Getting rich by writing an app for the iPhone and selling it in the appstore sounds very lucrative… however all those free (and most times useless) apps don’t make it easier to be successful. And in my opinion they destroy the business model, as free can’t pay any bills.

For example:

Pano’s not particularly cheap, at $3, but it can create some enormous, impressive panoramas right on your iPhone. (source)

Unfortunately lots of people I talk to think the same – “oh, this app is sooooo expensive, it costs 3 Euros!”. Come on, you paid at least 200 Euros for your iPhone and you pay about 20 Euros per month for a contract… and then you complain about 3 Euros for some useful software?

What bugs me even more is if these people are software developers who write software on their own! They know how much time it takes to write (bug free, nice and shiny) software, earn money by writing software and and still they complain if a developer wants to get 3 Euros for his software?

Wow.

Update 1: it seems iAd does not really solve the issue of the million apps in the appstore. $ 14,- per sale is not worth it.
Update 2: same problem on the iPad – just too many apps and too little showroom.
Update 3: make sure you don’t miss this comic!

(Image copyrighted by theoatmeal.com)

After careful consideration I ordered it:

(from Geek And Poke)

I am a Christian and Apple products are sinful, I do not want our website to be created by a product made by this corrupt group. You need only look at their logo, an apple with a bite taken from it. Do you not know the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden? If I allowed you to create my website on a MAC I would be just like Adam, taking a bite of the forbidden fruit.

Read the full story on clientsfromhell.net.

Update: now also available as comic!

Last Monday my Mac refused to boot up again – even in single user mode he remained in a reboot-loop. Trying to get to the data was not that easy as the hard drive was encrypted using PGP Whole Disk Encryption.

Not a problem I thought – I have a TSM backup from the Friday before and most data is in code repositories or anyway. All I really need is a presentation for Tuesday morning. So I boot up my Thinkpad, install all the Windows updates (I do not use it that often ) and start TSM.

Empty backup set.

What?

Verify all the connection settings.

Empty backup set. No data showing up in TSM.

Starting to sweat.

Now here the story about why I love my Mac starts. I love the Mac platform because:

• I was able to create a 1:1 copy of my personal Mac on an external USB drive.
• I was able to boot from this cloned disk via USB by just holding the Option key. Just boots, all data and settings there. Try doing that with Windows
• After booting I installed PGP and mounted the internal disk. I was able to copy away all my data from the broken disk to the external drive (this includes the whole /home/mike directory and some /Applications).
• Time to reformat the whole disk and install a clean copy of Snow Leopard (finally a good reason to upgrade!).
• After booting into the clean OS all I had to do was copying (!!!) the /Applications to the appropriate folder and copying (!!!) the home directory to the right location. After logging into the newly created user account all my data was there.
• By copying the home directory everything just worked – even the WLAN connections, settings, MobileMe syncing, all just working. All I lost have been the printer settings. No need to re-install tons of applications, all just copied back – and working fine!
• Try the above on Windows!
• Now I tried something – I started TSM on the Mac and logged in – and magically all my data showed up in TSM! What? Verified on Windows – empty set. Can someone working on TSM please explain that behavior to me? Why is the TSM data only showing within the same platform?

Overall the whole work took half a day – including a clean OS update and to “migrate” all applications. Only TSM scared me a bit – so I now started to create weekly backups using Carbon Copy Cloner – which is a good thing anyway, as it is super-easy to boot the backup on another machine. And I love the Mac because it does not use a magic registry and installing applications is really simple!

Wozu ich herzlich gratuliere! 2 Milliarden angesehene Videos PRO TAG sind wirklich nicht ohne!

Gespannt bin ich ja ob Google TV bzw. Youtube einmal Apple den Rang ablaufen werden. Deren Apple TV ist ja mehr ein Spielzeug und unterstützt nicht einmal Blue-Ray geschweige denn Aufnahmen auf Disk….

Was mich dabei aber doch schockt ist die folgende Aussage:

Der typische US- Fernsehzuschauer sitzt über fünf Stunden vor dem TV-Gerät. (Quelle)

Sport wäre glaube ich sinnvoller…

Two non-published Dilberts talking about the “issue” of a lost 4th generation iPhone:

Hilarious!

You can read the full story at  Scott Adams Blog post.

Der/Die/Das Apple TV ist ja an sich eine gute Sache. Da kann man Videos, Fotos etc. am großen Fernseher ansehen anstatt sich vor den kleinen Laptop setzen zu müssen. Und man kommt auch relativ zeitnah zu den US-Ausstrahlungen an Serien ran. z.B. an die letzte Staffel von Lost.

