I just came across this podcast with Peter Fader, a marketing proff at Wharton. He’s reitterating a lot of my concerns about the iPhone. He also talks about the appleTV and subscriptions for digital content.

This has to be one of the funniest fanboy flicks I’ve seen in a LONG time. You have to check it out.

This article talks about cellphone manufacturers starting to sell phones directly to consumers. If it works out, it will be great for consumers. Until now, large switching cots (contracts and losing your phone number) have locked consumers into their carriers. Now, with the ability to move your phone number from carrier to carrier, if you pay the $80 premium, you can avoid the contract as well. This will (hopefully) turn the cellphone services into a commodity, thus lowering the price, and stop some damn companies from charging crazy amounts for services that cost them pennies.
That’s my rant; good night, and good luck.

I’m having this flashback to the days of bashing Microsoft. It was so easy and now I’m feeling the same thing about the RIAA/CRIA.

Michael Geist has posted some stats (released by the recording industry) that directly counters some of the CRIA’s reasons for wanting legislated anti-circumvention (among other culture and rights destroying laws):

… CRIA President Graham Henderson was telling the media that the Canadian digital market was not taking off and that “people are simply abandoning the marketplace altogether, and they’ve made the decision they’ll just download the music and worry about how the artist gets paid later.”

Not so. Canadian digital download sales grew by 122 percent last year, increasing from 6.7 million to 14.9 million (digital albums increased by a similar percentage).

Awake at 6AM and posting about digital downloads. Is there a bigger geek in the world? Well… maybe these guys.

p.s. It’s always funny to see who’s hotlinking to you sometimes. Check out this. Scroll about half-way down. There’s my thumb with the fortune.

… and all I have to say is HAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHA. Here is an old post on I made on this topic.

Tim sent me a link to the iProduct. Check it out. (I’ve made it available on my server in case it gets taken down, click below for the local copy).

I found a blog with some answers to many iPhone questions. The answers don’t make it look any better (in general). I also find it funny that there is some ambiguity over if it will have a vibrate/silent mode.

I know this was on Slashdot but I like to have some of my past posts supported by other people on the compu-global-hyper-mega.net (i.e. I like to win :)). Here’s a post about how the most likely large force in supporting DRM is going to be Apple. [sarcasm]Big Surprise[/sarcasm]

I was horribly underwhelmed by the MacWorld keynote yesterday. Has the media lost he ability to be critical of Apple? I’m starting to think that most of them have. Although there are lots of merits to the iPhone, it isn’t the huge revolution that Steve Jobs would want us all to think. I know some are going to disagree (*cough*tim*cough*) with me but I’m going to post my thoughts either way. Here’s the beef:

1. iPhone is not an iPod. The iPod is a great music player for one major reason—the design traded off the generic interface that a lot of competitors had (e.g. PocketPC) and focused on making an interface that works great for music (and then marketed the hell out of it). I can use my iPod interface without looking at it (which I do all the time); you can’t do that with the iPhone. The iPhone has the feeling of Apple’s second crack at the Newton and they shouldn’t try to pass it off as anything else—way to dilute the value of the iPod “brand.”
2. Typing on a touch screen!? Come on. The main reason why the mini-keyboard works on all the “inferior” devices is that there is tactile feedback. I can type on my crackberry without having to really look and peck. My thumbs can feel the “home” positions.
3. Apple didn’t invent most of the stuff on the iPhone. e.g. Microsoft’s PocketPC has had full browsing since I was in high school.
4. This is not for business users. It’s totally a consumer product. How do I know? The “e-mail push” from Yahoo! and no real exchange push support. The didn’t even explain the “push” enough for me to comment on any further.
5. It costs A LOT!
6. Not everything they showed is good. For example, the vast majority of the internet apps I saw were bandwidth intensive. Since (in Canada at least) carriers charge $10/mb, I’m quite sure most consumers (see 4) aren’t going to like that cost. That’s why a lot of smart phones do things the way they do things—to save bandwidth.
7. Zooming in/out of webpages has been done… a long time ago.
8. Java?! Third-party development?! Hello?!

There are quite a few other little things but I’ll leave it at that. In general, the iPhone has some coolness (e.g. the interface which was probably ripped off from this guy) but I don’t feel it’s a product that’s nearly as good as his Jobsness professes. Perhaps if we had a 3G network and they spent a little more time on some of the issues I mentioned above then it will really make some headway.

Of course, since it’s an Apple product that is tied to the iPod it’ll probably sell to a bunch of people—I’d guess mainly fanboys with too much money on their hands. Apple has to be careful though, fanboys and the iPod brand will only take you so far.

p.s. I just found this which is also critical of the iPhone. Thankfully I’m not the only one.