In a rather unexpected twist, Canada’s largest newspaper and newspaper of record — The Globe and Mail — has published details of Apple’s upcoming iTV. According to the paper, Rogers and Bell — Canada’s two largest telcos — are already testing the Apple iTV in their labs.

via Apple iTV detailed: It’s like a 42-inch iPad | ExtremeTech.

I’ll have two, by the way. Or maybe three.

The dated, dusty and generally dreadful technology store?

Oh dear.

Let’s be clear, Dixons Travel is pretty excellent. I’ve bought quite a lot from them over the years — indeed I even picked up a £1,400 laptop once on a semi-whim. Dixons Travel shops at Heathrow tend to be brightly lit, modern and staffed by (generally) keen folk, ready to help.

Almost the polar opposite, then, to the dive that is Dixons Bracknell, nearby my place in Ascot. It’s a shocking place, stuffed to the brim of old, over-priced technology that’s hardly helping anyone. As for customer service? It’s rare, very rare, to find a Dixons chappy who’s happy to help beyond demanding you ‘enter your PIN’ and querying if you ‘want the receipt in the bag’.

PC World is another flipping tragedy. If John Browett is seriously meant to be the guy who masterminded their development, I’m sorry to say, they’re about a trillion miles away from the quality environment of an Apple Store.

That, I should point out, hasn’t stopped me buying — begrudgingly — from PC World on occasion, especially since it’s rather useful to walk-away with something there-and-then.

Perhaps John was the loanlone voice at Dixons/PC World? Perhaps he was the chap kicking and screaming and trying to get the dead-end retailer to do something, anything, that might make customers smile? Maybe he focused his attention on the Travel shops first?

Either way, the benefit of the doubt is most certainly necessary. It’s a phenomenal role for John and I wish the chap every success. He’ll be inheriting probably one of the most fascinating physical sales environments on the planet.

Here’s how GigaOM reacted to the news:

Tim Cook has made his first major appointment since taking the reins at Apple, bringing in the head of British technology retailer Dixons, John Browett. He comes in to fill the gap left by the departure of Ron Johnson, the man who spent a decade building the Apple Store into a force to be reckoned with.

 

via Who is Apple’s new retail boss, and what will he do? — Tech News and Analysis.

Now, all the iFans go absolutely nuts, there’s method in this apparent madness, especially given Apple has just completed yet another ridiculously amazing quarter.

If you recall, Nokia was swimming along knocking out millions of handsets a day before it reached what we might politely describe as a market-required-correction. Things got so bad in February last year that the company found itself in a seriously precarious ‘burning platform’ position.  It’s of platforms we wanted to talk, though.

In this week’s episode we discuss the ‘technology cycle’ and how the need to refresh a mobile platform every 5 years – something that is currently causing Nokia and RIM so much pain – will eventually come to Apple.

How will Apple handle that?

How will they navigate the treacherous waters? The mobile industry is moving faster and faster — and although Apple is easily knocking back billions in revenue at the moment, it’s conceivable that it could come unstuck rather fast.

We do think Apple is one of the few firms with the vision and experience to navigate this tricky process successfully. That didn’t stop us wargaming a host of scenarios though.

Have a listen and tell me what you think:

[ Direct MP3 download - 34MB ]

There are lots of ways to follow or subscribe to the Podcast using iTunes and other popular services.

I don’t mean unlimited texts, or fancy calling plans — I mean absolutely new products and services that really make you sit back and think, “WOW”.

Why are operators so horrendously rubbish at delivering anything new into market?

Well there’s a whole load of reasons. You can blame the top management. I do, regularly. You can blame the jobsworths sitting having lots of meetings with each other and doing nothing. You might look at the obsessive focus on minutes, texts (and more recently, data revenues). There are hundreds of valid explanations for why comparatively nothing has changed in the operator landscape for years.

Today, however, I’d like you to join me in reading this post by Matthew panzarino at The Next Web: “This is how Apple’s top secret product development process works”

If I’ve held your attention this long, please click on the link, read it, and then come back here.

Right then.

Fascinating, isn’t it?

Look at the company’s tenacity and focus. I love each and every single concept. The “new product process” roadmap. The EPM mafia… LOVE that. Someone who’s actually IN control of the project and answerable to the direction team? Genius. I very much like the “Rules of the Road” too, detailing out every single significant milestone with — crucially — a DRI (“Direct Responsible Individual”).

If you’ve ever worked in an operator, or if you’re sitting there employed by one at the moment, I’m willing to bet Matthew’s post will have had you salivating at the possibilities. Can you IMAGINE what it’d be like to work at an operator where the Apple approach was used?

Can you imagine the creativity? The excitement? The flippin’ brilliant innovation that could be delivered?

Of course, you’ll also understand in absolute terms that something like this COULD NEVER HAPPEN HERE.

Unfortunately it seems like most operators are built to make any kind of change or update impossible, usually because of a lack of balls on the part of senior management. Dated billing systems, crippled networks, antiquated budgetary demands, the whole thing is super-depressing.

