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Eight Reasons I'm Going to Miss Books

Posted by Harry McCracken on April 17, 2009 at 1:49 pm

[NOTE: Here’s a post that first appeared in our free T-Week newsletter, which you can subscribe to here.]

Gutenberg BibleSo help me, I’m in favor of progress. I grew up loving magazines and feel blessed to have spent a large chunk of my life to date working on them, but when they go away, I’ll be okay with it. Most of the things that magazines do well, the Web does even better, and the inherently interactive nature of the Internet lets it do an array of things that are simply impossible for paper magazines. As for newspapers–well, they’re already dead to me.

Books, however, are different. Them, I don’t want to disappear–ever. I own and like Amazon’s Kindle, but if I had to choose between it and printed books, I’d opt for the latter in a nanosecond. Even so, the Kindle is already good enough to leave me thinking that it’s pretty much inevitable that printed books will begin to look archaic within the next decade. Once something starts to look archaic, it usually becomes archaic. So I’m thinking that by the time 2019 rolls around there will be a lot fewer books and a lot fewer bookstores, and, perhaps, a lot fewer book authors.

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Google CEO Thinks 2009 is Android's Year

Posted by Ed Oswald on April 17, 2009 at 9:18 am

During the quarterly financial results conference call on Thursday, Google CEO Eric Schmidt sounded very confident about Android’s prospects for the coming year. He called the number of maufacturer and carrier partnerships expected to be announced “significant,” and seemed to allude to the fact that device announcements could be equally so. One area where Android will turn its focus to in 2009 is netbooks, indicating a desire by Google to move away from a purely phone-based platform.

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Apple Responds–Briefly–to Microsoft's Laptop Hunters Ads

Posted by Harry McCracken on April 17, 2009 at 2:17 am

Arik Hesseldahl of BusinessWeek has weighed in on Microsoft’s “Lauren” commercial, the first of its Laptop Hunters ads. All of them involve shoppers rejecting Macs in favor of Windows PCs, and the implication in each case is that Macs offer overpriced glitz rather than substance. Like other observers, Hesseldahl points out that Lauren’s HP laptop has a lower-resolution screen than Apple’s MacBook Pro, much poorer battery life, and more bulk. He also notes that she’ll have to pay for anti-virus software, won’t get Apple’s iLife (which is bundled with all Macs), and won’t qualify for free troubleshooting at Apple’s Genius Bar. Good points all.

He also managed to get a quote from Apple about the Laptop Hunters campaign–the first ackowledgment of it by the company I’ve seen:

Usually silent on such things, Apple did give me a comment on the Microsoft ads. “A PC is no bargain when it doesn’t do what you want,” Apple spokesman Bill Evans says. “The one thing that both Apple and Microsoft can agree on is that everyone thinks the Mac is cool. With its great designs and advanced software, nothing matches it at any price.” Microsoft declined to comment.

That’s pretty straightforward and dignified, making for an interesting contrast with the snarky tone of Microsoft’s recent anti-Apple salvos. It’s an interesting role reversal, given that in the past it was usually Apple who snarked at Microsoft, and Microsoft who replied either calmly or not at all.

But I wonder if we’ll ever get a response to Laptop Hunters from these guys:

 

Apple's Get a Mac ad

Actually, I wonder if we’ll ever see PC and Mac again at all. Except for a couple of animated holiday spots, I don’t believe they’ve shown up on TV since last October, before Microsoft  had really ramped up its Apple-bashing. Back then, they were trashing Vista, and I said that it felt like inside baseball. My guess: Either they will respond to Laptop Hunters…or they’re gone for good.

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All Your Apple Belong To Us: First Mac Botnet?

Posted by Ed Oswald on April 16, 2009 at 8:55 pm

Ryan Naraine at ZDNet has a shocker: Symantec has said it has evidence of the first known Botnet comprised of Mac computers that are attempting to launch denial-of-service attacks. The root cause appears to be a cracked copies of iWork ’09 and Adobe Photoshop CS4 that also includes an additional payload with the Botnet code.

