tech ronin

Bush Iraq war $ will bring US to its knees

Read it and weep: The Three Trillion Dollar War. The Iraq war has already cost us more than the twelve year Vietnam war and twice the cost of the Korean war.

The Bush tax cut, shoddy reporting, a timid congress and a huge real estate bubble lulled Americans into a stupor while our future was being flushed down the toilet. If pro-war McCaine wins the election, I'm outta here.

US infrastructure both old (highways, bridges) and new (broadband, fiber) is long overdue for an upgrade relative to our aspirations and size. Our primary and secondary schools are obsolete.

Imagine what that wasted money could do for infrastructure, schools, job retraining and healthcare. We are spending $12 billion a month. Let's shut this war down now!

The crazy thing is that besides this horrific financial loss (and carnage let's not forget), we are less safe from a military standpoint. Way too many of our troops and military hardware are in Iraq. This leaves us unable to respond to other legitimate threats.   

Someone please pull the plug on the outdated and, as far as I can tell, greedy and malevolent leaders responsible for this mess.

Weak enonomy will slow iPhone vs BlackBerry

Enterprises married to the BlackBerry won't switch any time soon. But any with an eye to the future are likely to invest in trial programs with iPhones. Someone in IT is going to see to it that some experimentation is done with the new SDK for enterprise-critical apps.

Meanwhile, forward-looking firms that may still be using Treos would be first candidates to switch to iPhone.

Companies have been putting the brakes on IT spending since last August's market scare. IT cuts won't help Apple make a big splash this Summer, but early adopters in enterprise IT should start spending enough to help Apple hit their 10,000,000 iPhone target by year end.

Expect vertical corporate software like Salesforce.com's iPhone app to proliferate quickly.

It will be hard to wait till July. But I expect to be seeing an ongoing series of Youtube videos showing off alpha and beta software to keep us going in the mean time.

Realistically, RIM can't compete with Cocoa touch as a development tool. Here's where the vaunted "desktop class" mobile software Steve talked about at the iPhone keynote in January '07 comes into play.

This is the joker in the deck. RIM talked about how playing media on a phone isn't that hard to compete with. Perhaps, but couple that with mobile Safari, core animation, OSX and a killer SDK and RIM, Microsoft and Nokia have something to worry about.

Upgraded MacBook Pro and iMac 24 to 4 gb RAM

In the last couple of weeks I upgraded my MacBook Pro and iMac from 2 to 4 gigs of RAM. It cost me about $100 at Other World Computing for the 2- 2 gig sticks of RAM, so that was about $200. I checked just now and you can get out the door with UPS ground shipping for under $98 for 4 gigs of RAM for the MBP or iMac Core 2 duo machines.

I tried on my own to install the RAM and after encountering the slightest bit of difficulty in each case (a screw was too tight for me and I worried about stripping it), decided to just ask my local Marin Mac Shop to install the RAM. Their charge? $27/machine. Any questions?

If you operate towards the power user end of the spectrum and have relatively powerful hardware to match, RAM is so cheap right now that you would be foolish not to upgrade up to 4 gigs of RAM if you can. That gives you headroom for things like 25 tabs open at once in Safari plus maybe 10-20 open applications. Works for me!

Now I feel like I'm not handicapping my fast Macs. It's crazy to spend around $2500 for the Mac and then cripple it even a little with not enough memory.

I have to admit that both these machines were fast to begin with and I really didn't have any complaints at all about my new 2.8 ghz iMac. But, who knows what it is capable of if it is limited by RAM a lot of the time?

Recession is Apple Talent-grab Opportunity

You know that $18 billion in cash Apple has lying around gathering dust? What say Apple starts staffing up for the coming era of iPhone / iPod touch platform domination? You can buy both companies and talent on the cheap in a recession. Steve is Scotch as I recall.

Combine a crappy economy, an awesome new iPhone SDK, a frictionless wireless App store and a $100 million iFund and what do you get? The best and brightest global entrepreneurial software talent are going to swarm this. Look what jailbreaking wrought and multiply by 10 for a start.

Update Mar 9: Upon further reflection, it strikes me that Apple may well scoop up the a few of the most promising iPhone SDK developer companies themselves. I'm convinced Apple needs to staff up.

I noticed that last year their R&D spending was less than 4% which is pretty low for such an innovative company as Apple. But then maybe some of their recent spending hasn't been expensed yet due to the 2-year window within which they can recognize expenses for the iPhone.

Attentive Mac fans have noticed the fairly high number of missed deadlines. Most recently Leopard was late and a bit buggy when finally released and now the SDK is just in Beta rather than done by February. Apple needs talent - the best available. I almost think they've been too busy building stuff to go out and find some more good people. But that only works so long.

I liked seeing Steve including two of his most able executives in important parts of the Roadmap presentation. They were looking good, actually. Steve casts a long shadow, but he needs plenty of help at the size Apple has grown to be.

iPhone/iPod touch: THE platform of the next decade?

Apple today introduced a glimpse of iPhone 2.0 to be shipping in late June. They showed lots of enterprise features. They are going for the enterprise which is appropriate to compete with the BlackBerry and because the US consumer market is going to be slower than molasses for a while.

Apple showed vertical market software with early non-shipping versions of SalesForce.com and Epocrates. Both looked sensational. I am counting on my md to be sporting an iPhone when I have my checkup in August.

And the fun part, of course, is iPhone games. Glimpses of Super Monkey Ball, Spore and other fun titles look fantastic. Fun but more waiting.

Steve's perfectionism was in evidence. This is an incredibly complete and well-thought-out SDK effort. Steve mentioned we might be living with it for 20 years. But that perfectionism will cost us a few more months of waiting.

It is clear that Apple is making a play for what they feel is the next computing platform of note. The mobile computer.

I was pleased hear reference to wi-fi as being a part of 2.0 because if they introduce 3G around this same time, we get wi-fi AND 3G, not 3G OR wi-fi. I'm ready to pony up for such a combo device.

Also, questions about VOIP were raised and Steve said Apple is OK with VOIP over wi-fi but not over the cellular network. I can live with that for now.