Windows pundit and iPhone user Paul Thurrott, on the prospects of an an Apple iTablet, after a briefing with Lenovo:

I spent about an hour and a half meeting with [Lenovo] this morning and while I am charitably described as a ThinkPad fanboy, the truth is, they just make the best notebooks on earth. And now they’re getting even better. It’s dizzying. I posted a bit about this yesterday, but there is so much going on here. In fact, their near-final version of a tiny notebook with a breakaway tablet screen absolutely kills anything Apple could possibly announce later this month. It’s not even close.

Daring Fireball‘s spot-on reaction:

Um, OK

If it’s being shown at CES, I’ll try to stop by and get a second opinion

On the eve of Microsoft releasing its new Zune HD platform (the one targeted at competing with the iPod touch), Windows Super-siter, Paul Thurrott is reporting that the still nascent plain vanilla Zune platform (the one targeted at competing with the iPod touch and classic) is being abandoned. (Shades of PlaysForSure?)

Likewise, the Wall Street Journal breaks word that Microsoft’s general manager of Zune marketing, Chris Stephenson is also being discontinued, leaving to take a position at Universal’s Interscope Geffen A&M Records.

The Zune HD admittedly looks like a more-than-compelling competitor to the 2007 iPod touch (the 2009 model, well have to see), and has bloggers strangely enthused, but it’s curious Microsoft is cutting support for previous players at the same time. Though Apple also believes them to be a dwindling market, rumor has it we’ll see camera-sporting iPod nano and classic come next Wednesday.

Could this actually be a sign of Microsoft gaining some much-needed focus? And will the logical, and still denied, ZunePhone be next? (And what would that mean for current Windows Mobile ODMs?)

(We’re still hoping for an XboxPhone instead!)

[Via Daring Fireball]

Could Apple eventually gain monopoly status in one or more businesses, and become as “evil” (or worse) as Microsoft was when regulators went after them in the 1990s? Windows pundit Paul Thurrott thinks so, and thinks it’s time to act now before it’s too late.

Now, Thurrott is an interesting dichotomy, well-balanced on his Windows Weekly podcast yet Dvorak‘ian in link-baiting on his blog. He’s pro Microsoft all the way, but has still been unable to find anything as compelling as the iPhone or iPod in their respective spaces. So, assuming we’re dealing with the more even handed podcasting and iPhone-using Thurrott, and we’re not just biting his baited link, his argument here is this:

until very recently, Apple was the underdog, and they’ve been the underdog for almost their entire existence. This creates a certain mindset, and under Steve Jobs especially, it’s created a very aggressive competitive spirit. This aggressiveness is fine when you are literally the underdog, just as was the case with Microsoft early in its career and it was trying to wrest the PC industry from IBM, Lotus, WordPerfect, and other tech dinosaurs. But once you have a dominant market position, that aggressive behavior–so important for an up-and-comer–isn’t just bad, it’s illegal. It’s just hard to turn it off when it’s been part of the corporate psyche for so long.

His answer?

With this obvious comparison of two very similarly belligerent companies–Microsoft of the mid-1990s and Apple of today–in mind, I think the time has come to rein Apple in. To examine Apple’s exclusive relationships with wireless carriers. To force it to open up iTunes to competing players, and its iPhone and iPod devices to competing software and services. If we don’t do this now, it will only be more difficult in the future. All you have to do is look at Microsoft’s never-ending antitrust saga–which has now stretched on for 15 years, involved regulatory bodies on three continents, and gone on far longer than its actual bad behavior–to see why it’s time.

The problem?

Apple is not yet a monopoly in any real business. They may own the Mac and the iPhone outright, but those are tiny blips in the big PC space and the increasingly vast smartphone space. Apple likely will never be a smartphone monopoly, and artificially defining a “consumer smartphone” is like defining a “Redmond MP3 player” space and pondering Zune regulation.

