Best of Smartphone Experts, 31 Jan 2010
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Best of Smartphone Experts, 31 Jan 2010
January 31, 2010
You are looking at posts that were written on January 31, 2010.
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Steven Colbert Shows off iPad at the Grammy Awards!
Our caption: Steven Colbert is iPad at the Grammy Awards and so can’t you. What’s yours?
Engadget has the video up. Enjoy!
This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.
Steven Colbert Shows off iPad at the Grammy Awards!
Amazon Reluctantly Agrees to Higher eBook Pricing
Even before the launch of the iPad, there had been rumors that Apple was working with publishers to allow them to set their own prices for ebooks. This could result in bestselling ebooks being priced as high as $14.99 vs the current selling price of...Macmillan Books to Return to Amazon, Prices to Rise to iPad iBooks Level, Consumers to Vote with their Wallets
Both Mcmillan and Amazon have issued statements about the story linked to previously, wherein they stopped selling Macmillan e-books after the publisher wanted to raise the price for best-sellers to an agency model $12.99 to $14.99 — which Apple had already agreed to for iBooks on the iPad.
Mcmillan’s CEO, John Sargent’s comments ran as a paid advertisement in the Sunday edition of PublishersLunch and read in part:
Under the agency model, we will sell the digital editions of our books to consumers through our retailers. Our retailers will act as our agents and will take a 30% commission (the standard split today for many digital media businesses). The price will be set the price for each book individually. Our plan is to price the digital edition of most adult trade books in a price range from $14.99 to $5.99. At first release, concurrent with a hardcover, most titles will be priced between $14.99 and $12.99. E books will almost always appear day on date with the physical edition. Pricing will be dynamic over time.
The agency model would allow Amazon to make more money selling our books, not less. We would make less money in our dealings with Amazon under the new model. Our disagreement is not about short-term profitability but rather about the long-term viability and stability of the digital book market.
Amazon’s response can be found in full on Engadget, but contains:
We have expressed our strong disagreement and the seriousness of our disagreement by temporarily ceasing the sale of all Macmillan titles. We want you to know that ultimately, however, we will have to capitulate and accept Macmillan’s terms because Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles, and we will want to offer them to you even at prices we believe are needlessly high for e-books. Amazon customers will at that point decide for themselves whether they believe it’s reasonable to pay $14.99 for a bestselling e-book. We don’t believe that all of the major publishers will take the same route as Macmillan. And we know for sure that many independent presses and self-published authors will see this as an opportunity to provide attractively priced e-books as an alternative.
So what do you think? Will the publishers be able to raise prices or will the market — or lack thereof for higher priced e-books — force them back down again?
[PublishersLunch via BoingBoing via Engadget]
This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.
Macmillan Books to Return to Amazon, Prices to Rise to iPad iBooks Level, Consumers to Vote with their Wallets
Apple Store Down — Could be iPad Pre-Orders, Could be Nothing…
Yes, the Apple Store is down. We have no idea if this is for iPad pre-order setup, for some other product update/refresh, or for behind-the-scenes maintenance.
If you have any ideas, let us know in the comments and we’ll update as soon as it’s back!
[Thanks to Andy for the tip!]
This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.
Apple Store Down — Could be iPad Pre-Orders, Could be Nothing…
Will Apple’s iPad Get Jailbroken and How Long Will it Take?
When Apple announced the iPad last week, TiPb’s email quickly filled up with readers and forum members who wondered if it would be possible to jailbreak it and, if so, how long it would take? First, it’s important to remember that, while we’re all excited, the iPad doesn’t even ship until March at the earliest, so it is pure speculation at this point. We do hope the likes of the iPhone Dev-Team and/or Geohot will try their hardest to get it accomplished and that it will only be a matter of time.
The good news is, unlike the iPhone, Apple is selling the iPad 3G carrier-unlocked, so there’ll be no need for redsn0w or blacksn0w. Just pop in a Micro-SIM and you can use it on any network you want.
The bad news is, Apple has really stepped up to the plate when it comes to combating the jailbreak. With their new iPhone Platform Security Manager and hardware changes and the patching of software exploits like the 24kpwn, which no longer works on the latest iPhone 3GS and iPod touch G3 models, there is no doubt in our minds it will take a good while.
So, to anyone looking to pick up a iPad and jailbreak it when it is released, we hope you have a good amount of patience.
We’d also like to know — presuming the iPad is jailbroken, which Jailbreak Apps do you most want to see ported over?
This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.
Will Apple’s iPad Get Jailbroken and How Long Will it Take?
CEOh-Snap iPad Attack Edition — Google, Nokia, Microsoft, and Nintendo on Apple’s Tablet
Prior to Steve Jobs laying into Google and Adobe, Google, Nokia, Microsoft, and Nintendo got their shots in on Apple and the iPad, and here’s what they had to say:
- Google CEO Eric Schmidt: “You might want to tell me the difference between a large phone and a tablet.” [via Business Insider]
Someone might want to tell him people are making Android tablets, or is he still using BlackBerry?
