This week’s debris was full of juicy side items that we need to catch up on: Watching high definition TV, Stallman’s slam on cloud computing, a change in thinking about work environments, the World Computer Chess Championship, amateurs at work, buying or manipulating Apple stock and more.

On Monday, I found Loyd Case’s story about his experience with high definition TV fascinating, and it really hit home. Mr. Case talked about how there really wasn’t much worth watching on TV until a convergence seemed to happen. HDTV, Netflix, and a raft of SciFi oriented shows have all combined to draw him back to the Big Screen and his compulsion has grown. Required reading if you have an HDTV.

On Tuesday I found another compelling article in which the founder of the GNU license, free software and legendary figure in the world of computing, Richard Stallman, slammed Cloud Computing as a trap.

“It’s stupidity. It’s worse than stupidity: it’s a marketing hype campaign,” he said.

“Somebody is saying this is inevitable – and whenever you hear somebody saying that, it’s very likely to be a set of businesses campaigning to make it true.”

In essence, we’ll all be cut off from our personal files and resources and end up having to pay a toll to access our own data. Stallman believes it’s a sham, and I can’t disagree with him. In my own life, I have found myself instinctively shying away from depending on the emerging Cloud and will continue to do so. It’s something to ponder because every home user needs a computing strategy with respect to operations, security, sharing, backups and now the Cloud.

Speaking of strategies, have you ever seen those ads where the businessman in on the beach in St. Johns with his cell phone and notebook computer? I don’t know if those kinds of ads sowed the seeds or have just been a symptom of an emerging cultural change about how to get work done. The applicable buzzword is Results-Only Work Environment, ROWE. Sounds good to me — check it out. Maybe you’ll be on the beach sooner than you think.

In the World Computer Chess Championships, a cluster system from the U.S., Rybka, is tied for the lead. This story shows the standings, documents a Rybka game in which it announced mate in 29 moves, an informal game between Rybka and a top Chinese women grandmaster Gu Xiao Bing.

On Friday, there was lots of debris. Jim Goldman with CNBC told the world that amateurs are at work when they sell off Apple stock on an unverified story about Steve jobs having a heart attack. Goldman was stern:

“..such is the ridiculous climate on Wall Street right now. I hope they find this guy who wrote this post. But all the traders who dumped Apple shares based on that garbage have some searching of their own to do. Soul-searching. Selling first and asking questions later is the work of amateurs,”
Mr. Goldman wrote.

Amen.

Have you noticed that Apple and AT&T are sending free SMS messages out about updates to iPhone owners? It’s the fastest way to get to every iPhone. In the “Windows Vista Capable” lawsuit against Microsoft in which the plaintiff claims that Microsoft deluded customers into believing some PCs they bought would be fully capable of running Vista, the question has come up about how to notify all those in the class. National ads and Websites just can’t reach everyone who bought computers with Vista.

How about this? Create a Vista Update that must be installed and then notifies the customer.

“I further understand that Microsoft can classify the update as ‘Important’ so that each end-user must affirmatively ‘accept’ the update so that it appears on their screens — even if they had previously disabled automatic update settings.”

“We believe this is a very reasonable and cost effective way to get closer to personally notifying the people who would be in the class,” Jeffrey Thomas, an attorney for the plaintiffs proposed.

And Microsoft has to pay for the Vista update if the plaintiffs prevail.

Cute.

Awhile back, I commented on the Kodak Zi6 video camera as a good alternative to Flip video for Mac users. Christopher Breen at Macworld said it’s his favorite too, and wrote up an initial impression. I suspect the Zi6 will be on a lot of our readers’ Christmas list. Kodak! Gear up!

Finally, there was an interesting story at InternetNews about the pissing contest between Adobe and Apple over Flash. Adobe wants it on the iPhone and Apple doesn’t. iPhone customers suffer, but in this case, Apple has much bigger fish to fry, and they’re working on their own technology from what I’ve read. Once Adobe gets the keys to Internet video on the iPhone, Apple loses control. The story has some interesting background.

Have a great weekend!

