This is a random collection of thoughts around the new iPhone and the now-old iPad.  I’ve had the iPhone coming up on two weeks now, and I feel I’ve had enough real-life experience with it to be able to provide some cogent thoughts.  I’ve been using it in conjunction with my iPad so this post will cover thoughts on both.

On Protection.

Over the long weekend, I did a bunch of tech stuff I’d been meaning to do for some time. Most importantly, I installed a clear protector onto our new iPhones. For the first time, I used the BodyGuardz line of protective sheets rather than the InvisibleShield line. The BodyGuardz are a much better value. For $25 you get two sets of protective sheets that fully cover the iPhone’s front, back, and sides. Installing them was relatively straightforward but it conclusively proved why I would never be a surgeon.

There is a level of mental comfort in having these shields on our phones. But to cover up that amazing screen with anything is just a darn shame. No film application is ever perfect, and any bubbles are incredibly annoying. The liquid applicator they provide does create a thin glaze under the film which detracts from the beauty of the iPhone’s screen when it’s off. On the plus side, it does give a little bit more tactile grip to the iPhone. I also think it helps a bit with the attenuation issues people have been suffering when they touch the sides. The side films seem designed to exactly fit the phone but it is exceedingly difficult to apply them so that they run the full length properly. I ended up overlapping the antenna gaps just slightly, which seemed to act as a non-conductive layer between my fingers and the band. I don’t know if this is an intended benefit or not, but it’s relatively cheap to try out if you’re having major issues. I personally haven’t noticed a huge problem with attenuation or service interruption but that could just be me.

For now, I’m planning to keep these on the phone, at least until the cases I ordered come in. This phone is never going to be outside a case anyways so I may decide to remove the front film to let the gorgeous screen shine through.

And if anyone has a good case recommendation for the iPad, could they please contact me?  All the cases I’ve tried out so far suck.  I don’t want a sleeve and I don’t want a backside-only protector.  I need something that I can use on a desk as well as on the sofa, and it needs to support the iPad in portrait and landscape modes.  I like the Apple case, but it’s just a little too cheap-looking for me and I’d ideally love a case that has a latchable/securable front protector.

UPDATE (7/14/2010): I’ve had the Bodyguardz film on the iPhone for about a week now, and the glaze underneath has vanished completely.  The screen protector is still visible (you can see where the cutouts are for the speaker and the front facing camera) and it feels like there is more “depth” when hitting the Home button.  I gotta say that I am really liking the Bodyguardz.  I no longer think they interfere with the Retina Display and for all intents and purposes, they’ve disappeared from my perception, which is kind of the point of these things.  I’ve definitely noticed a decline in the number of dropped calls as well, though that needs to be heavily caveated.  First off, I don’t make a ton of calls so I’m not a great sample.  Second, since the issue has been covered to death in every tech blog and news rag, I’ve been more aware of how I hold the phone.  Finally, I could never consistently reproduce the issue, so I may not have been impacted.  Having said all that, I routinely hold the iPhone 4 in my left hand with the antenna gap perilously close to be covered by the base of my thumb and I’m sure I’ve covered that gap on calls, both before and after the film application.  Since I’ve applied the Bodyguardz, I have not had a single dropped call.  Period.  So perhaps the combination of the side protection plus my clumsy application have created a nice little insulated zone around the antenna openings that is helping my calling?  In any case, I’ve become a big fan of these things, and their customer service can’t be beat.  They were prompt to answer my emails about returning my extra films, and they were prompt about issuing me a refund.  Good on ya, guys – keep up the great work.  I am seriously considering buying a set of the iPad 3G protection skins to replace my InvisibleShield cover.  The InvisibleShield just seems to attract more dirt, though that could just be due to the increased surface area.  But definitely something I’m considering in the longer term…

iPad vs. iPhone

I’m fairly sure that if I had gotten the iPhone 4 before my iPad, I would have skipped the first gen iPad in hopes that the second gen would come with a Retina Display. Apple probably knew this, which is why they didn’t pull out the iPad as a “One More Thing” during the iPhone launch.  I still love my iPad but the iPhone is proving good enough for almost everything I need to do when I’m mobile.  I have used the iPhone for navigation, for checking newsfeeds, and for recipes.  It’s perfectly fine as a quick reference device, especially since the Retina Display makes it so much easier to read despite its small screen real estate.  But for consuming books and video, for gaming, and for productivity, the iPad is still the superior device.  Am I glad I have both?  Yes.  Should I have gotten the unlimited data plan for both?  Probably not.  I’m spending $60/mo on data access for the i-Devices, which is a bit much.  I’m seriously considering dropping my unlimited plan on the iPad, except that I’d still like roaming access, so I’d only be saving $5/mo (I refuse to pay for tethering, which is just AT&T saying “please bend over” while holding a very thick broom).  I’m really annoyed that Apple didn’t put a decent GPS chip inside the Wi-Fi only version, since that’s the main reason I went with the 3G iPad.

