Mike Elgan - page 9

Chinese American Carol Chow runs a trendy bakery in Beijing called CCSweets. Her most popular items are iPhone cookies and iPad cakes, which take hours to make. One iPhone cookie costs about $35. An iPad cake costs almost as much as a real iPad.

Chow says the popularity of her desserts has spawned local imitators, who simply copy her designs. (I wonder if they’re really Android-based pastries under the frosting….)

Read the whole story and watch the video.

Former Vice President Al Gore’s new book, “Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis,” is a $4.99 iOS app designed by Push Pop Press, a startup launched by two former Apple engineers. “This app,” according to Gore, “is a new kind of book that combines text and images, as well as video, interactive info-graphics and my own audio commentary.”

It’s also bullshit, according to Jason Baptiste.

The touch-tablet market is still in its cradle and already Apple has won. The iPad now has a lead so vast that it will not and cannot be dislodged from its position of dominance.

Fans of competing platforms don’t want to hear this, of course.

The Google Android faction believes that — finally! — a real, shipping tablet-specific version of open-source Android exists, so a tsunami of iPad-killer Android devices will now quickly overwhelm and surpass the iPad. This is wishful thinking based on a false belief and an inadequate appreciation for the primacy of apps and the destructive power of platform fragmentation.

Read the whole story here.

Everybody freaked out this week about the discovery that iPhones store location history in an unencrypted file. Congressional grandstanders Al Franken and Ed Markey demanded that Steve Jobs explain himself. Matt Drudge used his Caps Lock key to write a screaming headline about it. Gimme a break.

The whole “LocationGate” scandal is a non-issue, as far as I’m concerned. It’s just a lot of noise about a potential privacy breach that buries the real privacy violations happening every day.

Go here to read the whole story.

Samsung Electronics says it has filed lawsuits against Apple claiming patent infringement. The suit comes just one week after Apple sued Samsung, accusing the company of copying iOS products and packaging. Samsung filed its suits in South Korea, where the company is based, as well as in Japan and Germany. Samsung claims Apple infringed at least 5 of its patents.

“Samsung is responding actively to the legal action taken against us in order to protect our intellectual property and to ensure our continued innovation and growth in the mobile communications business,” said a Samsung spokesperson. Translation: “It’s on, bitches!”

Finally, Apple is dragging one of the many copycat hardware makers into court for copying Apple’s brilliant ideas.

Or…

Apple joins in on the lawsuit frenzy to win in the courts instead of competing on features, price and user friendliness.

What are we to make of Apple’s recent lawsuit against Samsung? Is Apple right? Did Samsung “slavishly copy Apple’s innovative technology, distinctive user interfaces, and elegant and distinctive product and packaging design”?

What’s the likely outcome? Why Samsung? Why now?

The legal mumbo jumbo surrounding cases like these make them boring as hell. But the impact of this turn of events could be far reaching, and affect the future of computing and mobility.

What you need to know is that while this lawsuit seems narrow and specific — targeting a handful of Samsung devices for copying the iPad and iPhone — it’s really a warning for industry at large, and about the entire iOS family of products, from wristwatches today to desktops tomorrow and everything in between.

This is not about the iPad vs. the Tab. It’s about Apple’s very unique approach to everything vs. everyone else’s business-as-usual — and it’s about the future of computing.

Nearly a year ago, I predicted in my Computerworld column that Apple’s iPad would not only eat into netbook sales, but sales of laptops and even desktop PCs. It was an unpopular prediction.

If you look at the 300+ comments attached to that piece, you’ll see that the majority of commenters at the time thought I was crazy, stupid or both.

One wrote: “Obviously Mike Elgan has gone off the deep end on this one. This article is so naive to the real world, and so far fetched it makes me think this is nothing but, once again, a biased article by an iSheep in its purest form.”

Another said: “This article made me laugh out loud. I thought I was reading The Onion!”

Still others were more direct: “I’m pretty sure this is the stupidest article on the internet.”

You still hear people dissing the iPad these days, of course, but nobody dismisses it. Sales of the iPad have far exceeded the expectations of all but a tiny minority of us who were very bullish from the start. Analysts have had to raise and raise again their unit-sales estimates. Early doubters have been silenced.

Now, you might think I’ve come to brag that I was right and my critics were wrong about iPad replacing PCs. A Gartner report published this week says that PC shipments are down from last year. Overall PC shipments in the United States fell by 6.1 percent. HP was down 3.5 percent. Dell dropped 12 percent. And Acer took a nearly 25 percent hit in unit sales. Meanwhile, Apple’s sales grew nearly 20 percent.

One analyst at Gartner said the PC declines resulted from buyers “turning their attention” to media tablets and other devices. The “media tablet” market is a euphemism for the iPad, which owns 70 percent market share and is expected to sell in the 45 million unit range this year.

