Astronaut’s Photo of Smoke Over Lower Manhattan on Sept. 11, 2001

On a day of somber memorials â€" for American diplomats killed in Benghazi on this date last year, and for the thousands who died in the terrorist attacks in the United States in 2001 and during the coup in Chile on Sept. 11, 1973 â€" an American blogger directs our attention to a stunning view of Lower Manhattan from the International Space Station after the World Trade Center collapsed.

NASA An image of Lower Manhattan seen from the International Space Station on Sept. 11, 2001.

The photograph was taken by the American astronaut Frank Culbertson, who recalled, “We took video as the second tower was collapsing â€" didn’t know exactly what was happening, but I knew it was really bad.” NASA released some of that video to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the attacks.

A former Times colleague, Patrick Witty, captured another remarkable image of the scene that morning from the ground, and is now looking for help in identifying the witnesses to the tragedy whom he photographed on Park Row as the first tower came down.

I took this photo 12 years ago today, just as the South Tower collapsed. Help me identify the subjects. http://t.co/pddkHtmKP3

â€" Patrick Witty (@patrickwitty) 11 Sep 13

Daily Report: Privacy Suit Against Google Will Continue

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Buy! Sell! Hold! Analysts Offer Different Views on Apple

The stock market really doesn’t like the new Apple iPhone 5C, or at least the price of it. As Apple’s stock fell more than 5 percent on Wednesday, analysts were all over the map with their reactions to the company’s new phones and sales strategy.

Apple said Tuesday that its new iPhone 5C and iPhone 5S would be available in the United States, Japan and China. Many hope the less-expensive phone, the 5C, will help Apple improve international sales, but there is concern that the price isn’t low enough to lure new customers.

Analysts at UBS, the giant Swiss bank, were not impressed and downgraded Apple’s stock to neutral. In a report written by Steven Milunovich, an analyst with the bank, the concern was that Apple could not compete with other smartphone makers in those countries. “A recent survey of 35,000 Chinese consumers conducted by ChinaDaily.com indicated that only 2.6% of respondents would consider purchasing the iPhone 5C at the $549 (Rmb4,488) level,” Mr. Milunovich wrote.

Price worried other researchers, too. The iPhone 5C costs twice as much as some rival smartphones, including the Xiaomi Mi3, which starts at $327 for the 16-gigabyte model and $408 for the 64-gigabyte version.

“IPhone 5C pricing was higher than what many were expecting at $550,” wrote the Baird equity analyst Will Power in a report to investors. ”Although we continue to believe that China is an important long-term opportunity for Apple, recent China results have disappointed.”

But there were some analysts and investors who came to the company’s defense and said that Apple knew exactly what it was doing, and set the price accordingly.

“Anyone expecting Apple to come truly down market with the iPhone 5C was fooling themselves,” said Tony Cripps, principal device analyst at Ovum, the research company, in an e-mail. “The day that happens is the day the company signals that it has run out of headroom for expansion.”

By extending sales of the iPhone to these new foreign markets, some predicted that Apple would sell more iPhones.

“The inclusion of China from Day 1 and a total of 100 countries by December 2013 is set to boost demand for iPhone 5S and 5C to unprecedented levels, putting significant pressure on the supply chain,” said Ronan de Renesse, principal analyst with Analysys Mason, a consulting firm. Mr. Renesse said that he expected Chinese buyers to purchase over 200 million smartphones by the end of 2013, “nearly as much as North America and Europe combined.”

Of course, if sales of the company’s less expensive model disappoint, Apple has the ability to drop the price, as it has in the past.

On Sept. 5, 2007, a couple of months after the release of the first iPhone, the company dropped the price of its new product to $400 after customers and analysts complained that the original $600 price tag was too high.

While people at the time lambasted the company for the price drop, since 2007, the company has sold upward of 250 million iPhones.

With that in mind, it would not be surprising if Apple at the end of quarter announced that it had sold more iPhones than ever before.

