I hope Apple will buy its soul back from AT&T one day

Apple wants to make sure nothing goes wrong at the launch of the iPhone. For a while, everything else is taking a back seat, as customers are suffering in silence. You shouldn't expect any iPod updates any time soon. Leopard has been delayed. But the worse news is the oldest: Apple is teaming up with AT&T in an exclusive deal, tying all U.S. purchases of the phone to an AT&T subscription plan.

Apple gets help in something it has never done before: launching a mobile phone.

In exchange, it has agreed to sell its soul.

Everyone congratulated Apple for playing hardball with yet another industry (after successfully tackling record labels): there will be no stickers, no joint branding, no silly AT&T applications compromising the beautiful iPhone. Yet I beg to differ. I think buying an iPhone will be riddled with huge compromises.

Apple users are seen as discerning customers with a good taste, people who want value for money, who cannot be fooled into restrictive contracts.

This is why I think it's just simply against the DNA of Apple and its users to sell a cellphone that only works with one provider.

When I bought my Handspring Treo 270 smartphone four years ago (a revolutionary product in its own right), it came without a subscription or a subsidy. I took the SIM card out of my old phone, and put it into my Treo. That was it, I could start making phone calls right away. For data access, I had to change a few settings. It took me five minutes.

Later I switched mobile carriers. All I needed to do was replace the SIM card, and I was good to go. When I traveled abroad, I could just buy a pre-paid SIM card and pop it in, for much better rates. And if I wanted to, I could use my Treo without any SIM card at all, as it had lots of functionalities that didn't require one.

Today, Palm (previously Handspring, previously... never mind) offers subsidized as well as "unlocked" versions of its Treo phones. I think this is how a self-respecting customer buys an expensive, revolutionary smartphone. There should be a choice.

As for the iPhone: you absolutely have to get a plan from AT&T. There's no other way to buy one.

• If you have another plan with another carrier, you have to cancel it or keep paying both.
• If you go abroad, you have to pay roaming fees.
• If you just want the device for its other uses (iPod, WiFi-enabled internet device) and aren't interested in a mobile carrier plan at the moment, again, you're out of luck.

In essence: If you want this date with the sexy iPhone, you'll just have to endure its big hairy uncle AT&T joining you for a threesome.

This isn't exactly the kind of hardball Apple plays with the music industry. Sure, if you want to purchase songs from iTunes, you'll have to settle for what the labels are selling you (though Apple is there to watch out for the terms). But that's where the analogy ends. if you don't like the iTunes Store, you never have to use it. Sales of iPod might be just fine without the approval of the five record labels. And Steve Jobs does display a "take it or leave it" mentality when dealing with the labels, when refusing to increase prices, when urging them to drop DRM in open letters. He's the last chance for a crumbling industry, and he knows it. His offers aren't supposed to be turned down.

Not so with the iPhone and AT&T. It's not the Apple with the pirate flag any more. It's not the defiant Apple we know and love. Nope, it's AT&T's little obedient lapdog that we see there. AT&T may significantly help Apple reach its iPhone sales goals, but I think Apple and its clients are paying a great price for this.

While I have no sources to back me up on this one, I'm also pretty sure AT&T has a say in what can and cannot go into the iPhone. I'm sure Skype or iChat, maybe the most natural applications for the device, were vetoed by the telecom giant as they could compete with its voice services. Basically any hope that the iPhone could truly change the mobile phone industry was lost when Apple went to bed with one of its giants.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a realist. I understand that initial sales of the iPhone are the single most important data that matters in the life of this product. This is what everyone, including investors, competitors, the entire cellphone industry and the media will be looking at. Apple has to get that right in order to establish itself in this new market. This is probably why it entered into such an uncharacteristic contract.

I just hope that eventually, Apple will be able to buy back its soul, and get out of this lousy, restrictive deal that screws its customers. I want to be able to buy an iPhone without being forever tethered to some big, dumb, evil telephone company.

Also, it remains to be seen how Apple plans to pull off the iPhone launch in Europe: a much bigger, more saturated, more mature cellphone market. A similar strategy might simply crash and burn in the old continent, where the iPod (a major iPhone component/selling point) isn't as strong as in America. For example, the iPod only has 28% of the German market.

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Palm to compete against own OS: well done, folks!

According to a Register story (Palm distances itself from Windows), Palm, Inc. is dropping Windows Mobile and adopting Linux.

