DerekMartin.ca

I'm a father, manager, programmer, scrum master, geek, & movie lover.

iPhone Predictions

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What’s all this pointing to? Possibilities:1) You’ll store all your media on your home computer in iTunes, and your iPhone will be able to access it all via streaming. Favourites will be stored directly on the phone so they’re available in the woods, driving, etc, but mostly you’ll stream. 2) You’ll sideload all your media from the store & harddrive to your .Mac account and both your iPhone and home iTunes will have the ability to access your online media. .Mac becomes your media server. Apple may copy Amazon’s S3 idea and charge you per gigabyte to store your data online. 3) iTunes Media Store introduces the “all you can eat” model, where you pay Apple $30/month, and you can stream anything to your iPhone/iTunes 24/7. All the music in the entire catalog is yours to listen to (but not download) any time. A few years ago I got to meet with the heads of EMI Music Canada, and I told them that to win the war against piracy they’d have to make paying easier than not paying, and that the way to do this was to a) never allow another download; b) never sell another physical album; c) only allow streaming via high speed network to authenticated devices. I believe Apple’s about to do that. Any one of these options would pretty much kill 90% of the arguments against using iPhone as primary iPod due to capacity issues. What else?Wireless bluetooth headphones/microphone will be available at launch. They will integrate your music headphones and phone mic into a single wireless unit. It may or may not use voice activation or a physical button to answer a call. Also, it’ll have SSH/Terminal and RemoteDesktop built it, to make it the ultimate sysadmin tool right out of the box.

Comments from my old blog:

(Richard)[http://www.braeken.com] said: I am not sure if the .Mac thing would be good thing. Basically they would force people to get such an account to get around the capacity problem. And I think a lot of hardcore windows users don’t want to go that way so I think they wouls split their user base. Getting the info from your home PC is a possibility but I am not convinced how well this would work for the ‘normal’ user.

The “all you can listen to” concept is something that has been discussed in the past. I can see that happening.

I think the biggest question with the iPhone is the battery life and personally I would prefer to have a iPhone without the phone but I assume that this will be announced soon. at 2007-06-05 10:45:53

Juan said: Orb allows you to stream any media from your home computer to any device (pc, laptop, pocket pc, cellphone) I’ve used it several times on my cellphone, however it kills my battery, I can’t get any calls while I’m connected, and it doesn’t work on the subway. I’m thinking support for large storage SD cards.

unlimited data plans are expensive, unless Steve Jobs is refering to the mobile browser embedded in cell phones. at 2007-06-05 12:06:33

u.c. said: Im finding Im becoming a slave to my tech gizmos,update me,charge me,boot me,upgrade me so Im looking forward to the day I can just have a wi fi comms chip inserted in my brain,using my retinas as a screen and a charging point to intake solar energy.Could use the whole body as an aerial and as Im big I should get good reception. Remember stock goes down as well as up but Apple is probably only one of a very few stocks thats a pretty safe bet. at 2007-06-06 15:53:44

derek said: Apple stock has gone up $5.30 per share since I posted this two days ago, and $45.00 per share since the iPhone was announced in January. That’s to say from $80.87 to $123.64 in just 4 months. Wheeeeeeeeeee at 2007-06-06 23:37:32

mom said: as a general rule it is best to buy when its low, not high, hugs at 2007-06-07 08:45:01

derek said: I just had a crazy thought - Apple’s been playing with multi-touch screens a lot. They don’t really make sense for the desktop, because you don’t want to reach over and touch your monitor and finger-print it up.

BUT what if they provided a multi-touch-pad, like a mousepad, but which you could use with your hands. Think about it! All laptops already use trackpads — it’s a natural extension to use a pad with the desktop. Maaaan, that would be hot. at 2007-06-08 12:16:38

u.c. said: Disabled people already have a device like that where u just move your finger over a pad.Even better you can just use your eyes instead of a mouse or pad or touch. www.eyetechds.com or google “disability aids for computers. Theres some real crazy technology around for people with disabilities,its worth a look. at 2007-06-08 16:24:06

derek said: Looks like WIRED agrees with me about DotMac, and thinks Google will be powering DotMac from here on out. at 2007-06-08 22:47:13

Secret Plans

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iPhone - Best Is Yet to Come

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Regarding the iPod capacities, it’s going to be interesting if people will use see the iPhone as their primary iPod. Personally I see it as a phone that can play some movies and music. Not more than that. I can’t see the iPhone replacing the current iPods out there. They will need to come up with iPhone without the phone part, which is something that I expect that will be announced once the iPhone has been out there.

