The best thing to come out of Apple’s announcement today is an end to endless cycle of speculation about when The Beatles would come to iTunes. Rumors on the subject have been turning up prior to Apple events going all the way back to the launch of the music store in 2003, and while The Beatles are the most well-known musical group in modern history, they are just one band, after all.

Admittedly, the announcement is big news for Apple Inc. The library is a guaranteed money-maker, and songs are available as individual purchases, possibly Apple’s greatest accomplishment regarding the whole deal. But it made a mistake in the way it went about promoting the news, and the Apple faithful and tech elite are expressing the disappointment resulting from that mistake across the web.

There’s one person who unquestionably thinks The Beatles’ arrival on iTunes merits as much fanfare as it got: Steve Jobs. At the launch of the iPhone in January, 2007, the album shown to the world when demonstrating music on the revolutionary new device was Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. At the time, not only had The Beatles rebuffed Apple’s overtures for the iTunes Music Store, but litigation between Apple and Apple Corps over names and logos was still ongoing. Has any other individual or organization at odds with Apple been treated so well? Turning one of the most popular web sites in the world into a teaser for The Beatles is just a continuation of the fanboy relationship Jobs has with the band.

If that seems like a small thing, it isn’t. The larger point coming out of today’s announcement is how Steve Jobs sometimes treats Apple: like he owns it. On more than one occasion, Jobs has turned Apple’s website into a kind of personal blog. A few years ago he was ranting about music DRM, and more recently about Flash. In both situations it was more than a rant, too. Decisions were made that directly impacted consumers. With music DRM, Apple’s long fight over song pricing ensured iTunes Store customers got DRM-free music long after other competitors. With Flash, Apple customers don’t get the same experience on websites with iOS devices that Android users do.

Though perhaps personally motivated, it doesn’t mean either decision was necessarily a bad one. Bad would be the Cube. When it was launched in 2000, Steve Jobs called it “the coolest computer ever.” In 2001, Apple VP Phil Schiller was stuck with announcing its discontinuation. The Cube put too high a price tag on form over function, and it wasn’t the last time Steve Jobs would make that mistake. The iPhone 4 has problems that echo the same hierarchy of values.

If it seems unfair to blame Jobs for these missteps, he certainly gets enough credit for the company’s successes. He’s regularly named the most successful, important CEO in business today, and it’s true. That’s why Steve Jobs gets to use Apple’s website to promote a band that means a lot less to those born after 1970 than the release of iOS 4.2 would today, annoying as that might be. Will he be more hands-off in the future as a result of the negative fallout from today’s announcement? Likely not. Should he be? Apple’s track record says probably not. What do you think?

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Google is the one with the most to worry about, though, according to a new report (subscription required) posted at GigaOM Pro. Google does have a significant interest in the netbook market, like Microsoft, thanks to its upcoming Google Chrome OS, but that isn’t the reason they need to be scared. The real reason is the demise of the web.

Paul Sweeting, in the GigaOM Pro piece, contends that the reason the iPad poses such a threat to Google is that it rewrites the rules of content delivery, eliminating the avenues through which Google makes money via search and advertising. As I’ve written about elsewhere, Apple’s aim is clearly to control not only the content that appears on its devices, but also the conduits by which that content arrives.

Apple promotes a tunnel vision version of the Internet, with content funneled, separated and kept specific to the app you happen to be using. It’s a cellular model of consuming Internet-based content, and it is attractive to the consumer in the same way a walled Japanese garden is attractive to the appreciator of nature. The garden is safe, predictable, contained and aesthetically pleasing. Raw nature can be all of these things, too, but it isn’t necessarily so all of the time.

My only question, and the one which Sweeting poses without asking directly is, is that something I want to happen as a consumer of media? Do we want to “settle” the web, so to speak, by allowing Apple to pacify it, distill it, and then sell it back to us through tightly controlled channels? It may seem alarmist, but it isn’t. It’s what Apple has to do to grow its consumer base as a mobile device maker.

In an ideal world, from Apple’s perspective, Cupertino would have exclusive control over all major media distribution. The company desires that, or as close as is possible in the real world, because by controlling the distribution of content they can also control which devices consumers have to use to consume it. That, in turn, means hardware sales.

