Posts by Techwriter10

I for one hope it's dead wrong! But thanks for the comment. By November you should be getting Win7 installed on that laptop. General availability is Oct 22.

Ron

It's interesting to me that so many people took my premise to heart. I realize it's a big leap from selling hardware to resurrecting the economy, but I appreciate that there are so many of you keeping me on my toes.

Thanks for all the comments. It shows me that you're reading my stuff and that means a great deal to me, even if you don't necessarily agree with me (which in this case I'm not sure you should be). :-)

Ron

Windows 7 is coming next month. That's hardly news to any of you, I'm sure, but have you considered that this major OS release could be the catalyst to end the recession? I'm guessing not many of you have come to that conclusion, but consider this: Many, many companies steered clear of Vista, but companies still using XP will be looking to upgrade in the next 18 months. And it could be very much like the book, "If You Give a Moose a Muffin:" If you give a company a new OS, chances are they are going to need some new hardware to go with it, and that could set off a hardware buying frenzy.

Slowly Coming Out of It

The numbers have suggested the economy probably has hit bottom and we are slowly moving in a positive direction, so perhaps Microsoft can't be given sole credit for this (if it comes to pass), but the writing is clearly on the wall. When I criticized Microsoft in my recent post, Has Microsoft Chosen Subterfuge Over Quality, I garnered a lot of comments, more than any other post since I've been writing this blog, and what a lot of people said is that I should see Windows 7 in action. The word is that this is a much more stable OS, that companies are going to like it, and that they are going to buy it.

Unfortunately for them, they are probably going to …

When you are dealing with a populations as large as China's, even when you take into consideration that three quarters of the population doesn't have internet access, you are still talking about a very large number of those who do. So it's no surprise that Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! want a piece of this rather large and likely growing pie.

So far at least though, it's not one of the big American search engines making the biggest impact in China. According to an article in this month's Forbes Magazine, it's Chinese search engine called Baidu that's a run-away number one.

Baidu is Local

According to the article, Baidu is a local firm started by a US educated entrepreneur by the name of Robin Li. What Li has been able to do is take control of the search market in China by marketing his search engine as a native tool that understands the language and culture better than any American company could. Li has managed to build a Google-like market share in the neighborhood of 65 percent of Chinese searches. Google has about half that, but according to Forbes is growing rapidly and putting pressure on Baidu. (It's worth noting that this PC world article reports that Google is much less successful than Forbes suggests.)

Treading Dangerously in Foreign Markets

While the Chinese market is tantalizing because of its size and potential for Herculean growth, it is also …

As I said, clearly in this article, I'm sure the other players do it, and if you read my body of work in the blog, you will see that I go after Google and Apple as well. While I don't necessarily agree that Microsoft has done much to improve its image in recent years--Vista anybody?--I do agree that all three players should and do face criticism from me as a blogger whenever I feel it's warranted. I write specifically about these three companies quite often, partly because they all product lots of news, partly because they each stumble along in their own way and partly because the dynamic between the three of them is so interesting. The idea for me is to find interesting connections and point them out to my readers as I see them.

Ron

David,
I completely agree with your last paragraph. It should NOT be the default setting and it's really stupid that it is. As for the rest, we'll have to save our Mac v. PC full out debate for another day. There are not enough hours in the day. :-)

Thanks for the comment, David. I would suggest, however, that you are repeating the line offered by Microsoft in their ads. As I wrote in an earlier, post, Apple's Value is More Than Skin Deep, if you use a Mac, you would find that it's a lot more than just hype and glitz.

As for your iTunes/iPod issue, I agree it drives me nuts that the default is to write over the drive, but there is a setting in iTunes to make your iPod behave like a hard drive if that's what you prefer.

Yes, Apple is a corporation, so as such it's going to have ethical lapses, as I wrote recently in Good Apple, Rotten Apple, but I think the US Department of Justice has more than enough evidence to suggest that Microsoft clearly wins in the ethical lapse race. Apple, for the most part has let its hardware and software do the talking, while Microsoft used predatory practices throughout the 90s to sell Windows. The Ad wars are all part of doing business. Whether you like the Microsoft campaigns (which I've written that I don't) or the Apple ones (which I've written I do) are clearly matters of personal preference.

