Bad News for iPhone Competitors = Good News for iPhone and iDisk Browser Flaw

Reviewers fall all over themselves to praise iPhone and iDisk flaw emerges.

Reviewers fall all over themselves to praise iPhone and iDisk flaw emerges.

  • Always wait for something better. ALWAYS.

    ZDNet's David Borlind has a bug up his butt about 3G. If the report is true, this could be worse news for Apple given that the price drop had to have come so soon to stimulate demand. There's nothing that kills demand for the current generation of a product like an announcement that the next generation won?t be stillborn with obsolete networking technology the way the currently available generation was. Aarrrrrgh! And that's not the Macalope talking like a pirate! It's him wanting to stick pointy objects in his eyes to gouge out the offending sight of such claptrap! We've been over and over and over and OVER this a zillion times in the past nine months and people still refuse to accept the simple fact that there are tradeoffs with battery life and cost. And not one of the goofballs harping on EDGE will ever mention the iPhone feature that might just trump a slower connection speed - its interface, one the Macalope would argue is superior to that of any other cell phone. But, shhh. Don't mention that. It's all about 3G. Because it's faster. Whether you can find it or not. Sure, the next version of anything will always be better than the current one. But iPhone 2.0 will very likely get the things right that iPhone 1.0 got so wrong. Well, this ought to be good. For example, in addition to making it work on the faster of the two networks that most GSM-flavored providers like AT&T run (was this really that hard of a decision?), I?m guessing that it will have removable batteries as well. Ah! You mean just like when Apple put a removable battery on the iPod when a relatively small group of people clamored for one? Wait a minute... Perhaps iPhone 2.0 will also address the third most talked about iPhone flaw (in addition to missing 3G support and non-replaceable batteries): its soft keyboard. Hey, Dave, you know there's this guy that runs Apple -- his name is Steve Jobs -- and you should really consider looking at some of the things he's said and his track record in sticking to them. Because he's the kind of guy who usually sticks to his guns unless something is really obviously wrong and, well, this just isn't one of those cases. Might the new design have some sort of hardware-based keyboard... No. ...or will Apple do what it does with the touchpad on its notebooks... Huh? Now trackpads aren't big enough for you? Dave, if your fingers are ballooning up to sausage size you might want to see a doctor. You could have a circulation problem. ...and stick us with something that some segment of the market (like those of us with big fingers) simply can?t use? There seems to be this set of technology pundits running around dissing the iPhone's keyboard as too tiny for their big fingers, heh-heh-heh. And you know what they say. Big fingers... Dave, take a look at those keys. They aren't any smaller than the keys on a Treo so just man up. If the Macalope can operate them with his massive hooves, then you surely can with your apparently overly fleshy digits. The fourth most talked about flaw ? its total RAM ? will most definitely get a boost. WE INTERRUPT YOUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED PROGRAMMING TO BRING YOU THIS NEWS FLASH: DEVICES IN THE FUTURE WILL HAVE MORE RAM! FILM AT 11. ...if Apple's is smart, it will also add an SD slot: one that supports the high capacity version of SD known as SDHC. As long as in this context your definition of "smart" is "stupid". Again, there's this device called the iPod. To borrow a line from Fake Steve, maybe you've heard of it? Do you see any iPods that have upgradeable memory? No, you do not. It's not, as you claim, a "conspiracy theory" that Apple does not make all of its devices as upgradeable as its pro products. It's a business plan. And it works pretty well because -- guess, what? -- most people are going to upgrade these things in two years anyway. The Macalope has a 4 GB iPhone and, while you can never have too much RAM or hard drive space, it's fine. A well-selected playlist, some TV shows and a movie are all he needs for trolling around town or even a flight across the country. The iPhone with its Safari browser may get plenty of rich internet applications via Web sites built in AJAX. But I wonder if the next version will support one of the prevailing runtimes (Java or Flash, I don?t think there?s a chance in hell that Apple would go for Microsoft?s Silverlight) so as to increase the iPhone's appeal due to application availability (especially in overseas markets where mobile runtimes are getting more traction than they get here in the US). Meh. Maybe. It would certainly help gain some traction in the business market if the iPhone's Safari supported Java. But that's just not a market Apple competes in. And, again, have you heard of Steve Jobs? But it's that 3G support alone that should kill any desire for iPhone 1.0. Yes. The idea that something in the future might be better should always kill any desire to own something now. If you time it just right, you can buy that one killer device five minutes before you die and achieve optimal purchasing! Remember, Berlind is talking not just about Europe here, he's talking about sales of the iPhone everywhere. Maybe then, there'll be a shred of truth to the Apple TV advertisement that says "It's not the mobile Web, it's just the Web." Oh, fer... Have you used Safari on the iPhone? Even on EDGE it's the best web surfing experience on a cell phone money can buy. Meanwhile, so long as an iPhone is connecting to AT&T's network and not some WiFi network (the iPhone also has a WiFi radio), the browser experience is most definitely saddled with the sort of granny lane performance that has "mobile Web" written all over it. False advertising? You decide. Silly pundit zombie talking points that will not die. The iPhone will be in its fifth rev and we'll still be talking about the commercial where Apple showed it working faster than it might in suboptimal conditions. The Macalope has said this before, but pardon Apple for not showing the slowest possible speeds in its commercials. David, there are more and more WiFi hotspots every day. The sandwich shop down the street from the pointy one's office has one, the coffee shop has one, the waiting room in the auto dealer has one. New Yorkers like to say that the outdoors is something you have to go through to get to the cab. Well, EDGE is something you have to go through to get to WiFi. My god, people act like EDGE is some blight on the human condition like polio or something, as if there were no trade-offs to be made that 3G was simply better. It's not. It's faster, but it uses more power, the hardware is more expensive and it's not as ubiquitous as EDGE in the U.S. where the iPhone needed to be successful first. The Macalope knows that's not the case in Europe, hence the WiFi deal which -- hey! -- is a feature. Look, the horny one does not expect the iPhone to do as well in Europe as it has in the U.S. and for several of the reasons Berlind lists. The price and, yes, the lack of 3G. But Berlind refuses to look at the iPhone as a package and instead focuses on what he perceives to be deal killers. And the last two and a half months have proved that they're not. They may be for Berlind, but one of the biggest problems with the current state of punditry is to confuse what the public wants with what the pundit wants. The two are not necessarily the same.

