Although the service is (predictably) Android-only, a sharp developer has already got it working with iOS and today submitted his code to the App Store for approval. James Clancey's gMusic ($1.99, App Store) is the most popular Google Music app for iOS and it's getting a new feature really soon-now. 

gMusic 5.2.1 – the current version — only plays music that you've uploaded to Google Listen Now (formerly 'Google Music'), but according to Wired, Clancey spent the weekend coding an update to support the subscription service after hearing Google announce All Access last week at I/O. 

Clancey submitted gMusic 6.0 to Apple for approval that adds support for Google Play's Music All Access feature, the $10 per month all-you-can-eat music subscription service designed to compete with Spotify, Rdio and others.

Clancey tells me that the main focus of gMusic 6.0 is All Access, full search, adding music and radio stations. The other good news is that he's not planning a price change for 6.0, at least not immediately. 

Apple's been long rumored to be developing its own "iRadio" subscription music service, but it's recently rumored to have hit a rough spot in negotiations with Sony Music and Warner Music Group. CNET notes that the impasse is over fees to be paid for skipped songs:

Apple and Sony Music, the world's second largest music label, are still trying to hammer out details over how much Apple would pay for songs that people listen to a fraction of and then skip, according to people familiar with the negotiations.

There's no telling if Apple will approve gMusic 6, but I can't see why it wouldn't. If you don't already pay a subscription for one of the other competing music services, gMusic 6 might be a nice option.  

Moving forward, Apple will be providing discussions in two different areas: Apple Support Communities and Apple Developer Forums.

Discussions for Servers and Enterprise Software are available here.

It has been my honor to provide support to this list since 1998 when we first introduced Mac OS X Server to Apple customers. Your support of Apple, OS X Server and this list is greatly appreciated.

However, a number of the discussion mailing lists appear to still be functioning, including the Client Management Mailing List and the Xcode Users List. I notice that the Darwin Kernel List stopped at the end of April and there are no new posts, which is unusual.

These discussion mailing lists are very old school. I subscribe to a number of them and they fit in my workflow, putting the content where my eyeballs are most of the day: my mailbox. This is either the end of an era or it isn't. I can't tell.

Is it another warning sign for OS X Server? No idea.

The Accelerate Your Mac site said there had been some response by readers of problems; mainly, that Thunderbolt devices weren't recognized upon restart. Resetting the System Management Controller appeared to help in those cases.

When installing a firmware update, I try to be very conservative with the process: Of course, a laptop must be plugged in, but I download the update with a wired connection, rather than over wi-fi. And a full backup and clone to an external drive before proceeding is recommended.

I was interested in the symptoms of SMC corruption. It's quite a list and worth rereading:

Fans

The computer's fans run at high speed, although the computer is not experiencing heavy usage and is properly ventilated.

Lights

The keyboard backlight appears to behave incorrectly (on Mac computers that have this feature).

The Status Indicator Light (SIL) appears to behave incorrectly (on Mac computers that have an SIL).

Battery indicator lights, if present, appear to behave incorrectly (on portables that use non-removable batteries).

The display backlight doesn't respond correctly to ambient light changes on Mac computers that have this feature.

Power

The computer doesn't respond to the power button when pressed.

A portable Mac doesn't appear to respond properly when you close or open the lid.

The computer sleeps or shuts down unexpectedly.

The battery does not appear to be charging properly.

The MagSafe power adaptor LED doesn't appear to indicate the correct activity.

System performance

The computer is running unusually slowly, although it is not experiencing abnormally high CPU utilization.

Application icons may "bounce" in the Dock for an extended amount of time when launched.

Applications may not function correctly, or may stop responding after being opened.

Video

A computer that supports target display mode does not switch into or out of target display mode as expected.

A computer that supports target display mode switches into or out of target display mode at unexpected times.

This latest Thunderbolt update reminded me of another recent Support Note, but this one about Windows 8 installations. The symptoms are that users see an alert that Windows couldn't create a new partition or located an existing one during a Windows 8 installation.

So, where would Thunderbolt be in this problem, you might ask? It appears to be something with I/O mapping.

The resolution is to shut down and then unplug any Thunderbolt or USB devices, except for one with the Windows ISO installer.

Interesting.

The war between Apple and rivals Google and Samsung could heat up next month as the Cupertino-based giant is rumored to announce some big changes at its its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), including cutting off both Google and Samsung. 

Apple's WWDC kicks off on 10 June in San Francisco, California, and while the company never announces its plans in advance, there are rumblings that it could wield its almighty ban hammer against Google and Samsung. 

Samsung on the outs

In September, Apple cut the amount of chips that it ordered from Samsung for the iPhone 5. A report said that while Samsung is still an approved supplier, Apple instead picked Japan's Toshiba Corp, Elpida Memory and Korea's SK Hynix to supply DRAM and NAND chips for the iPhone 5. 

In August 2012, Apple won a landmark victory against Samsung after a US jury found that it had copied key features of the iPhone, and awarded Apple $1.05 billion in damages. More recently, it's been whispered that Apple is going to drop Samsung silicon from the upcoming iPhone and iPad in favor of TSMC, a move that could have devastating repercussions for Samsung.

