Quite frankly, I never expected this will ever come true, especially so soon after the release of Kindle 2. At this point, Kindle 2 is just barely hot off the press, shipping to those early adopters, and already it’s being replaced by a software platform strategy. You have to wonder about Amazon’s claim of Kindle success. For as long as Amazon has tauted Kindle being a hot selling, successful consumer electronic product, the company has been more than reluctant to release any sort of sales figure. During the Kindle shortage throughout the holiday season, Amazon would not divulge any production schedule or data.

Every consumer product company, regardless of industry, understands the important in marketings its own success. McDonald’s with their millions of burgers served, Pepsi with their “4 out of 5 people prefers the taste of Pepsi over Coke”, Apple with their millions of iPhones shipped. Publishing these numbers breeds consumer confidence, and leads to increasing momentum for the popularity of your product. So why isn’t Amazon more forthcoming? Is Kindle really as much of a success as Amazon want the outside world to believe?

Kindle on iPhone's User Interface

To be fair, although Kindle for iPhone is a free app, iPhone itself is a rather expensive device. If you were to compare them purely by the book reading experience, I’m sure more than a few people will prefer the experience of the Kindle hardware rather than just the software alone.

• The e-paper display has a much longer battery life, you don’t have to worry about running out of juice in middle of reading.
• The display is larger and more comfortable than iPhone.
• Backlit LCD screen is more tiring on your eyes over time.

However, iPhone does so much more than the Kindle: You can check email, browse the web, watch videos, download apps, and of course, make phone calls. On top of all that, iPhone actually starts at a lower price range for the base model than Kindle 2. Sure, you have to factor in phone bills as part of that cost of ownership, but those are phone bills that you would probably be paying regardless if you were using the iPhone or any other smartphone/cellular phone devices. From that point of view, Kindle 2 becomes an “unnecessary cost” while iPhone is just another piece of existing cost (cellphones in general) that people can’t live without.

So why would Amazon do this to themselves?

When the Kindle was first released, a lot of people thought that Amazon was aiming to create the same vertical market that Apple had with iPod and iTunes Music Store. The reason Apple was so successful with their strategy, is that they were able to dominate in all fronts of their vertical integration: Hardware, software and content. If Apple had given up that exclusivity at any point and allowed other devices to interact with their software and content, chances are iPod would not be as dominant as they are today.

For Apple, they realized that although content is the “reason” for consumers to purchase iPods, it is the iPod, not the content, that is the primary source of income for Apple. It is increasingly apparent that Amazon’s strategy is very different, they’re in the business of selling content, not hardware. The act of making Kindle available as a software platform on other devices, also makes their own hardware less appealing. It’s not just the iPhone. What if I can get Kindle on my desktop computer, my laptop computer? If you really look at the pricing structure of the Kindle hardware, I can get a Netbook for about or less than the cost of Kindle 2, and I have a fully functional computing device with a full color screen.

Clearly, this is the first step for Amazon to step away from the hardware business. No one knows exactly how much Amazon is paying to subsidize for the cost of not only the hardware itself, but also the wireless service that goes along with the Kindle hardware. If Kindle becomes nothing more than just a software platform, then it’s not much different than MobiPocket, which has been selling eBooks on mobile devices since the year 2000, whom Amazon had also acquired.

The problem with losing this competitive edge, is that without a hardware platform to tie yourself into, you lose the distinction against any upstart that can take over with better value propositions and tools. Perhaps Amazon should’ve learned the lesson from their own MP3 store, which were granted DRM-free music licenses a year before iTunes Music Store. Despite the fact that Amazon had technical advantages with better music file format (higher bitrate and DRM-free), cheaper pricing, they still couldn’t topple iTMS, simply because the synergy of that hardware+software+content platform is too strong to overcome. Amazon MP3 store ended up doing nothing to thwart iTMS sales, although it did manage to pick up and expand its own fan base.

Without the Kindle hardware, Kindle books are just any eBook. If I can get the same eBook that’s better looking or cheaper from any other third party publisher with the same content, I will. Amazon still has the force of being the 500lb. gorilla in the world of book selling, but it just made itself a lot more vunerable if eBook is truly to be the future.

• Disabling all addons other than AJAXed WP.
• Re-uploading all the files from WP 2.7.1.
• Re-uploading AJAXed WP files manually.
• Changing back to default theme.

Nothing’s worked so far… I’m gonna try a database repair or something next.

Update:

Performed some database maintenance routines… optimizing and removing overhead. It’s not having any effects.

Hope they fix it soon.

Update: Temporarily disabled the addon and inserted old school —more— tags on the more recent posts.

In the past year though, the development of QuickSilver came to a grinding halt. It was put into the open source community but received very little attention since. The original developer of QuickSilver now works for Google’s Mac division, and has been focused on other projects. So imagine my excitement when I came across the article on Smoking Apples Blog that the same developer has unveiled his latest project, Google Quick Search for the Mac.

I immediately switched over and messed with Google Quick Search for about two days. For a very early beta, Google Quicks Search shows some promise, but I still prefer QuickSilver by a fair margin.

The Good:

• Google Quick Search is easier to use for the first time user. The straight forward presentation of search results are easy to understand.
• For the advanced user who wants to perform specific action on search results, QuickSilver does this with two-to-three panels, where the first panel is the search result, second panel performs action with third panel for any additional action. By default, the second panel action is “open”, which works well for the application launching aspect of QuickSilver. However, to learn how to perform additional actions and drill deeper into menus becomes a convoluted key combination of arrows and tabs. GQS does better in this regard, because all the items are organized in a single view. You can drill down into deeper action menus in very consistent manner, and the presentation isn’t necessarily limited to only three panels.
• GQS also allows performing web searches more straight forward. In QuickSilver, you have to first install the web search plugin. Type in the name of the appropriate search engine, then tab over to the text field (third panel) to type in the search text. In GQS, performing web searches with your default browser is just a key press away.