  • ★ Notes and Observations Regarding Apple’s Announcements From ‘The Beat Goes On’ Special Event, Which, Inexplicably, I Didn’t Bother to Publish Two Weeks Ago When They Were Relevant

    iPod Shuffle Interesting that they didn’t change a thing other than the colors. No price cut, no additional storage. My interpretation is that competitors aren’t even putting pressure on Apple at the low end. iPod Nano The proportions on the new Nanos seem awkward to me. The old Nano form factor certainly wasn’t appropriate for video, but it was far more elegant than the new ones. The killer feature, form-factor-wise, is how thin they are. It’s more like a thick credit card than a thin gadget. They’re going to sell a zillion of these, but I can’t help but feel that the traditional fundamental iPod design — horizontal screen above a click wheel — is on its way out. Interesting that the Nano now has games available, but the iPhone and iPod Touch do not. iPod Classic For the first time since the iPod debuted, there’s no white model anywhere in the line-up. 160 GB is more storage than many personal computers offer. Fill it up with typical MP3 or AAC audio, and it would take three months to listen to it all. The appeal though, is that you can just sync your entire library every time you connect with iTunes, without worrying about specifying a certain subset to carry on your iPod. iPod Touch This is the “iPhone sans phone” iPod I expected Apple to announce. And until iPhone fever hit me in early June, the one I planned on waiting for in lieu of getting an iPhone. But having used an iPhone for nearly three months now, if I lost my iPhone today I’d buy another iPhone, not an iPod Touch, because I actually use and enjoy nearly-ubiquitous EDGE access to the Internet. There’s more missing from the iPod Touch compared to the iPhone than just the phone/SMS/EDGE — a lot more than I expected. Roughly in order of usefulness, none of the following apps are on the iPod Touch: Mail, Maps, Camera, Notes, Weather, Stocks. (Weather and Stocks are cool iPhone apps, but are easily replaced with web sites.) Not to mention the seemingly spiteful absence of event creation in the Calendar app on the iPod Touch. Clever bit of Jobs keynote jujitsu during the iPod Touch segment of the event: He does a whole big run-up to revealing that Safari is included, by emphasizing all the Wi-Fi networks that require a web page sign-in before letting you on. So the pitch is that you need Safari. It was a sleight of hand to draw attention away from the question of what do you do when there are no available Wi-Fi networks at all? What a browser needs is a network, but Jobs pitched it as the network needing the browser. It’s silly if you think about it: if it weren’t for Safari, the only thing you’d be able to do on the iPod Touch with Wi-Fi is watch YouTube and buy songs from iTunes. Plus, presenting the inclusion of Safari as a sort of “boy, isn’t it cool that we did this” feature draws attention away from the exclusion of Mail. There’s been a lot less bitching about the Touch not including Mail than I expected — I think that’s at least partly attributable to the way Jobs presented the inclusion of Safari. Curious that on the Touch, Apple moved Safari’s icon from the “dock” at the bottom of the home screen. On the iPhone, the four apps in the special spots at the bottom of the home screen are clearly the four most important apps: Phone, Mail, Safari, iPod. I see no reason why the Photos app on iPod Touch would be used more often than Safari. If anything, the Photos app is less useful on the iPod Touch than it is on the iPhone, because the iPod Touch doesn’t have a camera. It’s not like Safari is hidden up there in the top-left, but I think it deserved the spot in the bottom row occupied by Photos. Two rules of thumb: (1) it’s easier to lower prices than to raise them; (2) it’s easier to add features than to take existing features away. Apple got burned by #1 with the iPhone price cut, but, still, it’s the exception to see a major price cut treated as bad news. The point is, if they weren’t sure what the optimal initial price point was for the iPhone, they were better off guessing high than guessing low. As for the missing iPhone apps on the iPod Touch, clearly these decisions were made to firmly establish the iPhone as the superior device, the current king of the iPod hill. It would be easy far Apple to add some of these apps to the iPod Touch — like, say, Mail and Calendar editing — if they feel like the iPod Touch needs a shot in the arm, sales-wise. On the other hand, it would have proved disastrous if Apple had shipped the iPod Touch with more of the iPhone’s features, then decided it was too good compared to the iPhone, and then tried to take some of them away in a future software update. But in addition to the iPhone apps the iPod Touch is missing, it’s also not as good of an iPod as the iPhone. The killer feature of the iPhone-as-iPod is the clicker on the headphones. Hit play, lock the screen, put the iPhone in a pocket, and you’re set — just click the headphone button once for play/pause and double-click to advance to the next track. Without this, I just don’t see how the iPod Touch can be used while in a pocket. One last note regarding possible future feature upgrades for the Touch: Apple has stated as a matter of record that iPhone sales are being accounted for on a subscription basis over 24 months, so as to allow them to ship additional features in free software updates. Apple has made no such statement regarding the iPod Touch. If they’re not going to use subscription-based accounting for the iPod Touch, then I don’t think they plan on shipping new features in free software updates. I don’t think we’ll learn the answer to this until Apple’s next quarterly financial statement in October. Games for iPhone and iPod Touch It struck me as off-key in the immediate aftermath of the announcements that the new Nanos now get games, but the iPhone and iPod Touch don’t. Weird in that the iPhone and Touch have larger screens, touch-based interfaces, and Wi-Fi. Then it struck me that, if Apple does in fact plan to release games for the iPhone and iPod Touch, it’d be a sweet thing to unveil a few weeks from now. A nice way to generate new buzz without releasing new hardware. iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store Interesting that they put “Wi-Fi” right in the store name. It’s a big “fuck you” to the mobile network carriers, a way of emphasizing that this store is Apple’s, not theirs — and that it only works over Wi-Fi, not the phone network. Also note the word “music” — that translates as “video isn’t available here — yet”. The Starbucks Deal Based on the description on-stage during the event and from the press release, I remain unclear whether this means all Wi-Fi access at participating Starbucks will be free for iPhone and iPod Touch users, or is it just free Wi-Fi for use with the new iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store? The former would be cool; the latter seems lame. Given the lack of a straight answer, I’m going to assume it’s the latter. Ooh, free Wi-Fi that I can only use to buy music from you. Thanks!

  • What Did You Say?

