Android Beats Apple: Part 1, Android, the underdog? Upsets iPhone in Q2 Deathmatch

Ben

The news reports over the last few days that Android handsets outsold iPhone in Q2 are misleading hyperbolic and dare I say possibly irrelevant.

Except for this...  No one gets to win.

No one gets to win.  I know, it make for terrible headlines but Apple and Google have already won seats at the table.  The players yet to be introduced are HP, and Microsoft, and the legacy players that could resurrect themselves Blackberry and Nokia.  The goal is different for each of them but what they seek most from the vast mobile market is not so much dominance as relevance.

It is in this context that Q2 sales reports are a big win for Google Android.

Google decided long ago that they needed to have a presence in the mobile space Must read Google Blog entry from Sept 2008 about the future of Mobile

The only reason Google bought developed and released Android for free was to insure a future with Google ads in it.  It was entirely possible that the mobile phone market might have developed without an effective way for Google to sell ads.  (perish the thought) My original view was that Google had modest ambitions and wanted to control the mobile space enough to insure that they would have a seat at the table.  That was before iAds (and the dark times...)  I was way under shooting the mark of how fractured the market would become and as a result how important it would be that Android be very successful in its own right.  What the recent news articles confirm is that the incredible sales growth, speed of development and diversity of options of the Android Platform virtually guarantee Google will be selling ads to millions that are served to billions of users using mobile platforms in the future.

As Nokia Will tell you (111million device sales at an average price of 61 EUR and a net profit of about 90 cents a unit... ouch!).  Unit sales do not translate into profits.  Google has a working model in search but the metaphor for how we relate to our date could change drastically over the next few years (hello FlipBook).  and their goal will be to make sure that the investments they have made in Maps, Nav, Docs, Mail, and operating systems will insure they have plenty of fertile advertising ground.  (they will)

Author is Long Apple and wishes he was smart enough to buy Google when it came out at $90.

Subscription Friction: Time Inc bumping up against Apple Restrictions.

Peter Kafka writes about the magazine industry (Time) struggling to figure out what to do about iPad.

Charge for an app and you get paid but get no customer data (Apple keeps it) and Apple has rejected their sign in app where the model would be similar to the WSJ where you pay Rupert and get a sign-on that gives you access to the paper/Magazine. Magazines want to be able to sell subscriptions and get data about their buyers so that they can market themselves to advertisers. Paying a 30% vig to Apple and not getting any subscription data sows not sound like a winning combination. There are plenty of examples of apps that receive revenue and data about their customers but are still applications in the app store. Just not magazines.

Think about this: Noe Apples point of view. What is the question Apple is trying to answer/control?  lets assume for a moment that Apple is OK with magazines external sales then comes the question... What is a magazine?  What is effectively different about buying a subscription to Time and buying a subscription to Angry Birds? Every addition step into the structure of the marketplace they are building has huge implications for iPad,Apple and the entire competitive landscape being build around portable connections.


Brave New World

iPad apps/ magazines / media are not going to look like their real world counterparts for very long. We are going to invent (royal we) new ways to consume information that could be radically different from the way we do today

Antennagate the Because we Can't Let it Go Edition

First it aint over...  Antennagate is guaranteed to be in the news at least thru September when they either announce more free cases OR as Steve said in the briefing  Who knows maybe we will have figured out something better by then.

I thought it made sense to apply a little critical though (ok very little)  to Antennagate the press conference.  

What is interesting  about the drop call rate is that according to Anand Lal Shimpi from Anandtech (on TWIT Sunday iTunes link) the iPhone 4 really does have a measurably more sensitive antenna and will hold onto a call in weaker areas better than previous iPhones but then he went onto explain that that in their testing the iPhone4  did have more dropped calls in stronger signal areas where the iPhone 3GS did not.  Are you fascinated yet  I mean this is scintillating stuff!  OK so what you say is the point. 

Add the fact that Steve Made clear in his presentation that they actually do not know why the drop rates are higher than the 3GS.

What if the antenna is in fact performing exactly as designed and the drops have nothing to do with the antenna?   ( I know but you can put your finger on the thing and the bars drop forget about the frickin bars for a minute)

As one possibility not because I think this is the solution but just as an example... What if the issue is something different about the way the software controls the radio in medium signal areas (ostensibly to improve battery life) that is buggy or needs tweaking?