- Nokia social point-main Mark Squires: In a post titled, “A fruit confused”, he takes issue with Apple calling itself the world’s largest mobile devices business (measured by revenue). [via Nokia Conversations]
Fair enough, considering there are lies, damn lies, and statistics, but the title of the post… really?
- Microsoft director of product management in the developer platform, Brandon Watson: “developers of applications for the iPhone OS–which the iPad uses–are not making money. Developing applications for the iPhone and iPad is expensive, he said, because iPhone OS uses the Objective C language rather than Microsoft’s more pervasive .NET platform. And Apple’s control over the platform has alienated some people that make software for its products, he said.” [via Technologizer]
Cue Windows Mobile millionaire dev and their 140,000 runtimes in 5… 4… 3… 2…
- Nintendo President Satoru Iwata: ‘It was a bigger iPod Touch. I question whether those features would be enough to get people to buy new machines.” [via NYT]
Never mind his own company just released a bigger version of their own, the Nintendo DSi LL… He’s missing the same point many others are likewise missing. The iPad isn’t just a big iPod touch. The iPad is a big iPod touch. That’s its killer feature.
And yes, we’ll be saving all these comments, and any others we come across, and looking back at them one year post-iPad launch to see if it works out any better for the competition than it did when the iPhone was mocked in 2007…
[Thanks to everyone who sent these in!]
This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.
CEOh-Snap iPad Attack Edition — Google, Nokia, Microsoft, and Nintendo on Apple’s Tablet
Forget Flash, iPhone, iPad Don’t Support ActiveX!
I’ve mentioned a couple times already, given the recent flare-up in the discussion about iPad and iPhone not supporting Flash, that not so long ago you had a hard time using any browser other than IE6 because of another proprietary plugin — Microsoft’s ActiveX. Times change, though, and these days Firefox, Safari, and Chrome users seldom if ever come across the big red X. It’s possible Flash and its blue lego block will soon be likewise optional on major sites.
Scobleizer draws the same analogy:
Let’s go back a few years to when Firefox was just coming on the scene. Remember that? I remember that it didn’t work with a ton of websites. Things like banks, e-commerce sites, and others. Why not? Because those sites were coded specifically for the dominant Internet Explorer back then.
Some people thought Firefox was going to fail because of these broken links. Just like Adobe is trying to say that Apple’s iPad is going to fail because of its own set of broken links.
But just a few years later and have you seen a site that doesn’t work on Firefox? I haven’t.
What happened? Firefox FORCED developers to get on board with the standards-based web.
The same thing is happening now, based on my talks with developers: they are not including Flash in their future web plans any longer.
I work in web development and just did a major site redesign for an international company. It went from a lot of Flash, to no Flash. Why? Marketing wanted a site that would be more easily viewed on BlackBerrys and iPhones.
Daring Fireball drives this home:
Flash is no longer ubiquitous. There’s a big difference between “everywhere” and “almost everywhere”. Adobe’s own statistics on Flash’s market penetration claim 99 percent penetration as of last month. That’s because, according to their survey methodology, they’re only counting “PCs” — which ignores the entire sort of devices which have brought about this debate. Adobe is arguing that Flash is installed on 99 percent of all web browsers that support Flash, not 99 percent of all web browsers.
Used to be you could argue that Flash, whatever its merits, delivered content to the entire audience you cared about. That’s no longer true, and Adobe’s Flash penetration is shrinking with each iPhone OS device Apple sells.
This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.
Forget Flash, iPhone, iPad Don’t Support ActiveX!
CEOh-Snap: Steve Jobs Says Adobe Lazy, Flash Buggy, Google Wants to Kill iPhone, Not “Not Evil”?
According to an anonymous source in attendance at Apple’s recent, internal iPad town hall meeting at the Cupertino campus, Steve Jobs answered some employee questions by saying “Adobe is lazy” and that Google’s “don’t be evil” motto was “BS”. Wired reports:
On Google: We did not enter the search business, Jobs said. They entered the phone business. Make no mistake they want to kill the iPhone. We won’t let them, he says. Someone else asks something on a different topic, but there’s no getting Jobs off this rant. I want to go back to that other question first and say one more thing, he says. This don’t be evil mantra: “It’s bullshit.” Audience roars.
About Adobe: They are lazy, Jobs says. They have all this potential to do interesting things but they just refuse to do it. They don’t do anything with the approaches that Apple is taking, like Carbon. Apple does not support Flash because it is so buggy, he says. Whenever a Mac crashes more often than not it’s because of Flash. No one will be using Flash, he says. The world is moving to HTML5.
Wired points out that, by getting around the App Store pocket veto and delivering Google Voice for iPhone via an HTML5 web app, Jobs should be careful what he wishes for. Google maps data and YouTube were shown off during the iPad launch, as was PDF support, though no Flash (despite some ad-related confusion).
More than a battle of words, however, this is a battle for control of the consumer internet experience — and the tremendous revenue that comes with it.
This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.
CEOh-Snap: Steve Jobs Says Adobe Lazy, Flash Buggy, Google Wants to Kill iPhone, Not “Not Evil”?
