So… CRAZY early tomorrow morning I head to San Francisco. One of the main focuses of my trip will be attending the MacWorld Conference & Expo and meeting folks there. I’m really excited. I’ve always heard about MacWorld but I’ve never been to one.
I wanted to take it slow so this year I’m just doing an expo pass, which I’ve heard is all you really need.
I’m just curious, what tips do you guys have? Anyone I need to meet? Do you want to meet? Anything in particular that I should check out?
For a while now, there has been talk of Washington, DC getting an Apple Store in Georgetown. According to Apple Insider, this is facing delays due to opposition Apple is getting for it’s building proposals they’re sending to the local Georgetown advisory neighborhood commission.
Although it’s since been cleared to raze the building at 1229 Wisconsin Ave., Apple has been unable to pass its design proposals for the new store through a review process governed by a pair of local preservationist bodies, according to the Georgetown Current [PDF].
The paper reported last week that the Georgetown advisory neighborhood commission rejected the third consecutive proposal from the electronics company at a December 2nd meeting, and that the Old Georgetown Board did the same at its own meeting two days later.
Concern that Apple’s design may be too radical for the surrounding neighborhood appears to be the primary issue. Its most recent proposal calls for a glass first story “with a solid-stone upper facade punctuated by a large window shaped like Apple’s logo.”
Speaking for all the Apple fanboys in the DC area, I hope this gets resolved quickly.
Today, Apple fanatics from around the world all cried a little bit in unison when they heard the news that this will be Apple’s last year at the MacWorld Expo in San Francisco and that this year Father Steve Jobs won’t be giving the keynote.
Despite being an Apple fanboy, I think there is actually a pretty cool thing going on. Check out this section of the press release:
Apple is reaching more people in more ways than ever before, so like many companies, trade shows have become a very minor part of how Apple reaches its customers. The increasing popularity of Apple’s Retail Stores, which more than 3.5 million people visit every week, and the Apple.com website enable Apple to directly reach more than a hundred million customers around the world in innovative new ways.
Apple is making the decision to move away from the mass market approaches to getting messages into the hands of customers. They’re opting for the mediums that allow them to go directly to their users, the Web and their retail stores.
Just like Apple, you too can move away from the fire hose broadcast style messaging via mass media and start utilizing the Web and social media as a medium for having a relationship and building community directly with your users.
Obviously, we can not all start retail stores like Apple so that we can have face to face relationships with our customers but a lot of us can spend more money on travel. We can attend the conferences, meetups, and users groups that our users spend their time at.
I read the paper edition of the Washington Post. Today someone purchased two full pages of the paper for an advertisement. I don’t want to know how much that cost. Regardless, those days are over. Much like the massive keynotes at trade shows, that style of getting your message to your users isn’t cost effective of efficient.
So… what are you doing to have a relationship directly with your user community?
So… as many of you experienced this morning, it seems as if data network that is used by the Apple iPhone went down this morning. It’s nearly 12 hours later and it still seems incredibly spotty to me. Sometimes it will works and sometimes it won’t.
Does Apple really want the iPhone to be a credible enterprise device? This kind of stuff can’t happen. I can understand a couple of hours but most of the day??
I’m starting to depend on the iPhone as a way for me to do work. It’s part of my life. When it doesn’t work, I feel shut off.
When Blackberry service goes down, Washington DC starts to look like a scene from a Left Behind movie.
So this morning I waited in line to get the brand new iPhone 3G. For those of you who just have to know, I opted for the black 16 gig version.
One reason why I wanted to upgrade was that 3G unlocks a lot of options for you that you don’t get with EDGE. You’re naturally going to be able to download more data to your phone A LOT faster.
I had downloaded the Pandora Radio iPhone App to my older phone but there were constant delays in playing songs as the phone had to catch up with the song it was downloading.
Now on the iPhone 3G, I can listen to music on Pandora seamlessly just as if I was listening to Pandora from my computer. This is GAME CHANGING.
I already hardly ever listened to the radio. I think this seals the deal.
The thing I want next is for my friends at ODEO to create an iPhone app so that I can stream audio podcasts write to my iPhone. I travel a lot and I’d love to be able to download the TWiT podcasts write to my iPhone without having to sync up with my computer.
