Archive for the ‘Apple’ Category
2 iPhone 4 Posts
TechCrunch tidily sums up today’s iPhone media event:
“Let’s recap: Jobs acknowledged the ["Antennagate"] problem, then offered evidence that people don’t really care because the phones are still selling like hot cakes. Not only that, but other phones have the exact same problem. And it only affects less than one percent of all iPhone 4s anyway. Still, we love our customers so much we are giving them all free cases. Any questions?”
The Electronic Frontier Foundation reports that the San Mateo County D.A.’s office has withdrawn its warrant in the case of the lost/stolen/Lord-knows-what iPhone 4 prototype. Gizmodo’s Jason Chen will get his seized computer stuff back, but it could be subpoenaed at a later date.
Duct Tape Fixes Everything, Even the iPhone 4
Consumer Reports has decided that it cannot recommend the iPhone 4 because of its well-known signal woes. But CR Labs has come up with what they call an “affordable” fix:
“Cover the antenna gap with a piece of duct tape or another thick, non-conductive material. It may not be pretty, but it works.”
Am I gonna pay 300 bucks for an obelisk and then stick gray tape on it, which will get all grimy with lint from my pocket? Mais non. I’d wait for Plan B. (And it ain’t this.)
Link via Lifehacker.
Apple Discovers It Can Make Money Selling Both Razors and the Blades
You know the old “freebie marketing” business story of King Camp Gillette — he gave away the razor so he could make more money selling disposable blades. Apple has discovered that you can make money on both. Today it announced that the App Store — the give-away part of the equation, designed to drive iPhone and iPad sales — has generated $429 million in revenue since it was launched 2 years ago. That’s 1% of Apple’s gross profit. Nothing to sneeze at, if you ask me, especially since it’s the result of other people’s work. Is this a great country or what?
iPhone 4 Blog Roundup
The best of the best of the best:
- John Gruber focuses on the “retina” display (pun intended):
“[Apple is] using a new production process that effectively fuses the LCD and touchscreen — there is no longer any air between the two … The effect is that the pixels appear to be painted on the surface of the phone; instead of looking at pixels under glass, it like looking at pixels on glass. Combined with the incredibly high pixel density, the overall effect is like ‘live print’.”
- MobileCrunch reminds us that iPhone 4 is more than “the extremely high resolution screen, video chat capability with FaceTime, and the sexy new form factor”, and thus obligingly tells us “Everything you need to know about the iPhone 4“.
- Finally, TechCrunch’s Jason Kincaid, a fellow Android user, throws a little smack at Apple fanboys and girls:
“But despite the fact that my phone doesn’t quite match up to the iPhone 4, at no point yesterday did I consider jumping back onto the iPhone bandwagon. My Nexus One doesn’t feel much slower than the iPhone … What’s more, I’ll be surprised if Android devices don’t surpass the iPhone’s hardware capabilities within the next four months or so. We’ll probably be seeing sharper screens, faster processors, and even integrated gyroscopes (another feature launching with the iPhone 4) on the next wave of devices. And from a software perspective, Android actually seems poised to start beating Apple on some fronts, namely its connection with cloud services … In short, more than ever it looks like Android and Apple are in a dead heat. And that’s a great thing for all of us.”
In the last 5 months I’ve covered the launch of the iPad and iPhone 4. I’m getting tired of Apple’s regularly-planned obsolescence cycles. I feel like I’m suffering from Apple Fetish Fatigue. (Or maybe it’s simply that I’m currently rereading Shop Class as Soulcraft. I’m having trouble with perspective here.)
Tit for Tat
Two months after Apple filed suit against them, HTC is countersuing Apple for infringing on 5 of its patents. War (Apple vs. Google) by proxy!
Apple Says ByeBye to Lala
Apple has notified customers of online music streaming site Lala that the service will shut down on May 31. The thinking is that Apple, which bought Lala at the end of last year, will launch its own music streaming service sometime in June.
You Haven’t Lived Until Steve Jobs Rips You
First it was Google. Back in January Steve Jobs called the Big G’s “Don’t Be Evil” corporate motto “bull****”. This was yet another episode in the two companies’ long and drawn-out parting of the ways. (Although a couple of months later Steve and Google CEO Eric Schmidt did meet publicly for coffee. Why do the pictures remind me of this?)
Today it was Adobe. Steve decided to “jot down some thoughts” about why Flash will never ever make it on Apple’s mobile devices:
“Flash was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short … New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.”
Boom.
You have to hand it to Steve, though. He’s all about equal-opportunity. You don’t have to be a big corporate competitor to get the Steve Jobs treatment — all you gotta do is “find” an iPhone and post it on the Web.
For Once I’m On The Winning Side
And I’ll take any victory whenever and wherever I can: Android has more U.S. Web traffic than the iPhone, according to AdMob.
People Are Soooooo Problematic [UPDATED]
Security-wise, people are the weakest link, viz:
ITEM 1: John Markoff reports that January’s Chinese Google hack began with one person who clicked when he/she oughtn’t:
“The theft began with an instant message sent to a Google employee in China who was using Microsoft’s Messenger program, according to the person with knowledge of the internal inquiry, who spoke on the condition that he not be identified. By clicking on a link and connecting to a ‘poisoned’ Web site, the employee inadvertently permitted the intruders to gain access to his (or her) personal computer and then to the computers of a critical group of software developers at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. Ultimately, the intruders were able to gain control of a software repository used by the development team.”
That software, called Gaia, only controls signons to a range of Google services from Gmail to Docs.
ITEM 2: Back in March, Apple software engineer Gray Powell lost a prototype of the next-gen iPhone in a bar not too far from the Apple campus. He was field-testing the device, which was camouflaged to look like your basic, garden-variety iPhone. The phone eventually wound up in the hands of Gizmodo’s Jason Chen — for a mere $5,000 — who publicly dissected it, according to the NY Times, “as if it were an alien from another planet”. Apple politely but firmly asked for it back.
From what I have read about Apple’s security-obsessed culture, right now it sucks to be Gray Powell.
UPDATE, April 27: The authorities have gotten involved.
Today’s iPhone OS4 Event in 10 Seconds
From today’s iPhone OS4 media event: iPhone OS4, due out this summer (iPhone 3GS and iPod Touch 3rd gen only) will feature multi-tasking (more or less) and iBooks.
There, I’m done.
