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AT&T Pulls iPhone Online Sales in NYC Metro Area

Posted by Ed Oswald on December 28, 2009 at 8:35 am

If you’re looking to buy an iPhone in New York City, better be ready to visit your local Apple or AT&T store. The carrier has pulled the phone from its online lineup, and is giving little if any reason as to why it has done so. It appears to also be unavailable in Westchester County in New York and also in NYC’s New Jersey suburbs.

The Big Apple is one of AT&T’s problem spots when it comes to its network, and many have blamed high concentrations of the iPhone in the city for the problems. I guess the easiest way to fix this would be to attempt to slow down sales of the device there and hope that it keeps the problem from getting any worse.

“We periodically modify our promotions and distribution channels,” was all AT&T gave Consumerist’s Laura Northrup when she asked for official comment. A online sales reprsentative went further, saying the company  doesn’t “have enough towers to handle the phone.” There’s your answer, folks.

One has to think that Apple must be pretty upset right now. It now appears to be AT&T’s strategy to shut down sales of the iPhone in an area if its network can’t handle it. So who’s next? San Francisco? Philadelphia? Los Angeles? If this move isn’t an argument to trash the AT&T exclusive agreement ASAP, I don’t know what is.

Only a matter of time before Verizon makes fun of this one…

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The Speculative Prehistory of the iPhone

Posted by Harry McCracken on December 28, 2009 at 1:34 am

Remember the very first iPhone–the one that sold for $249, had an iconic click wheel, a cool slide-out keypad, and a unique two-battery design–and which ran on Apple’s very own nationwide wireless network? No, not the iPhone that Steve Jobs unveiled at Macworld Expo San Francisco on January 9th, 2007. It didn’t have any of those features. I’m talking about the one that was an ever-changing figment of the collective imagination of bloggers, reporters, analysts, and others who wrote endlessly about the iPhone in the months before anyone outside of Apple knew much of anything–including whether or not the phone existed at all.

I’ve been thinking about that era of blissful ignorance lately. Coverage of Apple’s supposedly-upcoming tablet device (allegedly to be known–maybe–as iSlate) is building to a similar crescendo. Just as with the iPhone, the tablet is already the subject of gazillions of words’ worth of rumors, reporting, guesswork, wishing, and hoping.

Can we learn anything about Apple tablet pre-coverage from the pre-coverage of the first iPhone? I think so. So I revisited much of the early iPhone scuttlebutt for this article. Herewith, choice bits from a bunch of old stories, with summaries of what they got right and wrong…and then some overall thoughts.

The art sprinkled through this story consists of concept iPhones rendered by fans and other interested bystanders prior to the real iPhone’s debut. I’m entertained by them all–but please note that none look even a little bit like the phone that Steve Jobs brandished at Macworld Expo.

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Is It iSlate?

Posted by Harry McCracken on December 25, 2009 at 11:49 pm

I’ve been enjoying the holiday (Merry Christmas!) and refraining from blogging today, but I’d be remiss if I let any more time pass without a quick acknowledgment of the flurry of speculation that the Apple tablet–the one we don’t officially know exists yet–will be called the iSlate. There seems to be plenty of evidence that Apple’s interested in that name, but that’s not definitive proof that the tablet will get the moniker. It might just mean that Apple’s pre-emptively taking steps to prevent anyone else from using it.

There does seem to be a certain logic in the name, though, if we assume that the tablet is more akin to a giant iPod Touch than a keyboardless Mac. It’d be startling if it didn’t have the “i” prefix, for one thing. And it would be equally startling if it did have “tablet” in its name–that word brings to mind all sorts of specific assumptions about form factor, input methods, and the like, most of them associated with Microsoft’s failed Tablet PC. An Apple tablet would likely be radically different from the Tablet PC in most ways that matter, so why suggest a link through a similar name? Especially when you could use a different term that you’ve trademarked, so you don’t find yourself competing with knockoff “slates?”

Oldtimers like myself will remember other examples of the use of “slate” as a synonym for “tablet”–most notably Slate Corporation, an early-1990s company which made applications for Microsoft’s first failed tablet platform…

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Blu-ray’s Last Chance to Shine

Posted by Ed Oswald on December 24, 2009 at 11:45 am

I think Sony’s finally gotten the picture: either drop your prices, or forget about Blu-ray ever catching on. Data from NPD is showing that player sales in 2009 stand to increase 54 percent over last year, thanks in part to an effort to bring player costs down to near the $100 price point ($79 at Walmart Black Friday) for the holiday shopping season. Consumers now can reliably find a player for under $200, something that was somewhat difficult this time last year.

Player costs have dropped at about the same rate as DVDs did, falling from a high of $800 at launch in 2006 to an average cost of $221 on Black Friday according to research firm Envisioneering Group. Chief among the reasons for the drop appear to be a marked drop in component costs, allowing prices to fall.

However, the deep discounts on Black Friday seem to be significantly more than what happened with DVDs, and probably has a lot to do with a realization that time is running out for Blu-ray.

Let’s face it: the format probably has one more Christmas season — two at most — before streaming media becomes a serious competitor in delivering high-definition to the home. Already, companies are moving along with their plans (take Apple’s rumored television service for example), and I feel I can say with some confidence that by Christmas 2011 there is going to be quite a solid fooprint for ultra-fast broadband, i.e. fiber optic to the home and the like.

