iOS Devices

Browsing through Apple’s clearance page, I came across one item of particular interest, the previous generation MacBook Air. As you probably know, the air is normally priced at 1799, which in my opinion is way too high considering what you get. However, Apple is now offering the previous generation MacBook air for only 1399, completely new in box. The only difference between the previous generation model and the current generation model are the graphics and Displayport (if you don’t have a Displayport monitor, this may actually be an advantage). 1399 for the air is much more reasonable, and is how I feel it should have been priced in the first place. 

To go buy it, click here.

Microsoft lowers the price of Zunes by $20.  Sorry if we didn’t hear about this earlier, it was under our radar.  Here’s the new lineup vs. the nano equivalent:

• 16 GB: Zune, $179; iPod $199 equiv
• 8 GB: Zune, $139; iPod $149
• 4 GB: Zune, $99; no iPod

.

…good luck with that…

The iPhone and the Apple TV were born together. Sharing the same stage at Macworld 2007, both products were an attempt to extend the reach of products they already had, the iPhone growing on the iPod and the ROKR, and the Apple TV growing on the Mac Mini and iTunes. The spotlight at the event was primarily on the iPhone, as they were banking on it to extend their market reach and to bring multi-touch into the mainstream, but the Apple TV was a sleeper product that they hoped would take over the small but growing industry of Internet TV.

Two years later, the iPhone has exploded into the best selling phone of any cell phone, with high critical acclaim and an App Store that is revolutionizing application distribution, and the Apple TV has, well, been sleeping. Sales numbers haven’t been revealed, and the Apple TV remains the hobby that Steve Jobs called it after it flopped. Rabid fanboys have defended the Apple TV, saying that Apple did a great job on it, and its an excellent product if you learn to appreciate it. The problem is, consumers aren’t going to pay 230 dollars for a product they have to "learn to appreciate."

So what’s the problem with the Apple TV? It’s simple: it doesn’t do anything that consumers can’t already do. Movie Rentals? Everyone with cable or satellite can do that with the same titles at the same price. TV Shows? Everyone can watch TV Shows, and most can record them, for free, which sure beats paying 1.99 per show (or 2.99 for HD). Music? Music Channels are aplenty on cable and satellite, and one can easily burn a CD of their own music to play. Purchasing Movies? Everyone has a DVD player, and they would much rather use the DVDs they already have or rent one at Blockbuster than to start their collection from scratch. Youtube? Well, you got me there, but I don’t see Apple TVs selling like hot-cakes because you can watch Youtube pixellated on a flat screen TV as opposed to your computer. The point is that the Apple TV has nothing unique or innovative that makes it worth the asking price for the average consumer, and with the economy the way it is, the Apple TV has the lowest bang for the buck of any Apple product.

Now don’t start bashing me for hating on the Apple TV: I am a proud owner of an Apple TV, and have loved every bit of it. As a filmmaker, there is no better way to showcase my films to friends than the Apple TV. As a person who has been blacklisted from all the movie rental stores in town for forgetting to return the rentals, and who hates navigating and troubleshooting the clunky DVR rental system that is included with my cable, the Apple TV fits the bill perfectly for me. Unfortunately, it doesn’t fit the bill for most people, and the potential Apple has to make this a killer product is through the roof.

The question remains: what should Apple do to fix it? 

First of all, they need to change the focus again. Its not Movies, Movies, Movies as Steve Jobs declared last MacWorld. Its TV Shows, TV Shows, TV Shows! The number one thing that consumers use their TV for is TV Shows, period. Movies are not the primary focus of a TV. Apple needs to figure out a way, through live TV, ad-supported content, and great consumer choice to make the Apple TV a worthy alternative to cable or satellite. People are NOT, I repeat, NOT going to shell out 2-3 dollars per TV Show. This is stupid, moronic thinking. Perhaps Apple could offer a way to deliver standard channels for a monthly fee per channel. Instead of packages, people could pay a certain amount of money per month, per channel, allowing them complete control as to what is on their TV, and what’s not.