iPhone Antenna Issues

One of my best friends is a bigshot at M&M/Mars.  He was once asked to participate on a panel discussion at a telecom conference.  The audience consisted of telecom providers who wanted to know how to best sell into the large enterprise market, especially because things like data and messaging were just starting to become popular.  One of the audience members stood up and asked him what he looks for in a mobile phone.  In response, my friend pulled out his Nokia phone (which was at least 2 generations out of date) and said “I’d like it to work as a phone.”  Tech companies really seem to forget this basic concept – it’s a smart phone.  If it can’t make calls, it’s not a phone, it’s a mobile device.  Apple is being disingenuous when they blame the iPhone‘s attenuation problems on their inability to do math.  Too many people are complaining about a problem making calls, which is humorous if you’re not the one suffering from the problem.  But when you’re trying to call 911 late at night after you’ve witnessed a crime or been in an accident, it’s really not funny.  The bad thing is that I can’t rely on the iPhone as an emergency contact device, issues with AT&T service aside.  When I’m trying to call for an ambulance, I really don’t want to worry about whether I’m levitating the phone correctly to maximize signal strength.

It also means that every time I see one of those Apple videos featuring their internal designers talking earnestly about how hard they tried to create beauty and how magical the i-Device is, I’m going to just laugh and blow them off (even more so than I already do) as self-loving nerds.  No matter how good they think they are and no matter how pretty their end result, I know they failed.  Gizmodo had a great post about just how huge a failure this is on Apple’s part – they’ve fallen so in love with themselves that they are ignoring the fact that good industrial design means that it works, not just that it’s pretty.  If I have to think about how to use a product, something’s wrong, and Apple has only themselves to blame.  They’ve been promoting that mode of thought ever since they released the first iPhone.  Yet now here they are saying, basically, “yes always think about how you’re using your iPhone to make sure you’re not using it wrong”.

Luckily, phone calls are rare and far between in my household, and 90% of my calls are to my fiancée, who is also on AT&T, so those minutes buckets are pretty much unlimited.  I really hope, though, that she’s never stuck late at night on a bus coming home from work and trying to reach me.

iPad’s Video and iPod apps

These apps suck.  Suck suck suck suck suck.  No other way to put it.  Why they are split into two apps rather than the single iPod app that’s provided on the iPhone is beyond me.  There is obviously some higher design principle at work that I am too pedestrian to understand.  But when I can’t skip through a list of video podcasts using the CONTROLS PROVIDED FOR THEM, I consider that a pretty major design flaw.  The only way I can move from one video to the next without picking and choosing each one is if I create a playlist.  That’s just stupid, Apple.  Why should I create a playlist of video podcasts when the Videos app has a podcast section?  And is there any reason why you decided that TV shows don’t need to have any identifying information aside from a still image from the show itself?  Maybe I’d like to, oh I don’t know, see the SHOW’S NAMES?!?!?  You guys are starting to approach Microsoft levels of stupidity with these issues, and I sincerely hope that you fix them in the next version by providing an iPod app, rather than this craptastic Video/Music split function junk.

On the plus side, you seem to have fixed the issue with Smart Playlists not being synced when Live Updating is checked.  I think it’s only been about a year now since that issue’s been reported?  So I guess I should expect an iPod app on the iPad when you release iPad 3.0?

UPDATE (7/14/2010) – Yea, Apple, your Video app sucks hairy moose testicles.  What is the sense in showing one sequence of videos on the iPad and a completely different sequence in iTunes?  This weekend I was playing through some TV shows I’d ripped and I realized they were completely out of order on the iPad.  Since I’m a metadata FREAK, I quick checked the iTunes versions to see what I’d screwed up.  Lo and behold, the iTunes list was in correct order.  After much trial and error, I realized that the iPad sorts TV shows using the Track Number while iTunes uses Season and Episode Number.  Can someone tell me how the team that created the Video app thought this was a good idea?  It’s like they decided to remove the Video functionality in the iPod app but just do a half-assed job of it so that they could piss off as many people as possible.  So for those of you trying to figure out why the hell the iPad isn’t sequencing your shows correctly – either fill in both Track Number and Episode Number fields for each show, or just rely on Track Number to do your sorting.  Of course, if you choose the latter, I fully expect that one day Apple will fix this stupidity and then you’ll have to go back and re-enter the Episode Number data so you might as well do both now.