The Bad:

• QuickSilver is a desktop search tool first,  with some web featured attached via plugin. So by default it does what I want it to do, which is search for documents and applications on my local folder. GQS has a mixed approach to presenting some applications/folders/documents, with some links to search for text on Google. Sometimes, even searching for applications that’s simply in the default application folder, will end up with web searches as the first result. For example, I typed in “adium” when I first installed GQS, and my default option was “search for ‘adium’ on google”. Of course, these results do improve overtime as GQS learns which result you care about more; but the default for a desktop searching app should be what’s on my desktop, not the web.
• Related problem to issue #1, is that to some extent, you can never really get what you want in the results because of the way web search options are mixed in with local options. I typed in “log” and came up with three folders named “log” in my results, but none of the three is the log folder I was looking for. Drilling down deeper into local results, I finally found the correct log folder as the #6 choice. The problem is, I look for the other log folder quite often as well, so as long as GQS insists on displaying the top 3 local search results mixed in with their own web search options, I’ll probably be looking for the wrong log folder half of the time.
• QuickSilver also maintains its own index, as opposed to relying on hooking to Spotlight for its searches. The downside is that QuickSilver only index folders you tell it to look into (by default it looks for Application & Documents, for the most part, all you need), while you can still use it to manually navigate into folders that you don’t index. GQS’s hook into Spotlight allows it to look for everything and anything on your hard drive, but that means the performance suffers. Just about every search result I attempted with GQS resulted in a few seconds of lag while it processed Spotlight results. It’s really not a huge amount of time, except I’m completely spoiled by QuickSilver’s instantaneous response. You don’t have an option to turn Spotlight off, because there are no way to index individual folders within its preferences right now, and if you turn Spotlight searches off, GQS will only display web search options.

Google Quick Search also suffers from a lot of instability issues currently. At one point it was hanging while consuming an increasing amount of memory, by the time I noticed it and force the application to shut down from Activity Monitor, it was using up 360MB of RAM, while consuming 99% of all the processing cycles on one of my cores. Keep in mind that this is a really, really early beta, so I assume that the performance issue will be fixed over time. Given the popularity of this download already, I hope it’s relatively quick.

However, whether or not they will change some interface behavior issues (for example, making web search results a secondary option on a different keypress, ability to monitor folders instead of relying on Spotlight) remains to be seen.

For now, I’m sticking with QuickSilver, it is still more robust & flexible, and I’ve already endured the learning curve.

The question is… Will I be motivated enough? Typing on this virtual keyboard is serious business!!

Once you understand the stereotype, establishing relationships within the different cultures within the office is pretty easy. Of course, there will always be someone on the fringe, where personality and ideals clash in such catastrophic way that you’ll never truly get along, even on just a professional level. After all, it’s impossible to love the human race in its entirety. So we learn to get along, or at least learn to ignore those cases of absolute incompatibility.

For the most part, I get along with people just fine. However, if there was one personality that I simply can’t stand in an office environment, it has to be the self-righteous IT admin.

These IT admins usually share the following characteristics:

• They’re usually not the admin for your external servers, such as the customer database, or web server, the internet store… or any outward facing assets.
• Instead, they’re usually the internal admin that manages your desktop, network, storage & email.
• Often times, they’re contracted via a third party consulting/management company. This probably has more to do with very few smaller companies want a full-time IT staff. After all, when nothing is wrong with your corporate network, they just sit there and do nothing.
• They’re usually some very biased zealot championing some company or another. For example, a Microsoft-certified IT admin will endless push MS products & praise Microsoft, after all, their livelihood depends on the continued dominance of Microsoft.
• In contrast, they could also be a super dedicated Linux/Unix geek, where they would transition every system you have to open source as much as possible. They might also insist that every website you build must also be viewable in Lynx.

All those characteristics can probably be interpreted as “charming” or “eccentric” in the same vein as Jon Arbuckle. However, this one last characteristic is what really, really drives me nuts:

• Often times, they’re just complete assholes to anyone who they don’t think have any computer knowledge.

The odds, from the view of most IT admins, are against me, given the fact that I’m a Mac user. Often they will refuse to support me, and then laugh at me for my lack of Windows prowness. The assumption is that since I’m a Mac user, I know nothing about how a computer “really” work and will never understand the greatness and the knowledge that’s being held inside their brain as opposed to mine. Of course, they would have no idea that I once upon time, had a SLI-enabled rig with water pipes directing the flow of heat throughout my self-built system. A computer where every single part and spec, down to the cycling speed of the RAM was carefully researched & picked out by yours truly. I’ve simply grown tired of Windows, and tired of spending thousands of extra money just to get 5 more frames-per-second out of some first-person shooting game that I will get tired of before I’m half-way through the game anyway.

To them, being a “Mac user” pretty much equivocate to being completely computer illiterate. That, in turn, gives them the right to sneer and talk to me in that, “I know you won’t understand this, so let me explain this to you as what I would with a five year-old…” tone.

I don’t find it surprising that they would communicate to me in such a tone. What I do find extremely surprising, is that IT admins are seemingly the only people in the company that can also carry that tone of indignity while talking to VP level staff, CEO’s, and sometimes, even the vaunted Board of Directors! These IT admins, are the only people that can simply tell the VP of (insert any non-technical department here, obviously if you talk to the VP of IT that way, you wouldn’t have a job for much longer) that they don’t know what they’re doing, what they’re talking about, at times infer that they’re extremely dumb for having done something. As for resolutions, they will fix whatever mistake you just made, but not before scolding you and making you feel guilty. Of course, they’ll never fully explain to you what happened, either because they don’t really know, or they think it’s a waste of time to educate that little brain of yours with limited capacity for understanding their technical ingenuity.

The reality is this: IT admins are the new generation mechanics. Simply that, glorified mechanics.

Even VP and CEO’s whimper at the feet of IT admins, because they either do not want to deal with the complexity of computers, or do not have the time to deal with it. If you think about it, a CEO can have ran several multi-million dollar, successful corporations, and still resort to sending the car down to the shop for an oil change. In fact, they would be more likely to simply send everything to the shop than dealing with it themselves. Does the car mechanic talk down to the CEO? Of course not, because they understand that they’re in a service industry, and bad service eventually leads to not having any business down the road.

IT admins don’t see themselves as being a part of the service industry, but rather in a strange way, feels as if they’re in control of something much greater. If the CEO doesn’t get email today, then the whole company is screwed, therefore the wellness of the company relies strictly upon the shoulder of the IT admin, right?

Just as these proud IT admins are talking down to people as if they were five year-olds, the five year-olds are commoditizing what the IT industry does best. We’re approaching an age where a huge majority of our kids growing up knowing how to use a computer. They’re building their own websites, writing codes as a part of school assignments. Just how much longer will the current generation of IT admins be able to snicker at those people who don’t know how to use a computer? As the number of computer illiteracy dwindles, so does the job security of IT administration.

So, word of advice: Stop acting like assholes. There will come a day that they’ll just fire you and hire the sixteen year old from next door to do your job.

