October 17, 2011
I have very wide ranging musical tastes — from classical to heavy metal. Over the years, there have been many guitarists that have influenced my playing, some to the point that I wanted to know their secrets and be able to play their greatest songs. I spend countless hours in my studio playing just because I love the instrument.
Everybody’s list is different, but here’s mine:
Zakk Wylde Randy Rhodes Eric Clapton Stevie Ray Vaughan Dave Mustaine Andres Segovia Robert Johnson Angus Young Jimmy Page Eddie Van Halen Tony Iomi Tony Rombola Slash Jim Croce
I was reading an article this morning by industry analyst Ross Rubin about how RIM needs something with the impact of Apple’s voice assistant technology, Siri.
Of course, Ross is correct, RIM definitely needs a big win like Siri. However, it occurred to me as I read through the article that RIM needs so much more than just a major new feature.
In all fairness to Ross, he was only focused on how RIM needed something — anything — to spur the company and didn’t get into everything else that was wrong.
RIM is like the Boston Red Sox of technology products. They were on top of the world, but ended up being the laughing stock of an entire industry. Now, no matter how hard they try to make it back, things just keep getting worse.
I still firmly believe that the problems with RIM start with the co-CEOs. They are responsible for driving the company forward with new technologies, designs and ideas (or in this case, driving the company into the ground). Yet for years they let the company rest on its laurels and not continue to innovate.
By the time RIM did start to put out new products, it was so far behind the competition that even catching up was almost impossible.
RIM desperately needs a change to the very top of the company. This will instill some much needed confidence in the company and its future products.
It also needs to figure out how to end system outages like it had last week. Things like that just can’t happen with a company the size of RIM.
The last piece of the puzzle is new products. Get rid of the crap they are currently selling and design a new line of products that people actually want.
Part of this phase is also coming up with some must-have features like Apple’s Siri.
Apple has taken the smartphone market in an entirely different direction than what RIM helped create years ago. The problem for RIM is that Apple circled back and created features and security options that directly compete with the BlackBerry.
I’m not sure users have enough confidence in RIM at this point to believe that any new hardware or software will be much different than what they already have.
Written by Peter Cohen
Reuters:
Taiwan’s HTC Corp lost a patent infringement complaint filed against Apple Inc in a preliminary decision at the U.S. International Trade Commission on Monday.An ITC administrative law judge found “no violation” by Apple of four HTC patents that include technologies for power management and phone dialing.
It isn’t over for Apple with HTC though. In February a full commission is expected to rule on whether to uphold the judge’s preliminary decision.
This is only one of several patent-related lawsuits Apple is fighting. Apple is also battling Samsung, another phone manufacturer producing handsets based on Android (similar to HTC), and that’s stretching across several continents.
Written by Jim Dalrymple
A new network from Myke Hurley that encapsulates all of his podcasting work, including The Bro Show. Other hosts include Terry Lucy, Patrick Rhone, Dave Caolo, Joshua Schnell and Stephen M. Hackett.
Written by Jim Dalrymple
According to The National, accidents fell 20% in Dubai and 40% in Abu Dhabi. Lieutenant General Dahi Khalfan Tamim from the Dubai Police department said his force saw the largest decrease among young drivers and men.
If BlackBerry users had Siri, they wouldn’t need to read their texts manually.
Written by Jim Dalrymple
“Light, shadows, depth — all perfect!”
Such an impressive photo.
[Via Veerie’s blog]
Written by Jim Dalrymple
In my book Instapaper is certainly a “ridiculously good deal” and that may sum up Instapaper 4 perfectly.
I’m a proud paying member of Instapaper and I’m really impressed with what Marco did with version 4.0.
Written by Jim Dalrymple
PDFpen is a great application for editing your PDFs. You can add signatures to PDFs and email them back, instead of resorting to printing and faxing. You can even make corrections and edit images. There’s also OCR for scanned documents — essential for those going paperless.
Download a fully-functional demo of PDFpen. At $59.95, it’s the affordable alternative to Acrobat.
When The Loop relaunched on September 1, it was a completely different site that focused on the content, not advertising or pageviews. It was a major change for Peter and me to stray from the traditional advertising model, but with the help of Fusion Ads, it’s working out just fine.
