iTunes Announcement from Apple Tomorrow
by aakar on November 15, 2010
I’ve been going back and forth on the announcement Apple is making in regards to iTunes. Initially my thought was: “could it be iTunes streaming?” The way Apple worded the message on their homepage almost hinted at possibly the end of the mp3. But after further thought it became pretty apparent that it couldn’t be streaming iTunes nor anything related to the iTunes “cloud”. That type of announcement from Apple would immediately generate one of their famous press-conferences. It would be a massive announcement. A significant change in the iTunes model. Something that surely would require Steve to get on stage and profess to the entire world how easy it is and how it just ‘works’.
So what could it be then? Well, MacRumors has a post saying the Wallstreet Journal all but confirmed that “The Beatles” are finally coming to iTunes. That type of announcement seems to be perfect for Apple to do via the web. On top of it, there seems to be some very apparent sneaky Apple-like hints on the splash page as MacRumors pointed out.
So while this isn’t an announcement for iTunes streaming, which is definitely at some point or another coming, it’s still a significant announcement for music distribution.
The Unsocial Network – Vanity Fair
by aakar on November 12, 2010
There’s a great except from The War for Late Night by Bill Carter in this months Vanity Fair. The whole piece is on what transpired last year among Conan, NBC, and Leno. The whole situation seemed so downright unimaginable. Reading it, it seems as though it’s something right out of a Hollywood screenplay.
There are a lot of titillating tidbits, though one specifically about Conan’s brilliant letter to the “People of Earth” and how Team Conan’s lawyers basically allowed him to speak his mind. Right before they were about to hit submit Conan’s producer wanted to point out the situation they were getting themselves into:
For Ross, the room all but spun. He was light-headed; he couldn’t remember the last time he had felt this nauseated. “O.K., everybody, hang on,” he said at the last minute, before a set of fingers pressed the buttons to send out the first press leak of the statement. Ross had to speak out; he wanted one last moment of consideration of just what it was they were about to do. Conan stopped at the door.
“Let’s all be aware of this: we’re about to blow this fucker up,” Ross said, full of portent.
There was only one reaction that mattered. Conan stood outlined by the doorway of the conference room, his swoop of copper hair almost touching the frame. He looked directly at Ross, unblinking. “Blow it up,” he said.
Browns Lay a Smacking to the Patriots
by aakar on November 8, 2010
C’s lose to lowly Cav’s a few weeks ago and now the Patriots lose to the Browns. Everything is coming up Cleveland, eh? We’re all WITNESSES
Back to the Patriots game though. Awful. Abysmal. Atrocious. Three words that pretty much sum up the Patriots efforts yesterday against the lackluster, yet up-and-coming Browns. The Patriots were handled on every single facet of the game. Special Teams, Defense, and Offense.
The special teams couldn’t figure our a way to handle the ‘wussy’ kickoff. The defense couldn’t stop the run nor handle a rookie quarterback on the run. The offense couldn’t get any sort of rhythm going. Tom Brady looked below average, while Colt McCoy looked like a probowl quarterback.
Hats off to ManGina and the rest of the coaching staff including Rex Ryans less-evil twin. They put together a terrific game plan and executed it perfectly.
There’s nothing good that came out of this game. As a Pats fan you can only hope that they learn A LOT from this awful loss. On the plus side at least I’m not a Cowboys fan. Ouch.
By the way, the Browns gave out a Gatorade bath. How lame is that? Your third win of the season and you are giving out a Gatorade bath. This was the Browns Superbowl ladies and gentlemen.
Thoughts on Titans Claiming Randy Moss
by aakar on November 5, 2010
Had a few days to digest the Titans claiming Randy Moss on waivers. While plenty of Patriots fans were hoping Moss would slide through the wire and become available as a free-agent, it would have been next to impossible for something like that to happen. Moss is too good of an athlete for all 32 teams to skip, no matter how disgruntled he may be.
