Leander Kahney - page 42

Against the odds and earlier than expected, Wired magazine has debuted its interactive magazine app for the iPad. And it’s killer.

The Wired app blends the magazine’s superb editorial editorial and high production values with elements that only digital can bring  – interactivity and multimedia. The stories are well-written and beautifully designed with big, gorgeous photos. Navigation is easy and intuitive and there are lots of interactive graphics and supplementary video.

“Wired magazine will be digital from now on, designed from the start as a compelling interactive experience, in parallel with our print edition,” says Chris Anderson, Wired’s editor in chief. “Wired is finally, well, wired.”

Thanks to Apple’s ban on Flash, the app had some birthing troubles, and was expected later this summer. Wired has solved the Flash issue by making the app native to the iPad — it’s not an Adobe Air or Flash port. According to Anderson, it’s made with the same Adobe productions tools used to create the print magazine, so it’s (relatively) easy and quick to produce in parallel. This, of course, is crucial.

It’s not cheap — $4.99 a pop — which has already upset some reviewers on iTunes. Because the digital edition is produced in parallel and distribution costs are near zero, it should cost a lot less than print, critics reason. (The print edition costs less than a dollar with a subscription).

But the price is perhaps one of the most important things about the digital edition. Wired is trying out a new business model, one that many print publishers are praying will work. Me too. If Wired can make it profitable enough to support its editorial costs, that’s good news for everyone — publishers and readers.

Check out CultofMac.com’s quick video tour of the Wired iPad app (This video will play on the iPad, btw):

Two of Microsoft’s highest-profile executives are leaving, and Apple’s running rings around the company is partly seen as the reason.

Robbie Bach and James J Allard, leaders of Microsoft’s Entertainment & Devices Division, are both leaving and will not be replaced. It is Microsoft’s biggest management shakeup in years. The restructuring will put CEO Steve Ballmer in direct charge of Microsoft’s consumer-focused mobile businesses, which are getting a kicking from Google, Nintendo and especially Apple. This transition is reminiscent of when Bill Gates left Microsoft, which signified a turning point for the company’s leadership and direction.

In fact, Venture Beat’s Dean Takahashi, who wrote a pair of books about the Entertainment & Devices Division (Opening the Xbox and The Xbox 360 Uncloaked), says the inability to compete with Apple is behind the shakeup:

Allard’s last project at Microsoft was Courier, which Ballmer canceled earlier this year. It was viewed as an attempt to take on the Apple iPad. While Bach’s division is profitable now, it may be remembered for its inability to take on Apple in the increasingly critical mobile business. And that may explain why, any day now, Apple’s market capitalization is going to become bigger than Microsoft’s.

More here: The rise and fall of Microsoft’s Xbox champions, Robbie Bach and J Allard

UPDATE: Horace Dediu has a good guess why Bach was fired: he lost Hewlett Packard when the company bought Palm. “Bach lost a key account; in fact, he could be responsible for having lost the biggest account that Microsoft ever had. Ballmer is a sales guy and he knows the importance of these relationships. A customer like HP must be managed carefully and their strategy must be steered to fit with yours. If HP felt they needed to go somewhere else for their mobile OS, it’s a slap in the face, but if they buy the asset and IP and internalize a competing platform, then that is a dagger to the heart for Ballmer.”

Google has graduated its spiffy Chrome browser for Mac from beta to stable release. It’s a major milestone for the browser, and an indication Google is taking the Mac platform seriously. For a while, it looked that Chrome for Mac was an afterthought.

Mike Smith, Product Manager, Google Chrome Team:

Today, I’m happy to announce that Google Chrome for Mac is being promoted out of beta to our stable channel. We believe that it provides not only the stability, performance and polish that every Mac user expects, but also a seamless native Mac application experience that Mac users will feel instantly at home with.

I’m a big fan of Chrome, even though it’s a memory hog with multiple tabs open. It’s fast and there’s a big and growing gallery of more than 4,500 extensions.

I don’t often play around with advertising, but Olympus’ virtual ad for it’s new PEN E-PL1 camera is pretty fun.

Go to www.getolympus.com/PEN3d and download a paper cutout of the camera (you can get it here). Install a plugin, and when you hold the paper camera up to your iSight webcam it turns into a 3D model of the camera.

