September 22nd, 2011 § § permalink
This morning I looked at my phone on the way to work to see what day it was. This was what I saw:
Thinking it was odd, but dismissing it as part of the beta possibly, I just unlocked and looked at the calendar.
A little later I was curious so I woke it up again. This time:
Really? “I want a parrot?” It also occurred to me that I only had the beta on my iPad, NOT my iPhone.
When I got to work I did some search engine work and came up with nothing. I was starting to wonder if my phone had been hacked but it wasn’t doing it anymore.
Then when I searched the Octopus line again, it came up with Mastodon. My memory clicked in that it was what I was listening to on my drive to work. “I want a parrot” is a song from the new Aristocrats album.
Mystery solved, but begs the question.. is this the best way to reveal the song title? Remove the date and put no indication that it’s a song title? The music was new so I didn’t recognize the songs.
Confusing.
December 27th, 2010 § § permalink
Today it occurred to me, Google has taken a play directly from the Microsoft playbook. These days there is a prize fight being fought between Google and Apple for the heart and mind of smart phone users. Apple has a head start, but that doesn’t historically mean a whole lot.
A Brief History Lesson
Back in 1984, Apple released the Macintosh computer. There had been home computers before, but the Macintosh was the first computer that anyone could just sit down and use. Before the Macintosh, computers were obtuse, they required knowledge of arcane commands and were accessed in a, and I am being nice here, less than approachable interface.
Apple came back from Xerox after seeing the mouse and graphical user interface and in perfect Steve Jobs form set out on perfecting it and making it as sexy as possible.
The problem that Apple has never managed to solve is that sexy is expensive. In 1990, 6 years after Apple had released the Macintosh with great success, Microsoft released Windows 3.0. Windows 3.0 was the first version of Windows that had a true graphical windowed environment and it was the first version of Windows that truly caught on with PC makers.
You can practically thank Windows 3.0 for the birth of several major computer manufacturers, namely Gateway, or Gateway 2000 if you are old enough to remember them then.
What Windows 3.0 managed to do was put a computer in your home, with roughly the same capabilities as a Macintosh, but at almost half of the price. Computers were still very expensive then compared to today. A Macintosh went for about $2,495 and a PC with Windows could be had for less than $1,500.
Isn’t This Article About Phones?
Oh yea, that’s right. So what does this have to do with phones? The Apple pundits will tell you “Price doesn’t mean much, you can get an iPhone on contract for $200 and they are selling light hot cakes. That’s true, but there is quite a long tail on that user acceptance curve and the real wealth of users are not yet holding smart phones.
As of 2010, ComScore says 45.5 million people in the United States own smartphones. The mobile phone market is comprised of 234 million subscribers. That’s just in the United States! That means all of the smartphone OS’s, and Palm, Google, Apple, Microsoft and RIM are the biggies, are fighting for less than 20% of the available market. Are these numbers starting to sound familiar?
Today that means 80% of the market aren’t willing to pay for either the phone or the data plan. Google is already trying to figure out ways to subsidize the data plan with advertising, and you can already get Google Android based phones free on contract. This year Best Buy had an Android phone free with contract for every major carrier.
That means we aren’t too far from free Android phones with cheaper data plans. Once Apple has soaked up all of the tech savvy people with expendable income, Google or Microsoft (I hope!) can walk in and just sweep all the remaining people into customers. If you think this sounds crazy, it’s happened before.
It’s like déjà vu over here if you ask me. A “good enough” competitor, prices that attract the consumer at large, and a willingness to let anyone build on their platform to build devices that fit whatever the user wants.
I don’t know about you, but if I was Apple, I’d be looking in the rearview mirror. And in case you think the iPad is any different, read this article again and replace iPhone with iPad in your mind.
April 19th, 2010 § § permalink
Today I had a problem with my iPhone again. When I leave the office, I have to go down to an underground parking garage to get my car. Obviously I lose what little signal I actually get at work. One might think that as soon as you get out of the garage, you’d be fine. You would get your beloved signal back and all would be good, right?
No, not right. There are many things in this world I don’t understand, I am just a man. One such thing is the mysteries that must explain the laws of iPhone cellular connectivity. I would think that it’s constantly searching for signal, if it’s present it gets the best it can, if not, it doesn’t. I would of course be wrong, because when I get out of the building, I still have no signal. I might still have signal until I do one of several things (only one of which works) which I’ll describe in a minute.
Today I left the office and decided to wait, wait until I got signal back. I traveled this route:
View Larger Map
That’s right, 2.1 miles and 5 minutes later (not including traffic and lights) I still had zero signal. Now I travel this route and talk on the phone, via headset of course, nearly every week day. I know there is signal here. It seems like the iPhone just sucks at re-acquiring a signal.
And What’s More
Why doesn’t switching the phone into airplane mode reset the radio and prepare it to acquire a fresh signal? I am guessing since the intent is while you are ON an airplane, it expects a different network and would scan for the best possible network to connect to when you turn it back off.
The problem is that it doesn’t. When you turn airplane mode back off, it’s got the same crappy non-working, call failing signal I had when I got out of the parking garage. We are talking 3G indicator with 4 minimum bars. For some reason I can get email, and text messages, but I can’t make phone calls.
And What’s More
The only way I have found to fix it is to physically reboot the phone. So why the hell does it take so long? Why does my phone take longer to shut down than a 3 year old install of Windows XP? It doesn’t make sense. If it’s really based on Darwin, when it sends a kill, shouldn’t it just KILL? Why do I have to wait literally over a minute for my phone to turn off, and nearly a minute for it to boot again. Two minutes doesn’t seem long, until you are standing there trying to make a damned phone call.
It seems like the one thing my iPhone does very poorly is actually making and receiving phone calls. We have all complained about the call quality and of course the ever present dropped calls, but there seem to be a whole rats nest of problems with the iPhone when it comes to telephony. Sorry to rant, but this one is getting old, it happens nearly every day when I leave work.
April 14th, 2010 § § permalink
August 11th, 2009 § § permalink
What’s that you say? It can’t be possible! 9% market share in PCs! Symbian has them crushed in market share in the smart phone market. There’s no monopoly here! I am afraid so…
In economics, a monopoly exists when a specified individual or an enterprise has sufficient control over a particular product or service to determine significantly the terms on which other individuals shall have access to it. Monopolies are thus characterized by a lack of economic competition for the good or service that they provide and a lack of viable substitute goods. – From Wikipedia
I am, of course, NOT a lawyer, have no legal training, and this is purely a common sense interpretation of the law. The situation occurred when Apple opened up the iPhone to external developers. They created a marketplace that allows 3rd parties to develop Applications for a platform, the iPhone. If Apple had not decided to create it’s own applications for that platform, it might be a different story. But in this particular case, Apple is now competing with other developers on the iPhone. This is no different than if they decided the would not allow Firefox to work on OS X.
It doesn’t matter that Apple doesn’t charge for these applications, ask Microsoft. Bundling, Tying, all of these practices come into play when you have a system, that you allow others to develop on, and you prevent them from creating applications that compete with your own for competitive reasons. (Google Voice anyone?)
I am afraid that when this comes up, and more high profile applications get rejected because they duplicate (a nice way to say compete with) Apple’s bundled software, the castle of Apple might start to shake under the weight of it’s own defenses.
I am sure they feel quite good about their place right now, but if history has proven anything, even Microsoft’s money doesn’t do much good when fighting the government. And if you thought Bill Gates was smug answering questions to the house committee, wait until Steve Jobs shoes up in sneakers and a turtle neck.
