Recent questions regarding Steve’s health have renewed calls for a succession plan at Apple. While I hardly give two shakes over the “Industry Concerns” cited in the recent New York Post article, I would go a little further and suggest that what Apple needs is not a ‘Succession Plan‘, but a new CEO.
As startling a statement to make as that is, hold the flames for just a few more moments, follow me after the jump to find out why.
An upskirt warning poster in a subway station outside Tokyo. Photo by Jeff Epp.
The iPhone 3G in Japan has a special feature unique to that country: The camera always makes a conspicuous “shutter” sound when a picture is taken, even when the phone is set to “silent” mode.
The loud shutter sound is supposed to deter voyeurs from taking sneaky pictures up women’s’ skirts — or down their tops.
In Japan, upskirt and downblouse shots have become increasingly popular with the advent of high-resolution camera phones.
As a result, all cell phones sold in Japan make a conspicuous shutter sound, or say the word “cheese” when a snap is taken, according to Nobuyuki Hayashi, a tech reporter based in Tokyo.
On almost all new cell phones, the camera shutter sound can not be muted, Hayashi says.
“Some manufacturers have even put louder shutter sound,” he reports.
The shutter on the first iPhone sold in Japan could be muted in silent mode; an anomaly that many wondered whether Apple would correct in the iPhone 3G, Hayashi says.
Apple did: The shutter sound cannot be turned off, even in silent mode, Hayashi says.
Software engineer Satoshi Nakajima, the lead architect of Microsoft’s Windows 95, picked up a Mac for the first time two years ago.
He was so impressed, he says he’ll never touch a PC again.
Satoshi loves Apple products so much, he started a company in April, Big Canvas, to develop for Apple’s iPhone platform full-time.
“We have chosen iPhone as the platform to release our first product (for) several reasons,” explains his company’s website. “We love Apple products… You need love to be creative.”
Based in Bellevue, WA — right next to Microsoft’s home turf of Redmond — Satoshi spent nearly 14 years at Microsoft, serving as the software architect of Windows 95 and 98. He also oversaw the development of Internet Explorer 3.0 and 4.0. While at Microsoft, he developed the third largest portfolio of intellectual property of any employee at the company, according to his bio.
Last week, Satoshi released his company’s first iPhone application, Photoshare, a free, social networking app for sharing pictures with the iPhone.
Photoshare is like Flickr for iPhone photographers. The downloadable Photoshare app allows users to upload pictures to Photoshare’s website, and then share those pictures publicly or privately — without any required registration or the need for a computer.
We spoke with Satoshi about the pleasures of writing software for the iPhone SDK and got some of his thoughts about Apple’s UI, its distribution model for iPhone apps and the future of handheld communications.
The interview continues after the jump.
I’ve been a gamer for a very long time. I distinctly remember my dad helping me to play one of the earliest Space Invader units by lifting me up (what with a diminutive version of your correspondent not being able to see the screen properly) and then pretty much instantly regretting it (what with me being rather heavier than he realized). I’ve devoured games on ZX Spectrums, Commodore 64s, BBC Micros, Amigas, PCs, Macs, and consoles from Atari, Nintendo, Sega, Microsoft and Sony. And although today’s gaming landscape is clearly significantly more conservative and homogenized than that of the 1980s or early 1990s, there are still many gems lurking amongst the dross.
It’s curious to see Apple again taking interest in games. Few will remember the disaster that was the Pippin, a joint production with Bandai that rightfully made #22 on a top 25 worst tech products of all-time list by PC World, and Macs have never really been at the forefront of gaming, with users typically forced to pick up two-year-old PC games at current PC-game prices.
With iPhone, there’s a feeling things might be different this time. Right from the start, Sega was extolling the virtues of the device, demoing a highly competent version of Super Monkey Ball, and reports suggest spec-wise that Apple’s hardware rivals Sony’s PSP and Nintendo’s DS, which are the only two mobile gaming platforms worth a damn. Also, Jobs claims a third of the first wave of applications on the AppStore will be games.
My concern is that the genius of Apple’s lack of physical controls for most applications (thereby enabling context-sensitive controls and keyboards) might be its undoing in the games world. Jailbroken iPhones offer emulators of classic consoles, but the lack of tactile controls renders them borderline unplayable, and although the iPhone’s accelerometer and touch-screen will force (some) developers to create unique and innovative products, there’s a real risk iPhone as a gaming platform will remain a seriously niche concern, by virtue of lacking a D-pad and other ‘standard’ controls.
Some might argue that iPhone’s unique controls can only be a good thing, using Nintendo’s Wii and DS consoles as ‘proof’. But while both of those devices have proved staggeringly popular, they offer alternatives to developers. Yes, you can wave the Wii remote around like a loony, or draw on the DS touchscreen, but more typical control methods are also catered for. And it’s pretty obvious that some developers try to shoehorn unwieldy control systems into games (a shocking number of DS games require hateful microphone-based controls at some point) on such consoles because they can. But with the iPhone, they will sometimes have to.
