A New Gig

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Earlier this week, my post on the media reporting Verizon iPhone rumors as fact was picked up in its entirety by Josh over at Macgasm. I was more than happy to let them re-publish it as a guest post.

Well, it turns out that was just the beginning. I’m happy to announce that I am the newest contributing writer on the site. I’m excited and honored that Josh and his team want me on-board.

I’ve always struggled with the topic of covering straight-up news stories here on ForkBombr. I don’t think there are many people treating ForkBombr as their primary source for Apple news. I don’t want them to be. I’ve always viewed this website as editorial in nature, and I think that is what keeps people coming back.

Writing for Macgasm will help me keep ForkBombr aligned with that vision, while also letting me use that journalism degree I’m working on for some good, old-fashioned, non-editorial news writing.

NYT Jumps on Verizon iPhone Bandwagon

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Miguel Helft:

After more than three years of using only AT&T cellphone networks, Apple is now making a version of the iPhone 4 for Verizon’s network, according to a person who is in direct contact with Apple. Apple and Verizon will begin selling the phone early next year, said the person, who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity because the plans were supposed to be confidential and he did not want to alienate his contacts at Apple.

Big newspapers like the WSJ and NYT just don’t toss rumors around. This is starting to feel real.

‘Hipstamatic Addicts’

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Eric Spiegelman:

Because the iPhone allows all of us to be amazing photographers now. And something needs to happen about that.

This feeling has been eating away at me for some time now because I feel like a cheat when I shoot something amazing with my phone. Take my last two shots, which I’m very proud of. They cause me a lot of self loathing. Look at how amazing my photo of the Urban Lights sculpture at LACMA is. It’s a total lie. I understand framing, I understand the rule of thirds. I don’t understand how to work with light, especially not dusk, which was when this photo was taken. My Photoshop skills are rudimentary. Yet I created an Amazing Photograph because my phone has Lo-Mob on it. Fuck you, me.

My ex-girlfriend and one of my best friends are Hipstamatic addicts. Hipstamaddicts. I refused to download Hipstamatic because I didn’t want to gaffle their style. I have my own style. I adjust some levels in Photogene, crop the image, run it through one of a handful of CameraBag or Lo-Mob filters, then use TiltShiftGen not to make a tilt-shift image but because a little bit of blur goes a long way, and because TiltShiftGen has a killer vignetting tool. But this is a farce. It’s like saying I’m a cook because I mix and match TV dinners. It’s retarded to think I have a photographic style in iPhone photography. I hope the ghost of Walker Evans punches me in the face.

Eric’s right. The key here is that taking pictures doesn’t make you a photographer. Software makes this line an easy one to blur.

[via Gizmodo]

Xmarks Back from the Brink?

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Xmarks:

Thank you Xmarks users. You told the world it was simply unacceptable for our service to shut down and it worked. Thanks to your passion, Xmarks now has multiple offers from companies ready and willing to take over the service and keep making browser sync better and better!

This is not a signed, sealed done deal yet. But with multiple offers on the table we’re pretty confident that Xmarks will continue on with no service interruption. Our style of transparent blog updates has worked so well in this process we want to continue that approach and share this news with you. Some may accuse us of masterminding this whole process; I wish we were that clever! Instead we give the credit to our user base, who spoke up in a way that caught the attention of bloggers and journalists around the world and, in turn, generated new options for the service to live on.

Mobile Web Apps in a Multi-Platform World

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Way back in the dark ages before the App Store, the only way to add functionality to an iPhone was through Safari. In iPhone OS update 1.1.3, Apple added webclips, an easy way to launch into a web app from the iPhone’s homepage. While these were not full-featured apps, it wasn’t a bad compromise. While they didn’t offer much in terms of integration [1. If you’re feeling nostalgic, go read Erica Sadun’s great look at how webclips were implemented under 1.1.3. Pretty cool.] with the rest of the OS, they did allow users to more easily pop in and out of websites designed specifically for iPhone use. Twitter clients abounded, as did to-do apps and news apps.

With the opening of the App Store, web apps for the iPhone were pushed to the back burner by developers. With an SDK, developers could create far richer, native applications that looked and acted like Apple-built programs. They could be paid for their work, all from a store built-in to every device. [2. Be sure to check out this great essay by Peter-Paul Koch about developers, web apps and the App Store.]

The web app was nearly forgotten.

If we fast forward to today, Android is a powerful rival to Apple’s iPhone. With numerous handsets on every major carrier, the number of people using Google’s mobile OS is growing. With more users, Android developers are struggling to create the apps people want to Android’s poor SDK and multiple hardware and skins. Without a doubt, the quality (and quantity) of Android apps is holding the platform back.

On the flip side of things, iOS developers who want to build an app for Android have to double their efforts.

Web apps seem like an obvious solution to this multi-platform problem. Eric Anderson at 37signals:

Lately, we’ve been exploring ways to offer web apps that perform like native apps on mobile devices. For this short sprint we targeted mobile WebKit browsers—especially the default browsers on iOS and Android—because of their widespread use and excellent support for HTML5 and CSS3.

