Dave Metzener's Weblog

Interesting…

Really! That’s about all I can muster. It’s really just a very large iPod touch with 3G and “assisted GPS” (what exactly is “assisted”?). It’s probably pretty fast. However, it’s hard to tell with a processor called A4. What exactly is an A4? What does it compare to?

The iLifeiLife suite of applications that will run on it sound pretty cool. Plus, $30 for the suite is way better than $80.

If I were getting a computer for my parents now, I would probably get them this iPad. It will be way easier to maintain since they would have a much harder time messing it up than the Mac Mini they have now. It would be way faster than the Mac Mini. My mother only does email and web surfing so she would be fine with it. My father plays games so would probably find most the casual games on it perfect for him.

As a “netbook” it’s severely lacking. No USB port or any expansion capabilities at all. No CD/DVD drive. No physical keyboard, but I suspect the on screen keyboard is probably just fine. The biggest problem, the AppStore and Apple’s censorship/review policy. Programs for the iPad will be vetted just like for the iPhone/iPod touch. This means that it’s not, I repeat, NOT a laptop/netbook at all. It’s a very large iPod touch!

That said, if I were getting a portable computing device (notebook, netbook, etc…), I would seriously be looking at an iPad. It’s really lite at 1.5lbs yet still pretty large for screen space. 10 hour battery life is pretty nice, but lack of expansion and the AppPrison AppStore makes it a tough option to fully decide on.

Also, as an ebook reader, I would have to say that Amazon, Sony and Barnes & Noble, don’t have a lot to worry about. The reason e-ink was invented was to make a display that was easy on a readers eyes. Back-lit screens, no matter how they are back-lit, are not easy on a readers eyes. Otherwise, reading books with notebook computers would be way more popular. That said, the fact that the iPad can do so much more than just be an ebook reader, that Amazon, Sony and Barnes and Noble probably should worry a bit.

So, all that said, will I be running out to buy one when they are available? Even if I had the money to get one? Probably not. I’ll play with someone else’s iPad and if some generous relative gives me one for Christmas, I certainly won’t return it. However, I’m not all that excited about it.

I also, don’t see this being the “tablet computer” that will attract current tablet computer users. I’m thinking of doctors here. I could be wrong, but it just doesn’t seem like a device that they would want to switch to. Even if all the software that they currently use were available.

So, good luck Apple. I hope you do well with it. I just don’t see this being the iPod/iPhone device you are hoping it will be.

If the headline is a true statement, then Apple needs to get off it’s backside and work out a way to protect applications from being pirated.

Via: 24/7 Wall St.
Apple and the companies that sell software for the iPhone and iPod touch at the App Store have lost over $450 million to piracy since the store opened in July 2008 according to an analysis by 24/7 Wall St. There have been over 3 billion applications downloaded since the App program began. Bernstein analyst, Toni Sacconaghi, estimated that between 13% and 21% of those downloads are from paid applications. According to this analysis, the average price of an application purchased at the App Store is $3. Sacconaghi estimated that Apple’s revenue from the App Store is between $60 million and $110 million per quarter. That amount has certainly increased since this research report was published because of the rapid growth of the number of applications.

If what that article is saying is true, then it’s clearly up to Apple to solve the problem. If for no other reason than to save the $135,000,000 that Apple is losing per 18 months.

There are folks out there that question the $450 million number and I must say that I have to wonder a bit too. The only way people can pirate iPhone/iPod touch apps is to jailbreak their iDevice. There are those that are doing this. In fact, some say that 10% of the iDevices out there are jailbroken. That comes to about 7.5 million jailbroken devices. Now, are we saying that, on average, each jailbreaker pirates $60 of software every 18 months? That sounds like a doable number. However, I really doubt that every jailbreaker is also a pirate. Now, what percentage of jailbreakers are pirates needs to be figured out.

The article states that 40% pirate, so now we are talking about 3 million jailbroken pirates would need to be stealing $150 worth of apps per 18 months. This still sounds like a doable figure. I mean we are talking less than 1 $0.99 app per month per jailbroken iPhone/iPod touch pirate. Assuming all the numbers are close to accurate.

If this is all true, then Apple is loosing way too much money to be sitting back and letting it happen. They must be working on something. If Microsoft can put together a system to prevent Xbox 360 pirating, then Apple can sure do something.