These applications are apparently making the rounds on BitTorrent. Moral of the story here? Stop using pirated apps.

OSX.Iservice and OSX.Iservice.B are the names of the files, which essentially obtain the password of the Mac machine allowing the hackers to take control. Estimates of affected Macs number in the thousands, Symantec estimates.

So much for the ‘Macs are immune’ meme. While this doesn’t point to an actual vulnerability just yet, it indicates that Macs like every other computer can be used for malicious purposes.

Of course the Apple faithful will be quick to yell this down, but I don’t think dismissing this is a good idea. So suck it up people and download a Mac virus scanner. Yes, you do need it.

I think the above is enough proof that the threat is real, no?

Update: Commenter Dave Barnes brought up another good program for detecting unwanted outgoing data: Little Snitch.

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Boom! Madden Games Will Stick Around

Posted by Jared Newman on April 16, 2009 at 8:18 pm

john_madden_footballJohn Madden may have stunned the sports world today by announcing his retirement from broadcasting, but football video game fans shouldn’t be surprised that the Madden game franchise is staying put.

Speaking to Gamasutra, EA Sports spokesman David Tinson said the company has a “long-term contract” with Madden.

Tinson didn’t elaborate, but EA Sports President Peter Moore posted some thoughts to his blog: “We all obviously knew this day would one day come, when John would walk away from the booth, but he certainly leaves a lasting legacy that we’re proud to be able to carry on through our Madden NFL videogame franchise for years to come,” Moore said.

Madden took a backseat role in last year’s game, in which Tom Hammond and Cris Collinsworth handled broadcasting. It was the first time Madden didn’t provide color commentary.

I wonder for how long Madden will continue to be the face of EA Sports’ golden franchise. At first, I figured his name will eventually fade from popularity, and EA will want to move on, probably when the contract runs out.

On the other hand, we could see an interesting phenomenon in which the video game keeps the Madden name alive. A brand that sells 70 million copies in its lifetime doesn’t fade away so easily, and no other video game franchise has become so synonymous with its genre. (It helps that EA holds exclusive rights to use real-life players, stadiums and teams in its games, effectively locking out any competition, but that’s beside the point.)

This could certainly be the first time that a video game keeps a sports icon in the limelight, long after his retirement.

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Kindle: It's a Certifiable Hit

Posted by Ed Oswald on April 16, 2009 at 3:21 pm

Kindle 2Well, if the sales figures being reported by TechCrunch’s Mike Arrington are indeed correct, the Kindle is a hit. Since February, a source indicates 300,000 Kindle 2’s have been sold, and the device is shipping out at a rate twice as fast as the original model.

Extrapolating that out through the rest of the year, that suggests 1.7 million Kindles will sell in 2009, and at a $359 retail price generate a staggering $592 million in revenues for Amazon. This isn’t even considering an uptick in sales as we approach the holidays: so in all likelihood the figures could be even rosier than this.

Amazon is much more conservative, estimating sales of 800,000 during the year. But still, that would mean a quarter billion in revenues would come from its e-book efforts — not too shabby.

It’s not clear whether demand has dropped, or production has increased, but Kindles are finally back in stock on Amazon after being backordered nearly since the original device’s release.

You have to credit Amazon: it saw an untapped market for electronic books and was able to capitalize on it. And with consumer’s increasing hunger for things digitally, it may have answered an inevitable problem with its business: what happens when people stop buying paper books?

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Please, Apple–More iPhone Carriers!

Posted by Harry McCracken on April 16, 2009 at 1:04 pm

Verizon iPhoneI’m a little behind on this, but the Wall Street Journal is reporting that AT&T’s exclusive deal to sell the iPhone in the U.S. expires next year, and that the carrier is working furiously to get an extension until 2011. The company is selling millions of iPhones a quarter and luring plenty of customers from its rivals, so its interest in remaining the only source of iPhones makes perfect sense. But I can’t wish it well here–I think it’ll be a fabulous day for consumers when iPhones are available from one or more additional carriers.

