Marginal Utility

by Tom Bozzo

A MacNN news item divines a possible merger of calendar and map functions on the iPhone from an Apple patent filing. My marginal propensity to consume Apple-branded electronics is at least as high as the next person's, but nevertheless if Apple is granted this patent then the USPTO is fundamentally broken.

At issue is how the hell can this pass muster for novelty and non-obviousness? Inter-application communication — sending data from application A to application B — is old hat, as is combining the functions of applications A and B into Application C. This post, for instance, is written with an application (Firefox 3) that combines functions of e.g. a Web browser and RSS reader. So there has to be something extra-special about the choice of applications A="calendar" and B="map program." If you tell me that someone with ordinary skill in the art wouldn't envision the combination, then I'd laugh at you and then you'd tell me I'll never make it in patent law.

Regardless, Apple's application seems about as patentable as a Method and Apparatus for Text Entry and Editing on a Digital Computer would have been in recent prehistory. They deserve such copyright protection as is available for their code, and to be exposed to the rigors of competition otherwise.

Labels: Apple, Intellectual Property, technology

by Ken Houghton

1. Legos.
   
2. Macs.

All in one.

Labels: Apple, LEGO, technology

by Ken Houghton

The short list of "challenges" I won't send in response to this query, even with its opening:

Today, I'm not here to create another discussion topic dealing with how Vista sucks or how peripherals aren't working because they don't have drivers for Vista, or how I want to revert to XP again, and so forth. [T]his week's topic stems from a forum discussion created by CNET member chustar, who wants to know if there are any folks out there who are part of a silent, Vista-loving majority and would like to express their enthusiasm for it. He has used Vista for close to a year without any problems and simply loves it. I'm sure he's heard enough of the bashes on Vista and would like to take this opportunity to hear from the people who actually are using Vista and, quite frankly, like it or love it

Realizing that not having anything to publish next week would be embarassing, Koo adds:

Now remember, folks this discussion is, for the most part, based on the positive experiences around using Vista, but not just limited to that. So I ask that you please be civil in your replies and be considerate of others when posting.

So here would have been my list of positive things about Vista:

1. It has given me a new appreciation of Linux systems
   
2. It has confirmed that Bill Gates and/or Steve Ballmer really were good at finding products for MSFT, since the results since they moved to being upper management have been a monopolistic version of the Peter Principle
   
3. It has given me a new appreciation of those cute little Apple computers.
   
4. It has proved that the OEMs are still dumb enough to believe anything they are told by MSFT. (Releasing Vista OSes on a machine that can handle a maximum of two MB of RAM should, in itself, put several firms out of business.)
   
5. It has given me a greater appreciation of Unix systems
   
6. It has reminded users who had forgotten with the NT4.0-XP that MSFT systems require Constant Vigilance.
   
7. It has given me a greater appreciation of XP
   
8. It has demonstrated that Judge T. P. Jackson was correct, and that the Fourth Circuit and the Bush Justice Department are not working in the best interest of the long-run survival and growth of United States corporations.
   
9. I has given me a greater appreciation of Sun systems
   
10. It has returned us to the Good Old Days where you could make a cup of coffee, have a conversation with your family, and catch up on your reading—and that's just waiting for it to boot up.
    
11. It has given me a greater appreciation of OpenOffice 2.0 and GoogleDocs, since the money spent on that 2 Meg of RAM (see point 4 above) would otherwise have gone to buying MS-Office.

Feel free to add to or correct this list in comments.

Labels: Apple, competitive advantage, computers, Linux, Monopoly, MSFT, technology

by Tom Bozzo

But seriously, folks, it's pretty awesome. My trusty iPod Photo looks like a dinosaur by comparison.


Blogged in part from the iPhone.

Labels: Apple

by Tom Bozzo

March 6, 2007, at this humble blog:

There's no good reason [*] why the Civ IV game engine couldn't run well (with functional graphics) on the iPhone-minus-the-phone that will presumably be the next-generation iPod.

Note to Apple lawyers: this prognostication was powered by pure logic — which is to say, the totally obvious conclusions that Apple would rip off its own industrial design efforts on the iPhone for a high-end iPod that, unlike Microsoft, Apple wouldn't cripple a Wi-Fi iPod.

Anyway, I really couldn't have asked for more, except of course for pocket Civ IV.


[*] Other than the resource-hogging graphics, of course.