It’s quite magical and I laughed with delight when the virtual camera appeared on screen. You can remove the lens, check out different shooting modes and play with the flash. Turn the camera around and you can take pictures or shoot video of yourself, which you can share on Facebook.

The virtual camera works well on a MacBook and iMac. Even though you have to install a plugin, I think it’s worth it. This is digital marketing done well.

The PEN E-PL1 is one of a new generation of new Micro Four Thirds (M4/3) cameras that promise DSLR quality with point-and-shoot ease. It has an interchangeable lens, built-in image stabilization and can record HD video.

(The June print issues of Wired and Popular Photography contain pre-cut cameras. There’s also a competition to win the camera and some cash: Shoot a video explaining what you’d do with the PEN camera and $5,000. Details at www.youtube.com/getolympus).

We’d like to ask you for a favor.

We’re running a survey to get a better idea of who you are and what you like to do online. Yes, we know, surveys can be a pain, but the data is essential for our sales team to represent us properly.

If you like what we do, it’d be a huge help if you could fill it out. The survey is a pop-down ‘toaster’ style. It’s conducted by Crowd Science, a well-respected name (here’s some info about Crowd Science from TechCrunch). The survey hovers over the leaderboard for a few seconds and disappears if you ignore it.

The survey isn’t too bad. We’ve kept it as painless as possible. It’s about a dozen questions, standard stuff, mostly about your usage of online social-media and some basic demographic information. It’s totally anonymous and takes a few minutes to complete.

The survey is persistent. It’ll run until we turn it off. This allows us to gather a stream of up-to-date information, rather than a snapshot that’s soon out of date. But don’t worry — only a small percentage of readers see the popdown. If you see it and ignore it, you won’t see it again for at least 3 months. And if you take the survey, it won’t pop up again.

The information is essential, otherwise we wouldn’t run it. The site needs to make revenue or we won’t be able to operate. And to make revenue, the sales team needs to give potential advertisers good readership info.

We appreciate your help — many thanks.

UPDATE: I’ve removed the static link from this post, which didn’t work. My apologies. Crowd Science doesn’t support static links.

Reader “Romeo From Brazil” wrote in to share an awesome tip: how to quickly and easily get a U.S. iTunes account anywhere in the world.

Romeo’s method works like a charm. You don’t need a credit card and it is far easier than other methods we’ve seen. Best, it works in ANY country, so if you’re in the U.S., you can use it to buy music available only in the U.K. And if you’re outside the U.S., you can use the account to buy apps and music not available in your country, like Apple’s iWorks suite.

Here’s how it works:

Even though the iPad will go on sale in Canada at the end of the month (May 28), our friends north of the border are buying them by the boatload on the grey market.

It’s not hard to smuggle an iPad across the border, but Canadians have to jump through a couple of hoops to download apps from the U.S. App Store.

Reader Tyler Hojberg emailed us with the details.

Federal antritrust regulators are taking a keen interest in changes Apple made to its iPhone developers agreement, the Wall Street Journal and Reuters are reporting.

Steve Jobs is at it again — emailing Apple customers with answers to their questions.

This one was sent to CultofMac.com by reader Paul Greenberg, who asked Jobs about a missing MobileMe feature that’s been bugging him for three years: the inability to sync notes via MobileMe.

An update to ABC’s iPad app that adds 3G video streaming has already been submitted to the App Store.

The popular app will likely win Apple’s approval and will shortly be available as a free download. Since its launch a month ago, ABC’s app has been one of the most popular on the iPad, all owing users to enjoy high-quality streams of ABC’s hit shows, like Lost.

However, as we noted last week, the app works over Wi-Fi only. It will not stream video over AT&T’s 3G cell network. This came as a shock and surprise to new iPad 3G owners, who were also beginning to discover that other video services, like Netflix and Youtube, severely downgrade video quality when streaming over the cell network.

Silicon Alley Insider: ABC iPad App Update With 3G Video Streaming Already On Its Way

Web surfing on the iPad 3G using its cell connection is really pretty good, especially if you get away from congested urban areas.

Using the iPad over the weekend, I’ve been pretty impressed by the speed of the iPad 3G for routine Web surfing. Video, however, is another matter — it’s a disappointment.

The “Spirit” iPad/iPhone jailbreak is available for download from the Dev Team. You can download Spirit here.

