Apple filed its 2010 annual report today. MacRumors found some interesting tidbits including this one:
The Company expects its gross margin percentage to decrease in future periods compared to levels achieved during 2010 and anticipates gross margin levels of about 36% in the first quarter of 2011. This expected decline is largely due to a higher mix of new and innovative products that have higher cost structures and deliver greater value to customers, and expected and potential future component cost and other cost increases.
The new MacBook Airs have a unibody display chassis. That probably has a higher cost structure than previous ones. The rest of the MacBook line will probably get full unibody construction in the next updates, in addition to IPS LCDs, I’m hoping. The next iPad will definitely have a higher cost structure than version 1.0: my guess is a 9.7-inch 2048×1536 IPS LCD. And all of this at current prices or less. Example: no one is close to US$499 for a 9.7-inch equivalent tablet. Dell and HP should be worried.
Pegatron Technology internally expects its Apple CDMA iPhone shipments to reach 10 million units in 2011 and the company has recently started to gear up and is installing new equipment as well as hiring about 10,000 new employees at its plant in Shanghai, China, according to sources from component makers.
Pegatron also makes MacBooks and the iPad for Apple. I recently upgraded to the iPhone 4 and AT&T sucks where I live. Maybe I should take advantage of the no-questions-asked 30-day return policy…
via Daring Fireball, Dr. Drang on Mac resolutions:
When the Mac first came out, one of its great WYSIWYG features was that a pixel on the screen was supposed to be equal in size to a printer’s point: 1/72″.
Not now:
On a 11″ MacBook Air, a 72-pixel line—which would measure 1 inch long against an onscreen ruler—is just 0.53 physical inches long. On a 21.5″ iMac, that same line is 0.70 inches long. User interface items, like buttons, menu items, and scroll bars are 30% bigger on the iMac than on the Air.
Aside from the newly introduced MacBook Airs and the 17-inch MacBook Pro, most Macs have a resolution that is within a tight range of 109 to 113 PPI.
The resolution on new Macs seem to be converging around 130 PPI. The 11.6-inch MacBook Air has a range-topping 135 PPI while the larger 13.3-inch version has 128 PPI. The 17-inch MacBook Pro has 133 PPI. If you consider the 1680×1050 option on the 15-inch MacBook Pro the resolution increases from 110 to almost 129 PPI.
Next generation MacBook and Pros will most likely change:
That leaves the iMacs. If the 21.5-inch iMac goes from 1920×1080 to 2560×1440 the resolution increases from 102 to 137 PPI. The 27-inch iMac will need to increase to 2880×1800 (double 1440×900) to get to 126 PPI.
Although not exactly the same a tight range around 130 PPI for all Macs will make the overall experience similar.
The original Macintosh had a 9-inch monochrome CRT display and had a pixel format of 512×342. That’s about 68 PPI. Interestingly that’s also about half of what the new Macbooks are converging toward. So maybe the new Macs’ great WYSIWYG feature will be that 2×2 pixels on the screen will be equal to size to a printer’s point: 1/72″.
Trusted Reviews on the 11.6-inch MacBook Air:
The screen didn’t make quite as much of an impact as we hoped, looking like a lesser quality panel than those of other MacBooks; contrast, colour saturation, and viewing angles all seemed worse. That said it is still a more than nice display for general use. Moreover it’s resolution of 1,366 x 768… is a combination of screen size and resolution that seems to have fallen out of favour so we’re glad to see it return. Essentially, to our minds it’s the perfect balance of portability and practicality.
Can we expect an IPS LCD to show up on a MacBook? I sure hope so.
According to a previous source of ours, we have been told that Apple in fact has no plans to release the white model iPhone 4.
Just a hunch: The defective white iPhone 4s that have already been manufactured will be highly sought after. I expect some of them will show up on eBay.
Macworld received maxed out 2010 MacBook Air notebooks and benchmarked them using Speedmark 6.5. The result? According to MacRumors:
In the context of Apple’s broader lineup, maxing out the 11-inch MacBook Air brings it within 5% of the current white MacBook on the Speedmark suite, while the top-end 13-inch MacBook Air healthily beats the standard 13-inch MacBook Pro despite the Air’s slower processor.
If you have a MacBook already and want to blow the socks off of these new MacBook Airs for a fraction of the cost of purchasing them just get a fast SSD.
Engadget on the HTC Desire HD:
A prime reason as to why that battery runs down so fast is, of course, the inclusion of a jumbo 4.3-inch screen on the Desire HD. We said this with the HD7 and it bears repeating here: although the Desire HD has the same 800 x 480 screen resolution as the original Desire, the simple act of magnifying that resolution onto a larger display just makes operating the phone easier.
The HTC Desire HD lasts a day, if you’re extremely frugal. The larger display does make reading stuff off of the display easier. As to the larger display helping to ease operations, well, I beg to differ. Unless you have gigantic hands it will be almost impossible for your to operate the Desire HD with one hand. In landscape mode you probably will not be able to thumb type. But thumb typing in portrait mode should be much more comfortable. I think a 4.3-inch display is too big for a smartphone for folks with regular-sized hands.
.. if Apple is doing an end run around the carrier by putting its own SIM inside the iPhone, it could do what Google with its NexusOne could not, which is create an easy way to sell a handset via the web without carrier involvement. Much like it helped cut operators out of the app store game, Apple could be taking them out of the device retail game.
Here’s the rumor: Apple and Gemalto are working on a special SIM embedded directly into an iPhone. Get the iPhone from an Apple Store, retail or online, choose your carrier and off you go. Carrier need not get involved.
Walgreens: I’ve never heard of Maylong before but the Maylong M-150 is a 7-inch Android tablet that is being sold at Walgreens for just $100. The 7-inch LCD sports a 800×480 pixel format and the touch technology is resistive. What that means is that stuff on it won’t look good (low pixel count and visual obstruction due to resistive touch layers on top of the LCD) and you’ll need to actually push into the display to get your touches activated.
A great read on Gizmodo regarding Indium Tin Oxide (ITO) the transparent and conductive material that makes LCDs work:
The US Geological Survey estimates that known reserves of indium worldwide amount to some 16,000 tonnes, overwhelmingly in China. Dividing that by the rate at which we are currently using the stuff suggests those reserves will be exhausted by 2020.
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