On June 23rd an announcement was made at the Marketcircle Blog which revealed that an iPhone companion to their business productivity application, Daylite, was being developed. The news has been greeted with great enthusiasm from current Daylite users, and we got a chance to talk to Marketcircle's president, AJ, about their mobile development plans.

First, for those not familiar with Daylite, it's what AJ refers to as a Business Productivity Manager. "It's more than a PIM," AJ stated, "it's more than groupware. Our premise is something called a Productivity Pyramid. The bottom layer is tasks, notes, files, meetings, urls, et cetera. The second layer is people: contacts, your companies and users. The top layer is what we call objectives, which is projects and opportunities." Daylite is geared towards helping small business -- ranging from one to fifty people -- move forward.

Very recently, Marketcircle released a new version of Daylite which integrates with the iWork suite. Daylite can also integrate with Mail.app and supports Sync Services for iCal and Address Book syncing.

The developers at Marketcircle were receiving constant requests for mobile applications for Palm, Blackberry, etc. AJ says that, at that point, the richness of data provided by Daylite didn't sync well with the available platforms. "And no offense to those platforms," he went on, "but they're quite ugly." All of that was "until we got the iPhone."

Where's all that cash that Apple made from the iPhone and all those iPods, Macs, and iTunes downloads last year going? Why, right into Apple's mattress. According to the Financial Times, Apple currently has $18 billion sitting on their balance sheet, doing nothing much at all. And they're OK with that -- Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer recently said in the Q1 conference call that they like having that "flexibility." And after all, you never know when you might need to drop $18 billion on something important.

All that money doing nothing isn't so great for Apple's investors though, some of whom apparently want a piece of the pie. They might like to see dividends, stock buybacks, or even actual spending come out of that on Apple's part (later in the piece, I'm surprised to see that Apple only spends 3% of their sales on R&D, while Microsoft spends 14%). But no -- Apple is flush with cash from all their big sales numbers, and they want to apparently stay that way.

[Via Ars]

As several readers have pointed out, the latest episodes of Scrubs (which started its final *sniff* season last week) are available on iTunes. But how can that be, Scrubs airs on NBC? Yes, yes - but thanks to the magic of large media conglomerates, Scrubs is not actually an NBC show.

Scrubs is owned/produced by Disney (which owns ABC), via their Touchstone Television division ABC Television division, meaning they are not part of the NBC Universal contract with iTunes. This is why it took so long for Scrubs to appear on iTunes in the first place (fellow Scrubs fans will remember how mad we were at iTunes/ABC over this issue). Now, in this final seventh season, things become a bit more complicated; NBC now shares profits with Scrubs (before they didn't get anything from syndication or DVD sales), as a condition for renewal, and you can watch full episodes on NBC's website (which you could not do before), but this is still an ABC show in terms of iTunes arrangements. It is my understanding that iTunes contracts are with the studios that produce the shows, not the networks that air the shows - which is not always the same thing.

For example, NBC Universal owns/produces the show House, which airs on FOX. Thus, the current season of House in unavailable on iTunes. Conversely, FOX owns/produces My Name is Earl, for NBC, and like Scrubs, current episodes are available on iTunes. Weirdly enough, Ugly Betty, which is now also fully owned by NBC (because the chairman and head of programming for NBC is the owner of Reveille, which produces Ugly Betty and The Office, among others) does have its new episodes on iTunes - only because I assume they signed an agreement with Apple before NBC bought the company.

Of course, if the WGA does indeed strike, not much of this will matter anyway, because none of our new shows will be on TV or iTunes for us to watch. This concludes today's lesson in Television Business in the Digital Age.

The ongoing NBC Universal v. iTunes slap-fight has just become well, more slap happy. As reported in Daily Variety, Jeff Zucker (the President and CEO of NBC Universal), revealed some of the details of the NBC/iTunes impasse in an interview with the New Yorker's Ken Auletta.

Some of the highlights:

• In the last year, NBC U reported only $15 million in revenue from the deal with iTunes
• NBC U programming accounted for 40% of iTunes video sales
• NBC did want to experiment with higher pricing, albeit for only one show and on an experimental basis, but Apple refused.
• NBC U also wanted a cut of Apple's hardware sales (presumably iPods) to supplement revenues from the iTunes Music Store.

I'm sure it was just a coincidence that these remarks were given on the day of the launch of the Hulu.com beta, NBC's attempt to answer iTunes.

