Those who go see the new Pixar/Disney film “WALL-E” will notice several subtle references to Apple Inc. products old, new and imagined.

While the primary connection between Pixar and Apple is well known – Steve Jobs was CEO of both companies simultaneously until he sold Pixar to the Walt Disney Company in 2006 – the studio’s films had never made much of it.

Some things to watch for if you go see the movie:

The WALL-E robot recharges himself every morning using solar power. As soon as he’s fully charged, he emits the Mac’s familiar startup chime.

WALL-E runs his old VHS tape player through a video iPod, which he views through a large, flat flexible magnifying lens like those used to help people read small type.

WALL-E’s love interest, EVE, looks like the sort of robot Apple would build if Apple built robots, and with good reason. When the film’s director, Andrew Stanton, knew he wanted EVE to look as sleek and beautiful as possible, he called Steve Jobs. Jobs sent Apple Senior Vice President of Industrial Design Jonathan Ive over to Pixar for a day of consultation.

Ive, of course, is the design mastermind behind most of Apple’s products from the first iMac in 1998 to the iPod in 2001 to the iPhone last year. According to an article in May’s Fortune magazine, Ive said little but nodded his approval when presented with ideas he liked.

EVE exudes Apple sensibilities. Her skin is the same shiny white plastic of a MacBook. Her egg-shaped body is smooth and curvy. She has no visible buttons; indicator lights glow on her chest under her skin. Her arms lock seamlessly into the indentations on the side of her body – so seamlessly that in one scene poor WALL-E has trouble locating EVE’s hand.

Then there is the voice of Auto, the computer autopilot that flies the ship full of the descendants of those Earth-dwellers that left the planet 700 years earlier. Credited as “MacinTalk,” the voice derives from the Mac’s built-in speech generation software.

I don’t believe Auto’s voice is included in the current Mac OS, Leopard; Apple hasn’t used the term “MacinTalk” to describe its speech recognition software in years. I suspect the voice was generated on an old PowerPC Mac running Mac OS 9 or earlier. I’m not even sure which voice it is (anybody know?).

One more thing: Though not directly related to Apple, the acclaimed songwriter Peter Gabriel collaborated with WALL-E’s creators on the concluding song, “Down to Earth.” Gabriel developed to multimedia CDs back in the 1990s, Xplora 1 and, coincidentally enough, “Eve” – both Mac compatible, which was unusual for that era. In fact, Xplora 1 was created for the Mac first and ported to Windows. More recently Gabriel backed something called The Filter, software for helping people discover music using their iTunes collection.

(Read Mike Sragow’s review of WALL-E here.)

Posted by David Zeiler at 8:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (11)
                    

On the last day of her vacation Bible school, my daughter brought home a medal made from an old CD-ROM, one of the class projects.

Upon closer inspection I noticed the CD was a discarded Windows XP install disk. Someone finally has come up with an uplifting use for Windows! I’m sure even Bill Gates himself, on his last official day at Microsoft, would be proud.

Posted by David Zeiler at 1:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
                    

Losing personal data stored on a PC – your music, your photos, your financial records – is one of the worst nightmares that can befall a computer user.

Though for years experts have repeated the mantra of backing up PC data frequently, few users did so. When hard drives fail – an unpredictable eventuality – they take all your data with them to their digital grave.

That’s why Apple developed the automated backup feature Time Machine, introduced with Mac OS X Leopard. In concept Mac users need only attach a spare hard drive, switch on Time Machine and never worry about losing important data again.

But a spate of bugs with Time Machine has me wondering whether I can fully trust it. If nothing else, backup software must be absolutely reliable.

The bug that caught my attention affects my Mac Pro. Since installing the incremental 10.5.3 Leopard update (released May 28), Time Machine occasionally craps out in the middle of one of its hourly backups.

It presents the following message: “Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while copying files to the backup volume.”

Not exactly reassuring, eh?

I always click on the “OK” button and have noticed the next hour’s backup usually goes without a hitch.

