You may have noticed the updates getting fewer and farther apart here. I'm spending a lot more time away from my desk (and in front of a desktop-sized screen) and a lot more time either on a iPod Touch or in front of my Apple TV. This is good — it is very cool to have so many new alternatives for media. That is what this blog is about, after all. But my blogging platform used here just doesn't lend itslef to a more mobile entry method.

        

Back in February of 2008, the CouchGuy introduced you to The Average family and their Apple Home just after Christmas of 2009. I thought of it as a conservatively speculative look at what was (to me) obviously possible and practical based on what we had then.

Well, I somewhat overestimated the speed of adoption of expanding technologies, and underestimated the ability of the industry to drag its feet for no good reason whatsoever.

Despite this, the original visit with the Average family is the most popular post ever on this blog, so let’s take a look at my predictions to see how I did. Later, maybe we will take another look at the Averages, down the road a few years.

*****

Joe has already plugged his iPhone into a cradle in his office, so he picks up a 16GB iPod Touch from a cradle on the table near his chair. This used to be Joe Jr’s iPod before he got his upgrade to a new 64GB model for Christmas last week. Now, it is the family room Apple TV remote, running Apple’s VirtualRemote software.

Well, I got this one, at least, dead on. The current 64GB iPod Touch is none too big, considering the massive number of applications available for the platform. (My own 32GB model, once top of the line, is feeling a bit cramped these days.)  The Remote software is among my favorite apps, because it gives perfect control over my Apple TV. This works even better under the new Apple TV 3 software.

Joe‘s modest instant-on 56” plasma TV set ... is connected to  an Apple TV Media Server Edition he purchased at the same time, which in turn outputs to the family room’s Dolby 5.1 wireless stereo sound system. 

You can get a 56” plasma, but no one would consider this “modest”. The CouchGuy just replaced his recently-deceased 27” with a only-slightly-less modest 32” model. The best change is 3 HDMI ports instead of one, however, allowing me to at last connect my Sony DVD player without unplugging the Apple TV.

Do I really need a DVD player? Well, yes and no. These days, you can get a standard DVD player for a song, and I bought mine because it uprates normal DVDs to fill the screen of my HDTV. But I haven’t bought a new DVD in a long time — digital downloads via Apple TV is how the CouchGuy rolls now. 

The new Apple TV 3 software is fine, with a much more attractive interface. But iTunes is still a poor way to organize a large video library, and the current Apple TV model — while still a great way to get your iTunes-based video to your HDTV screen — isn’t robust enough to be a real media server.

The new, mightier Mac Mini would be a great basis for an Apple TV Media Server Edition like the one discussed.Apple’s currently bundling it with top-of-the-line server software for under $1000. Give us a more media-oriented version of that and we’ll be right where I predicted.

The only other ornament on the wall is the iSight 2 wireless camera mounted above the plasma screen, which the family uses for Apple TV iChats with Joe’s mother and father in Florida on Sunday evenings. He’ll have to show them the videos from Joe Jr.’s Senior Prom this weekend — if they haven’t already checked them out on the family’s .Mac video gallery account.

The current Apple TV is maybe a bit processor-deprived to drive live video chat on your HDTV screen, but easy video chat seems like a killer app that should have been bigger than it is. Meanwhile, .Mac is now MobileMe — and still not living up to the potential for such a centralized Apple-driven service. Apple’s massive new data center must mean something big is planned that will likely have MobileMe at the center of it. But not yet...

The red alert star indicates a completed download, and this turns out to be the rental copy of Cloverfield II that Joe pre-ordered a few months ago. He’d forgotten it was due for simultaneous Blu-Ray and download release this week. OK, they’d have something cool to watch tonight — or they might save that for the weekend. Joe knew he would probably end up buying the movie, as much as he had enjoyed the original, but the first rental price would automatically be deducted from his purchase price later if he decided to keep it.

The only thing holding up simultaneous releases on DVD and digital download is stupidity and greed on the part of the studios. If anything, we are moving backwards, with Big Media trying to prevent NetFlix from making DVDs available to subscribers until well ater the sales release. Big Media is just driving piracy by trying to force tiered releases, then trying to stop the pirates that they, themselves are encouraging by intimidating their customer base. It won’t wash in the long run, but in the short run this foolishness is holding the direct download market back far more than any rational person would have guessed in February 2008. 

He glances at the Blu-Ray disk slot on the Apple TV Media Server and again wonders why he bothered to buy the unit with that option. It had been useful when he first got it, since most Blu-Ray disks now came with Apple TV compatible versions of the films right on the disk. He moved over some of his Blu-Ray purchases that way, and could use the slot to play the older disks without this feature.

I stand by this one. The price of Blu-Ray has dropped below $100 for some of the Black Friday sales, but I still believe Blu-Ray is a dead issue. Apple iTunes Extras make DVDs even more irrelevant for the future.

All of his old non-HD movies he has long since moved over to the Apple TV Media Server’s drives using Flip4Mac's Drive-In 2 software to archive them. With the old Digital Millennium Copyright Act finally modified earlier this year, it was perfectly legal to keep archive copies of his old DVDs on the server hard drive where they were available with a single touch on his remote.

Talk about stupidity... The decision of the U.S. District Court in Real Networks, Inc. v. DVD Copy Control Association, Inc. killed Drive-In along with RealDVD — for now. It looks like it may take a consumer revolt and the revocation of the insanity of the DMCA to get us to the place where we can store most of our video content, legally, in convenient mass-storage digital format.

The yellow alert star indicates a new podcast of special interest had been detected. Sure enough, on the TwiT.tv channel the new episode of MacBreak Video Weekly was out a day early! He’d look at that later from the bedroom while Kris was getting ready for bed.

Video podcasting continues to grow and Apple TV makes it easy to enjoy this great content on your big-screen HDTV. Others have caught on to this and many top podcast creators (TWIT.tv, Revision 3, etc,) are available through a variety of set-top boxes and internet-connected TV sets.