Finally, I own an iPhone and for the most part I love it. Is it perfect. No. It's a piece of technology and I've yet to find one that is, but Apple does a very good job with its products. It …

I actually run Windows Media player on the Mac without an issue, so yes I have tried to use Non-Mac native problems. I'm not going to get into a Mac-PC war with you, so let's just leave it at that. Thanks again for taking the time to comment

Ron

I suppose it depends on your perspective, and humor is a subjective thing, but I found the Get a Mac ads highly clever. I have to say also if OSX is so overrated, why does Microsoft keep trying to make Windows look like it? Finally, I agree it is a much steeper hill to climb when you are trying to create an OS to work across an infinite amount of hardware and software, but if you can have a machine without those headaches wouldn't you do it? I've used PCs for more than 20 years. I've used a Mac on a daily basis for the last 3. I would take the Mac any day. I'm not a Mac Fan Boy per se. I recognize it's imperfect, as is all technology, but it works much more consistently than any PC I've owned over the years (and there have been many).

Thanks for the comment. This has become quite a lively discussion, which I really love to see.

Ron

It's not so much when it first gets rolled out because as you say that's expected with an OS or major piece of software. It's how they deal with the aftermath. There is little doubt that Vista was a piece of crap at release and remains so. There are blue screens and auto shut downs and variety of problems even in XP, which after a long time was finally "stabilized." I've used a variety of OSs, Microsoft doesn't get picked on because of who it is, it gets picked on a lot of the time because the criticism is warranted.

Ron

From everything I've read, I've heard that's true, and I look forward to seeing it in action to find out.

That's what bloggers do, my friend. We watch the tech news and when we find something interesting like this article, we react to it.

As for Win 7, as I said, let's just wait and see until it's in production and on desktops. It may be a decent OS. I have no idea, but Microsoft has been making bug-filled software for years and years. I've been using PCs and Microsoft software since the mid-1980s. I didn't just fall of the turnip truck and start leveling criticism at them. I speak from years of experience using their products.

I confess I'm not always kind to Microsoft. They stumble and bumble and often make bad decisions, and as such make a great target for a blogger like me, but looking back at the announcements they've made over the last couple of weeks, when you add it all up, they at least seem to be trying to move forward.

They may be awkward at times (as geeks often are), but the Zune HD, the CodePlex Foundation , and the newly announced Bing visual search tool all add up to a good week for the behemoth from Redmond. In fact, when you put it all together, even the most ardent of the anti-Microsoft ilk, would have to admit, it's a nice effort.

Zune HD

While this isn't a perfect device by any means, the design alone is a huge step forward from its clunky (and indisputably ugly) predecessors. This one looks sleek and sexy, and from a functionality standpoint, it has a lot going for it. Sure, they should have avoided those pre-roll ads in the free apps I wrote about the other day in Microsoft Ads Mess with Fuzzy Zune HD Feelings , but this is a device that people will take a long look at this holiday season. It may end up being too little, too late from a market standpoint since Apple owns this space, but at least they're in …

Yesterday Microsoft launched the long-awaited Zune HD. By all reports, this is a pretty nice device with a large 3.3 inch OLED screen with HD video and HD radio playback. As a media player, it offers access to a limited App Store and a very nice $15 all-you-can-eat monthly music subscription service. It looks like Microsoft put a lot of thought into the design, and at the very least, I wanted to get my hands on one at Best Buy and take it for a spin. Yet in spite of these unusually fuzzy feelings for a Microsoft product, our friends in Redmond found a way to undermine them. Ars Technica reports that Microsoft has chosen to run pre-roll ads prior to launching its handful of free apps. Seriously Microsoft? Ads? Really?! What are these people thinking?

Zune Hasn't Been the Biggest Success

If you've followed Microsoft's foray into the MP3 player market, the results to this point haven't been pretty (as I wrote in my most popular post ever: Zune and iPod: The Tale of Two MP3 Players), but the Zune HD with its sexy redesign has some serious potential. It's reasonably priced and according to this review from CNET provides a very nice user experience. I found the original Zunes to be clunky looking, but this one looks sleek and cool like somebody would really want to own one.

Do You Need a Few Extra Bucks?

Given …

The jury is still out on Win 7, but all reports indicate it's much better than Vista (although that wouldn't take much). I agree there are plenty of alternatives to using Microsoft products.

Thanks for the comment.
Ron

Those are good links. Thanks for posting them.

Ron

Thanks minigweek. Glad you liked the post and appreciate you taking the time to comment.