Next, the Apple TV needs one of these two things. Either they establish a movie catalogue as large as the one of Netflix, or they include a built in DVD player. They cannot expect to take over DVDs if they can’t offer as many titles, and if they don’t offer as many titles, in one of those two ways, they can not expect to sell Apple TVs. If they really want to be an advocate of consumer choice, they could offer a DVD player and a large catalogue, but that isn’t very much like Apple.

As far as the iTunes movies work, they need to change the way the rentals work. Something along the lines of 7 days to watch the movie as many times as you want before it expires, similar to the way a physical video rental service works, would be much better than the confusing model they have today. Also, all movies should be available for rent and purchase from the second they hit the store. I’m aware that its primarily the studios to blame, but its not as though Steve is setting the best example himself.

Also, the Apple TV needs a new remote. The white one that gets lost in your lap must go by the wayside. I think a multitouch universal remote would fit the bill perfectly, and although it would be fairly expensive, it would be worth it. iPhone and iPod Touch users could use their devices to control the Apple TV as well as the music they can already control. More on the advantages below.

Also, the Apple TV could benefit greatly from an App Store. Developers could add apps for online services such as Hulu, and could create games that could be controlled by the universal remote. Imagine controlling a car racing game with the universal remote as the steering wheel for your big screen. The possibilities are tantalizing. Couple this App Store with a better graphics card (nVIDIA anyone?), and you may have a recipe for success.

Finally, the price. If the Apple TV was a viable alternative to cable and satellite, consumers would be willing to pay more upfront. I could envision a 249 starting price with a 299 and a 349 option, the only difference between the models being hard drive size and graphics.

Apple created the Apple II and the Lisa before it found success in the Macintosh. The iPod was a niche product until PC support was added, which allowed it to take over the music industry. The iPhone started at 599 and did fairly well, but it wasn’t until Apple created iPhone 3G for 199 did it take over the cell phone market. Hopefully it will have taken Apple the first Apple TV to take over the living room as well.

digg_url = ‘http://digg.com/apple/Apple_TV_The_Recipe_for_Success’; align=”left”

Just get it over with already…

Hot Carl iCahn and crew can pretend like they are looking for a leader but all they really want is their money. Can we just put Yahoo behind us now? 

According to BGR’s non-insured Walmart ninjas, the iPhone isn’t just going to Costco after Christmas, it is going to Mr. Walton’s lil’ franchise.  The move is likely to clear out excess holiday inventories and is expected to drop the price to $149, just like at Cosco.

There’s been a lot of noise around the Web on Flash coming to the iPhone.  While some folks are in the "never going to happen" camp, there is some precedent for belief that it will someday be in the iPhone platform.  For instance, take this patent application from Apple (image to the right) that includes both Flash and Windows Media players.

To say that Apple is going  to forgo Flash altogether is probably untrue.  To say that they are taking a wait (and wait, aaaand wait) and see approach is probably closer to accurate.  I’m sure Apple would like to have more control over the Flash player as it currently goes against the App Store’s provisions and would need to be in the more natively "blessed" area of the iPhone development world.  Perhaps a specially "disabled version" of Flash that allows what Apple deems worthy (less CPU, less ad spam, more AIR apps) could satisfy both parties.

Flash may never happen on the iPhone, it is true.  But it isn’t like Apple isn’t hedging its bets.  Much like having an Intel version of OSX going for all of those PowerPC years, there is probably a Flash version of the iPhone running around Cupertino right now.  Apple may one day let it out of prototype and into the real world.  Until then, there is always VNC or Citrix.

If you live in the US or Canada, like it or not, your English pretty much sounds the same to the outside world…and the Google iPhone application.   Those outside this area have been having less success with the Google iPhone voice recognition application it seems … at least that’s what some of our commenters have said. 

Is this your experience out there?  What could Google do to fix this?  Perhaps they could use the location information in the app to determine what accent to use? 

The downside of that is that you’ll have Americans doing their best Monty Python accents when using iPhones in London and you’ll have Brits sounding like surfers in New York…not that we aren’t anyway.

