MacCast 04.22.2010 - Show #299

Media/Links

Opening

Opening Music

Music is "Say Anything" by Manda and the Marbles

Band's MySpace page

myspace.com/mandathemarbles

Sponsor

Smile on My Mac

TextExpander 3 and TextExpander Touch

smileonmymac.com

I'm loving fill-in snippets. Like mail-merge at expand time. Useful for snippets where you need just a few items or parts to have dynamic info.

TextExpander Touch has a great list of integrated apps

Tweetie 2, Twittelator Pro, Task Paper, WriteRoom, etc.

Sync snippets from the desktop.

Works on the iPad, too.

Free trial

News

Next gen iPhone lost, found, and exposed

The myth is becoming of Paul Bunyan proportions but some facts are coming to light

An Apple engineer lost a prototype iPhone

Gizmodo paid $5,000 to get it about a month ago? They played, fondled, videoed, photographed, inspected, disassembled and did just about everything but return it.

Apple asked for it back

What's wrong with this story

How "Gizmodo" came to "acquire" the device.

They paid for it after being contacted by the "finder". Engadget was also contacted, but turned it down on advice of their lawyers.

Gizmodo has always been open about their willingness to pay for stories. they even have offered "bounties".

Gizmodo has a reputation of being "less than professional" at times

TVBGone's at CES

I liken them to the TMZ of tech journalism

Gawker also owns Valleywag, BTW.

I get why they wanted the device and I don't blame them for reporting the features, etc.

They "outed" the engineer who lost the device. Bad karma.

Here's what they discovered:

Forward facing camera

LED Flash

Larger camera

Higher res 960x460 display

Flat back, Black plastic (possibly ceramic?), separated round volume buttons.

Second mic input (noise cancellation?)

Micro sim slot on side

3 grams heavier, slightly thinner

16% larger battery

Is this the iPhone 4G?

Both John Gruber and the iFix-it crew say it's likely very close to what we'll see.

I'm not sure I agree

It should be late stage testing, but this unit is a month old.

The case has seems, flat is cheap, easy to get on and off. jeff Gamet and Andy Ihnatko point out.

Round volume buttons are lame.

Apple could always remove features at the last minute. iPod Touch, iPad camera?

The "other" theft this week

A guy in Colorado lost his iPad and part of his finger in a mall robbery

This just sickens me and I hope these guys are caught and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

Apple Q2 results are amazing

Best non-holiday quarter ever

Sales of $13.5 billion and a profit of $3.07 billion for Q2 of 2010, up 49% from same quarter a year ago.

2.94 million Macs in the quarter, up 33%. Desktops sales up 40% (likely due to 27" iMac) and Notebooks up 28%

8.75 Million iPhones, up 131%. International expansion and more carrier partners a factor.

iPod sales down 1% with Apple selling 10.89 million units

iPads weren't sold in this quarter, but Apple did say they have moved 500,000 units in the first week.

Retail Store revenue was up 22%. 50% of buyers in Apple stores are still new to the Mac.

Hinted that they are excited for the new product line up ahead.

Other interesting comments

See iPad as an independent category

Not worried about netbooks

Not worried that it will cannibalize iPod or iPhone sales

Doesn't see iAds as an place for earning this year

AppleTV sales up 34%, but still a "hobby".

They run the App Store at just above break even, not a profit center

Thursday Apple's Market Cap hit $242 billion making it the 2nd largest company on the S&P 500 putting it ahead of Microsoft and behind Exxon Mobile

iPhone OS 4 features start to leak out

iPhone Central points out "Document Support"

Actually in 3.2 for iPad.

Allows 3rd party apps to "register" themselves as handlers for certain file types.

Pop-up has Quick Look and "Open in..." options.

Quicklook uses private API for now, so only Apple apps.

Apple released the second iPhone OS Beta

Improvements to multitasking and background processing features.

New multitasking UI animation for switching between apps.

Game Center Improvements

Expanded Internet Mail support

Sites already talking next gen iPad

iPad is selling very well

Apple claims over 500,000 units so far

Network World reports that Chitika Research, an ad network, surveyed 75,000 tablet devices and via IP and determined that about 51% were living in a house with a Windows PC ( or a Mac running a virtual machine?).

Apple has already pushed back many ship dates

Non-pre ordered of WiFi+3G in US to May 7th. End of May for International, w May 10th pre-order.

Boy Genius Reports has word from Digitimes that Apple might move to OLED in next iPad

Based on current prices, a 9.7-inch LTPS LCD panel costs about $60-70, while a 9.7-inch OLED display costs around (gulp) $500.

Apple announced headphone replacement program

Controls are non-responsive or work intermittently, Unexpected volume increase or decrease, Unexpected playing of voice feedback

Makes it official specifically for latest gen iPod shuffles with only external controls, but will cover any Apple headphone with remote and mic.

apple.com/replacementprogram

Apple has actually always been pretty good at replacing defective ear buds, this just makes it official.

Some Universities banning iPads from their networks

I love these link baiting headlines that provide no details

ArsTechnica actually describes at least the issue Princeton Universities network was seeing

iPads not renewing their IP lease when the screen is off. The IP gets re-assigned and then when you wake the iPad you have conflict

Interesting it didn't occur with every iPad, but about half (22 out of 41).