Daring Fireball: Regarding WordPress and Security:

… Is WordPress poorly-designed, security-wise? Is it just a matter of WordPress being phenomenally popular? Or is it both? I don’t know. The same argument continues to rage, 15 years after it started, regarding Microsoft Windows. WordPress has much to offer, starting with its large, generous, active developer community. But I can’t recall any widespread security attacks against Movable Type or Expression Engine, or against hosted services such as Squarespace, Posterous, Tumblr, or, yes, even WordPress.com (a hosted service, rather than software you host yourself). …

First off, I call BullShit to the statement that Movable Type or Expression Engine have not been attacked by hackers. I know of several people that host/hosted those applications and were hacked in one form or another. As far as the attacks on those user-hosted sites being “widespread”? All I can say is the same thing I say about Windows vrs. OS X viruses. There are way more attractive WordPress sites than there are other blogging application sites.

Now, I can’t speak for why Daring Fireball hasn’t been attacked more frequently than it has assuming it has at least once. Mr. Gruber certainly posts articles that rub folks the wrong way at times. (The above quoted article comes to mind…)

As to the need of having “constant vigilance” when running WordPress, if you run a weblog, no matter what blogging application you use, keeping it up-to-date is an important process. Just like Operating Systems, Windows or Mac, if you slack off keeping the OS up-to-date, you are running the risk of being hacked/getting a virus.

WordPress has always been extremely easy to keep up-to-date. Even before the semi-automatic process that is in place now. I have run WordPress for many years and upgrading to the latest version was never more complicated than uploading the latest files to my host, and running the upgrade script. Five minutes (at most) later, I was up and running again.

I have tried other blogging applications like Movable Type and Expression Engine. My impression was that none of the tools were as easy to update as WordPress was. In fact, I have made several attempts to “install” Movable Type and have never been successful in the last two years. The process is way more complicated than it should be, in my opinion.

So my sympathy goes out to the folks that have had their sites hacked/destroyed in this latest attack of WordPress installations. However, I don’t feel to sorry for them since it takes a just a few minutes out of anyones busy schedule to upgrade WordPress, no matter what version they are running prior to the latest version.

A while back, Apple told a developer to either take out some offensive words from their dictionary application (Ninjawords) or be removed from the AppStore. This prompted Apple’s Phil Schiller to write to John Gruber at Daring Fireball to respond to the accusation that Apple was censoring the dictionary app.

I felt that Apple finally had an idea that they needed to take a good long look at their process and make some changes.

Well, I’m afraid that either they are still taking that “long look” or they decided that nothing was wrong with their process because sure enough, developers seem to be getting shafted more and more since.

Case in point: iStat from Bjango. Originally, iStat had a great feature that allowed its users to “Free Memory” on their device so that they could play a game or run an application that might otherwise crash to the SpringBoard due to memory issues. Apple sent Bjango a letter stating that their software was causing confusion with it’s iPhone/iPod touch users and that they needed to remove the Free Memory feature from the software or have their iStat program removed from the AppStore.

Bjango capitulated and has since been updated with new features like a battery status display and process list.

Now Apple has sent a letter to the folks over at Vanilla Breeze telling them to remove the “Broken LCD animation” from their iSurprise application or be removed from the AppStore. When asked why, Apple responded saying that they were getting too many phone calls from their customers telling them their devices have become broken by using iSurprise.

Now, I understand that the iPhone is a great device and that its designed so that even a small child can use all the features of a cell phone without having to dig into it’s manuals. However, this is getting ridiculous. Apple is actually saying that their users are so stupid that they can’t tell the difference between an application bringing up a picture of a broken screen and an actual broken screen?

Are these users so stupid that as soon as the screen appears broken, they pick up their landline and call Apple claiming that the application iSurprise broke their phone? They don’t notice that the “glass” is broken only to the edge of where the display is and not to the upper and lower edges of the phone? That pressing the Home button “fixes” the break and then tapping the iSurprise icon then tapping the screen again causes the screen to break again?

Seriously?

Are they saying that they get calls when someone’s iPhone shows a broken screen but when they have a similar application running on their iMac and the iMac’s screen shows a graphic of a broken screen that they are not confused by this, but are by the iPhone app?

Something has to be going on at Apple above and beyond confusion by 0.001% of Apple’s iPhone/iPod touch users (assuming 400 people are calling complaining about this application, and that is being generous). It would take 400,000 users calling complaining about this problem for it to even show as 1% of their user base. What that something is, I just can’t even speculate on. It’s just too damn strange for me to figure out.

Apple needs to fix this AppStore problem, or they are going to have absolutely no developers for their precious phone/ipod as all the developers move to other platforms that don’t act like dictators.

“Bulk Apps” or Mass Produced Applications have been an increasing problem with Apple’s AppStore for quite some time now. More and more developers are finding that they can “bulk up” their application catalog or portfolio by simply taking a simple template app, applying different data and publishing the application as a totally separate app.