With iTunes Radio, Apple Takes Aim at Pandora

A decade ago, Apple transformed the music business with its iTunes store. Now what the music industry expects from Apple is less of a revolution than a helping hand.

Tim Cook, Apple's chief, right, and the musician Elvis Costello.

A preview of iTunes Radio, which will make its debut on Sept. 18.

Apple’s newest music feature, iTunes Radio, will be released on Sept. 18 as part of its iOS 7 system update, the company announced on Tuesday. The service is a sleek take on Internet radio, and Apple’s ability to place the app on millions of its devices gives it an enormous potential audience from Day 1.

“It’s a huge opportunity on a global basis to accelerate the transition of radio listeners and advertising dollars from terrestrial to digital,” said Stephen Bryan, the executive vice president for digital strategy at the Warner Music Group, which releases music by Green Day, Bruno Mars and hundreds of other acts.

The service is a threat to Pandora Media, which dominates Internet radio. But music and advertising executives say that the magnitude of that threat is unclear, given Apple’s relatively late entry into streaming music and Pandora’s strong market position. Both offer free streams of music tailored to a user’s taste and supported by advertising. In August, Pandora had 72.1 million active users â€" almost all in the United States â€" who streamed 1.35 billion hours of music, according to data released by the company.

“At this point Pandora is one of the leading recipients of mobile advertising revenue, and is one of the most popular apps, period, across devices,” said Clark Fredricksen, a vice president at eMarketer, a research firm. “It’s tough to see it getting killed.”

Instead, record labels and music publishers hope that Apple’s immense marketing power will attract more advertisers and help popularize Internet radio around the world. ITunes Radio will at first be available only in the United States, but it is expected to be introduced internationally soon. Apple operates iTunes stores in 119 countries.

“It’s hard to say that Pandora hasn’t helped make Internet radio mainstream already,” said Glenn Peoples, the senior editorial analyst at Billboard. “But iTunes Radio can help it grow and can change the impressions of it in the minds of advertisers and sponsors.”

Apple is the single largest retailer of music, its downloads providing labels a crucial source of revenue as sales of CD’s drop. One feature of iTunes Radio that music companies are particularly grateful for is a prominent button to buy a song as it streams. Subscribers to Apple’s iTunes Match feature, for $24.99 a year, can have that song instantly linked through the cloud to all of their Apple devices.

In the economy of digital music, one 99-cent download can be worth more than hundreds of streams. Apple’s deals with labels call for it to pay 0.13 cents for every song streamed on iTunes Radio during its first year of operation, according to reports in Billboard and elsewhere based on Apple’s licensing contracts. That is more than Pandora’s current rate of 0.12 cents, and Apple will also pay music companies a portion of the service’s advertising revenue.

Apple is entering an already crowded Internet radio market, which besides Pandora includes Clear Channel Communications’ iHeartRadio app; radio functions offered by on-demand services like Spotify; and others like Songza that supply ready-made playlists for various occasions, like working out or hosting a dinner party. This week Microsoft expanded its Xbox Music service, which includes a radiolike function, to work on Apple and Android devices.

So far Pandora’s investors have not fled. Since news of Apple’s plans first emerged a year ago, Pandora’s stock has roughly doubled. On Tuesday it closed at $20.35, up 1 percent for the day.

A version of this article appears in print on September 11, 2013, on page B8 of the New York edition with the headline: ITunes Radio Takes Aim At Pandora.

With iTunes Radio, Apple Takes Aim at Pandora

A decade ago, Apple transformed the music business with its iTunes store. Now what the music industry expects from Apple is less of a revolution than a helping hand.

Tim Cook, Apple's chief, right, and the musician Elvis Costello.

A preview of iTunes Radio, which will make its debut on Sept. 18.

Apple’s newest music feature, iTunes Radio, will be released on Sept. 18 as part of its iOS 7 system update, the company announced on Tuesday. The service is a sleek take on Internet radio, and Apple’s ability to place the app on millions of its devices gives it an enormous potential audience from Day 1.

