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Apple obsoletes PowerPC Macs
According to announcements today at WWDC, the next release of Mac OS X, OS 10.6 “Snow Leopard”, will not support PowerPC-based Macs. I find this pretty annoying. I like to get my money’s worth out of a machine. Now Apple is telling me I have to get a new machine if I want support, even though that old machine is still doing its thing just fine.
Yeah, I have Intel Macs; but I also have a number of PowerPC Macs, including my main laptop, that work just fine. I’d like to be able to use the latest software on these machines too, but now I’m rev-locked.
It leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It feels like blackmail. It doesn’t feel very “Green” throwing away a working machine that is otherwise adequate, but no longer compatible (with Apple’s business model).
Nokia handset sales down 19 percent
Alec Saunders provides his analysis of Nokia’s recent report that profits fell 90 percent in the most recent quarter. I agree with Alec’s points. I would add that this news fulfills my predictions (here and here) that it’s not about the hardware. If it were, Apple would already be in trouble. The iPhone doesn’t compare on a hardware level to Nokia’s high-end phones. As I said before: Apple isn’t winning because their phones are better. Apple is winning because the experience is better. iPhone has opened up a whole new world of uses for a mobile phone to ordinary consumers. People are doing things they never dreamed of doing before on a mobile phone (even if these things were technically possible on the phone they had before).
Nokia is playing a hardware one-upsmanship game, while Apple has swooped in on the flank and utterly redefined the handset landscape.
And the really bad news for Nokia is that even if they are able to realize they are playing the wrong game, they are in no position to be any good at the new game that Apple has created. Apple knows how to build good-enough hardware. More importantly, they know how to market it and they have their own distribution - all things out of Nokia’s reach. And the nail in the coffin? The App Store. Not only do they not have one, but Nokia doesn’t own enough of the parts to create one, nor do they have the expertise for operating one.
Nokia’s numbers will continue to slide as the DIY niche continues to narrow. I’m not smart enough to know how to get them out of this situation, but I can make one suggestion: Make your platform the easiest to build for. Get rid of “Symbian Signed” and let a third-party app marketplace thrive. Don’t make it easier to get certs - get rid of certs entirely! This is one place Nokia can immediately leapfrog Apple - not follow, but lead. Get rid of approval and let anybody write code and let the market, the community, rate the apps, and let end-users decide which ones they want to install based those community ratings.
Is Microsoft getting a bum rap?
Mark Evans thinks there is a double standard when it comes to Apple and Microsoft. He says:
No matter how often [Apple] drops the ball with a service (MobileMe) or product (3G Apple iPhone) that doesn’t work, batteries (iPod Nano, MacBook) that over-heat or slashing prices only a few months a product has been released (original iPhone), Apple somehow manages to stay out of trouble.
And
If Microsoft screwed up as badly, the cacophony would be overwhelming with people calling for boycotts and Steve Ballmer’s head.
For one thing, we have to bear in mind that, while Apple’s market share has been increasing, Microsoft is still the 800-pound gorilla, with at least a 90 percent market share. Microsoft is the incumbent. Apple is the upstart. Apple represents the alternative. And, as such, they probably do get cut more slack.
People have a tendency to cheer for the underdog. It’s not as “cool” to endorse the favorite.
And then there’s the fact that Microsoft has not given anybody much to cheer about in a long time. Apple really has produced some impressive innovations over the past eight years: iPod/iTunes, Mac OS X, iPhone. In the mean time, Microsoft has given us more bloated software and disasters like .NET (does anybody even talk about that anymore? - what developer that built on that platform doesn’t regret it now?).
Name any Web 2.0 company and they are not using any Microsoft tools. Its all open source and Mac with perhaps some Flash - Does anybody really think SIlverlight is going anywhere? Apple represents the future, Microsoft the past. Microsoft is John McCain and Apple is Barak Obama. It’s not cool to campaign for McCain… but like Microsoft, he still might win - he just won’t be “cool” in the process.
Why iPhone is not “boring”
I’ve seen several comments and posts recently suggesting that iPhone is just another boring story.
I believe an historic day passed us by last week. Sure, Apple opening up the iPhone App Store received some press, but I haven’t yet read anything that really “gets” the significance of this event. There’s all kinds of moaning and groaning about the quality of apps, the price etc. and while there may be truth to these gripes, the fact most people are missing is that, unless Apple screws it up in some big way, the world changed last week.
I consider it as potentially significant as the effect the introduction of WWW and Mosaic had on the Internet. Last week, Apple changed everything about the mobile phone ecosystem and I don’t think very many people noticed - yet. That world will never be the same, just like the Internet was never the same after HTTP.
The other players, whether device makers or carriers, are not even on the same planet - it seems like they aren’t even aware of the situation. They aren’t even asking the right question, to say nothing of having the right answer. There are hundreds of millions of mobile phones with Java on them - and nobody knows it. Most people have no idea how to buy anything for their phone beyond ringtones (if they even know how to do that). Their phones probably have the capability to run apps - but there is no place to get them. Well, or say in the case of Symbian phones, there are too many places to get them.