Granted, I don’t use a whole lot of Firefox addons, but there is one addon I couldn’t live without: The bookmarking addon from del.icio.us. Since I work on multiple computers at work and home, del.ici.ous has became a valuable tool to keep all of my bookmark in one place. It’s also much more flexible than Google Bookmarks.

Now there is a beta version of the del.icio.us addon for Firefox 3, available here:

delicious blog – Firefox 3, del.icio.us, and you

Just follow the link and install the new version of the addon, so far it’s been working great. With the availability of this addon, my switch over to Firefox 3 is complete.

Well, Google released the Android SDK today. The SDK was pretty impressive, giving us a good preview of the the OS user interface (via Engadget). However, one can’t help notice how much the “mockup” looks like a Palm Centro, or any myriad of Palm or Windows Mobile device that’s been available so far. One also can’t help but notice how the UI takes many lessons from iPhone’s UI. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, I suppose, but didn’t everyone expect a *lot* more from Google than just another software platform that looks just like any other software platform?

I listen to podcasts when I bike to work every morning (my form of reading the newspaper while having breakfast?), and one of the panelist on TWIT made a lot of sense, although I can’t recall it verbatim (and I’m too lazy to listen through a one-hour long podcast to find the exact quote). Whenever Google can’t conquer a market, they fragment.

Take for example, the “OpenSocial” initiative that Google just started. Google had their own social networking property (www.orkut.com), which was almost completely forgotten as a footnote to all their other services. Facebook became the monstrosity that overtook MySpace, which long before had overtaken Friendster. Orkut, however, was nowhere in anyone’s distant memory. By introducing OpenSocial, Google is undoing Facebook’s dominance in building web applets specifically for their service. In away, it seems like a move that benefits every developer, who can now develop for every social networking site (other than Facebook) and support many “platforms” at once. Of course, the “side” benefit is that Google has planted the seed that could possibly unseat Facebook from its dominance at the top, and also insert themselves as the tour-de-force of any social networking site that may eventually take the throne.

Taking a look at what they’ve done with Android, they’ve essentially fragmented any previous mobile Linux development, again inserted themselves at the helm of the movement. Furthermore, they’ve even fragmented the Java development community as well. CNet’s Crave blog has a great post on this, which touches on some of the issues with Android’s SDK and overall Java development. Of course this isn’t all bad, since Java in itself is a platform that has failed to satisfy anyone. However, once again it shows Google as a very shrewd company at being able to project themselves as a kind, gentle company that can do no evil; and at the same time, position themselves as the titan that is able to undermine an entire industry in one fell swoop.

Who does that sound like? You know it, it’s on the tip of your tongue, you know exactly who I’m talking about.

Yup, Apple.

It was another day of soul-searching later, that I said to myself, “Wait, is that all there is to this news? That’s it? Really? You mean, I didn’t miss anything? I mean.. I combed through my RSS reader for hours and hours looking for more detailed information, something more exciting, something with actual substance…. and… really? That’s it?” For at least a few hours, I thought I was caught in some sort of temporal anomaly and was missing vital information that Google has apparently announced to the entire world minus little ol’ me.

The truth is rather, disappointing? Underwhelming? Indeed, the news outlets were positive on Day 1, and almost all universally speculative and introspective on Day 2. How many times have we been promised a “mobile phone OS based on Linux & open-source”? This harkens back to the Linux PDA days, and we all know how that went. The only difference between Google’s announcement and all the other dozen open-source mobile OS initiative, is that Google has a lot of money. Shitloads of money. Certainly a lot more money than open source Linux companies that’s been trying to figure out how to make any money at all by doing, anything and everything?

Of course you’ll see an impressive list of partners, it’s Google for god’s sake! Everyone jump in the pool! The question is, how many of those partners really have any product development plans? How many of those partners will be looking for their own competitive advantage once the SDK is out? How many of those partners will actually, actively contribute to the initiative once they realized that they are at very high risk to put themselves out of business?

The answer for now is, “It’s Google, they’ll make it work.” We’ll see what develops in the coming months. I see it as Google just throwing a piece of SDK out there, and allowing the sharks to battle it out for supremacy. After all, taking this strategy really means they have very little stake in any particular company. It’s a smart way to position themselves, as a software platform provider that doesn’t really care which hardware wins out. If Sony Ericsson develops something great and put HTC out of business, so be it. If Nokia collapse (well, they haven’t made a commitment to the consortium at all yet, probably a smart move at this point for them), it really doesn’t matter to Google either.

I’m starting to see a bunch of executives & software engineers from companies gather at a coliseum built in Google’s backyard (or maybe by naval airbase or something), and someone from Google is sitting atop in the Emperor’s seat and just giggling at the bloodshed that’s about to happen.

There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with the way that Google is going about this. In fact, it’s probably the smartest thing they could do to get into the mobile device arena without actually becoming involved in it. The style just disagrees with me on a personal level. I like companies that design end-to-end solutions that satisfies consumer needs. For example, Tivo is a great company that threw themselves into the heat of the battle, and forever changed the way we interact with televisions.

That kind of a company earns my respect. Google’s Open Handset initiative makes me wonder, “Is this just going to be a Linux version of Windows Mobile?”

So I was a little disappointed when NBC decided to have a bit spat with iTunes, and decided to pull all of their shows off of iTunes by the end of the year. What really gets to me, is how senseless the arguments the media companies are raising against Apple. This doesn’t pertain to just NBC, but all media companies dealing with iTunes as a whole.

Think back to when Universal was negotiating with Apple for their new music agreement. Their argument was that they’re not making enough money from iTunes Music Store, they want more control over pricing. Similar arguments has been brought up over the years with Apple multiple times, and they’re all along the lines of more control over DRM, more control over pricing, more profit for the record labels. Time and time again they insist that they can’t make enough money from iTunes Music Store alone.

Yet, look what happened these past few months. EMI started selling DRM-free tracks on iTunes, and doesn’t seem to be hurt by it as much as bolstered by it. All the other studios started offering completely DRM-free tracks on Amazon MP3 that sold for as little as $0.89 per track, depending on albums (although the misconception is all tracks are available at $0.89, they are not. Most out-of-print album tracks are $0.99, similar to how such albums costs more than new releases at record stores). They have agreed to sell less restrictive & less expensive music on Amazon, meanwhile telling Apple this is precisely what they cannot ever afford to do.