    Like a few million other people I recently bought an iPhone 3G. But unlike a few million other people I bought TWO of them -- one for my young and lovely wife. That puts me in the rare position to actually speak from experience about a current networking issue: what's the deal with these iPhones? Is it the phone or the network that is causing problems? And the answer is: both. Our experience with the iPhone 3G is not good, though not terrible. It is a fantastic device, if flawed. The main flaw is the phone, rather than the iPod Touch bits that comprise the rest of the unit. Voice service is not good, calls are dropped, and the iPhone won't work places where my old Nokia N80 easily did. But my iPhone, oddly enough, works better than does my wife's. This variation is how I know at least part of the problem is with the phone, not just the network. But the network sucks, too. We switched from Verizon (I know you can't use an N80 on Verizon, smarty-pants -- I have more than one cell provider) which claims the best network but had the nagging problem of delivering the odd voicemail 7-10 days late. Verizon claims never to have heard of this problem but ask a few Verizon users and they'll confirm. Now that we are full-time on AT&T we might blame the lousy service on the phones except I also got a Samsung AT&T phone for Mimi, my mother-in-law, who is on our family plan. Her service sucks, too, so it is not just the iPhone. I'm sure AT&T has oversold their network. You can tell because the worst service of all is from one iPhone to the other. If the call doesn't spontaneously disconnect half the time you often still can't understand what the other person is saying. Service is somewhat better going to landlines or other mobile providers. I'm sure AT&T will fix this eventually but I don't like being treated this way. No wonder they are so hot to keep that iPhone exclusive, since half the iPhone users I know would jump to T-Mobile if they easily could. Last week's column about the population of CCIEs and global development raised quite a ruckus -- a word I include to confuse the non-native English speakers who saw last week's column as discriminating against them. We can argue a bit about the numbers and their meaning, but I think it is fairly obvious that: 1) Cisco dominates the Internet core router business, so this is a real issue no matter what your language, and; 2) CCIEs are NOT just network techs. It is an extremely difficult certification to get and typically costs in the neighborhood of $30-40,000 by the time you are finished, sometimes a lot more. While it may be patently obvious that China and Korea will be more important 30 years from now than India and Japan, that wasn't my point. Anyone can express that opinion. What I was trying to do was to show a reason WHY that might be the case as evidenced by this CCIE data. Why shouldn't India be just as successful as China? Their populations are comparable and they both have good educational systems with large numbers of graduates. They both value science and technology. India even uses English as one of its official languages. Both have booming economies with plenty of room for growth. Well this CCIE analysis gives one empirical reason why it should be so. While the Indians are developing their IP expertise, the Chinese are developing their IP networks, simple as that. Another reason to talk about this subject is because there is far too little actual thinking on the Internet these days. The blogosphere is full of opinions but not very much solid discussion of why things are the way they are. Agree with me or not -- I don't care -- but I'll always make you think. The whole point of this column is getting people to think and discuss. Now to the problem from last week of how YouTube and similar video services can better appeal to advertisers. I foolishly thought last week's tease might coax a few bucks out of the bushes at a time when I could use them, but no. So I'll reveal my solution anyway, even without a reward. YouTube would love to make lots of money from ads that would play before its 100 million videos per day, but they have had difficulty appealing to traditional advertisers, not because of the quality of the viewers but because of the quality of the videos, themselves. There is a huge variety of content on YouTube and while advertisers are willing to stretch a bit in what they'll sponsor, they are afraid of making a mistake and sponsoring the wrong videos, like those that contain nudity or other objectionable content. Short of watching all the videos, how do we best avoid this problem? That's what has Google scratching its GoogleHead. It all comes down to the quality of the metadata -- the data describing each video. I think the answer is obvious and is composed of three parts: 1) notification, 2) structure, and 3) standardization. I'm probably listing these backward, but I want to get notification out of the way first. Whatever system YouTube chooses to manage its metadata won't be perfect. There will be errors -- the Internet equivalent of Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction." So there should be a facility for viewers to notify YouTube if they feel that there is a significant mismatch between the likely target of the content and the target of the accompanying ad. No condom ads before Dora the Explorer clips, for example. No bacon commercials with vegan cooking shows. Having a way to report such errors will diminish them in both number and importance. Next comes structured metadata. It floors me that YouTube doesn't enforce this already. If you ever took a journalism class you learned that the first paragraph of any news story (called the "lead" or "lede" -- same pronunciation) is supposed to answer the questions who? what? why? where? when? and how? YouTube could use a form for each video submission that used these categories, possibly minus the highly suggestive "why." To submit your video you have to fill in all five blanks. Leave any blank unfilled and your video bounces. These five metadata categories really ought to cover the gamut of describing most any video. If they don't, or if they are improperly used, then we are back to notification and getting users to help fix our mistakes. Finally there is standardization. Even within the five structured metadata categories there can be great variation in the meaning of the chosen terms. That's why we need to standardize those terms. Rather than reinvent the wheel, I would rely on the best current system of standardized metadata, which is Wikipedia. Behind each structured entry would be those Wikipedia terms that would seem to be appropriate, along with links to their definitions, just to be sure. With this system it would take a minute or two longer to submit each video, but what the videos were about would be much clearer to viewers and advertisers alike. Paris Hilton is a "who." The Paris Hilton is a "what" or perhaps a "where," though the system would probably force them to be separated. Either way you end up with a hotel if you want a hotel and a sex video if you want a sex video. Now it's time to recharge my iPhone (again).

