GigaOM » Apple

The iPad May Be Perfect for Web Browsing, But It’d Really Rather You Didn’t

Darrell Etherington — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 20:00:33 +0000

Apple’s competitors are likely circling the wagons and preparing for quite the fight when the iPad drops late next month. Amazon has been highlighted as the company with the most to worry about in many of the articles written about the subject thus far, but Microsoft is probably also sufficiently nervous about the effect the device will have on things like netbook sales.

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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Pie Guy: Web Apps as Viable Alternatives

Olly Farshi — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 18:00:38 +0000

Pie Guy is an excellent little game that’s causing a small stir among developers. The game has completely bypassed the App Store and is available to download, right now, as a Web App.

It’s a cute 8-bit-era game with deliciously retro graphics that clones Pacman with a pie-themed twist. Eat the pies, don’t get caught by the cooks, and try to beat your high-score. The game can be installed for free simply by visiting http://mrgan.com/pieguy/ on your iPhone’s browser.

The surprising thing is that all of this was achieved without the App Store. I’ve never come across an iPhone web app that feels so much like a native app. From the install process, to the icon and graphics, the attention to detail is impressive.

Admittedly, Pie Guy is no Rolando, but nevertheless it’s just the sort of 99 cent app I’d expect to find riding high in the App Store charts. Except it’s not in the App Store — Pie Guy is free from the constraints and anguish of Apple approvals and it’s just as polished and professional as we’d expect, but perhaps rarely find, from a native premium app.

What’s amazing is seeing what has been achieved without the App Store. A great user experience and a great product, all without running natively. Plus, it even works offline, despite being a web app. It’s worth noting though Pie Guy is iPhone 3GS only, the app apparently takes advantage of the significant improvements Apple made to WebKit performance on the device.

Of course, iPhone web apps are nothing new. Way back when, before the glorious mess that is the App Store, Jobs announced that developing on iPhone was effectively as simple as creating a web site.

After a rather disgruntled reaction from the dev community, and much purported rushing on Apple’s part, we ended up with the App Store. The very notion of web apps, on the other hand, seemed to get tossed aside in the free-for-all gold-rush that ensued.

Many months later, attention is beginning to swing back around to the untapped potential of web apps. It may be that developers are looking for a route to take their concepts to users without running the rejection gauntlet that is Apple’s app approval process. However, it’s also likely that developers want to take advantage of those handy WebKit performance improvements on the 3GS.

Earlier this week on Twitter, David Kaneda, a WebKit developer, claimed, “I could write a pretty competitive Tweetie clone, pretty quickly.” Loren Brichter, developer of iPhone Twitter-client Tweetie, promptly responded by saying, “I dare you.” What resulted from the ensuing exchange was a coder battle that may go some way in illustrating the real potential of WebKit, with Kaneda already producing promising results.

In the meantime though, users are caught between a somewhat chaotic App Store and a predominantly lackluster selection of web apps. There’s clearly room for improvement in both arenas and it’ll be interesting to see what developers manage to squeeze out of WebKit in the coming months.

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Band Gives Away Everything (Sort of) for $3 Via App Store

Darrell Etherington — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 19:00:20 +0000

The headline in this case is slightly misleading. The Presidents of The United States of America (remember Lump, anyone?) are giving you access to four Presidents’ albums (all the ones the band owns the rights too), plus rarities and b-sides. The key word there is “access,” because while you can listen to the songs as much as you’d like, they’re streamed via an iPhone/iPod touch app, not physical MP3 files that you could actually add to your iTunes library.

The app is the brainchild of Dave Dederer, onetime singer and guitarist for the Presidents, who now acts as VP of Business Development for Melodeo, a company that deals specifically in software designed to stream iTunes content to other sources. In an industry that needs to look more and more at alternative content delivery methods, Dederer may be on to something. A $3 investment is probably going to attract a lot more attention than a 99-cent single track, since it gives interested customers the chance to sample a wide selection of a band’s work before making the decision to buy a full album or a number of tracks for more flexible use via their iTunes library.

For most other bands, this sort of thing is a problem, because they don’t usually own their own distribution and copyrights. That’s why Dederer is currently in talks with indie labels to release similar apps that cover entire stables of artists, thereby lessening the number of steps required in order to get legal permission to reproduce the tracks.

I am very much in favor of this new model. I prefer the idea of getting similarly grouped artists (by label, by genre, etc.) to go in together on an app like this, because then it becomes a sort of digital jukebox or focused Internet radio channel that you can have with you wherever you have cellular reception. At the same time, from an artist/label’s perspective, they’re getting great exposure with a growing market of people who tend to have disposable income and spend some on music. The Presidents’ app even has “Buy” links that redirect users to the iTunes purchase page so they can directly add tracks to their library.

It’s such a good idea, in fact, that I hope it catches on with other media. Imagine how great an NBC app would be that works along the same lines, providing the same full episodes they have on their site for streaming via iPhone on a dedicated app. They could include their commercials, and again, provide buy links that lead to their iTunes store.

What do you think, is this kind of delivery something you’d be interested in? For music, video, or both? Do you think it’s a realistic possiblity that the big networks will ever come on board?