We were actually looking for the clip where Clark was trying to use his pocket translator to decipher what the British hotelier was saying.  If anyone can find this, leave it in the comments and we’ll update :D

What’s the big deal?  Google’s Voice recognition (iTunes link) which is finally live doesn’t understand every word we speak?  Sure it works fairly quicky and acurately for people over the age of five.  I am amazed at how good it works for me and my wife.  But what about the two month old demographic?  When will they be served?  Age discrimination isn’t funny people.

By the way Google came up with "n" which according to Oprah means he’s hungry.  Scary.

According to Digitimes, the iPhone will be in Taiwan for the holidays.

Chunghwa Telecom (CHT), on November 14, announced it has obtained exclusive sales rights for the iPhone 3G in the Taiwan market, with launch tentatively slated for December 2008.

However, CHT did not release any further details about prices and the exact date of launch due to a non-disclosure agreement with Apple.

Gray-market iPhone 3Gs imported privately mainly from New Zealand, Hong Kong and the US have been available for sale in Taiwan for a while, with prices ranging from NT$22,000-24,900 (US$667-755) for an 8GB model and NT$23,680-28,500 for a 16GB one.

When will mainland China and its 1.4 Billion consumers see the iPhone?  It’s a bit ironic that the people who make the iPhone aren’t able to enjoy its shiny goodness.

This weekend, ARM announced that Ubuntu was going to be ported to the Cortex class processors.  Good news for Linux ARM fans but not that special since there have been videos of Ubuntu running on TI OMAP processors for awhile. 

This morning, ARM and Adobe jointly announced that full Flash 10 was ceritfied to run on ARM 11 Chips (like in the iPhone) at over 200Mhz including Windows Mobile devices.  We think someone is trying to tell Apple that Flash could be on the iPhone if they really wanted it there. 

Well that isn’t the only news coming out this week.  I had a chance to speak to Bob Morris at ARM who has much more exciting news for us later this week.  Until then, have a look at a 800MHz ARM Cortex going up against a 800MHz Intel Atom.  When you consider the power usage on ARM Cortex is an order of magnatude less than Intel, you might see where we are going…remember why Apple moved to Intel?

"I can just remove Tony…Boom!"

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlT-ih2g_Mc&w=425&h=344]

Also note that Phil get moved to the top of Stevo’s Favorites list?…hmmm…

via edible Apple

For those of you running small businesses, Egnyte’s cloud file server and backup is a great product.  We use it at work for distributing files to clients and keeping global files easy to access.  We also backup a few OSX servers using the service.  It is great all around.  We haven’t had an outage in the 6 months we’ve been customers.  I could go on and on..

Last month, however, Egnyte got really Apple friendly by releasing an iPhone web client.  We can now browse our file servers while on the road with an iPhone.  This is actually a great feature if you just need a quick look at a document or image.  The iPhone thinks Egnyte’s servers are web servers and if you download a .doc file, it uses the iPhone’s Quicklook to look at the file.  This works with all of the iPhone’s Quicklook abilities including PDFs, XLS and PPTs.

But this is where it gets interesting… 

Our Egnyte file server also house MP4 movies for clients.    Some almost a gig in size.  Also, we have more than a few audio files saved as MP3s.  Surely these won’t play on the iPhone over an AT&T 3G connection?

Actually for once, I have to give it to AT&T.  I was able to stream a client presentation that was saved in MP4 format while on the road.  It of course looked and sounded great on the iPhone and it is available whenever I want.  It is an amazing feeling to have secure access to all of your company’s files from the palm of your hand – at all times.  

If you haven’t checked out Egnyte yet, do yourself the favor.  They have a free 15 day trial of use and if you are a small company or individual considering buying or upgrading a file server, you will be hard pressed to find a better solution.  Oh, and did we tell you they are extremely Mac and iPhone friendly?

Seems to be some confusion on the ol’ Apple discussion forums:

Please help! I took my husband’s i-phone and found a raunchy picture of him attached to an e-mail to a woman in his sent e-mail file (a Yahoo account). When I approached him about this (I think that he is cheating on me) he admitted that he took the picture but says that he never sent it to anyone. He claims that he went to the Genius Bar at the local Apple store and they told him that it is an i-phone glitch: that photos sometimes automatically attach themselves to an e-mail address and appear in the sent folder, even though no e-mail was ever sent. Has anyone ever heard of this happening? The future of my marriage depends on this answer!