Ron

quicktpgo: That is odd behavior. I've never heard of that happening with a Gmail account, but I don't doubt that it does. Wonder if there is a way to reset the account or export your Gmail from one account to another.

Good luck.

Ron

As I said, it's really what eBooks could become, much more than a digital representation of the paper book, which is what we are getting now. So it might not be a conventional eBook as we've come to know it, but the definition is definitely a moving target at this point.

Ron

With the September 9th Keynote in our rear view mirror, we can begin to look back at it with a more unbiased eye, and explore some of the new features more clearly. It's obvious by now that this wasn't in any way a major announcement. This was exacerbated by the tantalizing rumors that floated all about prior to the Keynote (as I wrote in Apple Rumor Mill Comes Up Empty Again). But one new feature that slipped under the radar a bit was the announcement that for the first time, Apple was including an FM Radio in the Nano line.

"BFD," I hear you say, "so it has a radio. Whooptydoo," which is to be honest, is what I thought until a conversation convinced me that perhaps Apple is onto something a bit deeper.

Buying Songs From The Radio

I was having a casual GTalk conversation with my publisher at FierceContentManagement, Ron Lichtinger, when he pointed out there might be more to this FM Radio than meets the eye. In particular, he suggested, "Being able to buy songs instantly from the radio and storing it on your iPod is pretty darn cool – satellite radio has been doing it for a while, but that’s satellite radio. FM (and High Def) radio are free, but now, you’ll be able to tag and then pay for songs (through iTunes of course) as you’re listening to them." And that's when it hit …

I actually wrote about the need for an open eBook standard recently in this blog:

Amazon Shows Need for Open eBook Standards

Thanks for the comment.

Ron

No problem. I appreciate you taking the time to comment and express your thoughts in such detail.

Ron

I don't disagree with you.

If you read me regularly you would know I'm highly critical of Microsoft in my writing. In this post, I'm reporting what Walker told me about why he chose to become part of an organization sponsored by Microsoft. It's Walker's perspective on why he chose to be on the board of directors of this organization. The line might have been a poor choice of words if that's what you chose to focus on.

Ron

When interface guru Jakob Nieslen reported on the Kindle 2 usability last March, he pointed out it was great for books, but not much other content. Why is this significant? Two recent reports suggest that the eBook Reader could move beyond a simple device for reading books, and could become so much more.

In one instance, Apple has released a multimedia "eBook" into the iTunes store. In the other, news reports on Friday suggested that Time, Inc could be working a new Reader for the purpose of distributing their magazines. Suddenly, this market is looking even more interesting.

Time Keeps On Slipping Into The Future

A report on NBCBayArea.com on Friday, quoting an internal Time, Inc. presentation, suggested that the company is hard at work on an eBook Reader that could be available by the end of the year. This means that a high-profile publisher is attempting to get in on the ground floor of a developing market, rather than waiting to react to it, as the publishing industry has done for the last 15 years.

One key element of the memo as I saw it, was this sentence: "Whoever defines the interface wins." This is consistent with Nielsen's work, who believes that interface design and usability is the key to success for any device. The question remains whether the fact they understand this can translate into a device with high usability.

Another interesting nugget in the report was word that …

I'm not attacking FOSS, dude. I'm a big fan. Just making an observation that when people cross the open source community, they tend to come down hard on anyone they feel has wronged them. I would say your note is a good case in point.

Thanks for the comment.

Ron

Casablanca,
No need to be dependent on Windows. There are alternatives if you really want to switch from Microsoft.

Thanks for leaving a comment.

Ron

Thanks for the comment RC. I agree, I shouldn't be shocked by this development, but I still am. Seems like the resources would be better spent elsewhere.

Ron

Microsoft announced a new organization this week called CodePlex, which according to its web site, is "a non-profit foundation formed with the mission of enabling the exchange of code and understanding among software companies and open source communities." Now, you don't normally see Microsoft and Open Source in the same breath without raising a hair of suspicion (and in some cases howling laughter). In fact, my colleague Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, who has been writing about Linux and Open Source for many years, wrote in his Cyber Cynic column yesterday, he finds Microsoft's motives in this project dubious to say the least.

