Wordpress for iPhone
Wordpress released a app for blogging from the iphone. Works pretty well. Wish my iPod touch supported a Bluetooth keyboard.
Apple’s “Future Product Transition” is it OS X Everywhere?
I pulled this interesting tidbit this morning from CNN Money.
Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO, said on a conference call with analysts that the company’s profit margins will be pressured in part by a “future product transition” that he said he was not at liberty to discuss at the present time.
Apple says it’s profit margins may shrink to 30% because of this “future product transition”. What product has the capability to do something like this? It can not be the iPhone becoming open to all carriers, this would only make the phone more available and push more units for them. Over the years though we have seen more and more profits come from outside the computer side of Apple from iTunes, iPods, and iPhones. The profits are good from the “Mac” side of the house, but it’s never been as great and the products that have been replacing and growing revenues for Apple.
What I think my happen next year is that Apple will release OS X for PC’s next year. This may happen with a “Reference Design” which means Apple will publish an extensive list of supported vendors so computer makers can build with compatible hardware. Imagine Dell finally being able to ship computers with OS X installed. I would not be surprised that they would highly push that over Linux any day, and I believe that Dell has in the past publicly stated they would love to be able to ship Dells with OS X as the OS.
As a tortured soul who’s extended family use Windows PC’s my support nightmare could finally vanish, if I could put OS X on their stinking Dells. I for one welcome our new OS X overlords should they come.
Remote Control Applet Rocks
I have always disliked the Apple remote for the Apple TV and for Front Row. It’s simple, but sometimes you just want more. The new remote app that you can install on your iPhone/Touch is a godsend and is pretty cool. From your device you can start off a song, tell it to play on your Mac and then when you move into the kitchen to cook dinner you tell it to play the song over the the AppleTV! It’s completely seamless and you can move around the house putting different music on different devices. So imagine having several Airtunes and putting music in different places. Galleries will love this to set moods in different areas with different art.
So far I’ve used it to serenade my wife as a surprise before I told her about the feature.
Apple’s iPhone Activation Failure
As a engineer who works in the IT field I’d like to tell Apple I would love to be the guy that puts their online services division back in order. I for one hate to say someone needs to lose their job, but it’s painfully obvious someone has dropped the ball here.
Not only have they failed, they did in the most spectacular fashion possible. Several times.
First is the me.com mess. If you’re going to make a wide ranging change to a system, you do not launch it a few days before the flagship product that uses it.
Second Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony have figured out that global product launches can be a pain. In their cases it’s a few million products. Some numbers have put the launch at around 5 to 6 million phones. Do your engineers know what stress testing is?
iTunes Store is a mess. Some of it is clearly partitioned since I have not seen a negative impact for a few services. iPod software purchases should of been enabled days ago which would of given the store a run for it’s money. Any problems would have been identified and fixed prior to the more stressful iPhone launch.
PR or lack of any meaningful communication is just a slap in the face to customers. AT&T blames Apple for the problem, Apple is silent. I’ll be fair in saying that AT&T is not a leader in building redundant capacity into their systems so it could entirely be their fault this has happened. However, the meltdown of the iTunes store shows me that it’s most likely an Apple problem. Acting like a kid who keeps his mouth shut in order to avoid getting into trouble is not very mature for a company or a kid. Own up to your problems is the first step to regaining consumer trust.
.Me Backlash?
Starting to see some people who would rather use their .mac email addresses rather than the new .me. I have to agree with a lot of people who say .me is just a lame email address. Now I actually use a Gmail account because I think the .mac service is much too expensive for what you get and it’s not subscription. I’m also a Linux user and emailing my friends who use Linux from a .mac address is kinda like spitting in their faces a bit too. Gmail was the neutral ground.
Still .me will probably only be a success for the younger crowd who gravitate towards social services. Adults and professionals will most likely gravitate towards or stick with .mac. For those complaining I think lame was the nicest term I’ve seen lately when describing having to use the .me address. The question still remains if new users can still make use of .mac or will Apple also in the future stop emails going to .mac addresses. I would hope the latter does not happen because it will push more users towards Gmail.
Internet All You Can Eat No More
Time Warner, Comcast, and AT&T are now planning on placing caps from 40G to 250G a month on Internet usage. They all claim that it’s impossible to keep up with the torrenters who are monopolizing the available bandwidth on the local networks and the interconnections on the internet itself. While I do not agree with their assessment that caps are the answer (QOS policies would of ensured joe netuser’s experience for free) and at the same time alleviate the need to constantly upgrade their networks to beat demand.
The United States has been the breeding ground of almost all of the most popular reasons people are online. Youtube, Google, MSN, MySpace, and a plethora of other websites sprung up because of this all you can eat strategy. My fear is that we will begin to see the end of an era of home grown internet dominance and more foreign companies will begin to pop up. Companies like Mozy are going to have a hard time serving the consumer markets if they would cause a user to use up their allotment of bandwidth.
I will agree that the all you can eat model was a recipie for failure because ISP’s refused to use the free QOS that most routers and firewalls currently employ. They started out saying Google should pay us to access our customers and frankly gave up once they realized that Google has a lobby in the government. These same companies now have figured out they can do it to the people who will be ignored if they cry out, and frankly we probably do have other things that are more important. However this stands to stifle innovation in the market and in the cases of IPTV will kill any notion that you can get around your Cable provider’s inflated rental rates and vendor dependent boxes. I love my Tivo, I love my Apple TV, and I love using Unbox and iTunes for rentals. I find it unfair to these companies because those same high bandwidth users also are proably their biggest renters.
However, torrenters will largely be to blame in my eyes because they’ve continued to download at horrendous rates 24/7 and they’ve pushed the telco’s into looking for options. Once they realized that they can make money if they put up caps and keep the competition at bay, it was a done deal.
Good Going Guys
Oh, same goes for you Newsgroup users too.
Twitter Live feed (Audio) of WWDC Keynote
http://www.twitlive.tv/
Problems with WoW and 10.5.3
If you have not upgraded to 10.5.3 and play wow, I suggest waiting for fixes. The update has been to blame for severe FPS issues with graphics cards in World of Warcraft.
Here’s the thread on it on the wow Mac support forum.
iTablet Confirmed by Moscone Center Images??
I would say 90% chance of a iTablet Mac being released if these photos have anything to say. Zoom in on the Macbook Air on the wall and what’s in front of it? That’s not a iPhone folks it’s too big. At first I said “Cool a black Apple TV”. Then I zoomed in on it and noticed the dimensions were completely off even for a blown up iPhone.
I would hope there’d be some sort of way for the iPhone to work inside the iTablet, but if they’re separate that’s cool too.
Super iPhone - Smackdown to eepc’s
I’ve just had an epiphany! What better use for the ATOM processor than a larger version of the iPhone that the iPhone docks into. The new iPhone could boast a 32-64G SSD itself and Apple sells a tablet version iTablet that like the mockups for a Tablet Mac docking into an iMac, it’s a iPhone docking into a larger Tablet mac.
If there was a succubus for Mac breathing nerds this would be it.
Imagine it would provide more robust processor power, battery life, expansion options, graphics for when you need a little more computing and then the phone goes back on the hip as your portable mule for information and other digital goodness.
Thought of it first Steve!
While I do not seriously think we’ll see this next week. I can imagine no other thing that would ever top that. It would also give the global smack down to any “iPhone Killers” out there. They’d never have the know how and foresight to come up with something like this.