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Another example: When we were building the tablet PC in 2001, the vice president in charge of Office at the time decided he didn’t like the concept. The tablet required a stylus, and he much preferred keyboards to pens and thought our efforts doomed. To guarantee they were, he refused to modify the popular Office applications to work properly with the tablet. So if you wanted to enter a number into a spreadsheet or correct a word in an e-mail message, you had to write it in a special pop-up box, which then transferred the information to Office. Annoying, clumsy and slow.
They could have had what Apple is going to deliver with iWorks for the iPad almost a decade ago, if it weren’t for the internal politics…
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Yes. Five. We want to bring all five of our productivity apps to iPad: OmniGraffle, OmniOutliner, OmniPlan, OmniFocus, and OmniGraphSketcher.
I finally had some time to watch the keynote.
Now all you folks saying that the iPad is just a bigger iPod Touch, go watch the iWorks demo in the keynote presentation.
Go ahead, I’ll wait….
Back again? Okay. Now ponder the following things:
- multi-touch (as in, three fingers or more)
- user interaction design
There’s some major progress being made here. Regardless of hype, the way Apple does introductions and all that. The real progress being made will not be by iPhone apps being scaled up. The real progress will be made with the mundane productivity apps.
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Watson claimed that many developers of applications for the iPhone OS–which the iPad uses–are not making money. Developing applications for the iPhone and iPad is expensive, he said, because iPhone OS uses the Objective C language rather than Microsoft’s more pervasive .NET platform. And Apple’s control over the platform has alienated some people that make software for its products, he said.
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Yes, there is much jealousy from iPhone developers at the sacks full of money being made by Zune and Windows Mobile app developers.
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Remember way back to January 2007, when the iPhone was announced? Oh Internets, you wailed and gnashed your teeth endlessly. No 3G network? No MMS? No apps on the iPhone? No replaceable battery? Oh, your complaints were endless. You were sure that the iPhone was doomed because it didn’t meet all your requirements.
And what happened? Well, Apple has sold 40 million iPhones. FORTY MILLION. They have become the largest mobile device company in the world.
So today, you moan on and on about all the features you expected and demand in the iPad. What no Verizon? No two-way camera? It’s not weightless? A full half inch thick? Only 10 hours of battery life? You make tons of predictions on the success and failure with scant details and without ever actually trying one.
[..]
“You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.” – Steve Jobs
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The video is available here.
I can’t wait for the next generation – I expect Apple, just like with the iPod, to introduce an iPad Nano….
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Claiming that he completely forgot about the much-hyped electronic device until the last minute, a frantic Steve Jobs reportedly stayed up all night Tuesday in a desperate effort to design Apple’s new tablet computer. “Come on, Steve, just think—think, dammit—you’re running out of time,” the exhausted CEO said as he glued nine separate iPhones to the back of a plastic cafeteria tray. “Okay, yeah, this will work. This will definitely work. Just need to write ‘tablet’ on this little strip of masking tape here and I’m golden. Oh, come on, you piece of shit! Just stick already!” Middle-of-the-night sources reported that Jobs then began work on double-spacing his Keynote presentation and increasing the font size to make it appear longer.
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Remember, everything Steve does during a keynote is on purpose:


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Try it, I’m going for yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, no, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, no, yes, no, no, no, no, yes, yes, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, yes, no, no, yes, yes, yes, no, yes, yes.
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Check out the line that’s forming outside our store in San Francisco as of this morning.
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Using Flurry Analytics, the company identified approximately 50 devices that match the characteristics of Apple’s rumored tablet device. Because Flurry could reliably “place” these devices geographically on Apple’s Cupertino campus, we have a fair level of confidence that we are observing a group of pre-release tablets in testing. Testing of this device increased dramatically in January, with observed signs of life as early as October of last year. Apple appears to be going through its cycle of testing and polish, which is expected from any hardware or software company as it nears launch.
So it’s suddenly safe to predict the new tablet will have an iTunes app store, and existing iPhone apps will require little modification to run on it.

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While meeting with a group of students, one of them asked the multi-billionaire: “Mr. Ballmer, would you sign my laptop?” The inquiry earned laughs from the group, as well as as the Microsoft executive. “It’s got Windows on it,” the student said, “I promise.”
“Oh yeah,” Ballmer said sarcastically, before taking the MacBook Pro and signing it with a marker. The autograph came with a note: “Need a new one?”
“It’s all yours,” Ballmer said as he handed the Apple machine back to the student.
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In 2003, when Apple said its iTunes music software would work on PCs using the Windows software of its age-old rival, Microsoft, Apple made up posters that read “Hell Froze Over.” Hell may be getting frosty again.
Apple is in talks with Microsoft to replace Google as the default search engine on its iPhone, according to two people familiar with the matter. The talks have been under way for weeks, say the people, who asked not to be named because the details have not been made public.
Wow. Now that would be interesting…
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Look at the bottom right. I tried a bunch of other tech companies, and none do this – does anybody know of ANY other company that does this?
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Apple just approved another little project by yours truly:

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Here’s the front page of one of the bigger “general news” web sites here in the Holland-lands.