As part of the redesigned site, we began offering a membership for our readers. This was a way for people who wanted to support the site to do so at a minimal monthly cost ($3).
In addition to helping support the site, we offered members a full text RSS feed. It was a thank you from us for the support.
Until this weekend, every comment about the new design and business model was extremely positive.
After four months of effort in designing a new business and site design to go with it, I was kind of shocked to get this email from a reader:
Jim love the new site redesign. Despise the truncated rss feeds.I just can’t see paying for the loop when Gruber’s site is free and doesn’t make me jump through hoops.Seems odd an Apple enthusiast site that doesn’t put it’s product first. This is a step below the full page dragon dictation ads you forced us to x out of to read your articles.I am not a google fan but they and John know how to advertise with tact, and seem to be doing very well because of it.I’m a fan of your writing but question your business model.
I responded:
Jump through hoops?I’m not asking you to pay for anything. You can view the site for free with less ads than most Mac sites on Internet. I have the $3 a month as an option for those people that want to support the site, not for people like you that feel everything on the Internet should be free.This is how I make my living and support my family. I’ve done this for almost 20 years and I believe I’m good at what I do. If this is what you think of me and the site, I hope you never come back.Jim
It is true that John Gruber monetizes his site in a slightly different way, but that’s a good thing. I talked to John on several occasions before the launch about my ideas, as well as a number of other people.
There is always work to do when running a Web site, but I never thought of the RSS feed or membership as making readers jump through hoops. There is a free truncated feed available and the content on the site is always free to everyone.
To those people that have paid for a monthly membership, we thank you very much. The support you’ve shown and the money that you pay is going to our families and to help expand the site.
We appreciate the support!
Written by Peter Cohen
New York Times:
Amazon will publish 122 books this fall in an array of genres, in both physical and e-book form. It is a striking acceleration of the retailer’s fledging publishing program that will place Amazon squarely in competition with the New York houses that are also its most prominent suppliers.
Book publishing continues to undergo nothing short of a seismic upheaval as Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple and others change the rules. I’m sure that some will lament these changes as the end of publishing as we know it, but change is inevitable.
Written by Jim Dalrymple
James Stewart writing for the New York Times about Steve Jobs’ accomplishments in retail architecture:
In many ways, the retail architecture is simply the largest box in which an Apple product is wrapped, and Mr. Jobs was famously attentive to every detail in an Apple product’s presentation and customer experience.
Jobs touched so many aspects of design in his years. We think mainly about the products Apple released, but it’s evident in things like architecture and Web design too.
Written by Jim Dalrymple
Apple today announced it has sold over four million of its new iPhone 4S, just three days after its launch on October 14. In addition, more than 25 million customers are already using iOS 5, the world’s most advanced mobile operating system, in the first five days of its release, and more than 20 million customers have signed up for iCloud, a breakthrough set of free cloud services that automatically and wirelessly store your content in iCloud and push it to all your devices. iPhone 4S is available today in the US, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan and the UK, and will be available in 22 more countries on October 28 and more than 70 countries by the end of the year.
Impressive for the iPhone 4S and iOS 5.
October 16, 2011
Written by Jim Dalrymple
Apple to Samsung during negotiations.
October 15, 2011
Written by Jim Dalrymple
The detail on the close-ups is just incredible.
Written by Jim Dalrymple
An easy way for small business owners to build Web sites. Maybe this will help rid the Web of the travesties called Web designs we often stumble across.
Written by Jim Dalrymple
Phil Hornshaw:
Like just about everyone else in the tech world, I didn’t expect the iPhone 4S to be nearly as popular as it is…
No, only people that believed the rumors thought it would be a disappointment. Like me, everyone else that was at the event thought it would be successful. Don’t speak for the rest of us in the tech world because you were wrong.
October 14, 2011
Written by Jim Dalrymple
Many thanks to Marketcircle’s Daylite for sponsoring this week’s RSS feed on The Loop.
Daylite helps you manage your business and your team. Daylite helps you manage your company’s projects, sales opportunities, contacts, tasks, appointments, meetings, notes, and email — on Mac, iPhone, and iPad.
For a free 30-day trial visit Marketcircle’s Web site. You can also find more information about Daylite for iPhone and iPad there too.