This was another eventful week. Apple and its iPhone developers have been squabbling, Google announced its G1 with comparisons to the iPhone coming fast and furious, and more delicious rumors surfaced on the new Apple notebooks rumored to be announced on October 14.

Have you ever wondered how many apps you can install on an iPhone? The magic answer is 148. You can normally only have 9 page of apps plus the “Fab 4″ and the bottom. Thats 144 + 4. iPhone Matters filled in the details.

I got a kick out of a post at the Innerdaemon that made a strong point, not about Apple’s practices, but where it could all lead: “Apple Rejects Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac.”

On Thursday, Apple Insider published a detailed comparison of the iPhone and Google’s Android G1. (I really don’t want to see any more headlines that say, “Does Google Dream of Electric Sheep?”) The design philosophy of the two phones is clearly described for those who are interested. Of course, the feature war isn’t going to decide market dominance here. Even so, we’ve been waiting to see what Google has been up to, and the differences in the two devices are fascinating.

During the week, I received a copy of the eBook, “Take Control of Buying a Mac” by Adam Engst. This is very much worth the meager asking price of $10 for those who aren’t totally immersed in the Mac Web. Particularly valuable is the table on page 10 and the discussion afterward that shows when Apple has tended to release new products and why. That’s because knowing when to buy is as important for some as what to buy. No one likes “Buyer’s Remorse.”

The eBook also goes into the details of that crucial decision: to buy a desktop or notebook. There’s a whole lot more, almost 100 pages. Adam Engst is a Mac guru, and you won’t find better advice for ten cents a page anywhere.

On Thursday, Farhad Manjoo published an article at Slate on why Steve Jobs may not be a lunatic when it comes to a closed system on the iPhone. For historical reasons in the PC wars, an open system was better, but a mobile phone is different animal. Given the fact that the Android phones haven’t faced the full wrath of the Internet bad guys yet, the author may be right and offers a lot of food for thought, even if you disagree with him.

Also on Thursday, there was a story about improved browsing history in Safari at TG Daily. I use OmniWeb for the thumbnails, a much more visual way for me to set up a queue for my articles. But Apple’s patent appears to focus on a tree view. If Apple can design a browsing history that can build a better article queue for me, I’ll go back to Safari.

On Friday, there was a story about how Webkit has achieved the highest score yet on the Acid3 test. Remember, back in the early days of the Internet everyone complained about how slow browsers were on the Mac? Not any more.

Finally, and this is just a rumor at 9to5Mac. Someone has either photographed or photoshopped an image of what the next MacBook Pro will look like, curvy MacBook Air lines, glass trackpad, and black bezel. (Maybe FW800 only and Wireless USB???) We shall see, but it’s a very cool glimpse of what might be in store for us in October. We can only dream…

Last night, I was experimenting with a new movie on Blu-ray, The Golden Compass. What got my attention was a piece of paper in the plastic case that said, “It is possible that this Blu-ray disc was manufactured after your Blu-ray player. To ensure the best possible viewing experience, our Blu-ray player may need a firmware update…”

Right away, I knew there might be a problem because I had heard about issues with some Blu-ray discs not playing correctly. All along the way, I’ve kept my Samsung BD-P1400 Blu-ray player updated with the latest firmware. Those updates improved the start up times, but the release notes focused more on title compatibility.

Sure enough, as soon as Golden Compass started, there was horrible distortion and I couldn’t hear Daniel Craig speak in the opening scene.

I always let the Denon receiver do the audio decoding, and the Samsung is set to “bitstream” output to allow that. But that clearly wasn’t going to work. I changed the Samsung to PCM mode, a kind of lingua franca for stereo systems and everything was fine.

Ack!

I did some digging.

1. I knew my Samsung’s firmware was up to date from August 8. I had never updated my Denon A/V receiver.

2. A Blu-ray forum discussion suggested that the Onkyo and Yamaha receivers are susceptible to what’s been labeled the “DTS bomb” on some movies if they don’t have the latest firmware upgrade. It only happens for Blu-ray movies mastered in “DTS-HD Master Audio“.

