“I’m just wondering why your marketing group can’t do something to try to rein in this next generation, because you’ve got a real bad image out there.”

So said a Microsoft shareholder to CEO Steve Ballmer at the company’s shareholder meeting yesterday. TechFlash reporter Todd Bishop notes that the same shareholder added that Apple’s TV commercials make Microsoft look “like a buffoon.”

I’m relieved to hear this. I often look at Microsoft and wonder if its shareholders are as out-of-touch as the company itself seems to be. In just the last few weeks here’s what’s getting the most enthusiastic coverage in the tech press at a time when it ought to be 100 percent about the newly launched Windows 7.

• A Microsoft manager claiming Windows 7 — Microsoft’s flagship product — is inspired by Mac OS X
• Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie’s bewildering assertion that “apps don’t matter” — despite everyone else on Earth knowing otherwise
• Further redundancies that include long-time evangelist Don Dodge, and his subsequent post that, now that he’s free from Microsoft, he can admit, yeah, he has iPhone envy
• And let’s not forget the bizarre PR misfire that saw the staff of Microsoft’s flagship retail store ignoring their customers for a full five minutes in favor of stomping their way, awkwardly and embarrassingly, through a dance routine

The take-home message? It ain’t just the Apple commercials making Microsoft look like buffoons.

How did CEO Steve Ballmer respond? Fear not, anxious shareholders, Ballmer has this to say to assuage your fears and calm your nerves:

You take any country, including this one, and you say, how are we doing? The truth of the matter is, we do quite well. Even among college students, we do quite well. Do we have an opportunity for improvement? We do. Some of that is marketing some of that is phase of life. It is important to remember that 96 times out of 100 worldwide, people choose a PC with Windows, that’s a good thing. Even in the toughest market, which would be the high end of the consumer market here in the U.S., 83 times out of 100 people choose a Windows PC over a Mac.

Hang on, back-up. “Some of that is phase of life.” Phase of life? Well, Ballmer sure knows his execu-speak. What galls me about this is how it illustrates perfectly that while Microsoft may be doomed to continue making embarrassing mistakes, it probably won’t suffer any actual harm as a result; it survives simply because of its mammoth install base. Nothing more than that. And that simple fact directly influences the attitude and reasoning of its CEO. Ballmer is tacitly admitting that, all things considered, yeah, Microsoft looks like a bunch of idiots but that doesn’t matter because they’ve got more customers than anyone else.

Turn this around, and imagine that Apple does monumentally silly things that make it the target of much derision and ridicule among the tech community and consumers. Imagine you’re a shareholder, and you see a drop in quarterly earnings. You see the company laying off staff (including highly visible and respected staff they should keep). You see its executives sending conflicting messages to the public. And when you take them to task for it, Steve Jobs replies “Yeah, we’ve been a bit crap. But most people own an iPod, right, so, no worries.” Would you be satisfied with that?

Ballmer added:

Frankly, the economy is good for us, because people do understand that Macintoshes are quite a bit more expensive for essentially the same computer … we have opportunities to improve among exactly the constituency that you identify.

Yep. Be happy there’s a recession, people, or else customers would be buying Macs!

This isn’t actually a Microsoft bashing exercise (clearly, it does that to itself and needs no help from me). Instead, I look at this and wonder (fear) that Apple might be headed in much the same direction. Recent unpredictable behavior around the application approval process has seen Apple severely criticised by some of its most staunch supporters. Developers aren’t just frustrated, they’re now quitting the platform altogether. And not because the platform is flawed, but because Apple is horribly (and very visibly) mismanaging it.

Apple needs to take a good long look at the Microsoft of today and ask if it isn’t starting to make the same mistake; stubbornly pushing ahead with flawed policies/strategies that are justified on the strength of product market share alone, despite the obvious (and loud!) protestations of the public, the press, and sooner or later, even its own shareholders.

Sure, Apple isn’t as bad as Microsoft yet. But this is how it starts, people. Google Voicegate. Joe Hewitt. Rogue Amoeba. It’s not exactly dancing in an Apple Store, but it’s still embarrassing and potentially damaging, and it’s definitely a trend that won’t go away unless Apple does something to fix it.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office yesterday published a patent application Apple made way back in 2008 for “Pushing a User Interface to a Remote Device.” So, then…Smart Remotes. Cool!

MacRumor’s Eric Slivka reports that the patent’s lead inventor is William Bull, now Yahoo’s Senior Director of Mobile User Experience, but once upon a time Apple’s iPod User Interface Manager. The so-called “father of the iPod,” Tony Fadell, is also credited.

The idea is simple; portable media devices — such as iPods and iPhones, for example — have their own on-board Graphical User Interface (GUI) and, usually, a built-in screen. Thing is, we don’t always want to take our iPhone out of our pocket when we’re listening to music (or, if you’re me, catching up on podcasts while washing the dishes).

Enter remote controls (referred to in this patent as “accessories”). Often they’re dumb little inline sticks with a few fiddly (not to mention tiny) buttons. They’re useful, but basic, offering perhaps only a half dozen simple controls. Some of the more elaborate remotes have their own little displays, which is all very well and good, except that they also employ their own little GUIs which not only fail to resemble the one on the device you’re trying to control, but often don’t provide full access to all the device’s functions. From the patent application:

…existing remote GUIs are defined and controlled by the remote control device, and consequently, they may bear little resemblance to a GUI supplied by the portable media device itself Certain functions available on the portable media device (such as browsing or searching a database, adjusting playback settings, etc.) may be unavailable or difficult to find.

Apple’s solution is to “push” the device’s GUI to a remote an accessory with a built-in display. Here’s the description from the patent application (I’ve shortened it to just the main points);

The portable media device can provide the accessory with an image to be displayed on the video screen… [and] include various user interface elements that can resemble or replicate a “native” GUI provided directly on the portable media device. The accessory can send information to the portable media device indicative of a user action […] for example, that a particular button was pressed or that a particular portion of a touch-sensitive display screen was touched by the user. The portable media device can process this input to identify the action requested by the user and take the appropriate action. The action may include providing to the accessory an updated GUI image to be displayed, where the updated GUI image reflects the user action.

