Long time since and update. Working like a dog
Scary stuff:
Big huge fire near Lake Tahoe where I grew up.
Tech stuff:
The iPhone is set to launch here in the US on Friday. I wonder if Steve Jobs is going to change the cell phone industry the way Apple changed digital music. Basically, with the iPod and iTunes, they were able to dictate terms to the music industry for digital music. What if the iPhone allows Apple to dictate terms to the carriers. Already, the iPhone is $500 WITH a contract. That almost sounds like full retail price. Maybe, the carriers aren’t getting much out of it. There were rumors at one point about an Apple MVNO. What if they just used whatever carrier to sell a data path for all the data-heavy features of the iPhone.
BTW, the iPhone looks (and is priced) much more closely to what Intel’s UMPC should be. Something between a normal cell phone and your laptop, but capable of reading documents, browsing the web quickly, etc. The icon-based navigation – like a Palm Treo (guess who the iPhone has squarely in their sights) – is like the Newton come full circle.
Newton gave birth to the PDA concept. Palm made it fairly mainstream and affordable. Handspring (which was started by ex-Palm people and then summarily purchased by Palm later) created the Treo concept – mating Palm OS with the phone. Now as Palm goes toward Windows and Linux OSes, the iPhone emerges looking very 21st century Palm-esque. Ain’t Silicon Valley irony great?
Bonus:
Yes, I did have a birthday. Yes, I feel old…