Tuesday, October 27, 2009
"The holiday lineup is set."
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
AT&T Opens the Door for Google Voice and Skype on 3G
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
For The Love of Money
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Lower priced Apple laptop on the way?
Wednesday, September 09, 2009
iPhone/Touch 3.1 and iTunes 9 Released
iPhone, iPod, App Store and iTunes Statistics
- 30 million iPhones sold to date
- 20 million iPod Touches sold to date
- 220 million iPods (all types) sold to date
- 75,000 applications in the App Store just within the first year
- 28%, or 21,178, of the applications in the App Store are games and entertainment related
- 1.8 billion applications downloaded to date (not including updates which would have represented a number a few times more than that)
- 8.5 billion iTunes songs sold
- 100 million iTunes accounts
- The #1 music retailer in the world
Jobs Returns to the Apple Stage
AT&T Responds (Poorly) to iPhone Data Issues
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Apple Tablet Destined for Greatness
Why AT&T is Holding Back The iPhone
MyTouch and Pre No Match for iPhone
Apple Software Box Set Staged For Upgrade
Friday, July 31, 2009
Desire for iTunes Playlist Tip
Monday, July 27, 2009
iPhone and Touch App Store Addiction
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
The $.99 iPhone App Deliberation
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Marketing Machine Moderation for Snow Leopard
Monday, June 22, 2009
A iPhone 3GS Fan Favorite - The Oleophobic screen
Steve Jobs Back at Apple - Does it Matter?
Apple Expert Improves Apple Support Experience
Tuesday, June 09, 2009
AT&T Becomes the Laughing Stock at Apple’s Developer Conference
In today’s keynote at the Apple Developer Conference the new tethering and MMS features of 3.0 were discussed. While dozens of countries around the world will have the ability to take advantage of both at the launch of 3.0 in a few weeks the US will not be one of them. That’s because AT&T won’t be ready to launch these services until the end of the summer. This further fuels the fire that AT&T’s 3G network is bottlenecked by iPhone users. Users across the country have complained of slow 3G speeds as well as switching between 3G and EDGE. When conference attendees were told AT&T would not be ready until the summer there was a flood of laughter. It seems preposterous that Apple would release features their major US carrier could not support at launch. Tethering I can understand, but MMS? Give me a break. Apple didn’t even provide a good reason why there would be a delay on AT&T’s behalf. If you don’t have a reason there is nothing to say. AT&T looked bad today.
Apple Releases iPhone 3GS
Apple’s latest phone, the iPhone 3GS, was announced at the 2009 WWDC today. The S stands for speed. The design is the same as the first 3G, but there are major speed improvements. Launching applications, viewing attachments and viewing web pages has improved. The phone is ready to deliver speeds of 7.2 Mbps once carriers are ready. The phone ships with a new 3 megapixel auto focus, white balance and exposure camera. To improve picture taking you can tap on the screen to force the phone to focus on specific areas (i.e. like a face for flower). The ability to take pictures in low light settings has improved and an auto macro feature can take picture of objects up to 10 cm away. One of the long awaited announcements was the ability to capture video. Video capture is at 30 frames per second VGA with audio. No HD quality videos on this phone. Once videos are captured there is a way to “scrub” and trim the video to just the content you want. Videos can then be shared via Email, MobileMe, YouTube and MMS. Hey! What about Facebook? It will be interesting to see how video capture will be built into applications. Another new feature available only on the 3GS is Voice Control. You can use your voice to make calls based on the names of people in your address book as well as control your music. Battery life, the nemesis of the iPhone, was also improved. The phone will be available on June 19th.
Features like video capture, voice dialing, longer battery life are what I call “about time” features. Other smartphones have had these features for some time now. I was disappointed to not see a camera on the front of the device. Face to face conversations will become pervasive in the future and the lack of second camera is likely a cost issue as well as a bandwidth concern for AT&T. Other than the video capability I don’t see existing 3G iPhone users trading up to this device. It’s not compelling enough. If you are an original 2G user from the first generation ending your 2 year contract the timing couldn’t be better.
iPhone 3.0 Available June 17th, 2009 With New Features
iPhone 2.0 came out less than a year ago with the launch of a Software Developers Kit for building applications. Since that time, developers have created over 50,000 apps available in the App Store. With a user base of over 40,000,000 iPhone and iPod Touches the App market space is huge. 1 billion apps have been downloaded as of April 2009. You can thank the free applications for contributing to that statistic. During the Developer’s 2009 keynote Apple showed a short video featuring developers telling their story about developing for the iPhone as well as customers declaring their love for their application. It was a fascinating video to get developers thinking 1) I could be one of those developers selling millions of applications and 2) I would love to have people talking about how much they love my application. A little positive physiological warfare on the developer mindset.