Essentially this describes a touch-enabled screen, small enough (and dumb enough) to still be called an accessory, which effectively acts as a small auxiliary display/input panel for the device.

I can’t see this making its way into an inline remote (it’s just not Apple’s style to make a wearable remote that’s big) but I can see a future revision of Apple’s current Remote that entirely does away with the buttons, replacing them with a capacitive touch screen.

Future software updates would enable one to connect the remote to a nearby Mac mini, Apple TV, even an iPod touch, and switch between those devices the same way the iPhone Remote app does today. The GUI would change, depending on the selected device.

The only drawback I can see to such a device (and remember, I’m just extrapolating here and imagining a potential future gadget — Apple’s patent application only describes a possible method and not an actual product) is that a remote with a capacitive touch screen will chew through its battery in next to no time. Is it conceivable we’ll be buying a charging dock for a future Apple MultiRemote?

More compelling is the notion that Apple could build this technology into an entire ecosystem, licensing third-party developers to create compatible hardware; imagine a house where a smart display on the door of your refrigerator not only tells you when the milk needs replacing but also allows you to skip tracks on the album you’re playing over AirTunes…

But am I thinking too small? Is this yet another patent application that will, ultimately, come to nothing, or could this be an early clue to a new Apple-tastic revolution?

Gotta love that Steve Jobs. He never was one to hold back, and even now, when he’s the CEO of the Universe (or something like that), he won’t be found spouting corporate speak.

CrunchGear tells the story of a small software development company called The Little App Factory. It made an app for the Mac called iPodRip, one of those tools for transferring music from an iPod to a computer. A law firm representing Apple sent The Little App Factory a letter, informing the company it had violated some of Apple’s trademarks, and instructed it to stop using the “iPod” bit in the app’s name.

iPodRip has been around for nearly seven years and CrunchGear’s Daniel Brusilovsky says it has been downloaded more than five million times. You’d think Apple’s legal sniffer hounds, Baker & McKenzie, might have acted a tad sooner…

Anyway, iPodRip developer and The Little App Factory CEO John Devor felt this was all rather unfair, so he wrote directly to El Jobso himself. Here’s a little excerpt from his impassioned plea for special treatment sanity (edited by me for brevity, but you can read the whole thing here);

Dear Mr. Jobs,

I doubt you’re aware but we recently received a letter from a law firm working on Apple’s behalf instructing us that we had violated several of Apple’s trademarks in our application iPodRip and asking us to cease using the name and Apple trademarks in our icons.

It is quite obvious that we mean Apple no harm with the use of the name iPodRip, or of the inclusion of trademarked items in our icons… …we are quite aware that Apple support and store staff have recommended our software on numerous occasions as far back as 2004 so we have felt that we were doing something right!

With this in mind, we are in desperate need of some assistance and we beseech you to help us to protect our product and our shareware company, I myself dropped out of school recently to pursue a path in the Mac software industry, and you yourself have been a consistent inspiration for me.

If there is anything at all you can do with regards to this matter, we would be most grateful.

Best,
John Devor

Poor fellow. Obviously he has poured his heart and soul into his company, and he has worked hard this last half-decade building a strong brand and large customer base. He wants to protect his investment, and why not? Apple has, it seems, been aware of the product, to some degree, for an awfully long time, so why slap him with a C&D letter now?

So Steve Jobs gets the email and thinks about this, right? He considers the years of service this guy and his company have provided for iTunes users around the world. He considers carefully the late-in-the-game complaint from Baker & McKenzie. He feels a swell of pride at the obvious passion of those in the Mac development community who so loyally support his products and strive to make the Mac ecosystem a bigger, brighter and more worthwhile place to be. Right?

Of course not. He’s Steve Jobs, people! This is his reply:

Change your apps name. Not that big of a deal.

Steve

Sent from my iPhone

I nearly fell off my chair in laughter when I saw that. I’m not sure I agree with him that’s it’s “not that big of a deal” (after all, this company has invested many years in their brand and built a considerable customer base) but I admire Steve’s no-nonsense attitude. He says exactly what’s on his mind, no PR-spin, and sends it straight from his iPhone, typos-and-all.

The Little App Factory acquiesced (what else could it do?) and renamed the app iRip. It also changed the app’s icon. Perhaps this whole affair was a thorn in the side, but I don’t feel too sorry for them, the tech press is giving them a lot of attention right now, and that’s gotta be good for business, right?

According to a report this week on The Mac Observer, Apple and AT&T have been presented with a class action lawsuit by a customer who accuses them of misleading the public by advertising the MMS capabilities of the iPhone 3GS despite not making those capabilities available in the U.S. when it launched.

(Yawn.) I’ll let you mull over whether the accusation is fair; the plaintiff, Francis Monticelli, says in the suit that “MMS functionality was one of the reasons people chose to buy or upgrade… it has [become] clear that AT&T’s network does not support MMS.”

TMO points out Apple made it quite clear MMS functionality would not be available in America at the launch of the iPhone 3GS. Surely you remember the hilarious (and embarrassing) murmur of amusement and derision from the audience at this year’s Worldwide Developer Conference when Scott Forstall introduced MMS? “29 of our carrier partners in 76 countries around the world will support MMS at the launch of iPhone OS 3.0,” Forstall announced, then, trying to keep a straight face, added, “In the United States, AT&T will be ready to support MMS later this summer.”

