Category: General Tech

Chris Foresman at Ars Technica:

David Chartier alerted us this morning that his MobileMe account type had changed from “Family Pack” to “Full Member.” Turns out that several MobileMe subscribers have reported having their account type change, fueling speculation that Apple will announce tiers to MobileMe subscriptions next week during WWDC.

Previously, MobileMe account types were either “Trial,” “Individual,” or “Family Pack.” Without notice, numerous MobileMe users had their accounts changed overnight to “Full Member.” While rumors have suggested that Apple may drop the $99 price to better compete with Google’s services, Mac Observer speculates that Apple may instead offer multiple tiers of service at different prices, with current $99 subscribers getting all MobileMe features. New subscribers would presumably be able to choose a cheaper option with fewer features.

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Andy Lintner has put together “If It Was My Home,” a neat little site that lets users put an overlay of the Gulf oil spill over their hometown via Google Maps. It’s a great way to visualize just how expansive the damage is.

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If you are’t familiar with @BPGlobalPR on Twitter, you need to be. It was setup as a fake PR account for BP, a company that you may have seen on the news recently:

Here are some of my favorite tweets from the account:

• • OMG This isss ridciulsus. playing a drinking gamee where we drink a shot everytme we seeee an oily birdddd!!! LOL! so wasted!!11
• • We are very upset that Operation: Top Kill has failed. We are running out of cool names for these things.
• • What a gorgeous day! The ocean is filled with the most beautiful rainbows!
• • If Top Kill doesn’t work, we’re just gonna toss a giant “Get Well Soon” card into the gulf and hope for the best.
• • Sadly we can no longer certify our oil as Dolphin Safe.
• • Catastrophe is a strong word, let’s all agree to call it a whoopsie daisy

Hopefully it is easy to see why the account has become very popular, very quickly.

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HP CEO Mark Hurd has retracted his “we didn’t buy Palm to be in the smartphone business” comment from yesterday.

Here is HP’s revised stance, via Engadget:

When we look at the market, we see an array of interconnected devices, including tablets, printers, and of course, smartphones. We believe webOS can become the backbone for many of HP’s small form factor devices, and we expect to expand webOS’s footprint beyond just the smartphone market, all while leveraging our financial strength, scale, and global reach to grow in smartphones.

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Matt Buchanan has written a great piece over at Gizmodo about MobileMe and Apple’s overall problem with iTunes being the center of so many of their services:

A minute after I pull any Android phone out of the box for the very first time, it’s loaded with all of my contacts, emails and voicemails. It took some people hours to setup their iPad.

Which speaks to a more fundamental problem with the iPad and iPhone, that they cannot exist completely independent of a desktop computer, the thing they’re supposed to be replacing. Fantasies of handing your parents an iPad, a very simple computer that’s easy to use and handles most of the things they want to do, like browse the web, send email and share photos, are dashed by this very simple fact. It’s mind-boggling, because it seems so obvious that the only big computer to which an iPad should connect is a server rack somewhere in North Carolina.

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Gruber breaks down AT&T’s new data packages.

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Jason Snell:

I don’t think the company needs to stop controlling what apps get in the App Store. All Apple needs to do is add a new feature, buried several menu items down in the Settings app, that mirrors the one found on Android devices: an option that lets you install Apps from “unknown sources.” If a user tried to turn this option on, they’d get a scary warning about how these sources couldn’t be trusted, and that they may lead to instability, crashes, loss of data, you name it. Scary stuff.

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Every year as WWDC approaches, the Apple rumor mill spins up and starts suggesting that the iPhone will be announced for additional carriers in the US.

The obvious carrier in question is Verizon. Just as large as AT&T, Big Red’s 3G coverage and voice quality far surpass AT&T is many regions. In fact, the most recent rumor — just out this morning — claims that Verizon is testing iPads on their network.

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Not too shabby.

Update: The timing of these announcements seem weird to me. Why not let Steve announce it on-stage at D8 last night? And why are the changes going into effect June 7? I still don’t really think an non-AT&T iPhone is coming, but this sure makes me wonder why AT&T is trying so hard all of a sudden to keep iPhone customers happy.

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Adobe:

Adobe Systems Incorporated has unveiled a new digital viewer technology that enables print publishers to bring stunning digital versions of their magazines to life. This new publishing software was developed with input from Condé Nast’s WIRED magazine, a publication that recently debuted a digital edition for Apple iPad, utilizing the new digital viewer technology. WIRED’s June issue Reader application, now available through the Apple iTunes App Store, is built using Adobe’s digital viewer software.

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Excuse me while I go burn my Rob Enderle effigy yet another time.

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Steve Jobs, in a 1996 interview with Wired about the future of the Internet:

The desktop computer industry is dead. Innovation has virtually ceased. Microsoft dominates with very little innovation. That’s over. Apple lost. The desktop market has entered the dark ages, and it’s going to be in the dark ages for the next 10 years, or certainly for the rest of this decade.

It’s like when IBM drove a lot of innovation out of the computer industry before the microprocessor came along. Eventually, Microsoft will crumble because of complacency, and maybe some new things will grow. But until that happens, until there’s some fundamental technology shift, it’s just over.

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