When Steve Jobs took his first medical leave of absence, the entire world held their breath for six months.  Would the company survive?  What implications would his absence have on the company’s product pipeline?  What would the industry say?  What would the industry do?  (and the million dollar question…) How would Wall Street react?

Now that Steve is going out again, this time, with no announced return date, the world is again holding their breath, asking all of the above questions, and EVERYONE seems to be waiting to see what Wall Street is going to do, say, and most importantly, who is gonna wet their pants first and pull out. Everyone seems to be sitting on pins and needles waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting for the stock to crash.  All I have to say to all of this is –

Will Steve’s cancer take a bite out of Apple?

Read More …

Will we see the iPhone on Verizon..?

I know some of you that have been following my iPhone chronicles either here or at Gear Diary are likely wondering if I’ve lost my mind.  I mean, wasn’t it me who has been saying over and over again that a Verizon iPhone was never going to happen..?  Well, the answer is yes and no.

In my last note about this, I said that Verizon getting the iPhone was unlikely as long as the current version device stuck with its current radio.  Verizon uses a QUALCOMM designed CDMA-based chipset for its radio. There are very few countries that have carriers that use this type of radio – the US (Verizon), very small parts of Asia, and (I think) Indonesia/Australia, and that’s about it.  The rest of the world is on GSM.  So, until a "universal" chipset or network (like LTE) became available AND until Apple made use of that universal chipset, there would be no iPhone on ANY CDMA network, Verizon or otherwise.  This has more to do with the costs associated to reengineering and redesigning the entire device and Apple having to support two different devices than anything else.  Stevie J. just doesn’t do that. 

One phone to rule them all… and that kind of thing.

My good friend, Matt Miller has come out with a bit of a dissenting piece on this, given all the rumor mongering, and its worth a read. His point – Verizon has an awesome network (and they do; but  I think they’re expensive) and regardless of whether or not VzW has LTE, any kind of 4G, the VzW iPhone is white or not, whether you can surf and talk at the same time or not or even if they ARE very expensive, they are still going to sell a lot of iPhones.

Matt is dead on right about that.  They WOULD sell a lot of iPhones.  The question is whether the millions of iPhones they would sell would offset the costs associated with the redesign, retooling, extra manufacturing lines, support costs, etc. and generate enough profit for Apple to do it BEFORE LTE hits in wide distribution on Verizon.  My point has NEVER been that there will NEVER be an iPhone on Verizon, but that there wouldn’t be as long as Apple has to maintain more than one version. 

Tomorrow’s announcement should be interesting. I, for one, will be keeping close to the internets tomorrow, waiting for the news to hit. Like Matt, I am interested in answers to the following questions (I’ve paraphrased/modified the first two a bit.  The other two are Matt’s, simply quoted here):

• How many iPhones [does] Verizon [think they will really] sell?
• How many AT&T iPhone users [does] Verizon [think  will switch to their] iPhone?
• How well can Verizon’s network handle the iPhone [with/without LTE]?
• How much will a customer have to pay monthly for a Verizon iPhone?

Keep your peepers pinned people!  Tomorrow is going to be an INTERESTING day!

Some cool updates today…

Today is a big day. 

Today is the first OFFICIAL day of activity over at CES in FAH-abulous Las Vegas.  Its also the day that Apple is launching the Mac App Store.  Now you can find, buy and install apps right from iTunes, like you do with all of your iOS devices.  Apple also released a minor (115MB) software update to OSX 10.6 Snow Leopard (version 10.6.6) that specifically enables this ability and includes all the necessary support files and stuff.  What I think is col, is that now your desktop apps can be managed, redownloaded, etc. just like your device apps.  If you ever have to rebuild your Mac, reinstalling everything just got a whole lot easier.

The iPad is about a year or so old.  It was released to much fanfare last year, about this time; and everybody and their brother went nuts for it.  At the time, it didn’t do much for me.  I had an iPhone and sold it.  I have a 2G iPod Touch, but don’t use it much.  At the time, the iPad seemed like nothing more than a giant iPod Touch (Wi-Fi only version) or a giant iPhone (3G version) that couldn’t make phone calls.

Now (hopefully), it can and is much, much more to a number of different people.  I’ve seen evidence that the iPad is seriously being integrated into the enterprise, though with highly focused purposes, and the full blown security and management applications you would expect to see on any other IT asset.

For me and my purposes, I’m not concerned with using it to match fabric swatches or to sell specific medical equipment.  I just want to be able to move from meeting to meeting with the ability to get through my day without HAVING to lug a laptop from place to place, conference room to conference room, office to office.  Basic stuff…

Specifically, I’m going to cover

• create and edit meeting notes (much like Microsoft’s One Note)
• Generate and track tasks, task lists and to-do’s
• send and receive e-mail,
• keep up with my ever changing calendar

This is basic PIM type stuff; but the addition of meeting notes isn’t. With the iPad’s size, weight and capabilities, getting all of this done should be a no brainer. Over the next few days and weeks, I’m going to be taking a long hard look at what the device can and cannot do in this regard.  Please watch JAMM as well as iTechGear.org for the articles, and we’ll see if Apple (and perhaps some 3rd party development houses) have given us something that really can work, or if they are only teasing us.

The Apple iPad at work…

We have done a lot in the past few days.  We’ve identified a lot of potential gifts for everyone, and now the only thing left to do is to purchase them and get them to our loved ones.  I’m going to give everyone a bit of a heads up when it comes to shopping on line.  There are a couple of rules that I follow when I purchase stuff on line, and they’ve served me well over the past few years; and I want to make certain that everyone practices "safe shopping."

That being said, let’s briefly review what we’ve covered so far

1. Computer Buyer’s Guide Part 1 – Computer Hardware
2. Computer Buyer’s Guide Part  2 – Computer Software
3. Computer Buyer’s Guide Part 3 – Cool Gadgets & Electronics
4. Computer Buyer’s Guide Part 4 – Digital Cameras for All

We’ve figured out what we want to buy; but not (necessarily) where we want to buy it. Let’s figure out where to get our stuff!  Check out some important Holiday common sense at iTechGear.org.