Freyburg

I have a new article on Mac | Life, this time about GPS on the iPhone and how it can be unreliable in a variety of circumstances.

It would appear that Apple is in fact looking to expand the iPhone OS past the iPod and iPad. To what purpose? Well, Steve Jobs did refer to the iPad as a “magical platform”, and maybe there’s more to that statement than just the iPad’s seemingly limited abilities. Maybe Apple is working on ways to convert their entire line of laptops to some hybrid of the iPhone OS, giving even professionals a new way to express themselves.

Or maybe not. After all, the iPhone OS is (at least at present) somewhat limited, and an application like Final Cut Pro would need a radical revamp in order to work in an “iPhone OS-ish” setting. But I’ve always said Steve Jobs is a lot smarter than I am, so we’ll have to see what Apple has in mind with this latest mysterious move.

According to a new article in Silicon Valley Insider, cable is starting to feel the pinch from online video, and no wonder. With old technology, no way to get a la carte programming, and a disdain for the customer that borders on the pathological, I’m not surprised cable is hurting.

Anecdotally I’ve talked to many friends who have dropped cable for online, some of them going so far as to get rid of their televisions. I keep my TV around as a video game monitor, but it doesn’t do much past that. And with the advent of iPhone apps like Al Jazeera English, it won’t be long before I pick and choose the channels I want (in my case, mostly news) and carry them around in my pocket.

Of course, Canada is even more of a monopoly than the United States, and to date we haven’t had anything as disruptive as Hulu arrive on the scene (though it’s likely on the way.) And our cable and TV execs are if anything in more denial than their US counterparts; when I was at the Banff TV Festival a few months ago one exec said with a straight face that “We’ll be just fine, we have HD!” Yes, never mind that all it takes is a clever bit of math and the web will soon have as good or better quality video than HDTV, you just wallow in your comfortable lies, TV exec.

Long term, I think the television industry as it stands is doomed. Eventually everything will come to our televisions, computers and other devices through the internet, and those who can adapt to that new reality will survive. Those that can’t…won’t.

Apple updated the iPhone system software to 2.2 late this week, and so far I’m impressed. New features include street views (for some cities) in Google Maps, a redesigned Safari, and the absolutely welcomed ability to download podcasts directly into the iPhone from the iTunes store. Never mind that the process is a little clunky, just the fact that I can do it is pretty impressive. Equally cool, bit not as glitzy, is the fact that you can now hit “update all” to update your apps, and they’ll update all at once. More importantly, the icons now stay just where you left them, rather than you having to move them around every time a feature gets changed. Other than that…it’s the same iPhone as always. Apparently Apple has added a bunch of “emoji” icons, which is important to the Japanese market, but doesn’t do much for me.

Just doing a test of blogging from my Iphone. Which, until Apple allows me to cut and paste and include links, is of limited use.