That's why I was surprised to find a press release in my In Box yesterday from open source vendor, DotNetNuke proudly trumpeting the fact that their chief architect and co-founder, Shaun Walker was joining the CodePlex Foundation interim Board of Directors. It's worth noting that DotNetNuke is built on Microsoft's .Net platform. In that context, Walker's role with the new foundation makes sense at least on some level, but will it fly in the open source community, a place that has been known to be cold and unforgiving?

Can Microsoft Change Its Stripes?

Walker says in the past he has been critical of Microsoft projects when he didn't believe they were created in the best of interest of the open source community. "A specific area where I have expressed public criticism of Microsoft in the past is regarding …

Right. I didn't mean to minimize the impact. I agree that video is going to be huge, but it really didn't warrant mainstream attention. When Google changes the way it indexes, that's another matter entirely and that's what I was trying to get across. Thanks for your comment and setting me straight on this one.

Ron

This wasn't a huge announcement I'll grant you that, but this is a lot more than liner notes. The Dylan example includes 13 previously unreleased versions of songs from Highway 61 Revisited along with video of live performances from the Newport Folk Festival the year the album was released. For a true fan, this is really precious stuff, so scoff if you must, but I think this is a great move by Apple. For the record I haven't found iTunes to be slow, and fans have always been willing to pay for interesting material.

Ron

Yesterday was Apple's Keynote, and you would think we would have learned by now that Apple rumors are meaningless. As the buzz grows louder before each of these events, there are rumors so convincing we think they must be a fait accompli. I mean how many of you thought you would wake up this morning to find the iPod Touch still doesn't have a camera? Not many, I'm sure and even fewer hands would go up if you suggested the *Nano* would have one. Yet each keynote, we still believe.

Remember the last one? Sure you do. There was a rumor about the $800 Mac Book. It was so solid it was sure to happen, only it didn't. And the Tablet, that one surfaced this year too, yet there was no Tablet. Why do we fall for it every time? It must be that we want to believe.

What Happened to that Camera?

If we were sure of anything prior to yesterday's Keynote, it was that the Touch would have a camera. What we got was pretty good: a price cut, more power; but we wanted a camera, dammit and we didn't get one. I for one am completely shocked, but not nearly so much as the fact that Nano was given one (along with a pedometer and FM radio). Steve Jobs likes to keep us guessing and this one came out of left field. No iPod has ever had an …

Apple introduced a new feature today that lets you buy an album from iTunes complete with extra material like bonus recordings, video footage, lyrics and more. This is the kind of package I was suggesting the record companies need to bring to CDs a couple of weeks ago in my post Record Companies Must Stop Being Stupid to Salvage CD Sales. By supplying these types of bonuses, Apple is luring the true fans to buy not just one or two great songs, but an entire package of music and multimedia in a move that should not only boost iTunes sales, but also salvages the idea of the complete album for a new generation of listeners.

One and Done

I know I probably sound old when I say it, but most albums these days only have one or two tracks worth buying, which is probably why young people have been conditioned to buy the couple of songs they like, rather than the whole package. Back in the day, we bought a vinyl album and we listened to the whole thing. As part of that experience, we learned to like the other tracks. And it turned out, they often were well worth listening to. Later the CD enabled us to skip tracks we didn't like, and a remote made that dead simple.

Digital Age

With the advent of iTunes, the idea of a whole package of music went out the window. People bought the songs …

It seems that Microsoft is now so threatened by Google that they have allegedly hired a high powered Washington lobbying firm to smear Google to government regulators. What's so interesting isn't that this approach is so petty and childish--although it is that--it's that Microsoft, rather than relying on the quality of its own products to grow the company, would rather "screw" one of its chief competitors. It's definitely a "wow" moment.

What They Are Doing

According to the AOL Daily Finance article--Microsoft Secret 'Screw Google' Meetings in D.C.-- where this story broke, the general purpose of this group of people is to talk trash about Google to government regulators and policy makers in order to throw road blocks in front of Google. Writer Sam Gustin says his sources describe the activities this way:

"...Microsoft is trying to harm Google in the regulatory, legal, and litigation arenas because they're having problems with Google in the competitive marketplace."

To Google's credit, the article goes onto say, when asked for a comment, they wouldn't bite (and why would they):

"Of course we keep an eye on what's happening in the industry," Google spokesman Adam Kovacevich says, "but the focus of our Washington advocacy has always been advancing good public policy for the Internet and our users."