Now with this NBC deal, they’re complaining about revenue, about not making enough money. Same arguments as the record labels had with iTunes. At the same time, they’re going to be bringing out their own video service that allows you to watch entire shows for free (albeit with advertisements) and even embed videos on other sites in a very web 2.0-friendly fashion. So now they’re just serving up bandwidth and going back to relying on advertisement-based revenue models. Do they really make that much more money from webcasts compared to selling the shows? I’m sure the studios makes a huge amount of money from DVD sales of TV shows. Meanwhile iTunes’ sheer volume may not be as much as DVD sales now, it is a developing market that will probably grow bigger over time as we steer away from solid-state mediums for media delivery.

Furthermore, NBC’s little tirade about how much they’ve helped the iPod, and how they should get a share of that iPod sales revenue, is utterly ridiculous. Has RCA, Sony, Sharp and other TV manufacturers been sending part of their revenue to television stations? Obviously TV as a delivery medium wouldn’t work without the TV stations. So why isn’t NBC charging TV makers a fee for delivering their shows to millions of homes everyday?

We’ll see how this whole thing plays out. In the end, AmazonMP3 might take over iTunes Music Store, but that’s only because iTMS was there to pave the way first. Maybe Hulu.com will succeed, or maybe it’ll be a massive failure. Whatever happens, the end result probably wouldn’t impact iPod sales a slight bit. After all, no one’s stopped buying TV’s because NBC doesn’t have any interesting shows on Wednesday nights, right?

Upon installing WP 2.3, I immediately was being fed errors due to the use of Simple Tagging plugin that I had before to manage tags. I had to disable Simple Tagging, then import the tags into WP’s new format. The import process was pretty easy and smooth. However I immediately found that there are no tag management UI built into WP 2.3 at all. Good thing that someone had already wrote a plugin to help manage tags, but it’s perplexing that you would have a blog that supports tags without any UI that help manage tags.

Furthermore, the tag cloud display that shipped with WP has no options whatsoever. It just displays a cloud, it doesn’t give you any customization capabilities. You can’t display a list view that I had before (although arguably I may stick with the cloud view anyway). Although there are a few early plugins that can help you customize the tag cloud display just a little bit, none of them had the flexibility of the Simple Tagging Widget.

Of course, retaining Simple Tagging isn’t possible, because the database structure that Simple Tagging used before is completely invalid with WP 2.3. So even though now there’s an “official” tagging structure in place, overall it is much less effective and usable than previous third party implementations. Over time, there will be third party enhancments to the built-in tagging mechanism for WP 2.3, but I’m really disappointed in how bad the out-of-the-box experience is.

I immediately scheduled an appointment at the Genius Bar, went in and exchanged my iPhone after work. The concierge at the Genius Bar was taken by surprise; he said it was the first time he’s seen this on the iPhone, although it was seen plenty of times on the iPod Touch already. He promptly exchanged my iPhone, and I walked out the Apple Store within 10 minutes of my appointment with a brand new iPhone and a much better screen.

The customer support experience I’ve had with Apple has always been very good. Although I do wish that I didn’t have to do that with almost every first generation Apple product I’ve purchased. I have exchanged an iPod Nano that couldn’t play Apple Lossless formats (even though it played everything else just fine), older iPods where the hard drive failed after less than a few weeks of usage; and my Macbook Pro’s power button has sunken in, which means I will have to take that to the Apple store eventually down the road.

Despite how well their products are designed, it’s also pretty widely known that first generation of any Apple product tend to have some unforeseen issues. I still remembered how the first TiBooks had a misaligned CD/DVD drive that can get your disc jammed and permanently stuck inside. Why can’t they just iron out these launch issues… pre-launch? Oh wells, at least I have a pretty screen on my iPhone now.

I’ve ran into a few annoyances so far with the iPhone:

• I missed being able to manually manage music. Even though creating a playlist for the iPhone is still pretty much the same thing, it just creates one extra step that I didn’t have to deal with before.
• I’m guessing the above change was made due to the “always disconnected except for sync” nature of the iPhone. I think Apple realized people will need to answer their iPhone at any given time, they can’t wait for the “disconnect first” method of previous iPod and all USB mass storage devices. So unless you are syncing, the iPhone is always disconnected. I think they could’ve created some sort of logic to handle manual management as well… but they just didn’t have the time to do that, so manual management is out.
• As a result of the above change, USB storage mode is turned off, so you can’t use the iPhone as a hard drive. Well, not unless you have other apps to hack it, I suppose.
• For whatever reason, iPhone also do not charge from USB when the computer is turned off. My previous iPods can charge from powered USB hubs even when the computer is turned off. The iPhone cannot. Hence you will probably be wise to grab another dock cable and have that with your AC adaptor ready at all times.
• I really hate the recessed headphone port.

Those are the only gripes I have with iPhone. There are other shortcomings for more advanced users, such as not being able to install native iPhone apps without hacking it (and having to reinstall them again probably after every Apple firmware update to the iPhone). I do wish there is a robust eBook application of some sort, but for the most part I’m happy using the various web-based apps for things that iPhone can’t do with antive apps. For example, Meebo on iPhone works extremely well.

With the new, larger screen, watching movies and tv shows on iPhone is also much more pleasurable than before. Also the playtime is much longer than iPod Video due to the lack of hard drive access. I’ve purchased an entire TV series from iTMS for the first time, and actually enjoyed the private watching experience almost as much as I would have on my HDTV setup. I can watch the shows before going to sleep (instead of hanging around the living room and falling asleep on the couch), I can watch them during lunch breaks at work… etc.

I also ripped some of my DVD’s using Handbrake into iPhone compatible format. I never thought I would enjoy watching video on such a small screen, but there’s something about the private, personal experience I can have now with my movies, just as with my music, that is very satisfying. I don’t think I’ve been this happy with any consumer electronic device in a very, very long while (since my first Tivo?).

Here I think of all the announcements:

1. iPod Shuffle – Practically nothing new and worth mentioning at all.
2. iPod Nano – It’s FAT. I really don’t like the new look. Although I bet once I’ve held on in person, I’d be willing to put up with the new form factor. It is even slimmer and overall smaller than the current Nanos. The proportion of the click wheel to the width of the device is just… ugly. I wish they could’ve worked a little harder and done something else. I was really hoping for an iPod Nano-Touch type of device here. It’s still not a bad iPod, just underwhelming.
3. iPod Classic – Same ol’ same ol’ with bigger hard drive. I do find it funny that the iPod Classic’s hard drive is bigger than some of my friend’s computer hard drive. Nothing new, nothing exciting.
4. iPod Touch – Great device, but it’s not really that fresh since it’s just a stripped down iPhone. Like I said, I rather wished they would integrate Nano + Touch into some device that’s in between.

