above) is worth checking out. Let us know what you think in the comment section below.

While there were plenty of people decrying injustices of Apple rolling out a new version of its 10-inch iPad less than a year after it debuted the last one, it hasn’t stopped people from buying iPads.

The company has sold through all of its launch day pre-order stock of fourth generation iPads in its online store. All six models of iPad Wi-Fi models will now ship after a week, with the 3G/4G wireless carrier models on hold until mid November. However, you can still try nabbing a fourth generation iPad this Friday when they go on sale at retail stores.

Early adopters were initially angry at the announcement because it meant that they have the latest and greatest iPad for five months shorter than they did between the iPad 2 and iPad 3. And to top it off, Apple will no longer sell the third-generation iPad, making the current batch of owners feel like they definitely should have waited before upgrading.

But clearly, Apple isn’t getting hurt by releasing a new version of a product that doesn’t fit into to its traditional one per year cycle.

As for Apple’s other debut product, the iPad mini, orders are scheduled to ship two weeks after pre-orders. However, that could change quickly after the product his retail shelves, as analysts are predicting iPad Mini shortages over the holiday season.

Via MacRumors

Photo by Dean Takahashi/VentureBeat

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Apple released its fourth quarter earnings today, just meeting market expectations. Wall Street said Apple would be around $35 billion in revenue, while the company reported $36 billion, or $8.67 per diluted share.

Apple didn’t release specifics about its iPhone 5, though it did increase its overall iPhone units sold by 900,000. In terms of iPads, Apple said that it saw iPad sales growth in all of the countries it’s available.

It also announced that it’ll start paying out dividends of $2.65 per common stock to its customers on Nov. 15 to all who are stockholder by the close of business on Nov. 12.

Thus far Apple’s stock has remain unmoved in after hours trading. Check out the company’s earnings by the numbers:

Revenue: $36 billion compared with $28.3 billion in Apple’s fourth quarter of 2011 and $35 billion last quarter.

Net Profit: $8.2 billion compared with $6.6 billion in Apple’s fourth quarter of 2011 and $8.8 billion last quarter.

iPhones: 26.9 million units, which is 58 percent more than Q4 2011. Last quarter Apple sold 26 million units.

iPads: 14 million units, which is a 26 percent increase from this quarter last year. In the third quarter 2012, Apple sold 17 million units.

Macs: 4.9 million units sold, only a 1 percent increase over the same quarter in 2011. Last quarter Apple sold 4 million units.

iPods: 5.3 million units, which declined 19 percent from the same quarter in 2011. Last quarter Apple sold 6.8 million units.

Apple money image via Shutterstock

Apple CEO Tim Cook re-emphasized the company’s interest in becoming the primary tool in the classroom today, with his announcement of a new version of its iBooks Author tool.

The iBooks Author tool allows publishers to create interactive textbooks that make better use of the curriculum found in regular (boring) print textbooks. This new version adds tons of really useful stuff for educators, including lots of new publisher templates and the ability to include mathematical equations and interactive widgets. I’m assuming the widgets will use the Internet to keep certain pieces of information updated in real-time.

The other big change is that iBooks Authors now lets publishers update their textbooks with new or revised information. To get an upgrade of a regular textbook, you’d have to go out and buy a new edition of the same book.

Cook revealed that iBooks textbooks curriculum is available for 80 percent of high schools across the country, and over 2,500 schools are using iBooks textbooks in the classroom.

Apple first announced its plans to boost its role in the classroom via the iPad back in January. Not only did the company announce partnerships with many of the major textbook publishers, but it also released a new version of iBooks with interactive textbooks as well as the first version of its interactive textbook creator tool iBooks Author.

The education industry is something Steve Jobs always wanted to revolutionize. Not only because the potential for profit is high (the textbook industry is a $9 billion per year business), but it’s also currently really underdeveloped. Students are bored with traditional textbooks, probably because they don’t really apply to the modern world. The information contained inside those books, however, can be translated to a better platform that does.

And that platform could be the less expensive iPad Mini. The lower cost means forward-thinking school districts across the country might be able to justify supplying entire classrooms with iPads.

