Quotulatiousness

June 7, 2011

Why Apple didn’t introduce the next iPhone model at WWDC

Filed under: Economics, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 17:28

Charles Arthur thinks he’s cracked the mystery over when the next iPhone will be introduced, and why:

This might seem blindingly obvious, but lots of people were hanging on to the hope that Apple would launch the iPhone 5/4GS/4G on Monday. The fact that it hasn’t — unlike the past two years, when it has announced new versions of the iPhone at, guess where, WWDC — indicates that Apple is shifting its strategy in phones.

Presently, Apple’s phone market segmentation strategy is to sell the newest model (the iPhone 4, now around a year old) at the highest price, and the second-oldest model (the 3GS, two years old) at a lower price. Hence you can find carriers such as Orange selling the 3GS for free with a £25 per month contract, while the iPhone 4 is still has an upfront price plus a £30+/month contract.

Presently this is as much segmentation that Apple is able to achieve, because it was locked into the yearly release schedule. That’s not surprising; Apple was a comparative newcomer to the mobile phone industry. Remember how the original iPhone couldn’t forward SMS or send MMS? How we laughed.

Now Apple is a serious player. And (we’re hearing from the supply chain) it is shifting the release date of the newest phone to September/October, which means a lot can change.

I’m still waiting on the next iPhone announcement, as I’m still at the tail end of my three-year contract (yes, Canadians only had the choice of a three-year contract when the iPhone 3G came to town). It’s running a very old version of iOS — 3.1.3 — as all the reports from the early adopters said that iOS 4 was a total pig on the 3G. Newer versions of iOS 4 don’t run on the 3G at all.

After August, I’ll (in theory) have the choice of going with the new iPhone or switching to an Android smartphone of some description (provided I can find good functional equivalents of the software I use on the iPhone). Hence, my interest in what Apple is doing for the next iPhone.

Instead, look to Apple to consider iPhone updates on a six-monthly basis. One model in September/October; another in March/April. That allows for incremental differences between versions which provides the updraft for sales, which carriers will like. But it also means that Apple doesn’t have to sweat too hard on how different to make the next handset — unlike the present situation, where every new model has to blow the bloody doors off.

Yet it also means that it will have a wider range of handsets to offer over time because of the natural segmentation of age: the iPhone 4, iPhone 4GS, some time next spring, the iPhone 5; in the autumn, the iPhone 5G (or whatever). And so on. The ages of the devices will create the tiers, which will allow it to slice the market into different price tiers and compete with Android — and more importantly RIM, which Apple clearly has in its sights as a rival to be crushed (why else introduce iMessage, which looks like a clone of BlackBerry Messenger?).

So that’s it: if you’re wondering where your iPhone 5 (4GS/4G) is, it’s being built in a factory in China. And Apple is getting ready to unveil a completely different way of slicing and dicing the phone market.

May 31, 2011

Colby Cosh tweets

Filed under: Cancon, Humour, Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 09:49

Colby Cosh works for Maclean’s, which is owned by the same corporate entity that provides his cell phone service. He’s not been impressed with his employer’s other line of business:

Tue 31 May 04:28 (On the whole, I would rather buy a mealworm-infested phone from a Somali pirate than deal with Rogers any further.)

Tue 31 May 04:32 (A pirate prob wouldn’t tell me how *lucky* I was to get a refurbished battery to replace the inert one in the phone he sold me 4 wks ago.)

Tue 31 May 04:34 (…which I had to relinquish for 2 weeks in order for the incalculably complex operation of “swapping in a working battery” to be executed.)

Tue 31 May 04:34 (…Not a NEW battery, mind you. I bought the PHONE new, but the replacement battery is refurbished. I am explicitly supposed to be grateful.)

May 3, 2011

Michael Geist on what the Conservative majority means for digital policies

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Government, Liberty, Technology — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:29

In short, he sees it as a mixed bag:

For example, a majority may pave the way for opening up the Canadian telecom market, which would be a welcome change. The Conservatives have focused consistently on improving Canadian competition and opening the market is the right place to start to address both Internet access (including UBB) and wireless services. The Conservatives have a chance to jump on some other issues such as following through on the digital economy strategy and ending the Election Act rules that resulted in the Twitter ban last night. They are also solidly against a number of really bad proposals — an iPod tax, new regulation of Internet video providers such as Netflix — and their majority government should put an end to those issues for the foreseeable future.

On copyright and privacy, it is more of a mixed bag.

