Found Footage: Waiting in line for an iPhone 3G

Filed under: Retail, Found Footage, iPhone Our good friends over at Engadget posted an exclusive interview from the line that is forming outside of the 5th Avenue Apple Store. In the video, they interview the first three people in line and ask them what they're doing. According to Daniel, the group leader, they are trying to "break a world record for most time spent waiting in line to buy something."Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: Retail, Found Footage, iPhone Our good friends over at Engadget posted an exclusive interview from the line that is forming outside of the 5th Avenue Apple Store. In the video, they interview the first three people in line and ask them what they're doing. According to Daniel, the group leader, they are trying to "break a world record for most time spent waiting in line to buy something."Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

  • Found Footage: David Pogue reviews the iPhone 3G

    Filed under: Retail, Reviews, Found Footage, iPhone In regular David Pogue style, he has published a half-comedy, half-review of the iPhone 3G. In the video, he shows a side-by-side comparison of the loading speeds of EDGE vs. 3G. It took only 40 seconds for a page to load on 3G, while to took over 3 minutes for the same page to load over EDGE. He also swings by the 5th Avenue Apple Store to speak with the people waiting in line.You can view this comical video review of the iPhone 3G by David Pogue on the NewYorkTimes video website. In addition, be sure to take a look at our summary of the top technologist's iPhone reviews.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

  • TUAW Video: Aspen Grove Apple Store on 3G Day

    Filed under: Retail, Found Footage, iPhone Last year, I put together a little 10-minute movie about the iPhone lovefest on June 29, 2007. This year, I did the same in between talking with Erica on the phone, and cleaning all the comments out of my email -- after reading them, of course. All of this was done in line at the Aspen Grove Apple Store in Littleton, Colorado. I know some people were critical of the employees at other Apple Stores, but this team is very professional and courteous, and I thought they did a great job considering the pressure they were under.This video was literally thrown together in about 30 minutes, so don't expect a potential Academy Award nominee. You've been forewarned! Direct link to video here.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

  • Overnighting in the Macworld registration line

    Filed under: Humor, Found Footage Sure, the Macworld registration line was kind of long this morning, but overnighting outside Moscone? Uncalled for -- this ain't the iPhone launch. Despite the futility, Justine and friend decided to "spend the night" waiting for Macworld registration to open. I guess they didn't want to wait in line -- and interpretive dance is always in good taste.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

  • Found Footage: 'I Am Rich' walk through

    Filed under: Humor, Found Footage, iPhone, App Store [YouTube link] Apparently, eight people actually bought the famed "I Am Rich" iPhone application. If you weren't rich stupid lucky enough to buy the app, or if you are merely curious what the fuss was all about -- the above "guided tour" is for you. I'll admit, I've found this whole saga pretty unfunny thus far. Don't misunderstand me, I get the joke, the whole thing has just struck me as easy and lacking any real point. Call me puerile, but I had to laugh at this video. The line that got me, "notice how 'deserve' is fashionably [misspelled]." Classic. Thanks Neil!Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

