What is APPLE planning?

[Yinzer]

Disagree. Runs much better but still there is tremendous lags and pauses when opening apps, switching between apps, and when trying to swoop apps closed with the new gestures on my iphone 4. Even after hard resets. Also most apps that were open and running in the background now go through what looks to be a re-opening of the app when switching between what was supposed to be an open app running in the background. Was not that way before. Also occasionally the keyboard entry chokes and there's a 3-4 second pause between key press and entry. YMMV

 

[seamus628]

Maybe its time for you to run out and purchase a new phone like I did, and I don't regret it one bit. OS7 runs beautifully, even "lush" if you like and is super quick. At some point in time you'll have to purchase a new timing belt, and while your in there maybe replace the water pump as well

 

[Yinzer]

I do like your creative metaphors and am extremely jealous of your ability to forgive the bastardized, horrible, unintuitive, and egotistical design that is iOS7, but: My iphone 4’s timing belt is only 3 years old. Wayyyyyy too young to need replaced just for fun. Also I was not clamoring for more power with a blower or turbo; my NA 3.0L 5-speed iPhone was just PERFECT the way it was until Jony “pbassjo” Ive showed up unexpectedly and painted my beautiful GPW into an awful pastel-colored plaid and polka-dot mess using Krylon spray cans instead of putting on an easily reversible wrap, only to then rag it over to Tim “Bastanza” Cook who irreversibly glued 800 lb of burnt clutches into my trunk, bogging down and stealing from me all the performance I once had.

Actually too I no longer need a water pump; all my tears of sorrow after ioS7 provide all the water and cooling I need!

I know you’re joking and mean well, but man, I hate the idea that $400 (or whatever my iphone 4 w/32gb and apple care cost me in June 2010) is only “good” for 3 years at most before the customer is essentially forced to upgrade hardware just to keep up with a crappy OS that’s forced upon customers, with no option to revert back to acceptable performance and preferred aesthetics & function if the customer so wished.

That link I attached to my post earlier today along with the comments after the article completely sum how I feel about ios7 (which I hate, in case that’s not evident, lol). I never thought I’d shop away from an apple phone but the day is coming I’m afraid. : )

 

[Jimbo]

I am sort of neutral on the look for iOS 7. Some things I like, other just meh. But there are so many other substantive things and features that are great. Safari for example. The MultiTasking and app switching. The Control Center and Notifications. The new camera app...

And of course just the way everything works together between my PC, Mac, iWork and iPad.

The window dressing changes just isn't that big of a deal.

-Jim

 

[NetViper]

I am sort of neutral on the look for iOS 7. Some things I like, other just meh. But there are so many other substantive things and features that are great. Safari for example. The MultiTasking and app switching. The Control Center and Notifications. The new camera app...

And of course just the way everything works together between my PC, Mac, iWork and iPad.

The window dressing changes just isn't that big of a deal.

-Jim

I like the way ios7 works a lot more than 6, I just hate how the icons looks and of course how slow it makes my ipad3 run.

What do you think of the rumors of the 12.9 inch iPad rumor? I would like to see a touch version of OSx on that vs iOS.

 

[Yinzer]

I need some therapy/venting. Didn't want to vent on my date last night, and my cat is tired of listening. I'm continually shocked about the seemingly downward trend in everything Apple recently, at least in my experience. All of a sudden my ipad 1 is a slug, even after hard resets. It frequently locks up for 10-15 seconds and crashes in Safari.