iPad memory issues

I’m running a jailbroken iPad, primarily because I can.  Now I understand that jailbreak tech is really young on the iPad and developers are still trying to figure out how to do it right.  But I’m seriously concerned about the iPad’s lack of RAM.  I think Apple made a bad choice when they went with 256MB in the iPad vs the 512MB in the iPhone 4, because when multitasking comes along, apps are going to be seriously memory constrained.  Apple’s limited implementation of multi-tasking in iOS (a name I predicted here on this blog well before His Jobs-ness announced it) is a lot more memory-efficient than traditional multitaskers a la Backgrounder.  But still  - I see memory leaks all the time running apps like Reeder and TweetDeck under the jailbroken iOS 3.2.  And I’m pretty sure that it’s not due to leaks in the jailbreak code.  TweetDeck reboots itself regularly on the half-hour, even when it’s the only app running on the iPad.  Running it on an unjailbroken iPad, the reboot periods are longer but I know they still were happening.

My guess is that iPad iOS 4.0 is going to be based a lot on iPhone iOS 4.0.  It’s a little aggressive to have the entire code base made common between the two platforms, but it’s inevitable that that will happen.  My guess is iOS 5.0 next year will be the first true common iOS base for all Apple platforms.  They can’t keep doing this multi-version iOS thing forever, especially if they release an iOS for AppleTV and for the Mac.  That would be four different fragments of the same base, which would make Android look like a bamboo shoot in terms of variety.

Multiple users on the iPad

The iPhone is intended to be a single-user device.  No bigs – it’s (marginally) a phone, it’s small, it’s got a fixed identifier (the phone number) attached to it – it’s very personal.  The iPad, for all its “magic”, is a multi-user device.  I’d like to share my iPad with my fiancée and a regular basis and my son has basically adopted the iPad as his own when he’s with us.  I’m totally cool with that, but it means that I’ve removed all my email accounts from the iPad.  I’d like some way to have user profiles and app sharing rules set up so that I can control what others accessing my iPad have access to.  I know user accounts are a big OS overhead issue, and there would be all kinds of complaints that Apple didn’t allow fast switching etc etc.  But basic user-level customization would go a long way to making the iPad a viable family device.  There’s no way I’m buying iPads for every member of the family and it’s stupid for Apple to think that people actually will do this.

And while we’re on the subject, Apple’s lack of controls on their Safari browser means that there is no way to control/limit kids’ access to the Internet.  Apple only allows binary control – either Safari is on or it’s off.  There’s no way to firewall or block access to non-approved sites.  Tools like OpenDNS’s Family Shield are a good start, but it’s relatively easy to circumvent.

So what do you guys think?  Am I way off base?  Spot on?  Comment up any of your complaints or compliments!

When we look out over the Internet, we seem to be diverging into three
different approaches, or paths, that define how users will interact
with the wider web.  For fun (and because I used to be a big role
playing geek), let’s call these the White Path, the Red Path, and the
Black Path.  The color descriptions aren’t intended to imply good or
bad, they are just convenient labels that reflect different
viewpoints.  You may disagree with my characterization of each path
and the companies I feel best represent that path.  But since I’m
writing the article, I get to decide who’s who.

Let’s start with white.  White is the amalgam of all other colors.
White light can be broken out into its constituent spectrum and I use
it to mean an open Internet commonality.  Of course the company that
best exemplifies this approach is Google.



Google has an embrace/extend approach to the Internet that has as much
user interaction moving to the web as possible.  This does several
things.  First, it makes the whole issue of the OS irrelevant – the
browser is the OS.  Second, it makes more and more of the user’s
interactions ad-enabled, the bread-and-butter of Google’s revenue.
Third, it keeps Google competitive against other companies that may be
ahead of Google, whether in terms of market share or implementation.
Google’s nickname of the Borg is quite relevant when you think about
the fact that they may have started further behind (depending on the
industry), but they will eventually catch up and surpass their
competition.

This embrace-and-extend philosophy was first attempted by Microsoft.
Initially they were successful in absorbing the force of the Internet
(who else can claim to have turned a multi-billion dollar company on a
dime to build IE6?)  In the end, though, they failed.  To quote the
awesome Darth Vader, “the student has now become the Master”.
Microsoft’s fear of the browser becoming the OS is becoming more and
more real each day, and they are forced to respond by putting their
primary tools online to compete.

Google has a vested interest in making the web as ubiquitous and as
accessible by as many different platforms, technologies, and devices
as possible because it increases their ability to sell ads.  But they
also need to “guide” folks into using their tools and concepts where
possible because that offers them greater control.  So Google embraces
web standards and the open source mantra while extending their
influence by providing robust tools and infrastructure to make
building on the web easier.  Google I/O showcased this approach.
Google announced Android 2.2, probably the most advanced mobile OS in
the world right now, as well as tools to extend the Google Apps
platform (including shots at Amazon’s various cloud-based services)
and a bold attempt at gaining access to the living room via Google TV.
Any one of those would have been interesting, but the fact that they
announced so many initiatives shows that they are starting to gain
some huge momentum in the race for Internet 3.0.