While he is thinking of it, Joe pulls up the plug-in menu for the EyeTV ATV Edition USB dongle attached to his Apple TV and selects to record the new episode of American Gladiators coming on later that evening.

We can’t do this through Apple TV yet, but the Eye TV iPhone app allows me to set up my recordings from my iPod Touch, which is almost as easy.

There is another feature he is using less often, he mused. Most of the TV shows he and Kris really cared about — Lost, Monk, Star Trek: The Academy Years and Three and a Half Men — they had purchased iTunes Season Passes for when several networks started offering bonus episodes for pre-ordering. (...) Heck, two of their favorite shows, CSI: Atlanta and Joss Whedon’s Luna City, are iTunes Exclusives, produced especially for Apple and not available anywhere else until the once-yearly Blu-Ray DVD collections come out.

For most network and major cable channel shows, it is quite possible to use Apple TV and iTunes season passes to substitute for cable. No major iTunes exclusive TV series yet, but wait for it. (Joss Whedon... call Steve Jobs. You guys need each other.)

Joe thinks about punching up the Games menu on the Apple TV to see if anyone out there is up for a quick game of Worldwide Naval Battle. 

Again, the current Apple TV model is a little processor-light for this, perhaps. It is obvious that gaming is a huge success on the Apple mobile platform, though. It still could be big on Apple TV. Not yet, though...

Instead, he idly checks the drive space available to him on the Apple TV Media Server and is surprised to find he is over the halfway mark on the 2TB built-in drive. Maybe it is time to buy an add-on drive. He could stack a 4TB NewerTech MiniStack ATV right behind the Media Server. (...) Of course, he’d have to add additional drives to the TimeCapsule 2 backup system in his office, but he needs to do that anyway. (...) Adding another 8 to 10 terabyte external drive to the TimeCapsule 2 is no big deal.

Drive size and backup is still a problem for people who manage huge hard-drive-based video libraries. The Drobo is a popular solution right now, and more mega-drive arrays will appear with easy-to-use setups for home video enthusiasts.

Joe gets up and wanders into his office, touching his wireless keyboard to wake up his 30“ iMac Pro and the matching 30” Cinema Display alongside it. (...) Kris had frowned a bit when he purchased the extra Cinema Display for the office, but she had to admit it was convenient for watching movies and other video streamed from the Apple TV Media Server on one screen while working on the iMac’s built-in display.

I got really close with this one, thanks to the new 27” iMac. What a powerhouse! I am amazed, though, that it isn’t set up to handle HDMI input directly and that it doesn;t have an option for a built-in digital tuner. With a little more media-friendly approach, that iMac might have been where my new 32” Magnavox HDTV set is today. Perhaps by next year...

Joe finds he is reluctant to go anywhere without his iPhone these days. The 3G connection brings him the web, video, and books anywhere he goes, although he finds he can rely on quicker (and free) wi-fi access in most places — at home, at the office, and in most restaurants and larger businesses he visits. Last night while at the mall food court waiting for Kris to finish shopping, his iPhone offered him a special price on the download version of the new Tom Clancy novel. He purchased it right then and there, courtesy of the mall’s Barnes and Noble bookstore who co-sponsors the free wi-fi connection there. He read the first couple of chapters while sipping the coffee he had also ordered from his iPhone, which was brought over to his table by a smiling barista from the nearby Starbucks. Joe thinks of his iPhone as an extension of his home computer system, and he can get anything he wants from it with a touch or two, including any movie in his Apple TV Media Server library.

In the last two years, our iPhones and iPod Touches have become the real growth platform for Apple. Where Apple has allowed the living room media market to languish, their hold on the mobile market has expanded at an explosive pace. (And Barnes and Noble’s wireless internet access is now free, so... a win there!)

Kris relies on her MacTablet much as Joe does his iPhone — it is her daily connection to her home and her office. As a real estate agent, she finds the MacTablet perfect for displaying listings to clients on the fly and keeping her busy schedule straight. It syncs directly and automatically with the local multi-listings service, keeping new local real estate listings at her fingertips as they are added throughout the day. It is also the perfect media player and electronic book viewer. — much better for the latter purpose than the smaller iPhone screen.

The much-awaited Apple Tablet is, alas, still much-awaited. Maybe by next year they will be almost as ubiquitous as the iPhone. Or maybe not.

Right now, Joe Jr. is in his room watching music videos on the new iMac Media Edition he got the previous Christmas. The 24” iMac Media Edition has a built-in syncing dock for his new 64GB iPod Touch, and a built-in TV tuner so that Joe Jr. needs no other TV in his room. He uses either the iPod Touch or his Apple Remote and Front Row to watch TV and movies and listen to music in his room, as served by the Apple TV Media Server or resident on his iMac’s hard drive in his own copy of iTunes.

As I noted earlier, we’re still awaiting a true media edition iMac. iTunes is better at sharing among multiple installs, so it is common for various members of the family to have their own media collections — and to share them.

So where will the Average family and their Apple Home be in another couple of years? I’ll tackle that in my next post...

        

For a number of years, the ol' CouchGuy has been a frequent participant in an online survey group run by NBC/Universal. I get several emails a month with detailed surveys about my likes and dislikes as relates to NBC/Universal's many shows and cable channels. I've always enjoyed doing these, and having the feeling that I might in some small way be helping to make TV a little better, (Yay, Monk and Psych! Boo, celebrity reality shows and changing "Sci-Fi" to the even more execrable "SyFy".)

        

When it comes to the Apple Music Event coming up on Wednesday, September 9, it is a lot of fun to speculate on what we’d like to see announced. When it gets down to cases, however, what we can really expect to get is probably a lot more limited.  I suppose as Apple fans we’re a bit spoiled. We can’t expect every announcement to be as exciting as the first iMac, the first iPod, the first iPhone, and the first iPod Touch. Or can we?

