Posts by Urs Keller

Head over to indeed.com ..

.. and look at the top job trends:

1. HTML5

2. MongoDB

3. iOS

4. Android

5. Mobile app

... <others>

The next input method will be Siri, not a keyboard

nt.

1 million people have voted with their wallet, ...

... and many more will do also.

Like it or not, if someone is willing to plunk down his or her hard-earned cash, the he or she must see value in what they are buying. Only the those peoples values are not the ones that the Apple-haters praise ...

LMAO. Keep waiting for the "iPad-Killer", folks! (Still waiting for the iPod-killer, the iPhone-killer ...)

H264 is decoded in hardware

whereas all the other codecs (perhaps with the exception of WMA / WMV) are not. This hardware acceleration has a huge positive effect on battery life. All the moaning about Apple, MS et al being members of MPEG LA and receiving licenses is overblown. Compared to these companies other revenue streams, it's not even bread crumbs on their tables ...

Upgrade vouchers could spoil the party

As Charles rightly pointed out, most PCs with Vista on them sold in the past few months have an upgrade voucher. So Microsoft will have to deliver large quantities of Win7 disks without actually making any money, though I'm not aware about who in the end pays for the upgrade (th OEM? hardly ...)

How long until she sues the gas station

for not warning that checking the fuel with an open flame could lead to the gas exploding?

@Tony: Yes

Yes, in the same sense as millions of MS-lemmings can't be wrong ....

Satisfaction is all that counts in the consumer space

Most of the Gighertz, Terabites and 25-in-1-readers stuff is mainly a "mine is bigger than yours"-game.

We are seeing the same thing that happened in the car industry: At some point in time, all cars have sufficiently powerful engines to drive at the legal limits. Then the focus of the advertising shifts to emotions and secondary aspects like car stereos, GPSs and car colours.

Will e 500 hp engine get you faster to London on the M3? Will a 5 Ghz 16-core CPU help you write your complaint letter faster?

@Rob Sked

Rob, there is a checkbox in iTunes that appears on the settings page whe you connect your iPod that reads something like "Convert files to 128 kBps). Check it, and all your files will be dynamically converted to the more compact (and lower quality) format. So you have high quality on your PC/MAc, and can fill up your iPod to the brim.

The RIAA problem is their self-interest

The RIAA is not (no more?) perceived as the valid representative of the musicians, composers, etc.. They are viewed as the giant squid sucking the life-blood out of their performers and the money out of the consumers.

How about a change in strategy to once again become the musicians advocate? Of course that would mean a lot less cars / chicks / cocaine, but might breathe new life into RIAA.

Anyway, I think the chances for this to happen are near zero.

Time to pass on the baton

What I see happening is that Jobs is slowly but decidedly de-emphasizing his presence. His very visible leadership was necessary to get / keep the boat afloat. This is no more necessary; it's no more Jobs selling a single product (i.e. bondi-blue iMac).

On a side-note, why is Jobs the only one considered capable / worthy / etc for announcing a new product? Of course, he is a master showman, but at the end it's the product that has to sell. I see lots of ads for the iPhone, and even there, the Apple logo appears only discreetly.

Ever looked at the mircosoft.com site?

1. Go to microsoft.com

2. select the tab "using your computer", and what do you see?

"Protect your computer. Learn 4 steps to help you avoid viruses, spyware, hackers, and more"

3. Select that and you see "Step 3. Use updated antivirus software"

So, Microsoft prominently states that you should use antivirus software (and if you click a bit more also offers one ...). Nice way to make money, first sell the disease and the sell the cure ...

Innovation for innovations sake?

Why should Apple put TurboMemory into their computers just because Intel has developed it and makes a lot of fuss about it? Why are the HP's, Dell's and Acer's of this world ignoring it too? Why should they put BlueRay into their computers when there are hardly any movies avalable in that format?

Appleis making something usable by finding a clever integration, and that is the kind of innovation which is needed. We have more than enough base technologies which by themselves are unusable or simply make no money. Because at the end, innovation is about making money

It's about security, stupid!

You may call Apple paranoid, but they want to make damn sure that 3rd party apps don't compromise usability, battery life or other characteristics considered key by Apple. As they cannot test every 3rd party application to the full extent, some application may slip onto the iPhones that only after a while expose some undesirable behavior. And how do you stop such applications?

Every operating system has an application launching service, and this service may call home when or before launching an application. Asking for a YES/NO information will be very fast even if not on 3G. Alternatively, a scheduled task may periodically check the apps that are installed.

A suspect has to be considered innocent until proven to be otherwise.

Blame it on SOX

Apple is charging because they HAVE TO!!! Yes, on our side of the pond (= Europe), it may seem unimaginable, but our poor fellows in the US have to.

The logic is something like "If it enhances the product, it has to carry a price". Otherwise, if you accounted for the sale of your product in your balance sheet and later enhance the functionality, it means that your balance sheet was not correct because the product was not finished, and therefore you accounted too much.

So by providing additional functionality, you may be liable of cooking the books ...

Oh dear!

Apple is already in the embedded systems market

Apple TV and Time Capsule are effectively embedded systems, for which the business logic of PCs do not apply (e.g. no need to be open to third party software). And sure you want to make them run cool, if only to save a fan. So yes, even to use the PA Semi processors could be an option.

But speculating a bit more, why would Jobs "buy" processor experts? Could it be to help Intel make a processor better suited to OS X, or to design a coprocessor that differentiates the Mac sufficiently to make it outrun Windows computers?

The only figure that's important is $$$

From what I can see, these market share figures are based on the number of phones shipped.

Question: How many 100$-handsets do Nokia/Moto/... have to sell to get them the margin of 1 (one) iPhone?

Please note: Apple is in the business to make PROFIT, not to conquer the world.

ZFS not bootable

Currently, as to my knowledge, not even Solaris can boot from ZFS. This means that you'll need an HFS+ file system for OS X in any case.

Sorry, Clay, not yet time for a clean install ...