“I’m just wondering why your marketing group can’t do something to try to rein in this next generation, because you’ve got a real bad image out there.”

So said a Microsoft shareholder to CEO Steve Ballmer at the company’s shareholder meeting yesterday. TechFlash reporter Todd Bishop notes that the same shareholder added that Apple’s TV commercials make Microsoft look “like a buffoon.”

I’m relieved to hear this. I often look at Microsoft and wonder if its shareholders are as out-of-touch as the company itself seems to be. In just the last few weeks here’s what’s getting the most enthusiastic coverage in the tech press at a time when it ought to be 100 percent about the newly launched Windows 7.

• A Microsoft manager claiming Windows 7 — Microsoft’s flagship product — is inspired by Mac OS X
• Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie’s bewildering assertion that “apps don’t matter” — despite everyone else on Earth knowing otherwise
• Further redundancies that include long-time evangelist Don Dodge, and his subsequent post that, now that he’s free from Microsoft, he can admit, yeah, he has iPhone envy
• And let’s not forget the bizarre PR misfire that saw the staff of Microsoft’s flagship retail store ignoring their customers for a full five minutes in favor of stomping their way, awkwardly and embarrassingly, through a dance routine

The take-home message? It ain’t just the Apple commercials making Microsoft look like buffoons.

How did CEO Steve Ballmer respond? Fear not, anxious shareholders, Ballmer has this to say to assuage your fears and calm your nerves:

You take any country, including this one, and you say, how are we doing? The truth of the matter is, we do quite well. Even among college students, we do quite well. Do we have an opportunity for improvement? We do. Some of that is marketing some of that is phase of life. It is important to remember that 96 times out of 100 worldwide, people choose a PC with Windows, that’s a good thing. Even in the toughest market, which would be the high end of the consumer market here in the U.S., 83 times out of 100 people choose a Windows PC over a Mac.

Hang on, back-up. “Some of that is phase of life.” Phase of life? Well, Ballmer sure knows his execu-speak. What galls me about this is how it illustrates perfectly that while Microsoft may be doomed to continue making embarrassing mistakes, it probably won’t suffer any actual harm as a result; it survives simply because of its mammoth install base. Nothing more than that. And that simple fact directly influences the attitude and reasoning of its CEO. Ballmer is tacitly admitting that, all things considered, yeah, Microsoft looks like a bunch of idiots but that doesn’t matter because they’ve got more customers than anyone else.

Turn this around, and imagine that Apple does monumentally silly things that make it the target of much derision and ridicule among the tech community and consumers. Imagine you’re a shareholder, and you see a drop in quarterly earnings. You see the company laying off staff (including highly visible and respected staff they should keep). You see its executives sending conflicting messages to the public. And when you take them to task for it, Steve Jobs replies “Yeah, we’ve been a bit crap. But most people own an iPod, right, so, no worries.” Would you be satisfied with that?

Ballmer added:

Frankly, the economy is good for us, because people do understand that Macintoshes are quite a bit more expensive for essentially the same computer … we have opportunities to improve among exactly the constituency that you identify.

Yep. Be happy there’s a recession, people, or else customers would be buying Macs!

This isn’t actually a Microsoft bashing exercise (clearly, it does that to itself and needs no help from me). Instead, I look at this and wonder (fear) that Apple might be headed in much the same direction. Recent unpredictable behavior around the application approval process has seen Apple severely criticised by some of its most staunch supporters. Developers aren’t just frustrated, they’re now quitting the platform altogether. And not because the platform is flawed, but because Apple is horribly (and very visibly) mismanaging it.

Apple needs to take a good long look at the Microsoft of today and ask if it isn’t starting to make the same mistake; stubbornly pushing ahead with flawed policies/strategies that are justified on the strength of product market share alone, despite the obvious (and loud!) protestations of the public, the press, and sooner or later, even its own shareholders.

Sure, Apple isn’t as bad as Microsoft yet. But this is how it starts, people. Google Voicegate. Joe Hewitt. Rogue Amoeba. It’s not exactly dancing in an Apple Store, but it’s still embarrassing and potentially damaging, and it’s definitely a trend that won’t go away unless Apple does something to fix it.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office yesterday published a patent application Apple made way back in 2008 for “Pushing a User Interface to a Remote Device.” So, then…Smart Remotes. Cool!

MacRumor’s Eric Slivka reports that the patent’s lead inventor is William Bull, now Yahoo’s Senior Director of Mobile User Experience, but once upon a time Apple’s iPod User Interface Manager. The so-called “father of the iPod,” Tony Fadell, is also credited.

The idea is simple; portable media devices — such as iPods and iPhones, for example — have their own on-board Graphical User Interface (GUI) and, usually, a built-in screen. Thing is, we don’t always want to take our iPhone out of our pocket when we’re listening to music (or, if you’re me, catching up on podcasts while washing the dishes).

Enter remote controls (referred to in this patent as “accessories”). Often they’re dumb little inline sticks with a few fiddly (not to mention tiny) buttons. They’re useful, but basic, offering perhaps only a half dozen simple controls. Some of the more elaborate remotes have their own little displays, which is all very well and good, except that they also employ their own little GUIs which not only fail to resemble the one on the device you’re trying to control, but often don’t provide full access to all the device’s functions. From the patent application:

…existing remote GUIs are defined and controlled by the remote control device, and consequently, they may bear little resemblance to a GUI supplied by the portable media device itself Certain functions available on the portable media device (such as browsing or searching a database, adjusting playback settings, etc.) may be unavailable or difficult to find.

Apple’s solution is to “push” the device’s GUI to a remote an accessory with a built-in display. Here’s the description from the patent application (I’ve shortened it to just the main points);

The portable media device can provide the accessory with an image to be displayed on the video screen… [and] include various user interface elements that can resemble or replicate a “native” GUI provided directly on the portable media device. The accessory can send information to the portable media device indicative of a user action […] for example, that a particular button was pressed or that a particular portion of a touch-sensitive display screen was touched by the user. The portable media device can process this input to identify the action requested by the user and take the appropriate action. The action may include providing to the accessory an updated GUI image to be displayed, where the updated GUI image reflects the user action.

Essentially this describes a touch-enabled screen, small enough (and dumb enough) to still be called an accessory, which effectively acts as a small auxiliary display/input panel for the device.

