Is Siri artificially intelligent or just a robot?

By Peter Nowak - Monday, October 17, 2011 at 12:26 PM - 5 Comments

Having just returned from a trip to New York on Sunday evening, I haven’t had much time to play with the week’s hottest new gadget —the iPhone 4S—but I have been able to formulate some initial impressions, especially in regards to its main new feature: the Siri personal assistant.

First, the basics. Yup, the iPhone 4S works as advertised. It’s faster, slicker and generally better than its predecessor, the iPhone 4. Some nifty additions to the operating system make things easier, like you can fire the thing up initially without having to connect it to your computer and you can share iTunes purchases between devices by turning on the iCloud storage option. Both options do a lot for eliminating cables and computers from the iPhone equation.

I particularly like the camera as well. The iPhone 4 had the best camera on any phone I’d tried so far and the 4S is yet another step up. Apple is continuing to strengthen the case for leaving the full camera behind and simply relying on a phone to take photos, at least in casual situations.

Much of the brouhaha over the new device, however, lies with Siri, the voice-recognition feature that can tell the user about everything from the weather to sports scores to scheduled meetings. Continue…

Imagine Rembrandt with an iPad

By Sara Angel - Wednesday, October 5, 2011 at 10:30 AM - 0 Comments

Photo Illustration by Sarah MacKinnon/Maclean's

According to David Hockney, if the 17th-century Dutch master Rembrandt were living today, he’d be using an iPad. Hockney should know. Not only is the British-born painter, printmaker and photographer recognized as a virtuoso himself, he’s an authority on Old Master techniques and the first major art-world figure to have a show featuring iPhone- and iPad-made pictures, Fresh Flowers, which opens Oct. 8 at Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum. “In Rembrandt’s drawings you can see that he worked very fast. That’s what the iPad permits,” explains Hockney from his studio in Bridlington, a seaside resort in Yorkshire. “Without ever having to get up for a pencil, you can draw from the first moment of inspiration.”

At 74, neither Hockney’s age nor his struggle with deafness has diminished his interest in innovation. He is as famous for his Fauvist landscapes and vibrant images of California swimming pools (in 1964 he fell in love with L.A., where he still has a residence) as his career-long embrace of new methods for making pictures.

In the seventies, Hockney arranged Polaroids as well as 35-mm prints to create photo-collages of a single subject. In 1989, he sent his exhibition art to the São Paulo Biennial via fax. As Charlie Scheips, curator of Fresh Flowers, explains, for decades Hockney’s work “has questioned the role of media and reproduction in art.”

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New iPhone: the ‘S’ is for ‘suckers’

By Jesse Brown - Tuesday, October 4, 2011 at 3:52 PM - 17 Comments

In their hearts, even the faithful know it: every iPhone since iPhone 1 has been treading water.  

A mobile phone that lets you surf the Internet, take pictures and check your email—that’s 95 per cent of the value. Everything else is gilding the lily.

Sure, GPS added some functionality and 3G provided a welcome speed bump. Though nobody uses it much, a video camera can be nice to have. But slimmer width, higher res, longer battery life, faster processor—these are the predictable, incremental improvements all consumer electronics undergo. Slap a new shell on it, change the colour, market the hell out of it, and perhaps folks will be convinced to ditch the pricey, still-functioning gadget you made them want so badly just a short time ago.

Eventually, people figure out that the differences are minor, and only the most insecure, status-obsessed early adopters will keep taking the bait. At that point, there’s only one place to go: downmarket. In Apple’s case, downmarket is most of the market.

For all of Apple’s dominance in mindshare, iPhones comprise just 5% of the cellphones in the world. While we in North America have been squealing with glee for an extra camera on our phone, Second and Third World nations have been experiencing true technological transformation through cheap, rugged phones like this, the world’s most popular handset. For millions, the homely Nokia 1100 isn’t just their first cellphone—it’s their first phone.

All phones will eventually be smartphones, and Apple wants to sell most of them. To do so they don’t need to offer new features, but cheaper phones.