Patriots fans should be semi-glad that the Titans claimed him. Why? Because at the very worst a division rival could have picked him up. That would have led to some interesting yet awful situations for the Patriots in their playoff run. At the very least the Titans may very well help the Patriots in playoff seeding. How? Well the Titans take on Miami next week and still have the Colts left on their schedule, twice mind you. So all-in-all it could very well be key if they can take one out of two from the Colts and beat Miami, helping the Patriots tremendously w/ record seeding being an important factor.
On another note, how brilliant of a coach/gm does Belichick look like at this moment in time? He was able to get rid of a disenchanted Randy Moss & his contract to the Vikings for a third-round pick, which on most accounts he was berated for, but he seemed to know something no one did. Randy Moss also praised the hell out of the team, the organization, and the head coach in his postgame press-conference last week. So much so, that it felt like the ex-girlfriend finally realizing how good she had it with her old boyfriend. Brad Childress on the other-hand, basically tossed the Patriots a third-round pick for four-weeks worth of work and then got slammed by Randy Moss. Goes to show you how this organization works, eh?
Impressive to say the least.
Get ready for Verizons Dream Phone – Fortune Tech
by aakar on October 29, 2010
Steve Jobs telling Ivan Seidenberg CEO of Verizon:
“Decisions you made [at Verizon] are decisions we would make at Apple.”
via Get ready for Verizons Dream Phone – Fortune Tech.
This article doesn’t shed much more light then what has already been written about. But I thought that quote says a lot about the future partnership between Apple and Verizon.
The one thing that I’m interested to find out is ‘How will Verizon’s network react to the iPhone?’ We know that AT&T’s network, while sub-standard in the eyes of many, fell to its knees because of the iPhone. It wasn’t the network that sucked, the iPhone and the usage of the phone on AT&T is what made the network suck significantly. Time will tell.
Apple Hosting Secret iOS Developer Summit Next Week
by aakar on October 27, 2010
Reports that Apple is hosting a secret iOS developer summit via Apple Hosting Secret iOS Developer Summit Next Week:
We are short on details, and we have not seen any public information about it, but it sounds like this will be a more intimate version of the iPhone Tech Talks that Apple hosted around the world last year.
Makes sense to me that they are trying to keep developers happy. I find it odd that it will be ‘only’ just that. Obviously I’m just speculating here but I think there could be three potential reasons for this summit, besides the obvious intimate tech talk.
1. Informing select developers on changes to the next iOS (4.5 or 5.0) However, it’s too early for any announcement regarding the next big update, this usually occurs during the March, April time frame. But maybe there are some significant changes happening?
2. Getting ‘significant’ developers together to put together teams to build tech-demos for the next iPad. If we are to follow the typical Apple release/announcement cycle, it would mean that an announcement of the new iPad would be coming in the January time-frame.
3. Trying to get iOS developers to begin creating Mac applications for the Mac App Store. They could be using this summit to push the Mac App Store to these iOS developers in hopes that they can build significant apps that Apple can then show off.
Again just speculation here.
Celtics Look Good
by aakar on October 27, 2010
The C’s took down the Heat last night 88-80. The final score isn’t indicative of how the game played out, the C’s really dominated the game on all fronts. The Heat though are still a work-in-progress and they will only get better as the season progresses but the C’s were smacking them around last night. The one thing I have to say though is the C’s still showed that second-half paralysis that they along w/ the rest of New England teams showed last season. I’m hoping that’s not going to be the case going forward. The Patriots are slowly putting it past themselves and I’m hoping that’s the case for the C’s.
Review: Windows Phone 7 – Mobilecrunch
by aakar on October 21, 2010
Windows Phone 7 is elegantly executed, incredibly intuitive, and straight-up beautiful at times. What it’s not, relative to the competition, is complete. The things it does, it does well — but the things that it doesn’t yet, tend to stick out. These things — third party app multitasking, copy and paste, or tethering — are things that people complained about other mobile operating systems lacking a year and a half ago.
