TheMacAdvocate

After over a year of analyst frothing, Apple announced the next step in its transformation of consumer electronics devices. The 2 predictable results of Apple’s announcement – the immediate sell-off of Apple stock and the collective feigned disinterest of Windoz apologists across the country – belies the truth. This is a device that will change the way people will interact with content. So you can click through to dumbasses like Thurrott or Dvorak as they lather themselves up over missing non-features like no buttons for games or no stylus, or you can take the word of someone who claims to know 1% as much, but is much more frequently right. Future’s here people.

So as many denial-riddled pundits yawn at SJ’s claim that “this is the most important thing I’ve ever worked on” (which would include the iMac, the iPod and the iPhone, to name a few), several other businesses are making messes in their shorts – and not the euphoric kind of mess. So now that the iPad’s here, who wins and who loses? Here’s Part 1 of a quick round-up, starting with the losers.

Adobe

When Apple made it clear that they had no interest porting Flash to the iPhone, many analysts shrugged it off as an anomaly. I mean: Flash is ubiquitous on the web and Apple always did weird shit like this. Besides, Adobe was working its plow improving a stripped down version of Flash that would sip battery power like a hummingbird and play super nice with mobile browsers. Just wait for the next version…or the next one. Anyway, even if Apple never adopted Flash and grabbed 50% of the smartphone market, it was only a small percentage of the entire mobile device market. There were still plenty of people to maintain Adobe’s Flash as the de facto runtime on the web, right?

Well the iPhone and now the iPad won’t support it. And Google doesn’t care much for it either. And now Firefox is switching off plug-ins by default for its RC3 Maemo mobile browser, in essence because Flash is a hog. HTML5 support is picking up. And up. Technorati everywhere are going on record as plainly stating that Flash is a dog and HTML5 is the wave of the future. Adobe’s response to the threat: Flash is everywhere. Sound familiar? Keep throwing up your Bang Bros. references to the ubiquity of Flash, guys. Jig’s up. Might not happen this year, but it’s happening: you’re fucked.

Amazon

Poor Jeff Bezos. After all that work getting the eInk technology to perfectly mirror a dead form of media interaction, Apple has to come out with a device that does 20 times as much and a ridiculously competitive price point. That whimpering you hear is no longer the effect Kindle is having on the eBook market; it’s now coming from the CEO’s office. First he’s going to get to see sales of his devices freeze (not that we ever knew how many they sold) and then he’ll get to see his margins – if there ever were any – crash through the floor.

But there’s hope! Amazon just acquired Touchco, a maker of multitouch panels, so a touch version of the Kindle is surely on its way. Because didn’t Apple get multitouch by acquiring Fingerworks? You just plug that shit right into your business model and – BAM! iPad competitor! Right? Right?

Guys, seriously: kick the clown shoes under the bed. A minor feature of one of Apple’s products just buried you.

The Windoz Ecosystem

Granted, no one expects Redmond to respond to the iPad with anything that anyone would rather use (except maybe Paul Thurrortt). But in typical Microsoft fashion, they’ll make a lot of noise about it and respond with something underwhelming. It won’t be the Courier, because the Courier is a bullshit cloud of vapor that smells exactly like Cairo, Longhorn, etc. The only people who’ve made money off the Courier are the people working for the design firm who did the rendering for this non-device. HP, who had the distinguished honor of having their tablet device fondled my Steve Ballmer’s sweaty mitts onstage at CES, is one known entry. Lenovo is another. M$ will respond not with some innovative take on slate computing, but with some bastardization of Windows 7. It will be a customized assemblage of some commodity PC giblets made to look like an iPad to a drunk 6 year old. Because M$ has been playing the me-too game with Apple for at least the last 15 years, and because the cash they spew into this space will have little – if any – return, M$ is clearly in the loser’s column, which should shock no one. Their unfortunate hardware partners, who really don’t have much of a choice, will be dragged right down with them.

Google

Google’s a loser on 2 fronts. First, as the always-brilliant Daniel Eran Dilger points out, the Google model of advertising is much more compelling on desktop and laptop devices (if you can use the word “compelling” to describe the experience of getting targeted ads dumped on your browsing experience). On devices like the iPhone, the probability of people clicking on an ad is much lower. People don’t want to rabbit-trail ads on mobile devices; they want access to the content they’re looking for. Apple’s iPad, while allowing for a greater surface to browse the web like a laptop, still sticks with the iPhone’s touch model, which one would think would continue to discourage ad clicks. More people using iPads to browse the web means fewer people using laptops and desktops. The value of Google to advertisers drops. Some content providers may even prefer to go to a subscription model instead of trying (and almost always failing – or producing content like 99% of the toiletries that dominate tech websites) to get advertising to support their online presences. Apple does subscription models pretty well. Less business for Google

The second front is Google’s suggestion that they’re going to compete with the iPad with a port of Chrome to a tablet device. Maybe Google will shop their tablet-ready versions of the OS to some device-makers before branding their own device, something I’m sure mobile device makers and carriers loved when they did it with Android and the Nexus One. Funny thing is: this business keeps falling for the “Lucy/Charlie Brown field goal” trick perfected by Microsoft. Google’s insistence on continuing to invest money in making inferior OS ports that compete with Apple products lands them smack in the middle of Failsberg.