  • Google's Android Market Guarantees Problems for Users

    Daniel Eran Dilger It's great news that Google is planning to deliver a market for mobile software with its own centralized “Android Market.” It should give Apple's iPhone Apps Store competitive pressure to continue to innovate, and provide a safety net for smartphone users if Apple fails to deliver progress fast enough. If Apple and Google both fail, users will be stuck with the failed third party software models related to Microsoft's Windows Mobile and Nokia's Symbian. Those high stakes make it all the more disappointing to find that the Android Market fails to answer the tough issues correctly. iPhone App Store vs Android Market. There's no doubt that there will be apps that make it into Google's Android store that aren't currently available from Apple, likely including WiFi tethering (for using your mobile's data plan to give your laptop Internet access on the road), a feature Apple forced NullRiver's NetShare to remove from the iPhone store. That was apparently at the behest of AT&T, which staunchly refuses to support tethering without charging an expensive additional fee. AT&T's 3G network is already strained to carry relatively light-duty mobile traffic; unrestricted amounts of data being dumped on the network from far more demanding desktop apps by millions of users is currently just infeasible to accommodate. Other providers have 3G EVDO bandwidth to spare, but will cut you off just as quickly when you reach their finite definition of “unlimited” data access. Finite bandwidth is not a problem Google's 'free and open' software market can solve, because Google is not the only link in the chain in providing mobile apps. AT&T isn't going to allow tethering from Android phones either, regardless of Google's intended store policies. And Verizon Wireless likely isn't going to allow WiFi on Android phones at all. So it's a joke to say Android will transcend every problem in ways that Apple hasn't. This isn't a case of Google acting like Netflix to offer unlimited content to rival Blockbuster's censorship; instead, Google is simply making great sounding campaign promises it won't be able to deliver. AppleInsider | Google reveals open Android Market to rival iPhone's App Store Will Google’s Android Play DOS to Apple’s iPhone? Why Apple Plays God with the iPhone SDK But Wait, There's More (And Less). The Android Market will also deliver lots of problems Apple isn't, including a way to distribute malware that can't be remotely killed, or untraceable spyware that professes to be on the up-and-up when you install it, but then works behind your back and phones home sensitive data to a rogue developer's servers. Remember all the speculation last year about the possibility of developers being able to hack the iPhone open and install their own malicious tools to watch what you're doing? Under the iPhone SDK, access to that dangerous path is simply forbidden. Under Android, there's not so much as a handrail for users. Apple has already reprimanded iPhone developers who provided inadequate protection of their users' data, and then forced them to fix their problems immediately. With Google advertising its “see no evil, hear no evil” policy for its self-policing development community, Google won't even know if there's a problem. It will also lack any way to stop or reverse problems, and having renounced any accountability for protecting users with regulatory controls, Google will lack the leverage to push malicious or possibly just incompetent developers to take any action once it does discover problems. Malware and junkware on the PC is a big problem, but on a smartphone it is orders of magnitude more serious of an issue. Having to run spyware cleanup on a PC is a nusance. Having your phone subverted into a tool for advertisers or identity thieves could easily result in issues on the level of life safety. If you thought it was embarrassing to have Outlook send out spam in your name in 2001, wait until Android starts drunk dialing all your contacts to tell them about special offers, attaching your GPS location and perhaps a recent photo from your album so they know they can trust you about it. Google seems to think it can simply ignore security problems by asking developers not to take advantage of its users. This is absurdly ridiculous in our modern context. Google may as well be building unvented fireplaces in a tornado alley trailer park. Ten Myths of Leopard: 9 Apple is Spying on Users! The Unavoidable Malware Myth: Why Apple Won’t Inherit Microsoft’s Malware Crown Wired's Grotesquely Rank Hypocrisy in Mobile Security. Where did all of those mobile phone security experts from last fall run away to? They were abuzz about the imagined catastrophe that might befall the “can't even run any software” iPhone, but none have stepped forward to posit an opinion on why Android's exposed spinning blades in a dark room might result in the world's next Windows XP. Wired, which led the witch hunt against the iPhone last fall, published an article this summer titled “Google's Open Source Android OS Will Free the Wireless Web,” which went on breathlessly for days about how Android would solve the industry's problems with giddy can-do chutzpah. Nowhere did the article even suggest a criticism of its wide open, security-free business model. Instead, the author announced, “Engineers who write for just about any mobile operating system today have to spend time and cash obtaining security keys and code-signing certificates. Android would allow any application to be installed and run, no questions asked.” If you're waiting for the other shoe to drop, don't bother. It ended right there on the “time and money savings” of not having any security model. Microsoft saved a lot of money by ignoring security, too, as long as you don't count the $11 billion malware industry. Shame on Wired for continuing its descent into hopelessly unplugged irrelevance. UnWired! Rick Farrow, Metasploit, and My iPhone Security Interview Kim Zetter and the iPhone Root Security Myth High Risk, High Likelihood for Exploitation. The tech media more