I can’t see this making its way into an inline remote (it’s just not Apple’s style to make a wearable remote that’s big) but I can see a future revision of Apple’s current Remote that entirely does away with the buttons, replacing them with a capacitive touch screen.

Future software updates would enable one to connect the remote to a nearby Mac mini, Apple TV, even an iPod touch, and switch between those devices the same way the iPhone Remote app does today. The GUI would change, depending on the selected device.

The only drawback I can see to such a device (and remember, I’m just extrapolating here and imagining a potential future gadget — Apple’s patent application only describes a possible method and not an actual product) is that a remote with a capacitive touch screen will chew through its battery in next to no time. Is it conceivable we’ll be buying a charging dock for a future Apple MultiRemote?

More compelling is the notion that Apple could build this technology into an entire ecosystem, licensing third-party developers to create compatible hardware; imagine a house where a smart display on the door of your refrigerator not only tells you when the milk needs replacing but also allows you to skip tracks on the album you’re playing over AirTunes…

But am I thinking too small? Is this yet another patent application that will, ultimately, come to nothing, or could this be an early clue to a new Apple-tastic revolution?

Gotta love that Steve Jobs. He never was one to hold back, and even now, when he’s the CEO of the Universe (or something like that), he won’t be found spouting corporate speak.

CrunchGear tells the story of a small software development company called The Little App Factory. It made an app for the Mac called iPodRip, one of those tools for transferring music from an iPod to a computer. A law firm representing Apple sent The Little App Factory a letter, informing the company it had violated some of Apple’s trademarks, and instructed it to stop using the “iPod” bit in the app’s name.

iPodRip has been around for nearly seven years and CrunchGear’s Daniel Brusilovsky says it has been downloaded more than five million times. You’d think Apple’s legal sniffer hounds, Baker & McKenzie, might have acted a tad sooner…

Anyway, iPodRip developer and The Little App Factory CEO John Devor felt this was all rather unfair, so he wrote directly to El Jobso himself. Here’s a little excerpt from his impassioned plea for special treatment sanity (edited by me for brevity, but you can read the whole thing here);

Dear Mr. Jobs,

I doubt you’re aware but we recently received a letter from a law firm working on Apple’s behalf instructing us that we had violated several of Apple’s trademarks in our application iPodRip and asking us to cease using the name and Apple trademarks in our icons.

It is quite obvious that we mean Apple no harm with the use of the name iPodRip, or of the inclusion of trademarked items in our icons… …we are quite aware that Apple support and store staff have recommended our software on numerous occasions as far back as 2004 so we have felt that we were doing something right!

With this in mind, we are in desperate need of some assistance and we beseech you to help us to protect our product and our shareware company, I myself dropped out of school recently to pursue a path in the Mac software industry, and you yourself have been a consistent inspiration for me.

If there is anything at all you can do with regards to this matter, we would be most grateful.

Best,
John Devor

Poor fellow. Obviously he has poured his heart and soul into his company, and he has worked hard this last half-decade building a strong brand and large customer base. He wants to protect his investment, and why not? Apple has, it seems, been aware of the product, to some degree, for an awfully long time, so why slap him with a C&D letter now?

So Steve Jobs gets the email and thinks about this, right? He considers the years of service this guy and his company have provided for iTunes users around the world. He considers carefully the late-in-the-game complaint from Baker & McKenzie. He feels a swell of pride at the obvious passion of those in the Mac development community who so loyally support his products and strive to make the Mac ecosystem a bigger, brighter and more worthwhile place to be. Right?

Of course not. He’s Steve Jobs, people! This is his reply:

Change your apps name. Not that big of a deal.

Steve

Sent from my iPhone

I nearly fell off my chair in laughter when I saw that. I’m not sure I agree with him that’s it’s “not that big of a deal” (after all, this company has invested many years in their brand and built a considerable customer base) but I admire Steve’s no-nonsense attitude. He says exactly what’s on his mind, no PR-spin, and sends it straight from his iPhone, typos-and-all.

The Little App Factory acquiesced (what else could it do?) and renamed the app iRip. It also changed the app’s icon. Perhaps this whole affair was a thorn in the side, but I don’t feel too sorry for them, the tech press is giving them a lot of attention right now, and that’s gotta be good for business, right?

According to a report this week on The Mac Observer, Apple and AT&T have been presented with a class action lawsuit by a customer who accuses them of misleading the public by advertising the MMS capabilities of the iPhone 3GS despite not making those capabilities available in the U.S. when it launched.

(Yawn.) I’ll let you mull over whether the accusation is fair; the plaintiff, Francis Monticelli, says in the suit that “MMS functionality was one of the reasons people chose to buy or upgrade… it has [become] clear that AT&T’s network does not support MMS.”

TMO points out Apple made it quite clear MMS functionality would not be available in America at the launch of the iPhone 3GS. Surely you remember the hilarious (and embarrassing) murmur of amusement and derision from the audience at this year’s Worldwide Developer Conference when Scott Forstall introduced MMS? “29 of our carrier partners in 76 countries around the world will support MMS at the launch of iPhone OS 3.0,” Forstall announced, then, trying to keep a straight face, added, “In the United States, AT&T will be ready to support MMS later this summer.”

Still, that little fact hasn’t stopped Monticelli suing, though I’m sure he won’t get far. I’ll never quite understand the litigation-happy nature of some of my American cousins (here in England we prefer to send strongly-worded letters of complaint) but it got me thinking about the now-forgotten drama of iPhone MMS. I can’t help wondering — was it really such a big deal? I mean, now you’ve got it, do you ever use it? Would you truly miss it if it disappeared overnight?

When MMS first appeared via the iPhone OS 3.0 update I couldn’t wait to try it out. I took a photo of a bowl of apples (go figure) and sent it to a pal. “I have MMS!” I declared, proudly. “So?” he enquired, puzzled. (I forget sometimes not everyone is an iPhone user and therefore have always had MMS.) That was back in June, a good five months ago. It was the first — and last — iPhone MMS I ever sent.

Color me conditioned by my experience with previous iPhone OS limitations, but if I want to send someone a photo I instinctively use the Mail app. I’m not alone, either — fellow iPhone owners never send me MMS messages but also choose to use Mail instead (I know because of all those “Sent from my iPhone” footers I keep seeing).