That’s what the iPhone 4S will prove to be: the first entry in Apple’s budget product line. That’s why it works on GSM and CDMA. Pleasing U.S. carriers is now less important than offering a universal device. It’s their priciest iPhone right now, but soon the iPhone 5 will be here, giving Apple occasion to slash the 4S’s sticker price and market it (along with the 4 and the 3G) as Apple’s first affordable options overseas. To buy it here, now, at top dollar, is a sucker’s choice.

In the long run, there’s nowhere for the iPhone to go but down.

Jesse Brown is the host of TVO.org’s Search Engine podcast. He is on Twitter @jessebrown

Inconvenient truth?

By Alex Derry - Monday, October 3, 2011 at 10:00 AM - 1 Comment

Carlos Duran/Corbis

Former U.S. vice-president Al Gore, the self-described inventor of the Internet and global warming prophet, has once again displayed his oracular powers. While speaking last week at an economic conference in Johannesburg, South Africa, Gore, an Apple board member, made specific mention of “the new iPhones coming out next month.” His statement, which he said was intended to be a “plug,” sent tech watchers into a tizzy of speculation over whether Apple would be launching not one, but two models of the iPhone—a slightly upgraded iPhone 4S and the brand new (and hotly anticipated) iPhone 5—at a rumoured launch event on Oct. 4. Neither Gore nor Apple, which is notoriously secretive about new products, has clarified the remarks. But given his inside knowledge of the company’s plans, Gore seems to have confirmed that there will be at least one new iPhone hitting the shelves in October.

Don’t underestimate Apple’s contributions

By Peter Nowak - Monday, August 29, 2011 at 11:07 AM - 4 Comments

Photo by Tony…/Flickr

I’m back from my short vacation and what’s the first thing I see? A character assassination attempt by my fellow blogger Jesse Brown.

Just kidding. I have nothing but respect for Jesse and love his stuff (his interview a few years back with Jim Prentice, where the industry minister hung up on him, is one of my all-time favourites). He messaged me while I was gone to ask if I was okay with him rebutting my blog post the other day about Steve Jobs and Apple’s importance to technology over the past decade. Of course I was, so he had at it.

To summarize, Jesse challenged my assertions that Apple changed everything with a slew of products that included the iPod, iTunes, the iPhone and the iPad. He went on to say that Google has been the far more important technology company over the past 10 years. Continue…

We’ll call you

By Kate Lunau - Friday, August 26, 2011 at 9:30 AM - 0 Comments

Photograph by Andrew Tolson

Everybody knows what it’s like to dial a company’s customer service line and get stuck on hold, waiting for a human representative to come on while tinny music plays through the phone. For those who can’t face another interminable wait, there’s some good news: an app can now do the waiting for you.

FastCustomer (available for iPhones and Android phones) offers a list of over 2,500 companies, including customer service lines for Amazon, WestJet, and Canada Post. Those who’ve downloaded the app select which company they’d like to contact; FastCustomer then puts in an automated call, contacting the user when a real-life representative becomes available. This app, which claims it’s already saved people from spending over 280,000 minutes on hold, “keeps me from being subjected to creative versions of Lady Gaga songs in muzak format,” one enthusiastic user wrote on the FastCustomer blog. For some, that’s priceless, even if the app is now available for free.

Waging a patent war

By Cigdem Iltan - Friday, August 5, 2011 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

Smartphone makers have been duking it out in the courts more than they have on store shelves in the past few weeks, and analysts say sales numbers may explain why. Devices that run Google’s Android platform now outshine Apple’s iPhone: first-quarter market-share estimates this year show Samsung has hurdled to 13 per cent from three per cent last year, while HTC jumped to 10 per cent from six. Some analysts believe the results have prompted Apple to lash out with a series of patent infringement lawsuits aimed at HTC, Samsung and Motorola, the world’s top three Android handset manufacturers.

Apple’s market share rose slightly too, but the tech giant’s third-quarter financial results show that nearly half of its revenue comes from the iPhone. Google chair Eric Schmidt last week came out swinging against Apple, accusing its execs of trying to tangle their competitors in a legal web. “They are not responding with innovation, they’re responding with lawsuits,” he said. “We have not done anything wrong.” But it is in Apple’s nature to be a tough litigator, technology analyst Carmi Levy says. “It would be naive of us to think Apple is running scared and is using courts to protect itself,” he says. During an earnings call last month, Apple COO Tim Cook said: “We have a very simple view here. And that view is that we love competition. But we want people to invent their own stuff. And we’re going to make sure that we defend our portfolio fervently.”