How much they will use the iPod functions (and the computer functions) will largely depend on the battery life I believe. Nobody wants to recharge their phone every 3-5 hours.

I still think that the iPhone can be a big hit but that it also has the potential to become a dissapointment.

PS I was disappointment that they didn’t announce a SDK for the iPhone but rely on web apps. First I think it would have been a huge opportunity to create more interest in developing apps for OSX. And secondly I am a big fan of having an app on my machine instead of relying on a web connection to do my work. Using AJAX apps is a nice feature but at the same time it means that you can let the users of the other phone companies use the same apps. at 2007-06-12 11:26:40

derek said: Hey Richard - I totally agree with you. Synch simplicity is key. So is battery life. So is the usability of the virtual keyboard… and yes, perhaps the best thing that’ll come of it is scaring the other phone companies into developing decent software. As for the SDK — I don’t need a full SDK per-se, but I would have liked a document/website detailing the iPhone’s API, so that I really can launch an app for iPhone on June 29th. I think relying on web-apps is fine if they provide some way to cache data locally, like a per-application chunk of disk space, AND if they find a way to launch these apps fullscreen without the Safari chrome. I’d be totally fine with that. I know some people are already writing client-side-only javascript & flash apps that can synch whenever you go online — this will just push that technology to the forefront a bit quicker. Lastly, most other phones don’t run a real web-browser like Safari. I don’t know of one (aside from ultra-mobile PCs) that supports AJAX requests and the full gamut of javascript — so the iPhone apps are safe for a while in that regard. They probably don’t care about being the only place to run these apps anyway — they just want to be the best place to run them (same strategy with OSX versus Windows). at 2007-06-13 00:12:59

Dinko said: Other view of apple and iphone regarding apple stock.

http://tradertim.blogspot.com/2007/06/short-iphone-and-everything-else.html at 2007-06-13 18:24:42

(BigDaddy71)[http://www.littlehart.net/atthekeyboard] said: Don’t too Apple Fanboy on us here Derek. I want apps that will run on the iPhone, not sit on the web. C’mon Steve, that’s lame. It’s so corporate. at 2007-06-15 17:46:08

Richard said: Well the battery life is better than they initially announced and I finally saw the first iPhone ad and it did look impressive. So it will be interesting to see how it is going to work out for them.

Having said that, I definitely won’t buy the iPhone. I am not a big fan of cell phones so I only use mine for emergencies. So in other words, it’s cheap :) Which is also why I am probably more interested in the iPhone minus the phone capabilties. at 2007-06-19 18:17:45

(cK)[http://www.vandelayenterprises.com] said: Wait until they integrate GPS. Imagine standing outside of a Loblaws and auto-downloading coupons and finding out what they have the best deals on. Sitting in traffic and your iPhone suggests a route with lower congestion. The possibilities are endless. at 2007-07-19 14:31:58

Cadence

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On an unrelated note, Ottawa’s Bluestfest kicks off next week. Van Morrison opens it up, then there’s Bob Dylan, INXS, Blue Rodeo, Manu Chao, Kanye West, The White Stripes and shitload of other performers during the week long event. You should plan a quick trip to Ottawa! at 2007-06-27 12:02:17

derek said: I sold my computers, but I still have the company laptop, which I now carry to & from work each day. Fun fun fun.

Vlad - that is a kickass lineup of bands! at 2007-06-27 18:02:33

mom said: do you remember me watching Bob Ross on saturdays ? , scary ! ps not keen on Cadence but not entirely bad. hugs at 2007-06-27 20:07:55