Microsoft May Want To Be Careful on That Front

Microsoft has had its share of run-ins with government regulators both in the United States and in the European Union. …

A week ago today, the unthinkable happened. That's right, Gmail went down...for *two* hours. You would have thought, judging from the amount of chatter on Twitter that we were experiencing an epic attack, a horrible natural disaster, perhaps the end of life as we know it; but it was none of that. Just couldn't get our email for a couple of hours. I'm surprised the Obama administration didn't step in and declare a State of Emergency. It certainly seemed plausible based on the reaction to the outage.

My favorite tweet, which captured perfectly, the level of hysteria we were seeing on Twitter as people learned Gmail wasn't working, was this one:

@scalzi: MIN 30 OF GMAIL OUTAGE THE CITIES ARE IN FLAMES & PEOPLE EATING PETS TO SURVIVE.TO FUTURE GENERATIONS: WE MEANT WELL

What Went Terribly Wrong

The funny thing is that this was not a denial of service attack. It wasn't a North Korean hacker trying to bring the west to its knees by disrupting this most vital of services. No, it was good old fashioned human error. I know it's hard to believe that with all of the super smart people at Google that it's possible that one (or maybe a few of them) screwed up, but apparently that's what happened.

The Official Google Gmail Blog post on the outage described the cause this way:

"... At about 12:30 pm Pacific a few of the request routers became overloaded and in effect …

Apple Insider reports this morning that Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster is predicting that Apple will end its exclusive agreement with AT&T by next summer. This rumor has been out there for some time (as I wrote back in June in Is Apple Getting Ready to Dump AT&T?). The exclusivity agreement never really made sense to me, but as the market matures, it makes even less.

Look at RIM

If you want an example of a handset maker that has thrived with a multiple carrier strategy, look no further than RIM. Today, in the US, you can buy multiple flavors of the Blackberry including the Storm, the Flip, the Bold, The Curve or the Tour. Each carrier has its own particular flavors. For instance, AT&T has the Blackberry Curve 8320, while Verizon has the Curve 8330. They are essentially the same phone, tuned for each carrier's network? Could Apple do something similar?

The Multiple Carrier Strategy Works

Munster points out that Apple has already experimented with a multiple carrier approach in France and found it worked to increase their market share. I've found carrier choice is based mostly on how good the coverage is in your area. In my home, for instance, I've found that I can't get a good Verizon signal, so I'm inclined to stick with AT&T.

I have friends who pine for an iPhone, but are tied to another carrier because of a family plan with different contract …

All good points. I agree with your assertion about avoiding ads, but I also know from experience watching TV on the PC that I will put up with them to watch a show I like. My wife and I use the ABC player frequently and they drop in short ads throughout the show. You put up with it just as you do on TV because you want to watch the show. If you think about it, we are really trained to deal with ads in this way (even if we may ignore them and move onto something else).

That said, I like your idea of subscription and on demand pricing to avoid commercials and you may be right about this. This may very well be the future of TV watching, but there are still many, many people who don't use a DVR, On-Demand or any of the services you cite and these people are still watching commercials, so it could end up being some combination of the two.

Thanks for your thoughtful comment and for reading.

Ron

Years ago Marshall McLuhan uttered the famous phrase, "The medium is the message." He said this long before the World Wide Web. If he were alive today, he might have said something else: "He who controls the distribution method, controls the money." When you look at the Web's influence on media companies over the last 15 years, it's clear, whether we are talking about news, music or television programs, as the distribution channel has shifted to the web, these media companies have struggled mightily to adapt.

Newspapers

Newspapers as I've written in past have been notoriously bad at this. When I interviewed Scott Karp, who runs Publishing 2.0 last spring, he pointed out to me that newspapers lost control of the distribution channel when the business began to shift from the web. He argued that the newspaper's core business wasn't producing news or selling ads, and certainly not selling subscriptions which even in the heyday of newspapers only accounted for a fraction of its revenue.

No, he said, newspapers were in the business of getting that newspaper onto your front step every morning. They controlled the distribution channel back then. The web changed everything, and they basically watched while Google (and other search engines) took control of web content distribution.

Music

The music's industry's response to the internet has been clear. Send out the lawyers and try to litigate their way to success. But much like the …

It certainly has been a roller coast ride of a month for Apple, and it continued this week with news they had allowed an iTunes competitor, Spotify, to place an app in the App Store surprising many industry pundits who believed they would reject it. Meanwhile, earlier this week Apple showed its petty side by issuing a take-down notice on Tuesday to UK IT publisher, The Register for posting a review of Snow Leopard, the new Apple OS in violation of what Apple lawyers called "confidential trade secrets."

