Archive for the 'Analysis & Commentary' Category
Apple made a lot right moves with the revamp of its notebook line today, yet it missed a tremendous opportunity to steal Christmas away from Dell, HP, and Toshiba. While $100 off the previous MacBook is nice, it’s not good enough. In a slow economy, cutting-edge and quality take a backseat to affordable and usability. Windows machines will win that race come this gift-buying season. Unfortunately, Apple has made a miscalculation with its price point and it won’t be enough to have just three figures on the price tag to lure in new customers. No, buyers will see the sea of laptops at Costco, Wal-mart, and Best Buy selling PCs loaded with Windows Vista at reduced prices. Consumers in general usually won’t pay a premium for a superior product and with the slow down in the economy, $100 off an Apple laptop isn’t going to change anyones mind from a PC to a Mac.
I hear the same argument daily from my clients that “Macs are too expensive” and how they can buy 2 laptops at Costco for the price of one Mac. Even when I educate them that the cost of ownership will be much greater with the PC, they don’t care and don’t listen. This mentality will continue in this lackluster economy even more so than ever.
While the MacBook is a great piece of hardware with some incredible features, it missed the prime feature of all: a great price point. It’s not to say that the MacBook won’t do good, its sales will be good if not strong; however, it won’t be spreading like a Southern California wild fire like it could have.
You get what you pay for. An old but still very true saying. While Twitterrifc is a beautiful client, it’s lacking features just make it a pretty looking client. The Premium edition costs $10 and still doesn’t bring up the feature list to par for the asking price. TwitterFon is nice and free, but with little more offering than Twitter’s own mobile web page, it’s not too worthy of icon space on your iPhones home screen. Twinkle is nice, but since it is tied into its own network, your replies sometimes do not appear on Twitter and there are other issues, such as the near impossibility of activating the application. Not much left in the App Store for you to find, but thankfully Stone Design has upped the ante from Twittelator (its free offering) with Twittelator Pro (App Store link.)
With slew of features and an interface that rivals Twitterrific’s awarding winning look, you’d have to be silly not to consider Twittelator Pro’s $4.99 price. Any Twitter user that finds themselves tweeting at least a few times a day, or needing to read others tweets, will need to have this on their first page of their iPhones home screen. Some of the offerings of Twittelator Pro includes the ability to tweet from any screen, paste links, text and images, full reply ability, tweet from within Safari (!), various themes, copy tweets, easy to read tweets, post photos, TwitPic photos show as thumbnails in tweets, delete your own tweets, read up to 200 tweets, advance filtering, in-depth user details, en or disable following, drill down into friends, super advance search, bookmarks, recent, and emergency tweeting. This is just SOME of the offerings of Twittelator Pro!
SvenOnTech has used all the Twitter clients available on the iPhone and without a doubt, we like Twittelator Pro the best. We’ve given the clients a few months to mature and the only one that really has done that is Stone Design’s client. Author, Andrew Stone, has taken the time to listen to our and other users requests and implemented them into Twittelator Pro quickly to allow it to pull well ahead of any other Twitter client for the iPhone. As of this writing, an entire chunk of new features and fixes are on their way and are only waiting for Steve Jobs (our assumption, not Stones) to okay it. Any day now you should see the following in the update:
NEW FEATURES:
- New Twitter Keys panel to insty insert cool graphics into your tweets – tap Guy Smiling
- New Advanced Setting to thread your replies and direct messages right in with your friends
- You can edit existing accounts to fix typos or change password
- Groups show where Nearby is
FIXED:
- Better memory management when memory runs low (less exits!)
- Handles bad TwitPic image in tweet (doesn’t exit!)
- Better error message if you direct message someone who isn’t following you
- Search results with unicode characters appear correctly now
- & appears correctly in tweets now
- & and quotes don’t take as many characters to encode
- No error message if TwitPic times out
- Upside down landscape photos fixed
- Failed image/tweet combo uploads let you retweet them
- increased timeout for TwitPics to deal with their success
- Fancy curly quotes are displayed correctly
Look, we’re like the next guy looking for a free hand-out at the App Store but for a mere $5, you’re getting a quality and slick looking Twitter client that you’re just not going to get anywhere else. Twittelator Pro is just plain and simple, slammin’! And yes, I’ll tweet that! 
