Technovia

So I bought a new computer

I bought a new computer. It's not a Mac.

It's a Dell. It runs Linux. It didn't cost me £1400.

And I love it. I'll write some more about why I decided to switch later, but so far I've had it a week, and the only reason I've picked up the Mac again is to get copies of some files which aren't supported by anything other than Mac apps and save them into something sane.

Best. Tech. Discussion. Evah

Read it. Go on. You know you want to.

Why Apple's iPhone sales aren't really that RIMarkable

I've got a long post over at Mobile Computer Mag on why Apple beating RIM's sales for their most recent quarter isn't totally surprising. The headline is a little bit misleading - they certainly are remarkable results - but who can resist a pun like that in a headline?

AppleInsider's coverage of Apple versus RIM is wrong

AppleInsider.

"Apple announced quarterly iPhone sales that surpassed those of BlackBerry maker Research in Motion by nearly a million and a half units or 25%: nearly 6.9 million iPhones versus 5.4 million BlackBerry units in the third calendar quarter of 2008." (My emphasis)

It's amazing how many inaccuracies you can cram into a single sentence. This one manages two, which render the entire thing worthless.

First RIM hasn't reported results for the third calendar quarter - its quarters don't match up to calendar quarters, being out by a month. Its last report, on the 25th September, covers the three months ended 30th August.

Secondly, it didn't report sales of 5.4 million BlackBerry devices. As Steve Jobs noted, during that quarter it reported sales of 6.1 million. "Prince McLean" has picked up the results for the previous quarter (RIM's first of fiscal 2009).

One sentence, two simple errors, and a misleading report which is now propagating across the Internet.

Apple's results might be great, but coverage of Apple results is disappointing

There isn't much doubt in my mind that Apple's had a great quarter. But what I'm deeply disappointed by is the coverage we've got from the media about it.

Take, for example, the summary that GigaOm provides. There is nothing - absolutely nothing - that I couldn't have got from simply listening to the conference call and writing down the facts myself. There's no contextualising, there's no questioning, there's no comment from people who they, as reporters, have access to and that I don't.

There is, in fact, no added value at all. I might as well read the press release. In fact, as the press release contains a pretty decent decription of how GAAP works, I'd actually be better-off reading the press release.

Now I'm not singling GigaOm out here, because almost no one has actually done this news as a proper news story. The only person I've seen who's actually added any value to the story is Joe Wilcox, who did more actual journalism in a single Twitter than anyone else has done in all their stories. Joe simply pointed out the fact that when Jobs compared BlackBerry sales with iPhone he wasn't comparing the same periods - which means that you can't claim that Apple is outselling RIM with real authority.

Joe was also the only person I've seen who pointed out that Apple's reporting of non-GAAP earnings isn't a great way to measure if you're trying to compare its performance with its rivals. As Joe puts it, "I've covered Microsoft for a decade, and I've never seen this kind of accounting before. Microsoft has huge amounts of deferred revenue because of annuity licensing contracts. Deferred, or unearned, revenue is just that."

Tech writing deserves better than it's currently getting from the blogs and writers who have come into the game in the last few years. It's time for a few of the leaders to step up and raise their game. Otherwise, I suspect that quite a few of the "blogging networks" won't survive the next couple of years.

The iPhone as multi-purpose gadget

Self-Reliance 2008 - The Atlantic (November 2008):

"The postmillennial version of a Leather­man is the Apple iPhone. Like all digital technologies, the iPhone has yet to achieve the hard-grained, Spartan elegancies of the steely Leatherman. It makes up for this with its cannibal appetite for other tools. Leathermans will disappear—I commonly give mine away—but iPhones devour other tools, digesting them into virtualized application services: phone, camera, e-mail, Web browser, text-messaging, music and video players, whole planet-girdling sets of urban Google maps, house keys, pedometer, TV remote, seismometer, Breathalyzer, alarm clock, video games, radio, bar-code scanner … the target list grows by the day"

It's worth remembering that the iPhone represents the best embodiment yet made of what will be an entirely new technological platform, the first designed to be connected all the time. The PC, and its luggable cousin the laptop, are direct descendants of room-sized computers which stood on their own, connected only to dumb terminals, and which did "processing" - crunching massive amounts of data, which was then churned back out.

Phones are something very different - they are designed from the start to be communication devices, rather than processing devices. The assumptions and roles which machines like the iPhone will take will also be about communications: who you are, what you want, how you want to do it.

MacBooks, iMovie, and USB HD video cameras

Picking up this comment from TalkBack on ZDNet:

"Actually, you're all missing the point here. Even if you have an HD USB camcorder, you STILL can't use it with the new
macbook - you can't connect a drive via USB fast enough
to play the AIC video that iMovie creates. If you own Final
Cut Pro and you have the option to encode AVCHD to Pro
Res, at HD resolution, the video will not run on a USB
drive. I do, however, have a number of FW drives that will
do it...

Why have none of the tech press picked up on this? Job's
comment was the single most arrogant and ill-informed
thing I have even seen a CEO say in a long time."

I don't know if this is true or not, as I haven't got one of the new MacBooks (and now I'm wondering if I'll bother). It would certainly be worth someone who has access to a new MacBook and an appropriate camera testing.

The effect of rumours on Apple's share price

John Gruber takes Duncan Riley to task over his story about an "$800 MacBook", which, of course, proved to be pants. I largely agree with John, although I still think that it's worth asking the question of who benefits from a rumour like that (it certainly wasn't Duncan), but it's worth putting to bed one of John's claims:

"Riley is the one and only source for this $800 laptop rumor, it wasn’t even close to true, and it is dominating post-event news coverage and quite possibly a significant factor in Apple’s stock price dropping 5 points on the day."

While it's true that after the Apple announcements Apple's stock dropped, it's worth remembering that in the aftermath of Riley's story, Apple's stock rose. Take a look at the chart and you'll see that on the 10th, when the NASDAQ was largely flat, Apple rose by five - something that could be attributed to Riley's story and the follow-ups by various analysts.

So, while the expectation of a cheaper product might have contributed to a fall in Apple's share price post-announcement, that fall simply wiped out the gain that the rumour had caused in the first place.

New Apple laptops... nice, but not overwhealming

As usually happens, my first thought when reading about Apple's new laptop range was "hmm... must buy!" And, as often happens, after an hour or two I'm much more ho-hum about them.

Who gained from the $800 MacBook rumour?

Don't you find it interesting that at a time when Apple's stock price was going into the toilet (like everyone else's), a rumour emerged about low-priced MacBooks? A rumour which analysts picked up on, and which thus protected Apple's share price from falling any further at a vulnerable time.

And now it seems that rumour was not necessarily true, but as the whole market has gone up it doesn't matter half as much.

So here's the question: Who would benefit from a rumour like that being spread at that particular time? Someone started that rumour, after all...