A lot of people are counseling to limit our expectations. The more soberly inclined among Apple pundits seems to agree on almost nothing except that this event is likely to be an iPod refresh for the most part. Honestly, that is what seems to be called for right now — something just new enough to kick over iPod sales for another good Christmas season.

Still, Apple is known for bringing around a surprise or two when you least expect it. Let’s take a sober look at what we can expect to see on Wednesday... and then spice up each prediction with a nice bit of a slightly more imaginative nature that could add a really magical Apple sparkle to the occasion.

The iPod line

There can be no doubt we’re in for some refresh here. After all, the event invitations feature a classic iPod silhouette motif and the line “It’s only rock and roll, but we like it!” The iPod line is the product series that brings the music, and we can be virtually certain Apple will want to be offering some reasons for us to trade up over the fall and the holiday season. This is the traditional time for an iPod-centered event, so what can we reasonably expect to see?

The new shuffle is about as tiny as it can get, so unless Apple’s signed up with the American College of Surgeons to offer a dime-sized implant that goes under the skin right behind your ear and eliminates the need for ear buds, I think we can assume that the miniaturization trend is over.

It might be reasonable to expect a cosmetic change, but I wonder if colors really matter when the item in question is almost too small to see at twenty paces already. More likely would be a drop in price on the existing model to about $49, and/or a model with about twice the capacity for the current price of $79.

If I were feeling a bit more fanciful, however, I’d look for Apple to move back to a larger design more akin to the Generation 2 clipback model, restoring the buttons for those who like them but including VoiceOver and remote-bearing earbuds as exist on the Shuffle 3G. Such a model would probably have more capacity for the money.

Want me to go way out on a limb? I’d love to see a shuffle with a postage-stamp-sized screen that displayed either album art or a visualizer-like light show, but I fear that’s a bit beyond practicality. It would be interesting to see a 2G-size shuffle that snapped into a variety of fashion accessory mounts, though — a bracelet, necklace, belt buckle or pin. This would offer a lot of third party accessory opportunities and make wearing a shuffle even more of a fashion statement. (This makes keeping a variety of colors available a must .)

The iPod Nano seems to change shape almost every year, and I doubt this year will be an exception. It could afford to get a bit bigger and feature a larger screen and a built-in camera. (The prudent man doesn’t expect video here... but the more freethinking CouchGuy might not be surprised.). A capacity expansion is practically a given if a camera is installed.

Is the iPod Classic going to stay in the line? I think so, though it is possible Apple could kill it off. Even the conservatives among us seem to be expecting it to hold on one more year, simply because there are still a lot of people who want to carry all their music and still have room to use their iPod as a portable hard drive. The realistic expectation would be no capacity change at all but a slightly lower price. Slightly less realistic but sure to be popular would be sticking a camera on this baby, too.

Getting daring with the Classic leads me to think of a combination of the Classic’s capacity with an iPod Touch’s interface — a bulkier item I’d be tempted to call the SuperTouch. Such a device would be a power hog, having to handle both a touchscreen and a hard drive. But oh, man... what a device for the true on-the-go video fiend! 

The iPod Touch is an absolute must for an upgrade. The camera is almost a dead certainty, and it isn’t that much more outrageous to figure it will be take both stills and video. Lower prices for higher capacity is very likely. I would further expect them to keep the current more-limited iPod Touch at the bottom of the line at a price that makes it practically irresistible, as they did with the iPhone upgrade. Anything that makes the potential app market larger is likely to be seen as a Very Good Thing by Apple, and a really cheap iPod Touch would do that nicely.

A bit less likely but still not too far out would be wireless sync with iTunes via Wi-Fi. That might wait, however, until they can do it with both the iPhone and the iPod Touch at once. Uh... I wonder — could that be added to the existing new iPhone with just a software upgrade? Hmm...

If it were up to me, I’d push a little farther and make the new iPod Touch a feature match for the iPhone — just without the phone. Camera with video, microphone, compass, voice control, Bluetooth — the works. Why the heck not? Might it cannibalize some iPhone sales? Yes, and why should Apple care? They no longer have a direct financial interest in selling you cellular contracts, and they’re rather hacked off at AT&T anyway. An iPod Touch that was a feature-for-feature match for the iPhone without the cellular communication capability makes sense for Apple today.

In truth, I expect down the line the differentiation between the iPod Touch and the iPhone to go away entirely. Build and sell one unit, into which you can slide a sim card — or not — as you choose. No sim card — it works just fine on Wi-Fi — and perhaps on WiMax. That’s most likely a year or two away, though.

iPhone

Any substantial iPhone upgrade at this time — well, that’s a prediction too far out for even this CouchGuy to contemplate. But I would expect a software update to accommodate a few things that could get added to the iPod Touch, like the wireless sync capability I mentioned earlier.

iTunes

An iTunes upgrade is to be expected. Conservatively, we can probably look forward to some social networking features — perhaps tied in with existing social networks like Facebook and Twitter and perhaps featuring Apple-branded social network offerings tied to MobileMe as well. Most of us would expect a few performance enhancements and some new media deals to announce.

The new digital media format codenamed “Cocktail” seems like a good bet for introduction under iTunes 9. The more restrained prediction has this as simply a way to package a set of songs with album art, lyrics, liner notes, and music videos in one downloadable product. Some of us, myself included, think this might be the first use of the format, but that it is designed to be much more — an ambitious attempt to establish a true multimedia package format that would be perfect down the line for all sorts of things, including multimedia textbooks.

What I’d most like to see is a complete revamping of iTunes as a media organizer. Frankly, it is a mess right now, trying to stretch metadata and sorting capabilities originally intended for music only to fit a much broader range of media. iTunes is slow and bloated and not very well designed to handle media stored on multiple drives, networked storage, or “cloud” backup. It needs to support more formats, organize files better, and run a lot more smoothly than it does. I’m really hoping some of this will be addressed in iTunes 9, but realistically I think the less-important social networking and album format “upgrades” are a lot more likely to happen.