Looking at iPhone gaming demos to date, there’s already a split between games such as Super Monkey Ball using iPhone to fashion highly intuitive controls via tilting, and more traditional games being hamstrung, leading to having to ‘jolt’ your iPhone upwards to make a character jump. A quick glance around the web suggests I’m not alone in wishing iPhone catered for all, rather than those with an ‘accelerometer and tilting’ fetish. One Mac user created a mock-up of a PSX-style controller for iPhone, and the people over at icontrolpad.com (pictured right) have prototyped a device that almost turns iPhone into a PSP-style handheld console.
Unfortunately, any devices along these lines are likely to be limited to jailbroken iPhones—at least for the foreseeable. But here’s hoping Apple takes these ideas on board. For while I’m all for innovation and playing something new, it’d be a shame to restrict iPhone to certain types of games, simply by not giving developers access to a full range of controls, tactile or otherwise.
It’s been Apple against the world for so long that we’re kind’a just used it being that way. However, when we compare Apple against her chief rivals, as well as against some entire industries, a different picture emerges.
Looking at our favorite company in this light maybe helps us understand parts of Apple’s strategy that seem confusing if not just downright bizarre. Follow us after the jump and we’ll discuss why, when we talk about Apple vs Microsoft, Dell or the entertainment industry at large, this ain’t a David versus Goliath matchup anymore.
Of the more than 25,000 developers who applied to Apple's iPhone developers program, 4,000 were admitted, according to a story in Fortune. We bring you now 12 interesting Apps to look for. Descriptions and screenshots after the jump.
Of the more than 25,000 developers who applied to Apple’s iPhone developers program, 4,000 were admitted, according to a story in Fortune. Apple set a July 7 deadline for those accepted developers to submit their applications for inclusion in the inaugural launch of the iPhone AppStore, expected to coincide with the worldwide debut of the iPhone 3G in two days.
We bring you now 12 interesting Apps to look for. Descriptions and screenshots after the jump.
Update: For a well-reasoned rebuttal to at least my views on design, check out Leigh’s counter-post once you’re done reading here.
I’ve been alluding to this for a few months now, but let me repeat: The Mac is poised for innovation over the next few years on a scale that we haven’t experienced since the initial move to OS X in the previous decade. After five years of focusing on new categories like the iPod and the iPhone while gradually improving its Mac product line, the company has now freed up the resources to strengthen its core and highest-revenue business: Macs. And at the same time, new technologies are emerging to take the Mac to the next level. To read why, click through.
Photo by Christopher Chan
Proving themselves every bit as susceptible to consumer hype as their American counterparts, thousands of Apple fans attended the grand opening of Apple’s first retail store in Sydney last week, with several hundred having queued up as long as 31 hours prior to the opening hour.
Accommodated by agreeable weather, the large crowd helped continue Apple’s success in rolling out its innovative retail concept, which makes the stores themselves almost as much of a draw as the products inside.
More pics after the jump.
Ford & Lincoln / Mercury cars are now shipping with a voice activated technology they call “SYNC”, which proudly proclaims “Powered by Microsoft” on all the adds they’re running. My first thought was: ‘Now what the heck would anyone willingly admit that?‘
My second thought was: ‘Why isn’t Apple just OWNING this space?‘ Click through, and we’ll chat about this after the jump.
Everyone is concerned about Steve Jobs’ health, prompting the obvious question about succession plans at Apple. The company seems doomed without him. Who has the vision and drive?
But Apple will be fine without Jobs, although it won’t be the same.
Here’s why, after the jump.
I’m a fan of both Firefox and Safari and regularly use both on my Macs. I like Firefox because it lacks some of Safari’s “Squirrely-ness” with some websites –particularly those using scripting, and I like Safari for private browsing, and because it is so fast. So after a day of use, am I prepared to drop Safari forever for the Fox? Click through, and lets discuss.
BusinessWeek has an interesting but slightly over-the-top story about the misery the iPhone 3G will inflict on the rest of the wireless industry. It’s quite maudlin in its focus on the needs of the establishment wireless service providers. It even seems to mourn threats to the dominance of the existing wireless carriers. Perhaps the only news to glean in between the forecasts of doom is that Palm, once the dominant player in Smart Phones is now too niche to merit a mention in a round-up story like this. Apparently, the hole Palm needs to climb out of is so deep that the iPhone 3G’s coming ubiquity doesn’t even make things worse.
