Category: Opinions

WWDC 2011: Mac OS X Lion, iOS 5, the ecosystem and Apple’s legitimization of piracy

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Twitter’s kind of taken over my news sharing lately, but sometimes I still feel like writing a lengthy feature about important technological milestones. Apple’s WWDC 2011 keynote topped the technology news today and there are some very important things worth mentioning. 

Mac OS X Lion part of the keynote was not a big surprise. There’s been multiple developer preview releases already, so most of the announcements were really just confirmations that makes developers feel better about spending the last 2 months re-writing their apps to be Lion-ready. 

Mac OS X Lion will released via App Store only. Recovery is now built-in to a partition on disk. I assume this means the 200 MB EFI partition that currently stores nothing will finally see some use. I hope the recovery function can be duplicated onto a USB drive in case of complete system failure. 

Autosave is long overdue for a major desktop OS, versioning is now a standard feature. AirDrop will do p2p over Wi-Fi, auto discovers and sets up ala Boujour (presumably). System wide multi-touch gestures, fullscreen apps, Launchpad (copying Springboard from iOS) and Mission Control have all been revealed before. 

Perhaps the biggest impact from the Mac OS X Lion announcement was its pricing. $29.99 is all you pay if you already run Snow Leopard. Must have Snow Leopard to access App Store so I assume Apple will rack up Snow Leopard upgrade sales concurrently. What is Microsoft going to do with their pricing model now that Lion is $29.99 for everyone? There’s probably a panick in Redmond right now, Ballmer may needs to spend another billion to feel complete. 

iOS 5 is perhaps the bigger news. But I noticed most of the top 10 features in the keynote were copying, or if I put it nicely, catching up to Android. A new notification system, system-wide Twitter integration, Newsstand (why can’t iBooks also look like this?), new camera controls, simple photo editing, wireless updates is now extended to the OS level, finally you don’t need to sync an iOS device with iTunes when you unbox it. 

The real feature that Android doesn’t have is still a copycat. This time from RIM. iMessages will be built into the current Messages app and will support real-time notifications while messaging, just like BlackBerry Messenger. LiveProfiles, Ping, Kik, WhatsApp, and every other BBM clone just rolled over and died, and for good cause too. The market was too saturated with messaging apps. It’s nice to get something official from a major OS developer. 

The video mirror feature that is currently iPad 2-only will do away with cables now if you have an AirPlay compatible display, or an AppleTV. Just join the same Wi-Fi network and AirPlay to the output device. 

Steve Jobs can rest easy now. Apple fulfilled their “Post PC” promises with iCloud integration. Wi-Fi sync for any traditional iTunes content. iCloud will store all iTunes purchased content for you, plus 5GB worth of storage that is used for emails, and anything else and 30 days worth of photos. 

One last thing: iTunes Match will upgrade your ripped songs to 256 kpbs AAC DRM-free for a $24.99 yearly subscription! The terms and conditions states a limit of 25,000 songs, still better than none. Unmatched songs will be uploaded, but not upgraded to 256 kbps AAC. Still forthcoming is whether or not the iTunes matched songs will be made available after the subscription expires, or if you must keep the subscription active for matched content. Either way piracy is now legitimized.

Apple is likely not stopping with just music. iTunes already sells movies, books, etc. Whether or not this will extend to all media sold in iTunes is yet to come. 

What does the AT&T/T-Mobile merger mean to Canada?

You have no doubt have heard by now that AT&T and T-Mobile is seeking regulatory approval for merger. AT&T is prepared to pay Deutsche Telekom $39 billions in the acquisition. $25 billion will be cash, $14 billion stock options, Deutsche Telekom will in turn own 8% of AT&T. Everyone wins. 

Everyone, including Canadians.

T-Mobile’s spectrum licenses in the US are AWS, or otherwise known as Band IV (1700 MHz), similar to that of Wind and Mobilicity. The footprint is not yet large enough but AT&T’s plans of using it to expand its the LTE coverage in the US. This would only mean one thing. Eventually the true 4G handsets will need to utilize AWS, at least partially in conjunction with the current Band II+V (1900 MHz + 850 MHz) in North America. A hexa-band device will be the new standard to cover the world. 