However, 37signals has been running into issues rendering web apps across platforms which Anderson outlines in his post. But even with some differences in how different platforms render things within WebKit, these problems are not nearly as troubling as building separate, native applications. Design issues are much easier to overcome than interoperability issues.

Despite these issues, Anderson and 37signals are moving forward:

Despite opinions to the contrary, mobile web apps still feel like an excellent opportunity to offer native-like performance without having to specialize in a particular platform, or be subject to the whims of an overlord.

Browser-based mobile apps clearly have the potential to offer user experience that is on-par with native apps. Of course designing that kind of experience is going to require more than emerging mark-up and style techniques—it’s not going to be enough to just serve a mobile stylesheet for your app. Offering a native-worthy mobile experience requires you to rethink the UI of your app and deliver it within an environment where touch is the rule.

The main problem with web apps today is that they aren’t granted the same rights as native apps, including integration with calendar, contact and photo information. Web apps continue to be islands. Even with off-line data, they just aren’t the same as SDK-built apps. Until Apple, Google and other mobile OS makers resolve this issue, web apps will always be second-class citizens in this app-driven world.

On Core Competencies and Battle

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While I usually don’t quote entire posts, this one from my buddy Kevin Lipe is worth it:

What I don’t get about this whole thing is this: Why the hell does Adobe feel like it has to “beat Apple”? Adobe makes application software and browser plugins. Apple makes computers, phones, and operating systems (and yeah, they have pro apps, but ask anybody who uses them: they sort of half-ass all of that these days).

Where’s the competition? Because Adobe’s got their panties in a twist because Apple won’t put their crash-heavy, usefulness-light browser plugin on a mobile phone?

Adobe should go back to making good programs that people want to use, and not worry about Flash. I can’t imagine that brings in a great deal of their revenue. Microsoft is not the way to get back to their core competencies—Microsoft doesn’t even have a core competency anymore.

Rumor: Microsoft, Adobe in Merger Talks

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The New York Times:

Steven A. Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, recently showed up with a small entourage of deputies at Adobe’s corporate offices in San Francisco to hold a secret meeting with Adobe’s chief executive, Shantanu Narayen.

The meeting, which lasted over an hour, covered a number of topics, but one of the main thrusts of the discussion was Apple and its control of the mobile phone market and how the two companies could partner in the battle against Apple. A possible acquisition of Adobe by Microsoft were among the options.

This would be a huge shift in the computing industry. Adobe has been a powerhouse since the golden age of the early 1980s. A world without Adobe is one that I’m not sure I’m ready to ponder. If this is true, it really shows how far Adobe has sunk.

Microsoft InDesign feels wrong, while Microsoft Flash and Microsoft Shockwave seem oh so right. I think this would make Photoshop for Mac even more unstable. If that were possible.

[via Mac Rumors]

WSJ Verizon iPhone Story Planted by Apple?

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MG Siegler:

Now, I of course don’t know for sure that Apple fed WSJ this story — but let’s look at the recent history. In January, as rumors were swirling about the iPad, the WSJ had a story suggesting the tablet computer could run around $1,000. At the time, I pointed out why this reeked of Apple setting expectations low so they could blow them out of the water. A few days later, a former Marketing Manager at Apple backed this up. The result? Steve Jobs on stage announcing the iPad would start at just $499. Boom.

[…]

If you go back to last year, on June 19, Apple had their most successful product launch ever (at the time) with the iPhone 3GS. That night, after the stock market had closed, WSJ broke the news that Apple CEO Steve Jobs had undergone a liver transplant months earlier while on his medical leave of absence. The timing of such a scoop was curious at best — and there’s no denying that the timing was advantageous to Apple. Jobs was said to be fine, and returning to work shortly.

Dear Media, Please Stop Reporting Verizon iPhone Rumors as Factual News Stories

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Take a look at these headlines:

Looking at that list, you would think Apple announced something regarding the iPhone today.

Thing is, they didn’t.

The WSJ story set the Internet’s pants on fire this morning about a Verizon iPhone. Here’s the crux of it:

Verizon Wireless has been meeting with Apple, adding capacity and testing its networks to prepare for the heavy data load by iPhone users, according to one person familiar with the matter.

Mind you, this product hasn’t been seen in the wild or announced. By anyone. Yet the entire world is reporting it as fact. No one from Apple or Verizon has confirmed such a product exists. It’s a mythical product, yet the stock of at least two companies have bounced around today because of an unnamed source.

One unnamed source — even in the WSJ — does not a product make.

Rumors aren’t news. Speculation — no matter if it proves to be accurate in the long run — isn’t reality.

Journalists, get your act together. Pay attention to the words you use. This wouldn’t be an issue if you used words like “reportedly” every once in a while. You can’t report something as fact until it is a fact. I’m pretty sure they cover that in the first session of Reporting 101.

While I’m sure the boys and girls in Cupertino have a CDMA iPhone in the works, reporting that as fact isn’t a responsible move.

Sidenote: The WSJ also says:

Apple is also developing a new iPhone model, said people briefed on the phone.

Imagine that, a company is working on a future product. My guess is that other companies are also working on future products, as crazy as that sounds.

Another non-news item.

Way to go, tech journalists. Another home run.