Archive | March, 2009
An iPhone 3.0 Scorecard: My Wishes, Apple’s Plans
First, an apology. The gods of technology usually treat me pretty well, but they chose this morning to punish me, presumably for some tech-related crime I’d committed (possibly insufficient backing up). My liveblogging failed to come off as planned, and if you showed up and were disappointed, I’m sorry (and thanks to Ed Oswald for helping to deal with the situation) .
Eventually, I realized that Twitter on my iPhone could serve as a respectable alternative mode of communication. And I guess it’s appropriate that I used my iPhone to relay information about the next generation of iPhone software.
The good news? Well, actually, the whole darn event was good stuff other than my technical woes: iPhone 3.0 looks really, really promising. I’ll have a lot more to say about it in the coming hours, days, weeks, and months, but for now, I wanted to recap my wish list from a few hours ago and see how Apple did at addressing my hopes, dreams, and ambitions.
Here’s what I was wishing for…and whether it came up in today’s announcements.
1) More TLC for iPhone developers. Like clearer policies, fast-tracking through the approval process, and measures that will give companies incentive to build more ambitious apps that are worth more than $2.99. [How'd Apple do? It didn't do any of this stuff, specifically, but it introduced numerous things that should please iPhone software creators: subscription plans in the iPhone App Store, the ability to embed maps, the ability to talk to hardware, the ability to support cut and paste...and it said that it wants to work really hard to make getting apps distributed fast and easy. Overall, good news.]
2) Tools for managing a ton of apps. Like the ability to name groups of icons (Games, Communications, Productivity) and jump between them directly rather than having to side-swipe until you get to the page you want. You know, sort of what like you could do on a PalmPilot a decade ago. [How'd Apple do? It didn't say anything about adding groups. But it did introduce system-wide search, including for apps, in the form of Spotlight, which should help a lot.]
3) Similarly, some sort of shortcut feature. How about a gesture that pulls up a dock of apps you’ve selected without making you go back to the home screen? [How'd Apple do? Didn't do this, as far as we know.]
4) More speed. For all the wonderful fluidity and responsiveness of most of the iPhone experience, the OS still grinds to a halt in certain circumstances, especially when you open some apps, such as SMS. [How'd Apple do? In response to a question from the audience, we heard that 3.0 will have a variety of performance-related tweaks.]
5) More reliability. Safari still closes without warning on my iPhone from time to time. And the whole darn OS has been known to reboot itself, like a tiny Blue Screen of Death. [How'd Apple do? No news came up on this front, but I remain hopeful...]
6) Task synching. Pretty please? [How'd Apple do? Um, what if I asked again: pretty please with sugar on it?]
7) Notes synching. With a more powerful and straightforward notes app (I’d love to kill the lined yellow paper interface and funky font). [How'd Apple do? Done! Maybe not the font part, but Notes now allows synching, has cut and paste, and works in landscape mode.]
8) The notification service that Apple promised last June. So apps such as instant messengers have some ability to work in the background. I’d love something far closer to true multitasking if Apple could figure out how to do it without making the phone less reliable, but I’ll take what I can get. [How'd Apple do? Done! Notifications should be a huge boon. We saw a demo of the Meebo universal IM service with IMs working even when you weren't in the app, and it looked terrific.]
9) An option that lets you choose a delay before the phone’s auto-lock feature kicks in. So I don’t have to do the slide-and-unlock gesture every time I turn the phone on. [How'd Apple do? This didn't come up, but it's minor enough that I suppose it could be one of the 100 new features that went unmentioned, of which there were presumably quite a few.]
10) The ability for third-party apps to get at file attachments from e-mail. So it’s easier to use productivity apps such as the spreadsheet in QuckOffice’s Mobilefiles Pro. [How'd Apple do? This wasn't mentioned specifically, but there are apparently some enhancements relating to e-mail/third-party app integration.]
11) Tethering. It’s been four months since AT&T told us it was coming soon; the clock is starting to run out on “soon.” [How'd Apple do? iPhone 3.0 has tethering support, but carriers, including AT&T, will need to decide when and how to support it. Wonder if this means we won't see it until the new software shows up this summer?]
12) Input-output stuff that would permit more iPhone-specific hardware accessories. I want a Think Outside keyboard for my iPhone, darn it! [How'd Apple do? It added support for peripherals via the dock connector and Bluetooth. But not, as far as I can tell, for keyboards, which would require software glue to communicate with applications that involve alphanumeric input. Dang.]
13) iLife for the iPhone. Or at least the start of an iLife-like suite of creativity apps that take advantage of the phone’s hardware capabilities. I’d like to see a little photo editor, video capture and editing, and audio recording, for instance. [How'd Apple do? No news on this front.]