I’m trying to figure out when and how this habit started; it’s easy to say it’s the result of Apple’s decision not to support MMS functionality, but if I force my grey cells to work a little harder, and think back to those dark times before the iPhone, I don’t have any fond memories of MMS. Sure, I had the function on every one of my old phones, but I barely ever used it. So perhaps my aversion to MMS started then…

Either way, I don’t care for MMS. It’s a clunky old technology that never mattered to me. Not even my most geeky of friends ever bothered using it, with or without adding an iPhone into the equation.

Apple’s Chief of iPod/iPhone Marketing Greg Joswiak once said the iPhone originally didn’t include (amongst other things) MMS functionality because it wasn’t high on the list of features customers wanted from their mobile phones.

Naturally, there was an outcry. People were either ambivalent (they didn’t care or simply accepted email was an adequate alternative) or they were furious. Spend a little time picking through any of the popular Mac discussion boards from 2007 onward and you’ll find plenty of disgruntled punters lamenting Apple’s decision to not support the feature.

You know how, when a child isn’t playing with a toy, and you try to take the toy away, the child will instantly want it and make a scene if they don’t get it? It’s that peculiarly human tendency to want what we don’t have, or what is being taken (or withheld) from us. Well, I wonder, was the outcry over MMS the same thing? And now we have it, how many of us are actually using it?

If you’re in the States and didn’t jailbreak your iPhone, MMS is still fairly new to you and you might still be enjoying the novelty of finally getting it working. So, while MMS is fresh in your minds (and your iPhones) perhaps you can answer the question — where do we really stand with MMS?

Is it an indispensable tool Apple had no business keeping from us this long? Or should we reluctantly (and perhaps a little bashfully) admit it wasn’t worth all that fuss and noise — Apple was right not to make it a priority and, if we’re really truthfully honest, we never used it anyway…

I spend an awful lot of time poking around in the App Store in both iTunes and on my iPhone, just in the hopes of finding something new and exciting to download and use on my device. It’s not an ideal situation, and I often wish Apple would throw out its tired model and completely restructure the App Store from the ground up.

There’s little chance of that happening, but a new Facebook app could help make the App Store more navigable, and do so with a little help from your friends. Mplayit is a new service being offered on Facebook that aims to bring some sense to the jungle that is the 100,000-strong App Store using a more intelligent browsing system based on recommendations and demos.

The idea is that there’s no one better to recommend iPhone apps you’d like than your friends. Using Mplayit, friends can make recommendations via the app which will appear on their profile page and in the news feed. That way, you’ll have a trustworthy source when you’re shopping for new software for your device.

By far the most useful aspect of Mplayit during my brief use of it was the app recommendations and shared apps. The rest, including popularity, search and categories, is already available to users via the App Store itself.

I’m not exactly sure how apps get onto the recommended list, since I would assume that they would be the ones which are the most recommended, but then what’s to differentiate them from the shared app? Whatever the methodology behind their selection, the fact remains that they are good picks, and well-deserving of attention. The list provides a good variety, too, covering apps with a range of functions instead of just presenting, say, all the top Twitter apps.

The best part of Mplayit, from the standpoint of people who need to see to believe, is that most apps come complete with videos and images previewing the functionality of the software running on an actual iPhone, and a full text description, too. That’s what puts Mplayit ahead of other iPhone app discovery sites like AppShopper.com or 148apps. Of course, each app also includes buy links that redirect you to the App Store, and a link through which you can add the program to your collection, which helps Mplayit track app popularity and recommendation information.

Many people are reluctant to use Facebook apps because of privacy concerns and fears of spamming the news feeds of friends, but after trying out the service for a little while, I haven’t found any cause for concern with Mplayit. The best part is that you can still use most aspects of the app without granting it access to your profile information.

I’ve had a rant building up for a few weeks. A rant about developer’s treatment at the hands of the App Store submission procedure. However unlike many rants on the topic, mine is not directed towards Apple. It is directed towards the iPhone developers who complain about the poor, unfair treatment they get, carrying their bleeding hearts in their palms while claiming Apple is bludgeoning the life out of them.

Two recent news headlines, seemingly separate, are intrinsically tied together and the synergy of them have made my eyes dislocated from the continued rolling they involuntarily perform.

The first headline, Facebook Developer Turns Back on iPhone relates how another high-profile developer has thrown their hands up in disgust over how Apple’s closed system runs against their principles. A direct quote from Joe Hewitt, developer of the popular Facebook application can be found on TechCrunch, and is most relevant. I will come back to this later:

I respect their right to manage their platform however they want, however I am philosophically opposed to the existence of their review process.

The second headline is Apple’s App Store Approval Process Now Includes an Automated Layer. The quick version is that Apple is now using an automated tool to determine if the Apps that developers submit to the App Store are using any Private API calls.

These two headlines are actually the same story, a fact that was made quite apparent by a popular direct iPhone-to-iPhone messaging App called Ping!. On Ping!’s Facebook Page, the developer announced that the much-anticipated version 1.2 of Ping! has been rejected by Apple:

Bad news is Ping! 1.2 has been rejected by Apple on Nov 14 due to a software library we used, developed by the Facebook company. This library is used by many apps including Ping! and the iPhone Facebook app itself. Unfortunately the most recent version of this library has violated some of Apple’s guidelines and  has caused hundreds of apps to get rejected including Ping! 1.2.

So let’s get this straight. Ping! and hundreds of apps have been rejected because they used a popular development framework, a framework which used Private APIs. A framework, which was created by Joe Hewitt initially for use with the Facebook application and then made available to third-party developers.

Lets be clear about this; Joe Hewitt used Private APIs in his public framework, well-known to be against the rules of the App Store, and then acts all indigent when Apple slaps his framework down. Rather than disclosing his error, rather than saying “oops sorry about that,” he would rather ride the trendy wave of ‘blame Apple control policy’ and cite ‘philosophical differences.’ I rather wonder if these philosophical differences would still be present if his framework hadn’t been caught in this automated tool. If it were just other people’s frameworks that were caught, would he still have quit for ideological reasons?

