Is Apple Doomed?

21. January 2013 · Categories: Apple

With the rise of the at cost phones and tablets from the Android camp, Florian Müller wonders whether Apple is doomed unless it can impose a lot of differentiation through the enforcement of patents.

Apple has two important advantages compared to the Android camp: the app store and the great quality of the hardware. The app store is important for serious use, as you need good applications to get some work done on the device. This is still a very strong point for Apple. Even though Android is catching up in the number of apps available, they are not yet catching up in app quality. And this is not surprising as the Apple App Store is still making developers a lot more money than they can on Android. Add to this that it is much easier to support the entire Apple ecosystem, and I do not see that Android will be catching up soon.

The hardware quality is a different advantage that is very difficult to overcome for the competition. This is not that cannot build them, but that they lack the DNA for tasteful design. Apple in addition has huge margins which they can use to innovate while the competition gets slowly starved off funds. Many people regard them as overpriced, but apart from the iPhone they are not selling at a huge premium, in fact their large economies of scale allow them to price their offerings quite competitively. Their relatively high prices are the result of a refusal to skip on quality, and it leaves them in a pretty good position as the high end tech brand.

The opening Android has is almost exclusively by price, and it is only in phones where the large margin of the iPhone leaves Samsung an opening to compete at the quality end of phones. Everyone else needs to reduce product quality to be able to undercut Apple, and this is a huge problem. The only individual phone that has even come close to iPhone sales levels is the high end Galaxy S III, which is only a bit cheaper, and I believe this shows that phones are cheap enough that people are willing to pay a premium to get the best possible experience.

Apple might eventually be forced to reduce their 50+% margins on the iPhone to a more reasonable 30%, this would correspond to a price drop from 700$ to 500$. The Nexus 4 was priced at 300$, without LTE though, so the question is whether Apple could maintain a 150$ premium on its phones. I believe that many people will prefer a higher quality handset that lasts well for one more year, for the same total cost, to repeatably replacing junk. Also we must not forget that phones are cheap, that the premium for an iPhone is only about 300$, or 12.50$ per month for 24 months. This looks like a very reasonable price to pay for getting the best experience for a device you use hours every week.

The real problem that can break Apple is the web revolution, which causes nearly everybody to move their data into the cloud as a convenience to ensure that all our different devices have the same data, as well as to facilitate better sharing with other people. Apple will always be at a disadvantage here as their way to make money is to create the best devices, and their instinct is to restrict their services to users of their devices. Google has much better web service offerings and Apple has so far not been able to provide something matching. Ironically, even Microsoft is much stronger in web services than Apple. In general, iMessages is their most successful web offering, but the app store is really breaking at the seams, and should be rewritten.

There are similar problems with the iCloud offerings, they seem to not work right all the time, with the risk of data loss. Also they are not very useful for collaboration.

Elevation Dock

18. January 2013 · Categories: Apple

After a long wait and a lost package my dock has finally arrived. It looks beautiful.

With my trusty old iPhone 4, it works very nice, especially the low friction connector ensures that I can easily take it out with one hand. It is designed to allow you to use it with the iPhone in a case, so there is a 5mm margin to each side. This means that without a case the iPhone looks a bit lost on the dock, it looks much better with a bumper attached. The bumper however ever so slightly increases the distance to the dock receptor in the iPhone, which means that slight movements caused by interacting with the iPhone in the dock can displace it, and cause it to loose the connection. This doesn’t happen with a pure iPhone, the connection is then very robust.

Unfortunately, the current iPhone 5 adapter uses the original lightning cable, which has too much friction for one handed operations. So 5 users need to wait until their search for a better solution is successful.

Aaron Schwartz Persecution

15. January 2013 · Categories: Politics

After hearing the sad news that Aaron Schwartz committed suicide, much of the coverage has focused on how a prosecutor gone wild has contributed to this by cornering him. Despicable as this behavior has been, the real cause for this problem has not been this disgraceful human entity, but the congress of the United States as well as the Supreme Court.

It is the responsibility of the law makers to create laws that cannot abused by a bully, and the responsibility of the law’s guardians to rein them in when necessary. And the law that gave that bully the tools to intimidate Aaron was well known for being ridiculously broad, but is has not been changed. It has been defended by saying that people would not abuse its power, but this is obviously wrong. Just as people will abuse the tax code to avoid paying their fair share of taxes, prosecutors will overreach when given the opportunity by a bad law.

I believe that we simply cannot hope to keep bullies out of the prosecutor office all the time. Instead we should:

  • Allow the Supreme Court to judge on the constitutionality of laws once they have passed, and not years later when a victim of the law finally manages to appeal to the court.

  • Clean up the laws with tighter definitions to reduce their potential for abuse.

iPhone mini Rumors

12. January 2013 · Categories: Apple

There is constant speculation that Apple will introduce a cheaper basic version of the iPhone to address more of the market, and to fend of price competition from Samsung. As Apple seems to be doing just fine with the old phones, it would only make sense as a way to get rid of the old dock connector, and switch the entire lineup towards the lightning adapter.

