Archive for Apple
by Ewan Spence
April 21, 2008 at 9:02 am · Filed under iPhone, Apple, 2008
I wonder just how much a headache the iPod Touch is causing Cupertino? Essentially the Touch is the iPhone without the phone circuit, but it’s also more than that. It’s not the ongoing revenue stream that the iPhone devices are, it’s not out there challenging for column inches in a fight with the telcos and smartphone manufacturers. It’s the forgotten brother of the line up.
Yet it’s arguably exactly the same hardware, and it’s definitely the same platform as the iPhone. Yet iPod Touch users are getting a rough deal at every turn. Flash software updates are being charged for, just to add in the same software that the iPhone carried originally, it seems to be the forgotten product, and as the iPhone gathers all the press and marketing push, the Touch is left forgotten in everything except the financial reports.
The Touch could be, with some focus, a fantastic platform for Apple and the mobile space. It’s well positioned to be the first truly mainstream successful internet tablet. Yet it continues to be crippled. The upcoming iPhone SDK will also allow applications to run on the iPod Touch
The Touch may well have the potential to be a new type of device family, but it could also signal that Apple are losing site of their audience – news that the January 2008 upgrade was going to be chargeable drew (admittedly muted) boo’s from the audience at the MacWorld Keynote… and with the upgrade to allow third party SDK developed applications due to incur a further charge, I wonder if Apple really wanted the iPod Touch in the first place?
When you have a product you should be 100% behind it, or kill it. I wish Cupertino could make its mind up.
by Ewan Spence
April 16, 2008 at 6:59 am · Filed under Mobile Tech, iPhone, Apple, Nokia, 2008
The sky is falling the sky is falling, there must be a 3G iPhone around the corner all the tea leaves and chicken [little] entrails say so!
Yes there is more furor around certain dedicated parts of the internet in regards to an update to the iPhone line, especially with the ‘why wasn’t it there in the first place’ 3G connectivity (to which I suspect the answer is a mix of cost, high power consumption, and Apple’s relative inexperience in the mobile market place). And driving that discussion over the last few days has been the drop in price of some one hundred pounds ($195 US) by UK carrier O2 on the 8GB iPhone – bringing it to a respectable (but still overpriced) 169 pounds
Yes I said overpriced, but let me refine that. It’s over-priced for the UK market, where you can pick up the high end Nokia Nseries devices for under 50 pounds in many cases. As we’ve said time and again, the nature of the market in different territories can affect a device and how it is received. The US finally had a phone with a good set of features for the tech crowd, and they loved it.
Please don’t read too much into a price cut of a company that has likely got excess stock on a unit. If there was some devious plot to clear the shelves, don’t you think that the 16GB unit would also have a price cut? Or that the cut would also be given to O2 customers in Ireland?
I’ve no doubt there will be a 3G iPhone in the near future, but Apple are traditionally very good at keeping things quiet, especially when there’s not been a squeak of an FCC filing for a 3G variant (which needs to be done some 90 days before a product release as I recall).
Apple fanboys, seeing patterns when there are none. Gotta love em.
by Darla Mack
March 4, 2008 at 8:53 am · Filed under Mobile messaging 2.0, iPhone, Apple, Content, LinkedIn
LinkedIn announced on their blog that their social media professional portal has now gone mobile.
LinkedIn Mobile is in beta and available on any web enabled wireless phone that uses WAP… which most of them do.
The beta product includes a version specially optimized for the iPhone and is available immediately in English, French, German, Spanish, Japanese and Chinese with additional languages to follow.
Mobile users simply go to http://m.linkedin.com from your mobile device.
by Imran Ali
February 6, 2008 at 8:58 am · Filed under iPhone, Apple
As Darla reported yesterday, rumours of a 16GB iPhone were true as Apple announced a newly fattened iPhone and iPod touch lineup…
An unsurprising announcement, but a couple of inferences can be drawn from the new price points; that the telephony features of an iPhone command just a $100 premium over an iPod touch with equivalent capacity and, more significantly, this indicates the viability of a $599 iPhone with 32GB capacity. Nice! But where is it Apple?
by Darla Mack
February 5, 2008 at 5:04 pm · Filed under Mobile messaging 2.0, iPhone, Apple
Rumors had circulated around the net about the 16GB iPhone and now it looks like its true. Apple has updated its site to introduce the new 16GB iPhone, just in time for Valentine’s day. Is there anything new? Not really… just more space.
Now truth be told, I’ve only handled an iPhone twice, both totaling 5 minutes, but that as enough to change my mind about the device. Yes I do think its a breakthrough in technology devices, especially for the US market, but as with anything it could use some work.
According to SMSTextNews, the 16GB will also be available in the UK for O2 and will be priced at £329. Consumers in the US can purchase the iPhone via Apple’s Online Store for $499.
by Russell Shaw
January 16, 2008 at 7:07 pm · Filed under Twitter, Apple
After Twitter suffered some big honkin’ service disruptions during Apple CEO Steve Jobs Macworld keynote yesterday, the circumstances surrounding those bugs moved Twitter co-founder Biz Stone to author a kind of mea culpa blog post.