“It’s a huge opportunity on a global basis to accelerate the transition of radio listeners and advertising dollars from terrestrial to digital,” said Stephen Bryan, the executive vice president for digital strategy at the Warner Music Group, which releases music by Green Day, Bruno Mars and hundreds of other acts.

The service is a threat to Pandora Media, which dominates Internet radio. But music and advertising executives say that the magnitude of that threat is unclear, given Apple’s relatively late entry into streaming music and Pandora’s strong market position. Both offer free streams of music tailored to a user’s taste and supported by advertising. In August, Pandora had 72.1 million active users â€" almost all in the United States â€" who streamed 1.35 billion hours of music, according to data released by the company.

“At this point Pandora is one of the leading recipients of mobile advertising revenue, and is one of the most popular apps, period, across devices,” said Clark Fredricksen, a vice president at eMarketer, a research firm. “It’s tough to see it getting killed.”

Instead, record labels and music publishers hope that Apple’s immense marketing power will attract more advertisers and help popularize Internet radio around the world. ITunes Radio will at first be available only in the United States, but it is expected to be introduced internationally soon. Apple operates iTunes stores in 119 countries.

“It’s hard to say that Pandora hasn’t helped make Internet radio mainstream already,” said Glenn Peoples, the senior editorial analyst at Billboard. “But iTunes Radio can help it grow and can change the impressions of it in the minds of advertisers and sponsors.”

Apple is the single largest retailer of music, its downloads providing labels a crucial source of revenue as sales of CD’s drop. One feature of iTunes Radio that music companies are particularly grateful for is a prominent button to buy a song as it streams. Subscribers to Apple’s iTunes Match feature, for $24.99 a year, can have that song instantly linked through the cloud to all of their Apple devices.

In the economy of digital music, one 99-cent download can be worth more than hundreds of streams. Apple’s deals with labels call for it to pay 0.13 cents for every song streamed on iTunes Radio during its first year of operation, according to reports in Billboard and elsewhere based on Apple’s licensing contracts. That is more than Pandora’s current rate of 0.12 cents, and Apple will also pay music companies a portion of the service’s advertising revenue.

Apple is entering an already crowded Internet radio market, which besides Pandora includes Clear Channel Communications’ iHeartRadio app; radio functions offered by on-demand services like Spotify; and others like Songza that supply ready-made playlists for various occasions, like working out or hosting a dinner party. This week Microsoft expanded its Xbox Music service, which includes a radiolike function, to work on Apple and Android devices.

So far Pandora’s investors have not fled. Since news of Apple’s plans first emerged a year ago, Pandora’s stock has roughly doubled. On Tuesday it closed at $20.35, up 1 percent for the day.

A version of this article appears in print on September 11, 2013, on page B8 of the New York edition with the headline: ITunes Radio Takes Aim At Pandora.

Today’s Scuttlebot: Applemania, and a Family Shunning New Technology

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Apple Unveils Faster iPhone, and a Cheaper One, Too

Jim Wilson/The New York Times

Apple’s Philip W. Schiller. One new iPhone comes in colors.

CUPERTINO, Calif. â€" Apple has grown too big for just one iPhone.

On the left, three versions of the iPhone 5S, which can read fingerprints; on the right are the less expensive 5Cs.

That is why Apple is releasing two new iPhones this month instead of just one, including a cheaper model aimed at less wealthy countries where new Apple phones have been desired but are out of reach because of their price.

The lower-cost model, the iPhone 5C (the C for color) comes in a plastic case and has the same features as the now-discontinued iPhone 5. The fancier model, the iPhone 5S, comes in aluminum and includes a faster processor and a fingerprint sensor for security, among other features. The iPhone 5S costs $200 with a contract, and the iPhone 5C costs $100 with a contract.

But at full price without a contract, which is how many overseas carriers allow people to pay for phones, the iPhone 5C costs $550 â€" only $100 less than the iPhone 5S. That is far higher than the range of $300 to $400 that many analysts believed could help Apple against lower-cost competition.

“I thought the 5C could come in at a lower price point to really drive more unit sales,” said Michael Walkley, a technology analyst for Canaccord Genuity, an investment bank.