Still, it makes me wonder if all my data is getting backed up properly. Has some of it become corrupted? How would I find out? Ferreting out the problem files would be no trivial task – I have over 400 gigabytes of data on my backup volume.

As this issue discussed on blogs and in forums since the 10.5.3 update appeared, it clearly affects a fair number of Mac Pro owners. Some advise deleting the partial backup file from the backup volume, but others say that’s only a temporary fix.

Some have expressed hope the 10.5.4 update – rumored to be coming in mid-July – will resolve the issue.

I realize that no software is perfect, but Apple needs to be particularly careful with Time Machine. Users have reported an assortment of bugs with the feature since Leopard’s introduction last fall.

In fact, the very 10.5.3 update that appears to be causing the current problem with Mac Pro models included no less than seven fixes directed at Time Machine issues. The most ominous: “Addresses reliability issues when performing a full restore from a Time Machine backup.”

Few things breed misgivings over backup software like “reliability issues.” And while Apple almost always fixes such problems eventually, the company’s habitual refusal to acknowledge whether it’s aware of an issue and whether its engineers are working on it leaves users frustrated and confused.

At this point, I plan to continue using Time Machine on my Mac Pro while crossing my fingers my data is safe. But just in case I’m also going to dust off my copy of Super Duper! to run a second backup to my external network drive.

Wasn’t Time Machine supposed to make performing backups easier?

Posted by David Zeiler at 8:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (21)
                    

More malware surfaced for the Mac last week, but it’s the usual bad news, good news scenario.

The bad news is that at least a few of the black hats of cyberspace consider Mac users worth their trouble, an unwanted side effect of the Mac’s ever-growing user base.

The good news is that none of the exploits is a virus that can propagate itself in the wild, something common in the Windows world. The new Mac malware threats consist of a coulple of Trojans – something the user must download and execute – and a phishing scheme.

Thus simply exercising caution and common sense should keep the typical Mac user safe from harm.

Of the threats reported by security firms Intego and SecureMac last week, the most pernicious is OSX.Trojan.PokerStealer. Once downloaded, “PokerGame” looks like an application, but launching it brings up a dialog box reporting a “corrupt preference file.” The dialog requests the user’s administrator password ostensibly to enable repair of the corrupt file.

But instead, Intego says, the Trojan sends the user name, password and IP address to a remote server, which could enable someone to take control of the Mac remotely and damage the system, including the deletion of files.

Intego also reported a vulnerability in the ARDAgent of Mac OS X’s Remote Management software. Few home users bother with this, as its primary use is for IT departments to manage Macs in an office setting. However, because the feature is built in to OS X, the issue affects all users.

Ironically enough, the best defense against this threat is to turn on Remote Management in the Sharing Preference Pane -- having the feature enabled thwarts an attack. (Intego says OS X 10.5 Leopard’s similar but unrelated Screen Sharing feature “has no effect on this vulnerability.”)

Like the PokerGame Trojan, the ARDAgent vulnerability requires significant user cooperation. Since this exploit depends on ARDAgent’s ability to run AppleScripts, the user must download an application booby-trapped with an AppleScript that contains certain shell commands.

When executed those shell commands give the application root privileges over the system. Root privileges in OS X essentially grant the power to change or delete anything in the system. That’s a bad thing, particularly when malware’s involved.

SecureMac warned of a specific exploit based in the ARDAgent vulnerability, AppleScript.THT. The company claimed a hacker Web site has put this Trojan script in the wild with the intention to propagate it via iChat and the file-sharing application Limewire.

In addition to gaining access to a Mac system as root, Secure Mac said AppleScript.THT “can log keystrokes, take pictures with the built-in iSight camera, take screenshots and turn on file sharing.”

Once again, however, the AppleScript must be downloaded and executed by the user – it doesn’t spread by itself. It may appear either as a compiled 60-kilobyte AppleScript called Asthtv05 or as a 3.1-megabyte application bundle called AStht_v06.

SecureMac further warns that once launched the AppleScript.THT “will move itself into the /Library/Caches/ folder, and add itself to the System Login Items.”

