Analysis Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Reality Absorption Field: Making the top choice

by Ross Rubin (Apr 11th, 2013)

Among Apple competitors, it's become fashionable to pay the company a backhanded compliment regarding iOS. Yes, the patter typically goes, Apple created a breakthrough platform back in 2007. However, the paradigm has now shifted to... something. In the case of BlackBerry, that something is a ...

Reality Absorption Field: Apple's best product revision

by Ross Rubin (Mar 16th, 2013)

Have you heard the news? There's this pretty successful Apple product -- starts with an "iP," ends with a "d" and has a vowel in the middle. And its average prices have dropped. Apple is (cue ominous music) doomed (cue evil cackle). Doomed, I say, repeating myself loudly so as to be heard above ...

What Starfish can learn from its failed Macworld appearance

by Megan Lavey-Heaton (Feb 6th, 2013)

If you haven't read it yet, please check out Lex Friedman's account on Macworld's site of his attempts to view the Starfish smartwatch prototype. Lex does an amazing job summarizing how the company stumbled and stumbled again in its attempts to show the Mac community its competitor to the ...

Reality Absorption Field: Forms without Apple function

by Ross Rubin (Feb 1st, 2013)

The last Reality Absorption Field discussed how CES is relevant to Apple -- mostly through major standards milestones -- even though the company doesn't attend the annual confabulation. But CES can also be seen as a mirror that is held up to the world of device makers, even those that don't ...

Reality Absorption Field: What happens in Vegas

by Ross Rubin (Jan 16th, 2013)

A few years ago, a senior Apple executive was once told that, even though Apple did not exhibit at the annual Las Vegas spectacle that is the International Consumer Electronics Show, its presence seemed to linger in the arid air and in the clouded minds of many attendees. "We love that," he ...

Point-Counterpoint: The 'cheap iPhone'

by Chris Rawson (Jan 16th, 2013)

The "Apple will make a low-cost iPhone" rumor is turning into one of the leading tech industry memes of 2013. Just like the "Apple will make an HDTV" and "Apple will introduce a streaming music service" rumors, the "low-cost iPhone" rumor isn't exactly new; there have been rumors of an "iPhone ...

Reality Absorption Field: A slow rise to the Surface

by Ross Rubin (Nov 15th, 2012)

After all the teasing and secrecy and controversy around its launch, the recent announcement by Steve Ballmer that Surface with Windows RT (the only chip-defined flavor of Microsoft's debut branded tablet that's currently shipping) was off to a "modest" start might have seemed like a shocking ...

Reality Absorption Field: Sizing up the iPad mini

by Ross Rubin (Nov 7th, 2012)

Welcome to Reality Absorption Field, a new bimonthly column where veteran industry analyst and occasional TUAW TalkCast contributor Ross Rubin will discuss industry developments and how they relate to Apple. On October 23rd, following presentation of slimmed-down Macs and a beefed-up iPad, ...

Does it matter if the iPad mini cannibalizes iPad sales?

by Erica Sadun (Oct 31st, 2012)

On October 23rd, Apple introduced its fourth-generation iPad, the iPad mini and a slew of Mac refreshes. Somewhat lost in the reaction to those launches and refreshes was what I think is the most interesting story of all: the iPad 2, and how competitive it has been in this market. Today, a bit ...

New Mac mini tear down and benchmarks from Mac Mini Vault

by Mike Schramm (Oct 25th, 2012)

The Mac Mini Vault has already grabbed a new Mac mini and taken it apart. You can read through the site's teardown and analysis right now. The short version is that much of the mini's design is the same. As you can see above, with the new version on the left and the 2011 version on the right. ...

One-bit Internet: The iPad is/isn't a content creation device

by Richard Gaywood (Jul 9th, 2012)

In the conclusion to my Retina MacBook repairability post, I wrote: "on the Internet, it often seems that everything must be compressed to a one-bit image: black or white, triumph or catastrophe, the very best or the absolute worst." So it goes for the eternal debate over whether the iPad is a ...

Apple doesn't invite Kaspersky Lab to examine Mac security (Updated)

by Mike Schramm (May 14th, 2012)

Update: Engadget smelled something funny in this story, and turns out they were right; Kaspersky is now saying that the comment about "working with Apple to analyze OS X" was taken out of context, and that Apple has not invited the security firm to analyze its desktop OS. Full statement is ...

TUAW Deep Thoughts: How netbooks conquered the universe

by Erica Sadun (May 8th, 2012)

Look around out there. Netbooks are not only ubiquitous, they have basically conquered all of reality. Before you do a spit take and start saying words that are unsuitable for TUAW's family friendly audience, let me remind you of Apple's iPad introduction. Steve Jobs laid out the plan for how ...

The road to OS Xi: Where iOS and OS X suffer a teleporter accident and merge

by Erica Sadun (Apr 29th, 2012)

Remember The Fly? That's the one where Jeff Goldblum tries to teleport but instead gets his genes all mixed up with a fly. "[T]he Telepod computer, confused by the presence of two separate life-forms in the sending pod, merged him with the fly at the molecular-genetic level." Look at ...

Spotify lifts track limits on free accounts, struggles to stand out in streaming market

by Mike Schramm (Mar 29th, 2012)

Good news for European fans of the streaming music service Spotify: The company has lifted the five-track replay limit per day for users of the free service in Sweden, Finland, Norway, the Netherlands and Spain. Additionally, US users will get their current six-month free trial extended, but ...