14) Caching in Safari. So it doesn’t want to reload pages it loaded minutes ago all over again. [How'd Apple do? No news on this front.]
15) Cut and paste. Not because I need them all that much–I think there have only been a couple of instances when I really, really felt their absence. But I’ll be glad when we can all stop wasting brain cells talking about the fact the iPhone doesn’t have them. [How'd Apple do? Done! And done well, judging from the demo.]
That’s not a bad score overall. More encouraging still, Apple added a ton of stuff I wasn’t expecting. More thoughts about all of it soon.
HTC Has Three Android Phones on Tap for 2009
17. March 2009
Development on the Android platform is not slowing down by any means for Taiwanese phone manufacturer HTC. As well as releasing the second generation model of the T-Mobile G1 later this year, at least two other Android-based phones are scheduled for a 2009 release.
The G2 will go on sale first in April in Europe through Vodafone. The other two models do not apparently have a firm release date. In any case, HTC’s disclosure that it has at least three phones in the pipeline confirm rumors that the company was moving full speed ahead with Android.
Sorry, No Live Coverage :( But here’s the next best thing….
17. March 2009
Bad news Technologizer fans — Harry has just pinged me and said that we’ll not be able to bring you liveblog coverage.
We’re working on some semi-live reporting so don’t go anywhere, see below. Still ask your questions in the comments!
Sorry for the incovenience!
UPDATE: Were Live(ish) – http://www.technologizer.com/iphone3
5Words for March 17th, 2009
17. March 2009
Happy Saint Paddy’s day, everybody!
Sneak peek: Dell’s Adamo notebook.
Macworld’s iPhone 3.0 wish list.
Three More HTC Android phones.
Comcast passwords exposed on Web.
Super-fast game download service.
Boxee does an iPhone remote control.
Rough February for Macs, iPods.
Fifteen Things I’d Like Apple to Tell Us About the iPhone Today
17. March 2009
I’ve pretty much given up making Apple predictions these days, but I’m allowed to hope for specific things, right? And divvying up all possible Apple announcements into “could happen” and “seems unlikely to happen” isn’t the same thing as making predictions, is it?
So here’s my wish list as of a few hours before I liveblog Apple’s iPhone 3.0 event. It’s highly personal, but focused on stuff that seems plausible. Which, I repeat, is not the same thing as predicting that any of this will happen.
Alltop Gets Personal With MyAlltop
17. March 2009
At South by Southwest Interactive, I checked in with Guy Kawasaki, the one-time Mac evangelist, longtime entrepreneur/author, Twitter dynamo, and founder of Alltop, a news and information site built on 31,000 hand-picked RSS feeds on topics of all sorts. Today, the site launched MyAlltop, a new feature that lets you build a custom page with your favorite feeds.
It’s a welcome addition, since Alltop, while cool, has also been a little overwhelming. Guy describes it as an online magazine rack, which makes sense, but with it’s so vast and jam-packed that it reminds me of one of those New York newsstands that’s so dense with magazines that it’s simultaneously exciting and intimidating.
You know, one like this (photo borrowed from The New York Review of Magazines):
With MyAlltop, you start by rummaging through Alltop’s topic pages. But every feed on every page now has a plus sign: Click it, and that feed gets added to your My Alltop page. Which looks just like any other Alltop page, except every feed is one you picked, and you can order them on the page to your liking:
I also like the fact that MyAlltop pages are public–there’s actually no way to hide them–so you can share a link to yours to show what you’re reading. Here, for instance, is the Technologizer tech-news page I’m in the process of constructing. (It’s still a work in progress.)
Alltop has always been entertaining to burrow through; MyAlltop makes it a lot more personal, and more useful if your goal is to dive in, see what’s new in your favorite feeds, then dive out. It’s not a replacement for your current RSS reader–in fact, it’s not really an RSS reader at all, since you select from Alltop’s list of feeds rather than plugging in any URL you please. But it’s fun, fast, and very, very simple to use. If you check it out, let me know what you think.
Tuesday Morning: Live Coverage of Apple’s iPhone 3.0 Event
16. March 2009
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Just a quick reminder: Twelve hours from now, at 10am PT, I’ll be sitting in the audience at Apple headquarters for the event at which the company will tell us at least something about what’s next for the iPhone. And I’ll liveblog it all as it happens at www.technologizer.com/iphone3. Please consider this your personal invitation to join me and chime in with comments and questions. See you then, I hope!
Is The Web The Solution for America’s Troubled Newspaper Industry?
16. March 2009
With the sudden news that the country is about to lose another high-circulation paper, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, it is becoming increasingly clear that in an attempt to stay relevant, these companies are betting on the web for their salvation.
