iPad

Apple announced the latest iPad. That’s it. It’s just called iPad. No numbers or anything. It claims to be a revolutionary upgrade, but I just don’t see it. In fact I’m disappointed.

Full disclosure I have a lot of Apple crap. I love their products. I even shed a tear for Steve Jobs. That said I think the company takes itself way too seriously at times and can go a bit overboard with the pretentiousness. Never the less I had to stop for a few minutes to find out what the latest iPad offers. As everyone else has gone over a billion times here they are:

• Screen resolution increased
• Better graphics processor
• Better camera
• LTE Support (The real 4G)
• Slightly reduced pricing

Let’s break these down one at a time:

1) Better screen resolution pumped up to an unsightly 2,048 by 1,536 pixels. When I say unsightly I mean it. Most people will never, ever tell the difference. Above 1024 and your eyes just don’t register that much. Maybe a newborn would see it because everything is new and awesome but not the rest of the post-crawling-age population.

2) Better graphics processor. Ok perhaps this one will be good. Video can drag a little and recording can be a pain, so a better graphics processor is always a good thing. I’ll give them a point for that.

3) A better camera. Holy shit, a 5 megapixel camera. I can hardly breath. That’s 2005 2004 technology. My iPhone 4 has more megapixels than that and it’s SMALLER. I’ve yet to see one person, even some hard core Apple fan boys at the beach, holding up their iPads to take pictures. Wait, beach isn’t a good example because you can’t even see the damn screen in the sun. Ok how about this: Apple developers club party at the local university. Everybody had an iPad. Pictures taken with iPhones and real cameras. Eight to ten megapixels is becoming the norm for most devices. It’s good quality and size but not so damn big you’re only taking a dozen photos before running out of memory. Apple: You’re doing this on the iPhone 4S, why not the new iPad???

4) LTE. This one has to be the most interesting yet ultimately sad upgrade. LTE is great. Super fast internet speeds. I’d kill for an LTE card in my Macbook or iPhone. One major problem though: AT&T and other carriers have done away with unlimited data, and they’re raping you six ways from Sunday if you go over. Now think about that for just a moment… You’re getting the shit kicked out of you now for using 3G wireless broadband technology. Your current 3G download rates are around a megabit per second, if you’re lucky which you probably aren’t. The new LTE download rates are up to 100 megabits per second. AT&T’s top plan for new people is 3 gigabytes per month. Note the difference in bits versus bytes. To go through your 3 GB monthly cap you’d have to stream down at 1 megabit per second for or about 4 hours.

To blow through that 3GB cap with LTE would only take you four minutes. So you can pretty much kiss any type of streaming video (Netflix, Amazon, etc.) goodbye or you’ll be paying with your arm, leg, second child, and another mortgage. Until caps are eliminated LTE is a dead duck.

5) Price. Supposedly the price has been reduced. Ok that’s nice. That always helps. But it’s still hella expensive. Drop that price another $100 and I think twice as many people will be using iPad by August.

Note: After posting I did learn of two new points: more memory in the new models, and a much larger battery. Cult of Mac has a great article on this latter point.

So there you have it. The newest amazing product from Apple. I really, really wish they had made it lighter by swapping aluminum for carbon fiber or polymer. I wish the screen went edge to edge instead of this stupid bezel around it. I wish more had been done to improve the cameras. What about NFC? Bigger hard drives for less? There are so many other improvements they could have done to this iPad that would have made it a steller purchase. Yet just a few weeks after the birthday of Steve Jobs we’re still handed this sack of shit that is minor, incremental improvements, spun and sold as much more than it really is.

I remember when Apple was releasing products as soon as they were conceived, leaping dramatic steps over previous models. Now we’re down to a trickle, once or twice a year. Come on Apple, Steve’s dead, you’ve got more money than the Vatican and a few dozen countries COMBINED. Show us INNOVATION not mini updates to keep sales going. Be bold, be daring, be Apple dammit! I think our friends over at the Gentlemans Rant says it best in their iPhone 4S outtake spoof. (Note: this is satire!)

EDIT!!! THEY MADE ONE JUST FOR THE IPAD!!!!!

Apple, Inc. Sucks. Period.

Apple, Inc. is a brilliant technology company that has given us many innovative, truly amazing products. At the same time, Apple has penalized, punished, sued, and bullied its way through the world in ways that make Microsoft look like the neighborhood lemonade stand. They have sued customers into oblivion, stifled competition, bullied the media and its competitors for years. But now the final straw may have been broken.