Google on the outs

Bloomberg reported in April that Apple's Eddy Cue met with Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer to discuss "ways Yahoo can be more deeply integrated into the software that runs on the iPhone and iPad". The most obvious way to do this would be to replace Google with Yahoo as the default search provider on Mobile Safari in iOS 7. Apple could also replace Google with Yahoo in the desktop version of Safari in OS X 10.9, also rumored to be previewed to developers next month. Mayer was quoted in January as saying that she wants Yahoo to work with Facebook, Google, and Apple to widen the reach of the biggest US web portal.

Vendetta or good business?

There's clearly no love lost between Apple and Google. A case could be made that theft of Apple intellectual property occurred while Eric Schmidt was on the Apple Board (a charge Schmidt denies). Schmidt was on the Apple Board during the development of the iPhone, and Google's first Android phone appeared on the market suspiciously soon after its announcement. In July 2009, I called for Schmidt's dismissal, and he was gone from the Apple Board less than a month later. 

Then shortly before his death, Jobs gave this wonderful pearl to biographer Walter Isaacson:

… I will spend every penny of Apple's $40 billion in the bank to right this wrong. I'm going to destroy Android, because it's a stolen product. I'm willing to go thermonuclear war on this. 

Apple's been slowly moving away from Google over the past year, as evidenced by its removable of both Google Maps and YouTube from iOS.

Apple is their biggest client

Apple became Samsung's biggest client in February 2011 when the Wall Street Journal reported that it purchased $8 billion worth of LCD displays, NAND flash memory, and mobile chipsets from the Korean manufacturer. Samsung manufactures the "Apple" A5 and A6 chips used in all iPhones and iPads.

With iOS retaining over 65 percent of mobile marketshare, a switch away from Google as Apple's default search provider would definitely make a major dent in the company's advertising revenue. While iOS users could still browse to www.google.com (or use the Google Search app) for searching, most iPhone and iPad users use the search bar built into Mobile Safari. If Apple switches to Yahoo, the biggest winner would be Microsoft, because Bing powers Yahoo search (even though Yahoo wants out of the deal). 

Put yourself in Tim Cook's shoes. Would you dump Google and Samsung?

But then, there are the rest of us who'll probably never exploit the depths of Photoshop, and only use a handful of the same basic features over and over again. For most Mac users, Adobe Photoshop is overkill.

When Adobe announced this week that it was killing its Creative Suite (which includes Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign, among others) as packaged software in exchange for Creative Cloud (CC), a pure-play subscription model, you could almost hear the cry of designers across the globe screaming at their Wacom tablets and color calibrated monitors. 

Our own Andrew Nusca covered the earth-shattering announcement at Adobe Max in Los Angeles, California, for Between the Lines. Adobe's FAQ and press release provide additional details. CC Complete pricing is as follows:

• $49.99/month for new Creative Cloud members (annual commitment)

• $29.99/month for existing CS3 (or later) licensees (annual commitment)

• $19.99/month for Student & Teachers (annual commitment)

• $19.99/month for a single app

• $69.99/month Creative Cloud for teams

• $39.99/month Creative Cloud for teams using CS3 (or later) licenses

After the initial shock that Adobe had one-upped Microsoft in the software subscription race had wore off, two things immediately came to mind. First, it might be time to upgrade from CS5 to CS6, just in case I really need Photoshop's extra muscle. And second, it's time to find a replacement for Photoshop that better suits my needs (and budget).

Hands down, the best replacement for Photoshop on the Mac is Pixelmator, which is available for $14.99 from the Mac App Store. I've been testing Pixelmator 2.2 Blueberry, which is due to be released on Thursday, May 9 (as a free upgrade, natch), and it's an amazingly tight piece of code that's extremely fast, functional, and beautiful at the same time. In fact, it performs the half dozen or so tasks that I use Photoshop for, better than Photoshop did.

My image editing workflow revolves around editing pictures for the web (as you see in these pages), some color correction (mostly levels, curves, and exposure), adding the occasional annotation or watermark, and manipulation of image size, canvas size, and save for the web. While I'll occasionally dive into masks and layers, its an infrequent effort at best. All photo management is otherwise handled by Aperture (another decision that I may reconsider.)

Pixelmator handles all of these tasks with ease, and makes me wonder if I ever needed Photoshop in the first place.

Pixelmator 2.2 Blueberry comes with more than 100 new features and improvements, including:

• Smart Shapes Tools, which let you quickly adjust a shape's outline with easy-to-use controls to get just the look you're after

• Shapes palette packed with dozens of readily available shapes that are as easy to add as dragging and dropping

• Shape Style palette, so you can effortlessly create more polished and advanced shapes

• Convert Text into Shape, which allows you to convert type layers to shape layers, and then easily apply gradients, shadows, strokes, or even reshape individual letters

• Smart Move Tool, which knows when you are working with image or shape layers, and gives you just the options you need at that time

• Paint Selection Tool, which is the simplest and the fastest way to make even the most challenging selections in your images with just a few brush strokes

• Light Leak Effect, which makes it easy and fun to create stunning, retro-artistically illuminated images from any of your photos.

If you don't want to pay a king's ransom for periodic bursts of image editing, purchase Pixelmator and buy a MacBook Pro with the savings.

One thing I like about living in the northeaster part of the US is the change of seasons. Now that spring is upon us, it's time to put away the heavy leather and down coats and replace them with a lightweight jacket. The Tropiformer jacket is the perfect weight for spring/fall, and quickly converts to a vest for warmer weather days without unzipping the sleeves (it uses a series of magnets).

