Difference between iPad2’s Safari and Desktop Safari

Since we are targeting the Raxa EMR for JSS for Webkit-based browser, it is important that the team understands the subtle differences between the Desktop shipped Safari and the version of Safari shipped for iPad2. The differences with Chrome are quite a few, so I won’t list those here.

Following are some of the differences to remember:

• No Flash support
• Safari iPad does not support position:fixed in CSS
• Safari iPad creates link for 10-digit numbers automatically
• Safari iPad does not allow scrolling over textareas and iframes
• Safari iPad has issues with CSS Animations that cause flickering. Use JavaScript animation or hacks in CSS -webkit-backface-visibility:none; and -webkit-perspective:1000;
• Safari iPad greys the upload button

Things have been improving compared to the first iPad and iPad2 and the differences are minimizing.

Apple wants 17+ yrs old only to use Opera

In another of Apple crazy works at the App Store, Apple does not allow users under the age of 17 yrs to download Opera. Opera is the first non-Apple web browser to be made available at the App Store, but with that crazy restriction. Now Opera, just like Safari opens web pages. It actually does it better depending on which benchmark you are looking at.

Opera reacted in the following manner:

“I’m very concerned,” says Standal. “Seventeen is very young, and I am not sure if, at that age, people are ready to use such an application. It’s very fast, you know, and it has a lot of features. I think the download requirement should be at least 18.”

For those under 17, there is a workaround. Just visit www.opera.com and download it. We do not ask for your age or your credit card number. Please, get your parents’ permission before using this browser

Opera does have a sense of humor

iPad 2 : Something about Apple just fascinates people

Why do people get fascinated with Apple products? I’ve always wondered… Is it really that Apple products are so much better than what’s available in the market? They had the iPod, the iMac, the iPhone and the iPad (…to name some) and gave them cult status. Now with the iPad 2, I see the same fascination in people in response to the launch and the ads.

The iPad 2 really isn’t the best in terms of hardware packed into the device. Motorola Xoom/Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 has the camera on both front and back better than the iPad 2. Battery life and processors are equally competitive. The ecology around Android is really awesome and growing rapidly. The iPad 2 is thinner, but wasn’t the iPad already thin?? The iPad 2 doesn’t have USB. It does not run flash. It will use proprietary formats for connecting to other devices. It does not have an SD card reader. So why are people still fascinated with the Apple iPad 2?

One thing is how Apple sells you the stuff... The ads make an emotional connection with you. The people who tell you things in the Apple ads, just like Steve Jobs speaks at the launch of these devices, make you feel fascinated. The “cool-ness” of Apple devices are another fascination. The external design and look-and-feel of Apple products are these days probably similar to other high-end devices, but the overall experience of the Apple software in my opinion is the biggest difference. How many times on the iOS have you seen a “Force Close” dialog, that an Android device would often throw? How many times do you feel an interface element to be out of place, when using an Android device?

I write this as I’ve just finished playing with a friend’s Motorola Xoom while at the library. I’ve tried the Galaxy tab, the iPad, but none of them are “Post PC” as Jobs describes it at the moment. Somebody nicely said, its an Apple vs Oranges comparison. You choose the fruit you like… I don’t like both yet!!

Apple’s Billion$ Datacenter Gets a Boss

Apple is till date known as a cool gadget company, but that seems to be soon changing. Apple recently acquired $46m rebates from North Carolina to set-up a $1bn datacenter in the state. This price is more than the state-of-the art data centers owned by Google and that questions what Apple wants to do with such a powerful data center. May be OSX is going to be hosted on the cloud ??

Anyways, today eBay's Olivier Sanche will join Apple as its director of global data center operations and manage all the data centers that Apple is setting up. Olivier Sache was one of the guys who created the great E-bay and Paypal Infrastructure before web services were the “in-thing”. Apple had realized the strength of internet-services long back with iTunes and iPhone App Store, but it has also failed many times as shown with .mac and MobileMe downtimes and lack of new features. Apple has internally done many experiments, but failed in consolidating it position on the web...