Dan Hesse, Sprint’s CEO, went on record this summer citing the absence of the iPhone from its list of offered devices as being the number one reason why Sprint was losing customers.
Fast forward to October 14th, launch day for the iPhone 4S. Here’s what Fared Adib, Sprint Product Chief, had to say in a press release:
“Sprint today reported its best ever day of sales in retail, web and telesales for a device family in Sprint history with the launch of iPhone 4S and iPhone 4. We reached this milestone at approximately noon CT/1pm ET. The response to this device by current and new customers has surpassed our expectations and validates our customers’ desire for a truly unlimited data pricing plan.”
Written by Jim Dalrymple
BGR.com:
“AT&T had already activated a record number of iPhones on our network — and is on-track to double our previous record for activations on a single day.”
Looks like the naysayers were right, the iPhone 4S is clearly a failure.
Written by Peter Cohen
Massively:
Today CCP continued show its commitment to this new development direction with a special reactivation offer for returning players. Most account-holders whose subscriptions lapsed during or before the Summer drama have been sent an email offering a special rate of $4.95 US for 30 days of subscription time.
CCP Games lost the goodwill of many EVE Online players over the summer following the release of a new installment of the long-running MMO that implemented some unwelcome changes in the game. Recently CCP CEO Hilmar Pétursson posted an apology to gamers upset by the changes; this continues the company’s acts of contrition.
Written by Peter Cohen
BusinessWeek:
In the weeks leading up to Apple’s (AAPL) Oct. 4 announcement about the new iPhone 4S, Tim Hickman lived and breathed rumors about the device. His company, Hard Candy Cases, makes protective covers for mobile phones, and he was determined to get a jump on production. After three separate manufacturing partners in China sent him detailed 3D models of an iPhone with a widened, pill-shaped “home” button and a slightly tapered back, Hickman decided to roll the dice. He paid $50,000 to make steel moldings to mass-produce cases for the new design and, on the morning of Apple’s announcement, began taking orders on his website. The gamble backfired: Apple’s new iPhone 4S included no major changes to the exterior design. The home button remained circular. Hickman suddenly owned $50,000 worth of paperweights.
What’s more, some Apple rumor sites rely on the same information as these case manufacturers to report on future Apple designs. They, too, got burned. The report says that smartphone cases are now a $436 million a year business, so it’s no wonder some companies are taking risks like this to be the first to market.
Written by Jim Dalrymple
Macworld:
At a service update conference held on Thursday afternoon, RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis said, “We don’t know why the switch failed and why service never failed over to another alternative switch.” Asked why the company couldn’t avoid network traffic backlogs by re-routing traffic by bypassing Slough, RIM didn’t give a straight answer.
They’re like deer in the headlights.
Written by Peter Cohen
Reuters:
A Dutch court on Friday turned down Samsung Electronics’ request for an injunction against all of Apple’s mobile products that use 3G telecommunications technology, including iPhones and iPads.
Hopefully Samsung will realize it’s barking up the wrong tree pretty soon. Things just aren’t going its way in court, regardless of the country.
October 13, 2011
Written by Jim Dalrymple
Businessweek:
In many ways, Forstall is a mini-Steve. He’s a hard-driving manager who obsesses over every detail. He has Jobs’s knack for translating technical, feature-set jargon into plain English. He’s known to have a taste for the Mercedes-Benz SL55 AMG, in silver, the same car Jobs drove, and even has a signature on-stage costume: black shoes, jeans, and a black zippered sweater. (He favors Reyn Spooner Hawaiian shirts for normal days at the office.)
A detailed six-page feature.
Written by Jim Dalrymple
Mel Martin for TUAW:
44% of 3G and 3GS owners plan to upgrade to the iPhone 4S 42% of iPhone 4 owners say they plan to make the jump 24% of BlackBerry owners say they are coming on board the Apple 4S 12% of Android owners say they are willing to switch
Update: Changed the 24% from Android to BlackBerry.
Written by Jim Dalrymple
Reuters:
A U.S. judge said Samsung’s Galaxy tablets infringe Apple’s iPad patents, but also that Apple might have a problem establishing the validity of its patents.
Australia and now the US.