Other stuff

It also seemed very clear to me that Consumer reports sucker punched Apple.  They effectively outlined the problem, and posed what they thought was solution.  Apple came out and provided the solution Consumer reports telegraphed would make them happy and BLAM not good enough.  

Why just AT&T returns?  I mean why not Apples?  look no black hats here just a weird omission.

I have seen it other places but the whole 1 out of a hundred thing was intentionally designed to minimize the size of the issue.  based on all the numbers I have seen none of which may be right the droped call difference is somewhere between 10 and 50% worse than the iPhone 3gs.  Try this.... Only one more out of a hundred flights crash  ( you get the point)

Look this is a real issue but it is not the reason not to buy the phone.  Apple looks standoffish they (Steve) says stupid things but over time when confronted with issues with their products Apple has  the right thing

Look for my semi annual where is my dividend rant coming soon to this blog...

Apple Refuses to give away Computers: This investor Cheers!!

$899 computer....  

Apple said their margins were going to get squeezed over the next year and the whole world thought.  Oooohh Apple's giving away free stuff!  (However unlikely I thought it was a possibility too)

Real back of the envelope stuff here but here it is.  Apples PPU (Price per unit) on computers of all kinds fell only 80 bucks from the year ago quarter.  

If Apple dropped the price of the lowest price laptop by $200 bucks and since the product mix favors sales of the lower price laptops a $200 price drop would have an outsized effect on the average.  combine that with the falling price on the Air and average PPU could drop by $200 would mean that just to maintain revenue equal to last quarter they would have to sell 20% more computers just to maintain their 3.6 Billion in Revenue.

So here is the take home.  If the business is growing. and revenue is growing.  Don't give up margin.

Apples cost to make a less expensive (at retail) computer is only pennies cheaper than making a more expensive one.  Apples strategy has and apparently will be (until it is not) to try and add further value to convince us that we do not want a $600 laptop.  (In fact Apples average PPU will be crushed this quarter anyway because of the Back to School promo but will be similar YOY)

I will write some more later on the effect this has on Earnings Growth prospects for next year.

Here are some related links

Reasons for Narrower Margins

Earnings release next week

Apple Crushes Dell

Why Apple should pay a dividend

Is Apple stock cheap?

Writer is Long Apple and is depressed that the Red Sox cannot beat the team from Tampa.  If your depressed you may be a Red Sox Fan too.  Don't love the Red Sox it only brings pain.  Love Apple but not because of Writer OR the Red Sox

iPhone/Safari Search Revenue

Mozilla receives 

Apparently v.2.2 of the iPhone Firmware includes a google search-bar on the top and right of the address bar just like in a "real" browser.

Revenue is the answer to the question you were going to ask.  Apple cut a deal with Google to put the search bar

 there and will receive income for how much it is used. 

Mozilla received the lions share of its income, $57 Million from Google for the Google branded search bar on it's browser last year.  Apple earns money on the iPhone/Safari browser too.

The back of the envelope...   Mozilla search share implies that 1% of search is worth ~$10 million from Google.  A month ago iPhone represented .3% of the Browser market or ~$3 million dollars worth of search.  It does not sound like much but wait a year.  When there are 50 million of these things on the ground the revenue will be $10s of millions of dollars.

Look, tens of millions of dollars is a lot of money even to a company that earned more than 4 billion dollars in the last year.

Just as an aside when I say iPhone I mean iPhone AND iPod Touch.  Don't be so offended shees.

iBrick: "Revolutionary" SALES Process...

Look There may be a "Revolutionary Manufacturing process" code named iBrick (I LOVE code names!). But in advance of being proven incorrect. I call bullshit.

1, Customers do not care about "Process" if it makes the product better GREAT we love it but sans improvement no sales. So for example the laptop were more ridged or significantly lighter or better at dissipating heat. it would be killer.

2, If there is a "process" why would it have to be here and Apple building factories? Double Bullshit!. One of the reasons Apple is so Profitable is they do not own factories or huge backlogs of inventory. It also provides them flexibility in product design, and does not mary them to plant and equipment that can (READ WILL) become obsolete.

3, As an example. Dell and AMD have BOTH announced in recent weeks that they are selling off factories and ramping up orders from third party manufacturers in an effort to cut costs. I point this out just as a corporate reality of the immense cost of owning manufacturing. Dell and AMD are not companies that Apple should generally be emulating (Apple=good, Dell=huh?)