I routinely sit and listen to many talented folk from the Western mobile operator community describe their complete inability to actually do anything in their roles beyond smile, attend ‘nothing happens’ meetings and send emails to each other.

Over the years we’ve seen glimmers of hope. It’s not all bad. Entire divisions have been established to help boost this kind of thing. However, invariably, the division that’s busy doing all the cool stuff doesn’t ever get the attention of the mothership. Because the mothership’s leaders are either numbskulls, career minute men (obsessed over the sale of minutes) or simply way, way out of their depth.

It does get rather depressing.

It’s not all bad, though. I’ve seen some encouraging signs from one operator group. Another is sort-of getting there.

One of the most interesting moves in recent months came from the freemobile.fr chaps (here’s the FT overview). I’m hopeful that they’ll get the French industry out of it’s current funk and, if we’re lucky, the fever of panic will spread abroad.

One can but hope..

- – - – -

Here are the previous posts in the Operator Innovation series:

- Operator Innovation: Isolate me from the pain of hardware responsibility
- Access any airport lounge with T-Mobile GlobalPlus+
- Let me access my SMS everywhere
- One number for all my voice calls
- Fancy a MacBook Air, iPhone, iPad for £100/month?
- Why can’t my operator talk to my bank when my card declines abroad
- Taxis, baby, Taxis!

When users will find out for certain is also subject to debate; a March launch has been suggested for the iPhone by a number of blogs, who have also suggested it for the iPad 3. Hexus, however, has claimed that Apple could make a rare announcement at February’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

via Apple’s larger iPhone 5 ‘coming in March’ – Telegraph.

Generally speaking — and famously — Apple never bother with conferences unless it’s got “Mac” or “Apple” written on it.

I don’t see them breaking the habit and exhibiting at MWC any time soon.

However, I do think that it would be very, very smart if Apple made an announcement either the week before or during Mobile World Congress — especially if it was iPhone-related.

Apple already did this to an extent with CES — however, the iPhone and the mobile industry are a seriously different kettle of fish.

If Apple really wanted to upset the existing world order (and the millions upon millions of Euros being invested during Mobile World Congress), they should call a “Let’s talk about iPhone” press conference for the first Monday of MWC-week.

Goodness me.

Can you imagine?

Just speculating brings me out in goosebumps.

The world’s consumer media (mainstream and bloggers) will be flying into Barcelona on Sunday evening to record their “here’s a new Android” segment for 30 minutes on Monday morning, before flying out same-day. [Of course, the trade media will be there for the duration].

Can you imagine the shock if Apple made the media choose? Either you cover our keynote about the new iPhone in San Francisco. Or you go to that also-ran in Barcelona.

To be clear, I’m certainly not labelling MWC thus! That was me putting fighting words in Apple’s mouth.

Sparks would fly though.

And there’d be no choice. The media would flock to San Francisco. The anchors, the editors, the pundits — they’d all be in California and MWC would either be ignored or

The ramifications for the industry would be profound. Of course the mobile industry now exists in Apple’s shadow. But not officially. Not, really. And certainly not at MWC. In Barcelona, the operators can freely strut their stuff and the other platforms can have a bit of time in the media sun. Apple is always in the back of everyone’s mind at MWC, but it’s possible to suspend reality for at least a few minutes.

And it’s in this limited reality that the rest of the industry gets to pretend that it’s still relevant, that things are still the same as they were pre-iPhone. That nothing has really changed.

Look at the keynotes at MWC over the last few years since the iPhone’s announcement. iPhone and Apple has been largely irrelevant — the industry’s still under the impression it’s in control.

A serious tub-thumping press conference from Apple timed to remove all attention from MWC would illustrate the new world order nicely.

I’m a fan of this kind of hard ball because it’s one of the only measures that might prompt the rest of the mobile marketplace — the operators in particular — to actually get off their arses and start innovating properly.

Anyway.

Perhaps Apple will be too polite and give-way.

More than 9 billion push notifications later and the company is now absolutely flying with 25,000+ customers with tech giants such as Intel, Salesforce, Verizon, Foundry Group and True Ventures participating in their Series C round. Not for nothing is Urban Airship routinely regarded as one of the most valuable tools in a developer’s arsenal.

Urban Airship’s products now underpin the operations of companies such as Dictionary.com, Groupon, Warner Bros, The Weather Channel and Yahoo. The chances are that if you get a third-party push notification on your iPhone today, it was probably sent through Urban Airship’s infrastructure.

The snowball continues with the arrival of Christopher Dean, formerly the Chief Strategy Officer at Skype. He joins recent CMO hire Brent Hieggelke (the chap behind Second Porch/HomeAway).

I have to say I’m particularly impressed with how they’ve integrated Rich Push into the service. If you chose to include the SDK within your app, your customers will appear to receive gorgeous rich push notifications instead of the rather limited ‘one liner’ style approach standard on iOS. Of course — and rather interestingly — Urban Airship’s notifications infrastructure isn’t just restricted to iOS. Oh no. It works on iOS, Android and BlackBerry — and even the Kindle Fire.