I’m sure Apple will still sell a ton of them, because no other MP3 player in the market has near the media dominance. The surprise to me was the $200 price drop on the iPhone. I promptly went out and got one, 2-year contract be damned. At $399 it’s a very reasonably priced PDA phone, in fact, one of the most feature-rich and well priced phone you can get. I guess I’ll put up with AT&T for another 2 years at least.

Wireless iTunes Music Store… In a way it’s a long time coming, but I wonder how many times I’ll be wondering around in middle of nowhere just wanting to buy a new song?

Although I wouldn’t go so far as saying everything was “crappy”… I wasn’t extremely impressed either.

Despite of how much I love the iPhone, I still don’t believe in signing  a two year contract for AT&T/Cingular. I’ve been a customer with Cingular back since when they were PacBell PCS, I have no reason to be locked down to a contract to prove my loyalty to a carrier. Especially since the iPhone isn’t subsidized at all. If signing a contract meant I can save a few hundred dollars, then at least the value proposition is existent. There is absolutely no reason to a sign a contract for a phone that will inevitably be unlocked (and probably be available at the same price).

Service issues aside, the iPhone itself is simply one of the most brilliant consumer product ever made. It is a device that will completely reshape the mobile phone market. The problem is, the other phone manufacturers seem to be thinking, “Wow, the iPhone has a touchscreen, we must all move to touchscreen-only phones as well.” I’m not saying that iPhone’s touchscreen isn’t brilliant, but it isn’t the end-all solution to the woes of the mobile phone design we’ve seen in the past decade.

There are already several manufacturers that’s decided to manufacture their own versions of a touchscreen phone. Some of which has been offering touchscreen capability for years (for example, most of HTC’s Windows Mobile based phones). The problem with these phones isn’t whether or not your buttons are placed on a screen or engraved into a rubber nub, the problem is the underlying unresponsive, inadequate, and sometimes down-right ugly software.

It’s easy to credit an obvious invention (even though touchscreen has always been around, the type that iPhone uses, basically a type of clear laptop touchpad, is completely new to the market) for the success of a hardware product; ultimately it isn’t just the hardware design, but how the hardware design interact, melds and works with the underlying software. I don’t find the buttons on my Razr hard to press, I don’t find the features on my HTC Windows Mobile phone to be so hard to access or inadequate; but I also don’t understand why everything I do on either of these phones seems to take place 3 seconds after I’ve executed a command, clicked a button, or even just scrolling through the address book.

Years and years ago, there was this great, ambitious operating system called BeOS. It was built from the ground up to be a multi-threaded, multi-CPU operating system. The most impressive aspect of BeOS, was how responsive it was at handling tasks that were extremely taxing to other operating system at the time. You can run multiple windows of videos, move them around the screen, resize them and still have lightning fast response. Mind you, this was the age when most users were still living with Windows 3.1 (maybe some on Windows 95?). The software engineers of BeOS were able to achieve this, because they were very aware that the outward responsiveness of an OS is just as important to its interaction with the user as the underlying operations.

For example, while another OS will prioritize the task of writing files to the disk, BeOS prioritized the playback of that file being written, saved, copied. The writing of the file can still be finished up in the background, but the immediate feedback of that file being worked on is the most important thing to the user, and delivered a level of interactivity that was far more appreciable.  The OS was instantaneously more robust because it made sure that you knew what it is doing, what you’ve done, then went ahead and finished up all those tasks in the background where it wouldn’t bother you.

That is in essence one of the most important aspect about the iPhone. On the first week of iPhone’s release, CNet even performed a real-life, side-by-side test of iPhone’s UI speed against what Apple were showing in the commercial. There were all sorts of accusation that Apple had fussed with the footage, sped up some parts, edited out the lag time in between. Well, the CNet guys found that almost second by second, they can do everything that was done in the commercial with their iPhone. Sure, the touchscreen UI is slick and intuitive, but it is also the amazing responsiveness of the UI, the underlying robustness of the software, that really sets the iPhone apart from any phone that you’ve ever used before.

Another company named Pasen put out this video on Youtube recently:

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Sure, it’s a touchscreen device that completely rips off the iPhone. Look at the video, watch the number of times you had to click, double-click, drag fingers around, try to see if the device is responding. Wait, what is it doing now? Did I just select that? Is that playing now? How do I.. wait, let me click on that again.

I hope the rest of the consumer electronics industry doesn’t follow suit. It’s not just about the touchscreen.

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Enjoy!

Finally, on the last day of May, iTunes has been updated to version 7.2 along with the arrival of “iTunes Plus”. DRM-less, 256kbps AAC files at last. I was excited enough to hop on right away and purchase 2 albums that has been sitting in my Amazon shopping cart for months (in their CD form, no less).

I’ve always been a very discerning audiophile, which only recently finally succumbed to the fact that keeping all of my music in Apple Lossless is really just a waste of hard drive space for a small (although still perceivable) quality gain. I have over thousands of dollars invested in pretty good audio equipments, most of which I no longer listen to on even a monthly basis anymore.

My Super Audio CD player is completely useless, as the format has died a painful and slow death. Now it is nothing more than a glorified CD changer that I never, ever bother to change. I have racks of CD’s that I don’t really want to deal with on my next move, only half of which has been ripped into MP3′s.

Fact of the matter is, there are only so many hours of entertainment I can relegate to my schedule per day, and most of those times are split in between games, TV, and other activities outside of the house. My interaction with music now are limited to my commute and a few minutes at work when I don’t have to worry about the next meeting. I am now content with 256kbps

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The whole fiasco is summarized at TechCrunch, with the users eventually winning out at the end. Obviously, there was no way that Digg can fight back against their entire user community. It’s a demonstration of how powerful the public voice can be, especially given the proper medium.

The question here, is that if a decryption key can be made into such highly publicized information, then what is the boundary for any information to remain private? Traditionally these type of information are always available, but only through backdoor channels, you always had to “know somebody that knew somebody” and digg around (no pun intended) for these ever-elusive hack. Now a HD-DVD decryption key is out in the wild, what’s a software maker’s right to protect say… their serial numbers?

If everyone posted their Windows Vista serial key, for example, what is Microsoft’s right to protect themselves against a possible outbreak of millions of serial keys being made public, and the ensuing windows activation nightmare?