While companies that are assertive in the courts run the risk of diverting attention from the marketing of their wares, the manufacturers involved in the ongoing smartphone patent wars are sophisticated enough to focus on both areas, says Levy. Whether court battles impact innovation may be up for debate, but the power of litigation clearly isn’t: after a U.S. International Trade Commission judge recently ruled that Taiwan’s HTC had infringed on two Apple patents, China’s 21st Century Business Herald reported that two Chinese smartphone makers are considering jumping ship from Android to Microsoft’s Mango Windows Phone 7 operating system, raising the question of whether other companies may eventually follow suit.

America with no Apple?

By Alex Ballingall - Monday, July 11, 2011 at 9:10 AM - 0 Comments

Ahn Young-joon/AP

Samsung upped the stakes in its patent dispute with Apple last week when it called on the U.S. International Trade Commission to ban imports of Apple’s iPhone and iPad from China, where they are made. Apple is expected to respond with a similar request, raising the possibility that the tech giants will be choked off from the American market. The two sides have traded accusations of copyright infringement since April, when Apple accused its South Korean rival of ripping off its smartphone and tablet designs. For its part, Samsung has filed similar lawsuits against Apple in Germany and Japan.

While Apple has dominated the tablet market, Samsung has emerged as a big player, too, and is expected to pass Nokia as the world’s top producer of smartphones this year. Ironically, the two companies have enjoyed a close business relationship. Apple is one of Samsung’s biggest buyers of computer chips and screens.

A sommelier in your pocket

By Stephanie Findlay - Wednesday, May 25, 2011 at 9:15 AM - 4 Comments

Photograph by Jenna Marie Wakani

Last year, VinTank, a “digital think tank for the wine industry” based in Napa, Calif., released a report that reviewed 75 wine-related iPhone apps. Last month, VinTank did a redux of the report—this time the number of apps on the market had soared to 452.

A small industry has sprung up around smartphone apps for wine. Some better than others, says Paul Mabray, VinTank’s chief strategy officer, who notes, “there’s a ton of trash out there.” Mabray suggests the best wine apps are the ones with a specific function and a simple interface. Some of his favourites include: Cor.kz, a bar-code scanning app that pulls up info on 750,000 wines, and Nat Decants, described as a “personal sommelier in your pocket,” run by noted Canadian wine writer Natalie MacLean. (It also has a label scanner for wines sold in B.C., Ontario and Quebec.)

The wine app industry is still in its infancy. “There is a tendency for the application to be myopically focused on the oenophile,” says Mabray. He predicts wine apps will soon be more like Instagram or Foodspotting—visual apps where you can post pictures and trade notes with friends. “I’m looking forward to following what wines my friends are talking about,” says Mabray. “More like Facebook, or Twitter.”

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Is RIM down or is Apple (and others) up?

By Chris Sorensen - Friday, April 29, 2011 at 5:53 PM - 1 Comment

Today, perhaps for the first time, BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion appeared to officially lose the confidence of the analyst community. After months of grumbling about RIM’s too-little-too-late product launches (most recently its widely anticipated PlayBook tablet), RIM finally sent stock watchers over the edge by releasing a first quarter profit warning Thursday that it blamed on further product delays.

Several responded by downgrading RIM’s already beleaguered shares, which closed down 14 per cent Friday at US$48.65 on the Nasdaq. But not before offering some pointed criticism. “We really want to believe, but … as much as we like the stock (and we have until now), last night’s warning caps what has been a string of strategic and execution missteps,” Cormark Securities analyst Richard Tse said in a note. Another analyst suggested that perhaps it was time for RIM’s co-CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Laziridis to ditch their sharing of the top job, while yet another seemed to be looking for an outlet to vent months of pent up frustration. “We’ve lost confidence in RIM and don’t see this as a one-time miss,” National Bank financial analyst Kris Thompson said. “We’ve heard for too long about RIM’s great product roadmap. Consumers are not listening nor waiting.” He went on to write, “RIM does not even seem to have dual cameras on its upcoming BlackBerry product line-up. The last time we checked, video is the future.” Ouch.