Finally, I’d like to add a Mac-specific phishing scheme I recently received in my e-mail. Targeted at .Mac subscribers, the e-mail cites a “billing problem” and provides a link for the victim to verify billing information.

The link is fraudulent of course, its purpose to bamboozle unsuspecting Mac users out of their credit card information.

Some cynics last week dismissed the new malware threats as attempts on the part of the Intego and SecureMac to sell unneeded security software to Mac users.

I agree to a point but nevertheless advise vigilance against falling into the traps set by the bad guys. I don’t necessarily think Mac users need to rush out and buy security software, but the more popular the Mac gets, the more of this stuff we’re going to see.

Forewarned is forearmed.

Posted by David Zeiler at 12:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
                    

When several Apple bloggers called attention to Steve Jobs’ gaunt appearance at last Monday’s WWDC keynote, we were reminded of a fact few wish to face: Steve Jobs will not head Apple forever.

Some speculated Jobs could be suffering a relapse of the pancreatic cancer for which he had surgery in 2004. An Apple spokeswoman gave The Wall Street Journal the explanation that Jobs merely had a “common bug” and was taking antibiotics.

The story percolated on Apple-related blogs as well as financial blogs, contributing to a 7 percent drop in AAPL. (The stock fell $4.03 the day of the keynote but closed at $185.64 on Tuesday. From there it slid $13.27 to close at $172.37 on Friday. Analyst excitement this week over prospects for the 3G iPhone has pushed AAPL back to the $180 range.)

The severe reaction – both from the Apple faithful and Wall Street – illustrates how vital Steve Jobs is to the ongoing success of Apple Inc.

He is arguably the most celebrated CEO in America. Because of his “rock star” persona, his legendary ability to elicit great products from those who serve under him and his skill at manipulating the media, Jobs is as much a celebrity as a businessman.

Detractors may deride Jobs as an egotistical tyrant unworthy of the accolades but one need only look at Apple’s history to see the man’s impact on the company. Over its 32-year existence, only the years Jobs was absent – 1985 to 1997 -- did Apple struggle.

So every time even a whiff of a hint arises that something might force Jobs out of his CEO post, both Apple fans and stockholders alike break out the worry beads.

The last time this happened, it wasn’t Jobs’ health but his role in a stock backdating scandal that had people contemplating a Jobs-less Apple. Concern over that incident buffeted AAPL stock for months.

Like most fans of Apple, I’m also a fan of Steve Jobs and all he has achieved. I pray he just lost a few pounds fighting a cold in recent weeks.

But the reality is someday he will leave Apple, whether it’s for health reasons or some other unforeseeable event. What then?

At first not much would change, apart from the stock plummeting. A new CEO would be named from a list of potential successors.

Apple would continue selling cool products. High-ranking Apple execs like Senior Vice President for Industrial Design Jonathan Ive and Senior Vice President for Worldwide Product Marketing Phil Schiller would do their best to keep Apple’s winning streak alive.

But as time goes on, Apple will falter without Steve Jobs. No successor could have Jobs’ unique combination of charisma, steel will, exceptional vision and instinct for knowing which products to shun and which to pursue.

Without Steve at the helm to reject mediocrity while imposing his will on both employees and business partners, Apple will backslide from an extraordinary company to an ordinary one.

Hit products will come less regularly. The media won’t hang on every announcement. Apple won’t be special.

Contrast that to the situation at Microsoft. Bill Gates will retire June 27 from the company he founded after having ceded control to Steve Ballmer in 2000. As much as Gates has meant to Microsoft, his long goodbye means his departure won’t devastate the company.

Jobs’ controlling personality never would permit a gradual transition of power. Can anyone imagine Jobs submitting to the authority of a successor as he makes a slow and graceful exit?

No, when Jobs leaves Apple – whatever the cause -- it will be sudden and traumatic. I dread that day and hope it doesn’t come for a very, very long time.

Posted by David Zeiler at 12:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)
                    

UPDATE 7/2: For those just finding this post, you might be interested in reading my thoughts on how AT&T's plans to sell the new iPhone without a contract will affect the unlocking equation.