In reality, it is likely that Palm will emulate its former stablemate, Palmsource (formerly the software arm of the company, which was spun off and then acquired by Japan's Access and is now focused on adapting features of the Palm UI for a mobile Linux platform). In other words, it will concentrate for its uniqueness on navigation, widgets, and other critical features of the modern mobile UI

So, allow me to recap some of this sad saga. Execs from a struggling Palm left to create Handspring. It made a hit, the Treo. But Palm owned the OS. Palm bought Handspring, so everything was finally in one hand. Palm could have started to be building the whole widget, just like Apple.

But it wasn't meant to be. Palm spun off its OS to PalmSource, then licensed it back. Then Palm decided to use Windows Mobile. Meanwhile, PalmSource (now part of Access) was moving the Palm OS (now known as Garnet) to Linux. So what does Palm do? Also try to move the same OS to Linux on its own, so it can reduce licensing fees.

Let me guess: when Palm is done with its new OS (and renames itself about three more times, to maybe to PalmTwo, Treo, Inc., and then back to Palm), it will spin off the new OS as well. Or maybe spin off the Treo. Yeah, I think that one is certainly in the cards.

Or, at least, it will sell the Treo name and license it back.

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Is Apple Planning iPhoto for Windows?

No.

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Honestly, I'm just sick of everyone in this stupid Edelman/PC Mag/Twitter story

This made news, I guess, because Twitter was involved. Do you remember the time when bloggers started explaining how they first heard of Twitter, and what the hell it is anyway? Me neither. You know, all bloggers have always known all about Twitter, so this is why they just started dropping its name whenever they felt the time was ripe. You know, me too. That Twitter. I'm not going to admit that I only got around to first reading about Twitter some three weeks ago. As a blogger, being well-informed is what I'm all about, and I always know about everything. Even if I don't say so.

Anyway, here's the story. Edelman PR is a company representing several tech firms. Its senior vice president Steve Rubel gets a free subscription to PC Magazine, and throws it in the trash. Tsk, tsk. Worse, he chooses to tell all the world about it via Twitter, even though his company routinely begs the editor of that very magazine in his trashcan if he could pretty please write about its clients.

I'm going out on a limb here, but my guess is that this may have been caused by Olympic-sized stupidity, and/or psychopathic tendencies that are not uncommon among senior vice presidents.

But anyway, PC Magazine Editor-in-Chief Jim Louderback learns this, and throws a hissy fit like I've last seen in fifth grade. He's taking his ball home:

Should I instruct the staff to avoid covering Edelman's clients? Ignore their requests for meetings, reviews and news stories?

I know Louderback meant this as a rhetorical question, but the answer actually exists: no.

Duh.

Louderback is an editor. His job is to know what matters to his readers, and then instruct his reporters to write about those things.

I somehow doubt that many PC Magazine readers think along the lines of "I wish they stopped covering all the companies who happen to be the clients of that PR firm whose senior vice president wrote something nasty the other day."

Or is it just me?

Yet his childish rant goes on:

I did a quick search through my recent email, and found that over the past few weeks Edelman staff pitched me about news and new products from Palm, MarkMonitor, Mozilla/Firefox, Microsoft (hardware and Xbox), Eyespot.com, Vulcan Flipstart and Dash Navigation. Heck, they even pitched me yesterday on the release of Adobe's new Creative Suite 3, which has to be relevant to at least some of the 11 million folks we reach across our magazine, web and video properties each month. And then I realized that this was probably just the callous act of a rogue Edelman exec, and it didn't necessarily reflect the views of the rest of the company. Still, it made me wonder. And in the future, if I'm on the fence, I'll probably be somewhat less inclined to take a meeting with one of Edelman's clients.

OK. So if it weren't for Edelman, PC Magazine would never have covered Palm, Microsoft or Adobe.

Riiiiight.

And if some psycho at the same Edelman, a PR firm that no PC Magazine reader has ever heard of, says something nasty, the magazine will stop covering all these companies.

Here's the slogan of PC Magazine: the independent guide to technology.

If I were a subscriber, I'd cancel now.

And Twitter about it.

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Europe: a fragmented market for the iPhone, despite EU-wide carriers

According to AppleInsider, Vodafone is seen as the most likely European carrier for the iPhone. So, Europe will have a single iPhone carrier, just like the U.S., right?

Wrong. In Europe, Vodafone is not a company, it's a brand. In some countries, Vodafone Group Plc. has subsidiaries, in others, it has affiliates, and in yet others, only partners without any ownership affiliation. According to Wikipedia, Vodafone is present through partners only in as many as 12 of the 27 EU countries!