The copyright bill is — as I described at its introduction last June — flawed but fixable. I realize that it may be reintroduced unchanged (the Wikileaks cables are not encouraging), but with the strength of a majority, there is also the strength to modify some of the provisions including the digital lock rules. Clement spoke regularly about the willingness to consider amendments and the Conservative MPs on the Bill C-32 committee were very strong. If the U.S. has exceptions for unlocking DVDs and a full fair use provision, surely Canada can too.

The Conservatives are a good news, bad news story on privacy. A fairly good privacy bill died on the order paper that will hopefully be reintroduced as it included mandatory security breach notification requirements. There will be a PIPEDA review this year and the prospect of tougher penalties for privacy violations is certainly possible. Much more troubling is the lawful access package which raises major civil liberties concerns and could be placed on the fast track.

April 20, 2011

What will Smartphones kill off next?

Filed under: Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:21

When you look at their track record, Smartphones are technological hit-men, taking down category after category of stand-alone electronic devices:

Cisco’s recent announcement that it was closing its Flip mini-camcorder business got us thinking. It’s pretty clear that today’s smartphones, with their excellent HD video cameras, are partly to blame for the Flip’s demise. But how many other consumer products and services — digital or analog — are being killed off by the big, bad smartphone?

We’ve assembled a list of likely victims here. If you know of other smartphone-induced casualties, please tell us in the Comments section — or contact your local law enforcement authorities. Let’s start with the most obvious victims…

The only two items on their list I disagree with are stand-alone GPS units and paper maps. Paper maps because the portable GPS units are excellent for what I think of as tactical directions — take this turn, drive this distance, etc., but are not as useful for strategic purposes. Paper maps aren’t dead yet.

And the reason I don’t think GPS units are quite dead isn’t technological, but financial: I can’t afford to use my iPhone for GPS because of the insanely high data costs when I’m roaming, especially if I’m in the United States.

April 12, 2011

Next iPhone to be delayed into 2012?

Filed under: Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:27

According to sources at some of the various suppliers for key iPhone components, Apple may be delaying the next iPhone:

Analyst firm Avian Securities said that production of the iPhone 5 won’t begin till September, meaning a holiday launch at the earliest, or even a New Year’s debut.

The note, reported in Business Insider, is based on chats with key component suppliers, which support a consensus view that launch will be either a late 2011 or early 2012 event.

The note adds that a low-spec, low-price iPhone is also on the Apple roadmap, though exactly where on the roadmap is unclear.

This is surely a worrying development for the iPhone elite — not only could such a nano-iPhone divert some components, further pushing back the iPhone 5, but it would mean that “ordinary people” can get their hands on a fondleslab.

My own iPhone 3G is still holding up well (I’m not a particularly abusive owner), but I’ll finally be out of contract with Rogers in August, so the delay in the next iPhone release may increase the chances of me switching to an Android phone instead.

March 14, 2011

The iBoob saga

Filed under: Humour, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 14:57

Jesse Brown recounts the story of the iBoob app:

Idiots worldwide rejoiced when news came that the iBoobs app, censored by Apple, had found a home in the Android Marketplace.

For those tragically unfamiliar with iBoobs — how can I describe it? It’s boobs. They jiggle. A settings screen lets you adjust things like “boob weight,” “stifness,” and “gravity factor.” If any of this turns you on, I’d like to introduce you to a killer app called porn.

iBoobs is a Freemium product. If you upgrade from the free ”iBoobs light” app to the $2.10 paid app, you can toss the boobs around with the tip of your finger. Or at least, you could last week. It seems that Google has since followed Apple’s lead (at least partially) and banned the paid version of the app.

If your imagination isn’t enough, there’s a YouTube video of the application here.

March 11, 2011

Nothing to see here, citizen iPhone 3G user, move along

Filed under: Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:31

An impertinent Apple iPhone 3G user risks becoming a non-person by asking why Apple’s latest security fixes exclude customers using earlier iPhones:

A Reg reader who brought up Apple’s decision to exclude the iPhone 3G and other older devices from its latest security update on an official forum has received a firm rebuke for his effort.

Apparently the post, which was quickly deleted, failed three separate rules of the Apple Discussions soviet, as a curt notice to our source explained (extract below):

Apple removed your post on Apple Discussions, titled “Please Apple, you cannot leave a major share of your customers vulnerable,” because it contained the following:

Speculation or Rumors Discussion of Apple Policies, Procedures or Decisions Petitions

Damn straight. Frankly our man can consider himself fortunate not to have his account deleted for suggesting Apple (at minimum) ought to release patches for Safari for the iPhone 3G. An iOS 4.3 update, released on Wednesday, which includes a number of critical security fixes, is incompatible with both the iPhone 3G and older versions of the iPod Touch. You need the iPhone 3GS, or later, or iPod Touch third generation to take advantage of the update, which includes a number of critical security fixes as well as performance and functionality improvements.

