iOS 4

I was able to grab iOS 4 for my iPhone 3GS minutes after it became available today. I have not had much time to play with it, but so far it feels like a really nice upgrade from iPhone OS 3.1. I really like being able to group apps into folders and I have been wanting a unified inbox on my phone since my first iPhone in 2007.

Time will tell if the “multitasking” support makes the phone feel more responsive, but so far, so good. My phone may be a year old, but it feels fresher with this new software. I am reminded of what a nice trend Apple has going with free upgrades for existing phones. Bear in mind that upgrading phone OS versions has never been a given in the past, and continues to be hit or miss on Android.

Now I just keep thinking of what iOS 4 will bring to the iPad when it appears later this year. At the least, the items that have appeared already on the iPhone will be much appreciated.

Filtering

For years, I have filtered my email into different categories — mailing lists, system administration, email forwards, and so on. Thus far, I have always done so on the client side, in my email client. Since switching to IMAP email a number of years ago, the big question became how to standardize those rules across different computers I might use during a given day.

.Mac (now MobileMe) paved the way, back in 2004 when I first signed up for it, by offering a convenient way to synchronize quite a few system settings, including filter rules. It worked great for keeping things humming along on my laptop and desktop. However with the advent of lighter clients such as the iPhone, a crack appeared in my system — the iPhone doesn't do filtering. Nor would my email be filtered if I viewed it in webmail. The situation has become more apparent since I started using an iPad, which, like the iPhone, lacks rules support.

All that said, I have finally broken down and tried server side filter rules. My main rules are now being applied on my server as messages come in. CPanel makes such filtering remarkably easy to setup. So far, so good.

Please let me know if you send me anything and do not receive a reply, however!

Google Earth is How It Should Be on iPad

If you need an example of what a 10” screen attached to Apple's A4 processor can do, you really should check out Google's updated Google Earth for iOS. While I thought Google Earth was pretty nifty on the iPhone and Android phones, on the iPad, the effect of using it is much more like on the desktop application.

I remember five years ago when I first tried Google Earth that it completely amazed me as I took it through the Grand Canyon and saw how it layered real satellite imagery on a 3D model of the terrain. It is something I always love having the chance to demo to people. And thanks to a well designed codebase, it usually runs at an enjoyable speed even on less than top of the line computers.

Yet, the idea of being able to see it at approximately “full size” in a touchscreen environment really changes things. It feels natural, like this is how Google Earth was always meant to be. I had a feeling if the program ever showed up on the iPad it would be amazing, yet given the current Apple-Google hostilities, I doubted the release of such a full iPad version would happen.

Great job, Google.

The View from Mudsock Heights

My fellow OFB contributor and friend, Dennis Powell, manages to deal with political correctness and issues surrounding utilities and communication services in one highly amusing piece this week. Just the helicopters part alone makes the column worth your time.

The piece does remind those of us in the city about why we have it so good, even when it might not always seem so.

Last Minute Prediction

I think Netflix will be supported by the Apple TV and that the mysterious trackpad device that has been floating around this morning will be a potential way to interact with an iPhone OS driven Apple TV (that makes more sense than offering it as a competitor to the Magic Mouse).

Predictions for Tomorrow

Update: I have a longer story about AT&T and the iPhone HD up at OFB.

With Apple's big WWDC keynote tomorrow, I'll go ahead and throw out some predictions as usual. I think it is virtually assured we will hear of the next generation iPhone tomorrow, and I'm putting my money on “iPhone HD” for the name.

I am all but assured by those in the know that it will not be available for Verizon tomorrow, just AT&T. On the other hand, I believe that AT&T is moving up eligibility for its users — even for some or all who bought the iPhone 3GS last year — to upgrade to the new iPhone because a Verizon launch is coming relatively soon. I believe a Verizon launch early this autumn is likely and Ma Bell wants to get people tied into a long term commitment before rumors around Big Red's upcoming iPhone begin to appear too genuine.

What does extending customers out two years do for AT&T? It buys the teleco time to finish its LTE buildout. While LTE is the designated 4G upgrade from AT&T's present GSM/UTMS network, and not Verizon's CDMA2000 one, Verizon is still way ahead on launching LTE as it joins most of the rest of the world in following 3GPP.

While AT&T's 3G network has more life remaining in it, with its various HSPA upgrades still available, LTE will win if only by a marketing fiat. Don't misunderstand me — LTE is better than AT&T's HSPA network over the long term, but AT&T is right from a technical standpoint not to rush into LTE; not only are devices still not ready for it, but the capabilities for advances in its current network have not been exhausted yet. Put another way: the maximum abilities of HSPA exceed the minimum abilities of 4G technologies like LTE and WiMax. The current iPhone 3GS, with its HSDPA 7.2 support, can offer real world performance that is better than the reported speeds of Sprint's HTC Evo 4G, for example. But, consumer perception is that 4G is automatically better than 3G. Hence, AT&T needs to get as many enthusiasts locked in as possible while it awaits its own LTE network to light up about a year behind Verizon's.

I also think we'll see something else announced, especially since Jobs has promised not to disappoint people who have already seen his crown jewel thanks to the sleazy antics of Gizmodo. The next generation, cloud friendly Apple TV seems like a reasonable choice and could open the door to a prediction I made earlier this year. Such a relaunch might also make sense amidst a larger revision of MobileMe as a partially free service that is more tightly woven into Apple's iPhone OS devices much as Google's services are with Android phones. I think a reworking of MobileMe is almost mandatory if Apple is at all serious about cloud computing, given that for all of MobileMe's advantages, free services from Google, and competitively priced services from companies like Dropbox, best MobileMe in numerous areas.