How fast will Vodafone get all these companies to launch the iPhone in their respective markets? Unless Apple bitches and moans and threatens the world's largest telecom company into getting its act together, there can be several-month differences between introductions in different member states, as has been the case with many cellphone launches. (One I have been experiencing, waiting for months in frustration, was the Sony Ericsson P910i a few years ago. The Hungarian launch came months after the UK and German introductions.)

The EU isn't a single telecom market yet: it's actually 27 separate markets, with their own separate national telecom authorities. This is supposed to change after this summer, but the iPhone will most likely still need 27 approvals.

Worse, the 27 Vodafones and Vodafone partners are very separate entities who don't really talk to each other. Yet another personal anecdote: when I moved abroad, I asked Vodafone if I could transfer my two-year subscription to the Vodafone in my new home country. Of course not.

Apart from the brand, there's very little in common between the different Vodafones in the EU. Terms, prices and services vary greatly. I wonder how Apple will manage.

So should Apple choose another carrier? Nope, my post wouldn't be much different if, say, T-Mobile were the most likely candidate. It's not a Vodafone problem, it's an EU problem.

Just think about the iTunes store. I'm not sure if everyone knows, but 12 of the EU's 27 member states still have no access to the store. (It's a different 12 from the countries without a Vodafone affiliate, so no, it's not a pattern.) Establishing a single European market is a great endeavor, and the EU has come a long way, but there's still a lot of distance to cover.

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Do Apple's Final Cut intro videos contain synthesized speech?

Apple has just released Final Cut Studio 2. The package is jaw-dropping. My favorite is the all-new Motion, with 3D capabilities and a vast array of other additional features.

While watching the introductory videos of all the various components of the Studio, I noticed something strange about the voice-over. At first, I thought, "Damn, who is this new guy? Something is bothering me about him." There was something strange about his intonation. And then I realized what: it very closely followed some pre-defined patterns. Upon further thought, I've made a wild guess: that guy probably isn't human.

Decide for yourselves, but if that's synthesized speech, it's pretty damn impressive. It sounds 99% human. It could be passed off as human. It's a huge improvement even over Alex, the great new voice coming soon to Leopard.

If it's just some guy who does voice-overs for a living, I apologize. But if not, I'm speechless.

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Apple to rethink scrolling and mice?

Two of Apple's hardware patent filings have made the news this Friday.

The first, discovered by AppleInsider, describes a new Mighty Mouse design that ditches the problematic scroll ball, and lets the user switch between a "traditional" (cursor control) mode and a "pan/scroll" mode by adjusting the position of the fingers holding the mouse. In the latter mode, mouse movement would translate into scrolling, and the pointer would not move.

It may sound like a nice idea at first, but it has some serious problems. First of all, while the current two hand positions that let users choose between "right" and "left" clicking are fine by me, apparently some users find it confusing. I'm not sure if introducing yet other hand positions for switching between yet other modes is a good idea.

The "scrolling mode" itself also leaves me scratching my head. It's nothing new: many traditional scroll-wheel mice have such a mode which you can enter and exit by pressing the scroll wheel. I use such a mouse at work, and I hardly ever use that feature.

Modes are bad. I've been conditioned all my life to using the mouse to point; now I'd be supposed to use the same motion for scrolling. To me, the concept of moving the mouse for anything other than moving the pointer is totally alien. It's like using the steering wheel to shift gears.

When I scroll, I expect to have my mouse remain stationary. And I don't want to readjust my hand position every time I want to scroll. So thanks, but no thanks.

I think all Apple needs to do is, really, just fix the damn scroll ball, so that it works and keeps working. Perhaps a new design should avoid the use of moving parts. But how would that be possible?

One idea that Apple was toying with (and filed a patent for) was the rotary wheel mouse, which would have featured an iPod-like wheel on top of a mouse. The patent application itself starts by dissing traditional scroll wheels in order to establish the superiority of the proposed solution. Ironically, its arguments also stand valid against the scroll ball solution Apple eventually adopted:

the user must scroll, pick up a finger, scroll, pick up a finger, etc. This takes time and can be an annoyance to a user. In addition, because a portion of the wheel protrudes above the top surface of the mouse, inadvertent or accidental scrolling may occur when one of the two buttons is activated.

The rotary wheel would have allowed lengthy, continuous scrolling, without lifting a finger. Note how neither the Mighty Mouse nor the new "dual-mode" mouse can do that.

