Category Archives: Apple
Promises, promises
The launch of Windows 7 required an update of the “I’m a Mac…” ads. Here’s the first one.
Hockney’s iArt
The New York Review of Books has a lovely Slide Show by Lawrence Weschler about David Hockney’s use of the Brushes App on his iPhone.
It’s infuriating btw. I have the Brushes App too, but so far have been unable to produce anything that isn’t embarrassing. There’s no substitute for talent. Sigh.
That Unix box in the palm of your hand…
… can do amazing things. It can also make voice calls, btw, but that’s the least important aspect of the iPhone.
Thanks to Brian for spotting it.
It wasn’t me, guv
I’ve always believed that the best general philosophical null hypothesis is that nobody knows anything. This week’s Economist has a lovely tongue-in-cheek editorial about bank bosses which confirms the wisdom of my position.
Certainly, bank bosses displayed the hubris of all big corporate baddies: paying themselves loads, making nutty expense claims try an $87,000 rug and, in one case, playing bridge in Detroit as their firm collapsed. Compared with Kenneth Lay of Enron or Bernie Ebbers of WorldCom, however, they were amateurs. Most were useless rather than venal.
Far from expertly manipulating their firms’ books, many could not understand them. Citigroup’s boss reportedly learned of its $43 billion of toxic assets only in September 2007 he was told losses were unlikely. UBS’s own post mortem found that “at no stage” did managers have a decent assessment of its subprime exposure. Merrill Lynch signalled a $5 billion write-down in October 2007, only to increase it to $8 billion a mere 19 days later. Even when they had decent numbers, executives struggled to manage their mutinous staff. One ex-boss says his job was “less management, more crowd control”. Meanwhile shareholders pushed bosses to take risks. The vast majority backed RBS’s suicidal takeover of ABN AMRO.
The paper notes that, faced with the catastrophe, corporate-governance gurus are “scraping around, like scholars of jurisprudence in a state of nature”, and suggests some common-sense measures instead:
What firms need is a culture of excellence—but that is like saying all football teams should be like Manchester United. Perhaps the clearest lesson is that big banks are as close as businesses can get to being unmanageable. Bank of America’s assets are now ten times those of Exxon Mobil, America’s most valuable firm. A balance-sheet of $2.3 trillion is beyond the ken of mere mortals. Even firms staffed only by all-knowing deities—such as Goldman Sachs—look like giant black boxes to outsiders. If the new bank bosses want to be in charge, they must shrink and simplify their firms. That way, next time round, they really can be blamed for everything.
AT&T finally gets the message. Now for European telcos…
From Good Morning Silicon Valley.
There now, that wasn’t so hard. In a change of heart, AT&T said Tuesday it would allow iPhone owners to use Internet voice applications like Skype across its 3G network, and all it took was the clamoring of customers, the threat of tougher competition and the specter of government intervention. The system works!
Concerned about losing revenue and adding to its traffic load, AT&T had initially imposed restrictions that limited the use of iPhone VoIP apps to Wi-Fi connections, even though it let some Windows Mobile phones use such apps across its network. The reversal, the company said, was not the result of a sudden epiphany, but the result of a “regular review of device features and capabilities.” “Today’s decision was made after evaluating our customers’ expectations and use of the device compared to dozens of others we offer,” said Ralph de la Vega, CEO of AT&T’s mobility and consumer markets division. Yep, just an ordinary review that began back in August, right after the FCC sent a letter to the major carriers asking them to explain their policies on Internet telephony apps. With the FCC’s embrace of Net neutrality principles and now a Google-Verizon alliance making openness a key selling point, AT&T must have figured it was a bad time to look like an obstructionist.
Funny how things happen when the FCC takes an interest. OFCOM, are you listening?
e-readers, e-readers, e-readers…
Yup. They are the Craze du Jour. What’s worrying everyone, of course, is that Apple is getting ready to do to the Amazon Kindle what it’s done to Nokia smartphones. GMSV has a nice round-up.
Amazon knows that competition in the developing e-reader market is going to get considerably stiffer in the near future, so it’s doing what it can to grab share while the grabbing’s good. Today the company announced it was lopping another $40 off the price of its Kindle, bringing it down to $259 in the U.S. The geographic distinction is needed because Amazon also announced it would start selling an international version of the gadget, equipped to use the global network of AT&T and its roaming partners, in more than 100 countries (though still not Canada) at a price of $279.
International customers, however, will have to factor in some additional expenses. Different countries will impose various duty charges and value-added taxes on the hardware for starters. Downloading books and periodicals in the U.S. comes for free via Whispernet across Sprint’s EVDO network, but will cost $1.99 abroad. Taking delivery of periodical subscriptions will cost an extra $4.99 a week internationally. And users overseas will pay 99 cents a megabyte to transfer personal documents to their Kindle. Still, the expansion should give a nice boost to the Kindle’s sales figures (whatever they may be; Amazon will say only that the Kindle is its “most wished for, most gifted, and No. 1 bestselling product”).
NYT discovers Tablet PC
Yep. Here’s the evidence.
SAN FRANCISCO — The high-tech industry has been working itself into paroxysms of excitement lately over an idea that is not exactly new: tablet computers.
Quietly, several high-tech companies are lining up to deliver versions of these keyboard-free, touch-screen portable machines in the next few months. Industry watchers have their eye on Apple in particular to sell such a device by early next year.
Tablets have been around in various forms for two decades, thus far delivering little other than memorable failure. Nonetheless, the new batch of devices has gripped the imagination of tech executives, bloggers and gadget hounds, who are projecting their wildest dreams onto these literal blank slates.
In these visions, tablets will save the newspaper and book publishing industries, present another way to watch television and movies, play video games, and offer a visually rich way to enjoy the Web and the expanding world of mobile applications.
“Desktops, laptops — we already know how those work,” said Brian Lam, editorial director of the popular gadget site Gizmodo, which reports and hypothesizes almost daily about these devices. Tablets, he said, “are one of the last few mysteries left.”
Shakespeare’s ratings
The Holy Grail
This morning’s Observer column.
The quest for the Holy Grail is generally regarded as a preoccupation of those of a religious or mystical bent. But in fact the community which suffers most from Holy Grail Syndrome is made up of geeks and early adopters who would never be seen within a mile of an altar.
For Christians, the Grail is the cup, plate or dish supposedly used by Jesus at the last Supper. For the computing community it is the Tablet, a slim, lightweight device which combines significant computing power with the convenience of a paper notebook. And sightings – or rumours – of the mythical device provoke the kind of delicious excitement so masterfully exploited by the novelist Dan Brown.
We had such a sighting last week…