Behold: the Fisher-Price Apptivity Case, a protective baby-friendly cover for your iPhone.
I’m a digital guy, have been since I got an Atari as a second-grader. I now have two kids that can’t help but see my TV set, laptop, iPad, iPhone, iPod. They think it’s fascinating and fun.
So I did what any responsible parent should do. I downloaded and tested some age-appropriate apps and let my older son explore. The iPad and iPhone are genius devices in their usability, with their clutter-free fascia and immersive interfaces. So now the gadget is teaching the boy animals, colors, shapes, letters, memory retention and matching, spatial relations, you name it. We also set up guidelines: no screens between breakfast and dinner, no YouTube (Thomas the Tank Engine snuff films! who knew?), you have to play out difficult boards and not quit things quickly, etc.
That boy is now 4 and is as digitally savvy as anyone his age. He’s also wicked good at memory matching games, he can write his letters in capitals and lowercase, and he plays sophisticated games like Flow, Trainyard and Rush Hour better than many adults. Heck, he figured out how to unlock the home screen at 21 months. And he still loves his real-world toys, crayons and books.
Done right, gadgets are as wondrously useful for young people as they are for adults.
My baby boy is 15 months and dying to play with the iPhone. Right now he only gets glimpses when his big brother is engaged. Soon enough, Eli, soon enough.
Category: gadgets (Page 2 of 4)
Few visualizations of the transition from old media to new media (to which I’ve long been contributing, as both a digital media veteran and a reader) are as stark as the sales trend of the Encyclopaedia Brittanica, which ceased print publishing this week (edited for clarity):
Sales of the Britannica peaked in 1990, when 120,000 sets were sold in the United States. … Only 8,000 sets of the 2010 edition have been sold, and the remaining 4,000 have been stored in a warehouse until they are bought. … Now print encyclopedias account for less than 1 percent of the Britannica’s revenue.
Brittanica’s been in print for 244 years. (It has the New York Times and The Economist beat by nearly a century.) But in a relatively brief 22 year span, the print encyclopedia’s distribution dropped by 93% and the share of the publisher’s revenue from those books dropped by 99%.
I continue to read many publications in print form, atop the multitude of web pages I consume. But I suspect it won’t be long before my only practical reading option is a tablet.
Aw, what the heck. Today is a nostalgic one thanks to Steve Jobs. Everyone I read keeps posting about how they’ve used so many Apple devices over the years. So I took stock.
Apple ][e (loved)–I didn’t have my own, I just used Mike Han’s a lot. Circa 1983.
Apple //c (owned)–the ][e was off the market by the time my parents bought me my own computer.
Apple Macintosh (loved)–again, I didn’t have my own, I was forced to go over to Felix Sheng’s and Howard Slatkin’s houses and be jealous of theirs. Howard’s dad had the original Talking Moose app, which I fondly recall to this day.
Apple Personal Modem 300/1200 (owned)–this is the gadget that really changed how I view the world. I fell in love with online communication back in late 1987.
Macintosh LC (owned)–my first Mac. Kind of a piece of crap, particularly after I installed AutoDoubler to find hard drive space and my processor slowed to a crawl.
Macintosh SE/30 (loved)–I inherited this when I took over my college newspaper. It’s probably my all-time favorite computer, even though it was three years old when I used it. I had on it Eudora, Microsoft Word 5.1a, and a Klondike solitaire app, and it was just about perfect.
Macintosh Performa 636CD (owned)–the Mac I got after I wiped the LC hard drive and sold the machine. It was fine.
Power Macintosh (used and owned)–I had Power Macs at two different jobs in the 1990s and early 2000s, and purchased one for myself in 1998 after I moved to New York and needed a decent machine at home for freelancing. I forget the model number, but I was very happy with my personal Power Mac, which I upgraded several times over the years. I used Power Macs in vintage (pre-PowerPC) mode as well as with G3 and G4 chips. Soldiering on through Apple’s darkest years, loyally, hopefully.
