Comments on: Being Played? Flash, Music, and Manipulation – Wait-a-Thon

By: sparhawk

sparhawk — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 17:06:27 +0000

Those subscription services… ugh, they’re called negative option marketing and sometimes it’s you buy those with the iPhone or no buy at all.

By: Rene Ritchie

Rene Ritchie — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 21:18:00 +0000

Yellow iPhone pre-loaded with Beetles catalog!

(TM Merlin Mann)

By: tschertz01

tschertz01 — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 19:21:41 +0000

I read the rumors. I enjoy the rumors. I sometimes hope the rumors come true. But I never believe the rumors until they are real.
There are lots of things I would like to see on the iPhone but Flash I can live without (fancier ads oh joy) and subscription services (miss a bill and kiss your music goodbye) I don't want.

By: AnteL0pe

AnteL0pe — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 08:58:10 +0000

'm done getting excited over all of these rumors...

Welcome to the wonderful world of owning, and caring about the future of, Apple products. Something about Apple has more than other computer makers is the rampant rumor scene. Maybe Apple brings this on themselves by hyping everything, but even that is mostly out of their control. I mean any time Apple even hints at a new product people go nuts, most of the hype isn't Apple created. Anyway, when dealing with Apple rumors remember this tried and true rule of thumb:

No one knows **** and anyone who tells you they do is making money from banner ad impressions on their site.

If you remember that, never believe any rumors and never get excited for products/updates/features that rumor sites predict then you'll rarely be disappointed by Apple announcements. I can't count the number of times I've heard some jackass on a Mac related forum site proclaim "Worst MacWorld ever!!1!" immediately after Jobs' keynote just because all of the outlandish, rumored-to-be-certain products weren't announced.

By: NPR_aficionado

NPR_aficionado — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 20:38:12 +0000

Don’t you feel, as the general consumer, you are getting played by the big corporations?

By: Rene Ritchie

Rene Ritchie — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 18:19:27 +0000

Re-MMS, I think cell-specific techs like SMS and MMS will begin to fade as general net standards like Email become available on more and more phones. (Phones that don’t have keyboards could still make use of email protocols to send between themselves and non-phone clients).

By: Rene Ritchie

Rene Ritchie — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 18:17:34 +0000

I was listening to TWiT yesterday and Jason Calacanis (sp?) was on, who founded Weblogs Inc. and Engadget. He said what often happened was that people at the big tech companies like MS, Palm, and Apple, who were unhappy with this or that corp. decision would leak it to Rojas (sp? Founder of Gizmodo and Engadget) or Ryan Block (current EiC of Engadget) just to get negative attention and try to get the policy changed.

Two other crazy stories he told was that, right when rumors broke of a the first WinMob Treo, he asked Rojas if he knew anything about it, and Rojas just smiled and pulled one from his pocket. Far as Calacanis knew, only Gates and Colligan had them at that point, but Rojas said he was slipped one because they wanted his opinion.

Lastly, Calacanis said he met Jobs while wearing an Engadget name tag and Jobs commented that he liked Engadget. Jason was surprised Jobs read it but Jobs said Engadget did a better job of providing competitive info than anything Jobs could do.

By: labgpr

labgpr — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 17:03:03 +0000

I agree, must of this rumors are to get more clicks on the page than anything else. And the worst part is that works all the time. If you look around all the tech blogs, they keep repeating the same stuff and the ones with the iPhone on it generates a lot of comments. We can only hope that some of them materialize. In terms of flash, i miss it but if it’s going to stall my iPhone on every page, no thanks. It’s annoying enough on a regular computer, so I prefer the skim milk version of the iPhone. On the other hand, I do miss MMS, search and cut-n-paste, in case somebody is listening.

By: gruswitz

gruswitz — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 16:37:32 +0000

… or the problem could be rumors being reported as news. Sure companies of all sorts float rumors to test the waters or play spoiler, but electronics consumers (like us) are just bit more rabid for more info than in many markets. The blogs trade rumors readily, it’s kind of fun. However, the “legitimate” news now references rumors from the blogs as sources. That’s just silly.

By: Rene Ritchie

Rene Ritchie — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 16:15:37 +0000

Serendipitously by way of Gruber:

The Age of the Anti-Cassandra John Gruber Today, 5:34 PM Paul Krugman: Cassandra had the gift of prophecy — she saw, correctly, what was coming — but was under a curse: nobody would believe her. Today, our public discourse is dominated by people who have been wrong about everything — but are still, mysteriously, treated as men of wisdom, whose judgments should be believed. Those who were actually right about the major issues of the day can’t get a word in edgewise.

By: Rene Ritchie

Rene Ritchie — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 16:13:28 +0000

If the SDK opens it up to becoming an e-book reader (which would be great considering the text-rendering quality), then I think the negative impact would be tremendous.

Adobe just don't know from skinny.

By: burnsaa

burnsaa — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 14:00:38 +0000

I can probably count on one hand how many times I’ve opened a PDF on my iPhone in the almost year I’ve owned it so to me its a worth while trade off.

By: Rene Ritchie

Rene Ritchie — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 13:36:33 +0000

I work in graphic design (among other things) and I've literally saved hours on the Mac by having the built-in Apple Preview open PDFs near-instantly rather than the bloated Acrobat which seems to take over a minute just to launch.

Since Apple uses a system very much like PDF for all their 2D graphics rendering, I don't know about you, but I would never want to give up the near instant iPhone experience for something sluggish from Adobe.

(Then again, I really am in no hurry to get the Flash tech on my iPhone either...)

By: burnsaa

burnsaa — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 13:24:03 +0000

Dang it Jobs so what if we use adobe for looking at PDFs does it really matter come on I want flash and I want it yesterday. So not that it was likely me but who was last weeks wait a thon winner where are the winners being posted?

By: Dieter Bohn

Dieter Bohn — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 13:17:04 +0000

@Bad Ash:

You say that, but you won't really be done until you hit rock bottom and admit you're powerless to stop your cravings for rumors and give yourself up to a higher power.

By: Bad Ash

Bad Ash — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 12:32:02 +0000

I’m done getting excited over all of these rumors… I’ll believe it when I see it for myself. And I’m so over all the the numerous threads on other forums regarding the 3g iPhone and all of the people who post the same thing over and over again…. should I wait until the new iPhone comes out, etc…

Ok I’m done ranting.

By: Rene Ritchie

Rene Ritchie — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 12:03:26 +0000

Thanks and agreed!

By: Dieter Bohn

Dieter Bohn — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 11:39:33 +0000

…and dugg!

http://digg.com/apple/BeingPlayedFlashMusicand_Manipulation

By: Dieter Bohn

Dieter Bohn — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 11:36:10 +0000

Leaks are definitely a conscious part of testing the waters for people's desire for a given feature. Sure, we're enablers, but we also get a chance to apply pressure with the way that we report the rumors and the companies we "play" off each other to try to get the stuff we want.

updated this post - definitely wait-a-thon worthy!