With Olivier in its team, Apple surely hopes that its web services woes will end... May be Apple’s planning a Search Engine to compete with Google. Isn’t that a reason why Google’s Eric Schmidt was asked to leave the Apple board ??

Apple Registers Highest Ever Revenue & Profit

While the economic downturn and recession has hit nearly everyone, Apple seems to be surging on with its sales. Yesterday Apple announced its first fiscal quarterly earnings report and the figures are just amazing. It announced revenue of $10.17 billion and net quarterly profit of $1.61 billion.

Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs said, “Even in these economically challenging times, we are incredibly pleased to report our best quarterly revenue and earnings in Apple history--surpassing $10 billion in quarterly revenue for the first time ever”. Apple sold 22,727,000 iPods (3% growth YoY), 2,524,000 Macs (9% growth YoY) and 4,363,000 iPhones (88% growth YoY).

Its amazing on how those iPods still sell like hotcakes and the demand still seems to go up. iPod Touch was added the line-up, but then the other iPods still have majority of the share. Apple sold a record number of MacBooks and they account for 71% of all Mac sales.

Microsoft Songsmith is Apple Garageband Competition

Everyone and anyone who has used a Mac off late is sure to have seen Garageband – Apple powerful yet simple audio mixing, editing, recording, instrument tutoring application that’s part of the iLife suite. Its simplicity is simply superb! At CES 2009, Microsoft showed Songsmith as a competitor to Garageband.

While Microsoft has done all kinds of software applications, audio is one place where in my knowledge Microsoft has never stepped in. Songsmith is one application that is going to change that all. Here’s a youtube video showing some of its features in an advertisement for Songsmith (store link).

While Songsmith is relatively new, you will find a few loopholes and it’s audio detection isn’t perfect… But from what I’ve tested, it is quite good for the Garageband!!

Microsoft will be on a publicity drive for Songsmith over the next few months. Watch out for the new Windows musician in your neighborhood… It might just be better than the Apple-pwn’d band!!

Google to Bring iPhone-like App Store to Android

The iPhone App Store's success for Apple has changed the way Google is thinking content-distribution for the Android platform. According to an announcement yesterday, Google is ready to have an App Store for the Android platform called the Android Market.

Google has been working on the Android platform for over an year now and is about to give a final release by the end of the year. Different handset manufacturers have already vouched their support for the platform and Android is seen as the biggest competitor to Apple's iPhone in the smartphone market. With the roaring initial success of the AppStore for Apple, it makes obvious sense for Google to have a similar content-distribution system for their platform.

Google also has an expertise on web infrastructure and it can surely avoid the mistakes that Apple has done with the reliability and availability of its web services. The details on exact model of operation of Android Market are still unknown, but Google surely will make it open and stable!! They are the "do-no-evil" company!!

Apple iPhone 3G at Rs.31000 ($720) in India

While most of the iPhone lovers in India already own an unlocked 1st generation iPhone, Apple officially launched the iPhone 3G in India at Rs. 31000/- or $720 when you apply the latest conversion rates. The same iPhone 3G costs $199 to a customer in the US with a cell plan from AT&T.

By the way, Airtel and  Vodafone are the two companies that have brought the iPhone 3G to India. If you want to buy the iPhone from Vodafone, then you can choose from a host of plans which have voice + data ranging from Rs.500 – Rs.1000. But along with that monthly rental, you have to buy the iPhone at an insane Rs.31000/-

The pre-launch interest for the iPhone 3G in India was huge. Airtel and Vodafone received over 25000 customers who were interested in the iPhone. How many of those customers are stupid enough to buy at this price is anyone’s guess?? India is the 2nd largest cellphone market in the world. But I’m pretty sure that with this ridiculous pricing the official iPhone 3G will not capture even 0.1% of the Indian market. With all the marketing expenses and Apple revenue sharing, the economics of the iPhone 3G for the cellphone operators doesn’t make any sense to me.

The most funny thing in this whole affair is that 3G services are still not available in India. It will take atleast another year for the services to start in full swing. So anyone who buys the new iPhone 3G will not be able to use the 3G services. With the current sucking GPRS service from these GSM operators, the internet speeds are so slow, that I would prefer my old 56k modem to surf the internet than GPRS.