Speaking of MP3 players, in that space Apple could arguably be approaching monopoly status, though the market according to Apple themselves is now fading (hence their development of the iPhone). Even if Apple does mathematically hold an effective MP3 monopoly at some point, that’s not illegal. Abusing such a monopoly would be, for example forcing Best Buy not to carry Zune’s if they want iPods.

Otherwise, much as I (and Thurrott himself) find the notion of the EU’s constant browser bashing of Microsoft ridiculous given the advances of Firefox and WebKit (Safari and Chrome), the idea of forcing open what’s essentially content management software like iTunes is equally silly. (Note: Not letting iTunes run on Windows is a specious parallel, iTunes is an app, not a platform). What’s next, PS3 isn’t getting a fair shake so we have to force Nintendo to allow PS3 games and license Mario? Sigh.

As to movies and TV shows, if Big Media would drop their consumer-hostile DRM schemes, then just like MP3 both Apple and Microsoft (and others) could sell unlocked movies and TV Shows that users could play on or move between any device. That’s not an Apple problem, it’s a Hollywood problem, and consumers should channel that rage appropriately (especially towards legislators who are heavily funded and lobbied by Hollywood to “protect” their content from us evil customers).

Personally, I never left Microsoft because I thought they were “evil” (IE6 aside, of course), I left because I found better device(s) to suit my needs from another company (while Microsoft was being punished by the DOJ and EU, fancy that). If that happens again with Apple, I’ll likely move again.

Maybe to Android. Oh, wait, Google is a monopoly in search and online advertising, and is slowly ensconcing themselves on every device and harvesting my data for… what? Maybe they’re evil and should be stopped right now as well?

Slope, meet slippery.

Our sibling site, WMExpert’s tells us about all the speculation surrounding code-name “pink”, which may have to do with some manner of next generation Windows Mobile stuffs. (We’ve heard whispers of “rouge” as well, so we’re guessing there’re some real “Lady Marmalade” skunkworks going on).

What thinks noted Windows pundit Paul Thurrott, who has made a side career absolutely annihilating Windows Mobile as of late? As much as he loves Vista and Windows 7 and everything else Microsoft (Internet Explorer rightfully excluded), and as much as he bashes and baits all things Apple, iPhone user Thurrott has been saving his most impassioned rants of late for Windows Mobile. The latest?

Yep. [News that Windows Mobile 7 may not hit the market until 2010] is bad. Microsoft is working on a number of things before that major update, Windows Mobile 7. These include a new version of the WM version of IE, called Internet Explorer 6, and a new Windows Mobile platform called Zune Mobile that includes Zune functionality. But it’s not happening quickly enough.

Really? 3+ years after Steve Jobs hit the stage at Macworld 2008 and pulled the original iPhone from his pocket isn’t quickly enough? That’s how long it takes to even begin a response? “Pink” aside, is there no sense of urgency in Redmond? No desire to step up their game in the face of the iPhone walking in, stealing their mind share, and smacking around their market share?

I wanted to at least mention one thing I found vaguely alarming. When asked about the success of the iPhone and how that impacts Windows Mobile, I was told that the iPhone “validated” Microsoft’s approach. That’s some weird combination of revisionism, wishful thinking and, perhaps, delusion.

Apparently not.

Yesterday we covered some of the blogswarm surrounding the iPhone having (possibly!) already sold 10 million units, becoming the most popular smartphone in the US, and the 2nd most popular handset in the US.

Well, Windows Super-Siter Paul Thurrott retorts:

So this is just like Mac market share, in other words. It’s a subset of a subset of a market, picked to make the picture look even rosier than it really is. It’s US sales of smart phones to consumers over the counter at retail locations only, not “US sales of smart phones.” Most smart phones are sold to business users, not consumers, incidentally. And that means that “typical” smart phone sales are corporate sales, not consumer sales. This whole thing is a crock.

So, is Paul right? Are the sales numbers cherry-picked, smoke shrouded, mirror-skewed, squinted at slivers of fantasized reality? Or is he, a well known iPhone and Mac user, just trolling to get sites like ours to link to his blog? (D’oh!)