It sounds bleak, but it might not be all bad. Apple seems committed to providing quality content in innovative ways, so maybe handing them more control is the right move. What do you think? Is convenience, ease of use and quality of finish worth the trade-off required in terms of autonomy?

Read the full report over at GigaOM Pro →

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The format the new hardware takes will actually be only the superficial impact of tomorrow’s announcement, though. What will really amaze, and what will matter far more for the future of Apple and the personal electronics industry, will be the content deals that are announced alongside the launch of the new device. If the deals go anywhere near as predicted, Steve Jobs could be crowned the new king of all media.

Alright, so maybe I’m overstating things a bit, but not by much. The story of how Apple’s iTunes affected the music industry, and gave the company an amazing degree of control in setting policy and pricing splits for digital music distribution is well known. It is widely accepted that record companies begrudgingly acquiesce to Apple’s demands, although occasionally they demand a concession, like the iTunes price policy change that accompanied the move to DRM-free music files.

Even now, Apple is reportedly trying to use the same strong-arm tactics on providers of television video content who hawk their wares in the iTunes store. MacRumors reports that the Mac-maker is urging TV networks to lower the per-episode price of content from $1.99 to $1, as part of its selling strategy for the tablet.

If the tablet proves to be even half the multimedia wunderkind it is being hailed as, other media providers can expect the same kind of pressure brought to bear. The book, magazine and newspaper industry in particular stands the least chance of resisting Apple’s power grab, since at this point it’s already looking for a life raft to save it from a daunting future steeped in decline. Some rumors are now circulating that the tablet will ship with a built-in Barnes & Noble bookstore, but whatever the outcome, you can bet Apple will have significant support from magazine and newspaper providers looking for a lucrative alternative to print.

Where Apple has the advantage, even if it is seen as an unsavory source of salvation by those wary of what its done for the music industry, is that it isn’t the Internet. People almost invariably like things that are free, and the Internet makes free easy. The only thing people like more than free is easy, and Apple’s distribution method makes things very easy, especially if the iTunes store is married to an extremely light and thin portable device with a decent size screen and a range of connectivity options.

Selling through Apple also takes a lot of the backshop issues out of the hands of providers. They no longer have to worry about setting up advertising, controlling access, preventing piracy and security exploits, etc. And the revenue picture becomes much more clear, with a per unit price that stockholders and stakeholders alike can easily understand. Taking the long view, siding with Apple makes sense, even if the upfront price is quite steep in terms of power dynamics.

So will Steve Jobs inherit a kingdom tomorrow? Not quite yet, I think. More like he’ll take control of quite a few lucrative fiefdoms, but it’ll take a little longer to unite the entire media nation and declare himself monarch. Make no mistake, though, this is what the tablet will accomplish in the long run. It’s the inherited legacy of the iPod and iPhone, in fact, and this is simply the next building block. Fancy gadgets are lovely, but what draws customers to those shiny screens is the content that they’re displaying; control the content, and you control consumer spending.

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But when is touch too much? The latest rumors, coming from the Chinese-language Commercial Times newspaper, as reported by DigiTimes, suggest that Apple will be launching a brand new addition to the iMac line in 2010 with a touch-enabled display. If the report is accurate, the new iMac would have a 22-inch screen, in between the current 21.5-inch and 27-inch models.

The report is based on a supplier called Quanta supposedly receiving the outsourcing contract to make the machines, with Sintek Photronic supplying the necessary touchscreen panels. The rumor is at least plausible, and even a likely next step coming from a manufacturer like Apple that has consistently done touch well and introduced it across much of its product line in some form or another. The question isn’t whether or not Apple will do it, it’s whether or not it should.

I get a tablet computer. I understand what that’s for, how people will use it, and how, thanks to mobility, touch controls make sense. I can’t say the same thing for touch-enabled desktops, except in special cases. For retail, sure, and for restaurants and other similar industry applications where touch has been used because it makes an exceeding amount of sense to do so, that I understand. But as I sit at my home office typing up this post, I wonder if I would derive any benefit by being able to control my iMac by touching the screen versus using my mouse.