Theoretisch.

Praktisch nämlich nur wenn man in Deutschland wohnt und nicht im Entwicklungsland Österreich. Weil hierzulande wird im iTunes-Store kein einziges (!!!) Video angeboten. Aber die Apple TV Box wird weiterhin verkauft.

Ob die Käufer das vor dem Kauf wissen? Dass das Gerät in Österreich zum großen Teil nutzlos ist? Und ob den Filmstudios bewusst ist, dass sie so sicher nicht mehr verkaufen? Besonders wenn man die Filme auch kostenlos bekommt?

On Wednesday the mysterious Apple iPad has been announced. Phase 2. And because a lot of people know that I’m an Apple fanboy and feel the urge to discuss “what does not work on the iPad and why it is crap” with me I’d like to finally outline a few thoughts about this device….

What the iPad is and what it is not

• The iPad is not a computer replacement. It is not meant to be your only computer in a household. Yes, it might work out for some special cases (my mum, my dad) but the average geek will still need a separate computer for development, hacking etc.
• The iPad does support multi-tasking. You can listen to music while browsing the Web. All well-coded applications will remember the application state, so going to a link while reading a mail will open up the very same mail once you open up the mail application again. IM has proven to work very well using Push notifications and I bet there will be better support for Push in the next release of the iPad OS (list all notifications etc.).
• The iPad cannot make phone calls and therefore is also no cell phone replacement. Well, you can make calls using i.e. Skype and a Bluetooth headset. Who wants such a large cell phone anyway? I never really understood that kind of comment…. it’s no phone at all! The iPad is a iPod Touch on steroids and targets unusable, slow Netbooks with Windows on it. So it is also no cell phone replacement.
• The iPad has three (3!) different keyboards. You can use the onscreen keyboard, which (according to my experience with the iPhone) will work very well in most cases. As alternatives you can use a Bluetooth keyboard or use the keyboard-dock. Plenty of options for faster typing.
• The pricing is quite ok – yes, you can get laptops for the same price, but take into account the quality of these low-end devices. Apple stuff is always a bit more expensive (no need to complain!), but on the other hand you get a device that just works. No fiddling with Firewalls, no RegEdit, all stuff that you don’t really need.

What I miss on the iPad
These features would make the iPad of real use to me and I think they are missing in the current version of the device:

• Wireless sync. I don’t see any reason for plugging the iPad to my computer to sync music and videos. Why can’t it sync over the air (when it is plugged to a power source)?
• Multi-User support. No need for two iPads in our household, but two separated user accounts would be great.
• Airtunes support to stream music directly to the speakers, instead of just remote-controlling the MacBook.
• A front-mounted camera would be great for Skype or iChat video conferencing. Eventually also to detect who is using the iPad (see multi-user support above).
• Cheaper e-Books. I don’t understand why I should pay the same price for an e-Book as for a paper book. The publisher saves money on printing, I have to buy a reader… so get cheaper!
• Tethering through an iPhone. I have an iPhone, so why do I need an additional 3G contract? Let me tether through the iPhone, because contract in Austria allow me to use my 3GB monthly volume how I want to use it. Could also use the iPhone GPS location…

Will I buy it?
Let me quote someone here:

To hell with it! It’s not something I need. It doesn’t solve any problems I have. I can resist. I am strong. I may be “Mr. Mac,” but I am also “Mr. Practical.”
Which is exactly what I said when the iPhone came out. 3 days later I was in the Apple Store eagerly holding out my credit card to anyone who would take it. (source)

So: I don’t know yet. Most probably I’ll skip the first generation and wait for an upgrade. It is also depending on the iPhone 4 which is to be released this summer (yes, my contract is finally over!) and what features it offers. And of course what features Apple will add to the iPad over time…

Let’s see what really happens on January 26/27…. will it be an Apple Tablet device?

Update: I think it might be “just” a new iPhone with a larger screen and a higher resolution (and a new Software) – Apple can’t wait until July to release a new, competitive phone, they have to match up with the market right now. The iPhone 3GS is, when looking at the specs, already a bit outdated in terms of screen size, performance and features. But hey, eventually it is really a tablet, which can be used to stream music to AirTunes and act as a remote control for the Apple TV 2.5

(Source: Geek And Poke)

Well, everyone is talking about “the cloud” and cloud computing.. After SOA and Web 2.0 the cloud is the buzzword of the year 2009.

But what is it really, this “cloud”?

Well, Apple very well described in in a recent news announcement:

That’s it basically – it’s servers + virtualization with a new marketing name attached to it….