PowerBook G3 (loved)–my close second on the favorites list. Gorgeous, powerful, transportable, rugged. The Economist got me one for my international travels and it went around the world with me with aplomb. To this day part of me wishes they’d bring back an evolved version of this laptop design, with its soft-touch matte black exterior.
iMac (loved)–I was still plugging away on my hotrodded Power Mac when the iMac blew onto the scene. I didn’t buy one, but everyone else did, including my my mom. Bondi Blue everywhere. (Mom is on her third iMac now.)
iBook (used)–when I met my wife, she had the Bondi Blue Tangerine Orange Mac laptop. Cute and durable.
iPod (owned)–the original model, 2001. My parents thought I was nuts buying a $399 gadget that no one had ever heard of. (I still have it, and it still works, although the battery is shot.)
iPod mini, 3G, nano, Classic, Shuffle (owned)–I believe my household has had 10 iPods through the years. Five of them are currently in use in one way or another. We never did get an iPod Touch, though.
PowerBook G4 (owned)–purchased when the iBook and PowerBook G3 both fell apart. Served us well for years.
iPhone (owned)–bought the original model the first weekend. Rock star.
MacBook (owned)–our current machine is another gem. Fast, useful, attractive, everything an Apple product always is. I have a nearly identical MacBook Pro at work.
iPhone 3G (used)–Amy got this one, I didn’t.
iPhone 3GS (owned)–and now we both have this guy, awaiting the 5, whenever it comes out.
iPad (owned)–we didn’t buy one, then Amy got one, then we didn’t use it for awhile. We have since discovered that it is our three-year-old son’s favorite toy. (I still don’t use it for much. Maybe the iPad 2 will change that.)
The only company in my life with a similar longevity is Nike, whose shoes I’ve been wearing since first grade. Quite a run for a technology company. Godspeed, Apple.
I am enough of a traditionalist that I still gauge the importance of news by its placement on the front page of the printed New York Times. (I still get a copy on my doorstep every morning.) So it was not lost on me that the lead in today’s paper was Steve Jobs’ decision to step down as CEO of Apple.
CEO transitions are often news, but not front page news, much less the story that carries the day. (As of this writing the story has already become a secondary item on nytimes.com, making the print edition the final record of the day’s priorities.) Such is the impact and presence of the genius behind one of history’s most remarkable companies.
While the Times is my guide, I first learned of Jobs’ decision last night–on my iPhone. I could run down a list of Apple devices I’ve used in the last seven days alone but to do so would be almost too obvious. Jobs’ vision has transformed how we consider, use and appreciate technology, all for the better.
I’ve enjoyed Apple products since the days of the ][e. I look forward to many years of continued innovation and successes by the company. Today, like the rest of the world, I tip my cap to Steve, in thanks and in admiration.
From my post on aiaio:
The majority of respondents, 58%, don’t use the mobile Internet at all. And two-fifths of that group doesn’t even have a web-enabled mobile device.
In my everyday life, for each instance I have of “aha! let me look that up on my phone,” I get half as many eye rolls about the fact that my phone came out of my pocket. My ability to access information in an instant can be trumped by an inclination toward, well, not taking out the phone.
Mobile etiquette is a funny thing; I personally err on the side of polite more than progressive, apologizing if my phone comes out mid-conversation. I wonder how much of that is going to drive mobile adoption the next few years, and when or whether it will move from accepted to expected across all social and age classes, as text messaging has.
Steve Jobs’ reality distortion takes its toll on truth, on Fortune Tech.
I hate when hyperbole overshadows fact. (It’s one of the reasons I have never gotten deeply into following politics.) This article posits to fact-check Steve Jobs’ iPad 2 keynote, but Seth Weintraub’s corrections are surrounded in so much arm-waving frustration that they undermine the root arguments behind them. They also overstate the corrections.
To wit: Jobs included a bullet point that said the iPad has greater than 90% market share. Weintraub wrote in response, “‘>90% market share’. OMG Math,” then asserted, “Apple would have needed to sell 3.2 million more to reach 90% of 2010’s tablet market share.” Which, in itself, isn’t accurate either. If the market is essentially the 14.8 million-sold-in iPad and the 2 million-sold-in Galaxy Tab, then Apple’s sales in 2010 weren’t 90% of the market, they were actually (wait for it) 88.1%. OMG Math.
