I’m on the road today, headed up to NYC to visit some friends, but I thought this was worth sharing. I got an email this morning confirming that my free Apple bumper case has shipped, despite the estimated 3-5 week ship time Apple initially doled out.
Even though I’m not among those cursed with a failing phone, it’s nice to see some quick turnaround on Apple’s part. Hopefully people can start to see a working phone some time early next week.
I swear a story like this comes out every eight to twelve months just to trick unsuspecting (though I’m starting to suspect a few things) people like myself into spending money on garbage in the hopes that it will be worth millions of dollars someday.
Today’s tale: a man saw a box of glass negatives at a yard sale ten years ago and, though he wanted it, was unwilling to pay the $70. He haggled down to $45. It turns out those negatives were some of Ansel Adams’ early work, and the collection (what was once a box is now known as a collection) is worth around $200 million dollars.
So, how many people will be running out to yard sales this weekend?
Among Apple’s various hardware updates today, the company launched a trackpad for desktops, officially dubbed the Magic Trackpad. I’m not real sure where the magic is.
Now granted, I tend to prefer the trackpad to the mouse for general browsing, but this is something that seems aimed at power users, not the casual internet browser. Desktops come with a mouse, so people are comfortable using the mouse. Will they really want to drop $69 for a couple gestures, most of which are mimicked by the controls on your everyday mouse today?
My guess is no, but I’m not naive enough about Apple products to think this thing won’t sell. It would definitely be much cooler if it worked like a tablet (yes, there is some third-party software that can help a bit), but as a simple trackpad, I’m just not that impressed.
It may surprise you to learn that unlocking and jailbreaking your cell phone has to this point been against the law. It’s especially surprising considering some of the first news when a new iOS build is released is who can jailbreak it the fastest.
The legality, at least, will no longer be in question. Feds ruled to make it a legal practice to remove the barriers between you and the awesome powers of your phone. In reality, this doesn’t do much. It’s not like jailbreaking was being enforced in any serious way in the past. This also won’t change things for the current jailbreakers. They’ll keep going, hacking as they have in the past, and the people using alternative app stores will likely continue to do the same. The only people this really affects are the few entrepreneurs out there who will try to make a legitimate buck by opening yet another app store for interested parties.
If you are such a party, start looking for your new apps soon. Otherwise, as you were, folks. Nothing to see here.
Ever since the Twitter launch, people have been trying to convince me that the service is important – some go so far as to say it’s a vital part of the internet community. While I agree that it is somewhat of a phenomenon, I’ve never come around to see the real point of Twitter. The only thing that’s good about Twitter is that it’s free, and it seems even the Twitter-using population agrees.
The story comes courtesy of the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism’s 2010 Digital Future Study, which found that a mammoth zero percent of Twitter users would pay for the service. Zero. Now, part of that is certainly that it’s tough to transition users from a free service to a paid model. In the same vein, though, users that truly care about a service will pay to keep it alive. Ninja Video, a video site that was recently raided by the feds, had sizable donations from its members, even though it wasn’t required for use of the site. The fact that Twitter is ZERO percent – not 0.8, not 0.6, not 0.005 – says a lot to me.
No, this post is not invitation for your views on Twitter. I realize some people think it’s valuable. Some people Know it’s the greatest thing in the world. If it was that important, though, you’d probably be willing to pay for it.
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