recently went into high alert to warn users that Apple's MobileMe web apps didn't perform SSL encryption, allowing the possibility for spies to target them in order to read their calendar and email transactions, were they to used the web apps over a public network. That's a valid concern to voice, but also an extremely unlikely threat for users to spend much time worrying about, particularly since there are a number of straightforward precautions users can take to avoid any risky exposure scenarios. There's also little business model behind sniffing calendar appointments and the kind of mundane email threads that .Mac users might engage in while drinking coffee at Starbucks. On the other hand, malicious software and social engineering exploitation is a billion dollar industry, and organized criminals in Korea, China, Russia, and of course Nigeria are as desperate for new dollars outside of the PC desktop as Google is. Rather than the unlikely scenario of on-site spies targeting a specific individual to sniff out truffles from their browser's email, these people have organized and profitable methods for delivering viral payloads to wide audiences from the convenience of a position thousands of miles away. On a smartphone, they can take your money simply by having installed software send a paid SMS. This is a real threat, not a contrived bunch of hysterical nonsense dreamed up by fear-mongering pundits. It is simply criminally negligent for Google to design a smartphone software platform with nearly zero regard for the safety of its users. We can justifiably criticize Microsoft for its lax stance on security in the 90s that resulted in the Windows malware crisis, but many of the potential dangers of certain decisions weren't fully recognized back then. Google is organizing an olympic-sized skating party on a lake it knows has dangerously thin ice. Is Apple’s MobileMe Secure? Store vs Market? It's also worth mentioning that the media is comparing what Google only intends to do with what Apple has already pulled off; I could easily draft plans for a phone that sounds better than the iPhone, but I certainly couldn't deliver it. Apple has years of experience in media sales and micro-payments in iTunes. It began selling software through iTunes in 2006, and spent years refining its software deployment system to make sure iTunes would work as a true market place for mobile software once the iPhone was ready. Anyone can open a store. There are a dozen online music and video stores that have gone out of business trying to sell music like iTunes. Apple created a real market, where both buyers and sellers can have confidence that they're getting a fair deal. Google has tried to backhandedly condemn Apple's App Store for being called a “store,” negatively associating the word with a commercial endeavor as opposed to the community effort Google's marketing team has branded a “market.” Never mind that the words really mean the same thing; Google isn't really creating a market, because markets have enforced rules. Without rules and authority, there is too much risk involved to do legitimate business. If Android were only setting up a barter system between the company's altruistic and noble minded PhDs in the Google cafeteria, there wouldn't be an issue. However, Google is setting up shop in the most corrupt, chaotic, and criminal setting on earth: the wide open Internet, a dirty enough place to turn a brand new PC into a viral porn spam server within fifteen minutes of being plugged in. Hacking iPod Games: How Apple's DRM Works Rise of the iTunes Killers Myth Can Great Google Getter Done? The company's Alfred E. W. Newman approach to security issues is more than a little alarming coming from a company that is fully aware of Internet scammers. Google's main job is identifying and scouring away the criminal tracks that SEO frauds try to leave behind in its search engine results. The company terminates its advertiser partners on a whim when it even suspects an irregularity, and the web is full or people complaining that Google has failed to pay them for hundreds of dollars of AdSense advertising without even a fair explanation. The company is hard edge and savvy when it comes to protecting its own revenues, so why is it being so soft and naive when the security of its users is on the line? Google's “do no evil” slogan, paired with its considerable contributions to society, from free search to free satellite imagery, and from its staunch support of the public interest related to WiFi and mobile broadband issues to its investments in progressive technologies to make the world a better place, all simply add up to leave its unreasonable stance on mobile security a mysterious puzzle. Can Google even pull its store off? The company serves up millions of free videos in YouTube, but remember that Google originally tried to build its own YouTube and failed; it had to buy YouTube to enter the market. Google also screwed the pooch when it dropped its own paid DRM video service and told its users to go fly a kite. That kind of customer-oblivious behavior isn't going to successfully lock horns with Apple's proven excellence in delivering the iTunes Store as a customer-friendly market place. Apple pulled together 14 year old torrent freaks and the RIAA's lawyers into the same room and made them play together. It turned the festering boil of the rotten mobile software market into a million dollar per day buffet. Google's Android Market not only faces the same challenges, but also has to fly in the face of the industry darling, starting at zero against Apple's ten million installed base of iPhones and its accelerating market share. The industry outside of Apple is working just as hard to grab its own slice as well. Google taking on the iPhone App Store is a bit like Sony deciding to build cars to take on BMW. That's all fine and good, but let's see the car before we start comparing its “planned” zero to 60 performance against that of today's cars with a proven legacy. And stop telling us that lacking both seat belts and brakes is a feature. 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!