So what was wrong with the rotary mouse? Simple: it would let you scroll either only vertically or only horizontally, just like traditional scroll wheel mice. This is probably why the idea was ditched, and the omnidirectional scroll ball emerged as a solution. At least for the time being.

Incidentally, this is why I don't think today's other hardware patent filing, the one about yet another iPod-esque rotary wheel put on a keyboard, is going to go anywhere.

I think rotary wheels are on their way out anyway. Looks like the iPhone won't have one, not even a touch-screen implementation featured in yet another patent filing. And I think it's a safe bet that the iPhone's interface will eventually, over the next three or four years, trickle down all the way to the iPod nano.

So, I think Apple should go back to the drawing board if it wants to dump the scroll ball. I have some suggestions, and I'll post them soon. Stay tuned!

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Is the desktop dead? You wish!

Paul Graham says Microsoft's dead. I think his statement is a bit premature, but in essence, right: while still hugely profitable, Microsoft has become yet another big dumb company that matters less and less. The once fearful software dinosaur keeps (admittedly) playing catch-up to Apple's software innovations, and just about every new endeavor it attempts ends up as a humiliating failure.

But according to Graham, the main reason behind Microsoft's demise is... the death of the desktop. Ouch.

Everyone can see the desktop is over. It now seems inevitable that applications will live on the web—not just email, but everything, right up to Photoshop. Even Microsoft sees that now.

He links to Snipshot, a web application with basic image editing capabilities to prove the Photoshop point.

While impressive and useful in some circumstances, I'd be hard-pressed to find that app anything more than a novelty today.

So is Graham a Photoshop power user? Here's his background:

Paul Graham is an essayist, programmer, and programming language designer. In 1995 he developed with Robert Morris the first web-based application, Viaweb, which was acquired by Yahoo in 1998. In 2002 he described a simple Bayesian spam filter that inspired most current filters. He's currently working on a new programming language called Arc, a new book on startups, and is one of the partners in Y Combinator.

OK. I'm a bit tired of visionaries and web programmers pronouncing the desktop dead.

I'm a bit sick of platform-independent enthusiasts, including subcontractors I've worked with throughout my career, dismissing very legitimate usability and performance concerns. If the work you do involves several files, complex and quick actions, and a thousand clicks per hour, nothing comes close to a dedicated desktop application.

So let's talk again when someone develops a web-based version of, say, iLife. And yes, it does need to include optimized scrolling and full-screen slideshows in iPhoto, recording in iMovie, DVD encoding and burning in iDVD, and all the rich user interface features such as Exposé, multiple windows, drag and drop, immediate feedback, and acceptable performance. It might be possible in five years, but honestly, would it be worth the hassle?

Remember how television was supposed to kill the cinema? The desktop isn't going anywhere either.

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Why the iPhone is a safe bet for Apple

Does Apple run a huge risk with the iPhone? It has been pointed out several times just how competitive the cellphone market is, how unfamiliar Apple is with the sector, and how hard it may be for the company to succeed.

It might appear that Apple has sunk tremendous R&D costs into developing the iPhone: it's truly a revolutionary product, with hundreds of patents and breakthrough features. In creating the iPhone, Apple even ported OS X to a different processor, and shoehorned it into a tiny handheld device! And unlike the clumsy mobile version of Windows (whose name is seemingly changed more frequently than Steve Ballmer's underwear), the iPhone OS actually seems like a product that has actually been adapted to the needs of its users.

What if the iPhone fails? Will Apple just write off all the time and money it invested into it? Will all that great technology be thrown out, and will the company sulk back to manufacturing Macs and iPods?

No. First of all, I think the iPhone is very unlikely to fail. I think people want it badly. They can hardly wait to get one. The momentum that has been building up behind the iPhone should be strong enough to guarantee exceptional sales.

But even if initial reaction proves to be less than stellar, Apple can pretty much still fix the product in software: it can add killer features, it can open it up as a development platform, and so on. The possibilities are endless, especially in light of the Cocoa frameworks that enable rapid software development.

But let's imagine the worst-case scenario, a Cube-style disaster. Let's imagine that the iPhone sells so badly that Apple needs to discontinue it. Then what?

Here's what would happen then. Apple's stock would tank. Paul Thurott, Rob Enderle, and that other idiot whose name I forget would celebrate by tap dancing and farting.

And about three seconds later, Apple would release a new generation of the iPod that would make everyone's jaw drop.