Next, I visited the local Apple store this weekend and jokingly asked a cute Genius: "as probably the first person to ask, is there any way to go back to ios6 on my iPhone4?" The friendly Genius said "sure! Just restore using a backup from before Sept 18!" I asked whether she was sure, given that Apple stopped signing to ios6, and she cutely rolled her eyes about not knowing ANYTHING about such a thing and how wrong 9to5mac or macworld and other sources can be. I asked her if she knew firsthand if this really worked (even though I was rather sure it wouldn't) and she said she'd been suggesting this since late September w/o any returned customers so it must be working. Now, I think we're all used to interfacing with Apple store Geniuses and their trained "act" of never badmouthing Apple or confirming knowledge of any rumors or going off script... But this time I felt like I was talking with the cutest brainwashed humanoid I'd ever met and I knew I'd get nowhere with trying to get a real answer from her or any other Genius. But in the name of science and as the eternal optimist - or to confirm to myself that it wouldn't work - I tried and of course it defaulted to ios7. Only now my iPhone won't auto-lock at all even though I have auto-lock set to 1 minute, and now it requests a password when I retrieve voicemail even though I didn't set a password (I just hit Cancel each time). And I still haven't found a way to stop the annoying "Cellular Data is Turned off for "Music"" popups each and every time I play music.

Way to go Apple. From hero to zero after 6 years of minimal mis-steps, at least based on my experience. Just amazing!

As much as I complain, I haven't yet moved on away from Apple and I didn't take any AAPL off the table at $520 (it's now at $560); the optimist in me hopes Apple's board of directors will sack Jony Ive, bring back Forstall, and clean up the buggy hard-to-read mess that is ios7. But mostly it just feels insulting that there seems to be a general acceptance by many to discard what was a perfectly good $300 phone just a few months ago...that hoping to own a phone for more than 2 years is just crazy talk....

The concept of having something you own keep getting slower and slower even after hard resets and then spending $1000 on phone hardware every decade just seems wrong and immoral. I stumbled upon this at the "I hate ios7" facebook page. It sums things up surprisingly adequately. Only this time I'm not drinking the koolaid and running out to replace my iPhone.

<iframe src="//player.vimeo.com/video/79695097" webkitallowfullscreen="" mozallowfullscreen="" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="281" width="500"></iframe> IDIOTS from BLR_VFX on Vimeo.

Please realize that I know there are BIGGER problems in the world than this. It's just a shame that a product can disappoint while it once was so stellar in this consumer's opinion. If this is what happens in marriages - where one side of the partnership changes suddenly and irrevocably, then I can feel why divorce may be the only option for some.

Rant over.

- - - Updated - - -

Rant almost over, lol. While searching for ios7 jailbreak info before beddy bye, I stumbled upon this.

http://www.macrumors.com/2013/12/05/apples-app-store-usage-numbers-suggest-ios-7-adoption-at-74/

From the comments:
"If you google iOS 7, the fourth most commonly searched word that follows it is the word "Sucks"."

"7 is only at 74% because no one can uninstall it. If we could still roll back to 6 every one I know would immediately. I do tech work on the side, every client is calling begging me to work tech magic to get 6 back on, I'm breaking hearts left and right. This is Apple biggest scam. They act like the adoption and love for the new OS is high, when it's really not. It's only high because we cannot get it off."

Really now? I confirmed the first comment, it's true hehe. For those here who like ios7, I don't think you're crazy wrong; but I know I'm crazy jealous.

 

[NSXrebel]

ALL THAT NOISE

You sure do whine a lot about iOS 7. I did a google search of iOS 7, no such thing as "sucks" being a top hit, not even 4th. Probably best if you move on to another platform like Android, Windows Phone 8, or BlackBerry if Apple/iOS is no longer meeting your needs.

As for your passcode, you did set one when you first got your iPhone and probably don't remember it. That's how the iPhone automatically retrieves your voicemail and you get visual voicemail. Press and hold 1 from the dial pad until you get the prompt to reset your password, or you can just call your service provider and have CR reset your voicemail passcode.

 

[Yinzer]

You sure do whine a lot about iOS 7.

Ain't that the truth!!!

I'll start looking for options soon and promise will bite my tongue even sooner, maybe now. Even I'm tired of the whining.

I assure you I've never set or used a vm passcode. Just strange that a prompt would appear after restoring from a backup that of course had no passcode set. I'll try your recommendations nonetheless, thx.

You don't see this in any google search? I do on my mac pro & iPhone.

