Now I am not for a second condoning this kind of behaviour. I believe opt-in is the only way to do optional updates, especially when you are adding applications to a users machine.

However, I had to laugh when I saw Ed Bott get all up on his high horse about this. Ed is a Microsoft guy so it was all the more hilarious that he try to grab the moral highground here. In his post he said:

I think Apple is dead wrong in the way it’s gone about using its iPod monopoly to expand its share in another market. Ironically, an excellent model for how this update program should work already exists. It’s called Windows Update, and it embodies all the principles that Apple should follow… The right way to do it involves these four principles

* Opt-in is the only way. The update process should be completely opt-in. The option to deliver software should never be preselected for the user.
* Offer full disclosure. The software company has a responsibility to fully disclose what its software does, and the customer should make the opt-in decision only after being given complete details about how the update process works.
* Offer updates only. Updates should be just that. They should apply only to software that the customer has already chosen to install.
* Don’t mix updates. Updates that are not critical should be delivered through a separate mechanism.

They are good principles, I have no argument with them however Ed offers these principles up as if Microsoft lived by them! Ed, you are dreaming. Microsoft are just as guilty of breaching these principles as Apple. I don’t use Microsoft software much but the last time I tried to update Windows Live Writer my default search engine was changed to Live Search, and I had to opt out or I would have had Windows Live Mail, Windows Live Photo Gallery and Windows Live OneCare installed on my laptop.

Pot kettle black Ed.

Seesmic now includes the ability to embed videos you record there, so rather than go over it again I thought I’d embed the video here. The quality of Seesmic videos is poor, sorry about that!

A lot of the functionality I’m referring to in the iPod Touch is new and was announced at MacWorld 2008 earlier this week.

According to the Apple info page on the update, it:

includes general operating system fixes that enhance the stability, compatibility and security of your Mac

The page goes on to include details of fixes for Airport, Mail, iCal, System and Finder as well as other fixes.

Personally, I love Leopard. I know some people have had issues with it but I have had the opposite experience. The upgrade to Leopard has actually fixed two previous problems I was having with 10.4 and my laptop is now running faster too. Hopefully 10.5.1 will resolve most of the early issues people have had with Leopard.

As you can see, it looks fantastic. The interface is unbelievably slick and surprisingly responsive. Using Nokia smart phones means I have become used to devices this size being slow but there is absolutely no lag on the iPod Touch.

The browser is fantastic, esp. for my feed reading. YouTube videos are way better quality than on the site. In fact the video resolution, in general is spectacular.

The only negative thing is that synching with the computer can sometimes take a while so don’t try to synch as you are about to run out the door!

Other than that I have now realised how much better the iPhone experience must be – uh oh!

Leopard, Apple’s latest version of OS X was released on Friday 26th last and in just over 24 hours, a hack to allow Leopard to be installed on PCs has been published.

The installation is not trivial but the instructions are very easy to follow and it certainly looks do-able.

No doubt Apple will quickly release an update (10.5.1) which will address this but in the meantime, all you non-Mac users, enjoy a secure, reliable, easy to use OS on your choice of Intel-based hardware.

Many others are eschewing Vista, not just because of the speed and stability issues it has but also because of the steep learning curve on moving from XP to Vista.

On the other hand Apple’s star seems to be in the ascendancy. In their financial statement released yesterday, for the quarter ended September 29th, they report:

Apple shipped 2,164,000 Macintosh® computers, representing 34 percent growth over the year-ago quarter and exceeding the previous quarterly record for Mac® shipments by 400,000. The Company sold 10,200,000 iPods during the quarter, representing 17 percent growth over the year-ago quarter. Quarterly iPhone™ sales were 1,119,000, bringing cumulative fiscal 2007 sales to 1,389,000.

“We are very pleased to have generated over $24 billion in revenue and $3.5 billion in net income in fiscal 2007,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We’re looking forward to a strong December quarter as we enter the holiday season with Apple’s best products ever.”

“Apple ended the fiscal year with $15.4 billion in cash and no debt,” said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO.

Why are Apple’s Mac sales doing so well and Vista so poorly?

At least part of the answer has to be in Apple’s strategy of releasing new versions every 12-18 months. Steve Jobs referred to this strategy in a piece in the New York Times yesterday when he said:

“I’m quite pleased with the pace of new operating systems every 12 to 18 months for the foreseeable future,” he said. “We’ve put out major releases on the average of one a year, and it’s given us the ability to polish and polish and improve and improve.”

