Category Archives: App Store

AirPods, App Store, Apple, Apple Music, Apple Watch, Beats, Cars, China, Earnings, Episodes, iPad, iPhone, Mac, QotW

Week 93 QotW – Apple March Quarter Earnings

This is our Question of the Week episode, with the question being what we should make of Apple’s March quarter earnings, reported on Tuesday this week, so this is our quarterly deep dive on Apple’s earnings. We talk through each of the major product segments – iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch (and wearables generally), Mac, and Services, and also talk a little about trends in China and in R&D spending, among other things.

As usual, you’ll find some links to related content as well as other ways to listen to the podcast beneath the embedded Soundcloud player below.

We invite listeners to submit questions for subsequent weeks in the comments below, on Twitter (@jandawson, @aaronmiller), or via email (jan at jackdawresearch dot com). We also have a dedicated Podcast Twitter handle at @BDPcast.

As ever, you can also find the podcast on iTunes, in the Overcast app, or your own favorite podcast app. Here is the RSS feed for the podcast if you want to add it manually to your app of choice.

Show notes:

Here are some useful links relating to this week’s episode:

  • Jan’s Tech Narratives post (free even if you’re not a subscriber) on Apple earning
  • Jan’s tweets immediately after the earnings call, in this thread.

Please leave us a comment or get in touch via Twitter to give us feedback. We’d love to hear from you. Also, we’d love it if you would leave a review of the podcast on iTunes.Please leave us a comment or get in touch via Twitter to give us feedback. We’d love to hear from you. You can reach the individual hosts on Twitter (@jandawson, @aaronmiller), or via email (jan at jackdawresearch dot com). We also have a dedicated Podcast Twitter handle at @BDPcast. And we’d love it if you would leave a review of the podcast on iTunes or in your podcast app of choice.

Amazon, App Store, Apple, Episodes, Intel, Music, Pandora, Spotify, Tim Cook, Vesper

Episode 59 – Tim Cook’s 5 Years, Intel IDF Announcements

Our News Roundup this week covers the Backchannel article about Apple’s AI efforts; Spotify, Amazon, and Pandora’s attempts to negotiate new rights deals with music labels; and the shutdown of John Gruber’s Vesper note-taking app for iOS (and what it says about the state of the App Store and the app economy more broadly).

Our Question of the Week is “How should we view Tim Cook’s first five years as Apple CEO?” and builds off the blog post Jan did this week with lots of charts comparing Apple at the beginning and end of Tim Cook’s first five years. We talk about how Apple has changed, what Tim Cook has done differently (notably increasing R&D spend), and his biggest successes and failures during his time as CEO. There’s a link to the post in the show notes for today’s episode.

Our third segment is a discussion of Intel’s announcements from its big developer event last week. We talk about the emphasis on specialized silicon and non-traditional devices for Intel, the focus on sensors and their many applications, and the licensing deal with ARM, among other things.

Lastly, we wrap up with a Weekly Pick, which is a personal hygiene recommendation from Aaron.

As usual, you’ll find some links to related content as well as other ways to listen to the podcast beneath the embedded Soundcloud player below.

We invite listeners to submit questions for subsequent weeks in the comments below, on Twitter (@jandawson, @aaronmiller), or via email (jan at jackdawresearch dot com). We also have a dedicated Podcast Twitter handle at @BDPcast.

As ever, you can also find the podcast on iTunes, in the Overcast app, or your own favorite podcast app. Here is the RSS feed for the podcast if you want to add it manually to your app of choice.

Show notes:

Here are some useful links relating to this week’s episode:

  • The Backchannel article by Steven Levy on Apple’s AI efforts.
  • John Gruber’s post on Vesper shutting down
  • Jan’s post with about 20 charts and analysis on Tim Cook’s first five years as Apple CEO
  • Aaron’s Weekly Pick was an electric toothbrush – specifically, the Oral B Vitality Floss Action model, which you can find on Amazon (affiliate link).