No biggie. I'll just have to throw in the towel instead of using it for my crybaby tears, lol.

 

[NSXrebel]

I assure you I've never set or used a vm passcode. Just strange that a prompt would appear after restoring from a backup that of course had no passcode set. I'll try your recommendations nonetheless, thx.

You don't see this in any google search? I do on my mac pro & iPhone.

No biggie. I'll just have to throw in the towel instead of using it for my crybaby tears, lol.

I assure you, you DID set a passcode for VM. if you were receiving visual voicemail before, you would have had to set a passcode for it to work. NO way around that. If you hadn't, the minute you get a voicemail, you would have gotten a prompt to setup a passcode. You probably just don't remember setting it. its a 4 digit code.

 

[Jack Sparrow]

I assure you, you DID set a passcode for VM. if you were receiving visual voicemail before, you would have had to set a passcode for it to work. NO way around that. If you hadn't, the minute you get a voicemail, you would have gotten a prompt to setup a passcode. You probably just don't remember setting it. its a 4 digit code.

lol...Rebel is right in more ways then one. If you're not satisfied, move to a different platform. Lots of people complain first before they think about being accountable for their own inability to properly operate technology.

 

[Gansan]

It is likely that you did have a passcode set. When you restore from a backup, passwords are not included unless the backup was encrypted. When you restore, the previously stored password is erased, and you have to re-enter it. It's normal.

 

[Yinzer]

I assure you, you DID set a passcode for VM.

And I'll assure you back: No you're wrong and yes you're right. I just didn't explain accurately. I do have a passcode for externally dialing in to check VM's but I've never required or set a passcode to access visual VM directly on the iPhone. I've restored my iPhone from a backup at least 4-5x since 2010 and only this time after restoring this weekend does it prompt "Password Incorrect, Enter voicemail password" from out of nowhere. Most interestingly, it prompts this after I've listened to a new message instead of before, it accepts any passcode I type in (gives no error message), and it keeps re-prompting for each new VM even when I type the correct passcode. I would have expected the prompts to stop after that. I'll call AT&T and take care of it. I'm trying to no longer belabor my personal experiences but in the sake of keeping things general towards Apple: I whined yesterday mostly to indicate once again that for me, the days of "it just works" no longer seems to apply.

lol...Rebel is right in more ways then one. If you're not satisfied, move to a different platform. Lots of people complain first before they think about being accountable for their own inability to properly operate technology.

Um, thanks but wrong. See above. I had 38 months of understanding & being able to operate it properly. Only now it seems to not "just work" like it did pre-ios7. Cool that you're on post #777 today though!

And hopefully this is one of my last personal blah blahs here, but: Yes it's my own personal cross to bear that I haven't moved on. I haven't rushed to it because for one thing, I'm too entrenched with Apple after 7 years to jump quite yet (25k song files in iTunes + podcasts, I stream often to AppleTV, I have a personal business's key emails all entrenched within folders in my icloud email account, I share multiple iCal calendars with family members, etc.). Secondly even with my critiques of ios7, I consider Apple the "gold standard" for mobile/home/entertainment integration. I've tried friends' phones & galaxy tabs & others and find them to all be poor compromises from trying to copycat the trailblazer, to be frank, while trying to do things differently enough to avoid lawsuits. The more I think about the bummer logistics of jumping ship, the more I'm trying to just bite it (and hopefully bite my tongue here more often).

AAPL up $6 today but on slightly lower than avg volume. Glad I'm in the minority!

- - - Updated - - -

It is likely that you did have a passcode set. When you restore from a backup, passwords are not included unless the backup was encrypted. When you restore, the previously stored password is erased, and you have to re-enter it. It's normal.

Gansan - thanks! I honestly don't recall whether I needed to re-enter a VM passcode last time I restored from a backup. But I do know it didn't have the unpredictable/quirky behavior I'm currently experiencing, described above. Maybe I dropped my phone once too much!