Black, on the other hand, represents the absorption of all colors.  In
a nutshell, this describes Apple’s philosophy.



In Apple’s worldview, the Internet should be filtered and buffered
through their App universe using Apple-sanctioned tools and devices.
The iPad, the iPhone, the iTouch – all of these represent ways to
control and shape the Internet by putting Apple between users and the
wild wild frontier.  Apple also wants to shape and control the
Internet, but their approach is to provide an experience that is so
smooth and easy that people won’t want to leave their walled garden to
visit the badlands of the unfiltered web.  There’s a small access
point to that madness provided via Safari, but the lack of Flash
compatibility serves to underscore that even when there’s an exit,
that exit is provided on Apple’s terms and they hold the leash back to
the iFortress.

In principle, there is nothing wrong with this approach.  HTML5-based
web apps can drive a near-seamless Internet experience.  However, it
means a lack of connection to the App Store’s transaction management
system, which means the user has to trust the app builder.  It’s a lot
easer to just pay $0.99 to buy a sanctioned app.  With iOS4 and iAds,
the lure of the App Store increases even more.  Apple develops ads
with major advertisers, developers put space in their applications for
those ads to run, users interact with the ads in-line, rather than
through web sites or custom advertising apps, and multi-tasking on a
more capable processor makes all this work seamlessly.  The developer
gets a chunk of revenues from the advertising, allowing the
development of lower cost, better applications.  Win-win for everyone,
so long as you’re willing to live with Apple being the gatekeeper to
all your content.  Never forget that Apple is there to sell hardware.
Content is the engine that drives hardware sales so Apple is always
going to err on the side of the providers, not the users.

Red is where things get interesting.  I use the term Red to represent
a middle path between the all-or-nothing White and Black, and Facebook
serves as the example.



Facebook also wants to control and extend the web on their terms, but
they know that they can’t be everything to everyone.  They’re not the
walled garden of Apple – no devices to control and manage the user.
But at the same time, they can’t become the open-source firehose that
is Google – someone might come along and make them irrelevant.  So
they attempt to provide many many reasons to stay within their domain
(Farmville, anyone?) but they also provide (unwanted) breadcrumbs back
for those times when users leave the nest.  Would it be possible for
Facebook to become an Apple-type environment?  Sure, and they’re
looking into how to make the site more sticky by offering photo
storage, video streaming, dedicated email service, etc.  But they know
that locking down their environment too much would move people to
other, similar, services, so they try to walk that line between too
much and too little.

Facebook’s biggest bugaboo is that in order for them to make money,
they need to know EVERYTHING about their users, and their users have
to be willing to share everything about themselves.  Already the push
back is happening as Facebook keeps trying to make more and more
public while users resist.  I believe that it will take only one or
two more high-publicity privacy violation incidents for Facebook to
fall under federal regulation, in which case they will have a much
harder time making changes willy nilly.

Each path’s champions have a firm view of the future of the Web.
While I don’t believe that only one company can win, I do believe that
one company’s vision will dominate in the mid-term.  Which one, I’m
not sure, though I do have my favorite. What I do know is that the
battle between these three companies will result in rapid advances in
web technology and standards, as well as in mobile Internet hardwares.
The next five years will see an Internet radically different from
what we have today, and more and more the concept of a traditional
(Microsoft-based) desktop will become irrelevant.

Apple finally unveils iPhone 4 to the masses. Steve Jobs introduced the new iPhone on Monday, complete with an all-new, thinner design, camera flash, front-facing camera called FaceTime for video calling, a second noise-canceling microphone, multitasking, HD video recording, iMovie App for iPhone, iOS software, and a gyroscope for six-axis motion sensing.

iPhone 4

Steve Jobs says the new iPhone is beyond any consumer product that’s ever been seen, only 9.3mm thick and 24 percent thinner than the iPhone 3GS, making it the “thinnest smartphone on the planet.”

Availability
The new iPhone 4 arrives on June 24, while preorders begin on June 15. It is available in the same prices and capacities as last year’s model: $199 for 16GB, and $299 for 32GB. The iPhone 3GS will be available for $99.

Internals
The new hardware also has a larger battery that offers longer uptime, including 7 hours of talk time 3G, 6 hours of 3G browsing, 10 hours of Wi-Fi browsing, 10 hours of video, 40 hours of music, and 300 hours of standby.