  • 5th Avenue Apple Store starts iPhone 3G line

    Filed under: Retail, iPhoneGearDiary is reporting that a lineup of about 10 people started queuing up Friday for the iPhone 3G launch at the 5th Avenue Apple Store in New York. You may recall last year's 5th Avenue store queuing started about a week early as well. The iPhone 3G goes on sale at 8 a.m. on July 11th. The first people in line are a man, his wife and their young child. According to GearDiary, the couple told security that they're trying to set a record for time waiting in line and possibly having a baby waiting with them. Police are allowing the 10 people to wait in line and currently have no plans to use barricades. GearDiary has posted some pictures for your viewing pleasure. [via MacNN]Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

  • What's Next from Apple: New iPods Sept 22, iPhone OS 2.1, iTunes 8.0

    Daniel Eran Dilger Kevin Rose has been trying his hand at making broad sweeping generalizations about the next generation of iPods, but sorry, no digg. Most of his predictions are not even original, and those that are are so vague that they're really just worthless. Here's what you can really expect. Rose likes to suggest what's next from Apple, but his guesses only approach reality when they're based on leaks that occur days prior to an announcement. His flat out guesswork tends to be yet far further removed from reality, indicating that he has no special inside track on things at Apple, nor much of an imagination tempered by realistic appraisal. A month before the iPhone was unveiled, Rose predicted it would be available from CDMA providers, have a pull out keyboard, and sport two batteries, one for music and one for the phone. Of course, splitting a battery in half is not really a brilliant solution to prevent music playback from running down your phone, but the simple fact that Rose didn't know about the exclusive deal with Cingular (come on, it was Apple's only mobile partner to date) and the unlikelihood of Apple tacking on an HTC-esque keyboard makes his guesswork easy to dismiss. I had imagineered the iPhone as a web browsing iPod (“based on Nokia’s mobile contributions to Safari”) with SMS messaging features, contacts, calendar, and a camera… six months earlier. And CDMA? I recommended Apple “leave Verizon alone and partner with Cingular, TMobile, and MetroPCS using GSM technology.” The difference between my ideas and those from Rose, apart from mine being six months earlier, is that I presented mine as only reasonable ideas with some rationale behind them; Rose insisted he had special knowledge from reliable sources. Generation 6 iPods An iPhone Worth Talking About The Real iPod touch Deets. Now he's predicting new iPods. The iPod touch is supposed to get “fairly large price drops to distance itself from the $199 iPhone.” Sorry, wrong. The iPhone is only $199 in the minds of consumers. It gets a subsidy from AT&T, which is why you can't just buy one for $199 and walk out the door without signing a phone contract. The iPhone's $2,000 service contract offers plenty of distance between it and the iPod touch. The iPod touch is not possibly going to get cheaper than the iPhone for a couple reasons. First, obviously, it costs nearly as much to make. The lack of a subsidy pretty much balances out its lack of mobile radio components. Second, Apple isn't desperately trying to sell the iPod touch. It exists as a product to sell to users who can't or won't buy an iPhone because they're tied to Verizon or don't want a phone. Rose worries that the iPhone is “cannibalizing sales of the iPod,” but there's nothing more Apple would like to do than to feed every iPod user an iPhone. Sure the bonehead analysts will have another field day complaining about how there's only minor growth among iPod sales while they ignore iPhone numbers, but these guys aren't easy to reach with basic facts. Apple has been giving away the $300 iPod touch to students buying a laptop; that looks like an effort to broaden the iPhone platform. Apple wants college kids playing iPhone games and interested in creating their own iPhone software. Left to their own devices, most kids would buy the old hard drive iPod Classic because they think they need to walk around with their entire torrent library of stolen music. (Get off my lawn!) In any case, we all knew the iPod refresh was coming. I'm pretty sure they're coming on September 22. I'm also pretty sure that the 8GB iPod touch is going away, making the 16GB model the new $199 version. That outrageous price drop, facilitated by today's cheaper Flash RAM, would kill the remaining market for the hard drive-based iPod Classic, converting Apple's entire lineup to Flash RAM. Additionally, it would migrate even more iPod buyers into the installed base of iPhone App Store users and hasten the cannibalization food chain that leads toward the iPhone. The 16GB iPod touch will be sold next to the existing 32GB model, which was just released earlier this year. For that reason, I don't see a larger capacity model being introduced now. I don't see tremendous demand for carrying 64GB of music from people who are also ready to pay for 64GB of Flash. Nano 4: Zune 2007? Rose says the Nano will get a redesign that makes it look like last year's Flash RAM Zune; iLounge already predicted this a month ago, although Rose embellished his version with the idea that “the actual plastic on the outside will be curved,” presumably like a TV from the 80s. How nostalgic! I miss having a wildly distorted tube picture, almost as much as a scratchable plastic iPod screen. Oh the good ol' days. Will Apple expend significant resources to make the Nano 4 into a widescreen tall/long player and define a new 4GB hardware model to fit into a niche that is only $50 less than the new 16GB $199 iPod touch? How much room for differentiation is there under $200? Seems more likely that Apple will instead only release a cheaper version of the existing 4GB Nano that's closer to $99, leaving room for a $149 8GB Nano in between. That will pull Shuffle buyers up into splurging on a full video Nano. If you want to watch video sideways, you can get an iPod touch for $199. What kind of widescreen cinematic experience can you get with a long/tall Nano/Zune? When I reviewed the Flash Zune, one of the complaints was that half (but only half) of the controls reconfigure when you hold it sideways. Plus, existing iPod Games wouldn't work in the widescreen orientation; both the display and the controls would be messed up. On top of that, regular video playback would be forced to play back wide, and/or look bad because its stretched. Microsoft has no qualms with playing video in an odd aspect radio, but the iPod is made by Apple, which has some aesthetic boundaries that constrain its behavior. Winter 2007 Buyer’s Guide: Microsoft Zune 8 vs iPod Nano iPhone 2.1 Rose says Apple will also release “iPod touch 2.1 software, iPhone to get update very soon after.” We already all knew the iPhone 2.1 update was coming, and that it's going to be significant, and that it is due for release around the same time as the new iPods. Whether the new iPod touch will ship with it in advance of the iPhone would depend on whether iPhone-only features in the release hold it up, but Rose doesn't suggest any special knowledge or rationale behind this claim. iPhone 2.1 is supposed to usher in new GPS features and the push Notification system, but the real demand for downloading it will be that it fixes a major problem that currently causes third party iPhone apps to crash on launch and randomly when running. Apple needs to get this out quick before it blows the reputation of iPhone software stability in the minds of users. That's reason to believe that iPhone 2.1 might ship even before the new iPods, rather than the other way around. Because software developed using the iPhone 2.1 SDK won't run on iPhone 2.0.x, expect everyone to need to update their software to download a new generation of 2.1-only apps. This will be free for iPhone users, but might incur a nominal fee for iPod touch users due to accounting rules. Myths of Snow Leopard 3: Mac Sidelined for iPhone Ten Big New Features in Mac OS X Snow Leopard