If you’ve been thinking about playing with notifications, do take a look at what Urban Airship are offering: You can get a million push messages per month with their basic account — and that’s absolutely free.

I’m looking forward to seeing what else they’ve got coming in 2012.

It’s the first new year’s eve since the launch of iMessage. Will Apple’s servers hold up? Can they teach the MNOs a thing or two about scaling? History suggests not but I guess we’ll find out!

Jay responded:

That would be a no! It’s midnight here in Hong Kong, and trying to send *any text* with iMessage enabled results in “Message send failure” – turning off iMessage, and the mobile operator handles it just fine.

So I guess even just the lookup of “is this an iMessage person” was failing… ouch!

My son was due out of bed at about 530am (teething at the moment) so I didn’t bother doing the whole New Year thing. I was in bed by 10pm I think. Life as a father with a toddler, eh? So I didn’t get to see if iMessage performed nicely during the midnight rush. How did you find things? It raises interesting questions about Apple’s ability to truly scale to significant volume. One imagines that Hong Kong wasn’t doing THAT many iMessages, surely?

Jonathan Ive is rumored to have an Apple-branded HDTV hanging out in his office. According to a USA Today source who worked at Apple, Apple’s head of design is sitting on a 50-inch iTV that is likely to hit the market later this year.

via Rumor: Jonathan Ive Has a 50-inch Apple HDTV in His Office | TechnoBuffalo.

As I commented in my initial post on the matter back in October, Photo stream was a total screw-up. A joyous concept that arrived half-baked. Or, not even that — it was still frozen, waiting for the oven. Being unable to selectively delete photos from your device photo stream made it either unusable or highly frustrating for most right-thinking users.

I commented as such on my post.

Predictably, I received a barrage of shocked Apple people who defended the 5.0 implementation, pointing out that my feelings and instincts were completely wrong.

Suck it.

I’m right. I knew it. Apple either didn’t put the resources into the first version or decided to let the community do the testing and evolution for them.

Either way the next release should fix the primary problems. This is great news.

Technobolt has the full details on what’s coming with 5.1. Here’s the bit about Photo Stream:

Photos taken using iOS 5.1 can be deleted from Photo Stream on your device and will be removed automatically from Photo Stream on your other iOS 5.1 devices. Older photos can be manually deleted from your iOS 5.1 devices.

5.1 is in beta right now and should be with us soon. Bring it on.

One of the reasons I was so disappointed by the recent Apple keynote was the total lack of new hardware. One of the key points we were all looking for was Apple’s NFC strategy. The reasoning was pretty straight forward: It’s game over for NFC once Apple sets the strategy.

I think the marketplace is changing rather dramatically though and the company’s (apparent?) delay has enabled other players (especially Google) to charge ahead.

The previous thinking went like this: Apple = a sexy company. Everyone wants to work with them. So the moment they announce NFC capabilities linked to your iTunes account, everyone-and-their-dog will queue up to work with them. Because it will just work beautifully. And Apple will have arranged a few influential partnerships to convince just enough of the industry to think, “screw it, let’s use their standard”. One example I’ve floated a few times is some kind of tie up with a sports association — like the NBA or NFL, to ensure that every single one of their stadiums offer NFC-ticketing at launch with the iPhone 5. Or Starbucks. Or similar.

It’s a lot more murkier now that I’ve started to see PayPass technology all over the place and now that other incumbents are busy making hay before the Apple gorilla gets stuck in.

Yet I wonder if the majority of the market is either consciously or sub-consciously waiting for Apple to get on with it, still. You can’t ignore them. You simply can’t. Not only are they ridiculously influential, they’ve got the capacity, the reach, the credit card numbers, the loyal customers… not to mention 80 odd billion dollars to spend as necessary.

It’s going to be rather exciting to see what they propose. Meanwhile I’m delighted to see that the rest of the world isn’t standing still. RIM, for example, recently had some of its handsets certified by Mastercard for NFC transactions. I’m hoping we’ll see some stimulating news from Microsoft/Nokia on NFC soon as well.

Meanwhile I think there is an element of wait-n-see. Because if Apple are going a completely different way from everyone else, the market’s going to have to make a determination. Apple still carry so much influence that whatever they announce, it’s likely that’s going to be the way ahead for everyone. Right? What do you reckon?

How do you like the idea of turning your heating up by telling Siri to sort it out?

I like that a lot.

A *lot*.

I don’t want to have to arse about going into the kitchen — which is where our boiler/thermostat is — and open up the sodding boiler thingy and then screw about with stuff. No. I want Siri to do it for me.

And given how well Siri appears to work with my accent, I’m well up for this.

But not just the heating. I’d like to control a whole host of things from Siri (or, via voice). It’d be good to query the oven temperature and have it increased/decreased from the sofa.

It’s still a little experimental but Wired reports that if you’ve got the patience, you too can make this happen. Me? I’m going to wait until this stuff is a little bit more ‘production-ready’.

How long before your new Barratt Home comes with Siri integration?