Really out-there predictions for DVD ripping capabilities aren’t likely in the face of what has happened to RealNetworks’ RealDVD software in court recently. If anyone could have a chance of taking on the dimwitted media giants in this arena, it would be Apple — but I don’t think they are ready to do that yet. 

As for The Beatles in the iTunes Music Store... it is well overdue and would be a great way to kick off Cocktail, but I’m not feeling it. I think they are going to miss the boat here. They’d be better off to do it now and sell digital downloads of all the new remastered collections in Cocktail format alongside the physical-media versions. But I think they are going to fiddle around on this awhile longer, which will result in a lot of lost sales when all that new Beatles material hits the torrent venues about a half-hour after the CDs come out. Pity. (I’d love to be wrong about this. Really, I would.)

Apple TV

You know the ol’ CouchGuy really wants to see something happen here, but the conservative and realistic predictor says it isn’t in the cards. That said, I’ll go out on the ledge just a little way and say I do expect something to be said about the Apple TV on Wednesday. New hardware would be a stretch, but I would certainly think it reasonable to expect Cocktail support for the existing hardware.

If it were mine to do, though, I’d at least go for a revamp of the Apple TV software entirely with a Snow Leopard core and Quicktime X powered display capabilities. Using this opportunity to fix the sometimes sputtery iTunes syncing would be nice, too.

People predicting new hardware with DVR features or a subscription model on TV shows — well, the CouchGuy likes your spirit, but not your chances. Not at this event, anyway. A revamped Mac Mini with a hardcore Media Center orientation is maybe slightly more likely. Maybe.

Macintosh - Desktop/Laptop

This is the wrong show for this. I can’t imagine a scenario with a big Mac rollout for the stage on September 9. I would not be surprised at some moderate upgrades announced quietly soon after this event (especially to the iMac), but it won’t be the focus of this event. As I said, I’d give a very tentative maybe to a Media Center Mini, but only as the most liberal of expectations.

iPad

The majority opinion is that we won’t see an iPad tablet product until early to mid 2010. If you are betting the rent money, this is sure the way to bet. If you have some cash you can afford to lose, though, there might be some outside chance that Apple will make some sort of commitment to this, if just to admit the project is in the works and to turn loose of some iPhone app-making tools and expansions to support it for the developer crowd to play with.  The CouchGuy can, when he’s having one of those nice dreams, foresee a lovely surprise with an iPad that is essentially a big iPod Touch announced now (most likely for shipment after Jan 1, 2010) with a hint at a full OS X touchscreen Mac coming later. I haven’t quite given up hope that the iPad is ready now. It sure would make for a nice holiday sales season for Apple. But I won’t bet the farm.

Steve Jobs

And who, exactly, is going to be leading this clambake on Wednesday? The conservative money is on Phil Schiller as master of ceremonies because if the conservative view of what is going to be announced is correct, it is just not a big enough event to bother trotting out Steve for his big return to the spotlight. Personally, though, I’ll be surprised if there isn’t just enough magic happening to get Steve on stage for at least a wave, a smile and a word or two. A full-fledged Steve Show? Only if one or more of the long shots come in. A Beatles appearance, an Apple TV relaunch with a TV show subscription service, or an iPad reveal would bring Steve onstage to host. Otherwise, I think this is unlikely.

In any event, I’ll be hovering over my iMac waiting for each piece of news as it trickles in. I’ll share my instant reactions through my Twitter feed, and in a longer blog posting later in the day. No matter what, it’ll be a fun time.

        

Andy Ihnatko in the Chicago Sun-Times gave some interesting hints about what the power of the new Snow Leopard OS X might do for the rumored Apple tablet. There's a lot of speculation out there about this non-product (some of it from me), but this is a really thought-provoking piece. Snow Leopard's reduced drive footprint, enhanced performance even on slower processors, slick new Quicktime X interface, etc. sure would make it attractive as the underpinnings for a media-oriented iPad. Food for thought, indeed...

        

I promise to make this my last posting for awhile on this subject. Things have deteriorated to where there is no longer much space for any reasoned discourse. But I can't let Jason Calacanis' latest anti-Apple rant pass without comment. Originated on his This Week in Startups video podcast, found on YouTube, linked from Digg and titled "A Message to Apple Fanboys and Girls from Jason Calacanis", it is an epic screed that has all the useful semantic content of a wordless scream of childish pique.

        

Jason Calacanis graciously sent me a nice tweet a few days ago acknowledging my earlier blog post responding to “The Case Against Apple”. I thank him for that, but I can't thank him for his followup effort. I find his blog entry today, “Apple’s Master Plan (and why even fanboys should be scared)” is even wider of the mark than the first — and in some cases quite insultingly so.

Right off the bat, I find his assertion  that “well over 95% of you responded that Apple was acting too closed and should, for market opportunities alone, open up their platforms” is somewhat suspect. I’m not sure what measuring stick he’s using. It appeared to me that most of the longer blog responses I saw around were refutations of his points, not support for his thesis. Most of the “support” in shorter comments appeared to be of the usual unreasoned “yeah, screw Apple!” variety. Even the comments attached to his own blog run no better than 50-50.

“The Case Against Apple” was at worst a badly-aimed scattershot repetition of oft-repeated off-target analogies about what (mostly) the iPhone “should be”. “Apple’s Master Plan” is, in my opinion, far less defensible. The piece is full of scare tactics, name-calling, misdirection and outright errors.

Calacanis is correct that Apple is fighting for the mobile desktop, and that they are off to a good start. He’s wrong, however, when he asserts that if Apple wins it will set the industry back decades. In fact, Apple may be the last, best chance to save the mobile desktop from the morass that the mobile phone has been mired in for years.