Sellers of unlocked iPhones are about to go out of business.

The revised terms of Apple’s agreement with carrier AT&T will make buying an iPhone with the intent of unlocking virtually impossible.

Those who buy the iPhone 3G will need to purchase a service contract with AT&T before leaving the store. Apple will not allow customers to buy an iPhone online. And those who do not activate their iPhone within 30 days will face an as-yet-unspecified penalty.

After hackers cracked the iPhone last summer, unlocked iPhones became an industry unto itself. Some domestic customers unlocked iPhones for use on T-Mobile’s network (the only other domestic network compatible with the iPhone).

But many more iPhones became part of a substantial international grey market. People bought iPhones online without purchasing a contract with AT&T, unlocking them and shipping them outside the United States for sale to eager customers in dozens of countries.

In September Apple tried to stop the unlocking with a software update that “bricked” unlocked iPhones, resulting in a backlash from irate customers and negative media coverage. The incident bruised Apple’s customer-friendly public image and probably left CEO Steve Jobs seeking better options.

Not long after that ugliness it became apparent most of the phones were going to countries in which Apple had no deals with carriers, generating sales the company wouldn’t otherwise have had. Apple policy quietly shifted to unofficial toleration of unlocked iPhones.

Until this week, anyway.

Now Apple has contracts with carriers in over 70 countries, all of which are preparing to sell the new iPhone 3G. A large and active grey market in unlocked iPhones no longer serves Apple’s interests. Apple needed to make it go away, and quickly.

Apple’s bricking strategy apparently has yielded to a method much harder to defeat: the terms of the AT&T service contract.

Simply canceling the contract with AT&T after the iPhone purchase would seem a workable tactic. Adding the lower cost of the new iPhone ($199) to the $175 fee for canceling the contract and the initial $40 activation fee brings you to a total of $415, just $16 more than buying the original iPhone without a contract.

But according to a Computerworld article, AT&T will require the return of the iPhone before it cancels the contract.

So if you really want to own an unlocked iPhone, you’ll face no insurmountable technical barrier. But since you’ll be paying full freight for AT&T’s service, you’ll have gained little.

As an advocate for Apple selling unlocked iPhones for a premium price alongside carrier-subsidized locked iPhones, I’m disappointed Apple decided to choose this path. I understand the strategy behind it, though.

To sell much higher numbers of iPhones, Apple knew it needed to drop the price. The only way Apple could sell the iPhone for significantly less money was to have AT&T subsidize it. You can bet AT&T insisted on the airtight restrictions in the contract terms to ensure it would get the monthly fees needed to cover that subsidy.

Apple will sell more iPhones, AT&T will make more money and customers will pay more while losing what little hope remained of someday being able to use a carrier of their choosing.

And while on the subject of pricing, the long-term cost of the iPhone 3G will exceed the original’s since the minimum service fees with AT&T will run at least $10 per month higher.

With a two-year contract, that’s $240 -- $40 more that the $200 price cut you’ll get with the new subsidized iPhone. If AT&T charges more for text messaging as some suspect (monthly fees start at $5), the discrepancy could be more severe.

Furthermore, AT&T is the one reaping all the extra dough, not Apple. Another part of the companies’ new agreement ends the revenue sharing of the monthly contract fees. (Apple will continue to collect fees from existing iPhone contracts, however.)

So not only will AT&T collect more from each customer every month, it gets to keep all that money for itself.

It appears the revolution the iPhone supposedly had brought to the phone maker-carrier relationship has crumbled prematurely.

Posted by David Zeiler at 5:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (109)
                    

It turned out Apple previewed the next version of the Mac operating system, OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, at WWDC after all and validated the most improbable of last week’s rumors – that it will focus on system speed and stability while offering no snazzy new features.

Apple’s history could make Snow Leopard a tough sell, regardless of its advantages. Apple has conditioned us to expect lots of features with each iteration of Mac OS X. According to Apple’s own count, OS X 10.4 Tiger had 200 new features. Leopard boasted 300.