Web developer Pete Lamonica is the brain behind the thermostat hack. He can now tell Siri to check his thermostat’s status, and change the temperature at which the heater or air conditioner turns on. Lamonica started on his project last Tuesday after Applidium released its instructions for cracking Siri using a custom SSL certification authority. The complete project took about five days.

“I had originally planned to do something similar to that College Humor skit, then I thought I could have it control my wireless thermostat. I created a proxy to accomplish that,” Lamonica says. He’s a member of the St. Louis-area hackerspace Arch Reactor. “I’ve done some stuff with the thermostat before, such as having it log temperatures. It has a developer API which makes it very easy to work with.”

via Siri Hacked to Control a Thermostat — What’s Next? | Gadget Lab | Wired.com.

Waiting. Walking. Watching TV. Working out. Winding down. Waking up. We check email pretty much everywhere these days. And when we do, we want easy access to our important messages so we can respond quickly and get back to life — or slinging birds at thieving green pigs.

With that in mind, we’ve created a new Gmail app for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. We’ve combined your favorite features from the Gmail mobile web app and iOS into one app so you can be more productive on the go. It’s designed to be fast, efficient and take full advantage of the touchscreen and notification capabilities of your device. And it’s one more reason to switch to Gmail.

via Introducing the Gmail app for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch | Official Gmail Blog.

Why the obsession over apps for iOS when there are 70 million folk with a BlackBerry whose Gmail app you’re about to kill?

Fascinating.

All your purchases automatically downloaded. Except movies. Or TV shows.

I think my problem with Apple began when, without any flipping explanation at all, the latest version of their operating system required me, by default, to start scrolling upwards instead of downwards. Or was it the other way around? I can’t remember. I don’t care. I don’t want to care. This is why I pay extra for Apple — so that it’s all managed.

The launchpad arrived. Supposedly to make things look like iOS. That’s confused the hell out of my family who are still trying to get around the scrolling update. Yes, you can switch it off, but the confusion, dear me… that’s taken some explanation.

Then the utter debacle with this bleedin’ Photo Share system. An ultra-alpha photo-sharing-sort-of-but-not-really service that has even the best of us confused. That is, apart from the Apple Apologists who’ve been seriously upset with my recent rather critical post. Some apologists even took to forensically taking apart my post to try and point out that Apple wasn’t to blame. The ‘you’re just using it wrong’ argument doesn’t stack up. Not when I’m spending thousands with the company every year. Not when I can buy a faster, higher-spec Dell for a billionth of the price.

The latest arse with Apple is iTunes. It really is a dickhead set of services. Let’s be clear, I really enjoy the concept, I do spend LOTS with Apple through iTunes. I love the one-click download options, the speed and, for the most part, the available selection of songs, TV shows and movies.

But it’s almost 2012. I thought I’d be freed from the shit.

Let me explain the shit: It’s managing files.

I now have 993 gigabytes of iTunes media. Movies, TV, audiobooks and music. I don’t buy HD movies or TV shows. I can’t ‘afford’ to, because I have to manage my sodding file structure myself. This, despite the fact that Apple has a gigantic data centre waiting for me.

A little while ago when I passed 600GB of iTunes data, I deployed a dedicated drive for iTunes. I opened up my Mac Pro and stuck in an extra 1-terabyte drive. I then painfully DICKED about with the iTunes Library file to make sure that when I transferred the data and the database file to the new drive, I’d still be able to access all my music. Get this wrong and your database file corrupts. (You can still *see* the list of files, just, you can’t flipping access them any more, so you need to start again with the ratings, etc.)

It’s a triple-A arse. It sucks so much of time. I thought I was done. I really did. But I obviously keep on spending money with Apple. One TV episode is about 600mb. Buy a single 24-episode series and you’ve spunked 14.4 gigabytes. Before long that starts to add up. Especially if you’re a big fan of a particular on-going series. My wife likes to buy a lot of TV series as well.

And I need to horde the flipping files as well. Get this: It’s almost 2012 and I am still having to horde my own flipping data. Why? Because I ‘own’ it. I don’t WANT to own it, but I have to. Because if I lose the files, I’m screwed. The £30 I spent on some series is wasted because I can’t get the files again. Unless I plead with Apple’s customer support. Who are wholly entitled to ignore me. Because, as they keep on reminding me, I must back up my purchases.

I don’t bother backing them up.

A flipping TERABYTE? Yes. I’ve almost got a terabyte of data. I’m 7GB away from overloading that drive. I now need to go and buy a TWO TERABYTE drive. Just for Apple. Just because I quite enjoy being able to watch the odd TV show on the plane or the train.

It’s beginning to seriously wind me up. I don’t want to invest another 6 hours screwing around with hard disks.

Why can’t I just access it all in the cloud? Why can’t I delete 500GB of the shows that I don’t need to watch *now* and, should I feel the need to call up the first series of The Sarah Connor Chronicles (worth a look if you’re into Sci-Fi), I should be able to re-download it again.

But no.

Not yet.

Not now.

Apple’s clearly not ready yet for whatever reason. Perhaps it’s the inane idiots in the movie and TV industry preventing it. In which case, I should redirect my ire. Although I’d have hoped Apple could have just stamped on them. Or threatened to buy the whole industry to shut them up.

