Category: iPhone

As lithium:heroin, is iPhone:Crackberry?

Probably not, but…

Listening to this week’s MacBreak Weekly, the Macalope found himself shouting “iPod! iPod!” at the lovely Merlin Mann and the talented Scott Bourne.

Discussing why a Blackberry user would be inclined give Apple the benefit of the doubt on the iPhone, the suggestion was that they’d only do it if they were also Mac users.

Well, the Macalope suspects not many are going to because they’re so thoroughly entrenched in the platform, but they don’t necessarily have to be Mac users.

They could just really like their iPods.

The Macalope knows some Trojan horses and, frankly, they’re kind of pissed that the iPod stole their shtick.

Don't hate the phone

A note to those currently dissing the iPhone

Note to all those griping that they don’t care about the iPhone and Apple should be concentrating on OS X and dammit, dammit, DAMMIT!

Products like the iPod and the iPhone are why Apple is still around and, therefore, why the Mac OS is still around and is as awesome as it is.

Macworld’s Peter Cohen makes a similar point.

Yes, it’s bad that Apple told us Leopard would be out in the spring and it will now be out in the fall. Bad Apple! Bad! It’s also a shame that Apple won’t be able to use Leopard to entice PC users who are on the fence about upgrading to Vista. And you can question the veracity of Apple’s contention that the iPhone delayed Leopard (but you’d probably be wrong).

But griping about the iPhone itself — regardless of its relative importance to you, personally — is, ultimately, cutting off your nose to spite your face.

Arrogance

iPhone FUD.

Apple’s Arrogance With iPhone

Ah, you’re off to a great start, Gundeep Hora!

I have to ask one question from Apple, if I may.

Well, the Macalope’s only read the title but already he’d prefer that you didn’t.

What’s up with the sheer arrogance in regards to iPhone?

Yeah! What is up with that?!

Man!

Yeah, you know what I’m talking about.

No, actually. The Macalope really, really doesn’t.

The lack of presence at last week’s CTIA tradeshow was purely disgusting and an insult to the entire industry.

Oh, that. Well… funny story. See, Steve Jobs thought Phil Schiller was going, and Phil Schiller thought Tim Cook was going and…

Personally, I wouldn’t be too arrogant at this point, especially considering the fact that the iPhone is going to be nothing more than a temporary novelty that will eventually wear off.

Boy, the Macalope never gets tired of hearing that one! And it’s a good thing since he’s been hearing it since 1984!

Then again, maybe that shows your insecurity about the iPhone and further proves my point.

Mmm… no.

Had you let the industry (press, analysts and competitors) experience the iPhone throughout CTIA, maybe you may have realized the idiocy behind the $599 price tag, and the phone’s lack of usefulness.

It’s $499, jackass. And “lack of usefulness”?

Let’s just say that if you and an iPhone were in a room together, something in the room would lack usefulness.

Clearly, it’s not designed for business users…

It may not be specifically designed for business users, but the Macalope suspects there will be a lot of senior executives and salespeople who are going to buy these things and simply demand their IT groups support them (at least their iPhones).

… and very few average consumers, mainly teenagers (the seemingly obvious target market of the iPhone), will have the budget to invest in a ludicrously priced cell phone.

Ah, the obvious target market for the iPhone is those punk kids because we all know Apple just makes toys! Like the iPod. Which is a toy. For… everyone.

Now, remember, this whole rant is ostensibly about Apple not showing the iPhone at some trade show. You remember the iPhone, right? It’s the product that isn’t shipping yet. The one that hasn’t received FCC approval yet.

That iPhone.

So, Apple, it’s not that I have anything against you… well, you may beg to differ after reading this column, but let’s be a little more humble, show some humility and launch a respectably priced product.

Oh, wait, maybe it’s not about the trade show. Maybe it’s about the price. Or maybe Gundeep doesn’t know what the hell it’s about, he just wanted to bash the iPhone.

Well, Gundeep, your name has been duly noted in the pantheon of clowns that rushed to declare the iPhone DOA. See you in a year or two!

UPDATE: In comments, DomBass points out that Hora’s first post about the iPhone was glowing. Try to rationalize the “lack of usefulness” comment with this:

Since the iPhone is also going to be a ridiculously powerful mobile device, the number of exciting applications that Apple will release throughout the product’s lifecycle is only going to make the iPhone an all around winner.

