Brian X. Chen has some good reporting on the recent 4G rebrand of the AT&T iPhone’s HSPA+ network:
“Consumers are confused enough already,” Mr. [Jan] Dawson said. “When something like this is the central gag in a Saturday Night Live skit, you know you have problems.”
Chen also notes that when T-Mobile did the same thing in 2010, AT&T called it misleading. Indeed.
This morning, I awoke to twilight. The sky looked perfectly clear, as befits a spring morning in Calgary. I glanced across the way and noticed that the magpies next door had made some progress on their nest.
Life is short, but that doesn’t preclude you from slowing down and looking around once in a while.
Jacqui Cheng on the glamourous, jet setting lifestyle that she endures every time Apple releases something new.
March sixth—one day before the iPad event—Rob Enderle published his predictions:
I think people are going to find it disappointing, […]
While it is an improvement over the iPad 2 . . . people are going to be expecting more.
It’s a day ending in “y”, so Rob Enderle said something dumb about Apple again. In his attempt to prove what he predicted, what reason do you suppose he offered?
a) Steve Jobs didn’t introduce it,
b) its dictation feature is similar to the handwriting feature on the Newton, or
c) people will buy the iPad 2 instead because it looks the same.
If you had a hard time deciding which of the above Enderle used to prop up his argument, it’s okay: the answer is d) all of the above. To prove point a, Enderle:
The fact that Apple couldn’t port Siri in time is particularly troubling, suggesting it’s having internal execution problems. That was further exemplified by its inability to keep the order sites up after launch.
Apple brought out a product that, on its face and if Jobs had presented it, would have exceeded expectations. But the company fell into the common trap of trying to make it seem better than it was.
Of course there is no evidence that they tried to port Siri to the new iPad any more than they did, nor that it was the result of internal management struggles. And, of course, pre-order sites have failed under Jobs. Enderle has a point he’s desperate to prove, though:
The Newton was a pretty amazing handheld tablet computer for its time. It significantly exceeded what any competing product could do. But Scully focused on handwriting recognition as the key feature and it sucked. […]
Dictation may be the new iPad’s handwriting recognition. Unable to get Siri to work on the new iPad, Apple instead dropped back to dictation.
This point would be a lot stronger if the dictation in the iPhone 4S were awful, but they aren’t. They’re pretty great. Sour grapes, Rob?
Even after March 16, there are likely to be old iPad 2s that folks are going to think are the new iPad. We aren’t, as a group, that observant.
Well you clearly aren’t, Rob.
So there will be some percentage of buyers who will buy the iPad 2 thinking it is the new iPad, and be pissed.
Rob can’t read, therefore nobody else can.
What could Apple’s motives be here? A normal observer would note that a $399 entry price severely undercuts the rest of the tablet market (save for products sold at a loss, like the Kindle Fire), reducing the price of entry for an iPad. Not Rob, though:
This decision was likely made to clean out old inventory on top of the price reduction, or in the hope that many of the vendors would sell the old iPad at the old price.
This isn’t a limited-time while-supplies-last offer, and I doubt Apple has a year’s worth of iPad 2 inventory laying around. They’re going to keep making new ones. Enderle’s other reason is entirely stupid.
This article hasn’t hit its jackass high with any of the quotes I’ve pulled, though. That happens at the beginning:
But the way it was announced reminded me more of John Scully’s Apple than Steve Jobs’ Apple. Steve was an expert at setting expectations that the product could beat, while Scully tended to overset expectations and folks were increasingly disappointed. Scully’s Apple had problems with execution as well. We saw all of that in the new iPad announcement. John Scully was the CEO who is famous for firing and replacing Steve Jobs in the 1980s, and I think Tim Cook is now the new John Scully.
Rob Enderle is an idiot.
This wouldn’t be noteworthy if Enderle were some kook with a small weblog. But according to his website, he’s the most-quoted tech analyst in the world.
And in the red corner, the Macalope:
Now, when the Macalope said “people” were declaring the new iPad a failure, that was sort of a half-truth. Because one of these “pundits” was Rob Enderle and, if we’re being technical, Rob is actually some kind of mold.
Nice. The Macalope proceeds to tear apart Enderle’s articles, both of which suck, as you’d expect.
Farhad Manjoo, for Slate:
It’s the iPod model. In this story, Apple begins by releasing a novel, category-defining product. Then, as rivals scramble for some way to respond, Apple relentlessly puts out slightly better versions every year, each time remaining just out of reach of the competition. Meanwhile it lowers its prices and expands its product lineup, making its devices more accessible to a wider audience.
As long as Apple keeps anticipating where the market will go, they’ll keep rising above their competitors [1]. Take a look at the netbook fad: analysts were relentlessly pushing Apple to make a cheap laptop. These analysts saw a potentially huge netbook market because Dell and Asus were selling lots of them. As Jason Snell put it:
Apple sold 2.3M laptops at an average price of $1,265 per unit. Imagine how much money it could have lost if it had a netbook!
This was posted on October 19, 2009; three months before the iPad was announced. Apple sold over 15 million iPads in their most recent quarter.
Shawn Blanc points out that AT&T does not clearly distinguish between HSPA+ and LTE on their “4G” coverage map. A nasty trick and, par for the course in AT&T’s world, outright deceptive.
“iPad”.
Marco Arment on the competition:
They’re not fanboys. They’re not brainwashed by “marketing”. Your competitors’ customers aren’t passing on your product because they’re stupid or irrational.