  • Microsoft's Mojave Experiment Exposes Serious Vista Problems

    Daniel Eran Dilger In its enthusiastic efforts to sweep Vista's problems under the rug using theatrical demonstrations on trick props, the Microsoft's Mojave Experiment also unintentionally exposes some other embarrassments and technical deficiencies related to the “new” operating system now nearly halfway through its expected lifespan. Microsoft’s Mojave Attempts to Wet Vista’s Desert Let Sleeping Dogs Lie! Microsoft bragged that 83% and 89% of Vista users in a separate study would recommend it to others or expressed satisfaction with it (respectively), but it then has to point out that nearly half of those were actually only “somewhat likely” to recommend it and more than half were only “somewhat satisfied” with their experience. In contrast, most consumer satisfaction ratings, such as ChangeWave's smartphone comparisons, only present “very satisfied” users. In a competitive market, users who were only “somewhat satisfied” would be very likely to move on to something else. The iPhone has “very satisfied” 79% of its users in that independent study. But Vista has only “very satisfied” 43% of users in Microsoft's own study, a ranking that compares to the feedback ChangeWave got back on the dreadful smartphones from LG and Sanyo. That's not saying much. On its “Windows Vista: Look how far we've come” page (I am not making this up), Microsoft notes that Vista runs 98 of the top 100 consumer applications. Assuming that Microsoft didn't figure in any Mac-only apps, that means two top sellers still can't run on Vista nearly two years after its launch. Maybe that isn't something to brag about either. Look, It Toots Its Own Horn. “When Windows Vista debuted in January 2007,” Microsoft notes, “we declared it the best operating system we had ever made.” This reminds me of the toddler diapers commercial where the kids sing “I can pull them off an on! Mommy, wow, I'm a big kid now.” Good job patting yourself on the back, Microsoft. Well done. But what was everyone else saying? “'Windows Vista is beautiful,' The New York Times raved,” the site points out, omitting the fact that the Times' review was actually titled “Vista Wins on Looks. As for Lacks …” and began by observing, “Microsoft’s description, which you’ll soon be seeing in millions of dollars’ worth of advertising, is 'Clear, Confident, Connected.' But a more truthful motto would be 'Looks, Locks, Lacks.'” The supposedly “raving” review also noted that the user interface in “Vista has something of a multiple-personality disorder,” noted “some jaw-dropping misfires,” “some useful XP features have simply been removed,” and concluded “that’s not to say, however, that Vista is worth standing in line for on Jan. 30,” before asking “Is it too little, too late?” Windows Vista: Look how far we've come And Shut Up About Security, You're Only Making Things Worse. Microsoft also works hard to advertise Vista's stronger security, a notable improvement. The company says, “Windows Vista has fewer than half the security vulnerabilities of Windows XP,” but that claim relates directly to the fact that Microsoft itself releases the majority of vulnerability reports for its products because the open source community doesn't have the same access to discover and publicize its weaknesses as Linux, Mac OS X, or other products making use of open source code. Microsoft's Vista vulnerability count is therefore about as useful as China's reports on its own human rights violations. However, it also notes that Vista is “60% less likely to be infected by spyware or malware than Windows XP SP2.” That's great, but Windows XP SP2 isn't exactly known to be bulletproof. It's hard to find a Windows PC that isn't dripping with spyware and malware, so only being a little better than half as infected is bad news for Vista, not something to advertise. “Come to Beijing, where you're now 60% less likely to be persecuted for your beliefs, run over by a tank, or die from pollution!” Of course, Microsoft also takes a disingenuous potshot at Apple by saying, “in early 2008, Windows Vista was shown to have 89% fewer vulnerabilities than MacOS X 10.5, making it the most secure Windows release to date.” That non sequitur also fails to point out that Vista was a year old at that point, while Leopard had just been released. But even more damning is that that factoid was sourced from a Microsoft employee's blog, who posted the vulnerability count figures without any context, and without disclosing the fact that “Mac OS X vulnerabilities,” just like the cited “Linux vulnerabilities,” include every flaw found in their bundled open source libraries and servers, regardless of whether these are turned on by default or exposed to users at all. Microsoft does not bundle in counts for flaws found in its equivalent software libraries, and typically even excludes flaws discovered in Internet Explorer and Java. While pundits like to talk a lot about vulnerability counts, they never qualify what those numbers actually represent. For example, does it have any impact on security overall to find that throughout the last year: for Mac OS X: • 16% of the listed vulnerabilities threatened the potential for system access • 10% threatened to expose sensitive data or system info • the largest amount, 29%, were only denial of service attacks while under Windows Vista: • 43% of the vulnerabilities threatened to provide to system access • 24% threatened to expose sensitive data or system info • only 5% were limited to threatening a denial of service attack Microsoft has to lie through its teeth to suggest that Leopard has greater security issues that Vista, despite having just admitted that Vista is only 60% less likely to be infected than a Windows XP machine. How many Mac OS X machines have malware or adware infections? There are simply no credible threats of malware infection on the Mac, and no amount of countable vulnerabilities in Java, Perl, or OpenSSL have changed that this last year during which researchers on Microsoft's payroll were blogging about misleading vulnerability counts on the Mac. The last time we looked at vulnerability numerology for December 2007, it turned out that over third of the Mac OS X flaws that Secunia had tallied up were actually blank placeholders or duplicates. A quarter of the reminder were related to Sun's Java SDK or JRE, which few users touch, and which Microsoft does not include in its own counts for Vista. There were actually half as many flaws in Apple's own Leopard code as there were in Vista's, which really means that Microsoft hasn't delivered some breakthrough in security that has launched Vista to a lofty new position of safety, but only that it is significantly better than Windows XP, but not better enough to get users to spring for an expensive upgrade, accept the performance hit, and buy a bunch of new hardware and software. Conversely, the virus, malware, adware, and spyware plague on Windows has motivated many PC users to move to Macs. Microsoft is upset that Apple is advertising this fact, but before Microsoft complains about Apple telling the truth, Microsoft should really stop lying about Mac security and vulnerability counts, because that kind of blatantly dishonest hypocrisy doesn't help its case at all. Vista vs Mac OS X Security: Why George Ou’s ZDNet Vulnerability Numerology is Absurd Microsoft's Black Kettle. It is comical that Windows enthusiasts try to suggest that the runaway success of the iPod and iPhone is primarily due to Apple's marketing. Microsoft has blown out hundreds of millions of dollars to flog Vista, but it has flopped because it delivers too little advantages at a high price in terms of compatibility, performance, and of course that arrogantly high retail price tag. Microsoft has only backhandedly acknowledged Apple's success with the Mac, iPod, and iPhone in its statements to investors, warning them that it would have to give up profits in order to try to match Apple's business model. Microsoft's business teeters upon its ability to prevent competition in the markets it operates in. Now that the company is facing a credible competitor to the future of Windows from Apple's Macintosh, it must now start delivering upon its promises and actually ship products people want. However, Microsoft is still stuck with Vista until it can release Windows 7 in 2010, likely alongside Windows Mobile 7, its first attempt to copy the iPhone. Apple's current rampage across the PC, MP3 player, smartphone, and mobile Internet device markets demands a stronger response than just rolling out a plan to show up years late to the party. Windows Vista, 7, and Singularity: The New Copland, Gershwin, Taligent Microsoft’s Zune, Vista, and Windows Mobile 7 Strategy vs the iPhone Over the last decade, Microsoft has been content to collect licensing money for warmed up old code without regard for security or features. No amount of Mojave marketing tricks can disguise the problem that the company shipped an Edsel with Vista: a product it arrogantly assumed the market would buy simply because it was Microsoft pushing it out. Let's see how well the company does with some friendly competition. Did you like this article? Let me know. Comment here, in the Forum, or email me with your ideas. Like reading RoughlyDrafted? Share articles with your friends, link from your blog, and subscribe to my podcast (oh wait, I have to fix that first). It's also cool to submit my articles to Digg, Reddit, or Slashdot where more people will see them. Consider making a small donation supporting this site. Thanks!

