This is amazing. And not-for-profit too.
Category Archives: Apple
Google discovers that phones are hard-ware
From Good Morning Silicon Valley:
This morning, analytics outfit Flurry, which gets a good handle on handset use through app stats, delivered its estimate of Nexus One sales in the phone’s first 74 days, and the news was not good. The 74-day milestone was used because that’s how long it took the first model of Apple’s iPhone to sell one million units. Flurry’s calculation of Nexus One sales over a similar stretch — 135,000 units. The sorry showing has nothing to do with overall enthusiasm for Google’s Android mobile OS; in its first 74 days, Motorola’s Droid sales hit 1.05 million units, a tad better than the original iPhone. Because of assorted market variables, the numbers aren’t directly comparable, but they do provide a general sense of things. And what the numbers would seem to be telling Google is that without the marketing muscle and consumer convenience that come with selling a phone through a major carrier, even a technically impressive piece of hardware is going to have a rough go of it. Google will have to hope things turn around once the Nexus One becomes available on the Verizon network this spring.
And, to add insult to injury, Google’s discovered that its application to trademark ‘Nexus’ has been rejected. Someone else got there first. Google will appeal. Lots of lucrative work for m’learned friends ahead.
Tim Bray: Now A No-Evil Zone
Tim Bray has jumped ship — from Oracle to Google. And he’s there to work on Android and compete with Apple.
The iPhone vision of the mobile Internet’s future omits controversy, sex, and freedom, but includes strict limits on who can know what and who can say what. It’s a sterile Disney-fied walled garden surrounded by sharp-toothed lawyers. The people who create the apps serve at the landlord’s pleasure and fear his anger.
I hate it.
I hate it even though the iPhone hardware and software are great, because freedom’s not just another word for anything, nor is it an optional ingredient.
The big thing about the Web isn’t the technology, it’s that it’s the first-ever platform without a vendor (credit for first pointing this out goes to Dave Winer). From that follows almost everything that matters, and it matters a lot now, to a huge number of people. It’s the only kind of platform I want to help build.
Apple apparently thinks you can have the benefits of the Internet while at the same time controlling what programs can be run and what parts of the stack can be accessed and what developers can say to each other.
I think they’re wrong and see this job as a chance to help prove it.
Hooray! Interesting times ahead. And he’s a photographer too.
Microsofties use iPhones at their own risk
Lovely WSJ story.
REDMOND, Wash.—Microsoft Corp. employees are passionate users of the latest tech toys. But there is one gadget love that many at the company dare not name: the iPhone.
The iPhone is made, of course, by Microsoft’s longtime rival, Apple Inc. The device’s success is a nagging reminder for Microsoft executives of how the company’s own efforts to compete in the mobile business have fallen short in recent years. What is especially painful is that many of Microsoft’s own employees are nuts for the device.
In a discussion about employee iPhone use, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer once told executives that when his father worked at Ford, his family drove Fords.
The perils of being an iPhone user at Microsoft were on display last September. At an all- company meeting in a Seattle sports stadium, one hapless employee used his iPhone to snap photos of Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer. Mr. Ballmer snatched the iPhone out of the employee’s hands, placed it on the ground and pretended to stomp on it in front of thousands of Microsoft workers, according to people present. Mr. Ballmer uses phones from different manufacturers that run on Microsoft’s mobile phone software.
A Microsoft spokeswoman declined to comment and declined to make executives available for this story.
Waiting for the iPad
The iPad is coming (beginning of April in the US, late April in the UK) but nobody has the faintest idea what will happen when it arrives. All over the computing industry, manufacturers are frantically trying to get their own iPad-lookalikes ready. HP has got one, apparently. No doubt ASUS has too. Google is rumoured to be working on an Android slate. And so on. Up to now, there’s only been a niche market for tablet devices (despite Bill Gates’s historic conviction that they would be the New Big Thing.) The $64 billion question is whether the Apple product will rescue the industry by creating a whole new product category — between the netbook and the laptop/desktop.
The content industry — especially the publishers of high-end magazines — is also waiting with bated breath to see what happens. Will the device rescue print from having to go down the cul-de-sac of web paywalls? That’s why publishers are so interested in putting out their publications as Apps rather than sites: doing it that way means that there’s a way of charging for content that consumers apparently find acceptable. The problem, of course, is that that gives Apple another chokehold on online content: everything has to go through the iTunes store, and Apple gets a cut of all the action thereon.
So this is a strange time: a huge industry is holding its collective breath to see if a single company will change everything. Will the iPad be a game-changer, as the iPhone has proved to be? Or will people buy it and then wonder — after the novelty has worn off — if it was worth all the fuss? Nobody knows.