Jackass.

UPDATE II: Oh, man, it just gets worse. Commenter PygmySurfer found this gem from Hora in which he opines that Apple will dump OS X because it’s becoming a consumer electronics company.

Note to Hora: you might want to check what operating system two of Apple’s consumer electronics products — the iPhone and Apple TV (and probably the next version of the iPod, too) — run before writing something so mind-numbingly stupid.

Gin rummy.

Dvorak.

The Macalope sees that John C. (the “C.” is for “C. What An Ass I can Be?”) Dvorak is ginning up hits from Apple web sites by saying Apple should “pull the plug” on the iPhone…

…before it’s too late! Aaaaaaahhhh! (Cached link here.)

The Macalope has discussed this before, of all the silly pundits, Dvorak is really the one who deserves no links.

The problem with Rob Enderle is not Rob Enderle, it’s lazy journalism. Paul Thurrott is largely just a Microsoft fan boy and has, on occasion, a nice word for Apple. And the Macalope firmly believes that George Ou believes every crazy koo-koo bananas thing that he writes.

But Dvorak has no business writing about Apple. Period. When a pundit has admitted he’s just flame-baiting, why would anyone take his opinion seriously?

So don’t click through to read Dvorak’s trolling. Click here and ask MarketWatch why anyone should listen to anything John Dvorak has to say about Apple ever. Don’t use filthy words, don’t use capital letters, don’t go all Artie MacStrawman. Just do the textual equivalent of sighing and rolling your eyes.

And then go read something else.

Monkeys flinging their own poo

Enderle and some other nitwit have no compunctions about talking out their asses.

Apple TKOs Cisco in iPhone bout, analysts say.

As part of the settlement, all legal action on both sides has been dismissed, but the rest of the arrangement’s details remain confidential.

[Emphasis the Macalope’s.]

That didn’t stop analysts familiar with Apple, Cisco and the iPhone brouhaha from speculating on who won and, more important, who lost at the negotiation table.

EEEE-EEEEE-EEEE! OH-HA-HA-HA!

“The rule in Silicon Valley is that if Apple leaves the table smiling, the other guy got screwed,” said Rob Enderle, an independent analyst and principal of the Enderle Group.

OOH-OOH-OOH-OOH!

Roger Kay, of Endpoint Technologies Associates, agreed. “It certainly looks like Cisco gave away the store.”

OOH-HA-HA-HA-HOOOOOOOO!

Both Enderle and Kay said their take was based on the clear value of the iPhone name, and the vague interoperability promises made in the statement. “I’m not convinced that Cisco got what it wanted out of this,” said Enderle. In the past, he added, Apple has made promises to partners that it didn’t keep. “That’s been a history of deals with Apple. The partner always regrets it.”

OOH-HA-HA! EEE-EEE-EEE! OOH-OOH-OOH!

…

As usual, Enderle is talking out of orifices that were not meant for such purposes.

Cisco clearly could not have given a rat’s ass about the iPhone trademark. It Photoshopped the name on existing products to try to give the illusion that it had great big plans for it. Then it happily came to an agreement with a company that was going to put it on a landmark product that will turn Cisco’s use of the trademark into a footnote. A brief anachronism.

Do not, dear readers, shed a single tear over poor Cisco. The Macalope doesn’t know the terms of the deal any more than Enderle does, but whatever it got, it was adequately compensated for half an hour of Photoshopping.

iPhone, youPhone, we all use "iPhone"

Apple and Cisco make a deal.

Apple and Cisco make a deal (Wall Street Journal subscription-only).

Under the agreement, both companies are free to use the trademark on their products globally and acknowledge the trademark ownership rights that have been granted. Each side will dismiss any pending actions regarding the trademark.

iPhones for everyone!

ADDENDUM: The Macalope would just like to add that this was really a silly thing to worry about. Does anyone really care what the Apple phone was called, as long as it wasn’t called the Apple Portable Communications Device for Business Or Personal Use Brought To You By Cingular, The Greatest Phone Company Ever?

The Macalope never found time to delve into Brier Dudley’s column last week, but one of the standout moments was Dudley coming down with a case of the vapors over Steve Jobs’ lack of concern for U.S. trademark protection.