Other forum discussions I looked at suggested that the Denon A/V receivers are immune to the bomb, a sudden loud burst of nose, a popping sound at some point in the movie that is said to be able to “wake the neighbors.”

I bought the Denon 3808 back in October last year and decided that while it may not be susceptible to the so-called bomb, the horrible distortion lead me to look for a possible firmware update. Since the Denon is on the Internet for Internet radio, via a small Linksys Switch in my living room, I drilled down to the menu items and found the Firmware Update option. It takes over an hour, so I started it and went to bed.

This morning, I set the Samsung player back to Bitstream mode, a mode that lets the receiver do the decoding, and fired up Golden Compass, All was well.

Lessons learned:

1. If your Ethernet-enabled Blu-ray player isn’t on the Internet, get it there. At the very least, burn a DVD and do the manual updates the moment they come out.

2. Make sure your A/V receiver also has the latest firmware. Many modern A/V receivers with HDMI also have Ethernet connections.

3. Watch closely for Blu-ray movies like Golden Compass, The Fly, Fantastic Four, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and a few others encoded in DTS-HD Master Audio.

4. If you have a problem you can’t seem to fix right away and just want to watch the movie, temporarily change your Blu-ray player to PCM output mode if available.

5. The Internet is your friend. Check out the Blu-ray and AVS Forums.

With the Christmas buying season on the horizon, there will be lots of good looking deals on Blu-ray players and Audio/Video amplifiers. However, a badly selected pairing of equipment or limitations in fire-sale priced equipment can lead to issues, so it it’ll pay to watch for problems like this and make sure your equipment is Ethernet enabled for firmware updates. It’s just a fact of life on the Blu-ray edge.

In the coming months, the iPod Observer will be publishing articles that will help you through the buying process for A/V equipment for HDTV systems. Stay tuned.

Early in the week, we started out with the Podcaster kerfuffle when Apple rejected an iPhone app for the App Store because it competed with Apple. The consensus was that Apple is treading on thin ice with that idea. Apple always protects its own interests, but when the excesses of power reach a certain limit, then the company is not only damaged but opens itself up to legal scrutiny. Apple crossed the line in the opinion of most, including me.

Here is an amusing look at the secret, decision tree that Apple uses to determine whether an app will be rejected or accepted at the App Store.

On another subject of law, if you thought being tossed out of a Yankee baseball game by the police for having to use the bathroom during the singing of “God Bless America” is bad, just wait until the RIAA and MPAA get their way in Congress.

The Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to vote on the Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights Act. Apparently, it’s no longer sufficient for the Copyright holder to take you to court for a violation. The act would get the government into the business of filing a civil lawsuit against “any person” who commits a copyright violation.

The American Library Association, Public Knowledge and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) are fighting this law because 1) the government shouldn’t be involved in this litigation and 2) if someone is accused of copyright violation, the government can impound the computer which is forfeited.

Later in the week, we learned that Microsoft’s US$300M ad campaign to fight Apple and spruce up the tarnish image of Windows had run into problems with the first two Seinfeld/Gates ads. The company that has been accused of being out of touch with customers created to ads that were, well, out of touch with customers.

In the third ad, which aired Thursday night, Microsoft got it all wrong again by trying to un-stereotype the PC user. The problem is, we already know that a wide range of smart, diverse people use PCs. Ninety percent of Americans. What Microsoft seemed to be saying is that, shucks, not all PC users are doofuses like John Hodgman. But wait, Hodgman has been saying, all this time, “I’m a PC.” Apple’s attack was aimed the issues with Windows, not with PC users.

Microsoft’s response was another misfire because it did nothing to address the digs that Apple has made against the deficiencies in Vista. Instead, the ad went into defensive mode. “Hey, I’m an astronaut! I use Windows.”

By choice, I’m sure, given the history of NASA Houston trying to eradicate Macs.

While Microsoft eats cake, Hewlett Packard is tending to their bread and butter computer business. Backtracking to the previous week, when I had to skip my blog, I noted that HP has quietly assembled a group of engineers to completely improve the Windows experience. The efforts go all the way from adding software conveniences to the PCs that assist Vista to bypassing Vista altogether with Linux.