Apple introduced OS X in 2001 and since then has brought out four newer versions (Puma, Jaguar, Panther, and Tiger) with a fifth version (Leopard – OS X 10.5) due to ship this coming Friday.

Ubuntu releases new versions on a pre-defined six monthly schedule.

Xp was also released in 2001 but the next version of Windows, Vista, didn’t ship until January 2007.

The gently, gently upgrade strategy appears to be working for Apple and Ubuntu as their uptake soars.

Microsoft needs a new strategy for its Windows platform. Its current strategy certainly isn’t working.

Om’s own choice is Apple’s Mail app.

Personally I used Mail for years and loved it but I had to drop it eventually in favor of Thunderbird because its junk mail filters are useless. I kept clicking on the Junk button to try to train it to learn what was junk from what wasn’t but Thunderbird was orders of magnitude better at stopping spam so I had to move away from it.

Reading that there is a new version of Mail in Leopard I quickly checked out its new features but I was disappointed to see no mention of improved junk mail filtering.

I don’t see any compelling reason for me to upgrade then

Do you?

I’m running Safari version 3.03 on my Mac and it doesn’t crash but I’m told version 2.04 does crash.

I have tried turning off some of the sidebar widgets but that didn’t fix it (maybe I didn’t turn off the right ones?) and I tried tweaking the theme but to no avail.

If there are any code junkies out there who have any suggestions on why the blog may be suddenly crashing some versions of Safari, I’d love to hear them so I can resolve this.

Thanks.

The three mobile operators mentioned are T-Mobile of Germany, Orange of France and O2 in the UK. According to the article:

The operators are set officially to announce the partnerships at the IFA trade fair in Berlin at the end of August

The article goes on to say that

[Apple] will continue the roll-out elsewhere in Europe next year, when it will also launch in Asia

Damn! I realise it is unlikely but is there any chance the UK O2 launch will include Ireland?

I have read a lot about how great the iPhone is but I hadn’t seen any until last Friday; and then I saw three!

I was at a lunch in Cork with Britt Blaser and Sean O’Mahoney (amongst others). Both had iPhones.

I had a chance to try the phone out for myself and see just why people rave about it. It is spectacular.

Later that day I met Patrick Collison. Patrick also had an iPhone.

He was meeting Damien and myself. During the meeting he had to leave us briefly to collect someone. He left his iPhone for us to play with. It really is an incredible phone (although Patrick, after about 25 minutes the sound deteriorates on calls to the speaking clock in Hong Kong ).

There is no question but that Apple have re-defined the mobile phone.

Vodafone would have seemed a more likely distributor seeing as they have a network in more European countries than O2. O2 must have made it far more attractive for Apple to say that they were chosen over Vodafone. It will be interesting now to watch who Apple partners with in the countries where O2 have no presence.

The iPhone debuted in the US last week and in its first three days is reputed to have sold over 1m units – a runaway success by any measure!

This incredible success is a measure of Apple’s successful marketing machine, but it is also indicative of pent-up dissatisfaction with the current array of phones on offer. The iPhone’s user experience is so much better than anything else currently on the market, that the Symbian group and Microsoft will really have to get the thumb out to come up with a competitive offering.

I just hope that when it comes to Europe it will have 3G (the US model doesn’t have 3G, relying instead on EDGE and wifi) and a better camera.

The phone does indeed appear to live up to the hype with a game changing interface. There are, of course, a few issues with the phone (more of which later) but it has to be remembered that this is version 1.0 of the phone and many of those issues will be ironed out in the coming months. Can anyone remember the first version of Windows Mobile and just how terrible that was? With that in mind, what Apple have done with their first phone is indeed creditable.

Nokia and Microsoft must be very concerned now with the appearance of this new player on their territory. Especially since the phone’s interface beats anything they have ever produced!

Apple have announced that the phone will be updated over the ‘net – similar to how the iPod’s firmware is updated one assumes. This will allow Apple to quickly address faults or bugs found in the phone’s software as well as adding extra functionality.

David Pogue, after outlining all the phone’s strong points in detail goes on to point out some of its flaws –

So yes, the iPhone is amazing. But no, it’s not perfect. There’s no memory-card slot, no chat program, no voice dialing. You can’t install new programs from anyone but Apple; other companies can create only iPhone-tailored mini-programs on the Web. The browser can’t handle Java or Flash, which deprives you of millions of Web videos… it can’t capture video. And you can’t send picture messages (called MMS) to other cellphones.