With the cost factor less of an obstacle, Apple won’t have to sell school districts on its commitment to education, as the company has historically shown that its products (e.g. Mac computers, past textbook sales) are an important teaching tool. Competitors like Amazon don’t have that kind of track record, which makes it much harder to justify the cost of supplying a school with Kindle Fire tablets.

Photo by Dean Takahashi/VentureBeat

A photo of what looks like the shell of a new 10-inch iPad leaked online today, showing off Apple’s new 8-pin Lightning dock connector.

If the photo above, which was obtained by Apple.Pro, is real, it would back up previous rumors indicating Apple’s plans to release a slightly upgraded version of its iPad 3. This new model iPad is expected to make its debut at the Oct. 23 event, along with a possible 7.85-inch iPad Mini and a new version of iBooks.

While the iPad 3 isn’t even a year old, it wouldn’t surprise me if Apple disregarded the ire of early adopters by releasing a brand new version. It would also fit in line with Apple’s strategy of dropping the version number on the iPad itself. (Technically, there is no “iPad 3,” only the iPad with retina display.)

The timing of a refreshed iPad 3 now would also make sense, since Microsoft is releasing its own line of premium Microsoft Surface tablets Oct. 26.

Via 9to5mac

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Though Albert Einstein is long gone, the great physicist’s brain lives on. No, not zombie-style; slides of the man’s brain came out in an iPad app form today for anyone to study like a scientist.

According to the Associated Press, the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Chicago converted Einstein’s brain from a collection of hundreds of aging slides to the digitized versions used in this new iPad app. Thomas Harvey created the slides after the great scientist died roughly 60 years ago. The 1950s-era slides are in fragile shape, and today’s researchers fear they will be destroyed or lost, prompting the conversion.

Source: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/nmhmc-harvey/id555722456?ls=1&mt=8

Einstein’s brain on the iPad app.

The app enables scientists (or anyone else) to take the same look at Einstein’s brain as if they were looking through a microscope at the slides themselves. It is available in the App Store for $9.99. The hope is that someone, somewhere will be able to unlock the genius behind Einstein through his brain. It also widely distributes his brain, where it was only available to those who could get their hands on the physical slides.

The Associated Press notes that because we do not have images of the full Einstein brain, we do not know from where on the brain the slides were taken. For now, scientists are just satisfied that a digital version of his brain exists.

via The Associated Press; Einstein top image via Shutterstock

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Every week, we see a tech company make a sweeping prediction about the death of the desktop PC.

Just this week, conference-goers at the Intel Developer Forum concluded that in the eyes of technology execs, desktops had virtually become obsolete. Amid all the discussion about mobile, it was a forgotten topic.

They have a point: Tablets are growing at an unprecedented pace, according to some stunning statistics. No other technology has penetrated society so quickly — not even electricity. In April 2010, the tablet market was born with the launch of the iPad, and within 18 months, it reached 11 percent of U.S. households. Apple has proven early critics wrong by selling over 84 million iPads.

Technology research firm, NPD Group, have predicted that tablets will outpace notebook PCs for the foreseeable future, eclipsing sales by 2016.

It’s good news for e-commerce. This new generation of tablet-lovers is shopping, tweeting, “pinning,” browsing the news, and consuming more e-books than desktop users.

Tablet growth could also lead to a shift in online education. After noticing that its students were studying on their iPads, Onlineclasses.org put together this neat infographic that charts the meteoric rise of the tablet market.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Just because you can Skype into a company meeting from a beach in Boracay, doesn’t mean you should.

Tourists are increasingly connecting to the Internet while on vacation, according to a recent study from Michigan State University. The walls between work, home, play, and now that last frontier of relaxation, vacations, have pretty much crumbled. Ubiquitous Wi-Fi, cell coverage, smartphones, tablets, and wee laptops are partially responsible, along with high-pressure jobs and workplaces that expect you to be reachable at all hours.

But you can’t blame technology and your boss for everything — your iPhone isn’t forcing you to check Twitter. While our use of smartphones on vacations has tripled in recent years, according to the study, it’s actually not all work and no play. Researchers found that 80 percent of people were using their devices to plan vacations and 70 percent were using them to do work (clearly there are a lot of multi-taskers). That means travelers are logging in to plan their activities while on vacation.