Still, that little fact hasn’t stopped Monticelli suing, though I’m sure he won’t get far. I’ll never quite understand the litigation-happy nature of some of my American cousins (here in England we prefer to send strongly-worded letters of complaint) but it got me thinking about the now-forgotten drama of iPhone MMS. I can’t help wondering — was it really such a big deal? I mean, now you’ve got it, do you ever use it? Would you truly miss it if it disappeared overnight?

When MMS first appeared via the iPhone OS 3.0 update I couldn’t wait to try it out. I took a photo of a bowl of apples (go figure) and sent it to a pal. “I have MMS!” I declared, proudly. “So?” he enquired, puzzled. (I forget sometimes not everyone is an iPhone user and therefore have always had MMS.) That was back in June, a good five months ago. It was the first — and last — iPhone MMS I ever sent.

Old Habits…

Color me conditioned by my experience with previous iPhone OS limitations, but if I want to send someone a photo I instinctively use the Mail app. I’m not alone, either — fellow iPhone owners never send me MMS messages but also choose to use Mail instead (I know because of all those “Sent from my iPhone” footers I keep seeing).

I’m trying to figure out when and how this habit started; it’s easy to say it’s the result of Apple’s decision not to support MMS functionality, but if I force my grey cells to work a little harder, and think back to those dark times before the iPhone, I don’t have any fond memories of MMS. Sure, I had the function on every one of my old phones, but I barely ever used it. So perhaps my aversion to MMS started then…

Either way, I don’t care for MMS. It’s a clunky old technology that never mattered to me. Not even my most geeky of friends ever bothered using it, with or without adding an iPhone into the equation.

Apple’s Chief of iPod/iPhone Marketing Greg Joswiak once said the iPhone originally didn’t include (amongst other things) MMS functionality because it wasn’t high on the list of features customers wanted from their mobile phones.

Naturally, there was an outcry. People were either ambivalent (they didn’t care or simply accepted email was an adequate alternative) or they were furious. Spend a little time picking through any of the popular Mac discussion boards from 2007 onward and you’ll find plenty of disgruntled punters lamenting Apple’s decision to not support the feature.

You know how, when a child isn’t playing with a toy, and you try to take the toy away, the child will instantly want it and make a scene if they don’t get it? It’s that peculiarly human tendency to want what we don’t have, or what is being taken (or withheld) from us. Well, I wonder, was the outcry over MMS the same thing? And now we have it, how many of us are actually using it?

If you’re in the States and didn’t jailbreak your iPhone, MMS is still fairly new to you and you might still be enjoying the novelty of finally getting it working. So, while MMS is fresh in your minds (and your iPhones) perhaps you can answer the question — where do we really stand with MMS?

Is it an indispensable tool Apple had no business keeping from us this long? Or should we reluctantly (and perhaps a little bashfully) admit it wasn’t worth all that fuss and noise — Apple was right not to make it a priority and, if we’re really truthfully honest, we never used it anyway…

I spend an awful lot of time poking around in the App Store in both iTunes and on my iPhone, just in the hopes of finding something new and exciting to download and use on my device. It’s not an ideal situation, and I often wish Apple would throw out its tired model and completely restructure the App Store from the ground up.

There’s little chance of that happening, but a new Facebook app could help make the App Store more navigable, and do so with a little help from your friends. Mplayit is a new service being offered on Facebook that aims to bring some sense to the jungle that is the 100,000-strong App Store using a more intelligent browsing system based on recommendations and demos.

The idea is that there’s no one better to recommend iPhone apps you’d like than your friends. Using Mplayit, friends can make recommendations via the app which will appear on their profile page and in the news feed. That way, you’ll have a trustworthy source when you’re shopping for new software for your device.

By far the most useful aspect of Mplayit during my brief use of it was the app recommendations and shared apps. The rest, including popularity, search and categories, is already available to users via the App Store itself.

I’m not exactly sure how apps get onto the recommended list, since I would assume that they would be the ones which are the most recommended, but then what’s to differentiate them from the shared app? Whatever the methodology behind their selection, the fact remains that they are good picks, and well-deserving of attention. The list provides a good variety, too, covering apps with a range of functions instead of just presenting, say, all the top Twitter apps.

The best part of Mplayit, from the standpoint of people who need to see to believe, is that most apps come complete with videos and images previewing the functionality of the software running on an actual iPhone, and a full text description, too. That’s what puts Mplayit ahead of other iPhone app discovery sites like AppShopper.com or 148apps. Of course, each app also includes buy links that redirect you to the App Store, and a link through which you can add the program to your collection, which helps Mplayit track app popularity and recommendation information.

Many people are reluctant to use Facebook apps because of privacy concerns and fears of spamming the news feeds of friends, but after trying out the service for a little while, I haven’t found any cause for concern with Mplayit. The best part is that you can still use most aspects of the app without granting it access to your profile information.

Ever entertaining—if unreliable—DigiTimes has not one, but two big tablet rumors today. The mythical device (subscription required) has been delayed from early 2010 to the second half of next year, and there will an OLED model. Seriously.

According to anonymous sources inside that the electronics supply chain, Apple changed the launch from March—as opposed to January—to “switch some components” and to add a model with a 9.7″ OLED screen. The OLED model will be manufactured with a display from LG Electronics, as part of a $500 million dollar contract with Apple. That model would be in addition to an LCD tablet with a 10.6″ display.

If making two tablets with different size screens seems a curious decision, the price of the OLED tablet is extreme. According to DigiTimes, a 9.7″ OLED display would cost about $500, and display price is typically a third of total cost, so $1,500 would be the price to manufacture the tablet. Even accounting for cost reductions by next year, the retail price could be as high as $2,000.

That’s probably about right (the price, not the rumor). The Sony XEL-1 TV has an 11″ OLED screen and retails for $2,500, but can be found for as “little” as $1,800. However, even with a subsidy from a wireless provider, there is no way Apple is going to recreate the Cube failure in two-dimensions by selling a tablet in the range of $2,000. Look for an LCD tablet for around $800 early next year.