They started out simply as e-books published to the AppStore one book as one application. Usually a book that is in the public domain. Then, actual book publishers saw that iPhone e-books were becoming popular and decided that they would join in and publish their books as e-books. At the time there were a couple of pretty good e-book reader apps out there for publishers to attach to and before you knew it, there were hundreds of e-books in the AppStore.

e-books have become a huge segment of the AppStore comprising over 9,500 titles ranging in price from Free to $20 and more. e-books are an acceptable “bulk” app because Apple gave developers little choice when it came to applications. Sure, you could put 10, 100, even 10,000 books in a single application. However, a book publisher wouldn’t want to because they would have to sell the application for hundreds if not the maximum $999.99.

The real problem started with a new type of application. Location-based apps as well as fan apps. Location-based applications pull data from RSS feeds, flickr, and other sources to create an application that doesn’t require an internet connection to get to the data. A developer pulls the data for a specific region together, creates an application for the AppStore, and published it. Before long, that developer has 100+ apps all using the same code base.

There are currently 71,617 published applications in the AppStore. This number is based on AppShopper.com’s tally. Games comprise the bulk of that number at nearly 20%. e-books take a good 13% and Entertainment another 13%. The rest of the AppStore categories are less than 10% each, the biggest of which is over 7% in the Travel category.

Interestingly, one developer holds just over 13% (that’s equal to all the e-books that are published!) of the 71,617 published applications with a whopping 9,500+ applications. One developer! Brighthouse Labs currently holds the record for the largest collection of applications in the AppStore. Clearly, this is a lucrative business for Brighthouse Labs. It’s probably safe to say that there is more than one person behind this developer. I would even venture to guess that we are talking between 50 to 100 people work for Brighthouse Labs.

Update: Whoops, I don’t know where I came up with 9,500 apps for Brighthouse, that number should be 2,280 which is 3.2% of all the apps published, still an impressive number. 2,280 comes out to about 6 apps a day since the store was opened. Not inconceivable for a one or two developer shop to produce. However, from information garnered from other bulk application developers, it’s probable that Brighthouse employees around 20 or so people to turn out the apps that they do. Consider that Brighthouse didn’t start creating their apps back on July of last year. they have probably been punching out apps for about 8 months which equates to about 10 apps a day, 7 days a week, for 8 months.

Thanks Frank for pointing out my mistake there. I don’t know where the 9,500 came from unless I read the number of e-books as being the number from Brighthouse. I’m leaving the old text in but crossed out to show that I had made the mistake and corrected it.

I would also venture to guess that 95% or more are minimum wage or possibly even “sweat shop” labor that do the bulk of the work, no pun intended. In order for Brighthouse labs to have 9,500+ applications in the store, they would have had to submit to Apple, 24 applications a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year! That’s assuming they started submitting apps the day the AppStore opened!

Brighthouse Labs isn’t the only developer out there creating Bulk apps either. One such developer, Khalid Shaikh, was booted from the AppStore and their privileges to the iPhone development program revoked. At the time, he was the 3rd most prolific developer with over 900 applications published. Apple pulled the developer, not because he was a bulk developer, but because he was publishing copyrighted material in his apps.

Apple made a change to the way developers could sell their wares when they released OS 3.0 not long ago. A new feature called In-App Purchasing allows developers to combine their content into one application and still make money for their separate content. Comixology is taking advantage of this feature with their application “Comics“. Comics is a $0.99 application that allows you to download comics to your iPhone. They have a large collection of comics from 15+ publishers as well as creater-owned titles. There are several comics that are free, but the bulk of the titles cost $0.99. You don’t have to find these titles in the AppStore, you go into the Comics application, find a title you want, and tap a Buy button. You are charged through Apple for the purchase, but no new applications are downloaded to your iPhone/iPod touch. Its downloaded into the Comics application where you can read it at your leisure.

Game developers are taking advantage of this feature to offer new downloadable content for their games like the PS3 and XBOX-360 have done for years. Developers as well as patrons benefit from this since patrons don’t have to buy whole new applications for 3-5 times the price and the new content doesn’t take up extra space on their device. Developers benefit since they don’t have to charge 3-5 times the price which makes the content that more appealing to patrons.

The problem though, and the reason for the headline to this article, is that Apple should have thought of this before opening up the AppStore to developers back in 2008. Now, to be fair, no one predicted the rise of bulk apps back in 2008, so it’s hardly fair to blame Apple for this. However, if Apple had given developers the ability for In-App purchasing back in 2008, would we be seeing the Bulk application problem we are seeing today?