Technology & Gadgets

Apple isn’t known for rolling out ‘clones’ of anything. What they are known for is taking existing products & technologies, and packaging them together into a new and innovative product (mp3 players, smartphones and tablet computers all existed long before Apple revolutionized those markets); don’t expect their streaming music service to be any different. A few things they can do to make a streaming music service more ‘Apple-y’:

Make it an expanded version of Genius playlists, so it has access to all your purchased iTunes tracks (local and iCloud), as well as Apple’s full library of music you don’t own, streaming from the cloud. This way Apple only has to pay streaming royalties on the songs you don’t already own, giving them a leg up in profits over the existing streaming-only services, and perhaps cutting down on the number of ads you’re served. Songs you don’t own will show up in your played history, but can’t be added to your own custom playlists unless you buy them. Buying would be as easy as clicking the ‘buy’ button on the song entry, as though you’re in the iTunes Store. This way they’re able to use the streaming service as a trojan horse for the iTunes store, introducing you to new songs based on what you already like, but limiting what you can do with those songs until you purchase them. Some customers will just use the service the same way they currently use Pandora, in which case Apple won’t make much money on streaming royalties, but at least they won’t lose those users to Pandora/etc. Those customers are also that much more likely to make any potential music purchases through iTunes.

At least, that’s what I would do if I made the decisions at Apple.

What will Apple release onto the world this time? Well, a third-gen iPad, to be sure; but that may not be the biggest game-changer of the day. That title will go to the new 1080p AppleTV, with an emphasis on streaming from iOS devices, rather than localized apps on your TV. The iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch will be the primary interfacing devices, and the AppleTV just a conduit for throwing content to the big screen.

The problem with all the other ‘smart TVs’ is, nobody wants all those apps on their TV.

Nobody wants this.

There’s no good interface for browsing apps on a TV, and nobody wants to talk to their TV or have to swipe their arm in the air for Kinect-like control. The best device is already in most people’s hands: their iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch. While all the classic consumer electronics contenders rush to beat Apple to the smartTV market, they’re all running the wrong way, and Apple’s got something completely different up their sleeve.

The foundation already exists: You can use Netflix or Hulu or any one of a number of other streaming videos apps on your iPhone or iPad to stream straight through to your TV. The Comcast Xfinity TV app is the best interface I’ve ever used for searching or browsing tv listings & changing the channel on my TV. I’ll never page up & down that clunky outdated onscreen guide again.

Comcast Xfinity iPhone App

Hopefully, in classic Apple style, they’ll announce some licensing deals, and maybe even a new streaming platform to accompany the new device. At a bare minimum, expect a TV app, like Newsstand, to bring all the video content together.

And because the AppleTV will be an accessory to Apple’s other high-margin products, Apple won’t need to make a big profit off it. It won’t be so much about direct profits as it will be about selling more iPhones & iPads, and pulling more people into the Apple ecosystem.

Down the road, expect Apple to release the long rumored TV set, to sell alongside the set-top-box. It will be free from any convoluted settings menus or on-screen guides – that’ll all be controlled by your handheld device, too. Actually, expect just 1 power button, and… that’s it.

And even if no new licensing deals are announced today, expect Apple to keep working on breaking the old TV model with a more Netflix or Hulu-like experience, once the content providers realize they’re better off playing nice with Apple than trying to keep protecting their antiquated content delivery system.

So while the iPad 3 (or HD or whatever they call it) will probably get more headlines, it’ll be the new AppleTV platform that will really guarantee Apple’s continued growth into the foreseeable future. I for one can’t wait to retire my convoluted button-ridden Comcast remote once and for all!

We’ll all find out in just a few minutes.

Gizmodo thinks the next round of MacBook Pros will just be suped up versions of the Air – with no optical drive and no hard drive (SSD only). While I agree the optical drive is dead, and FireWire will be dropped in favor of Thunderbolt, I wouldn’t be so fast to dismiss good old-fashioned hard drives just yet.

