Apple marketing chief Schiller unfollows Nest & Tony Fadell on Twitter following Google deal::

Only a few days after “father of the iPod” Tony Fadell agreed to sell thermostat and smoke detector maker Nest to Google for north of three billion dollars, Apple senior vice president (and former Fadell colleague) Phil Schiller has unfollowed the Nest CEO and the Nest company on Twitter.

Here’s Schiller’s following list from a recent cache:

Apple CEO Tim Cook Appears at China Mobile iPhone Kickoff::

iPhone sales have begun at China Mobile January 17th. The world’s largest carrier made a deal with Apple back in December 2013 to carry the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c on their wireless network.

9to5Mac:

To celebrate January 17th  launch, Cook and China Mobile Chairman Xi Guohua attended the opening at a China Mobile store. In celebration, Cook and the China Mobile executive offered autographed iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c units to the first customers to enter the store.

Cook also consented to a few questions and made a statement at a store opening.

Bloomberg reports that Cook said, “today is just the beginning of China Mobile and Apple coming together to deliver the best experience in the world.” When asked is a bigger-screened version of the iPhone was in the cards, Cook surprised no one by answering, “We never talk about future things. We have great things we are working on but we want to keep them secret. That way you will be so much happier when you see it.”

Why Did Google Buy Nest? Why Did Nest Go With Google?

The word is out, Google has bought connected thermostat and smoke detector maker Nest for $3.2 billion in cash. But why did Google want Nest? And why did Nest choose to go with Google instead of, say… Apple?

Why Google Bought Nest

In case you were unaware, Nest is a company whose aim is to make household objects smarter via advanced design and internet-connected features. Currently, it is best known for its Nest Thermostat ($249), a smart home thermostat controlled by your mobile device, and the Nest Protect ($129), a smoke and carbon-monoxide detector.

The company was founded in part by CEO Tony Fadell, a former Apple employee who is known as “The Father of the iPod.”

Google’s acquisition of Nest immediately puts Google in first-place in the race for in-home smart devices and appliances. While Nest has never released sales numbers, some estimates say the company is shipping upwards of 50,000 smart devices a month. I’m thinking any other company in the same marketplace would be hard pressed to match numbers like those.

Mashable humorously echoes the thoughts of many:

Will you have to log into Google+ to activate your smoke alarm? Will audio versions of Google’s paid search advertisements blare throughout your home via the speaker of your carbon-monoxide detector?

While Google’s announcement of the deal says that Nest will continue to operate as a separate and distinct entity, with Fadell still leading the way, it is still not hard to imagine how Google could use the Nest technology in the future. Despite any privacy implications – and there would be more than a few – Google’s powerful data crunching capabilities combined with Nest technologies could breed a new generation of smart home appliances that could be just what the market has been waiting for.

Why Nest Picked Google as a Partner

Well, besides the logical reason, “because they asked,” there are numerous attractive qualities Google holds for a company like Nest.

In an interview with GigaOM’s Om Malik, Nest co-founder Fadell noted how he has been wanting to refocus on designing product experiences instead of spending his time on scaling and infrastructure — something Google is very good at.

Tony Fadell:

I was spending nearly ninety percent of my time on building the infrastructure of the company and I wasn’t able to spend enough time and cycles on what I love doing: products and creating differentiated experiences for our customers. That is where my love is and Google offered to let us focus on that, but with scale that will help bring our horizon closer to us, faster. Google offers to bring that scale to us. For me, ultimately building great products is key.

Fadell went on to explain that while the Nest lineup of products has done quite well in the U.S. and Canada, the company needs to expand to other markets. Google can help with that.

Fadell says Nest will be increasing its marketing spending to get more people to use Nest products. He thinks the deal with Google will prime other companies to build around the “internet of things,” bringing previously ignored products to the limelight.

Who knows if Nest ever had talks with Apple for a deal similar to the one with Google. Apple certainly has the cash at hand to easily pull off such a deal. Nest’s co-founder Tony Fadell worked for the Cupertino firm. And, Apple sells Nest thermostats and smoke + carbon monoxide detectors in its stores and online. Why didn’t these two companies make a deal?

Turns out the relationship between Apple and Fadell may have been strained for quite awhile.

