AI, Mobile, and Eveything Around the Cloud

Is this Apple's netbook? I've always said On Apple will not traffic in rumors but I'm making an exception here. You'll understand why in a bit. This image was part of a post from Gizmodo . For weeks (months) now, tech pundits and bloggers have begged Apple to release a netbook. Wall Street have preached doom for Apple because of the opportunity Cupertino is missing in the netbook segment of the laptop market. Steve Jobs said the iPhone and iPod Touch was Apple's answer to the netbook. More recently, Apple has stated that they've go ideas on where they want to go with their answer to the netbook but has not commited to anything. Let me just say I hope it's not what we're seeing in the Gizmodo post. Honestly, it's beneath Apple's reputation as an innovator. Don't get me wrong, I think there is a market for Apple with a $900 laptop but not as an answer to the nebooks in the market. I'm still of the opinion that Apple's answer to th...

Apple rumors are like junk food. We all love it and it's so good when you're eating it. And so addictive. Well, that's what Apple rumors are like. While Apple rumors don't do any bodily harm, it hurts folks on other ways. Stock manipulation. Earnings. This is why I don't traffic them but I do read them. Maybe that's the problem. We read them and some (not all) bloggers are willing to believe their "sources" just to feed us. Now, the hottest rumor going around is by Boy Genius Report (sorry, you'll have to find the link yourself). A lot of it are simply stuff we already know based on past Apple launch schedules. June or July is when we'll see the next iPhone. We know that much. It's what else BGR spiced up their post with that has traveled around the world many times over by now. Slide-out keyboard - let's start with the most plausible of the two implausible rumors. It may happen as I've noted before that Apple may com...

I don't have a network of secret Apple devotees who feed me information but I do want to put one issue to rest now. This one of the issues going around now is iPhone tethering. According to Apple, tethering is build into iPhone 3.0 but it's up to individual wireless providers make the service available. Here in the US, there have much anticipation since the brief appearance of Netshare last year. Since then, tethering requires some jailbreaking and tinkering. The news of tethering was not presented during the preview and it was only offered up by Apple execs during the Q and A session. So, what does it mean in the summer when the iPhone 3.0 is finally available? I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that when the new iPhones, service plans, and iPhone 3.0 are launched, tethering from ATT will be available as well. It may require a separate tethering plan. Tethering may also be available in some countries. So you can bet that in June or July, Apple will make a big dea...

Wow...a whole lot of nothing but there still was a "wow" factor. Well, first. A lot of the features we expect a modern mobile platform should have. Cut and paste. Some sort of background processes. File transfer (wireless or otherwise). Took a while for us to get them (officially, we still don't have access to them). But that never came with the original iPhone. Nor did they come with iPhone 3G. So today's presentation of the iPhone 3.0 is really a lot of catching up. At the same time, we were shown today of the potential of the iPhone platform because of Apple's unique perspective on mobile computing, attention to details, and design. For example, the new video player can distinguish between bandwidth connection to allow the content provider to deliver the best media for the user. It's personal touch and attention that has made iPhone and the iPod Touch so unique as a platform. Instead of creating a mobile platform from a smartphone, Apple has cr...

We are less than 48 hours away from Apple's planned event to preview iPhone 3.0 to the media and bloggers at large. So, what are we expecting? Honestly, there is no way to know with certainty. There are tons of rumors on the Internet and I'll let you sort those out yourselves. And anyone out there claiming to know what's going on is pulling a Jim Cramer . What you're likely to read about iPhone 3.0, usually more than 12 hours out, are rumors and, likely, wish lists of what people to see in iPhone 3.0. Here's the problem. I want everything that I can imagine in iPhone 3.0. Everyone wants that. Every blogger, every iPhone user, and every Apple fan. But that's not going to happen. One reason is a lot of features take time to develop, test, and deploy. Two, Apple isn't going to give us features unless it's critical to the success of the iPhone. And even with the complaints about certain lack of features (voice dialing and cut/paste quickly times to...

In the last week, we saw some major moves by big companies getting into the iPhone app business. Obviously, I'm talking about CBS's TV.com app and the just released Kindle for iPhone app. Slow but surely, folks in the upper echelon of the corporate realm are beginning to realize that mobility, fortunately for us the iPhone, is how people will get their information, video, and other forms of entertainment. So, what does the future hold? A month down the line? Six months? A year from now? Frankly, both of these apps surprise me. Not the apps themselves but the fact that Apple allowed them to be released into the wild just blew me away. First, the TV.com app. CBS, by offering albeit limited quantities of full episodes of videos to be stream free to iPhone and iPod Touch users, therefore, potentially bypassing the iTunes stores for some of its offerings was "okayed" by Apple's store sentries. Recall not long ago, the biggest news was that Apple was rejecting ap...