That said, what about iDisk? I mean, all my Macs happily share documents, files, and such via the synchronized “disk” in the Mobile Me cloud. Why can’t my iPhone have access to it? I mean, the iPhone can already handle many document types and via QuickTime other multimedia files. So, browsing ones iDisk hierarchy shouldn’t be a problem at all, right? I mean, the column view was made for the iPhone! To be able to realize while at a business meeting that you forgot some information from a document and then be able to say, “Oh, I’ll just look it up via my iPhone on the iDisk,” would be a life saver! Or being able to show videos off to your friends at a party by just simply logging into to your iDisk. Speed shouldn’t be an issue with 3G or Wi-Fi, right?
Apple, I hope you’re on the same track that I am and that you’re just simply being very secretive as usual. I hope, along with my cut-n-paste, this will be coming in the firmware update 2.1. Please tell me it’s so! If not, please add this to your list ASAP!
(PS: I know I can log into the web site and do this, too, but come on, we want native support!)
[Picture courtesy ronbailey's weblog]
Aaron Vronko thinks a lot of people are too caught up in the 3G iPhone frenzy and thus are missing something big right before their eyes. In fact, it’s right there in their hands: the first-generation iPhone.
Aaron Vronko is the co-founder of Rapid Repair, popular for its iPod repair and used sales, and he spent some time on the phone with SvenOnTech last week. Building a strong business from an abundance of used and damaged music players by Apple, Vronko believes that it can continue its growth by adding iPhones to the mix. Vronko senses that there are two markets with the first-generation iPhone come July 11th, the date of release of the 3G iPhone. The first market is that of sales from the slew of five to six million 2G iPhones in the wild. Rapid Repair intends to see one to two million of those iPhones being shipped to its facilities in Michigan. This leads to the second market: sales of used iPhones. Vronko estimates these cleaned, repaired (if needed), and certified iPhones will be in the sub-$100 range (or lower) when Rapid Repair puts them on sale.
“Why would anyone want to buy a first-gen iPhone near the same price Apple and AT&T are going to offer the 3G iPhone at?” I asked Vronko. He responded that many people out there are not going to want to lose a ton of cash on activating the new iPhone (AT&T and Apple will require in-store activation at purchase) when they can just purchase the older one and easily unlock it. “People can’t live without it,” Vronko told SvenOnTech about their phones. Not wanting to have to wait two years on AT&T to jump ship to T-Mobile or any other GSM network, this desire creates a strong demand for old iPhones. Being on par with the 3G iPhone, sans the updated network support and GPS, the older iPhone will continue to have shine factor.
Then there is those who don’t want to upgrade and just want to stick with their current love. Come June 29th, warranties will run out on iPhones and those that did not opt for the extended warranty from Apple Care will now be able to use Rapid Repair’s service to fix their iPhone. “Fifteen precent of these devices will break in the first year,” Vronko told SvenOnTech on the phone last Friday. Vronko continued, “That’s a huge parts supply”. Yes, that means Rapid Repair will even purchase defective iPhones. Rapid Repair will pay between $50 and $75 depending on the condition of the phone. So even if you’re looking to upgrade, or are forced to due to a damaged iPhone, then you have a reputable place to sell it to. Vronko warned that, “You don’t know what you’re getting with eBay,” and such services. With Rapid Repair’s well respected reputation and reasonable purchase price, selling your iPhone couldn’t be easier.
Sale or buy, Vronko wants you to come to Rapid Repair first and see what it has to offer. Drop by to get your sale underway or to start your purchase today. Tell them SvenOnTech sent you.
TomTom has confirmed to SvenOnTech that it has indeed, “…tested and successfully [ran] our navigation software on the iPhone and it looks good and works well.” The Holland-based company told SvenOnTech that it is waiting to see what Apple’s strategy for the built-in GPS is on the next-generation iPhone, “…before we can say more about what kind of opportunities this will bring us.”