Apple has played the same game again!! To be part of the Apple cult you have to be filthy rich and stupid. Apple is known to have high margins, but when you know that you have a product that can score on volumes, you obviously can lower your margins and increase your profit. But Apple gives a damn about volumes. It is happy to have a cult status and if that means only milking your stupid customer base, then so be it.

iPhone App Store’s $30 Million May Be Second Best

Apple CEO Steve Jobs said in an interview yesterday to Wall Street Journal that the iPhone AppStore made $30 Million in the first month of sales. That is  approximately close to $1 million everyday for July. Its an amazing feat when you think about the problems with the launch of App Store & iPhone 2... And $1 million a day is not a small amount, but will the business scale?? Will it be the winner for online content distribution??

Steve Jobs has already proved his amazing entrepreneurship in the past with the iPod and iTunes Store. Apple has changed the face of online music sales with its iTunes store and is surely building it up everyday by adding more and more content. The iPhone is also one of the most successful smartphone product, which in its first-generation already got a cult status and has been a hit in its second re-incarnation as well. But with all the success coming its way, there aren’t too many people who are looking at Apple’s shortcomings.

Apple’s failure in web services like .mac and MobileMe is probably its biggest recent failure. But then there is also the bad sales of AppleTV and Jobs Cube (oops MacMini) which still isn’t in the living room!! Apple desktop and laptop sales may be growing, but they still aren’t anywhere outside the US. But with those products not working as well, Apple still rocks with the iPhone.

The App Store fetches 30% of total revenue to Apple and the remaining 70% to the application developers/publisher. 30% does sound a lot for just hosting your App, but then with the developers getting rich for their not-as-much efforts, why would anyone have a problem with Apple getting an even bigger share?? For example, Super Monkey Ball is the most successful paid app on the App Store and has sold more than 300,000 copies in 20 days at $10 each. This means Sega (…and OtherOcean Interactive) made $2.1 million in 20 days. This has made OtherOcean create a new iPhone apps division, which obviously shows that they want to make many more such wonderful apps. I expect many more such developers coming up with interesting apps for the iPhone in the future.

But what we need to think is how much will people keep spending on the App Store and what will be the kind of competition that will come up for developers on the app store... If you need comparisons, most people will obviously look at iTunes, but I don’t think music and games/apps can be considered to be similar content. Obviously music can be downloaded and used whenever, where-ever you want. You could be playing your favorite tunes all through the day, but is it the same with games/apps on a mobile device?? How many hours can you game on the iPhone ?? How many apps do you need on the iPhone?? How much more will you really spend on the iPhone after that purchase??

On the PC side of things, there’s another company getting big on the online content distribution front. And its Valve Software, with its Steam Content Delivery System, which I think has more “steam” in the long run. Desktops/wired networks have lot more bandwidth to download and gaming hardware is lot more capable on PCs. Also we may be moving to specialized gaming consoles from desktop computers, but then Steam could very well be moved to consoles in the future. Steam already has 15million users, who use Steam servers for multiplayer gaming, buying new content, social networking and the like. Steam also has the support of many game developers and studios. And new studios are getting interested everyday to share their content on the Steam system. With all that and improving PC gaming numbers from other countries than the US, it feels that Steam could very well be the leading content delivery system of the future.

How Apple scales its App Store and how developers come up with new and interesting applications/games on the App Store will determine its future success. But the start is surely on track!! Probably, App Store is the constant stream of revenue for Apple, since someone somewhere is going to need an app, but then $1 billion revenue which Steve Jobs is expecting from the App Store is way... way too much!! Atleast not until every kid on the block owns an iPhone!!

Steve Jobs says Apple Still Has to Learn the Web

Google is the king of the web and everyone realizes web is the place to be. But has anyone wondered why other giants like Microsoft, IBM and HP don’t have hold over the internet market as much as Google. Steve Jobs, the Apple’s messiah today revealed to its company employees through an email that Apple still has to learn ways to improve its web services and was referring to the recent debacle with MobileMe.