ITProPortal, via MacDailyNews writes about Fadell’s exit from Apple:

“Tony got canned,” Leander Kanhey writes in his new book, Jony Ive: The genius behind Apple’s greatest products. “He was paid off with his salary for a number of years plus so many millions to leave. Tony was canned because he was battling with Jony.”

Kanhey’s book suggest that Fadell and Apple parted on less than good terms. It seems that Fadell had originally conducted talks with Google when he decided to found Nest.

“This decision wasn’t made on a whim – Google has been in the mix in some way or another for about three years of our almost four-year history,” Fadell said in a blogpost about the deal. “In fact, my first meeting with Google as a Nester was before we’d launched.”

Google’s support and interest from the beginning may have meant it was the only feasible partner in Fadell’s view of things.

It will be interesting to sit back and watch what technology sprouts form the union of Nest and Google.

Will Google completely swallow the tech startup, assimilating its technology into Google branded products, or will we see Nest stand on its own as a leading brand in home automation tech?

What’s your opinion reader? We’d love it if you’d share your thoughts with us in the comments section below.

Rumor: Apple to Bring Back 8GB iPhone 4 to Shore Up Sagging India Sales

Apple is apparently set to bring back an old favorite from yesteryear to customers in India. The company is reportedly preparing to bring back the 8GB iPhone 4 exclusively in the Indian market.

AppleInsider:

Citing unnamed sources at four of Apple’s top trade partners in the region, The Economic Times reports the company will soon start sales of the 8GB iPhone 4 in its push for marketshare.

The report claims the iPhone 4 will be priced at roughly 15,000 rupees, or $243, when buybacks and equated monthly installment (EMI) plans are factored in. That would come out to a savings of 11,500 rupees, or $187 over the device’s original retail price three year ago.

One strike against such a move would be the supply of the iPhone 4 itself. Apple halted production of the iPhone 4 last fall, and moved the iPhone 4S into the entry-level slot. Sources say the company will attempt to draw upon unsold inventory of the iPhone 4 from around the world.

Apple’s EMI strategy, which dulls the pain of the cost of the devices by spreading out payments over multiple months, has proven popular in the past, with iPhone sales rising 400% over a three-month period in 2013 after the debut of such a plan.

No official announcement has been made as to when sales of the iPhone 4 will begin in India.

Ever Wonder Why Android OS Updates Take Forever to Reach a Phone? (Infographic)::

Did you ever wonder why Android OS updates take forever to reach customer devices, if they arrive at all? Smartphone maker HTC has shared the circuitous route an Android update must travel before it reaches consumer devices. It’s all laid out in the infographic below.

AppleInsider:

Apple, in comparison, faces a single stakeholder when it comes to iOS updates: themselves. They need only regulatory approval and technical certification from carriers — Apple famously released their cross-platform messaging service, iMessage, without consulting any of their carrier partners.

The effects of this dichotomy are illustrated by the latest version distribution statistics. Cupertino’s newest operating system, iOS 7, now runs on more than three-quarters of all iOS devices, while Android 4.4 “KitKat” is found on a relatively miniscule 1.1 percent of devices, according to Google’s developer dashboard.

         Full Scale image here

The Inside Story of How Android Ripped Off the Original iPhone::

It’s been known for some time that Google’s Android platform was largely inspired by (and some might say modeled after or copied from) Apple’s iPhone. Indeed, the original Android devices didn’t resemble today’s Android smartphones at all. In fact, Android was originally designed without any sort of touchscreen in mind, and the original “Google phone” concept resembled a Blackberry more than an iPhone. 

A fascinating except published in The Atlantic (via Daring Fireball) from Fred Vogelstein’s new book, Dogfight: How Apple and Google Went to War and Started a Revolution, casts some even more interesting light on just how badly Google crapped their pants when they first saw the iPhone.

The article points out what can only be a truly horrified response coming from Google Android engineer Chris DeSalvo (emphasis added):

“As a consumer I was blown away. I wanted [an iPhone] immediately. But as a Google engineer I thought ‘We’re going to have to start over’” Chris DeSalvo said. “What we had suddenly looked so… nineties. It’s just one of those things that are obvious when you see it.”