The free, untethered jailbreak is available for Mac and Windows, and works with any iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch on firmware 3.1.2, 3.1.3, or 3.2. It’s a quick, easy, one-click process, according to QuickPwn, although the Cydia app is buggy. Just download the jailbreak software, plug in your device, and your iPad or iPhone is instantly recognized. Hit the “Jailbreak” button and you’re done.

Note: Before performing a jailbreaking make absolutely sure you’ve got a backup of your SHSH blobs so that if anything goes wrong you can restore to 3.1.2. You can find a step-by-step guide from Redmond Pie here.

Spirit is not a carrier unlock (which allows you to use unauthorized wireless carriers like T-Mobile).

The Dev Team highly recommend syncing with iTunes before trying this jailbreak. If anything goes wrong, you will have to restore the device. It’s especially iffy on the iPad.

Note: On iPad, all this is still sort of beta. Some packages in Cydia, not designed for iPad, might screw up your system and require you to restore. Be careful. (And no, Cydia’s appearance is not final.)

Dev Team: Spirit Freed.

I just noticed something about surfing the web on an iPad. Here’s a hint: look at the red circle in the New York Times screenshot above.

It was hard to spot because it’s actually noticing something that’s not there: the blue Legos where the Flash plugin should be.

In January, when Steve Jobs introduced the iPad, he wasn’t able to load the NYT‘s front-page videos (remember the Lego bricks visible during his debut event?) The absence of Flash seemed like a major problem. Video, games, rich-media — none of these would work, pundits said, and the iPad would be a crippled device.

But that hasn’t proven to be the case. Not at all. During the past month I’ve been using the iPad, I’ve rarely encountered problems with the lack of Flash. All the sites I visit regularly – the BBC, NYT and Wall Street Journal — all of them have quickly made video and rich-media available in iPad-friendly formats.

YouTube is especially iPad-friendly. I’ve yet to encounter a YouTube video the iPad wouldn’t play. And because so many sites use YouTube to embed video, it seems like a lot of the web is iPad-friendly.

The only problems is streaming music from MixRiot (which I use a lot but isn’t exactly mainstream) and playing Farmville and thousands of other Flash games. But given how much time I waste fertilizing my kids’ crops and sending them gifts, that’s actually a blessing.

And it’s only going to get worse for Flash. Look at the chart below from Encoding.com, which does a lot of video encoding for sites like MTV and MySpace. In the last four quarters, Flash video (represented by FLV and Flash VP6) dropped from 69 percent to only 26 percent of all videos. Meanwhile, the H.264 format went from 31 percent to 66 percent, and is now the most popular format by a long shot.

Here’s a couple of screenshots from the iPad’s YouTube app showing the dramatic difference in quality between Wi-Fi and 3G.

The screenshot above is from video streaming over WiFi. And below is the same YouTube video playing over 3G.

I paused the video before taking the screenshots and tried to take them at about the same point.

The difference is clear. Over Wi-Fi, video quality is near high-def. Over 3G, it looks like a bad QuickTime movie from the mid-1990s.

Of course, this isn’t new — it’s just much more noticeable on the iPad’s big beautiful screen. This has been the case on the iPhone for some time, but on the smaller screen, the difference in quality isn’t as dramatic.

Meanwhile, our readers are reporting that Verizon’s MiFi delivers: there’s no difference in quality between Wi-Fi and 3G on Verizon’s network.

UPDATE: As our friend Chris Foresman of Ars Technica fame points out in the comments, 3G tops out at a paltry 64Kbps. ” It looks like crap on the iPhone,” says Chris, “so it shouldn’t be a surprise that it looks like crap 4x as big?”

Foresman says the 64Kbps number isn’t generally known, but is reported in Apple’s developer docs. AT&T had said there would be a limit, but didn’t say what it was.

64Kbps is pathetic for 3G. According to the International Telecommunication Union standards body, 3G specifies a minimum data rate of 144Kbps in high-mobility (vehicular) applications, 384Kbps for pedestrian applications, and 2Mbps (that megabits per second) for indoor (stationary) applications.

And here are the screenshots full size:

The honeymoon is over. I’ve discovered my first major disappointment with the iPad 3G, and I’ve only just started playing with it. Video over 3G on the iPad totally and utterly sucks.

