Discovered something today after I wiped my home iMac and reinstalled everything all sparkly fresh and fast: If you put the Activity Monitor in the Dock you can choose to have it display live usage stats instead of the static application icon. It’s a handy feature for Firefox users like me who have to keep an eye on those memory leaks.
Nicely done Apple.
Google and Microsoft,
You have more money than you know what to do with – literally billions sitting around. (As of the end of 2009 Microsoft has $9.4 billion and Google has $10 billion.) So how about you put a little more effort into making your products a more visually pleasing?
And by “more visually appealing” what I mean is “less ugly.”
I’ll even tell you how to do it: buy away designers from Apple and UX gurus from Adaptive Path.
Offer them $250,000 per year and the final word on how your products should look. Give them the ability to do what they do best and get out of their way.
Then take the committee of engineers, middle managers and their spouses who have been making those decisions, and put them to work doing something useful like cleaning staplers or minding their own business.
According to TUAW:
“As Mark Siegel from AT&T explained to me yesterday, “AT&T wants to be as fair as possible to customers who very recently purchased an iPhone.” Thus, if you purchased an iPhone from an AT&T store AFTER May 27, 2008, you have the option of returning the phone to an AT&T store between July 11, 2008 and August 1, 2008 for the new iPhone 3G. Those customers will also be refunded the difference between the price paid for the 2G iPhone and the iPhone 3G.”
I must say I’m impressed. Especially because they’re refunding the difference in the two phones. Well played AT&T, well played.
Something fishy is afoot. One thing I neglected to mention in my overview of the 3G iPhone is that the notorious revenue-sharing deal between AT&T and Apple is no more. (Up to this point, it was speculated that AT&T was giving Apple a monthly payment for each iPhone subscriber.)
So…why is AT&T still the exclusive provider of the iPhone? What’s Apple’s incentive to stay with them? Seems like a raw deal for Apple because they’re still severely limited as to their potential market.
Don Reisinger over at CNET speculates the relationship between the two companies may be over in the relatively near future. He has some good points, so check out the article.
My speculation is that the (rumored) five-year contract isn’t quite that long. In fact, I wonder if maybe the contract wasn’t based on length of time, but quantity of phones sold. A wacky idea, I know. But it may explain a couple of things:
1. AT&T would be reassured in the beginning that they’d have a guaranteed number of new subscribers from this unprecedented arrangement.
2. AT&T says it will only gives kick-backs for the first year. Apple doesn’t hit the 10 million mark in that time frame, so they lower the price and make it more difficult to unlock the phone so they can hit the target number and get out.
For what it’s worth, I think T-Mobile may get the iPhone before Verizon (despite the larger Verizon customer base) simply because the hardware is ready to go. CDMA phones suck a lot more juice than their GSM counterparts, something Apple will have to address, especially if a CDMA phone is going to be using 3G and GPS.
Absurd? Possible? Likely? “You’re a freak and should write about something else”? Sound off in the comments.
The Reality Distortion Field is strong with this one. I’m just finishing watching the keynote and in the 12 hours since it took place a lot of the shine has disappeared from Mobile Me and the iPhone 3G.
Because I know you’re all very interested in this, I will elaborate.
Watching Phil Schiller present Mobile Me (logo look familiar?) was kind of embarrassing. He kept explaining its “new” functionality as if it were some revolutionary concept.
“And when you get an e-mail on your desktop, it automatically shows up on your iPhone too! It uses the cloud!”
Oooo…”the cloud”. Try to work that buzzword into your presentation a few more times.
“Now watch carefully…you can drag and drop e-mail from your inbox to folders! You wouldn’t expect to see that in a web application.”
Actually, Yahoo and Hotmail have been doing that for quite some time. And they’re free.
“Let’s say my softball practice got moved back to Monday night. Using this web version of iCal, I can simply drag and drop that appointment from Tuesday to Monday. You wouldn’t expect to see that in a web application.”
Google Calendar does that. And it, too, is free.
I don’t know, maybe Phil Schiller and the folks at Apple use a special, handicapped version of the Internet (see photo right).
Then there’s the 3G iPhone. Or, as it is being called, the “iPhone 3G” (which is cumbersome to say). It’s pretty much everything the rumors said it would be. Speaking of rumors, what’s happened to Apple’s penchant for secrecy? For the last year or every major announcement has been pegged beforehand. But I digress.
It’s an iPhone. It’s 3G. It’s coming next month. The biggest news is that it’s only $199. That’s a big deal. There are much crappier phones out there being sold for a lot more. But there are a few things Uncle Steve forgot to mention during his keynote:
You HAVE to activate the iPhone at either an AT&T or Apple Store when you purchase it. There is no prepaid option. You can’t activate it at home. You can’t buy it online. Not only is this inconvenient and going to make its debut a nightmare for employees and customers alike, but from a logistical standpoint it makes it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to unlock. (Which, of course, is the whole point of doing it this way. But I just wish they’d come out and say it.)
Unlocking aside, AT&T customers (you have my sympathies), there are some additional costs you should be aware of.
1. You have to pay $10 more per month for that 3G speed.
2. Those text messages that were originally bundled with your iPhone plan are gone.
3. Your two-year contract will start over.
So, you’re going to pay an extra $15 a month ($10 for 3G and $5 to replace your lost text messages) for 24 months which comes out to $360 plus the taxes and “fees” associated with those charges. So the REAL cost of your $199 iPhone works out to be more than $560 when all is said and done. (Note that that figure is just the extra costs associated with this particular phone and doesn’t include the cost of the monthly plan.)
Oh, and while you’re forking over that $560 over the course of your contract, there will be probably three or so upgrades to the iPhone. In fact, I’m willing to bet they have a capacity update (16 and 32 gig?) before Christmas.
Overall, Android is looking like a great alternative.
In other news, Snow Leopard, OS 10.6, is due out in about a year. Apple is pulling a Microsoft here and the new OS will just be stability, security and performance tweaks – no new features, just things that should have been included originally.
Basically, it’s Service Pack 1.
While I want to believe Apple will make this a free/very inexpensive upgrade, I know better.
Images courtesy of here and here.
