neomac

How Apple can let Samsung save face the way it let Microsoft do so.

Mon, 21 May 2012 15:03:18 -0400

As you know, Apple is locked in a patent battle with Samsung over their shipping android phones which are essentially counterfeit iPhones. At the same time, Samsung is desperate to keep Apple as a customer because losing $8B in orders each year would really sting, but also Samsung is used to being a bully and isn’t in its nature to respect other people’s property rights. So, Samsung isn’t going to back down.

Apple can let samsung save face, while having its patents protected in one fell swoop: Secure from Samsung a promise to stop making android phones by the end of 2013.

Samsung can then switch to windows mobile, won’t be violating any Apple patents and will likely quickly dominate that marketspace (assuming they’re stronger than nokia.)

Samsung “needs” android right now because it doesn’t have its own OS. But windows mobile is a reasonable solution with one huge advantage over android: A license from Apple.

Yep, Microsoft paid Apple for a license to violate its patents. This happened in the late 1990s when Apple was struggling. Apple had Microsoft dead to rights on patent violations (and copyright violations) and at that time. The brilliance of Steve Jobs is that he realized that Apple didn’t need to enforce its patents against Microsoft because Microsoft “simply has no taste.” So, Apple traded patent rights for billions upon billions (as Carl Sagan would say, god rest his soul) in dollars.

Classy guy that he is, Steve even let MSFT buy some restricted stock and spin the story as “Microsoft bails out Apple!” (Many windows weenies think that’s what happened to this day.) The billions of dollars started appearing buried in Apples’ quarterly filings and suddenly Apple was in turnaround mode.

Its amazing that these facts, reported in the mac press at the time, seem to have been scrubbed from the communal unconsciousness.

Anyway, a similar deal works with samsung. Let them pay a small amount for past wrongdoing, migrate off of Android and onto Windows (which is no real threat to the iPhone because Microsoft finally actually innovated for once) and everybody wins.

Most importantly for Samsung, is, they can bury the hatchet in a secret deal, nobody admits wrongdoing, and Samsung can declare victory.

Apple for its part, eliminates the primary android phone manufacturer and protects its patents at the same time, which is what it really wants.

Wish: Apple solution for wireless headphones.

Fri, 04 Jun 2010 13:57:19 -0400

Apple has managed to make very small, very low power WiFi devices in the form of the iPad Touch and the iPhone. They even connect at a fast speed - 802.11g rather than the older b.

This is a vastly better networking technology than Bluetooth, which was invented at a time when WiFi wasn’t practical from a price and battery life perspective.

However, bluetooth has barely evolved and the bluetooth protocols were designed by committee— and work like it. Thus bluetooth really hasn’t taken off like it should.

Worse, bluetooth uses the same spectrum bands as WiFi so in our increasingly wifi saturated world, bluetooth is increasingly a low quality solution.

Apple is just the kind of company to fix this, and I’m kinda hoping that they do next week. Again, no inside info, but the timing feels right, and Apple is about the only company that can do this. The reason they might not is that the market may simply not be big enough.

Here’s the solution: Wifi enabled headphones. Earbuds would plug into a ipod shuffle sized receiver clip, while over-the-ear cans would have it all integrated. Apple could provide for seamless interconnectivity, using Bonjour. Solve all the pairing problems, and much more importantly— provide unbeatable audio fidelity at unbeatable ranges and with a clear, consistent, user experience.

I think this would probably be an open protocol with a nice name like Bonjour that apple could trademark, and thus license people who meet the protocol like the WiFi alliance does now.

But more importantly, I could finally get the headphones I’ve wanted since the first day I heard about bluetooth.

So, that’s my wishless for WWDC. And if not this year, maybe next year.

Bluetooth, like flash, is one of those technologies that needs to be taken out back and replaced.

New Prediction:

Thu, 03 Jun 2010 21:25:03 -0400

WWDC hasn’t been spoiled. The biggest news of WWDC hasn’t been leaked. I don’t know what it is, I haven’t a clue or inside information. This is just me knowing apple and having a feeling for their ways.

Its possible, however, it has been predicted, but as with most apple predictions people don’t really get the point of the product they predict— the iPhone was predicted as “an ipod with a phone”, remember.

I was right: No iPad! My prediction record, and why I got that one right.

Wed, 05 May 2010 04:46:48 -0400

At 11:47 on July 27th, 2008 I opined on twitter:

Prediction: Apple will *not* come out with another tablet computer (other than the ipod/iphone line) within at least the next 18 months.

July 27th, 2008 — http://twitter.com/neomac_com/status/869905628

What’s very important about this “Wrong” seeming prediction is that at the time I wrote it, the pundits and rumor sites were going on and on about how a new “tablet computer” was coming from Apple in the “september / october” timeframe.

How did I know this was false? I didn’t have any inside information, I’ve just been watching Apple for many years. I am pretty sure that Apple was working on the iPad at least prior to the date of my prediction, but this means nothing. Apple was “working on the iPad” since before they released the Newton.

