Archive | January, 2011
Apple’s iPhone 4 Screw Job
Apple has been notoriously antagonistic towards do-it-yourselfers, preferring their customers have their equipment serviced through the company’s official channels. The Cupertino company may have found another way to foil these handy folks: using rare, hard-to-find screws.
Called “pentabular” screws, their pattern looks similar to a Torx screw, yet different. The best way to describe it probably is flower-shaped. Drivers for these screws aren’t readily available–making it more difficult to perform DIY repairs.
Continue reading this story…
More on Google’s Puzzling Decision to Oust Kongregate from the Android Market
20. January 2011
Kongregate Arcade’s rejection from the Android Market just got more interesting now that Google has explained itself.
Earlier this week, Flash gaming portal Kongregate released an Android app that’s basically an extension of the full website. Kongregate Arcade provided recommendations and user reviews for more than 300 phone-friendly Flash games, along with badges for in-game achievements.
It also allowed users to cache Flash games for offline play. And that, apparently, is what upset Google enough to remove the app. (You can still get it from Kongregate’s website.) The Android Market does not allow developers to distribute their own app stores, and offline caching led Google to view Kongregate Arcade as a self-contained app storefront.
But in explaining its logic to GigaOM, Google has exposed both a double standard for video games and an instance where Apple, oddly enough, is more liberal.
Google Voice Number Portability is on Its Way
20. January 2011
Engadget’s Ross Miller notes that Google is testing the ability to port your existing, old-school phone number and make it a Google Voice number. Which I’d like to do. But it’s a little confusing, since Google Voice is not a replacement for standard phone numbers but a complement to them. If you’re under contract to a wireless carrier and port the number in question to Google Voice, you’d terminate the contract and pay ugly fees–and wouldn’t have a real-world phone number anymore.
What I want to do is make my current AT&T number into a Google Voice number–but then I’d need a new AT&T number which people who called my Google Voice number would reach me at.
I wonder if AT&T would give me a new number if I asked?
The $35 Tablet: Toast?
20. January 2011
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India’s Economic Times has an ominous report on the country’s $35 Android tablet, which at one point was supposed to ship by January 15.
According to the report, there’s been a misunderstanding between the vendor and the Indian government over a bank guarantee. India’s financial rules require the guarantee — reportedly $13 million — in case the vendor doesn’t come through with the project.
Not surprisingly, that was a problem given that the components alone in each $35 tablet cost more than its selling price. One government source told the Economic Times that each tablet cost the vendor roughly $125 in parts. That’s a long way from the $35 manufacturing cost India was touting last year, and even further from the $20 that the government hoped to charge students after a subsidy.
To me, the problems seemed obvious all along. Even if the manufacturing costs were close to $35 per tablet, India’s plan to make the product profitable for vendors was a long shot, banking on sales to other countries at higher prices to offset the low cost in India. And if it’s not dirt cheap, it’s just another mediocre budget tablet.
India isn’t giving up yet. The government will issue a new tender and hopes to have the matter “sorted out in a few weeks,” according to a senior official, who also said that “The Sun will rise in 2011.” India could be looking to source components from suppliers in Taiwan and Korea, but again, it’s going to be tough, if not impossible, to hit the desired price point. Gartner analyst Vishal Bhatnagar told the Economic Times that $35 won’t even cover the cost of a screen and a microprocessor.
Jawbone’s New Era of Bluetooth Headsets
20. January 2011
Almost exactly one year after releasing the stylish Jawbone Icon, Bluetooth headset maker Aliph is back with the Jawbone Era, a new $129 model that’s meant as a higher-end complement to the $99 Icon, which remains on the market. It continues to address my own long-standing gripe about all headsets–I can never remember how to use the darn things–by being the first model I’ve seen that you can operate without using any buttons other than the on/off switch.
Aliph VP Travis Bogard provided me with an Era for review and told me that the headset was also designed for an, um, era in which relatively few people choose to use a Bluetooth headset to make traditional calls, but more and more folks are doing more and more audio-related things with their smartphones–from using Skype to listening to Pandora and podcasts.
Tippr Rains on LivingSocial’s Amazon Parade
20. January 2011
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Jealous much? LivingSocial competitor Tippr’s CEO Martin Tobias posts in his personal blog that he’s been notified of a flaw in how LivingSocial’s shopping cart does “quantity validation.” Why is this important? Amazon specifically said cards sold through the site were limited to one per customer. The exploit allows for a workaround to this, Tobias claims.
Taking Stock of Apple
19. January 2011
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The news that Steve Jobs will take another medical leave inspired scads of Apple-history timelines. This one by Marketplace’s Matt Berger, which plots major Apple product rollouts alongside the company’s stock price over the past thirty years, is one of the best.
Facebook Wants to Be on Your Dumbphone, Too
19. January 2011
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While Facebook has definitely been able to expand its reach through its smartphone apps, there is still a signficant portion–a majority, actually–of mobile phone users who do not own a smartphone, or maybe even want one. The social networking giant seems determined to put itself in front of those consumers as well.
In collaboration with Snaptu, a company that specializes in developing stripped down apps for use on so-called “dumb phones,” Facebook has launched an app which will work on about 2,500 devices from a range of manufacturers including Nokia, Sony Ericsson, and LG. It aims to provide a similar experience to that of its fancier smartphone counterpart.
