Tag: verizon

iPAM

Alright then, how did we do? We were basically calling for:

It makes much more sense going forward for Apple to abstract away the “I’m ready to sync” part of the current equation; you buy the app, it comes with an iPhone app, they are linked and automatically exchange info. Changes then sync next time you dock the phone or tablet or, presumably, automatically over the air if you so desire.

Some of which we got, I guess. Certainly not the xenomorph part of my theory (yet); instead, you get to buy iWork for your Mac, and then buy it three more times for your iPad. Why the hell didn’t I think of that? But we didn’t get tight, vertical integration of any kind, really, even though Steve did use the product matrix with the hole between iPhone and a laptop. Just have to wait for some future revision (if ever) to really get the full-on, 24/7 back-and-forth arrows going there. Or else they suspect the entire “home computer” side of the equation will gradually extinguish itself over a number of years and obviate the whole issue. And maybe it will. iPad certainly represents a first step in that direction.

That’s what makes its interface choices, and the relative popularity of same very important going forward. As the Macintosh set the standard for computing, well, so far, I strongly suspect the iPhone and its descendants is setting the standards for future consumer computing. At the very least as said computing gets done through Apple.

AT&T stays on as carrier. If Apple was ever going to go with Verizon, this was the product. Not happening. Mark my words, Apple will buy or found its own damn dumb-pipes company before it has product on the Verizon network. Period.
The lack of contracts part of the equation is certainly interesting. I suspect AT&T sees it as a way to lessen the network impact by encouraging people to buy a month of service when they really need it, then let the service lapse for a while. No other explanation for it, really. We can therefore expect iPhone 3G service to get markedly worse in densely populated areas since they think they’ve got the overloading issue prefigured. Wonderful.

My overall iPad-specific thoughts in convenient numerical form:

  1. I think the iPad is really aimed at MacBook Air users; they’re not exactly power users, but they need to be able to open and edit a spreadsheet or a document of some sort on the go. Weight is their critical factor. iPhone, though pocket-sized, can’t provide the file editing and really never will; again: it’s pocket-sized. And but so the same folks clearly aren’t willing to lug a MacBook around, since any MacBook out there is cheaper and vastly more capable than an Air, and yet they went for the Air anyway.
    Obviously, the non-laptopped are also targets here; they may well have an iPhone and wish it did just a bit more, or they want something like an iPhone but don’t want to or couldn’t mess with the contracts and/but also saw iTouch as too limiting for one reason or another.
  2. The sandboxing implicit in the iPhone/iPad OS automatically and fairly drastically limits what you can do with it when compared with a “real” laptop computer. But I suspect we’ll only see more and more of that approach in consumer devices. Notably missing from the demos, though, was “what happens to the files” you are opening/saving/editing with the various iWork apps that were demoed. Pretty clear they aren’t automatically syncing via the cloud, or we’d have been shown it. I suspect you have to plug it into a Mac, where you then bump them back into your traditional filesystem. Presumably iTunes then deals with pushing any Mac-side updates back again and sorting out versions. Or not. Small deal to give you the capability to move this stuff into .me, though. Seems so painfully obvious, one wonders where it was today.
  3. Brushes looks like an absolute killer app on the iPad (as opposed to the iPhone version of the same app being interesting, for sure, but not really a reason to buy an iPhone/iTouch). Seriously, it’s DTP for tablets.
    Likewise, I think comic books, textbooks, and newspapers will prove to be unexpectedly powerful. The interweaving of text, video, charts, chat, depth, and you-name-it really could revitalize the whole news-papering trade. Likewise comics seem to be crying out for a killer platform and easy, impulse purchases that don’t involve Comic Book Guy (worst tablet ever). Just seems like an awful lot of business to be done in the currently-printed realm, especially when iPads are down ~$200. Perhaps already, seeing as KindleDX is  ~$450, of similar dimensions, and an utterly hobbled, so-last-decade device by comparison.
  4. Another dark horse not related to comics: The MLB app looks like something out of the not-too-distant future that I’ve been promised every time anyone does a “what will  the teevee be like in 10 years” piece for OMNI. Wowie. Unlimited possibilities. Pop-Up video goes wide. Really a big deal.
  5. The matrix: I really never thought that, as of this announcement, iPhone would be instantly, clearly, and definitively the iPad mini. But it is. Funny how things work out sometimes.
  6. The name? Boy, Apple is really feeling its oats right now. The least of the problems with the name is its relative proximity to iPod. Generally speaking: not so fresh. In related news: the countdown clock for the end of the iEra is probably set back another five or ten years now. Jesus.

Verizon is the perfect corporate partner for Apple. This is precisely how Steve Jobs himself would deal with a balky battery door. With a branded sticker. Accept no cheap substitutes; only Verizon-brand stickers give you the confidence today’s multitaskers demand.

AT&T to customers: Drop dead

Ahh, AT&T, you’ve under-provisioned your network and all those iPhones you are more than happy to sell contracts for are making it easy to, you know, do stuff. And you apparently didn’t count on that. For three years running. The result: lots of data in your under-provisioned network. Who do we blame for this oversight? Why, the customers of course:

The carrier has had trouble keeping up with wireless data usage, leading to slow load times and dropped connections. It is upgrading its network to cope, but AT&T’s head of consumer services, Ralph de la Vega, told investors at a UBS conference in New York that it will also give high-bandwidth users incentives to “reduce or modify their usage.”

Translation: usage caps and overage charges, here we come. You iPhone users need to be hobbled like the rest of our customers! It’s like AT&T is fundamentally determined to go into a death-spiral the second ‘Merican iPhone users can go to another network. Which, it appears, is most likely to be T-Mobile. Sure took a long time for Fucktardia to figure out that Verizon is built atop an incompatible network, didn’t it? But just why is AT&T so dependent on iPhone? Weren’t they turning a profit before? Yes, but:

iPhone accounted for roughly 68 percent of [AT&T’s smart-phone/3G] sales [that make up the lions share of overall sales revenue]

[-and-]

Wireless revenues were up 37.2 percent, driven by “messaging, internet access, access to applications and services,” or [the iPhone]

These are very data users (and the attendant revenue spike) that AT&T is both dependent on and has resolved to infuriate. The plan, in a nutshell, is

“Gentlemen, we’ve run our brand into the ground on the back of notoriously poor service, especially in the dense urban environments where our 3G network actually, you know, exists. Lets really, really take it to the next level by nickel and diming these same users in the last year or two of their contracts. That way, north of 40% of our new revenue streams will head for the exits the second exclusivity ends.”

Great plan. So long, AT&T. Been so nice knowing you.

All that said, it’s still unclear to me why Apple doesn’t just buy Sprint, turn it into a dumb-pipes company, and reap the ridiculous profits that result. Mayhaps they (still) will.