If you came here for advance information or predictions about Apple’s much discussed table, I am afraid I have neither. In fact, I am fairly sure that what I am about to tell you is unlikely to happen, so, there you are.

On the other hand, I have certain hopes for the product and one, in particular, is something that I haven’t seen anyone in the media discuss: could the Jesus Tablet revolutionize the way we buy and use wireless data?

Everyone agrees with the fact that the tablet will have some kind of 3G or 4G wireless cellular connectivity, but they all seem to take for granted that network access will be provisioned the same way it is done with the iPhone.

The tablet, however, is not a phone—quite the contrary—and, therefore, it’s perhaps a good idea to ask whether Apple may not be looking for ways to create an even more captive market.

To understand what the implications might be, one only needs look at the Kindle. It hasn’t occurred to me until recently that the killer feature of Amazon’s reader is not the e-ink screen, or the vast selection of books—it’s the fact that it makes accessing a cellular network completely seamless: there are no contracts for you to sign (except the one with Amazon), no data fees to pay (except the ones you pay to Amazon as part of your purchases) and—most importantly—no roaming fees to deal with.

In other words, even though it doesn’t look like one, the Kindle is a cell phone that works the world over through a single provider that is not your cellco. In fact, looking at Amazon’s recent announcement of its revised royalty scheme for the Kindle, you can see that they are planning to charge $0.15/MiB for data transfer, regardless of where the user is in the world. To put things in perspective, the lowest price that is available to me while roaming in the States is $1/MiB—and that’s if I pay a $10 monthly fee to get it reduced from $6/MiB, if I sign a long term agreement and if I agree to pay on top of my regular voice and data plan.

Compare this experience with the absolute hell that dealing with your current cellular company is, and you will see that there is an opportunity, for a sophisticated player, to create a wave of unprecedented disruption in the wireless market.

If Apple were to sell the tablet and make a data plan available through Apple, a number of really important things would happen:

• First, its users would become entirely captive—no messing around with third-party companies, subsidies, and the likes
• Second, a clueful company would, for the first time in history, be in control of a wireless experience end-to-end. Just like the iPhone’s killer feature is the App Store, this could be the tablet’s one defining characteristic
• Third, Apple’s immense buying power would bring costs down to a level that is going to be difficult to beat
• Fourth, the fact that it doesn’t look like a phone doesn’t mean that the tablet couldn’t work like one—and without pesky wireless companies dictating terms, no-one would prevent customers from installing Skype or a SIP client on their systems
• Fifth, Apple could easily integrate this service with others it already provides (MobileMe Data?)

The disruption of this approach would be nearly total: because customers purchase service from Apple, the underlying network provider becomes little more than a curiosity, and it’s not unthinkable for our friends from Cupertino to eventually set up their own global wireless network.

Of course, I have no illusion that it’s highly unlikely for any of this to happen—I mean, the wireless companies cannot possibly be so shortsighted to let this happen, right?

Right?

Image credit: Tablets by swimboy1

Yes, you can do it. Here’s how. (more…)

The new Services menu in Snow Leopard finally allows me to fix an old gripe.

(more…)

Am I the only one who is a little tired about all the AppStore-related BS? I certainly hope not… (more…)

As you know, I write applications for the iPhone in my spare time. I don’t have much in the way of spare time, but one or two of the applications that I have written have been moderately successful, although I have been recently forced to pull one due to some changes in Apple policies.

I don’t care if it needs to be off the record or we need to sign another top-secret NDA

If you follow me on Twitter, you know that I recently—well about a week ago, at any rate—switched from my trusty, 3-year-old 15″ MacBook Pro to a brand-new 17″ Unibody MbP (you know, the one with the battery that can’t be removed).

One of the things that really annoy me about review sites is that they are all interested in scooping each other and, therefore, their reviews never really have any depth. Personally, I don’t really care about what the specs of a computer are, or how they match up with the competition, or how well a computer performs in the contrived-benchmark-du-jour.

What I care about is how well it performs for me.

Before you laugh this off as another Tabini oddity, coming up with a meaningful review is not that hard—what it takes is time, and a real user… you know, someone who actually uses the machine for a real purpose instead of trying to get an article on a website as quickly as possible. If more people did that, we’d know less about RAM and hard disks, and more about what they can do to us.

Thus, here’s my quick review of the MbP.

