Mike's Blog

New iPhone due out next week

The next iPhone, in detail: video capture, twice the storage and much faster CPU

Figuring out what's going to be in the next Apple iPhone, expected next week, turns out to be surprisingly easy.

...

The next iPhone will be able to capture video: there will be enough processor power there. (Other mobile phones have had video capabilities for ages, but Apple appears to have wanted to have something special to sell, and wanted to preserve battery life.) Expect an improved camera - 3 megapixels, up from the present 2MP, is a reasonable upgrade.

We can also make a number of other forecasts based on those, and other ineluctable realities about the cost of components in computing.

1) Its Flash storage will be doubled. Prices there are halving every year, so rather than the present 8GB and 16GB models, you'll see 16GB and 32GB. A separate data point on this comes from Darren Waters of the BBC, who says he has heard this, independently, from a Carphone Warehouse source. (CPW sells iPhones in the UK.)

2) You'll have a lot more onboard RAM: 256MB in total, rather than 128. Again, simple economics: it costs the same for that much as it did two years ago. That will mean that applications can store more data in memory and boot faster. It might also mean that you'll get better video quality, since there will be more available for the graphics chip.

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The quick 5-second roundup:
-significantly faster
-will record video
-better camera
-no FM. (Uses battery, so let accessories companies fight for it)
-twice the storage of current models
-still no Flash
-will work as a modem (it's always been able to, but networks refused to allow it)
-same price.

...

Yeah, US broadband falling WAY behind the rest of the world in both cost and speed - this isn't news but still interesting

Reposted from NY Times

World’s Fastest Broadband at $20 Per Home

By Saul Hansell

If you get excited about the prospect of really, really fast broadband Internet service, here’s a statistic that will make heart race. Or your blood boil. Or both.

Pretty much the fastest consumer broadband in the world is the 160-megabit-per-second service offered by J:Com, the largest cable company in Japan. Here’s how much the company had to invest to upgrade its network to provide that speed: $20 per home passed.

The cable modem needed for that speed costs about $60, compared with about $30 for the current generation.

By contrast, Verizon is spending an average of $817 per home passed to wire neighborhoods for its FiOS fiber optic network and another $716 for equipment and labor in each home that subscribes, according to Sanford C. Bernstein & Company.

Those numbers from Japan came from Michael T. Fries, the chief executive of Liberty Global, the American company that operates J:Com.

His larger point: “To me, this just isn’t an expensive capital investment,” he said.

The experience in Japan suggests that the major cable systems in the United States might be able to increase the speed of their broadband service by five to 10 times right away. They might not need to charge much more for it than they do now and they’d still make as much money.

The cable industry here uses the same technology as J:Com. And several vendors said that while the prices Mr. Fries quoted were on the low side, most systems can be upgraded for no more than about $100 per home, including a new modem. Moreover, the monthly cost of bandwidth to connect a home to the Internet is minimal, executives say.

So what’s wrong with this picture in the United States? The cable companies, like Comcast and Cablevision, that are moving quickly to install the fast broadband technology, called Docsis 3, are charging as much as $140 a month for 50 Mbps service. Meanwhile other companies, like Time Warner Cable, are moving much more slowly to upgrade.

Competition, or the lack of it, goes a long way to explaining why the fees are higher in the United States. There is less competition in the United States than in many other countries. Broadband already has the highest profit margins of any product cable companies offer. Like any profit-maximizing business would do, they set prices in relation to other providers and market demand rather than based on costs.

Pricing at Liberty varies widely by market. In Japan, its 160 Mbps service costs 6,000 yen ($60) per month. That’s only $5 a month more than the price of its basic 30 Mbps service. In the Netherlands, meanwhile, it charges 80 euros ($107) for 120 Mbps service and 60 euros ($81) for 60 Mbps. Mr. Fries said that he expected these prices would fall over time.

“Our margins go up,” he said. “But we are delivering more value.”

Cable executives have given several reasons for why many cable systems in the United States are going very slowly in upgrading to Docsis 3. There’s little competition in areas not served by Verizon’s FiOS system, which soon will offer 50 Mbps service. And some argue there isn’t that much demand for super-high speed.

Mr. Fries added another: Fear. Other cable operators, he said, are concerned that not only will prices fall, but that the super-fast service will encourage customers to watch video on the Web and drop their cable service.

