Apple Matters

James Stoup has a way of cutting through the static surrounding issues and getting to the heart of the matter. The issue James is taking on at Apple Matters? App Store suckiness. The opening paragraph sets up the rest of the article:

I find it ironic in the extreme that Apple, a company whose foundation is built on the idea of selling high quality products, would create a store whose very design kills high quality products.

If you’ve been following the controversy about cheap apps in the App Store you know the problem: How can a company invest in producing an app that will sell for more than a few bucks when that app has to compete against apps that cost .99?

James has a novel solution: set a minimum price for apps and make that minimum $4.99. As a consumer it probably sounds like crazy talk, as a developer it likely sounds like nirvana. As an iPhone user user you’ll be better off if you read the article at Apple Matters.

So you’re wondering what is coming at MacWorld? In one of my columns at Apple Matters I took a wild guess that it would be an oversized iPhone with a USB port to accommodate dongles for your carrier of choice. For me it was all about the internet everywhere.

Hadley Stern thinks differently, well he’s down with the oversized iPhone deal but he has a much better reasoning for his thought that something along these lines will show up at MacWorld. In fact Hadley lists five reasons. Perhaps the best is that Steve gets to say he invented but the other four (economy, atom chip, extending the reach of iTunes, iPhone) are solid as well.

Here’s the interesting thing, a concept like that has been going around Apple longer than the iPhone. The supposed genesis of the iPhone was a Safari Pad that an employee showed to Steve. When Steve saw it he didn’t think “A tablet to browse the web!” He thought “frickin’ iPhone!” and… more...

Hadley Stern is miffed. He’s taking a look at what Apple has done in the past and with the iPhone and seen the copycats. What, exactly, is a Blackberry Storm if not a direct rip off of the iPhone? And you know RIM won’t give Apple a kiss after that screwjob so why not some cash?

Hadley’s not exactly that upfront about it but that is the take away message. All the companies coming out with touchscreen phones are really coming out with iPhone knockoffs and that doesn’t seem fair to the company who went through all the hard work of getting everything right in the first place. Read the entire article Should Other Companies Pay Apple at our sister site Apple Matters.

Chris Howard isn’t afraid to bash Apple when something is screwed up. But he’s also not above praising the company when something exceeds his expectations. Right now Chris Howard is very pleased with the iPhone. IF you’re wondering why it is a sordid tale of servers being overwhelmed, bandwidth caps and iTunes locking up. You can read the whole story at out sister site: Apple Matters. But a link isn’t enough, I mean the energy expended clicking a link… Too much to ask! Here’s an excerpt:

Now lazy programmers would have simply restored the last known OS, but Apple obviously weren’t lazy, and coded to detect the new OS waiting and used it. Well done, Apple.

Of course, there were no apps on my iPhone (besides the Apple ones), so I was still a bit nervous. But then a sync kicked off and it indicated it was installing my apps. I think at this point I stopped holding my breath.

Well it isn’t all sunshine and flowers. Chris, like the rest of the iPhone world is wondering where copy… more...

Chris Seibold, today’s designated idiot, has a post up at Apple Matters averring that the CEO of Microsoft is trying to spread doubt in the growing mobile market because he fears that Microsoft is falling behind. This time Ballmer isn’t laughing out loud at the iPhone but he is disparaging Google’s revenue model for Android. As Chris points out (blind hog meet acorn) the same tactic was used by Microsoft with Internet Explorer.Chris concludes that the FUD campaign won’t work:

The bright side is that the plan won’t work. People get why giving away something for free can be a great idea. People trust Google much more than Microsoft. Sorry Ballmer, you’ll have to try a little harder next time. People are getting tired of eating FUD.

Read the article over at Apple Matters.

Apple Matter’s very own Chris Howard has an article up wondering if the iPhone’s momentum can be stopped (answer=yes but it won’t btw). Chris has a huge list of recent positive iPhone head lines and then gives specific examples of where the iPhone’s popularity is really helping to drive the iPhone ahead of the competition. As Chris aptly puts it:

Because in Q4, when folks are buying a new phone, they’ll feel the weight of that momentum pushing, pushing them to buy the most popular phone, the one that “everybody” has. And then they buy it, tell their friemds, get added to that quarter’s statistics, and the momentum builds more

The iPhone has, in a sense, created its own halo effect. The more it sells, the more it sells.

Read the whole article, it is worth your time.

Apple Matters dimmest writer (Chris Seibold) has posted a bit about lessons Apple learned from not turning the original Mac into a dominant computing platform. According to the dullard the original Mac was fantastic, leaps and bounds ahead of the competition, but Apple’s slow response to changes consumers wanted led to the marginalization of the machine. Here’s an example of Chris’ reasoning:

The last thing to note about the original Mac was the failure to be responsive to the market. Macs cost twice as much as a PC but Apple never seemed to notice. When the company should’ve been trying to drive adoption the company chose to focus on driving profits in a big way apparently realizing too late that early adoption could drive later profits. You’ll note the iPhone is very competitively priced.

Okay, so the guy is a little slow. Maybe he can pick it up in the conclusion:

The answer of why Apple is being so flexible with the iPhone when the company hasn’t been flexible before is obvious. Apple learned a lot from the Mac. Apple learned that being way ahead in technology is great but that… more...

James Stoup has an interesting piece up at our sister site Apple Matters about the state of the iPhone. No, not about how great or terrible the device is but how much it must chafe Apple to have to partner with others on this project (Apple does not play nicely with peers). From the article:

After all, Apple is nothing if not a control freak. They want to be in direct control of every aspect of the “Apple Experience” and right now they aren’t. As I said before, that doesn’t mean that things aren’t going well, they are, but I refuse to accept that Apple is really satisfied with the current state of things.

It is interesting reading, especially when James wonders how Apple my retake control of the whole enchilada. That something I’d like to see.

Read it here!

The iPhone’s built in camera takes a lot of guff. No flash, 2 megapixels, that weird virtual button, the photos that always look as though you snapped them in the shakiest moment of heroin withdrawal… wait, that last one just happens to me. But the rest are true gripes.
If you can let the griping go it turns out that you can get some great pics with the iPhone and even apply some slick effects. Interested? Well start off with this article by Bakari Chavanu at our sister site Apple Matters for how a pro uses the iPhone to snap pics (and why) then read Turning the iPhone Into a Digital Photography Tool . The article covers every thing from pro tips to awards to apps. Worth your time!

Chris Howard has an excellent piece up at our sister site Apple Matters listing refinements for the iPhone. Highlights include:

Undo!! I lost a whole email when backspace got stuck on.
Rotate lock. Sometimes you just don’t want the screen to rotate. I lie in bed reading webpages. If I lie on my side, the webpage rotates to landscape (I prefer portrait most of the time). It’d be nice if there was an option to tap to lock the orientation. I know some apps I’ve seen have that feature. (Maybe a two-finger tap?)
WiFi sync. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to sync your iPhone over WiFi instead of having to plug it in? Please, Apple?

There’s a lot more in the article and since we don’t want to step on Chris Howard’s toes or make the site owner unhappy we’ll just give you the link and let you check it out for yourself.

iPhone Improvements Wish List