Either way, I’m moving into the departure lounge with Apple. It’s my mistake for using up too much of their services and becoming too dependent. I stopped buying movies from Apple a little while ago because the hassle of dealing with the 4GB was getting annoying. I just rent them now.

Before any smart-arse decides to suggest that I should ‘buy the DVDs’ or ‘own it on Blueray’, no thank you. I haven’t bought a DVD for at least 5 years and I don’t ever intend doing so.

And another thing. Now that I’ve got iCloud synching going on, I don’t know WHERE I am with my iPhones and iPads. When I buy an episode on the iPhone, I used to diligently plug the iPhone into the computer as soon as I could to ‘backup’ the purchase (“Transfer your purchases”) to make sure that the mother-computer had a copy of the file.

I chose the sync-by-wifi option and now I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t know if the files are ON the computer automatically. Or not. And all of a sudden I’m wondering why my iPhone battery is fried — because it’s been busy synching 2GB of TV shows that I downloaded the night before back to the desktop by super-slow WiFi.

I’m about to disable all this WiFi sync jazz just so I’ve got some control again. Geez.

Does anyone have any helpful recommendations for some alternative services to iTunes? I mean helpful. It’s got to be at least as good. For instance, I haven’t seen the last episode of Downton Abbey yet. I intend buying it tonight on the iPhone to watch on the train tomorrow. I need that level of flexibility.

Amazon may well be the answer at some point.

Meanwhile, is my only option to put up and shut up?

Note: I am delighted that I can even get annoyed with this kind of thing. A few years ago — back when Symbian was king — having this kind of problem was a pipe dream. I really do appreciate the evolution wrought by Apple. I’d just like to see it evolve a little bit more, quicker.

iCloud is something else. From the rather anecdotal conversations I’ve had with a few “CSOs”, iCloud is a substantial threat on quite a few points:

1) Corporate data is now likely to find its way quickly to the iCloud — and remain there through the use of all manner of apps (not least the iWork suite)

2) In most cases, the storage of data on iCloud is likely to be seamless handled, meaning the employee may well be unaware the data is being stored away from their device.

3) To make matters worse, the company doesn’t actually have access to its data stored on iCloud. No. The data has to be accessed through the independent employee owned iCloud account.

4) When the employee leaves, they take their iCloud credentials and all their data with them.

5) Policing the use of iCloud is likely to be substantially challenging. I’m sure there will be options available to switch this off as a policy, but I wonder how easy or widespread this will be.

6) It’s not as if iCloud is highly secure — the data is accessible with just an email and a password. In many cases, the employee’s 7-year-old is likely to know the access credentials — the same ones they use to buy level upgrades on Angry Birds.

7) There’s no visibility for the enterprise — they might have 5 employees each unknowingly storing the entire company customer record on iCloud. The enteprise can’t track or manage this.

The boundaries between enterprise and personal are seriously blurred with iCloud. I find this highly exciting as it forces a response. Indeed I’m not sure if a ‘kill it’ or ‘switch of iCloud’ mandate will be good enough — or be acceptable. I imagine that as apps and services develop they’re likely to want to depend more and more on the likes of iCloud. Reversing the dependence on iPad/iPhone as a result will be quite a challenge.

What’s the way ahead? Well I wonder how long enterprise will continue to tolerate ‘consumerisation’. I think it’s been fine up ’til now, with the odd exceptions. But can you really approve and allow your Chairman to (perhaps unwittingly) store draft acquisition papers or similar market moving data on his personal iCloud account?

As iCloud becomes even more integrated into the experience (think iOS 6 or iOS 7), will it be possible to explain to the Chairman that he has to give back his 4th generation iPad and stop using it?

Or will we see a radical adjustment to the current definitions and approaches we have surrounding enterprise security?

We just need one CEO to lose his iPad — well, actually — we just need someone to successfully crack the CEO’s ultra simple “david1978″ password and log on to the CEO’s iCloud account to gain access to a crazy amount of data. One big meaningful headline and there will be pandemonium.

Can you imagine the social engineering involved in cracking the Coke CEO’s iCloud account? I’d imagine all you have to do is turn up at home to help fix the HiFi. Ask his wife for the iTunes password to check the sync is working (or some sort of nonsense) and boom, you’re in.

I’m particularly interested in whether I could theoretically ‘clone’ a device if I had their iCloud credentials and performed a restore?

In terms of the way forward, do you think we’re about to enter a more enlightened period where we extend trust and responsibility to employees (especially with the buy-your-own trend)? Or do you expect enterprises to get even more obsessive about their data control and management policies?

If so, where do we go with the consumerisation of IT trend?

The other half of the time, I’m furious that, in order to find anything out, I have to keep on pulling down at the top of the screen.

I don’t know if I’m sold on it.

It is *nice* to see, for example, Instagram notifications collected in one place. It’s good to have somewhere to view upcoming calendar entries. I do think that it would be far more useful to have this information surfaced on the main screen of the phone. I do wonder if the Apple obsession for UI neatness has resulted in a bit of a fudge.