Potentially every manufacturer will want to hop on the AWS bandwagon to futureproof themselves against the inevitable merger. In the short term nothing will happen, but in the long run Wind and Mobilicity will make a killing with a plethora amount of new devices available to their networks. 

Sorry American consumers, your competitive loss will be Canada’s competitive win. Ironic isn’t it? 

It may be time to give Netflix Canada another shot

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I signed up for a trial and kept it for 3 months when Netflix first launched in Canada and the content available was horrendous compared to the US. Things have changed in the few months since and now into Q1 of 2011 Netflix is steadily adding more content to the Canadian market daily. 

If this continues I may once again consider subscribing to Netflix and this time probably keep it for good. 

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Nokia-Microsoft alliance will be a force to reckon with

I woke up this morning and saw the Engadget’s liveblog on the Nokia’s Capital Markets Day announcements. All the rumours are real! Nokia is going to be exclusively supporting Windows Phone 7 as the software platform, and Symbian is dead. There are still signs of MeeGo development but it sounds like Stephen Elop doesn’t place a lot of faith in the project. 

Steven Ballmer was also in attendance at the Capital Markets Day, although I couldn’t make out who was courting whom. In the end the result is the same. Microsoft gains a competent hardware manufacturer, Nokia gains a competent software platform. 

Below are some bullets from the Q&A period. 

 

  • No specific announcement for when we’ll see the first Nokia Windows Phone. Ballmer mentioned that the engineering teams have spent a lot of time together already.
  • Elop also confirmed that Nokia is a Finnish company and always will be — they will not be moving to Silicon Valley or anywhere else.
  • Ballmer said that the partnership is “not exclusive” but some things that Microsoft is doing with Nokia are “unique” allowing Nokia to differentiate itself in the market. Elop added that it’s important for the Windows Phone 7 ecosystem to thrive, which means that multiple vendors must succeed.
  • Elop didn’t believe that Nokia could create a new ecosystem around MeeGo fast enough.
  • Nokia will “substantially reduce” R&D expenditures while increasing R&D productivity moving forward.
  • Nokia did talk with Google about adopting Android but decided that it “would have difficulty differentiating within that ecosystem” and the “commoditization risk was very high — prices, profits, everything being pushed down, value being moved out to Google which was concerning to us.” Microsoft presented the best option for Nokia to resume the fight in the high end smarpthone segment.
  • Elop clarified that MeeGo will ship this year but “not as part of another broad smarpthone platform strategy, but as an opportunity to learn.” Something that sounds very similar to position Nokia took with its so-called “experimental” Maemo-based N900 last year. After the first (and apparently, only) MeeGo device ships this year, the MeeGo team will then “change their focus into an exploration of future platforms, future devices, future user experiences.” Trying to determine the “next disruption” in smartphones.
  • Responding to “hope for a broad MeeGo-based ecosystem,” Elop said that Nokia simply wasn’t moving fast enough to effectively win and compete against Apple and Google. Windows Phone makes it a “three-horse race,” something that Elop says is pleasing to the carriers he’s been speaking with.
  • Nokia has different options for its tablet strategy including using something from Microsoft or something that Nokia has developed internally.

 

Web anonymity is impossible in 2011

I blogged about the Evan Ratliff’s story back in 2009. It took amateurs roughly 1 month to discover his whereabouts and catch him physically. How long do you think a professional government agency will take to track down an anonymous person on the web? 

During December 2010, anonymous organized Operation Payback, which were DDoS attacks on websites of companies that opposed WikiLeaks.

An hour ago Ars posted about FBI several simultaneous raids against many anonymous members in relation to Operation Payback. 

You have 1 month leeway if you wish to commit a federal crime on the internet, as of 2011. I guess you should expect a good enough case built against you that can compel a judge for a search warrant in less time than that.