That would have been more than enough for the entire month, but they've dealt with rumors of a possible Tablet, lawsuits, an FCC investigation and oh yes, they released a new version of that Snow Leopard OS this morning (Am I the only one who mixes up versions because they are all feline names?). This month has shown Apple is a complex organization, perhaps more so than we had previously thought.

First, The Good News

PaidContent.org reports that Apple has approved an iPhone App from Spotify. This is significant because Spotify is an online music service that at least has the potential to compete with a core iPhone application, iTunes (which is also a significant revenue source for Apple). This probably has less to do with altruism on Apple's part, so much as fear of an anti-trust or anti-competitive action by the government. As previously reported, Apple …

You have to give Sony credit, they are really trying new strategies to wrestle eBook marketshare from the Amazon Kindle. This month they announced several new editions of the Sony Reader, including the brand new Reader Daily Edition, which should be in stores in time for the holiday shopping season. This comes on the heels of their recent announcement to support the open ePub ebook standard I wrote about last week in my post, Could Sony Open eBook Decision Pressure Amazon. I'm still not sure either Sony (or Amazon) has lowered the price on these units enough to give them mass appeal, but you have to like the effort.

Reader Daily Edition

The Reader Daily Edition finally gives Sony customers a wireless choice. I could never understand why Sony would require you to tether your Reader to get your eBooks . It's 2009 and consumers want to be able to get their books quickly and easily, and this version of the Reader provides that with wireless access on AT&T’s 3G mobile broadband network. This gives users access to Sony’s eBook store from just about anywhere in the U.S that is covered by AT&T's wireless network, but this new unit comes with a hefty price tag of $399.

The other two units announced this month, the Pocket Reader at $199 and the more feature-rich Touch for $299 give consumers cheaper options, but my take is that all units should be wireless at …

In a wide-ranging interview with the German Magazine Der Spiegel recently, the Head of Google Europe, Philipp Schindler, defended his company against the latest round of attacks from publishers who claim that Google is siphoning profits without creating content.

Truth be told, this argument is getting old and it suggests that the publishers themselves have abdicated any responsibility for their own lack of vision. The fact is that the newspaper industry has had years and years to deal with the internet and they never made any real attempt to rest control from Google, Craigslist or any of the other successful online ventures.

A Little History Lesson Might Help

If you consider that the web launched in the early 90s and commercialized by the mid-90s, that means that newspapers have had more than 15 years lead time. Also consider that the company they consider to be the big bad wolf of the internet, Google, didn't even exist before 1998 and didn't really become a force for several years after that.

Now consider that newspapers remained throughout the 90s, the main source of news and information. They had the content, but what they lacked was any foresight to take advantage of what was happening on the web. If you look at the web today, it's completely content-centric, yet newspapers whose main commodity has always been content have never been able to come up with creative solutions to deliver that content to the web while making money.

For years now, Apple has been on a heck of a ride creating pleasing products with a loyal customer base, but suddenly this month the tide seems to have turned, at least in the press. As my DaniWeb colleague, Davey Winder pointed out last week, the press jumped on numbers earlier this month that showed Apple's famed customer service was down a tick. It was literally a point from the previous surveys, yet some writers treated it as a turning point.

Maybe what's turned is that the press tired of Apple's infamous arrogance has suddenly turned on the Cupertino company. I didn't realize it myself until I started gathering links for a possible post on the programmer poaching battles going on between Apple, Palm and Microsoft when I began to see a clear pattern of bad news over last week.

Apple Attempts to Block Profile on Steve Jobs (August 17th)

In what amounts to a ridiculous attempt to control the press, Apple reportedly attempted to block a profile on Steve Jobs from being printed in the Sunday Times. Granted, the article is often over the top, and it's in my view even a bit silly in parts. I'm not sure why they would care or think they could wield that kind of influence. They could just let readers decide, but it's yet another example of Apple's attempt to constantly maintain control of the message.

Lawyer Wars with Psystar (August 20th)

In a move that could only be characterized as surprising, Sony announced last week that it was going to be using the open ePub eBook standard, which in theory should enable Sony Reader users to access and use any books created around the standard. Sony Readers will also be able to read Adobe PDFs and Adobe eBooks, both of which come with Adobe DRM. It's a complex announcement, but one thing is clear, Sony has laid down the gauntlet with Amazon, leaving it as the lone major proprietary reader. But is Amazon too big to care?