iTunes 8.0 Rose says iTunes 8.0 “it's a big update with new features,” but doesn't say what they are. He also says it will be “a real point upgrade” deserving the 8.0 name. However, there is little rhyme or reason to Apple's iTunes version numbering, and no real correlation between the amount features introduced and the version number increment. iTunes 2.0 added iPod support after ten months of iTunes 1.0, but iTunes 3.0 only added minor features the next year. It was replaced by iTunes 4.0 a year later, which added the Music Store and AAC support. Two years later, iTunes 5 introduced some cosmetic changes and was immediately replaced with iTunes 6.0 only a month later, without any major new features. Another year later, iTunes 7.0 arrived with a new look, video game support, and Coverflow. It has since seen loads of new features, from support for Apple TV to the iPhone to new iPods and new movie rentals, all of which were only numbered as minor updates. We've had iTunes 7.x for two years now, so iTunes 8.0 is not really ballsy prediction at this point. Of course, Apple is just as likely to skip ahead and release iTunes X. And if iTunes X isn't ready, we can might even get iTunes 7.8 and 7.9 over the next couple years. Oh my sides. With the likelihood of entirely new iPod touch or Nano models being quite low (after all, the Zune isn't going to get a refresh until late next year, and Apple isn't facing any tough competition at the moment), Apple's iPod announcement might end up more about a new iTunes than the iPod. Rose doesn't make any iTunes 8.0 feature predictions, instead jumping ahead to suggest that Apple is working to make sure Mac OS X 10.5.6 will provide support for Sony's BluRay, the competition to iTunes that nobody cares about. Hmm. Steve Jobs has so little regard for optical discs that he basically shunned iDVD last year when showing off iLife 08, but now he's going to resurrect BluRay and excite customers by including it on the company's laptops, where any resolution advantage it offers over DVD would be nearly invisible? Oh ho ho my sides. iTunes Unlimited? The rumor mill is talking about subscription music in the next iTunes. Steve Jobs has opposed subscription music since iTunes got started. He worked for years to convince the labels to let go of the dream of billing users to essentially listen to the radio. Subscription music has always revolved around outrageous DRM that requires the (historically Microsoft PlaysForSure) player to sync up and check in every month or lose its music. I've written up lots of reasons why subscription music was an awful idea that wouldn't fly. I doubt Apple will actually float it as rumored (“iTunes Unlimited” for $129 sounds awful). However, enough has changed in the last two years to reconsider how subscription music could be delivered. For starters, the iPhone and iPod touch are now wireless, so they can both stream and verify exploding media DRM. Apple's iTunes, modern iPods, Apple TV, and the iPhone also now already handle exploding DRM for movie rentals, which blew over last year without any complaint, although it doesn't look like iTunes' movie rentals have had a massive impact on the world due to their relatively high price point. Offering movie rentals appeared to be a requisite concession leading up to convincing the movie studios to agree to movie sales in iTunes. Apple could sell access to subscription music directly from the iPhone and iPod touch that worked similar to movie rentals, and the labels might even allow users to freely copy rental tracks between computers linked to the same iTunes account. Such an arrangement hasn't found mainstream popularity elsewhere, but nobody else had been able to sell music prior to iTunes either. While the rumors suggest there could be a discount for MobileMe users, it would be a lot smarter to make it part of MobileMe instead. That would limit subscribers to Apple's loyal base, easing in the system rather than exposing a brand new subscription service to ten million handheld users and 150 million iTunes users and all but promising another meltdown. At least by making it part of MobileMe, Apple could add lots of subscribers and upgrade existing subscribers to a $99 “unlimited music” additional fee. Keep in mind that all this is highly speculative. I doubt “unlimited iTunes” will fly, as the idea was not leaked but rather simply invented. How Apple Could Deliver Workable iTunes Rentals The Online Music and Movie Rental Myth Rise of the iTunes Killers Myth As Long As We're Speculating… If Apple does convert its entire iPod line to Flash players, it would make sense to incorporate a new audio codec setting that maximized the amount of songs you could copy into an 8GB player. For years, Apple's major selling point on the iPod what that it offered massive hard drive storage capacity. Now it's migrating to Flash, which is more expensive but considerably more shock resistant and suitable for a handheld computer device like the iPod touch. Working to cram more music into tighter spaces would allow Apple to make the iPod touch and iPhone more competitive against a hard drive player. AAC is already optimized for low-bitrate playback. Apple also needs to add remote functionality for controlling Apple TV to iTunes, just as you can already do via the free iPhone app. And how about direct streaming of content between iTunes, Apple TV, and the iPhone, such as for movie rentals. Currently, to get a rented movie from an iPhone to Apple TV you have to do two syncs involving a middleman iTunes PC. iTunes also needs to expand on the options for syncing media to the iPod and iPhone. In addition to syncing specific playlists, it should be able to automatically sync over a smart “Party Shuffle” mix of music that fills a specific proportion of the device, such as 50% music, 10% podcasts, and then the specific movies, TV, and audio books the user selects. Then shuffle out the listened to tracks and add new music every time it's synced. Allow users to hide songs from iTunes just as you can hide photos from your iPhoto album to simplify the view without deleting anything. Add Time Machine support so you can go back to see earlier play counts and browse your media library as it appeared in the past. Add integrated support for viewing PDFs and other QuickView document types, so you could use iTunes as a metadata-rich document browser with search and playlist features. Or give Preview an iTunes metadata document database interface. More Music Deals. Add other corporate sponsors to the Starbucks deal, so you can discover their playing music and buy tunes over their WiFi link. And isn't it about time Apple and AT&T got together and hammered out that plan to open iPhones to AT&T's hotspots? I'd debit a 99 cent WiFi access fee from my iTunes account if it were necessary. What's the point of setting up $8 per hour WiFi services for the zero people who use them? And on that tangent, how about rolling out my Ubiquitous WiFi idea for allowing other mobile users to borrow your AirPort's WiFi signal? I'd also like to see Apple get AT&T to allow users to place calls over their WiFi link as a concession for not having a functional 3G network in place yet. I also think AT&T should sell or rent AirPort base stations to its millions of broadband users, with all of them open to WiFi sharing so that iPhone users could place a freaking call and access the web at faster than EDGE speeds between now and whenever AT&T actually gets 3G rolled out. Apple also really needs to deliver some sort of central media server, possibly tacked onto Apple TV. Just add a USB hard drive and have it serve up the contents as a Bonjour-discoverable iTunes library to your local network. This would allows users to dump all the media off their laptop. And then allow WiFi sync to optionally copy fresh media to the iPhone from the central media server library. There's plenty that could be tacked onto iTunes, but the biggest new thing in the iPod announcement actually might be something entirely different than last year's iPods for cheaper and a new rev to iTunes. I'll spill that in the next article. Ten Big Predictions for Apple in 2008 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!

