The iPhone Podcast

And regarding that system-wide UI overhaul, I hear the same thing as Rene Ritchie: “Ive’s work is apparently making many people really happy, but will also apparently make rich-texture-loving designers sad.”

Now, this is exciting.

parislemon:

So says Rene Ritchie of iMore, who tends to be very accurate when it comes to such information.

Sounds about right. The third generation iPad was released last March, and the fourth generation was a very minor revision, so we are due for a new iPad.

It will be interesting to see if Apple releases a new iPad Mini at the same time.

Apple announced that iTunes U has reached a new milestone — over one billion content downloads. iTunes U features the world’s largest online catalog of free educational content from top schools and prominent libraries, museums, and organizations.

This is the future of education.

Apple’s business was our business—not because we had some stake in the company, but because we’d grown to love Apple products, and if Apple went away, so would our Macs. Nobody liked the idea and everybody worried about it. That experience left an imprint on us as a community.

Smart piece.

Finally, this week has been mind-bending in terms of numbers, so we thought we’d share some of those too. While we’ve been fixing bugs, optimizing our back-end to handle massive amounts of data, and sharing high-fiving kittens on Twitter, you all have been swiping and emailing at an eye-popping pace.

I’m really impressed with Mailbox. We’ll be talking a lot about email when the podcast returns.

Apple has managed to nab three of the top 5 spots for the top-selling mobile phones in the U.S. during Q4 2012 according to the NPD Group, with the iPhone 5, iPhone 4S and iPhone 4 ranking first, third and fourth, respectively. Apple also retained the crown for best-selling overall smartphone maker, accounting for 39 percent of smartphone sales in Q4 2012, compared to Samsung’s 30 percent.

Despite the never-ending stream of “Android is winning” reports, the iPhone continues to be the top selling phone in the U.S.

Just as the rumors foretold, Apple has just anounced a 128GB version of its fourth-generation iPad with Retina display — the Wi-Fi model costs $799, while the Wi-Fi plus LTE model costs a whopping $929.

I was hoping Apple would discontinue the 16 gig model and just double all the current storage and charge the same prices. I bet that happens when they release the new iPad next fall.

At the end of the second quarter, Google expected shipments of 2.5 million Nexus 7s in 2012 but since then it has continually placed additional orders in view of booming sales, with the cumulative shipment volume in 2012 will reach 5.0 million units based on orders released, according to Taiwan-based players in the supply chain.

Not a bad number, but again, this is “shipped” not sold. And Apple “sold” 3 million iPads in one weekend.

It is likely that there is no retail outlet in the world that generates as much cash per square foot than an Apple Store.

That’s certainly true of the U.S., according to the latest top 10 list from Retail Sails, which ranks U.S. chain stores by their productivity (see chart at right). Apple (AAPL) was No. 1 last year, generating sales twice as efficiently as Tiffany’s at No. 2, and it is No. 1 again this year — despite the unhappy reign of Dixon’s John Browett and a recent slowdown in same-store sales.

Luckily for Apple, John Browett didn’t have enough time to damage the world’s best retail brand.