Technology & Gadgets

The new Motorola Droid RAZR is generating lots of buzz, mainly for how how “impossibly thin” it is, at a skinny 7.1mm. It’s been reported all over, with that same number mentioned every time. What none of these reviews mention, however, is that the WHOLE phone isn’t actually that thin. There’s a pretty significant chunk at the top of the phone that’s considerably thicker. It doesn’t appear Motorola is releasing specs for how thick the thickest part of their phone is, which is generally how you measure something’s thickness. By Motorola’s reporting, the MacBook Air is only 3mm thin, since that’s how it measures at its thinnest point.

See for yourself. Personally, I’d rather have a couple extra mm width on the entire phone, than a thick spot at the top that sticks out an extra 3.4mm. But, maybe that’s just me.

Taken individually, Apple’s claims may not look like they have much merit. For instance, one of Apple’s trademarks includes, “The mark consists of the configuration of a rectangular handheld mobile digital electronic device with rounded corners.” Another states, “The color gray appears as a rectangle at the front, center of the device” (the screen). It probably isn’t hard to find prior art of rectangular handheld mobile electronic devices with rounded corners and a screen. But put them together in the same configuration as the iPhone – the rounded corners at the same radius, a grid of colorful square icons with rounded corners, with the bottom 4 set apart on a silver background, and the whole device surrounded by silver edges – and the merit of the claim begins to focus.

There are plenty of ways to design a phone, and nothing before the iPhone could have possibly been mistaken for an iPhone. You can put an LG Prada next to an iPhone and make a case for Apple copying some of their design aspects, but you would never mistake the iPhone for the Prada; and that’s what this lawsuit is about – in their hardware design, interface, icons and through to their packaging, Samsung’s products all-around mimic Apple’s quite closely, and that’s what intellectual property Apple is trying to protect.

In this set of visual charts, Apple’s trademarks and self-proclaimed trade dress are broken down line-by-line, and checked against Samsung’s products prior to (SGH-F700 smartphone & Q1 UMPC) and after (Galaxy S smartphone & Galaxy Tab tablet) the release of the iPhone & iPad. While no silver bullet, it does illustrate the transformation Samsung’s products have made since Apple’s devices have been on the market, and how similar they have become to those devices.

Start: Apple vs. Samsung Page 1: Hardware Design

Apple’s profit margin on iPhones are estimated to be around 60%, and the average selling price of the iPhone is $625. That’s $375 net profit per phone, and $250 in costs. Considering the BOM is $187.50, that leaves $62.50 in other cost factors (licensing, R&D, pack, ship, reseller’s cut, etc.).

If they were to release a $200 phone, those ‘other factors’ likely wouldn’t decrease much, if at all; so even if they got the BOM down to $100 (near impossible), and they knocked $12.50 off the ‘other factors’ costs, the actual total cost of the phone would still be $150, leaving them with a mere $50 net profit (25% profit margin). They would have to sell 7.5 times MORE iPhone Nanos to make the same profit they’re making on the current $625 (average) iPhone. They sold 47.5m iPhones in 2010; so just to make the SAME profit, they would have to sell 356.2m iPhone Nanos in a year. Even for Apple, that’s a big jump. Read the rest of this entry »

via Shashdot:

Slayer Silver Wolf writes with this excerpt from TorrentFreak:
“‘On October 26 the remaining LimeWire developers were forced to shut down the company’s servers and modify remote settings in the filesharing client to try to harm the Gnutella network. They were then laid off. Shortly after, a horde of piratical monkeys climbed aboard the abandoned ship, mended its sails, polished its cannons, and released it free to the community.’ And so, LimeWire Pirate Edition (LPE) was born. Based on the LimeWire 5.6 beta that was briefly released earlier this year and then withdrawn when Lime Wire LLC lost its lawsuit, LPE is now in the wild. In many ways, it is better than the version killed by the RIAA.”

It just goes to show you, no matter how many lawsuits, no matter how much the industry heavyweights try to shut it down, there is no plugging the hole that is online filesharing. The only way to compete is to actually compete by offering a compelling service at a reasonable price. It’s a new generation of media distribution, and until the providers realize that, they’re going to continue to see their customers flee to alternate sources – many of which won’t get any royalties back to the creators.

And here’s a hint: Blocking certain browsers from accessing your content (or making them pay for access) that’s freely available online is not going to work for long.

Apple ‘got’ the right combination of simplicity (interface) & complexity (apps) long before the rest of the smartphone market – including Google. Now, while Apple is still dipping its feet into the TV market with the new $99 streaming Apple TV set top box, it’s Google who is pushing ahead when it comes to delivering internet video to our TV’s. But don’t count Apple out just yet.

This recent ABC’s Nightline shows off the soon-to-be-released Google TV, a device Google hopes will find as much success under and inside your TV, as Android is finding on phones. Take a look:

While Apple is trying to press you to use iTunes for most of your content (Netflix is the only other video source available on the new Apple TV), Google is going for the whole internet’s library of video. There are built in apps for Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Unbox, and new apps will surely come out quickly after the product is officially released. The killer feature is Google’s specialty – you can search for a show, and whatever video source is available online will come up in the search results. Select one, and you’re off to watching.

While this doesn’t immediately fix the problem of content providers clinging to their archaic “content bundle” cash cow, it will be a huge step in educating consumers about what TV could be. DVR was a small step – allowing people to time-shift their shows, to watch at their convenience. But the future of TV is this ‘library’ concept, where you don’t have to preemptively choose a show to ‘record;’ instead, you’ll just hop on your TV and pull up whatever show you missed, instantly from somewhere online. When consumers get a taste, they’ll start thinking, “why am I paying for all these channels, when all I really want to watch is X & Y?” And when enough consumers start asking that question, it’ll be the end of ‘cable tv’ as we know it.