Leading news is the fact that Apple invited the press to a demonstration. That’s it, nothing more than that. Apple sending out an invitation is front page news.
Speculation about the tablet, of course, but the way it’s handled is indeed getting a bit insane.
my prediction: iLife 2010, iPhone OS 4.0, and “one more thing”…
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Apple NASDAQ:AAPL and the companies that sell software for the iPhone and iPod touch at the App Store have lost over $450 million to piracy since the store opened in July 2008 according to an analysis by 24/7 Wall St.
[..]
There have been over 3 billion downloads since the inception of the App Store. Assuming the proportion of those that are paid apps falls in the middle of the Bernstein estimate, 17% or 510 million of these were paid applications. Based on our review of current information, paid applications have a piracy rate of around 75%. That supports the figure that for every paid download, there have been 3 pirated downloads. That puts the number of pirate downloads at 1.53 billion. If the average price of a paid application is $3, that is $4.59 billion dollars in losses split between Apple and the application developers. That is, of course, assuming that all of those pirates would have made purchases had the application not been available to them for free. This is almost certainly not the case. A fair estimate of the proportion of people who would have used the App Store if they did not use pirated applications is about 10%. This estimate yields about $459 million in lost revenue for Apple and application developers.
I think a more fair estimate of the proportion of people who would have used the App Store if they did not use pirated applications is about 0%, but that’s just me.
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Monday’s article at the Wall Street Journal, which provided confirmation of an Apple tablet device, had all the earmarks of a controlled leak. Here’s how Apple does it.
Often Apple has a need to let information out, unofficially. The company has been doing that for years, and it helps preserve Apple’s consistent, official reputation for never talking about unreleased products. I know, because when I was a Senior Marketing Manager at Apple, I was instructed to do some controlled leaks.
The way it works is that a senior exec will come in and say, “We need to release this specific information. John, do you have a trusted friend at a major outlet? If so, call him/her and have a conversation. Idly mention this information and suggest that if it were published, that would be nice. No e-mails!”
The communication is always done in person or on the phone. Never via e-mail. That’s so that if there’s ever any dispute about what transpired, there’s no paper trail to contradict either party’s version of the story. Both sides can maintain plausible deniability and simply claim a misunderstanding. That protects Apple and the publication.
In the case of yesterday’s story, Walt Mossberg was bypassed so that Mr. Mossberg would remain above the fray, above reproach. Also, two journalists at the WSJ were involved. That way, each one could point the finger at the other and claim, “I thought he told me to run with this story! Sorry.”
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Do I think The Tablet is an e-reader? A video player? A web browser? A document viewer? It’s not a matter of or but rather and. I say it is all of these things. It’s a computer.
And so in answer to my central question, regarding why buy The Tablet if you already have an iPhone and a MacBook, my best guess is that ultimately, The Tablet is something you’ll buy instead of a MacBook.
I say they’re swinging big — redefining the experience of personal computing.
It will not be pitched as such by Apple. It will be defined by three or four of its built-in primary apps. But long-term, big-picture? It will be to the MacBook what the Macintosh was to the Apple II.
I am not predicting that Apple is phasing out the Mac. (On the contrary, I’ve heard that Mac OS X 10.7 is on pace for a developer release at WWDC in June.) Like all Apple products, The Tablet will do less than we expect but the things it does do, it will do insanely well. It will offer a fraction of the functionality of a MacBook — but that fraction will be way more fun. The same Asperger-y critics who dismissed the iPhone will focus on all that The Tablet doesn’t do and declare that this time, Apple really has fucked up but good. The rest of us will get in line to buy one.
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Even now, with the blogs all over the story, and Michael Wolff griping, and with AT&T admitting that its coverage in New York and San Francisco isn’t up to par — even now, with all this going on, no one in the mainstream media will hold AT&T’s feet to the fire.
Know why? Katie points me to this article. The big T was the second-biggest ad spender last year, just slightly behind Verizon. For the first nine months of this year they’ve dropped a bit but they’re still the fourth-biggest advertiser.
But wait a minute, you say. Would TV networks and leading newspapers really look the other way on a big story just because they feared losing advertising revenue? Would AT&T really use its advertising budget as a weapon to shape the way it gets covered? Surely that kind of thing doesn’t happen.
Yeah. Surely not. Must be something else. All that breaking news about the underpants bomber or something.
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AT&T has apparently found a workable solution to the reported data congestion in New York City. They’ve quietly stopped selling the iPhone to customers in the New York metropolitan area, at least from their web site.
I guess that’s one way to solve the problem.
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Since the Consumerist story appeared Sunday afternoon, AT&T service reps have been telling New Yorkers like myself that it won’t sell us the phone online because of fraud problems.
What does that mean? Sean, the pleasant rep I talked to tonight, told me he could sell me a refurbished, 8-gig 3G iPhone online or over the phone. But if I wanted a new iPhone, he said, I’d have to go to a retail store.
Why? “There’s actually been a problem in that area with fraud for the iPhone. It’s kind of a high-risk area.” Sean then reassured me that he was “not saying there’s bad neighborhoods anywhere. That’s not what that means.” But he couldn’t offer any more details.
I’ll let Fake Steve Jobs do the summary:
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In short: this is a huge company that’s going off the fucking rails. It’s bad enough they can’t run their own wireless network. Now they can’t even get their lines of bullshit straight either.
I hate that. Another example of MS being on the wrong track. Full of creative, brilliant people, and a useless management.
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But then again, the Wall Street definition of “competent leadership” is “manages to get good quarterly results this quarter”, and Ballmer has been adequate for that.
[Microsof responds:]