Is it possible that the Mac is making inroads with Enterprise IT? Intel Capital announced at CEO Summit that it is leading a Series A investment round in Active Storage of Torrance, CA, which builds high-performance storage solutions for the Mac platform. Other investors in this round include Mission Ventures and Valhalla Partners. Intel Capital invests in companies that drive demand for Intel products, but it also looks to make money and apparently it sees money in enterprise-class solutions for the Mac.

Active Storage was born out of Apple’s decision to discontinue the Xserve RAID. Alex Grossman, CEO of Active Storage, and the other founders were previously executives in the Servers and Storage products group at Apple, Inc. They left to form their own company that would produce storage solutions of the same quality. While Apple has been pitching the Promise VTrack RAID as a replacement solution, Active Storage has developed its XRAID product line to be a lot more Mac-like with brilliant Mac-native management software. This is high-end gear for serious business — fibre-channel, redundant controllers, redundant power supplies, redundant cooling, etc — with an emphasis on performance. The XRAID comes in two flavors, the original XRAID with 16TB capacity expandable to 32TB and the XRAID ES with 4TB, expandable to 16TB.

All of this power is wrapped in a sexy package that feels very Apple like. The folks at Active Storage have put a lot of care into building enclosures with no sharp edges, tapered screws that sit flush with the chassis, thick gauge aluminum, and slick handles on the drive sleds that pop out with a light touch. I had a chance to take a look at the XRAID at Macworld Expo in January and the build quality on these units is astounding. Having been in a data center or two in my life, finding a polished product where attention has been given to every detail to make it simple to access from both the front and the back of the rack is a real joy. One of the coolest pieces is an iPhone monitoring app that gives you all the details you could want on how the XRAID is performing even when you are not near the data center. This is definitely a storage solution fit for a Mac.

The extreme ease of use in a Mac environment has made Active Storage popular in the entertainment crowd. When asked to explain further, Mr. Grossman explained that, “You may not know this because you aren’t in working with these systems every day, but feature-length movie production requires 50 to 100TB of storage. And that need doesn’t go away when the movie is finished either. There is a need for long-term archival storage as well. And it doesn’t always make sense to use tape backup, so disk-to-disk archiving is growing.”

Final Cut has made the Mac platform a common choice for film editing with some feature films like King Kong being composited and edited entirely on Macs. With the advent of HD, the storage needs for films are growing astronomically. Active Storage appears to be positioned to take advantage of that trend. It makes a great hardware solution in conjunction with Apple products like the Xserve, Final Cut Server, and Xsan 2.

The company currently has about 25 employees, but about 50 open positions on its web site. It is obviously looking to grow substantially in 2010, especially with this capital available to fund hiring and product development.

It is great news to see a well-respected investment fund like Intel Capital place bets on the Mac market, especially in a company that is focused on enterprise-class solutions for the Mac.

Earlier we reported that the next generation of iPhone might have an RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) reader built in, if rumors prove true. Well, there’s no need to wait that long, if near-field communications (NFC) is what you’ve got a hankerin’ for. Wireless Dynamics has announced a device called the iCarte that will add both RFID and NFC capabilities to the iPhone.

The device adds functionality to the iPhone via the dock connector, to which it connects without adding too much bulk or without being too much of an eyesore. In fact, it looks like the iCarte’s designers went out of their way to make sure the add-on looks like it’s a natural extension of the iPhone itself, rather than an apparent third-party accessory.

A chip embedded in the iCarte turns your iPhone into a portable electronic wallet, able to process contactless payments. It can also transmit any information it receives directly to enterprise databases using Wi-Fi or 3G network connections, so that orders and purchases can be automatically input into your company’s home server. Of course, in order to use the iCarte, you’ll need to be using iPhone OS 3.0, since only the latest major software update supports dock accessory connectivity.

The iCarte also has a mini-USB port to allow for pass-through charging and syncing, so you won’t have to constantly remove and replace the device, and it comes in both black and white, in case fashion is a concern of yours. To be clear, while Wireless Dynamics does talk about business applications, it looks like the iCarte’s functionality is aimed primarily at people on the consumer end of the retail equation:

iCarte has an embedded smart-chip that can be configured as debit, credit, pre-paid and loyalty cards, for secure contactless transactions. iCarte can also read NFC Smart Posters, download or upload electronic coupons, tickets or receipts. iCarte is ideal for iPhone users who want to use their iPhones for fast and secure contactless payments, transit payments, loyalty rewards, checking balances, top-up, discovering new services from smart posters or kiosks and exchanging information with other NFC phones.

iCarte’s web site is devoid of information regarding an official release date or pricing for the receiver, although it does offer contact info if you’re interested in finding out more about the tech. Presumably a companion iPhone application would be required for programming in payment card information, checking balances, etc., but as of yet no such app is available via the iTunes Store.

If you’re still running an old Mac PowerBook 550c or something similar, it must be really annoying to not be able to use Twitter via a native client. That’s probably your No. 1 concern, in fact, on your OS 8.1-running machine. You could always use the web interface, but that’s not really a fair solution, is it?

Now, thanks to Grackle68k, Mac users who are still running Macintosh System 6, 7, 8 and 9 can have a dedicated Twitter client of their very own. Personally, I think the release of this app was just timed to steal the spotlight away from Seesmic for Windows. Obviously this is much bigger news!

Twitter is available to pretty much any platform, and that’s no accident. The technology behind it is relatively lightweight, with clients only really needing the ability to make API calls to be completely functional. The memory footprint of clients differs depending on what developers choose to add on the client side of things, but little is needed to make one actually functional.

That’s the idea behind Grackle68k, a labor of love for a small group of programmers who realize that there’s still quite the classic Mac enthusiast crowd out there who actually use their well-aged machines for some basic tasks in addition to just keeping them running (myself included). The program lets you tweet, but if you want it to remember who you are on each startup, you’ll have to break out the ResEdit and make a change to a resource by adding your login information. It’s an added step, true, but a fun one that should bring back memories, so hey, I’m not gonna complain.

