Month: March 2012

Disappointing, Three Years Running ⇥

Apparently millions of fans around the world can be wrong, despite what Elvis thinks. This morning, I noticed that everyone’s favourite analyst thinks the iPad 3 will be a disappointment. There’s too much stupid in the article to respond to, but here’s a taste:

“I think people are going to find it disappointing,” said Silicon Valley technology analyst Rob Enderle. “While it is an improvement over the iPad 2 … people are going to be expecting more.”

Liked that, did you? Have another:

And the launch possibly in October and marketing blitz around Microsoft’s Windows 8 operating system supporting tablets with all of the functions of a Mac desktop computer “is going to hit them (Apple) them hard.”

Enjoyed that? Marco Arment certainly did:

Knowing no more than you do right now, I can guarantee you: the iPad 3 will disappoint a lot of armchair tech commentators, “analysts”, and anyone who gets paid by the pageview. (How convenient.)

Apple’s stock will dip slightly tomorrow because the iPad 3 isn’t powered by cold fusion, but people will buy it in droves. The display will be incredible. It will be a hell of an update for anyone with a first-generation iPad, and an amazing way for first-time buyers to be introduced to it. And Android tablets will be playing catch-up all year long.

The world keeps spinning.

Uncle Sam: If It Ends in .Com, It’s .Seizable ⇥

Not just .com, either:

When U.S. authorities shuttered sports-wagering site Bodog.com last week, it raised eyebrows across the net because the domain name was registered with a Canadian company, ostensibly putting it beyond the reach of the U.S. government. Working around that, the feds went directly to VeriSign, a U.S.-based internet backbone company that has the contract to manage the coveted .com and other “generic” top-level domains.

Looks like it might be a good idea to register another non-generic domain.

With New Hardware, Square Begins Taxi Rollout ⇥

Nick Bilton:

But things are about to change, says Square, the mobile payments network, which is beginning the rollout of a new payment platform in New York taxis in the next few weeks.

This looks amazing. Square really is becoming the payment system of the future. I can’t wait until they roll their lineup out to Canadian customers.

What the iPad 3 Really Needs: Fewer Stupid Articles About the iPad 3 ⇥

Craig Grannell:

As the iPad 3 gears up to smash the industry in the face, the internet is being pelted by articles that say—shock!—the iPad 3 is doomed! It’s rubbish! Its competition is about to nonchalantly zoom past, leaving Apple once again like it was back in the days when it didn’t have a clue.

Hilarious takedown of some of the dumbest analysts and what they think about the iPad 3.

Is Ice Cream Sandwich Out Yet? ⇥

Vlad Savov:

[W]e’re sat watching as a two-stage software update roadmap develops. One is for Google’s own, the Xooms and the Nexuses of the world, and the other is for everyone else, leaving Android phone owners at the mercy of quixotic phone makers and myopic carriers.

Carriers are aren’t worried, manufactures can’t be bothered, and Google is too busy to care, so the user loses. They’re not just losing out on new APIs and the new user interface, but also on important bug and security fixes. Rooting simply isn’t a viable option for most users. Everyone needs to step up and deliver here.

24/192 Music Downloads are Very Silly Indeed ⇥

Christoper Montgomery clears up the many misconceptions of digital audio. He cites a study that compared a variety of audio formats and qualities:

In 554 trials, listeners chose correctly 49.8% of the time. In other words, they were guessing.

Precisely. And this was only with 16-bit audio. Virtually nobody can tell the difference, and almost no consumer-grade equipment can replicate it.

Submit a Radar, or GTFO ⇥

Daniel Pasco notes that filing radars is a great thing (duh), and that duplicating existing radars is even better:

Frequently, at least one other person will have reported the issue that you did. A lot of people get frustrated by this, because they think that their report has been summarily dismissed […]

Filing a duplicate bug is your way of up-voting, or bumping, a reported issue. The more duplicates that show up for a specific issue, the higher priority that issue becomes.

Well said. If you want to encourage people to duplicate your radar and ensure that something gets fixed, OpenRadarHelper is a great Safari extension by Guillaume Campagna. It posts radars filed through Apple’s Bug Reporter to OpenRadar, and vice-versa, so you can link people to the OpenRadar copy. Smart.

iPad 3 and Photography ⇥

On this week’s Talk Show, John Gruber commented on the pattern of Apple’s iPad keynotes, noting that specific apps were demoed at each event. The first demonstrated productivity apps, and the second expanded into the creative realm of GarageBand and iMovie. However, the third major part of the iLife suite still has not been ported to the iPad. Neven Mrgan has some thoughts on why a straight port of iPhoto wouldn’t be good enough:

Perhaps Apple is rethinking the whole photo workflow: how we shoot, how we store, how we edit, how we share. If that sounds hopeful, I’ll let it fly on the wings of iPhone’s success as a camera. It would be neat if everything that happens after we tap (tap!) to shoot changes as much as that act of taking pictures itself has changed in the last five years.

I wholly agree—iPhoto for iPad simply isn’t a good fit. Smart points throughout this piece. He mentions that the inclusion of a photo printing service would be strange (emphasis his):

Look at this incredible paper-like screen. Your photos have never looked this good! Now let’s use this futuristic piece of interactive glass to print your pictures, then mail them.

