Dave Winer with some interesting insight into what Apple may really be doing:

I said it's a lot simpler and more insidious. Apple doesn't care about web standards, nor do any other large companies. That term, and "open" are just fig leaves that cover up what they're reallly doing. Instead of opening things up, they're doing just the opposite. Closing as many holes as they can as quickly as they can. Because they're doing what the media business wants to but hasn't been able to do, yet -- control and monetize user programming of content. Apple and many (if not all) of the tech companies want to get the control back from the users. Of course they can't say this, and they won't. But actions speak louder than words.

Winer's take is that Apple is trying to close as many open holes as it can so that it, with the continued blessing of the entertainment industry, can provide a tidy way to monetize digital content moving forward.  It's about closing the many paths that are now open and only leaving one road, albeit likely paved with gold, open.  It's a curious analysis, one that has baked into it a certain amount of (well placed) tinfoil-hattery.

Winer's opinion runs counter to John Gruber's, who states that Apple is closing the Flash "hole" in the iPhone/iPad platform to 'enforce web standards.'  I tend to agree with Gruber, because with Apple, it's all about platform control.  The quicker Flash gets relegated to wherever it is that Flash opponents wish it would crawl, the faster, the argument goes, open web standards like HTML5 and h.264 can become mainstream.

It will be very interesting to see what's in the middle of all of this, where the truth often lies.

Loading mentions Retweet

A conversation I have every month or so. Fellow iPhone users, this is our pickle.

Loading mentions Retweet

Stephen Fry:

I know there will be many who have already taken one look and pronounced it to be nothing but a large iPhone and something of a disappointment. I have heard these voices before. In June 2007 when the iPhone was launched I collected a long list of “not impressed”, “meh”, “big deal”, “style over substance”, “it’s all hype”, “my HTC TyTN can do more”, “what a disappointment”, “majorly underwhelmed” and similar reactions. They can hug to themselves the excuse that the first release of iPhone was 2G, closed to developers and without GPS, cut and paste and many other features that have since been incorporated. Neither they, nor I, nor anyone, predicted the “game-changing” effect the phone would so rapidly have as it evolved into a 3G, third-party app rich, compass and GPS enabled market leader. Even if it had proved a commercial and business disaster instead of an astounding success, iPhone would remain the most significant release of its generation because of its effect on the smartphone habitat. Does anybody seriously believe that Android, Nokia, Samsung, Palm, BlackBerry and a dozen others would since have produced the product line they have without the 100,000 volt taser shot up the jacksie that the iPhone delivered to the entire market?

Just last night I listened to a guy in a bar, perched authoritatively in his seat, loudly proclaiming to his gaggle of four friends the iPad just a 'big iPod Touch' and 'useless' and 'guaranteed to be the biggest dud Apple released in the past 10 years'. I listened to this raptly for a while and then realized that if people can't see what this thing represents, they just don't get it.

It's really that simple.

As I wrote about before, there are typically two camps of opinion when Apple drops a new product into its matrix: those who see what Apple is gunning for, and those who don't.

With the iPad, the camp of those who don't understand is larger than I would expect, especially given the recent example of the iPhone's explosive success.

Loading mentions Retweet

Fake Steve Jobs (Dan Lyons) on the iPad backlash, penned before the Apple press conference:

Because there is going to be one, trust me. This device isn’t as obvious as iPhone. It’s kind of subtle. Which means that those of you who have done the spiritual work to prepare for it will be fine, but those who haven’t done the work, well, they’re probably going to miss a lot of this at first. So you’ll see some noise about who needs this thing, it’s just a fancy desk ornament, and so on. I am telling you this now so that you can be ready for the harsh voices and they won’t hurt you when you hear them. Just let the negativity pass by you. Do not engage with it or try to fight it or argue with it. Step aside, and let the dark energy flow away.

Humor put briefly aside, my casual observation of blogs, forums and Twitter suggests the hating on this thing is unbelievable.  I see two camps emerging: one that gets it, one that doesn't.  At this point, the former seems considerably smaller than the latter.

Oh, but before we get started, there's also this: MS shill Paul Thurrott already pronouncing the iPad a failure.  Which he did before the keynote was even over. I needed to get that out of my system right from the get go.  John Gruber, be sure to file that one away for your early 2011 Best of Claim Chowder post.