Apple works on a lot of things. Apple explores different form factors. Not every project is product. In fact, what makes Apple a great company is that so few of their projects actually are products. They only release the very important ones, and they are able to polish the hell out of them.

It was obvious, in the Summer of 2008 at that there was no iPad right around the corner because the iPhone was still a very new product. The appstore had just launched and while successful was not the phenomenon it is now. The 3G iPhone had just launched and while also successful, the iPhone was not yet the runaway hit.

The reason rumor sites so often get things wrong is that they don’t have a long term perspective. Apple does, and I do.

But then they have to have 5 new rumors a week, and I am able to put things down in stone, 18 months before starting my blog to set out my bona fides.

Think I just got lucky? Here’s some more:

Most recent, I correctly predicted the iPad commercial during the Oscars:

Prediction: Apple will run an iPad commercial during the Oscar broadcast. Just like the “Hello” commercial for iphone in 2007.

March 3, 2010 — http://twitter.com/neomac_com/status/9964067379

But that was a gimme. How about something more challenging?

Apple’s purchase of PA Semi is going to have huge implications. The ipod/iphone is a platform, that Apple is betting a quarter billion on.

April 25th, 2008 — http://twitter.com/neomac_com/status/796578008

Context and perspective are important. At the time, Steve had not yet confirmed my prediction in an interview, and people were saying that Apple acquired them “for the engineers” (as if that made any sense.)

I still think that this acquisition has not fully come to fruition. But I believe Apple made it with the expectation of it affecting Apple’s products in 2013 and beyond.

Another more recent one, that probably also seems obvious now (only 4 weeks after launch!)

The iPad is going to fail like the iPhone failed. And like the iPod failed. Amazing to see whines from those who will never get it.
Jan 27th, 2010 — http://twitter.com/neomac_com/status/8298134291

The internet is notorious for its short memory. People who think things were obvious after the fact are oblivious to the statements they made beforehand.

How many people said the iPod was going to be a failure? I remember the day of release, the comments that were posted to the slashdot story. It was obvious to me that none of them got it. And that’s pretty understandable at the time— pre-existing open source bigotry combined with a fundamentally new category product.

But here it is, nearly 10 years and 150+ million ipods later, and when the iPad was announced you heard the same complaints from the same people. ”No USB” and “No Flash” and— irony of ironies— “it’s just a big iPod”.

Apple doesn’t walk on water. But I think if you’re going to criticize them, you should at least have enough perspective to understand what it is they are doing.

I promise to give you that perspective. This guarantees virtual anonymity— but if you question my chops, just remember, I predicted that there would be no iPad for 18 months when everyone was claiming it was imminent.

I may have only just barely made the 18 month deadline, but I was a 18 months closer than they were!

"There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance...."

Wed, 05 May 2010 04:16:17 -0400

“There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance. It’s a $500 subsidized item. They may make a lot of money. But if you actually take a look at the 1.3 billion phones that get sold, I’d prefer to have our software in 60% or 70% or 80% of them, than I would to have 2% or 3%, which is what Apple might get.”

- Steve Balmer, April 30 2007 as quoted in USA Today

http://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/management/2007-04-29-ballmer-ceo-forum-usat_N.htm

Why 960 × 640?

Tue, 20 Apr 2010 15:14:00 -0400

Why 960 × 640?:

marco:

What’s the average-person selling point for the high-density display that will overcome the downsides?

It is perfectly understandable that the creator of Instapaper would see this change in terms of reading. But the iPhone HD is going to have a 960x640 display for showing super high quality video from it’s internal camera.

Cellphone video has always pretty much sucked. This is a great area where Apple has an opportunity to not only deliver something great— but to deliver something competitors can’t match.

Apple has an HD Format that they quietly introduced last year called iFrame. The format of this video? 960x640. This perfectly matches a pixel doubled iPhone display, and this is not a coincidence.

Over the last several years, we’ve seen two major trends— the replacement of point-and-shoot cameras with cellphones, and the addition of hd video on cameras of all types. We’ve also seen the rise of inexpensive HD cameras of low quality, such as the flip and kodak zi6.

The downside of most cameras that shoot video is that their manufacturers made poor codec choices. AVCHD is designed to work with optical disks and TVS, and with no concern for what will happen with the video. Thus despite Apple shipping iMovie for almost a decade, most consumers have no convenient way to edit their movies. iFrame is a codec that is easily editable without a transcoding / importation step. Just copy the files onto your computer and iMovie works with them natively. This is huge for anyone who shoots a lot of video.

In one release, for $199 (with 2 year contract) Apple is going to release a video camera that delivers much higher image quality, in a much more usable codec, in a package with a gorgeous display to show off this gorgeous video. And make consumer video vastly more relevant than it has been since the initial boom in days of DV.

This is also a product which shows how Apple’s vertical integration pays off— they make the CPU in the phone which shoots the video, the computer to edit it which comes with a built in editing suite. Both the phone and the computer help sell each other as part of a total solution.

But the clear selling proposition for consumers— what Marco actually asked for— is that for $199 you can get a high quality video camera, that shoots stills, and you get the phone, and the iPod, etc. for free.