We Have Our New Steve Jobs

It looks like Ashton Kutcher will be tasked and given the honor of playing iconic and legendary figure in today's most revolutionary tech market, Steve Jobs. Man, I really killed that first sentence didn't I?

Here's the things, I don't know what to make of it. Steve Jobs' role in bringing about the computer revolution on the 80s and the mobile revolution with the iPhone. Along the way, Apple, under Steve, really changed more than just music, computer, and mobile but with the whole ecosystem, it changed the way society operated and how we deal with each other.

So, a guy who has done well for himself but can hardly taken seriously as an actor will play this man, the man who was mourned by millions upon his passing.

I seriously hope Sony knows what they are doing.

 

Apple's "Greener" Fuel Cell Plant Online In June

Apple has commissioned a fuel cell plant that will run on animal waste to power its North Carolina data center. You know, iCloud, iTunes, and, hopefully, some secret plan that will power Apple's TV plans.

It's a 4.8 MW plant. There should also be solar panels as well. Macrumors reported that these will be 20% effecient Sun Power panels that will provide an added 20 MW of power.

All along, I thought it was Google that has lead the green charge but it it is good to see Apple trying to get its power from more efficient and renewable sources.

Perhaps, we'll see Apple put more into newer battery and renewable tech for its mobile devices. With possibly around 400 million devices in the wild by the end of 2012, imagine just how carbon will be offset if Apple allows solar charging to be built into its iPhones, iPads, and Macs.

Source: Wired.

 

Mobile Means Be Careful What Video You Watch In Public

I like scary movies. And today, I got quite a treat as I ventured out of the house to do some chores on a cloudy day in LA. Cloudy cold day that was perfect for a hot coffee with a pastry and a scary movie on Netlfix. I don't like watching them alone at home.

Which leads me to this post. Be careful what you watch in public.




As you can see, nice day, right?

Well, with mobile now, we can take our whole lives with us. Work and entertainment. So I finished watching Quarantine from a couple of weeks ago and started on Quarantine 2, zombie movies where the characters in the plots were, you guessed it, quarantined. In the first movie, a news team followed a fire engine into an apartment in LA and ended up trapped inside by a military force tasked to keep a weaponized rabies that turned the infected into the walking dead. In the second part, it's folks on an airplane and airport terminal.



Don't knock it until you try it. Both are good movies that even friends who typically aren't into zombie stuff liked it.

The thing is that there is a lot of violent scenes and folks walking by as you watch it can get them wrong impression as they glance at what you're doing on your smartphone or tablet.

Oh, and there are scenes where zombies suddenly pop out at you and you instinctively flinched back. Yeah, happen to me a few times and this old couple at an outdoor seating area kinda gave me weird looks.

I am sure there are other movies or videos that likely are not appropriate in public even if you're not really sharing them with others. It's one of those things we have to get used to with more mobile users. People at the gym might wonder why I am laughing or smiling but when they glanced at my screen, they'd realized that I am watching the Daily Show or the New Girl. But if they happened to see the scene where the survivors tried to hang and choke a zombie, they probably wouldn't understand and consider me a sicko.


- Posted using Mobile

Apple Could Move To Increase Wages And Benefits For Chinese Workers - How Will Competitors React

It's inevitable that the wages and benefits for Chinese workers will increase. We've already seen that happening in China for years. For reasons that are obvious, the media has decided to make Apple their whipping boy in all this. While they have largely ignored its competitors like HP, Dell, HTC, Sony, and others in the Android and Windows market, that include PCs, tablets, televisions, and smartphones, use some of the same factories Apple does.

What will happen to the cost of their products? Well, the answer is simple: it'll go up. However, the true question is how this impact this margins of some of these companies that do not necessarily have the benefits of Apple's higher margin.

For Android device makers, it helps some what in that they don't have to pay Google for the cost of licensing Android. But facing competition on all fronts, Android device makers could be forced to cut back in features to maintain margin. Perhaps, this has to do with the announcements earlier in the year that HTC and Samsung will release less models. It has nothing to do with confusing consumers. Rather, it may have more to do with trying to maintain margins and profit if they have to deal with less models.

PC makers are already having a hard time of it with thin margins. While most are still profitable and have tried to move into other markets like mobile and services, we might see a price increase at Best Buy once the manufacturing costs take place.

