Apr 17
Brilliant, must-read piece by Stanislav Datskovskiy:
I argue that Apple now has not one but two monopolies:
I) A nearly-total monopoly on computer (and pocket computer)
systems designed with good taste.
II) A total monopoly on the Microsoft-free, hassle-free personal
computer.
Mr. Jobs is indeed starting to behave like that other convicted
monopolist we know and love. Yet unlike the latter, Jobs did not
engage in underhanded business practices to create his
monopolies. They were handed to him on a silver platter by the
rest of the market, which insists on peddling either outright crap
or cheap imitations of Apple’s aesthetic.
(Via Alex Payne.)
★
[From Non-Apple’s Mistake]
This is quite a funny article actually 
Creativity requires a mind, and a herd has none.
Apr 12
Best piece I’ve read on the whole thing, by a long shot. Must-read.
★
[From Louis Gerbarg on Apple, Adobe, Game Interpreters, and Section 3.3.1
This topic has attracted a lot of interesting commentary.
Apr 12
Tech geeks love numbers. When discussing computers, they speak of gigabits and gigahertz, of RAM and ports. The more tech adept among them will even swap out the internals or write their own code. They are tinkerers extraordinaire, and are just as happy customizing their rigs as they are in using their machines for their intended purposes, be it work or pleasure.
Then there’s everyone else.
I became a Mac user because I got tired of cracking my machine open to deal with hardware, and I got tired of fighting my software to get any work done. My work needs are simple: a browser, a word processor, and sporadic use of office productivity software (covered by Microsoft Office and Apple iWorks). With Google Docs, I use less and less of my desktop apps. I love cloud-based computing.
I was a PC gamer, but the current generation of dedicated gaming consoles took care of that. My Xbox, despite being made by Microsoft, is stable, fast, and runs my games perfectly. How could a company that gave us Windows build such a great gaming platform?
Because it was a closed system.
[From My iPad as a tool]
Remind me how long this has been the year of Linux on the desktop
Apr 12
Want a a simple, single-paragraph on what the Apple/Adobe iPhone spat is all about? Jean Louis Gassee supplies it: “Who, in his right mind, expects Steve Jobs to let Adobe and other cross-platform application development tools control his I mean the iPhone OS future? Cross-platform tools dangle the old “write once, run everywhere” promise. But, by being cross-platform, they don’t use, they erase “uncommon” features. To Apple, this is anathema as it wants apps developers to use, to promote its differentiation. It’s that simple. Losing differentiation is death by low margins. It’s that simple. It’s business. Apple is right to keep control of its platform’s future.” I think it really is that simple.
Related posts:Apple’s quest for massive market share
Adobe and Macromedia Thoughts
Adobe versus the world
[From The best summary of the Apple/Adobe war]
Microsoft wants Flash dead too, but they are more constrained in what they can say and do about it than Apple.
Apr 09
The iPhone OS 4.0 event just wrapped up and the faithful are filing out of the Apple venue with a slightly shell-shocked look. What happened? Oh nothing, just multi-tasking, iAd, a huge Mail update and a bunch of other stuff. Yes, the long-awaited OS update for the iPhone has just been run down and we’ve got all the details. Here, in handy bullet point form, are all the things you need to know about iPhone OS 4.0… Continue reading[From Everything You Need To Know About iPhone OS 4.0]
I suppose I’ll be downloading the beta on Sunday.
Apr 07
The iPad isn’t a big iPod touch—an iPod touch is a miniature iPad that restricts the full multitouch experience in exchange for offering greater portability. With the iPad, in contrast, you get multitouch the way it was meant to be done.
That’s one of our many take-aways after having submerged ourselves in iPad land since launch. The larger screen doesn’t just offer more space to work with—it opens up a different and more immersive user experience. Because of this different experience, though, the closed nature of the platform can get under some users’ skin in ways the iPhone and iPod touch do not.
Still, the iPad is likely to just be a starting point for Apple and for multitouch computing in general. There are obvious downsides to the device—we’ll tell you what those are—but it’s clear that it does sit in its own category that floats somewhere between a smartphone and a laptop, and it serves different purposes than either its smaller or bigger siblings. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
A large chunk of the Ars staff contributed to this review, either in the form of writing full sections or by offering feedback and insights based on their own experiences. Because the 3G + WiFi version is not yet on the market, we all tested a WiFi-only iPad. We think it’s worth noting up front that the WiFi-only version is probably best if you only plan to use it at home or at Starbucks—you’ll definitely miss not having an Internet connection while out and about, and the (non-contract) 3G data plans are not bad at all, so long as you can stomach the extra $130 you’ll have to fork over for the privilege.