Why? Apple is seizing market share and Hewlett Packard is smart enough and technical enough to start doing something about it.

Apple’s ‘Get a Mac” ads have had a measurable Return on Investment (ROI). HP is taking concrete, technical steps to stop it. I wonder what Microsoft’s analysis of ROI will be for US$300 spent on the new ad campaign.

Microsoft gets no soup, no respect, and an ad about nothing in their new advertising campaign which launched during Thursday Night Football. I formed a theory a while back that the ad would mirror Microsoft’s corporate culture, and I think my prediction was fulfilled. The ad was overweight, self conscious, and unfocused, just like Vista.

It’s getting so bad that BusinessWeek wrote about, “HP’s End Run Around Windows” on Friday. BW wrote about how Hewlett-packard, which is feeling technical and frisky once again, formed a group of engineers to develop software that would make the PC and Windows easier to use — or bypass. The skunkworks is pushing to even replace Vista with an H-P devised OS, possibly based on Linux and adding a touchscreen technology. Sounds like Mac envy to me.

This week I learned about a couple of new applications that intrigued me. AppleJack is a script which can be accessed after a sick Mac is launched in Single User Mode. (CMD-S at startup.)

Single user mode is a root level account that has no other users enabled and is used for diagnosing and repairing a Mac. I would recommend AppleJack for users who are fairly familiar with UNIX but don’t use the UNIX repair functions often enough to jump right in with confidence like a daily sysadmin would.

I also learned about the iSquint (free) and VisualHub (commercial) partner apps for converting video files between various formats. These could come in very handy for converting between formats like .flv, ,3gp, DivX and H.264. I don’t think it works with the Elgato turbo.264 however. I aim to find out.

For those who have been lusting after the flip video, there might be a better alternative. On Wednesday, I read about the new Kodak Zi6 which is much more integrated with the Mac: it saves its video natively in H.264 format and has a removable flash memory module. Better, it records in 30 or 60 fps, 16:9 and 720p. The original press release was July 10 and reviews are just now starting to appear, like Mac360. So much for Flip Video in my book. Now, I wonder, will Nikon and Canon jump into this game too?

After the holiday break, I came back to find a Don Reisinger piece published over the holiday about how Apple can gain a lot of market share. It has some food for thought, but is missing some essential elements which I’ll get to in my next Hidden Dimensions. Meanwhile, an acquaintance of mine — we were contemporaries at Apple — Chuq Von Rospach had some sharp and accurate comments to make about the Reisinger editorial. Both are linked above for your reading pleasure.

Looking back this week, it was a watershed time for Apple. A lot of the news centered on reported problems with the Infineon 3G radio system in the iPhone 3G, and that came on the heels of of an embarrassing MobileMe roll out. Apple found out that when even the smallest glitch appears in a popular consumer device, all the vultures come out, looking for a tasty meal of revenge — even if served cold.

There is fear swelling in the offices of the IT Managers and the PC pundits. Apple is changing the game with leverage from a massive iPod infusion into the world, to the tune of 150 million so far. Now Apple is clearly using the iPhone and Cocoa touch as a platform for a next generation UI. The concern by the fearful is that Apple is dealing from a position of strength and Microsoft seems powerless to stop them.

Fairly soon now, we’ll be using touch tablets with a gesture language and dictionary. The mouse will be gone, and a generation of young people raised on iPods, iPhones and Unix will start carrying around the Internet in their pocket.
Walt Mossberg explained the vision fairly well this week.

As a result, every time Apple stumbles, there will be a witch hunt by people who find it in their interest to put the brakes on this new paradigm.

Part of the problem, and something I learned at Apple, is that a few cases, a dozen cases, a hundred cases make for a tasty meal of sour grapes in print, but it doesn’t always reflect the technical reality of the situation.

Apple has a reason for remaining silent. Even though the vast majority of Apple customers are spending their time working, playing, watching the Olympics, going to weddings, having barbecues, and watching their kids soccer games, the Web can get info frenzy mode and appear to have compelling force.
For most users, who aren’t professional Internet surfers, they’ll simply update their iPhone when iTunes tells them to and think nothing of it. Meanwhile, chicken little journalists will try to make Apple look bad to earn some page views.