I find the repeated assertions in this piece that Apple is in the mobile market only to “line their own pockets” pretty disingenuous coming from a businessman as competitive and matter-of-fact about making lots of money as Calacanis. Does Calacanis advocate running a publicly-held company with no profit motive, aimed at some goal of assisting his competitors to divvy up the market “for the good of all”? Of course not. If so, his stockholders should take him out and have him shot. Thank goodness Apple does aim at making a profit, and they do it by offering products that lots and lots of people want to buy. Consumers vote with their dollars, and they are overwhelmingly voting for Apple. Calacanis calls those of us who think Apple should aim for profits “Ayn Rand-ers”, which is doubly insulting coming from someone who (a) knows the difference and (b) never had a problem aiming at profits himself in the past.

Calacanis asserts that “competition and open systems are better for consumers on all levels”, implying that Apple doing well in the mobile desktop market will put an end to that. Again, Calacanis knows better and is using generalizations that don’t fit as a scare tactic. There is plenty of room for competition in this market, and if the competition fails it will be because they do a poor job of delivering what their customers really want. One way they can assure such a failure is to deliver a mobile desktop experience that is exactly what Calacanis says he wants, expecting that he is a typical user. There is plenty of room for mobile data devices that target an open-source, anything-goes, elite audience that needs and wants that. Indeed, the Blackberry did well targeting the top end business elite for a long time. But Blackberry did not begin to penetrate the market formed by the “rest of us” until Apple’s iPhone showed there are other ways to approach things. They are learning quickly that there are more of us than there are of the elite Calacanis-type users.

The term “open systems” is not set forth here in the usual sense. Instead, it is used by Calacanis as a meaningless buzzword, setting “open” equal to “good” and “closed” equal to “evil”. The issue here is not one of “open” vs. “closed”, but one of who is the audience Apple should target with the iPhone/iPod/iTablet product line. Calacanis claims “open” is better on all levels for consumers. Nonsense. Not every data communications product or product line needs to be a no-standards free-for-all.

Apple seems to be choosing to create “the mobile platform for the rest of us”, and in so doing is attracting tons of customers who never gave a damn about the idea of a “smartphone” before. Apple did the work to figure out what customers like and how to give it to them in a package that anticipates needs they don’t know they have yet and provides unequaled usability. While others created phones that were “designed” by Torquemada and systems that told customers they’d use what they had and like it, Apple created something that was a quantum leap ahead. Calacanis, however, seems to think that this is some sort of dastardly plot to turn us all into slaves. For him, “open” means Apple does the work and everyone else is “open” to exploit it and bend it out of shape and force all users to deal with the consequences, whether they want that or not.

My idea of “open” is that Apple is open to seek the market they see out there and everyone else is open to do the same. A certain level of interoperability and data portability is certainly required, as we all have to use the same cellular networks and data formats. Apple can’t possibly develop every desired piece of software themselves, so a market for third-party software is also necessary. But there is no reason that every mobile data device needs to be wide-open to everything any individual wants to put on it, regardless of what that does to the overall user experience. I’m the homeowner and if I am more comfortable sitting in a walled garden than in a glass house, who is Calacanis or anyone else to tell me Apple is evil for allowing me to make that choice?

Calacanis discusses the rumored (and almost certainly soon-to-be-announced) Apple tablet, and is horrified that Apple might bring it out as part of the iPhone/Touch ecosystem. To do so instead of equipping it with the more “open” Mac OS X is in Calacanis’ words “the ultimate tell” — making it clear (to him) that Steve Jobs intends to rape the world by somehow forcing them to buy something easy to use and demonstrably popular with an extremely wide variety of consumer types instead of something aimed at only the same people already buying Mac laptops.

Using this scare language, Calacanis hopes to convince you that black is white, bad is good, and buying what you obviously want and like is the worst thing that could happen. Please don’t fall for this. Calacanis says we “fanboys” (there’s the gratuitous insults again) are drunk on the kool-aid, but right here it is Calacanis that is standing at the punchbowl with the rat poison box in hand insisting that Apple selling anything short of a Calacanis Chaos Communicator which offers any experience different from that big box you already have on your desktop is the work of the Devil.

The next section, however, is where Calacanis goes completely off the deep end. Here he tries to sell you the idea that a more narrowly-focused iPhone and an iTablet based on the same concepts will lead inevitably to Apple coming into your homes to take away your ability to load third party software on your desktop computer. Steve Jobs is coming to make you buy your desktop software only from the App Store, to rip away your Firefox and Opera browsers in favor of Safari Forever, and lock you away in Apple-branded Hell eternally! Piffle.

(By the way, Jason — despite your assertion here, Apple’s heinous decision to not put the gross piece of memory-hogging crap that is Adobe Flash on the iPhone does not prevent you from playing Bejeweled for free, forcing you to shell out an outrageous $2.99 for Bejeweled 2 in the App Store. After all, that’s a whole microfractional percent of a Tesla payment! You can go to http://popcap.com/iphone/games/bejeweled and play Bejeweled for free on the iPhone any time, without Flash. I frequently do. If you are going to use inane scare tactics, at least be accurate with them.)

Calacanis doesn't really believe this load of bull. I can’t believe he’s sincere because he’s a smart, savvy guy. He has to know that this is the worst sort of crappy “slippery slope” argument, as favored by venal politicians and fly-by-night hand-in-your-pocket televangelists. I’m insulted that this should even come out of his mouth — that he thinks his readers are so incredibly empty-headed as to let that one slide by while we stand slack-jawed and drooling. Damn, Jason, I never underestimated your intelligence. How dare you underestimate mine in such a fashion!