We use Google Maps to navigate, Yelp to find good restaurants, translation tools to look up phrases in the local language. For the truly last minute, there are apps like Hotel Tonight for making same-day bookings. Technology is also how we brag about our trips, replacing postcards and old-school photo albums. (If you go cliff diving in Acapulco but don’t Instagram it, did it really happen?)

Though easy access to this type of information is helpful, the benefits of unplugging completely may be worth packing a paper map. A Harvard Business School professor did an experiment with the Boston Consutling Group. Over the course of three years, 1400 employees were banned from checking in on work after 6PM just one day a week. Professor Leslie Perlow found that employees were happier with their jobs, and communication, productivity, and teamwork improved.

Personally, I think turning off your smartphone could increase the quality of a vacation. Sure, without GPS you could get lost in the back alleys of some strange city. But then you’ll actually have to talk to some locals, explore new locations, and potentially end up having a real adventure. I know, crazy talk.

The Michigan State University researchers tracked the computer and smartphone patterns of subjects for two years, during which time the use Internet on sabbatical increased. I guess things move slowly in academia, because while the results are just being released now, the data was actually collected between 2005 and 2007. (Tablets don’t appear on the list of devices participants brought on vacations, but there are a few pagers on there!) It’s a safe assumption that vacationers’ Internet usage has increased greatly since then with the proliferation of smartphones and vacation-friendly tablets.

The study will be released in one of my favorite publications, “Annals of Tourism Research.”

Man on beach image via Shutterstock

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Apple shipped 17.2 million mobile PCs in the first quarter of 2012, leading the world in units shipped by 22.5 percent, according to a study by NPD DisplaySearch.

You would think the market would be saturated by now, but Apple is still shipping tablets and laptops by the millions — and with new releases like the latest iPad, interest will continue to grow. Compared to the same quarter last year, Apple shipped 118 percent more mobile PCs, eighty percent of which were iPads. That accounts for 162 percent growth year over year.

The latest iPad launch, which occurred in March 2012, was an obvious and major contributor to Apple’s share of voice in the mobile PC market. The company sold three million iPads in its debut weekend alone, and began to roll the tablet out to a number of countries thereafter. A lot of its popularity stemmed from an improved screen, which quadrupled the amount of pixels available in the display, along with 4G connectivity.

The iPad accounted for so much mobile PC growth, that Apple didn’t even show up on the list of companies who shipped the most notebook units. HP won that game. But the amount of iPads shipped was enough to raise Apple up over its competitors in the overall market.

Hp followed Apple in overall mobile PC shipments with 8.9 million unit shipped. Acer came next with 6.9 units ships, Lenovo with 5.9 units shipped and Dell brought up the rear with 5.6 units shipped.

via NPD DisplaySearch, Image via Grant_Robertson/Flickr

Apple CEO Tim Cook made his first trip on Thursday to a Chinese Foxconn production facility that is charged with making the company’s ultra popular iPhones.

Cook’s visit comes after weeks of accusations that employees of the Foxconn plant(s) were the victims of inhuman working conditions, low wages, and unreasonably long shifts. Those same claims, also perpetuated by This American Life’s interview with activist Mike Daisy, caused quite an uproar from Apple’s customers. It even sparked protests outside Apple retail stores and petitions calling for the company to end its relationship with many of its manufacturing partners.

While Daisy’s claims about Foxconn’s labor practices were later revealed to be mostly fabricated, Apple apparently got the message from its customers.

It’s likely that Cook’s visit is part of a new effort by the company to find out more about its manufacturing partners. According to a Reuters report, Cook was seen in pictures smiling and shaking hands with employees at the Foxconn Zhengzhou Technology Park facility, which employs 120,000 people.

China is a very important part of Apple’s business. The country is home to several factories that build its products, like the iPhone, iPods, iPads, and others. China is also Apple’s biggest market overall. Apple is currently selling the iPhone through Chinese wireless carriers China Telecom and China Unicom, but it has yet to strike a deal with the country’s largest carrier, China Mobile. (That could change when China Mobile upgrades to LTE.)