But while there’s no question investors are disappointed, perhaps it’s time to re-examine why we expect so much of the Waterloo, Ont.-based company. Sure, there was once a time when RIM was top dog in the smartphone world, but that was mostly because it was the only one out there with a decent smartphone to sell. After years of targeting business clients (who, incidentally, still like the BlackBerry’s keyboard and secure email), RIM enjoyed a brief period that began in late 2006 when consumers also became interested in what a BlackBerry could do. So RIM threw on some extra features like a camera and MP3 player and briefly cornered the market with models like the Pearl and Curve. And then Apple came along, launching its original iPhone in mid-2007, changing the game forever. While it took a while for the iPhone’s full impact to felt on RIM’s fortunes, this stock chart (comparing RIM, Apple, Nokia, as well as Microsoft and Google) shows a clear changing of the guard by late 2009:

There’s no question Apple out-innovated RIM in the smartphone space, but it should be noted that Apple has also bested everyone else too. Look what happened to Nokia, the world’s biggest phone maker, which has since been forced to throw its lot in with Microsoft. Other device manufacturers have simply tried to copy the iPhone, with varying degrees of success. Google, meanwhile, is pursuing a different strategy by focusing on software only. Tellingly, no one else has managed to out-iPhone the iPhone even after four years, an eternity in the tech business.

Given that smartphones still account for a relatively small proportion of global mobile sales, the good news for RIM is there’s still plenty of room for everyone in a fast growing market. RIM may no longer be driving the bus, but it’s not going to be running behind it either. It still sells loads of BlackBerrys in North America, Europe and Asia, and continues to expand into developing markets. In fact, RIM’s share performance over the past five years actually stacks up rather well compared to others in the smartphone space—other than Apple’s, of course. To be sure, RIM is far from a perfect company, and there’s clearly much room for improvement. But could it be that RIM’s biggest failing is that it didn’t invent the iPhone? If so, then it has plenty of company.

I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it, Apple tracks me

By Jesse Brown - Friday, April 22, 2011 at 9:18 AM - 13 Comments

If he had nothing to hide, he'd have nothing to worry about.

Okay, so Apple has been tracking your whereabouts through your iPhone or iPad without your consent for the past 10 months. So what?

No, really – so what? You don’t need to worry about Apple knowing where you’ve been. As they’ve explained (.pdf), they’re tracking you for your own good! By triangulating your whereabouts through cell phone towers,  Apple can vastly narrow down the range of your possible GPS coordinates, making your GPS-reliant apps run much quicker.  Feel better yet?

Maybe not. Okay, but consider this- even though your device secretly rats out your location to Apple every 12 hours, this data cannot be linked to you.  Apple assigns you a randomly generated number that changes every 24 hours. It’s this number that’s linked to your location history, not your name.  So even if law enforcement presented Apple with warrants, demanding the complete history of your whereabouts (as they routinely and successfully do with mobile carriers), Apple would be technically unable to drop a dime on you, even if they wanted to.

This guy stops at every Arby's.

So don’t worry about the fact that Apple has your location data. Instead, worry about the fact that you do.

Your iPhone or iPad automatically generates an unencrypted file called “consolidated.db” which contains the last 10 months of your location data with time stamps. Any computer synched to your Apple device also has this file.  Anyone who gets their hands on your gear can easily tap into the file and get an exact log of your movements. There’s already a handy app to turn this raw data into a pretty map.

U.S. Senator Al Franken has sent Apple a stern letter (.pdf) demanding answers on this flabbergasting revelation, and you can expect every privacy commissioner in the land to soon do the same.  In the meantime, here’s how the nervous among you can delete your consolidated.db files – so long as your iPhone is jailbroken.

RIM’s secret weapon :-)

By Chris Sorensen - Tuesday, March 29, 2011 at 12:13 PM - 6 Comments

Photograph by Jessica Darmanin

It’s a balmy March afternoon in Toronto and Emma Brun-Hayne is lounging with two friends in Yonge-Dundas Square, the city’s ad-plastered shrine to commercialism. She talks loudly over the din of a nearby street performer’s drum solo while her turquoise-coloured fingernail traces the touchscreen of her new BlackBerry Torch smartphone, in constant search of updates from friends. While teenagers are known for their dramatics, one can’t help but take Brun-Hayne, 19, at her word when she professes her love for the wireless device. “Without my BlackBerry,” she says, “my life would be over.”

