The iPhone is hurting AT&T’s image so much that the stock photo from the AP used with CNN’s story is of a jailbroken device:
‘Ankle-Deep in Icy Cold Water’
The Macalope, on the “Apple tablet will save journalism” story:
Sources at The New York Times told Lam that Apple approached the paper about putting its content on what everyone assumes will be a tablet. Lam doesn’t say what the Gray Lady’s response was, but given the current state of the newspaper business, the Macalope’s advice would go something like this: “When you’re standing on the deck of the Titanic, ankle-deep in icy cold water, and someone asks if you’d like a ride to the future in their time machine, you go.”
On the Pre and iTunes
As rumored, this morning’s webOS 1.2.1 update did indeed bring a fix to Media Sync, allowing the Pre to yet again sync more-or-less seemlessly with iTunes 9.0.1. The update brought another tongue-in-cheek changelog note from Palm: “Resolves an issue preventing media sync from working with latest version of iTunes (9.0.1).”
Resolves the issue of Apple now wanting you in, eh? Now it’s time to figure out what Palm did this time that took less than 40 hours of work, and how long it will take Apple to put out an iTunes update to break it again. Eventually we’re going to reach a point where either Apple will have to radically overhaul the iTunes sync structure to block the Pre, or one of the two parties relents and stops hacking/patching their software. Given the enormous number of iPods on the market right now, it’d be a daunting task for Apple to completely reprogram iTunes to block the Pre, and at this point they’re starting to run out of ways to tell if an iPod is really an iPod, short of asking for serial number authentication.
From where I sit, this back and forth isn’t good for Palm — or Pre owners — in the long run. Why would I want to use a device that had a major feature that only works sometimes?
iPhone Problems? Use a 9mm
I know it’s frustrating when your phone is borked, but telling an Apple Store staffer that you’re “so mad I could pop a 9mm at it” — before revealing you actually have a real 9mm concealed — probably won’t help matters.
But that’s what a man allegedly did yesterday at the Apple Store in Cincinnati’s Kenwood mall. According to reports, the man continued, “I’ll do it right now. Look!”, and opened the right side of his shirt to show a black 9mm handgun.
Kudos to the Apple Store employee who stayed calm and said she’d get it fixed. She walked him over to a technician before informing her manager, who called police.
Wow. Bad day at the Genius Bar.
Developers Wary of iPhone Projects?
Why the lack of love? The reasons are varied, but many tie back to a central thread—Apple’s emphasis on control. It’s hardly surprising that that might raise the hackles of independent developers, who are used to running their businesses as they see fit—as one presentation put it frankly, “we’re all control freaks.” The App Store puts all the power in Apple’s hands, determining when developers can release updates, what they have to charge, and in many cases even how they market their apps. For independent developers, it’s like handing their baby over for someone else to raise.
Oh Man, That’s Mature
MacDailyNews has a piece titled “Bing bong the bitch is dead: Microsoft’s ‘decision engine’ loses significant share in September.” Here’s a sample:
According to a report by analytics firm StatCounter, Microsoft Bing’s share of the U.S. search market decreased by more than 1 percentage point in September," Oreskovic reports.
“Bing, which Microsoft is backing with a massive marketing campaign, had 8.51 percent share in September compared with 9.64 percent in August,” Oreskovic reports. “Google’s share of the U.S. search market increased to 80.08 percent in September compared with 77.83 percent in August.”
[…]
MacDailyNews Take: Bing bong! The bitch is dead. Which old bitch? The wicked bitch! Bing bong! The wicked bitch is dead!
There’s a line between reporting the news with thoughtful — even slanted — insight and being a bleeding-heart fanboy who loves to fling poo at the “enemy.”
Good job, guys. You just lost your place in my Google Reader subscription list.
Inside an iTunes LP
In the LP we dissected, Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King, the root directory consisted of 12 items. This included seven folders, an .xml and .plist file — which appears to point to full media files inside an iTunes library — an iTunesArtwork file, an .itlp file with a file size of 0KB, and a standard, run-of-the-the mill index.html file. Inside the HTML file, the doctype is HTML 4.01 with meta name properties set to “hdtv-fullscreen” and “hdtv-cursor-off”. This particular one made use of three stylesheets and 34 JavaScript files, which were marked copyright of Apple Computer.
