Category Archives: Apple

The iPhone and the Kama Sutra

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This morning’s Observer column.

The big news at the Apple Worldwide Developer Conference last week was that Steve Jobs is apparently still away on sick leave. So the limelight fell on subordinates. They announced a new version of the iPhone, drastic price reductions on the old model, a new operating system for old and new iPhones and the next version of the company’s OS X operating system.

But widely-touted expectations that the company would launch a ‘tablet’ computer were not realised. Which makes sense, really: a tablet would represent a major change in direction for Apple and it’s hard to imagine Jobs leaving such an announcement to a mere underling. As far as unveiling tablets is concerned, Steve’s only peer is Moses…

UPDATE: Bill Thompson wondered if Apple were just trying to protect us from badly-scanned versions of the Kama Sutra.

Under the Eucalyptus tree

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I bought the Eucalyptus iPhone App the other day (for the price of a single paperback book) and suddenly am able to search, download and read everything in the Gutenberg archive. It’s simply wonderful — no other word for it. The text is eminently readable and the interface delightfully simple. As is my wont at this time of year, I’m re-reading Ulysses. But this year instead of lugging around a thick volume, it’s in my shirt pocket. Magical!

The iPhone and telephone-number profits

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This morning’s Observer column.

The significance of the iPhone – as regular readers know – lies in its operating system. It's really a powerful Unix computer that fits into the palm of your hand. That means it can run very sophisticated software – such as a browser that actually makes it feasible to read web pages and even books on a small screen. Add to this the fact that it is also permanently connected to the internet and you have what the rest of the industry is starting to recognise as a game changer.

Actually, the PC business is also beginning to wake up to the threat of the iPhone. How come? Well it turns out that iPhone users make less use of their laptops and desktop computers. The reason is obvious when you think about it: much of what we do on the net is pretty routine – checking email, accessing websites, Googling, accessing Facebook or Twitter. If you can do all that without booting up a computer, why bother?

The iPhone is also transforming the market for software…

The new market for software

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Fascinating Ars Technica piece on hos the market for software is changing as the iPhone consolidates its strangelhold on the smartphone market.

In addition to giving away some nice swag to celebrate the countdown to one billion App Store downloads, Apple also created a list of top 20 paid and and top 20 free applications. The list gave us a good idea of what iPhone users like and what they are willing to pay for en masse (the lists appear to be region specific, so many of you will be looking at the US list).

To make the list a bit more interesting, however, MacRumors has collected sales numbers for some of the apps from a variety of different sources. While none of the numbers are 100 percent up to date, they are a reasonable approximation.

Since not all developers are open with their sales numbers, the article only talks about four of the top 20 applications numbers. The number-two application, Koi Pond by the Blimp Pilots, has made an estimated $623,000 (after Apple’s cut) from about 900,000 downloads. Number three, Pangea’s Enigmo, is harder to pinpoint because it has fluctuated in price over its App Store lifespan. With an estimated 810,000 copies sold, however, Pangea has made at least $561,330 on the one application alone. PocketGod, number 12 on the list, has earned an impressive $350,000 since its release in January with somewhere around 500,000 sales. The last application with any numbers is iShoot, which at number 19 on Apple’s list has reportedly made the author $800,000 in just five months.

While the numbers are in no way indicative of the whole, it makes it quite clear that it is possible to make a comfortable living developing solely for the iPhone. Even with mildly popular applications, we would estimate that a developer could squeak out a living if they were any good…

LATER: Nice email from a reader with a link to an Irish Times story about one of his students, Steven Troughton-Smith, who “has emerged as Ireland’s most successful software developer for Apple’s iPhone, generating revenues of up to $1,000 a day.”

The drunk, the lamp-post and Amazon’s Kindle

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This morning’s Observer column.

Know the old joke about the drunk and the lost keys? A policeman finds a guy scrabbling under a lamp-post and asks him what he's doing. “Looking for my keys,” he replies. “Is this where you dropped them?” asks the cop. “No,” replies the drunk, “but at least I can see what I’m doing here.”

When it comes to technology futures, we’re all drunks, always looking in the wrong place…

LATER: Interesting stuff about the upcoming eReader from the Cambridge firm Plastic Logic.

STILL LATER: See Jakob Neilsen’s review of the new Kindle.

Apple Store bans Facebook?

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Have you noticed how every Apple retail store is always packed with teenagers who are hogging all the demo machines? They’re obviously not going to buy Macs, so what are they doing? The answer is, apparently, FaceBooking. But,

In an effort to thwart off time-theft and loiterers, Apple has decided to add Facebook to the list of banned websites at retail locations nationwide. When I asked some of the genius’ today whether or not anyone noticed the change, they all said that Facebook stopped working sometime in the past week. One of the genius’ said “Apple Stores have become a regular Internet Cafe, so placing the most popular time-killer [Facebook] of them all on the banned-list will certainly help everyone get a chance to test out the computers”.

Source.

LATER: Dave Hill passes on a link which casts doubts on this:

Or is, just possibly, not true?

I know from experience that some Apple stores put limits on where on the Web you can take their demo machines — sometimes restricting Safari to Apple’s promotional pages.

And it’s certainly possible that individual stores have blocked Facebook — as MySpace has been blocked since May 2007 — because some of its members were hogging the machines.

Indeed, Ars Technica quotes an unnamed Apple employee who says his store has been blocking Facebook for about a month.

“It’s just trying to find a balance between letting people try out the computers, but not tying them up so others can try them as well,” he told Ars. (link)

But a person at Apple headquarters in a position to know assures me that there is no nationwide ban on Facebook in effect — permanent or otherwise.

I’m headed to the nearest Apple store to check it out. If you’re in one now, let us know in the comment stream where you are and whether the demo machine you’re using will let you get to your Facebook page.

UPDATE: CNET’s Caroline McCarthy beat me to it, did the legwork, and confirmed that Facebook is accessible at all three Manhattan Apple Stores, although as suspected there are individual machines in those stores that will redirect you to an Apple Store page.

The sound of serious money

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This morning’s Observer column.

At this point, those of us who have been watching Mr Jobs strut his stuff for decades began to yawn. Then something happened that made your columnist sit up. On to the stage strode John Doerr, the driving force behind Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers of 2750 Sand Hill Road, Menlo Park, California – the world’s premier venture capital firm. Mr Doerr said that he was so taken by this apps store idea that he was setting up a $100m fund to invest in people who were interested in developing software for the iPhone.

In retrospect, it may have been a pivotal moment in the history of the computing industry. Doerr, you see, has great judgment and a long history of spotting winners before anyone else. Companies he backed in their early days, for example, include Amazon, Compaq, Electronic Arts, Google, Lotus, Macromedia and Sun Microsystems. So if he thought there was something in the apps store idea then perhaps Jobs’s hyperbole might be justified.

And so it has proved…