- Posts tagged iPhone
- Explore iPhone on posterous
Business Insider On the Outside Regarding Apple Long-Term
Fast forward 5 to 10 years and it’s not hard to imagine seeing Apple with a small (but probably very profitable) share of the smartphone market. It will be a niche player in the market it revolutionized and could have dominated. History seems bound to repeat itself!
Actually, it's pretty hard to imagine the above outcome. In order to do so you'd have to forget that:
- Phones aren't PCs; that model doesn't apply.
- There's zero price advantage in non-iPhones. Indeed, Apple set the price points at $99 and $199, which initially could only be met by competitors via mail-in rebates.
- The iPod model is far closer to the iPhone model, and no one's touched Apple in this area.
- Android gains are almost all on the back of Verizon, who can't sell the iPhone.
- Android's becoming more fragmented every day. (A new phone released this week is using version 1.5.)
Ignore all of that—as many seem to—and it's still hard to imagine Business Insider's projected outcome. Because nowhere in the scenario does Apple's Board of Directors toss out their brilliant CEO (and the team he's put together) to bring in a line of unprepared bozos as replacements. Nope. Ain't happening.
Adobe Flash Still Not Practical For 20 Out Of 20 Handset Companies
Adobe is working with "19 out of 20" handset companies to get Flash working on their devices
Still.
At what point do tech writers call Adobe out on their failure to get Flash working worth a damn on mobile devices, instead of just repeating the standard Adobe line? And at what point will Adobe be embarrassed about it?
It's been years, people, can't we call it like everybody sees it?
Google's lax vetting allows almost any app in the Android market. Unscrupulous developers rejoice.
It collects a user’s browsing history, text messages, your phone’s SIM card number, subscriber identification, and even your voice mail password. It sends the data to a web site […] That site is evidently owned by someone in Shenzhen, China. The app has been downloaded anywhere from 1.1 million to 4.6 million times.
Though the research comes from a maker of Android security software, they've identified what the malicious app does and where the data is sent; the issue is real.
No vetting is perfect. Apple recently approved a flashlight app that housed a tethering application (though it harmed no users). But Apple shows concern about iPhone privacy. The excellent location services in iOS 4 are a great example. I appreciate the work they do on this.
For Android, we can and should excoriate the developers of this particular app, but we should also excoriate Google for barely trying to avoid this sort of thing.
So this is Android:
- Available apps with little curation, and security issues being exploited.
- Multiple OS releases and features that may or may not be coming to your particular hardware.
- Multiple devices from multiple vendors each having vendor-specific software/services (crapware).
- A real possibility that soon running security software will not only be prudent, but a foolish thing not to do.
Do these sound familiar? It's the Windows OS model of the 1990s. Android resembles it more every day.
Perhaps the most important stat from Validas's wireless smartphone bill analysis
But, more than 4 percent of VZW Smartphones consume more than 2 gigabytes per month, as opposed to just 1.6 percent of iPhones.
That's it right there.
Remember when AT&T introduced their data caps? The highest cap was set at 2GB, and there was outrage. AT&T said only 2% of their customers use more than that each month, but few believed them. Well, it's just 1.6%.
I dropped two iPhones on our family plan to the $15 200MB cap, and mine to the $25 2GB cap. That's $35 a month saved with no decrease in activity on our part.
The caps work, and they save you money. Lots to complain about AT&T for, but not everything they do is evil. This one's putting money in my pocket, and would do the same for 98.4% of you.
Thoughts On Today's Ruling About "Legal" iPhone Jailbreaking [u]
First, Jailbreaking was never really illegal. If legality is what kept anyone from doing it I think they were misinformed. It was a gray area awaiting a ruling either way; Apple wanted the court to settle the question as to whether jailbreaking violated copyright, and they did, though not in Apple's way.
There is zero evidence to support Apple would have gone after individual jailbreakers (had the ruling gone the other way), any more than they go after one-off Hackintoshers.
I believe Apple wanted the shield of illegality not to go after geeks, hobbyists, etc., but rather to stop the unscrupulous who may now crawl out of the woodwork to make a quick buck on this.
I can practically see "Jailbreak Kits" for sale already. Their marketing copy gushing about how this once forbidden activity is now available to the general public. They'll publish a link to the Library of Congress statement that few will read and fewer will understand. They sure as heck won't dwell on the practice being unsupported, or that the next iOS release will likely kill it. Money in hand, they're off to the next sucker leaving their current "customers" yelling at Apple as if it's Apple's fault.