The index file isn’t complicated; it’s largely made up of JavaScript calls and a single “div” tag. Most of the HTML is stored inside the “vues” sub-directory and called from within the JavaScript files. The most interesting part of the file are the comments referencing “TuneKit.” What TuneKit is, exactly, is anyone’s guess, but I’m willing to bet it has something to do with the “resource” Steve Jobs referred to during the September keynote that Apple makes available to artists to create these LPs.
The LP we dissected had a huge number of images. Keep in mind the file is 206.5MB and it doesn’t have any audio or video inside of it, short of a 484KB audio loop. That, of course, means there’s an extraordinary number of images–in fact, the majority of the text is made up of images! Some users have complained that they can’t scrape for the lyrics in each song because they are handled this way.
The last bit of interesting information is the inclusion of a font .svg file. Not every browser supports this feature, and WebKit only added the compatibility recently. SVG is the future — accept it, or be consumed.
My wife bought the new Muse album as an iTunes LP, and the whole experience is really nice. I hope more and more artists go this route.
MobileSafari Gaining Market Share
Apple’s iPhone OS has successfully overtaken Symbian for the lead in all mobile web traffic, according to the latest data from AdMob. The combined iPhone and iPod touch share has jumped from 33 percent in February to 40 percent in August. Symbian, meanwhile, has almost exactly traded positions with Apple and fell from 43 percent near the start of the year to 34 percent in August.
RIM’s BlackBerry OS, Windows Mobile and Palm OS also dropped sharply in the same time frame. The BlackBerry fell more softly, from 10 to 8 percent, but the older platforms have dropped off rapidly; Windows Mobile fell from 7 to 4 percent, and the now-discontinued Palm OS has declined from 3 percent to just 1 percent. The fastest risers outside of Apple were relatively new platforms like Android and Palm’s webOS, which respectively account for 7 percent and 4 percent of the mobile Internet.
For ForkBombr, about 4% of traffic comes from MobileSafari, with all other mobile browsers combined only accounting for .05% of usage.
On the desktop, Safari for Mac weighs in at 57%, Firefox for Mac and PC both accounting for 10%, with Internet Explorer being used for a startling 8% of views.
FCC Finds Web Speeds Slower Than Advertised
The Washington Post explains.
The Sales Side of the Genius Bar
After my time was done with the Genius Bar folks, I kept my eye on some of the other Genius Bar visitors. Of the five folks I watched, four of them had purchases in hand when they left the store. (I imagine that Apple tracks the revenue generated by Genius Bar visitors, and knows exactly how much money the average Genius Bar visit is worth. It won’t ever happen, but I’d love to see those figures!)
It’s no accident that in newly-renovated stores, most of the smaller items (cases, cables, software) line the walls closest to the Bar at the back of the store.
Apple Looking to Redefine Print Media?
Some I’ve talked to believe the initial content will be mere translations of text to tablet form. But while the idea of print on the Tablet is enticing, it’s nothing the Kindle or any E-Ink device couldn’t do. The eventual goal is to have publishers create hybridized content that draws from audio, video, interactive graphics in books, magazines and newspapers, where paper layouts would be static. And with release dates for Microsoft’s Courier set to be quite far away and Kindle stuck with relatively static e-ink, it appears that Apple is moving towards a pole position in distribution of this next-generation print content. First, it’ll get its feet wet with more basic repurposing of the stuff found on dead trees today.
Like iTunes LP, but for textbooks, magazines and newspapers.
Wifi-Blocking Paint
Researchers say they have created a special kind of paint which can block out wireless signals.
It means security-conscious wireless users could block their neighbours from being able to access their home network – without having to set up encryption.
The paint contains an aluminium-iron oxide which resonates at the same frequency as wi-fi — or other radio waves — meaning the airborne data is absorbed and blocked.
By coating an entire room, signals can’t get in and, crucially, can’t get out.