It appears that the focus (at least initially) is to expand mobile usage of the site into developing markets. Facebook has struck deals with several carriers across Asia, Europe, and the Dominican Republic to offer use of the app for 90 days without any data charges.
Facebook plans to offer the application to other carriers worldwide over the next several months, it says. The offering is much like “Zero,” its free-to-use low bandwidth website that the company launched last year.
One caveat–if you are downloading Snaptu in an attempt to get Facebook, unless you’re on a launch carrier it will not work (whether you pay for the data charges or not). It’s not clear when this restriction is set to be lifted. Snaptu still has its own unofficial app, which according to TechCrunch is similar to the official one.
iDOS for iPad: It’s Back! [Update: Gone Again]
19. January 2011
(Update: It’s gone again.)
For a few glorious hours last October, iPhone and iPad owners could turn their devices into fully-functioning DOS emulators with iDOS, a $1 app. It was, of course, too good to be true, and Apple quickly removed the program.
Surprisingly, iDOS is back in the App Store, possibly for good, and now it’s free. The only major concession is the removal of file transfers through iTunes, which allowed users to load and install pretty much anything — even Windows 3.0.
But as TouchArcade points out, you can work around this roadblock by downloading iPhone Explorer on your PC and dropping files into the “/Apps/iDOS/documents” directory, which becomes the C: drive in iDOS. Hooray nostalgia!
Netbooks: Not Dead Yet!
19. January 2011
Yesterday, a spate of stores reported that an Acer sales executive had predicted the slow death of netbooks as tablets take off. Some took the news as an opportunity to tap-dance on the netbook’s grave. But now Acer is saying that it was all a big misunderstanding.
Microsoft Finds Source of Heavy Data Usage in Windows Phone 7
19. January 2011
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Remember that mysterious Windows Phone 7 phantom data problem we reported on, which several of you seemed very skeptical about? Well, Microsoft has confirmed that it was indeed happening due to an apparent issue with a third party application. It won’t name names, but here’s what they had to say to Seattlepi.com’s Microsoft Blog:
We have determined that a third-party solution commonly accessed from Windows Phones is configured in a manner that potentially causes larger than expected data downloads. We are in contact with the third party to assist them in making the necessary fixes, and are also pursuing potential workarounds to address the configuration issue in case those are needed.
The company said only a “low single digit” percentage of WP7 users were affected, and that it believed the third-party app was the source of most of the complaints. It is still looking over reports to ensure that no other issues may be causing the bandwidth issues.
At this time, Microsoft is declining to identify the third-party responsible. Probably not a maj-or issue if the problem is affecting so little of the user base as the company claims, but still no solace to those that might be affected.
Nintendo 3DS: $250, March 27 Release Date
19. January 2011
After 10 months of teasing, Nintendo has answered the biggest lingering questions about its next handheld: How much will the Nintendo 3DS cost, and when can you get it?
At $250, the Nintendo 3DS is almost twice the price of the DS Lite, and $100 more expensive than the DSi. It’s the most expensive handheld Nintendo has ever launched, and ties the Wii for Nintendo’s priciest hardware launch ever (if you don’t adjust for inflation).
Google Pulls an Apple With Kongregate’s App?
18. January 2011
Weird. Earlier today, I wrote about Kongregate Arcade, a neat-looking portal app for mobile Flash games. But for “unknown reasons,” Google removed the app from the Android Market. You can still get it from Kongregate’s website (hooray openness!), but I’m quite curious to hear what happened.
Ten Million iPads a Year? Guess Again!
18. January 2011
Back when we didn’t know for sure if the iPad really existed, there was a rumor that Apple expected to sell ten million of them in the tablet’s first full year on the market. Many observers were skeptical. Me, I didn’t take a stance–I just said that it was hard for outsiders to crunch Apple’s numbers, and I had fun looking back at sales figures for past Apple products. (Total Apple I sales: about 200 units, in an era when that wasn’t bad.)
Well, Apple released its quarterly financials today, and we now know the ten-million-iPads-a-year rumor was off. After nine months, Apple had already sold 14.8 million tablets. Not bad for a product that was supposed to be an embarrassing flop. (The lesson, as always: It’s pointless to analyze anything based on an utter absence of facts…and at least as pointless to read such analysis.)
Rebuttal by Invite
18. January 2011
Earlier today, Engadget posted images and details relating to HP’s upcoming WebOS tablets, including the suggestion that the devices won’t go on sale until September. Then I got an invite to HP’s February 9th WebOS event–which I thought was a tad odd given that I’d already been invited and RSVPd. But this new invite has a purpose: It says that anyone who thinks that Engadget let the cat out of the bag is wrong. Of course, it doesn’t say whether Engadget’s scoop is completely spurious, or partially so…or even largely correct but incomplete. We’ll presumably need to wait until the 9th to figure that out. I’ll liveblog the event, so you’ll learn what’s going on as soon as I do…
Apple’s Holiday 2010 Quarter Was a Barnburner
18. January 2011
Apple’s quarterly numbers are in, and they’re pretty stunning. The Cupertino company reported record revenue of $26.47 billion, nearly twice last year’s $15.68 billion. This was powered by record numbers across all its major businesses: 4.16 million Macs, 16.24 million iPhones, and some 7.33 million iPads sold. Adding in these sales means Apple sold some 15 million iPads during 2010 alone, well above even the rosiest predictions. More to come if the analyst call produces any interesting tidbits…
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20. January 2011
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