But no, I’m not here to brag. The replacement of PCs I predicted hasn’t quite begun in earnest. The replacement will come. And I will brag. But for now, it’s more interesting to see how the iPad is gradually undermining the foundations of PC dominance.

Here’s how Apple’s iPad is setting the stage for the decline of the PC.

The front page of the gossip rag The National Equirer February 17 shouted about the untimely demise of Apple’s founder and CEO Steve Jobs: “APPLE BOSS 6 WEEKS TO LIVE.”

That headline was derived from a medical source quoted by the newspaper: “One of our experts – Boca Raton, Fla., critical care physician Dr. Samuel Jacobson, who has not treated Jobs – told The ENQUIRER: ‘The poor guy! Judging from these photos, he is close to terminal. I would say he has six weeks.'”

Well, needless to say, the doctor was wrong and the whole “six weeks to live” thing was just sensationalist baloney. Jobs is very much alive. And since his paparazzi death sentence more than six weeks ago, he has dined with the president and launched the iPad 2.

It’s hard to recall now, but the number-one complaint about the iPhone when it first came out was the on-screen keyboard.

Engadget’s Ryan Block asked: “Will the iPhone be undone by its keyboard?” People talked about how on-screen typing would destroy the iPhone in the same way that the hand-writing recognition system helped kill the Newton.

Even more incredibly, one of the main iPad criticisms when it first came out was the visibility of finger smudges on the screen when you turn the power off.

These concerns seem quaint now, textbook examples of the limited human-ape mind trying to grapple with novelty. It’s like people complaining about their new “motor car” a hundred years ago by saying the infernal contraption fails to slow down when they say, “whoa, Nellie!” and won’t speed up when they whip the fender with a riding crop. “It’ll never catch on!”

Many annoying tech pundits (including and especially Yours Truly) bitched and moaned about Apple’s global ban on the sale of third-party physical keyboard and refusal to create one of their own.

I believe Apple deliberately used its red-hot iPhone product to force the world to accept and learn to appreciate on-screen keyboards, and break them of their physical keyboard habit. When Apple released the iPad a year ago, it was usable with two Apple keyboards (the standard Bluetooth keyboard and a new cradle keyboard). But no matter. The on-screen keyboard idea had already been accepted by a critical mass of users.

Despite widespread acceptance, people are still divided on whether on-screen keyboards are good or bad, and most still prefer a physical keyboard. But let’s look at the big picture.

iPhone users are downloading, and VCs are throwing money at, a new iPhone app called Color.

Don’t get it? You’re not alone.

What the Naysayers are Naysaying

The general reception to Color has been overwhelmingly negative — even worse than the initial reception to the Apple iPad.

Gizmodo quipped that Color’s main purpose is to “amuse yourself by creeping out strangers.”

All Things Digital said Color reminds them of a mock news story created by The Onion, in which investigators establish the cause of a fire by examining the “43,000 pictures taken by students at a party.”

Fortune called Color a “whimsical” “Trojan horse.”

Computerworld called it a “social network for voyeurs.”

Daring Fireball says Color is a “breathlessly overhyped piece of crap.”

The app is currently rated by users with only two stars out of five in the iTunes App Store. Compare that with, say, the 99-cent “Mr. Ninja” game app, which is getting five stars.

The two main strains of criticism center around uselessness and privacy. People aren’t understanding how to use Color, nor why they might want to. Also: The app doesn’t give you any way to know who’s seeing your pictures, and enables creepy weirdos to potentially observe others unwisely sharing private or inappropriate moments. Also: Many users I’ve talked to don’t realize that when you connect to others at a specific event, Color then gives you access not only to their photos and videos taken at the same event, but all taken by them previously elsewhere as well.

All this criticism and mockery is interesting, but largely misguided. I’ll tell you why below, but first lets understand what Color actually is.

U.S. Air Force Combat Controller Ron Walker says he dropped his iPhone 4. That’s happened to us all, but at the time Walker was leaning out of a US Air Force plane door while preparing for a static line jump from 1,000 feet.

After the jump, Walker says he used the Find My iPhone app, and found his iPhone at the base of a tree in a forest. The phone was unscratched and worked fine, according to Walker.

The phone had a Griffin Motif case, and no other protection.

Go here to see photos of the actual phone.

AT&T’s proposed $39 billion acquisition of T-Mobile would result in new efficiencies and economies of scale. It would enable the provisioning of more and better services at lower cost than the two companies could achieve separately.

And that’s exactly why the Obama administration may block it.

Steve Jobs famously once quoted Picasso as saying: “Good artists copy; great artists steal.” And by that metric, Apple is a lousy artist.