You don’t question us, Apple customer. We question you.

March 8, 2011

Lastest boon to spammers? The move to IPv6, apparently

Filed under: Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:50

John Leyden reports that with all the good things about moving to the vastly larger address space of IPv6, we can expect at least one negative:

The migration towards IPv6, which has been made necessary by the expansion of the internet, will make it harder to filter spam messages, service providers warn.

The current internet protocol, IPv4, has a limited address space which is reaching exhaustion thanks to the fast uptake of internet technology in populous countries such as India and China and the more widespread use of smartphones. IPv6 promises 3.4 x 1038 addresses compared to the paltry 4.3 billion (4.3 x 109) addresses offered by IPv4.

While this expansion allows far more devices to have a unique internet address, it creates a host of problems for security service providers, who have long used databases of known bad IP addresses to maintain blacklists of junk mail cesspools. Spam-filtering technology typically uses these blacklists as one (key component) in a multi-stage junk mail filtering process that also involves examining message contents.

“The primary method for stopping the majority of spam used by email providers is to track bad IP addresses sending email and block them — a process known as IP blacklisting,” explained Stuart Paton, a senior solutions architect at spam-filtering outfit Cloudmark. “With IPv6 this technique will no longer be possible and could mean that email systems would quickly become overloaded if new approaches are not developed to address this.”

February 9, 2011

Real usage-based billing might work, but not the current form

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:25

Tim Wu contrasts the way the UBB issue is being presented and how it might actually be successful:

The issue of usage-based billing is a little tricky because such systems are not inherently evil. When you think about it, we usually pay for things on a usage basis. Gasoline, electricity and even doughnuts are generally billed based on how much you use. And the fact that usage-based billing sounds reasonable in theory is surely why the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission approved the new rules.

But take a closer look and something far more insidious is going on. If bandwidth were actually billed like electricity or water, that might be fine. But what the CRTC approved is something different. Claiming that its profit and consumer welfare are exactly the same thing, Bell wants to remake Internet billing. It wants to make use of the most lucrative tricks from the mobile and credit-card industries by preying on consumer error to make money. And this ought not be tolerated.

Any rule that asks the consumer to guess at usage, and punishes you if you’re wrong, is abusive. Imagine being asked to guess how much electric power you need every month, with a penalty for mistakes. Yes, that’s what cellphone companies do — or get away with — but that hardly makes it a model. It’s a system of profit premised on human error, and this begins to explain Bell’s deeper interest in usage-based billing. Bell wants to make the horrors of mobile billing part of the life of Internet users. And that’s a problem.

H/T to Michael O’Connor Clarke for the link.

Nokia: the company on the burning platform

Filed under: Technology — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:57

Nokia has a problem. The ordinary cellphone market which mere years ago they bestrode like a Colossus has been overshadowed by the smartphone market, and they’re just an ordinary company in that market.

In the memo, Mr. Elop shares his vision of the current state of the mobile landscape, where Apple controls the high-end of the wireless market with its iPhone, where Google’s Android not only is making its mark in the smartphone arena but now conquering the mid-range market with Android and how Nokia is even losing the fight to control the low end of the cellphone market — an arena in which the company has traditionally dominated — as it struggles to compete with China’s MediaTek for market share and mind share in emerging markets.

“The first iPhone shipped in 2007, and we still don’t have a product that is close to their experience,” he writes.

“Android came on the scene just over 2 years ago, and this week they took our leadership position in smartphone volumes. Unbelievable … And the truly perplexing aspect is that we’re not even fighting with the right weapons. We are still too often trying to approach each price range on a device-to-device basis.”

Update: Eric S. Raymond thinks the memo shows that Nokia’s new CEO has the courage to grasp the nettle:

If this memo does nothing else, it proves that Elop is not afraid to look facts in the eye and propose drastic remedies for a near-terminal situation. I cannot recall ever hearing in my lifetime a CEO’s assessment of his own corporation that is so shockingly blunt about the trouble it is in. The degree of candor here is really quite admirable, and does more than any other evidence I’ve seen to suggest Elop has the leadership ability to navigate Nokia out of its slump.

It’s clear from the memo that Elop is preparing his company to change their flagship smartphone OS. You can’t get more obvious than ‘We too, are standing on a “burning platform,” and we must decide how we are going to change our behaviour.’

