Tag Archives | iPhone

Quicken for iPhone: Good, as Far as It Goes

Posted by Harry McCracken on May 1, 2009 at 12:26 pm

Quicken LogoIntuit, the company whose Quicken has been synonymous with personal-finance management for years, has brought the app to the iPhone. It’s not the first version of Quicken for handheld devices–I used an earlier one on my PalmPilot years ago–but it’s the first modern one. And as its name, Quicken Online Mobile, suggests, it connects directly to the Net to grab your financial details rather than making you sync with the desktop app.

Actually, it doesn’t work with the traditional application version of Quicken at all–it’s a companion to Quicken Online, the Web-based version which relaunched in a free version last fall. If you’re like me, you tend to associate use of Quicken with personal-finance nerds who have their acts together, track everything carefully, and are on the road to a happy and prosperous retirement. Quicken Online isn’t aimed at those people: It’s got relatively few features, is heavy on automation (like Mint, it downloads transactions from your banks and credit-card companies automatically), and most of what it does is focused on making sure that you’ve got enough money to get to your next paycheck. Quicken Online Mobile brings that approach to the iPhone and iPod Touch, and does a nice job at it. You can see what you’ve spent and what you’ve made, and the home screen tallies everything up and tells you whether you’re in any risk of running out of dough.

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Apple is Headhunting Gaming Executives

Posted by David Worthington on April 30, 2009 at 9:31 pm

The evidence keeps coming that Apple is getting serious about gaming. In just the past week, the company has hired a senior Xbox executive from Microsoft, and earlier this week, a graphics expert from ATI. Apple’s headhunting follows its investment in a graphics chip maker in December.

Today, Gizmodo reported that Apple now employs Richard Teversham, the former senior European director of business, insights and strategy for the Xbox. Bob Drebin, CTO of AMD’s graphics group, and creator of Nintendo GameCube’s graphic chip, joined Apple earlier this week.

In December, Apple took a 3.6% ownership stake in UK-based chip maker Imagination, and licensed its PowerVR graphics technology. PowerVR provides advanced graphics capabilities including OpenGL ES 2.0 support, and shader-based 3D graphics.

iPhone games are becoming more clever, and the platform’s library of titles is increasing day by day. While most next generation iPhone rumors are vague, Apple’s gaming-related investments are transparent. It’ll be fascinating to see what the results are.

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Is Palm Planning to Pre-Empt (Get It?) the New iPhone?

Posted by Harry McCracken on April 28, 2009 at 9:37 pm

Nelson MuntzOver at MobileCrunch, M.G. Siegler engages in some speculation that’s entertaining–even if it turns out to be wrong. (And we don’t yet know whether even Palm knows a firm ship date for the Pre.)

It’s now just about May and there’s still been no official word from Palm when it comes to an official launch date or pricing for the Pre. All we know is what we’ve known for a long time — it’ll launch the first half of 2009; a window that is quickly closing. But a few pieces of new evidence today point to an actual specific date. And it’s a very intriguing one — June 7: The day before a likely Apple keynote address at its WWDC conference.

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Apple Gadgets From Verizon? This Summer?

Posted by Harry McCracken on April 27, 2009 at 8:02 pm

verizonmainlogoOver at Business Week, Spencer Ante and Arik Hesseldahl have a story (warning: auto-playing video on page) saying that Apple is in talks with Verizon Wireless to have the wireless giant sell a couple of new devices: a smaller iPhone Light” phone and a “media pad” that does photos, movies, music, and–via Wi-Fi–phone calls. One of the devices could be out this summer, the story says.

The details here sound a tad odd–which doesn’t, of course, mean they’re not true. If Apple doesn’t have a deal nailed down with Verizon for a phone, could it really have a model that works on Verizon’s network out in just a few months? (Seems unlikely, but who knows?) Would Apple make a smaller, cheaper phone that couldn’t run iPhone apps (it sounds improbable, although Apple often does things that seem improbable until it does them?) Would Verizon Wireless really want to sell a device that made phone calls over Wi-Fi? (Actually, that sounds entirely plausible, if the company’s in the mood to do something different.)

One part of this does sound logical: If Apple were to work with Verizon on some new devices, it could expand its carrier relationships while still signing a deal to extend AT&T’s iPhone  exclusivity…

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Location-Based Services: Cool! Disturbing!

Posted by David Worthington on April 27, 2009 at 7:35 pm

GigaOM has published an interesting read about how Apple’s iPhone has driven demand for location-based services. The rise of these services was inevitable, but now there need to be recognized, accepted practices about what they can and can’t do.

A few years ago, I changed a setting on my Nokia to avoid commercial SMS messages. I did that as a precaution after I read a magazine article about how my local Starbucks could send me a coupon as I passed by on the street. That never came to be, but it’s looking more probable now.

Many of my friends have iPhones, and I was compelled to install the location-aware social networking app Loopt after a friend told about how great it was over the holidays. It’s still installed onto my phone, but I’m glad that it only updates itself when I invoke the application and want my location to be known. The AroundMe application can be useful for locating local points of interests, and again, it is not evasive.

However, it’s only a matter of time until application makers begin to get more creative with their terms of use. The possibility of an advertisement-subsidized phones also exists.