Then… I’d be able to have the equivalent of both new radio music and talk programming right at the command of my finger tips in my iPhone. WAY cool!!!!
So… what do you think of the Pandora Radio App? Do you more so prefer the Last FM or AOL Radio iPhone Apps? Do you prefer listening to the radio? If so, why?
So on the way back from a meeting in the SOMA neighborhood of San Francisco, I strolled by the flag ship Apple Store on Market Street. On my way to the meeting I noticed that the “We’re out of the iPhone 3G” sign was gone so I thought maybe I could stop in and pick one up on my way back.
Much to my surprise. There was a line going down the block. One person mentioned that they had been there for two hours.
That’s CRAZY. The phone has been out for a week and folks are still queing up for 2 hours?!?!? NUTS!
My first gen iPhone is good enough that I’m not going to wait in that long of a line.
So… yesterday, when I found the link to get early access to the iPhone 2.0 software, of course I tried it and loaded it up right away. (Yes, I am that guy.)
I then proceeded to download a bunch of apps to my phone.
Now there are just some apps that I don’t get why they are apps. For example, there is Facebook and the New York Times. Their iPhone apps are almost exactly the same as their iPhone Web site.
As the implementations of mobile Web browsers improve across mobile phones, increasing the use of new Web technologies (better CSS and JavaScript), there is a chance you’ll be able to use the iPhone Web site again.
I can’t imagine that Apple will ever license the iPhone OS so you’ll never be able to see your iPhone app used on anything but an iPhone.
Now I can understand Sega’s Super Monkeyball. That is a REALLY fun game for the iPhone. I can’t imagine you’ll be able to do that with a browser for a long long long time so I understand if you wanna make that an iPhone app.
But… why does Twitteriffic need to be an iPhone app? Didn’t we get EXACTLY the same thing with Hahlo? Actually, I think Hahlo has more and better functionality.
With iPhone 3G, a lot of the speed, responsiveness, and interactivity issues with iPhone Web sites should be resolved.
Yeah… so when you start to think about time and resources around whether your company should build an iPhone app, ask yourself whether or not you’re doing it because it’s cool or you’ll get a lot of people to use it.
Am I crazy? What do you think?
I’m getting pretty excited for July 11th. It will be the launch of the new iPhone 3g. Unfortunately, I think I’m going to be in an airplane all day so I won’t be able to stand in line but that’s not a huge deal.
The new word is that you’ll be able to turn your old iPhone into a wifi iPod, which rocks.
Original iPhone owners who prefer not to give away or sell their old iPhones after upgrading to an iPhone 3G can instead keep their devices and use them as WiFi-enabled iPods, AT&T has confirmed.
This expands my choices for what I want do with my old one.
Are you going to get the new iPhone? Do you have an old one? What are you going to do with it?
On Monday, geeks from around the world watched with baited breath as Apple CEO Steve Jobs, in addition to announcing the 3G iPhone, gave a status update on iPhone 2.0 which will include 3rd party software apps.
They software apps they demo’d were awesome and showed the amazing breadth of what you’ll be able to do with the iPhone.
BUT… I wonder if all this interest in creating 3rd party software apps for the iPhone will quell interest in creating Web apps.
While the promise of iPhone software apps leaves me with glee, it also kind of bums me out. Why would you want to create something that can only be used on device?
I can’t imagine that Apple will ever license their iPhone software out to other hardware manufacturers. If you make a software app for the iPhone, it will always stay on the iPhone.
While the promise of the Web is that if the browser makers and the Web publishers both adhere to standards, you’ll have no problem using the content or application no matter what device your on.
The biggest problem with Web apps on the iPhone 1.0 was that the connection was too slow. You really desired for better interactivity and response when you did something. Well, having 3G in the iPhone should fix a lot of this.
I wonder if just like with the computer, where we saw a generation of apps first start off as software and then move to the Web (mail, office productivity), if we’ll see the same with mobile and the iPhone.
What do you think? If you were to create an app for the iPhone would you do it as a software or a Web app? If software, are you comfortable with being so silo’d?
So yeah… the new version of Google Reader for the iPhone (http://www.google.com/reader/i/) is 10,000x better then the old one. This makes me SUPER happy because I basically live off of Google Reader.
iPhone users, check it out and tell me what you think.