Most people carry their iPhones with them, but it's difficult to carry an iPad without a dedicated bag. The ScotteVest Tropiformer jacket solves that problem with a unique pocket that fits either the full-sized or mini iPad right inside the jacket. And boom, you're hands free.

The Tropiformer is the perfect balance of style and function. It's a great-looking jacket that allows you to carry your iPhone and iPad (and a whole lot more) without having to wear a utility belt. The Tropiformer has 22 pockets, but it doesn't look like it. They're tastefully concealed, but extremely useful.

Probably the most useful feature is the Quick Draw Pocket on the front left of the jacket. When your iPhone's in it, you can see its screen by glancing at the inside of the jacket, and you can even operate the touchscreen through the clear material. I also like the extendable key holder in the right front pocket, because I don't worry about losing my keys when I'm biking or being active.

The magnets in the removable sleeves take a little getting used to (they like to attach to metal door frames and such), but it's hardly a deal breaker. The jacket's functionality and quick-draw sleeves more than make up for it. If you pull the trigger on this fun spring garment, go for the red or blue option and put a little color into your wardrobe. The green jacket's white accent colors are a sharp combination that gets lots of compliments.

Tropiformer comes in five colors and is available for $150 from the ScotteVest website.

The problem of seat availability and community networking hasn't gone unnoticed by developers. Some have brought forward solutions.

Developer Dan Wood, the founder of Karelia Software, wrote in his personal blog that Apple should take its developer messaging on the road:

Seeing that the talks are going to be made available online, it's really the labs and the socializing that we will all be missing. But do all those need to be concentrated in a single week, in a single place? What if Apple made the sessions be online only, as Daniel suggestions, and come up with a series of regional conferences/labs around the world, based on developer population?

Actually, this kind of thing has happened before. The developer "tech talks" a couple of years ago. They've also had a few special, small "developer kitchens" in Cupertino, though that was before the masses started growing.

Why not just start up an annual program of "tech talks" which are staffed by DTS engineers and evangelists, touring the world constantly? They could function as mobile versions of WWDC labs — but just as importantly, there could be social aspects to the gatherings, so that fellow developers had a chance to eat, drink, and be merry with fellow developers in their local area.

It appears that Apple may have been listening. Or at least, remembering. The company posted that videos of the talks will be made available online to registered developers — as they were in some previous years. And it will begin staging Tech Talks in several localities starting in the fall.

Oliver Drobnik at the Cocoanetics blog sees deeper issues, especially for women programmers. In a long, long post, he said that the limited number of tickets available for all programmers is troubling, but particularly for students and women programmers.

Drobnik said that its natural for companies to send their lead developers and development managers to WWDC rather than lower-level engineers. "A dev lead can spend more quality time with Apple engineers and talk to the app store review team on behalf of the company's interests," he wrote. However, he is concerned that this decision may further limit the number of female engineers sent to WWDC.

According to Drobnik, Apple should expand its outreach to students and women. He noted that in the WWDC 2013 Student Scholarship program, Apple gave away 150 tickets to students (a value of $240,000). As part of the selection criteria, students were asked to build an app that "tells us about you".

One could argue that this program is unfair to the rest of us hard working software developers. I need to scrape together about a months worth of earnings to be able to afford to travel to WWDC. And I think that I have done more for Apple's business in my 4 full-time years than most of these students will do in their lifetime.

Even calling it a "Student Scholarship" is a misnomer. A true scholarship does not only pay for a ticket for an event, but also takes other burdens off the student's shoulders. What Etsy did is a true scholarship. What Apple does is just giving away free event tickets based, in part, on merit.

Drobnik proposed that Apple should expand its scholarship program, paying for students' expenses and training. This Apple Developer Workshop would run year round, not just to WWDC. This program would bring in women and men, likely in equal numbers, he suggested.

Apple then would be able to get first pick of the engineers coming out of the program, and also, they could give the student tickets to participants of their new scholarship program. The development public would see this as much "fairer" because you would have to learn programming for several months instead of being awarded a lucky break based on a simple quick app you whip up.

Apple should be a shining example and "Sherlock" the scholarship idea. In the least they should stop calling a scholarship which is none. Making apps has ceased to be a science a couple of years ago, it became vocational. Companies who still think that they need academics for programmers are only hurting themselves.

Such a residency program has been done in the arts for many years. And of course, there's the Minor Leagues in professional baseball. It's an interesting idea to expand this concept to developing programming talent.

As I have mentioned before, Apple has three major hardware/software platforms on the market, and is one of the biggest computing platform companies in the world, yet it only offers a single developer conference.

Yes, the Tech Talks are a good idea. However, Apple needs to address the needs of differences in geographic and market segments, and how that plays out within each of its target platforms. Certainly, enterprise and business customers have different needs than gamers. The needs of sci-tech customers may be different than those of consumers. Could it be that there are differences in programmer concerns in the new Asian markets?

However, it's apparent that Apple doesn't want to break out all these segments for its developers. Instead, it's one conference for all who can score a ticket and afford to attend. For the rest, check out the videos.

After all, if Apple did really look at all the segments into which its platforms were making inroads, and seriously decide to act on that data, the company would certainly have to greatly expand its developer education program. Oh, and it would have to expand its internal testing and bug-fixing teams in order to address the increased level of expectations. Good luck on that happening.

Geode consists of an iPhone 4/4S case with a programmable GeoCard, an E Ink barcode screen that can emulate the bar code or mag stripe on any card, and a biometric fingerprint scanner to keep your data secure.