In the age of the iPhone and a host of Google-powered phones with cool names like Galaxy and Nexus One, it might seem unusual for someone like Brun-Hayne to be so over the moon about a BlackBerry. After all, it’s the same wireless device that an army of Bay Street bankers and lawyers have clipped to their hips just a few blocks away. But what’s good for the suits—a no-nonsense keyboard suitable for typing corporate emails—also happens to be just the thing for teens’ and tweens’ favourite mobile pastime: sending text messages. Thousands of them.

Or, in the case of BlackBerry, instant messages. There’s a difference. Research In Motion Ltd. originally developed BlackBerry Messenger, or BBM, so employees could chat in real time, but it has since morphed into a powerful social networking tool. And some observers argue the feature, despite having roots in 1990s desktop chat tools like ICQ and MSN Messenger, may actually hold the key to RIM’s future success as it fights an increasingly pitched battle with rivals Apple Inc. and Google Inc. “As BBM goes, so goes RIM,” says Kevin Restivo, a senior analyst at research firm IDC Canada. “I’d argue it’s as important to RIM’s future as wireless email, which is, of course, the ‘killer app’ RIM used to become a tier-one supplier of smartphones.”
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Android isn't really open. It's just less closed than Apple.

By Jesse Brown - Monday, March 14, 2011 at 2:34 PM - 21 Comments

Idiots worldwide rejoiced when news came that the iBoobs app, censored by Apple, had found a home in the Android Marketplace.

For those tragically unfamiliar with iBoobs—how can I describe it? It’s boobs. They jiggle. A settings screen lets you adjust things like “boob weight,” “stifness,” and “gravity factor.” If any of this turns you on, I’d like to introduce you to a killer app called porn.

iBoobs is a Freemium product. If you upgrade from the free ”iBoobs light” app to the $2.10 paid app, you can toss the boobs around with the tip of your finger.  Or at least, you could last week. It seems that Google has since followed Apple’s lead (at least partially) and banned the paid version of the app.

What could possibly have been the problem?

The boobs themselves are still available.  Google is not anti-boob, per se. No statement has been issued, and so we must speculate: it seems Google’s official policy on boobs is that it’s okay to shake them around really hard, so long as you don’t poke, smoosh, flick or pull them.

Google is such a tease.

Perhaps it wasn’t the touching—maybe Google objected to iBoob’s extras—shake them boobs just right, and you get a peek of nipple.

This feature alone places iBoobs outside of the Android Marketplace’s prohibition on nudity and sexually explicit material.  This, you may remember, was not always the case.  The Android Marketplace was initially open to all apps—that was its defining attribute. But after Android surged in popularity (and after Steve Jobs sneered puritanically in Google’s direction) the porn was cut.  Google retreated to a middling position on sex apps designed to keep them just a bit more risque then Apple; hardcore was out, nudity too, but sexy apps could stay if they identified themselves as not for kids. As Google puts it: “Apps that focus on suggestive or sexual references must be rated ‘High maturity’.”

High maturity. iBoobs certainly doesn’t qualify for that.

The fact is, Google is supposed to be busy organizing the world’s information, not jiggling CGI jugs around to determine where they stand on their arbitrary porno-scale.  If Android is open, then let it be open. Open doesn’t mean “less closed than Apple,” it means open. Open to any dumb app that any dumb person wants to make or to use.

Kinda like the Internet.

Fighting crime? There's an App for that

By Michael Barclay - Thursday, March 10, 2011 at 10:32 AM - 0 Comments

British Columbia: Stealing someone’s iPhone doesn’t work out so well if it’s equipped with GPS, as a Surrey man now charged with robbery discovered. The accused met the alleged victim online and offered to buy his laptop; when the two met in downtown Vancouver, the accused allegedly pulled out a gun and left with both the laptop and an iPhone. Police caught the suspect shortly after by using the phone to track his whereabouts. He is charged with using an imitation firearm, robbery, and possession of a dangerous weapon.

