Oh, this looks promising: “Find My iPhone.” Cut to video clip from 30 Rock episode in which Liz loses her iPhone. “Find My iPhone” is a feature of MobileMe, apparently. Lose your phone and log in to Mobile Me and the service will locate your phone for you. It will also allow you to force the device to play an audio alert so someone can locate it. And if you can’t? Remote wipe. Nice.
It was a banner week for earnings calls. Yahoo, Microsoft and Apple all got the liveblogging treatment on All Things D.
First up, BoomTown’s anticipation for pistol-packin’ Carol Bartz’s first earnings appearance paid off when Bartz dropped the F-bomb, live and uncensored.
A look back at the week during which approximately 40 percent of the posts were about Twitter. Or at least it seemed that way.
BoomTown got the ball rolling by making a visit to Twitter HQ bearing pies. During a video tour of the premises, Biz Stone discussed rock stars and booze, and spilled the secret of the strange green deer.
As we head into the summer iPhone refresh cycle, the Mac rumor sites are fast pulling together a wire-and-string outline of what the device might look like. Last week brought with it reports that iPhone ’09, or whatever it might be called, will sport a 3.2 megapixel camera. Now comes news that it may support 802.11n wireless connectivity and video editing as well.
Perhaps Macworld Expo 2009 will have its “one more thing” after all. In a note to clients this morning, Ezra Gottheil of Technology Business Research speculates that Apple will indeed launch a new product category at Macworld in early January. A netbook.
Not up to Apple’s standards.” That was Steve Jobs’s August assessment of the company’s MobileMe service following its travesty of a launch. Plagued by persistent mail outages and recurring data loss issues, MobileMe’s debut was, in Jobs’s own words, “not [Apple's] finest hour.” Indeed. It was among the company’s most humbling, prompting a public apology and not one, but two, free service extensions totaling 90 days. But that’s all behind us now. In fact, it’s like it never even happened.
What an ugly week for Apple. Voice and data reception issues plaguing iPhone 3G, MobileMe still not up to company standards, and now reports of sparking iPod Nanos. Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry is investigating a possible battery defect in Apple’s older iPod Nano music players after receiving reports of minor fires caused by overheating devices.
My God, the irony– it BURNS. The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) on Tuesday gave Apple its highest-ever score, awarding the company a record 85 points in its 2008 survey of consumer sentiment. This, as customer satisfaction with Apple’s iPhone 3G and MobileMe service presumably plummets thanks to some much-publicized outages and failures.
If, as Apple CEO Steve Jobs recently said, the launch of MobileMe was not Apple’s finest hour, then what can be said of the more than 800 hours that followed? Because they haven’t exactly been Apple’s finest hours either. So, how about a “60-day extension to MobileMe subscriptions free of charge”?
“Not up to Apple’s standards.” Typically those words, when they’re uttered within Apple, refer to Microsoft or another of the company’s rivals. But not today. Today, they refer to Apple’s MobileMe service. Said Steve Jobs in an internal all-hands memo: It was a “mistake” to roll out MobileMe at the same time as the iPhone 3G, iPhone 2.0 software and the App Store.
Speaking at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference this past June, CEO Steve Jobs said of MobileMe, the suite of online services that would soon replace the company’s troubled .Mac, “I think we finally got it right.” Mmm. Not exactly. After nearly two weeks of technical problems, it’s become clear that Apple has not gotten Mobile me right–not yet anyway.
John Paczkowski has been poking fun at the tech industry and the personalities that drive it since 1997. From 1999 to 2007, he wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper. Read more »
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
12:58 AM: Breakfast: Two schools of fish from Tokyo Bay. Calories: 782,000. How I was feeling when I ate this: confused, irradiated, hating my size.
11:37 AM: Exercise: “Taxi Stomp” (alternating legs, for 30 blocks). Calories burned: 148,900,183.
1983. The Beatles announce their first tour in thirteen years, but likewise announce that Michael Jackson will be going on tour with them as a one gigantic mega-concert event.
Best video mashup ever.
A Facebook Memorial
Wow.
Worth it for the Rickrolling photo alone.
Excellent.
Flughumor!
… you vacuous, toffee-nosed, malodorous perverts
Stephen Fry and zoologist Mark Carwardine meet the kakapo — a fat, flightless and very randy rare parrot.
D is unlike any other executive conference. Since its debut in 2003, D has brought to life the energy and excitement of the digital revolution in an unscripted, upfront and unparalleled way. Read more »
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