I had good luck with the E Ink display (it scanned at every retailer I tested it with), but the GeoCard failed due to an issue with the adhesive that holds its metallic chip. My card was replaced with a working unit in relatively short order. Then I kind of forgot about it.

I got an email recently that the Geode website was down and that its last tweet was on October 16, 2012, so I decided to look into it. The Post and Courier of Charleston, South Carolina, tracked down former iCache CEO Jon Ramaci — and got some answers.

It turns out that manufacturing problems gave way to a pair of lawsuits (one involving a former iCache consultant and the other a former employee), then in September 2012, Apple released the iPhone 5 with a new form factor (that didn't fit in the Geode case), a new kind of connector and Passbook, an app that offered affinity card storage, like Geode did. And things seemed to spiral downward from there.

The Post and Courier's Brendan Kearney interviewed Ramaci and he revealed that he and many of his top deputies had left the company in November 2012 amid mounting customer dissatisfaction. Many backers left acerbic comments on the company's Kickstarter page, lacking anywhere else to vent their frustrations.

According to Kearney, Ramaci, Ross, and several other members of the original iCache team left in November 2012. Although Ramaci denied that he was fired, he refused to elaborate on the circumstances surrounding his departure, saying only that after six years, "it was time".

The iCache board of directors and advisers eventually shrunk to one person each, and in March 2013, the corporate website went offline altogether. Ramaci claimed that the iCache board asked him step down as CEO to focus on the iPhone 5 product while Erik Ross, iCache’s chief strategy officer, was installed as the new CEO.

"I felt my deliverable was to get the product to the next phase, and we had accomplished quite a great deal in a short amount of time and a very short budget as far as development of the card and the product itself." — former iCache CEO Jon Ramaci

In the article in The Post and Courier Ramaci claimed that 90 percent of the Kickstarter backers got their Geodes, and that the remaining 10 percent opted for the iPhone 5 version. I received both my original Geode and a replacement GeoCard with a handwritten letter.

Although Ramaci tried to remain optimistic about iCache in the article, the company has all but vanished. Chairman Richard Scott did not respond to Kearney's requests for an interview, and former board member Arthur Pingolt Jr. declined to comment on iCache.

Clearly, Geode wasn't a total ruse; the company manufactured and shipped (at least to me) a working, viable, and exciting product. What happened to iCache is more likely a lesson in the hazards of tying your business model to a company with billions of dollars, a world-class global supply chain, and a rigorous 12-month product life cycle. Just as Geode began shipping, Apple pivoted (with the iPhone 5), and it was time to start over again.

Hardware manufacturing at any kind of scale is a difficult proposition, but trying to keep pace with a company with over $150 billion in annual revenue and an assembly line of new products that never seems to stop is pretty close to impossible.

A Facebook group, Robbed by iCache, tracks stories of disgruntled backers and former customers, and this New York Times article talks about the hazards of backing Kickstarter projects.

While iOS 7 and OS X 10.9 are foregone conclusions, the WWDC logo might be a clever hint at what's to come. Many have noted that the WWDC '13 logo is almost the exact shape of the Apple TV puck.

While the logo shares the rounded square shape of the puck, there are variations behind it in different colors. If you look closely at the colors behind the purple square, they include red, green, orange, and blue — the exact colors found on another familiar logo: That of TiVo.

While it's a bit of a stretch (granted), it's not out of the realm of possibility, either. I've long been saying that Apple should acquire TiVo (in 2006 and 2009), and it's been rumored as far back as 2005. Apple's certainly got the capital, but I'm afraid that that ship might have sailed.

The cable companies have started to catch up to TiVo with their DVR technology (kind of), and Apple will need deals with all of them to get any substantive traction on the set top.

Jason Calacanis told ZDNet's sister site CNET UK in October 2008 that he "knew first-hand that Apple was working on a networked television". But two-plus years before that (on January 6, 2006), I wrote on The PowerPage about how Apple might release a television at Macworld Expo 2006.

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster has long claimed that a television will be Apple's next big thing, and Steve Jobs told his biographer that he had "finally cracked it" shortly before his death.

Jobs told Walter Isaacson:

I'd like to create an integrated television set that is completely easy to use. It would be seamlessly synched with all of your devices and with iCloud. It will have the simplest user interface you could imagine. I finally cracked it.

Don't get me wrong; I love the idea of an Apple television, I just think that it's a long shot for WWDC.

According to the Apple executives, the company sold "just under 4 million Macs", which was a 2 percent decline from the same quarter a year ago. The actual number was 3,952 units, down from 4,061 units sequentially (and Apple's big quarter).

Tim Cook, Apple CEO, said desktop sales were strong following last quarter's launch of new iMacs. At the same time, laptop sales were down, he noted. Apple doesn't break out the numbers in desktops and notebooks, nor the sales in market geographies.

He was asked about the overall PC/Mac market in the era of tablets, and whether it is high prices or the iPad that's inhibiting or cannibalizing Mac sales, respectively. Here's his answer from the Seeking Alpha transcripts:

I think the reason that we were down last quarter, we were down 2 percent as you had mentioned. The market for PCs are incredibly weak. IDC said that the market for the March quarter was down 14 percent year on year, which is the largest decline that I remember from being in this industry for a long time.

At the same time, we sold almost 20 million iPads, and it's certainly true that some of those iPads cannibalized some Macs. I personally don't think it was a huge number, but do I think it's some. And I think probably the larger thing at least for the, maybe not so much on the Macs side, but on the PC side, it's cheaper, probably extending their upgrade cycles.