How would Apple differentiate such a phone from the main phone? Until now it has used the available memory as the key differentiator, and it could do that with a cheaper version as well. The iPod touch also has a slower processor, as well as a slightly worse back camera than the iPhone. I doubt they would skimp too much on materials and the screen, as they are what sets the Apple brand apart. After all they have never chased the volume market in computers, and the health of the app ecosystem is excellent, so there is no need to chase volume to get more developers to their platform.

Currently Apple is able to charge more than 100% profit markup on the iPhone, and this gives them a lot of room to reduce prices for a basic model and still turn a decent profit. What I do not expect the basic model is to be cheap, more a different take on the iPhone, maybe the robust phone? Still elegant, but tougher, heavier ( like iPhone 4 heavy).

I do not believe that Apple will cut its margins on the phone too drastically, and definitely not at the price of quality. You use your phone simply too often to be willing to endure quality compromises, and in the developed world people earn enough to support a $100 surcharge every few years to get the quality you want.

Based on iPad mini as well as iPod Touch prices, a $350 iPhone is easily achievable, possibly even $300. The question is what kind of pricing pressure it would cause on the main model. Say it would be the current Touch with phone radios ( no LTE) added. Should they also provide a 32GB option for $400, I can see 60% switching from the 5 to this model. After all it would match or best the 4S in everything but the rear camera.

The Eternal Copyright

24. December 2012 · Categories: Copyright

One of the great deceptions in the discussion about copyrights is its length. With a discount rate of just 4%, a 40 year copyright term would capture 80% of full value of the work. But when we look at the actual works, we see that most are popular for at most a year, maybe 5 years. So granting any longer copyright terms would not help much in generating revenues, and if a work is not popular within 40 years, it will almost never become it later, and it certainly will not provide the income that allows the creator to pursue further works.

The main argument used to justify longer terms is as an old age provision for the artist. Since a work would only generate a meager income 40 years later, it will not help the average artist very much. It would be much better to help them save for their old age. Sportsmen are in the same boat; after 35 they need a new carrier or live of their savings. Artists do not need a special deal.

The real benefactors are the lucky few holders to the rights of evergreens. They still generate a nice income, but we must not forget that the holders would already have been amply rewarded in the first 40 years. There is no need to keep rewarding people for their ideas forever.

The other argument used is brand protection. When you create a popular figure you want to keep the right to exploit it, and you do not want any imitators to produce low quality lookalikes. But this is a job we should not burden copyright law with; there are already frameworks in trademark law that can be used, and we need to make sure that we do not kill fan fiction with it as well. If we look at the successful Disney franchises, they live from renewing their characters, not from reprints of 40+ old stories. And they want to keep the control not for the old stories, but to retain profits and control over marketing tie ins.

The last point is about artistic integrity. But provisions about which versions can be called the real thing are completely separate from who should be allowed to produce them, and royalties.

When we talk about copyright, we should not loose sight that it is an artificial monopoly created by the state to encourage the creation of works. It costs money to police it, and it reduces the ability to interact with them. These are expensive enough that limiting the copyright term to 80% of the value of an infinite monopoly sounds like a brilliant deal. This is a 40 year term when assuming a 4% discount rate, an incredibly generous assumption. For example companies demand a discount rate of 8% to 12% when calculating whether to start a product, because of the inherent uncertainty in any projection of the future. Nobody uses the returns 40 years from now when calculating where to invest, the uncertainty is just too great. The terms are so long not because they would encourage more creative works, they are the result of lobbying by the lucky few millionaires and companies owning the few really profitable properties and wanting to extract extra rent from the public. Long copyrights are not for needy poor artists, they are for greedy rich bastards.

Nikon Wireless Adapter WU-1b: Minimally Viable Interface

15. November 2012 · Categories: Photos

Nikon offers the WU-1b as a companion wireless adapter for the D600, which works with WMAU (Wireless Mobile Adapter Utility) on the iPhone to allow remote shooting. The app works well, but it is also extremely limited in what it can do, making you constantly wonder what it could have been.

The adapter itself is minuscule, only 3 grams and roughly the size of the flash shoe. It offers about 2 hours of battery life on the camera when you have live view on all the time, which means that it will last long enough for occasional use.

The interface is utterly frustrating. When you have live view on your device active, you cannot change any setting at all, neither on the device nor on the camera. The only thing you can do is tap on the screen to initiate focussing. This works, and is invaluable when you need to place your camera in odd places, but it could be so much better. Given Nikons history of artificially limiting their firmware ( bracketing comes to mind), I suspect they want to protect their PC remote program. But they should really keep in mind that this is future: Who wants to carry a laptop when an iPad mini can do the job just as well?

Macro/still images when shooting from odd angles

In practice I found it much less useful than I hoped for. Having a remote screen makes adjusting the camera easier, but you really would like to have both hands free for this. Here a Glif for your iPhone together with a GorillaPod will help.

Once the camera is positioned right, I was annoyed by the lack of feedback and manual control in the app. There is no ability to zoom the display to check on focus, and test photos download slowly, in like 10 seconds, so using this for your checks instead is also frustrating. I cannot change any camera settings remotely, tap to focus is supported, but no sign of manual focus adjustments, aperture or exposure compensation. And when you change a setting on the camera, you cannot simply do it, you need to first leave the remote view in the app.