For a Steve Jobs Keynote, the kick-off to last week’s Worldwide Developer Conference was surprisingly, well, surprise-free. Apple rumor-mongers nailed the specs on the iPhone 3G, the pricing, the slipping ship date, and even the launch of Mobile Me, a major redesign of Apple’s .Mac service that focuses on Push technology for the rest of us. For subscribers of Mobile Me, all you have to do is make a change to your calendar on one platform, whether Mac, PC or iPhone, and the change instantly occurs on your other machines. Apple was going to become the Push company.
Phil Schiller demoed the applications involved, from photos to e-mail to address book for almost a half-hour, repeating the phrase “desktop-quality applications” roughly 900 times. As promised, the apps instantly updated across platforms. The Push technology really works, as well as, or, Apple hopes, even better than Microsoft Exchange for corporations. In every respect, it looked like a winning platform. For $99, anyone can have world-leading syncing of their entire digital lives. There’s just one problem: you have to use Apple’s Web applications to do that. No GMail, no Flickr, no GCal, no Facebook. Rather than delivering on the promise of automating the process of keeping every aspect of your life up to date, Apple requires you to leave behind your existing digital life to build a new one. Unless you’re an existing .Mac user, you need a new e-mail address, a new online photo gallery, a new calendar, a new form of online storage. And I, like a lot of people, am not going to make that change. I love Google Apps, Flickr, and Facebook. They’re where I keep my stuff. And that isn’t going to change any time soon. Rather than Mobile Me, Apple seems to have created Mobile Steve. To see the implications of this decision, click through.
Update: Reader imajoebob has got a really funny response in the comments. Worth a read.
Trying to write this post on a Blackberry has taught me something, this thing’s web browser stinks. Now that the 3G iPhones will be on-sale in July, I’m gonna hafta break-down and get one. That said, only one-question remains: How to hide the purchase from my wife?
After the break, we’ll talk through my strategy, in the hopes that a fellow husband in a similar pickle might benefit from my experience, or maybe even able to help me devise a better strategy.
Greatest of all time.
I just got back from visiting a friend in San Luis Obispo, California, and he pointed me towards the Mac Superstore. I’d never heard of the place, and Apple has so thoroughly eradicated all unofficial Mac retailers that I didn’t think there were many left (sadly). But I decided to give the place a close look from the inside. What follows, here and on the jump, is a photo-tour to the coolest Apple store that the company doesn’t own – and maybe ever.
Best Doorstops Ever.
The experience at the MacSuperstore, founded in 1998 by Shane Williams, a graduate of Cal-Poly San Luis Obispo, begins before you even walk in the door. Since the weather is almost always sunny and calm in SLO, Williams and staff use vintage all-in-one Macs to hold the doors open to the faithful. I checked closely, and one door is propped by a Mac Plus while the others are SE/30s. The effect is inviting – and a bit disturbing. I last used an SE/30 in mid-1999, and it seemed pretty far from a doorstop then.
All the most interesting stuff is inside, however, so please read on.
The iMac is a beautiful all-in-one desktop solution capable of handling most every need. But it’s also a bit pricey, especially compared to the dirt cheap Mac mini. Jon Doty decided to do something, fusing a Mac mini with a commodity LCD monitor to create a homemade iMac that I can only describe as…elegantly janky.
Make sure to check out the gallery – the whole process is detailed to a charming degree.
Via Digg.
Mike Beauchamp’s iPhone has been through hell and back – and it’s still working. He tells the story in graphic detail at Flickr.
As the last pair of headlights approached, the semi got over to the far outside lane because he saw me standing on the side of the road. I knew this was trouble. As I watched helplessly from the shoulder, the semi plowed my phone at full speed, throwing it to the ditch on the other side of the highway. At this point, I figured I’d retrieve it just for the purpose of seeing the crushed iPhone in disarray, mangled and crunched lifeless in the grass.
Much to my surprise, as I approached, I heard the familiar sound of my ringtone — the iPhone was alive and ringing! As I picked it up and cradled it gently in my hands, I saw the screen displaying my caller ID — the screen still worked! I slid my finger gently over the answer slide and paused as I held the tattered and torn device to my ear — my heart must have skipped a beat when I heard my mom’s voice at the other end of the phone — the phone still worked!
Glorious. Apple should hire him.
Via Daring Fireball
Nine months after initial reports emerged suggested that iPods and other portable media players might have the potential to disrupt life-saving pacemakers, a further study from the FDA suggests that the risk of harm has been over-stated.
“Based on the observations of our in-vitro study we conclude that no interference effects can occur in pacemakers exposed to the iPods we tested,” they concluded.
Previous studies focused on the risks to pacemakers associated with keeping an iPod two inches from your chest. All that makes me think is that the people conducting the study aren’t too clear on how to use an iPod. Why would you strap one over your heart? And how?
Reuters Via Gizmodo.
iPod Heart Attack image from Global House Price Crash