That said, I don't think this market is a dead market or bad market by any means. I think it has a lot of life to it. We are going to continue to innovate in it. We believe that if anything, the huge growth in tablets may wind up benefiting the Mac, because it pushes people to think about the product they're buying in a different manner, and people may be even more willing to buy a Mac where today than may be buying a PC.

And so, we're going to continue making the best personal computers. Our strategy is not changing. And we feel really good about it. We delivered some incredible innovation last year with Retina display with the MacBook Pro, an incredible thin and light package, and we've got some more great stuff planned. So this is an area we're continuing to invest in.

Interesting: The iPad is cannibalizing sales somewhat, he admitted. However, Apple appears to believe that this erosion isn't coming so much from current Mac owners; rather, more from its PC customers, who might be considering switching to the Mac.

In addition, Apple sees a future computer upside to iPad sales, with an emphasis on the Mac. I believe in this potential as well. People are figuring out that they need different computing devices for different tasks, which is a more mature market approach.

For example, I recall folks who said: "I don't need a PC. The iPhone is all I need in a computing machine." And following the arrival of the iPad, they said the same thing about the iPad. Nonsense; this isn't a sensible approach to productivity and computing. We want the right tool for the job, iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

Yes, we can do amazing and useful things on iPads and iPhones. But for a real content creation platform, you want a powerful, multi-windowing, multi-tasking computing environment. And if you're going to pick such a machine, then customers will want a quality experience, which they get from a Mac.

You have to laugh at the timing, but last week, the Soluto system analyst company released a report that noted that the MacBook Pro is the most reliable platform for running Windows. Gotta love it.

Related story

• Which Mac is better for running Windows?

• In 2009, tickets sold out in one month

• In 2010, tickets sold out in eight days

• In 2011, tickets sold out in 12 hours

• In 2012, tickets sold out in 2 hours

• In 2013, tickets sold out in 2 minutes.

By extension, 2014 WWDC tickets will probably sell out in 2 seconds. And you'll probably need to write a very clever script to actually procure tickets.

But when does WWDC turn from an event designed to help developers into a total farce? Some think that it's already happened. Red Sweater Software's Daniel Jalkut thinks that WWDC is "flat-out busted" and should end.

Some think that the size of the show should be increased, but at some point, the teacher to student ratio gets too diluted and its value is diminished. Cupertino, California, promotes the ability to "connect with Apple engineers" as a key benefit of attending WWDC, but it only has a finite amount of said engineers.

It has also been suggested that Apple increase the already astronomical ticket price beyond the current $1,600 level. While this might slow orders, it will have the side effect of turning WWDC into an even more elite event attended by only the most well-funded developers.

One solution is to offer tickets via a lottery system, where a "ticket request period" is opened for a week, and any registered developer can request a ticket by entering their complete billing information. After the window closes, an algorithm picks 5,000 developers at random and charges their card. Tickets could be requested exclusively from a special iOS app, just for the fun of it.

Apple could also prioritize tickets by seniority (the length of time you've been a registered developer), popularity (number of downloads of your apps), or success (based on gross sales). Or it could require requestors to solve a programming problem to prove that they're a developer.

Once tickets eventually sell out, Apple should webcast the keynote and the sessions. While Apple probably wouldn't give it away for free, it wouldn't be too difficult to sell a "stream package" at a discount to registered developers who could tune in from their home or office. Apple could even require an Apple device to view the stream like it did with its 2012 launch of the iPad mini.

Apple always posts the videos after the event, but the company needs to find a better and more efficient way to bring the content to its developers. Clearly the demand is there.

Tim, you alluded to fall announcement of products. Is that indicating that there may not be substantial new products until literally fall? Late September, which means the September quarter could look a lot like the June quarter? Is that part of what you're implying, or were you being more general?

Cook replied:

I don't want to be more specific. But I'm just saying we've got some really great stuff coming in the fall. And across all of 2014.

As Larry Dignan noted in Between the Lines, the reaction in after hours trading was swift as Apple's 7 percent gain faded quickly on the comments.

Some pundits have been speculating that an updated iPhone 5S could be released in the summer (June, July, or August) and some have even suggested that an iPad refresh could come as soon as this month. It's easy to see why people would be disappointed to hear "fall" after rumors have indicated "summer" (or even "spring", in terms of the iPad) — but this is why rumors need to be taken with a grain of salt. 

While Cook's comments could be a decoy to divert attention from his real road map, or a page out of Jobs' classic "under promise and over-deliver" playbook (he could release products in both summer and fall, after all) let's take his words at face value for the moment. Not releasing an updated iPad or iPhone until the "fall" actually makes a fair amount of sense and would probably be a good move for the company. 

For starters, there's a growing perception that Apple is falling behind the likes of Google, Windows, and, to some extent, Facebook in the mobile OS department. Not literally of course, (there were plenty of blustery statistics by Apple's CEO and CFO about "usage" and "ecosystem"), but in practical terms, the iPhone home screen from 2013 doesn't look much different from the iPhone home screen from 2007.

Apple's mobile OS consists of a grid of static icons, while other OSes have widgets, live wallpaper, tiles, and yes, even chat heads. Apple has had the same boring, static icons for six years. 

