Even the biggest brand out there, Napster, failed to capture any of its former glory as a pay service despite the ad blitz and continued media coverage.
It's like shutting down a brothel and replacing it with a legitimate massage parlor. Would you fly out to Reno, Nevada to get a deep tissue massage at the retooled Bunny Ranch? These are kinds of questions these execs are not asking.
What Google's chief executive, Eric Schmidt, has to fear more than anything else is that he'll awake one day to learn that the Google search engine suddenly doesn't work on any Windows computers: something happened overnight and what worked yesterday doesn't work today. It would have to be an act of deliberate sabotage on Microsoft's part and blatantly illegal, but that doesn't mean it couldn't happen. Microsoft would claim ignorance and innocence and take days, weeks or months to reverse the effect, during which time Google would have lost billions.
Jesus.
This is like bad science fiction, written before the internet was invented - by Dan Brown. Cringely is such a tool.
I'm just glad I don't have to do warsailing anymore. In the past I used to tell my boat rower to keep it steady long enough to break the WPA-PSK while wearing that ridiculous mask.
I enjoyed reading the analysis and the breakdown of converted trial users, but I must say, the application looks like shit. The typography is horrendous, the colors are all wrong, and the interface looks like something out of 80's or designed in MS Paint. The tagline on the app site is "Not pretty. Functional." What makes iPhone remarkable is that it demonstrated that you can have both pretty and functional. It's not an either/or proposition anymore. RIM/Nokia/Microsoft no longer have an excuse to say that in order for something to be functional it must conform to the lowest common denominator.
Contrary to popular opinion, the unwashed masses do appreciate well-designed, well-planned, and well-implemented products if it is within their price range. There is a reason why Pontiac Aztec failed in such a spectacular fashion.
ESRB should forget about the iPhone and start rating desktop applications. I'd like to know if it's acceptable to let teenagers play with NURBS in 3DS Max
Gartner has projected that in the next 5 years about half of all internet bloggers will paper launch their own internet tablets, because it's the next logical step.
That is if an App is free then it is always free, if an App is paid for THEN it can charge you more.
You're right, but here's a better example of LITE vs Pro app like DSLR Remote. One of them costs $1.99 and the full-featured app costs $9.99. The company plans to update the app to support Nikon cameras very soon and they're not doing separate apps in this case. With in-app purchasing you could just buy support for either Canon or Nikon and not subsidize it for the other camera.
Extend this to things like local maps for turn-by-turn gps (like XRoad's G-Map) and you can see the value in having something which adds content a la carte. Currently they have Eastern US and Western US, each of the apps weighing in at 900MB. That's 1/16th of the space on your iPhone. A lot of maps that you don't need if you're just going to drive around Los Angeles.
...but it's not a positive development for the consumer no matter how you slice it.
I disagree, and here's why.
In-game, in-app transactions free up developers to provide applications which are modular and go beyond widgetizing the phone with bunch of buttons. For example, instead of releasing 10 different apps for language instruction and ranking somewhere in the 10,000's on the list of downloaded apps, you could just make one well-designed app and then provide language packs for a fee. Currently there are lots of single-purpose apps from the same company localized to fit a specific language. This is bad for the developers because they don't have a chance to reach critical mass on the platform since their offerings are balkanized - Spanish, French, and German versions are all competing against one another and other similar apps. Their combined total downloads would propel them to the top but since these are treated and sold as separate apps you lose exposure.
This would also do away with "LITE" applications and get you the real thing where you could purchase the full game after playing the demo level. It's really a redundant step to download iFighter Lite (an awesome game!) and then go back and purchase the full iFighter game. The in-game transaction saves you the step of going through delete > re-download > sync steps and puts you back into action.
Will some developers abuse this by releasing shitty content? Absolutely. But the market will sort these out in time.
"If a company designs both hardware and software, it can build much better systems than if they only design the software. That's why Apple's iPhone is so much better than Microsoft phones."
Ellison always finds ways to throw tiny daggers at Microsoft.
Why would Cook be 'sabotaging'? We're talking incompetence here, not malice.
It was implied in the post (which I'm sure was a troll).
Sorry - the downfall has already begun. RIM is again the biggest smartphone maker.
Blackberry smartphones are selling more than iPhones because RIM is catering to the enterprise which tends to place orders by thousands. Secondly, Blackberry has more models and is available across different carriers. Third, and most important - iPhone is more than just a smartphone. It's a platform with which Apple will try to branch out into different markets. Blackberry is a one-trick pony and doesn't have excellent prospects when it comes to things that don't fall within their core competency. The statistic you mentioned is the same kind of marketshare trap whereby Mac or Linux are being dismissed simply because those OSes are in single digits, often forgetting the fact that most PCs are just beige boxes inside offices that serve a single purpose. I'd like to think that 1 consumer PC which actually gets used for gaming, shopping and entertainment has more worth than 30 PCs which are locked down and offer very limited access to users (i.e. office machines)
Rather than compare monthly shipped units, a better metric is web usage. iPhone/iPod touch dominate this category.