The iPhone 3.0 feature list was somewhat rehashed from a few months ago, but with some new entries. Now you can rent and purchase movies from the iPhone. Audiobooks and TV shows available as well. Parental Controls were improved to include movies, TV shows and applications. Tethering is available for those vendors that support it. Still no reference to the availability of Flash. Auto fill now finally available to remember user names and passwords for web sites. A really cool Find My iPhone feature was announced. It’s a service available to MobileMe customers for a fee on a yearly basis. Using the service via MobileMe you can view the approximate location of your phone on a map. You can send it a message with a special audible alert regardless if it is in silent mode. What a great way to drive revenue!!! Details remain as to how long the alarm stays on. You can also send a remote wipe command to delete all data. In general with the 3.0 release there are lots of the minor features yet to be discovered. In an important confirmation from Apple we know that “free apps remain free”. Developers have to be careful about their pricing model out of the gate with Apple’s stance on this. Push notifications are finally ready to go with three types: text alerts, numerical badges for icon and custom alert sounds.
Lots of great benefits all around with the 3.0 release. Application developers will produce even more amazing applications with the 3.0 SDK. User satisfaction with the device will continue to sore. All that being said, there are many features you can find on a Blackberry but not on an iPhone.
Apple Previews OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard at WWDC
Windows 7 is just another Vista according to Apple. There’s a lot of truth to that. Microsoft can’t escape the registry, DLLs and other poor decision choices that plague the Windows OS. Contrast that to where Apple is with their operating system. Apple’s Leopard 10.5 is fantastic. It’s loaded with features and stable as can be. At Apple’s developer conference today, Apple provided more information on Snow Leopard, the next release of the operating system. The past few versions of OS X have been loaded with user features. With Snow Leopard we are likely to see less of that. Snow Leopard is about building upon Leopard to build a better Leopard. Snow Leopard will focus on refinements, new technologies and Exchange support. This OS is not a full-blown enhancement in many respects, but provides the right next steps in the evolution of the OS.
Refinements: Don’t expect any big changes in areas like the Finder however it will be rewritten in Cocoa for better performance. The Finder has a few enhancements with magnification control of icons and the ability to view documents or movies based on an icon. The existing Stacks feature handles large contents better by allowing you to scroll through the contents of Stacks. Clicking on a folder in a Stack view keeps you in the Stack view as opposed to opening the folder in the Finder. Very handy. Other upcoming changes will include faster cancellation of actions, put back from trash, custom search scope and other developer benefits to enhance the experience. Expose is being built in to the Dock to provide easy access to application windows. Dock Expose even retains its position when switching between applications. Copying text from PDFs has vastly improved by detecting the makeup of a document to allow for better selection techniques. Hand gestures on the track pad will be incorporated with next character prediction for some languages. Mail speed has improved in basic areas. The new QuickTime user interface on the player has greatly improved and looks more like playing a DVD. Safari 4, when used with Leopard Snow, has full history search based on the text of pages. That feature can be used with Spotlight. Really cool.
New Technologies (for techies): Snow Leopard will complete the effort of moving the OS to 64 bit. All of core system applications will finally be upgraded. New hardware has brought about the need to better address OS basics. Multi core processors are one of those areas that can be optimized especially with processors including more cores. Apple has created Grand Central Dispatch as a means to increase performance using multicore processors. This will be an important topic for developers of applications with high demands on the CPU. Not much response from the crowd as they try to figure out what this exactly means. On the video front Apple introduced OpenCL to replace OpenGL. Apple created it as an open standard and they have the buy in from all the top graphics manufacturers.
Exchange Support: Exchange support will now be built into Mail, iCal and Address Book. Mail uses auto discovery to find Exchange servers based on login credentials. Viewing Office attachments works with Mail’s quick view even if you don’t have MS Office installed. You can do things like accept calendar items in Mail and search the Exchange Global Address List in the Address Book. On the back end you have to have Exchange 2007. Apple points out you get Exchange connectivity without having to buy Outlook like on Windows. Ouch.
Snow Leopard’s pricing is set at $29 for users upgrading from Leopard. Getting users to Snow Leopard is an important, but not critical upgrade to provide support for the next generation of applications. Leopard Snow doesn’t offer many bells and whistles at this point and is unlikely to before the final release this September. The price point tells it all in terms of what the perceived value will be to users.