TomTom is excited that Apple is entering the GPS world with the 3G iPhone, due to release July 11th at both Apple Stores and AT&T stores in various markets, and is more than ready to bring its highly acclaimed navigation software to the iPhone.
TomTom believes with the development of more pedestrian navigation systems, such as the iPhone and Nokia’s offerings, it will continue to bring greater attention and demand to car navigation devices. “With more and more people getting acquainted with navigation, this will also further grow the demand for car navigation,” TomTom’s Karen CK Drake, Public Relations Manager for TomTom, told SvenOnTech last week. Drake emphasized that it does not believe the iPhone to be a replacement device for GPS but rather be “complementary” to its current offerings of car-mounted GPS units.
SvenOnTech will actively watch this developing story and keep our readers abreast of any new information as becomes available.
Remember the first version of Windows Media Player that came with Windows95? Ya, it was a joke. A big one. When compared to Apple’s QuickTime (QT), Microsoft had a long road of acquisitions ahead of it. Instead of standing still Apple pushed the envelope with QuickTime and added innovating features such as QuickTime VR. QT VR allowed a user to “spin” an object 360 degrees around and look up and down a bit with the movement of their mouse. This was a decade before it showed up in Flash on web sites! As the web became popular, Apple’s attention to it gave programmers interaction (QTi in 1998) with its users.
But Apple’s direction seemed to have made a change by 2002 when it released 6.x. Now supporting the competition through Flash 5 and scriptable ActiveX controls, outside of MPEG-4 support, there was little innovation anymore. Certainly the release of 7.x and H.264 was a great addition; however, by this time, less and less use of QuickTime could be found on the web. Flash was king and QuickTime seemed to no longer sing. While Adobe was thrusting user interaction features to developers in Flash, Apple seemed to slowly add a bread crumb here and a bread crumb there to QuickTime ignoring the flashy San Jose-based company’s web progress.
What used to be considered an excellent medium for multimedia presentation on the web is now not even considered by most web developers today. Apple’s limited supply of user interaction has left it in the cold of consideration and oddly enough, Apple doesn’t even seem to care. Using the same underlying architecture created in 1991, QuickTime is the heart and soul of iTunes and thus seems to be Apple’s only true intention for this multimedia maverick. With all the money Apple paid Apple Records, Ltd. in settlement fees all those years ago, one would think any company with half the brains of Apple would push such a ground breaking application. So why the disinterest? What happened? While Apple announced QuickTime X this week at WWDC 2008, it won’t be out for at least another year in which its market share will have been even more eroded. Even upon release, will it deliver?
SvenOnTech has spoken to and heard many developers complain about QuickTime. The complaints range from how heavy QuickTime is now (does Microsoft make this?) to its near zero user interaction interface. Even though it looks great for movie trailers and other video footage, the latest version of Flash handles this just as well if not better because of all the other goodies that come along with it. QuickTime is just not usable anymore. Sad. Once die-hard fans of the multimedia application are now completely ignoring it, just like Apple.
So you’re excited about the next iPhone. So much so that you’re putting some heavy heat on Google Images to find the latest pix. You slobber over every little image you see. You tell yourself that, “It’s totally possible this is it!” Let me take this moment to burst your bubble. While fun to fantasize what the next-generation iPhone will look like and be fitted with, the truth is, we’re dealing with Apple here, people.
Apple, CEO Steve Jobs in particular, does an amazing job in keeping new products under wraps. Very few, if any that I can remember, products ever make it to web sites for sweet spoilers prior to Apple dawning the current for the first time. As for the iPhone, look at its abundance of “sneak peak” pictures last year prior to it’s unveiling at Macworld 2007. Not one of the nearly hundred different “models” was even close. Not even close. It’s this historical reasoning that proves the leaks we are now seeing for the next-generation iPhone are nothing more than fakes.