In just over a month, he’s been flippant about U.S. trademark protection, accounting standards, securities regulators and European antitrust enforcers.

After ignoring Cisco’s trademark on the term “iPhone,” Apple called the resulting lawsuit “silly.”

The Macalope is relieved to see that our great nation survived this month-long crisis.

Those iPhones. They'll kill ya.

Enderle.

Rob Enderle has some horrible things to say (tip o’ the antlers to Piotrowski via email) about using the iPhone in a corporate environment.

Hard to believe, isn’t it? The Macalope is just as shocked as you are.

But, apparently the iPhone can cause your entire company to come crumbling to the ground almost instantaneously. And give all your employees syphilis. Or something.

“The device isn’t secure enough, nor is it designed to run with corporate systems,” he said.

Enderle has been running around his usual circuit of lazy journalists spreading the idea that the iPhone isn’t secure since the day it came out.

The only real basis for this argument seems to be the fact that because it will run QuickTime, show a variety of image types and do other multimedia tasks, those files can be used to compromise the iPhone the same way they can be used to compromise a PC or a Mac.

Sooo, it’s no more or less secure than a PC or a Mac. OK. [The Macalope is working on a piece on security which he hopes to post over the weekend.]

What about it “not being designed to run with corporate systems”? There’s some truth here. iTunes is not an enterprise-level application, many web-based business applications use Java which the iPhone doesn’t support and many businesses eschew 802.11 because it’s not as secure as good o’ Ethernet cable.

But Enderle’s foil in this article — Forrester’s Charles Golvin — doesn’t seem to know what the hell Enderle’s talking about. He thinks some Office functionality will quickly make its way to the Mac (hey, even TextEdit can read Word files) and notes that Exchange does IMAP and so does the iPhone, unlike RIM devices. So the iPhone could be a good corporate player.

To really try to scare corporate IT executives, Enderle decides to play a little buzzword bingo.

If executives insist on connecting iPhones, then the IT department has a duty to report the violation since it could mean that Sarbanes-Oxley or other compliance rules have been broken, Enderle said.

Ooh! Mention Sarbanes-Oxley! That’ll get ’em!

OK, now, the Macalope has not read Sarbanes-Oxley in its entirety, but he does know a bit about it and the whole point of it is putting in place proper controls that are properly documented. It obviously does not dictate which hardware or software you can use. If your business decided that what it needed to do to be successful is have every executive walk around with a live grenade in their hand, that would be fine under Sarbanes-Oxley as long as you had the proper controls in place (i.e. their hands would be duct taped closed, they’d be followed around by an admin assistant whose job it was to hold their hand closed, etc.).

Enderle is simply trying to use the issues of corporate security and policy as a club to try to bash the iPhone and get his name in another useless he said/she said article. Anyone who manages IT policy knows that the iPhone could just as easily be part of a policy as almost any other device. Enderle is simply assuming that business won’t make an Apple product part of their policy and that the only way it could conceivably get into an enterprise is from some rogue and rather stylish executives who might also be metrosexuals.

The point should be that no device that’s not an approved corporate standard (not just ones made by Apple) should be used for company business in an enterprise environment. The Macalope didn’t make this rule up and he has a lot to say about how enterprises tend to pick the least common denominator (Windows) as their corporate standard, but that’s the way this works, like it or not.

You could just as easily pick OS X and the iPhone as you could Windows and the Blackberry (or all four!) provided your policies and procedures covered those technologies.

Enderle’s one-trick pony really needs to be put down.

The Peter Principle

Wharton’s Peter Fader provides a compelling argument for changing majors.

Wharton marketing professor Peter Fader provides today’s object lesson in why an MBA may be a tremendous waste of your time.

Fader is asked his opinion of the iPhone, the AppleTV and Steve Jobs and manages to get just about everything wrong.

He even breaks out our old friend, Artie MacStrawman.

Pete Mortensen and innerdaemon do a good job of deconstructing much of Fader’s absurd analysis, but the Macalope loves a good piling on, so he’ll try to hit some points they declined to.

I think that when this phone actually hits the market, some of the grand visions of Steve Jobs has as well as some of the Apple zealots are going to be rather disappointed.

Use of the term “Apple zealots” should automatically disqualify you as an impartial judge of the company, let alone passing yourself off as someone competent enough to be teaching marketing to anyone other than members of the Microsoft management training program.