The available alternatives are Android or WP7. Apple’s iOS is right out because Nokia needs to be able to sell cheap on a huge range of handsets. RIM and WebOS are tied to one company each. MeeGo’s been tried and failed. There are no other realistic contenders.

I think we’re being given some subtle clues that it will be Android.

Update, 12 February: Andrew Orlowski has some post-tragedy analysis of Nokia’s collapse into the arms of WP7:

There are times when you don’t want to intrude on public grief, but Nokia has spent 15 years (or more) trying to avoid this day.

New CEO Stephen Elop would argue otherwise, but giving up control of your platforms means giving up control over your destiny – and Elop has given Nokians not one twig of consolation around which a bit of dignity could be wrapped.

He’s also signalled the end of Nokia as a high R&D spend technology company. “We expect to substantially reduce R&D expenditures”, said Elop bluntly in this morning’s webcast. The new Nokia will be a global brand and a contract manufacturer whose primary customer is itself.

“Disaster” and “stitch-up” are two of the texts I received this morning from Nokians. Finnish press reports 1,000 staff in Tampere walking out. A surprise? Not really. For 15 years Nokia has defined itself, to its partners and customers, as the Not-Microsoft. Now it’s utterly dependent on them. There’s no Plan B.

[. . .]

How does Nokia recreate the product-centric, almost skunkworks development culture of the 1990s, while retaining its global logistical strengths, such as its ability to customise for local markets? How does Nokia prevent Microsoft from stealing its ideas? How does it create services that don’t brass off its biggest customers, the operators? Some of these are very old questions, and the Microsoft tie up does nothing to resolve them — it might even complicate them.

The impact on morale is probably the most immediate thing Elop has to address — it’s a huge blow to Finnish national pride. Elop’s brutal assessment in his “Burning Platforms” intranet post is that Nokia was hopeless at strategy, rubbish at marketing, and couldn’t write software. He all but told Nokians that they should have stayed in the rubber boot business.

What a motivator!

February 8, 2011

Smartphone data usage surging

Filed under: Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:46

In a development that will surprise nobody (unless you work in the planning department of a cell phone company, apparently), smartphone users are indulging in data faster than predicted:

With costs of maintaining their networks flying through the roof, the nation’s largest wireless carriers are attempting to limit the mobile Internet usage of their most download-happy customers through speed slowdowns, price tiering and by raising costs.

Yet Americans’ mobile Internet usage is growing exponentially. Video, multimedia-heavy apps and other data hogs have even casual users sucking down more data than they realize.

“As the mobile Web continues to get better, people are using it more,” said Todd Day, a wireless industry analyst with Frost & Sullivan.

[. . .]

In June 2010 — when it scrapped its unlimited data offering and moved to a capped system — AT&T (T, Fortune 500) said that 98% of its smartphone customers use less than 2 gigabytes per month of data, and 65% use less than 200 megabytes.

But that was six months ago. At the rate mobile Internet traffic has been expanding, June was practically the stone age.

[. . .]

The heaviest data users tend to have Android devices, which run widgets that constantly update with data over the network. Android users download an average of 400 MB per month, and iPhone users are a close second with 375 MB per month, according to Frost & Sullivan. On the flip side, BlackBerry devices tend to download just 100 MB per month.

Update: “Brian X. Chen says “Verizon iPhone Shows You Can’t Win: Carriers Hold the Cards”:

The launch of the iPhone on Verizon adds to the mountain of evidence that you just can’t trust wireless carriers.

On the day that iPhone preorders began last week, Verizon quietly revised its policy on data management: Any smartphone customer who uses an “extraordinary amount of data” will see a slowdown in their data-transfer speeds for the remainder of the month and the next billing cycle.

It’s a bit of a bait-and-switch. One of Verizon’s selling points for its version of the iPhone is that it would come with an unlimited data plan — a marked contrast to AT&T, which eliminated its unlimited data plans last year.

Verizon incidentally announced a plan for “data optimization” for all customers, which may degrade the appearance of videos streamed on smartphones, for example.

Verizon didn’t send out press releases to alert the public of this nationwide change regarding data throttling and so-called “optimization.” The only reason this news hit the wire was because a blogger noticed a PDF explaining the policy on Verizon’s website, which Verizon later confirmed was official. Obviously it’s bad news, so Verizon wanted to keep a lid on it.