Take a look at Apple's once vaunted music products. iTunes should be taken out back and shot, and I haven't used Apple's music app since installing the Spotify and SiriusXM apps. And Twitter music makes the Music app look prehistoric. Apple staunchly ignored music subscription and streaming services, and now companies like Spotify and Rdio are eating its lunch.

Look at chat. While iMessage is a step in the right direction, it suffers from reliability problems and is unnecessarily complex to set up. Meanwhile, apps like WhatsApp Messenger, Facebook Messenger, Kik Messenger, Viber, and Wickr make Apple look like your grandfather's messaging app. 

Apple should have owned the mobile OS, music, and messaging, but it was too busy counting its money and resting on its laurels. 

Moving its iPhone and iPad announcements back to "fall" seems to confirm earlier rumors that iOS 7 was delayed, but it could be a net positive for the company — if it uses the time to completely overhaul and modernize iOS and its mobile hardware. And I'm not talking about a new "flatter" look from Johnny Ive and being 1mm thinner.

Apple needs to innovate again, and bring back the excitement that made people want the iPhone in the first place.

Pushing back its mobile hardware to later in the year would allow Apple to showcase iOS 7 to developers at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (presumably in June). This will give developers all summer to ramp their apps to take advantage of iOS's new features. 

Apple needs to completely overhaul iOS with features like a live and completely customizable desktop (with widgets, menubarlets, and lock screenlets), customizable default apps (because Apple has also fallen behind in Maps, Safari, Mail, and Calendar, too) and third party keyboards (which Apple can vet to address the security implications). Everything needs to work in landscape and upside-down mode, too. 

Once iOS 7 is given to developers this summer, Apple needs to redouble its efforts on mobile hardware and explore features like NFC, inductive charging, and better cameras and batteries. It also needs to include Retina displays in every mobile product (I'm looking at you, iPad mini). And if people want a five-inch smartphone, make a five inch iPhone. Why is Apple just giving away this market to Samsung/Google?

And it's time for Apple to address payments. Apple has sold almost 600 million iOS devices, and I'm tired of Apple claiming that that mobile payments are in their "infancy". That's nonsense. As I mentioned in August and September 2012, Apple could singlehandedly move mobile payments into adulthood by investing in Passbook, NFC, and other frictionless payment technologies and own the space! Or will it let Passbook wither and die like music and messaging? 

In short, I'm OK with Apple pushing its new mobile offerings to the fall to make a bonafide effort to stay competitive. Frankly, it needs to. If Apple doesn't make some significant moves with mobile in 2013 it will give away even more ground to Samsung and Google, and will become the phone that your parents use, while business, professional, and power users defect to devices and platforms that work the way they want them to. 

Apple is at a crossroads, and it needs to step up or step aside, and I hope that it's using the extra time wisely. 

In January, Apple gave the following guidance for its fiscal 2013 second quarter:

• Revenue between $41 billion and $43 billion
• Gross margin between 37.5 percent and 38.5 percent
• Operating expenses between $3.8 billion and $3.9 billion
• Other income/(expense) of $350 million
• Tax rate of 26 percent

CNET has reported that Apple expects profits for the quarter to be between $9.23 and $10.23 per share. A Thomson First Call poll of 48 analysts expects Apple to post earnings of $10.12 per share on sales of $42.6 billion.

Apple's estimates for Q2 EPS are lower than the same quarter a year ago ($12.30 per share), while its estimated Q2 revenue is up from the $39.2 billion in the same quarter year ago.

In his Apple Earnings Preview on Seeking Alpha, Bill Maurer noted that even though Apple could announce record quarterly numbers, the stock might still get punished due to the "analyst game" or missing analysts expectations:

Apple will likely post a record second quarter, and most likely guide to a record third quarter. But if the numbers don't come in where analysts have their marks, and Apple doesn't raise the dividend just yet, this stock will continue to be punished. Apple's stock is already down 44.6 percent, and the beating could continue.

You can tune into a live stream of Apple's second fiscal quarter conference on Tuesday, April 23, 2013 at 2:00pm PT/ 5:00pm ET on Apple's Investor Relations website.

Buy, sell, or hold?

Update: AAPL's fiscal Q2 results are in (press release):

• Revenue $43.6 billion (compared to $39.2b in the year-ago quarter)
• Net profit $9.5 billion, or $10.09/share (compared to $11.6b, $12.30/share)
• Gross margin 37.5 percent (compared to 47.4 percent)
• International sales accounted for 66 percent of the quarter’s revenue
• 37.4 million iPhones sold (compared to 35.1 million)
• 19.5 million iPads sold (compared to 11.8 million)
• 5.6 million iPods sold (compared to 7.7 million)
• 3.9 million Macs sold (compared to 4 million)

Roman Loyola at Macworld recently reviewed Pupil by Louder Than Ten, a useful screen-resolution-switching utility. It costs $5.

Loyola said that the strength of Pupil is its customization.

For example, if you have three different resolutions you like to use, you can choose to display only those three in Pupil's menu — and put them in a preferred order. Other apps, such as QuickRes, display the whole list of available resolutions at all times — which I don't mind, but it's nice not to have to see options that you'll never use.

There's more to the utility. Check out the full review.

Many believe that more is better when it comes to resolution. And at times, it is for some forms of content. However, elements in the user interface, such as icons and tools, can shrink to dinky size. Worse, even though text may be clearly rendered, it's way too small to see for some users' eyes. This is especially true for users with older eyes, even with "computer glasses". Small is small. Switching resolutions is an answer, but only if it's easy to use.