The P-I will move to a online only source a la the Huffington Post, but it will come at a high cost: the 165-person newsroom would likely shrink to less than 20. In addition, its likely that much of the reporting would be outsourced.
What’s worse, the closure of the P-I, and the earlier shuttering of the Rocky Mountain News, could threaten other papers. Both operated what are called “joint operating agreements,” where competing papers sign agreements to pool operating costs. The Seattle Times and The Denver Post were the other halves of each respective agreement.
Neither were doing well beforehand, and now are faced to pony up for their expenses on their own.
Besides the P-I, other papers are going online. The Christian Science Monitor, which has published in print for 100 years, will go online only in the spring. But some are still trying to stick it out.
Even More on That iPod Shuffle Remote Control
16. March 2009
Over at PCMag.com, Mark Hachman has a good piece on the controversial new earbud-embedded remote control for Apple’s new iPod Shuffle. Folks have theorized that Apple will demand royalties on third-party headphones that incorporate remote controls, and that it might be encrypting commands send from the remote to the Shuffle to prevent unauthorized clones. And maybe even that it was planning to spread such a design to other iPods.
Hachman’s piece is based largely on an interview with a Monster Cable exec; that company plans to make lots of Shuffle-compatible headphones, and says that the commands aren’t encrypted and that it thinks that manufacturers could make compatible headphones without Apple’s blessing. On the other hand, the remote functionality apparently does fall under Apple’s “Made for iPod” logo program, which involves paying a fee to Apple if a company chooses to participate.
Bottom line: It looks like the remote may be a new revenue stream for Apple, but that it isn’t a nefarious plot to monopolize the iPod headphone market. Which doesn’t mean that the Shuffle’s design won’t continue to be controversial. I seem to be one of relatively few reviewers who was sort of won over by it–not that I decided it makes sense for everybody–and I remain very curious whether consumers will end up giving it a thumbs up. (The most obvious way to tell that will be if the design continues on to the fourth-generation Shuffle, whenever that shows up…)
Calls Increase for PS3 Price Cut
16. March 2009
The story, linked in Harry’s 5Words, is getting old. Sony’s attempts to hush the calls for a Playstation 3 price cut resemble a substitute teacher trying to calm the classroom — a momentary lull that slowly grows into even greater cacophony.
The latest round began earlier this month, when Electronic Arts Redwood Shores manager Glen Schofield said he hoped Sony could figure out how to reconcile the PS3′s high price tag with the current economic climate. Last week, Media Molecule founder Alex Evans — whose company developed LittleBigPlanet — expressed to Gamasutra that the console’s price should go down soon. Analysts have added to the chatter as well, and today, Bloomberg writes that Sony is facing pressure from publishers.
“Sony obviously still has a ways to go with their pricing,” said Peter Moore, the head of EA Sports. Yves Guillemot, CEO of Ubisoft Entertainment SA, said game makers stand to gain any time a console slashes its price.
But Sony is in a bind now, because its console is still too expensive to manufacture. In October, market researcher iSuppli cracked open the Playstation 3 and analyzed its innards. The total cost was down 30 percent from the first-generation, to $448.73, but that still means Sony is losing money on every $399 console it sells. A price drop doesn’t seem wise after the company posted its first annual loss in 14 years.
Appropriately, Sony’s senior marketing VP Peter Dille fired back at critics. “Everybody in the development community would love for the PS3 to be free, so they could just sell razor blades,” he said, adding that the company has to worry about profits as well as the console’s install base.
I’ve read elsewhere that if Sony announces a price cut, it’ll happen at the end of March, after the company closes its financial year. My first thought was “bad call,” as most of this season’s major releases — Street Fighter IV, Resident Evil 5 and the PS3-exclusive Killzone 2 — have come and gone. On the other hand, maybe a price cut is the right prescription as the industry braces for a momentary lull. That way, Sony will be good and ready for the summer and holiday season.
Just Like Every Other Cloud, Azure Was Sure to Crash at Some Point.
16. March 2009
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Let’s think of it as a graduation of sorts for cloud services: you haven’t made it until you’ve experienced at least one major crash. Microsoft’s time was this weekend, apparently. For 22 hours from 10:30pm Pacific on Friday to about 8:30pm PDT Saturday, Windows Azure was unavailable. It is not immediately clear exactly what caused it to go down.
We’ll likely not know until after Mix 09, happening this week in Las Vegas. That’s because Azure has a large presence at the event, and Redmond probably doesn’t want to deal with outage questions while they’re trying to talk it up. But you gotta think journos and bloggers are going to be peppering representatives with questions on what exactly happened…
What the Heck is an Aperture?