  • MeMobile, You Kaput

    As widely predicted, Steve Jobs this week introduced at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference the iPhone 3G that was first reported in this column late last year. The $199 price was a welcome surprise but shouldn't have been given Apple's confident predictions that it would sell 10 million iPhones by the end of the year. That's four million more by Christmas in up to 70 countries, so the numbers make sense. Apple, which holds its sales estimates pretty close to the vest, had to do something like this in order to remain the darling of Wall Street. But you know what was the REAL big news in Jobs' keynote? Not his apparent poor health, which I have to admit concerns plenty of people, and for good reason. No, the big news was MobileMe, Apple's Microsoft Killer. Huh? Watch the recorded video of the speech (it is among this week's links) at around 1:10 when Phil Schiller takes the stage. He demonstrates a lot of stuff, mainly push e-mail and calendaring, but also a suite of web applications for remotely accessing user data and metadata held in MobileMe, the successor to Apple's .Mac service. He doesn't show a word processor, doesn't show a database or a spreadsheet, and doesn't show a presentation program. In short, he doesn't show the guts of any networked office-type application. He shows applications that are actually far more sophisticated than any of those. Given the code Apple already has for its iWork applications, how much more effort would it take to webify those apps, too? Not much, I'd say. A year from now I guarantee you that MobileMe will offer a complete suite of web-based Office applications. Now let's get back to that Microsoft-killing part. Microsoft's success is based on two products and only two products -- Windows and Office. Microsoft is obsessed with the idea that Google will undermine one or both of those monopolies through Google Apps. This is all Steve Ballmer thinks about and is what made him so eager to spend $40+ billion for Yahoo. But what if the real threat isn't Google at all, but Apple? In every business there is some version of the 80-20 rule that says 80 percent of the business comes from 20 percent of the customers. Smart businesses do whatever they can to play to that powerful 20 percent. If you are a new CEO who needs to turn around a business 10 minutes after walking through the door, there are two things you can do: 1) cut costs, and 2) focus on your top 20 percent customers. That's it -- you are now a turnaround expert and I grant you an honorary MBA. There's another kind of company, however, that applies the 80-20 rule in a different manner and Apple is one of those companies. They aim everything they do at that top 20 percent and ignore the rest. Sometimes you hit a home run and get 75 percent market share, like Apple did with the iPod and iTunes, but I can guarantee you the business plan was aimed at taking 20 percent, tops, and making a good living with that. There are other companies that take a similar market approach to Apple, but few of them are in the computer business. BMW and Porsche are good examples. What if Porsche were in the software business. What sort of word processor would Porsche build in 2008? It would be distributed, network-based, have central file storage and an elegant user interface. That's the key to what Steve Jobs does all day: he sits around and asks questions like, "If Porsche made a media player, what would it be like?" That's it -- you are now qualified to replace Steve Jobs at Apple on days when he's away making trouble for Disney. There are two delightful aspects of applying the 80-20 rule in this manner. For one, the 20 percent market -- if that's all that you are aiming for -- tends not to be price-sensitive. That market is willing to pay something for elegance or convenience, but better still for elegance AND convenience. That's how Apple could charge $99 per year for .Mac and for the successor to .Mac, MobileMe. There is at least $60 in profit for Apple hiding inside that $99 price. The second delightful aspect of Apple's application of the 80-20 rule is that Microsoft can't do the same thing. Microsoft can't compete. Bill Gates made the decision decades ago to go for market share -- for the 80 percent part of the 80-20 rule or -- better still -- for all 100 percent. And it looked for a while like he might get his way, until Apple was reborn. If Microsoft gets only 20 percent of any market it enters, they consider that effort a failure and it would be, because Microsoft's business is scaled and its cost structure is optimized for really, really big numbers of mindless and fairly undemanding customers, most of whom wouldn't pay $99 per year. That takes care of Microsoft, but here's the real beauty of this Apple strategy: it takes care of Google, too. Though Google has a very different approach than Microsoft does to almost every product and market segment, in this one aspect they are identical. Google, too, aims for maximal market share, which means they can't expect customers to pay and their cost structure has to be maintained such that they make a profit without being paid. Which leaves a lucrative niche all to Apple. Now let's jump back to the automobile analogy and look at Porsche, which is presently buying Volkswagen. This is probably a stupid move on Porsche's part, but makes the point that smaller, highly profitable companies can develop the kind of financial power needed to take over vastly larger, if more poorly run kinda-sorta competitors like Volkswagen. Nearly everyone who tries it is going to LOVE MobileMe, which Apple -- calling it "Microsoft Exchange for the rest of us" -- will madly market to small and medium-sized businesses, of which there are six million in the U.S. alone. Those outfits will buy iPhones, MobileMe accounts, and eventually Macs and MacBooks for their workers. IPhone enterprise customers will do the same. Organizations that find Google Apps too hard to use (have you actually tried to build a wiki using Google Sites? I have and it is HARD - far worse than using JotSpot, from which Sites supposedly evolved) or aren't big enough for Exchange will buy MobileMe instead and never look back. And that's just in the U.S. What about those other 69 countries that will have iPhone service by the end of the year and the 62 that will allow Apple's App Store? This will become a juggernaut driven not by the iPhone, not by the Mac, not by Apple's media distribution business, but equally by ALL THREE businesses. There are ways it could be made even better. For example, the smartest thing Apple could do with its cash hoard right now would probably be to buy SalesForce.com and fold that into MobileMe, instantly taking the high ground among the road warrior set. Steve Jobs is brilliant and patient. He has a plan and is executing on it to perfection. Bill Gates couldn't pick a better time to retire and let someone else take the fall.