The One to One service is offered to customers of new Macs for $99. The services comprise: Data Migration, Personal Training, Group Training, and Open Training programs. The terms and conditions for the service are online at Apple's Retail Store site.

Data Migration — One to One members are entitled to Data Migration services for one (1) Mac purchased from an Apple Retail Store, Apple Online Store, or 800-MY-APPLE, if requested within the first sixty (60) days of your membership, including any renewals. Data Migration includes the data transfer of files from your old computer (PC or Mac) to your Mac.

To be eligible for One to One Data Migration, your original computer must start up properly and be virus free. In addition, any PC must be running Windows XP Service Pack 3 or later, and have a working Ethernet port.

If you're migrating from a Mac, your system must be running Mac OS X 10.5 or later, and have a working Ethernet, Firewire, Thunderbolt, or USB port. If you put any data or information on your Mac prior to your Data Migration, it will be erased and the Mac will be restored to its factory condition prior to transferring the data from your old computer.

Upon your request, we will install any compatible Apple hardware that was purchased in conjunction with your Mac. We will also assist with installing software that was purchased in conjunction with your Mac in a Personal Training or Open Training session that you schedule with the Apple Retail Store.

Data Migration services include the transfer and integration of your email, contacts, calendars, music, photos, bookmarks, and documents from your personal user account, and not the accounts of others you might store on your old computer. Apple does not guarantee the transfer of all data from a personal computer to your Mac, as certain data — including, without limitation, certain email, contacts, and calendar applications — may not be supported.

One to One Data Migration is available only at Apple Retail Store locations, for Mac computers owned and registered in your name, and running the latest version of OS X.

InfoAppleStore points out that customers can only request the service within the first 60 days of ownership versus an entire year span with the former terms. And more importantly, the installation of hardware and software is now limited to Apple Store purchases.

The installation of compatible Apple hardware is now limited to whatever was purchased with the new Mac. The store staff will now "assist" with the installation of software that a customer purchases during a Personal Training or Open Training session. Previously, the staff would "install" software, and the location of purchase wasn't qualified.

Previously, Apple allowed data migration via Wi-Fi for both Mac and PCs, however, now only hardwire connections are supported. This may be a difficulty for some minimal PCs. I never understood why Apple would support Wi-Fi transfers since they are unreliable and slow — or so I have found in my own office.

The last line in the Apple data transfer terms appears to me to be a bit confusing. It reads that the One to One Data Migration is "for Mac computers owned and registered in your name, and running the latest version of OS X." Does this mean that the older Mac that someone brings into the Apple Store — to transfer its data over to a newly purchased machine — must be running the latest version of OS X? If so, that's a huge change for millions of Mac users.

According to the Desktop Operating System Market Share tally at NetMarketShare, more than half of Macs in its counting are running older versions of OS X. I should have said tens of millions of Mac users.

What may be the outcome of these changes? Many of the new Mac owners, especially those will older Macs, may seek out Mac consultants to help with their data transfers and software configuration. And Mac certified hardware shops will see extra work installing internal hardware, although, the design of many new Macs, such as the new iMac models, discourage after-purchase upgrades.

This could be just what Apple wanted. The cost of migrating data to older Macs must be costing Apple much more than the $99 that is covered by the One to One service fee. Much more.

But I got lazy a couple weeks ago and paid the price as a result.

I got a new 2013 Retina MacBook Pro 13-inch to replace my late 2012 model, and decided that it would be quicker to move the SSD from the old to the new Mac rather than migrate the data from a Time Machine backup.

Simple enough, right? No. Bad idea. 

For starters, migrating from a backup is always better, because it forces you to make a backup that you can restore from. I hadn't made a backup in around six weeks because I got lazy and neglected to plug in the USB drive sitting on my desk. 

Take a close look at the photo above. The SSD in question, a blazing fast 6G model from OWC, just barely fits inside the carrier bezel under the trackpad in the rMBP13. When I moved it to the new Mac, I guess that I didn't seat it firmly enough in the socket and, as you can see in the photo above, the corners of the SSD are just barely resting on top of the curved corners of the carrier bezel. 

When I tightened the screw that holds the SSD in place (gently, mind you), it flexed the board enough to crack a component on the board. Sure enough, it wouldn't boot and I was greeted by the dreaded blinking grey folder of death. 

And that was the end of my SSD.

Thoughts began racing through my mind of everything I had worked on (and not backed up) in the past six weeks, including my book manuscript and photos from my daughter's birthday party. Luckily, I had shared the photos with my wife via PhotoStream and a bunch of documents that I was working on were located on Dropbox. In other words, thank goodness for the cloud. 

Unfortunately, I had a lot of documents that weren't on the cloud that got obliterated with my quarter turn of a screwdriver. But my bad fortune (stupidity?) should be a lesson to you. It's relatively inexpensive to back up your data, and today's tools make it completely automatic and transparent. 

After my data loss issue, I took two steps to ensure that it never happens again:

1. I replaced my Airport Extreme with a 2GB Time Capsule. It's essentially an Airport base station with an internal hard drive. I configured it to back up my hard drive via Time Machine any time I'm on my network.

2. I subscribed to an online backup service. I chose CrashPlan+ Unlimited ($60/year) because: a) It includes unlimited online storage; b) It doesn't have a single file size limit (I use a large Windows VM); c) It offers 448-bit user encryption; d) It keeps deleted files; e) It offers a Seed Service to speed your initial upload; and f) It's priced fairly.