  • People already lining up for 3G iPhone?

    Filed under: Cult of Mac, iPhoneIn what must come as somewhat, yet not completely, surprising news, it seems people are already starting to line up at Apple's flagship 5th Avenue store in New York for the next version of the iPhone -- supposedly being announced on June 9th. According to our friends at Engadget Mobile, the line is already about 60 people deep but some waiting seemed confused as to what they were actually waiting for -- although others did think they were in line for the new iPhone 2.0.Could this line actually be for the latest and greatest version of the iPhone? Or, is this just some tragic case of mis-communication? Maybe they think they can get their hands on one of those iPhone refurbs? Or, perhaps the employees at that particular store are bored and just in the mood to mess with customers?Whatever the answer, if this is actually an indication of the fervor iPhone 2.0 is going to generate, maybe I should start thinking about when and where to line up so I can get mine?How about you guys, you going to camp out to be the first on your block to get an iPhone 2.0?Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

  • First Week With The 160 GB iPod Classic

    Here’s an unformatted collection of thoughts and experiences since picking up a 160 GB iPod Classic, the last one in stock at the Apple Store in Alpharetta GA, last weekend. This blog is going to be from the point-of-view from someone who’s jumping from a 2nd gen (click wheel) iPod to the 6th gen “classic” model. So some of this is new to me and won’t be new to those of you with more modern iPods. Though I’m not completely oblivious to iPod evolution: I have been borrowing a 2nd gen nano from my wife while my old one is in the shop (no, it’s not back and not refunded after more than two months; yes I have initiated a chargeback). I’ll Take the 160 Gig Classic, If You Have Them in Silver, Please Over the course of August, I set about re-ripping my entire CD collection, pictured below. I’d previously ripped probably about 200 CD’s at various bitrates, and with the advent of iTunes Plus re-setting my feelings about appropriate bitrates, plus a 300 GB second drive in the G5 still only half full, I decided to move the collection up to 192 kbps AAC for rock, 256 for jazz, classical, soundtracks and everything else. Rather than pick and choose what to rip, or try to figure out exactly which discs I’d already done, I figured it would be faster to just get everything. At the end of this process, I had a library that was about 60 GB. So when Steve announced the new iPods, I was kind of stumped. To their credit, Apple has rolled out an iPod product line that’s very clear in the appeal of each unit: ModelConcept ShuffleTiny, cheap, giftable NanoSmall, cheap, video, giftable ClassicEnormous storage TouchNovel, new functionality, widescreen video I’d been pining for an iPhone-like iPod, but the iPod Touch would only be able to hold a quarter of my music, and wouldn’t have much room for video. So given this chart, and with the size of my library fresh in my mind, the sensible choice for my needs was the Classic. Yeah, the widescreen would be great for video, but I just didn’t know how much video-watching I would really need (besides, if I’m traveling, I probably have my PowerBook and can watch DVD’s on that). Of course, some people are asking why there wasn’t an iPod Touch offered with an HDD. I suspect that would be too much a change of the form factor of the Touch, making it un-Steve-ishly bulky. So, given the choice between compromising the Touch and having more models out there than Apple would usually prefer, they chose the latter. But I wonder how long the Classic will really live on? 160 GB is crazy huge… maybe when Apple can get 32 GB of flash memory at a reasonable price, we’ll see the end of the HDD-based iPod. Initial Sync Copying 60 GB of music over USB 2.0 is no small task. I initially was just going to have iTunes sync my library to the pod, but then thought better of that and went back to manual mode. I selected all my tracks and dragged them over: I let that go for about two hours. When it was done, iTunes got slow and balky, and wouldn’t let me copy video to the iPod. Eventually, it just crashed. So, I ejected the iPod and found that rather than having 10,000 songs in my pocket, I had 0. Grrr. At this point, since I had little or no usable data on there other than my podcasts, I did a “restore”, and then started copying songs in smaller chunks, about a thousand at a time. Much better. Notes and Nonsense So, anyways, I finally had all my tunes, plus a few ripped DVD’s and a TV show I bought from iTunes. So how well does it actually work? Here are a few impressions: Notice how the screenshots show the menu set against part of an album cover? The cover art is randomly selected from your library, and moves with a sort of “Ken Burns effect”, changing every 8 seconds or so. Cover Flow is stupid. No, it’s inconsistent. iTunes knows to group together artists from a compliation like a soundtrack, either by use of the “compilation” flag, or by assigning an “album artist” (even if it’s just “various artists”). The iPod, on the other hand, repeats a cover over and over again, once for each artist on the album. Maybe iTunes is right and the iPod is wrong, maybe vice versa, but they really ought to both work the same way. Syncs take a shockingly long time. Shocking because it’s not clear that iTunes is really doing anything — before you get to the file-copying, you’ll spend as much as 30 seconds enjoying the Spinning Beachball of Doom. Ejecting the iPod Classic takes about 60 seconds, which seems ridiculously long. Memo to self: only plug it in to sync and charge, because waiting for the eject is damned annoying. Since we’re talking about the old-style iPod screen, and not the widescreen of the Touch, 4:3 video like TV makes a lot more sense than widescreen movies. To illustrate, the TV show Rumbling Hearts versus a DVD rip of the widescreen movie The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension: The cable connection is inconsistent: sometimes neither the Finder nor iTunes notices when I’ve plugged in the iPod. In a weird case earlier today, I plugged in the iPod and went on with some other business, not noticing that it hadn’t mounted. Later, an iCal alarm woke up the iPod and made it beep, and with that, it mounted in the Finder and appeared in iTunes. Weird. I forgot to take a picture of this, but kana characters look beautiful in the new GUI. If you’re into J-pop or J-rock or other content where the song titles are in Japanese or Chinese characters, you’ll find it’s crisp and clear to read on the screen. Hey, have you been using the enhanced podcast format (either with apps like Garage Band, or the Chapter Tool)? Well, you can stop now. The iPod Classic doesn’t show the images at the chapter stops. Come to think of it, it looks like the Chapter Tool has disappeared from Apple’s website too? Oh, and you know what? I’m thinking 160 GB might end up being more than I really need:

  • How Closed Is the iPhone?