  • Plan B

    Last week I presented my best guess why Microsoft would want to buy Yahoo. What was it that made Yahoo worth $44.6 billion to Bill Gates? Based on what I believe is a pretty profound understanding of the innards of each company, I said it came down less to competing with Google and more to transforming Microsoft into a new company operating under new rules and successful in a new era. Anything else simply didn't make sense to me. Ganging up on Google might sound good, but combining corporate cultures is difficult and in the short term -- which is all that matters to most companies today, seeing their trajectories simply as a succession of short terms -- it could only help Google and hurt Microsoft/Yahoo. If Microsoft was serious about its bid for Yahoo, then there had to be some bigger prize for Redmond that went beyond simple market share. But what if Microsoft wasn't serious about its offer? Well then things start to get REALLY interesting. Certainly Microsoft's offer for Yahoo has thrown that company and several others into a tizzy. Yahoo can't be getting much work done, that's for sure. And if you believe the press reports, AOL and News Corp have been dragged into the strategizing, too, and are subject to disruption. For Yahoo, as the primary target, overall efficiency in the company will have dropped instantly by 20 percent just because people will be talking at the watercooler rather than doing their work. And Yahoo wasn't a very efficient place to begin with. This alone has some value for Microsoft, where I will guarantee you the distraction is far less. Screwing with the minds of Yahoo has value to Microsoft and screwing with AOL and News Corp, too, well that's just a bonus. You can see that Yahoo is concerned about Microsoft's real intentions in its response to the Microsoft bid. The Yahoo board said the bid undervalued the company, but Yahoo spokesmen (not the board) carefully added that regulators might block the deal and Microsoft was offering no financial guarantees. If Microsoft were to come back to Yahoo with a sweetened bid nearer to $50 billion and a guaranteed $1 billion termination fee if for any reason the deal should be blocked or fall through, I'm guessing Yahoo would respond much more favorably. It's up to Microsoft now to prove its intentions. There is good reason to believe, however, that Microsoft's intentions are anything but good. Redmond's real goal may be simply to poach people from Yahoo, and this deal could help them do just that. There is plenty of historical precedent for such behavior. Back in the 1990s, for example, Microsoft made many approaches to Borland, a company that was giving it fits in the programming languages business at the time. Borland's products were simply better (and a lot cheaper) than Microsoft's. Bill Gates had also been stung by the defection of an important Microsoft executive, Rob Dickerson, to Borland. Failing to buy Borland at a good price, Microsoft took to recruiting Borland employees, sending limousines during lunch hour with Microsoft signs in their windows to Borland's Scotts Valley, California headquarters to pick up techies for job interviews. Microsoft reportedly took this technique to an even higher level around the same time when it tried to buy Intuit, which at that point was primarily known for its Quicken home finance application. Microsoft wooed Intuit and won the company in 1994 with a $1.5 billion all-stock offer. Another reported incentive to Intuit was Microsoft's threat to throw $1 billion into development of competing products if Intuit didn't sell out. Already in antitrust trouble with the Department of Justice, Microsoft eventually dropped the offer, paying Intuit a $46.25 million termination fee. But according to at least one Intuit techie who jumped to Microsoft shortly thereafter, the primary purpose of Microsoft's bid was actually to get information on Intuit's programmers, NOT to buy the company. Unlike Borland, where Microsoft paid a PR penalty (and later scored a lawsuit) for sending limos to the parking lot and interviewing anybody who would get in, by entering a formal due diligence period with Intuit, Microsoft got access to many details, including Intuit’s product plans and employee records. By the time they bailed on the deal, Microsoft had a very good idea exactly which Intuit employees to recruit to both improve Microsoft Money and to hurt Quicken, QuickBooks, and TurboTax. It is a testament to Intuit that the company survived. Now jump to Yahoo, where exactly the same process could be in effect. At a minimum Microsoft is forcing competitors to act when they would rather not. If Yahoo succumbs Microsoft will gain exactly the sort of inside information they got from Intuit. Yahoo is a huge company plagued with pockets of inefficiency (pockets of efficiency?). A failed Microsoft bid, even one involving a termination fee, could lead to horrific results for the company. Remember that Yahoo is staggering here while Intuit was at the top of its market and its game. I'm not saying this is what's happening, by the way, just that it concerns me. I guess we'll have to wait and see. And while we are waiting, most of the technology world has been hanging out this week in Barcelona, learning about the future of mobile technology at the 2008 Mobile World Congress, which sounds like a government agency but is really just a trade show for cellphones. Google is there announcing a new version of its Android open source software developers kit for building Linux-based mobile phones that will work well in the Google ecosystem. But unless it is happening behind closed doors and I am unaware of it, nobody in Barcelona is looking at a true Google Phone or gPhone, which won't hit the market until later this year. The whole concept of the gPhone is problematical both for the market and for Google, itself. I'm making a distinction here between Android phones introduced by any number of vendors and a true GOOGLE phone — a gPhone — actually sold under its own brand by Google. Microsoft doesn't sell PCs, you may notice, because to do so would step on the toes of their hardware OEMs. Okay, the xBox 360 is a lot like a PC, but it is still a lot more like a video game and Microsoft was around for 25 years before it dared sell an xBox. So conventional wisdom says Google won't sell a gPhone, preferring instead to see the world repopulated with Android phones, instead. But Google is not like other companies, which means they are sometimes bolder and sometimes more foolhardy, because a Google-branded gPhone — two of them, actually — is on the way. Here is what little I know, dropped in my lap this week by a loyal reader (you know who you are). There are two gPhones slated for release with the first coming in September and the second probably not appearing until after Christmas. Given that the first is the high-end model and the second is cheaper, Google will probably expect to make as much money as possible on the higher-margin units at Christmas before revealing the budget model even exists. How Apple-like, eh? Both will include WiFi, which makes me wonder if a VoIP client will be there, too. The high-end phone will look somewhat like a Blackberry Pearl, but the screen flips up and there is a keyboard for texting. No word on pricing for the high-end phone, but the second model is intended to be less than $100 — AFTER Christmas. The actual manufacturer of these gPhones will be Samsung (rumors to this point had indicated HTC, so this is a change) and Google is still talking with both T-Mobile and Verizon as potential carriers (rumors also said Verizon had passed — not). That means there are both GSM and W-CDMA versions in the works. Given AT&T's success with the iPhone I can't imagine Verizon will let the gPhone pass, but it will be interesting to see if Google will be able go with a nonexclusive deal and get both U.S. carriers. Nah.

  • Of Fixes, Flaws & Pants Aflame: An Apple Extravaganza of News & Rumors of Same

    Burning man means something totally different for iPod user, iPhone challengers, competitors crank out a response, QuickTime flaw fixed, iPod touch hits Japan & more.

