RIM Offers Device Management for iOS and Android

Having already screwed up all devices they offer, RIM moves on to other com­pa­nies’ devices.

The 2011 15" Macbook Pro Blows

Maybe Marco should “drop the com­puter on the desk” and see if that fixes it?

RIM (Blackberry) shipped as many PlayBooks last Quarter as Apple ships in two Days.

It’s not a tablet mar­ket, it’s an iPad mar­ket.

France Telecom CEO Leaks iPhone 5 Ship Date: October 15

“If we believe what we have been told, the iPhone 5 will be released on 15 October,” Mr. Richard told a group of reporters, accord­ing to TechCrunch. He didn’t say if that date was for the iPhone’s world-wide launch, or if it could roll out in the United States ear­lier in the month.

Mr. Richard is the same CEO that let slip Apple was plan­ning on using micro SIM cards in the iPhone 4, which does add a lit­tle more cred­i­bil­ity to his iPhone 5 launch date.

Why does any­one tell this guy anything?

Should I Replace My Computer/PC with an iPad?

I get asked this ques­tion a cou­ple times a month by friends and fam­ily who know I’m a com­puter geek​.So I’m com­mit­ting the com­mon response I give to writing…

For those in a hurry: the answer is mostly yes.*

A com­puter is an oven, an iPad is a microwave.

Some peo­ple could live with only a microwave in their house. When I lived by myself for a cou­ple years in col­lege, there was an oven in my apart­ment. Not once dur­ing my tenure did it know the warmth of a human touch. But some­one seri­ous about cook­ing would never get by only on a microwave, the same way some­one seri­ous about har­ness­ing the power of a com­puter could never get by on an iPad alone.

Like a microwave, the iPad is new and very very good at a hand­ful of things and ter­ri­ble at every­thing else.

Stuff it’s good at:

• Surfing the web
• Short email correspondence
• All types of reading
• Watching movies
• Playing games
• Listening to music
• Creating music
• Finger paint­ing (I’m serious)
• Massive bat­tery life
• Intuitive inter­face
• Great value for the money
• Etc…

Stuff it’s ter­ri­ble at:

• Long form typing/coding
• Complex image/video editing
• Complex spread­sheet manipulation
• Complex audio editing
• Connecting to mul­ti­ple exte­rior devices
• Multitasking
• Etc…

When microwaves really went main­stream in the 80’s (by that time about 1/4 of all US house­holds had one) there were all kinds of lame cook­books about how to make a turkey in a microwave or a roast or any num­ber of other unlikely culi­nary can­di­dates for your nuke box. That’s because when you have a new ham­mer every­thing looks like a nail. Have you ever eaten a roast cooked in the microwave? Yeah, nei­ther have I, because it’s a ter­ri­ble idea. If your going to be mak­ing roasts, you prob­a­bly should own and oper­ate an oven.

The iPad is new and shiny. If you love gad­gets and com­put­ers, you should get one, but it’s not going to replace your desk­top com­puter any­time soon. They’re great at a small, but impor­tant sub­set of com­put­ing tasks, and they make them enjoy­able like no other device I’ve owned. The only skep­tics I’ve met so far are peo­ple who haven’t used them.

Here’s the three-way breakdown.

1. If you don’t care about that list of, “Stuff it’s good at” tasks up there, then you shouldn’t get one at all (obviously).
2. If you only care about those tasks, then you should get one immediately.
3. If those tasks are a small but impor­tant sub­set of what you do with com­put­ers then maybe you should get one or maybe not, it will prob­a­bly come down to budget.

*Once again though, the answer is mostly yes. I say this because if you’re ask­ing, and your bud­get allows for it, you should prob­a­bly get one. People that do do a lot of seri­ous com­put­ing most likely already know the answer to this ques­tion and the iPad is per­fect for peo­ple who don’t do a lot of seri­ous computing.

Jobs Himself May Have Sunk Apple's "App Store" Trademark Infringment Claim Against Amazon

In its suit, Apple accuses Amazon of trade­mark infringe­ment and unfair com­pe­ti­tion. Moreover, Apple noted that Amazon did not ade­quately respond to a num­ber of Apple requests that they cease call­ing their app store, well, an app store. Notably, Apple is engaged in a sim­i­lar legal spat with Microsoft over the very same issue, with Microsoft seek­ing to block Apple’s trade­mark, alleg­ing that “App Store” is a generic phrase that doesn’t war­rant trade­mark protection.

Now, a few weeks later, Amazon has finally responded to Apple’s ini­tial suit and has asked a Federal Judge in San Francisco to dis­miss the suit and issue a declara­tory judg­ment rul­ing that Amazon isn’t infring­ing on Apple’s trade­mark rights. Interestingly enough, Amazon’s answer uses state­ments from none other than Apple CEO Steve Jobs in an effort to prove that the term ‘app store’ is a generic designation.

Amazon specif­i­cally high­lights com­ments made by Jobs dur­ing an Apple earn­ings con­fer­ence call held last Fall. During the course of the call, Jobs repeat­edly made ref­er­ence to “app stores” that weren’t in ref­er­ence to Apple’s iTunes App Store.

If their own CEO is going to use the term “app store” to refer to non-Apple appli­ca­tion stores, it’s a tough argu­ment to make that oth­ers can’t. It’s a rare slip up from Jobs. I bet he’s pissed. I’d be pissed.

News Corp’s iPad Newspaper Delayed

The post­pone­ment appar­ently has noth­ing to do with the app itself, but with Apple’s new iTunes sub­scrip­tion method. Apple will auto­mat­i­cally charge users either weekly or monthly and will auto­mat­i­cally update the app every morn­ing as new edi­tions are pub­lished. Apple report­edly must “tweak” the new ser­vice before The Daily can be launched.

I was cer­tain Apple would be the punc­tual one in this duo. Maybe iTunes caught whitiPhonitis.

Real-Time Visual Language Translation for Your iPhone.

Definitely from the future. It’s going to be great in 10 years when we have stuff like this embed­ded in eye glasses and contacts.