With Jobs on the sidelines, we're back to the Sculley era at Apple...
You're talking out of your ass. Jobs is not on the sidelines. He's too much of a control freak to let Tim Cook or anyone else sabotage the juggernaut he helped to create. If you think Sculley's Apple will make a comeback then you're mistaken and don't know history.
Apple isn't desperate for low-level buzz dealing with obscure hirings. They can leak a single photo or make a "mistake" on the web store and dominate the news cycle for 2 weeks.
It's a highly inefficient operation in terms of getting a good return from the shelf space. It's taken up by giant empty boxes that don't do anything.
Here's an idea. Tear down these remaining stores and turn them into arcades with every game loaded on a server with terminals all around. You pay-for-play and if you decide it's something you'd enjoy pay for a copy on a USB stick. Now you have instant gratification and avoidance of downloading of 3 gigs of shit on Steam.
This whole url shortening shit started to pick up steam few days ago when Digg introduced Diggbar - a hybrid of frame and url-shortening that framed other sites and did not display the proper site address. John Gruber went nuts and modified his blog to redirect users to a special page. Then he blogged for 2 days non-stop how to make diggbar go away. Since he's widely read around the web everyone started chiming in with their opinions on the general idea of url shortening services and how it hurts or helps the web.
What we have left is the stuff that preserves well.
Totally agree. Those supermarket plastic bags with a half-life of 50,000 years bare important messages for distant generations. And you know they're going to misinterpret the purpose of our junk and come up with weird theories to explain why we were so polite.
1. Saw an Egyptian obelisk which had lasted for a long time. 2. Our modern data preservation methods aren't built for longevity. 3. Rocks have better data integrity than digital archives.
Thanks for the heads up. I'll be sure to keep that in mind when I'm deciding whether to save my memoirs on rock or.doc. Really helpful stuff.
Please, deliver on your promise and fix the app notifications you've announced when the first SDK shipped. There are so many great applications out there that would get a much needed enhancement - IM, GTD apps, Email, etc.
My #1 request is push email that doesn't involve Yahoo, Mail2Web, or Me.com
Slashdot Mirror
Even the biggest brand out there, Napster, failed to capture any of its former glory as a pay service despite the ad blitz and continued media coverage.
It's like shutting down a brothel and replacing it with a legitimate massage parlor. Would you fly out to Reno, Nevada to get a deep tissue massage at the retooled Bunny Ranch? These are kinds of questions these execs are not asking.
Jesus.
This is like bad science fiction, written before the internet was invented - by Dan Brown. Cringely is such a tool.
I'm just glad I don't have to do warsailing anymore. In the past I used to tell my boat rower to keep it steady long enough to break the WPA-PSK while wearing that ridiculous mask.
A $300 digital photo-frame that runs Firefox.
Sign me up.
According to this graph.
I enjoyed reading the analysis and the breakdown of converted trial users, but I must say, the application looks like shit. The typography is horrendous, the colors are all wrong, and the interface looks like something out of 80's or designed in MS Paint. The tagline on the app site is "Not pretty. Functional." What makes iPhone remarkable is that it demonstrated that you can have both pretty and functional. It's not an either/or proposition anymore. RIM/Nokia/Microsoft no longer have an excuse to say that in order for something to be functional it must conform to the lowest common denominator.
Contrary to popular opinion, the unwashed masses do appreciate well-designed, well-planned, and well-implemented products if it is within their price range. There is a reason why Pontiac Aztec failed in such a spectacular fashion.
ESRB should forget about the iPhone and start rating desktop applications. I'd like to know if it's acceptable to let teenagers play with NURBS in 3DS Max
Microsoft: exploits loopholes in law to avoid paying corporate taxes.
People: exploit loopholes in Windows activation to avoid paying for a license.
Gartner has projected that in the next 5 years about half of all internet bloggers will paper launch their own internet tablets, because it's the next logical step.
From TechCrunch? I refuse to believe that.
You're right, but here's a better example of LITE vs Pro app like DSLR Remote. One of them costs $1.99 and the full-featured app costs $9.99. The company plans to update the app to support Nikon cameras very soon and they're not doing separate apps in this case. With in-app purchasing you could just buy support for either Canon or Nikon and not subsidize it for the other camera.
