Entries Tagged 'Tech' ↓

Daniel Eran Dilger
While the United States prepares to elect a new president, candidates on both sides have made interesting comments about their affiliations with tech companies and their perspective on issues facing the tech industry.

Here’s a look at Senator Barack Obama and Senator John McCain compare, looking first at how each relates to Apple and Microsoft, how corporations are leveraging money and political power to shape public policy to fit their own interests, and followed by a look at each candidate’s stance on issues related to technology.

Continue reading →

Daniel Eran Dilger
Throughout the 90s, Apple’s increasingly precarious business was hobbled and complicated by the albatross of the Newton. As Apple abandoned the sophisticated but unfinished and ultimately unprofitable platform in early 1998, Palm began selling its wildly popular PDAs while PC makers struggled to copy that success in the mobile market with clumsy WinCE based devices.

Ten years later, PC makers are still failing to understand mobile devices as Apple launches its game changing WiFi mobile platform. Here’s why PC makers will be similarly left behind in their fight against the iPhone in the market for low cost mobile devices.

Continue reading →

Daniel Eran Dilger
Apple’s WiFi mobile platform, represented by the iPhone and iPod touch, appears to echo elements of the history of the company’s Newton MessagePad from a decade ago. This time, as a decade ago, Apple engineered a highly specialized device and integrated software while the company’s PC competitors lined up rival products that were largely gutless, impractical, instant eWaste units powered by software inappropriate for use in a mobile device. Here’s a historical comparison of the mid 90s Newton with today’s iPhone platform, leading up to what can be drawn about the future of Apple’s mobile WiFi platform compared to the Asus EEE PC and similar devices.

Continue reading →

Daniel Eran Dilger
Apple critics have been working to push the idea that the company’s pricing models in iTunes are in trouble and that HBO’s recent deal to sell shows for $2.99 per episode will cause a stampede toward untenably higher pricing. They’re wrong, here’s why.

Continue reading →

Daniel Eran Dilger
Inventory shortages of the iPhone appear to predict the launch of a new 3G model, long expected to be released this June around the first year anniversary of its debut. However, the rumor mill has recently kicked into overdrive to predict the arrival of another new device based on the same platform, either focused on gaming or serving as a tablet device. This is highly unlikely, for the following reasons.

Continue reading →

Daniel Eran Dilger
Microsoft’s marketing of Windows Vista and the Zune have failed in large part due to the fact that Microsoft has not learned how to effectively sell consumer products. Consumers buy Windows and Office, but that’s because they have no choice, not because of the company’s marketing savvy. Microsoft only effectively markets its products to businesses, which represents a very different type of sales relationship.

Businesses are so used to disgorging overloaded language about facilitating and empowering that they don’t find Microsoft’s marketing of the same caliber all that difficult to swallow. Consumers are a whole ‘nother ball game, and Microsoft is striking out in efforts to reach them. This has big impacts on the company’s future prospects.

Continue reading →

Daniel Eran Dilger
Copying the self-serving campaigns run by SVTC and Greenpeace, the group Climate Counts has made Apple, Inc. the core of its latest press releases. The group says Apple “is not yet taking meaningful action on climate change,” and is a “choice to avoid for the climate-conscious consumer,” but then points out that its “action” metrics are all based on ineffectual political posturing. And the reason for the tough critique: Apple elected not to join the Climate Counts consortium last year and throw money at the group’s ineffectual efforts to “facilitate engagement.”

Continue reading →

Daniel Eran Dilger
Microsoft has been keeping awfully quiet about sales figures for its Zune, a product that many Windows Enthusiasts originally predicted would cause considerable grief for Apple’s iPod. However, despite a new model refresh last fall and plenty of advertising, Microsoft has been left to announce that its actual sales are still a joke.

According to an Associated Press article citing Jason Reindorp, Zune’s director of product marketing, the device has sold “just north of two million” between its debut in November 2006 and May 2008. Apple has sold roughly 76 million iPods during that same period, more than doubling the installed base of iPods since the Zune’s debut.

Continue reading →

Pitted against Microsoft’s efforts to crush Flash using its own copycat Silverlight platform, open source projects seeking to duplicate Flash for free, and Apple’s efforts to create a mobile platform wholly free of any trace of Flash, Adobe has scrambled to announce efforts to make Flash a public specification in the Open Screen Project.

Will it help get Flash on the iPhone? Here’s the first segment of a three part series with a historical overview of the wars between Flash and Adobe, Microsoft, Sun, Apple, Google, and the open source community, the problems Flash faces today, and what future Flash can hope for as an open specification.

Continues: AppleInsider | Flash Wars: Adobe in the History and Future of Flash

Incidentally, Flash was the subject of the first article I wrote on RoughlyDrafted: Flash in the Plan

Technorati Tags: Apple, History, Software

Gene Steinberg of the Tech Night Owl podcast invited me to join Bob LeVitus and Steve Kruschen on his weekly show this week. I rattle on for some time about Apple’s purchase of PA Semi and the portability of Windows versus NeXTSTEP and Mac OS X; PowerPC vs Intel x86; the vaporware of Copland, Gershwin, and Taligent compared to Vista, Windows 7, and Singularity; and Apple’s success in a slow economy. You can hear for yourself and subscribe to the Tech Night Owl RSS feed at:
The Tech Night Owl LIVE with Gene Steinberg

May 1, 2008 episode:

http://www.techbroadcasting.com/podcasts/nightowl_080501.mp3

Earlier episodes I’ve participated on:

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

Technorati Tags: Apple, iPhone, iPod, Mac, Microsoft, Software