Now I don’t mean to pick solely on Mr Hewitt, and maybe I’m being too harsh. But he is just the latest example in a blogosphere that increasingly seems to love taking the loud minority and say “Look! Here’s proof that the end is nigh!” Come on, the end isn’t nigh, it’s not even on the horizon. Out of the thousands of App Developers that exist, we’ve had a dozen, maybe two dozen make a public fuss and quit. Big deal! This is the real world; businesses start, some succeed and some can’t hack the brutal reality. Those just make excuses and quit. Just like everywhere else in the business world.

To summarize the full story that I see, it goes something like this:

• Apple publishes the rules for making iPhone Apps, including publishing and documenting the specific APIs which developers are allowed to use.
• Some developers ignore these rules and make use of Private APIs. Some Apps get through the cracks in the newly functioning App Store review procedures.
• Apple starts to crack down on private API usage. Developers who get rejected due to Private API use cry foul “Why are WE rejected but THOSE apps are allowed?” This was a fair question.
• In response Apple says “They shouldn’t have been allowed, we are working on a way to fill up the cracks in the system”
• Apple then goes ahead and fill the cracks with an automated (and thus unbiased) system to test of private API usage.
• Developers then cry foul, “It’s not fair, you’re a bully, it’s too hard.”

Cry me a river….

Before I get off my soap box, I’d like to add that there are times and places for Private API use. As a professional software developer working on proprietary custom embedded solutions on Windows Mobile devices for specific customers, I freely admit to using Private API calls at times. Sometimes its necessary to get a specific job done. The difference is scope and control. Our clients deploy the software under our care and guidance, with specific OS and hardware requirements. If they change devices or operating systems, we know about it well in advance and can prepare for it accordingly. Our clients don’t just upgrade the OS and expect everything to work.

The consumer market is a completely different kettle of fish, customers upgrade willy-nilly  and expect things to just work, especially things related to Apple products. Private APIs are private for a reason, because they can not be relied upon to behave from one OS release to the next. This means that applications will break and the consumers, you and me, lose out.

In the brutal competition of any market place, and indeed the world in general, the strong will survive and the weak will perish. The App Store is no different and I’m constantly dumb-founded as to why some people expect it to be so.

Ever entertaining—if unreliable—DigiTimes has not one, but two big tablet rumors today. The mythical device (subscription required) has been delayed from early 2010 to the second half of next year, and there will an OLED model. Seriously.

According to anonymous sources inside that the electronics supply chain, Apple changed the launch from March—as opposed to January—to “switch some components” and to add a model with a 9.7″ OLED screen. The OLED model will be manufactured with a display from LG Electronics, as part of a $500 million dollar contract with Apple. That model would be in addition to an LCD tablet with a 10.6″ display.

If making two tablets with different size screens seems a curious decision, the price of the OLED tablet is extreme. According to DigiTimes, a 9.7″ OLED display would cost about $500, and display price is typically a third of total cost, so $1,500 would be the price to manufacture the tablet. Even accounting for cost reductions by next year, the retail price could be as high as $2,000.

That’s probably about right (the price, not the rumor). The Sony XEL-1 TV has an 11″ OLED screen and retails for $2,500, but can be found for as “little” as $1,800. However, even with a subsidy from a wireless provider, there is no way Apple is going to recreate the Cube failure in two-dimensions by selling a tablet in the range of $2,000. Look for an LCD tablet for around $800 early next year.

Speaking yesterday at the Professional Developer’s Conference, Microsoft’s Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie explained what’s really important when it comes to the smartphone business, and it’s apparently nothing at all to do with the number of apps available on any one platform.

All the apps that count will be ported to every one of them. It’s a completely different situation from the PC market, where software’s built to run on a Windows or a Mac. Mobile apps require very little development, so it’s much easier to bring them onto every platform.

Yeah. That’s why there are more than 100,000 apps in the iTunes Store and, what, five in the Windows Marketplace? And that’s why quality apps like Facebook or Tweetie 2.0 have been ported, feature-complete, from the iPhone to Windows Mobile, Blackberry and Palm OS? Oh, wait…

The point here is that Microsoft’s senior execs apparently continue to misunderstand what’s going on in todays smartphone market. Microsoft seems to view the iPhone not as a serious competitor but more as a toy, something to disregard because grown-ups (grey-suited corporate drones) aren’t interested in all that flashy functionality and rich media. They’re not interested in the astonishing range of software available for the iPhone. They just want Mobile Powerpoint and Excel, plus a few other ageing Office apps. That’s all that really matters, right?

Wrong. We need look no further than JD Power’s recently published results of a satisfaction survey they conducted of business smartphone customers around the world. Apple came in at number one, RIM finished second.

WIRED’s Gadget Lab published an article yesterday examining some of the mistakes Microsoft has made with Windows Mobile. NPD Group analyst Ross Rubin told WIRED:

Microsoft’s mobile OS history is rooted in personal digital assistants, which were marketed toward enterprise audiences. Today, the smartphone has shifted into the mainstream as a consumer device, and yet Windows Mobile is still largely focused on enterprise features.

Perhaps Microsoft has a significant change planned for the release of Windows Mobile 7, WIRED’s Brian Chen asked Redmond HQ. They declined to discuss Windows 7 directly, but did have this to say about their mobile OS business;

The company’s mobility strategy has not changed; it is and has always been to provide a software platform for the industry. The company works closely with many mobile operators and device makers around the world because people want different experiences on a variety of phones.

Well, it’s certainly a different experience alright. A lousy one. That’s one reason Microsoft’s global smartphone market share has dropped from 11 percent in 2008 to 7.9 percent today. In the meantime, Apple and RIM have seen their market shares swell to 17.1 and 20.8 percent, respectively.

Microsoft’s Mobile strategy is out of touch. Ever-increasing numbers of enterprise customers who once used Windows phones are today carrying Blackberrys or iPhones and have entirely different expectations of their cellular devices. Mobile Outlook just won’t cut it any more.

Driving the point home is a timely article published this week by the Wall Street Journal, about the disparity between old, primitive tech used in the office, and the far more capable and empowering technology found at home. According to the WSJ’s Nick Wingfield, execs at Kraft Foods noticed the difference.

Executives began to worry that the company’s technology policies were preventing employees from staying in step with trends. Kraft was a consumer company, they figured, so workers needed to be more familiar with the technologies that consumers were using, whether the iPhone or YouTube.

So, the IT department stopped blocking access to consumer Web sites, and the company started a stipend program for smart phones: Workers get an allowance every 18 months to buy a phone of their choosing. (Over 60% picked iPhones.)