Apple is changing all that with the iPhone store. And gripe all you want about the warts of the current apps or the prices or whatever, all that mises the point. Ordinary people now know how to obtain apps (free or otherwise), how to install them - perhaps more significantly, the entire idea of adding apps to a phone is now “normal” - it’s now part of the collective consciousness.
And developers have a place to put them, not “yet another place”, but the place, the one and only place. I always said iPhone was about iTunes from the start.
Of course this is about distribution and execution - Apple has the right capabilities to create this “perfect storm”. Unlike carriers, Apple knows how to build and manage software and services (can you say iTunes?). Unlike other device makers, Apple has their own distribution and marketing - they don’t need to rely on the carriers to market their device.
The future of Mobile is now Apple’s to lose and the rest of the mobile space better be worried.
Going green with a Mac Mini
There have been rumors flying about for a long time that the Mac Mini was going to be discontinued by Apple. Now it’s looking like it might be here for at least a while longer, according to AppleInsider, who report that a new version is in the works.
I have been working on an elaborate post about my uses of the Mac Mini for a while, but now I’m deciding to just go ahead and blurt it out, in short and sweet form.
I have a “lab” of sorts where I test a lot of things on different OS platforms. Years ago, it consisted of several basic “tower” PCs running various versions of Linux and Windows. Those took up a lot of space, consumed a lot of power, and made a lot of heat. A few years ago I downsized to Mini-ITX platforms to save space and heat/energy.
Well a few months ago, I took this even further and configured a Mac Mini for the role:
Headless Mac Mini VMWARE Fusion server
I expected this to take quite a fair bit of work and time. It turns out I got all the OSs installed in virtual machines and all the software running in the VMs in just a few hours. I was impressed with both Mac OS X 10.5 and VMWARE. Now I’ve gone from five Mini ITX PC boxes, to one Mac Mini running several virtual machines under VMWARE Fusion. And that still leaves the Mac Mini itself available for whatever I wish. The box is running Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, which now has better support for headless operation. The Mac Mini has no keyboard, mouse, or monitor attached, and lives happily tucked away in a closet.
The Mac Mini may not be all that green on paper, but it is far greener than the five systems it’s replacing. There is way less heat, and MUCH less power being consumed and it’s actually more convenient and more usable too.
In terms of space savings, it’s tremendous. Even with the smallish Mini ITX machines, we were still talking about something the size of a trash compactor or a small fridge. Whereas the Mac Mini would easily fit inside a single one of the Mini ITX boxes, with room to spare.
The VMWARE virtual machines are running some rather treacherous apps too and OS variants, and it all works. Apple has created more than a nifty desktop OS with Mac OS X. It turns out to be a pretty darned capable headless server virtualization platform too. Here’s a quick rundown of some of the tricks involved:
- You’ll need to attach the Mac Mini to a keyboard, mouse, and display to get it set up the first time. Be sure to uncheck the “Open Bluetooth Setup Assistant at startup when no input device is present” option in the Bluetooth System Preferences, or every time your headless Mac boots it’s going to complain that it doesn’t have a keyboard or mouse.
- Because this machine is a 24/7 server, I turn off Sleep in the Energy Saver control panel.
- Add any VMWARE virtual machines that you want to start automatically when the Mac boots to the “System Preferences > Accounts > username > Login Items” for the account and set that account to “Automatically log in” at boot (under “System Preferences > Accounts > Login Options > Automatically log in as:”).
- I run the Vine Server VNC server on the Mac Mini to enable any VNC client to remotely view or control the machine. This must also be added to the “Login Items” so it starts automatically when the machine boots.
- I use Chicken of the VNC (and ssh) to remotely control the Mac Mini from other Macs. Linux or Windows VNC clients can also be used to remotely control the Mac Mini and that works fine too (it’s weird to see a Mac OS GUI on Windows).
While I was at it, in the native OS X system of the Mac Mini, I activated the Apache 2 install that comes with Mac OS X 10.5 along with MySQL server and a Wordpress install for good measure.
This all works very well. The only issue so far has been that some major OS updates kill the “headless” operation here because they pop up a dialog during the boot, BEFORE the user is logged in and therefore BEFORE the Vine VNC server is started, meaning no remote access. This sucks because in those cases I have to hook up a monitor/keyboard/mouse just to click ‘ok’ to let the update finish and let the machine reboot. This has only happened with one update so far, so it is an annoyance I can live with, but it would be nice if the mac update process eventually just timed out and completed the update unattended.
iPhone SDK, not quite
I have not had time yet to figure out whether Apple’s direction with the iPhone SDK is a good or bad thing. Apple will be taking the approach that they will be the only way to distribute apps, the gatekeeper. That sounds bad, but I’m told by people I trust that the process will be reasonable, better than the situation we have for distribution of freeware with Symbian Signed for Nokia phones.