  • Curious Stuff About the New iPods

    Daniel Eran DilgerApple's iPod Event introduced a flurry of new features that raises some interesting questions and uncovers some new information on Apple’s worldwide plans to expand the iPod’s reach. The Standard iPods.The entire existing iPod lineup got a revamping, with the Shuffle simply getting new colors, the Nano getting video playback, video games, and Coverflow, and the 5.5G iPod, commonly called the "video iPod," getting more capacity, a facelift, and new official designation as the "iPod Classic."Those three products all maintained existing price points with several new features:The Video Nano, leaked under the name "Fat Nano" and called the “3G Nano? by Apple, gets a 2? 320 x 240 screen for video and Coverflow features, as well as video game compatibility with the 5G iPods. It ships with three free games: Apple's Vortex, Klondike, and iQuiz. The Nano also remains the only iPod that works with the Nike+ system.Nano is rated for 24 hours audio playback, 5 hours video playback and comes in two 6.5 mm thick versions:4 GB $149, silver8 GB $199, silver, black, red, blue, greenThose new colors match the iPod Shuffles, which remain at $79.The iPod Classic is mildly revised, thinner, and offers a new top capacity of 160 GB. This is the only remaining hard drive based iPod, and comes in silver or black. It is rated for 40 hours audio playback, 7 hours video playback, and comes in two versions:80 GB $249, silver, black, 10.5 mm thick160 GB $349, silver, black, 13.5 mm thickNew OS X iPods.Many assumed an iPod based on the iPhone would be a natural, but I originally didn't expect Apple to release one this fall. Rumors called for an “iPhone nano,? which I argued against back in July. Rather than a new smaller iPhone, Apple released an iPod with iPhone features. [Kevin Chang, iSuppli and The iPhone Nano Myth]Called the iPod Touch, it has the same display as the iPhone, WiFi, and an even thinner case: 8 mm vs 11 mm. Its WiFi works with same Safari browser and YouTube client as the iPhone, the it delivers the same Coverflow features and multitouch photo and video playback. It also adds a new WiFi Store application for buying songs from iTunes. Oddly, the iPod Touch appears to lack the Google Maps, Weather, and Stocks widgets of the iPhone, which is a curious omission. It also lacks a Mail client, Notes, and a camera. It does have the iPhone’s Calendar and Contacts--making the new iPod Touch a full fledged PDA.Interestingly, Apple has also added dictionaries for UK English, French, and German, and localized support for English, French, German, Japanese, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish, Korean, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Russian, and Polish.Clearly, Apple plans to blow out the new iPod touch worldwide at a scale far faster than is possible with the iPhone, which is tied to service provider agreements in every location. That may also explain why Apple isn’t advertising the US based stocks, weather, and Google Maps applications with the iPod Touch, although YouTube is there, and Mail should be.It appears Apple is ready to establish the iPod Touch around the world to prime the market for the iPhone. Also, there’s no longer much reason to try to get around activation for the iPhone.Put a Mail and VoIP client for this device, and the mobile phone market may change dramatically worldwide, shifting from cellular to WiFi. At $300 - 400, this makes a very cheap Internet mobile computer. The iPod Touch also offers 8 or 16 GB of Flash storage, twice that of the largest iPhone.8 GB $299 8 mm thick16 GB $399 8 mm thickThe iPhone meanwhile, got an aggressive $200 price drop and the smaller 4 GB model was discontinued. I did not expect Apple to cut its price so soon or so much, particularly given the fact that sales appear to have surpassed all other smartphones and even tied the popular LG Chocolate feature phone.8 GB $399, 11 mm thick.This will be painful news for mobile makers already struggling to live up to comparisons with the iPhone. Motorola is banking on the RAZR 2, which is just another flip phone with slight improvements in its crappy software. Nokia demonstrated the iPhone as its own vision for the future. Things don’t look good for mobile makers, or their service provider partners, particularly the CDMA2000 Sprint and Verizon in the US. The iPhone was already cheaper, now it’s no contest. Say goodnight, Palm and Windows Mobile.[Ten Fake Apple Scandals: Phony Rage About iPhone Price and Profits]The New WiFi Store Steve Jobs also demonstrated a new WiFi Store, a custom application that will be released for both the iPod Touch and the iPhone later in the month. Through the new store, you can search for songs, browse popular tracks or by genre, listen to samples and buy songs at the same $.99 price. Downloads are saved to the device and synced up to iTunes for backup. Interestingly, Apple doesn’t use mobile networks to download songs; as I had pointed out, WiFi is far faster. Also, there’s no provision for subscription music, keeping the iTunes DRM simple and consistent. No exploding media, and no prohibition from using your own music on CDs. One thing I thought would be impractical was a mobile iTunes store; Apple’s slick custom app version makes me wrong on that point. “Will iTunes sales jump if the iPhone gets a more difficult to navigate mobile interface that is slower, more complex, and more restrictive?? As it turns out, Apple didn’t add any Janus style DRM.One missing feature on the iPhone and iPod Touch is no Internet streaming music capacity. Even if this was only available over WiFi, it would make a lot of sense--as a feature, certainly not as a way to sell downloads. But since Apple makes its money selling hardware and not on selling music, adding iTunes’ Internet radio features might make sense. The reason for no offering it may be that WiFi streaming would kill the battery too quick.[Using iPhone: File and iTunes Sync Via USB, Wireless, and Over the Air]Starbucks’ Hot Spots.Apple announced a partnership with the ubiquitous Starbucks to allow devices running the WiFi Store app--including the iPod Touch, the iPhone, or a laptop running iTunes--to connect at Starbucks locations and download purchased songs at no additional charge. Starbucks will also popup its list of songs being played in the store, you can browse and buy them. The new service is to get rolled out in the thousands of Starbucks stores over the next year. Missing in the deal was any offer for free WiFi access in general, which is a bit lame. Apple offers free WiFi in its own 200+ retail stores, but it would be great to form a federation of WiFi providers that offer low cost access. Even a cheap subscription service--or free hotspot access with a purchase--would be great.What's also interesting is that the WiFi access at Starbucks locations is sold by T-Mobile. Why hasn't that company jumped to offer low cost WiFi plans for iPhone users? It's currently trying to sell WiFi VoIP phones; perhaps it should remember that it is a service provider, and offer service to phones, not try to sell more equipment. Offering a $20 HotSpot-only plan would allow T-Mobile to pickup a lot of iPhone--and now iPod Touch--users, customers it would otherwise never gain. WiFi providers now need to think past just laptop users, and cellular providers with hotspots need to think past cell phone users. While Jobs was in error to call the iPod Touch the first music player with a web browser, it will certainly have far more impact than the existing Archos devices. Jobs demonstrated a custom app for Facebook. Other recent sites geared toward the iPhone version of Safari include a client from WebEx and various third pary games and utilities.[iPhone Appr]New Ringtones in iTunes.Rather than selling static song clips for $2 like the mobile service providers, Apple appeared to ready to add ringtone syncing with the iPhone back in January; screenshots taken during the original iPhone event caught a new Ringtones tab in iTunes. Instead, the tab failed to ever appear and the iTunes contract was revised to say that songs couldn't be used as ringtones. Clearly, the genius of music executives got involved in the process.So now, the compromise is revealed. Of a select half million songs on iTunes, users will be able to upgrade a purchased song for an extra $1, and then be able to edit their own section of the song within iTunes for use as an official iPhone ringtone. There are also standalone apps for putting DIY ringtones on the iPhone, but Apple can't tell you that. Ringtones can also be used to set alarm sounds.The new version of iTunes is scheduled for availability later today.What do you think? I really like to hear from readers. Comment in the Forum or email me with your ideas. Like reading RoughlyDrafted? Share articles with your friends, link from your blog, and subscribe to my podcast! Submit to Reddit or Slashdot, or consider making a small donation supporting this site. Thanks!