Really revolutionary would be having the iBrick sold on street corners by Earthfriend Jen. "Would you like some water or Hemp with that?"

I'm just sayin.

Psystar Delays Delays Delays

Last Week Apple filed for dismissal of Psystar's Anti-Trust countersuit filed in California.  There is an excellent summary of what is going on along with links to all the public documents over at Groklaw (LINK)  .  

The next pertinent date appears to be Nov 6th when the judge could rule on the request for dismissal.  In the mean time Psystar has until Oct 15th to file some counter arguments to the request for dismissal.  Should the case not be dismissed it would appear to my non legal mind that this "ADR" agreement moves the case out of the court and into private mediation.  Private mediation would mean no more public documents.

Where is the fun in that?!

Just as a reminder, I am not a lawyer, (nor did I play one on TV) I barley passed english and most everything I write is made up.  Except for the disclaimers nothing here is presented as fact.

Apple: a Berkshire Hathaway Company

Apple would be a great fit for Mr. Buffet.  And since he is on a buying spree...

Apple's stock closed Thursday at $100.10 a share a new 52 week low.  Their market cap is now less than 90 billion dollars soooo anyone wanna team up with Warren and  buy a computer company?  

You and your new business partner Warren Buffet can buy Apple Co. today for less than 100 Billion dollars.  Here is what you get... for the low low price of $90 billion dollars.  You get 4.5 billion in earnings (TT) growing at 25-35%. [maybe more!] and 27 Billion in current assets!

27 Billion!  

You and your buddy Warren will get Apple for 61 billion dollars (88-27)  which is effectively 13.5x trailing earnings.  Why?  you say are you and your partner Warren interested in this clearly suffering company (stock price down 50% YTD)?  

• Sustainable world wide growth (at a significant discount)
  
• Unsurpassed brand loyalty, 
  
• FAT margins (albeit narrower than historically)  
  
• Best in class products (Mobile computing, Computers, Music Players)
  

Apple has finance all of its amazing growth over the last 8 years from available cash flow, so has no debt and the best employees in silicon valley

Realistically a takeover of Apple would cost significantly more than the current stock price and it's not like the world is flush in takeover capital right now.  The point is that this is a crazy successful and strong company with huge prospects for the future.  What multiple would you pay for Dell's 3% margin, GM's millions in losses, the entire finance industry's mystery balance sheets?

Writer is long Apple and loves his mother.  You should love your mother but Apple is up to you.  Do not suppose that writer is suggesting other than loving your mother.  Your finance decisions are yours alone.

Amherst College The Land of Mac Tech

Amherst College.  Appleland

Approximately 1/2 the incoming class of Amherst College (2012) has an iPhone or iPodTouch.  YOW! And is more likely to own a MAC (laptop) than a PC.  14 poor souls trudged to campus with desktops.  I suspect that at least half of these guys are first order geeks that wanted desktops, the rest just could not convince Dad to pony up.  

While that stuff is cool the Earth shattering number is that 1/3rd of the incoming class of 2003 applied online.  89% of this years class applied online.  That is dramatic.  

5 ...  Number of students with a landline phone.  FIVE.  

The world is changing.  Quickly.

Despite all the change that has occurred over the last thirty years we have only just begun to see the changes that will effect all of our lives as a result of the Personal Computing Revolution.

Apple and The Troubles

So I'm at the mall yesterday looking for a gift for my daughter who is turning 13. She wants an iPod capable speaker set up for her bedroom. (Madness I tell you).

Anyway, I wander into the Apple store and am greeted by 1 and then 2 and then a group of 3 helpful Apple employees, which leads me to look around and notice that I am one of maybe 3 customers in the store... AT LUNCHTIME. So my buddy and I stop at a local restaurant for lunch and overhear the waitresses talking... "This is even slower than yesterday".

Is it possible that all the shoppers went to Washington with John McCain yesterday?

Look we don't know where the economy is now, only after the fact to we have any clue what happend so I won't say recession or depression instead I will refer to our current economic situation as The Troubles. Cool huh, non committal but ominous.

Look, Apple is great, the iPhone is going to sell like hotcakes, maybe 40-50 million units next year alone. As of today (or by the end of year) The iPhone will be available in 72 countries!