Issues of profit sharing and price flexibility aside (I'll refrain from sharing my own opinions regarding those issues), the conclusion I find most interesting in this saga is that Zucker's figures (along with figures Apple has reported in the past) back up what many analysts have been saying all along: demand for television content via iTunes is pretty underwhelming. Think about it, NBC says they made only $15 million in revenue off of media sold via iTunes last year; even in the softening TV on DVD market (where the cost per episode is on average, the same, for the consumer), that's peanuts compared to retail revenues of those same shows.

Additionally, if NBC represents 40% of all iTunes video sales, and assuming that the other media companies have a similar revenue split agreement with Apple, that would put total revenues by the content providers for the video/TV sector of the iTMS at approximately $38 million. Strictly looking at the situation in those terms, I can understand why media companies might be reticent to offer up their programming on iTunes. I mean, really, what's the point? If the content is going to be essentially given away, web-based services like Hulu make a lot more sense.

Apple has released another iPhone ad unofficially titled either "All These Years" or "How?" I say 'unofficially' titled because it hasn't appeared at Apple's iPhone ads page as of this writing yet, but a copy is already on YouTube. This time around, Apple's giving a shout out to the business users, asking how they could have gone all these years without "email like this" or "stock updates like this" in their pocket. Personally, I'm glad they wrote the ad this way, because I would probably have spit out my beer if the voiceover would have said "without email like this... in your pants."

But seriously: I worry about how well this particular ad is going to do. The iPhone is receiving a lot of criticism from the business sector, much of it understandable, for not working with Exchange Servers. While I don't wear a suit to work every day (or pretty much any day), word on the street is that Exchange support is the major hurdle keeping the iPhone from storming corporate purchase receipts. If the iPhone is primarily targeted at consumers, that's great. But if Apple wants to truly go after business users, they need to play by that industry's rules and offer the software support those folks need.

That said, it is a bold ad that certainly highlights the iPhone's gorgeous UI in a business setting. I'll update this post with a link once Apple publishes the official ad.

[Update: There are actually two new ads, and Apple has updated their site with both - All These Years is the one I caught here, but another new one is All the Parts. Just like the first ad, I question their approach because the ad isn't entirely accurate. One major 'part' of the internet the iPhone lacks is Flash. While I personally would be happy as a camper if Flash never arrives on the iPhone, I understand that it's something many users want. Either way, the lack of Flash is certainly a glaring hole in their particular wording with this second ad.]

[via iPhone Alley]

The first numbers are in and it looks pretty good for Steve Jobs, Apple, and the iPhone. According to market research firm Piper Jaffray, Apple sold about 500,000 iPhones from 6 p.m. on Friday through end of business Sunday night -- 300,000 more than the market research firm originally estimated the company would sell.

In a report released by Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster, it was also revealed that ninety-five percent of buyers in San Francisco, New York and Minneapolis purchased the 8GB model iPhone (myself included) instead of the 4GB one. Also, about half of the 253 buyers surveyed were new customers to AT&T.

So, let's see, what's 500,000 times $650? Actually, I think I might need a calculator for that one. Someone hand me an iPhone.

The Economist has published an article that explores some of the lessons other companies can learn from Apple's journey through the industry, as well as it's unique practices towards product design and customer relations. Specifically, the article outlines four lessons other companies should take notes on, including the fact that some of Apple's innovation comes both from without and within, highlighting the fact that some of its strongest products like Mac OS X and the iPod are either built on the foundation from open source (Mac OS X's BSD Unix core), or originally conceived by an outside consultant (like the iPod). Another great lesson the article mentions is an ability to not listen to customers or the market when one's instincts say otherwise. Both the iPod and Nintendo's Wii are cited here: while the iPod was originally criticized for being too expensive of a gadget, the market has clearly spoken otherwise. In the case of Nintendo's wildly successful Wii, the company was criticized for betting on a portion of the market that was more or less completely ignored by the other video game manufacturers: non-gamers who haven't picked up a console yet.

It's a good read that takes a realistic approach while spotlighting some of the lessons that companies can learn from Apple's wild success in recent years.

Thanks Adam

It's been over a year since we first mentioned Pyro, the powerful Mac OS X client for 37signals' Campfire web-based chat service for groups and businesses. While I personally didn't pick up a copy back then since I wasn't a Campfire user, I'm not entirely familiar with every change that has come since April '06. Still, even the most recent list of changes warrants Pyro another mention, especially since I'm looking at using Campfire for a few uses and projects.

