Unreleased Apple products (that probably wil never be released)

Go to Matt's channel here.

The Chosen

The book The Chosen is about a young boy named Reuven and his "rival"  Danny.  It is taking place during the 1940s (probably 1945 or 1946), around the death of President Roosevelt and the end of World War II.  I have decided to focus in on the themes that are within the book.  

Chaim Potok (the author) introduces the theme, very subtlety, yet he still makes it very effective.  I believe that the theme is that  two ideas (or people) can contrast and conflict with eachother and can still be complementary.  He introduces this theme with Reuven and Danny.  Even though Danny is a Hasidic Jew and Reuven is an Ortodox Jew, they have a lot of things in common.  They are both devoted to their Religion and are important players for their respective baseball teams.   

Chaim also introduced a  symbol, the baseball game.  The baseball game represented a war.  The Author made the symbol explicit, by making Mr. Galanter use war metaphors throughout the entire baseball game.  He also brought in the fact that Reuven was begining to hate Danny, and from Reuven's perspective, this was a war that he couldn't lose.

I also think that there is an implicit theme that is introduced.  It is the seculsion that the Jews had from the rest of America.  Instead of having the children play a baseball game (like most of America) they were playing a softball game.  That really speaks to how they do not have much interaction with real American life.  It seems like the teachers at the schools are struggling to keep the boys true to their religion, and still be introduced to American culture and soceity.  People like Mr. Galanter were doing there best to introduce American culture to the boys, yet even when they did that, the boys were still isolated, playing softball vs. the all american sport: baseball.  I also think that, that is where the Author got the title from.  I think that he meant the Jews to be "The Chosen", since they were isolated from the rest of the world.

The themes of the book were introduced in many clever ways.  As I read more of the book, I'm sure I'll find more themes that are introduced.  If you want to read a detailed review on the book Click Here.

New Interactive Flash Application

I finished creating a Flash Application for this blog.  Now there is a pages section right above blog posts and below the "Pear Apple Logo".  Just click on the page that says "The Apple Basics" and have fun!

Jon4lakers is a Youtube God

Go his YouTube channel here to watch his analysis of everything tech.

or watch his newest video below.

Written Copy of Evan and Hank's (me) Query

Raise Your Voice and Sing

By Hank Wu and Evan Villafranca

Hello my name is Hank, and my name is Evan.  We are here to present to you this week’s query.

“Those who wish to sing, always find a song.” -Swedish Proverb

There are people who change the world.  There are people who benefit mankind by singing their songs of integrity.

Let’s take a look back.   219 years ago (December 15, 1791 to be exact), the Bill of Rights came into effect.  Had people like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison not fought so hard for our Bill of Rights, America could be a very different country.  All of this happened because Thomas Jefferson and James Madison were brave enough to lift their voices in song.

All songs are unique to the individual, but some songs resonate for generations.  Even a passion, such as a sport, can hold a song.

Baseball is something that we all know and love.  It wasn’t always the diverse sport it is today.  Not too long ago (1947) a man named Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier, and changed both baseball and American History.  It took a lot of courage to get out there despite the adversities he faced.  All of this happened because Jackie Robinson wished to sing his song of integrity.

In music, artists usually sing about this topic, we will share part of a song that we think represents integrity, called Not Afraid by Eminem.

Whether it’s singing, playing baseball, putting your ideas to written words, or simply following your New Year’s Resolution, as long as you put enough effort and integrity into what you do, you will always find a way to accomplish your dreams.  Look at Jackie Robinson, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison; listen to their songs of integrity.  They wanted to make the world a better place. 

This week’s Query is:  What is your song of integrity?

My top 5 favorite websites about technology

1.  Engadget

2.  Gizmodo

3.  9to5mac

4.  Cnet.

5.  Boygeniusreport

What Smartphones Users Think of Eachother

This guy makes iPhones useable

Airplay

Apple's new Apple TV.  Apple's new iPad OS 4.2.  They seem like completely different products, but in reality they complete each other.  With iOS 4.2 iPad's can use a new feature called AirPlay.  AirPlay is a wireless streaming connection that allows you to stream any iOS compatible video to the Apple TV (and presumably any other iOS device if you can SSH into it, crash the spring board and install lowtide.ipa).  Why is this significant at all?  Well this would be one of the first real competiters to wireless HDMI.  It streams at 720p and many critics are already raving about the superior frame rate that AirPlay has compared to wireless HDMI.