Earnings will break records every quarter. Just not as fast as it would have been. Whatever was left of the US Economy has been ripped to shreds over the last couple of weeks. Apple does not exist in a vacuum sales will be negatively effected. How negatively effected is anyones guess but it is all but assured that sales will be off.

So, when Peter Openheimer stands up on October 21st (aprox) he will announce record earnings, unprecedented growth, and the stock will get killed on very conservative future earnings estimates (unless it doesn't). Mr. Oppenheimer will take several questions regarding the Troubles but will as he has in the past decline to comment on the economy or how much it plays into Apples earnings estimates going forward

Apple's earnings will be less that what they might have been but they are the best in class competitor in all the business segments they compete in (computers, handsets, music players) and will be the dominant player in these segments when the troubles are over in maybe 15 years (I know not funny)

Bet on the long term

Writer loves breakfast cereal and is long Apple. Eat whatever cereal you like but don't do it because this guy said so. Same with Apple.

Podcaster... GooMo (Android) is Calling

Yesterday Apple shut down the back door that Alex Sokirynsky was using to distribute Podcaster.  

Duh 

Podcaster duplicates iTunes Podcast distribution function.  This is a core feature of the iPhone/iTunes environment and one that Apple will not allow to be duplicated.  

Duh

There is no mystery here you could write/develop the coolest program in the world, if it duplicates core functionality of the existing iPhone it will be rejected.  Apple is not going to release a press release that says what it feels it has already communicated to developers and the developers have nothing to lose by bitching about big bad Apple.  Sokirynsky will take his resentment/skills to another platform, for which Apple may pay a price. 

Many respected voices in the intertubes have voiced the opinion that Podcaster does not duplicate any functionality of Apple Software.  Some of these voices distribute podcasts (that I like) so they may have a little bit of a blind spot.  Podcaster distributes podcasts wirelessly. 

Podcaster is a program that might have been used to stream podcasts directly from an iPhone/Touch wirelessly. Soon to be available on an Android phone near you.

 Related Tidbit

There were 88 new applications posted to iTunes last night. 3927 applications total 900 in the last two weeks!

Android comes to Play: GooMo and the Future

Ahhh the future.  Three weeks ago we knew there would always be investment banks....

The first "GPhone" is being released today and so is born the first credible competition for the iPhone.  Do not misunderstand, the phone released today could be terrible.  

It is the first credible competition for the iPhone.  Google does not care about the device, they continue to look for ways to expand and protect their search and advertising franchise.

Great Article by Greg Sterling outlines the market and how the iPhone has been really a "proof of concept"  device that will lead to other, more and better devices.  Regardless of what WinMo and Blackberry had done up until the iPhone was introduced, they did not actually get used in a way that makes the internet the internet.

There are a lot of WinMo and Blackberry devices sold and in use, its just that they are not used for anything but texting and email.  (as measured by hits )  [if WinMo is WinMo, should Android be GooMo?]

To Google the internet is advertising and the "Mobile internet" is the future.  Andy Rubin points out in the Google Blog There are more mobile phones in use today by people that have NEVER had a PC (of any kind) than there are currently PC's.  To grow Google must be as ubiquitous in Mobile as they are on our desktops.  It is not important to Google that Android be anything but a minor success, they just need it to be enough of a threat to insure that Google will continue to serve mobile advertising on many devices.

So later today when people are talking about how Great or terrible the actual device is remember that this is the first of what will be MANY from many competitors.  WinMo will eventually be trashed by Microsoft and they will start from scratch and there may be even more players that we have never heard of that will innovate their way into the space.  The point is that in a couple of years there will be better internet enabled phones than we have now available from a number of sources.  

Today is the day that Apple begins to give up some of its 100% market-share in the next generation of mobile platforms. (of which the iPhone is the only current offering).  

We know that there will be insane growth in this market for the next couple of years and that we all will get to benefit from innovations in the devices /methods / cost.  We do not know what those devices would be.   For the Near term iPhone will play "PC" to Googles "Mac"/Android.  It will be fun to watch.

I'm Earth Friend Jen and I'm a PC!

As most of you have likely seen, Microsoft is running a new batch of commercials extolling us that we should all want to be  PCs,  by showing us all the people that "Are" PC's that we might like to be like.  