Many people don’t seem to realize what occurred over the weekend regarding the new iPhone prototype. Let me sum it up for you real quick:

On the night of March 18, iPhone engineer Gray Powell walked into a bar in Redwood City California and left an iPhone prototype. Someone found it and for whatever reason took it home. The person tried to contact Apple who said they had no idea and could not comment further. So they took it to Gawker, an online media publisher. Gawker instantly recognized the potential, proven or not, of a great news story – so they they paid the guy $5,000 for it. At the time, we didn’t know if it was the real thing or not. It didn’t even get past the Apple logo screen. They took pictures, they took it apart, and they analyzed the heck out of it. After all that they published a MAJOR news story that was instantly devoured by the public.

Gawker, the publisher of Gizmodo, and the editors tried unsuccessfully to contact Apple to confirm if the device was indeed theirs. Apple would not confirm it was their phone, but they did ask for the phone to be sent to them. Gizmodo (as anyone would) demanded some type of admittance that this was their phone and they would like it back – just in case it really wasn’t! So finally, at the insistence of Gizmodo, Apple sent a formal letter asking for the prototype back – which Gizmodo immediately did. So far, so good.

Then on April 26, police raided the home of Jason Chen,  Editor of Gizmodo (warrant etc. in the link). They seized a ton of stuff. Not only did they take all of his computers, but also iPhone, iPad, iPods, wireless base station, his business cards and a wholeeee lot of other stuff. (see previous link for details).

The raid was carried out by California’s Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team (REACT) at the behest of Apple Computers, which sits on the REACT steering committee. If you’re not familiar with REACT don’t be surprised, neither was I – or anyone else outside of the high, high level of silicon valley computing. REACT is a high-tech crimes task force that was formed to deal with issues such as piracy and theft of trade secrets in the tech industry. However it appears the raid was may have been conducted at the behest of Apple, but may have also been illegal.

The law is a little murky here but it makes sense. According to Wired magazine:

“The federal Privacy Protection Act prohibits the government from seizing materials from journalists and others who possess material for the purpose of communicating to the public. The government cannot seize material from the journalist even if it’s investigating whether the person who possesses the material committed a crime by receiving or possessing the material, which seems to be the nature of the investigation involving Chen. Instead, investigators need to obtain a subpoena, which would allow the reporter or media outlet to challenge the request and segregate information that is not relevant to the investigation.”

This refers to an area of law called “shield” laws (remember the Valerie Plame case?) A 1972 court case set a legal standard for decided if reporters are shielded from police action related to their journalism, but a formal law has never been passed. But wait! There’s more from Wired:

“California state law also provides protections to prevent journalists from being forced to disclose sources or unpublished information related to their work.”

So we’ve got a federal legal ruling and a state law. But Gawker/Gizmodo is an electronic blog, are they really journalists? According to Jennifer Granick, civil liberties director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, ”California law is crystal clear that bloggers are journalists too”. That clarification comes from the case of Jason D. O’Grady, a blogger who was sued by Apple and won with the help of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. From the EFF website on the case:

“In May 2006 a California state appeals court ruled in favor of the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s petition on behalf of three online journalists, holding that the online journalists have the same right to protect the confidentiality of their sources as offline reporters do.”

So where does that leave us? The San Mateo County District Attorney got a warrant against a protected individual, conducted an illegal raid, illegally seized property, and may have done so at the direction of a private corporation. If this doesn’t make you mad then you must be asleep.

Here’s my final take since nothing has been resolved:

1) If I find an iPhone in a bar I’m not giving it to the bartender. I may leave my name and phone number but there’s no way I’m giving it to a bartender. I’ve worked in the food and drink industry and saw countless number of employees keeping lost property for themselves.

2) I would not have sold it to Gizmodo because it could have been truly stolen property.

3) If I were Gizmodo I would have gleefully paid for the phone and the story – because it’s a major, major story. It’s not the first time a story has been bought. Specifically because Gizmodo did not know the history of the device, or even if it was real.

4) Journalists should be shielded from revealing sources in instances that do not involve national security. I support the enactment of a limited journalists shield law, but as with the case of the leaked video from Iraq I say if it’s classified and you release it you should go to jail. Period.

I think Apple has no legs to stand on. Your people lost it. You didn’t claim it up front so a journalist is more than in their right to treat it as lost and unclaimed property. On top of that you look like a bunch of jackbooted thugs bullying everyone. Unless Apple – and by Apple I mean Steve Jobs – doesn’t step up and make this right publicly, I am done with Apple products.

This ain’t over yet! What if the police just happen to find questionable porn, software, or other stuff on Chen’s computer. They could prosecute him for that too! It’s not out of the realm of huge possibility, though hopefully that will fall under the legal doctrine of fruit of the poisonous tree.

We’ll see!