    Daniel Eran Dilger"Six Reasons Why Apple May Never Open the iPhone" outlined the rationale behind the strategy driving Apple's software plans for its new mobile. At the same time, it's important to take a reasonable appraisal of the iPhone's supposedly closed nature. While Apple is unlikely to open up the iPhone in the same sense as the Mac anytime soon, it is already an open platform in ways that matter. [Six Reasons Why Apple May Never Open the iPhone]Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don't.While it's always easy to criticize Apple's position, it's not as simple to plot out an alternative course that would actually work better, or work at all.Recall that pundits fell all over themselves over the last two decades insisting that Apple do a variety of things they assured us would solve all of the company’s problems, including ideas to:License its OS to other hardware makers.Copy Microsoft's Windows strategies.Compete directly against Microsoft in IT markets.Split into hardware and software companies.Buy Be, Inc. for its BeOS.Adopt the Linux kernel.License Windows from Microsoft.While it was easy for the advice columnists of industry rags--who don't run multibillion dollar hardware companies--to insist at various times that Apple should have done all those things, it was all wishful conjecture. In contrast, Palm actually did all of those things and none of them worked out for that company, which was facing circumstances similar to Apple.[The Egregious Incompetence of Palm]Closed as in Managed, Not as in Locked Down.Apple is keeping mobile OS X devices closed to manage the experience of users, not so much to kill or prevent third party development. The company just officially clarified that, indicating that its policy on third party development was indeed largely related to the difficulty of maintaining APIs for developers, as I described on Monday.[Apple not opposed to native iPhone app development - AppleInsider]Since 2001, Apple has kept the iPod closed in the sense that it has made no efforts to sponsor third party software development. It did not prevent any third party development however, and made no efforts to stop users from either porting Linux or developing the alternative RockBox firmware for it.Apple didn't want an array of shareware applications holding up future development and bringing scorn upon the company for changing how things worked in new models. That policy allowed Apple to remain competitive and nimbly improve iPods across new generations of hardware in various directions with the Photo, Mini, Nano, video, and now the Touch. At the same time, Apple also expanded its own iPod software development in partnerships with Nike+, various games developers, and an ecosystem of integrators, resulting in a platform that is actually openly active despite being officially regarded as closed. The iPod is really best described as a managed platform.Now compare Microsoft's Zune and its Xbox line. While Microsoft welcomes games developers to its platform, it's only welcoming in ways that suit the company. It refuses to allow Linux developers to roll their own firmware, erecting signed boot barriers to thwart any unauthorized software. While Apple has no problem with RockBox on the iPod, Microsoft has worked to stop the XBMC "Xbox Media Center" project, an effort of identical intent. With the iPhone, while Apple has only ever officially supported a web platform for third party developers, it has similarly done little to stop anyone from assembling and distributing their own software for it. So far, it has only been AT&T that has worked to stop certain efforts, and those relate to commercial distribution of hacked versions of Apple's own firmware. [Inside the iPhone: Third Party Software]Software Wrapped in Hardware.Apple's core competency is in offering a managed experience. Its products are known to "just work," a reputation that has spanned two decades. While Apple has only enthusiastically jumped into application software over the last decade, the secret to Apple's slick hardware integration has always been software. The difference between Apple and Microsoft is that Apple sells its software wrapped in hardware. Microsoft only licenses software, and its few and failing hardware products have always really just been software licenses tied to loss leader hardware. That results in Apple being confident that only a small minority of users will want to put Linux on their Mac or RockBox on their iPod, and that in neither case will it pose any threat to the company, because it's happy to offer those users hardware at a profit.However, Microsoft is very threatened by the prospect of its hardware devices being wiped clean and replaced with free software, because it fears it will cut into Xbox Live and Zune Marketplace sales, where the company plans to make most of its revenues. It loses money on the hardware, particularly after all the warranty maintenance it has to pay.[Leopard vs Vista 4: Naked Sales]Apple's Shaken Software Sales Confidence.If Apple is so confident in its software, why doesn't it sell it head to head with Microsoft, either in PC licensing, IT sales, or in kicking open the door to rival Microsoft's Windows Mobile, which embraces development? The answer lies in the irrational, upside down world of software sales that Microsoft has constructed and maintains in place.It's easy to insist that Apple could open up the iPhone and bring about world peace, but that's a lot like insisting that Apple could have successfully licensed its Mac OS, or could have used Linux or Be, or split in half, or any of the other things that may have looked wise until they failed elsewhere. I think Apple feared developing a mobile platform that wouldn't gain critical support. Remember that Apple not only offered the world Rhapsody gold and got nothing but blank stares, but also couldn't sell NeXT's WebObjects even after reducing the price from $50,000 to eventually essentially making it free.WebObjects is the dynamic web application server engine that delivers the online Apple Store and the iTunes Store. Prior to being acquired by Apple, NeXT's WebObjects was used to power Dell's first commercially successful web store and by MCI to develop the back end of its Friends and Family campaign, a feat other providers scrambled in vain to copy but couldn't because the technology was so unique.