But what about the content owners, you’re wondering? Why would they put their content up on the internet, if it means more people will cut the cord to their cable bundle? It will be very similar to how the music industry eventually caved in after Napster, and started to offer their music for sale digitally – if you don’t give the people what they want, at a reasonable price, they’re going to go somewhere else to get it; often times that means ‘pirating.’ While the content providers might want to think they can kill piracy through lawsuits, the only real way to reduce it is to give in, and offer a compelling product that makes piracy less appealing than just coughing up for it. Hulu was a good start in this case.

When Hulu came out, many ‘pirates’ found Hulu to be easier, and the short commercials, not too much of a put-off. So while not collecting the same kind of revenue as they had been used to on their cable networks, the content providers did find a way to curb pirating and collect revenue. By raising the cost from a few commercials, up to a few commercials plus $10/mo for Hulu Plus, suddenly the dynamic had changed once again. If that $10 got *all* of the current episodes for all networks, they’d probably be onto something (also, a ~$30 which also included all the “standard” cable channels might be a good option, too); but since it’s still just a small selection of the overall breadth of shows, it’s going to send the pirates back off to pirating again anyway; and why pay $10 for *some* of your favorite shows, when you’re already off pirating the other ones anyway?

So this is where Google TV has it right: give consumers access to *all* available content, no matter where it’s from. When the content providers see they’re losing viewers and subscribers, they’re going to have to choice but to add their videos to the pool of online content, so they can collect some of the revenue from unplugged viewers. Hopefully, at that point, Apple will come around to offering some kind of subscription TV service, and Apple and Google can both work to do for the TV industry, what they’ve done for the cell phone industry; and we can kiss the cable ‘subscription service’ good riddance.

As expected, Apple released an update to their Apple TV set-top-box. Just about all the rumors & speculators were right – the price dropped to $99, the hard drive is gone in favor of streaming, and TV rentals from iTunes will be $0.99/episode. Unfortunately, the new feature set fails to include one major update that had been widely expected, and whose omission will ensure the device remains squarely in the “hobby” department – the switch to the iOS platform. Had Apple included the iOS in the new device, it may have actually had a descent chance of being their next big success. Instead, with the custom, locked-down interface, it’s just another set-top-box.

Sure, the updated Apple TV streams from iTunes or your iPhone, & it has Netflix streaming built in – but that’s exactly the problem – it’s built in; ie., not expandable. Without the iOS and the App Store that goes with it, you’re stuck with only the applications Apple thinks you need. You prefer Hulu or Amazon On-Demand over Netflix? Get something else. You want to stream Pandora directly to your stereo? Move along. And who knows what will be out next year. The point is, by keeping the OS to a proprietary & non-expandable system, they have greatly limited its appeal, and thus its sales potential.

Had Apple built the new Apple TV on the iOS instead of their baked-in interface, consumers would for the first time really make a connection between the device, and their iPods/iPhones/iPads. As it stands, the Apple TV still *looks* like a hobby. It’s something completely different form any of their other products, and that’s the way people are going to perceive it… and continue to look right past it.

Apple had a chance to change the game when it comes to the living room. No other company has the brand recognition, loyalty, and positive mind-share in the consumer electronics market that Apple has. They could have leveraged that, and made a real run for the living room. They could have taken Apps on your TV mainstream. They could have been the king of the hill as far as set-top-boxes go, and had a huge head-start once they start integrating that box into their own TVs in the (hopefully) near future. Instead, they just came out with an updated version of one of the many set-top-boxes on the market; and if you hadn’t noticed, nobody’s really interested in the current crop of set-top-boxes.

[sigh] Well, there’s always next year.

Apple is widely expected to release an updated, streaming version of their iTV (previously “Apple TV”) set top box, with iOS (previously “iPhone OS”… see where I’m going here?) and the iTunes App Store, for $99. They have long said the Apple TV was a hobby, so it’s about time they came around and made it a first-line product; but that won’t be the box that they (will probably) release tomorrow. They will only see success when they release a real Apple TV; I hope to see one tomorrow, but I’m not holding my breath – but the box tomorrow will be a trial run of what they will integrate into a screen within the next 2 years. They already make 30″ LCD’s, so it’s not a big leap; But the real magic will be the first commercially successful App store for the living room – and bring internet TV to the masses for the first time.

The iPhone was the first smartphone to break into the consumer market; and while all the other players are trying their hardest to break through into the digital TV distribution market (Hulu, Netflix, Roku, Boxee, Google, Amazon, Best Buy…) none of them will be as successful as Apple. Just as people didn’t want computers in their phones, they don’t want them in their TVs either; but Apple already has the brand recognition and mainstream mindshare from their recent successes. A TV with Apple Inside might cost a few hundred dollars more than one from Sony or Panasonic, but we’ve already seen people are willing to pay for the brand – and the experience that goes with it. An Apple TV could be an even bigger success than the iPhone.

Besides, what else would you use that that Magic Trackpad for?

“There’s an awful lot of hoopla – around the iphone 4 antenna…”

Personally, I didn’t have any issues with the antenna – even before I got a case for it.

Update: When I first watched this, a few hours after the Apple press conference, it had a few more than 4,000 views. It’s been 3 days now, and is over 600,000. It proves the artist’s theory – if you throw enough ‘stuff’ at the wall, eventually, something’s bound to stick. Here’s to you, Jonathan Mann.