In fact, I already sort of have touchscreen computing capability in my iMac, via a connected Wacom Cintiq monitor. Admittedly, you have to use a stylus, so it isn’t exactly the same, but I still finding myself abstaining from using it for anything but drawing and photo editing. Even the Sony Vaio L (check out the second “Con”) and other PCs already on the market with the tech built-in strike me as fairly silly. I’ve used them on display in Best Buy and the like, but that’s an entirely different thing from sitting at a desk and using it for many hours at a time.

Touch control will also be shoehorned into a number of different applications. Unlike the more expensive versions of Windows 7, Snow Leopard isn’t designed to work on a touch-enabled machine, and neither are any of the Mac apps you’d be using with your computer. I can see flick scrolling and image browsing being a bit of a boon, but not enough to merit the inclusion of the tech, especially when it would mean constantly having to switch from using the mouse to interacting with the screen in all likelihood.

Where touchscreen desktop computing has been introduced, it has faced questions about how truly useful and effective it is. Galen Gruman at TechWorld describes his disappointment with the Windows 7 implementation of touch in a piece that soberly addresses the tech’s current shortcomings. In this excerpt, he discusses some UI and feedback problems with the idea:

[O]n a touchscreen, your hand and arm obscure your view of where your fingertip actually is, making it hard to actually touch the intended radio button, close box, slider, or what-have-you. It doesn’t help that these elements are often small. And there’s no tactile feel to substitute for the lost visual feedback.

It’s far from his only strike against touchscreen desktop computing, but even on its own, it describes an issue so annoying as to set me against the concept of a touch sensitive iMac, at least until the next generation of OS X takes touchscreen computing as its focus instead of as an afterthought or add-on.

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pocket BLU is a free download from the App Store that allows your iPhone to become a remote control for operating Blu-ray discs from Universal. It won’t work with just any movie, of course. Blu-ray discs need to be played using a Wi-Fi connected player, for one, and the title has to be specifically enabled to work with pocket BLU, something which will be indicated by a conspicuously placed logo.

The app will allow you to control playback of the film, and jump backwards and forwards to any point in the movie using a visual time line. You’ll also have access to a pop-up keyboard for entering data, which will definitely make any typing you need to do with your Blu-ray movie much easier. Finally, some titles will offer the ability to stream special content from the disc to your iPhone, which can then be stored for later viewing.

The app has promise, but limited as it is to one major distributor’s titles, it feels a little like yet another extraneous feature designed to add value to a format that’s failing to catch on with most consumers. Chances are, I’m never going to watch or care about the additional features included for pocket BLU users anyway, so why not just stick to playing back digital content on my Mac and using Rowmote or VLC Remote to control it? Take it from me, Universal, you’ll be far better off if you focus on delivering content to the iPhone platform, instead of just control mechanisms.

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Ever since I owned a Sony Ericsson phone which connected to my Mac via Salling Clicker, I’ve been fascinated with controlling OS X remotely. The iPhone created a fantastic device for taking remote control to a new level, and a search for “remote” in the App Store illustrates how popular the idea is.

A relatively new app on the scene is Rowmote, which takes a much more simplified approach. Rather than trying to offer a huge array of functionality, it simply replicates the controls found on a standard Apple remote. This provides a thoroughly appealing solution as Apple doesn’t always bundle remote controls with new computers.

Initiating a Connection

Rowmote consists of two separate applications. As you’d expect, one goes on your iPhone and the other (a “helper app”) is installed on your desktop. The installation process is simple, although a restart was required by the desktop installer — something I’m not used to on OS X!

Provided that both devices are connected to the same Wi-Fi network, they should see each other immediately and initiate a connection (as shown on the right).

One of the major advantages of connecting via Wi-Fi is that a line of sight isn’t required to communicate. Whether you’re wandering around the room or happily waving your iPhone around, it should still be able to skip a track or adjust your volume.

Application Switcher

The only aspect of the remote which goes beyond that provided by Apple is the ability to swap focus between different applications. These include Front Row, Airfoil Video, Boxee, iPhoto, iTunes, Quicktime, DVD Player, Keynote ’08 and ‘09, PandoraJam, Plex, Powerpoint 2008, Skim, Spotify and VLC.