Apple Improves MacBook Laptop Line
With the current trend of new Apple customers purchasing laptops it’s no surprise that Apple has invested so much effort in reinvigorating their laptop family. The new 15” MacBook Pro is the continuation of the build out taking on some of the features found in the 17” MacBook Pro like a built in battery. The new battery provides an impressive seven hours of battery life. The new batteries have 3x longer recharge length compared to the previous version. Most users will go five years before the need to replace the battery. An SD card slot was finally added. Sometimes Apple is just late to the game and the lack of SD card was one of those areas. The MacBook Pro will sell for $300 less than the prior 15” at $1699. Some of the more expensive models include the NVIDIA GeForce 9400M and the GT. Users will have the ability to choose between faster graphics or longer battery life. The 13” MacBook was rebranded officially as a MacBook Pro. It now features improved battery life, up to eight GB of memory. The LED backlit keyboard is now standard and Firewire 800 is included. Only $1199 after the $199 price drop. The MacBook Air also received updates and significant price drops.
Apple clearly felt sales pressure from a weak economy as well as recent Microsoft attack ads to reduce pricing. Hardware is an evolutionary process and the current lineup of Apple laptops looks great. The new line is incredibly friendly in the environmental space. Businesses who “care about the environment” need to consider if running Windows on Apple hardware might make sense (without ever getting in to Mac OX).
Sunday, June 07, 2009
WWDC 2009 Predictions for the iPhone, OS 10.6 and Steve Jobs
Friday, May 29, 2009
Apple’s App Store Staff Causes Confusion
Saturday, May 09, 2009
There's An App For That
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Why is the iPhone keyboard so difficult to use?
Monday, March 30, 2009
Microsoft's Ad Campaign Highlights the "Real" Truth
While the commercial does a lot to generate conversation about the value prospect of each platform it doesn’t make a difference in consumer selection of a Mac or PC. To understand the debate we have to strip away the labels of “Mac” and “PC”. This is not about being cool or not being cool. Fortunately for Lauren and other PCers, computers don’t define coolness. Truth be told, as demonstrated by this new ad, is that when all is said and done people select computers based on their needs. Some needs are met by a PC as is the case with Lauren. The $999 MacBook simply doesn’t provide her with the screen size she wants for the price point she’s at. There’s nothing wrong with that. When Lauren decides to buy a PC she makes trade offs and for that matter she seems OK with that. You have to wonder if she understands the tradeoffs she’s making. Was she aware of Apple’s leading customer satisfaction scores, the amazing iLife software, the excellent quality hardware, access to Genius Bars and a stellar Operating System. These were the things that brought me to Apple (see my 2005 blog entry). Is a more educated consumer likely to prefer Apple?
Consumers are very price conscious today and it’s understandable why Microsoft would want to address their value add in this area. Lauren looks very happy with her purchase. Welcome to Vista Lauren! I’m sure you’ll enjoy it as much as much as all of the other Vista users who wish they could be back on Windows XP. I couldn’t resist…
Thursday, March 19, 2009
3.0 Features: Is the Best Yet To Come?
Next Generation iPhone Likely to Have Video Capture
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
New Breed of Applications On The Way
Here’s a glimpse of some of the new features available to the development community:
Push Notification: Apple has long been criticized for not allowing applications to run in the background. When you hit the Home key to access another application you’ve essentially closed the application you were working in. This was all done in the spirit of addressing performance issues caused by applications running on Smartphones in the “background” (lingo for not the application you’re currently using). According to Apple, based on their test of a 3rd party IM client tested on multiple non Apple devices, stand by time for those devices dropped by 80%. Apple’s battery life with 3G is already bad enough. The last thing Apple wants is for you to have 20 applications running in the background as your phone battery quickly fades away. The downside to having these applications not running in the background is that you’re unable to receive alerts or messages from the application. If you use a chat application and someone IMs you, you wouldn’t know it until you used the application. Apple’s solution is to provide a notification service so application vendors could notify Apple of application alerts. Apple in return would notify your device. Apple acknowledged today they “were late on this one”. They expected to have this available by the end of 2008, but it didn’t happen. Based on developer feedback they had to “completely rearchitect the server infrastructure to make it really scalable”. The jury is out on if Apple is doing the right thing here. I believe Apple is genuinely interested in providing the best experience possible and restricting background applications is, arguably, a wise choice. There are applications that are not alert or message based that still won’t be able to run in the background. There should be an option for users to allow this.
Peer to peer device connectivity: Developers can write iPhone and Touch applications that can interact with other devices over Bluetooth using built in auto discovery features. Developers can focus on writing their application while Apple handles the discovery, connectivity and state management of other devices. Ideal for games, document sharing, etc…
Accessories: The iPhone and Touch will be able to communicate with devices external to itself. At the media event today, there were examples of how this might be used. In one case, an iPhones could control an external speaker via a phone based equalizer and a blood pressure device provided info to the iPhone via an application, Who knows…heart monitors could be next. Very cool.