It’s also the case that there are some parts of the iPad “experience” that we didn’t get to cover here, but we think the next several pages will convey more about what using the iPad is like than you ever thought you wanted to know. So let’s get on with it!
Read the comments on this post
[From feature: Ars Technica reviews the iPad]
Pretty comprehensive review. Clearly a hands-on is needed to ‘get’ this. Still not clear if it is going to break out of being a niche product though.
Apr 04
Up until now, a shroud of mystery has surrounded Apple’s custom engineered A4 system-on-chip; we know it’s clocked at 1GHz, likely tied to Apple’s prior acquisition of P.A. Semi and manufactured by Samsung. Outside of that, the only other knowledge we’ve gained has come not from the mouth of Cupertino, but from the extracting wizards over at iFixit. The A4 contains at least three layers of circuitry layered on top of each other, though it’s packaged just like the iPhone processor: microprocessor in one package and two memory modules in the other package. We also learned that the iPad RAM is actually inside of the A4 processor package, and we’re expecting to learn even more from those folks in the coming days. All that said, there’s still much debate on whether Apple’s own silicon can stand up to Qualcomm’s heralded 1GHz Snapdragon, the chip powering Google’s Nexus One among other things. AnandTech pitted their iPad against the iPhone 3GS (600MHz ARM Cortex A8) and the aforesaid Nexus One (1GHz Snapdragon QSD8250), using a number of website loads as the primary benchmark. Overall, the A4 proved to be around 10 to 30 percent faster, though it’s impossible to say what effect the operating system has on things. Have a gander at that source link for more — we get the feeling the competitions have just begun.Apple’s A4 SoC faces Qualcomm Snapdragon in knock-down-drag-out benchmarking test originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 04 Apr 2010 01:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink | AnandTech | Email this | Comments [From Apple's A4 SoC faces Qualcomm Snapdragon in knock-down-drag-out benchmarking test]
That’s very interesting. How custom is this chip? Apple does have an architecture license for ARM that allows them to tweak the chip design.
Apr 01
As expected, Apple gave the New York Times’ David Pogue , USA Today’s Ed Baig and the Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg an early crack at the iPad for reviews that just appeared. [From First iPad reviews appear, mostly thumbs up]
It only remains to be seen how well it actually sells.
Mar 30
Harry McCracken, looking back at Microsoft Bob, 15 years after its release:
Analyst Charles Finnie of Volpe, Welty & Co. called Microsoft’s product a threat to the very existence of Microsoft’s competitor in Cupertino. “Bob is going to be another nail in Apple’s coffin unless Apple can somehow raise the standard yet again on the ease-of-use front,” he told the AP.
★
[From ‘Another Nail in Apple’s Coffin’]
We know how that turned out
Mar 28
Shipping for pre-orders has been pushed back more than a week, to April 12 The demand curve for Apple’s (AAPL) new tablet computer crossed the supply curve sometime overnight Friday. By Saturday morning, the ship date for iPad pre-orders, originally set to guarantee delivery by April 3, had been pushed back to Tuesday April 12. Customers who had already pre-ordered are still scheduled to get their iPads next Saturday. Meanwhile, the option to reserve an iPad for pick-up at an Apple Store has disappeared from Apple.com entirely. That does not mean that there will no iPads available for sale next Saturday. Customers who reserved them over the past two weeks were told at the time that their iPads could be picked up between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. Saturday April 3. After 3 p.m., any iPads that haven’t been collected may be made available, while supplies last, on a first-come, first-served basis. It’s not clear whether the shortfall is due to strong demand, short supply or both. Published estimates of the number of iPads Apple was expected to have on hand by April 3 range from a high of 1 million to a low of 300,000. By Friday, according to the best available estimate, 240,000 iPads had been pre-ordered online. The only published report on reservations suggests that they’ve been coming in at roughly the same rate. Kudos to the folks at Planet iPad, who were the first to spot the change in ship dates. See also:
iPad week two: 240,000 pre-orders
iPad week one: 190,000 pre-orders
Day 1 estimate: 120,000 iPad sales
Apple sells 50,000 iPads in two hours
The wild iPad Ruckus begins
How many iPads will Apple sell?
[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped]
[From Apple has run out of iPads]
I wonder how this affects the UK launch? No impulse buy for me I guess