Since as it turns out the commercials produced by Crispin, Porter + Bogusky were produced on Macintosh computers Microsoft should get Earthfriend Jen to do a cameo on their new I'm a PC commercial because as you may have already guessed EFJ (yea were tight) is produced on a Mac too.

Jen Moss is a woman who promotes the use of hemp as clothing and water as a healing force by parading nearly nude around Ojai, CA.

Try these!

I wear nothing... and I'm a PC

or I'm a PC and I'm an earth friend...

From her home page:

 “Treat the earth well:  It was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children.  We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors.  We borrow it from our Children.”--Ancient Indian Proverb

The cool thing is that since EFJ (yea we are that close) produced her home page on a Mac just like the I'm A PC commercials.

All links from this blog should be safe for work.  link from the link at your own risk

Apple Vs. Dell: Bad Markets and growth prospects

So Holy crap is the world ending or what?

Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac,  Lehman Brothers, AIG, Bear Stearns.  All out of business.  Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Washington Mutual teeter on the brink.  

Does Wall Street think Apple is an investment bank?   (PS they have more cash)

Here is an interesting factoid.

YTD Dell and Apple stocks have performed identically (Down 30%), This is nearly meaningless but it makes a nearly meaningless point. (The irony is not lost on me)

Dell is the largest (sometimes second largest behind HP) manufacturer of personal computers in the world.  They are a formidable company that makes a lot of hardware.  But heres the thing.  They sell commodity boxes with a median price point between 6-700 bucks and despite a ridiculous 16.4 Billion in Sales last quarter made $746 Million   That sounds like a lot but here is the take home message.  Their margin is 17% and their Net per share 3.5%  

Apple on the other hand despite being only 4th and making a fraction of the unit and dollar sales of Dell maintained a margin literally DOUBLE 34.8% and net earnings more than 4x Dells. (14.3%).  Apple  Netted 1 billion dollars on 7.4 Billion in sales in the 2nd (their 3rd) quarter.  

Much of the price of a stock is the prospects for future earnings that investors believe the firm has  So what are the prospects of these two firms?  Maybe the sense is that people will buy a Dell instead of a Mac because of the impending foreclosure on the family home? After all Walmart's sales are up this year at the expense of more expensive retailers. Steve Jobs health (why do we say health when what we mean is death?) is a continuing issue, maybe investors are not convinced that the iPhone is the game changer we think it is?  

Dell

Dell has nowhere to go.  They are the price competitor the "low cost manufacturer" that can sell for less than you and still make money.  NO MORE.  Dell is not the low cost manufacturer as evidenced by the fact they are selling manufacturing facilities world wide.  So here is why that matters The price competitor has to be the low cost competitor or.... well you get the idea.  Dell's sales are growing at a pace with or slightly behind the industry as a whole.  Dell cannot and will not become a high margin competitor and by the very nature of the fact that they are at the commodity end of the business cannot grow faster than the industry.

Apple

Apple on the other hand is the innovator, they sell computers that sell for an average price of well over a thousand dollars.  In fact as recently as the second quarter Apple computers represented 66% of ALL computers sold for more than one thousand dollars.  The computer business represents about 45% of their total business and is growing at between 35-50% per year currently.  Their iPod business is flat but very profitable and the iphone business is growing exponentially (but will remain marginal for the next couple of quarters)

Now after having said all this if you had to buy ONE of these stocks which one do you think will have higher returns over the next 5 years?  One more Question... If you were the commodity manufacturer and were looking for a new market to grow into do you think you would want to build computers that could run the Mac OS? Like say Psystar? 

Author is long Apple, this is not advise but you really should call your mother.

When the "Rest of us" want more: a switchers parable

So here is a partial proprietary and perhaps even parsimonious LIST of things Apple has not made better for "Switchers"

These are things that, as a Mac User you know are there, and dread them coming back to haunt you.  You have seen the light and have carried much water for Jobs & Co. convincing the great unwashed that the thing they need to do, the ONE thing that will make their computing life more complete,  is to switch to a Macintosh.

Having done so, said unwashed person comes to you a couple of weeks after getting their Mac Pro/iMac and says agitatedly....

Where is the right click?  Well you say, if you just hold down the Control button when you click that will bring up the same menu functionality...  WHAT.  ADD  A RIGHT CLICK  the single mouse click thing was tired in 1994, now it's just stupid.