 

[NSXrebel]

If you've had to restore your phone 4-5 times in the last 2-3 years, maybe the phone itself is bad. Why did you have to restore your phones so many times??
The only times I restored was when a new jailbreak was available, and I only restored because it was always recommended when upgrading OS and jailbreaking.

As for the VM, that "external" passcode is the same passcode you would use on the iPhone for Visual VM. You HAD to have set the passcode on your phone in order to receive Visual VM, you probably just don't remember doing so. Otherwise you would not have Visual VM working, and would be prompted to enter your passcode every time you got a new VM.

As for music on iTunes, you have a considerable library, similar to mine, but then again I never bought music from iTunes, and I'm guessing the majority of your library was purchased before Apple did away with DRM. (BTW, DRM was not Apple's fault, but the RIAA's call, many people mistakingly blame Apple for that) There are a few ways to get around that.

You can burn your music to CD's using iTunes and then re-rip that music back into iTunes and it will be DRM-free, but with a large library like yours, that's not very practical.
The other option is to subscribe to iTunes Match for $25 and you can redownload most, if not all, of your music DRM-Free with the added benefit of getting a higher bit rate of 256kbps.
I've read there are 3rd party software that will remove the DRM but I've never tried any of them, so YMMV.

Calendars you can export from iCal/Calendar and import into Google Calendars easily.

As for emails, I've never done that but a quick google search should be able to help you out, or you can just fwd your emails to a gmail account.

 

[NSXrebel]

Apple posts record sales/profits for 1st quarter, again.
Drops in value. AGAIN. nearly 10% after hours.
Fncking ANALyst.

 

[kookoo4nsx]

Once the stock bottoms, Apple will be using its cash to buy its own stock.

 

[NSXrebel]

Once the stock bottoms, Apple will be using its cash to buy its own stock.

and go private?!

 

[Budweiser®]

Apple posts record sales/profits for 1st quarter, again.
Drops in value. AGAIN. nearly 10% after hours.
Fncking ANALyst.

What do analysts have to do with this? Profits are flat YoY for the 3rd time, margins are down. If there's no potential for additional profits what makes them deserving of a higher multiple?

 

[jond]

Apple posts record sales/profits for 1st quarter, again.
Drops in value. AGAIN. nearly 10% after hours.
Fncking ANALyst.

From what I read, if their Q2 guidance is accurate, it will be the first year over year decline in a long time.
That tells me the growth, even with China recently added in, may be over.

Once the stock bottoms, Apple will be using its cash to buy its own stock.

Or use the money to innovate...
Not to be mean, but the new Android smartphones are infinitely better and apple hasn't innovated anything new with the iphone in years.
If they don't pick up the pace, they will become blackberry IMO.

 

[heySkippy]

infinitely

That word, I don't think it means what you think it means.

 

[NSXrebel]

What do analysts have to do with this? Profits are flat YoY for the 3rd time, margins are down. If there's no potential for additional profits what makes them deserving of a higher multiple?

Seriously?? I don't know why, but wall street seems to listen and go with what the clowns guesstimate what Apple should be selling. They're all over the map with their guesses. Wall street then wrongly assumes Apple didn't meet expectations.

Jond, as for China, we have yet to see how they will affect growth, since the iPhone was only released out there starting with this (2nd) quarter. My take, is that Apple will only be selling more iPhones. We'll find out in a couple months or so about Q2.

 

[steveny]

What do analysts have to do with this? Profits are flat YoY for the 3rd time, margins are down. If there's no potential for additional profits what makes them deserving of a higher multiple?

Yeah it's turning into amazon, lol.

 

[Budweiser®]

Seriously?? I don't know why, but wall street seems to listen and go with what the clowns guesstimate what Apple should be selling. They're all over the map with their guesses. Wall street then wrongly assumes Apple didn't meet expectations.

Jond, as for China, we have yet to see how they will affect growth, since the iPhone was only released out there starting with this (2nd) quarter. My take, is that Apple will only be selling more iPhones. We'll find out in a couple months or so about Q2.