Ah.

I could go either way on it, I really could.

How are you finding it?

Apparently it’s going to kill everything on the phone apart from the contacts and email messages. Joy.

Hardly useful when I’m thousands of miles away from my main computer. I think I’ll need to wait a few weeks before upgrading my main iPhone. I can’t afford the disruption. Plus it’s not as if I can ‘re-download’ the movies. At least, not yet.

I have, however, brought my Orange iPhone 4 that I use for testing — so I shall be updating that one. Although I’ve just realised that’s got a whole TV series on it that I was planning on watching. Typical. I’ll give that some thought.

Meanwhile, have you done the update to iOS 5? Are you liking it?

Update: I tried to upgrade the Orange phone — that didn’t go too well:

My good friend Tom introduced me to Apple, properly. My brother, Martin, had been using Macs for quite a while but I didn’t quite get that. It was only when Tom sat me down and discussed the appreciation he had for the stunning service, the product architecture, the seamless integration of hardware and software — and the, “it just works!” mentality — that’s when I thought I’d take a look.

I spent quite a bit of time dithering. Until I arrived home from the cinema one evening to discover that my super-dooper hugely expensive PC had somehow forgotten it’s wireless drivers. Or something. Basically, it wouldn’t connect to the internet. And, in typical fashion, I had a TON to do that evening online. After 2 hours of fiddling I ended up carting the machine downstairs so I could connect it physically to the ethernet cable and get some work done. I finally finished my work at about 3am. I went to bed resolving to rid myself of this shit.

I bought a Mac Pro tower the next morning.

I like the fact that with Macs, everything is generally binary. It either works, brilliantly. Or it’s screwed. And that’s what you need the Apple Store for.

I won’t go into the whole isn’t Apple brilliant thing. Suffice to say that I’ve spent a lot of money on their products and services over the years and I’ve enjoyed the experience immensely.

The iPod and it’s effect upon the music industry was exciting. The engineering on the original MacBook Air was a wonder to behold. But the iPhone? It changed everything. (That’s precisely what I wrote at the time.)

Over the years I think many of us grew accustomed to the annual (or sometimes half-yearly, if we were lucky) keynotes from Steve Jobs. His turn of phrase, his clear passion and vision for how things should be, no wonder he and the company garnered millions upon millions of fans.

I only wish the fastidiousness and attention to detail that Steve applied to his work was duplicated by other senior executives across the technology space. It’s patently clear to see that the overwhelming majority are pushing pencils and paper around desks. I used to marvel at the stories that would come out of Apple’s HQ about how Steve behaved, about how he pushed his teams to seriously innovate, to think different — and to bring it all together into a coherent, compelling consumer offering that just worked.

There are a number of exceptions but I think it’s more or less fair to say that when you hear the term “Consumerisation of IT” what folk really mean is ‘Apple’ in all its guises whether it’s laptop, desktop, phone, tablet or service.

I’m hugely saddened that Steve’s no longer with us. The planet is poorer for it. The technology industry is poorer for it. However, as many have commented, his legacy lives on. And what a phenomenal legacy it is. I hope they do keep this in mind at Apple and keep implementing the Jobsian rigour throughout their operations. I’m sure they will.

Finally, if you haven’t already seen Steve’s Stanford University Commencement Address, I do recommend you take some time to watch it:

It’s flipping ridiculous.

Buy a 2GB movie for £9 and unfortunately it’s now your problem to manage the file. I want to buy the license and not have to mess about managing my own data infrastructure.

If you have a disk crash and you lose all your movies, hard luck.

I reckon you *might* be able to appeal to Apple for the right to download some/all of your purchases in that instance. But I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple declined to assist. Every time you download something they’re pretty good at pointing out that you should keep a backup.

A backup of my 960GB of iTunes content?

No thank you.

I just don’t want that problem.

You know and I know that Apple has a record of my purchase and that it’s stupid-simple for them to enable download on demand. I’m sure the company has wanted to look at offering this for sometime but licensing issues may have prevented it. Or perhaps the sheer data volume implications.

So I’ve been flying fast and loose. I don’t bother to back up all those TV shows, movies or music.

That’s a problem.

But perhaps a bigger problem — or massive frustration — is not being able to access the data because it’s stuck on my primary iTunes library. If I want to watch Top Gun when I’m in Houston next week, I need to plan ahead. I need to put that file on the devices I want now. It’s unrealistic to sit in a Houston hotel room and transfer a 2GB file at 15k/sec from my home machine.

The chances are the Houston hotel will have a pretty good connection to the iTunes server though. So I’d like to be able to pull down that content as I wish.

It looks like we will certainly have this feature enabled next week — although I saw no mention of movies yet. Did you? I might have missed that. Still, the ability to stop having to worry about the location of my data (and the fact that it’s backed-up — or that I have a license to access it as I need) is rather reassuring.

I particularly like the concept of iTunes Match as well: All the other music I have in my library now becomes accessible on any (Apple) device.

What are you thinking about iTunes in the iCloud?