The picture is noticeably downgraded on a 3G connection. The built-in YouTube app delivers video that’s very low-res compared to the video it delivers on a Wi-Fi connection. It’s barely watcheable.

And apps like the ABC app and Netflix won’t work on 3G at all. They both The ABC app launches a pop up that says: “Please connect to a Wi-Fi network to use this application. Cellular networks are not supported at this time.”

It may be better to get a Wi-Fi only iPad and invest in a MiFi, which appears to work flawlessly for delivering high-def video, according to reader reports on iLounge.

UPDATE: My mistake. Netflix does work over 3G. The video quality is clearly lower resolution however.

Here’s a couple of screenshots showing the difference:

The iPad 3G is the iPad everyone’s been waiting for. Let’s face it: the 3G data connection and GPS makes this the iPad you don’t want to to leave at home.

• There’s almost no physical difference between the iPad 3G and the Wi-Fi only iPad, except for the strip of black plastic on the back covering the 3G antenna, and the microSIM slot on the left-hand side.
• The contents of the box are the same (iPad, charging brick and sync cable). The only difference is a pin tool to pop the microSIM slot.
• Like the WiFi iPad, you must connect it to iTunes before it powers up. It will not switch on out of the box. There is no software update at present. The iPad doesn’t register itself with AT&T you call up the Settings menu and hit Cellular Data option.
• Signing up for a data plan wasn’t too bad. You type in username, password, and credit card details. You have to create a new account, which seems to be linked to an AT&T account if you have one (it pulled up my address that it had on file). The sucky AT&T connection in this part of San Francisco made it slower than it should submiiting the data and waiting for a response. However, the activation of the data plan took only a couple of minutes.
• Be warned: monthly data fees are ongoing unless you cancel. This is going to be easy to forget at the end of the month. If you cancel and want to re-enroll, you have to go thorough the entire enrollment process again. Kinda painful.
• Web surfing is pretty slow — but that’s because AT&T is overloaded and the signal weak here at my office. It’s not really a fair test. I’ll conduct more tests later at home.

Here is what the iPad looks like close up:

As expected, the iPad 3G has already been jailbroken — only a few hours after its launch.

MuscleNerd of iPhone Dev Team posted pictures and a video to YouTube showing a jailbroken iPad 3G running Cydia.

MuscleNerd used the “Spirit” jailbreak, an software tool that promises untethered unlocking of Apple’s recent devices (iPhone 3GS, iPod Touch 3G, and iPads). The Dev Team has promised to release Spirit to the public soon. In preparation, be sure to backup your SHSH Blobs. You can find a step-by-step guide from Redmond Pie here.

Here is MuscleNerd’s video showing Cydia running on an iPad 3G.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFmy1rolqpw&feature=player_embedded

Via Redmond Pie. Thanks Taimur.

The first thing you’ll want to do on your brand new iPad 3G is sign up for a data plan. It’s pretty easy, and you can do it right on the iPad. It’s basically half-a-dozen finger taps (except for typing in your credit card number of course).

Here are step-by-step by instructions, courtesy of this knowledge base article from Apple.

I’m waiting here like a kid at Christmas, pulling the curtains, hoping to see the UPS  Fed-Ex truck outside. Some of you guys on the east coast may have got yours by now. Let us know in the comments. And send us pictures; we’ll post them.

It was a Brian J. Hogan, a 21-year-old resident of Redwood City, California, who found Apple’s iPhone in a bar, according to Wired.com.

He now regrets not trying harder to contact Apple, and sold the phone to Gizmodo because they told him “there was nothing wrong in sharing the phone with the tech press,” according to a statetment provided by his attorney to Wired.com.

Hogan has been interviewed by law enforcement investigators but has not been charged with a crime. His attorney says he is willing to cooperate with authorities…

… The person who found the phone “is very definitely one of the people who is being looked at as a suspect in theft,” San Mateo County Chief Deputy District Attorney Stephen Wagstaffe told Wired.com Wednesday. “Assuming there’s ultimately a crime here. That’s what we’re still gauging, is this a crime, is it a theft?”

… A friend of Hogan’s then offered to call Apple Care on Hogan’s behalf, according to Hogan’s lawyer. That apparently was the extent of Hogan’s efforts to return the phone.