Please leave us a comment or get in touch via Twitter to give us feedback. We’d love to hear from you. Also, we’d love it if you would leave a review of the podcast on iTunes.

App Store, Apple, Apple Music, Apps, Episodes, iMessage, Retrospective, Siri, tvOS, WatchOS, WWDC, WWDC2016

Episode 50 – Our First Year, WWDC Preview

This week’s episode marks the one-year anniversary of the first episode, with both episodes offering previews of Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC). It’s also episode 50 (we skipped the weeks of Christmas and New Year).

Given the anniversary, we thought it would be fun to do a little retrospective of some of the things we’ve covered on the podcast over the past year, and so we made that another topic of discussion on the latest episode. There’s now a permanent page on the site where you can easily see a full listing of past episodes, so you can easily browse them. But we spent some time highlighting some of our favorite episodes from the past year, as well as discussing the past year in consumer tech. Links to the episodes we mention are below in the show notes.

If, for whatever reason, you don’t feel like reminiscing with us, you can skip to 21:20, when we start talking about this year’s WWDC. Specifically, we talk about Siri and digital assistants in general, something Jan’s been asked about a bunch in the lead up to WWDC by reporters. Secondly, we talk about iMessage and the prospects for iMessage as a platform, something we discussed in Episode 33. We also talk through iOS getting more pro features, what we might see in tvOS and watchOS, Apple Music, the App Store changes announced this week, and the fact that we’re unlikely to see any new hardware announced.

As usual, you’ll find some links to related content as well as other ways to listen to the podcast beneath the embedded Soundcloud player below.

We invite listeners to submit questions for subsequent weeks in the comments below, on Twitter (@jandawson, @aaronmiller), or via email (jan at jackdawresearch dot com). We also have a dedicated Podcast Twitter handle at @BDPcast.

As ever, you can also find the podcast on iTunes, in the Overcast app, or your own favorite podcast app. Here is the RSS feed for the podcast if you want to add it manually to your app of choice.

Show notes:

Here are some useful links relating to this week’s episode:

Please leave us a comment or get in touch via Twitter to give us feedback. We’d love to hear from you. Also, we’d love it if you would leave a review of the podcast on iTunes.

App Store, Apple, CES, Episodes, Netflix

Episode 28 – CES, App Store Numbers, Netflix

For our first episode of 2016, we focus mostly on CES and the announcements made there. Jan was there in person, while Aaron followed the news remotely. We discuss the following trends and products, among others:

  • The rise of USB-C
  • Cars, technology, and autonomous vehicles
  • Fitness and wearables – Fitbit Blaze and Withings Thermo
  • Drones
  • Virtual and augmented reality
  • Headphones, including Apple’s reported moves here
  • 4K and Ultra High Definition plus HDR in TV sets.

We also spend a few minutes specifically discussing Netflix’s big international expansion news from CES, including Jan’s post from this week about the possible financial implications. Lastly, we discuss the new App Store numbers Apple released this week and what they might mean. And, as always, we wrap up with our Weekly Pick, a product recommendation.

As usual, lots of relevant links and other information are below, under the embedded SoundCloud player.

We invite listeners to submit questions for subsequent weeks in the comments below, on Twitter (@jandawson, @aaronmiller), or via email (jan at jackdawresearch dot com). We also now have a dedicated Podcast Twitter handle at @BDPcast.

As ever, you can also find the podcast on iTunes, in the Overcast app, or your own favorite podcast app. Here is the RSS feed for the podcast if you want to add it manually to your app of choice.

Show notes:

Here are some useful links relating to this week’s episode:

  • The Verge’s Bragi Dash review
  • The Thermo thermometer product page on Withings’ site
  • TechCrunch article on Quanergy’s solid-state LiDAR technology
  • MG Siegler’s two pieces on Bluetooth earpieces (1, 2) and Jan’s earlier piece on intimate computing for Techpinions
  • Jan’s post from this week on Netflix Everywhere
  • Jan’s post on Apple’s new App Store numbers
  • Jan’s post on why Apple should buy Netflix
  • Aaron’s Weekly Pick, which is a knife sharpener, on Amazon (affiliate link).