The personal computer as it has developed (in the usual chaotic way that anything like this grows) is a whole different sort of beast than a mobile. Using a personal computer attached to the internet requires an investment of time, money, study and focus. Everything affects everything else and woe will befall anyone who can’t handle that for themselves or rely on someone else to do ti for them. You no longer have to be a geek to use a computer — but only because there are a lot of other geeks working damn hard to cover your butt for you. Even so, you are asking for it if you so much as download your email or hook up a wireless access point for your laptop without having some idea about what you are doing.

No matter how smart you are, you don’t necessarily want that level of complexity all of the time! It is no reflection on one’s intelligence to want a device to do a more limited set of tasks and “just work” for each of them — especially when it is not the only device you own. A mobile device that “just works” for a wide range of data handling, communications, media and fun uses is a nice thing to have, and Apple is discovering (or rather the world is discovering because Apple made the choice available) that one way to accomplish that is to be a little picky about what you put on the device in the first place.

If you want an everything box, fine! Buy one. (You probably already have it — it is called a “laptop computer”, and Apple makes the best ones on the market.) But for those times you don’t want or need that out in the mobile world, there is an iPhone. And if you want the bigger screen along with the simpler interface, I think Apple’s going to have you covered there soon, too.

This is not a Commie plot, it is a Good Thing. If you want a mobile platform that is utterly open like the proverbial barn door in all ways, I’m sure someone will make one for you. (Google’s Android platform might be an excellent place to start.) I’m equally sure that such a thing will not sell in the numbers that the iPhone sells, but that’s OK. There’s room for both. But it is utter balderdash — insulting balderdash — to say that anything else is Evil and aimed only at sheep who haven’t the sense to want exactly what Calacanis wants out of a mobile platform.

Calacanis is trying to tell you that “freedom” requires that anyone have the ability to do anything, anytime, with (or to) any device and system you buy. That’s a load. Freedom means you — the buyer — have the freedom to choose what you want to buy. Apple is offering a better choice, and people are flocking to it in droves. We kid about the Steve Jobs “reality distortion field”, but the real distortions are coming from the people who want you to “think the same” about the growing mobile desktop as the existing personal computer market because they don’t know how to compete on any other level. The target markets are not the same and there is no reason the devices must be the same.

I want to be free from crap on my iPhone, free from software bloat, free from the same hassles in the great outdoors that I have when I am at my desktop computer. A lot of people have brought out tablet computers that failed because they were just laptops with a different form factor. I want my mobile platform to just work, and if Apple can do that — I’m buying. I do want flexibility, and if Apple restricts my choice too much I’ll buy from someone else. But it is not a moral crusade, and anyone who tells you it is a holy mission is just trying to get their piece of the pie for free, and they say screw you and what you want and need. Don’t fall for it.

Apple’s only “Master Plan” appears be to offer an easy-to-use and self-consistent platform for mobile devices that is aimed at the widest possible market, not just the minor percentage who want seventeen browsers and the latest bloatware, and all the rest all the time. Sure, Apple wants to sell you something, but they are giving you something honest in return for your money. There's a new concept. Watch out for the people who claim only they are wearing halos while the other guy who is trying to make an honest buck is Satan incarnate. Their hands will be in your pockets a lot deeper in the long run, and you’ll have a lot less to show for it.

        

One of my favorite tech personalities is Jason Calacanis, CEO of Mahalo.com. I always look forward to his visits to Leo LaPorte's This Week in Tech podcast because Calacanis never fails to make the discussion lively. Unlike so many in the tech spotlight, Calacanis isn't afraid to say what he thinks, even if he's all alone in his convictions. His bombastic style as a CEO and as an observer of the tech scene suits my tastes. I often agree with him, but I enjoy hearing what he has to say even when I don't agree.

So when he posted "The Case Against Apple - in Five Parts" at Calacanis.com, I dropped everything to read and digest what he had to say. Calacanis has been increasingly critical of Apple of late, sometimes with good reason. If he was ready to state his overall argument for his growing mistrust of a company he'd usually supported in the past, I was ready to hear his story.

Now that I have, I still think he's sincere and thoughtful in has assessment. But I also think he's basing much of his thesis on the same fundamental flaw in reasoning that invalidates the arguments used by so many Apple naysayers. I won't class Calacanis with the blowhards out there who know they are dealing from the bottom of the deck. This man has earned more respect than that. But he's wrong this time, and I can point out how and why.

The original post is well worth the reading, and I encourage you to click this link and do so if you haven't already. None of the charges he brings against Apple here are new, but they are stated here with more clarity and less special pleading than I have seen them in the past. I note that all five of his points involve the iPod/iPhone ecosystem, and I think that's an important distinction. The reason for most of the complaint here is not that Apple runs this side of its business so much differently than it runs the Mac side of things. Rather, it is because the iPhone and iPod have been so phenomenally successful that in these areas Apple is easy to cast as the villain. Indeed, it is no accident that so many parallels are draw throughout the posting between the Microsoft of yesterday and the Apple of today. But the cases are not at all parallel, and it is the critical difference that eludes Calacanis as it has so many others.

Calacanis charges Apple with five anticompetitive practices. Here they are, along with his "bottom line" conclusion:

1. Destroying MP3 player innovation through anti-competitive practices
2. Monopolistic practices in telecommunications
3. Draconian App Store policies that are, frankly, insulting
4. Being a horrible hypocrite by banning other browsers on the iPhone
5. Blocking the Google Voice Application on the iPhone

Bottom line: Of all the companies in the United States that couldpossibly be considered for anti-trust action, Apple is the leadcandidate.

Let us look at what is really meant by "anticompetitive". I think Calacanis would be the first to defend vigorous competitive effort in an open marketplace. Calacanis is a fierce competitor when necessary, but has always been smart enough to know when alliances are better than warfare. He would not expect Apple to throw away a competitive edge, and would probably call them traitors to their own stockholders if he caught them doing so. He instead seems to be accusing Apple of using a dominant market position as an unfair lever to stifle the efforts of others to compete fairly. Calacanis cites Microsoft and Google as companies that have drawn government interest for unfair competitive practices, and offers the opinion that Apple has — undeservedly — been given a free pass in this regard.