I don’t think it’s a bad idea for Apple to occasionally make some consumer friendly statements. For example, “We are aware that a few customers have been having problems with dropped calls on their iPhone 3G. We’re looking into it.” The problem is that these statements have to go through corporate attorneys who typically advise that the safest and best course of action is to say nothing, admit nothing, and just quietly fix the problem.

Worse, once Apple opens up and says something, there are journalists who will press and press, dissect every word,
and still put their own spin on it.

Despite all this, Apple is learning, leaps and bounds, what life is like in the fast lane of consumer electronics that go beyond a simple music player. Once a company starts handling personal data, everything has to be perfect or people get really cranky.

I liked Jason Snell’s editorial this week. No one is quite sure what Apple needs to change internally to avoid or deal better with these high visibility technical problems, but we all hope they fix things soon.

This week, I’m going to go backwards in time (without the aid of a Time Machine) to look at some of the secondary stories that caught my attention.

My favorite, however, was from July 28, a story at APC about how every time Hewlett Packard sells a PC with Windows XP, Microsoft has figured out how to log it as a Vista sale.

You read that right.

According to Hewlett Packard executives, since June 30th, HP hasn’t been able to sell a PC with an XP license. But what they can do is ship it with a Vista business license and XP pre-loaded. So even though HP gives the customer what they want, XP, Microsoft gets to log it as a Vista sale.

That agreement lasts until January 2009, but HP wants to extend it. “Looking into the crystal ball, I don’t think businesses will see much value in upgrading to Vista until late next year, and even so, Microsoft will probably have come out with something else by then,” said Rob Kingston, Group Manager of Commercial Product Marketing for HP.

Hmm. Slam dunk.

I guess we’ll be taking all future Microsoft sales numbers for Vista with a microgram of salt.

On Thursday, I saw a neat article at TV Newsday about all the problems broadcasters are having with the audio feeds associated with HDTV. Apparently, some technicians, pressed for time, aren’t reading the manuals and aren’t aware of the in-place broadcast standards that keep audio levels from booming and busting. Lip sync problems are also a sign the engineers don’t have the time to do their homework.

On Tuesday, I read about IBM’s ever more aggressive work with Linux as a way to undermine Microsoft. The latest effort is the “Microsoft-free PC” effort. That’s an initiative with Red Hat, Novell and Ubuntu to assist customers with displacing Microsoft technologies.

IBM brackets Microsoft on the low end with open source solutions, Linux and small business solutions and on the high end with Linux, AIX, servers, storage, services, and even high performance computing. While we sometimes think about Apple vs. Microsoft, it’s really Apple, IBM, Google, Red Hat and Yahoo against Microsoft.

Also on Tuesday, there was a fun but dismaying article about the payroll system in California that runs on Cobol. What happens when the governor says to the state employees: “We don’t have an approved budget. Use the payroll system to cut your pay to minimum wage!”

The answer: “But sir, it’s 30 years old and written in Cobol.
No one knows how to do that!”

On Monday, Ryan Faas, who continues to amaze, wrote an extensive article: “Macs in the Enterprise: Top Ten Assumptions, Myths, and Misconceptions.” Mr. Faas has worked as both a PC and Mac sysadmin and has written some of the deepest and technical articles ever on Apple products in the enterprise.

Every Mac IT manager or user who wants to see a wider use of Macs in their organization needs to read this. After that, read Jason Packer’s take on the article. Mr. Packer adds some additional, valuable insight.

With the Mac taking off in the enterprise, there are new insights to be aware of, and enthusiasts are able to use ever more persuasive arguments against the IT managers who have historically taken an easy but perilous Windows road with blinders on.

You have your homework assignment.