Please leave us a comment or get in touch via Twitter to give us feedback. We’d love to hear from you. Also, we’d love it if you would leave a review of the podcast on iTunes.

2016, App Store, Apple, Apple Pay, Apple TV, Apple Watch, Episodes, iOS, iPad, iPhone, Jeff Williams, Mac, Management, Phil Schiller, Predictions, Smart home, Swift

Episode 27 – News Roundup, 2016 Predictions

For our final episode of the year, we decided to focus on our predictions for 2016. We kick off the episode with a review of three news items from the past few days: the Apple management changes announced on Thursday, December 17th; the recent Morgan Stanley report calling for lower iPhone sales; and the open-sourcing of Swift and the related interview of Craig Federighi by John Gruber. Following a roughly 15-minute roundup of these news items, we spend the rest of the time discussing our predictions for 2016, starting with our predictions for Apple’s various product lines, and then broadening out to cover other industry trends and companies, including Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Microsoft. We hope you enjoy this last episode of 2015 – we’ll be taking a break for the weeks of Christmas and the New Year, and will be back the week of CES, which Jan will be attending January 4-7. Enjoy the holidays and we’ll see you in January!

As ever, the SoundCloud player is embedded below, and under that you can find a list of links relating to this week’s episode along with links to other formats for the episode.

We invite listeners to submit questions for subsequent weeks in the comments below, on Twitter (@jandawson, @aaronmiller), or via email (jan at jackdawresearch dot com). We also now have a dedicated Podcast Twitter handle at @BDPcast.

As ever, you can also find the podcast on iTunes, in the Overcast app, or your own favorite podcast app. Here is the RSS feed for the podcast if you want to add it manually to your app of choice.

Show notes:

Here are some useful links relating to this week’s episode:

  • Apple’s press release about the executive changes
  • An article covering the Morgan Stanley iPhone estimates
  • Apple’s press release about open-sourcing Swift
  • Craig Federighi’s interview on John Gruber’s Talk Show podcast, and the transcript of the conversation
  • Episode 2 of the Beyond Devices Podcast, in which we first discussed the open-sourcing of Swift and talked about many of the same topics covered by the Federighi interview.

Please leave us a comment or get in touch via Twitter to give us feedback. We’d love to hear from you. Also, we’d love it if you would leave a review of the podcast on iTunes.

App Store, Apple, Apple Watch, Apps, Docks, Episodes, Facebook, Mac, Mac App Store

Episode 24 – Mac App Store, Facebook’s “Meta OS”, Apple Watch Dock

This week, we kick off our discussion with a review of what’s happened over the last week or so with the Mac App Store, which suffered from a certificate-related bug that broke a number of apps previously downloaded from the store. We also use this as a jumping-off point for a broader discussion about the Mac App Store and the various other issues developers have been complaining about for some time now. Our second topic is our Question of the Week, which is about why Facebook has so many apps beyond the main Facebook app. This ties into a post Jan wrote on Techpinions last week (link in the show notes below). Our third topic is the new dock Apple has just released for the Apple Watch in somewhat under-the-radar fashion, and again we broaden the discussion to cover Apple’s strange history with docks for its products.

As ever, there are relevant links and other material under the embedded SoundCloud player below.

We invite listeners to submit questions for subsequent weeks in the comments below, on Twitter (@jandawson, @aaronmiller), or via email (jan at jackdawresearch dot com). We also now have a dedicated Podcast Twitter handle at @BDPcast.

As ever, you can also find the podcast on iTunes, in the Overcast app, or your own favorite podcast app. Here is the RSS feed for the podcast if you want to add it manually to your app of choice.

Show notes:

Here are some useful links relating to this week’s episode:

Please leave us a comment or get in touch via Twitter to give us feedback. We’d love to hear from you. Also, we’d love it if you would leave a review of the podcast on iTunes.