Finally, Apple will continue to "break" jailbreaks. Not only does the statement not mean Apple must allow the activity, but I believe every jailbreak so far relies on a security exploit. Of course Apple's going to plug that hole. They better.
[UPDATE:] See this excellent post for more information what today's copyright ruling really says.
Dear Apple: Only 235,000 Apps? Only 47,000 Developers? Your "Closed" Model Sucks.
Total Active Apps (currently available for download): 234,915 […]
Number of Active Publishers in the US App Store: 47,370
I'm surprised Apple hasn't shut that site down for regularly publishing Apple's shame.
Meanwhile, I'm certain Android's freewheeling, "open" (except for the native API, or Flash), look-the-other-way, Lord of the Flies approach to app development has resulted in numbers that embarrass Apple's.
Right?
And even if the numbers aren't quite as high, I'm sure Android apps are overall of a higher quality, and will run on a higher percentage of phones than Apple's.
Right?
And even if fragmentation is a bit more of an issue, I'm sure Android developers are raking in cash from the reported 160K activations (potential new customers) per day.
Right?
For shame, Apple. Don't you know "open" always wins?
iPhone Developer Shows One Way To Handle An App Store Rejection
Options…
- become enraged at the fact that Apple has the audacity to reject us for knowingly using code that violates our developer agreement then alert the media in hopes that everyone will be sympathetic to our plight especially Gruber (be sure to link to a post of his saying that he was right about something because we all know that that’s the easiest way to DF linkage) then write Steve Jobs a letter and sulk at his inevitable response where he doesn’t bend an inch then bitch-quit the App Store (only to return with tail between legs 6 months later)
- just remove the illegal feature and submit again
The above is from a post about getting Camera+ approved for the App Store. The app had just been rejected, and it's their description of the two options they felt they had.
They chose the second one, by the way.
The result? Not only is Camera+ in the App Store, it recently received a killer update and I believe is now better than Best Camera. (Like Camera+, Best Camera was designed with a photographer to make it easy to shoot, edit, and share photos.)
So whether you appreciate the Camera+ developers and photographer for focusing on getting their app to market instead of complaining, or simply because they have a great app, you should check it out.
Finally, I know there are App Store rejections not so neatly dealt with. That's all the more reason to highlight Taptaptap's actions. The complaining from those who could just follow the rules tends to drown out those with legitimate issues who don't have such a clear option.
Home Sweet Home (Screen)
As of right now, and always subject to change.
Steve Jobs' Summation At Today's iPhone 4 Press Event
If a user's having a problem, it's our problem. So we've been working really, really hard for the last 22 days to try to understand what the real problem is, so that when we solve it we actually solve it, rather than just putting a band-aid on it or giving a certain press person what they think they want us to do.
And we think we've gotten to the heart of the problem here. And the heart of the problem is smartphones have weak spots. We made ours extremely visible. Some took advantage of that to demonstrate it; it was very easily demonstable. We screwed up on displaying too many bars and made that demonstration more theatrical than it needed to be. And so for those small number of customers that are having problems we're gonna give them cases which we think will take care of most of those problems. And for those that still are unhappy we're gonna give them a full refund. And that's everything we can do to try to make every customer happy.
But the data supports the fact that the iPhone 4 is the best smartphone in the world, and that there is no "antennagate". There is a challenge for the entire smartphone industry to be able to improve its antenna performance some day to where there are no weak spots on any smartphone, and we're dedicated to doing that, but unfortunately that's a day in the future. So for today, we love our customers, and we're gonna try to take care of every single one.
—Steve Jobs, July 16, 2010
While many tech sites are too busy being bent out of shape at receiving hard data that refutes their lunacy of the last couple of weeks, I thought someone ought to post Apple's actual position on this.
Apple Crushes Everyone In Cell Phone Customer Satisfaction Ratings
Surveys of consumers' future buying habits mean very little. If consumers did what they said in surveys, products made via those surveys would be raging successes, but they're not. Apple, perhaps famously, eschews such surveys, contending a customer doesn't know what they want until they see it. So even though the future looks great for Apple in the article's surveys, it means little to me.
There is, however, one type of survey that's very important. Customer Satisfaction is not about the future, it's about real people who own the device now, and how happy they are with it. I would argue it's the only survey that really matters. Look at that chart. Apple crushes everyone by such a wide margin the other guys should be revamping their support policies, procedures and staff, not their product lines.