Alberta: A man surrendered to the RCMP in Whitecourt after firing a shotgun in his apartment 15 times in two hours in the hopes a neighbour would call the police so that he could “go to war” with them, say the RCMP. The man was bleeding at the time of the arrest. He has been charged with careless use of a firearm and mischief.

Ontario: A Toronto Transit Commission worker has been charged with assaulting a passenger. It is alleged the on-duty worker—on his way to his own route—boarded a crowded suburban bus and demanded a man and his son move further back before proceeding to shove the man into a pole. The worker surrendered to police the next day.

Quebec: A man called 911 in the early morning while driving on Montreal’s Autoroute Décarie, sounding angry and incoherent, according to police. When police cruisers arrived at the scene, the suspect rammed his car into one of them and charged toward others before speeding off. Police fired shots, wounding the man in his upper body. He faces a dangerous driving charge.

Newfoundland: The streets of St. John’s are a bit safer after police caught two drivers with a total of $32,000 in outstanding traffic fines between them. Neither had a valid licence or insurance, and both were charged with breach of probation. They were discovered during routine traffic stops.

Difficult days for RIM

By Chris Sorensen - Monday, March 7, 2011 at 6:13 PM - 11 Comments

BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion Ltd. has finally lost its crown as the biggest smartphone platform in the United States, according to new data by research firm ComScore. The research shows that phones running Google’s Android software now command just over 31 per cent of the U.S. smartphone market, up from about 24 per cent last October. RIM, by contrast, has dropped to a 30 per cent share from nearly 36 per cent over the same period. Apple, meanwhile, is holding steady around 25 per cent.

In some ways, a changing of the guard was inevitable. Unlike RIM (and even Apple for that matter), Google’s strategy has been to make its OS available on multiple phones, made by multiple manufacturers, sold at a range of prices. But the meteoric rise of Android in just a few years still appears to have taken many in the industry by surprise. Nokia CEO Stephen Elop told employees last month in a now infamous memo that the Finnish cellphone giant essentially got caught flat-footed by the competition, citing Android in particular. Elop compared the Finnish cellphone giant’s predicament to a man standing on a burning oil platform in the icy North Sea with two options before him: either stand there and burn to death, or jump. Nokia jumped. A few days later Nokia announced that it was partnering with Microsoft and will use Windows-based software on future devices.

As for RIM, the Waterloo, Ont.-based company still owns the enterprise market, but most of the growth these days is happening in the consumer space. And RIM still seems to be playing catch-up when it comes to slick multimedia devices. It still doesn’t have a worthy iPhone competitor (although its touchscreens have gotten progressively better) and Apple has already come out with the second iteration of its iPad, while RIM’s PlayBook tablet has yet to make it to store shelves. Equally as troubling, at least for investors, is the recent departure of chief marketing officer Keith Pardy, a former Nokia and Coca-Cola executive, for “personal reasons.” Not only is it bad timing, right before a major product launch, but it suggests RIM’s effort to make its brand as loved as Apple’s has foundered. “Mr. Pardy was likely brought on to help with this image transformation given his prior experience at Nokia and Coca-Cola and his departure may signal a lack of success in this endeavour,” wrote Amitabh Passi, an analyst at UBS in a research note.

On the other hand, investors should take comfort in the fact that RIM isn’t afraid to make changes when the market demands it, or when something isn’t working. Because, as Nokia learned the hard way, the last thing you want to do when you’re falling behind in the fast-moving tech business, is nothing at all.

The iPad sucks

By Jesse Brown - Thursday, March 3, 2011 at 1:35 PM - 164 Comments

Now this I would have lined up for.

Apple sold 15 million iPads in nine months. But so what? The gadget is a dud.

Too harsh? I don’t think so. A year ago, there were some pretty high expectations for the iPad. It was “transformative“. It was “magical“. It was going to change computing. It was going to save publishing. It was going to kill netbooks—probably laptops too.

It has done none of these things. After the cool factor wore off, iPad owners were left with a nice way to surf the web on a couch. Compare it to the iPhone, a truly transformational device that owners interact with hundreds of times a day. My dad (not exactly a luddite, but close) got one as a gift, and within a week he couldn’t remember how he had lived without it. He now has a dorky little holster for it on his belt. It’s adorable. My mom followed up by buying him an iPad. He played with it for a day or two and hasn’t used it since. The iPhone is a crucial tool, the iPad a toy. Boys get bored with their toys.