Cook’s trip also included meetings with Vice Premier Li Keqiang, the mayor Beijing, and a visit to Apple’s largest retail stores in the country, according to the Reuters report.

Photo credit: Apple

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Beauty retailer Sephora is testing an iPad program in select stores this month, inspired by what it believes is a close relationship between its customers and Apple.

The iPads have been introduced to 20 stores around the U.S. with the goal of providing extra product details that could only be offered through the Internet.

For instance, Sephora’s website provides customer-written product reviews that can be categorized by location, skin color, skin sensitivity, and age. The iPads come with a custom Sephora app installed and give a buyer access to information such as whether a lotion gave anyone with a certain skin type a rash.

Those with allergies can also find product ingredients through the in-store app. You can review purchase histories as well, in the case you want to buy the same blush you bought previously, but can’t remember the color’s name.

Apple, in particular, struck a chord for Sephora because of the company’s existing hold on Sephora customers.

“We see a high overlap between Apple products and our consumers,” Julie Bornstein, senior vice president for Sephora Direct, said in an interview with VentureBeat. “We decided to build an app for the iPhone specifically … Once you commit to building an app for one product, you can leverage the other products.”

When Sephora was looking to create a mobile website, it realized that the majority of visitors to its non-mobile-friendly site were from iOS devices. Indeed, after launching the custom mobile site, nearly 70 percent of its visitors were from iPhones alone — a number Bornstein notes is the inverse of Android’s popularity with the broader public.

For that reason, Sephora decided to create an iOS application, soon followed by a consumer-facing iPad app. The iPad app used in-store is not available elsewhere.

We asked Bornstein if she believed Apple and Sephora use similar marketing tactics, which created the customer overlap. “There’s probably some brand parallel [at Sephora] to the brand positioning that Apple has,” she said.

She also noted that Sephora finds Apple product users to be more active with their devices, which may drive sales.

But the in-store employees, or “cast members” as Sephora calls them, shouldn’t be concerned. Though the iPads are there to answer people’s questions and drive sales, Bornstein doesn’t believe this technology is going to replace or reduce the staff.

You can find the program in the cities listed below:

• Ala Moana, Hawaii
• Aventura, Florida
• Boulder, Colorado
• Forum, Las Vegas
• Lenox, Atlanta Georgia
• Meatpacking, NYC
• Oxmoor, Kentucky
• Powell, San Francisco
• Prudential Center, Boston
• Rockingham, North Carolina
• Roosevelt Field, Garden City, NY
• Santa Monica
• Soho, NYC
• South Coast Plaza, Costa Mesa, CA
• Times Square, NYC
• Towsen, Maryland
• Union Square, NYC
• Venetian, Las Vegas
• Virginia Beach, VA
• Washington Square
• Portland, OR

Apple, Foxconn, and the Fair Labor Association have each responded to ABC’s “iFactory: Inside Apple” news special, which aired last night on ABC.

The iFactory Nightline episode told the story of Foxconn, a Chinese factory that produces iPads, iPhones, and MacBooks for Apple. The factory has been criticized for poor working conditions and suicide threats. Apple invited the Fair Labor Association, along with ABC’s Bill Weir, to take a look into its assembly lines. The factory, while clean and seemingly safe, still has suicide nets that scale the sides of its buildings to protect employees from themselves. Top complaints from factory workers are low wages, no benefits, and long hours.

The three entities issued one clarification each, and ABC ran the statements on its site.

Apple

ABC caught up with a young woman working at Foxconn who only makes enough to visit her family once a month. She explained that she eliminates extra material from the Apple insignia on 6,000 iPads a day, though Apple disagrees with that number.

ABC said: Zhou Xiao Ying admits, “A lot of times I think about how tired I am.” Around 6,000 times per shift, she grabs an iPad housing and files the aluminum shavings from the iconic Apple silhouette.

Apple responded: “In manufacturing parlance this is called deburring. Her line processes 3,000 units per shift, with two shifts per day for a total of 6,000. A single operator at Ms. Zhou’s station would deburr 3,000 iPads in a shift.”