MacBook Pros still need more storage than SSD’s can supply at a remotely reasonable price. I think even Apple realizes that a lot of pros still need 500GB – 1TB, and $1500 is too much to pay for *storage* space, which is what most of big drives are used for. I expect hybrid drives, or perhaps a combo SSD+HDD. If I can have a 128GB SSD for my boot drive with all my apps and files I access most often, and I could still store all my big files & archives on a HDD, it would be the perfect balance of speed, storage & price. Or perhaps (ideally) Apple will change the game again and release a custom hybrid drive with 32GB or 64GB built on (most max out around 8GB), to manage all the caching automatically, so my 1TB drive will feel as fast as an SSD for booting & all the files I use most, while retaining the high capacity at a reasonable cost per GB.

I agree that the optical drive and FireWire are both dead – that will allow them to increase battery capacity while slimming down the profile quite a bit – that optical drive is by far the 2nd biggest component in the current machines (after the battery of course). Ethernet port could go either way – you can get an adapter so it’s not a big deal if they drop it. 

Whatever the new Pros look like, I have a credit card waiting for them. My pre-unibody Pro is really showing its age, and I would have bought a new one already, but I’ve been waiting for the new optical-less models since last fall. And the wait is killlllling me!

I thought the iPad (and consequent tablets) was kind of pointless when it was released; after all, I already have a smartphone & a laptop, and if the tablet doesn’t completely replace either one, what’s the point? It’ll be a niche product for people with money to burn, I thought. Then the iPad2 came out & the original dropped to $400; So I cashed in my tax return & got one to play with.

At first, it was mostly a novelty; but then there was the moment I “got” it: I was sitting on the sofa one night watching TV & had the urge to look something up. My smartphone was in my pocket, & my iPad & laptop were both on the table in front of me. I reached up, hesitated for a second, & grabbed the iPad. It was just more convenient for quick web browsing & tasks like email, at least when I’m sitting/laying on the sofa. Since then, I’ve found I leave the laptop on the computer desk, and just have the iPad on the coffee table. I only use my laptop when I have to work on things most people don’t need to do on a home computer – and I think that’s the biggest thing to take away: there are some things tablets can’t do or don’t do as well as a laptop; but most home users don’t need to to do those things. Sure, typing a lot isn’t ideal, but the backlash over that is overrated – you get used to it fast – and you can always get a little keyboard for those times you want to write your Mom a novel.

Since then, I’ve found myself using the iPad for a lot more than emailing & web browsing: editing photos, recording & editing music, designing logos, crunching numbers; the custom apps really are amazing. And Maps & Yelp are a much better experience than a smartphone when you’re discovering a new city. They’re all things I could do on a laptop (if I tethered it for data), and most are things I *could* do on a smartphone, too; but after using a tablet, laptops really start to feel clunky, and for some tasks (editing music, graphic design), the smartphone is just too small to work comfortably. Laptops also aren’t ideal on the train, which is where I get a lot of work done in my iPad. As for the 7″ tablet, I think it’s better than a smartphone, but not enough of a difference to warrant carrying a second device. In many ways, 7″ tablets are more akin to big smartphones than they are to regular (9″+) tablets, but without the convenience.

As for reading, I actually prefer reading on my smartphone rather than my iPad, and I think it’s just a matter of convenience: My smartphone is always on me, and it’s not worth pulling out my iPad just to read. I can actually see a place for the classic Kindle for people who read a lot, because its screen is so much more paper-like; but I just don’t see the usefulness of a 7″ tablet over a smartphone. They’ll probably sell like crazy this year because they’re new & cheap, but eventually people will realize they already have a device that can do *pretty much* everything just as well, AND it fits in their pocket. After the novelty wears off, most of the 7″ tablets will likely just sit on a shelf most of the time. And yes, I realize I haven’t used a 7″ tablet regularly enough to really know how well it works as a tablet, but I have played with one long enough to decide its benefits over a smartphone don’t justify having another device.

I see a future where laptops are tools for work & computer nerds, and tablets (with 9″+ screens) are tools for average home-users. And for those who read a lot, I think there will always be a place for the cheap classic Kindle e-reader. But I think 7″ tablets are bound to go the way of the netbook: cheap, but rather pointless.

So until you’ve had a chance to actually use a (9″+) tablet, and I mean more than just toying around with it at your local Big Box store, I can see why you wouldn’t really see the point. I was the same way a year ago; but now I’m a happy, regular tablet user. Over the next few years, millions of others will likely come to the same conclusion.

A lot of people are questioning whether Apple has a case when it says Samsung, Motorola and others copied their design for their own tablets from the iPad. Take a look:

Source: MacRumors/SockRolid

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.