The case, however, doesn't hold water in any of the five areas, and the flaw in all five is basically the same.

Under charge #1, Calacanis says that Apple's refusal to allow open access to use iTunes software to feed and manage any and all MP3 players from any and all manufacturers is anticompetitive. He blames Apple's "lack of openness" for the lack of advanced features on today's crop of MP3 players, and says that people would be wholly outraged if Microsoft had made it so that the Zune was the only MP3 player compatible with Windows.

The Calacanis analogies don't hold up under scrutiny, however. Apple didn't make it so the iPod is the only MP3 player that will work under OS X. Indeed, iPod dominates among Windows users, and you can hardly say Apple had any way to keep competitors off of that computer platform. Nothing prevents any manufacturer from making an MP3 player with any set of advanced features they wish, and any MP3 player can be used on the Mac platform Apple controls (as well as on Windows) — as long as the manufacturer is willing to provide the user with Mac/Windows digital hub software that will support the player and those advanced features. Apple has done nothing to keep any such software from working in Mac OS X. But marketing an MP3 player is more than just creating hardware — it is providing a hardware-software ecosystem that works well. Calacanis wants Apple to relieve the competition of 2/3 of that burden, taking on the chore of keeping iTunes up and running for the benefit of everyone else's hardware. Apple would be foolish to do so.

What sells iPods is not just the iPod hardware — it is the iPod/iTunes ecosystem. I would be the first to says that iTunes needs a lot of improvements. As a media manager, it is still horribly flawed. If someone else can do better — let them! Apple can't stop that, and hasn't tried to do so. To make it, however, they will have to have the software run as well and be as easy to use as iTunes, and that's no going to be an easy task. A lot of whiners want to build cheap MP3 player hardware and let it ride on the back of Apple's expensive and hard-won position with iTunes easy-to-use interface. It is not anticompetitive for Apple to deny them the free ride.

Microsoft built the Zune, built the Zune software, and had the advantage of knowing all there was to know about making it work well with their own Windows product. The result? A truly laughable failure to even come close to challenging the iPod in a free marketplace. Why? Their ecosystem was just not as good at meeting the needs of the target audience as the iTunes/iPod combo.

So Apple is only "guilty" here of not doing the other MP3 player manufacturers' jobs for them, for free.

The second charge that Apple is engaged in monopolistic practices in telecommunications (with the iPhone) is similarly a misdirected charge. Calacanis says "AT&T is the suck" and the fact that you must use AT&T service to use an iPhone is monopolistic. This one is hogwash, and I'm frankly disappointed in Calacanis for falling for this old line of drivel. Oh, I agree that AT&T is "the suck" in many ways. I also agree that the practice of tying a particular phone to a particular carrier or set of carriers as a competitive practice is undesirable, and this sort of thing has stifled the growth of cell phone services in the US for years while growth of services has flourished in places like Japan. But Apple didn't create that situation her. Consumers have allowed a handful of carriers to collude and engage in consumer rape for a long time before the iPhone came along. The only reason that people are just now noticing is that, for the most part, all cell phone hardware choices sucked just about equally hard until the iPhone came along and made consumers realize that they deserved something better.

Suddenly, the focus was off what services you could eke out of your carrier with your crummy phone and onto a piece of hardware that made it worthwhile to care about what was hanging off your belt. AT&T sucks as a service provider — and all of the others suck, too, in various ways. But to get into the market, Apple had to make the iPhone work with some carrier. Now that the iPhone is a certified hit, every carrier would love to offer the iPhone, and that might eventually put Apple in a position when they can dictate some consumer-friendly terms to the industry at large. But the anticompetitive practices of the cell phone industry can't be laid at Apple's feet, any more than a TV set manufacturer can be blamed for the excesses of the cable TV industry. Those practices existed in the market when Apple entered it. Again, this charge by Calacanis is misdirected. Two down.

In charge #3, Calacanis takes Apple to task for not opening the App Store to any and all comers, and for "draconian" practices to eliminate apps that compete with Apple's own business offerings. I'll agree that there have been some inconsistent, unwise and just plain dumb decisions handed down in the history of the App Store approval process (and that process needs to be improved), but overall the idea of restricting the software available on the iPhone to approved offerings is a wise one.

Once again, analogies used by Calacanis to software use on personal computers don't apply. When the first personal computers were created (and no one knows more about that than Steve Jobs — he was one of the midwives at that birth), there was no "internet" — no personal computer networking of any kind. Personal computers and personal computer networks grew up together, facing the various opportunities and security pitfalls alike together. Meanwhile, cell phones and cell phone networks crew up side by side as well. But when the crossover point comes that merges the two comes(a point that is not exclusive to the iPhone, though the iPhone is the poster child for the movement, as it were), there is a danger that the less capable and complex protections of the cell phone network are not ready for the full brunt of the wild and woolly practices of the internet. Some care seems prudent.

Even so, this is not the only reason to restrict software on the iPhone. The truth is that the iPhone was never intended to be the sort of wide-open platform that the personal computer is, nor should it necessarily become so. Most of the audience for the iPhone does not want or need to stick a full-blown personal computer into their pocket — along with all the vulnerabilities and operational complexity that implies. Above all else, the iPhone/iPod Touch experience needs to stay accessible and simple to the average person. The App Store vetting process needs to be smoother and more fair to developers, and Apple will learn how to make it so over time. Like most new ideas, it has some shaking out time to go through. But Apple wants to keep some hand in seeing that what gets to the iPhone platform is at least marginally consistent and a truly open software market would make that impossible. There will be those consumers who want the wild and woolly experience in their pocket (woo!) and if so, there will most likely be plenty of other devices they can buy that will allow this. But for those of us that want something that just works, there's this set of devices from Apple. The market will decide. and there's nothing anticompetitive about Apple deciding which kind of device they want to sell, and the market deciding which one they want to buy. Want an utterly open source phone — go with Google's platform instead. It's your nickel. But there's nothing here to interest the anti-trust boys either as long as anyone can play the game. Three down.