Foxconn

Thousands of Chinese hopefuls line the Foxconn gates during hiring season. Weir contended that the starting salary for Foxconn employees wasn’t enough to qualify them for regular Chinese payroll taxes. Foxconn says that, with overtime, 75 percent of its employees could hit the tax target.

ABC said: “Starting salary is around $285 a month or $1.78 an hour. And even with the maximum 80 hours of overtime a month, the Chinese government considers them too poor to withdraw any payroll taxes. “

Foxconn responded: “We have over 75 percent of the employees in the category of earning at least 2,200 RMB ($349/month) basic compensation standard. That means they are earning 13.75 RMB ($2.18) per hour. If they work overtime on the weekend, they will earn 27 RMB ($4.28) per hour. In order to reach 3500 to be taxable, they will have to work 47 OT hours to reach 3,500.”

“If the overtime hours are in weekdays, they have to work around 63 hours per month to reach that level of salary to be taxable.”

“Your statement is only true when applying to the entry-level workers while over 75 percent are already over the probation and earning more than 2,200 RMB basic salary.”

Fair Labor Association

Suspicions abound whether the Fair Labor Association will go too easy on Apple, given that Apple is the first electronics company to join the FLA. Additionally, it is paying dues to be in the association and is paying for the audits, which the FLA will perform. The FLA clarified how long it had been in talks with Apple. Weir had interviewed FLA president Auret van Heerden.

ABC said: “Was Apple resistant to this idea when you first approached them?” I ask. “It was a long conversation,” van Heerden smiles. “We’ve been in this conversation for about five years,” he says. Apple joined the F.L.A. on Jan. 13, eight days before the New York Times ran a series examining the company’s labor practices.

Fair Labor Association responded: “The discussions began in April 2007 but stalled in March 2008. We then resumed them in April 2009 and decided to do a small pilot survey so that Apple could get an idea of how our tools might add value to their program. That pilot led to a second activity that I believe contributed to the decision to join the FLA at the end of 2011. I, of course, cannot speak for Apple but I do believe that the decision to join was probably taken some months before (and therefore well before) the New York Times articles.”

via ABC

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

No nanny? No problem! Modern-day parents are increasingly employing tablets to entertain, teach, and occupy their children, according to survey data gathered by analytics firm Nielsen.

Seven out of 10 children under 12 (70 percent), in tablet-owning households used a tablet during the fourth quarter of 2011. The figure represents a nine percent increase from the third quarter, Nielsen found.

The most popular activity among young children is far and away playing games. More than three-quarters of kids, or 77 percent, are playing downloaded games. Thankfully, 57 percent of parents also indicated that their growing babes are using educational applications.

Here’s something fun: The tablet also seems to help parents with the often headache-inducing task of keeping kids quiet and occupied while traveling or dining out. Fifty-five percent of parents indicated that their children used tablets for entertainment while traveling, and 41 percent of parents said the tablet served as a pleasant distraction for their kids at restaurants.

Of course, there’s bound to be a subset of the parental community that frowns upon on the tablet’s growing role in (and out of) the household. Is a child frequently entertained by an iPad or similar device less likely to socialize or play nice with other kids on the playground? Will these young, impressionable minds opt for technology over interpersonal communication later in life? All are great questions with unknown answers.

For now, the convenience of placing a tablet in front of a child is one too tempting for a growing percentage of parents to pass up. And the tablet just might be a viable and cheaper alternative to a babysitter or full-time nanny, so long as you don’t expect it to clean up after your kids.

Photo credit: Wayan Vota/Flickr

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Last month saw several big stories on poor working conditions at the factories in China where makes Apple products. Chief executive Tim Cook initially responded by saying that Apple had nothing to apologize for. Now Apple has announced a series of special “voluntary audits” at Foxconn factories in Shenzen and Chengdu, China by the Fair Labor Association.

It’s the first big step by Apple to be proactive about the horrendous working conditions at its suppliers.

“We believe that workers everywhere have the right to a safe and fair work environment, which is why we’ve asked the FLA to independently assess the performance of our largest suppliers,” Cook said in a statement today. “The inspections now underway are unprecedented in the electronics industry, both in scale and scope, and we appreciate the FLA agreeing to take the unusual step of identifying the factories in their reports.”

