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.

Perhaps the most underwhelming “theory” where the says this:

We’ve just solved a problem that hasn’t been solved for twelve hundred years - and it’s that easy

Watching his video, I’m hoping there’s more to this idea of “Nullity” being equal to 0/0. If there isn’t then all he’s done is given a new name to “undefined.” This most definately doesn’t solve the computing problems that Dr. Anderson is implying that this cute nintendo type name addresses:

“Imagine you’re landing on an aeroplane and the automatic pilot’s working,” he suggests. “If it divides by zero and the computer stops working - you’re in big trouble. If your heart pacemaker divides by zero, you’re dead.”

If this is all it takes to be a doctor then I should have stayed in academia.*

p.s. I actually haven’t read any academic slanted paper on this so I’m just assuming that the BBC article is an accurate representation. Let me know if you have better information.

*As pointed out by Tim, yes, I’m still in “academia” but MBA programs really don’t feel like academia and I think you know what I meant (doing an MSc and PhD etc.)

I just came across this news byte (ha ha, byte) about the EFF’s case against AT&T. I’m pretty happy:

According to allegations first raised in the New York Times, AT&T allowed the NSA to install traffic monitoring equipment in its San Francisco and other facilities across the nation. With the equipment in place, the NSA is able to sift through large numbers of phone calls in the US. The government argued that airing the allegations contained in the lawsuit would harm the national security interests of the US.

Judge Vaughn disagreed, saying that if the government has been truthful in its disclosures, divulging information on AT&T’s role in the scandal should not cause any harm to national security. And if it hasn’t been truthful? “The state secrets privilege should not serve as a shield for its false public statements,” he wrote. “In short, the government has opened the door for judicial inquiry by publicly confirming and denying material information about its monitoring of communication content.”

I’m glad the courts finally stopped one of the get out of jail free cards the Bush administration has been handing out like candy on Halloween.

On an entirely unrelated note. I recently watched these lectures. Pretty entertaining and interesting if you know anything about computer architecture or what teaching Computer Engineering/Science is like in University. A great quote:

Information hiding is all very good, but students need to have some information before they can start hiding it.

Dr. C. Ravishankar

In conclusion, I’m very happy with my membership in the IEEE Computer Society. Computer geeks of the world, go sign up!

Does Wireless Fidelity even make sense?

Fidelity - accuracy with which an electronic system reproduces the sound or image of its input signal

therefore

wireless fidelity - the accuracy with which a device reproduces an input sound or image using wireless transmission or wireless quality reproduction of an image or sound????

I just saw another article that said “Wi-Fi, or wireless fidelity.”

Please, reporters, stop calling it that before it becomes the accepted term. See wikipedia for the explanation.

This has already made the rounds on all the big news sites but Google Calendar is out.

I’ve been playing with it for the last 15 min and in that time I’ve:

1. Imported all of my calendars from iCal.
2. Imported some public calendars.
3. Subscribed to my calendars via iCal.
4. Added/deleted some sample events.

So far the only thing I wish it did was allow me to set a default view for when I log in (i.e. current month, not current day).

All-in-all I’m very, very, very impressed. I’ve made the move to Google Calendar and I can really see this being very useful. If you want to start swapping calendars let me know.

From the it’s about time department… I’m really glad to hear that at least one network is going to push out some of it’s shows on demand for free. I think this is a great way to finally meet the consumer demand for… ummmm… on demand (why should I rearrange my life to watch a show? The show should be on when I want it). I really hope it works out—I can see this as being a really goood way to take a chunk out of piracy and make a few extra bucks from both ads and consumers purchasing shows. If it does we could end up with a totally different distribution model for shows. Bring it on!

This post is in response to this comment and this blog posting.

I think you’re making a few assumptions:

1. DRM prevents piracy.
2. A music store that doesn’t use DRM is like Napster or will have a real impact on the amount of piracy.
3. Selling music online is a natural monopoly.
4. You don’t want to change technology, ever.

