Rubénerd!

TheNextWeb Canada is reporting that ministers in Saskatchewan (hey, spelled it right the first try!) have started using iPads. They seem almost too excited by their new toys... or at least one of them is!

Don't get me wrong, I love the hardware and think that anything that can reduce costs and improving service is a Good Thing, but I'm wary of governments relying upon one device from one foreign company. As much as it pains me to admit it, in this circumstance I'd probably prefer them using Android tablets. Android isn't entirely free either, and the tablet hardware will be unabashedly and unashamedly cloning the iPad, but it's a start.

According to the Twitters, here in Australia Greens senator Scott Ludlum and Liberal MP Malcolm Turnbull have started using iPads too, but more in a personal capacity.

Unfortunately despite my best efforts at staying at version 9, I had to update iTunes to 10.0.1 this afternoon so I could install the latest iTelephone update. Looking at the interface and how it's still the the most sluggish Apple application on my Mac, I'll still be using Exaile for actually playing music ;).

Cocoa iTunes! Come on, help a brother out!

Don't look now but... I was just looking at my dock before and I realised I use more Oracle software now than Apple software. Don't worry though, they didn't force my dock to be horizontal, I only did that so I could take a better screenshot. If you have it on the side, it would have taken up more space.

Does this mean I'm more of a lackey for Ellison than Jobs?

UPDATE: Maybe I spoke too soon!

Fire up the Terminal and type this:

defaults write com.apple.iTunes full-window -1

I'm on tethered internet so I can't (and don't feel compelled) to download iTunes 10, so I can't check if this works or not. If it makes your Mac explode, don't come to me for a replacement. I would replace it for you, but I've got a lot to do right now you see.

Apple has released new stuff, so because Slashdot and the like dub me an Apple fanboi it's my civic responsibility to discuss them... from my iTelephone. We still don't have home internet, you see :(.

iPod shuffle

Don't get me wrong, I adore Apple products because they're the only consumer electronics company that can design things (and yes that includes B&O!) but only Apple could remove buttons from something, make an advertising campaign out of it, then put the same buttons back and advertise it as a feature ;).

iPod nano

A very interesting change having a touch screen, but I wonder what impact it will have on usability, especially when you're walking around with your hand in your pocket. The ClickWheel was such a boon because you could operate it without looking, and you could memorise the order of the menus.

It also lost the ability to play video (which they heavily advertised in previous versions) and it no longer has a built in camera. In many ways its like the transition from the iPod Mini to the nano, they're two completely different devices. It's basically a slightly larger iPod shuffle with a screen.

iPod touch

There are lots of people who can't justify buying an iPhone 4 and an expensive new phone plan, and I know if I was one of them I'd be really considering getting one of these now that it has the "retina display" too. I mean I look at the screen on my iTelephone and look at every single other phone on the market and I feel like someone has rubbed grit into my eyes, or my glasses are really dirty!

Apple TV

It has an A4 chip which I think we were all expecting. They were able to keep the interface true to the original though. Unfortunately, I must be one of the few people in the universe who doesn't like black or think its cool, so the new colour is a bit of a shame. Oh well, I'm weird.

iTunes

For a brief moment in Leopard, iTunes looked like a Mac native application with a consistent interface. Now it looks different again, and I strongly doubt they've made it a Cocoa application either. Honestly, iTunes is the easiest application to use to organise lots of music (as the name suggests!) but it's also the most unstable, unreliable application Apple ships. People were asking about 64 bit, but that won't happen until it's rewritten in Cocoa owing to Carbon's 32 bit limitation.

I suppose they don't want to do an Objective-C rewrite because they have so much invested in the current codebase, and they still want to make it reasonably portable for Windows users. Bummer.

Ping

The new iTunes music social network thing. As someone who's worked as a network administrator, I shudder a bit at their choice of name. Oh well, if people use it and like it. I prefer the Whole Wheat Radio model, personally.

Conclusion

Some interesting changes, and its good to see Apple can still deliver stuff. I won't be getting any of it though. I mean, my iTelephone 4 has an iPod in it ;).

With their launch of new iMacs and Mac Pros yesterday, Apple are perhaps copping the most flack for discontinuing the 24 and 30 inch Cinema Displays. Presented for your consideration are my thoughts, interspersed with plenty of pointless nostalgia. Is that how you spell "interspersed"? Doesn't look right.

Anecdotal nostalgia

For several years my primary machine was a PowerMac G5. It was an amazing machine for compiling huge projects, compressing archives and video, and when it got hot it sounded as if a fighter jet was landing on my desk. It was huge, it was beautiful, it looked like a machine someone would use to get things done. But I digress.

Along with the Mac mini, the PowerMac (and now the Mac Pro) are the only Apple computers that didn't/don't come with displays, and I'm sure I wasn't the only one who baulked at the price when I saw the Cinema Displays displayed (heh) as an optional extra for use with my new PowerMac. Next thing I did was go down to Funan Centre and pick up a Samsung display for 1/10th the price.