With tools like Time Machine included in OS X and Time Capsules starting at $299, there's simply no reason not to backup your data automatically. I added an online backup service for protection against a local catastrophe and recommend that you do the same. Immediately. 

Ask yourself two simple questions: If your hard drive/SSD were to fail (or was lost/stolen) today, do you have a full backup at your fingertips? How long would it take you to get back up and running?

Now go purchase a Time Capsule and subscribe to an online backup service. 

Eventful 2.0 for iPhone (free, App Store) scans your music library and informs you about when your bands are in the area (like Songkick does), but that's where the similarities end. In addition to music, Eventful allows you to find out about numerous other events in your area, including movies, performing arts, family events, and sports.

Eventful differs from its competitors in a couple of key ways:

• It scans your iTunes music library, Spotify and Last.fm

• It allows you to rate any event, venue, and movie trailer with a simple thumbs up or thumbs down

• The more you interact with the app, the more it learns your preferences

• It saves your preferences and will notify you when your favorite events are happening nearby, anywhere in the world

• It provides personal event recommendations generated by a proprietary recommendation engine

• It boasts over 4 million events and 21 million users

• Eventful's "Demand it" service lets you request events in your area

• It includes movie show times, trailers, and details

• It includes 26 additional categories, including sports, kids & family events, festivals, etc.

Eventful will alert you when your favorite bands are coming to town, and as an Eventful user, you will receive performer and recommended performer alerts (from its recommendation engine) via email. The addition of movies and family events are worth the price of admission. If you're looking for something to do this week (or weekend), I recommend that you give Eventful a spin.

Watch the trailer below.

Several recent blog posts point to availability services and monitoring applications. Adam Engst at TidBITS and developer Oliver Drobnik at Cocoanetics both expect WWDC Blast to do the job right. 

Drobnik writes:

All those options pale in comparison with the professionalism that can be had from WWDC Blast. Any kind of monitoring system's effectiveness depends on you noticing any alert notification. And this is their flaw. If you are on the wrong cost of the USA or some place else on our geoid that we call home, then email, push notifications, or SMS won't cut it.

What you really want is a friend who constantly refreshes the WWDC page and calls you the second there is action there. WWDC Blast is exactly that.

According to the WWDC Blast folks, their "proprietary technologies and engineered redundancy at every level of our stack ensure that when WWDC tickets go on sale, we'll be the first to know. And when we know, you'll know".

As I have mentioned before, Apple has three major hardware/software platforms on the market and is one of the biggest computing platform companies in the world, but only has one developer conference. Why is that?

Developers, enterprise, and government customers and education sites, as well as various market segments could use specific conferences. Or more than tracks at the current WWDC. That all the tickets for the conference are sold in a couple of hours isn't a good thing.

The products I demonstrated included:

• Jawbone UP ($129.99): A wristband that tracks how you sleep, move, and eat. It also includes cool features like smart alarm, power nap, and idle alert. This is the band that I replaced my Nike+ FuelBand with because of the sleep monitoring functionality. I reviewed the Jawbone Up here on March 19, 2013.

• BodyMedia Fit Link ($149.99): This armband monitors your calories, activity, and sleep, and integrates with the Activity Manager portal to analyze raw data, log food, and track your progress. It's an FDA-registered medical device with the most accurate calorie burn measurement (based on clinical trials). The armband includes sensors for skin temperature, galvanic skin response, and heat flux, and integrates with the new Withings WS-50 wi-fi scale (see below). The Fit Link requires a subscription ($6.95/month, $59/year, $89/two years) to use beyond the trial period.

• Withings Smart Body Analyzer ($149.95): This killer, next-generation wi-fi scale measures weight for up to eight different users (so it is suitable for the whole family), body composition, heart rate, and indoor air quality, and features in-app coaching. It syncs with the Withings Health Mate app for iOS (free, App Store) and also with the BodyFit system (above). This is probably my favorite and the most compelling device of the lot.

I've been testing the Seismik case ($35) from Lunatik — the same folks that pioneered the iPod nano watchband — for a few weeks, and I'm impressed with the level of protection that it offers. Seismik utilizes the same patent-pending Impact Truss system found in the company's Taktik cases, providing serious drop protection for your iPhone.

The unique air cells around the perimeter of the case absorb impact and direct it away from the iPhone. I've dropped my iPhone 5 a couple of times while using the Seismik case, and it suffered no trauma. In fact, it actually bounced after landing on the corner of the case after a short drop.

The open cell design of the Seismik case reminds me of non-pneumatic tires (NPT) like those developed by Polaris for all-terrain vehicles (see this YouTube video), and it works in much the same way. In addition to the cushioning air holes, Seismik also features a semi-transparent hard shell back panel and openings for the camera, flash, speakers, and buttons. The volume buttons are a little harder to press with the case on, but I chalk that up to a trade-off for the additional protection.

Seismik attaches with a simple snap-on design and adds only a minimal amount of heft to the iPhone 5. As with all impact cases, Seismik adds to the footprint of the iPhone, resulting in some compromise. Mine, for example, won't fit in the Elevation Lab dock that I have on my nightstand, but that's a price that I'm willing to pay for the additional protection. Although its width is increased, Seismik doesn't add much thickness to the iPhone 5, allowing it to preserve most of its pocketability.

Seismik comes in five colors and is available for $34.95 from the Lunatik website.