The Le Séance !

Oh great spirits, we are attempting to contact one our missing followers of MacNight. His spiritual name is "Le". Please release him to the Macworld so that others may benefit from his great knowledge. Why he has been banished for so long has concerned the Mac faithful. Please give us a sign that he is well, and that he will be enriching us with his great wisdom sometime soon. <... beep, please deposit 25 cents ...> Sorry, I have to go now. I'm out of change. <... I'm sorry you call has been disconnected. ...> <... Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep ...>

Motorola is splitting in two....

Well, it looks like Motorola has decided to push it's recently unprofitable cell phone branch of the company out of the main company into a separate company. It seems Motorola hasn't been able to create a hit in the cell phone market since the Razor phones. Even that phone only looked cool, but had problems, in my opinion. Some of the reasons for their problems was increased competition, including Apple's new iPhone. Motorola probably looked at all of the innovation in the iPhone and figured that this phone was so far ahead of the competition that it may be too late to even try to catch the technologies in this phone.

iPod music bundling

Gentlemen, this is one of the most unique ideas I've ever heard. Check out the Ars Technica piece:

Unlimited Downloads!

If I understand correctly, an option for purchasing an iPod would include an additional charge which would allow the purchaser to download an unlimited number of songs as long as they owned the iPod.

Is this right? It almost sounds too good to be true. I also understand another music player has that feature - for an additional $80. You know, it almost seems like a good deal! And, you own the music!

Now the article says Apple wants to charge an additional $20, not $80. I know I may sound crazy, but $20 in addition to the iPod would be a steal. I would think $40 to $80 would make more sense for UNLIMITED downloads!

Am I reading this right? And if so, what do you guys think?

Ars Technica Opinion Piece

Check out this article from Ars Technica:

iPhone Development

It is fascinating and talks about how crazy developers are to make applications for the iPhone, but how some are questioning the role of Apple as the so called "gate keeper" and taking 30% of revenues generated from software sales. On the other hand, Apple also takes care of all the "overhead costs" such as taking care of credit card charges, distribution, maintenance of the App store for the iPhone.

Stitch, what do you think?

Speaking of Steve Ballmer...

Check out this article from eWeek by Mac evangelist turned reporter Guy Kawasaki's interview of Steve Ballmer. Interesting read:

Ballmer Interview

Time for the iPhone blastoff?

With the latest news from Apple with their "Enterprise" solutions and "SDK", is now time for the iPhone blastoff countdown? After seeing the video of Apple's announcement, I was in awe. The iPhone will now be a fully secure network which links directly to Microsoft Exchange server for push email, push calenders, and push whatever. VPN support (virtual private network) which would allow an encrypted connection for sensitive data transfers. And with the SDK (software development kit) any business can customize their services and software on the iPhone. The SDK looked like is an amazing tool for creating applications quickly.
Businesses could get data from their own servers quickly and securely to their workers in a very portable device. Taking a laptop everywhere is not always convienient. Sales people are perfect targets for these devices. Any job which could need information sent to a remote location.
In addition, Apple looks like they want the iPhone to become a mobile gaming platform. With the full 3 axis accelerometer in the device. Instead of using a mouse or joystick for control, you just tip the iphone in different orientations. So the interface goes from mouse and joystick driven, to finger pointing and tipping.
The repurcutions of this may not be felt until later this year but like the initial iPod introduction, has been ignored by investors as being anything significant.
The iPhone incompasses all of what makes Apple great. It has a rock solid OS based on OSX. A great software development tool in SDK. They even have an iPhone simulator which run on your computer to speed development. Simple access to the cool features of the iPhone, touch interface, video, accelerometer, etc should stimulate quick development of awesome apps. Plus the attention to cool design and simple interfaces. Apple is firing on all cylinders now. Like the Venture Capitalist said, "the iPhone should be bigger than the personal computer". I think he is right.

Proud new owner of an iPod Classic

Yes the time has come where I have gone ahead and made the iPod purchase. Yes I have owned a shuffle in the past. And Christina has an iPod nano before they widened it. But I feel that the number of features and price have reached a point which begs the question. "Why don't you buy one!" I got a black iPod classic with an 80GB hard drive. I like the fact that you can do video on it if you like. It has a wheel based Coverflow feature. And the large 80GB storage have sold me on this model. The iTouch is cool but still in it's infancy. I would expect that the flash memory prices will drop quickly and then make this the iPod of choice in a couple of years. But the original draw for the iPod and what drew me to the Classic is the huge storage where you have "everything in your pocket". I have already loaded a classic Stanley Cup Finals game from the 1970's on it, to call up one of the greatest players to ever play the game, Gilbert Perrault. He played like a Mazda MX6, "just like butter". Soon it will be filled with "Science Friday" podcasts, and loads of songs. And it will nice to be able to pull up anything in an instant. Apple magic at it's best.

Nike and Apple Again

Have you heard that Apple and Nike are teaming up again. This time to use the iPod nano to collect workout data from exercise equipment in Gym's. They are in negotiations with major exercise equipment manufacturers to add access ports for Nanos. It appears that the Nike website for tracking running data has grown into a very popular community. And Apple/Nike want to expand this to more workout types. People can find exercise partners to compete against on the Nike site. Who would have thought this would be so popular. I thought that this pedometer/ipod gadget would come and go. But it appears to have staying power.

MacBook Air in short supply

Gentlemen, the new Macbook Air is reportedly in short supply:

The Air

And indeed, it is the top selling Mac on the Apple Store website. Are we to conclude that the Air is a hit, or is this simply supply shortage with Apple failing to accurately predict demand? It would be surprising to me if the Air retained this position even ahead of the Macbook, given the Macbook's excellent value (in my humble opinion).