With all the above in mind, I can’t see how Microsoft’s Mobile strategy could be considered sound business. If I were a Microsoft shareholder, I’d be hopping mad at the company’s apparent inability to understand — and adapt to — the demands of today’s smartphone consumers.

It’s paradoxical, really. Microsoft has always highlighted how customer choice is of paramount importance, indeed, a key component in its success with Windows. In the quote above, Microsoft’s own spokesperson stresses how Microsoft works with mobile operators and OEM’s to provide choice. But at the PDC yesterday, Ozzie seemed to be saying that an impressive selection of apps (ie. choice) is unimportant. He mentions “apps that count” but doesn’t say what those apps are; in any case, that’s a short-sighted assertion. Apps that matter to me, may not matter so much to you. That’s precisely why an iPhone owner’s home screen is so fascinating to other iPhone owners.

The iPhone’s greatest strength is the tens of thousands of software titles available in the App Store, usually at a knock-down price. There is, literally, something for everyone, no matter how discerning ones’ taste in Games, Productivity tools, or fart apps.

I give Windows Mobile another year, max. If it can’t build its app marketplace into a substantial repository of quality titles at (very) low prices, it won’t matter how closely Microsoft works with its technology partners. Because, at that point, Windows Mobile will be reduced to a Wikipedia entry as an “also ran” in the history of the smartphone.

Is it possible that the Mac is making inroads with Enterprise IT? Intel Capital announced at CEO Summit that it is leading a Series A investment round in Active Storage of Torrance, CA, which builds high-performance storage solutions for the Mac platform. Other investors in this round include Mission Ventures and Valhalla Partners. Intel Capital invests in companies that drive demand for Intel products, but it also looks to make money and apparently it sees money in enterprise-class solutions for the Mac.

Active Storage was born out of Apple’s decision to discontinue the Xserve RAID. Alex Grossman, CEO of Active Storage, and the other founders were previously executives in the Servers and Storage products group at Apple, Inc. They left to form their own company that would produce storage solutions of the same quality. While Apple has been pitching the Promise VTrack RAID as a replacement solution, Active Storage has developed its XRAID product line to be a lot more Mac-like with brilliant Mac-native management software. This is high-end gear for serious business — fibre-channel, redundant controllers, redundant power supplies, redundant cooling, etc — with an emphasis on performance. The XRAID comes in two flavors, the original XRAID with 16TB capacity expandable to 32TB and the XRAID ES with 4TB, expandable to 16TB.

All of this power is wrapped in a sexy package that feels very Apple like. The folks at Active Storage have put a lot of care into building enclosures with no sharp edges, tapered screws that sit flush with the chassis, thick gauge aluminum, and slick handles on the drive sleds that pop out with a light touch. I had a chance to take a look at the XRAID at Macworld Expo in January and the build quality on these units is astounding. Having been in a data center or two in my life, finding a polished product where attention has been given to every detail to make it simple to access from both the front and the back of the rack is a real joy. One of the coolest pieces is an iPhone monitoring app that gives you all the details you could want on how the XRAID is performing even when you are not near the data center. This is definitely a storage solution fit for a Mac.

The extreme ease of use in a Mac environment has made Active Storage popular in the entertainment crowd. When asked to explain further, Mr. Grossman explained that, “You may not know this because you aren’t in working with these systems every day, but feature-length movie production requires 50 to 100TB of storage. And that need doesn’t go away when the movie is finished either. There is a need for long-term archival storage as well. And it doesn’t always make sense to use tape backup, so disk-to-disk archiving is growing.”

Final Cut has made the Mac platform a common choice for film editing with some feature films like King Kong being composited and edited entirely on Macs. With the advent of HD, the storage needs for films are growing astronomically. Active Storage appears to be positioned to take advantage of that trend. It makes a great hardware solution in conjunction with Apple products like the Xserve, Final Cut Server, and Xsan 2.

The company currently has about 25 employees, but about 50 open positions on its web site. It is obviously looking to grow substantially in 2010, especially with this capital available to fund hiring and product development.

It is great news to see a well-respected investment fund like Intel Capital place bets on the Mac market, especially in a company that is focused on enterprise-class solutions for the Mac.

Earlier we reported that the next generation of iPhone might have an RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) reader built in, if rumors prove true. Well, there’s no need to wait that long, if near-field communications (NFC) is what you’ve got a hankerin’ for. Wireless Dynamics has announced a device called the iCarte that will add both RFID and NFC capabilities to the iPhone.

The device adds functionality to the iPhone via the dock connector, to which it connects without adding too much bulk or without being too much of an eyesore. In fact, it looks like the iCarte’s designers went out of their way to make sure the add-on looks like it’s a natural extension of the iPhone itself, rather than an apparent third-party accessory.

A chip embedded in the iCarte turns your iPhone into a portable electronic wallet, able to process contactless payments. It can also transmit any information it receives directly to enterprise databases using Wi-Fi or 3G network connections, so that orders and purchases can be automatically input into your company’s home server. Of course, in order to use the iCarte, you’ll need to be using iPhone OS 3.0, since only the latest major software update supports dock accessory connectivity.

The iCarte also has a mini-USB port to allow for pass-through charging and syncing, so you won’t have to constantly remove and replace the device, and it comes in both black and white, in case fashion is a concern of yours. To be clear, while Wireless Dynamics does talk about business applications, it looks like the iCarte’s functionality is aimed primarily at people on the consumer end of the retail equation:

iCarte has an embedded smart-chip that can be configured as debit, credit, pre-paid and loyalty cards, for secure contactless transactions. iCarte can also read NFC Smart Posters, download or upload electronic coupons, tickets or receipts. iCarte is ideal for iPhone users who want to use their iPhones for fast and secure contactless payments, transit payments, loyalty rewards, checking balances, top-up, discovering new services from smart posters or kiosks and exchanging information with other NFC phones.

iCarte’s web site is devoid of information regarding an official release date or pricing for the receiver, although it does offer contact info if you’re interested in finding out more about the tech. Presumably a companion iPhone application would be required for programming in payment card information, checking balances, etc., but as of yet no such app is available via the iTunes Store.

If you’re still running an old Mac PowerBook 550c or something similar, it must be really annoying to not be able to use Twitter via a native client. That’s probably your No. 1 concern, in fact, on your OS 8.1-running machine. You could always use the web interface, but that’s not really a fair solution, is it?