Apple says that the battery starts to lose capacity after 300 or 400 charges. Eventually, you’ll have to send the phone to Apple for battery replacement, much as you do now with an iPod, for a fee.

Then there’s the small matter of typing. Tapping the skinny little virtual keys on the screen is frustrating, especially at first.

Two things make the job tolerable. First, some very smart software offers to complete words for you, and, when you tap the wrong letter, figures out what word you intended. In both cases, tapping the Space bar accepts its suggestion.

Second, the instructional leaflet encourages you to “trust” the keyboard (or, as a product manager jokingly put it, to “use the Force”). It sounds like new-age baloney, but it works; once you stop stressing about each individual letter and just plow ahead, speed and accuracy pick up considerably.

Even so, text entry is not the iPhone’s strong suit. The BlackBerry won’t be going away anytime soon.

The bigger problem is the AT&T network. In a Consumer Reports study, AT&T’s signal ranked either last or second to last in 19 out of 20 major cities…
Then there’s the Internet problem. When you’re in a Wi-Fi hot spot, going online is fast and satisfying.

But otherwise, you have to use AT&T’s ancient EDGE cellular network, which is excruciatingly slow. The New York Times’s home page takes 55 seconds to appear; Amazon.com, 100 seconds; Yahoo. two minutes. You almost ache for a dial-up modem.

These drawbacks may be deal-killers for some people. On the other hand, both the iPhone and its network will improve. Apple points out that unlike other cellphones, this one can and will be enhanced with free software updates. That’s good, because I encountered a couple of tiny bugs and one freeze. (There’s also a tantalizing empty space for a row of new icons on the Home screen.) A future iPhone model will be able to exploit AT&T’s newer, much faster data network, which is now available in 160 cities.

But even in version 1.0, the iPhone is still the most sophisticated, outlook-changing piece of electronics to come along in years. It does so many things so well, and so pleasurably, that you tend to forgive its foibles.

In other words, maybe all the iPhone hype isn’t hype at all. As the ball player Dizzy Dean once said, “It ain’t bragging if you done it.”

It is funny to see Techmeme going wild over a story which I broke over 36 hours ago!

Come on guys, that’s old news. Try to keep up.

The new Apple iPhone is a very desirable bit of kit, no doubt about it. Even at the $499 (4GB) or $599 (8GB) asking price.

I spoke to a contact in Apple about the iPhone which they are launching with AT&T this coming Friday and, from what he said, the launch sounds like it has all the makings of a disaster in the works!

First off the phone is sold brick-locked – in other words the iPhone is dead when you get it. You have to bring it home, hook it up to an Internet connected computer , and activate it online.

Remember, there are 1m of these puppies pre-sold. What happens when 1m people all try to log in to the site to activate their phones around the same time. How well will the activation server infrastructure hold up?

Presumably, if you have a PC, this process also involves the installation of iTunes and Safari (Macs come with these installed).

Then there is the issue of the iPhone being sim-locked. And I don’t just mean that the phone is locked, nope, the sim is locked physically into the phone! It can’t be removed.

Seemingly there is a way to map your existing number to the sim in your iPhone – this will be part of the activation process. But you can’t take your sim out of the phone for any reason. What happens when you want to upgrade to a new phone? No idea. Presumably this will be straightforward if your new phone is another iPhone – but if it is not…

Joy, oh joy, I can see lots of potential for support issues right there.

Keep in mind also that the phone is not being sold to business customers – the AT&T shops are only going to sell the phones to consumers.

Consumers with a good credit record. If you have any history of bad debts, you can forget about getting an iPhone! They won’t sell you one.

Why is the credit record important? Well, if you buy an iPhone, you are signing up to a two year AT&T contract with a minimum spend of $60 per month! $60 per month for two years is $1440. So, after the initial purchase, you are committing to give Apple and AT&T at least another $1440.

So, if you are a technically minded consumer, have access to an Internet connected computer, can logon to the activation site, have a good credit history and a steady income for the next two years, it should be no problem.

I’d hate to be working for AT&T or Apple’s support next weekend!

UPDATE: – I see AppleInsider are reporting that the first shipments of the iPhone have arrived in the US under unprecedented security.

Further Update: Apple have confirmed that activation of the phones is done by the consumer “in the comfort and privacy of their own home or office, without having to wait in a store while their phone is activated” as I mentioned in the post above and that the price plans start at $60 per month, again, as I said above.