Snow Leopard has barely gotten its paws wet, and now news comes that Apple is already working on its replacement. It’s not really surprising, since Apple is basically always either working on the next iteration of its products or releasing them, but still, it does whet the appetite for the next version of OS X.

The suggestion of the new operating system appeared in an entry posted early this morning in a change database for “launchd,” an open source framework that controls the booting of OS X and administers running processes. The new entry includes an error message with the string “11A47″ in it, which is a reference to what version of Mac OS X is being used.

Previous versions of OS X have all followed the same numbering scheme. The number at the start of the string references which version of OS X is being used, with the letter indicated the minor release number and finally another number at the end indicating the development progress of said minor release. So, for example, Snow Leopard at release was represented by the string 10A432, and Leopard was 9A571. 11A47, then, would seem to indicate that an early build of 10.7 was being used.

According to MacRumors, the “47″ part of that number would suggest that Apple has already been working on the new version of OS X for at least a couple of months now. It’s still very early days, though, and probably even a long way off from a release to the developer community. We saw a two-year span between 10.4 and 10.5, but only a one year gap between the release of 10.5 and 10.6, because 10.6 represented mainly performance upgrades and refinements. Chances are, 10.7 is at least another year and a half off.

No news yet on what to expect in 10.7, although there is reason to believe that the upcoming iteration of OS X will bring more major changes than the last update. Traditionally, Apple introduces far more GUI and basic functionality changes in major point releases, but Snow Leopard was a special exception to that rule, a fact reflected in the price. It’s possible that Apple will release OS 11 at some point, but as of right now, it seems likely that it will continue with the current numbering scheme.

Anything in particular you’d like to see in 10.7? Maybe something you were disappointed wasn’t there in OS X 10.6? Personally, I still think Finder could use some further fine-tuning, but otherwise I’m at a loss at the moment.

Apple is fairly reliable, but not the most reliable company of all when it comes to notebooks, according to a new study by research firm SquareTrade. The top honor goes to Asus, which surprised me, but I suppose shouldn’t have when I consider the build quality of my fairly inexpensive Eee PC. Toshiba and Sony rank next most reliable, with Apple coming in a close fourth.

I remember a time not too long ago when IBM and Apple would top the list every time, with other manufacturers coming in a fair distance behind them. IBM sold its hardware business to Lenovo, which seems to be having some effect on quality, but is Apple also slipping as it grows? I don’t think there’s enough data to identify a trend, but it is a little worrying.

Still, at least Apple is still under the 20 percent mark for three-year laptop malfunction rates, which is the measure that indicates reliability in the study. Dell is the only company below it, also under 20 percent, with 18.3. After that, things take a significant turn for the worse, with HP coming in ninth place at 25.6 percent. That means Apple is still showing better-than-average performance overall.

Electronista suggests that the reason for the divide between top-tier manufacturers and those that fall below the average is that the companies with greater than 20 percent malfunction rates tend to do much of their business in the budget laptop and notebook categories, which see higher failure rates overall than premium-priced laptops, where Apple exclusively does its business. It’s possible NVIDIA-gate accounted for some of those failures, although SquareTrade doesn’t go into detail about malfunction causes in this report.

The iPhone isn’t capable of true multitasking if you’re running a legit, non-jailbroken device, so you can’t do something like, say, have Facebook and Twitter open at the same time. Thanks to the latest update, though, for TweetDeck for the iPhone (free, iTunes link), you can experience most of the advantages of that hypothetical situation using only one app.

The newest version of TweetDeck for iPhone has lots of new features, but by far the most significant is the ability to add columns that show updates from your Facebook friends (and MySpace, too, if you’re a musician or a 13 year-old who somehow got transported to the future from the year 2000). You can read updates, yes, but you can also do wall posts, comment on things, and update your own status, all without leaving the app.

You can even “Like” someone’s status update from the zoomed in view. Really, if you use Facebook the way I do these days (never opening the inbox, browsing the news and live feeds like they were slightly broken Twitter feeds and occasionally doing a wall post or two if something catches my eye that needs direct address. My Inbox has become a wasteland of lost and unread missives, and I rarely look at event or other invitations, unless prompted to do so in real life or on Twitter.

When you hit the compose button, you’re taken to the usual window, but now at the top you can opt to post your status update to one, some, or all of the accounts associated with your TweetDeck installation. It’s very handy if you want to post an update across more than one Twitter account, or if you’d like to selectively push some of your Twitter updates to your Facebook without using an extra plugin and the #fb tag, for instance.

Other new features include landscape keyboard support (via a button, not the accelerometer, which is actually better in my opinion), 12seconds.tv integration for 3GS video tweeting, and an option to save draft tweets you’re working on. Should give you a chance to rethink that disparaging comment about your workplace you’re thinking about posting. Bit.ly URL shortening with click tracking is also a new feature, as is the ability to add a column devoted exclusively to trending topics.

It’s a good update, but I still don’t think it can replace Tweetie 2 as my primary client. If I was a social media manager at a company in charge of maintaining multiple Twitter streams for different lines of business, TweetDeck would be my go-to application, but as it stands, it’s just more meat than I can generally chew.

If you’re planning your holiday shopping but want to get a good grasp of the budget available to you in advance, it helps to know what kind of deals you’re going to get. Luckily, Apple’s Black Friday discounts have been leaked early, so you can factor in those price reductions while you’re figuring out how pinched you’re going to be financially come January.

Boy Genius Report got the early tip-off, from an anonymous source. It comes in the form of what looks like a flyer image, detailing some pretty significant discounts on all things Apple, basically. They’re deep enough that you’d probably do well to hold off any Mac or iPod-related purchase for at least another 10 days just in case.

