Apple Could Buy the Mobile Phone Industry

Apple Could Buy the Mobile Phone Industry

Daring Fireball

Horace Dediu:

Given the current valuations, it would not be difficult for Apple to acquire every phone vendor except for Samsung with cash alone.

 ★ 

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iBooks just seems to work

One of the features announced by Apple yesterday as part of their iCloud product is an extension of iBooks that allows you to order books through iTunes and have them delivered directly to your iOS devices. This product is listed as a Beta but it worked when I tried it - the book I bought in iTunes was available to read by the time I had picked up my iPad and opened iBooks.

Not a life-changing feature, perhaps, but certainly a nice little improvement to an already slick system.

iPhone Camera Button Concept

This is a really neat idea but I can't help feeling a bit sorry for these guys; the main advantage of this product (the physical camera button) has just been rendered obsolete by the changes announced in iOS 5. Oops.

Red Pop
http://www.coolhunting.com/tech/red-pop-iphone-photo-accessory.php

iOS 5.0 Announced

Yesterday it was predictions, today the results. Basically we can sum it up as some right, some wrong but overall the new features in iOS 5.0 look like a pretty amazing package. It's a pity we have to wait till the autumn but at least there's a fair amount to look forward to.

Get the details here: http://thisismynext.com/2011/06/06/ios-5-announced/

Steve Jobs' Keynote at WWDC

So what do we expect to hear tomorrow from Steve Jobs? With no inside information at all, here are my predictions.

I think the following things are quite likely to appear in iOS 5.0:

1. Imminent availability, maybe within a week, but no accompanying hardware (yet)
2. Hugely revised notification system, probably (since they're still hiring people) with more features in 5.1 and 5.2
3. Deep voice control integration. Apple have bought several companies in the voice recognition area and it makes sense for this technology to appear sooner or later
4. iCloud integration for backups, file-sharing, contacts, calendars, email and other data. MobileMe on steroids.

The following things might appear, but seem less likely:

1. Widget system and an improved lock screen. This has been on the wish list for four years and would be nice to have
2. iPhone 5 - now expected in September, probably not appearing tomorrow
3. iPhone Nano - could make an appearance at the end of the keynote but there's loads of other stuff to announce - seems unlikely
4. Apple TV with voice control and apps. Not impossible but not hugely likely.

iCloud will also feature tomorrow and is likely to be tightly integrated into iOS 5.0, both for iPhone/iPod/iPad and Apple TV. I'm hoping to see shared calendars and contact lists so that the wife and I can simplify our data management. File-sharing and backup seems likely, along with over-the-air syncing and upgrades of some sort.

So in total I've made 14 predictions. Check back tomorrow to see how I've done.

Eurostar and Flash - not all good

It's my fault for not installing Adobe Flash (because of this) but I can't help being slightly annoyed that large companies like Eurostar will only give you the data you need if you have a particular technology on your computer. I don't, so I can't get the data I need. It doesn't work on my iPad either, which is even more annoying, since I now can't get this data on either of my usual machines. 

I don't see why they couldn't serve alternate content for those of us who don't use Flash. I hope their trains are more functional than their website.

Pretentious post about writing

I quite enjoy writing. At work I write emails, workflow descriptions, user guides, reports, technical texts, marketing brochures and a variety of other documents. At home I mostly write dreadfully boring blog entries while imagining that my prose is insightful, witty, entertaining and respected. 

The tools I use to capture my thoughts and present them to my audience are amongst the most sophisticated ever constructed. The laptop computer, or any computer for that matter, is an exquisite piece of precision-engineered equipment that most people take for granted or curse as some aspect of its delicate interior (usually the installed software) performs less than perfectly.

The computer upon which I am drafting this article has been teased into existence through a bewilderingly complicated sequence of manufacturing processes. It has arrived in my home as an object of desire and beauty and will doubtless leave in several years having finally exhausted my patience and been replaced by a younger, faster, lighter, more beautiful alternative. Computers, like superheroes, die young or live to become the villain, hunted down and replaced by their more virile descendants.

And the software? It is easy to be rude about software or to underestimate the challenges facing programmers. Many people, myself included, are frustrated by faults, bugs, inconsistencies, poor design decisions or missing features that hinder their work or reduce their productivity. Building software is difficult; building great software that delights the user is particularly tricky.

I have been wondering this week about user-delighting, distraction-free writing software. Modern operating systems present a variety of distractions for the struggling writer. Email, Twitter, Facebook, BBC News and Google Reader compete for your attention. Instant messaging applications, alarms and task managers try to pull you from your task. Even the operating system tries to get in the way, updating, restarting or simply deciding that whatever you are doing must wait while it completes its own activities.

The idea of the distraction-free writing tool is that everything, including the controls of the application you are using, is hidden from view while you capture your prose. This leaves you looking at a page full of text, a word count and a page indicator. If you have a quiet environment in which to work, distractions should now be minimal.

My plan was to buy a dedicated application to facilitate distraction-free writing and, as ever, Google suggested several possibles. Byword (bywordapp.com) seemed to offer the right combination of features and price (£5.99, Mac App Store) but just before I bought I saw a recommendation for Pages (Apple's word processor, £11.99, Mac App Store) in Full Screen mode and, as Pages already lives on my MacBook, experimentation was simple.

In conclusion, for distraction-free writing on the Mac I recommend Pages in Full Screen mode. Byword's features are more specialised (paragraph focus, for example) but Pages offers a full suite of general-purpose word processing tools that you will need as  soon as your text is ready for formatting.