What’s better than a couple of well versed, well argued technologists presenting deeply reasoned and sharply insightful, fundamentally different but equally challenging, views on a critical topic? Well… nothing. They’re just hard to find given the intertube collective’s penchant for rewarding punditry and link baiting. Sometimes, however, we’re lucky enough to find a mix of both knowledge and provocation.

Cases in point: here were have noted Windows Super-Siter, Paul Thurrott, and accomplished Roughly-Drafted Apple Insider Prince McLean each presenting their own unique, multi-part perspectives on MobileMe.

Ready for the blow-by-blow? Continued after the break!

Says Thurrott, about how he “can’t imagine why any Windows user would ever sign up for this car crash”:

unlike the mature Exchange product, the initial version of MobileMe is half-baked, with glaring functional holes that make it less than desirable than it could be. And that’s especially true on the Windows side–the focus of this review, of course–because Windows users get dramatically less for the $99 a year that Apple is charging than do Mac users.

Says Dilger by way of contrast to “Microsoft’s proprietary MAPI RPC (Messaging API using Remote Procedure Calls), used by Exchange Server to deliver messages between the server and Outlook client software, was designed only for use over a secured LAN and does not provide the security required to pass messages over the open Internet” :

For an initial offering, Apple’s MobileMe really gives even the entrenched enterprise-grade competition a run for its money with its low consumer price tag. MobileMe’s low price is all the more interesting because nobody is currently even competing in the consumer market for comprehensive push messaging. And despite the attention Apple has been getting for the rough rollout of the service, MobileMe is now working smoothly enough to be well worth the $99 retail price.

As much views as reviews, there’s some technological and historical gold hidden deep within the punditry, and I recommend reading both, provided you have the time and can muster up the inclination.

While noted Windows pundit Paul Thurrott might be an out-of-the-closet iPhone lover, it seems his experiences with, and feelings for, MobileMe have been more towards the negative.

There have certainly been problems with MobileMe, and Apple has reached out to users as Casey posted yesterday. Now Thurrott has a leaked Apple sales note, reportedly sent out to redefine their language in light of these problems:

MobileMe Messaging Update MobileMe messaging is being updated effective immediately. In order to set appropriate expectations with our customers, focus your sales discussion on “automatic sync” rather than “push.” Additionally, we will no longer describe MobileMe as “Exchange for the rest of us.” When discussing the sync features of MobileMe, you may tell a customer that: Updates between me.com and iPhone or iPod touch will occur in a matter of seconds. Updates between me.com and Macs running Mac OS X Leopard and Windows PCs may take up to 15 minutes when MobileMe is set to sync automatically (Macs running Mac OS X Tiger may experience longer sync times).

Ouch! Want some double-ouch with a hefty side dish of rant? Check out Thurrott’s complete post where he focuses on lack of IE7 and Firefox support and, in part, takes David Pogue’s iPhone 3G review out for a ride…

Is Thurrott justified given Apple’s painful and still botched MobileMe roll-out? Or is he upset the mass-media is still dissing on Vista and wants to throw some fire Apple’s way? Little of both?

Not evil twin to Phone Different Week in Review, not an invasion by Fake Steve, This Week in Smart Phone Schadenfreude brings you all the feel-better news you need about the smartphone world outside Apple’s current media dominator. (Who knew there was such a world? We were just as surprised! Inelegant, interface challenged, keyboardy, crashy, single-touchy place — best not to linger…). Join us as we mock review the big news from last week at our sister sites. Everybody loves sibling rivalry!

WinMob on ur Blackberryz

No, Crackberrians, no need to have an OS attack. Ballmer isn’t threatening to unleash his BSOD’d “platform” on the Javaware that passes to power your little e-mail monster (yet). Our bad. Maybe we should have titled this “WMExperts on the Blackberry Bold”, or maybe just “Hawt or Not?” instead?