Sad that Microsoft is so late to the party. The UI looks so elegant and so anti-Microsoft that it definitely intrigues me. I’d love to test one of these out. However, Microsoft is not only late to the party, they are late and incomplete to the party. All the things they are missing are the things the iPhone was missing on day one. Apple, to a point (I still feel multi-tasking on an iPhone is a cop out), has taken a long time, 3+ years, to get these things fixed or updated but they have.
Not to say I wouldn’t love to test one so Microsoft if you’re reading this, which is highly doubtful, send me one 
.
Giants-Phillies NLCS Game 3: A Giant Media Blackout – The Daily Fix – WSJ
by aakar on October 20, 2010
Giants-Phillies NLCS Game 3: A Giant Media Blackout – The Daily Fix – WSJ.
I walked into a Trader Joe’s two Sundays ago only to get blindsided by a radio broadcast of Game 3 of the Division Series against Atlanta, which played on the store’s public address system. I angrily heard that the Giants were leading 1-0, though thankfully the announcer didn’t say which inning it was. I sprinted out of the store and waited for a half hour in the car as my wife and a friend bought our groceries.
Ugh.. Come on are you serious?
I love my sports too, but seriously dude? You call yourself a fan cause you DVR games?
Two days earlier, on a Friday night, I had dinner at a restaurant located less than a half-mile from the baseball stadium while Game 2 was wrapping up. Midway through dinner, two older Giants fans who had been at the game walked in and sat the table next to mine. I gave my usual don’t-tell-me speech and they said they would abide. I later found out that when I turned around, they made a thumbs-down motion to my friends, who were kind enough not to blow it for me.
Sports and DVR’s really don’t go together that well. To tell you the truth a real fan wouldn’t go out to dinner the night of a playoff game. How about you stop trying to be a dick and actually watch the game live? Skip work, stream it (MLB.TV the quality and additions make it almost as good if not better than TV), listen to it on the radio, or seriously just stop pretending to be a fan…
Steve Jobs on Android’s Fragmentation
by aakar on October 19, 2010
Google Operating System has an interesting piece on Steve Jobs on Android’s Fragmentation rant.
Steve Jobs is right, the real question is: What’s best for the customer? Some people like to have options. Not everyone likes iPhone’s form factor, iPhone’s interface and some may even want a hardware keyboard, a custom virtual keyboard or a weather widget. Android is a diverse ecosystem and there’s a lot to learn until Google, hardware manufacturers and all their partners manage to come up with revolutionary phones, consistent interfaces and integrated experiences. Android is just an opportunity to innovate, it’s not a complete package. Google chose a non-restrictive license for Android to encourage innovation, even if that meant less control and more fragmentation.
Mobile phones are more personal than computers and I don’t think we’ll live in a world where every smartphone user will choose an iPhone. There’s always a trade-off and not everyone wants a perfect phone if that means they’ll have to change their definition of a perfect phone.
I’m not a Google hater. I think the Android has a lot of pros. Although, the issue for me on a mobile phone comes down to a few things.
1.) Experience: If I’m dealing with an android device, the experience I get on an HTC Evo vs the experience I get on a Droid is completely different. I’m not even talking about the interface, I’m talking about how the hardware and software interact. How one phone isn’t as sensitive to touch as another or at the very least the performance of one vs. the other.
2.) Development: Look fragmentation makes development much much harder. If you have a different UI on each Android device, if you make each Android device significantly different in hardware specs, then you require developers to test their applications on each device. You make the end-user experience with the UI that much worse. I’m not saying we need one UI or one device, however I’m saying that there needs to be some guidelines. If user A uses Twitter on the Evo and then uses it on the Droid, you want to make sure the experience is equal. That’s where the Windows vs. Android comparison ends. Because UI on a Windows OS, no matter if it’s a HP or a Dell is going to be similar. Thus UI development and design on Windows becomes significantly easier because you know what you’ll as UI experience on each Windows device. Performance might be different due to hardware changes, but in general you’re testing under minimum requirements. The term minimum requirements should not be part of the mobile vocabulary for an end-user. However, maybe minimum requirements should become a general Android term for manufacturers.