Google veteran Biz wrote:
One week ago we announced the hiring of Lee Mighdoll as Vice President of Engineering and Operations. Lee’s immediate goal is to help turn Twitter into a reliable communication network that people all over the world can depend on every day.
The challenge facing Lee and our entire Twitter team was highlighted this morning during Steve Jobs’ keynote address.
Macworld is only one event, in one city. Twitter must be reliable around the world, around the clock, and it must accommodate all sudden bursts of real-time messages—everything from Apple announcements to natural disasters.
Whoa, quite a mea “gulpa” there, Biz.
Biz ends his post with a plea for help-and for those with an interest and a suitable professional tech background to help Lee Mighdoll, to apply on the jobs section of the Twitter site.
by Russell Shaw
January 15, 2008 at 8:33 pm · Filed under iPhone, Apple
During his keynote speech at Macworld in San Francisco today, Apple CEO Steve Jobs addressed some of the texting improvements in the 1.13 iPhone firmware upgrade announced today.
Already available, the upgrade offers the ability to send the same SMS text message to multiple people.
Like here:
You can also save a history of your text messages.
My question is, though: don’t most mobiles let you do that already? My BlackBerry does.
by Ewan Spence
January 7, 2008 at 2:06 pm · Filed under Mobile messaging 2.0, Devices, Apple, 2008
What’s going to happen in 2008 is going to be this… every smartphone manufacturer is going to proclaim that they have the fastest selling smartphone of it’s class in history. We might even see certain manufacturers shouting about the fastest adoption, the greatest rise in market share… blah… blah… blah…
Yes I can confidently predict that the marketing of smartphones and highly spec’ed out feature phones (here’s looking at you, Apple) will cloud over the reality of the situation just enough to cast their brand or device as the next coming. And you know what? I’m going to be pleased to see that.
After all, if we’re in a marketplace awash with marketing data, where companies are sniping over every customer, over every feature list bullet point, over store signage, that can mean only one thing… The idea of a smartphone is embedded in the public consciousness. While PR and marketing are going to be spending more and more money on their device, the first big hurdle will already have been overcome. In much the same way as you don’t see advertising on why you need a games console at home, you just see advertising on why you need this specific games console, the rubicon has been crossed.
Smartphones will be mainstream.
All that remains is for the market to decide which smartphone is the one. And that’s where it’s going to be handed over to the marketing department, that’s when it’s going to get interesting, that’s when it’s time to look at the small prints in the advertising.
So my first mobile messaging prediction? 2008 - the year that smartphone advertising gets vicious.
by Ewan Spence
November 23, 2007 at 10:47 am · Filed under Devices, Mobile Tech, Platforms, Software, ARPU, iPhone, Google, Apple, Instant Messaging, Openmoko, Communication, Convergence, Symbian
The launch of Android, and the Open Handset Alliance (primarily with Google and over 30 other partners) has prompted a huge amount of discussion around the internet, from Telecoms Analysts, Industry Watehrs, Developers and enthusiatic bloggers. That’s been reflected here on Mobile Messaging 2.0.
So what exactly is the impact of this in the mobile space? Debi Jones and I sat down to discuss that very topic in our latest podcast.
Google, Android and the Implications - MM2.0 With Debi Jones and Ewan Spence:
Play Now |
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Download
by Ewan Spence
November 1, 2007 at 7:10 pm · Filed under Software, iPhone, Apple
By any account, there are over a million iPhones out there from Apple, and a huge number of them have been cracked open to get round the locks both on third party software and the SIM lock (to allow the device to run on any network around the world). Hard numbers have, until now, been hard to come by, but now Nicholas “Drudge†Penree has partially solved that query. He is the man behind AppSnap – a web based application that gives users read/write ability to the main file system in the current firmware. This allows other apps, including a generic application installer, to be placed and run on the iPhone.
With over 150,000 downloads, Penree feels that this represents around 100,000 devices. Add in a touch of windage, and that’s almost ten per cent of iPhones sold that have been cracked open. This isn’t a few hackers trying out a few things and kicking the tyres. And I very much doubt that every single user of a cracked iPhone is some uber-power user.
This is the community making a very loud statement about what they want to do with their device, that they paid for with their money. I find it amazing that, post-sale, any company would seek to limit what a person can do with their own property – even to the point of reaching into a device and switching it off permanently.
To a certain extent Apple is now trying to head this off at the pass by promising an SDK in February 2008, but really this should have been communicated at the launch of the device. Building a smartphone OS is a complicated business, and giving everyone the keys is going to expose every single flaw in the device in short order. One obvious one is that as a Linux based device, every application will be allowed to run with root privileges. I’m pretty sure that a full firmware upgrade will be needed before February, which will rework loopholes and gaps (such as root access) before the SDK arrives. I suspect a large swathe of developers are currently trying to make the brand new mobile OS habitable for hackers, while at the same time holding them up with a slow leak of PR friendly about turns.
Apple, normally pride themself on being the master of the message and spin, have really dropped the ball on the iPhone.
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