Now it might seem silly that a person buying a professional computer would go out and buy a consumer display to use with it, but the great thing about the PowerMac line was you could bring your own third party stuff to the party. Its why people went with them instead of getting an iMac. Even most professional AV users I read on newsgroups opted for third party displays, though they no doubt splurged a bit more on them than I did to buy mine.

As a pointless aside, that Samsung display still works. We have it attached to our media server and scanner machine. Last Windows box in the house, go figure.

Don't attempt jokes before breakfast

The problem for Apple is displays are now so cheap and the profits so razor thin people are more likely to cut themselves on that than any of the styling of the display itself (that was supposed to be a joke, but it went off the rails). Apple uses IPS panels in their displays, but people don't see that when they're comparing prices, they just see inches and price. There's another joke there, but I'll leave that for you to imagine.

Still, I can see why some people would be disappointed. My aging MacBook Pro still has a great screen built in, and because it's the older generation it has a florescent tube as the backlight instead of LEDs which their new display and current MacBooks use. It sucks (relatively speaking) for battery life, but I find I can use it for much longer periods without getting eyestrain. The same goes for the 30 inch Cinema Display, probably, if I could have afforded one.

The other issue is that Apple's lone display -- the 27 inch -- is just as wide in resolution, but you lose 200 pixels down. For an OS that keeps the menubar permanently locked to the top of the display, plus with all the toolbars in pro apps, that's not an insignificant loss of screen real estate.

I suppose this is another of those decisions that makes bidness sense for Apple, but will ruffle plenty of people's feathers. I wish I could have afforded a cool Apple 30 inch display that they used all over Law and Order, but I suppose my current super cheap but decent 1920x1080 22" ViewSonic will have to do. The ratio is a bit irritating, but the colours are great and lines are ultra sharp. Oh yeah, and it's matte!

As a final aside…

It looks as though Apple Australia still has stock of the 30 inch Cinema Display, as of the 29th of July. If I had two and a half grand I'd get one in a heartbeat if only so I could revel in further digital nostalgia. It's got DVI instead of a MiniDisplay Port too. I could even pretend it's an iMac by drawing a black optical drive slot on the side.

I wasn't going to talk about this, but I've been asked enough about it on The Twitters that I feel obligated to now. Well okay and I've been thinking about this whole mess too, and I know the universe was anxiously awaiting my analysis. Hey you in the third row, stop laughing!

Is disclosure when you shut a floppy drive door?

Firstly, as a matter of disclosure and all that, I do not have an iPhone 4. I decided a while ago it wasn't in my budget, and I felt I was far too too absent minded and clumsy to be trusted with a phone that has two sheets of glass on it and not just one! I lost my beloved Tunsten W to a fall on concrete, and to think the odds of cracking are doubly bad on this one sends shivers down my spine.

Besides, I tend to follow Apple hardware releases one generation behind to save myself some money, so with the iPhone 4 now available it means I can upgrade my iPhone 3G to a 3GS! Savvy?

Were you going somewhere with this?

So it seems people are whinging and getting their knickers in a knot about signal strength and reception on the iPhone 4. Whereas almost every phone since the late 1990s had since moved to an internal antenna, some engineers at Apple HQ figured that external antennas always performed better anyway, so if they could somehow adapt the case to allow for one, they'd have improved reception without anything annoying sticking out, to use the engineering terminology.

The problem is, they also took that approach with the other internal radio transmitters and receivers in the device and only left tiny seams between each, such that if you hold the phone in a certain way, the antennae are shorted and signal strength is drastically reduced. Steve Jobs' characteristically blunt emails to customers that won him my respect in the past (how many other Fortune 500 CEOs talk to real people?) turned into a PR storm when he told people to simply not hold it that way.

The problem may not have been detected in real world trials because people were carrying them around in cases to disguise them as iPhone 3GS phone thingys, or some people are suggesting Apple knew it was a problem which is why they offered those weird coloured bumper cases at launch.

Perspective

While people such as Andy Ihnatko say they have no problems with their iPhone 4s and claim that despite the lower number of bars they actually get better reception than on the 3GS, a vocal minority have been calling for recalls (hah, I never noticed that pun until just now) and understandably so if the phone fails at its primary function!

I tend not to believe such sensationalist stories on the surface because often all you need to do is peel off one layer to expose a bunch of FUD. For example, the BBC's report quotes Rob Enderle who seems like a nice guy but has been dead wrong on so many of his Apple predictions that it's almost become a running joke.

As I've said here many times, I think part of Apple's problem is they're held to such higher standards compared to the rest of the IT industry, so much so that small problems that would be dismissed or ignored with other products are thrown kicking and screaming into the limelight when it's an iDevice. If the iPhone 4 had the battery of the HTC Evo, or the impossible to read in daylight OLED display on the Nexus One, people would be piling on the scorn, anger and jokes thicker than a deep dish pizza. That reminds me, I'm hungry.

Thank [deity], he's almost done!

I have a tag on my blog called the sorry state of journalism and I stand by it. Stories like the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster are reported on in detail, when similar disasters that occurred in Mexico and Nigeria are almost totally ignored. In this case, despite the iPhone 4 being Apple's most successful product launch in history and demand continuing to outstrip supply at levels Android and WiMo hardware makers can only salivate at, the media are billing Apple as the new Toyota (another dodgy story, by the way) and how this antenna problem will half their stellar share price and send people madly smashing Apple store windows with slices of deep dish pizza. I really am hungry.