It’s far too easy to forget that the glue that makes the iPhone such a fantastic experience for many is the service element, the fact stuff “just works”. That’s only going to get better. The array of iCloud offerings are set to make the iPhone, iPad and Mac work together like magic. The ability to snap a photo on your iPhone and then see it immediately on your other devices will be revolutionary for most users. For me I will finally be able to stop thinking. I don’t want to waste precious brain resource dicking about managing my media, syncing it, copying it.

The quickest way to get a photo to my desktop right now? Email. A full sync involves a bit of hassle — and it’s out of the question if I’m using a different machine (that I don’t use as the primary sync source). The total arse of having to create a new email with the photo the send it has always wound me up. I knew there was a better way. So I’m very much looking forward to actually using this feature regularly.

The other vendors out there are going to have to work hard to replicate or enhance the iCloud offering.

Next I’m going to look at iTunes…

Have a read:

Nokia’s stock held up nicely last week on the news that it will slash 3,500 jobs in various facilities around the world. However, this week the stock is slumping, and the main reason for this could be Apple’s event.

In all probability, Apple could come out with a cheaper version of iPhone along with the iPhone 5. It could be an entirely new phone with different specifications or iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS could act as a cheaper iPhone.

Forbes: “Apple could eat Nokia’s lunch in emerging markets”

Ah dear.

Well it’s certainly possible.

If Apple release a £15 iPhone that doesn’t need a credit card or about £1,500 of surrounding ecosystem kit to make the whole thing work nicely, then yeah, I could see a problem for Nokia in the short term.

Meanwhile, life continues…

Have you been sick of the sodding iPhone rumours? They’ve been never-ending, they really have.

Tomorrow at 6pm London, the industry will take a collective deep breath and hold it for 90-odd minutes.

Well, I presume something like 90 minutes. I haven’t actually looked at any timings. I can’t be bothered.

I’ve had enough of it. Just tell me the news already.

It is exciting, though.

Let’s insert a period of self-reflection. I’m only ever satisfied with grand announcements at this level. I’m hoping for big things. I’d like to see a repetition of that original iPhone keynote when my mind expanded with excitement at the prospect of people being able to write ‘apps’ for this platform — and be able to distribute them easily, well, actually, have Apple do the distribution for you, via their new ‘App Store’.

I’d like to see some big NFC news. Facebook and Twitter integration should be stimulating to consider.

I’d like to see some good, smart, expansive thinking from Apple.

I really don’t want to see iPhone 4.1. You know, better camera and a few cosmetic bollocky additions — and a new price point. That, I’d like to take as read.

I want to see the next generation from Apple. I hope we will get a glimpse, at least.

I’m keen to hear more about iCloud. Can I finally free myself from the rather shit limited iTunes/iPhoto ‘desktop’ experience? I hope so. I’m also looking forward to playing with iOS 5.0 properly — I hope it’s actually released tomorrow.

What else?

It’ll be interesting to see how the company presents itself (without, we presume, Mr Jobs on stage at all).

I do wonder how the reality distortion field will bear up without the man himself. He’s always been closely associated with these keynotes so I’m keen to see how the rest of the team come across.

My preferred way of doing consuming these events is to follow along with a few liveblogs — loosely — and then watch the whole keynote, end-to-end, later on that evening once it’s hit the Apple site.

Above all the most exciting part of a keynote announcement is the knowledge that whilst you and I are evaluating the new kit/service offerings, hundreds of massive companies are hastily convening board meetings to collectively do some unplanned ‘brick shitting’ (as one executive described the experience) as a result of the news. Bring it on!

And then disaster struck. For some silly reason I lost grip on the iPhone — my fancy 3 iPhone, no less — and boom, it had slapped on to the floor.

I knew it was bad news as I picked it up from the floor. I could see tiny crystals of glass spread all around the phone…

Arse. The phone still works. The touchscreen is still operational, it’s just the glass that is screwed.

And I don’t bother with insurance, generally.

So it’s up to me to fix it. Which I think will be an interesting exercise. I’m going to try and have the screen replaced by one of those online repair shops.

£79.99 I’ve been quoted. Let’s see how we get on. I shall tell you all about the experience.

After the initial hive of activity back in August, it’s gone all quiet on the iPhone 5 front.

There’s been the odd story now-and-again, but I think it’s fair to say that all the ‘it’ll be September 15th’ (or whenever) speculators have quietly looked the other way as last week came and went.

It shouldn’t be long now though.

If things go to plan, we’ll start hearing about a launch event as invitations are sent out to the Valley’s tech press. That will get the tech planet buzzing toward fever pitch. Then we need one of the chaps at the Wall Street Journal to make ‘an informed prediction’ or something like that — ideally on the Thursday to give us all the weekend to wonder, before a Monday launch event.

We’re long overdue a bit of fever pitch now.

Given the fact BlackBerry DevCon is coming next month along with Nokia World, I think Apple will want the product out the door — or at least live, to overshadow those companies — pretty soon.

I’m looking forward to seeing how they present the device and the (new) strategy to the market.