There is no Print Screen button on the keyboard.  How do I Make a screen print?  Your friend asks.  Well,  you can give them this list, but be careful,  because Macs support many different image types that are often not supported on the PC.  Nothing worse than Opening up a presentation on a PC and having none of the images you worked so hard to steal/find be there.  Damn you Tiff.

Why can't I play video?  Oh you can just not WMV video. without downloading.  Flip 4 Mac  ignore ALL the adds and get the FREE one.  This functionality should exist out of the box, really.

Why cant I Control-C/V/B/X/Z?  Oh you can you just have to scrunch up your pinky and use the command button instead.  WHAT?  The Mac is not Windows and this little penance will remind you how lucky you are to have such a wonderful machine.  

Here's an Idea, how about a Switchers panel on the Systems Preferences panel that will let you customize some of these "features" so that people can work in an environment that is comfortable for them.  That way the people that we convince that the Mac really is a better computing environment won't want to beat us unmercifully (as often, I really am a slacker) .

iPhone/Touch/App Store Vs. Nintendo DS

So, why if you had the alternative of the iPod Touch would someone buy a DS for their kid.

If current pricing in the App store for major publisher games holds (5.99-9.99 per game) the iPod Touch is the less expensive option if you buy more than 5 games.  Even cheaper if you have 2 kids since one purchase on iTunes will legitimately sync on a number of iPhones/Touches.

No Lost games, bigger screen, cheaper to own.  The only current Nintendo advantage is a large (huge actually) library of existing games.

Developers must like it too because distributing thru iTunes they have zero packaging costs as well as much lower distribution and sales cost. (Typical cut for publishers at retail is 50%  vs. the 70% at the App Store) it is clear with both EA and THQ now producing iPhone/iTunes content that the publishers are sold on the platform.

This market will not be as big as the iPhone but since 2004,  77 million DS's have been sold.   5-20 million Touches a year would be a very nice number. 

The iPod Touch is a much more flexible platform for any kind of software development but is super for games.  The open question remains... Will the market agree with my impeccable logic?

Edit ya I left out that the iPod is in fact an iPod.  

App Store Blogstorm

So there is this kerfuffle regarding the App store.  On the one hand we have Gruber.  Defender of the liberal arts and on the other Mike Arrington of Tech Crunch defender of well gravity.

  

Gruber/Arrington make very different arguments so you would think that they could not both be right but they are.  The thing that makes this argument cool is that we are free to assign whatever motive we want to Apple since we have no way to know what really happened.

Gruber is right, Gruber is Always right (Daring Fireball.net )

It’d be different if Apple had published an explicit rule stating, for example, that podcasting apps are prohibited. But there is no such guideline. Podcaster seems to fully comply with Apple’s published guidelines, and yet it was rejected for violating a secret rule....

The point is not that Apple can’t reject apps arbitrarily. They can. Elsewhere in the SDK Agreement is a more or less wildcard clause that grants Apple the right to reject apps — and remove apps which were previously accepted — for whatever reasons it chooses. The point isn’t about what Apple can do but what they should do.

And they shouldn’t be doing this. 

Gruber gets hot about an issue once every couple of weeks and lets fly all of his substantial edumicated smoothyness.   Slick awsome and right.  He represents that part of us for the world as we would like it to be.  He is hopeful, but unyielding and ultimately willing to make a go/no go decision based on something that is a poor compromise.

Arrington:

The fact is that there are more than twelve million iPhones in people’s hands today, and another800,000 or so are likely sold each week. That is too much of an opportunity to pass up. Developers will complain, but ultimately they’ll play by whatever rules Apple demands. Even if those rules are ambiguous and subject to change regularly without notice.

Arrington is right, I mean he is seriously correct.  This is what will happen.  I like Arrington too, it's just that I don't want to agree with him.  He is drive, ambition, business everything I admire in someone that likely feeds his family.

The downside of Arrington's argument is that it means we live in that world that is not fair, where we don't necessarily like the choices we have at any given time.  There is this MBA/Machiavelli thing that while right is a little to grown up.  

(Daniel Dilger is involved in the argument too but besides being pedantic I don't think I like him and three ways are sooo confusing)

As an aside.  The App store continues to Explode with Apps.  Four Hundred have been added since last weeks iPod show (3405 current total). Including todays release of The Force Unleashed.  This is the first release on the App store by THQ and further evidence that the iPhone/iPod Touch are going to be taken VERY seriously as a gaming device.