Now, thanks to Grackle68k, Mac users who are still running Macintosh System 6, 7, 8 and 9 can have a dedicated Twitter client of their very own. Personally, I think the release of this app was just timed to steal the spotlight away from Seesmic for Windows. Obviously this is much bigger news!

Twitter is available to pretty much any platform, and that’s no accident. The technology behind it is relatively lightweight, with clients only really needing the ability to make API calls to be completely functional. The memory footprint of clients differs depending on what developers choose to add on the client side of things, but little is needed to make one actually functional.

That’s the idea behind Grackle68k, a labor of love for a small group of programmers who realize that there’s still quite the classic Mac enthusiast crowd out there who actually use their well-aged machines for some basic tasks in addition to just keeping them running (myself included). The program lets you tweet, but if you want it to remember who you are on each startup, you’ll have to break out the ResEdit and make a change to a resource by adding your login information. It’s an added step, true, but a fun one that should bring back memories, so hey, I’m not gonna complain.

With Black Friday rapidly approaching, the time of the year for spending is upon us. Although I’m sure all of us Mac lovers are considering which Apple product we’ll be blowing our budget on (mine will be a Magic Mouse), there are also the other gadgets in our lives to consider.

One of the most important gadgets for Mac users is often the digital camera, what with all those wonderful iLife tools we can use to manipulate and share the photos and videos we take with our digital cameras. As such, here’s a quick guide on picking the right digital camera for you.

1) The inverse law of megapixels
Despite what the guy at the Best Buy tells you, more megapixels does not mean better photos. In fact, in this day and age the opposite is true. This is because the more megapixels you pack onto a camera sensor, especially the tiny sensors found on most point and shoot cameras, the worst they become at picking up light. Nowadays you can’t buy a camera with fewer than six or seven megapixels, which is more than enough for most, and you will actually hurt your picture quality if you buy small cameras with more than 10 or 12 megapixels.

2) Think about where you shoot
Most people don’t stop and think about the type of photos they take before they buy, not realizing that there are tradeoffs to be made. For example if you take a lot of photos in low light conditions, buying a camera with a larger sensor and whose lens can open up wider to pick up more light, like the Canon S90 or Panasonic LX3, makes a lot of sense, but such cameras also mean giving up zoom range. The opposite is true if you like to get close to your subjects. You can pick up a pocketable point and shoot with a 12x zoom like the Panasonic DMC-ZS3, but you’re going to give up low light capabilities. If you want the best quality in all conditions you’re going to have to give up portability and carry around a large DSLR.

3) Don’t forget the accessories
Even if you’re not spending a ton of money, a few simple accessories can improve your photography experience. I almost always recommend picking up an extra battery. There’s nothing more annoying than having your camera die on you in the middle of a trip or family event. Another useful accessory is a tripod, which doesn’t necessarily need to be a gigantic. Picking up something like a Gorrilla pod, which is both cheap and small, can let you stabilize the camera when taking shots with a long exposure, like a night scenery shot, and also lets you set up the camera better for self-portraits.

4) Decide how serious you are about photography
If you’re truly a point and shoot photographer, then it’s important for you to pick up a camera with a good automatic mode and wide selection of usable scene modes. If you’re more advanced, or want to learn how to take more control of your camera, then expect to pay more for a camera with full manual controls. If you’re a serious photographer or if you’re ready to take the leap to the highest level of photography, then it may be time to invest in a DSLR, which allows you to swap lenses for various photographic situations.

5) Don’t cheap out
We’re Mac users for a reason. We recognize quality and are willing to pay more in order to get the best. The same is true with digital cameras. The universe of cameras under $150 is enormous, and they’re all almost the same. By paying a bit more, I’d say more than $200 for a point and shoot, you’ll find a significant increase in photo quality and features. That’s not to say that every camera under $150 is poor and every one over $200 is good, you’ll still need to do research, but there’s less chaff to sift through at higher price points and a better chance of picking up something you’ll be happy with.

The cameras below are widely seen as solid performers in their class. If you’re still bewildered by the options out there, these are a good place to start your research.

Price: $199

This is a good fit for anyone who wants a reasonably adept camera in a small and slim package. The price is reasonable too, but don’t expect wonders from the tiny sensor in this camera. Expect to use the flash in even slightly dim conditions. On the plus side, you do get face detection, HD video recording and image stabilization.

Price: $270

Stepping up a bit in price over entry-level point and shoot cameras, the ZS3 is still a very good value considering what you get. That is an extremely impressive zoom range, from wide angle for scenery shots all the way up to a 300mm zoom for getting close to subjects far away. HD video is also a big plus here, with the ability to zoom while recording, something that not all cameras can do. Not all is perfect, however, as the ZS3’s sensor is tiny, which combined with a less than impressive maximum aperture means that this camera struggles in low light situations. If you’re looking for small and versatile, however, the ZS3 hits the sweet spot in a lot of places.

Price: $430

Canon’s newest addition to their high-end point and shoot lineup offers quite a few features that will get advanced amateurs excited. First up is a significantly larger sensor than that found in most point and shoot cameras. Combined with a lens that sports an f/2 aperture at the wide end, this means the camera struggles much less than typical point and shoots in low light situations. You also get a full range of manual controls and an interesting click wheel around the lens that can be assigned to a variety of functions. The S90 doesn’t come cheap, however, and it is missing some features like HD video that you can find on much less expensive cameras.

Price: $640

DSLR’s like the D60 combine a huge sensor for even better low light photography, with the option to switch lenses to match your particular situation. Be ready to continue spending, however, as in this world it’s the quality of your glass (lenses) more than the camera itself that will dictate the quality of your photos, and lenses don’t come cheap. The D60 is a good choice for those just entering the world of interchangeable lenses as it’s available at a reasonable price and it offers a more gradual learning curve than other more advanced DSLRs. That said, it does lack one of the new sexy features that you are beginning to see on DSLRs: video recording. If that’s a must for you check out the Canon T1i.

Snow Leopard has barely gotten its paws wet, and now news comes that Apple is already working on its replacement. It’s not really surprising, since Apple is basically always either working on the next iteration of its products or releasing them, but still, it does whet the appetite for the next version of OS X.

