Month: June 2024

Apple Vision Pro costs 18% more in China than in America

Dan Uff June 30, 2024 2

The Apple Vision Pro spatial computer is now available in China with a retail price roughly 18% higher than in America, Apple’s home country.

The device starts at 29,999 yuan, or $4,128, in China, compared to a $3,500 retail price in the U.S.

Many of the most popular posts about the device on Chinese social media platform Weibo on Friday focused on the hashtag “is it worth paying for the China version of Vision Pro,” according to a CNBC translation.

Greater China accounted for about 18% of Apple’s revenue in the three months that ended March 30, according to an Apple filing.

Store salespeople told CNBC that all of Friday’s half-hour training sessions for preorders of the Vision Pro were booked up at Apple stores in Beijing — from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m.

Chinese companies such as Tencent, Alibaba and JD.com have launched Vision Pro versions of their apps for shopping, playing games and watching videos.

Via: CNBC.com

How big could an Apple Intelligence services business be?

CompuScoop Staff June 29, 2024 1

When it comes to Apple Intelligence, the biggest payoff for investors could be yet to come, and it’s not currently in any Wall Street spreadsheets.

Apple investors breathed a sigh of relief on June 10th when the company’s CEO, Tim Cook, and his deputies held a two-hour presentation about their intention to bring artificial intelligence to the iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Apple had been seriously lagging the giants of AI, Microsoft, and Alphabet’s Google, but they managed to turn things around sharply with a vision for AI assistants that actually offered some nice functionality.

Apple has emphasized the security aspects of its iCloud facilities for the purpose of protecting user data. That opens the door to a meaningful boost in Apple’s services revenue, its most profitable business and its fastest-growing.

Services, including sales of music and video and apps, was a fifth of Apple’s total revenue in the fiscal year that ended in September, at $85 billion, a staggering sum considering it was just $14 billion a decade ago… Services’s profit, moreover, is almost twice what it is for iPhones and iPads and Macs, at 75 percent of sales last quarter versus a profit of 37 percent for product sales.

Anything that contributes to services sales should be music to investors’ ears. AI could be a shot in the arm if Apple decides to broadly sell an AI predictions service in the cloud…

It’s conceivable Apple could offer a retail cloud computing AI service, not unlike the services offered by OpenAI, search engine Perplexity.ai, Google, and privately held Anthropic… All those services have coalesced around a price of $20 per month, which is the price for ChatGPT Plus, Perplexity.ai’s Perplexity Pro, Google’s Google One subscription, which includes its Gemini language model, and Anthropic’s Pro account.

Via: Fast Company

More information on MeTV Toons

Dan Uff June 28, 2024 1

YouTuber AntennaMan gives more information about the newest network called MeTV Toons. What is it, in what markets, and how you can get it on your TV.

The video is below:

[su_youtube url="https://youtu.be/y7aMCuXYIIw?si=kvyZIZ5ogfIVL68t"]

Apple Vision Pro arrives in China mainland, Hong Kong, Japan, and Singapore

Apple Inc June 28, 2024 1

Apple Vision Pro arrives in China mainland, Hong Kong, Japan, and Singapore

Today, Apple Vision Pro arrived in Apple Store locations across China mainland, Hong Kong, Japan, and Singapore. Vision Pro seamlessly blends digital content with the physical world to deliver powerful spatial experiences that transform the way people work, collaborate, connect, relive memories, enjoy entertainment, and much more.

Apple team members celebrated with the first customers in these countries and regions to explore this revolutionary product and participate in a guided demo experience that’s only available at Apple Retail. Customers can visit the Apple Store online to book a personal one-on-one demo of Apple Vision Pro and discover the range of capabilities of spatial computing, from groundbreaking entertainment experiences to an infinite canvas for favorite apps.