Apple is the leader in portable audio market with iPod and also holds a cult figure on the desktop front. But like Microsoft, Apple still hasn’t figured out a way to provide efficient web services. The MobileMe is a one-stop solution for web services delivered for the iPhone and includes features like over-the-air syncing, linking web applications like Mail and Calender.  Basically MobileMe is a subscription-based cloud application where all the Apple devices including iPod, iMac, PC, iPhone and the rest can collaborate together. But lately the services have been failing all too often. Sometime the services don’t work or work with constant interruptions. Forums all over the web have been filled with discussions on failure of MobileMe. And its not just MobileMe which is failing for Apple. The .mac which is another web service for Apple desktops is also having problems lately.

In an email sent to Apple employees, Steve Jobs mentions that MobileMe is not up to Apple's standards. “It was a mistake to launch MobileMe at the same time as iPhone 3G, iPhone 2.0 software and the App Store. We all had more than enough to do, and MobileMe could have been delayed without consequence.” Jobs adds that, “The MobileMe launch clearly demonstrates that we have more to learn about Internet services... And learn we will. The vision of MobileMe is both exciting and ambitious, and we will press on to make it a service we are all proud of by the end of this year.”

All this just proves that the online world of business and technology is lot different compared to the desktop world. Heroes become zeroes in a second’s flash and being agile is the name of the game. When we criticize Google of being too fast to release new technologies under the “BETA” label, we ought to remember that this is the key to their success. They often release services that aren’t fully feature-rich, but they work stable-enough to be accepted by the internet audience... And then slowly they keep adding more features!!

Windows Beats Linux/OSX at Handwriting

Lately I’ve been trying to code an application which requires some form of natural handwriting recognition. Natural Handwriting is basically the way you write on your Tablet/Pocket PC/Palm/Mobile, either using a stylus on your touch-screen or on the desktop using mouse. And after looking at different options available for handwriting recognition, Windows beats every other operating system including Linux and Mac OSX hands down!!

For the last month or so I’ve tried every possible handwriting recognition software and API out there. Paid, free and open-source API or Programs for Windows, Linux and OSX. Out of all the ones I tried, only one seemed to be perfectly working and easy to develop upon and its from Microsoft. Microsoft has this ultra-amazing API called InkAnalysis, but obviously and sadly for me, works only on Windows. And sad because the application for which I’m developing this handwriting recognition module is a popular open-source kids software and mainly targeted towards Linux distros.

InkAnalysis is a powerful API that performs 2 complementary activities of handwriting recognition and layout classification. InkAnalysis API has very good Interfaces for detecting the layout of any  given document and based on the understanding of the layout it performs handwriting recognition. Even without training it amazingly detects a wide variety of handwriting that even I had a hard time reading as a professor when checking my students’ answer sheets. The API was earlier only available as part of the Windows Vista SDK, but Microsoft has also released the API through the Tablet PC Platform SDK. This means applications that use InkAnalysis API can be run on not only Windows Vista but also Windows XP SP2, SP3 and the future... And the best showcase of the accuracy and strength of the API is through the built-in Windows Vista app called Tablet PC Input (check below screenshot)

 

During the trials of all the different APIs and programs, I had high expectations of finding something from Apple that “just works”. With the iPhone they seemed to me like the “touch” geniuses and handwriting would definitely be in touch category. But alas! OSX InkWell isn’t good enough. It makes too many mistakes and correcting them doesn’t work very well. Training or no training it had hard time recognizing natural cursive handwriting. Even the API was pretty complex to use and the didn’t have enough explanation.

Finally I came back to where I started... Looking for a API that would work with Linux, preferably was open-source licensed. I tried a few and none were close to useable. HRE from Sun was archiac and complex, Tomoe is for Japanese and Chinese script only, LipiTK from HP Labs doesn’t work like advertised and support won’t reply back to emails. Google’s revived Tesseract is only a OCR-engine, good for typed text and not handwriting. OCRopus is also work-in-progress and not working at the moment. With all my hopes down on the project, I finally reached CellWriter. CellWriter seems to be a good working handwriting recognition, but doesn’t work as modestly as InkWell or perfectly as InkAnalysis. CellWriter uses a cell-based, single-character recognizer. It requires training without which it can’t understand much, but once trained is pretty accurate at character recognition. But I tried applying it to multiple cells and it doesn’t quite work. May be a good character recognizer, but not handwriting recognition.