The thing is that the cost of each device will not go up by much. A few dollars. However, when a company that sells tens of millions of device like Apple, Samsung, HP, and Dell does, that adds up quickly. HP who can sell forty to fifty million devices a quarter, not just PCs, a $5 increase means $150 to $200 million less quarter. For Apple, that means $300 million profit less for the last Christmas quarter. Between the two, Apple is likely better to weather this than HP.

Perhaps, what this means is that device makers and factories will need to figure out new ways to keep cost down if they don't wish to shift the cost to us harding working consumers.

Now, you'd think the anti-Apple camps might very happy to have Tim Cook and Apple face the brunt of fire on the Chinese labor issues in the media. That might be true in the short-term. However, Apple gets to negotiate the terms with labor groups and Foxconn and that could end up dictating the terms to its competitors.

If anything, other tech giants should be coming forward and begin to talk about these same labor issues they're facing and how they want to address it. Otherwise, they stand to lose the moral ground forever to Apple. And in an increasing media-savy consumer market that demands fairness, Apple could come out of this looking very rosy while burdening its competitors with higher costs.

Friday Movie Clip: Ghost Recon

I've played Ghost Recon with friends years ago.  In case you're not away of this, Tom Clancy is a novelist who write a lot of spy and war novels.  The most famous is the Jack Ryan series and he has parleyed that into a publishing and gaming empire.  

One of the best gaming series in the Rainbow Six games.  Now, Ghost Recon is back - guerrilla style.  I doubt much of the high tech equipments are that high-tech.  I think it's a future our soldiers are headed towards.  What could be even better is if you play the game without the high tech toys and see how you fare.

Obviously, you can't do that until the game is released but wow, does the video look good.  Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a Mac version.

Couple of Benchmarks,Speeds And App Sales, That Show Where We Are With Tablets

Here a couple of interesting benchmarks that provide a partial picture of where Google’s Android And Apple’s iDevices.  Obviously, we know that Android dominates the mobile handset market, both domestically and globally.  However, Apple leads in the only category that it has ever cared about: profits.

How about the speed of the latest and greatest tablets and how much money developers are getting?

More At Clouding Around.

Blackberry Woes A Warning To Other Players

Blackberry's maker, Research In Motion, has been having a bad time of it lately and it got worse yesterday.  I don't want to get into the gory details from yesterday's financial call.  Only some personal observations about the market and what stagnation and arrogance can do to one individual or an empire, be it corporate or a political entity.

First, there's denial.  I was going to start with arrogance but they kind of go hand-in-hand at times.  Apple went through it in the 90s.  Microsoft, Palm, and countless others went through this during the 2000s with the music players.  And then as if that isn't enough, nearly all of the major mobile device makers were arrogantly in denial about the iPhone.

And I'm sure that while Apple has done quite well with the iPhone and other iOS devices, Steve Jobs likely was pretty arrogant when he thought Apple was years and years ahead of the competition.  I'm sure the folks at Cupertino were shocked when Google's Android so quickly overwhelmed the iPhone in the marketplace.  By some measure, Apple is still doing well where it counts:  it owns about 70% of the mobile profit.  

The worst is RIM.  It's palace enclosed CEOs simply didn't think competition could ever touch them based on the strength of the Blackberry brand.  They also believed their expertise in security for corporate emails and messaging would allow them to weather the tides of innovation happening just beyond their reach.

Hence, the only thing that I came away from the RIM earning call yesterday was that the company was open to being sold off.  Nothing else mattered.  The next Blackberry OS reminds of Web OS in a way.  It's fantastic for some and does some things differently from its competitions but it really offers nothing revolutionary in terms of experience.  And oh, no apps.  

Of course, this is a warning to the incumbent leaders in the wireless market.  Apple and Google.  However, they have an advantage the fallen have not.  They've seen what could happen if they sit on their asses and try to milk existing market for all its worth.  Someone will come along and knock them down.

Now, the question is can RIM make a comeback.  I've said above that RIM is open to offers of a takeover but let's supposed they want to try one more time to recapture its glory days.  Can it happen?  Apple did it, why not RIM?

I think it's possible.  Difficult but it can happen if innovative juice is still flowing there.  I don't know if it is.  Like a wounded beast, it'll have no choice to but strike out.  And because RIM could be desperate to try anything, that thing brought upon by primal desire to survive could be just what will end up disrupting the market.

So, everyone best stay on their toes.  Competition is alive and well in the mobile market regardless of the state RIM, Nokia, or HP is in.  And for us mobile warriors, competition is awesome!