As I was listening to Windows Weekly podcast this morning, I found out that Leo Laporte had gotten a new sponsor (for at least this episode) that makes a software called “Engage”. It offers a bit of the same functionality as QuickSilver for those envious Windows users. Although most likely, Windows users never knew such an approach to program launcher existed, but Mac users dual-booting or virtualizing Windows on their machine is probably incredibly frustrated every time they had to reach into that Start Menu. It is still far less powerful than QuickSilver in terms of extensibility and integration via plugins into other programs, but at least it’s better than the bare minimum Start Menu that Windows comes with.

Engage – the automatic start menu organizer

Personally, I think the delay doesn’t really mean much. As much as I love to see a new OS from Apple, there’s nothing obviously wrong and needs to be improved in MacOS X now. Unless Leopard has some insane, awesome unknown trick up its sleeve, there aren’t any feature that I have to have now. There certainly weren’t any new features introduced by Vista that makes me say, “I wish MacOS had this…”

Getting iPhone out on-time, and without bugs is probably the most important issue to Apple’s continued success at the moment. A bad iPhone launch could set back years of good will that Apple has built up. It’s funny how much it takes to rebuild a company (dating back to Steve Job’s return and the cute multi-color iMacs), and how easy it is to destroy it and see it crumple (the entire 1990′s for Apple).

It’s unlikely that I will read through every single one of my post and fix those errors. If anyone cares to sort through them and sees some information they really need (a link to a certain site, for example), please let me know and I’ll attempt to fix them.

Meanwhile, if you are in the same situation, and are looking for way to import Blogger into WordPress, here is the plugin that will do a very decent job:

Import New Blogger to WordPress

However, for every created need, there are a dozen of “WTF were you thinking?” I think this qualifies as one of them:

iCarta: Stereo Dock for iPod® with Bath Tissue Holder

I realize the product is a bit on the old side. I ran across a picture while browsing TUAW, and couldn’t resist posting it here. Since the product has been released for almost a year now, I’d like to see how many of these they’ve actually sold.

Brute force keygen cracks open Vista

It’s certainly not an easy hack, but at the end of the day is that it *will* work. Microsoft will probably also attempt to figure which keys are hacked and which ones aren’t, and disable those which are. The problem is, if hacked keys become widespread and varied enough, it will become harder and harder to track & keep everything “clean”. If two people calls up the Windows Activation hotline, who do you trust?

“Show Us The Code” is pushing for Steve Ballmer to show the open source world exactly what part of Microsoft’s source code is being used in Linux:

Your repeated claims that Linux violates Microsoft’s intellectual property has come to the attention of the Linux community. Not only that, but it’s been reported Microsoft has convinced businesses to pay for a Linux patent that you can’t provide.

Publicly pledge your support for Microsoft showing the public the code within Linux that violates their intellectual property by May 1st, 2007.

So far, the support seems to be gathering steam. Let’s hope this one doesn’t fizzle out like previous movements.

The Original Apple Vs. PC Guy Ad

Viacom to Sign Deal with Joost (via Techcrunch)

Hackers discover HD DVD and Blu-ray “processing key” — all HD titles now exposed

Enjoy!

Vista Month: Welcome To The DRM?

It’s a good, short & concise post that pretty much summarizes all the ideas behind Vista’s new content protection scheme without going into too much details. Although the post itself is relative old news by now (not to say that my post isn’t), the comments following the post is most entertaining.

There are quite a few people who swear they’ll never use Vista. Which will most likely be challenged when they purchase their next machine which will inevitably ship with Vista preinstalled. A few said they would rather switch to Linux, and even fewer said they will switch to MacOS. Completely understandable, since you can get Linux distributions for free, and you would have to pay for a new machine to get MacOS.

The number of people who are willing to defend Microsoft on this point is also surprising. While a few valid counter arguments has been made, including that most of these security features are turned on/off depending on the policy of the content provider; the fact remains that the studio has absolute, revocable control over what we paid for.

As history has shown us, it’s really hard to disable or extend pre-existing devices of any sort. For example, add-on drives to enable extra functions in consoles has never really panned out (even XBox 360′s HD-DVD drive is nothing more than offering an value add to watch HD-DVD content. No games will ever come out in that format). Destroying backward compatibility, as some early CD-DRM methods has proven, is also nearly impossible. With all the non-compliant stand-alone HD players out there, it’s hard to say if the studios will ever enforce complete security profiles on HD content.

However, this isn’t about the practical application of such ideals, but the fact that our rights to some degree has been completely taken away by these implementation of technology. If we allow them to get away with it this round, they will make sure it was implemented the “right way” the next time around. That’s an argument that everyone seems to be missing.

CES 2007: The Wootable Awards

Part of me didn’t believe that even Microsoft would go as far as implementing a content protection system that would come at a such detriment to the consumer. So I waited for weeks to see if Microsoft had any sort of public statement and rebuttal against it. Microsoft did eventually comment on the content protection behind Vista, and really couldn’t say much more other than admitting, and putting a good spin on what has been done.

Short blurb about AACS
To understand Windows Vista content protection, we have to first understand the difference between DVD, Blu-ray and HD-DVD. Our good ol’ DVD format was made during the adolescence of the digital content era. At the time the movie studios were promised that this complex encryption algorithm would never be cracked. As it turns out, CSS (the method of encryption used on DVD) wasn’t as impervious as we thought. If I recall correctly, the key to decrypting CSS was discovered in one of the software that plays back DVD on the PC. Since there’s no way to revoke that key once discovered, CSS encryption was hence cracked forever.

Thus, with HD-DVD and Blu-ray, the studios sought out a much more effective method of protecting their content. What they arrived at is what’s known as AACS (Advanced Access Content System). The key differences between AACS and CSS are:

• AACS seems to have a more modern public/private key encryption system, where there are many more keys assigned than there are in CSS encryption. The granularity of key distribution is unknown. Keys can be handed out on a per-player or per-model number basis, or perhaps even a per-company basis. This is unknown.What is for sure, is that there is a very complex & established backend that manages the distribution & licensing of all these keys.
• AACS uses a revocable broadcast system, where the content providers can revoke keys that has been hacked & distributed illegally. So if they realize a certain key has been compromised, they could distribute future content where they no longer will play and decrypt by using that pirated key.
• Manufacturers of players, either software or hardware based, has to pay licensing fee to AACS in order to use the keys. If a certain manufacturer say, goes out of business and then fails to pay the licensing fee, there are no guarantee that your player from that said manufacturer will continue to function. They could revoke the key and you would essentially be stuck with a brick (or useless bytes on your hard drive, if it’s a software player).
• AACS is also “policy-based”. Meaning that each Blu-ray and HD-DVD has a list of configurable policy to act with the hardware/software system that it is playing on. The content provider can choose to enable & disable certain features. For example, a lot of first-generation players shipped with component output which does not support HDCP (the end-to-end encryption from your player to your TV set), and a lot of current content does not have the policy to disable or degrade playback at the lack of HDCP. However content providers can choose to enable this feature in the future and once again, render your current hardware/software potentially useless.