The user
I used to think that I am a bit of an oddity in terms of computer usage: I use XCode alongside Pages on a machine that runs a rather complex Apache installation and a custom-built version of PHP. However, it turns out that I’m hardly alone: a bunch of tech-business people are in my same shoes: they need to write code and handle accounting, all in the same day.

As I am not a gamer—at least most of the time—graphics and power do relatively little for me. As far as I am concerned, the defining qualities of a computer are portability, desktop real estate and overall ownership experience. Here, I got to try out all three.

The experience
I like shopping at the Apple Store—although I do not normally need much in the way of buying advice, I appreciate the opportunity to window shop and make sure that the choice I’ve made is the right one; there are some things, like picking a screen type, that one just can’t do on the Internet. Plus, there is always the plus of being able to walk with your new machine under your arm.

I also like Apple customer service. Although I’ve had a few occasional hiccups, the folks at the Apple Store have always been very good to me. In this particular case, the first machine I bought was damaged—to be honest, I’m not sure if it was my fault, as, although I normally treat hardware with care, I might have bumped it on the way home. No matter—a visit back to the store resulted in a brand new system, no questions asked.

The other great thing about buying Apple is that you get really good support wherever you are. Last year, I was in Wilmington, DE for a trial and my machine developed a nagging problem with its battery. Rather than having it die on the stand, I took it to the local Apple store, where, despite the fact that the machine had been bought in a different country, they gave me a brand-new battery, again without asking much in the way of questions (it helps, of course, that I insist on getting all my receipts via e-mail on my Mobile Me account: this way, even if my computer is dead, all I need to pull them up is a browser and any computer).

My only real complaint here is the fact that in-store computers are only available with the 5,400 RPM hard drives, which is just plain stupid. The price difference compared to the 7,200 is only $50, but the performance hit is likely to be quite significant. Besides, you just can’t get a faster hard drive even if you want, unless you go on their website. What gives?

The machine
The new MbP is very portable. With my usage pattern (mostly writing code or documents, e-mail, browsing, some code compilation time here and there), I can get a solid 7 hours’ worth of computer time—in fact, the biggest problem that I’ve had this far with the machine if my inability to properly calibrate the battery, because the machine can stay awake longer than me.

Despite its size, the computer can be easily carried around. The construction is sturdy (I broke my very first Apple laptop by slamming my fist on the wrist rest when some piece of code I was writing refused to work after a few hours of trying—I have since learned the hard way not to do that again, but I have a feeling that the new Unibody construction can take a lot more abuse than its predecessor).

A big plus for me is the fact that (a) there are three—count ‘em, three—USB ports on the machine, and the are all on the same side (the left, to be precise). This is very handy when using my portable mouse, which requires a dongle* together with my iPhone for development and my microphone headset for carrying on conversation over the Net. I suspect that a left-handed person might be a little put off by the location of the ports, however.

The screen
The biggest selling point for me is the screen—at 1,900 x 1,200, it has the same resolution as my 24″ iMac, but, given the smaller screen size, offers a much higher pixel density than its larger cousin. This makes for a strange dichotomy: on one hand, everything becomes tiny, which does take time to get used to. On the other, the amount of real estate is nothing short of fantastic, particularly when working with multiple code windows, or editing a word processing document at the same time as you’re working on a spreadsheet—something that comes in handy when I do my budgeting.

Glossy or matte? Ah, the agony of choice. I ended up going with the antiglare option (which, curiously, you can actually get at the Apple Store), but I confess having second thoughts about my choice. Given how bloody bright the screen is, I really don’t think that one could have a problem with it, even in full sunlight. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the FAA were to forbid its use anywhere on the approach path of commercial and military airports for fear of blinding passing pilots.

Overall impression
Overall, I am happy with the purchase. The MbP feels like a desktop machine—the first time I have been able to say that about a laptop—without being as unwieldy as one. As I mentioned, power and memory are not really concerns, but the machine does feel very responsive, even with the 5,400 RPM hard disk (which I plan on eventually replacing either with an SSD or a 7,200 RPM). From the point of view of screen capabilities and portabilities, the MbP is a clear winner; the only way I think I would be happier would be with a 17″ version of the MacBook Air—although I shiver at the thought of how expensive that would be.