Yet the promise of fewer upgrade headaches and better performance on existing hardware combined with some deft marketing could have many of the Mac faithful opening their wallets in “about a year” when Snow Leopard arrives.

The ultimate issue may be the price. Some think Apple should give it away for free, but I don’t see that happening. Even without new features, OS X 10.6 will require the full attention of many Apple engineers over the next year. Apple will charge for it.

But even the most devoted Mac users likely will balk at paying Apple’s customary $129 upgrade tax. A generous Apple might charge $20 or $30, but I think $50 is probable – and fair.

We might even see tiered pricing, with current Leopard 10.5 users paying $50 and those upgrading from earlier versions paying the full $129.

Among those most resistant to paying anything more than a token upgrade fee will be Mac users who have labeled Leopard “unstable” and buggy. Such people say a “maintenance release” is just what OS X needs.

No doubt, Leopard has had its share of problems, but I don’t think its bugs are significantly worse than those of previous OS X versions.

Presumably Apple will weed out some nagging OS X issues in 10.6, but the overriding goal will be to optimize it for Intel Macs and create a foundation for features we’ll see in OS X 10.7 and beyond.

Some other thoughts on Snow Leopard and what has surfaced this week:

Why not in the keynote? One would think that a WWDC keynote would be the perfect time to publicly announce the next version of OS X. Yet Jobs and other Apple officials only spoke of 10.6 after the keynote.

Did Jobs feel Snow Leopard’s less flashy ambitions not worth mentioning? Or did he just want to keep the spotlight firmly focused on the iPhone?
Whatever the reason, it was darn weird. I’d bet most of the developers in the audience gladly would have sacrificed one of those tedious iPhone app demos for a brief overview of Snow Leopard.

No PPC support The HardMac Web site had a screenshot from the Developer Preview yesterday showing “an Intel processor” as one of the system requirements. As rumored, Mac OS X 10.6 will not run on PowerPC-based Macs.

While a few will decry the dropped support for PPC Macs -- less than three years after Apple switched to Intel chips -- it’s the right move. In fact, it appears Snow Leopard will shed most or all of the PPC code that keeps the OS more bloated than necessary.

From the Snow Leopard page on Apple’s Web site: “Snow Leopard dramatically reduces the footprint of Mac OS X, making it even more efficient for users, and giving back valuable hard drive space for their music and photos.”

Grand Central Snow Leopard’s speed enhancements will derive primarily from “Grand Central” a new technology that will better harness the power of the multiple CPU cores present in all Macs. My 8-core Mac Pro is salivating over this one.

Open CL Another performance booster, OpenCL will exploit the largely unused computing power of graphics processors. No one has spelled this out, but I’m guessing Macs with dedicated graphics cards (MacBook Pro, Mac Pro, iMac) will benefit from this far more than those that use one of Intel’s integrated graphics chipsets (MacBook, MacBook Air, Mac Mini).

QuickTime X Apple’s multimedia QuickTime framework will get an overhaul in OS X 10.6 as well. Dubbed QuickTime X, it will feature “optimized support for modern codecs and more efficient media playback,” according to Apple’s Snow Leopard page.

64-bit support Apple plans to extend 64-bit support in OS X 10.6 to permit the use of up to 16 terabytes of memory. That’s 16,000 gigabytes of RAM, folks. Few home users today need more than 3 or 4 GB of memory, and fewer still could afford whatever terabyte RAM modules might cost. Scientists with access to federal grant money can get excited, though.

Exchange support In a move apparently aimed at enterprise customers, Snow Leopard will include support for Microsoft Exchange 2007, building it in to such apps as Mail, Address Book and iCal.

Posted by David Zeiler at 8:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (16)
                    

Some of the iPhone’s biggest fans – tech bloggers, mostly – have had a lot to say today about the new iPhone’s shortcomings. Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone 3G yesterday at the Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco.

Despite the much-desired addition of faster 3G network capabilities, GPS and a $200 price cut, astute iPhone watchers zeroed in on several improvements they expected but did not get, such as a better camera, multimedia messaging and greater storage capacity.