16. March 2009
[A NOTE FROM HARRY: Digital Media Central guest posts continue with a contribution from Ree Drummond, better known as Pioneer Woman. This digital photography post is republished from her site, and it's part one of a series on apertures. Here are parts two, three, and four over on Ree's site.]
Photography is based on light. Did you know that?
As a matter of fact, “Photos” is the Greek word for “Light.” And I happen to know that only because I’m a homeschooling freak of nature and I teach my children Greek and Latin. When I feel like it.
Anyway, light is everything in photography, and how much (or how little) light enters your camera determines what your ultimate photo will look like.
Are you with me so far?
Apple Adds DRM to Shuffle Headphones?!?
16. March 2009
([UPDATE:] This post was written with the information Technologizer had at the time. Since then, we’ve learned a bit more. Please reference this new post from Harry.)
The “Apple tax” has been somewhat of a tongue-in-cheek joke in the tech world for a long time: where the consumer pays a higher price for a product simply because it bears the Apple logo.
Well, that concept may be coming to Shuffle headphones as well. Amid giving the Shuffle its first-ever “no” recommendation for an iPod/iPhone product, Apple enthusiast site iLounge also dropped a bombshell: Shuffle headphones are essentially DRM protected.
iLounge claims that the headphones add some type of ”authentication chip,” which means that standard headphones will not work with the device. Obviously they wouldn’t, since all the navigation is done via the iPhone-like pushbutton device on the right earbud wire.
But if third-party headphones add playback controls but don’t have this chip, they won’t work either. That means no volume, no voiceover, and no navigation. Nada. You’re S.O.L. To make them work, iLounge says a $20-30 to-be-manufactured adapter is needed, or approved headphones, which so far are no cheaper than $49.
Seeing on my end how easily those headphones short circuit at the pushhbutton unit causing them to malfuction on my iPhone, this should be something Apple users should be concerned with. If they bring this technology to other devices, God knows owning an iPod will become more expensive.
I’ve played with the Shuffle. And frankly, my experience was nothing like Harry’s, and more like iLounge’s. I struggled to get the thing to move from track to track–instead i was nearly blowing out my eardrums cause the volume was getting louder. Count me in as one of those who prefer their controls on the device.
I was watching others in the Apple store with me. Quite a few were having trouble with it. I really do see this Shuffle as the iPod line’s version of the Cube–kinda cool idea, but just not necessary.
US Mobile Internet Usage Accelerating
16. March 2009
The number of mobile device users accessing the Internet in the US at least once a month has risen 71 percent in the last year, with a total audience of nearly 63.2 million, comScore reports. Weekly and daily usage is also up 87 and 107 percent to 19.3 and 22.4 million respectively.
No doubt, the rise of the iPhone which in turn spurred competitors to better their own mobile Internet offerings has helped accelerate mobile Internet usage. The mobile web today is ten times better — and more usable — that what has been offered in the past.
What are people looking at? Increasingly its their social networking site or blog, as that showed a 427 percent year over year increase to 9.3 million daily unique users. General news and information was checked by 22.3 million daily, and entertainment news was also popular, seen by 5.5 million daily.
So let’s do a mini-survey of Technologizer users. How often are you using the mobile web? What are the three most common types of things you’re looking at?
5Words for March 16th, 2009
16. March 2009
Greetings from South by Southwest:
iPod Shuffle’s authentication chip found.
Boxee adds iPhone remote software.
Kevin Rose spreads iPhone rumors.
New Conficker due April first.
Dear jurors: Please don’t Twitter.
Pictures of Lenovo’s skinny netbook.
What I Know About Twitter
15. March 2009
[NOTE: Here's a post that first appeared in our free T-Week newsletter, which you can subscribe to here.]
I don’t claim to be a Twitter genius. (Even though I was flattered when Jason Hiner of TechRepublic recently ranked me #1 among tech Tweeters.) And I’m pretty sure I’m not addicted to Twitter. (Although there’s no social network I enjoy more or spend more time fooling around with.)
After spending a couple of years Tweeting, however, I do feel like I’ve learned a fair amount about how to have fun with it–especially over the past eight months or so, during which it’s become core to my daily online regimen. Whether you think of Twitter as a low-maintenance Facebook alternative or a form of micro-blogging or a hybrid of chat room and party line or something else–and me, I think it’s unique–it isn’t always instantly obvious how to get the most out of it. So herewith, a few Twitter tips. They’re not gospel–no two people use Twitter exactly the same way–but they work for me. (If you’re a total Twitter beginner, start by reading this good guide to the service’s nuts and bolts.)
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17. March 2009
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