Dual cameras
The iPhone 4 also includes a whole-new camera system that includes LED flash with a 5 megapixel lens that records HD video. The new rear camera will record 720p video at 30 frames per second. Users can also use built-in video editing to trim their HD clips right on the phone.

The handset’s forward facing camera can be used for video chat with the application FaceTime, allowing users to see someone using another iPhone 4 as they talk to them. Videos can also be edited using the new iMovie application, which will cost $4.99 on the App Store.

Docs by Microsoft and Facebook

Look out Google because Microsoft and Facebook are teaming up to challenge Google Docs online document sharing.

Microsoft Docs looks like a real threat to Google Docs because simply Microsoft still makes a better word processor than Google. Facebook’s crowd sourcing and social networking platform creates a true online desktop and utility for productivity. Docs also have a simple domain name that people can remember http://www.docs.com.

Google needs to respond with a true social networking strategy by merging their Gmail, YouTube, and Picassa audience to a single destination to share and communicate more seamlessly. They have made a pathway so far with integrating Buzz into Gmail. It was disappointing, however, that Google Wave was still a separate destination that needed another active conversion for adoption. Furthermore, their UI across different sites like Gmail, YouTube, and Picassa do not have similar look and feel.

Via http://docs.com

So as the three people who follow my personal Twitter stream found out (why the heck aren’t the rest of you following me? Love me, dammit!), I have decided to return my iPad. I officially reset it on April 15th, at 12:32pm. And it is sorely missed. Why did I do this? Because I’ve decided that the iPad will be my preferred tool for accessing the web and my media. I am returning my iPad so that I can buy the 3G-enabled one at the end of the month. Here’s why I’ve come to love yet another Apple device.

When I first got my iPad, I honestly was not that enthusiastic about it. Sure I’d blown close to a G on this thing, but all in all I wasn’t giddy with techno joy. (By the way, do NOT buy the docking stand. It’s less than useless and I’m hoping that Apple will take it back for a refund even though I don’t have a box for it.) I purchased some apps, downloaded some free ones, loaded up a few gigs of music and videos, and set about using it. I carried to and from work every day. I used it on the couch and in the dining room and in the kitchen as my wife was making dinner. I used it with the kids. I took it with me when we went out. And yes, I’ve used it in the bathroom (don’t tell me you guys didn’t think of that use case when you saw the iPad!). And gradually it took over my life.

First off, the screen is freaking gorgeous. Pictures can’t really do it justice. Somehow, the fingerprints and smudges disappear when that thing is fired up and you just see this giant expanse of real estate. Switching between my iPhone and my iPad was painful because I just couldn’t bear looking at the tiny iPhone screen.  Videos are just incredible to watch on the iPad.  Everyone I showed it to thought the screen was amazing.  Pictures were popping off the surface it was so brilliant.  Of course it was absolutely worthless in sunlight or while wearing sunglasses, but still.

Second, the virtual keyboard proved surprisingly useful, especially for someone with my ladylike hands. I was able to almost touch type on that puppy, so long as I wasn’t trying to tab or use too many special characters. (Apple, you guys aren’t nearly as smart as you think you are – WTF is up with not including a Tab key on the virtual keyboard?). In landscape mode, I was probably at half my regular typing speed (and I’m not a slow typer by any stretch). In portrait mode, I was typically two- or four-fingering it, but still getting along pretty darn well. I can access my corporate email via Outlook Webmail using the iPad just fine, which just relegated my Blackberry to the “never have to look at you again” pile. In fact, I’m probably going to give it back to the company because I just never use it.

Third, I realized that I could use this as my primary music player, with the sole exception of the time I spend in the weight room. They sell dock extender cables that will allow me to plug the iPad into my Sony stereo at work. I can download maps before I leave for a trip (and download on the fly when I get the 3G version). I can watch videos. I can even use it in the gym to practice my group exercise class training videos. And it’s a lot easier to follow along using the iPad versus trying to squint at a tiny iPhone screen.

Fourth, a lot of the stuff I’d kept around but never got around to doing anything with are finding new life on my iPad. PDFs are a pleasure to read. Comics too. (Comics are good, but the iPad isn’t going to be the salvation of comics.  The page size of comics are just a little “off”.  Manga, on the other hand, may have met their secret weapon.) Even reading is more pleasurable because I can pull out a book anywhere and I can carry dozens at a time.  I’d been considering a Kindle but now I don’t have to.  I’m still split between the iBook and the Kindle apps, but just being able to read anywhere is great.

Finally, compared to my iPhone 3G, the iPad is FAST. Blazingly, gloriously, wonderfully fast. Apps load like lightning. I can switch between apps with minimal fuss. Screens scroll easily and quickly. Granted, my iPhone is old and jailbroken, but I am not running tons of apps on that puppy. The iPad puts it to shame. I’m sure the new iPhone will be as fast as the iPad, but until I have that replacement in my hot little hands, I’m loving the greater speed.