Could Apple have handled the PR aspect of it better? Abso-friggen-lutely, and I hope they've learned a lesson from all this. Blaming software problems, AT&T and ultimately your customers is not good enough guys, lift your game.

As for people who've had issues with the antennas, Apple hardware does come with a 30 day money back guarantee. If people really want to show Apple they're not happy, they should vote with their wallets. Companies do take notice of these things.

Come on HP/Palm, where's my new WebOS Phone?

Even when the leaked iPhone 4 photos came out I thought the device was really ugly anyway, made my iPhone 3G look even classier than it did before. I intend to use this now 2 year old device until it dies by the way. One thing I've learned from family problems, turmoil and another international move in the last few months is that what phone you have really a friggen minor issue.

Don't get me wrong, I love working in this industry, but sometimes people really need to step back and take a deep breath. I need to remind myself to sometimes as well.

While I'm ragging on Android and on my mobile soapbox thingy, why is it the media consistently gives the platform a free ride but criticises everything Apple does?

It's not just old media

Don't get me wrong, I adore Slashdot and still use it as a primary news source in lieu of sites like Reddit and Digg, but their double standards are so breathtaking I fear sometimes I may collapse from a lack of oxygen. I hope I'm not near anything pointy when that happens, I don't think my insurance covers such stuff.

Yesterday's story that was summarised as the sweet eye candy of Android was only one of a litany of examples. I imagined that if Android had been substituted with iOS, the story would probably have been tagged as flamebait and plenty of angry people would have been frantically typing on their keyboard explaining why Apple is the spawn of Satan.

The latest example is this serious security hole in Android that wasn't even accidental but was deliberately designed.

Google Has Android Remote App Install Power, Too
It turns out that Android also includes a feature that enables Google to remotely install apps on users' phones as well.

BlueBoxSW humorously that had the story been about the iPhone, the headline would have read:

Again none of this should be construed to mean I wouldn't want an Android device myself (once they make some decent hardware and stop blaming it for software problems as I blogged about last year), and I certainly am not suggesting we let our guard down on Apple, but come on folks the stench of hypocrisy is threatening to gas us all.

The other players

I tell you what though, one thing we can all agree on is how amazing it is Microsoft has been so quickly and effectively sidelined with all their silly Kin and Windows Mobile Enterprise Phone Corporate Service Pack One Edition whatnot. The entire debate is framed as Apple versus Google, Microsoft barely even gets a mention in footnotes any more. Except for this post, hey at least I'm doing my bit. Buy a Sidekick!!!

Looking forward to seeing what Apple delivers at WWDC this year. Some quicky thoughts thingys:

• Despite having a lowly iPhone 3G that won't support it, I'll be interested to see how they really implement multitasking. The Microsoft and Google approaches clearly leave a lot to be desired, especially when one considers the best selling apps for Android for a long time were app and process killers.

• Looking forward to seeing the new Xcode and developer tools for the desktop. We will be getting them, right?

• Will all the rumours be true about ditching the Apple TV and fusing its software with the Mac Mini pan out? That'd be cool, because then I'd have a mint, limited edition hardware thingy :D.

• I'm interested in the iPad as an alternative category of device, but given I can't afford one and use FreeBSD on my netbook I'm not too interested in specifics. Probably will be a lot about it though.

• Given there aren't going to be any Mac software awards this year this seems even less likely, but some news about Mac OS X 10.7 would be schweet. Unless Snow Leopard is seen as the final version of this line and they'll be moving to Mac OS 11. Would it be Mac OS XI? I suppose that's too close to X11 to cause confusion. Some more FreeBSD contributions like Grand Central would also be epic.

Don't fret!

Even if you don't follow Apple or don't use their products, don't fret: the Android people will no doubt taking meticulous notes to copy all Apple's features, implementations and interfaces of said features so you'll probably have them later this year with 2.4 Cherry Fudge Pie or whatever it is. In the case of Microsoft, you'll have them by 2013 ;).

I jest of course, Apple needs competition to keep them on their toes. Speaking of which, where's the new HP WebOS phone? I'd get one of those in a heartbeat, WebOS is beautiful.

The iPad is selling like crazy over in Japan. And these people (amongst a chorus of others) told us even the iPhone was going be a disastrous flop in Japan, to speak nothing of the iPad!

in Japan, the world's second largest economy, it was launched with the kind of fanfare typically reserved for a new game machine from Nintendo.

Friday morning at an Apple store in Tokyo's Ginza district a line formed that was estimated at 1,200 people, according to media reports. Other stores in Tokyo, such as one operated by Soft Bank in Tokyo's Omotesando area, also saw long lines.

Some people have some explaining to do, and no it's not just about marketing.

I'll be interested to see what HP/WebOS and Android bring to the table. Google's perplexing ChromeOS/Android rift needs to be nipped in the bud if they're going to have an even remote shot at creating a cohesive product line.