Cook previously responded directly to a damning story in the New York Times in a letter to Apple employees, saying that, “Any suggestion that we don’t care is patently false and offensive to us. As you know better than anyone, accusations like these are contrary to our values. It’s not who we are.”

But momentum continued to build for Apple to take action. Last week activists delivered a petition with 250,000 signatures to the Apple store in Grand Central.

A former Apple executive quoted in the New York Times story said that, “Suppliers would change everything tomorrow if Apple told them they didn’t have another choice.”

Apple products, not cloud computing, will be the real force behind computer equipment sales in 2012, according to a report by analyst firm Forrester.

“Analysts have been predicting that cloud computing — specifically, infrastructure-as a service (IaaS) — will reshape the server and storage market,” the report read, “Actual adoption of IaaS remains limited.”

Meanwhile, there’s another trend that’s picking up: People are increasingly bringing their own devices to work, and those devices are frequently Apple products, since Apple is known globally for making products that are easy to use, easy to set up and that quickly proliferate to the masses. The “bring your own device” culture that began infiltrating the workplace in 2011 will mean companies will have to make technology plans around Apple, as opposed to the “less pressing” IaaS.

Cloud computing is a big switch that IT managers are dealing with. It’s new, it’s shiny, but it also means huge change, which causes doubts. In the second fiscal quarter of 2011, Forrester surveyed a number of companies and discovered that 14 percent had plans to introduce IaaS into the company structure. Only 3 percent said they were implementing these plans in 2011. Forrester believes the global economy will put a bigger strain on chief information officers’ budgets in 2012, however. Thus, early worries about spending money on new equipment supporting IaaS, will cause CIOs to cut these purchases out of the budget.

Forrester estimates that in 2011, Apple sold $6 billion in Macs as well as the same number of iPads to businesses, despite the fact that Apple does not target the corporate market. The iPad in particular is an easy-to -use technology that is less of an investment than a suite of Mac computers. This may be appealing to CIOs, and it show in Forrester’s 2012 and 2013 predictions.

In 2012, the firm predicts Apple will increase sales to the business sector, as growth in the overall tech market is expected to remain stable at a projected 6 percent per year through 2012 and 2013. Apple should sell $9 billion in Macs and $10 billion in iPads to government and businesses in 2012. 2013 looks even better, with a predicted $12 billion in Macs and $16 billion in iPads sold to the same segment.

In a recession, CIOs will turn toward easy, simple solutions, and thus Apple is the likely winner. IaaS may still play a big roll in shaping what the future of equipment may look like, but for now the iPad is still the executive’s favorite work toy.

Among the improvements, a source tells the site that Apple will offer personal setup for new computers and devices in “Startup Sessions” areas in stores, and iPads will be everywhere serving as interactive signage. The improvements have been dubbed “Apple Store 2.0″ internally, the source says.

While the news is still unconfirmed, it fits in with rumors from earlier this week that Apple was planning something big at its stores. It sounds like Apple is once again aiming to reshape what consumers expect from a retail store.

Apple has been praised for its chic retail experience, which unlike typical electronics stores, allows customers to try out products before they buy them. The stores also serve to distribute knowledgeable Apple tech support across the world — good luck getting the same sort of support by bringing your HP laptop to the Geek Squad. Not surprisingly, Microsoft has pretty much copied Apple’s retail setup in its own retail stores.

Meanwhile, AppleInsider is reporting that Apple Store employees will also be toting iPads instead of just the iPod Touch units they’re currently relying on. Employees likely won’t use iPads for all scenarios, but will have them on hand for certain situations, such as to demonstrate a product, or make it easier for a customer to pen their signature. A source tells the site that Apple may also release an iPad version of its RetailMe internal training app.

The Apple Stores will also be beefed up in other ways. 9to5 Mac says some locations will receive larger displays and better sound systems. Additionally, a new version of the Apple Store iOS app could be released this weekend, which is said to offer more features than the current app. “For example, a user with the app can walk into the store and the app will know which location the user is at. The app can even ask the user if they’d like to speak to a specialist,” 9to5 Mac’s Mark Gurman writes.