Then, in trying to compare apples to apples on component pricing, Weintraub starts with, “The XOOM’s are simply better.” He then chooses to pick at various items on the iPad’s spec sheet which don’t match up to the Xoom’s, and says Apple doesn’t measure up. But in doing so, he’s playing the same game in reverse: focusing on factors where his preferred device is stronger (RAM, storage, speakers) and ignoring the ones where his is not (processor, size, cameras). It’s a winless argument.
Thinly veiled disdain is good for speaking to a base of like-minded individuals. But it won’t win any broader discussions.
HP Slate photo gallery.
The real question to me is, how come Apple’s pursuers not only rip off the interfaces and concepts but also blatantly copy the exteriors? Black bezel, chrome rim–is there no other way for a tablet device to look than exactly like an iPad, albeit with a back panel full of Citgo logos?
Every touch phone in the market rips off the iPhone’s visuals, too. It’s not like Apple’s products are always handsome, either. I actually think the iPhone 3G and 3GS weren’t all that attractive. But the competitive market seems to think the only way to keep up with Apple products is to look like them. Even Microsoft’s Zune ripped off the iPod’s single round button for navigation.
Here’s a hint, product teams: these tactics may get you some sales, especially if you’re filling a market need, like offering buckets of iPhone-looking devices on Verizon’s as-yet iPhone-less network. But they won’t get you industry recognition. Or long-term market growth. Or the respect of discerning, taste-making consumers, who generally know the difference.
That’s the gist of Steve Jobs’s hastily arranged and moderately defensive iPhone press conference today discussing the antenna-finger-reception issue.
There’s nothing press-conference-worthy about the issue, really, other than the fuss that’s being made. Apple felt the need to respond to its critics, which, I suspect, has more than a little to do with Consumer Reports’ product damnation earlier this week. Stodgy as it may seem, CU wields a lot of influence, as evidenced by its recent safety warning on the Lexus GX460, which forced Toyota to immediately suspend its sales. (Disclosure: I am a consumerreports.com subscriber.)
Apple’s sales are a combination of its near-flawless execution and the halo of respect and admiration the company receives for its products. With the iPhone 4, Apple wound up with a) a tangibly flawed product, whether it wants to admit it or not, however minor it may be; and b) the potential loss of some of that all-important respect and admiration. Apple had to try and remind people of its general excellence and plug the hole in the proverbial dyke.
Let’s analyze the specifics of the “solution,” then, which has been cited as potentially costing the company hundreds of millions of dollars. Apple will give away free bumpers to all its iPhone 4 customers. This has an opportunity cost of $87 million, given Apple’s $29 price point versus the three million phones already sold.
Seriously, though: that bumper’s $29 ask is laughable. It’s a molded plastic ring. A lay consumer can buy full-size iPhone cases for $1.50 for as few as 30 pieces in bulk. What do you think Apple’s wholesale cost is for three million, sourced directly from the manufacturer? Thirty cents? Maybe less?
At $0.30 per case, Apple’s big giveaway will cost the company $900,000 for the first three million, plus overhead. Given that Apple has brought in at least $600 million in revenue (probably a lot more) on those three million iPhone 4s, nine hundred grand seems like a pretty painless repair. (As an Apple shareholder, I should note that this pleases me.)
The iPhone 4 remains an incredible product, and Apple a remarkable company. Today’s press conference didn’t really change things one way or the other. Their hope is that with their case-and-refund announcement in place, the issue will quiet down, and people will feel good about buying and using the iPhone 4. We’ll see if it works.
The Awl: The Golden Age Of Hipper-Than-Thou CD Fetishization Begins Now.
See, I’ve still got my old stereo, and I’ve been hoarding all the CDs I bought or burned between the ages of 13 and 24. Sure, they take up a lot of space. Was a bitch to move them out of the old apartment, too, but it’s worth it. This stuff is gold. … We remember Tower Records, man. We were there.