In fairness, it’s quite possible that Fader got his ass kicked by some Mac users back in grade school and has never gotten over it. If that is the case, the Macalope would like to apologize to Fader on behalf of Mac users everywhere.

Asked if $500 is too high for the iPhone, Fader says:

Well it’s not going to be too high for the first few hundred thousand people who just have to have it. You can charge them anything and they’ll pay anything.

Ah, those must be those craaaaazy Apple zealots! Of course we’ll pay anything! We’re Steve Jobs’ butt monkeys!

NEW ORDERS HAVE BEEN RECEIVED FROM APPLE HQ. REPORT TO CINGULAR RETAIL OUTLETS TO RECEIVE NEW DEVICE. BRING LARGE BILLS. THAT IS ALL.

Please. This kind of childish crap can be refuted with two words: G4 Cube.

Also, while it’s not at the same level, the Macalope would like to point out the time when we came together as a community and stood up and said “No!” to iPod socks.

But for the mass market, if they really want to create something that is anywhere close to what the iPod did, it is very expensive.

Right you are, Petey. Because it’s not like the original iPod was considered too expensive.

Wait, what?

Not to mention that Fader’s concern seems rather foolish with today’s revelation that the $500 will include 18 months of service as AT&T attempts to go for the market share gold. [Scratch that. AT&T sez no. (link via Daring Fireball and Jared Rice in comments).]

And, I think on the feature side, it doesn’t really have that many features.

Are we talking about the same phone? The one that’s an iPod, a phone and a breakthrough internet communications device? The phone with a full web browser? That phone?

Did you see that interface? That’s a feature. A feature you will use every single time you touch the phone. And it’s a feature none of the other phones have.

The problem with Fader’s analysis of “features” is he’s looking at some checklist he’s thrown together of “features” such as “upgradeable memory” and “removable battery” and “FM tuner” and, well, golly, the iPhone don’t got none o’ those.

Well, yes, dumbass, that’s going to happen when you just count “features” of other phones (many of which no one will give a crap about when they see the iPhone’s interface) and don’t count features of the iPhone that are less tangible.

As an example, which of these two features are more important to you?

  1. An FM tuner.
  2. The ability to just guess how something works and be right about 99% of the time.

The Macalope’s thinking #2 is just a tad more important, is not on Fader’s list of “features” and will be one of the big differentiating factors bewteen the iPhone and pretty much every other phone on the market.

On Steve Jobs, Fader says:

He’s a brilliant man but he’s of course very mercurial…

Of course! He must be! Someone wrote it on the bathroom wall at CES!

…he’s unpredictable and he’s very private.

“Unpredictable”? Really? Then why is Fake Steve so dead-on all the time? Jobs is, actually, fairly predictable. If you have enough imagination.

As far as I know there were no announcements about the Mac. That really is the bread and butter of the company.

Actually, no, it’s not really, love chunks. The iPod generated about 48% of the company’s revenue in the last quarter compared to 43% from Mac products.

And it’s a signal that they’re not going to be developing or supporting it as much as they used to.

That is simply a load of crap. While the iPod is overtaking the Mac as Apple’s most prominent product, the fact is that Steve Jobs chose to roll out the iPhone in dramatic fashion and that says nothing about the company’s support for the Mac.

How is it that Microsoft can go five years without a major update to Windows and Jobs fails to devote time to the Mac — after devoting almost all of his WWDC keynote to it just five months ago — and Apple’s suddenly dropping the Mac?

The interview is really an indictment of Wharton’s marketing department and if the Macalope were dean he’d call up Knowledge@Wharton and have them pull the thing immediately.

Cingular execs behaving badly

Try to tone it down, guys.

Cingular execs — from the the “Ha-ha, other carriers!” tone of CEO Stan Sigman’s dreadful keynote speech to the “We bent Apple” comments from president of national distribution Stan Laurie (antler tip to Daring Fireball) — sure are acting like some grade-A dickwads, aren’t they?

The Macalope would advise the “gents from Georgia” that their exclusivity lasts two years and people have long memories.

Apple made a deal of necessity and it brought the sizzle to the table. When you’re just the holder on a winning field goal, you should probably not do a big end-zone dance.