Forest from the trees, they can say whatever they want but at the end of the day it boils down to present value of future cash flows. 3 consecutive holiday quarters with the same profit despite selling more each year means growth is flat. AAPL's own guidance for Q2 is flat as well. The stock had growth priced into it yesterday, today's correction is a reflection of lower expected growth.

Yeah it's turning into amazon, lol.

Without the P/E of course I never said AAPL doesn't make money, just that they were, at least, overvalued.

 

[steveny]

8x cash on hand is not too overvalued IMO

 

[Budweiser®]

8x cash on hand is not too overvalued IMO

Personally I discount the cash number significantly, only 22% of the $159 billion is in the US. Some of that is priced in already but if a tax holiday is announced they'll pop back up $50/share easily.

 

[Yinzer]

Forest from the trees, they can say whatever they want but at the end of the day it boils down to present value of future cash flows.

And at the very end of the end of the day, it further boils down to product, doesn't it? From 200x-2010, their ipod, laptops, OS, iphone, iOS, and tablets were new, unique, and had no equals. They not only looked great and "just worked" but they all played well together. This was so shockingly refreshing when compared to 2000-era clunky MP3 players, cheap plasticky non-differentiated laptops, and Microsoft Windows reinventions every 5 years that weren't vast improvements over the prior iteration. So even at premium prices, it was no surprise that new customers flocked to Apple and stayed on as happy repeat customers every few years (for me it's been three ipods, one AppleTV in 2009, iPhone4 in 2010, one iPad for me and 3 as gifts, and a 2006 Mac Pro & cinema display). But from 2010 to 2014, the competition has been copying & catching up at lower pricepoints while Apple kept losing steam IMHO: 2010's iPhone4 focused too much on design at the expense of function & durability (antennagate issue & glass cases that cracked way too easily), iOS6's maps fiasco, iOS7's android/Windows look that no longer felt "Apple-like," and Tim Cook's continual strange dissing of combo laptop/tablets that's hopefully just a red herring while they work on a killer combo tablet/latop Air... But apart from the iPad intro in early 2010, Apple has just not had that same buzz & infallability from 2010 to 2014 that it exuded from ~2005 to 2010 IMHO. I haven't bought a new AAPL product since 2010 and I stopped dead in my tracks from upgrading to an iPhone 5s due to my personal dissatisfaction with non-Apple-feeling iOS7. I don't care what anyone says - Steve Jobs had the secret sauce and vision that will be impossible to replace.

Nonetheless I don't think AAPL is washed up - I'll very likely upgrade my 2006 Mac Pro and buy my first Apple laptop if/when they come out with that 13" combo iPad/laptop Air as long as the OS doesn't adopt the "Fisher Price meets South Park" look of iOS7, and the rumors about iWatch, Apple TV hardware, automobile infotatinment, human interface wearable tech, and combo iPad/laptop are still ripe for the taking and keep me interested. But separate from any knowledge of AAPL fundamentals (I stopped active equities investing & researching ~5 years ago), their stock price behavior is completely no surprise to me IMHO just based solely on my feelings about their product directions as of late. I'd been complaining about iOS7 as the "last straw" of disatisfaction for a while now (reflected in my whiny complainy anti-iOS7 posts earlier in this thread) and I finally sold all my AAPL at $570 around Dec 23. The $20 jump on not-crazily-high-volume after the China market announcement seemed like the perfect time to put my money where my mouth was. I'm not bragging - it wasn't a ton of shares and it was the first and maybe last time I'd *ever* sold 100% of a position anywhere close to a localized peak. Pure gut feel & lucky timing. Sad to say, if I wanted to get back in to AAPL anytime soon, it'd be like investing in a cigarette company; I'm not as big a fan of the products currently, so the fundamentals would be the only driver. Icahn keeps buying. I'd look to his actions as a positive indicator *if and only if* I knew that he's been an Apple user for a long time and uses Apple products daily. Even with China market & beyond, there are only so many new markets to get into, and once they're penetrated, it comes back to product.