I agree that it’s an odd combination, but I think there’s still something inherently special about a printed photograph in a book or a greeting card that can’t be replicated by a screen. Apple clearly agrees.

Square Register ⇥

A few months ago, Square took care of the end user, with the introduction of Card Case. Now they’re helping businesses directly, with Square Register. They’ve thought of everything with this app, even integrating with receipt printers and cash drawers. Cash payments look a little clunkier than they would on a machine with physical buttons due to the use of the touch screen, but one can always add a Bluetooth keypad. Be sure to check out the cool little video they made for it.

Update

Love this comment from M.G. Siegler:

I also love the last line of the USA Today story on the matter:

Square has no plans at this time to launch a version of Square Register for Android tablets.

I assume they also won’t be launching it for the Atari Jaguar, the Newton, or the Commodore 64.

Why spend the effort until there’s something worth writing it for?

Rob Enderle: Wrong Again

Water is wet. Fire is hot. Rob Enderle knows nothing about Apple. These constants are what ensures we get a good night’s sleep. With that in mind, he produced yet another in his anthology of turds entitled “Why Apple Suddenly Sucks“. Some choice nuggets:

I was looking at the PlayStation Vita the other day, and remembering that, had this product come out two years ago, it would have easily eclipsed the hottest product of that time — the iPad — which cost more and did far less.

I doubt this. The iPad was a huge product. Everyone was speculating and chatting about Apple’s tablet, as they had been since the rumours began several years prior. The hype around the Vita today, or the hype around similar products around the time of the iPad’s launch simply isn’t—and wasn’t—as big as the publicity of the iPad.

Steve Jobs seemed to understand better than most the need to manage perceptions. As Apple’s most influential advocate, when he said a product was wonderful, it was wonderful. From the first iPod (which kind of sucked) to the first iPhone (which really sucked as a phone), we drank his Kool-Aid by the gallon, and raved about these products.

The only reason people buy Apple products is because Steve said we should. The only reason people ever liked the iPhone was because Steve said it was good. Every person who buys an Apple product are too stupid to look elsewhere because they (we) bask in his magnificence.

This is, of course, nonsense.

Now think about tablets. The market had largely rejected them, and Steve Jobs himself initially said that folks would never buy anything without a keyboard. Then he brought out the iPad. And even though it was really just a netbook without a keyboard, folks saw the result as magical and different.

People didn’t buy it because it was an Apple product. People bought it because it ran the same touch-based OS as the iPhone and iPod touch, as opposed to its competitors which ran Windows. Competing products were basically laptops folded in half. The iPad was thinner, lighter, had longer battery life, and ran a touch-optimised operating system.

Without Steve Jobs, the magic is gone. Microsoft built Windows 8 to bridge into tablets and optimized it for that experience. People love Windows 8 because it is an iPad experience without the compromises […]

He’s just reading off the PR package now.

[…] and because Microsoft is assuring early reviewers get a positive experience by making sure they get the right hardware, software, and services wrapper. With Mountain Lion, Apple is doing the more traditional thing of just tossing the product out there.

Mountain Lion is in a developer preview stage. Windows 8 is in a public beta stage. These are completely different.

But without Steve Jobs selling the magic, folks are having a WTF moment. Instead of seeing the world through Steve’s reality distortion field, they are looking at the product critically and finding it lacking.

Nowhere does Enderle cite any early reviews of Mountain Lion, nor make any specific points as to what he thinks reviews dislike. His entire rant hinges on his unsubstantiated, unreferenced statement that 10.8 sucks. And, from what I’ve read so far, reviewers are generally enjoying it. The biggest controversy so far has predictably been Gatekeeper.

This article also relies upon his opinion that Windows 8 is amazing and beloved by reviewers. On the contrary, while the adaption of the Metro interface and the speed of the OS has been widely praised, most seem unconvinced by the combination of a desktop and tablet operating system.

David Pogue:

On a nontouch computer like a laptop or desktop PC, the beauty and grace of Metro feels like a facade that’s covering up the old Windows. It’s two operating systems to learn instead of one.

Matt Warman:

[…] it’s a weird, clunky, stupid duplication. Only Microsoft would provide an operating system with two different versions of its own web browser, available in two different places, with the same name and looks but different capabilities.

Furthermore, the two operating system updates aren’t even comparable. Windows 8’s Metro interface is a radical and interesting reconsideration of standard desktop paradigms. Mountain Lion’s name identifies its purpose as a relative of Lion. There’s no magical tablet interface, but good, solid updates throughout. Of course, Enderle doesn’t mention any of this. In his world, Mountain Lion is an utter failure (“sucks”) and Windows 8 is the future of everything. The reason this is occurring is because Steve Jobs is dead.

Rob Enderle should start flipping burgers. It’s hard to screw up as badly as he did here.

Windows 8 vs. iPad ⇥

Windows 8 looks very intriguing with the Metro UI on a tablet, but it’s a convoluted concept. The legacy stuff creates confusion and is generally terrible on a touch screen, and vice-versa (using the Metro UI with a keyboard and mouse).

Debunking Digitimes ⇥

How does this publication get any traction whatsoever? The staff of 9to5 Mac have a thorough refutation of their most recent (and widely-publicised) claims.