Here’s what we’re looking at, if the rumors prove true:

• Up to 30 percent off all iPods (excluding iPhone and iPod shuffle)
• Up to 25 percent off all Macs
• Up to 15 percent off all accessories, Apple software and Apple hardware

The sales seem to be available in Apple retail stores only, since the poster also states that “Select Apple stores open at 6 am,” and a line at the bottom advertises the new availability of in-store gift-wrapping. Last year we saw online Black Friday discounts, though, so it’s possible we’ll see them again.

If these deals do indeed come to pass, they would be pretty significant compared with previous Black Friday sales by the Mac maker. Twenty-five percent off of all Macs is a very good discount, for example, and would result in a $500 discount on the Core i5 27-inch iMac, or a $250 discount on the entry-level MacBook. Compare that to a $101 discount on the MacBook last year, and a $101 discount on the top model iMac.

The teaser image leaked by BGR is fairly convincing, in that it does seem to use design cues and aesthetics currently favored by Apple in its marketing materials, but it’s hard not to be skeptical in the face of sound business sense — considering Apple’s previous Black Friday discounts, and the fact that last time I checked, it really wasn’t in a position to need to offer big price cuts to bolster sales.

If these do prove true, I’ve been putting a new Time Capsule or Airport Extreme purchase on the back burner for quite some time now, and that 15 percent off is nothing to sneeze at, given Apple’s usual reluctance to offer any kind of price cut at all. Anyone else planning on making a purchase if these discounts really do apply? Something you wouldn’t buy otherwise, perhaps?

App Store developers now have more to contend with than just the fickle tastes of the humans Apple has reviewing submissions. Now, submissions also go through an automated filter that determines whether or not the app is obeying the rules and not using any of Apple’s private APIs, which is a no-no, according to the developer agreement.

The news comes via a conversation that occurred between developers on Twitter. Craig Hockenberry, best known for Twitterific, guessed that the App Store now contains a mechanism to check submitted code against proper framework use, and John Gruber responded that Apple has in fact recently begun to do just that.

The specific function of the new automated component is to check submissions for private API calls. If it finds any, the app is rejected outright. Presumably, such a check would be run at the beginning of the review process, thereby cutting down a lot on the number of submissions that must be reviewed by actual human beings. In other words, it’s a volume compensation strategy on Apple’s part.

It’s also technically fair, since Apple has said all along that private APIs are off-limits. The published reason being that Apple can’t confirm that said APIs will remain stable from release to release of the iPhone OS, meaning that something based on them might break every time an update rolls out. By forcing developers to stick with the public APIs, Apple is trying to ensure that some stability exists for end-users who depend on the hundred thousand apps or so available now in the App Store.

Despite being technically fair, the move feels a little unfair to developers, since Apple hasn’t exactly been consistent about enforcing the rules regarding private APIs up till now. One reason could have been that spotting their use just isn’t that easy, which the computer filter now rectifies. But it seems clear that Apple also looked the other way in at least a couple of cases when it suited it to do so, like with Google’s mobile search app, hence my suggestion that this has more to do with reducing workload using a non-arbitrary filter than anything else.

While the introduction of an automated layer does, on the surface, seem to guarantee a level of fairness, it also probably isn’t very encouraging to developers, who now essentially face a firewall before they gain access to individuals they can actually talk to about what’s wrong with their submission. Expect more headaches for the App Store team as the fallout for the implementation of this measure.

Scheduling a Genius Bar or One to One training session appointment has never been that difficult. Just go to Apple’s web site, enter some information, and you’re done. But a new rumor over at AppleInsider suggests that it’s about to become even easier, thanks to a new in-house developed iPhone app that could be forthcoming soon from Apple.

News of the app comes via a “source that has proven reliable in the past,” though no further information is given. The app is said to be able to create appointments for both Genius Bar and One to One, and to view membership details for programs that require a subscription. No word yet on a street date for the app.

Presumably the app would allow users to make any kind of reservation currently only available online, including a personal shopping appointment. Although the web site system currently employed is easy enough to understand and use, I imagine a dedicated iPhone app designed by Apple would make the process so easy and intuitive that I’d probably actually use it far more than I currently do, particularly for personal shopping when new products launch.

MacRumors corroborates the report via separate sources, so it seems likely that the Concierge app will be forthcoming. I’d expect it to appear before the holidays, so that shoppers can take advantage of it pre-gift giving, and people on the receiving end of Apple products can use it after the holidays to schedule appointments.

The Concierge app would be the latest move in a series of efforts focused on improving Apple’s retail performance, including in-store pickup for holiday shoppers, more and improved stores, and the new EasyPay touch system.

OnLive made a lot of noise when it first appeared on the scene way back in March at the Game Developer’s Conference of 2009. It’s a service that’s said to be able to make a gaming machine out of any computer that can run the latest browsers, which would effectively end the madness that is PC gaming hardware upgrades. And now, it looks like it might be able to work on the iPhone, too.

What OnLive does is bypass the normal hardware barriers involved in PC gaming by streaming the game live to a user’s browser window from a server farm located nearby. The server farm deals with the game’s performance demands, and all the end user needs is a good enough connection to stream the content smoothly.

It’s a setup that sounds too good to be true, and many remain skeptical about whether or not OnLive will be able to deliver what it has promised. There was supposed to be an external beta this past summer, but that’s been delayed, which doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.

Still, if the service works, it will revolutionize the way gaming is done. The system has strong support from game publishers, which makes sense because without the hardware barriers, they stand to broaden their audience considerably. If that audience were to also include iPhone users, you can imagine that even more game companies would fall in line behind OnLive.

The company recently demoed an iPhone app that allows users to play full games alongside users of the PC OnLive service, or players using the company’s MicroConsole, a standalone device which connects to a display or TV — yes, even without the modern convenience of buttons, joysticks and bumpers. Presumably, onscreen controls allow you to manipulate the in-game action, although a report at Engadget Mobile doesn’t go into detail about how exactly it works, nor does a blog post at OnLive. Needless to say, your PC gaming friend will probably be able to school you at Modern Warfare 2 unless you’re some kind of touch control prodigy.