These folks make some valid points. The iPhone 3G’s 2-megapixel camera is unchanged from the previous model. Most other smart phones give you at least 3 megapixels. Others had hoped for a front-facing video camera, which would turn the iPhone into a videophone via Apple’s iChat software.

Apple also failed to add the ability to cut and paste, an inexplicable omission given the relative simplicity of the function.

Other complaints include weak Bluetooth support, the lack of a landscape-oriented keyboard, no Adobe Flash in the Safari Web browser (which renders many Web sites all but useless) and the failure to boost storage in the high-end model to 32 gigabytes.

As an Apple watcher, I was impressed by yesterday’s announcements, but in the case of the iPhone I view developments from a strategic perspective, not that of a user (I don’t yet own an iPhone -- gasp!).

From a strategic perspective, Apple is doing a lot of things right to increase sales and market share. Apple focused on those features it determined would sell the most iPhones: a faster network, lower prices and an abundance of cool software.

I suspect Apple spent less effort trying to please existing owners precisely because they already had bought an iPhone. Satisfying existing iPhone customers was not the priority this time around.

Instead Apple concentrated on changes aimed at increasing iPhone sales as rapidly as possible. That iPhone availability will extend to 70 countries this summer is not a coincidence.

The cynical voice inside my head also wonders if Apple held back on some improvements intentionally to save them for the next version of the iPhone. Most of those who bought the first version of the iPhone may not be ready to upgrade now, but probably will be next year when Jobs introduces iPhone 3.0.

If Apple rectifies most of the issues that irk current iPhone owners in next year’s model, all will be forgiven. And Apple will sell even more iPhones.

Posted by David Zeiler at 1:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (30)
                    

Apple CEO Steve Jobs fulfilled the world’s expectations today by introducing the iPhone 3G, which will use AT&T’s much faster next-generation network to access the Internet. The new iPhone will go on sale July 11 starting at $199 for the 8-gigabyte model and $299 for the 16 GB model (which also comes in a white model).

Jobs also introduced a new $99-a-year “cloud computing” service, MobileMe that replaces the .Mac service that has long been dinged for costing more than it was worth.

Jobs presented a checklist of improvements to the iPhone that included the 3G network support, increased affordability, better enterprise support and wider international availability.

In addition to a faster network connection, the iPhone 3G features built-in GPS, better battery life and a plethora of new apps written by a growing legion of developers.

The new models did not get a bump in memory, no doubt helping Apple afford the big price cut -- from $399 and $499 – to make the device more affordable. Jobs said 56 percent of those who wanted an iPhone but did not buy one said the reason was cost.

Apple has taken care of increasing the iPhone’s global availability by signing contracts with cellular carriers in nearly 70 countries over the past month or so.

As for enterprise support, Jobs crowed about how the iPhone 3G includes many of the features business customers said they wanted: push e-mail, VPN, support for Microsoft Exchange, and so forth. He said 35 percent of companies in the Fortune 500 have participated in the program.

Perhaps to build suspense for the expected iPhone announcement, Jobs devoted about half of the keynote to iPhone software created by the first wave of iPhone developers.

Though hard to argue with given the audience – Mac and iPhone application developers – all that tech talk and the endless string of demos began to wear thin. As Engadget’s Ryan Block put I in his live blog commentary, “Man, these demos are crazy boring. Throw us a bone here Apple!”

Still, the overall impact of those demos was to show off the amazing potential of the iPhone as a platform. In addition to the many games, the keynote included demos of a music creation app, several medical apps and “At Bat,” an app that allows users to follow Major League Baseball games in real time and even catch video highlights from mlb.com.

As the stable of wide-ranging iPhone apps continues to swell, it will make the iPhone itself more and more compelling, particularly in relation to its competition.

The other major announcement Jobs made at the keynote was the arrival of MobileMe, which Apple senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing described as “Exchange for the rest of us.” Microsoft Exchange allows businesses to centrally manage e-mail, calendar and contact information.