Now we’re supposed to get excited all over again because the toy comes in white. Yes, it’s also a bit thinner and a bit faster. Guess what? Computers will always get smaller and faster. The problem with the original iPad wasn’t that it was too slow or too big. It’s that it was a solution in search of a problem. It didn’t let me do anything I couldn’t do before.

Perhaps this will change. As more and more people acquire iPads and other tablets (especially those that run on open platforms), new uses for them will emerge. New apps will be developed, and eventually someone will come up with something awesome that we will want to do all the time and that can only be done with a tablet. But when that happens, it will be despite Steve Jobs, not because of him.

Apple has steadily devolved from a maker of beautiful machines for creators to a censorious manufacturer of shiny doodads you can’t easily type on or share files with. Whereas once they led by innovating, they now aim to stay on top by using their market clout to bully others from doing so—see yesterday’s post by Chris Sorensen on Apple’s attempt to monopolize the touchscreen market.

Hoarding components—how magical!

A cautionary tale

By Chris Sorensen - Friday, February 18, 2011 at 12:52 PM - 2 Comments

Luke MacGregor/Reuters

For many in the industry, cellphone giant Nokia Oyj’s recent announcement that it will use Microsoft’s Windows Phone operating system on its high-end devices was viewed as a sign of desperation. Despite being the world’s biggest cellphone maker, Nokia has been steadily losing ground in the smartphone wars to Apple’s iPhone and devices that run Google’s Android operating system, while Microsoft, the world’s biggest software maker, has been unable to gain any real traction with its mobile OS. And it’s far from clear that combining forces will do much to staunch the bleeding. “Two turkeys don’t make an eagle,” tweeted Google VP of engineering Vic Gundotra about the announcement.

It’s a stark reminder of how quickly fortunes can change in the tech business—and it should act as a cautionary tale for Canada’s Research In Motion Ltd., which makes the popular BlackBerry. RIM’s global market share has also been slipping (to 16 per cent from nearly 20 per cent last year) as consumers pass over the company’s clunky touchscreen efforts—Storm and Torch—for the latest iPhone or Android-powered device. Ken Dulaney, an analyst at Gartner Research, argues that both RIM and Nokia stumbled as they tried to adapt their existing keyboard-oriented operating systems to touchscreen hardware, instead of building new software from scratch.

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Games on the go

By Chris Sorensen - Wednesday, February 16, 2011 at 10:12 AM - 0 Comments

Sony Ericsson;

The iPhone’s success hasn’t just rattled rival cellphone companies—it’s also sounded alarms among video game console makers, who fear cute, addictive mini-games like Angry Birds (the most downloaded application from Apple Inc.’s App Store) are rapidly positioning the iPhone as a gaming platform. Now Sony, which makes the PlayStation console, is fighting back with a new Xperia Play phone, which features a slide-out controller and is “PlayStation-certified.” The device is made by Sony Ericsson (partner in the joint venture) and runs Google’s popular Android operating system. A recent Super Bowl ad left little doubt that Sony is indeed targeting gamers, not your average smartphone user. The spot shows a couple of thugs, inside a dirty warehouse, stitching a pair of human thumbs on the green, cylindrical arms of the Android robot mascot—not unlike something you might run into while playing Resident Evil.

Smartphone subterfuge

By Chris Sorensen - Thursday, December 9, 2010 at 1:40 PM - 4 Comments

Getty Images

Faced with an eroding market share and middling reviews for its latest BlackBerry devices, some tech watchers are wondering whether Canada’s Research in Motion is on its way to becoming an industry “dinosaur.” But RIM still has a lot to offer, and nobody knows this better than archrival Apple. The Cupertino, Calif.-based maker of iPods, iPhones and iPads has, according to Dow Jones, hired away five high-level RIM employees over the past year and a half—all of whom worked in RIM’s enterprise unit, which caters to corporate clients, RIM’s bread and butter. Apple has had a tough time getting a foothold with the pinstriped crowd, although that may be starting to change now that Bank of America and Citigroup are reportedly allowing staff to use iPhones at work.