It would be the iPhone without the phone. It would play widescreen movies. It would use multi-touch. It would have your photo library on it. You could take notes with it. It would still be a PDA. It would have WiFi, it would have Safari, it would have Google Earth, it would have Skype.

It would do things that AT&T/Cingular would never let the iPhone do. It would have dozens of gigabytes of flash memory. And it would sell below $400.

And this thing would sell like nothing has sold ever before.

How do I know?

Easy. That's because such an iPod is coming anyway. Can you imagine this not happening? Will the iPod forever have a screen the size of a keyhole? Starting June, if you want the best iPod Apple has made, you will have to buy the iPhone. That's yet another way Apple wants to help the sales of the phone. But obviously, that will change eventually: shouldn't the iPod be the best iPod ever made? How long can it afford to be out-iPodded by another product?!

Obviously, Apple's releasing a higher-end product first. If it created a widescreen iPod before the iPhone, the latter would sell worse. So the new iPod will have to wait. How long it will have to wait depends largely on the success of the iPhone, I think.

But I'm convinced that the new, "iPhone without a phone" iPod is already ready, and mass production could start any moment a certain red phone rings.

And of course, now that OS X has been ported to a tiny device, Apple will never be the same company again.

And it's not an isolated phenomenon, either. Apple TV has turned out to be a stripped-down Mac, running Mac OS X, performing a dedicated function. For $300. Am I the only one who thinks that the implications of this are huge?

Apple is taking computing into completely new places. It's porting OS X left, right and center. Who knows what products Apple has in the pipeline?

The iPhone is just a beginning. Sure, it's important for Apple that it succeed. Yet even in the unlikely event that it fails, the technologies behind it are ready to power several other products, including iPods with pretty much guaranteed sales.

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George Ou: all your gerbils are belong to us

George Ou is a blogger for ZDNet. You may be familiar with the clueless ramblings of this anti-Apple zealot, especialy if you've followed, in an ultimate test of geeky monomania, the story that Crazy Apple Rumors (seriously) covered under the apt title Security Bitch Watch, a sad series of events with so many twists, turns and so much idiocy that it would leave your head spinning, hadn't you fallen asleep about two minutes into it.

In his latest misguided rant, he argues that Apple shouldn't mock Vista's user access control system as annoying and insecure, since the Mac's similar system is even more so: it actually requires you to type your password (so it's more annoying), and requires that pretty rarely (so it's less secure). Touché!

But the true embarrassment arrives in the comments string, where Ou attempts to drive his point home by referring to none other than the infamous Joseph Gerbils.

Joseph Gerbils.

At first I thought I was missing some American cultural reference. But after staring blankly at the screen for about 20 seconds, frowning, and finally saying the name out loud, it dawned upon me that Ou actually meant to say Joseph Goebbels.

The Macalope gently classified this as a typo, but I beg to differ.

This ain't no typo. A typo means that you know how to spell something, but you miss it.

Spelling Goebbels as Gerbils means that you've never seen that name written down. You've only heard it spoken. And you may or may not have a clue who the hell this archvillain actually was.

In any case, you're talking about things you don't know that much about.

Um, when was that other time Ou was talking about stuff he didn't know much about? Was it maybe all the time?

Ou has this to say about the whole fiasco:

If that's how you want to judge me, that's your prerogative. I'm an IT guy; I don't spell German very well especially when I'm posting improvised notes in a comment section. But if that means you won't take my IT advice seriously (or at least objectively), I can only ask you to reconsider. Thanks for the correction.

He doesn't spell German very well.

Damn.

I didn't know he was trying to spell German there. Good thing he told us. I thought he had what may be called a "brain fart." One of those embarrassing moments when you absent-mindedly do or say something really stupid. A momentary lapse of reason.

But no, this was a real attempt at spelling German. He made an effort, and now thinks, based on the result, that his German spelling skill is "not very good."

Let me help clarify things a little here. If you spell Goebbels as "Göbbels" or "Goebels," we can agree that your German spelling is, no offense, but really "not very good."

However, if you spell it as "Gerbils," you're a jackass. It's hysterical. It's All Your Base caliber. You deserve to be laughed at till the day you die.

George Ou apparently thought that the way to spell a German word was to find the rodent whose name sounds the closest in English.

There's no use in trying to explain it away. Here's my advice to George Ou: quit writing. Now. And hide in a cave.

By the way, "advice" is spelled "Rat" in German. Don't try to pronounce it.


Update: There must have been a horrible misunderstanding. Joseph Gerbils was real. Read the comment below!

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