There is another important thing about AirPlay.  It is all the new Apple TV has.  Let's take a look back to 2007 when the Apple TV was just released.  Everyone thought it was going to succeed and create a new thriving market.  It didn't.  What happened was it co-existed in a niche market along with the Tivo and Windows Media Center.  However, AirPlay changes everything.  This is Apple's go-to-market strategy for Apple TV.  This is how Apple will reinvent the television.  The possibilities are endless.  AirPlay 1.0 only allows us to stream video when we push the AirPlay button, but AirPlay 1.1 could use a RFD to detect when you are in range of an Apple TV and stream a video automatically (of course you could turn this all of in the settings).  It could get even bigger.  AirPlay 2.0 could allow you to stream more complex types of media to your Apple TV.  You could stream E-books, apps, even games.

Apple has a winner on their hands.  All they need to do is to keep on innovating.  As long as they keep on updating AirPlay and the Apple TV, there is no limit for Apple's reach into the living room.  Apple TV and AirPlay are more products that change everything, but this time.  It's for the better.

More thoughts on flash.

There is tension between two corporate giants (Adobe and Apple), who are fighting over market dominance. First let me talk about what Flash is.  Flash is a multimedia development platform that use to be owned my Macromedia until Adobe bought it.  It used to be used in 95% of the web, but that number has significantly decreased since Apple decided to not support Flash in it's iOS products.  If you want to read Apple's thoughts on flash you can just Click here.   Unlike what Steve Jobs says in his letter on flash (the link I just mentioned), the reason he will not support Flash is not because it is buggy, he will not support Flash because it does not help him gain market dominance.

Steve Jobs knows a lot about developers.  He knows that they make or break a platform, however if that platform is the Internet then there is no advantage to any given platform since all platforms can visit the Internet.  He knew that in order to give iOS exclusivity, he needed to make sure that when a developer makes an application for an iPhone, it will be difficult to port that application to other devices.  That way they will only develop applications for iOS.  I understand how that platform exclusivity idea works, however by eliminating Flash from the iPhone, it is now missing a feature that many people need.

Since there is no Flash on iPhone, you might think that iOS is doomed.  It's missing so much video content on the web.  It is missing so many games on the web.  However, if you really think hard.  The iPhone isn't missing any content.  Steve Jobs wouldn't allow that to happen.  After all, the iPhone is a content consuming device, not a content producing one, so it would be illogical for him to strip the iPhone of content.  Now you may ask, "Where will the iPhone content that computers can get via a flash player?"  They will get it from iTunes.  I believe that this is the second reason why Steve Jobs did not allow Flash on the iPhone.  It is because Apple get's payed to distribute premium content through iTunes.  So it will not allow you to get premium content on the iPhone without first going through iTunes in some way (be it an app, audio book, song, movie, ect.).  Any user generated content (like the content on Youtube) can freely stream to the iPhone directly, since Apple cannot sell user generated content, unless it wants to make record deals with everyone on Youtube.  Let me give you some examples. If I want to play the game Robot Unicorn Attack on my computer, I can just find a flash site that is hosting the code that will allow me to play it for free.  However on an iOS device, I must pay one dollar on the App Store.  25 cents goes to Apple, and 75 cents goes to the site that is hosting the code.  If Apple were to allow Flash it would be losing that 25 cents (and a lot more) every single second.

Right now, it seems that Apple is all good to go.  It has a healthy market share of smart phones.  It is ready to make Apple millions since it can only get premium content through iTunes.  Except for one thing.  Skyfire.  Skyfire is single handily bringing Apple's kingdom down.  Skyfire is an application that allows users to view Flash videos by converting them into HTML on the fly.  HTML is one of the few types of web video an iPhone can view.  Sorry Apple.  What's your excuse this time?

Query

Why the iPhone will never win the numbers game

Sure the iPhone makes Apple a ton of money; it even revolutionized the way we use or phones today, even if those phones are made by other companies.  Yet, it can't beat out Android in the market share game until they reevaluate their market strategy.  This can be summed up into just 1 word.  Features.

How did Apple differentiate itself from Microsoft and gain market share against the monster that is Microsoft?  It put in every innovative feature that it could think of.  How did Apple revolutionize the Music Industry and acquire 90% of the PMP market share?  It made the iTunes Music Store and packed it with millions upon millions of digital content (yes that is a feature, it created many different types of i Pods for each user (not even Zune can say that anymore), and made it the most polished device ever.  Well until the iPhone.  However the difference here is Apple is getting lazy.  Other companies like Google and Microsoft know that this is the future of computing and they are investing millions even billions into their operating systems.  Putting in feature after feature. Yet now iTunes seems to pale in comparison to the unlimited streaming of the Zune Marketplace.  The closed App Store, seems to lack the innovative apps of the Android Market Place.  Now that Apple only sells two models of it's phone compared to the hundreds of Android devices.  The number even pales compared to Microsoft's newly release Windows Phone 7 devices (ironically  it released 8 at once instead of 7). 