Taking it a step further; just use logic. Many pictures show a thicker iPhone than todays model. Why on earth would Steve Jobs allow a thicker model to digress itself to Apple Store shelves? Look to the iPod line and see how every generation slimmed from the previous version every time. Todays iPod Classic 160 GB version is thinner than the first generation that had less bytes than todays 8 GB nano. Additionally, Jobs has stated more than once that GPS was not where it needed to be and by all accounts through the last year, it still has not improved enough to bring it to the iPhone yet. 3G chipsets wouldn’t thicken up the iPhone, only GPS. No GPS: no thicker iPhone.
This post isn’t meant to speculate what will be in the next iPhone but rather to simply refute all the pictures slugging their way on the Internet as true leaks. Worry not, friends, like the excitement that electrified the masses upon the first release of the iPhone, Apple will not disappoint the second time around either.
It seems I’ve been throwing a lot of difficult problems toward Apple Care to become baffled on. I wrote about my odd iCal problem back in December of last year that neither Apple Care nor Microsoft could figure out (to which I later solved on my own genius bar) and now I have another one to add to the list.
I purchased one smokin’ Mac Pro last July and it was pretty much at the top end when all the features where added. Even with a 10% discount, the baby was a tad under 5k. So when after a month I started experiencing some really annoying slow downs due to constant hard drive spinning, I got on the phone and gave Apple Care a holler. After getting over the hurdle of what “swap” space was, I attempted to explain to the customer care representative that my hard drive was spinning more than an old 78 rpm record. After not getting anywhere with the first tech, I was sent to the second level. I defeated Level 2 as well. No answers. No wait, reformat and install was a suggestion which I had already tried prior to the call. So I lived with the spin for nine months.
Yesterday I added two more drives to my Mac Pro filling up all available slots. I now had the original drive and three added drives. I like cleaning out the inside of my computers every so often, so I pulled out the two already installed SATA hard drives and got a can of air and sprayed until it was exhausted. I secured back the two hard drives as well as added the two new ones. I closed up the Mac Pro and booted up. Guess what? No more hard drive dance floor spins!
So what could have caused the constant hard drive spinning is hard to say. It could have been a number of things such as dirty contacts on the SATA interface, not a fully seated hard drive, or the hard drive controller freaking out on just having two hard drives plugged in. I doubt it was that later and most likely just a hard drive not fully seated. Dirt could be it, but I really think it was the hard drive not being fully secured.
So, if you’re having a similar problem and Apple Care along with its forms offer no help, then give this a try. It may help.
With the rumors running rampant on the Internet of 3G iPhones to be subsidized by AT&T for a final cost of $199 with a two-year contract, it seems that time is running out for supposed exclusive carrier for US iPhones. Signs seem to indicate that this rumor has substance. Apple’s reported recent deal with Italy’s Telecom Italia Mobile to sell the iPhone unlocked and with a lack of firmware updates from Apple here in the states to re-secure an easily hacked 1.1.4 release in February, one would presume Apple desires more sales than headaches.
Seeing the huge demand in China alone for hacked iPhones, Apple can no longer ignore the demand for the Super Phone it released nearly a year ago last June. If the Cupertino iCompany does indeed decide to sell an unlocked iPhone, then AT&T needs to find another way to lock in its customer base. It will have to do it the old fashion way by eating a loss on the phone hardware in exchange for two years of your life. At a 50% discount of the initial cost of the phone, this will surely spawn new sales to the phone as well as retain current iPhone users desiring the faster mobile data access and possibly other hardware upgrade goodies such as rumored GPS (which I say is most unlikely.)
With a lack of a large GSM pool in the States, there may be not a huge splurge in unlocked iPhone sales locally, but where GSM is king, such as Europe and China, Apple could make a killing on the next generation iPhone if it truly will be sold as an unlocked device. Apple stands to make a greater profit with this business plan than skimming a few dollars a month per AT&T customer as it is suggested it is doing currently. While Apple is nearly half way to Steve Jobs self-commissioned 10 million phones sold by the end of 2008, sales have sagged in the last few months. International sales are even lower. An unlocked phone will change all that and meet, if not exceed, that 10 million mark for sure.