Next up: the Winners

Like any good fanboy, I followed the Apple event blogs as SJ and his band of merry men trotted out the iPad and its capabilities.  The best advice I’ve heard on the internets about the device is “don’t knock it till you’ve held it”.  The worst  - well – just hit up any of the comment sections of sites like Gizmodo and Engadget – or Paul Thurrott’s site.  You’ve got your usual assortment of idiots condemning a device that they haven’t touched.

TMA knows that version 1 of products like the iPad are going to have their limitations – just like the iPhone did in 2007.  But then came the SDK, and the App Store and 3G, etc. Even at version 1.0, the iPhone was itself an amazing device, not just because Apple made it but because of what came before it. Do you remember a lot about your cell phone before you got your iPhone? Me either. Those memories are tucked away like a childhood incident of inappropriate touching.  The iPhone rocketed to success off the back of an industry that seriously needed – and got – its ass kicked.

TMA also knows the iPad – in the short term – may also be a victim of Apple’s prior successes.  2 of Apple’s most innovative products, the MacBook Air and the iPhone, are the parents of the iPad. The light/thin Air with its non-removable battery and the touch-based UI of the iPhone combined. That awesome bloodline may also limit some people’s perception of what is possible with the device.   The iPad is an evolution of 2 existing products made by Apple, not a revolution against crappy products made by others. People may perceive the *want* factor slightly differently because several Apple products share some of its functionality.

I believe the ultimate success of the device – which it will enjoy by the way – will come down to how quickly developers can take advantage of the iPad’s increased real estate and some of the SDK’s bonus goodness like “popovers”.  Scaled up iPhone apps are nice, and the fruits of the 2 week development cycle afforded the handful of developers that presented the iPad at the Apple event give an inkling of what’s possible, but what’s concocted before the late March/early April release will be much more of a harbinger of the iPad’s success – in the short-term.  No one thought the iPhone would resonate in the market the way it did, but Apple took its revolutionary 1.0 product and proceeded to make measured, relentless improvements to keep it well ahead of the market. Apple’s commitment to that leadership, backed by the App Store model bodes well for the long-term success of the device.

People made retarded comments when the iPhone was announced.  There’s as much accountability as there is memory on the internet.  That didn’t make a whit of difference with the iPod or the iPhone. It won’t make a difference with the iPad.

Is there any stopping this wagon train? As the country slowly crawls out of an economic slump, Apple continues to kick the crap out of estimates in every category of profitability.

Unit sales of Macs and iPhones both sold at record levels, with the revamp of the iMacs boosting units above the million mark for the first time ever this quarter. Earnings were announced at $3.67 per share, up from $2.50 a year ago.

Macworld, as usual, has a nice recap of the earnings call.

These are lofty times, Macheads.

Over the past couple of months, I’ve come to sympathize with AT&T’s infrastructure plight. After trying and trying to accomodate iPhone users, their service is still compromised by the greedy 3% of users who hog 40% of their bandwidth. This isn’t a Marxist state, so people should pay for what they use, right?

Tell you what guys: I support your scary proposition to charge people for what they use and to smash the buffet table of unlimited use you currently grace all of us ingrates with.

Here’s the thing: if $30 represents unlimited use – by your definition - then $30 should be your ceiling.  So those piggish 3% should pay $30 – or more if they account for more than the established average bandwidth of that 3%. The rest of us should pay less.

That’s what you had in mind, right?

When you’re spawning products and updates like Jerry Bruckheimer throws off bad forensic crime dramas (”From the 200x blow-up of this webcam footage, you can clearly make out the perp’s face…”), it must be tough keeping all this stuff straight.

Oops! Steve just nuked employee #10,220.

UPDATE: Ars reports that ATV 3.0  is in the wild out and it looks to be worthy of “full point upgrade” status.  TMA’s happy muscles are officially twitching a little jig.

To say it is a laughable copy of an Apple Store is really understating it.

If I were an investor in Microsoft, I’d really, really want to know how they’re going to track the financial performance of these things.  Bury them in the “Entertainment and Devices Division”?  These stores – which sell nothing that you couldn’t get cheaper online and offer you no level of service beyond telling you that your PC-maker screwed you over – will fail.  And quickly.

In boxing, there are few things more satisfying to watch than a well-executed combination.  A lot of it is the result of what a fighter does before entering the ring.  Once there, it’s about opportunity and timing.

In Apple’s case, coming off another estimate-stomping quarter, they announced major refreshes to the iMac, the once-thought-dead MacBook, the artist-formerly-known-as-Mighty Magic Mouse as well as a respectable bump to the Mini.