How doe this affect Windows Vista?
Microsoft has an obvious strategy on making Windows Vista the next “media center” for every home, which probably also led to the decision for them to comply with just about everything that content providers wanted, even above and beyond the normal amount of compliance that is expected from a hardware manufacturer of traditional players.

AACS on its own is much more resource intensive; which explains why very early first generation Blu-ray and HD-DVD players can take as long as a minute to just “load” the disc. Of course that has improved with better & cheaper processors in the players, and won’t be much of an issue on your PC. Other than this resource being taken up by decryption, there are still other issues.

Like the aforementioned flexible policy with AACS, Windows Vista is also designed to “degrade” video & sound playback quality if the policy of the content calls for it. Of course all players has to deal with this, but PC users has the worst of it, because there’s a severe lack of completely compliant hardware available. To have complete compliance with AACS, you need to have HDCP, the end-to-end data encryption protection from the disc all the way to your monitor/speakers. There are very few hardware available that has HDCP compliance. There are very few HDCP compliant video cards, I’m not aware of any HDCP compliant sound card at all (which means you can’t get a digital output, only analog), and there are next to none HDCP compliant computer monitor on the market.

Furthermore, complete HDCP compliance requires part of the video/sound driver to become a “black box”. Obviously if the driver source code is available completely, HDCP would be easily hacked or bypassed by some method. So those users who chooses to run alternative operating systems, such as Linux, may be completely out of luck when it comes to HD content on their computer. There would be no open-source driver development to support HDCP components.

However, like I said earlier, most content available now do not have the entire set of compliance rules enabled, simply because there are still plenty of HD components on the market that doesn’t have compliance, and will *never* be compliant. It’s hard to say whether the content provider will eventually enable these features, and essentially shut out all first generation HD adopters (players & TV without HDCP support are all going to be obsolete if they choose to do so). It remains a fact that they are the ones in control, the consumers are not.

Other than HDCP compliance checks, Microsoft also implemented a “tilt-bit”. This is where they go much further to ensure content provider’s happiness than even the stand-alone players. A “tilt-bit” is a term derived from pinball machines, where there’s a detection that if you tilt the machine too much, the machine would consider that you were cheating & stop your ability to continue play. There is a constant system check that runs in the background every 30ms (milliseconds) when you are playing HD content. It checks against all the drivers in the system, all the processes, to make sure that nothing “weird” is going on. Nothing out of “expectation” is going on.

The reality is that computers are rather fickle machines. When you have millions of microscopic circuits on a tiny little chip smaller than your nails, there are a lot of errors that happens on a very small scale at all times. Computer chip do deteriorate over time as well, resulting very small breakdowns in circuits. Most people don’t realize that their computer is very much like their car, where “wear & tear” over time eventually degrades performance and kills a computer (which answers a lot of the questions like, “Why did my computer break down? I’ve only had it for 5 years and only ran one software on it!”). A “tilt-bit” check essentially catches errors similar to what your computer will naturally produce, and then decides what is deemed “appropriate” and what might be “hostile” and then restarts your graphic subsystem if it detects any potentially “harmful” behavior.

This is done to ensure that there isn’t any memory resident hack that’s capturing the decrypted output somehow. It’s also a very wide-area check for any potential hack of any sort that the system just can’t even predict or even know about. It’s like catching brim shrimps with a fishnet.

Lastly, there is a 128-bit encryption for all data sent through the PCI bus to your video card during playback, to ensure that no one can use any sort of a hardware snoop to capture unencrypted data going from the disc to your video card. HD content already takes up much higher bandwidth than DVD, now imagine having to encrypt/decrypt that content over PCI bus in real time. That’s an incredible amount of resource being eaten up for no reason other to service the content providers.

Will other OS’s follow suit?
This kind of insanely taxing implementations of content protection, is what I believe to be the reason that we have yet to see any sort of next-gen content announcement from Apple.

As much as people criticize Apple’s FairPlay DRM for being a closed & proprietary system, people also forget how much Apple fought to reach the compromise that became FairPlay. FairPlay came at a time where record companies weren’t happy about distributing digital content, and even those who did, did not want to license more than one device at a time. They wanted to charge people money for every device that their music played on. Apple fought back, got the contract so people can play their music on up to 5 devices, and are able to disable licensing on devices that they no longer use.

Even before the iTunes Music Store (I’m also surprised at how many people forgot that iTunes existed without the music store at first, and the first iPods did not have downloadable content; it was just a MP3 player), iPod implemented a really screwy one-direction music download to the device, where the song names would be completely scrambled & referenced by a XML file to provide a “soft-protection”. This was part of the design that convinced the music industry that Apple were at least somewhat reasonable to work with. Apple didn’t do these things for no reason at all, they did it so they can negotiate some sort of a compromise that could appease both content provider and the consumers.

Microsoft had made absolutely no attempt at negotiating for a compromise of any sort. Even with their Zune player, they agreed to “pay” music labels for each Zune they sold, even if none of that label’s music would ever make it onto a Zune. Microsoft has certainly made a terrible example of how to deliver content protection to their consumer, and I hope other companies will not follow in their footsteps.

Although this response could be universally applied to all software, it is hilariously funny that the president of Romania would say this right in front of Bill Gates… and basically thank him for the one issue he hates the most.

1. You’re only being compared to the same product of last generation.
This type of comparative review where you’re evaluated mostly against the last generation, perhaps even last generation of your own product, can only happen under two situations. One, if you’re the market leader and there are nothing else to compare to. Or two, you are only impressive when compared against last generation or your previous self. If you’re not in situation one, you’re in trouble.

2. Even major publications that are generally very mutual and stays away from making strong statements and opinions are not giving you a positive, perhaps even just mutual review.
This would be CNET…

It’s very clear in CNET’s review of Windows Vista Ultimate, they are not impressed by how much Windows Vista had to offer after years of development, and the only comparison that would shine light on Vista’s major facelift, would be against its former brethen.