So, moving along, I'll never quite be able to digest the hyper-reactionism and knee-jerk judgementalist attitudes of the Apple fanbase.  It doesn't matter if Cupertino releases the iPod, the iPhone or the iPad: if the device right out of the box isn't saving puppies and importing Russian brides automatically for lonely geeks, it's called underwhelming.  Today's backlash against the iPad reminds me of Slashdot's now-famous October 2001 reaction to the first-gen iPod: "No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame."

The iPad does most everything mainstream users want: email. Web. Gaming. Photos. Video. Books. Music. Not to mention the idea that you get to buy into an established software ecosystem of nearly all of the apps already sitting in the App Store.  The iPad, via the new iWork, also allows a new way to create content, not just consume it.  And nearly everyone is ignoring the value of the iPad SDK, which will give rise to iPad-tailored apps that will be phenomenal using such a large multitouch surface.  It weighs a pound-and-a-half.  Its battery will do 10 hours of video.

(Quick note regarding the lack of Flash: stop complaining about it.  Flash sucks in many cases, and with YouTube and Vimeo moving some of their videos to HTML5 + h.264, Apple is throwing its considerable weight around in web policy-making. They don't like Flash, and never will.  Deal with it.)

There's even a docking station and mechanical keyboard for the iPad, a peripheral category that Apple has long eschewed as worthy accoutrements for its products.

Reading between the lines, you can tell Apple brass has big plans for the iPad, way, way beyond what most of us (including yours truly) is seeing.  But I'm shocked at the amount of discontent I'm seeing from people who, apparently, needed a front-facing webcam so badly that everything the iPad does is rendered useless without one.  You Skype that much, do you?  Really?  Really?

But it continues: people are calling it 'underpowered' (despite reports to the contrary) and whining about a lack of Verizon support and (inexplicably) calling it nothing more than a 'giant iPod Touch.'  Hard for me to believe that so many people are missing what this thing represents (have they even seen the video?), especially once the other shoe drops.

And that other shoe, of course, is media deals.  With studios. With more publishers.  With magazines and periodicals.  With academic textbook houses.

There's a reason this isn't shipping for 60-90 days, and it's not all because of tight supply chain or violent outbreaks in Chinese factories: it's the ecosystem needs to bake a little more.  If you don't think you're going to see some interesting iPad announcements between now and its commercial release, think again.

I suspect we'll see the same pattern of naysaying, pshawing and predictions of how Win7-based slates or Android tablets or whatever will beat the iPad at its own game.  Until, of course, it starts dominating the market, creating new application classes, and putting competitors in the dirt.  Then everyone will get it.

Palm, RIM, Symbian and Windows Mobile fans: you know what I'm talking about.  Don't you?

Loading mentions Retweet

My 2-year-old daughter surprised me recently with two words: “Daddy’s book.” She was holding my Kindle electronic reader.

Here is a child only beginning to talk, revealing that the seeds of the next generation gap have already been planted. She has identified the Kindle as a substitute for words printed on physical pages. I own the device and am still not completely sold on the idea.

My daughter’s worldview and life will be shaped in very deliberate ways by technologies like the Kindle and the new magical high-tech gadgets coming out this year — Google’s Nexus One phone and Apple’s impending tablet among them. She’ll know nothing other than a world with digital books, Skype video chats with faraway relatives, and toddler-friendly video games on the iPhone. She’ll see the world a lot differently from her parents.

Fascinating article from Brad Stone stating that, quite simply, the unflagging rate of tech advancement is creating mini generation gaps whereby these mini-generations can be identified and grouped by what technology they grow up with during formative years.  Makes perfect sense, because more than once I've observed that young kids today are familiar with an iPhone in a way that kids of eight years ago are not.  My son, now 5, tries to touch, swipe and pinch the screen of every mobile phone he comes across.  Eight years ago, kids would have been introduced to a BlackBerry or Windows Mobile phone or something from Nokia and then introduced to an iPhone.

Another thing I think about: what will tech look like when my son is 16?  How many disruptive technologies will come down and displace the things that, by today's standards, are considered contemporary?

And perhaps the biggest question of all: speaking from psychological, cognitive, sociological and developmental perspectives, what long-term effect will all this technology, replete with its 'information anywhere' capability, have on people?  Today, we see all sorts of psychopharmaceutical drugs aimed at what we now consider mainstream psychological conditions: anxiety, ADHD, depression.  It's interesting -- and not just a little scary -- to consider what we'll be 'treating' 15 years from now as a result of people being overstimulated, forced to multitask beyond what the human mind can reasonably do (some argue we're there already) and rely on technology for everything: information, answers, directions, social consensus, morality.