Hookers with Blackberries on Facebook

Filed under: Economics, Politics, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:17

The latest round of moral posturing by politicians has accomplished great things: more sex workers now use Facebook to communicate with prospective clients, fewer are using Craigslist. Success?

A study by sociology professor Sudhir Venkatesh on trends in the world’s oldest profession, published by Wired, estimated that 25 percent of hookers’ regular clients came through Facebook compared to only three per cent through Craigslist.

Five years before that, in 2003, nine per cent of the prostitutes regular clients came through Craiglist and none through the then infant Facebook.

“Even before the crackdown on [Craigslist’s] adult-services section, sex workers were turning to Facebook: 83 per cent have a Facebook page, and I estimate that by the end of 2011, Facebook will be the leading on-line recruitment space,” Venkatesh writes.

Venkatesh says that there’s another key indicator for those who frequently hire prostitutes:

Curiously, he found one of the three main ways a sex worker can boost her earning potential is not to get a boob job but to buy a BlackBerry. “This symbol of professional life suggests the worker is drug- and disease-free,” Venkatesh explains.

Of prostitutes that own a smartphone, 70 per cent have BlackBerries while just 11 per cent own iPhones. Feel free to write your own hilarious jokes using that information.

February 3, 2011

Tools for protest marchers: anti-kettling app

Filed under: Law, Liberty, Media, Middle East, Technology — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:20

Patrick Kingsley talks to the developers of “Sukey”, a new mobile phone app intended to help protesters avoid being kettled by police:

Cairo, it wasn’t. But at about a quarter to four last Saturday afternoon, on a crowded backstreet in central London, something happened outside the Egyptian embassy that deserves at least a footnote in the annals of protest history. A crowd of students weren’t kettled.

In the context of recent British protests, this was a near-miracle. At each of the previous four major student protests in London since the Millbank riot on 10 November, police have kettled — or, in their terminology, “contained” — thousands of protesters, preventing them from leaving an area for several hours, and often from accessing basic amenities such as food, water and toilets.

Police kettle protesters supposedly to quell violence, but protesters arguably only turn to violence out of frustration at being kettled. Most notoriously, police trapped hundreds of teenage schoolchildren inside a tight grid on Whitehall on 24 November — and only subsequently did a few of them smash up a police van abandoned in their midst.

Saturday’s non-kettle, then, was a victory in itself. But the real excitement wasn’t that it didn’t happen — but how it didn’t happen. It is difficult to pinpoint exactly why police and protesters behave in a certain way at a certain time, but one explanation for the kettle’s failure to form lies with a new communications network, which launched that afternoon: Sukey.

January 31, 2011

Showing their true colours?

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Government, Law, Liberty, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:42

To mark the Egyptian government’s shutdown of cellphone and internet access to their angry citizenry, the US government wants to have the power to do the same. Subtle, eh?

Legislation granting the president internet-killing powers is to be re-introduced soon to a Senate committee, the proposal’s chief sponsor told Wired.com on Friday.

The resurgence of the so-called “kill switch” legislation came the same day Egyptians faced an internet blackout designed to counter massive demonstrations in that country.

The bill, which has bipartisan support, is being floated by Sen. Susan Collins, the Republican ranking member on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. The proposed legislation, which Collins said would not give the president the same power Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak is exercising to quell dissent, sailed through the Homeland Security Committee in December but expired with the new Congress weeks later.

The bill is designed to protect against “significant” cyber threats before they cause damage, Collins said.

Got to admire the balls of brass required to introduce legislation to do something in America at exactly the same time the US government is demanding that Egypt restore their citizens’ internet access. Breathtaking hypocrisy.

Update: By way of American Digest, a most appropriate image:

Smartphone release cycles speed up

Filed under: Economics, Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 09:05

It’s tough to always have the newest electronic wonder, and (at least in the smartphone world) getting harder all the time:

If you bought a smartphone within the past year, you might already have noticed that your once-cool superdevice is feeling outdated.

There’s a reason for that: “Android’s law.”

Smartphones are continually outdueling one another in terms of performance, and they’re coming to market at a breakneck speed.

For instance, if you picked up the Motorola (MMI) Droid when it went on sale in November 2009, you had the best Android device on the market. But then the twice-as-fast Nexus One went on sale in January 2010. Then the HTC Droid Incredible hit the market in April. Then in June, the Evo 4G put the Droid Incredible to shame. The Samsung Galaxy S came out later that month. Then the Nexus S … You get the point.

The average time smartphones spend on the market is now just six to nine months, according to HTC. But it wasn’t always this way: Average shelf time was about three years prior to 2007, HTC estimates.

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