That’s not to say that the iPad is perfect. From a productivity perspective, the iPad is sorely hampered by the virtual keyboard. I can pound out emails and write simple blog posts just fine, but I’m planning to buy a Bluetooth keyboard for the thing. And I don’t recommend Apple’s Pages or Numbers apps. Both produce files that are basically unusable outside the iPad and both are incredibly frustrating to use on the iPad itself, so don’t have dreams of creating massive spreadsheets or novels using them. If a developer ever figures out how to provide Office compatibility however, this thing would rock. Heck, even Google Apps integration would be good.

Also, the inability to save and transfer files outside of the iTunes environment is a pain in the butt. And the lack of multi-tasking is also incredibly annoying. I’m really looking forward to iOS 4.0 because the addition of multitasking means it will make the iPad a lot more manageable from a productivity perspective.  Once task switching is available, I could easily write entire blog posts on the iPad.

As another annoyance, Apple needs to stop treating music and video as two separate apps on the iPad (and the iTouch). There should be a single app to manage my media, and I should be able to mix and match media in my playlists, regardless of whether they’re audio or video. I’m hoping they will address this in iOS4 as a reveal feature when they announce iPhone HD.

The Calendar app needs a to-do feature integrated into it.  I shouldn’t need a separate app to create to-do lists.

Customizable themes should be made available (adding this would remove a lot of the need to jailbreak).

Given my new love of this toy, I’m now stuck on the iPad upgrade cycle (and no that was not a sly joke!), which is exactly where Apple wants me to be. With my iPhone, the contract made annual upgrades too expensive. But with the iPad, I can let my iPhone get two or three years old without worrying about lack of features or speed, as long as I upgrade my iPad each year. Apple is going to make a ton of money off of me. The brilliant jerks.

Adobe is all up in arms about the new license terms for Apple’s iOS 4, which restricts platform developers to using only specific native tools. That pretty much cuts out all other development platforms and cross-compilers, most especially Adobe. Needless to say, Adobe is not pleased. Well you know what? I’m totally on Apple’s side in this fight. Adobe took a chance when it developed Flash, and for a while that chance worked out for them. Their small platform ended up being used for more and more on the ever expanding Internet, allowing them to grow into almost a de facto standard. That’s fine for something like the Internet, which is an open environment that was built up through the combined efforts of a lot of organizations. But the iPlatform is not the Internet. Apple has created a walled garden and they have the right to manage that garden however they like.

In Philadelphia, sections of the city have city-owned pots of land that residents can rent out for a year.  On those plots of land, folks have planted vegetable and flower gardens.  The gardens are secured by fences and locks, but each resident doesn’t get individual access to their plots – they have to share the lock code with each other because there’s only one lock.  The rules are relatively simple and the renters tend to watch out for each other because they tend to be long-time renters, paying the nominal fee every year.  Importantly, they tend to follow the rules and they act to ensure that others follow the rules.  Every so often, the rules change and some people stop renting space because of those rules.  But that frees up a plot for someone new to come in, and they come in knowing the new rules and agreeing to honor them.

What Adobe is trying to do is pay the fee to access the garden and then passing out the combination to the garden’s lock to anyone who wants to pay.  In their best case scenario, they don’t even have to pay the fee for access – they just start selling the key and let the community sort out who’s supposed to be there or not.  Sorry, it doesn’t work that way.  For good or bad, Apple’s ecosystem is THEIRS.  They didn’t set out to build something on top of an already existing platform (like Google), nor did they try to make their ecosystem the biggest in the world by making development as easy as possible to as many as possible (like Microsoft).  Apple started out with a simple idea – let’s sell music.  Maybe they had this end state in mind all the time, maybe they didn’t.  Doesn’t matter.  It’s all theirs.  And because it’s theirs, they get to make the rules, and even change those rules, whenever they want.

Note that this viewpoint is not necessarily a conflict with the fact that I am using a jailbroken iPhone.  Since I’ve bought the device and own it, I think I should be able to do whatever the heck I want with it.   To not have that right is like buying a piece of produce from the community garden but being told that I can only use it in stir fry or fruit salad.  It’s stupid to even think that that sort of thing is possible, and just because it’s tech vs. produce doesn’t make it any less so.  However, once I change the parameters of the agreement of sale, I don’t have the right to request Apple’s support to fix my problems.  To extend the produce analogy even further, that’s like my buying a bell pepper, agreeing to use it only in stir fry, then putting it in fruit salad and complaining when people don’t like it.  I know and accept the risks of jailbreaking but by that same token, Apple shouldn’t be going out of their way to stop me.  Would I like Apple to be less restrictive in terms of what they do or don’t allow in the App Store?  Absolutely.  The main reason I jailbreak is to skin my phone and to get access to two apps that Apple won’t sell.  But those are the risks I’ve accepted because I’m choosing to go around the ecosystem.