I thus concluded Microsoft is way ahead of the competition on handwriting recognition. Handwritten input system is useful for a lot of people and developers from the open-source community have yet to realize this fact. After all the Vista rant is popular on the web, someone should have seen its good side!!

Mac Mini Will Be Dead Soon

If you have that cute-looking, small box from Apple that fits into any monitor called “Mac Mini”, then soon you may be the owner of a discontinued product. Rumours has it again that Apple has plans to kill the Mac Mini and replace it with something else. The death of Mac Mini has been predicted lot of times, but call it Steve Jobs insistence on a living-room computer or Apple’s love for small, Mac Mini has lived on...

But this time it could be little different... Apple has notified its partners that Mac mini will be soon reaching EOL (End-of-Life) and a newer product, possibly an addition to Apple TV will be launched. Mac Mini is the cheapest Mac available and it has been Steve Jobs favorite for long time. The “Cube” has lived on!! Apple has been working off late on consumer electronics that can be used in homes and living rooms along with TV. Apple TV surely hit that market, but isn’t as popular as one would want. Probably adding a computer and OSX to the Apple TV can help... It will be probably logical to have one product do it all

But the announcement from Apple about this product should come sooner rather than later. The Back-to-School season should be a good time to release the new product and help people make the switch to the cheapest Mac...

3G iPhone Expectation Decreases Market Share

The latest smart phone market share data released by IDC shows that Apple's iPhone has lost market share. On the other hand RIM's Blackberry has gained market share. Does this mean that Blackberry is picking up back against the iPhone? Is the excitement about iPhone coming to an end?

If you look at the facts it seems like Apple is loosing its lustre. iPhone has a market share of 19.2% in Q1'08 compared to 26.7% in Q4'07. At the same time Blackberry has increased its market share from 35.1% in Q4'07 to 44.5% in Q1'08. Thus it seems Blackberry has a victor in the making. IDC analyst Ramon Llamas said the BlackBerry is now strong in the "prosumer" segment, as RIM has successfully widened the appeal of the device beyond the professionals who have been its core customer group.

Actually, the fact is that iPhone excitement is just about to reach its peak sometime later this year when Apple Application Store will come into being. Apple has released its developer program and developers are in the process of finishing their applications. A lot of prospective buyers of the iPhone are also waiting for a 3G version which Apple plans to release in a few months time. With a really small timespan left, Apple will be up again and I think will be capturing all the lost market share.

Flash Not Good Enough For Steve Jobs, But Windows Mobile Wants It

When Steve Jobs said that Flash wasn't good enough for the iPhone, it was kind of odd. Odd because a lot of devices from other handset manufacturer including Nokia, Sony Ericsson are easily able to display Flash using FlashLite. But here we are, Steve Jobs saying the iPhone needs a better, "special" version of Flash, just like YouTube site for iPhone.

Soon after that, I was speculating that Apple was going to use Silverlight on the iPhone and Microsoft was pitching a good deal to Apple. But today Microsoft's Windows Mobile team has a surprise for us!! Microsoft has licensed the latest version of Flashlite v3 from Adobe to be installed on handsets with Windows Mobile. The most current version of Flash Lite, which is developed on Adobe Flash CS3, can' display pages built using Flash 9, but it works with sites created using older versions of Flash.

The announcement comes as a surprise because Microsoft has been building its own version of a Flash competitor called Silverlight. Silverlight is under heavy development for the mobile devices, but Microsoft still managed to win Nokia to install Silverlight on its devices. I'm not sure how Nokia would be feeling with this development and I guess they must be thinking some delay in the shipping of a Silverlight for Mobiles.

Either ways, how can be Flashlite good enough for Windows Mobile when it isn't good enough for iPhone?? I guess Steve Jobs always needs special treatment!!