The Amazon eBook Erase Debacle

A couple of weeks ago I reported here in the post, Amazon Shows a Need for eBook Standards, what happens when one company controls both the device and the books you read on the device. In this particular case, Amazon determined that copies of 1984 and Animal Farm were illegal and simply removed them from owners' devices without warning. As you can imagine, it set off a firestorm of protest, but it also highlighted the need for standards. If users had been able to back up their copies and read them on any device, then it would likely have diminished Amazon's power to change or remove content from people's devices.

As I wrote at the time:

"The trouble with the Kindle approach is that Amazon is selling the Reader and they are selling eBooks, which can be …

Today Dynamite Records, a fixture in Northampton, MA for more than 27 years shut its doors. Probably doesn't matter to most of my readers, but consider this news against the backdrop of figures released this week by the NPD Group indicating that iTunes controls 25 percent of all US music sales in the US. What's more, they control 69 percent of all online music sales. Meanwhile, the news gets worse for the likes of Dynamite Records because the brick and mortar stores that sold the most CDs? WalMart and Best Buy.

CDs Still Dominate...For Now

Yet surprisingly, in spite of the bitching and moaning by record companies, CDs still accounted for 65 percent of overall music sales in the first half of this year. That was the good news says Russ Crupnick, vice president of entertainment industry analysis at NPD. The bad news is if the current trend continues, online sales will catch up to CD sales by the end of 2010.

"Many people are surprised that the CD is still the dominant music delivery format, given the attention to digital music and the shrinking retail footprint for physical products," Crupnick said "But with digital music sales growing at 15 to 20 percent, and CDs falling by an equal proportion, digital music sales will nearly equal CD sales by the end of 2010."

Ultimately, the format probably doesn't matter, but there is still a way to sell physical CDs that iTunes just can't touch.

I have the feeling if this Tablet comes out next month, and who knows if it really will, Apple will have solved these problems. But you raise some interesting issues and I hope they actually produce one so we can see how they deal with them. Thanks for taking the time to comment.

Ron

The whispers have been getting louder lately that Apple will be be announcing the long-rumored Tablet next month at its September keynote.

We have all learned that these rumors are often wrong and Apple moves at its own pace, but the idea of an Apple Tablet with a 10 inch touch-screen--effectively an iPhone with a large screen--is so intriguing that it's hard for a blogger like to me to ignore. That's why I've come up with a list of five reasons you'll want to own this baby if in fact it ever comes to fruition.

1. Super eBook Reader
As I wrote about in Apple eBook Reader Could Change Everything, a tablet could be Apple's entree into the eBook market. When interface guru, Jakob Nielsen analyzed the Kindle, he wrote that the interface was great for book reading, but it failed as an internet device. An Apple Tablet would be the best of both worlds. Folks already use the iPhone as an eBook reader, although the screen size makes it a bit uncomfortable reading for a long period of time. The Tablet would provide that larger form for more comfortable reading and it's an Apple, so you know the display and interface would be superb.

2. Watching Videos
On a recent plane trip, I used my iPhone to watch TV shows I had downloaded from the iTunes Store. I found it surprisingly comfortable watching video, but the …

I'm special, so special.
I got to have some of your attention, give it to me!
~Pretenders, Brass in Pocket

Ah the games companies play trying so hard to get our attention. For the last 6 weeks or so Microsoft has done a fine job of turning the media attention machine on itself, so you just knew that there was no way Google was going to sit still while Bing stole the spotlight. Uh-uh, no way - there was something coming. You could just feel it - and we're not talking about buying On2 last week. That may interest some video geeks, but it doesn't warrant mainstream attention like say changing the way you run your search engine.

Competition breeds innovation and the change cycle is fast and furious. I'm talking of course about Caffeine, the new search algorithm introduced by Google this week. Oh yes, this is definitely a call for attention. Got mine.

What's This All About

Google announced on Monday it was releasing an entirely new way to crawl and index the web. In their own words:

For the last several months, a large team of Googlers has been working on a secret project: a next-generation architecture for Google's web search. It's the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions.