The latest version of Rowmote also has preliminary EyeTV support, allowing you to change channels and adjust the volume. It would be great if future versions could offer full control of EyeTV via their full-screen menu (in a similar fashion to Front Row).

Other Solutions

There are a number of other remote control applications available for the iPhone that are worth noting as alternatives.

For accessing your music and video, the first (and most popular) to note is Apple’s Remote app. This allows full control of iTunes playback, browsing of your library, and a whole range of other features. Other media-centric applications include VLC Remote for controlling the popular video player, a Boxee Remote, or jfControl for generic volume, track skipping, etc.

If you’re looking for a presentation remote control for Keynote, it’s definitely worth considering Apple’s official Keynote Remote. This is another visual treat, showing you which slides are coming up next along with any notes you’ve made. If you prefer to use PowerPoint (on Windows or Mac) it’s worth considering i-Clickr, which offers similar functionality.

Finally, a number of different remote controls allow you to actually control the keyboard and mouse of your machine. These obviously offer the broadest level of interaction, but can be incredibly fiddly to use. My favorite is Snatch, but other free solutions include RemotePad or Remote Desktop Light.

Conclusion

While I certainly admire the simplicity of Rowmote, in some ways I feel left wanting more. It’s great to have a low-cost application to replace a standard Apple remote, but the iPhone is capable of far more powerful and interactive connectivity (as some of the other remote applications go to show). It seems frustrating that you’re unable to interact with iTunes in a detailed level as you can with Apple’s Remote application. That said, if using Front Row, a similar level of navigation and control is possible.

Rowmote requires Mac OS X 10.4 or later, and is priced at 99 cents. It’s certainly a great deal cheaper than a replacement Apple Remote, and offers marginally greater functionality. If you’ve lost the remote that came with your Mac or want to replicate its simplicity on your iPhone, Rowmote is definitely the way to go.

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Keen not to be left behind by Apple’s increasing repertoire of multi-touch interface control gestures, Microsoft recently previewed a new technology called “SideSight.” SideSight is not just Redmond’s version of Apple’s tech, though. In fact, Microsoft’s new offering is not touch tech at all. More like proximity tech.

Gearlog provides an overview of SideSight, based on a paper presented by Microsoft U.K. at the User Interface Software and Technology conference. The paper describes the new input tech in the context of touchscreen interaction, which it claims is unsuitable for small devices which, naturally, have smaller screens. It’s a good point. Even on the iPhone, my meaty digits occasionally obscure some important piece of information.

How does SideSight, ahem, sidestep the problem? By allowing users to interact not only with the device directly, but also with the surrounding space. Using outward facing optical sensors lining the device, movements made by a user on a surface beneath or in the air around it are detected and translated into control actions. Gearlog provided these examples of how this might work in practice:

Pages could be panned and scrolled by moving a hand up and down, and Microsoft also proved that text could be entered and edited on the main screen through a stylus while the other hand scrolled the page — a movement that would be akin to the motions a user’s hands would make if he or she were writing on a sheet of paper.

So should Apple be wary of Microsoft’s latest foray into hand-waving? A lot will depend on third-party support, and integration with Redmond’s own future products. While cell phones are clearly a target market for the tech, the report also cites PMPs and watches as candidates. While I can see the appeal of SideSight in things like eBook readers, I have a hard time picturing a lot of consumer interest in watches with gesture control. What do you need to do with your watch that would require you to flail your hands around like a magician about to pull a rabbit out of a hat? And does Apple even care about those markets? Probably not, since Steve Jobs doesn’t even seem interested in the netbook market, which is much closer to their core business.

That still leaves the possibility of home computing, especially when tech like Surface moves downstream into consumer markets, and with software support on the OS side with Windows 7 and upcoming versions of Windows Mobile. Which means a lot of orchestrating needs to happen between now and then, and as it stands, it’s still not clear how intuitive SideSight is or has the potential to be. Multi-touch works because people don’t have to think about learning it. Mastering a complex series of gestures performed in mid-air is a different story.