And you know what, I’m tired of the iPhone 4. I’m getting bored looking at it now.

Is it just me?

Martin Fichter, acting president or HTC America makes a stimulating market observation as Chris Taylor at Mashable points out:

Speaking at the Mobile Future Forward conference in Seattle, Fichter related a story about taking his daughter to Reed College in Portland, where he took an informal survey of her dormitory buddies. “None of them has an iPhone,” Fichter said, “because they told me: ‘My dad has an iPhone.’ There’s an interesting thing that’s going on in the market. The iPhone becomes a little less cool than it was. They were carrying HTCs. They were carrying Samsungs. They were even carrying some Chinese manufacturer’s devices.”

Now whilst it’s highly anecdotal, I think he’s got a point. You need money to own an iPhone. To have the right amount of disposable income to afford the iPhone, you are probably going to skew older than your average student who might not want to commit to say $60 a month for two years.

$60 buys a good amount of beer.

Mashable’s Chris reckons that portraying the iPhone as uncool is a rather risky strategy, given the iPhone 5 is en route.

I’m not sure if I agree.

I don’t think the iPhone is at all cool any more. Indeed the shine wore off pretty quickly last year when I got on the train and found a Vicky Pollard (see above) look-a-like with an iPhone 4. I was still using a 3GS that I hadn’t bothered to upgrade. (Read: “Vicky Pollard has an iPhone 4; You are not cool any more“)

iPhone is increasingly vulnerable when it comes to ‘coolness’ because, well, anyone can have one nowadays. Provided you pass the credit check you can have an iPhone 4 for zero cash up front here in the UK on a 24-month contract. It’s the tightrope any brand walks in this situation. I’m keen to see how Apple handle this with the next generation of devices.

Will the iPhone 4 16GB move to a much more accessible £249 up-front, whilst the iPhone 5 moves into the £500 slot? Or will we see a controlled price drop across the quarters? e.g. £349, £299, £249.

Bring it on…

- – - – -

First, I thought Google. Now, I think Microsoft.

I was reading recently about Skype functionality being built into the forthcoming Mango release on Windows Phone (WP) and I started thinking: who is now moving forwards fastest in this whole ecosystem race?

At the turn of the year, I was part of a research panel discussion around the near future of mobile. The NDA I signed on the evening prevents me from disclosing what treats we were party to, however, what I can share is some of the thoughts we went in with.

Each of us was asked to present our ideas around future mobile technologies. My pitch was around, funnily enough, ecosystems:

“We’re already seeing mobile operating systems appearing in car dashboards. Soon they’ll be in our fridges, on our televisions, built into our coffee tables.. and, when that happens, purchasing decisions will also be made based upon these ecosystems. If your main technology at home is Android-based and you’re coming to buy something new for your household, you’re more likely to keep within the ecosystem that you’re used to. Both from a UI perspective and also from a service interaction ideal.”

This was at the end of last year. Rewind a few years, back when I was working at a certain voice to text company, and Google was talking about launching their own voice-to-text product through Google Voice – “They’ve parked their tanks on our lawn, we must be doing something right”.

At that time I was thinking about the different pieces being put in place by the big G:

GMail, GTalk, Google Maps and now, Google Voice.

Communications + presences + location? I remember saying to a French Googler whom I knew at the time “Man! I can totally see where you guys are going! Amazing. Android will be the glue to pull it together aaaand.. when you align the stars, it’ll be perfect!” – he smiled and bowed his head, knowingly.

The communication ideal behind these nodes, if you will, for me seemed like a major background strategy that was slowing falling into place. Alas, here we are several years later and – even with the likes of [the yet to be proven] Google Plus – all of these services are still yet to fully link up properly. But these things take time.

Fast forward back today and this piece on Engadget highlighting Skype integration in Mango hits. My brain clicks into gear.

Xbox, Windows, Windows Phone, Hotmail [yeah, I said it] and now Maps – the pieces are all there. But the key part here for me is Xbox. The one thing everyone seems to be overlooking: Xbox. There are 53.6million of these machines worldwide – already sat under televisions. Of those, 66% are connected [or at least registered] online via Xbox Live. Include in that another 10million Kinects [the fastest selling peripheral of all time] and you have one hell of a home entertainment system / internet ecosystem.

The Kinect already had video calling before Skype was announced for Windows Phone. Skype is also rumoured to be bundled in the next Xbox update. I’m not saying video calling is the future, not by any stretch. But a true and proper unified communications plan for consumers is the next big step. [Facebook is nearly there, but isn't interested in home or mobile hardware].

Windows 7(.5/Mango/Tango/Rango/Bingo/Bango – delete where appropriate) also promises gaming integration, amazing applications [like the mind-blowingly awesome British Airways app we saw demo'd earlier this year] and well, I can’t help thinking that a sleeping giant has been stirred.

I used to think that Google would be the one pulling this stuff together – the faster, more agile of the huge players in the world. They still could be. They still might be.

All I’m saying is, don’t forget about Microsoft and above all, don’t ignore the Xbox. I genuinely think it’s a trump card that Microsoft is yet to play.

Whatley out.