[Cocoa and the Death of Yellow Box and Rhapsody]I See Screens of Blue; What a Windows-ful World. Apple's software was ignored for years because everyone wanted to throw money at Microsoft for stuff that didn't work.How many times have you had the iTunes store crash during a transaction or even while browsing around? How many times has it gone offline for unscheduled maintenance? Now go search Microsoft's Knowledge Base. It SIMPLY DOES NOT WORK. The only way to reliably find answers in Microsoft's support pages has always been to search Google for it. Yet Microsoft sells everyone the same Active Server Pages that DOES NOT WORK at Microsoft. At the same time, nobody is very interested in WebObjects, the engine behind Apple's revolution in high volume music transactions and its very profitable online Apple Store operation. How many times have you crashed in a database web app and gotten an error message with .asp? That's Microsoft at work. Remember when ATM's didn't crash? That's back when they were mostly all running OS/2. Since many banks have migrated to Windows in the last few years, it's now common to see bluescreens on ATMs. Why did they do that? It's hard to understand. It is absolutely fantastically absurd that major businesses would trust Microsoft with their mission critical applications when Microsoft can't even successfully maintain its own website.Back in the days when AT&T and IBM wielded their monopoly power, at least things worked. Microsoft has killed innovation and replaced it with a cruel joke of arrogant incompetence, and yet retains more cheerleaders than IBM or AT&T ever had. This makes no sense. It’s a bit like the US, which congratulates itself about being a free country while shaking down tourists and taking their shampoo. Relatively little is said about this particularly irrational paradox between fantasy and reality either.Competing Against Stacked Odds.So you have a upside down reality where Apple is not able to sell its excellent NeXT technology despite a proven legacy in high-end enterprise segments well back into the early 90s. In large measure, that’s because of a 24/7 false information system full of Windows Enthusiasts paid to talk about how dangerous the alternatives to Microsoft are, regardless of their actual qualifications to speak about the enterprise market. Now look at the Mac. Apple has fair support from developers, and things are improving as Mac sales are swinging up, but the desktop is still very Windows-centric. Getting games developers to support the Mac is a challenge, and the fact that Microsoft is buying interests in game developers and making them Windows and Xbox-only doesn't help. Building support for a new mobile platform with Apple's limited resources could only be a potentially embarrassing failure. As is the case with WebObjects, I think Apple will have to show the world its utility by applying it first. And also like WebObjects, it may be that no amount of proof would ever convince the IT world that Microsoft is charging them for software that just isn't very good, or that alternatives could save them the outrageous software licensing fees they pay. Faced with the potential prospect of throwing an iPhone developer party where nobody shows up apart from some enthusiastic hackers and shareware authors, Apple decided instead to go it alone, working exclusively with a tight group of developers that it could trust. Apple will likely continue to announce new partnerships with outside services companies like Google, integration with car companies and other hardware manufacturers, and innovative new lifestyle partnerships like Nike and Starbucks. It won't however sit at home waiting by the phone for third parties to call it back about the great iPhone party invitations it mailed out weeks earlier. [Apple's Open Calendar Server vs Microsoft Exchange]Mobile Platform Not Another Desktop.Also note that the mobile application market is very different than the desktop apps market. That confounded the plans of Microsoft and Palm, who both behaved as if they were inventing the next PC as they rolled out their identical software development strategies. Look at what software is available for both the Windows Mobile and Palm platforms: a few useful utilities that could often just as well be web apps, a few mobile games that struggle to sell for $20, and really zero market for anything substantial. There's really no potential at all for profitable $100 - $500 software titles on mobile devices as there is on the PC desktop. Mobiles are a shareware market.Who makes high quality, shareware priced software? Who else but Apple? Who makes anything like iLife or iWork? Nobody can afford to! Adobe sells applications in the $300 and up range. Its consumer applications sell for around $99 each. Apple bundles several good apps into an $80 box, which makes them around $15 programs. No significantly sized company can develop serious software with substantial annual updates and afford to sell it for $15, apart from Apple. That's because Apple is using those titles to sell Macs.[Five Ways Apple Will Change TV: 2]A Messed Up Market.On the PC, Microsoft locked up the applications market by homogenizing the world with Office. Nobody can deliver a full Office at a lower price. Individual companies can deliver a killer standalone app that can't compete against a bundled suite, or alternatively struggle to establish an entire suite to compete against Office, but both options are a high risk, massive undertaking that swims against a heavy current. In neither case could you charge anything close to Microsoft, so even if you could match it in sales, you'd never catch up. Microsoft maintains its monopoly by thwarting competition, not by being so good that people drop alternatives and choose Microsoft. The result is that the rest of the industry - Novell, Sun, Google and now IBM, are all behind OpenOffice, an Office knockoff that is basically free. That's not a functional market.Meanwhile, Apple is delivering iWork, which is good and value priced, but also brand new and demands refinement. I think it will really develop over the next year. I hope Apple releases an '09 version and keeps advancing it rapidly, even if its only making a paltry $80 a copy compared to Microsoft's $300 and up Office. [How Microsoft Got Its Office Monopoly]Opening the Gates of iPhone SoftwareSo the point that I was destined to eventually get to is that Apple has figured out how to roll its own software by basically subsidizing it through hardware sales. There's no way Apple could profitably sell an $80 iWork for Windows or for Linux. Now, imagine an iWork-like mobile productivity pack for $25 for the iPhone, a similarly priced Utilities pack with VNC remote desktop and an ssh client. A couple dozen $5 games. A series of partner packages, BES integration from RIM, and maybe an iPhone Quicken from Intuit (whose board chair Bill Campbell originally ran Claris and also sits on Apple's board). Suddenly Apple's closed iPhone looks a lot more appealing than an "open phone" with as much support as WebObjects and Rhapsody ever saw. On top of Apple's "managed" efforts, there's also the hacker community, which has already developed a handful of tools and even a simple enough installer for non-technical users. That makes the iPhone unofficially open, even if its not part of Apple's managed plans. I have other ideas for iPhone software I'd like to see that I'll write up in an upcoming article. Send me any ideas for titles you'd like to see.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!

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