There was a boatload of debris this week. But before I get to that, I’ll have to backtrack a little on Apple TV. Back in April, I wrote an editorial about how the Apple TV is very focused and designed not to bewilder the average customer. Things have changed in just 3 months. In the fast-paced world of digital entertainment, the competition is exploiting Apple’s severe focus as a weakness. In addition, Netflix is moving fast, aggressively and smartly, even outmaneuvering Apple. So I can’t really disagree with Dan Frommer’s editorial on Friday. Apple needs to step up the possibilities on the Apple TV or drop from perceived hobby to perceived failure. In this case, perception will carry great weight.

Last week, Mac360 took a close look at Thunderbird and declared that, as a free e-mail program, it’s not ready for prime time. The principal complaints were that it’s ugly and that it’s a complete doofus when it comes to importing e-mail from other apps. Those two items alone are enough to disqualify Thunderbird. I can’t disagree.

On Tuesday, IBM announced an Eclipse plug-in that can scan and check code as it’s written to uncover coding errors before they work themselves too far into the development cycle. It looks very cool, especially since it can spot security weaknesses. However, it’s not cheap, so its really for large enterprise or government organizations. Check it out.

Also on Tuesday, an article I read linked to a very interesting Apple Time capsule, an occasionally humorous retrospective on the growth and use of Apple computers throughout the years.
It’s worth a look.

Have you ever wondered how to share apps between two iPhones you have? iPhone Matters wrote up the procedure on how to do it. Because iPhone apps are so small and easy to install, detailed licensing issues are foggy. However, this procedure depends on using a single iTunes account, and the iTunes procedure leads one to believe that the app belongs to an authorized account, not to a single iPhone or iPod touch. Just my opinion.

Cell phone users in California are finding it hard to put that phone down while driving. Handheld mobile phones are illegal when driving since July 1, and the CHP is raking in the dollars from people who can’t resist holding a phone to their head while driving. Lame excuses abound. All you iPhone users in California beware - and get that Bluetooth headset soon.

Buggy iPhone 2.0 software is driving Hadley Stone crazy, and he’s compared it to Mac OS 9. Someday, we’ll look back at the primitive OS on the iPhone, and its crashes, the way we do now when we recall OS 9 extension conflicts.

On Wednesday, I saw a story about local TV news having a death wish. [Subscription may be required.] It really struck home because I spent a lot of time reading, gathering and pondering news. The Internet is where it’s at, and most young people are getting their news from reliable Internet sources while the older people are watching Katie Couric with ads for Depends and Viagra. Local TV news is indeed headed for an awakening. The question is, are they powerless to control their fate — just like the dinosaurs?

Here’s a great “serves you right” story. A hacker has been owned by his own work. Hacker H.D. Moore who developed the Metasploit hacking toolkit had his own Website affected by his own hack. Can you spell karma?

On Thursday, I read that the Flip camcorder is the number one selling camcorder in the U.S. Why? Because it appropriates six basic rules for product design from Apple. Recently, TMO reviewed that great little video camera, and there’s definitely one in my future. If you’re jealous of those Johnny-on-the-spot videos that make the news or YouTube, all you need is one of these in your pocket. For $100.

Finally, On Friday I noted that the FCC has slapped Comcast’s wrists for blocking BitTorrent traffic and violating the principles of Net Neutrality. There was no fine levied, but Comcast and other carriers are now on notice. I liked this part: “The commission affirmed that it can and will enforce an open Internet and network neutrality principles.”[Applause for FCC please.]

To that end, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) published a tool, called Switzerland, on Friday that allows one to test one’s ISP for signs of interference with Net Neutrality principles. It’s a Python app that you’ll have to run from the command line. I’ve urged them to develop a GUI app for the Mac. We shall see.

Before I get on to the debris from this week, I must say something about what the Hallmark Channel did last night. My wife loves horses, so we watched a fairly delightful movie with Stephen Collins called “Every Second Counts” about a young woman and her horse.

The movie was fairly complete when, at 45 minutes past the hour, an ad came on that said something like, “To see the rest of the movie, go to our Website.” A very old “Murder She Wrote” then abruptly started.

I don’t know about you, but my feeling is that when a viewer invests in a movie, withholding material and redirecting to another medium doesn’t sit well with me. It reminds me of a not-so-funny event years ago when a TV industry spokesperson said that skipping commercials violates the implied contract between the viewer and the show. No one took that seriously, but in this case, there was an implied contract.