Anyway, seems WMExperts.com had this to title about the first-to-market iClone job from RIM:

Alright, the BlackBerry 9000 is Hawt

Think of It as an iPhone With a Broken Touchscreen

Blackberryz in ur iTunez

Sadly, this title is accurate. First RIM announces a $150 million development fund for “all mobile platforms” (read “iPhone”, since pretty much every other platform has had development going for years now and should already be a huge success, right?). Then, flabbergast-ingly enough, RIM — incapable of, you know, actually engineering their own way to effortlessly sync media to the Blackberry even with $150 million to throw at it — has decided to use Apple’s. So far there are no reports of RIM actually licensing iTunes connectivity from Apple, like… say… Apple just licensed Exchange ActiveSync connectivity from Microsoft.

Oksy, so let’s get this straight. First, RIM says they’ll give to the iPhone whether Apple likes it — or needs it — or not, and now they’ll take. Fiendishly clever, Lazaridis. Or it would be if you were a 12 year old 133t Hax0r in your parents’ basement, and not the CEO of the (technically) dominant smartphone maker in the world.

Hey RIM, how’d you like it if Ballmer monkey-boy danced his way into your NOC?

Epic kludge.

State of the WinMob — A Microsoft Mulligan?

Microsoft pundit and Apple-baiter extraordinaire, Paul Thurrott gave an(other) impromptu State of Windows Mobile speech on last week’s Windows Weekly:

You know, Windows Mobile is horrible. [...] It’s horrible. Horrible. [...] Don’t even get me started, we don’t have time. I… I… Windows Mobile is a disaster. [...]

[Is Windows 6.1 better?] Better than what? Yeah, it’s better than 5. But so what? This thing has the latest, 6.1 or whatever, the phone I’m using now. God, what a… it’s terrible. It’s terrible. They should be ashamed of themselves. They’ve had this thing… I don’t.. God, it’s embarrassing.

And, you know, I stuck around and I had the motorola Q for along time which I stuck with because of the high speed network and the fact that I could tether it to my laptop and use it as a high speed modem for my laptop. That’s great. I miss that. I’m going to tell you, though, the Windows Mobile stuff.. geez… It’s like going back.. Oh, god, it makes Windows 95 look futuristic by comparison.

[Is it challenging getting an OS onto mobiles?] Okay, Apple did something pretty impressive.

[The iPhone doesn't have cut and paste.] I hear ya, I’m just saying, you know, from a usability standpoint — night and day. [...] This thing is a piece of crap. They should completely start over. It’s horrible. It’s a complete waste of time. They should just pretend this never happened. This is.. it’s… it is the mulligan. They should just start over. Nobody uses the thing anyway. It’s just ridiculous.

[Treo 700w, HTC, and people love Sprint handsets...] I wouldn’t say love. Remember what they love about these devices are the form factors. The keyboards and, you know… You’re not going to find too many people who… I… I shouldn’t say that because, of course… [...]

You know what, look, I hear from Apple guys obviously. At least that I get. I mean, I could have my arguments with these people but at least Apple makes high quality stuff so we can arg–we can nitpick over whatever we want.

If someone is actually going to come to me and explain that Windows Mobile is not, in fact, a piece of crap, I’m sorry, I don’t entertain lunacy. This… This thing is ridiculous.

No, it’s terrible. No, it’s not even like a debate, it’s terrible. There’s no — you know what I’m saying — we can debate things. We can’t debate this.

[...] It’s terrible.

There’s nothing there. And this from a man who likes the Zune…

Yowza.

Palm’s 800th Verse — Same as the First!

Okay, even we have to admit it: the upcoming 800w is the Palm device we always wanted…

Back in 2005 when it should have shipped.

It takes until now to get WiFi? Now? Really? And still not on Palm OS “Granite”, but on Windows Mobile 6.1, which even HTC is desperately trying to hide like a Remond-headed stepchild?

Treocentral.com has the first “spy” pics, but honestly, who can tell if that’s even an 800w and not a 680 or even a 600 with a clever case and antenna mod?

And word to the “shadowmite”, how about obscuring the serial number on the proto and, hey, your reflection on the screen, so, you know, Colligan doesn’t have the hounds unleashed next time he spots you sneaking into the antiquities wing of Palm HQ, b’okay?