They’re choosing your competitors for good reasons, and denying the existence of such good reasons will only ensure that your product never overcomes them.
I’ve had a similar post in my drafts folder for a few weeks now, but have been unable to articulate these points as well as Arment has. A must-read.
Wired reviews iPhoto, and it’s scathing. Using the app on an iPad is confusing and convoluted. I suspect part of this is due to the learning curve, but this is an iPad: there should be no learning curve. Everything should be obvious. I love a lot of what comes out of Randy Ubillos’ department—I’m one of the three people who enjoyed iMovie ’08—but I think this is a misstep. If an iPad app requires a “help” overlay, it’s too opaque.
As for iPhoto on the iPhone? It’s too cramped, as you’d expect.
The Verge has some great macro shots of the new iPad’s display beside that of the iPad 2, including composited side-by-side shots. Truly stunning.
Stephen Hackett noticed something odd about iPhoto for iOS:
Whatever map tiles are in iPhoto for iOS, they don’t look like Google Maps.
Bryan Bishop at The Verge agrees:
Bringing up the location feature in the app calls up tiles that bear little resemblance to the Google service used in the rest of iOS and in iPhoto for OS X. Writer Holger Eilhard was able to discover that the tiles are in fact being pulled from Apple directly, from a server named gsp2.apple.com.
But Gruber asked and was told that it is indeed Google’s data. How very curious. I’m guessing they’re using Google’s location data, but Apple’s custom map tiles on top.
From the chart:
Attach a mouse with a USB 2.0 host
Wow. Via Shawn Blanc.
Less than two weeks ago, I followed up on my original BookBook for iPhone review. I noted some build quality issues and problems with its longevity, concluding:
I remain sold on the concept. The idea of a phone case with a wallet is a smart one, and Twelve South has executed theirs the best out of the ones I’ve tried or seen. However, I can’t use the BookBook every day. It’s not a finished product yet.
Thursday of last week, I received an email from the very nice marketing and P.R. people at Twelve South, creators of the BookBook:
Read your blog post about your experience with BookBook for iPhone. We’re really sorry to hear about the issues you’ve had, and would love to make it right — our BookBooks are designed to last, and for a lot longer than your 197 days! […]
When you have a moment, shoot me your current mailing address and phone number. We’d like to send over another BookBook for iPhone to replace the one that underperformed. Would that be OK?
My replacement arrived today, and it seems much more substantial than the first one I purchased. It still needs to be broken in, as all leather products require, but I’ll follow up again in another 197 days.
While I was disappointed with the quality of my original BookBook, I’m the proud owner of other Twelve South products. I knew they were purveyors of generally high-quality products. Now I know they take customer experience seriously as well. I noted on Twitter:
Twelve South is an Apple-influenced company right down to their customer service.
I stand by what I said. Great company.
This is a great wallet-type case, and probably the best of that type. I don’t think I can recommend it in good conscience, however, due to the issues I’ve mentioned. They’re not big issues, but when combined, they make for a worse user experience than a separate phone and wallet. That’s the clincher.
The much-anticipated completion of the iLife suite for iOS. As I said, this is a completely re-thought application, not just a port of the Mac version.
The early reviews have been divisive. Oliver Charavel likes Journals:
Journals is Gallery done better. I really hoped Apple would replace it, and they’ve done a stellar job!
Neven Mrgan dislikes it:
It’s too early for an opinion, but I’m not going to let that stop me: iPhoto for iOS is really bad. Can’t see myself ever using it.
When asked why, he replied:
Incredibly confusing, plain ugly in places. Really overdesigned and over engineered.
John Gruber is a fan:
The tools are useful and innovative, the use of touch is both natural and fun, and it’s chock full of nice little touches, like being able to choose which side of the display you want the thumbnails on.
Louie Mantia back in October, on Apple’s iPhone naming scheme:
The only other reason I can think of is that Apple sells multiple iPhone models at any one time. Consumers need a name differentiator. But they don’t sell iPad 1 alongside iPad 2, so I’m not sure about this reasoning.
After all, Apple doesn’t put the extra label on the back of the products. They simply say “iPhone” or “iPad.”
This is the approach they ended up taking with the new iPad, which is odd considering the first paragraph in this pull quote. They now sell the iPad 2 alongside something referred to as “the new iPad”. But, like iPods before it, people will come up with their own name. Much like the fifth-generation iPod was referred to as the “iPod video”, this will likely be known as the “iPad 3”.
A number of people noticed that the iOS 5.1 update indicates “4G” in the status bar when connected to AT&T’s HSPA+ network. This is disingenuous at best, especially as “real” 4G just arrived today in the iPad. This only applies to AT&T, as far as I can tell—my iPhone 4S does not display a 4G icon when connected to Telus’ HSPA+ network.
Or, as Dave Bug says:
AT&T switching their iPhone status icon to 4G from 3G is the biggest performance improvement since they changed the size of the signal bars.
[The 20 MB cap] causes a problem mostly for universal apps that are offered as a single download for both iPhone and iPad. See, on an iPhone the impact of the casual downloader, who sees an app and has to have it right then, cannot be discounted. These users probably grab the majority of their apps over their 3G connection on an impulse.
Since the iPad resources now need to be retina-friendly as well, app sizes will increase significantly, especially on apps with a lot of custom elements.
The keynote video is already up.
As a proud MLA user, this citation format makes perfect sense, with the exception of the lack of a required URL, “especially given the difficulty of Twitter search for anything not said in the past day or two.”