Updated Mac Pros and Mac minis would also make sense, but I doubt they will get stage time. I think the main Mac mention of note, other than the requisite sales figures, will be some acknowledgement of Mac OS X 10.7, presented as something that is shaping up in exciting ways, but that will not be previewed until some future time. The key goal here will be to assure people that Apple has not forgotten about the Mac.

Privacy Policy

Steve Jobs on user control of application privacy at D8:

People want to know what is going on upfront plain and simple. Ask them what they want to do, make them tell you to stop asking…

Exactly.

How Not to Do Market Analysis

Nick Farrell of the Inquirer writes:

Where Steve Jobs made his mistake was that he marketed the Ipad as a utopian device that can do everything that all his other products can. This is dangerous for Apple because if the Ipad can be a laptop, an Iphone, a e-reader and a music player then you do not really need any of those devices.

Save for the laptop and the iPhone, that's precisely the point.

While no doubt Apple could be hurt if a bunch of people stop buying MacBook Pros and instead buy iPads, that's assuming too much. I think what may happen is where you see families buy fewer computers, but more iPads. For example, you might see each child get an iPad, instead of several children sharing a slightly more expensive MacBook. Overall, that's a big gain for Apple. (And, just like netbooks, don't expect the iPad to entirely kill off more powerful computers needed for things like making home movies or doing major photo touch up.)

Farrell really misses the point when he notes, “Jobs may as well forget launching an Apple version of a Kindle or a PSP, then.” Obviously, the iPad is intended as Apple's answer to the Kindle and one of Apple's competitors to the PSP (along with the iPod touch and iPhone). The idea that Apple would still want to launch single-use models seems to go against the whole convergence direction both Apple and the general industry are following. Note that Apple didn't launch a phone and a widescreen iPod and a small web surfing device back in 2007, either. It launched the iPhone to do all three.

The iPhone is secure because, as its name implies, it is a phone and the larger, heavier iPad is not. If anything, Apple has untapped opportunities to make the iPad and iPhone work together. The iPod touch may be harmed, but if Apple can get people to pick up a $500 or $600 iPad over a $200 iPod touch, I don't think they will lose much sleep over that.

HT: John Gruber

iPad 3G Teardown

Incase you were curious, the good folks at iFixit have already torn apart an iPad 3G to see what makes it tick. The 3G model is, in my estimation, the more interesting option of the two iPad lines. Not only does it come with 3G wireless when you need it with no time commitments required, it also has an apparently quite good GPS chip for use with navigation apps like Navigon (and anything else location aware you might want).

The iPad, Flash and Proprietary Integration

CNet blogger and Canonical COO Matt Asay wrote an opinion piece today in which he applauds an earlier piece at sister publication ZDNet alleging Apple to be on an increasingly proprietary path. The quoted ZDNet writer Jeff Foremski writes,

Since the introduction of the iPod, iPhone, and now the iPad, Apple is becoming less and less open, is using fewer standard components and chips, and far fewer Internet technologies common to Mac/PC desktop and laptop systems.

The iPhone and iPad, for example, don't support common Internet platforms such as Adobe Flash or Microsoft Silverlight. That means you cannot watch streaming video from Hulu, or Netflix.

And while iPhone chips are available from other manufacturers, the iPad runs only on the A4 processor—an Apple designed chip that no one else can buy.

Let's consider these claims. The Apple A4 processor that runs the iPad is based on the same ARM architecture pretty much everyone in the mobile space is focused on at the present time. While Apple certainly likes vertical integration — because it lowers its dependency on outside suppliers and drives down costs — to say that Apple is becoming proprietary because of an in-house chip design is absurd. An Apple A4 is compatible with other ARM processors. The iPad CPU does not make the iPad more or less compatible with other systems than the iPhone's chip; as a matter of fact, neither chip has any influence on Apple's devices being able to interoperate with competitors' devices.

Foremski's second claim that Asay quotes is that Apple is utilizing “far fewer internet technologies” (implied: “open internet technologies”). By this, he apparently means Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight, neither of which are open nor standards. Only Adobe Flash is even a de facto standard, albeit one conspicuously missing from most mobile devices at present. And since when does omitting two plugins become equivalent to supporting “far fewer internet technologies”?

Foremski's other mutterings about Apple in the piece Asay links to are similarly bizarre for someone writing at a quasi-respectable tech media outlet. He suggests Apple came to the PC side, for example, by supporting USB. He fails to mention Apple helped drive the adoption of USB, with the original iMac making waves via its USB-only approach. He also suggests Apple made its “disk operating system files compatible with the PC world,” but fails to explain what he means by that. He can't mean that Apple finally supported reading PC-formatted disks (Apple has supported reading DOS/Windows-based disks for decades) nor that Apple has switched to Microsoft's formats for native disks (it hasn't).

As much of a pain as it may be that Apple is refusing to support Flash on the iPad and iPhone, the company is right in saying that it is pushing for something far more open than Flash. Call that decision whatever you'd like, just don't call it “being proprietary.” Asay, who is a smart chap, shows poor judgment in agreeing with Foremski on this.