Allow me to address these one at a time:

1. DRM does not stop piracy. For anyone who doesn’t know, a quick public key cryptography lesson and why DRM doesn’t work can be found here. The bottom line? The “attacker” of the crypto is also the intended recipient, this means that you want the attacker to be able to read the content at the same time prevent them from reading the content. Makes sense? No? It shouldn’t.

   I’m sure some of you will say; then why isn’t the DRM on the iTunes Music Store cracked right now? Simple, they obfuscate the key (making it difficult but by no means impossible to read). If all music were DRM I’d be one of the first people to break out my old x86 assembly book to try and figure out how they store the key. See the difference between encoding and encrypting.

2. First, online music stores aren’t anything like Napster and other P2P protocols. A music store allows users to download songs as they are purchased—read PAID FOR. Napster and other P2P protocols place no controls on who can get what, this means you can get content without paying for it. Obviously there is a major difference between P2P and online music stores.

   Second, will an online music stores without DRM have a really impact on the amount of piracy? My vote is for no. Why? Point #1—with or without DRM, I’m going to be able to get my content in an unlocked format somehow.

3. Selling music online is not a natural monopoly. It’s cheap and easy to setup an online music store—the only difficult part is licensing. There is no reason why we couldn’t have a million music stores online (we have a million brick-and-mortar music stores). The only thing that is enforcing the monopoly in the online stores is the DRM.

   When I buy a CD from a brick-and-mortar store, I can do what I want with it—I can play it in any CD player, I can rip it to any mp3 player, and I can make all the copies I want. Conversely when I buy DRMed audio file I can’t do what I want with it—I can’t play it in any mp3 audio playing program, I can’t put it on any mp3 player, and I can’t make all the copies I want.

   An example would better describe the problem: I buy 10 albums from the iTunes Music store, I can only play these songs in iTunes and on my iPod. Later I find an album on a different music store but the songs are DRMed so I can only play them in Windows Media Player and on an iRiver—I don’t buy the album from the second store because I don’t want to have to use 2 different audio playing programs and mp3 players. The iTunes monopoly continues. Without DRM I don’t have this problem I can play my music in anything, on anything.

4. Today Apple (in my opinion) makes some of the best hardware and software in the industry; What about in 10 years? Let’s say that I’ve been buying music from the iTunes Music Store for the last 10 years, I have invested a meager $15/month. $15*12*10=$1800. I decide I don’t like Mac OS X or Windows, I would rather use Linux. My iPod also breaks and I would rather get an iRiver . Guess what? I can’t make the transitions because I would loose all of my music. Is that fair?

I think you have to go through all of the articles on the Apple-France DRM debate and replace all instances of “Apple” with “Microsoft” and see how you like the ideas then.

I know this is already a quick link (see the side bar) but this is something I wanted to give a little more attention to. Check out Michael Geist’s blog posting on a recent CIRA study:

In summary, CRIA’s own research now concludes that P2P downloading constitutes less than one-third of the music on downloaders’ computers, that P2P users frequently try music on P2P services before they buy, that the largest P2P downloader demographic is also the largest music buying demographic, and that reduced purchasing has little to do with the availability of music on P2P services. I’ve argued many of these same things, but now you don’t have to take my word for it; you can take it from the record labels themselves.

I’m pretty sure I’ve been arguing some of this for years–now I have at least one study (sponsored by a record association) that backs me up… I don’t know if this is going to make much of a difference though.

Recently France has proposed a new law that would require DRM content to be transferable between devices and players (Apples annoying, RIAA FUDish, response).

I just wanted to throw my support behind this law. The big problem with DRM is that it strips away the rights of the end user to use the content as they wish. If I buy a song from the iTMS I should be able to easily play that song in any other player, and if I owned one, on my iRiver.

Not only does DRM not work, but it pisses off your paying customers.

Another nice possible side-effect for this legislation is the movement of trust away from MS/content providers back to the user of the system in a Trusted Computing system. By requiring the content to be “mobile” you eliminate the ability of the content providers to tie your media to your TPM in a way that makes your system refuse to work with YOUR content the way YOU want to. The Trusted computing system now takes orders from you, not the other way around.

Back to tech-talk on this blog again I guess. Like I have anything else to talk about.

Update (Mar 22): An article on Wired that says a lot.