I’m not engaging in AT&T-bashing here (you can find plenty of that elsewhere on the Web). I just like competition. I think that happy Verizon and Sprint customers shouldn’t have to dump their carrier to get iPhones. I’m hopeful that multiple carriers would mean lower prices for both the handset and the services associated with it. I believe that AT&T would have the greatest possible incentive to fix some of its network problems faster if its goal was to be the best iPhone carrier rather than the only iPhone carrier.

Unfortunately, consumers don’t get a say in the negotiations between AT&T and Apple. The wheeling and dealing will presumably boil down to whether AT&T is willing to wave enough money in Apple’s face to prevent it from striking deals with other carriers. If it does, the iPhone will remain an AT&T exclusive. But I hope that Apple asks for a boatload of money, and that AT&T blinks. And I’m curious to know just how hard it would be for Apple to have an iPhone ready that would run on the Verizon and/or Sprint networks.

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Too Early to Judge the "Lauren" Effect, But Mac Grows

Posted by Ed Oswald on April 16, 2009 at 11:13 am

Analyst firm IDC’s quarterly report on the state of the PC industry was released Wednesday, and it shows Apple was able to gain market share even in light of declining computer shipments overall.

Cupertino’s market share increased .2% year over year in the US to 7.6 percent, while overall PC shipments in the US fell 3 percent. Another winner here was HP, who took the lead in US shipments from Dell during the quarter.

Worldwide, things were quite a bit worse. The market contracted some 7.1 percent, although it was better than the 8.2 percent IDC had expected. The firm speculated that the US market’s resilience may be a sign that consumer spending isn’t as depressed as feared, and that even in a deep recession there may be opportunities for growth.

A lot of the growth will probably come in the portable computer market, which still is quite strong overall. “Tight credit and economic concerns have certainly taken a toll on PC shipments in the last couple quarters, but the move to portables, fueled by Mini Notebooks and falling prices, has mitigated the impact,” study head Loren Loverde said.

The “PC Hunters” ads came too late in the quarter to register any impact that could be gauged in the survey. It will be until July or so before we get any solid data on whether Microsoft’s price argument made any difference.

My guess is probably not. The worst of this recession spending-wise was last quarter in my opinion, and look how Apple fared. Could it be the Microsoft-leaning press is just a bit too eager to see Apple fail? What do you think?

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Posterous: A Cool Web Repository

Posted by Steve Bass on April 16, 2009 at 8:55 am

Steve Bass's TechBiteI get e-mails with PowerPoint and other types of files attached. Some are entertaining, but it takes more skill than I have to embed them in my newsletter in such a way that everyone can see them. (Scores of you wrote and said that you couldn’t play the YouTube videos I tried embedding months ago.)

But I’ve just discovered Posterous, a handy site for displaying practically any type of file: PowerPoint presentations, PDFs, Flash games, images, MP3s, documents, and videos in a variety of formats. The beauty of Posterous is that PowerPoint files display as they would if you had a PowerPoint viewer and image collections are automatically available as slide shows.

So far, here’s what I’ve posted to Posterous:

* Two PowerPoint presentations, one with images of unusual aircraft and the other showing a trip on Bolivia’s “Road of Death.”
* Two videos–Darwin Awards Reject numbers one and two.
* A PDF of the Monthly Computer Chronicle newsletter.
* A stack of images that show why our car insurance rates are so high.

I really like Posterous because it’s a free service with no signup to worry about. And there’s no muss or fuss: I just send them an e-mail and attach the file I want you to view. There are other features, such as making a blog private and password protecting it. Read the FAQ for more info.

[This post is excerpted from Steve’s TechBite newsletter. If you liked it, head here to sign up–it’s delivered on Wednesdays to your inbox, and it’s free.]

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