...more recent posts
According to Slashdot, The London Evening Standard is claiming what has been floating around for 24 hours as rumor: namely, that Apple has offered to buy ARM for $8 billion. That would be some *big* news. This would be a huge, and I think very smart, bet for Apple to make. And, at the same time, it would be bad in general as Apple would then be in a position to possibly deny other manufacturers access to ARM chips (think Google tablet.) Of course other manufacturers could just move to Intel Atom, so it doesn't fully lock other people out (and it would certainly be good for Intel.)
Interesting times. Bold move by Apple if true.
Newteevee.com is reporting that Google will open source the VP8 codec. Official annoucement is expected at next months Google I/O Developer's Conference. If true this is much bigger news than the TheorARM funding I mentioned the other day, as VP8 is a much more modern video codec. My guess is that H.264 is still going to be the primary video codec of the big players going forward, but hopefully VP8 can be a fallback codec supported by all the browsers so the little guys can escape the licensing costs of H.264 (which are small enough to be no matter for large media companies, but way too big for me.) Thanks Google.
A lot to process in Apple's recent developer's preview of iPhone OS 4.0 (which will be the next iPad OS as well.) I'm going to try to just give a quick run down.
Multi-tasking is finally arriving which has been a big missing piece at least in the sense of people talking about it being missing, if not in the sense that people actually ran into situations very often where they really needed it since the OS actually did multi-task - just not for 3rd party apps. In any case, it's here, and it looks to be pretty sophisticated in the sense of operating transparently to the user and not harming battery life very much. The trade off is that the implementation only allows specific activities to go on in the background. But these should cover what people want (allowing for VoIP, turn by turn GPS navigation, non iTunes background music streaming like Pandora.)
Apple also announced an in App ad platform, iAd, which allows developers to easily place ads inside their applications. This is something they could already do by themselves, but this makes it much easier. Ads are built completely in HTML5 and do not take you out of the application when clicked on (presently ads open in Safari, taking you away from the app.) Apple takes 40%, but does all the hosting and takes care of the transactions. Personally I don't care too much about this, but it seems like an okay deal if you're a developer and there are certainly lots of apps that I wouldn't mind advertising to be a part of if it means I can download them for free. In terms of AAPL this could be a pretty big deal I think.
And the giant Apple is great / evil debate continues to rage. Cory Doctorow is clearly the leader of the anti Apple camp with his post Why I won't buy an iPad (and think you shouldn't either). Gizmodo's Joel Johnson takes the bait other side with Cory Doctorow you are a consumer too. And these same arguments are played out in countless blogs and bulletin boards across the web. It's really interesting how polarizing the iPad (the iPhone OS really) is. I think I can see the danger that people like Cory are warning about. And I definitely feel the excitement of a new computing paradigm taking shape that iPad fans are swept up in. Like many things I don't think there is a clear side to come down on. Maybe I'm closest to Nicholas Carr's take which, if you're at all interested in this debate, I think is worth a read.
And lastly, now that the iPad has been in people's hands for a week we're starting to get some really thorough reviews. I'll go more into this later, but the major thing for me is what appears to be the only big negative. Apple just doesn't have document sharing and syncing worked out. This is exhaustively documented here. This is related to the general and radical way the iPhone OS deals with files. That is, the way it does away with the whole notion of a file system. This of course ties into the great debate above as the anti Apple camp sees this as only a bid for control while the other side sees it, variously, as the evolution of computing and a way to get this technology into the hands of everyone. But that debate is something of a trap I think if it stops us from thinking the real problem through. How can we make computers more simple, but not lose computing power in the process? Google's Android is perhaps way ahead in this one area as they really know how to use the cloud for storage. Apple is firmly tied to syncing through iTunes (attached through USB no less!) This could be the chink in Apple's armor. I don't think they have too long to get it right.
Oh yeah, and also there was a change in the developer's tools terms of service which kills Adobe's plans to allow Flash developers to cross compile to the iPhone (and Android, and Windows 7, etc...) Much ink is being spilled on this as an extension of the great debate but really this is a sideshow in my opinion. If I have time I'll put a short summary in comments but basically this part of the debate (although not necessarily the whole debate) is being blown out of proportion.
It's not clear yet if this amounts to more than a small effort by some niche group inside the company, but Google has created a grant to fund TheorARM, an ARM optimized version of the Theora video codec. This is a good thing even if it's the case that Theora can never be as sophisticated as h.264 (which seems true to me although is clearly beyond my expertise.) I think the idea here would just be to have a "good enough" fall back codec that is free in both senses.
But is google just funding it, or are they going to push it too? The post doesn't say anything about them actually using it (like, say, switching YouTube to it.) I can't imagine they would do that. Or how about on the hardware side? Are they going to order a couple million chips for the Nexus Two with TheorARM decode hardware? Having the optimized codec is great, but if it's not present in commodity chips than it won't matter and it probably won't get into chips unless someone big orders a huge amount of them.
And then there is the unclear patent situation. MPEG-LA has hinted that they may have patents that Theora violates (but I guess of course they would hint that.) And of course there are tons of other patent trolls out there as well just waiting to sink this ship (or any ship for that matter.)
Still, this makes me a little hopeful. It's certainly a small step in the right direction. We'll see what the analysis is from people who know more than me.
I got to play around with an iPad last night for a few minutes. Not much to report except that it feels exactly like I thought it would. Which is to say perfect. But you knew they'd get the size and shape and weight right. That's what they do best. Beyond that it's hard to say too much from such a brief encounter. The screen is gorgeous (although being night time I didn't use it in direct sunlight.) It is 100% responsive opening and switching between apps. And everyone at the table, including several people who hadn't heard of it and really don't care about such things, were crowded around looking at it completely enthralled.
Fake Steve Jobs has an open letter to the world that's pretty funny in an accurate way. Or is that accurate in a funny way? Dear human race, First of all, you’re welcome.