Definitions of Nova

nova |ˈnōvə|
noun ( pl. -vae |-vē; -ˌvī| or -vas ) Astronomy
a star showing a sudden large increase in brightness and then slowly returning to its original state over a few months.

Do they pick these code names just so these columns write themselves? Seriously. Nothing says next generation, second coming, return to dominance like something that explodes, kills all life, only to end up an infinitely sucking mass of dark matter.

On the other hand, since it won’t ship until first half 2009 at the earliest — by which time iPhone 3.0 will be on its way, and maybe a new, non-iClony Blackberry revolution (we dare to dream!) as well — perhaps Colligan and Co. really are code name picking geniuses?

And In No Other News…

We already covered how Sprint is spending wasting $150 million advertising dollars just to make the brand new Samsung Instinct pale in copy-catastrophe next to the last gen iPhone, but in an effort to be more helpful than hurtful, here’s some advice:

Just spend the money giving the devices away to your few remaining customers. You’ll move far more units than if you try and sell them, and maybe even engender a few more months of gratitude usage.

Wow, being nice really is its own reward…

Windows pundit and out of the closet iPhone lover Paul Thurrott brings his usual brand of over-the-top Apple baiting and legitimate griping to bear on iTune’s recent announcement of “day and date” movie downloads, where iTunes will offer the latest from Hollywood for sale (not rental!) the same day as DVDs are released.

Thurrott rightly points out that $15 for no-extras, unilingual, often non-captioned, DRM-laden movies is just too pricey, and even (though in a later point) that Hollywood is charging apple a whopping $16 per film, meaning Apple is taking a $1 hit on every movie they sell (as a loss leader to drive iPhone and iPod sales).

And greedy, gluttonous movie studios wonder why people are willing to go through the hassle of pirating (JAR!) content?

He also tells us rental movies don’t get the “day and date” treatment, even though Hollywood grants that privilege to CinemaNow and Movielink (whom he makes sure to mention had “day-and-date” purchases before iTunes as well).

Although Apple link-bait to be sure, Thurrott does place some small blame on the movie industry. Please allow me to add massive quantities more. Like the record companies, terrified of Apple becoming the #1 seller of music (whoops! too late!), the movie industry wants to give competitors some competitive advantage, with apparently no consideration for consumers who, 70% of whom, according to US market share, have iPods, including the iPhone, and would benefit from this content being made available under the same terms (if not more fairly priced with fairer terms of use) via iTunes.

But the movie industry is afraid of Apple “ruining” their business the way Apple “ruined” music. It couldn’t possibly be that the advent of the internet allowed creators to connect with consumers without the usury and distribution oligopoly of old media?

What says Thurrot?

I’d point out two things: That the ongoing migration from physical media (VHS, DVD) in the entertainment world mirrors a similar migration in software delivery, from physical media (floppy, CD, DVD) to subscription services and cloud computing. More pertinent to this story however, is the notion that anyone who is buying digital movies from iTunes (or any other service) is simply wasting their money. The future is anywhere, anytime on-demand delivery of content, delivered as subscription service. The very notion that someone needs to “own” a movie is outdated, especially when that movie is an intangible and demonstrably inflexible DRM-encoded digital file.

Fairly priced, DRM-free content, let’s say new movie rentals for $2 and purchases for $4, and there would be no casual piracy (and greatly reduced piracy in general). Volume pricing, given the economy of moving around nearly-free bits via legitimate p2p within a network may not be a working business model for the movie industry, but then again, it could just make them a fortune…

At that point it becomes, like iTunes music, an impulse buy, and I know I would spend more per month on that than I do now on physical media that costs them much more to produce and distribute.

What do you think?

Sure, die hard Windows pundit Paul Thurrott has already stepped out of the iPhone closet, skewering Windows Mobile both in his blog and in a (cold medicine induced?) tirade during the Windows Weekly podcast on the TWiT network.