On charge #4, I've got some sympathy with the prosecution, but only to a point. Having Safari Mobile as the only approved iPhone browser seems a little overprotective on Apple's part, at least from where I sit. I think that Apple may not trust their own approval process here, at least not yet. There are SO many ways a browser can go wrong because there are SO many web pages out there that it has to deal with. Microsoft's IE is a great example of what a poorly designed browser can do to the platform on which it runs. The iPhone is intended as a walled garden to protect the largely nontechnical audience that uses it, and Apple is — perhaps wisely — hesitant to install too many doors into that garden. They have to take responsibility for what gets through Safari Mobile as the gateway to the web — and to make sure that it integrates well with every other iPhone app that potentially calls on it. They may not be ready to guarantee that for something else as well. Still, I'd like to see a situation where multiple browser developers are free to push each other to improve, as Firefox, Safari, Opera. etc. have pushed each other in personal computer browsers.

Calacanis loses me entirely, however, when he trots out yet another inept (or, rather, "non-apt") analogy. There is no comparison between the anticompetitive use of IE in Windows and the bundling of Safari as the only browser available on the iPhone. The problem with the way IE was used anticompetively in Windows was not with the browser but with the way Microsoft unlawfully bullied independent hardware manufacturers into including IE and only IE on their hardware products. Microsoft used unlawful coercion to force hardware makers to offer IE exclusively. If the hardware manufacturer had freely chosen to do so, that would not have raised any anti-trust eyebrows. In this case, Apple IS the hardware manufacturer, making the free choice to offer just one browser. Any other hardware manufacturer in this space can make a different choice. The market will decide. That is fair, and that is four down for Calacanis.

The final charge by Calacanis involves the removal of Google Voice apps from the iPhone. It seems obvious that voice apps using the iPhone should receive scrutiny at the highest level, if it is given that Apple wants to keep the iPhone experience controlled and usable by the average person. After all, voice communication is what a phone is designed to do. Should the way this is handled be a matter of great interest to the consumer choosing a phone? Yes, of course. Is it a matter for government scrutiny? Not under any current law I am aware of! Once again, it is not illegal to prevent a competitor from piggy-backing on your product. I would urge Apple to do so consistently, and to weigh consumer satisfaction against a desire to profit directly from all aspects of the iPhone ecosystem. Indeed, if Apple can leverage the iPhone's overwhelming success enough to force the various carriers to treat consumers more fairly, I would expect this space to be opened up considerably in the future. If data communications by cell carriers can be freed of the stupid ways they have run things as voice carriers, the need for the iPhone and iPod Touch to be two different devices may go away altogether and you could install anyone's phone application on your device to run across whatever data carrier you choose. But that day has not (quite) arrived yet. Apple is probably as anxious to see that happen as we are.

Calacanis cites the defection of Michael Arrington of TechCrunch and Peter Rojas of GDGT.com as indicative of Apple's wrong choices, and I suppose we can add Calacanis himself to this list now as well. That is fine for them, making a free and individual choice. But just because what Apple has chosen to do is not what they want is not evidence that Apple has dome anything illegal or even unwise in the overall scheme of things. If these people need a more open platform, they should seek and support one — and nothing prevents them from doing so. Five down.

The flaw in all these cases is thinking of the iPod/iPhone platform as the only game in town. It isn't, and should not be. People should be, and are, free to choose what they want in a hardware device and the associated software platform. For years, I chose to use a Mac when that choice meant I could not run a lot of Windows-only software I would have liked to have. I chose this because, overall, the Mac experience — while more limited in some ways — offered me more of what I wanted. The same is true of the iPod and iPhone today. Many choose to use them because the overall experience is right. Forcing Apple to accept as part of that experience anything anyone wants to throw at them will not improve that experience. This market doesn't need government regulators to drag Apple down. It needs consumer pressure to force everyone else to make their products more attractive than what Apple is offering. That forces everyone in the industry to get better at what they do.

I encourage Calacanis to stay on Apple's back and encourage them to be better. But don't forget to encourage everyone else to work just as hard to make what they create at least as good as what Apple provides. Apple leads because they have what people want to buy, not because people are forced to buy what Apple provides.

UPDATE: Another excellent rebuttal to Calacanis is at http://www.zerologic.com/Blog/The-Case-Against-Apple-My-Rebuttal.html by Michael Sitarzewski.

        

Oh, you two guys have to meet.

Zack Whittaker? Have you met Rafe Needleman? Zack, Rafe; Rafe, Zack...

Seeing as how both of you have recently written blog posts essentially condemning to an early grave a product that hasn't even been announced yet from a company that's had very, very few product release missteps in the last few years, I thought you ought to have a chance to chat. I suspect that you'll find you have a lot in common when (and if) Apple releases a tablet device.

Zack says:

"Epic fail. In my professional opinion, having a tablet is like having a grandma without the sweets, like drinking non-alcoholic beer and bringing sun protection with you on your holiday to Scotland. It’s absolutely pointless."

Rafe says:

"(I)n the real world, I believe this whole category is a nonstarter. Why we keep waiting for the killer tablet computer is beyond me. Few people really want one, especially at the prices that they will have to sell for."

MacDailyNews says:

"Call us crazy, but if it were us, we'd wait to see exactly what Apple has cooked up, what its capabilities will be, what its form factor is, and how much it will cost before writing and publishing articles about its viability."

But then, MacDailyNews doesn't usually hang around the Naysayers Club. And come to think of it, neither do I.

See ya later, guys! We'll talk again sometime between September and March, OK?

        

This place was in desperate need of a coat of paint. I hope y'all like this look a bit better.