MobileMe enables individuals to use the Internet to manage their e-mail, contacts and calendars among multiple devices, including Macs, PCs running Windows and an iPhone.

For example, if you add a contact to your Address Book on your Mac, it shows up seconds later in the contact list on your iPhone. According to Schiller, MobileMe uses wireless networking to maintain up-to-date data on all a user’s devices.

MobileMe integrates with iCal, Address and Mail on a Mac and Microsoft Outlook on a PC. No mention was made of whether MobileMe would work with Microsoft’s Office for Mac Entourage mail program.

Even more dramatic is MobileMe’s Web 2.0 applications. When a user logs in to MobileMe, he can access not just online iDisk storage (which has doubled from 10 GB to 20 GB), but also a group of common applications – a calendar, mail, photos and more over the Internet, much like Google Apps.

The MobileMe Apps look very much like their Mac counterparts, and even support Mac-like features like drag-and-drop.

Those with existing .Mac accounts will be upgraded to MobileMe automatically, while those new to the service can get a 60-day free trial to see if they like it. The service will cost $99 a year, just like .Mac did.

Conspicuous by its absence in the Jobs keynote was any mention of the next version of Mac OS X or a new multi-touch device, both of which were the subject of much rumor chatter in recent days.

Posted by David Zeiler at 3:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)
                    

With another Steve Jobs keynote looming Monday, rumors are flying about a preview of Mac OS X 10.6, a retooled and renamed .Mac service, and the possibility of a totally new multi-touch product, perhaps the long-anticipated iTablet.

Although the alleged purpose of Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference is to engage professional software makers who write programs for Mac OS X, WWDC gradually has evolved into more of a Macworld-type event -- particularly since the demise of the summer East Coast Macworld show a few years ago.

Let’s have a look at the rumors and expectations for the keynote, which Jobs is scheduled to deliver at San Francisco’s Moscone West 10 a.m. Monday:

The iPhone: The one thing everyone agrees will appear Monday, from the Wall Street analysts to the most obscure Mac blogger, is a new iPhone. So Jobs better have one in his pocket when he steps onstage.

Apart from 3G network capabilities, few agree on what other features the new iPhone will have. Some possibilities: built-in GPS and a slimmer case available in several colors.

Most also expect Apple to keep selling the current 2.5G iPhone models at much lower prices, since many of the 70-odd countries where Apple plans to launch the iPhone this year still use the older technology. (Personally I would love to see one iPhone that incorporates all three technologies -- EDGE, 3G and Wi-Fi – and unlocked to boot, but that’s just a fantasy.).

I suspect we’ll also see a high-end version with at least 32 gigabytes of flash memory (up from the current 16 GB), possibly even 64 GB. The top iPod Touch model has had 32 GB since February, so a 32 GB iPhone would seem inevitable.

Since this is WWDC after all, Jobs definitely will speak of the joys of the iPhone 2.0 software that enable developers to write apps for the iPhone, as well as the App Store where Apple will sell them (while taking a 30 percent cut for itself). Many of the five-day conference’s developer sessions focus on the iPhone.

Mac OS 10.6: A few days ago The Unofficial Apple Weblog claimed Apple would distribute a developer release of the next version of the Mac operating system at WWDC. The site further claimed this version would be a “minor” release focused on stability and speed improvements with no significant new features.

Well-respected tech site Ars Technica said it had a source that confirmed most of this while adding the moniker “Snow Leopard.”

Both sites claimed this new version of OS X, purportedly due in January 2009 (way too soon in my opinion), would drop support for Power PC Macs, running only on Intel-based machines. Many Mac users commenced griping immediately.

True enough, Jobs often has made significant Mac OS announcements at WWDC (remember the funeral for Mac OS 9?), so I figure a preview of Mac OS X 10.6 is a strong possibility.

But as for the rumors – that’s all they are, rumors. I’m reluctant to comment further on any aspects of OS X 10.6 until Apple gives us some concrete details.

.Mac makeover: Apple’s often-criticized .Mac $99-per-year Web service could be reborn as MobileMe with enhanced features such as the ability to sync with Windows, Exchange-like over-the-air syncing and push e-mail.