Now, in response to to the CTIA Conference‘s official announcement of Windows Mobile 6.1, Thurrott once again gives anything but his usual spin:

Microsoft’s response to [the iPhone] threat has been abysmal. On the other hand, at least the company is responding. In the year since Apple first announced the iPhone, there’s been a sudden flurry of activity in the Windows Mobile world as Microsoft scrambles to embrace iPhone-like UIs and technologies in its own products. But Windows Mobile is hobbled by a number of factors, not the least of which is the gap between the software itself and the broken ecosystem (especially in the US) that is responsible for incorporating that software into devices and selling them to end users. The smart phone market isn’t like the PC market, and Microsoft can’t easily offer updates to existing Windows Mobile customers. Sometimes it can’t do so at all.

And, bringing to mind George Wallace’s comedy classic, “You know a better time to kick a man?”, Thurrott jumps on the downed OS maker thusly:

Lost amid all this, I think, is another indication of Microsoft’s inability to compete effectively in this market. They’re creating deceptive advertisements that make Windows Mobile look better than it really is. Here are two example “screenshots” of Windows Mobile 6, taken from the Microsoft Web site. See if you can spot the problem: [...] If you guessed, Windows Mobile doesn’t actually look anything like that, then you guessed correctly.

(Be sure to check out Thurrott’s complete post for the screenshots.)

How far behind the curve is Microsoft in the mobile OS space? Can they catch up to the iPhone? Are they even trying? What do you think?

Longtime Windows pundit Paul Thurrott has always had an interesting relationship with Apple. He has a MacBook, uses iPods, and link baits Apple fanboys every chance he gets.

But the times, they may be a changing! Look no further than the Windows Weekly Podcast, where Thurrott had this to say about Microsoft’s own Windows Mobile platform efforts when compared to the iPhone (transcribed):

“I have one very callous thing to say myself about the Windows Mobile guys, which is s**w them because, no offense, but seriously, you guys have had – I was there for the first version of WindowsCE, Pegasus I think it was called, and I have watched as they’ve mismanaged this smartphone market from day one. It has… it has always lagged behind, it’s not always been Microsoft’s fault – I understand part of it is just the nature of the business – but you know, Apple revolutionized the smartphone business not just with the hardware and the software but also with the way that they’re now presenting this stuff to users and updating the system over time, providing new functionality. This is something that doesn’t happen with other smartphones and it’s the type of thing where I can go to a Microsoft event and they can announce a new version of Windows Mobile, and that thing, I won’t see it in a store for another, you know, at the time, 18 months. That’s ridiculous. That’s ridiculous. Yeah, s**w ‘em. If a Windows Mobile device was better than an iPhone I would use it, but you would have to show me that device.”

Wow. Guess even Balmer hath no fury as a Windows pundit scorn…

While his original iPhone 1.0 review was mixed (or honest, as he claims, in the face of too many softball reviews from others), it slowly improved with firmware 1.3, and now with the beta of 2.0… Well, we’ll let iThurrott speak for himself:

Think of it this way. If you look at how the technology industry is changing, some core segments emerge: Traditional desktop and server software (Windows, Office), so-called software + services solutions that bridge the gap between the desktop and the Internet cloud (Office Live, certain Windows Live services), cloud computing (Gmail, Google Calendar, much of Windows Live), and mobile computing (Windows Mobile, Tablet PCs). Here’s the wake-up call: the iPhone touches on all four of these segments. And because most iPhone users are, by definition, Windows users, this is too important of a product to ignore. The iPhone is demonstrably more important than certain Microsoft products, including the Zune or Xbox 360, if only because it will affect a much wider audience. You can choose to ignore the iPhone at your own peril. I will not be making that mistake.

Is this the beginning of a tipping point towards iPhone? Pent up frustration against the long series of Microsoft announcements that never seem to materialize? Or just the momentary flirtations of anyone, even a diehard Vista-lover, when coming face to face with Pappa Job’s gift to the mobile world?

This post is a Wait-a-Thon post! Your comment posted here enters you for a a chance to win a $100 iTunes Gift Card! Also note that you can use your User Referral Link (found here when you log in) to get two entries in this week’s drawing.