Extend this to things like local maps for turn-by-turn gps (like XRoad's G-Map) and you can see the value in having something which adds content a la carte. Currently they have Eastern US and Western US, each of the apps weighing in at 900MB. That's 1/16th of the space on your iPhone. A lot of maps that you don't need if you're just going to drive around Los Angeles.
I disagree, and here's why.
In-game, in-app transactions free up developers to provide applications which are modular and go beyond widgetizing the phone with bunch of buttons. For example, instead of releasing 10 different apps for language instruction and ranking somewhere in the 10,000's on the list of downloaded apps, you could just make one well-designed app and then provide language packs for a fee. Currently there are lots of single-purpose apps from the same company localized to fit a specific language. This is bad for the developers because they don't have a chance to reach critical mass on the platform since their offerings are balkanized - Spanish, French, and German versions are all competing against one another and other similar apps. Their combined total downloads would propel them to the top but since these are treated and sold as separate apps you lose exposure.
This would also do away with "LITE" applications and get you the real thing where you could purchase the full game after playing the demo level. It's really a redundant step to download iFighter Lite (an awesome game!) and then go back and purchase the full iFighter game. The in-game transaction saves you the step of going through delete > re-download > sync steps and puts you back into action.
Will some developers abuse this by releasing shitty content? Absolutely. But the market will sort these out in time.
It's a really awkward ad and there is a guy at 1:43 mark doing the nazi salute.
Ellison always finds ways to throw tiny daggers at Microsoft.
It was implied in the post (which I'm sure was a troll).
Blackberry smartphones are selling more than iPhones because RIM is catering to the enterprise which tends to place orders by thousands. Secondly, Blackberry has more models and is available across different carriers. Third, and most important - iPhone is more than just a smartphone. It's a platform with which Apple will try to branch out into different markets. Blackberry is a one-trick pony and doesn't have excellent prospects when it comes to things that don't fall within their core competency. The statistic you mentioned is the same kind of marketshare trap whereby Mac or Linux are being dismissed simply because those OSes are in single digits, often forgetting the fact that most PCs are just beige boxes inside offices that serve a single purpose. I'd like to think that 1 consumer PC which actually gets used for gaming, shopping and entertainment has more worth than 30 PCs which are locked down and offer very limited access to users (i.e. office machines)
Rather than compare monthly shipped units, a better metric is web usage. iPhone/iPod touch dominate this category.
You're talking out of your ass. Jobs is not on the sidelines. He's too much of a control freak to let Tim Cook or anyone else sabotage the juggernaut he helped to create. If you think Sculley's Apple will make a comeback then you're mistaken and don't know history.
Apple isn't desperate for low-level buzz dealing with obscure hirings. They can leak a single photo or make a "mistake" on the web store and dominate the news cycle for 2 weeks.
It's a highly inefficient operation in terms of getting a good return from the shelf space. It's taken up by giant empty boxes that don't do anything.
Here's an idea. Tear down these remaining stores and turn them into arcades with every game loaded on a server with terminals all around. You pay-for-play and if you decide it's something you'd enjoy pay for a copy on a USB stick. Now you have instant gratification and avoidance of downloading of 3 gigs of shit on Steam.
This whole url shortening shit started to pick up steam few days ago when Digg introduced Diggbar - a hybrid of frame and url-shortening that framed other sites and did not display the proper site address. John Gruber went nuts and modified his blog to redirect users to a special page. Then he blogged for 2 days non-stop how to make diggbar go away. Since he's widely read around the web everyone started chiming in with their opinions on the general idea of url shortening services and how it hurts or helps the web.
Nerd bullshit. And not the good kind.
As long as the meat is made out of tofu.
In related news, PETA is taking donations to reeducate these chimps into changing their lifestyle.
Failed amazon.com experiments with new packing materials
JL421
Totally agree. Those supermarket plastic bags with a half-life of 50,000 years bare important messages for distant generations. And you know they're going to misinterpret the purpose of our junk and come up with weird theories to explain why we were so polite.
The entire piece consists of:
1. Saw an Egyptian obelisk which had lasted for a long time.
2. Our modern data preservation methods aren't built for longevity.
3. Rocks have better data integrity than digital archives.
Thanks for the heads up. I'll be sure to keep that in mind when I'm deciding whether to save my memoirs on rock or .doc. Really helpful stuff.
Appleinsider isn't the source. This appeared in Marketwatch. Check the second link for the original.
Please, deliver on your promise and fix the app notifications you've announced when the first SDK shipped. There are so many great applications out there that would get a much needed enhancement - IM, GTD apps, Email, etc.
My #1 request is push email that doesn't involve Yahoo, Mail2Web, or Me.com