Distributors Will Start Selling Refurbished iPhones in India

Writankar Mukherjee, reporting for ETtech:

Top smartphone distributors, led by Ingram Micro and HCL, are entering the business of selling refurbished smartphones in the country where they will refurbish old handsets sourced locally and then sell them, which will help them bypass government restriction of sourcing old phones from abroad.

and

Ingram Micro is launching the refurbished handsets under its own brand focused on iPhone. The company, which will also offer six months warranty on these handsets, has tied up with third-party manufacturers such as Dixon Technologies for this, an executive said. The pricing will be 40%-60% lower than the current selling price for a new model.

I don’t know how to react to this.

February 27, 2018 ✚ Permalink

Apple Plans Three New iPhones for 2018

Mark Gurman and Debby Wu, reporting for Bloomberg:

Apple Inc. is preparing to release a trio of new smartphones later this year: the largest iPhone ever, an upgraded handset the same size as the current iPhone X and a less expensive model with some of the flagship phone’s key features.

The most interesting bit about this report is this:

In at least some regions, Apple is considering offering a dual-SIM card option for the larger model. That would let people use their phones in countries with different carrier plans without having to swap out cards. Such a feature has been growing in importance and popularity, especially in Europe and Asia where business people routinely visit multiple countries.

Could we finally see a dual-SIM version of the iPhone? I’d be bummed if this option was exclusive to the largest (read: most expensive) iPhone though.

February 27, 2018 ✚ Permalink

Apple Watch and Baby Apps with WatchKit

Marco Arment comments on the terrible state of WatchKit:

Developing Apple Watch apps is extremely frustrating and limited for one big reason: unlike on iOS, Apple doesn’t give app developers access to the same watchOS frameworks that they use on Apple Watch.

Instead, we’re only allowed to use WatchKit, a baby UI framework that would’ve seemed rudimentary to developers even in the 1990s. But unlike the iPhone’s web apps, WatchKit doesn’t appear to be a stopgap — it seems to be Apple’s long-term solution to third-party app development on the Apple Watch.

The Apple Watch may be the best selling smartwatch out there without any competition, but it still has tremendous potential that 3rd party developers aren’t able to make full use of.

February 27, 2018 ✚ Permalink

Apple is Hiring for 9 Different Positions for the Apple Online Store Engineering team in Hyderabad

Apple has updated its Jobs portal with a listing of 9 new available positions for its Apple Online Store (AOS) Engineering team based at its new development campus in Hyderabad, India. These listings were posted on the portal late evening yesterday, just days after the Indian Government approved 100% Foreign Direct Investment for Single-Brand Retail in the country, signaling a major win for Apple, who has been trying to open its own stores in India for a little over 3 years now.

Apple India is hiring for the following positions for the Apple Online Store team in Hyderabad:

  • Software Engineering Manager
  • Machine Learning Engineer
  • Software Engineer
  • Senior Software Engineer
  • Software Engineer in Test
  • DevOps Engineer
  • Engineering Project Manager
  • Platform Engineer
  • Senior Tech Lead

Some of the job descriptions included with these postings:

Today, the Apple Online Store (AOS) provides one of the best multichannel commerce experiences in the world, and operates in 37 countries worldwide.

At AOS, its Engineering team is responsible for the global eCommerce platform that serves millions of customers around the world. We are a team highly skilled Software Engineering Managers, Engineers, Analysts and Project Managers based in Cupertino, London and Singapore.

These nine job listings are specifically for the Apple Online Store Engineering team. There are other available positions currently listed for other teams and other departments, but these 9 jobs were all posted together late yesterday evening.

This development may or may not mean that Apple is preparing to launch an Apple Online Store in India, but one care surely hope. Whatever be the case, what’s certain is Apple is expanding its Apple Online Store Engineering team in Hyderabad, along with its Site Reliability Engineering team, Information Systems & Technology team, the Strategic Data Solutions department, and of course, the Apple Maps team.

January 20, 2018 ✚ Permalink

Apple Developer Program Membership Fee Waivers

We’re pleased to announce that Apple Developer Program membership is now available at no cost for eligible organizations. Nonprofit organizations, accredited educational institutions, and government entities based in the United States that will distribute only free apps on the App Store can request to have their annual membership fee waived.

If you’re a nonprofit organization, accredited educational institution, or government entity based in the United States and plan to distribute only free apps on the App Store, you’re eligible for this fee waiver. You have to apply and wait for Apple to review your request and approve it.

I hope this comes to other countries as well.

January 4, 2018 ✚ Permalink

Matt Gemmell’s first look at iPad Pro 10.5-inch

Matt Gemmell has posted this lovely first look at his new iPad 10.5-inch gifted by his wife. There are some great photos of the device next to the old 9.7-inch iPad Pro, so you get a good sense of the changes in the dimensions on the new one.

June 14, 2017 ✚ Permalink

On Vivek Wadhwa’s Factor Daily piece titled “Why Apple is destined to fail in India”

apple-vivek-wadhwa-factor-daily-piece-lol

Earlier today, Factor Daily published this piece titled ‘Why Apple is destined to fail in India‘ written by Vivek Wadhwa. A similarly-worded article from the author also appeared on The Washington Post and VentureBeat a day earlier. I subscribed to Factor Daily via RSS a while ago, primarily for the people behind the site who have delivered some great content in the past. I, however, was definitely not ready for this hilariously bullshit stream of content heading my way.

Now, usually when I come across a title as bold as this one about Apple, and they’re dime a dozen these days, I usually either skip it completely or read it and then skip reacting to it. But this piece by Vivek Wadhwa has such ingenious crap filled inside, I couldn’t help fire up Ulysses. Vivek’s piece essentially says that Apple is destined to fail in India because the company fails to understand the Indian market and that “it is repeating the mistakes it made in China”. However, a lot of points that Vivek raises are just not true, plain wrong, or simply laughable.

[With inputs and corrections from Rohan “RN” Naravane, who was just as baffled upon reading the piece.]

(more…)

March 17, 2017 ✚ Permalink

Apple’s Next iPhone Will Have a Curved Screen & USB-C: Report

The Wall Street Journal’s Takashi Mochizuki is reporting that Apple’s next iPhone, the 10th anniversary edition, will have a curved display manufactured by Samsung.

Apple had been studying flexible organic light-emitting diode or OLED screens similar to those used by rival Samsung Electronics Co. and had asked suppliers for prototypes, The Wall Street Journal reported in November.

People with direct knowledge of Apple’s production plans said the Cupertino, Calif., company has decided to go ahead with the technology, and it will release a phone model using the OLED screens this year.

The most striking paragraph from the article is this one:

They said Apple would introduce other updates including a USB-C port for the power cord and other peripheral devices instead of the company’s original Lightning connector. The models would also do away with a physical home button, they said. Those updates would give the iPhone features already available on other smartphones.

This is absolutely bonkers.

February 28, 2017 ✚ Permalink