Shooting wildlife and children

Sometimes your presence behind the lens will disturb your subject, for this a remote release can be great. This one has a problem: it is slow. Slow to update the remote view, you can have delays of up to 200ms, and slow to focus, as you only have contrast autofocus available, which can take a second. But with a static camera you will already be focused on a specific location, so in practice the update delay is most annoying. But you will also run into the problem that the Nikon mirrors are loud; a mirror less camera would be much better for this.

Self portraits

Tap to focus makes it quite easy to set the correct focus point, and with the human face having enough contrast, the camera will lock on correctly. And the live view makes it much easier to position yourself correctly for the shot. As you will do a few test shots anyways to get the composition right, it is much less annoying to have to change settings on the camera. Overall finally a niche where the adapter is enjoyable to use.

Improvements I’d like to see

As it is the adapter has too many little flaws to recommend it unless you really need the remote live view to help with composition. What I would like to see in the future:

  • Higher speed

    Slow live view updates and low download speeds are a constant irritation.

  • Better remote focus support

    The lens has an autofocus motor, this should be used to do remote manual focusing. And add the manual focussing aids: highlight the focus area in the image, and allow us to zoom the remote view

  • Remote settings updates

    Modern cameras have become quite complicated computers, and we do not need all settings remotely, but please provide the important ones: aperture, exposure compensation, ISO sensitivity, flash exposure compensation and shutter speed.

  • iPad support

    Especially with the mini out now, it would be great to able to use the larger display.

Using Web Fonts

29. October 2012 · Categories: Software

I love typography, so the ability to use my own fonts on a web site is a very welcome recent addition. But there are a few issues I came across while trying them out.

Fonts only really work on high resolution displays

Making a font that also works well on low resolution displays is a lot of hard work, since it forces you to work with quite few pixels, and the low resolution requires you into a somewhat wider character width to keep the features easily distinguishable. Most fonts do not have this amount of attention put into them, and become relatively difficult to read at small sizes. Since you will not be able to notice much of the font with such a coarse display anyways, it is best to stick to default fonts for them. I know, Georgia and Verdana are getting a bit old on the eye, but they will be much more legible for your reader.

Your CSS should use media descriptors to use two differrent fonts depending on pixel density. The trick is to encapsulate your @font-face and font declarations in an @media block, then the fonts will not even load on low resolution displays:

Font Boxing

One potential problem with web fonts can be their metrics. The browser puts a bounding box around your text and uses that to calculate the position. The font designer determines where the characters will fit into this box, and the choice is sometimes quite different from the standard fonts, leading to layout problems. If there are issues, text inside styled buttons will show them. Remember to check both with and without ascenders / descenders to see if they look OK.

Impressions on the Apple Event

23. October 2012 · Categories: Apple

The iPad mini is close to what I expected from it, apart that it is sold as a full featured lineup. I suspect only the base models with 16 GB will sell well, given the lack of a Retina display. It has a nice new use in its much improved portability compared to the full iPad, and I have a feeling that it could become very popular as a companion on the go.

I am surprised that the iPad 2 is still in the lineup, is Apple selling off old stock, or are they required to keep it there to honor some contracts? The iPad mini would be a better buy if you need to look after your money, and the Retina display is just too big an update to ignore for $100.

The camera connection kit now comes with cables, and is split into two separate purchases. So it will be more expensive, and also have more bulk. Not a nice change, as the old connector was small enough to fit into an SD card pocket in your camera bag, and cables have a tendency to break. I wonder whether Apple is worrying about the stress when people put SD cards into the reader while connected to the iPad.

How long will Apple wait before they reduce the price they ask for more flash memory? On the MacBook Pro it is $2 per GB, with the iPads $6 or $3 per GB for memory that has a good deal worse performance. This leaves the door open for competitors to undercut Apple on price.

Tomorrow’s iPad Mini Event

22. October 2012 · Categories: Apple

Tomorrow Apple is widely expected to introduce a smaller form factor iPad. I assume it to be engineered with cost reduction as the main goal, while keeping the requirements of schools in mind. I expect Apple to want to use the A5 processor with it, and this means that it will not have a retina display.

The prices need to be competitive with the 7″ Android tablets, so I assume that there will be two models, one with 8GB memory for $249 and one with 32GB for $299, and maybe a 64GB model for $379. I am not sure about wireless, I find it unlikely that it will be supported, given the high prices of data plans, and the focus on costs. It might be added once the line will have a retina display as well.

I expect it to have similar capabilities to the current iPad, with the same camera modules as the iPod Touch. I would not be surprised if Apple would provide more color choice than black and white with this model.

 

User Tracking in iOS 6

15. October 2012 · Categories: Apple

With iOS 6, Apple has introduced a new advertising identifier. You can still opt out of using it: Open the Settings app, go to General, then About, then Advertising, then set the option Limit Ad Tracking to ON. This works on the iPhone as well as the iPad.

More background can be found at Business Insider.

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