In addition to already offering a dashboard and central location for all your Campfire chats and displaying message status alerts in the Dock icon, check out what's new in Pyro 1.6:

• Any file type can be dragged onto Pyro to share in a Campfire chat
• Pyro will automatically zip a folder or .APP
• Dragging an image from a web browser will insert a URL for that image instead of uploading it
• Campfire's new sidebar search field now works in Pyro
• Support for the new WebKit installed by Safari 3 beta (mentioned on the Pyro development blog)
• and of course, bug fixes

As Campfire's example uses page details, there are a lot of great scenarios for such a slick web app, and Pyro looks like the perfect tool to bring together the coolness of Campfire with the power of Mac OS X. Surprisingly, Pyro is still offered free, and even though Campfire primarily focuses on business users by offering a few paid accounts, it too has a free account with which you can register and tinker around to see if Campfire is right for your use.

While iWork isn't exactly at the top of everyone's wishlist of Apple software, it still offers a fairly strong set of Apple-esque tools for creating gorgeous presentations and documents. Since the company already has a fairly thorough iWork product page aimed at the general audience, it seems only natural (if a bit long-time coming) that Apple focus on the business customer with a new set of iWork@work Profiles. Through case studies that delve into the daily duties of a photographer, a historian and an architect, Apple highlights how iWork (and iLife, of course) helps them all get the job done.

Naturally, these profiles are filled with quite a bit of Apple fluff, but I think it's interesting to read some of the finer details and features that iWork offers people who are actually running businesses with it. Yes there are plenty of complaints against iWork - it's missing a spreadsheet, it doesn't do this, it messes with that - but these profiles are a nice read if you're willing to set all that stuff aside for a moment and investigate what Apple's productivity suite has to offer.

The TUAW podcast is back in effect ladies and gents, though this week we're a tad late due to some technical difficulties. Nevertheless, expect a steady new stream of podcasts and screencasts from here on out, starting with today's entry: TUAW Podcast #23: There and Back Again with the iPhone. Fellow TUAW blogger Michael Rose and I explore the iPhone's past, including how far back speculation about one of Apple's most anticipated devices actually reaches, as well as when Apple first gave away any hints that it was even considering such a device (hint: it's older than the 4.5 years Jobs mentioned at Macworld 07).

We then take a look at the state of the iPhone now, less than a month from its expected release, why the corporate and enterprise worlds are taking an unexpected interest in it, what happened with the 'iPhone/Leopard delay' email hoax Engadget experienced on Wednesday and how powerful that kind of news can really be. Heck, even a tech-savvy dolphin makes it into the show - where else are you going to hear that?

Michael wanted to clear up one specific piece of data we spoke about, however: we were discussing some differences between the iPod and iPhone, and Michael indicated the MP3 player retail market hit $600m in March. Turns out he was a tad high, as these numbers from Bloomberg put the number for MP3 players sold at retail at just under $225m. Just wanted to make sure we're keepin' it real.

You can snag a copy of this 36 minute, 17 MB AAC (m4a) podcast from our iTunes Store Podcast directory, this direct link or our own podcast rss feed. Enjoy!

Update: It took a couple of days for iTunes to catch up with our podcast feed, but as of Monday the show is appearing on the iTunes store. Sorry for the delay.


Show Notes

Links mentioned in the podcast:

- Engadget official response to Apple delay memo issue: http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/17/regarding-yesterdays-apple-news/
- MacRumors iPhone speculation from 2002: http://www.macrumors.com/2002/08/18/apple-iphone-rumors-speculation/
- Jason O'Grady isn't buying (still?): http://blogs.zdnet.com/Apple/index.php?p=335
- Fierce Wireless timeline of iPhone speculation: http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/timeline-apple-iphone-rumors-1999-present
- The Onion's Flappy the Dolphin on the iPhone: http://www.theonion.com/content/opinion/test_driving_the_new

Even the most rabid fan of Apple has to concede that the company doesn't pitch very aggressively to the enterprise customer. The Xserve typically doesn't get any time in the spotlight - not even at WWDC - and Apple doesn't exactly build a super low-end Mac that's ripe for squeezing Dell out of the millions of cubicles it currently inhabits. Seth Weintraub at Computerworld, however, thinks these facts are fading away in the mind of the enterprise customer, and things could be on the verge of a change.

Opening with a bulleted list of the major advantages the Mac now offers to the enterprise in terms of both hardware and software, Seth penned a 5-page article (sadly, Computerworld still practices pageview inflation) that essentially reads as a shopping guide for enterprise customers who might finally be getting curious about Apple's offerings. Seth even delves into some of the politics surrounding these kinds of purchases and how the Mac's eroding perceptions as a "consumer toy" or not being a high-end machine can be defeated when it's time to lay down the plastic.

One of the more interesting observations Seth makes, which is becoming more and more prevalent during what is perhaps Apple's most popular time in history, is that more and more decision-making business users are buying Macs for personal use. Seth comments that these users are beginning to realize that "what works well at home could do well at work." We couldn't have put it better ourselves.