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Rockstar Switching Horses, From Amazon to iTunes

Darrell Etherington — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 16:12:16 +0000

Rockstar Games, makers of the extremely popular Grand Theft Auto franchise, are picking up and moving a very lucrative music partnership from Amazon to iTunes, which offers players of GTA IV the opportunity to purchase tracks used in the game’s soundtrack.

The reason for the switch? Apple’s (a AAPL) decision to finally go DRM-free. Rockstar had apparently always wanted to go with the big fish (how could you not, when they command more than 90 percent of the digital music distribution market?), but also wanted users not to be tied down with the music they purchased using it.

The switch will come alongside Rockstar’s upcoming downloadable expansion for GTA IV, which will also introduce a major addition to the game’s existing soundtrack. This is a perfect example of why Apple’s decision to move to a DRM-free music library was the right decision, from the consumer’s standpoint, yes, but also as a sound business decision. Formerly wary prospective partners will now embrace iTunes with open arms.

For us as iTunes customers, this sets a precedent that other companies will hopefully follow, which would lead to more choice, and innovative content purchasing models. With GTA IV, you purchase the music via the in-game “Zit” service, and you can then download the track outside of the game through Amazon’s MP3 store (soon to be iTunes). Video games are an obvious partner, since the interactivity is already there, but movie and television soundtracks could soon follow. I’d also like to see the reverse implemented, whereby you can use any of the tracks from your existing iTunes library in-game.

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Books-As-Apps: Cutting Out the Clutter

Darrell Etherington — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 15:14:04 +0000

Over the holidays, I ended up reading an awful lot using my iPhone/iPod touch. I started with The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, just to determine whether or not I wanted to cough up ten bucks to go see the Brad Pitt movie, and then, since I enjoyed it, I downloaded and read a number of other F. Scott Fitzgerald short stories. To do so, I used Stanza, because it’s a great app, well designed and well maintained, and because the books are free under the Life +50 license. Which is not to say I won’t ever purchase an ebook through Stanza, just that I haven’t yet had cause to.

What I don’t think I will ever do, though, is buy an individual book application. To me, that would be like buying individual albums as independent applications instead of through iTunes. Why would I opt to have a thousand different icons on my desktop, one for each album, when it would be far easier, more organized, and more sensible to keep them all in one place, i.e., my iTunes library. The same applies for electronic books. How is it beneficial, to anyone besides publishers and developers, to have discrete applications for individual books?

The problem is that it does represent a significant benefit for those parties. iPhone users vary greatly in terms of their knowledge level and expertise. I still know someone who is, as of yet, not really sure how you get apps on to the device, and he owns one. Obviously, he’s an extreme case, but the point is that there’s still a large segment of the market that might not even be aware apps like Stanza even exist. Hence the need for books-as-apps, like the recently released ScrollMotion Iceberg Reader titles like Stephenie Meyer’s crazily successful Twilight.

Even beyond being impractical, books-as-apps prove annoying to end-users like myself who browse the app store regularly, and have to sift through a great many of them some days to find quality new releases. Might there be a way to satisfy both commercial interests and the interests of the consumer, without clogging up the app store and home screens with hundreds of unnecessary apps?

The answer is the iTunes store. Whether as a model for successful, centralized distribution, as with Stanza, or quite literally, meaning that they begin selling books through the iTunes store itself (not audio books, those don’t count). And yes, Stanza does already do this, but it needs the backing and promotional power of the iTunes store in order to convince publishers to use it instead of creating individual books-as-apps. Now if we could just get comics from major publishers distributed in a similar manner, the world would be a perfect place.

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Wal-Mart to Sell iPhones

Darrell Etherington — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 20:20:28 +0000

News broke yesterday that Wal-Mart will indeed be selling Apple’s iPhone, most likely by the end of December. The source of the information is employee training materials, and employees of the U.S.-based retail giant themselves. Wal-Mart is still keeping mum about the news, having made no official statement as of yet.

Early speculation held that the 4GB iPhone would make a return, at a new, $99 price point, designed to attract frugal customers in increasingly uncertain economic times. Today’s reports, supported by a number of sources and documents, maintain that a $99 iPhone is unlikely, and that Wal-Mart will instead offer a $2 discount, selling the 8GB model for $197, including contract discount.

Analyst Andy Hargreaves of Pacific Crest Securities told Reuters that Apple, while unlikely to cut a deal that would affect its profit margins, is probably seeking distribution through Wal-Mart in order to access different market demographics. UBS analyst Maynard Um, on the other hand, thinks a Wal-Mart deal alone will not be enough to broaden the iPhone’s reach, and suggests it should instead be only a first step to even more distribution deals with large retailers.

Details remain unclear, and conflicting reports from various sources indicate that nothing is confirmed, besides the iPhone’s imminent arrival. The arrival date, for instance, is cited by Bloomberg as December 28, but by CNN Money as possibly sometime before Christmas. Likewise pricing and storage space options, with Boy Genius Reports still maintaining that the $99 4GB model is a possibility.

Apple has refused to comment on any rumors or speculation at this point.

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