Best Answer so far from Cutthru:

Its a glitch, but only happens if the pic is sufficiently raunchy.

Can anyone else help her out?

Thanks MRod

Google is really stepping up to the plate with their iPhone apps lately.  The New York Times is reporting that Google’s updated search app will allow voice-search with results based on location.  So things like "where is the nearest Starbucks" can be asked and answers will be given via the Maps application.  Amazingly cool if it works as promised.  It is hard not to be impressed by Google sometimes. 

From the Times:

The service can be used to get restaurant recommendations and driving directions, look up contacts in the iPhone’s address book or just settle arguments in bars. The query “What is the best pizza restaurant in Noe Valley?” returns a list of three restaurants in that San Francisco neighborhood, each with starred reviews from Google users and links to click for phone numbers and directions.

Raj Reddy, an artificial intelligence researcher at Carnegie Mellon University who has done pioneering work in voice recognition, said Google’s advantage in this field was the ability to store and analyze vast amounts of data. “Whatever they introduce now, it will greatly increase in accuracy in three or six months,” he said.

Google has obviously spent some time and put some polish on this:

An intriguing part of the overall design of the service was contributed by a Google researcher in London, who found a way to use the iPhone accelerometer — the device that senses how the phone is held — to set the software to “listen” mode when the phone is raised to the user’s ear.

We are hitting refresh on the App store every few seconds and will update when this goes live…

For more analysis, check distorted loop

Kinda off topic here but (so bad it’s) good that we figured we’d pass it along. Ladies, thanks for passing over the iPhone.

via Giz

According to TechCrunch and their multiple sources, Apple is building a search engine to take on Google and Yahoo.  While it seems far fetched at first. (little expertise, no advertising model, etc.) Tech Crunch does raise a good point that Apple may be trying to enhance the experience for their users and could just be putting some Apple window dressing on another serch engine’s backend.

But one important fact that isn’t checking out – if Apple were building a search engine, they’d be hiring search experts and engineers. We’ve talked to a ton of them at all the big companies, and while some of them heard the same rumors, none have lost search employees to Apple, or heard of any specific hirings.

That alone almost certainly rules out a full on search competitor. You can’t do it without people who know what they’re doing.

Apple also loves the fees they receive regularly from Google for search marketing dollars earned from Safari. They obviously aren’t in the advertising business today, so even if they did launch a search engine they’d still heavily rely on Google or its competitors for the advertising piece. So why invest all that capital into search?

The answer is they’re not. But the rumors persist, and we believe they have a nugget of truth. Here’s what we think is really going on: Apple doesn’t like the search experience on its mobile devices, and may be building a radically different user experience which is much more visual than exists today. It will likely still be powered by Google results, but Apple may present it in a very different way that suits mobile users much better.

Stay tuned for more. There are pieces of this we are still putting together.

Now that those in ear headphones are actually coming out, Apple is updating their iPods to get ready for it.  First up, the iPod Nano 1.03 Patch.  Hit that software update for all of the goodness…and buckle your seatbelts, the new in-ear headphones are coming in 3…2….1…

Update includes:

• Support for Apple Earphones with Remote and Mic including In-Ear Headphones
• Fixed instability issues when using Nike + iPod Sport Kit
• Adds a setting to turn off Cover Flow when rotating iPod nano and a Cover Flow menu item under the Music menu
• When Shuffle setting is set to Songs, pressing play on a song in a saved Genius playlist will now follow the Shuffle setting
• After playing a slideshow with TV out, Cover Flow album art is no longer distorted
• Waking iPod nano after hibernating no longer distorts photos
• Other minor bug fixes

http://finance.google.com/finance?q=aapl

‘Nother one of those hunches.  Citrix, maker of…wait, it is already online.  Well, it will be official and in the App store very, very soon…are you ready to run Windows on your iPhone?  We can’t hardly wait!

[blip.tv http://blip.tv/play/gcFOzPEni4Bk]