Even as a tech geek, I reel sometimes.  As a guy who used to read a book a week but now struggles to get through one a month (most of my reading is web reading, which, arguably, is more convenient due to its more fragmented nature), I wonder where this is all going.

I know -- I think I'll check out a Kindle.  If, of course, the Apple tablet disappoints.  Then -- yes, then -- I'll get back to reading at a tyrannosaurid rate.  Right?

Loading mentions Retweet

Windows aficianado Paul Thurrott, reporting from CES, apparently fresh out of a linkbaiting seminar:

In the meantime, I wanted to briefly discuss some of the stuff Lenovo is doing. I spent about an hour and a half meeting with them this morning and while I am charitably described as a ThinkPad fanboy, the truth is, they just make the best notebooks on earth. And now they're getting even better. It's dizzying. I posted a bit about this yesterday, but there is so much going on here. In fact, their near-final version of a tiny notebook with a breakaway tablet screen absolutely kills anything Apple could possibly announce later this month. It's not even close.

One of the most profound markers of human ignorance is categorically denigrating or praising something the world has not yet seen.

Interesting that Thurrot not only provides the quip above, but also this gem:

IdeaPad U1 hybrid notebook. Shipping in the second half of 2010, this is the device that will make Apple's supposed tablet look silly.

Again, Paul must be running a beta version of Windows 7 with a time machine, because it's hard to say Something A will make Something B look silly when Something B hasn't been unveiled yet.

As one commenter notes, "Rumor mills suck."

Indeed.

Loading mentions Retweet

Todd Wasserman, reporting for BrandWeek:

By opting for these tin-eared retorts, AT&T does nothing but set itself up as a foe to consumers. At a conference in New York in early December, CEO Ralph de la Vega responded to charges that AT&T’s iPhone service was slow by turning condescending. “The first thing we need to do is educate consumers about what represents a megabyte of data,” de la Vega told reporters—this while floating the idea of charging heavy users more than others.

AT&T’s position seems to be that consumers are consuming way more data than the company had expected and everyone just needs to chill until the company can recover from this inconsiderate overuse. When the conceit is that ass-backwards, no amount of spin is effective.

If there's one company whose reputation has been steadily slaughtered over the past two years, it's AT&T.  The malign is deserved: I have followed the blogs, Twitter conversations and press releases as much as the next gadget/tech geek, and to me it's plainly clear that AT&T hasn't learned any lessons from brands who have had their business practices change due to consumers leveraging social channels.

But it's even worse than that.  They view iPhone users as the problem that led to their damaged brand, not their shoddy network to begin with or nearly flat capital expenditures since the iPhone's inception.

As a realtively new AT&T customer (who joined simply because of the iPhone), the vibe I get is that they believe it's easier to milk this iPhone thing -- however long it goes in exclusivity -- for all it's worth than it is to listen to your customers, address negative feedback, and build out your network to accomodate your users happily using your product.  AT&T had a chance to become something special, pehaps even to vy for extentend exclusivity, but instead chose to treat the iPhone deal as a racehorse: flog it as hard as you can until it dies, keep the share price at a decent level, get your bonuses, and move on to what's next.  That sort of myopia will be part of AT&T's enduring legacy, especially when they could have built a race team and made their customers their fans.

When the iPhone opens up to other carriers in the US, AT&T will see a hemhorraging of subscribers like never before.  Given how I drop at least a call day with AT&T, I will likely be among them.

Enjoy your early termination fees, Mr. Stephenson: they're the last vestige of what could have been.

Loading mentions Retweet

Tim O'Reilly, reporting just after the Nexus One press event:

News from the front: a possible turning point for Android. I've been a huge iPhone fan, but after using the Nexus One for a few weeks, I find so much to like that I'm close to the point where Android might be my first choice. While I may yet go back to my iPhone, I'm conflicted.

As an iPhone user who was impressed with the Motorola Droid but not enough to consider ditching my iPhone for it, the Nexus One already has me thinking that Apple better bring its biggest guns to the 2010 mobile web fight. While Twitter is ablaze about how the Nexus One is the iPhone killer, I think that's premature: anyone who's been doing this a while knows that Apple has had good G2 on this for a while now, and the next version of the iPhone (slated for the now-traditional June/July release) isn't going to concede much to today's Nexus One.

Should be interesting, but all speculation aside, it's time to remember this: when smart companies compete, customers always win. It's a beautiful thing.

(Via @khurtwilliams)

Loading mentions Retweet