The contract goes like this: “We schedule the show, arrange for a listing, and run the show to completion.” That’s unless, of course, the show is clearly marked Part I. Even a “to be continued” is accepted and legitimate in the TV industry.

In this case, however, there was a 2-3 minute snippet that showed what happened when the young veterinarian grew up. It was short, essentially a tease, but the viewer doesn’t know that. They just know that content has been interrupted and they’ve been redirected to another medium, the Internet, to see what followed.

That’s the first time I’ve ever seen that kind of puerile shenanigan, and I wrote the Hallmark Channel about it. The next time I think about the Hallmark brand, I’ll remember that dirty trick.

End of rant.

I noted on Wednesday that several sources were reporting a downturn in NAND flash memory prices. I really believe that NAND memory has been a game changer in the industry and has enabled all kinds of neat products.
What I have been calling the “iPod supertouch” is now being called the MacBook touch, and it won’t be long before we’re all toting around a modest-sized flat screen chock full of the Internet and gigabytes of NAND flash. Is the notebook computer, as we know it, about to come to and end?

Speaking of that kind of thing, I have to go back a few weeks to a David Sobotta blog in which he lamented the current state of industrial design of Macs. The current Mac Pro design dates back to the PowerMac G5 from the fall of 2003. The MacBook Pro design dates back about five years.
Mr. Sobotta hadn’t been in an Apple store for some time and was appalled at how little things had changed and how uninspiring the designs are.

I note that BMW keeps its designs stable for a long time too, making only tweaks below the hood (ahem). That keeps customers from being annoyed with new designs too soon and serves to protect their investment. Also, these days, there are a lot of switchers, and it probably comforts them to see both good design and stability in the Apple products as they periodically check in and make plans for the switch.

That said, I think Apple has gone too far. Has the company lost interest in futuristic Mac designs? Do they feel that with soaring Mac sales, nothing further need be done? Do they feel that Very Soon Now, SSDs and gestures will make the notebook computer obsolete? I don’t have the answers, but I sure would like to feel that Apple is moving ahead soon with designs that have been five years in the making.

As a testament to Apple’s ability to engage the customer at the retail level, it was reported this week that Gateway is exiting the direct PC sales business. I believe that when people have confidence in a product, they’re willing to purchase a commodity via mail order. But when customers are increasingly aware of problems, they want to touch and feel the product before they buy it. Maybe that’s not technically enough to make a valid decision, but who said that a lot of these PC purchases are devoid of emotion.

Gateway’s bad fortune may also have something to do with all those Internet and print ads for pretty PCs that show a blank screen. “Here, buy our pretty hardware. The OS? Oh. Ahem. We don’t want to talk about that. But, isn’t that notebook pretty?” That kind of game just makes the buyer want to touch and feel before buying a computer even more.

Finally, I note that another company has jumped into the fray with a Mac OS X compatible PC. They think they’ve found a loophole that inoculates them from action by Apple. Namely, you install Mac OS X yourself.

Apple can probably devise ways to have the OS “phone home” with a report that it’s not running on Apple hardware. I hope Apple’s attorneys will figure out better ways to deal with those obnoxious, pirate-happy customers than the RIAA has.

I can see a day, forced by by these so-called entrepreneurs, when we won’t be able to buy a boxed copy of Mac OS X. It’ll be available pre-installed on a Mac and only updatable via the Internet.

Sigh.

Because I write about what’s going on with Apple, most often I have to jump in and experience what the readers are experiencing. So with some trepidation, on Friday July 11th, when all hell was breaking loose, I went ahead and updated my iPhone 2G to the iPhone 2.0 software.

That’s when the trouble began.

The update appeared to go well with no error messages, but when the iPhone 2G finally rebooted, I had no icons on the home screen. The text under the icons was there and gave hints about where to touch, but the icons themselves were gone. I tried making a call, and I found to my surprise that as I touched each key on the telephone keypad, that key would completely disappear.

It’s not often one makes a call in which every number is different.

