Well, not all the cards. As I wrote once, the reason Apple does the things it does is to please us, the consumers. We demand a new iPhone every year that must be better and cheaper. We insist that a thousand dollars is too much for a state of the art computer. We want bigger TVs and external hard drives and slim cameras. And we, almost without exception, fail to care when our demand for more iPads drives Apple to double its orders, driving Foxconn to push more overtime, driving poorly-maintained ventilation systems to their maximum, driving a spark to ignite an aluminum-dust explosion. It’s not our problem, it’s Apple’s or it’s Foxconn’s or it’s China’s. Very reassuring.

One dreamer quoted in the NYT article says: “If they committed to building a conflict-free iPhone, it would transform technology.” Yes, and at the same time, it would transform Apple into a bankrupt company. A conflict free iPhone would cost far, far more and would in all likelihood not be as well-built. Apple knows this. The system we and they have in place works, unfortunately, at least for everyone but the workers coated in N-hexane. And at a twelve to a hundred thousand dollars a pop, they aren’t worth rocking the boat for, especially when you’ve got record profits coming in.

Just don’t forget that we’re in that boat too. Unlike many other companies whose profits come largely from ads, enterprise products, or components, the vast majority of what Apple makes comes straight out of a consumer’s pockets, more or less willingly. More than any other mega-corporation you and I deal with on a daily basis, we are fully in control of our contributions to this company. We’re part of this. Some would say the biggest part.

(Via TechCrunch » apple)

The truth is, the average Android user is not the same as an average iPhone user. iPhone users surf the web more, they’re more willing to buy software, they’re more willing to install and use apps…

You can say that it’s elitist or arrogant to argue that iOS users are better customers than Android users. But you can also say that it’s the truth.

(Via Daring Fireball)

Apple has 2/3rds the share of industry profits while it has garnered only 5% in market share.  Why would I want to go after market share in this scenario?

The 360′s new voice interface should be twice as smart, twice as fast, and twice as surprisingly wonderful as Siri. Instead, it just makes me want to break my TV.

(Via TechCrunch » apple)

The Kinect’s voice command is no Siri.

Still, a very cool experiment. And now one I’d love to see applied to some really, really popular celebrities, and some not-quite-yet celebrities. Then we’ll have a better idea of how much indie distribution will actually shift the balance of power in the media industry. It could be a little, it could be a lot, but it’s too early to tell.

(Via SplatF)

 

Ian Austen, reporting for the NYT:

Research in Motion said on Thursday that a new line of BlackBerry smartphones that it hoped would turn around its flagging fortunes will not come to market until late next year.

It was the latest, and perhaps most significant, setback in a string of product delays and missteps from the company.

In the meantime, profits are down 70 percent. I love to say “I told you so”, so: I told you so.

★

 

(Via Daring Fireball)

The show went on sale at noon on Saturday, December 10th. 12 hours later, we had over 50,000 purchases and had earned $250,000, breaking even on the cost of production and website. As of Today, we’ve sold over 110,000 copies for a total of over $500,000. Minus some money for PayPal charges etc, I have a profit around $200,000 (after taxes $75.58). This is less than I would have been paid by a large company to simply perform the show and let them sell it to you, but they would have charged you about $20 for the video. [emphasis mine] They would have given you an encrypted and regionally restricted video of limited value, and they would have owned your private information for their own use. They would have withheld international availability indefinitely. This way, you only paid $5, you can use the video any way you want, and you can watch it in Dublin, whatever the city is in Belgium, or Dubai. I got paid nice, and I still own the video (as do you). You never have to join anything, and you never have to hear from us again.

(Via The Loop.)

Information on the internet is costly to produce, near costless to distribute, but marketing can be an issue, a costly one at that.  Louis CK has an established brand so he can take the risks in production and let the viral nature of the Internet do its thing.

The experiment was successful but it’s not a game changer for Louis CK per se.  (If you doubt that, you put out $250,000 for production and see how viral your show goes.)  He just cut out a middle man, made more money and we saved some.  That’s the game changer for the big distribution, really marketing, companies.  Social networking is not good for their business model.  Not at all.

Read his whole post.  A lot to learn there.

It’s not clear just how complicit Apple is in Digitude’s business, but EFF staff attorney Julie Samuels told TechCrunch that if Apple was deliberately aiding Digitude’s patent trolling, “it would be horrifying.” And even if Apple were somehow coerced into settling with Digitude, Samuels doubts that “Apple didn’t have any other options.”

As we noted recently, Apple has a tendency to use its intellectual property in ways that seem inconsistent. For instance, an Opera developer claims that Apple has a pattern of using patents to slow down the W3C’s open standards process, while promoting open standards when it gives Apple leverage against its competitors. This situation with Digitude seems similar; Apple opposes the tactics of patent trolls when they come after iOS developers, but seems to support them if it aids its ongoing legal battle for dominance of the smartphone market.

(Via arstechnica.com)

Disturbing to say the least!

My almost-last-of-the-year Roll Call column tells you everything you need to know about what’s ahead next year…and why you should believe me because of how accurately I predicted what would happen in 2011.

In case you’re wondering, whether you should read any further…my batting average for this year was a whopping 857. My question: Should I have my agent call the Yankees to offer my services?

Looking Into My Budget Crystal Ball for 2012

By Stan Collender
Roll Call Staff
Dec. 6, 2011, Midnight

Instead of a dreaded year-in-review column that, as I said last December, is mostly “a snooze,” Fiscal Fitness last year listed seven predictions for what would happen in 2011. I’m going to keep that policy alive this year for three reasons.