Can Developers Decide iPhone Vs Android ??

Its exciting to see the amount of work that is going into mobile phone world. Google wants to be at the helm of things in the future of mobile devices and   Android is its bet to conquer the mobile world. Rich Miner, manager for mobile platforms at Google was speaking at the Emerging Communications Conference and said that Android will Outshine iPhone. Only time will tell if Google's belief in Android will be true, but let us analyse how the competitive environment of Android and iPhone will look like.

Apple's iPhone is a phenomenon. It sold about 4 million units in its first seven months of release and is grabbing market share in the US smartphone market unlike any other previous mobile phone. Even with a closed platform, where installing apps was an issue and developing apps for the iPhone was a reverse-engineering experiment, it still managed to make all those sales. Just goes to show what good design and "Apple sleekness" can do!! The latest release of the iPhone SDK brings in a new paradigm to the iPhone, where developers will be making new apps that can be downloaded from the "Apple App Store". Apple said last week that more than 100,000 downloads of the SDK were done and if this is any indication then we can surely expect some interesting apps for the iPhone.

On the other hand we have Google Android which was announced at 3GSM last year. Google Android is a software platform and there isn't any device in the market that currently implements it. The SDK has been downloaded over 750,000 times and Google is offering $10 million in prizes as part of its "Android Developers Challenge" for innovative applications. The response to the competition and design wins from Motorola, HTC, Samsung and others, may be one reason why Google may be confident about its position that Android may outshine iPhone.

But the question to ask here is whether just having good apps decide the winner?? iPhone has made its sale till date only on the pre-installed apps. This goes to show the mobile phone matters. The iPhone User-Interface has been innovative, but the same can't be said about Android at the moment. How it will be implemented by the handset manufacturers will also be another reason to decide the winner in this battle. Google Android being free, open-source will definitely help keep the price of the handset down compared to the expensive iPhone, but will price be enough to win this battle??

Developers may create great apps, but the users are going to decide the winner of this battle. Lets wait and watch the fun!!

2 Million iPhone Customers for AT&T

Reuters reports that AT&T has 2 million of its customers who bought an iPhone with the connection in 2007. The news just goes to show how many people bought the iPhone, but does not have a mention of how many people got the iPhone unlocked and are now using on a different service. But either ways, its great news for Apple supporters and its in sync with the Apple's largest quarter results ever.

From Reuters interview:

"We had very solid sales results in October and November and we had almost double sales in December," said Chief Financial Officer Rick Lindner, referring to iPhone sales on the company's quarterly earnings call.

Whoever said that iPhone isn't as much hit as the iPod needs to look at these numbers. 2 million means quite a lot of those cell phones are in the hands of people. And surely Apple has some margins with the exclusivity of AT&T. Hopefully, Apple has already made enough cash to pour in back to R&D for the next version of iPhone. A 3G iPhone should be coming sooner!!

Apple Wants OSX Genuine Advantage

According to this patent filing, we can see that Apple wants something similar to Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) that is part of Windows. The patent was filed by Apple on Dec 13, 2007 and has the subject, "RUN-TIME CODE INJECTION TO PERFORM CHECKS". Apple wants to have code injection into any running application and make checks if the application is valid or not and if it has necessary rights to run on the specific hardware or software platform. Thus, this is a DRM thing that Apple wants to add to OSX.  

DRM or Digital Rights Management is one way to govern data/applications and has been "talk of the town" for media files and content. If memory serves me right, Steve Jobs was last seen complaining against DRM to audio companies, but somehow he thinks that adding DRM to the OS is a good thing. Yes, it can be used for good things, when users are given the rights to manage the applications or data. But looking at the abstract, "an authorizing entity (e.g., an application owner or platform manufacturer)", it doesn't seem like the owner of the computer has much of the rights.

Vista has special checks of DRM as part of WGA and Microsoft uses it to check the validity of Windows users. WGA hasn't been able to prove the genuineness of the applications running maliciously on Windows and is only a waste of CPU cycles. Also it checks for genuine copy of Windows, but has been flagging some legal copies as pirated copies for sometime now.