Many of these features would be most useful to iPhone owners, which would dovetail nicely with this year’s iPhone-dominated conference. This rumor feels right. If it pans out, cheers will fill the auditorium when Steve announces it.

iTablet: Like the iPhone rumor before it, the iTablet rumor has been around for a years. This device would be about twice the size of the iPhone but would feature the same multi-touch screen and wireless connectivity.

I do not foresee an iTablet in the keynote. Even if Apple has such a gizmo in the works, as a totally new product it would probably get its own separate special event later this year.

For that matter, I’m not even sure what niche an iTablet would fill. But then Apple does have a way of re-inventing product categories to add those “gotta-have-it” qualities.

New MacBooks: If they’re coming, we won’t see them until after WWDC. Jobs won’t want any competition for the iPhone stuff. And Jobs generally goes light on hardware announcements at WWDC anyway.

Posted by David Zeiler at 12:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)
                    

The number of Windows users on the Internet continues to erode as the number of Mac users keeps creeping upward, according to data pulled from Net Applications.

When Net Applications released its monthly traffic report earlier this week, many Web sites dutifully reported that Mac OS X’s share of Web traffic had hit a high of 7.83 percent, with Windows slumping to a new low of 91.13 percent. Data for Apple’s Safari Web browser showed that it, too, hit a high of 6.25 percent in May.

Before continuing I must point out that although Net Applications describes its data as “market share,” a more accurate description would be “user share,” as in the percentage of people on the Web using a particular operating system or Web browser. Market share more accurately describes the percentage of people purchasing a product.

The free monthly statistics Aliso Viejo, Calif.-based Net Applications publishes derive from data the company gathers in the course of its business -- measuring Web traffic for its clients. So while not a scientific sample, it’s broad enough to indicate general trends accurately.

In particular this data excels at revealing long-term trends (Net Applications’ Web site conveniently provides data going back two years), and there we find a good bit of positive news for Apple.

The month-to-month data often obscures these trends. For instance, Mac OS X share hit 7.57 percent in January but dropped to 7.46 percent in February and to 7.38 percent in March.

But look at the two-year operating system charts. Since June of 2006, Mac OS X users on the Web have nearly doubled from 4.29 percent to 7.83 percent while Windows users have declined from 95.25 percent to 91.13 percent. (Toss in the iPhone’s 0.16 percent – the device does run OS X, after all – and Mac OS X’s share climbs to 7.99 percent.)

The lines are crooked but the trend is unmistakable – the Mac is relentlessly taking share from Windows.

Most of Windows’ loss of 4.12 percent went to Mac OS X – 3.54 percent – with Linux (0.30 percent), the iPhone and “Other” accounting for the rest.

Yes, the process is very slow and Windows still holds over a 90 percent share, but the numbers tell us Apple’s strategy is working. The Mac is steadily winning converts.

As for the iPhone, its share grew quickly after last year’s introduction, but has slowed in recent months (it was 0.13 percent in January). Net Applications offers no stats on the iPod Touch (probably too infinitesimal to register).

Should Apple succeed in its stated strategy to evolve those products into a new mobile platform, expect to see that success reflected in Net Applications’ monthly reports.

Apple has also made long-term progress on the browser front. Safari’s share of users has nearly doubled from 3.19 percent two years ago to 6.25 percent. The Mac version of Safari has gotten a little boost in recent months from the Windows version (0.28 percent), but most of the increase has come from the growing Mac user base.

If Safari’s rising share does not yet concern Microsoft, Firefox’s should. In two years Firefox has picked up 7.64 percent, rising from 10.77 percent in June 2006 to a very respectable 18.41 percent in Net Applications’ May report.

Internet Explorer, which had a share of about 95 percent as recently as 2003, saw that dominance fall to 84.11 percent two years ago and another 10.36 percent since, to 73.75 percent.

This tells me we could be on the verge of Browser Wars 2.0, this time with Apple’s Safari participating as a significant combatant.

Posted by David Zeiler at 5:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)