Labels: Apple

by Ken Houghton

With a hat tip to Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed, the value of that new iPod appears to have declined 20-25% since the end of the quarter.

Apparently, people are learning that the rumours about AT&T's lack of infrastructure are true. Or maybe it's just a side-effect of the 300-page and $5,000 iPhone bills.

At any rate, the discussion of that Aussie band with short pants and album production values to make Phil Spector proud is probably no longer visible.

Labels: Apple, iPod, technology

by Ken Houghton

The bold, daring, innovative, and technically-savvy thing to do last Friday—not coincidentally, the last Business Day of the Quarter&mash;was to drop two bills over the next two years subsidizing SBC's takeover of AT&T.

The bad news is that "the best phone that anybody has ever made" hitched its wagon to a falling star:

Data congestion left the mobile operator red-faced, and buyers fuming. Because most of AT&T's network uses an ancient, time sharing 2.5G technology - placing the USA on a par with Cambodia and Sierra Leone - the data congestion impacted voice callers, too.

(Apple decided against supporting the thoroughly modern 3G CDMA networks used by Sprint PCS and Verizon. Contrast this with the much smaller Palm, which managed to launch its Treo 650 in 3G CDMA and EDGE versions.)

Absolving Apple of this odd decision to cripple the iPhone, DKIB instead gives AT&T a brisk slap.

"AT&T has spent next to nothing on its GSM/EDGE network in the past nine months," notes DKIB analyst Pers Lindberg, who points out that in Q1, AT&T's capital expenditure for wireless was around $500m, a tenth of its fiscal year budget of $5bn.

Labels: Apple, conspicuous consumption, just life, technology

by Tom Bozzo

• The good news: tea-leaf readers report that the Apple Store is coming to Madison (via Badger Blues). The bad news: it's coming to the thoroughly miserable West Towne Mall. Apple would have been an excellent anchor for the new retail space at Hilldale — and having it across the street from work wouldn't suck. Nor, from Apple's perspective, would be having the Sundance Cinema and Whole Foods for neighbors.
• Dep't of self-answering questions: in the Wisconsin State Journal blurb (link n/a), Tom Alesia wonders how Sundance will differentiate itself from the Westgate Art Cinema, just a couple miles southwest. He then describes how Sundance a bar (including a rooftop patio in season) and a cafe, plus the Cap Times account notes the stadium seating — none of which Westgate has. Plus, Sundance will be one minute's walk from the Hilldale Great Dane and Son of Restaurant Muramoto. Go figure.
• All good news: the Sundance Cinema won't show commercials before films. Previews are presumably accepted as part of the experience. To Robert Redford: [smooch].
  
• But I'm really thankful that Marcus Theatres has run Westgate as an art cinema, especially when visiting Delaware (where there's a larger and generally as-well-to-do population) and seeing that the only alternative to multiplex fare is a drive to Philadelphia. There can be benefits to relative remoteness, even though it would be nice to be able to hop on a train and be disgorged in midtown Manhattan a couple hours later.
• Back to Apple: one of the recent Microsoft court cases revealed a memo suggesting that Microsoft had used continued development of Office as a (cough) lever with Apple in the pre-iPod, pre-iMac, pre-OS X 90s, when its future was unclear. Among other gems, Mac Office users were seen as guinea pigs for new Windows Office features. Not obviously featured: gratitude to Mac users for nurturing the Office cash cow when Lotus and WordPerfect ruled the DOS world.
• It's worth remembering that Mac Word 5.0a did almost everything its bloated descendents do (real-time spell check being the major innovation worth the CPU cycles) while running well on computers with one thousandth the processing and storage capacities of contemporary systems.
• One reason I haven't been blogging: learning the ropes of the new rules in Civilization IV. (To Mrs. Coulter: it's truly wise to ban Civ while major real-life projects are a-pending.) Civ IV has been just about as addicting as the original Civilization — which also ran well, back in the early '90s, on computers that couldn't display Civ IV's irritating start-up animations. There's no good reason why the Civ IV game engine couldn't run well (with functional graphics) on the iPhone-minus-the-phone that will presumably be the next-generation iPod. But Civ IV's performance on dual-core Intel Macs is middling, and it's performance on late-generation G5s is appalling.
• Maybe computer science departments should have bloatware remediation courses in their curricula.

Labels: Apple, Cinema, computers, Madison, MSFT, Random Bullets