Apple is stolen from by just about everybody. Microsoft and other companies steal design and interface ideas from Apple’s OS X. Cell phone handset makers steal Apple’s iPhone design elements. The new tablet market is essentially Apple’s iPad plus the tablets that steal ideas from the iPad. Everybody has stolen Apple’s approach to app stores.

There’s a difference between stealing ideas and stealing intellectual property. Stealing winning general approaches to doing things like multi-touch gestures on a tablet device is good. Stealing the code to do that is bad.

Microsoft has long been accused of stealing Apple ideas in the many designs of Windows that have occurred over the years. Windows has tended to be more challenging to use than OS X over the years, and Windows products tend to be less elegant. Because of all this, Apple fans often dismiss Microsoft as a company without innovation.

In fact, the opposite is true. Microsoft’s research wing is an under-appreciated engine of invention, in my opinion. And while Microsoft fails to productize some of its best inventions, it’s also occasionally successful at implementing new ideas in real products.

I’ll go further. Apple and its customers would benefit enormously if Apple were to steal the following five key ideas from Microsoft.

The disastrous quakes and tsunamis in Japan remind us that natural disasters can strike anyone at any time without warning. (Actually, the Japanese had some warning, thanks to their billion-dollar earthquake warning system.) Japan’s crisis also reminds us that the first two things to go in many emergencies is electrical power and telephone service.

That’s why the iPhone can save your life. When the power goes out, the iPhone still has great battery life. When the telephone system is taken offline, it’s still got an Internet connection. But mostly, the iPhone has some incredibly useful emergency apps.

By downloading just 5 iPhone apps, you can prepare for any natural disaster.

Go here to read the whole story.

A company called C² Technologies has announced the first of seven iPhone apps for training U.S. Army crews who operate and fire Patriot Missiles. Called the Mobile App for Patriot Missile System, the training program was developed on a game platform called Unity 3D.

The app uses multimedia for training, including video of actual Patriot Missile crews, 3D animations, pictures and text.

According to a release by C², the app “covers positioning and readying [of] the Patriot Missile system to launch and fire.” Can your Android app do that?

Who’s to blame for the disastrous roster of health, safety and environmental problems chronicled by Apple’s recently published “Supplier Responsibility 2011 Progress Report“?

In the past year, and especially in the past month, Apple has become associated with the many problems of Chinese manufacturing for two reasons.

First, a string of high-visibility suicides by employees of the Taiwanese contract manufacturing firm Foxconn were universally reported in the media as having occurred “at factories that make iPhones” and other such associations (even though those factories typically make products for many different companies).

And second, Apple’s “Supplier Responsibility” report generated enormous news coverage, and most of it overemphasizing Apple’s role and de-emphasizing the role of other parties.

Media aren’t the only ones associating Apple with Chinese factory problems.

Last week, Apple released a document called The Supplier Responsibility 2011 Progress Report, in which they detailed findings of a series of audits of factories that make Apple hardware. Apple also laid out their intentions in the report for addressing the problems they discovered.

We’ve been down this road before. Every few years, some Western country is either shamed into disclosing or issues a report voluntarily about the ghastly realities of Chinese manufacturing. Everybody vows to try harder. The factories and outsource manufacturing firms claim to implement new programs to curtail abuses and violations. Workers get a raise (never mind that they’ll be forced to retire in their 30s so management can bring in younger, more timid and lower-paid workers).

And the Chinese government often announces bold new initiative and laws to fix the problems. Everybody is reassured, and then it’s back to business as usual.

The problems never really get fixed. There are three reasons why.

Click here to read the rest of this article.

Apple announced its new plan for content publishers this week, and already it’s making money for the publishing industry by enabling wild, eyeball-grabbing headlines guaranteed to bring in the readers.

“Apple Just F****d Over Online Music Subs”

“Steve Jobs to Pubs: Our Way or Highway”

“Apple Launches Subscription System, Gouges Publishers in the Process”

“Apple Subscription Plans Anger Content Providers”

Digital-publishing-technology provider NewspaperDirect called Apple’s new policy ” unjustifiable,” “inexcusable,” “self-serving” and “ridiculous.”

The International Newsmedia Marketing Association felt “betrayed.”

OK, OK. We get the idea.

Movie critic Roger Ebert summarized another view in some quarters by tweeting: “Steve Jobs contributes his bit to the destruction of print media.”

That’s a compliment, not a criticism, by the way.

Meanwhile, just a day after Apple unleashed its new plan, Google unveiled one of its own, called Google One Pass. USA Today says the Google plan “undercuts Apple.”

So let’s collect ourselves and think this through. Is Apple’s plan really a major slap in the face to the publishing industry? Will it help kill print? And is Google’s One Pass a preferable alternative?

Apple CEO Steve Jobs used to talk a lot about changing the world. I don’t know about that, but he certainly has changed my clothes, and the “accessories” I carry.