LATER: It seems that Apple is barring UK customers from pre-ordering the iPad.
At last: the iPhone Developer License Agreement Revealed (courtesy of Freedom of Information Act)
From Slashdot.
The EFF is publicly disclosing a version of Apple’s iPhone developer program license agreement. The highlights: you can’t disclose the agreement itself (the EFF managed to get it via the Freedom of Information Act thanks to NASA’s recent app), Apple reserves the right to kill your app at any time with no reason, and Apple’s liability in any circumstance is limited to 50 bucks. There’s also this gem: “You will not, through use of the Apple Software, services or otherwise create any Application or other program that would disable, hack, or otherwise interfere with the Security Solution, or any security, digital signing, digital rights management, verification or authentication mechanisms implemented in or by the iPhone operating system software, iPod Touch operating system software, this Apple Software, any services or other Apple software or technology, or enable others to do so.” The entire agreement (PDF) is up at the EFF’s site."
The first iPad ad
Screened on US TV during the Oscars last night.
Mobile office, release 2.0
Meet my new mobile office. Because I move around a lot, I’ve been using a (supposedly) 3G dongle from the 3 network, which is the only device I’ve used in years which makes me long for the good ol’days of 300 baud acoustic couplers. The other day it occurred to me that my cheapo T-mobile Android Pulse phone might make a good modem, and — lo! — thanks to PDAnet, it does. It’s a very elegant solution which doesn’t require any root hacking on the phone. Just download the App from the Android market and install it. Download the client from here and install on your Mac (and, in my case, also on my Dell Hackintosh). There are clients for BlackBerry, Palm, iPhone and Windows Mobile too. Hook up the phone via the USB cable, launch the App on both machines, click ‘Connect’ and away you go. The interesting thing for me is how quick and efficient it is compared to the 3 dongle. (Memo to self: cancel that £10/month direct debit.)
In addition to tethered USB mode, PDAnet can also handle bluetooth connections. But only on Android 2.0. Sigh. There’s always a catch somewhere. Still…
Apple devices dominate mobile wi-fi access
Interesting Mashable report.
Mobile ad network JiWire just released the stats from its latest public Wi-Fi study and found that 56% of connections are from mobile devices like the iPhone, the iPod touch, Android smartphones and Sony’s PSP handheld gaming console.
JiWire serves ads through public Wi-Fi spots in places like airports, coffee shops and hotels. Last year it published another interesting stat: Just shy of 98% of mobile devices that connect to public Wi-Fi are made by Apple. The iPod touch and iPhone took 55.95% and 41.7%, respectively.
Those numbers have slipped slightly since then, with Google Android devices passing Sony’s PSP to take the third-place spot on the list.
Apple goes after Android
Rather than take on Google directly, Apple has sued HTC, the manufacturer which makes most of the handsets currently running the Android operating system. But to the detached observer, it’s clear what the real target is. Here’s GMSV’s take on it:
Although not named in Apple’s suits accusing HTC of multiple violations of iPhone-related patents, Google made a point Tuesday of publicly declaring its support for the company that makes many of the most popular Android-based smartphones, including the Google-branded Nexus One. “We are not a party to this lawsuit,” a spokesman told TechCrunch. “However, we stand behind our Android operating system and the partners who have helped us to develop it.” Unless Google can come up with a reason to turn loose its own legal hounds in a counterattack against Apple, however, that support, whatever form it takes, will be coming from the sidelines. In an effort clearly aimed at halting the Android advance, Apple avoided tangling with the search sovereign mano a mano and instead hit the HTC flank, opening the possibility of winning a U.S. International Trade Commission injunction sealing the border against any HTC phones found to be infringing.
Judging by HTC’s latest statement regarding the action, it may already have gotten some advice from Google on framing its position in the court of public opinion. In advising stockholders that it doesn’t expect the Apple suits to have any short-term material impact or affect Q1 guidance, HTC flew the freedom-of-choice banner, saying, “HTC believes that consumer choice is a key component to success in the smartphone industry and this is best achieved through multiple suppliers providing a variety of mobile experiences. HTC has focused on offering its customers a uniquely-HTC experience through HTC Sense and its broad portfolio of smartphones.”
Where things go from here is anyone’s guess — ITC action, countersuits and amended complaints, out of court settlement, royalties, IP sharing, full review of the patents themselves. But as a first-strike FUD missile, Apple’s litigation seems to be doing its job right now.
What it suggests to me is that Android is beginning to bite, in the sense that Apple thinks it may turn out to pose a strategic threat to the iPhone/iPad market.