Maps: Two areas of interest here. Applications can finally embed maps in to their applications. In the past, Maps had to load up separately. There was a real disconnect between the mapping and the application. Apple is also opening up the “core location” ability for turn by turn direction applications. This explains why we’ve not seen these applications to date through the App Store. Turn by turn vendors will use their own maps due to license restrictions with Google maps.
App Store Enhancements: While of little interest to most users, Apple will provide applications with more flexibility for intra application revenue streams. For example, you could have a game you purchase with five levels. If you want to purchase more you can buy them within the application instead of an additional application. Another example, perhaps you wanted an Ebook. Today, you would need to download a new application for each book. With the new App Purchase APIs, a single application would allow purchases from within the application. Everything would connect to the App Store to leverage Apple’s infrastructure for downloading, credit card processing, etc. Not sexy to the end user, but will improve certain experiences with applications.
The SDK will bring a next generation of applications that will impress. We’re on the verge of a new breed of applications we’ve yet to see.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Behind the Latest iPhone Statistics
Live Updates from the iPhone 3.0 Press Conference
Monday, March 16, 2009
On the Copy and Paste Bandwagon?
Friday, March 13, 2009
Sirius XM iPhone Player (Almost) Ready
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
A Shuffle Forward and Back
Tuesday, March 03, 2009
Product Announcements from Behind the Curtain
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Ballmer Comes Out In The Open
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Steve Jobs Taking Medical Leave
Friday, January 09, 2009
Download Disaster for Microsoft
Tuesday, January 06, 2009
MacWorld 2009 Thoughts and Observations
Apple product announcements were in ample supply during this year's MacWorld despite an ill Steve Jobs. A recent public announcement from Jobs clarified that despite his heath he is still control of Apple. That’s good news after watching Phil Schiller provide the MacWorld keynote. Phil is Apple's senior Vice President of Worldwide Product Marketing and has moved up from Steve's perennial sidekick to take the lead presenter position. Here are a few of my thoughts related to today’s keynote.
Phil Schiller’s Keynote: Phil is not ready for the primetime keynote spot. His performance was rookie like. He was lucky he could finish sentences with the proper words. He was awkwardly nervous for a senior executive. During his hour plus presentation he never really connected with the audience. His timing was off and his performance was disjointed. Phil’s excitement level about his own products seemed rehearsed and ingenuous. In contrast, when Jobs said some technology was “really cool” you believed him. I don’t know Phil well and he may be a great marketer, but he clearly isn’t in to the products at the same level as Jobs. Phil should consider himself lucky for making it through the entire presentation without any major missteps.
Apple Innovation: Apple’s level of innovation is astounding. The software and hardware products they develop are second to none. Can you imagine what types of products sit behind Apple’s Research and Development walls? It must be a treasure trove. While today’s announcements were not earth shattering they demonstrate Apple’s proficiency in innovation.
iLife 09: The already excellent iLife product line continues to improve with the newly announced iLife 09. iPhoto’s new face recognition software will consolidate all pictures of the same person in one collection. We’ll need to see how effective this is, but it is certainly ground breaking. Listening carefully to Phil it sounds like Apple purchased the technology. This isn’t something you hear often from Apple and I wonder if this was a slip. iMovie looks fantastic and a significant upgrade from previous versions. Garageband now has innovative music lesson capability allowing the user to learn how to play guitar or piano from onscreen instructors. Seems like a bit of a novelty. What became obviously clear during the presentation was that iLife announcements require their own day in the spotlight. There are too many features and applications to properly squeeze in to a twenty minute time slot.
Randy Ubillos - Chief Architect for Video: The real stand out from this year’s keynote was the iMovie demo by Randy Ubillos. He delivered a spot on and passionate demo. He should have delivered the entire keynote. He embodies the Jobs spirit. Get those marketing guys out of the way!
iWork 09: Who uses this? I don’t know any Mac user with iWork, but I suspect they’re out there. iWork continues to mature in all areas. The future of Microsoft’s Office on Mac is limited and it’s important iWork is available to take its place. These enhancements are welcomed and necessary Highlights of new features include Keynote’s iPhone remote feature and Number’s table categories and the ability to take complex Excel features such as functions and simply them.
Iwork.com Beta: iWork 09 has a document sharing feature that allows documents to be published to Apple’s web site. Those allowed to view the document have access to content reviewer features and download capabilities. It’s interesting to see Apple move in this direction, but even more interesting to see it done in the form of a public beta. It would be nice to have version history. The service will eventually be fee based, but is free during the beta. Another thing I thought was interesting was Phil’s direct request to Apple users for their feedback. I’ve never heard Microsoft ask users for their feedback from a “world stage”.
Mac Book Pro 17”: Eight hour battery life. Enough said!
No news on upgraded Mac Minis.