Back to the topic at hand though – Adobe vs. Apple.  Whether or not Apple is right or wrong ethically is not the issue.  Apple is doing what it feels it needs to do to protect their investment in the iOS infrastructure.  Adobe is trying to grow their produce in the Apple garden and calling foul because they got caught.  Sorry, Adobe – you didn’t pay for the garden and you don’t get to access the garden and set your rules in the garden just because you pout about unfairness.  You want to build out your Flash platform, then you go out and build your own damn garden.  Otherwise, be happy with the pervasiveness you have on the Internet and pray that you can find a workaround to making money once HTML5 begins supplanting your fancy animations.

Since the iPad has just been released, and since iPhone OS4 is being previewed this week, I figure I have as much of a right as anyone to guesstimate what Apple will release, not only this year, but next year as well. I can pundit as well as the next guy, and probably a lot better than most of the analysts who work for the research firms.

iPhone 4 (currently called iPhone HD)

• I predict that the hardware itself will probably not get an incredible form factor change. It will not have a slide out keyboard, nor will it transform into a little robot complete with rocket launcher. Apple has a great design – why mess with it? I recently took my iPhone out of its protective shell (first time in over a year) and the experience of holding the thing is just incredible, even though it’s two years old. No need to mess with great. Plus if it got any bigger, people would skip the iPad for the iPhone and Apple does not want that to be a possibility.
• I am in firm agreement with the rumors that indicate the screen will be exactly half the resolution of an iPad. Makes sense. Also makes sense that the OS will have hooks to auto-detect and auto-size apps (I believe Android has this already). Anything Apple can do to simplify development for third parties it will do. Plus it allows Apple to run a single code base for their entire iOS line. iOS – I think I’m going to trademark that.
• I would rate the chances of a Verizon enabled iPhone at 75% within the next year. I say this because Apple is starting to reach the limits of conversion. Just about everyone who wants an iPhone has switched to AT&T, and the universe of new cell users is not growing all that fast. If Apple wants to sell millions of these puppies, they’re going to have to expand the platform. Adding Verizon will immediately give Apple access to millions of new customers. The loss of AT&T subscribers is not a big deal because they’ll still be iPhone users. Maybe they don’t make as much money per sub on Verizon, but at this point it becomes more of a numbers game and making up the profits through volume. This theory is further confirmed by the fact that there were two iPhone models mentioned in the iPad’s guts.
• Front-facing camera? Maybe. Who cares? Are you really going to videoconference with this thing? I guess the market for amateur porn would skyrocket, and Chatroulette could have more interesting backgrounds. I’d rather hold out for a front facing camera on the iPad v2.
• I originally thought that it would feature a faster chip with more RAM. Required to support multitasking in iOS4 (see below). However, given that the iPad is apparently running with the same RAM as the iPhone 3GS and is performing faster, maybe all they need is a faster chip. I don’t think Apple’s going to go nuts trying to slot things into the iPhone that they can’t fit into the iPad with its much bigger size.
• The iPhone’s camera will get an upgrade, most likely to 5MP and add a flash. The motion capture rate will increase, mostly due to the faster processor. No front-facing camera, especially if that YouTube video of the supposedly new replacement screen is to be believed.

UPDATED 4/8/10 after the iPhone OS4 Release – I’ve updated the below predictions to reflect the announcements today.

iOS 4.0 (my new trademark!)