Streaming HD is the next logical big thing — the overhead costs are far lower than producing discs and the players that play them: all that is missing is the capable broadband connection. It’s coming, however, and should be here sooner than we think. The window is closing for Blu-ray and its closing fast. It may have won the battle against HD DVD, but in all likelihood its going to lose the war.

One positive that may keep Blu-ray around longer? Internet integration. Most of the players coming out these days offer more and more net-enabled functionality, such as the ability to use Netflix and so forth. This is essential as the shift to streaming media continues. But it may already be too late, and the format’s fate sealed. Whether or not this was Sony’s fault is something that will certainly be debated in the years to come.

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Twitter Looks to Geotagging With Mixer Labs Buy

Posted by Ed Oswald on December 24, 2009 at 10:15 am

Twitter said late Wednesday that it had acquired Mixer Labs, a company specializing in geotagging services for applications. It appears that the company would use Mixer’s technologies to improve its own geotagging functionality that it just launched for developers in mid November, and something that many mobile Twitter clients had been doing long before the company jumped on the bandwagon.

Mixer’s GeoAPI is used in non-Twitter applications, and it appears that it will continue to be even under new management. “We will continue to give new API keys for GeoAPI.com,” Mixer Labs said in a blog post announcing the acquisition. Twitter founder Ev Williams also seemed to suggest that the company was looking to merge the two company’s efforts while maintaining Mixer’s already established customer base.

Geotagging is a nifty feature for the mobile tweeter, although Twitter’s current setup doesn’t really make it too useful. The only way a location can be given in a tweet is through the tweet itself. It would be nice if Twitter embedded this information into the message itself just like it does the client information (i.e. “posted 1 minute ago from web, etc.), and maybe that’s an initial first step with this.

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Denial of Service Attack Takes Out Several Online Retailers

Posted by Ed Oswald on December 24, 2009 at 8:39 am

A denial of service (DDoS) attack Wednesday on the servers of DNS provider UltraDNS took out several major websites, including retailer Amazon, for almost an hour on Wednesday. The company provides DNS services for Amazon, Wal-Mart, Expedia, and a host of other sites, and the attack rendered these sites unreachable even though they were not attacked directly.

Of course, this attack is even more noteworthy considering it came during the waning days of the holiday shopping season, and likely put a brief kink in the shopping plans of a few last minute shoppers.

The attack occurred at around 4:45pm Pacific time, and was directed at Neustar’s servers (the owners of UltraDNS) in Palo Alto and San Jose, Calif. Neustar was able to detect it quickly and counter it somewhat, lessening the overall impact. Even so, websites served by either company became unusable for much of that hour until the attack subsided. Most sites were back to normal by 6:00pm.

Some are suggesting the attack may have been more widespread: other sites that are not serviced by UltraDNS were said to be experiencing problems as well, including the online game Second Life.

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Technologizer’s 2009 Predictions: Hey, a Lot of This Stuff Really Did Happen!

Posted by Harry McCracken on December 24, 2009 at 2:19 am

A year ago, I asked the Technologizer community to make tech predictions for 2009. Lots of you chimed in–and with 2009 wrapping up, it’s time to revisit your forecasts and see whether they were eerily accurate, in the ballpark, or bizarrely off-base. Here we go…

Digital Entertainment

Prediction: “I think what’s going to be the big news story of 2009 is the further personalization of entertainment. Apple has been on the cutting edge of this with such items as the iPod and iTunes, but I see a dark horse coming up that is going to change the game. But mass-communication as we know it is going to begin a steady decline, with people preferring to listen to their own portable video and audio libraries, on their own schedule and terms, and eschewing the old model of “I must be home at 9 pm to watch Desperate Housewives”. Broadcast television, which is already slated to go all-digital in February, is going to soon become as quaint as 78 rpm records.”–Dave Mackey

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Is the US Beginning to Log Off the Internet?

Posted by Ed Oswald on December 23, 2009 at 1:00 pm

Data from Harris Interactive seems to indicate that weekly Internet usage may be peaking, indicating that the dire predictions of the death of interpersonal communication as predicted by some communications scholars (mine in college included!) and your Mom and Dad may be a little premature. Since 1999, when Harris first began tracking weekly Internet usage, the number has been for the most part steadily increasing from 7 hours to a peak of 14 hours last year.

The biggest jump was from 2007 to last, and this likely had a lot to do with the explosion in growth in social networking sites. Twitter and Facebook, both very time-consuming if you get heavily involved in the status update side of things, both saw dramatic growth in this period. Additionally, a very competitive presidential election probably contributed to added time online as well, Harris speculates.

No surprise that the most active age group online is those 30-39 years old, spending 18 hours a week online on average. Again no surprise that those 65+ are spending far less time connected at 8 hours. Either way you slice it, if you have a computer you’re likely online: Harris reports a 98 percent of computer users have an online connection, or about 184 million adults.

Will these numbers still go up? It’s likely they will as more services move to the Internet (video, etc.) But it does look like the rapid growth in Internet use is slowing considerably, both in the numbers logging on and time spent. There’s probably several ways one could interpret Harris’ findings.

Yes folks, it’s good to log off sometimes: I know that because I sit here in front of a computer 30+ hours a week blogging and writing. After awhile you just need to disconnect. Then again, I find myself on my iPhone if I’m not on the computer, so maybe I’m never truly disconnected…

(Image from “Wall-E,” copyright Pixar, Inc.)

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