Bill Keller, Executive Editor of the New York Times, when discussing the evolution/revolution underway in the print media industry, mentioned off-the-record and in passing:
“I’m hoping we can get the newsroom more actively involved in the challenge of delivering our best journalism in the form of Times Reader, iPhone apps, WAP, or the impending Apple slate…”
And so the question becomes, was this an unintentional leak based upon content discussions the NYT has been having with Apple, or is Keller — like all of us — just so inculcated with speculation about the near-mythic Apple iTablet that he — like all of us — speaks as though it’s inevitable?
[via Gawker, thanks to everyone who sent this in]
With the return of Steve Jobs to Apple comes the return of Fake Steve to the interwebs. Fake Steve also returns to being bitingly satirical, something that had been lacking before its own hiatus. Recent gems include the excoriation of the New York Times, and lambasting Palm (twice) for focusing on Apple rather than the Pre in their own advertisements:
Do you remember what the ads for the original iPhone looked like? You remember seeing anything in those ads about the BlackBerry or the Treo? No. It was a whole new thing — sui generis, as the French say. It had to be. If all we could do was to make a slightly less s****y BlackBerry, and offer it for a few bucks less than what RIM was charging, we would not have bothered to make the product.
(Though he may be reaching in his claims of just how far Jon Rubinstein will go to be like “him”.)
If you’re easily offended, stay clear. Otherwise, enjoy it while it lasts…
Earlier this month, TiPb threw it’s hat in the ring of next generation handset speculation by predicting Apple would announce an iPhone HD in 2009. It just made sense to us, and apparently it’s beginning to make sense to others as well.
What happened? New York Times writer John Markoff dropped a rumor bomb:
The [unnamed search engine] company spotted Web visits from an unannounced Apple product with a display somewhere between an iPhone and a MacBook. Is it the iPhone 3.0 or the NetMac 1.0?
Jesus Diaz over at Gizmodo seems to be thinking what we’re thinking as well:
here in Gizmodo we are thinking about an iPhone HD with an updated 800 x 480 pixel display, probably coming in 2009.
So, is this just another wunderkind spoofing his or her web browser for lulz and chaos? Or is Steve Jobs already carrying around the prototype iPhone HD in his pocket, practicing the Keynote Boom! for WWDC 2009?
Seems it wasn’t a hair that broke the blogerati’s back, it was an App. Or more precisely, it was Apple’s denial of the Podcaster App that let loose the floodgates of negative internet reaction. Or even more precisely, it is the continued lack of certainty among developers as to what can and will be denied by Apple, leading many to reconsider the return on investment of hours upon hours of coding with 11th hour rejection hanging perpetually over their heads, like a virtual Sword of Damocles.
According to Read Write Web, Podcaster will be turning to Ad Hoc to distribute their App for nowwhile everyone from Daring Fireball to Roughly Drafted cover (and in some cases, recover from) the various comments and implications flinging back and forth across the blogsphere, the New York Times has decided to escalate the attention level:
I can’t see how distributing the program will hurt Apple. If anything it will make the iPhone a tad more valuable. On the other hand, treating developers capriciously is most certainly going to discourage them from spending nights and weekends working on new and useful applications that may give more people reasons to buy an iPhone.
Sure, the App Store is growing twice as fast as iTunes Music (though starting from zero is an easy way to generate an opening curve), and may well hit a billion units moved by 2009, but with Android’s open marketplace on the horizon, and Microsoft me-too’ing their way in with Skymarket, there could be alternatives. If Apple doesn’t take a page from their MobileMe fiasco playbook and rapidly standardize and clarify the rules of the game, they could lose their early lead. And that could cost them the Mobile Internet Platform dominance they so currently crave.
Don’t get us wrong. It’s Apple’s platform and they, like a Nintendo with the Wii, have the absolute right to approve or deny anything developed for their platform. But developers have the same right to stop developing for a platform they don’t think serves their best interests. And consumers have the same right to stop buying it for the same reason. As with the Blacklist push-back, that will be the ultimate officiator of this debate.
And a terse one-line email from Steve may not fix things if Apple waits too long…