John Stewart on The Daily Show rips Apple a new one for going Big Brother on Gizmodo:

“Apple – you guys were the rebels, man, the underdogs. People believed in you. But now, are you becoming the man? Remember back in 1984, you had those awesome ads about overthrowing Big Brother? Look in the mirror, man! …It wasn’t supposed to be this way – Microsoft was supposed to be the evil one! But you guys are busting down doors in Palo Alto while Commandant Gates is ridding the world of mosquitoes! What the fuck is going on?!

…I know that it is slightly agitating that a blog dedicated to technology published all that stuff about your new phone. And you didn’t order the police to bust down the doors, right? I’d be pissed too, but you didn’t have to go all Minority Report on his ass! I mean, if you wanna break down someone’s door, why don’t you start with AT&T, for God sakes? They make your amazing phone unusable as a phone! I mean, seriously! How do you drop four calls in a one-mile stretch of the West Side Highway! There’re no buildings around! What, does the open space confuse AT&T’s signal?!

…Come on, Steve. Chill out with the paranoid corporate genius stuff. Don’t go all Howard Hughes on us.”

Via Gawker.

Hewlett-Packard is buying Palm for $1.2 billion, the company has announced. Of all the potential suitors, I don’t think HP was mentioned as a candidate. Looks like HP will be making smartphones running Palm’s WebOS, which it may or may not rebrand. The company currently makes Windows Mobile smartphones and PDAs. Looks like it wants to manage its own hardware and software, à la Apple.

Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein is expected to carry on, the HP statement says. Minor note: Rubinstein started his career at HP before working for Steve Jobs at NeXT and then Apple.

Fast Company has written up the iPhonegate saga as a funny Choose Your Own Adventure. The flowchart is spot on and made me laugh out loud.

Here’s the whole thing: Choose Your Own Adventure: The Gizmodo iPhone Saga

Police have identified and interviewed the person who found Apple’s iPhone 4G at a bar, the San Jose Business Journal reports.

Also, it looks like Gray Powell, the engineer who lost the iPhone at the bar, and an Apple lawyer reported it as a theft. However, the District Attorney still hasn’t determined whether the case is a crime.

Investigators said they have identified and interviewed the person who took the phone from the Gourmet Haus Staudt on March 18 after it was left there by Apple engineer Gray Powell following a birthday celebration. Officials were unable to tell the Business Journal whether that person, whose name has not been released, was the same person who eventually sold the phone to tech Web site Gizmodo.com. […]

Wagstaffe said that an outside counsel for Apple, along with Apple engineer Powell, called the District Attorney’s office on Wednesday or Thursday of last week to report a theft had occurred and they wanted it investigated.

San Jose Business Journal: Apple asked for ‘lost’ iPhone criminal probe

Another piece of the iPhonegate puzzle has fallen into place. It’s been officially revealed for the first time that Apple reported it’s iPhone 4G protoype as “stolen,” not lost, according to the Wall Street Journal:

Stephen Wagstaffe, the chief deputy district attorney for San Mateo County, said Apple contacted authorities and “advised us there had been a theft,” which led to the search warrant and an investigation.

Until now, it’s been rumored that Apple considered the iPhone stolen — but hasn’t been officially confirmed. The distinction, of course, is crucial. If authorities conclude the iPhone was stolen, Gizmodo may be on the hook for buying stolen property. If the iPhone was lost, Gizmodo may be in the clear. However, under California law, a lost item that isn’t properly returned to its owner may also sometimes be considered stolen.

The authorities themselves don’t seem to have reached a conclusion yet. It is still unclear if they are investigating Gizmodo or the person who sold Gizmodo the phone. CNet spoke to the San Mateo District Attorney , reporting that it “has not been able to confirm whether the felony investigation is targeting Gizmodo staff, the iPhone seller, or someone else.”

If the authorities conclude that Gizmodo bought stolen property, staff may face up to a year in prison. But if police and the District Attorney are pursuing the seller, the raid on Gizmodo editor Jason Chen’s home may not have been warranted. Gizmodo may be protected under California shield laws, which prohibit judges from issuing search warrants against editorial publications, including online news sites. Techcrunch reports that the investigation has been “paused” while authorities decide whether Gizmodo is shielded or not.