The suggestion of the new operating system appeared in an entry posted early this morning in a change database for “launchd,” an open source framework that controls the booting of OS X and administers running processes. The new entry includes an error message with the string “11A47″ in it, which is a reference to what version of Mac OS X is being used.

Previous versions of OS X have all followed the same numbering scheme. The number at the start of the string references which version of OS X is being used, with the letter indicated the minor release number and finally another number at the end indicating the development progress of said minor release. So, for example, Snow Leopard at release was represented by the string 10A432, and Leopard was 9A571. 11A47, then, would seem to indicate that an early build of 10.7 was being used.

According to MacRumors, the “47″ part of that number would suggest that Apple has already been working on the new version of OS X for at least a couple of months now. It’s still very early days, though, and probably even a long way off from a release to the developer community. We saw a two-year span between 10.4 and 10.5, but only a one year gap between the release of 10.5 and 10.6, because 10.6 represented mainly performance upgrades and refinements. Chances are, 10.7 is at least another year and a half off.

No news yet on what to expect in 10.7, although there is reason to believe that the upcoming iteration of OS X will bring more major changes than the last update. Traditionally, Apple introduces far more GUI and basic functionality changes in major point releases, but Snow Leopard was a special exception to that rule, a fact reflected in the price. It’s possible that Apple will release OS 11 at some point, but as of right now, it seems likely that it will continue with the current numbering scheme.

Anything in particular you’d like to see in 10.7? Maybe something you were disappointed wasn’t there in OS X 10.6? Personally, I still think Finder could use some further fine-tuning, but otherwise I’m at a loss at the moment.

Today, on CNN.com I noticed a new online Get A Mac ad that I’ve lovingly named “Surveillance.”

Apple has done these sort of multi-banner ads on large news sites like CNN and NY Times before where the two ads cleverly interact with one another.

In this ad, Mac and PC are talking about Windows 7 and above them a number of surveillance cameras are showing people going in and out of Apple stores presumably switching from PC to Mac. PC can’t stand the thought so he runs to one of the stores and is observed on one of the surveillance cameras stopping people form going in to the Apple store.

Apple is fairly reliable, but not the most reliable company of all when it comes to notebooks, according to a new study by research firm SquareTrade. The top honor goes to Asus, which surprised me, but I suppose shouldn’t have when I consider the build quality of my fairly inexpensive Eee PC. Toshiba and Sony rank next most reliable, with Apple coming in a close fourth.

I remember a time not too long ago when IBM and Apple would top the list every time, with other manufacturers coming in a fair distance behind them. IBM sold its hardware business to Lenovo, which seems to be having some effect on quality, but is Apple also slipping as it grows? I don’t think there’s enough data to identify a trend, but it is a little worrying.

Still, at least Apple is still under the 20 percent mark for three-year laptop malfunction rates, which is the measure that indicates reliability in the study. Dell is the only company below it, also under 20 percent, with 18.3. After that, things take a significant turn for the worse, with HP coming in ninth place at 25.6 percent. That means Apple is still showing better-than-average performance overall.

Electronista suggests that the reason for the divide between top-tier manufacturers and those that fall below the average is that the companies with greater than 20 percent malfunction rates tend to do much of their business in the budget laptop and notebook categories, which see higher failure rates overall than premium-priced laptops, where Apple exclusively does its business. It’s possible NVIDIA-gate accounted for some of those failures, although SquareTrade doesn’t go into detail about malfunction causes in this report.

The iPhone isn’t capable of true multitasking if you’re running a legit, non-jailbroken device, so you can’t do something like, say, have Facebook and Twitter open at the same time. Thanks to the latest update, though, for TweetDeck for the iPhone (free, iTunes link), you can experience most of the advantages of that hypothetical situation using only one app.

The newest version of TweetDeck for iPhone has lots of new features, but by far the most significant is the ability to add columns that show updates from your Facebook friends (and MySpace, too, if you’re a musician or a 13 year-old who somehow got transported to the future from the year 2000). You can read updates, yes, but you can also do wall posts, comment on things, and update your own status, all without leaving the app.

You can even “Like” someone’s status update from the zoomed in view. Really, if you use Facebook the way I do these days (never opening the inbox, browsing the news and live feeds like they were slightly broken Twitter feeds and occasionally doing a wall post or two if something catches my eye that needs direct address. My Inbox has become a wasteland of lost and unread missives, and I rarely look at event or other invitations, unless prompted to do so in real life or on Twitter.

When you hit the compose button, you’re taken to the usual window, but now at the top you can opt to post your status update to one, some, or all of the accounts associated with your TweetDeck installation. It’s very handy if you want to post an update across more than one Twitter account, or if you’d like to selectively push some of your Twitter updates to your Facebook without using an extra plugin and the #fb tag, for instance.

Other new features include landscape keyboard support (via a button, not the accelerometer, which is actually better in my opinion), 12seconds.tv integration for 3GS video tweeting, and an option to save draft tweets you’re working on. Should give you a chance to rethink that disparaging comment about your workplace you’re thinking about posting. Bit.ly URL shortening with click tracking is also a new feature, as is the ability to add a column devoted exclusively to trending topics.

It’s a good update, but I still don’t think it can replace Tweetie 2 as my primary client. If I was a social media manager at a company in charge of maintaining multiple Twitter streams for different lines of business, TweetDeck would be my go-to application, but as it stands, it’s just more meat than I can generally chew.

If you’re planning your holiday shopping but want to get a good grasp of the budget available to you in advance, it helps to know what kind of deals you’re going to get. Luckily, Apple’s Black Friday discounts have been leaked early, so you can factor in those price reductions while you’re figuring out how pinched you’re going to be financially come January.

Boy Genius Report got the early tip-off, from an anonymous source. It comes in the form of what looks like a flyer image, detailing some pretty significant discounts on all things Apple, basically. They’re deep enough that you’d probably do well to hold off any Mac or iPod-related purchase for at least another 10 days just in case.

Here’s what we’re looking at, if the rumors prove true:

• Up to 30 percent off all iPods (excluding iPhone and iPod shuffle)
• Up to 25 percent off all Macs
• Up to 15 percent off all accessories, Apple software and Apple hardware

The sales seem to be available in Apple retail stores only, since the poster also states that “Select Apple stores open at 6 am,” and a line at the bottom advertises the new availability of in-store gift-wrapping. Last year we saw online Black Friday discounts, though, so it’s possible we’ll see them again.

