Posts from — August 2009

Daniel Eran Dilger

After having proven itself unable to compete in web search and advertising, Microsoft has acquired technology from a company with management problems and has launched a wildly hailed attempt to catch up to Google using a dishonest campaign targeting the government. Of course, this isn’t anything new, simply a repeat performance of the historical development of Windows NT. The only difference this time around is that Microsoft’s monopoly is no longer able to exert much leverage against legitimate competitors in the market, providing little hope for Bing. Here’s why.
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Daniel Eran Dilger

Is Steve Jobs the Snow Leopard at night? A reader supplied this artwork (click to enlarge), which makes me think of Bruce Wayne as the dark knight Batman. … Windows 7 costs how much!? Switch on the Snow Leopard signal!

Reader assignment: create other figures of the tech industry as super hero/villains. Steve Ballmer as the Penguin and Bill Gates as Joker spring to mind. Or perhaps Ballmer should be… Longhorn?

[update] Reader Carl Maniscalco envisions the Snow Leopard’s arch nemesis: Mr. Longhorn.

Daniel Eran Dilger

China Unicom has signed a three year agreement with Apple to become the exclusive provider of the iPhone in China, according to a report citing the company’s chief executive and a representative from Apple.
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Gene Steinberg of the Tech Night Owl invited me to talk about Snow Leopard and Windows 7. You can tune into the live stream Thursday August 27 at 6 PM PST, or listen to podcast episodes via iTunes, and subscribe to the Tech Night Owl RSS feed at:

The Tech Night Owl LIVE with Gene Steinberg

Recent episodes:

July 30, 2009, Windows 7, netbooks, and the Apple tablet.
July 9, 2009, Mozilla and Opera fight to make Ogg Theora the official codec of HTML 5.
June 18, 2009, Microsoft Enthusiasts
May 21, 2009, talking about Windows 7
March 19, 2009, talking about the iPhone 3.0 SDK
February 26, 2009, covering the Apple stockholder meeting
January 8, 2009, covering Apple’s last Macworld Expo

Earlier episodes I’ve participated on:

Oct 16 08
Oct 2 08
July 31 08
June 12 08
May 1 08
Mar 20 08
Jan 31 08
Jan 3 08
Nov 8 07
Sep 20 07
Aug 9 07
Jun 14 07
Apr 26 07
Mar 1 07
Jan 11 07

Daniel Eran Dilger

Nokia will abandon the Symbian OS on its high end smartphones and instead roll out new Linux-based devices in a fresh bid to take on the iPhone, according to advanced reports on next week’s Nokia World event in Germany.
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Daniel Eran Dilger

Windows Enthusiasts are working hard to compare Windows 7 against Snow Leopard. The problem: there’s no intelligent or rational basis for doing so.

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Prince McLean, AppleInsider

Apple’s iPhone held onto a 13.7% share of global smartphone unit sales in the second quarter, outpacing Microsoft’s Windows Mobile, which now claims just 9% of the market, according to Canalys.

Canalys: iPhone outsold all Windows Mobile phones in Q2 2009.
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Daniel Eran Dilger

If you’re thinking that Microsoft’s reported plan–to pit Windows Mobile 6.5 against Android and then wait for another year to issue Windows Mobile 7 as its “iPhone killer”–sounds inane, wait till you hear what the company intends to do to its current mobile partners. It’s a brutal strategy that promises to radically change both the smartphone and PC landscape.

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Prince McLean, AppleInsider

A report filed by a tipster claiming access to iTunes 9 says that it is “possible” the next version of Apple’s media player will sport both DVD import and playback as well as Facebook integration, allowing users to advertise songs and playlists with their friends.

Report: iTunes 9 to support DVD ripping, Facebook
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Daniel Eran Dilger

Windows Enthusiasts like to paint me as biased against the Zune because I didn’t get a free gift basket from Microsoft and then turn around with a CNET-style gushing review of the me-too player that manages to consistently slink a year or two behind Apple. But what does one of Microsoft’s own developers think of the device? Here’s an independent report from a person deep inside the Zune maker.
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Daniel Eran Dilger

A POP email setting in iPhone 3.0 has been identified as both a bug and a “security issue,” but that’s not really the case, writes Dr. Harry Zink.
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Daniel Eran Dilger

Before President Obama was elected, I compared him to Steve Jobs on the threshold of Apple in 1996, challenged with the task of rebuilding a failed enterprise and charting out a new future for it. How well is Obama doing in his role as a Jobsian CEO of America? Well, he could use some Apple-style marketing.

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Daniel Eran Dilger

An iPhone developer has reported that Microsoft promised it “a bucket of money” if it could port its Twitter app to the new Zune HD. The obvious question is, if there’s so much money in writing Zune software, why can’t Microsoft write its own simple apps and pocket all that potential for wealth itself?
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Prince McLean, AppleInsider

Sony plans to lure iPhone developers to the PSPgo, a revised version of its PlayStation Portable handheld gaming platform, and copy Apple’s low App Store prices to create demand for the relatively expensive new hardware, according to a gaming industry report.

Sony targets iPhone developers and low app prices for PSPgo
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Daniel Eran Dilger

Being a CEO doesn’t necessarily mean you have a basic grasp of logic. Jason Calcacanis proved this point while trying to make a rambling critique of Apple in his personal blog, oddly republished by the Silicon Alley Insider. Calcacanis demands that Apple be stripped of its technology so that less capable and innovative companies can benefit from it instead.

To make this moralist assault on free markets more palatable, he wraps up the whole thing with emotionalist language about openness and evil. At the core however, his rant reflects the new low in moron journalism that is eating up America like a swiftly spreading flesh eating bacteria.
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