The industry is worried that by offering 100 Mbps, they are opening Pandora’s box, he said. Everyone will be able to get video on the Internet, and then competition will bring the price for the broadband down from $80 to $60 to $40.

Aren’t you worried that the prices will fall too? I asked.

“Maybe,” he said very slowly. “We’ll see how it happens. We want to keep it up there for now. It is a premium service.”

Looks like I won't be buying another iPod or iPhone for a long time, if ever

Not that I need to I have an 80gb iPod and a new 16gb iPhone and I've purchased a number of iPods since 2002 and it looks like I won't be doing that again for quite a while, if ever. One of the first things to do with an iPod is get decent earbuds which generally cost $100 and up (I've seen them for $900). The $100 ones I usually get are a HUGE difference in quality with the supplied crap from Apple. Now those $100 ones will have to tack on the cost of a license fee to Apple which will be passed on to me. Apple takes a great product and cripples it with hardware DRM. If Apple supplied decent earbuds with the iPod at a decent price it would be better, although this furthers the DRM shit that seems to be going away with music downloads, I've never downloaded music as I like to OWN what I buy so I buy a CD since companies like Apple seem to suddenly like to come out with DRM which disables previous functionality. As in my current earbuds wouldn't be comaptible with their new iPods.

New iPods have DRM on the headphone interface

Posted by Cory Doctorow, March 13, 2009 10:43 PM | permalink

Fred von Lohmann from the Electronic Frontier Foundation sez, "The sharp reviewers at iLounge spotted out a misfeature in the new iPod Shuffle that other reviewers overlooked: third party headphones for it apparently will require an Apple 'authentication chip,' something that is already required for various iPod docks. Yet another example of Apple's DRM hypocrisy. Apparently it's OK for Apple to use DRM to lock in consumers and hobble competition, even as it rails against DRM on iTunes music."

Apple Adds Still More DRM to iPod Shuffle

(link BoingBoing)

Fred von Lohmann from the Electronic Frontier Foundation sez, "The sharp reviewers at iLounge spotted out a misfeature in the new iPod Shuffle that other reviewers overlooked: third party headphones for it apparently will require an Apple 'authentication chip,' something that is already required for various iPod docks. Yet another example of Apple's DRM hypocrisy. Apparently it's OK for Apple to use DRM to lock in consumers and hobble competition, even as it rails against DRM on iTunes music."

Apple Adds Still More DRM to iPod Shuffle

SETI@home

I hadn't installed SETI@home on this laptop. I've put it on others and it's exactly as they say, no issues, no impact. Follow the links and install it.

SETI@home needs you!

   

Posted on February 8th, 2008 at 9:32 AM in Astronomy, Cool stuff, Science

I am way behind on this, but it’s been a busy month. SETI is the Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence. It’s a project by a phenomenally dedicated and brilliant group of scientists and engineers to search the sky for radio signals from other civilizations. I won’t go into the basis for this here (you can read their FAQ for all that), but I think it’s a worthwhile endeavor.

One of their biggest problems is the sheer volume of data they generate. They probe the sky looking at a huge number of radio channels for a signal — imagine your car radio able to tune in to not 20 or 30 stations, but millions. Billions. That’s what they face.

Some very smart folks at Berkeley realized that home computers could be utilized to process some of that data, so they created SETI@Home. When you are not using your PC or Mac, the processor can be utilized to crunch through the SETI data, looking for that needle in a million haystacks: an intelligent signal (good luck finding one on your AM dial!).  (link Bad Astronomy)

I was so deluded, there is absolute scientific evidence for God!

via The View from Number 80

   

        »         PROOF #1
       
        Google is the closest thing to an Omniscient (all-knowing) entity in existence,           which can be scientifically verified.         She indexes over 9.5 billion WebPages, which is more than any other search engine         on the web today. Not only is Google the closest known entity to being         Omniscient, but She also sorts         through this vast amount of knowledge using Her patented PageRank technology,         organizing said         data and making it easily accessible to us mere mortals.
       
        » PROOF #2

Google is everywhere at once (Omnipresent). Google is virtually everywhere on earth at the same time. Billions of indexed WebPages     hosted from every corner of the earth. With the proliferation of Wi-Fi networks, one will eventually be able to access Google from anywhere on earth, truly making Her an omnipresent entity....
(link to all 9 proofs!)