If these deals do indeed come to pass, they would be pretty significant compared with previous Black Friday sales by the Mac maker. Twenty-five percent off of all Macs is a very good discount, for example, and would result in a $500 discount on the Core i5 27-inch iMac, or a $250 discount on the entry-level MacBook. Compare that to a $101 discount on the MacBook last year, and a $101 discount on the top model iMac.

The teaser image leaked by BGR is fairly convincing, in that it does seem to use design cues and aesthetics currently favored by Apple in its marketing materials, but it’s hard not to be skeptical in the face of sound business sense — considering Apple’s previous Black Friday discounts, and the fact that last time I checked, it really wasn’t in a position to need to offer big price cuts to bolster sales.

If these do prove true, I’ve been putting a new Time Capsule or Airport Extreme purchase on the back burner for quite some time now, and that 15 percent off is nothing to sneeze at, given Apple’s usual reluctance to offer any kind of price cut at all. Anyone else planning on making a purchase if these discounts really do apply? Something you wouldn’t buy otherwise, perhaps?

App Store developers now have more to contend with than just the fickle tastes of the humans Apple has reviewing submissions. Now, submissions also go through an automated filter that determines whether or not the app is obeying the rules and not using any of Apple’s private APIs, which is a no-no, according to the developer agreement.

The news comes via a conversation that occurred between developers on Twitter. Craig Hockenberry, best known for Twitterific, guessed that the App Store now contains a mechanism to check submitted code against proper framework use, and John Gruber responded that Apple has in fact recently begun to do just that.

The specific function of the new automated component is to check submissions for private API calls. If it finds any, the app is rejected outright. Presumably, such a check would be run at the beginning of the review process, thereby cutting down a lot on the number of submissions that must be reviewed by actual human beings. In other words, it’s a volume compensation strategy on Apple’s part.

It’s also technically fair, since Apple has said all along that private APIs are off-limits. The published reason being that Apple can’t confirm that said APIs will remain stable from release to release of the iPhone OS, meaning that something based on them might break every time an update rolls out. By forcing developers to stick with the public APIs, Apple is trying to ensure that some stability exists for end-users who depend on the hundred thousand apps or so available now in the App Store.

Despite being technically fair, the move feels a little unfair to developers, since Apple hasn’t exactly been consistent about enforcing the rules regarding private APIs up till now. One reason could have been that spotting their use just isn’t that easy, which the computer filter now rectifies. But it seems clear that Apple also looked the other way in at least a couple of cases when it suited it to do so, like with Google’s mobile search app, hence my suggestion that this has more to do with reducing workload using a non-arbitrary filter than anything else.

While the introduction of an automated layer does, on the surface, seem to guarantee a level of fairness, it also probably isn’t very encouraging to developers, who now essentially face a firewall before they gain access to individuals they can actually talk to about what’s wrong with their submission. Expect more headaches for the App Store team as the fallout for the implementation of this measure.

Scheduling a Genius Bar or One to One training session appointment has never been that difficult. Just go to Apple’s web site, enter some information, and you’re done. But a new rumor over at AppleInsider suggests that it’s about to become even easier, thanks to a new in-house developed iPhone app that could be forthcoming soon from Apple.

News of the app comes via a “source that has proven reliable in the past,” though no further information is given. The app is said to be able to create appointments for both Genius Bar and One to One, and to view membership details for programs that require a subscription. No word yet on a street date for the app.

Presumably the app would allow users to make any kind of reservation currently only available online, including a personal shopping appointment. Although the web site system currently employed is easy enough to understand and use, I imagine a dedicated iPhone app designed by Apple would make the process so easy and intuitive that I’d probably actually use it far more than I currently do, particularly for personal shopping when new products launch.

MacRumors corroborates the report via separate sources, so it seems likely that the Concierge app will be forthcoming. I’d expect it to appear before the holidays, so that shoppers can take advantage of it pre-gift giving, and people on the receiving end of Apple products can use it after the holidays to schedule appointments.

The Concierge app would be the latest move in a series of efforts focused on improving Apple’s retail performance, including in-store pickup for holiday shoppers, more and improved stores, and the new EasyPay touch system.

OnLive made a lot of noise when it first appeared on the scene way back in March at the Game Developer’s Conference of 2009. It’s a service that’s said to be able to make a gaming machine out of any computer that can run the latest browsers, which would effectively end the madness that is PC gaming hardware upgrades. And now, it looks like it might be able to work on the iPhone, too.

What OnLive does is bypass the normal hardware barriers involved in PC gaming by streaming the game live to a user’s browser window from a server farm located nearby. The server farm deals with the game’s performance demands, and all the end user needs is a good enough connection to stream the content smoothly.

It’s a setup that sounds too good to be true, and many remain skeptical about whether or not OnLive will be able to deliver what it has promised. There was supposed to be an external beta this past summer, but that’s been delayed, which doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.

Still, if the service works, it will revolutionize the way gaming is done. The system has strong support from game publishers, which makes sense because without the hardware barriers, they stand to broaden their audience considerably. If that audience were to also include iPhone users, you can imagine that even more game companies would fall in line behind OnLive.

The company recently demoed an iPhone app that allows users to play full games alongside users of the PC OnLive service, or players using the company’s MicroConsole, a standalone device which connects to a display or TV — yes, even without the modern convenience of buttons, joysticks and bumpers. Presumably, onscreen controls allow you to manipulate the in-game action, although a report at Engadget Mobile doesn’t go into detail about how exactly it works, nor does a blog post at OnLive. Needless to say, your PC gaming friend will probably be able to school you at Modern Warfare 2 unless you’re some kind of touch control prodigy.

When the app does see release, which won’t be for a while, OnLive CEO Steve Perlman says it won’t allow you to game right away. Initial versions will allow you to monitor gaming stats and spectate, so you can watch live gameplay without taking part. Interactivity is planned down the road, but control kinks and other issues have to be addressed before it goes live to the masses.

What do you think? Would you take advantage of full-version gaming on your iPhone if you had the ability to? I foresee a very limited catalog of titles that this sort of thing would work with, but if it does become a reality, and it becomes popular, developers might design custom gaming experiences for people who access games via OnLive on their iPhones.