Both iPhones will be available in the United States, Japan and China and other countries on Sept. 20. Apple announced a partnership with NTT Docomo of Japan, but not a highly anticipated partnership with China Mobile, the biggest carrier in China. It will be the first time Apple has been able to release its phones at the same time globally.

Investor reaction to the new iPhones was muted. Apple’s stock price finished the day down 2.3 percent.

The new iPhones represent a shift in strategy for Apple.

For years, Apple has offered multiple flavors of each of its products other than the iPhone. It offers many Mac notebooks, multiple desktop computers, several iPods and two sizes of iPads.

Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, recently said that each iPod model had a reason to exist, like the iPod Mini, a tiny device that did not have much storage. It turned in surprisingly strong sales, attracting athletes and people who listened to music occasionally. The classic iPod, with more storage, eventually shifted to become a music player for hard-core audio fans who wanted all their albums on one device.

“The Mini proved that people want something lighter, thinner, smaller,” Mr. Cook said at a technology business conference in May. “My only point is that these products all served a different person, a different type, a different need.”

Clearly, Apple thinks there is a reason for a cheaper iPhone. With Apple’s profit growth slowing, and smartphone sales surging in countries like China, India and Russia, the cheaper iPhone is meant for what analysts call “aspirational consumers” in those countries â€" the top 10 to 20 percent who are slightly uncomfortable about spending more money on a fancy brand, but might be convinced at the right price.

Apple especially hopes to be big in China, now the largest smartphone market in the world, where the company is being beat by Chinese manufacturers of low-cost smartphones running Google’s Android software system. Sales of Apple products in China were down 4 percent in the second quarter compared to the same period last year.

Apple was careful to not make the iPhone 5C sound cheap. It emphasized that many key parts were made of a high-quality polycarbonate material, and underneath the plastic is steel reinforcement. Apple added networking parts that make the phone compatible with global cellular networks.

“When you pick up and hold the iPhone 5C for the first time, you’re going to be blown away by the quality of it, and how rich and rigid it feels in your hand,” said Philip W. Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president for worldwide marketing, to a full house of about 300 members of the news media in the company’s Silicon Valley headquarters. Apple also scheduled satellite events in Tokyo, Berlin and Beijing, where it rebroadcast the product event for journalists.

The more expensive phone, the iPhone 5S, will be the first Apple device to feature a faster processor called A7. It also includes a chip called M7, a processor dedicated to sensors that detect movements, which will enable the iPhone to support smarter health and fitness apps. The iPhone 5S comes in three metallic colors: silver, gold and dark gray.

A version of this article appears in print on September 11, 2013, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: In Two Latest iPhones, Either Faster or Cheaper.

Apple Unveils Faster iPhone, and a Cheaper One, Too

Jim Wilson/The New York Times

Apple’s Philip W. Schiller. One new iPhone comes in colors.

CUPERTINO, Calif. â€" Apple has grown too big for just one iPhone.

On the left, three versions of the iPhone 5S, which can read fingerprints; on the right are the less expensive 5Cs.

That is why Apple is releasing two new iPhones this month instead of just one, including a cheaper model aimed at less wealthy countries where new Apple phones have been desired but are out of reach because of their price.

The lower-cost model, the iPhone 5C (the C for color) comes in a plastic case and has the same features as the now-discontinued iPhone 5. The fancier model, the iPhone 5S, comes in aluminum and includes a faster processor and a fingerprint sensor for security, among other features. The iPhone 5S costs $200 with a contract, and the iPhone 5C costs $100 with a contract.

But at full price without a contract, which is how many overseas carriers allow people to pay for phones, the iPhone 5C costs $550 â€" only $100 less than the iPhone 5S. That is far higher than the range of $300 to $400 that many analysts believed could help Apple against lower-cost competition.

“I thought the 5C could come in at a lower price point to really drive more unit sales,” said Michael Walkley, a technology analyst for Canaccord Genuity, an investment bank.