Most importantly, if you are in the market for a new laptop, the MbP gives you an opportunity to overcome any of the compromises you would typically have to make: it’s relatively light, powerful and sturdy, and has a screen second to none.

A few weeks back, I stumbled upon this video by the Google engineers who have been working on the eyes-free project for Android and I found it very interesting. At the same time, I found their solution a little awkward in that it relies on the user’s sensing the boundaries between virtual keys using tactile feedback—something that I don’t think able-bodied people (who can still benefit from this kind of technology to safely use the phone without looking at the screen) will be able to easily do.

After a few days of head-banging, I convinced my partner Arbi Arzoumani that this would make a good project for our nascent AFK Studio, the boutique iPhone development that we started earlier in the year.

Therefore, I am happy to announce the release of DialX, the world’s first sight-free dialer for the iPhone capable of dialing arbitrary phone numbers without looking at the screen. We have a complete list of capabilities over the at the DialX site, but, as they say, a video is worth a thousand words, so here we go:

I have a few coupons for a free copy of DialX available. If you would like one, please DM me on Twitter (@mtabini) and I will be happy to oblige (as long as I have any left). Please note that these coupons are good only for the US iTunes App Store.

Do you like DialX? Digg or Reddit this article and help us spread the word. Comments? Thoughts? Suggestions? Drop a comment below.

Analysts and journalists seem to have an unhealthy obsession with Apple. For example, I came across this article on Business Week, whence I draw this gem of journalistic imbecility:

And while a teardown doesn’t account for the costs of design, software, manufacturing, or shipping, these cost estimates help fill in the blanks toward estimating the profit on each device sold.

Let me put this another way: would you accept my measuring the worth of your house based on the pounds of timber or the number of bricks it contains? Not only would that ignore things like the cost of designing the house, researching the materials, hiring the labourers, building it, getting all the necessary permits, and so on, but also other things, like, say your location (comparable perhaps to all the marketing money Apple has to funnel into iPods), the cost of maintaining it, the risk of somebody slipping and falling (lawsuit, anyone?), the cost of improvements, and so on.

On one hand, I almost pity these journalists. Apple treats them like rabid dogs, instead of kissing their ass like everybody else does, and so what else can they do but take what essentially amounts to a curiosity—or, at best, a relatively insignificant aspect of the production of a device that belongs to an ecosystem as complex as the iPod’s—and build a whole business analysis out of it.

Edit: oh, incidentally, I’d expect that a magazine called “Business Week” would actually know that “profit margin” is not calculated based on the cost of raw materials alone. Heck, even Wikipedia knows that it’s the net profit-to-revenue ratio after all costs and taxes. Sheesh!

Last week, my 363-days-old battery (that’s right—two days short of the warranty’s expiration… clearly, somebody made a mistake!) decided that it no longer wanted to live and died a rather sudden death—one day, I could still get a decent 2.5 hours of usage out of it, and the next it barely lasted 30 minutes.

Given that the battery had seen less than the 300 charge cycles that Apple claims it takes to deplete it 50% of the original capacity, and I was getting far less than that, I took it to my local Apple Store to have it replaced (remember, it was still under warranty). There, I was treated like a dog and refused a replacement. Rather than argue with the genius at the bar, who obviously was not having a good day, I simply took my battery to another store, where the genius (this time a very, very polite lady) immediately gave me a new juice box.

Now, my MacBook Pro is around three years old, and I’m on my third battery. Clearly, either I’m doing something wrong, or Apple is. It turns out, it’s a little bit of both.

I did some research and came across this article, which explains a number of interesting tidbits about how lithium-ion batteries should be maintained. Apple doesn’t quite tell its customers about some of these points, so I thought it might be a good idea to post about them. Here are the highlights:

• Completely depleting your battery between charges is something you should try to avoid

• If you need to store your battery for an extended period, you should do so in a cool place, and at a 40% charge (that’s why, incidentally, new batteries are never fully charged… really, the manufacturer is not doing it just out of spite for you)
• Batteries do better when they’re cool—which is why you should consider not using yours unless you actually need it to provide power. If you’re at your desk, consider instead running on mains power with the battery physically removed from the computer and your charger safely connected to a UPS supply.
• Batteries deteriorate even if they’re not used—make sure you buy a “fresh” one when you actually need it, as opposed to keeping a spare “just because.” Similarly, make sure you double check the manufacturing dates on any new battery you buy.