It might be my imagination running wild, but picture walking by an electronic billboard that upon detecting your presence, notes that you ate five Papa John’s pizzas last week to all passers by. (Note: When I told Harry I was working on this post, he told me that he was spammed via Bluetooth by a Land Rover billboard in Times Square back in 2006.) Or, an inbox full of solicitations appearing after walking through a busy marketplace.

Worse still, tech-savvy criminals could crack the data stream of location aware application to target users above a certain income level. That might sound far fetched, but is information that these services send up into the cloud even encrypted?

Customer feedback (and distaste) for services that sap away privacy might be enough, but I feel that stakeholders including advertisers and phone makers need appropriate guidelines before there is misuse.

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Two Possible Apple Responses to the Netbook

Posted by Harry McCracken on April 23, 2009 at 10:15 am

Mac NetBookIn normal times, it’s standard operating procedure for Apple watchers to listen to Steve Jobs dismiss a product category, then come to the conclusion that his negativity simply means that Apple isn’t ready to enter it yet. At the moment, it’s acting CEO Tim Cook whose comments get parsed. As Jason Snell notes over at Macworld, Cook was pretty darn harsh about the downsides of netbooks during yesterday’s Apple financial conference call:

For us, it’s about doing great products. And when I look at what is being sold in the netbook space today, I see cramped keyboards, terrible software, junky hardware, very small screens, and just not a consumer experience… that we would put the Mac brand on, quite frankly. And so it’s not a space, as it exists today, that we’re interested in, nor do we believe that customers in the long term would be interested in.

But Cook didn’t say that Apple wouldn’t make a netbook, or something sort of like a netbook. Actually, he said that it might well do so:

That said, we do look at the space and are interested to see how customers respond to it. People that want a small computer (so to speak) that does browsing and e-mail might want to buy an iPod touch or an iPhone. So we have other products to accomplish some of what people buy netbooks for. So in that way we play in an indirect basis.

And if we can find a way to deliver an innovative product that really makes a contribution, then we’ll do that. We have some interesting ideas in this space. The product pipeline is fantastic for the Mac. If you look at the past, in 17 of the last 18 quarters we’ve exceeded the market rate of growth, and to exceed it in this horrendous economy is quite an accomplishment, especially if you look at these very low-cost netbooks that I think is a stretch to call it a personal computer, that are really propping up unit numbers as a whole.

Deconstructing all this, Cook seems to be saying that Apple won’t make a product with:

1) a cramped keyboard

2) terrible software

3) junky hardware

4) a very small screen

That would seem to rule out anything that’s an exact counterpart to today’s netbooks. But it does leave room for two other products that Apple could make:

1) The widely-rumored tablet--which, I’m thinking, would more logically run the iPhone OS than the Mac OS. No keyboard, and an interface tailored to work well on a small screen. (I like my Asus Eee PC 1000HE, but there’s no question that Windows XP is a poor match for its screen resolution–I’m reminded of that every time I press the Start button and get a warning that it can’t display all the times.)

2) A computer which I still think there’s a good chance Apple will introduce–a replacement for today’s $999 white MacBook that’s a pretty traditional Mac notebook that costs more than a netbook ($800, maybe?) but is also posher than one, with a 13-inch screen and a full-sized keyboard.

Of course, there’s no reason why Apple couldn’t release both of these products, since they’d be complementary more than competitive.

I have no inside info; I try to steer clear of assuming that Apple will make products because they seem logical to me; I know that the fact that the company’s public statements suggest that it might go in a particular direction doesn’t mean it will. But if Apple were to make either or both of these products, I think it would at least be consistent with both Cook’s comments yesterday and the company’s overall philosophies.

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AT&T: Palm's Pre Stinks Because…

Posted by Harry McCracken on April 22, 2009 at 1:22 pm

PreCentral has what appears to be an internal AT&T document designed to prep staffers on how to compare the iPhone 3G with Palm’s upcoming Pre. It’s not completely stunning that it tends to accentuate the negative when it comes to the Pre, and the positive when it comes to the iPhone:

Pre vs. iPhone

As unfair comparisons go, this one isn’t a complete outrage: The Pre’s lack of international capability and a robust, well-developed platform for distributing applications and content are significant limitations. But in case you didn’t know, an AT&T salesperson will never be the most reliable source of advice on how an AT&T phone compares to one which, like the Pre, will be sold only through Sprint.

Meanwhile, I’m sure that Sprint is prepping its own Pre/iPhone 3G head-to-head that point out a bunch of things about the Pre which AT&T forgot to mention: Its more compact size, its ability to multitask applications, integration with Facebook and other social networks, a better camera, and the Sprint network’s reputation for reliability. (Of course, by summertime it’s possible–likely?–that the Pre will be competing against a new iPhone with a better camera and a form factor that’s at least slightly different.)

When the Pre and the new iPhone arrive, I’m thoroughly looking forward to the battle between them. And I’m guessing that the real bottom line may be one that neither AT&T nr Sprint will admit: That they’re both going to be terrific phones that differ enough in key ways that neither is the clear winner for everybody. I can’t wait to judge ’em for myself…

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