Both iPhones will be available in the United States, Japan and China and other countries on Sept. 20. Apple announced a partnership with NTT Docomo of Japan, but not a highly anticipated partnership with China Mobile, the biggest carrier in China. It will be the first time Apple has been able to release its phones at the same time globally.

Investor reaction to the new iPhones was muted. Apple’s stock price finished the day down 2.3 percent.

The new iPhones represent a shift in strategy for Apple.

For years, Apple has offered multiple flavors of each of its products other than the iPhone. It offers many Mac notebooks, multiple desktop computers, several iPods and two sizes of iPads.

Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, recently said that each iPod model had a reason to exist, like the iPod Mini, a tiny device that did not have much storage. It turned in surprisingly strong sales, attracting athletes and people who listened to music occasionally. The classic iPod, with more storage, eventually shifted to become a music player for hard-core audio fans who wanted all their albums on one device.

“The Mini proved that people want something lighter, thinner, smaller,” Mr. Cook said at a technology business conference in May. “My only point is that these products all served a different person, a different type, a different need.”

Clearly, Apple thinks there is a reason for a cheaper iPhone. With Apple’s profit growth slowing, and smartphone sales surging in countries like China, India and Russia, the cheaper iPhone is meant for what analysts call “aspirational consumers” in those countries â€" the top 10 to 20 percent who are slightly uncomfortable about spending more money on a fancy brand, but might be convinced at the right price.

Apple especially hopes to be big in China, now the largest smartphone market in the world, where the company is being beat by Chinese manufacturers of low-cost smartphones running Google’s Android software system. Sales of Apple products in China were down 4 percent in the second quarter compared to the same period last year.

Apple was careful to not make the iPhone 5C sound cheap. It emphasized that many key parts were made of a high-quality polycarbonate material, and underneath the plastic is steel reinforcement. Apple added networking parts that make the phone compatible with global cellular networks.

“When you pick up and hold the iPhone 5C for the first time, you’re going to be blown away by the quality of it, and how rich and rigid it feels in your hand,” said Philip W. Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president for worldwide marketing, to a full house of about 300 members of the news media in the company’s Silicon Valley headquarters. Apple also scheduled satellite events in Tokyo, Berlin and Beijing, where it rebroadcast the product event for journalists.

The more expensive phone, the iPhone 5S, will be the first Apple device to feature a faster processor called A7. It also includes a chip called M7, a processor dedicated to sensors that detect movements, which will enable the iPhone to support smarter health and fitness apps. The iPhone 5S comes in three metallic colors: silver, gold and dark gray.

A version of this article appears in print on September 11, 2013, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: In Two Latest iPhones, Either Faster or Cheaper.

Today’s Scuttlebot: Applemania, and a Family Shunning New Technology

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Daily Report: A Cheaper iPhone? In China, It’s More Expensive

Before Apple’s introduction of the new iPhone 5C, the “C” was said to stand for “China,” “color” or “cheap” â€" reflecting the importance of the Chinese market, the bright-hued plastic body or the expected low price, Eric Pfanner reports.

While many analysts had expected Apple to price the iPhone 5C at about $400 in an effort to attract new customers in mainland China, where the company has been struggling, it will actually go for significantly more.

Apple said on its Web site that the iPhone 5C would start at 4,488 renminbi, or $733, without subsidies from mobile operators. That is not far below the price of the new flagship Apple iPhone 5S, which starts at 5,288 renminbi. Both phones were officially announced in California on Tuesday.

“If you look at the price, it’s clearly a high-end phone, not a low- or even midrange phone,” said Jenny Lai, an analyst at HSBC in Taipei, referring to the iPhone 5C.

The price is about 33 percent higher in China than the full, unsubsidized $549 cost in the United States. Chinese carriers don’t generally subsidize the handset price for consumers but they often discount their monthly bill. So the eventual cost to consumers has plenty of room to come down.

But given that Apple has been losing ground to lower-cost rivals in China, some of which make smartphones that sell for less than $100, will the 5C be able to turn around the company’s fortunes there? Read more »