I Say iTunes Store Rankings are Rigged

It was just hours ago that I stared, disgusted, at my TV as Comcast’s OnDemand service pelted me with ad after ad for their newest pay-per-view offering, the Matthew McConaughey-Kate Hudson crapfest Fool’s Gold. I found this disgusting because of all the fantastic movies in the world Comcast could promote, they were wasting time on this [...]

WWDC iPhone Predictions

We’re still a ways away from Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference (June 9-13, 2008), but it’s not too soon to start the foolish and almost always incorrect speculation about what will be announced. Here’s my guess at what might happen with the iPhone.
Everyone’s taken it as a foregone conclusion that a 3G phone will be introduced, [...]

iPhone Apps: the First Non-HTML Web App Standard?

For years, Java Web Start, Adobe AIR, several Microsoft initiatives, and who knows how many failed startups, have all tried to answer the question: does it make any sense to take all of that “traditional app”-development expertise that’s floating around in the world, and use it to try to write web applications that are [...]

iPhone Apps: More Exciting than Facebook?

With iPhone apps, we have a technology that might just be able to deliver the viral addictiveness of Facebook apps, but combined with a monetization plan, something Facebook app developers figure they can get around to some day, but for reasons they share with no one, haven’t decided to.
iPhone Apps have the same persistent user [...]

iPhone App Store: “Developer picks price”…screw you, record labels

Just going through the Apple keynote, and marveling at the moment where Jobs tells the world that developers get to pick whatever price they want for their apps. It’s a nice “screw you” to the record industry, who have long asserted that they deserve a similar right to charge different pricing for different songs.

I don’t [...]

Kindle Reader for iPhone?

Amazon’s new Kindle is appealing. I haven’t used one, but I hope it works well. (Even if it doesn’t, one of these days, somebody will get these eBook things right and they’ll take off.) I especially love that the Kindle doesn’t come with a wireless fee. “Pay-for-use” feels refreshingly liberating in an environment where every [...]

iPhone: “Slow Web Access”

Kind of interesting article about Apple’s possibly developing a tablet PC. (I say “kind of”, because I’m not necessarily convinced this is a real product as much as a prototype for something Apple is playing around with.) But here’s the part I most took note of:
So, can Apple turn the Tablet PC into a success [...]

Leopard Killer Feature: Time Machine

I know what you’re thinking: Time Machine is just another way to back-up your Mac. John Welch’s well-read post on “Best Leopard Features” even highlights TextEdit’s Word 2007 support, yet overlooks Time Machine.
But Time Machine is more than a backup solution. OS vendors have been shoving new features at us for years with something approaching [...]

Apple Becomes More Valuable; Cisco Continues to Mystify

According to the New York Times, Apple is now the most valuable computer maker in the world, and the fourth most valuable company in high-tech.
Interesting, though the most interesting part is: why the hell is Cisco (#3 on the list) so valuable? I’ve never understood that.
My sense is that Cisco will soon become like Sun, [...]

iPhone Price Drop

The New York Times so far seems to be treating the new iPod touch as today’s big news, but to me the significance of that is dwarfed by the $200 price drop for the iPhone.
I can’t recall any product ever falling in price so much so quickly, and it defies logic that it was Apple’s [...]