For security reasons many networks will blacklist conflicting devices. I imagine to them it looks like possible IP spoofing?

Happening automatically not policies being set by the schools, though some are.

Wi-fi issue solutions

Turn the wi-fi on the iPad on and off

Set higher DHCP lease times in your router or server.

Give your iPad a dedicated IP

Has Apple won the Great Flash War?

Mike Chambers, Principal Product Manager for developer relations for the Flash Platform at Adobe, reported in a blog post that, while the feature to target the iPhone and iPad in Flash CS5 will still be there, Adobe has no plans to support it moving forward.

They will take what they learned and leverage it for other mobile devices like Android and they will be working more closely with Google.

War of words and they are both not really telling the truth

From Mike Chambers blog, "The primary goal of Flash has always been to enable cross browser, platform and device development. The cool web game that you build can easily be targeted and deployed to multiple platforms and devices. However, this is the exact opposite of what Apple wants. They want to tie developers down to their platform, and restrict their options to make it difficult for developers to target other platforms."

From Apple spokeswoman Trudy Miller, in a statement to "CNet's DeepTec", ""Someone has it backwards -- it is HTML5, CSS, JavaScript, and H.264 (all supported by the iPhone and iPad) that are open and standard, while Adobe's Flash is closed and proprietary"

Really Flash isn't an "open" standard, but it is deployed on a lot of platforms and Adobe does want it everywhere

Trouble is that because it's not a standard, all features, performance, functionality are not universal across devices, platforms, and OS's so a true write once run everywhere model is not true.

For Apple, yes Safari supports those open standards, but iPhone Apps are now required to be in Apple code, not open.

Apple does rightly point out my beef with Flash that what it's used for (especially on the web) very often can be replaced with an open technology and often to better results on a wider variety of platforms

Sponsor

Citrix

GoTo Assist Express

gotoassist.com/maccast

From same folks who make GoTo Meeting and GoTo My PC

Instantly connect to a customer's, friend's, or family member's Mac or PC to give them support.

Just send them a link and your connected. Never have to leave the house.

I've used it and nothing is simpler. Easy, and secure.

Try it free for 30 days

Feedback, Comments and Commentary

Results of the Maccast Textplus Wi-fi Challenge

Overall it wasn't too bad. You can do it.

Likely depends on your area, but I was able to find wi-fi hotspots and lunch and at a Coffee shop

SMS on textPlus and voicemail SMS on Skype work like a charm.

Skype quality is Ok, not great in my opinion

No way to get inbound phone calls easily or easy access to voicemail was a pain

Missed the iPhones built in camera for Twitter, Facebook, etc.

Confession, I got an SMS on my iPhone. I turned off 3G, but forgot EDGE was still there. Had to check a voicemail from a client.

Many wanted to point out getting by with an iPad or iPod Touch and a Mi-Fi

In practice, I'm not sure that is cheaper or better than a 3G iPhone.

I know many who disagree.

Enter the iPad give away. US residents only.

maccast.com/textpluscontest

iPad thoughts a few weeks later

The love affair is not wearing off, but reality is coming into play.

Stand firm that it's more a content consumption device than a creation device

Love Netflix, reading news, surfing the web Twitter.

Have been taking notes, but lacks a good note app.

iWork, Pages is useable, but suffers from lack of compatibility with the desktop app.

File transfer and management between apps is not where it needs to be.

On screen keyboard

I can type on it very well, but there are some tricks

Can rest your hands on the device. Not easy to get to punctuation, etc.

I don't like combo of physical keyboard and touch screen. (no touch iMac please).

Battery is a killer feature.

Apps, Multitasking and software updates can fix the few minor issues.

If you trust Steve's vision of the category he created you won't be disappointed.

So who's it for.

The consumptive computer user. Web surfing, Media consumption, Email, etc.

The Uber Geek who get's that it's an "in-between" device. More than an iPhone, less than a notebook

Vertical markets

Macworld reports that a hospital in Visalia, Calif. is already making plans to deploy 100 iPads. E-mail, X-Ray results, medical imaging applications, EKG results and various other patient monitoring programs, all delivered using Citrix virtual desktop and application delivery software.

Desktop to Mobile app pricing dilemma

As I purchase new apps for my iPad, many which I purchased for my iPhone and Mac, I think the same thing that David does. This could get expensive.

I don't envy developers or their choices in the current Apple platform landscape.

Users want desktop apps that integrate with iPhone and iPad.

They want the apps to be fully featured across all those platforms

They only want to pay one price, one time, and want upgrade pricing.

Guess what? Apple doesn't really make that possible.

So we have a $50.00 desktop app, a $10 iPhone app, and a $20 iPad app all doing the same thing.

Of course developers can make a universal iPhone/iPad app, but what about the time involved and the fact they sold the iPhone app too cheap in the first place. They didn't know about an iPad when they did that.

What about "family" pricing? You get that by default on the iPod, iPhone, and iPad. Is that fair?

Still seems to be a race to the bottom

Competition is stiff.

Killer iTunes features you probably don't use.

Or at least I don't.

Home Sharing

Advanced-->Home Sharing

Browse and copy music from other Macs

You can authorize music from other iTunes Accounts if needed

Store-->Authorize Computer...

iTunes DJ + Remote + Party Mode

Use an iPod Touch, iPhone, or iPad with the remote app to control your iTunes