In the end, as with most of Microsoft’s innovations, the payoff won’t come until long after the announcement. Even then, it will probably be disappointing. Therein lies the major difference between the two companies’ innovation policies. Apple keeps things hush-hush and then wows you with little warning (though we try to spoil the surprise) while Microsoft tips its hand and under delivers. In its infancy, SideSight is a fairly interesting interface technology, and worth talking about, but just think of all the babies Apple isn’t showing off.

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Since the App Store’s launch back in June, I’ve had mixed feelings about the overall level of quality of the applications for sale. Knowing that Apple has control over what does and does not make it in to the store initially had me with the mindset that they should indeed do a bit of quality assurance. If they already said they’d control the floodgates, then I just assumed they should make sure only quality stuff made it through the door.

But yesterday, news of an interesting event sort of shifted my mindset on things.

The basic gist of the story is that a completely legitimate application was submitted to Apple for inclusion in the App Store, only to be reject:

We’ve reviewed your application Pull My Finger. We have determined that this application is of limited utility to the broad iPhone and iPod touch user community, and will not be published to the App Store.

Yes, Apple rejected an app that turns your iPhone in to a farting machine. Watch the video and you’ll see there is plenty of “utility” in this application…infinitely more than something like a beer simulator or a glowing ruby.

But arguing over whether farting or beer drinking with your iPhone is really not the issue…though that would certainly be an interesting conversation. The real issue here is where can Apple consistently draw the line? And should they even draw a line at all?

Apple lets just about anything in to the iTunes music store as well as the Downloads area of Apple.com. So why would they opt to have such a stronghold on the App Store?

The Arguments

One argument for Apple controlling things more tightly is that they’ve got the iPhone’s image and experience to control. The idea being that letting any Joe Blow put together an app and then have it available on the iPhone could, indirectly at least, have an effect on the end user’s overall experience and perception of the iPhone and Apple. Unfortunately this argument got thrown out the window pretty much on day one. The number of seemingly pointless/junk apps was overwhelming (ie. 3 different flashlight applications). So if this is Apple’s argument, it’s lame and clearly not something they’re sticking to.

Another argument for tight control over the store is security. With GPS capabilities and most people having a high concentration of personal data on a phone, Apple doesn’t want anything in their store that could potentially compromise someone’s personal safety or cause some huge number of lawsuits. In general, I do agree with this. There’s no reason Apple has to let applications with security risks in to their store. Unfortunately a number of applications that have been rejected doubtably were “security risks.”

The most interesting argument though is this issue of “limited utility”, the reason the Pull My Finger app was declined. Citing limited utility as the reason for declining an application is about the equivalent of not allowing a band’s album to be sold in the iTunes music store because Jobs thinks the band sucks. I think most people would agree that regardless of their like or dislike of a band, it would be ludicrous for Apple to decide what music should or should not be allowed in the store. Which is the same thought process I’ve now had for the App Store.

Regardless of the fact that I think having three flashlight applications or four different beer simulators is just plain pointless, I do not think Apple should play gatekeeper to what people will find utility with. If someone is willing to pay $1,000 for the I Am Rich application, they should be allowed to. If I want 18 different farting noises on my iPhone, why on earth should I not be able to? Who is Apple to decide that a farting iPhone has limited utility? (If that isn’t an interesting question…I don’t know what is)

On top of Apple controlling what the end-user can download, the people that are more directly affected by this are the developers. With no clear or consistent set of guidelines for what can and cannot make it to the store, developers are taking quite a gamble with their time and resources to develop something that could possibly get flat out rejected by Apple. In fact, some developers are already backing out of developing something for that very issue.

So while Apple’s intensions of keeping the apps in the store useful may be pure, they are also keeping potentially great ideas from ever getting developed at all.

So what is the answer here?

While I disagree with Apple rejecting apps for limited utility, I agree that dozens of the same simple applications would hurt more than help. So instead of letting the App Store become a free-for-all of flashlight wielding, beer drinking, fart machines, Apple should let developers release applications on their own that can be downloaded from anywhere else the same way apps for OS X can be downloaded anywhere.

If it’s legal trouble they are worried about, they could easily throw some Terms together that the end-user has to agree to before they install the app on their iPhone.

Your thoughts?

I’m really curious what you guys and gals think. What are reasons for and against Apple controlling apps? What are some solutions? Let me know in the comments.

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