When the app does see release, which won’t be for a while, OnLive CEO Steve Perlman says it won’t allow you to game right away. Initial versions will allow you to monitor gaming stats and spectate, so you can watch live gameplay without taking part. Interactivity is planned down the road, but control kinks and other issues have to be addressed before it goes live to the masses.

What do you think? Would you take advantage of full-version gaming on your iPhone if you had the ability to? I foresee a very limited catalog of titles that this sort of thing would work with, but if it does become a reality, and it becomes popular, developers might design custom gaming experiences for people who access games via OnLive on their iPhones.

There’s been talk lately that Apple’s execs are a little unhappy with the direction the iPhone and iPod touch have taken in regards to gaming. They didn’t anticipate such strong interest in gaming, it wasn’t really a key concern in their initial plans for the platform…and anyway, Stevey J’s not much of a gamer, and everyone knows to steer clear of Steve’s dislikes.

But as the Philosopher Jagger so wisely put it, “You can’t always get what you want.” And, as someone else once quipped, “If you can’t beat ‘em, join, ‘em.” To that end, Apple is advertising a job opening for a “Game/Media Software Engineer.” Based at its Cupertino hive mind headquarters, it’s a full-time position, and it sounds like Apple is taking it really very seriously;

The interactive media group is looking for a skilled software engineer who wants to work as part of a small highly motivated team to work on interactive multimedia experiences on the iPhone and iPod touch.

OK, sounds like gaming, right? I mean, sure, it could be the start of iLife for iPhone, but I doubt that. I suspect this is more likely the beginning of some home-grown games. It has done it before (it’s just, no one cared).

The position on the team is to help design and implement interactive multimedia experiences on the iPhone and iPod touch. The position also requires a creative thinker who can contribute and comment on the design process as well as being flexible enough to aid in all aspects of production such as asset management and able to work to a deadline.

Yeah, definitely sounds like gaming. What other medium is best described as “interactive multimedia?” (Don’t answer that, I know there are loads of genres, I’m just being glib, mmkay?)

The posting adds that applicants must have strong C / C++ / Objective-C skills, while an iPhone development background “is preferred.” In addition, Apple requires its shiny new game interactive multimedia code-monkey to have at least three years of videogame development experience, which includes having shipped “…at least one AAA title.”

So the question now is…why now? It was pretty obvious in the months following the launch of the App Store that games were the hot favorite of pretty much every iPhone/iPod touch owner. (Well, Games and Fart Apps. I once sat in a room drinking beer with some nerdy buddies and one of them started showing off his fart apps. No more than ten minutes later we had purchased and installed half a dozen such apps each. It seemed like such a good idea at the time. Yes, I’m ashamed.)

Unlike Fart Apps, public demand for games has a habit of persisting. (Insert Fart-App-related “bad smell” joke here.) So, if Games are here to stay, might as well get in on it, right Apple? At the very least, there’s money to be made.

More Than Just the Money

Of course, there’s another possibility here. Much has been said of the rumored iTablet and the challenges of making iPhone OS applications “scalable” — that is, adapted to run on the tablet’s much larger, higher-resolution screen. Assuming the iTablet also takes advantage of a custom chip architecture (courtesy of Apple’s purchase of PA Semi) we have a unique hardware platform in the pipeline. And when Apple has something new to show-off, there’s a very strictly observed custom to keep in mind…

When Microsoft shows off a new technology, it traditionally does so with the help of a hardware partner. On stage during a keynote, Ozzie will say something like “We’ve worked closely with HP for ten thousand years and here’s their President of Keynote Demos to show off the new widget…” So then some exec in a shirt and tie comes on stage and fumbles around on a PC for 15 minutes talking about “platform integration” and “line-of-business opportunity” or, whatever.

When Apple shows off a new technology, it traditionally takes all the credit for it, from inception to execution and every step in between. After Steve wows us with a 50 foot tall, all-graphics slideshow, Scott Forstall introduces a jeans-and-tshirt-wearing execu-dude, “We are so proud of this amazing brilliant incredible new widget… so we gave it to EA’s developers to play with for only six seconds and they produced this new game they’re gonna demo now…”

Showmanship differences aside, the point here is that Microsoft never tells us how it should be done. Apple, on the other hand, always does.

So perhaps (in the context of taking advantage of the potential offered by an entirely new platform) this job posting makes perfect sense; whether it likes it or not, the iPhone/iPod touch have demonstrated that gaming is an important part of today’s mobile lifestyle. Making them work properly on the tablet will be a new challenge, and one Apple will be keen to demonstrate from day one. If it is going to stick to the Apple tradition of showing everyone “how it’s done,” it makes sense it will want to develop a demo in-house.

If you fancy applying, you can read the posting right here. I wonder if Joe Hewitt should consider applying, y’know, just for giggles?

AdMob, the mobile advertising firm that recently made headlines thanks to a Google acquisition, might have become part of the Apple fold if things had worked out differently, according to a report by Bloomberg that appeared this weekend. Apple reportedly approached AdMob with interest before the Google deal went down.

That’s according to “people familiar with the matter” speaking to Bloomberg. It isn’t clear which side of the deal the source was on, but he or she declined to go on record since the proposed talks were never made public. Apple is said to have contacted AdMob “a few weeks” before Google made its successful $750 million bid for the firm.

If true, the rumors point to the increasingly fierce competition between two major players in the mobile phone game. Google’s Android is being adopted by more and more manufacturers and distributed on more devices everyday. To have a piece not only of the revenue from the use of Android apps and devices, but also from the advertising that appears on those phones, is a huge boon for the search giant.