Apple may or may not bring those ill-effects by implementing DRM in a different way, but in its very nature DRM is a hindrance to freedom. May be some people will claim DRM to be the price for freedom, but in my humble opinion, its only a way in which powerful people can show their might. Let's hope Apple doesn't bring it to OSX anytime soon!!

AT&T Takes Revenge On Apple

Everyone knows AT&T exclusively sold the iPhone and bet quite a lot of money on the iPhone. Infact, AT&T shares quite a large percentage of revenue earned from the iPhone users with Apple. So, you must come to think of Apple & AT&T being best friends...??

That's not quite the inside story. When AT&T sold the first iPhone bundled with its service exclusively, it meant that iPhone could be used only on AT&T networks. But you know, the hackers didn't want that to happen. They unlocked the iPhone and we know what happened after that. But one thing not many people understood is why Apple sold the iPhone from it's stores as well, when it was only meant to be running on AT&T's network. It should have been available only at AT&T's shops and not the iTunes activation. Atleast some gaurantee that you have taken the AT&T's plans!! Forget it though since that's history...

Apple releases the firmware slowly after everyone in the world has unlocked the iPhone and newer firmware is cracked even before Apple puts its on its servers. AT&T must be totally pissed off at these leaks and so, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson leaked the info that consumers could expect a new iPhone next year that offered HSDPA wireless broadband support. This means the 3G missing from iPhone currently would be available early next year... After this information leaked, obviously people wanting to buy iPhones will hold their horses and wait for the 3G one. That's how you take revenge on Apple!!

AT&T obviously has plans and other phones for its revenue, but for Apple the iPhone sales will surely slow down. PBS's Bob Cringely, also agrees to this view, but seems to suggest that Apple will bid on the 700Mhz spectrum that Google, Intel, Verizon and others are fighting for. We'll know that on Monday, but I'm quite certain Apple will stay away from the fight which has already got quite noisy!!

At Apple.com, Virus = Windows

Found this interesting thing and thought it would be funny thing to share with friends before they leave for the weekend. Its just a piece of the all-famous Apple bashing Windows at apple's website.

On the top right of the Apple.com webpage, you'll see a search box. Its an AJAX-enabled search box, which means its kind-of like Spotlight, where results are shown as you type. Yeah, so what everyone (read==>Yahoo) have already done this. But the fun thing happens when you type the word -virus- into that box. It says,

"Windows... Why You'll Love The Mac. View the latest TV Ads".

We've all already seen the ads from Apple with the Windows bashing, but this one is a good easter egg!! For a screenshot of how it all looks, look below or try it yourselves at apple.com

82% of iPhone Customers Are Very Satisfied

Although the "so called geeks" have been bashing the iPhone for not having some feature or the other, people who have bought the iPhone are very satisfied with the product.

I quote from ChangeWave's website, "According to ChangeWave’s latest consumer cell phone survey, completed Oct. 2, 2007, the Apple (AAPL) iPhone has continued to enjoy solid growth while racing to a huge lead in terms of customer satisfaction."

The report mentions that 82% of all the iPhone customers surveyed replied "very satisfied" with the product. For the owners of the iPhone, obviously the looks, interface and usability is what matters more than the 3rd party applications. A lot of iPhone users I know, think that iPhone already comes in with quite a lot of applications and others who want to install 3rd party apps don't mind using jailbreak.

Although the sample size of the survey is 3,654, my personal acquaintance of iPhone users tells me that they are truly a satisfied lot. Also the report mentions about the increase in the share price of Apple after the launch of the iPhone. Thus, Apple has not just satisfied its customers with the iPhone, but also helped make itself some money as well as made its shareholders satisfied!!

Another significant success story of the iPhone is how its captured the market share very quickly. It now stands at 2% of all the cellphones sold in the last 3 months. And the loser in Apple's gain is Motorola. Although Motorola still has the largest US market share, its dropped to 30% from 31% in July 2007.

This is great news for Steve Jobs and his team at Apple, who might have imagined such success after the hype that they created for the product before launch.

Original Report Release: ChangeWave