I discovered a new brand of pants the other day at REI. They’re called Rebel from a company called Kuhl. Never mind that I’m too old to wear anything called “Rebel.” They’re awesome pants! A brilliant cross between jeans and karate pants, they’re comfortable as they are indestructible. I like them so much that I’m never buying jeans again, and will wear these pants all the time, unless someone makes me wear a suit.

What really sold me on Kuhl Rebels was their iPhone compatibility. No, I’m serious!

The Catholic Church has formally blessed a new iOS app called Confession, which lets followers keep track of their sins. No, I’m not making this up!

The $1.99 app was created by an outfit called Little iApps and has been approved by Bishop Kevin Rhoades of the Diocese of Fort Wayne in Indiana. It guides Catholics through an examination of their sins, so when they visit a real priest for the Rite of Penance in a real church they’re ready for the ordeal.

The app guides users through each of the 10 commandments, where they can tap a check box if they’ve, say, coveted their neighbor’s ox or murdered someone.

The app also serves as a cheat-sheet for what sinners are supposed to say in the confessional. For example, when the priest says “Give thanks to the Lord for he is good,” the app cues the user to say: “For his mercy endures forever.”

It even has a database listing acts of contrition and prayers.

Confession works on iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad.

Apple started it. In the most famous and expensive TV commercial to date, the company hurled the first “Big Brother” accusation (not to mention a giant hammer) at IBM and the IBM-compatible world, as it was called at the time.

In the commercial, directed by Ridley Scott, an attractive blonde 80’s girl wearing Hooters shorts, a Mac T-shirt and the kind of ankle-length socks people used to wear back then with their “jogging shoes” smokes a gaggle of goons in an all-out sprint for the most depressing cineplex ever where she unleashes her sledgehammer at the screen with equal parts ferocity and femininity.

Since then, various other tech companies have accused each other of being “Big Brother,” and Apple is often the one accused.

Most recently (i.e. possibly this coming Super Bowl Sunday), Motorola will essentially accuse Apple of being Big Brother in this commercial.

The problem with all these “Big Brother” accusations is that they’re always based on sloppy, mushy thinking — including Apple’s original ad, which didn’t seem to have anything specific in mind about how IBM resembled Big Brother, exactly.

Pugnacious PC pundit John C. Dvorak is always fun to read. His opinions are often as outrageous as they are insightful. I’ve always been a huge fan, even when I disagree.

Dvorak’s latest post on PCMag.com, headlined “Understanding the iPad Computer,” is one of those I disagree with. In fact, I think his whole argument is exactly the opposite of reality.

(This isn’t the first time I’ve butted heads with PCMag.com over the iPad, by the way.)

In a nutshell, Dvorak attributes the overwhelming success of the Apple iPad not to the user interface, but to the design of the tablet as an output device, rather than input device. He writes:

“It was always assumed that the pad was going to be primarily an input device, like a paper and pen notepad. The successful machines of today are primarily output devices, not a notepad. It was this one simple paradigm shift that appears to be the difference maker.”

The column and conclusion are based on three key assertions, all of them false.

The next iPhone and iPad — both coming soon — will have no Home button on the front. “Multitasking gestures” on the screen will replace the button.

The next iPhone will have a “friend finder” feature or app similar to Google’s Latitude service. It will have built-in support for Wi-Fi hotspots (where the phone is the hotspot that supports up to five other devices). And it will have several other refinements and tweaks.

The next iPad will have a screen that’s the same resolution, but it will gain a camera.

How do I know all this? Well, I don’t. These are educated guesses. That education comes courtesy of a new beta version of the software that powers these devices.

Go here to read the story.

AT&T lost its iPhone monopoly, and may soon lose a million or two customers, to Verizon. But I think Verizon’s freshly announced support for the iPhone is on balance a very good thing for AT&T.

Estimates for how many current AT&T customers will switch to Verizon range from half a million (Barclays Capital analyst James Ratcliffe) to 6 million (Davenport & Company analyst Drake Johnstone). The likely number is probably somewhere between 1 and 2 million customers. (Full disclosure: My wife works for AT&T Interactive, a division of AT&T.)

AT&T Mobility currently has more than 93 million customers, and often gains somewhere between 2 and 3 million customers per quarter. So the loss of say, 2 million customers is significant but by no means catastrophic.

But what does AT&T gain?

The Wall Street Journal reported today that the Verizon iPhone will be announced Tuesday, January 11.

The announcement will happen at an event at New York’s Lincoln Center and will be headlined by Verizon President and COO Lowell McAdam, according to the story.

Journalists were sent invitations by Verizon today, but those invitations did not specify what the announcement would be. The Journal says the iPhone announcement was confirmed by “a person familiar with the matter.”