                                

I'm impressed

I received this comment from FastCompany on my recent post on silly unenforceable linking policies. They have responded to what they've come to better understand and have updated their linking policies. That post and related links on BoingBoing must have really had an impact.

IP Address: 204.52.234.67
Name: Heath Row
Email Address: [email protected]
URL: http://www.fastcompany.com

Comments:

Lest you have missed all of the subsequent blog entries and online discussion about Fast Company's linking policy, it has been changed -- you can now link to any Fast Company Web page without our permission... and without notifying us. We considered people's feedback -- and we responded given their input. Thanks for the mention!

"Stupid is as stupid does..."

A while back I posted a mini-rant on the stupidity of the Olympic Committee linking policy. Well all that brilliance wasn't just thunk up by them all by their lonesome. They were following in the example of some very large and clueless corporations. The link text I choose below doesn't have any real significance but I came across a 'legal' section in one of them about disguising the url, and wanted to choose an appropriate text string to 'disguise it'. F%&* you (KPMG), and f%&* you (AMEX - well maybe the link text is appropriate here) and f%&* you (Fast Company) and I wouldn't think of endorsing you (WPS Health Insurance) and if for whatever quirk of the universe you might think about endorsing me then I hereby and heretofore and herewith and forthwith impose the same linking policy posted on Boing Boing. The reason I was poking around in this again was a post on BoingBoing today titled "Boing Boing has a linking policy". Plus I'd been reading around on just way too much shit on politics and the war in Iraq as a recent article in Wired titled "The Crusade Against Evolution". (At least I know it's all due to the faeries and I think we should give equal time to them as well). and just needed a fun little diversion. Here's a fun site that's a bit out of date but for a while collected links to sites with stupid and clueless linking policies.

And in poking around at sites and doing some googling I just happened to come across this cool site with a collection of messages such as The site is best viewed in Internet Explorer because I am too lazy to test it in anything else. This site has been visited by 0041748 people I don't care about. And another great site on "Stupid Listener Questions". None of these are related to anything other than they were in the theme of "Stupid is as stupid does"!

BookCrossing

Fantastic idea!! I came across this site http://www.bookcrossing.com/home while browsing on Meetup.com. I've been going to the used book sale at the Friends of the Palo Alto Library for a while and seem to mostly buy buy books I've read to give to friends or have in my 'permanent' library in an other state. BookCrossing is a fantastic idea which was listed on PC magazine's Best 100 Undiscovered Web Sites.

Basically you register the book on the web site. Put a label in it for tracking and then 'forget it' somewhere. A coffee shop, bus stop, wherever. The person who finds it will hopefully read it, log on to the web site and make some notes which tie to the tracking number you've written inside and then pass it along. You can then 'follow' the trail of your books as they move through the world. The next used book sale at Cubberly is on on April 10th. I'm really looking forward to picking up good books that I've read and passing them on.

Although I've given many books away and people have given me book, this allows you to get an ongoing feel about how books you've passed on may have impacted people you've never met and most likely never will.

Update 4/7/04 - Next Meetup in the Bay Area is at 7pm at The Coffee Factory 3787 Stevens Creek Blvd. (map)

Call a Bike - Berlin, Frankfurt, Munich

I try to use public transport as much as possible (I don't have a car out here in California) and I find this service offered by Deutsche Bahn really neat, wish they had something like this in the Bay Area. Especially for tourists or if you don't happen to have your bike with you or it doesn't work out logistically to bring it on whatever transport brought you. For example, in taking BART sometimes it's not practical or possible on some route/times to bring it on board. With the DB service you just locate a bike locked up with the it's green light flashing, use your cell phone to call the service and enter your credit card number and you receive a code to unlock the bike. When you're done just lock it up and walk away. DB has a similar sort of program for car sharing as well although it's not quite as simple as just finding a car and driving away but close. ( link in German) (via engagdget)

typos

TypePad does not yet have a spell check tool so I've downloaded and am testing a posting interface to my blog from w.bloggar . It will take a little getting used to, especially remembering to click on the spell check so that I don't continue to post careless typos and misspellings! If I don't know how to spell a word I look it up. And I'll sometimes then do a copy/paste to make sure I get it right. If I know how to spell a word there's no telling how it might come out :-). Hopefully this will add a little more consistency to things.