The SDK is available now, in beta, but not for writing apps that actually run on the phone, if I understand correctly, but just for building apps and testing them (on a Mac, I believe). So they didn’t really make their promised February 2008 for release, but at least there is progress.
I’ll be spending some time with it and I’ll be particularly interested in comparing the software distribution options for iPhone vs. Symbian/Nokia. Could it be that we are actually headed toward a situation where the only open platform is Windows Mobile? How ironic would that be?
iPhone SDK promised date approaching
As many may recall, Steve Jobs had announced in October that Apple would be releasing its much-anticipated iPhone SDK (Software Developers Kit) before the end of February - I’m certainly not going to let them forget it.
Rumors are flying as the final days wind down. Some say it will happen next week - others say it will be delayed. One has to hope that Apple doesn’t follow in Nokia’s Symbian Signed disastrous ways. if they do, I guess we all have to become Windows Mobile developers or wait for Android.
First experience with iPhone is totally lame
So I broke down and decided to get an iPhone to do some development (hopefully) with it. People have told me there were month-to-month options for AT&T service, but this is NOT TRUE. You have to commit to a 2 year plan. The best deal we could find was to add the iPhone to an existing account. We had to bump the service (increase of $20) and add the iPhone data service (another $20). That’s a $40 increase to our bill for a few more minutes and the data plan. Okay. A $960 commitment, but I can live with that (I guess). Then of course I wanted the $299 4GB phone (that they still advertise prominently in the store) but it’s not available anymore - so I have buy the $399 8GB version. Okay, so now we’re talking $1,400 but fine.
So the guy at the AT&T store sets all this up and takes our money. Supposedly pre-approving all the AT&T service changes. All I have to do is go to iTunes and it will all be great.
Except I open iTunes and NONE of the options that we already supposedly setup at the AT&T store while we waited were there in the iTunes activation. Instead it’s $40 more per month than we were quoted (adding another $960 to the total commitment/cost, bringing me to $2,400 or so now). Oh, this iPhone thing is a great experience so far.
My wife kept a cool head and found online (not readily available in the official AT&T or Apple materials) an 800# we could call for “manual iPhone provisioning” - this was obviously an offshore call center - but after explaining the situation, the rep. supposedly made the adjustments to the account so that we will get the plan we ordered at the AT&T store. I guess we’ll find out when the first bill comes.
Not the kind of thing I expect from an Apple product.
Apple’s iPhone hacker dilema
Everyone has heard about Apple’s threats regarding unlocked iPhones. On Monday, Apple issued this statement “unauthorized iPhone unlocking programs available on the Internet cause irreparable damage to the iPhone’s software which will likely result in the modified iPhone becoming permanently inoperable when a future Apple-supplied iPhone software update is installed.”
I’m sure this will scare off some people that had considered unlocking their phone. In my case, I have to admit that I was thinking about getting an iPhone now that they can be unlocked, but I’ve put that on hold for now.
It will be very interesting to see if Apple really even continues to pursue this tactic. On the one hand, they must have At&T/Cingular breathing down their neck about it, buton the other hand, just as Microsoft benefited tremendously from all the illegal copies of Windows flying about, one part of Apple must want to encourage the hacking.
It’s not a matter of what can Apple do, contractually, or legally. It’s a matter of what will the costs be if they burn too many people, or the wrong people, and really do cause iPhones to become “permanently inoperable” and refuse to fix them. Apple depends on their standing and reputation. Once they stop being “cool” they will have a hard time getting new customers on product features alone.
Don’t kid yourself. Apple’s iPhone strategy is an iTunes strategy
A lot of us would kill for the master hyping ability of Apple and Steve Jobs. What they achived with the iPhone is nothing short of incredible. And perhaps some of us are just being a little jealous when we write posts like those of Richard Stastny and Michael Robertson. For the most part, I agree with their posts, and I encourage you to check them out.
There is one thing that stood out for me in the comparison table by Michael Robertson between the Nokia E61 and iPhone:
I highlighted the one (and only) place where iPhone is totally unique: iTunes. Michael notes that Nokia is the world’s largest phone maker, selling more than twice as many phones as their nearest competitor, but none of them offer syncing with iTiunes — and they likely never will. This point gets lost in a bullet-point “features list” like the one above.There is no other phone today that will work with iTunes and this is the only thing that makes this phone stand out, really. The rest is fluff and window dressing, including the touchscreen. Someone can copy everything else about this phone, and as Michael’s chart shows, there are already phones that do more than the iPhone, in all other respects.
Personally, the fact that the wi-fi is crippled is a huge black eye for Apple and something that simply outrages me. It’s the kind of thing we expect from AT&T, but for Apple to be all over that is just painful. And it is a very slippery slope. But I digress.
The point is, everything about Apple’s iPhone strategy is really an iTunes strategy, to make iTunes central to one’s life experience. Will it work, given all the downsides and limitations of the iPhone product? Time will tell.
They want people’s attention, the way Google and Microsoft want our attention. That’s what iPhone is really about.