And another fascinating tidbit from that Atlantic article, with another frightened iPhone response from none other than Android team director Andy Rubin (once again, emphasis added):

On the day Jobs announced the iPhone, the director of the Android team, Andy Rubin, was six hundred miles away in Las Vegas, on his way to a meeting with one of the myriad handset makers and carriers that descend on the city for the Consumer Electronics Show. He reacted exactly as DeSalvo predicted. Rubin was so astonished by what Jobs was unveiling that, on his way to a meeting, he had his driver pull over so that he could finish watching the webcast.

“Holy crap,” he said to one of his colleagues in the car. “I guess we’re not going to ship that phone.”

Steve Jobs famously claimed that Android was a stolen product in comments published in his official biography by Walter Isaacson – and from the nuggets revealed in the new book, it seems he wasn’t far off at all.

“I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and 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 still has yet to sue Google directly regarding Android – but it certainly clear that Apple shook up the entire mobile industry in a bigger way than anyone could have imagined. Even Google immediately saw how significant the iPhone was. They scrapped their entire Android project and started from scratch!

Tim Cook Email to Apple Employees: Apple Has ‘Big Plans’ for 2014:

Sunday morning saw a lengthy email memo from Apple CEO Tim Cook to the company’s employees that reflected on 2013 and looked forward to the upcoming year of 2014.

9to5Mac:

In the letter, Tim Cook discusses people experiencing Apple products this holiday season, the Apple products launched throughout 2013, and corporate initiatives. “This holiday season, tens of millions of people around the world, from all walks of life, are experiencing Apple products for the first time. Those moments of surprise and delight are magical, and they’re all made possible by your hard work,” Cook says in the beginning of the email.

Cook noted Apple’s new manufacturing process for the “Made in the USA” Mac Pro, and called iOS 7 an “extraordinarily ambitious project.” Cook also mentioned the iPhone 5s, the free release of OS X Mavericks, the introduction of the iPad Air, and the Retina iPad mini.

Cook also shared details of such corporate initiatives as the “tens of millions of dollars” donated to initiatives such as Red Cross for those affected by the typhoon disaster in the Philippines. Cook also noted that Apple is still the largest contributor to the Product(RED) foundation.

Finally, Cook teased big news for 2014, saying: “We have a lot to look forward to in 2014, including some big plans that we think customers are going to love.”

The full email from Cook to employees read as follows:

Team,

This holiday season, tens of millions of people around the world, from all walks of life, are experiencing Apple products for the first time. Those moments of surprise and delight are magical, and they’re all made possible by your hard work. As many of us prepare to celebrate the holidays with our loved ones, I’d like to take a moment to reflect on what we’ve achieved together over the past year.

First and foremost, we introduced industry-leading products in each of our major categories in 2013, showing the breadth and depth of innovation at Apple. We extended our lead in the smartphone market with iPhone 5s; launched iOS 7, an extraordinarily ambitious project; released OS X Mavericks for free to our customers; introduced the iPad Air and the iPad mini with Retina display; and this week began shipping the Mac Pro from a manufacturing facility in Austin, Texas. We also marked our 50 billionth download on the App Store – a milestone no one could have predicted we would reach so quickly.

Together we’ve shown the world that innovation at Apple goes beyond our products to the way we do business and how we give back to our community. This year, Apple raised and donated tens of millions of dollars for important charities and relief efforts like Red Cross aid to typhoon victims in the Philippines, and we continue to be the largest contributor to (PRODUCT)RED, supporting the Global Fund in its fight against the spread of AIDS in Africa. Just a few weeks ago, Jony Ive led an unprecedented effort that brought money and awareness to eliminating the transmission of AIDS from mother to child.

And finally, Apple is standing up for what we believe is right. We know that equality and diversity make our company and our society stronger, so we’ve urged the U.S. Congress to support workplace protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. We are also laser focused on our contribution to several environmental initiatives and we will increase our efforts even more in this area in the future.

We have a lot to look forward to in 2014, including some big plans that we think customers are going to love. I am extremely proud to stand alongside you as we put innovation to work serving humankind’s deepest values and highest aspirations. I consider myself the luckiest person in the world for the opportunity to work at this amazing company with all of you.

Happy Holidays,

Tim