In the iMac’s case, the specs are impressive: the top-of-the-line $2,199 model tops out at a 27″ 2560 x 1440 display and a 2.8GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 (Nehalem) processor ($200 less will get you an i5).  The MacBook gets the MBP treatment and now sports unibody (polycarbonate) construction and a 7-hour enclosed battery.  The mouse is an interesting concept.  In short, it’s a multitouch trackpad grafted onto a mouse’s body and it supports all the gestures of its integrated cousins.  We all know about Apple’s pathetic history with mice, so it’ll be interesting to see how it’s reviewed.

So in this boxing analogy, who is the opponent for which this one-two is intended?  I don’t know – is there anything else going on this week?

According to The Wall Street Journal, the analysts have finally shaken a little bit of the stupid out of their Q4 estimates for Apple:

Investors have grown accustomed to Apple crushing Wall Street estimates, so there are strong expectations for the company’s fiscal fourth-quarter, which ended September. Nearly 20 analysts have lifted price targets since September.

Analysts finally stopped notching their estimates at an average of $9.2 billion revenue and a profit of $1.42 a share.  So I guess the days of Apple catching analysts with their pants down are over, right?

Notsomuch.

This afternoon, Apple reported Q4 revenue of $9.87 billion and a net quarterly profit of $1.67 billion, or $1.82 per diluted share, destroying every estimate on the Street.  You can take your pick of summaries, but Apple Investor News is a nice aggregator.

Apple must still be exploiting that lull in anticipation of Windows 7.

Apple holds its quarterly earnings call on Monday, which means that analysts are tripping over themselves trying to anticipate Mac sales for the quarter.  Both Gartner and IDC predict Apple continuing to buck the trend – to the tune of 7 – 12% growth, depending on who you ask.

The folks at IDC (the same IDC that found that “Windows is cheaper than Linux“) cannot understand why people continue to buy Macs.  I mean, WTF?!

“Their sales just seem to defy all logic,” [IDC's] O’Donnell repeated. “There are obviously a certain number of people buying Macs even in the face of a recession.”

There are also a certain number of people who persist in their employment despite having their heads cemented up their asses.

Pity poor Ed Bott.  Aside from being one of the most transparent Microsoft shills beating the tech pavement, he is also a sometime user of Apple’s products, which must be hell for a M$ apologist.  One of the prerequisites for being a really effective Micronaut is that you have to feign respect for Apple – sort of how your closeted racist cousin claims to “have a number of black friends”.  You see, this front allows him to seem like a fair critic‚ while also letting him play the outraged user and bash Apple at every turn.

Ed’s latest shaken fist is over Apple’s bundling of the iPhone Configuration Utility with his update of iTunes.  Being the vigilant watchman he is, he was immediately wise to Apple’s game.

THEY LEFT THE CHECKBOX CHECKED!  Such incursion; such violation!

This isn’t the first time Apple has tried to bundle other software with updates for iTunes, which gives birth to Ed’s clever click-bait title: “Apple up to its old tricks, pushing unwanted software onto PCs”.

I’ll let you soak in the irony of the title for a moment.  Funny huh?

It gets better.  Because I like to point out irony to Windows enthusiasts (who by their very definition have no sense of irony), I’ll bang out a sentence or two in the comments section of webskid like Ed’s article.  Most of the time, doing so requires that you register at the site.  Undaunted by the time and effort required to create a user name and password at ZDNet (and stifling the urge to shower immediately afterward), I was treated to the following:

Note the three checked boxes to the right.  HOW DARE THEY CHECK MY BOXES FOR ME?!

So, I chuckle at the bonus irony and uncheck the boxes.  No thanks, boys.  Then I get the confirmation email:

I wish to WHAT?  Not only do I have to UNCLICK MY OWN CHECKBOXES on the site where Ed cries his self-righteous tears of injustice, I’m being spammed by them anyway?  Are you for real?  Well, obviously, I want to change my newsletter preferences from “no, don’t send me shit” to “really I fucking meant “don’t send me shit” when I unclicked those checkboxes”.  So I click the link to change my preferences and:

Wow. You want more information about me in exchange for the privilege of unsubscribing from spam that I should have never been on a list for to begin with?

To recap:

1. Ed Bott bitches about Apple’s software update foisting things on his PC he doesn’t need – that is, if he doesn’t understand that a checkmark in a box means he will in fact be downloading these things.

2. To register to leave comments on Ed Bott’s site, ZDNet‚ you have to uncheck 3 boxes to prevent you from being spammed by them.

3. Unclicking a checkbox on ZDNet apparently doesn’t mean what Apple thinks it means.  ZDNet still spams you.

4. You have to provide ZDNet with more information about yourself in order to really, really unregister for the shit you shouldn’t have been getting in the first place.

I mean, as a Mac guy who likes to laugh at Wintards, I’m all about the low-hanging fruit, but this even makes me a little embarrassed.