But don’t feel too bad for RIM. Last year, it hired Don Lindsay, formerly of Apple and Microsoft, to be its new vice-president of user experience, and it’s probably not a coincidence that RIM’s latest operating system is much smoother and more intuitive as a result. And, speaking of dinosaurs, RIM also managed to lure rock band U2 away from Apple’s marketing department in 2009—a score, especially if it’s middle-aged lawyers and investment bankers you’re trying to appeal to.

Lingo 2010

By Patricia Treble - Thursday, December 9, 2010 at 11:20 AM - 0 Comments

Getty Images; Istock

Death grip: Holding an iPhone 4 by its edge resulted in signal interference and dropped calls, because that’s where Apple placed its antenna. Steve Jobs initially pooh-poohed complaints, ordering customers to hold the phone differently.

Gleek: A fan of Glee, the wildly popular TV show about a high school glee club.

Liberation procedure: An experimental technique developed by Dr. Paolo Zamboni to open up narrowed veins in the neck and chest of multiple sclerosis sufferers.

Flash crash: In May, American stock markets lost more than 1,000 points in an hour, and some stocks, like Procter & Gamble, lost virtually all of their value before recovering. Blame was pinned on high-frequency trading—supercomputers automatically sniff out bargains a fraction of a second before most investors see them.

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RIM is down but not out

By Chris Sorensen - Thursday, September 9, 2010 at 2:00 PM - 0 Comments

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A few years ago, shares of Research In Motion were flirting with a price of $150 and co-CEO Jim Balsillie was talking about simply trying to steer the BlackBerry juggernaut, as opposed to actually driving it. These days, however, observers can’t be blamed for wondering if the wheels have fallen off RIM’s business altogether.

RIM latest device, the Torch 9800, was unveiled this summer and instantly deemed by tech blogs to be little more than an iPhone catch-up attempt—and a poor one at that. RIM sold about 150,000 of the devices in the U.S. in its first weekend, while Apple pushed about 1.7 million of its new iPhone 4s out the door during a comparable period, albeit through a multi-country launch.

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High-tech and badly dressed

By Stephanie Findlay - Thursday, August 19, 2010 at 3:00 PM - 0 Comments

Philippe Dureuil

Apple isn’t just dominating sales of electronics; it and other tech companies are now eating into just about every market segment. Americans are choosing to buy tech gadgets and big-screen TVs over appliances, furniture and cars. Compared to the first half of pre-recession 2007, sales of televisions, computers, video and telephone equipment grew 1.8 per cent in the first six months of this year, according to a new U.S. Commerce Department report. During the same period, spending on appliances decreased 3.6 per cent and spending on furniture fell 11 per cent.

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RIM’s revival

By Chris Sorensen - Thursday, August 12, 2010 at 1:40 PM - 0 Comments

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Research In Motion remains North America’s smartphone leader, even if it’s now widely perceived to be a runner-up behind Apple and its iPhone when it comes to innovation.

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Steve Jobs finally loses his cool

By Chris Sorensen - Thursday, July 29, 2010 at 4:20 PM - 0 Comments

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Apple CEO Steve Jobs adopted an unusually defensive tone last week at a press conference to address the controversy over Apple’s latest iPhone model, which can lose reception if a palm or finger blocks the device’s lower left corner. With Apple usually the subject of glowing press, Jobs appeared visibly annoyed at the whole “antenna-gate” affair, and even took a potshot at the assembled media. “This has been blown so out of proportion—it’s incredible,” Jobs said as he paced back and forth across a stage.

While he was careful to stress that customer satisfaction was a priority (unhappy users will get a full refund or free rubber case, which appears to correct the problem when slipped on the phone), Jobs maintained that there wasn’t anything wrong with the smartphone’s design, which incorporates an antenna into a metal band that wraps around the device’s edge. He said only about half a per cent of the three million iPhone 4s sold have resulted in antenna-related complaints. Jobs then showed videos of BlackBerry, HTC and Samsung devices experiencing similar problems (although the iPhone’s weak spot appears to be in a particularly bad place based on the way people usually hold a cellphone).

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