Don't you love the weight of those words. Can't …

You have to give Steve Ballmer and Microsoft credit. After years of sitting on the sidelines playing defense and catch-up, this year they have definitely been on offense. Whether it's the ad wars, releasing Bing, the deal with Yahoo!, the retail strategy or its latest move, a deal with Nokia , the company known for being stodgy and slow seems to have finally awaken from its decade long slumber and is attempting to define the terms of the game. To that end, Ive decided to grade Microsoft on each of these moves.

Ad Wars - Grade: D

While the company is trying very hard to redefine itself to a new generation of buyers, the ads have mostly fallen flat. As I've written here before, the 'I'm a PC' and 'Laptop Hunters' fail to take into consideration that they sell an OS and not hardware. The Laptop Hunters got some traction, taking advantage of the weak economy and high price of Macs, but recent sales figures have shown that Macs are selling just fine (as I wrote in Lauren's Wrong: People Definitely Want Macs).

Bing - Grade: B- (but work still outstanding)

While I haven't been personally impressed with Bing when I've used it, it has captured the attention of the media. I like the interface (even if it's not totally original), but I've gotten mixed results when using it as my search tool. To be fair, some people love the …

Yesterday was the major league baseball trade deadline and lots of teams made big deals and took huge gambles for short-term gain, while possibly risking the future in the form of younger, cheaper, but unproven talent. Microsoft and Yahoo! also made a trade of sorts when they signed an historic agreement this week, a move I consider mostly mostly positive, but like the baseball deals, it could take years to figure out winners and losers. One thing is clear, however, I find the length of the agreement, and the decision to use Bing as Yahoo's underlying search engine, a huge gamble on search technology that was only released in June.

Takes Two to Tango

Microsoft and Yahoo! made a smart move when they combined their search offerings earlier this week. I've always said, the two are far more powerful together than they would ever be apart, and by joining ad sales forces and advertising technologies, they could act as a powerful check against Google's Search market dominance. The search market is now a much more competitive place, and that almost always bodes well for the consumer, but the devil, as they say is in the details, and the details have some questionable elements.

Why Bing?

The most curious part of the agreement to me was to go with Bing, which has proven popular out of the gate, but has not been around long enough to measure even one quarter's market …

Word came out yesterday that AT&T didn't have a great quarter (which ironically sent the stock price soaring because it wasn't as bad as expected). This loss seemed perplexing to me given that Apple reported its numbers earlier this week (as I wrote in Lauren's Wrong: People Definitely Want Macs), and Apple reported selling more than 5 million iPhones in the quarter. With AT&T as the exclusive distributor of iPhones in the US and the beneficiaries of at least part of those huge numbers, you would think they would have had themselves a nice little quarter too, riding along on Apple's coat tails, but they didn't in real terms.

The reason is that AT&T has to subsidize each one of those iPhones that they sell losing hundreds of dollars per phone, but don't cry for AT&T just yet because what they lose on the front end, they make up on the back end.

Those Pesky Data Fees

For the privilege of owning one of these iPhones, AT&T has you sign a 2 year contract with a hefty monthly data fee of $30.00. By the way, if you want unlimited texting it's another $20 ($30 for the whole family and if you have a teen worth every penny - trust me) and of course, there is the phone plan itself which costs at a minimum $39.99. So it takes some time for AT&T to get its money back, but after a few months …

Apple released its third quarter numbers yesterday and by any benchmark they were impressive. Consider these numbers as reported by Macworld:

* $8.34 billion in sales and a net profit of $1.23 billion
* 5.2 million iPhones
* 10. 2 million iPods
* 2.6 million Macs (of which1.75 million were laptops)

It's impressive by any standards, but according to AppleInsider it represents the best non-holiday quarter ever. Think about that, then consider we are still in the midst of a massive recession, it's even more astounding.

So Much for Laptop Hunters

A story came out the other day that Microsoft COO Kevin Turner claims an Apple lawyer called him to complain about the 'Laptop Hunter' ad campaign. Let me file this under the "I find this very hard to believe," but in the age of digital media, the story found some traction. If it happened in the time frame Turner claims, one would assume that Apple had these numbers in hand, and unless the lawyer was acting on his or her own, I'm not convinced the incident ever happened.

If the Microsoft ads combined with economy are supposedly having such a dramatic effect on Apple's bottom line, how come they had such a successful quarter? I'm sure Steve Jobs is hoping that Microsoft's ads have an even bigger impact on his company next quarter if this the result.

iPhone and iPods

And …