First, as anyone who has followed any aspect of the federal budget knows, a postmortem on this year’s debate would be anything but in keeping with the season of “good tidings of great joy” we’re supposed to be in. In fact, it would be downright depressing.

Second, a year-in-review column would also be based on incomplete information given that the current continuing resolution expires Dec. 16 and, as hard as it is to imagine in light of all that has — or, more accurately, hasn’t — happened this year, the biggest budget-related confrontations might still be ahead of us.

Third, a year-in-review column would mean that I have to spend more time discussing the hardly super committee than the subject is worth at this point.

But before I get to my predictions for what’s going to happen next year, how well did I do for this year?

The answer is (note hardy self-congratulatory pat on the back here) not bad at all.

I hit directly on six of my seven predictions.

Saying that “gridlock and stalemate” were going to be the most prevalent aspects of this year’s budget debate, that Bowles-Simpson would have no real effect in 2011 and that there wouldn’t be a fiscal 2012 Congressional budget resolution were all right on the money.

Three of my other predictions — that earmarks would continue but go underground, government contractors would be the 2011 version of bond market vigilantes and that Wall Street would demonstrate a remarkable lack of sophistication when it came to the budget — also were correct.

Recent reports have indicated that (shocking, I know) earmarks continue to be sought by Representatives and Senators but that their efforts are now far less visible than they were before. And anyone who doubts the greatly increased budget activism of the contractor community hasn’t been paying attention to its ongoing efforts to stop the sequester that was triggered when the anything-but-super committee failed to move a bill.

If anything, financial markets demonstrated that they really don’t have a clue when it comes to what Washington will do on the budget. I was especially surprised by the argument I heard from many on the street that Congress would be embarrassed (their word, not mine) if the super committee didn’t agree on a plan and, therefore, that there was a strong likelihood it would succeed.

My one big miss last year was the prediction that the only reduction in the deficit would come from projected improvements in the economy. There were minor — and I am using that word very intentionally — legislated deficit reductions in the full-year continuing resolution enacted in April and in the Budget Control Act. But the biggest reason I was wrong is that the better-than-expected economic forecast (thank you, Europe) I expected to have an effect didn’t materialize.

Now on to what I see ahead in 2012.

1. There will be no movement on the federal budget until after the 2012 elections. Does anyone really think it will be easier in an election year for either political party to agree to a compromise that its base doesn’t want and won’t support than it was this year when it was already virtually impossible? A better question: Why does anyone think that the intractable budget politics of 2011 that led to repeated failures on every budget-related effort will be any different next year? If you have any doubt about what this means for the budget process: No Congressional budget resolution will be adopted in 2012.

2. Don’t be surprised if the sequester and tax cut expiration are delayed for six months or more. The Bush/Obama tax cuts expire Dec. 31, 2012, and the spending cuts triggered by the super-bust committee’s failure are supposed to begin on Jan. 2, 2013. Both will take place before the next Congress begins and the next president is inaugurated. It would hardly be a shock, therefore, if the only thing that happens in a lame-duck session is a deal that both extends the tax cuts and delays the sequester until June 30 or beyond.

3. 2012 will be “The Year of Avoiding the Sequester.” The big budget fight in 2012 will not be the deficit, it will be trying to come up with alternatives to the sequester.

4. President Barack Obama’s fiscal 2013 budget will not specify how the White House plans to comply with the sequester. There’s no legal requirement or political reason for the president to include in his spending plan released early next year the specific domestic and military spending cuts needed to comply with the sequester. It’s far more likely that the budget will include the administration’s plan for avoiding a sequester (see No. 3 above) and say that it will list the reductions later in the year if Congress does not agree with what it’s proposing.

5. There will be no tax reform in 2012. Even if all of the substantive and political work needed to get it done had been completed — and it hasn’t been — a tax “reform” bill that has as many losers who will pay more as winners who will pay less will be all but impossible to enact in an election year.

(Via Capital Gains and Games | Washington, Wall Street and Everything …)

Minnesota Senator Al Franken has sent letters to several more companies involved in the Carrier IQ scandal, reports say. Franken is in charge of a Senate privacy panel, and has issued new requests to AT&T, HTC, Samsung, and Sprint, in addition to one sent earlier to Carrier IQ itself. The new parties are being asked to explain how they’re using the Carrier IQ technology, and what data they’re gathering through it.

(Via MacNN | The Macintosh News Network)

Sen. Franken is not the guy you want asking hard questions.  It’s going to be a circus of scandal, finger pointing, the works.

 

Eliot Spitzer on the aforelinked scandal revealed by Bloomberg:

Imagine you walked into a bank, applied for a personal line of credit, and filled out all the paperwork claiming to have no debts and an income of $200,000 per year. The bank, based on these representations, extended you the line of credit. Then, three years later, after fighting disclosure all the way, you were forced by a court to tell the truth: At the time you made the statements to the bank, you actually were unemployed, you had a $1 million mortgage on your house on which you had failed to make payments for six months, and you hadn’t paid even the minimum on your credit-card bills for three months. Do you think the bank would just say: Never mind, don’t worry about it? Of course not. Whether or not you had paid back the personal line of credit, three FBI agents would be at your door within hours.

Yet this is exactly what the major American banks have done to the public.

Or, as Jon Stewart asked, “How the f*** is it that Martha Stewart went to jail?”

★

 

(Via Daring Fireball)

Gruber finds the perfect quote.