Tech, music, and religious nerdery since 1978.
Sounds like a top to bottom clash of cultures and a divorce waiting to happen.
When an AT&T representative suggested to one of Jobs’ deputies that the Apple CEO wear a suit to meet with AT&T’s board of directors, he was told, “We’re Apple. We don’t wear suits. We don’t even own suits.”
TUAW is reporting that my alma mater, Oklahoma State University, is starting a pilot program to evaluate how iPads can be used in the educational space. Handing out MacBooks, iPhones, and iPads isn’t a new concept, but this is one of the few instances where the use of the devices is being monitored to evaluate its academic value to the student.
…OSU is really interested in how their students will go about using them. The results should be intriguing, not only for the lucky college kids who get to use iPads all semester but also for Apple and for other schools that are formulating plans over how to share and use technology. It certainly seems like having an iPad at college would be helpful in the traditional ways (you could read textbooks or take notes on it), but it’s cool that OSU is thinking about new ways to use it as well, such as apps for tests or connections across local Wi-Fi for networked learning.
The program will start with a mere 125 students among a 20,000-plus student body. The iPad is thought of by many as a potential game-changer for education. So it will be interesting to see what the OSU experiment finds.
Barrons.com is reporting (h/t MacRumors) that Apple have allotted seven minutes of presentation time during Steve Jobs’s upcoming Apple Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) to Microsoft. According to their sources, Microsoft will talk about native iPhone development using Visual Studio 2010. This would be shocking enough in and of itself given Apple’s recent headline grabbing stance on controlling native iPhone development and limiting it to their own XCode application and developers suite. To make it even more shocking is the idea that none other than Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer himself will deliver the presentation. This could prove to be one of the more interesting twists in the upcoming keynote on June 7.
On a side note, my unconfirmed, completely fictitious sources say that following Microsoft’s time, Adobe will be allotted 30 seconds during which CEO Shantanu Narayen, already fuming from the Microsoft announcement, will receive a swift kick in the crotch by Jobs.
Update: Microsoft has apparently shot this rumor down via its Twitter feed:
Steve Ballmer not speaking at Apple Dev Conf. Nor appearing on Dancing with the Stars. Nor riding in the Belmont. Just FYI.
Steve Jobs has published an open letter regarding his thoughts on Flash. This well-written outline of Apple’s relationship with Adobe lays out why Flash is not on any iPhone OS device. This sums it up pretty well:
Flash was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short. – Steve Jobs
Daring Fireball’s John Gruber points out how the detail of the letter gives Adobe “little wiggle room” to respond. Michael Gartenburg (via Daring Fireball) makes the equally good point that Adobe’s only real play here is to respond with a version of Flash that runs favorably in a mobile touch environment.
A lot of talk from the blogs is about how this hinders developer’s choice when developing for the iPhone OS. This type of commentary drives me crazy. Developers can choose whether or not to developer for a given platform. If they don’t like the ground-rules, they can go play somewhere else. Logic dictates that if Apple drives away developers, fewer apps will be published, which makes the platform less attractive for consumers. The power of choice is still there.
The “problem” for developers is that the iPhone OS and it’s associated devices are the most sexy from a consumer perspective. So as a developer, here is your choice: do you stand on your principles (or lack of ability to evolve as a developer) and miss the market, or do you challenge yourself to learn something new? In the end, if lack of Flash is why you choose not to create an iPhone OS app or iPhone/iPod/iPad optimized experience in the browser, you probably weren’t committed enough the platform to make a great app in the first place.
Imagine that: Someone in the record industry wants more money. Shocking, I know. According to cnet news, music publishers are the latest victims of the digital age. Apparently, they make pennies on the dollar for tracks sold on iTunes and in other digital music stores.
To be fair, I don’t know the complete business model for digital music well enough to say whether music publishers are or are not getting screwed. I do know if these folks are going to get paid more, it’s coming out of our pockets, and as the article points out, the outcry is just now starting to settle from Apple’s move a few months ago to implement the first iTunes Music Store price increase.
The kicker to me is that they want to come after other music “sources” in iTunes as well. These include music in movies and TV shows, streaming radio, and even the 30-second previews for songs in the the store. This just seems a bit greedy to me.
“In the U.S. while we do get paid a mechanical (licensing fee) from ITunes [sic], we are not getting any performance income from Apple yet,” David Renzer, chairman and CEO of Universal Music Publishing Group, said in interview late last month with entertainment-industry publication, Encore. “(On iTunes) you can stream radio, and you can preview (tracks), things that we should be getting paid performance income for.
“Also, if you download a film or TV show,” Renzer continued, “there’s no performance (payment) and typically there’s no mechanical (payment) either.” (from cnet)
It might be true that they don’t get paid for these things, but I really don’t think they should come digging around the digital consumer for money. Talk to the studios about the movie and TV show issue. Talk to the radio stations about streaming radio. As for the 30-second previews, just give it up. We are already paying up to $1.29 per track. Keep pushing this agenda and a lot of people will fall back on much cheaper ways to acquire music, TV shows, and movies, which result in zero royalties.
Oh, and they are so upset that they are going to ask congress to intercede. Good thing congress doesn’t have anything on its plate right now.