There are several things one can try in this case. My initial update was through a USB 2 powered hub and a standard iPhone dock on a PowerMac G5. I had some problems in the early updates of the iPhone, but they disappeared in the recent updates. But just to be sure, I used only the cable and connected the iPhone directly to the USB port of my MacBook Pro.

Same result.

Since the iPhone was under AppleCare, I called AppleCare support. They told me something which, in hindsight, doesn’t sound right. The technician told me that the software update on Friday was having some problems and I should try later, maybe Saturday, to update again when perhaps a later version of the software would be available.

On Saturday, I opened iTunes and clicked on the Restore function.
To my dismay, the Restore seemed to be pulling the update from somewhere on my hard disk rather than downloading it from Apple. I rummaged around and found some stuff in

/Users/john/Library/Caches/Cleanup at Startup

but that didn’t seem to be the source of the file — just a temporary holding spot.

I searched the Apple forums and Internet in vain for anyone who had the same problem. No luck.

On Sunday, with a completely hosed iPhone and armed with my Applecare paperwork, I went to the Aspen Grove Apple store in Littleton, Colorado, expecting to get the iPhone repaired.

But that wasn’t enough. The store was fairly crowded, and the Apple salesman told me that I could get immediate attention if I had ProCare ($99/year), but with merely AppleCare, I would have to make an appointment. The earliest appointment was Monday evening at a location closer to my house, Park Meadows Mall. But the salesman did give me hint. The iPhone software downloads are located in:

/Users/john/Library/iTunes/iPhone Software Updates

[Replace "john" with your own user name.]

If I delete the file inside that folder, that will force iTunes to download a fresh version. On Sunday evening, I tried that and got the same version of the file, iPhone1,1_2.0_5A347_Restore.ipsw — and the same result. Hosed up iPhone.

I also discovered that if you hold down the CMD+OPT keys when clicking Restore, you’ll see a navigation box that shows the previous updates. I tried to back up to 1.1.4, but that failed. Some people in the forums suggested that backing up the firmware from 2.0 to 1.1.4 would not be possible.

On Monday, July 14, at 5:30 pm I went to the Apple store at Park Meadows and waited for only a few minutes before “Tim” saw me. I showed him the problem, and he didn’t even try to run diagnostics. Tim said that I won the award for the most spectacular iPhone failure of the day.

For a second, I thought he was going to invite me to take an iPhone accessory off the wall as a prize. No such luck.

After looking up my AT&T phone number, Tim said, “I see the phone is over a year old but you have AppleCare. Would you like a new phone?”

“Sure,” I said. “Thank you.”

Tim pulled out a refurbished iPhone 2G that looked good as new, swapped the SIM card, connected the new iPhone to his Mac and activated it. Then he started an erase function on the old phone that writes all zeros to memory. (I didn’t have any personal data on the phone anyway thanks to all the update attempts but no backup completed.)

In five minutes I had a new working phone, but with OS X iPhone 1.1.4. Tim said I’d have to do the update myself, but if that didn’t work, bring the new phone back. Or wait for the next update after 2.0.

I went home, downloaded a fresh copy of the 2.0 update (but same version # again) and conducted the update. Voila! The update took, and the phone was working perfectly, just as before the whole adventure started.

Observations.

1. I have no idea what deep, lurking secret caused my fresh-as-a daisy iPhone, bought on July 1, 2007, to work perfectly up to 1.1.4, then fail spectacularly at 2.0. I’ll never know, but hopefully some Apple engineer who plays with it might figure it out.

2. I was frustrated with how long it took to get the iPhone repaired on a weekend when there was pandemonium in the Applesphere. Indeed, it might have been wise to release the iPhone 2.0 software a week earlier than the iPhone 3Gs.

3 When I finally got to see an Apple Genius, it was a great experience. Tim was sharp, smart, courteous, and fast. He had my iPhone replaced and working in no time at all.

4. Finally … if you don’t believe it yet … get AppleCare on your iPhone. Don’t even think about not buying it, even on the cheaper, subsidized iPhone 3Gs.

I learned a lot about the iPhone update process, painfully. But, hey, that’s what we do here at TMO.