What is Apple to do?  Focus on adding more features to iPhones, and Apple can name any number it wants for its market share.

Ping!

Apple's fall event had many surprises, yet none were as surprising as Ping.  Ping is part of iTunes 10 (along with the re-branding of iTunes).  Ping is Apple's entrance into the world of social networks, which is already doing better than Google's attempt Google Buzz.
Apple made a very strategic move by making it's famous iTunes software more social, because iTunes is such a popular piece of software.  Think about everyone who has an iPod, iPhone, iPad, or Mac?  The iOS devices alone are 120 million people, and that's without counting Mac users.  Theoretically this could be bigger than Facebook very quickly, considering Facebook has 100 million users, and as long as people update iTunes (which everyone will do eventually) than they will be notified and annoyed about Ping.  Perfect right?  Apple has redefined another market right?  No, it has not, because Ping still has many major problems.
Right now, there are barely any Ping users (which isn't saying much considering it just launched yesterday) but the whole point of a social networking service is to interact with your friends.  On Ping there are not enough friends to interact with to make it worth while.  There is another problem, and this problem is problem of massive size. The problem is Facebook.  Despite Facebook's recent privacy problems it is still number one social network for many reasons.
1.  Facebook already has so many people that it's logical to sign up for the social network service that already has all of your friends.
2.  Facebook is centered around being social, so that means that it has games that you can play with other people (Zynga and much more), Ways to share music you like with your friends just like Ping (iLike), and many more ways to interact with your friends via wall posts, pictures, places, ect.
3.  Facebook is based on the web instead of an application like Ping.
4. Facebook is accessible on any device which can access a browser while Ping is only available to iOS users and iTunes users which completely cuts off Linux Users.
5.  Facebook has many more features than it's competitors thanks to developers who develop applications for Facebook.
Here are 5 ways Ping might be able to fend off Facebook.
1.  Apple needs to spread awareness for Ping, and create more incentives for users to sign up for Ping.
2.  Apple needs re-evaluate their choice on focusing Ping on music, if they want to make it a Facebook Supplement (like iLike) than this is fine, however if they want to make it a Facebook Killer somethings need to be changed.  Note.  Apple had to take down Facebook Connect from Ping due to problems between Apple and Facebook, which means that as of now Ping cannot be a Facebook Supplement.
3.  Simple, Apple needs to move Ping to the web (at least) and it the rumors about Apple moving all of iTunes to the web are true than this isn't problem.
4.  See above.
5.  Apple already has a thriving developer ecosytem for iOS and with Game Center becoming iOS's "XBOX LIVE" there really is no logical reason why Apple would't eventually combine these two products to create a super social network product, with games, music, videos, ebooks, ect.

So do you think Apple has what it takes?  Well I do.

iCon

Steve Wozniak is one of the kindest people in the world.  He also revolutionized computers in way that no one that changed everything.  The book iWoz is an autobiography about Steve Wonziak and his experiences living through the computer revolution.  As I read through his experiences I am in awe of his ability to manipulate a computer's software and hardware and allow them to work together in harmony, something that many computer companies still fail at doing today.

First let's talk about the way he revolutionized computing.  One day he and his close friend Steve Jobs were in Steve Wozniak's room talking about college, when suddenly a news reporter burst in asking Wozniak about an object on his desk.  That object was the APPLE I.  Later that day Steve Jobs envisioned a world where everyone had a computer.  He envisioned a world where computers where cheap and accessible to almost every person in the world.  When he told Steve Wozniak about these ambitions, Woz was worried.  You see, Woz had a job at Hewlett-Packard which meant that anything he invented had to go through Hewlett-Packerd.  When he broke the news to Jobs, Jobs was furious.  Luckily Hewlett-Packard signed an agreement that allowed Jobs and Wozniak to keep the invention, HP thought the idea of a computer for regular people was crazy.  That was the biggest mistake HP ever made.

Woz used that computer to build the empire Apple is today.  The APPLE I represented all of the innovations that were coming to Apple.  In a sense, Apple was Woz's child.  Boy was he proud.