• Multitasking will be in iOS 4. It has to be for Apple to remain a credible contender. Android is barking up their heels in certain respects, and AT&T’s slow embrace of Android phones means that Android will be able to do simultaneous voice and 3G data (who the heck thought this was not a good thing for CDMA networks to be able to do? They should be hung in effigy. I didn’t even realize this wasn’t ubiquitous. And Verizon charges you more for this crapservice? Unbelievable.) I think most everyone agrees this is coming.  OK so multitasking wasn’t announced but what was announced is the next best thing, and quite honestly a heck of a lot more sensible for a mobile OS.  Most people don’t need true multitasking, and Apple again proves that they can think outside the box.  I love this implementation of multitasking, and I hope that it’s as flexible and as powerful as I think it will be.  Will it do everything the techies might want?  No, but it will do what 99% of what the rest of the people need.
• As much as possible, Apple is going to try to remove the hassles of having a single OS for three different multi-touch devices. The resolution change, the multitasking, the single inbox – all of these will make the iOS a seamless experience across the platforms.  Hard to tell, but I find it interesting that iPad won’t be getting OS4 until the fall.  My guess is that OS4 gets released with iPhone HD, and OS4.1 gets released in the fall to iPhone, iPad, and iTouch.
• Enhancements to the video management features of iPad (and probably iPhone). Why Apple thinks it’s not a good idea to have video playlists in the Video app on the iPad is beyond me, but fix it dammit. I figured out that the iPad video app is the same as the iTouch’s video app, and that the core behavior of videos on the iPad/iTouch is different than on the iPhone. This is rather annoying, especially for folks who have both an iPad and an iPhone. Consistency should be the watchword for Apple now that there are three different platforms with basically the same OS. As the iPhone’s capacity increases, the ability to store more video is going to mean that it should start to match the capabilities of the iPad/iTouch.  Can’t tell yet.  Though the mention of “create playlists” says to me that some sort of change to the media management feature is coming.
• Universal inbox and possibly multiple Exchange account support. Jobs has committed to a universal inbox, but allowing multiple Exchange connections support would allow folks to get push email from more than one source. Right now, I have three different Google Apps domains I maintain/participate in. I’d love to get all my Google Apps ID’s connected to a single inbox with push mail.  I was spot on with this.  And as far as I know, the idea of multiple Exchange boxes wasn’t really mentioned in other tech blogs so I give myself a big thumbs up here.  This will be awesome, and if they increase security, then the iPad/iPhone becomes a much more credible enterprise platform.
• Increased security. If Apple really wants to compete against RIM, they need to make the iPad/iPhone a much more secure device. I think the iPhone was hacked in under 2 minutes at the last hacker convention? That’s just sad. Say what you will about RIM but until Apple gets a credible security model and platform, they will never be taken seriously as an enterprise platform. With the iPad, they have a real chance to break into the enterprise, but not if every noob hacker can cut their teeth screwing with their neighbor’s iPad.  Still TBD, though I’m hopeful.
• New collapsible calendar view. Ok this is my own personal wish list, but why can’t Apple can’t do something like Palm’s “shrink non-allotted time” view of a day?  Can’t tell yet.  Might be saving this for iPhone HD announcement.
• Overall, my guess is that iOS 4 is a refinement rather than a radical advance. There’s just not a whole lot that it’s missing once you add in the multitasking. It won’t stop the hackers from jailbreaking the devices, but it will give a lot of people like myself a lot less reason to jailbreak.  It was a pretty big step forward overall, both fine-tuning the existing platform, while significantly expanding its capabilities.  I think iOS now resumes its place at the top of the mobile smartphone pecking order, and I’m really looking forward to iPhone HD.  I will also most likely not need to jailbreak my future iPhone, since this version has just about everything I might need.  Sure, skins aren’t there, but I can live without skins.
• Overall, I give myself a B+.  What do you guys think?

Future Apple Devices

• iPad 3.0 will have a front facing camera. It would be inefficent for Apple to put in a front and rear facing camera, and why the heck would you even try to take a picture/video with the thing? A front facing camera will allow web conferencing. I predict that in order for this to be a possibility for iPad 2.0, Apple would have to release a version customized to AT&T and Verizon because otherwise, the load on AT&T’s network will just slam them back to square one again like the early iPhone days.
• The iPhone will not get significantly smaller. Much smaller and it would require a customized screen resolution that wouldn’t play nice with the 2:1 scale iPhone HD is supposed to bring. Much larger and it becomes a miniPad and a lot less portable. (This is why I think Dell will fail utterly with their impending product whose name I totally forget with the 5″ screen, continuing Dell’s long chain of mobile failures.)
• The iPod classic is going to go away by this time 2011. SSD prices keep dropping and Apple buys in such quantity that they get incredible discounts. I could see a 128GB iTouch to top out the storage line from the current 64GB. This would make sense if Apple continues to increase the iPhone’s storage capabilities and offers up an iPhone with 64GB of storage. Quite frankly, though, I think the storage is getting way past what most people need. I’m having a ton of trouble filling my iPad now and that’s after I transferred over a ton of video content. Why would I carry around a 64GB iPhone when I have a bigger counterpart to watch videos with? Music doesn’t take up that much room for most folks unless they’re storing uncompressed files. I would top out at 64GB for the iPhone and just concentrate on keeping the prices the same or lower.
• Apple TV will be integrated into a 40″ Apple TV panel. I think they learned a lot from the 27″ iMac production process and that’s the last piece of the entertainment puzzle for Apple. I could picture a simplified iOS for a TV with just a few standard icons (or heck, they could put the whole iOS on a TV – the only issue would be mimicking touch and finger movement).

How about you guys? Think I’m crazy? Let’s hear it!