My son (age two) broke my CD player last month. My gorgeous, wonderful, feature-rich, six-disc Pioneer CD changer, which lasted longer in regular use than any other piece of electronics I’ve ever owned, which I loved so much that I bought a matching car CD changer so I could swap the cartridges, which was such a near-perfect device that I actually had the laser realigned in 1996 rather than buy a new one. The day it broke was almost exactly the 20th anniversary of its purchase.
Twenty years is a long time for a piece of stereo equipment, so I’m not all that saddened that it broke. Its passing has thrown me into something of an existential crisis, though.
Do I buy another one?
I mean, I’m an iPod guy through and through. Had one since they first came out. I carry a 160GB iPod Classic in addition to my iPhone. I rarely pop in CDs to listen to casually, and despite my lifelong love affair with record stores, I’ve only physically bought music two or three times in the past couple of years, and they were point-of-sale impulse buys.
On the other hand, I have a lot of discs. More than a thousand. Most of which I’ve never properly digitized, because of the daunting task of burning a thousand CDs. (I perversely burn the albums I least care about, in order to get them out of my apartment, which means my iTunes collection contains a lot of mediocre music and not enough of my old favorites.) When we moved into our current apartment, I had two wall units custom-built for our living room, one of which just houses CDs.
I have been thinking for awhile about digitizing the whole thing and just moving on. But what to do with all that music? I’m something of a collector and I don’t like the idea of throwing away the tangible jewel boxes and liner notes, especially considering how much money, and time, I invested in acquiring them.
But the reality of progress cannot be ignored. I saved 800 cassette tapes and 200 vinyl records in my parents’ house when I moved out in the ’90s, and to date, I’ve listened to roughly 30 of those cassettes and none of the records. The hoarder in me shouts, “But those thirty! And how much is irreplaceable? And what about the next time you need music and forget your iPod? And the bootlegs, man! And imagine if you had to reassemble your metal collection from scratch…!”
Thing is, I have reassembled a lot of my music collection. No matter how much I deny it, I don’t look back much: all those classic rock albums I have on cassette? I don’t even leave those artists on the radio when the local rock radio station plays their songs. We move on.
In an ideal world, I’d find myself at home with two weeks to kill and no one else in the house, and I’d spend a few days pulling all my music–cassettes and all–into a lossless audio format on a two-terabyte hard drive with dual backups. I don’t know if or when that will ever happen, but in the meantime, I may as well admit to progress.
So we’re not replacing the CD player in the component stereo. We will, instead, pop in an iPod cable, so until we get a music server set up we can play tunes without dealing with the laptop. And my son–who, before breaking it, learned how to turn on the stereo and play CDs in the old Pioneer–will be able to bring his iPod into the living room and play his kids’ tunes on his own volition, once he learns to read, that is. And at some point I’ll even purge the living room of physical CDs.
It’s not that the future has arrived. Heck, the future has been here for years. It just took a toddler’s accident for me to formally let go of the past.
For all the fuss about AT&T’s new data rates (both pragmatically good and knee-jerk bad) the main point to keep in mind is whether those rates are actually good for consumers. For the most part, they are: John Gruber notes in his post that 98% of AT&T’s users fall below the new 2GB monthly plan, and that even with overages these rates beat the competition.
I’m a daily, heavy user of data on my iPhone 3GS, so I logged into my phone bill to see where I land. And lo, a surprise: not only do I not need unlimited data, I can actually drop down to the 250MB plan. Because I regularly use my home and work wifi, and I don’t download much media, my 3G bandwidth usage has been 230MB or less for the past six months.
I like the idea of an open meter, and when I change plans, I’ll probably switch to the 2GB/month plan, even if it costs me a few bucks extra. I will be happier paying $25/month and never hitting my limit than paying $15/month and worrying about, or getting slapped with, overages when I download some videos. Still, that’s found money for me, and for 98% of AT&T’s smartphone users.
One could gripe all day about AT&T’s signal strength or its needlessly expensive text messaging plans. But its data plans are well considered and decently consumer-friendly, no matter how the blogosphere reacts.