  • The Seduction of AT&T

    This week was Apple's World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC), the biggest news from which seemed to be the beta version of Safari (Apple's web browser) for Windows. Why the heck would Apple even produce such a product? Readers and pundits alike have been wondering ad nauseam. I know why. There are two theories being widely floated: 1) this is a challenge to Microsoft, and; 2) this is a strategic platform for Apple to offer its own web-based application suite. To a certain extent both may be correct, but I think there is a lot more to this story, which is sorely missing context in those many explanations. Let's start with that context, which is Apple's WWDC, an event sorely lacking in both substance and controversy if we ignore this Safari story. Mac OS X 10.5 still isn't ready to ship. The iPhone is coming in a couple weeks but Apple is so far only hinting at opening the product to third-party developers. In other words, Steve Jobs had bupkus when it comes to creating press this week UNLESS he throws Safari for Windows into the mix. Apple had to come up with something and this version of Safari, which reviewers have found to be buggy and definitely not ready for primetime, was it. Maybe Apple intended to do a Safari for Windows or not, but I'm guessing they had a version running in the lab as an exercise in Intel compatibility. When Steve realized that he had so little to hype, this alpha code suddenly became a beta "product." This isn't to say that Safari for Windows wasn't always intended to be a product, but its current state of development strongly suggests that it wouldn't have been in Steve's presentation if he had much else to show. Microsoft is not threatened by the announcement of Safari for Windows. Bill Gates isn't pissed off that Apple has challenged him. Gates is worried about Firefox, not Safari, and even Firefox is just a minor annoyance or else Microsoft would be doing a better job of competing with it. Beyond garnering some press, Safari for Windows is about AT&T. Steve Jobs is the best salesperson in the entire universe, but he doesn't like to waste his time. That means that, having seduced AT&T (nee Cingular), Steve will try to sell them more and more stuff until they have bought everything he has. He will invent stuff specifically to sell to AT&T as long as it acts as a bridge to yet more stuff he wants to sell them. Steve wants AT&T to see him not just as the answer to their prayers, but as the answer to their EVERY prayer. What could AT&T be praying for? Plenty of things, but the most obvious theme I see is how to compete with Verizon, Comcast, and all the national cell phone providers. With Verizon, AT&T has to defend its decision to stick with a copper broadband infrastructure instead of the more expensive optical fiber Verizon has picked. With Comcast, AT&T has to defend its copper plant against Comcast's copper plant, which is about to gain a LOT more bandwidth thanks to new modems using more advanced modulation techniques. And against the other mobile operators, AT&T has to defend its decision not to go full 3G with the iPhone. Are you noticing a trend here? AT&T is facing a potential bandwidth crisis when it comes to customer perception and it is logical to assume that Apple helped create that crisis. After all, the iPhone could easily have been made to work with 3G. Since AT&T HAS a 3G network, the decision not to use it was probably complicated and some of that complication may have come from Steve Jobs saying, "We don't need it. The iPhone will be insanely great with G2.5, thanks." Here is the complex package of goods Apple is trying to sell to AT&T: There's the iPhone, of course, but there is also the Apple TV as a potential set-top box. Three hundred dollars for a set-top box? You have to be crazy! Not so crazy. Compared to not spending the kind of money Verizon is spending on fiber, Apple TVs are cheap even if AT&T gives them away. Remember that $400 rebate you used to be able to get on a new PC by signing up for two years of MSN? That didn't appear to make sense, either, yet it ran for years. For Apple TV to be successful as an IPTV set-top box, Apple has to convince us that we really want to download our video, NOT stream it. Not incidentally, this is also the key to iTunes' long-term success. Downloading makes much more efficient use of network resources, works fine on a copper wiring plant, and fits our emerging TiVoesque world view. Steve will tell us that we are busy dynamic people who really ought to plan our viewing. And enough of us will believe him to make AT&T's copper video service a credible success. Beyond downloading video and audio, Apple's other technique for limiting AT&T's bandwidth hit, while simultaneously locking in the company as a customer for years and years, is building clever software services. The more processing that can be done in the data center the less data that will have to be carried between that center and the device. So AT&T will need a broad array of web services to offer its customers, most of whom will be using Windows computers, not Macs, which brings us back again to Safari for Windows -- a product Apple had no choice but to build. This move isn't about taking down Microsoft, it isn't about making Macintosh computers the dominant computing platform, it IS about performing a massive cashectomy on AT&T. But to Apple's credit the company doesn't want anyone to see this as theft, but rather as a technical triumph, simply because when AT&T's exclusive is over in five years, Apple will want to do similar deals with all of AT&T's competitors. Next week we'll have more on the iPhone, what it is and isn't and why. But before then, last week's column on the Whistlebox video-response application generated a lot of reader comments, many of them negative and some even nasty. Just to save you the trouble of reading them all, here is the gist: "Bob, you are lazy and/or stupid. Whistlebox is nothing new. There are plenty of products available right now that can do all Whistlebox claims and more. And even if there weren't, it would take at most a few days to build one, NOT two man-years. We are disappointed in you, Bob." Wrong, wrong, wrong. Of course there are Whistlebox competitors. User-generated video has been around since the days of CU-SeeMe. What the folks at Whistlebox have done isn't invent a technology so much as DEVELOP it. The distinction is clear: it is easy to cobble together a demo or prototype but altogether something else to build a tested production system that is easy to use and scales well. It would be close to impossible to ship in a few days or weeks a tested, refined application that DOES NOTHING (has a functioning interface but no underlying application engine), much less a tested, refined application like Whistlebox that actually does something. Anyone who claims otherwise has never shipped a product. Whistlebox was designed and built for the business and advertising markets to be integrated by non-computer scientists and used by non-nerds. But it isn't just the usability that matters, it is the reporting and management tools that give the application value for business customers. Whistlebox isn't the first such application and won't be the last, but it is the first I have seen that is offered in a form that can be easily used by organizations of all sizes and levels of technical sophistication. That's what makes it unique so far. None of the other applications offered up by readers as examples of prior art can do this. None of them are turnkey. This lack of turnkey capability in those other products may be seen as an advantage, not a disadvantage, by my geekier readers. Yes, YOU can customize the heck out of them. But can your Mom? Still, I was appalled by the nasty tone of many comments. Anonymity makes it so easy to criticize. At some point this column will probably have a video version. Then it is a short jump to video responses using a service like Whistlebox. When that happens, I wonder how many readers will be as critical on video as they are today in text? I can't wait.

  • iPod 2.1: Spankin' fresh and Jailbroken, plus countermeasures news

    Filed under: iPod Family, iPhone We have pwnage. Before you get too excited, we're talking just iPod touch -- the update that's been around since Tuesday afternoon -- not for iPhone 2.1, released this morning. That having been said, point your browser over to quickpwn.com to grab the latest version of the iPod QuickPwn. Now there is good news, and there is bad news, about jailbreak and iTunes 8. The bad news is that Apple has taken countermeasures against custom ipsw firmware bundles. The good news is that the iPhone devteam folks are working on patches for each of the device types in addition to the touch. Hop over to the devteam blog to keep abreast of the latest news.Read|Permalink|Email this|Comments

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