It’s unclear why Apple’s bid didn’t succeed, if it was indeed made. It’s possible that Google made a better offer while Apple was still in talks with AdMob, or that the advertising firm used the Apple offer as a bargaining tool in enticing Google. All of the companies involved in both deals declined to comment on the reports made by the anonymous source.

Acquiring a mobile ad firm would have been a bit of a departure for Apple, which is still a hardware manufacturer first and foremost, but it is a logical move for Cupertino to make. Many of the ads AdMob displays in mobile apps direct users back to other programs in the App Store, so essentially Apple would just be closing the loop and taking in additional revenue by promoting its own revenue-generating software delivery method. Plus, it could probably use the company to place hardware ads as well, promoting less successful products through the massively popular iPhone.

If Apple is genuinely interested in getting into online advertising, it could attempt another acquisition, or it may start hiring staff with the necessary skill sets. I’d hazard a guess that if the computer maker did make a failed bid for AdMob, it’ll be twice shy about getting into the game now, since Google now controls an intimidating 30 percent to 40 percent of the mobile advertising market. It’d be hard to gain a solid foothold at this point.

Apple previewed its Upper West Side store in New York yesterday. Besides welcoming the media into the company’s latest example of retail minimalism taken to its logical extreme, Apple Senior VP Ron Johnson talked retail.

Glass and stone enclose 8,500 square feet of retail space on street level, topped with a glass ceiling 45 feet above, and with a glass spiral staircase leading to the floor below. According to Gothamist, which has some really nice photos, the street level enclosure could fit 11 of the glass cubes like the one in front of the 5th Avenue store.

“We opened our first store in Manhattan seven years ago, and the response has been incredible,” said Johnson, and not just at New York stores. A look at the numbers shows just how successful the Apple Stores have been.

Apple opened its first store in May 2001. At the time, it was a controversial decision, and not just because the store design looked like something out “2001: A Space Odyssey.” Rival PC retailer Gateway was cutting back on its stores, but Steve Jobs envisioned Apple Stores as a boon to both sales and marketing. One goal was to eventually put an Apple Store within driving distance of 85 percent of consumers in the U.S., a goal which must be nearing achievement. For 2009, Apple opened more international stores than domestic. The company now intends to open at least one Apple Store in one new country a year.

Further, according to Gizmodo, the company plans on opening “more like 50″ stores in the current fiscal year, including more “significant” stores. The outlets, formerly known as “flagship stores,” will be built in multiple countries in Europe as well as Canada, and at least one in Shanghai, China. Also, in the future, stores will be larger in general, making room for more product tables, as well as a bigger Genius Bar. Anyone who has sought technical support at an Apple Store can see the need for that improvement. As for the number of stores being opened, 50 in 2010 would equal that of 2007, which is especially impressive considered the current difficult economic times.

However, Apple and the Apple Stores appear immune to those economic troubles. More than 170 million people visited Apple Stores this year, and for the quarter just ending that meant $1.87 billion in revenue. Average sales per store is now $26 million, coming in behind competitor’s like Best Buy, but besting Best Buy by a factor of five in terms of sales per square footage, $4,300 to $872. Apple beats even Tiffany’s on a retail space-based comparison.

Finally, there is the marketing factor. According to Apple, there are more than 100,000 applications on file for positions at Apple Stores. For the Upper West Side store alone, 10,000 applications were submitted, 2,500 applicants were interviewed and 200 were hired. While it’s something of a jibe to describe Apple as a cult, if you think of Apple Stores as metaphorical churches, or in the case of the Upper West Side, a cathedral, one role of Apple Store employees becomes clear:  making converts. Consider this: Half of those purchasing Macs at Apple Stores are new to the platform. That statistic that hasn’t changed since the first Apple Store opened more than eight years ago.

While the Upper West Store stands out architecturally, it is Apple Retail that has arguably done as much for the company as OS X, the iPod and the iPhone.

I’m not sure how many of you are playing Eliminate Pro on your iPhones, but I’m guessing it has to be a fairly high number, considering the app’s success since its recent launch. ngmoco’s ambitious first-person shooter for Apple’s mobile platform is third overall in the App Store’s Top Free list, but what’s more impressive is the number 22 spot it currently occupies in the Top Grossing list of apps.

That’s a huge step for the micropayments business model made possible by the introduction of in-app purchasing in iPhone OS 3.0. It marks the first real evidence that developers can make good money offering a “freemium” model on the iPhone platform, with users getting the initial product for free, but paying for in-game rewards and additional content.

ngmoco appears to have found the sweet spot in add-on content where users don’t feel like they’re being extorted by a game’s in-app purchasing system. Eliminate Pro uses a system in which players earn rewards for in-game achievements that can be used to purchase armor and weapon upgrades. The catch is that you only get a certain amount of time during which game play earns you points. You can keep playing for free, but in order to get more rewards, you have to pay for more usable time.

Users can buy blocks of active time using the in-app purchasing system, in $1, $10 and $30 dollar increments. Players seem to have taken a shine to the system, since in-app purchases alone account for all of Eliminate Pro’s gross revenue. ngmoco also has a strong community and social media promotions effort in place behind the new title.

The company’s other title that depends heavily on in-app commerce, Touch Pets Dogs, hasn’t yet mirrored the success of Eliminate Pro. It hasn’t been available in the U.S. store for quite as long as Eliminate Pro, but I suspect the fact that its target audience skews much younger has more to do with its weaker performance. Eliminate players are far more likely to be in a position to have access to a pay-capable iTunes account.

No doubt ngmoco and other developers will try to repeat the success of Eliminate with other apps based on the same model. Personally, I’d be happy to see more games along the same lines, so long as developers remember that “freemium” does not mean “artificially handicapped.” Eliminate Pro works so well because it’s fun even if you don’t make use of the in-app purchases. As a result, users feel that ngmoco is operating in good faith and are willing to spend money on enhancing their experience.