Looks like Steve Jobs has found allies in the form of Yahoo! Music and Monster Cable executives in the quest to banish DRM. An executive from competitor Yahoo! Music, Dave Goldberg chimes in with: ``I've long advocated removing DRM on music because there is already a lot of music available without DRM, and it just makes things complicated for the user." Claiming Microsoft's brand of DRM ``doesn't work half the time", the exec claimed Yahoo! made several attempts to offer music with or without DRM, and the removal of DRM has improved sales.

Additionally, Monster Cable backed up Jobs with a statement from head Noel Lee: ``Monster Cable shares Mr. Jobs' vision of breaking constraints for legal music downloads.... DRM is a complex and political issue, but digital music compatibility is even more complicated to consumers and limiting to the industry.... We are proud to support an open format and leaders like Steve Jobs who are making the efforts to get us there." The Monster Music branch offers a music format known as SuperDisc, which contains high definition surround tracks and DRM-free files. So... what now? Will other companies continue to stand up, or will Apple and the others buckle under the continued pressure from major labels to keep the DRM system intact?

Bad news for our buddies up north: Canada's Private Copyright Collective (CPCC) is hoping to tax consumers who purchase portable MP3 players, planning to compensate musicians for money lost due to copyright infringement and music copying. The Canadian federal court turned down the previous lobbying attempt made by the CPCC last year, because their law did not recognize portable players' hard drives and memory storage among its list of recording media. However, this hasn't stopped the CPCC from trying again, with a new proposal that suggests taxes on MP3 players in the amounts of $5CAD for players with up to 1GB of storage, $25CAD for players up to 10GB, $50CAD for players holding 10GB-30GB, and $75CAD for any player holding more than 30GB. Steep. In addition to MP3 players, the CPCC hopes to include memory cards (SD, MMC, Memory Sticks, etc.) to the list of taxable items. (Insert eye rolling here.)

(via MacNN)

If your love of Apple's products is evolving into a desire to work for or with them to some degree, informit.com has a nice roundup of the various Apple certifications one can earn, ranging from consulting, system administration and even getting trained to train. The individual articles provide nice summaries, as well as a few gotchas, for each of the certifications, as well as links to Apple's official sites. This is a nice starting point for making that leap from 'living room Mac nerd hobbyist' to 'paid corporate Mac nerd.' Scoring that choice parking spot, however, is an entirely different certification altogether.

It's been a while since we've had an entry in The Little Things, a series that examines the unsung features of the Mac and its community that we appreciate. A post from The Macalope brings to light a great one: Apple's KISS policy towards the versions of Mac OS X and how they're named.

[Update: Mike made a great point in the comments: the six versions of Vista only encompass consumer-focused editions of Windows, i.e. - Windows Server isn't even a part of this conversation, so I probably shouldn't have considered Mac OS X Server in my post. In this context, there is only one version of Mac OS X. I guess ultimately (no pun intended), I was just trying to be nice to the visiting team by giving them a fighting chance and doubling their odds with two versions of the Mac OS.]

The Antlered One points to (and laughs at) an eWeek article that asks Which Vista is the Right Vista?, examining the 6 - yes, count them, 6 - versions of Microsoft Windows Vista that will hit the streets soon: Vista Crappy Starter, Vista Home, Vista Home Premium, Vista Business, Vista Enterprise and, of course, the $400 Vista Ultimate which might very well likely require a new PC purchase of its own, just so its overblown eye candy doesn't choke on the 'old 'n busted' PC you might have just bought earlier this year (disclaimer: yes, 'Starter' is mainly for emerging countries and markets, but it's still on the list, which means it's still going to add to many customers' newfound addiction to Advil). While I have traditionally tried to stay at least somewhat informed of what's going on in the Microsoft Universe since my switch about 5 years ago, I find myself floored by this latest achievement of mind-numbing OS stratification. Does Business include Office? Why does Home Premium have crippled networking - after all, it's Premium, right? Will Ultimate eat my baby? These, and many other similar questions, are sure to take the bounce out of many a customer's step on their way to purchase a shiny, new (emphasis on shiny) version of Windows.

So thanks Apple, for not splitting Mac OS X into Gutted, Home, Premium, Even More Premiumer and Ultimately Shiny versions. Mac OS X does everything for everyone it needs to (and for bonus points: Apple's media center comes on all of them Update: save for the Mac Pro, good call Mr. Hugenstein), and Mac OS X Server's name is obvious enough to let most customers know that it's probably not their cup of tea. Good show Apple, and thanks for letting me check that bottle of Advil at the door.