Update:  Fake Steve Jobs Weighs in at his lucid best: Blow Blogstorm Blowww.

You are not the problem, your computer is

Computers are hard to use.

I am "Tech Support" for a half a dozen different folks (In quotes because my minions think my knowledge is vast and magical, it is neither)

 Based on feedback I am guessing a fair number of you dear readers do the same for folks in your lives.  It is astounding to me how difficult it all is.  I mean here we are, 30 years, into the personal computing revolution (whatever that is) and computers are still so hard to use for so many people that much of the time they just give up.  

The irony is that despite huge advances in hardware and software in terms of capacity, speed and cost (faster, better, cheaper) it is often times more difficult to do things today than it was 25 years ago. 

My Buddy Andrew is a writer.  He is old enough to know better but young enough to still try new things.  I work with him about an hour a month just finding documents, reseting menus adding subversive links to his browser window.  Heres a question, WHY after 25-30 years of producing Word does Microsoft lose "Normal" and replace it with "Draft".  Even if it is more "Correct" Don't you think that after 25 years folks had likely adapted? 

If there were a way to have one computer, that you could use forever, that would be cool.  Because whatever the failings of the machine you would have long ago adapted to the particular way it wants to do things.  Even if it were just metaphorically, you could work in OSX with Word with a 1983 Wordperfect menu system...Cool.

How many people do you know use style sheets? (2 and you don't like them) Use Excel for everything from lists to letters?  (oh my god half the office?) Use keyboard shortcuts? Backup? 

The really funny thing is that we are willing to tolerate old things that work in proprietary products.  For Example HP has been selling the HP-12c financial calculator since 1981.  It still sells well for 70 bucks a pop and likely costs about 3 bucks to make.  

I guess what I am saying is that however far we have come. And it does seem like a ways.  Is NOTHING compared to where we are going.  Good Design is astoundingly difficult.  Someday tech will progress to the point where things really are "easy" to use for everyone. But that day is a long way off.

iPhone Hangover: The unfair expectations of the CGE!

When you have invented the coolest gizmo ever (CGE), everything that follows is ...   well ...  not the CGE.

Every Apple announcement cannot be the iPhone, Get over it.

Yesterday Apple introduced slick sequels to their iPod line of products and updated iTunes. They told us ahead of time what the purpose of the event.   The event went off pretty much as planned.  YET everyone went home feeling empty and sad.  Apple will sell between 25-30 million of these things between now and christmas that is impressive.

The problem is that at MacWorld in 2007 Steve Jobs Apple  changed expectations about what comes out of cupertino forever.  Nothing (Never say never but really NOTHING) can be as exciting as the introduction of the iPhone/coolest gizmo EVER (CGE for short)   And no matter how much we rationally thing about what is going to happen today, we hold out in the back of our feeble little Apple loving minds the hope that something magical like that time... back in 07....CGE... NOOOoooo

It does not help that the last several of these events have been anti-climatic since virtually everything but the color of the product is know ahead of time.  The leaks are a factor of the crazy fast growing size of Apple and its "affiliates" and likely cannot be changed.. but it does remove some of the magic of the reveal.

It also does not help that we have 47 year old men showing us how to play video games, DUDE. Schiller might has well have been wearing a leisure suit for how cool this was.   Truthfully the segment felt like filler for something that was not there.

There are the unreasonable unthoughtful expectations like iPods for $100 bucks or cheerful John Dvoraks, but this is different.  No matter what you thought was going to happen today it just was a little empty.  

You cannot invent the iPhone every year.

Jobs: 10 Million iPhone Goal Reached!

Apple is telling the press that todays "Lets Rock event will be big because...

Steve Jobs will announce iPhone Sales to date and Apple may have reached their self imposed goal of  10 million iPhones for  calendar year 2008 3.5 months ahead of schedule. 

If the folks on the IMEA project at Investor Village are to be believed.  

To do this Apple has sold close to 6 million phones in the not yet complete September quarter. 

The Christmas quarter has always been big for Apple and iPhones are available in more places every day (point is that sales are going UP not staying flat or falling)  Should they sell 2.5-3 million phones a month for the rest of the year there could be between 17-20 million iPhones sold in Calendar year 2008.  Analysis is here   

Charles Jade had it on Sept 2nd