Snippets like this cannot be what Microsoft has planned for five+ years:

Windows Vista is not the Apple Mac OS X 10.4 killer one hoped for (or feared).

Perhaps we’re spoiled, but after more than five years of development, there’s a definite “Is that all?” feeling about Windows Vista. Like cramming an info-dump into a book report the night before it’s due, there certainly are a lot of individual features within the operating system, but the real value lies in their execution–how the user experiences (or doesn’t experience) these–and like the info-dump, we came away shaking our heads, disappointed. Compared with Mac OS X 10.4, Windows Vista feels clunky and not very intuitive, almost as though it’s still based on DOS (or at least the internal logic that made up DOS).

But is Windows Vista a bad operating system? No. It’s just a disappointment for PC users who hoped that Microsoft would deliver something truly exciting to finally leapfrog ahead of Apple. They failed.

Of course, CNET is still putting a positive spin on this being just Vista 1.0, and Microsoft will publish service packs in the future to improve the user experience. Although there are absolutely no historical example of that Microsoft, who up until this point used Service Packs primarily to fix bugs and address security issues.

Even then, they did not recommend current XP users to jump on the Vista bandwagon.

Windows Vista is essentially warmed-over Windows XP. If you’re currently happy with Windows XP SP2, we see no compelling reason to upgrade. On the other hand, if you need a new computer right now, Windows Vista is stable enough for everyday use.

The saddest truth about all this though, is that eventually all users will be running Vista, because it’ll be on their computer when they buy it. Chances are it’ll be the cheap crappy version of Vista anyway, but it’ll be Vista nevertheless. Microsoft will still make plenty of money just by the inertia of the computing masses, with a mediocre OS that did nothing to take us forward. At least Windows users can finally say they have a 3D accelerated UI as well, albeit an ugly looking one (insert your “PC case with plexi window + neon light” versus Mac Pro design analogy here).

From The Unofficial Apple Weblog:
MIT writer says Vista drove her to Mac

And the original article here:
Uninspiring Vista

Yay! I’m not alone! We should start a whole new subculture of “users driven to Mac by Vista” under the broader big-brother branch of the Mac culture.

Take a look at Engadget’s article for more information:
VirginMega France to sell DRM-free MP3s in March

So here are a few annoyance that I’ve found with my Mac:

• The Finder -
  The Finder is an adequate file management system. Part of my unhappiness with it is due to my experience with Windows Explorer for the past several years. Although Windows Explorer has its share of flaws, both file management system can take a few tips from the other. Although the more time I’ve spent with Finder, the more familiar and comfortable I became. It is also quite apparent that since moving to the Mac, I tend to interact with files a lot less with Finders than individual applications. For example, organizing my photos is done through iPhoto, music through iTunes. However, this also brings me to the next caveat…

Despite those complaints, the nuisances that I’m experiencing with OS X are far less troublesome than I had with Windows. I had installed Windows XP on this machine in Bootcamp, anticipating needing to run some Windows app at some point. I also pondered getting Parallels. The truth is, I haven’t found any software in Windows that I can’t find a replacement for in OS X. Often times the replacement software is much more intuitive than its Windows counterpart (that’s entirely another blog entry, eh?). The only thing I wish I can do is run Windows games, and I haven’t found a single game that really makes me want to dual-boot back to Windows at all.

I heard rumors that Parallels is working on getting game API calls routed through their virtual machine. There has always been such software for Linux to get Windows games to play within Linux. So… I guess that day will come.. eventually.

Although it isn’t perfect in the world of Mac, it’s close enough to convince me to get a Macbook Pro to go with my quiet behemoth at home.

The iPhone breaks two basic axioms of consumer technology. One, when you take an application and put it on a phone, that application must be reduced to a crippled and annoying version of itself. Two, when you take two devices—such as an iPod and a phone—and squish them into one, both devices must necessarily become lamer versions of themselves. The iPhone is a phone, an iPod, and a mini-Internet computer all at once, and contrary to Newton—who knew a thing or two about apples—they all occupy the same space at the same time, but without taking a hit in performance. In a way iPhone is the wrong name for it. It’s a handheld computing platform that just happens to contain a phone.

Read the whole article here.

Part of that may just be Apple is very satisfied with where Mac hardware & software is right now, and any model changes & upgrades wouldn’t require such a big announcement at Macworld. I think part of the reason may also be article like this one in Information Week:

“Microsoft had two serious issues. First, they had to make this update of Windows revolutionary enough that it came close to justifying the delay. Second, they had to come up with something that would stand up well with its main competitor in the desktop OS market, Mac OS X. Have they succeeded at both? I’d argue that the former’s almost a non-issue: Vista will sell well, because the world won’t have a choice. As far as the latter, well, probably, but you’d be hard-pressed to say Vista’s better than Mac OS X.”

“Windows is…well, Windows is very eager to tell you what’s going on. Constantly. Plug something in, and you get a message. Unplug something and you get a message. If you’re on a network that’s having problems staying up, you’ll get tons of messages telling you this. It’s rather like dealing with an overexcited Boy Scout…who has a lifetime supply of chocolate-covered espresso beans.”

“This kind of “change for change’s sake” is all over Vista. The window controls in Vista are smaller and flatter than in XP, and unlike XP, don’t reach all the way to the top of the window anymore.”

“For example, in Windows XP you have a control panel called “Add or Remove Programs.” While not elegant, it is clear. You know what that control panel’s functionality is, no guessing. It adds and removes programs. The Vista version? “Programs and Features.” Huh? What does that do?”

This article goes into a good amount of detail, including some comparative screenshots, and echos my sentiment about Windows Vista. It’s just not good enough to be “competitive”, but it’s still better than Windows XP.

Read more at Information Week:
Review: Mac OS X Shines In Comparison With Windows Vista

Well, I hope CES learned their lesson and never do this again. Apple just blew everyone away with the iPhone, coverages are all over the web, so I won’t repeat any of them here. I’ll just provide a few useful links to read up on all the jazz:

News.com
Engadget
Gizmodo

Of course, not the least:

Apple

Despite month of speculations, including many accurate ones, Apple *still* managed to just BLOW EVERYONE AWAY. Even with all the expectations and hype, they outdone all of them. No one cares about anything that’s going on at CES now, we’re all just counting our bills and waiting ’til June 2007.