Industry Experts say…

I was just wandering around Bloomberg.com articles from 8½ years ago, when I came across this one by Matthew Lynn – a Bloomberg News columnist.

“The opinions expressed are his own.”

says the disclaimer at the bottom. Looking back now, I bet Matthew wishes that the opinions expressed had absolutely nothing to do with him, given that the headline is this:

Apple iPhone Will Fail in a Late, Defensive Move

Ugly.

In other Apple related foolishness, there’s that famous thing that golfer Rory McIlroy shared in 2012:

If anyone is having a bad day, remember that today in 1976 Ronald Wayne sold his 10% stake in Apple for $800. Now it’s worth $58,065,210,000

Because yes, if you are having a bad day, it’s somehow comforting to know that someone has had a worse day than you. Thus, in the same way, if you’ve ever thought that you might have been massively wrong on something, take a look at the link above, because you won’t have been more wrong than Matthew.
Matthew has taken the proverbial biscuit when it comes to being wrong. Publicly wrong. Wrong on the internet, where no-one ever forgets and stuff like this gets brought up on top class South African blogs on Monday mornings 8½ years later. That wrong.

There’s some deep insight from the industry expert, as he states with the sort of confidence that only an indusrty expert can state:

The iPhone is nothing more than a luxury bauble that will appeal to a few gadget freaks. In terms of its impact on the industry, the iPhone is less relevant.

Well, yeah. But no.

Matthew wades through plenty of incorrect assumptions and erroneous assertions before coming out with this blisteringly mistaken final paragraph:

The mobile-phone industry is becoming a cozy cartel between the network operators and a limited range of manufacturers. It could certainly use a fresh blast of competition from an industry outsider.
It may come – but probably from an entrepreneurial start-up somewhere. How about phones with fewer gadgets but better at making calls? Or with never-ending batteries? Or chargers that don’t weigh three times as much as the phone?

It won’t come from the iPhone. Apple will sell a few to its fans, but the iPhone won’t make a long-term mark on the industry.

Look, credit where it’s due – we’re still waiting on the never-ending battery (wo-o-oh, wo-o-oh, wo-o-oh) (sorry), but “phones with fewer gadgets but better at making calls”? Hahahahaha, because this is 2015 and we don’t talk any more.

Thankfully, as far as I am aware, Matthew Lynn is still around and the continual resharing of his 2007 column hasn’t yet driven him to suicide. That’s good, because if we weren’t reading his opinion pieces, how else would we know that the Pope is going to renounce his Catholicism in 2016?

Google Calendar for 2014 World Cup Fixtures

Here’s a really easy way of getting all the fixtures for Brazil 2014 into your Google Calendar – get someone else to do it for you! Fortunately, there are nice people out there who have put the whole tournament into Google Calendar format and so all you have to do is to go to the site in question and click one little button.

As per TheAtlantic.com:

  • If you use Google, go to this site, then hit the little button in the lower right hand corner. It shows up on your calendar, but you can toggle it on and off in the left pane of Google Calendar.
  • If you use the iPhone Calendar app, download this .ics file, then click on it. It’ll bring up a dialog box asking where you want to put all the events. You probably want to add the games to their own new calendar.

DON’T WORRY if the times seem wrong (for example, that top link initially displays them in BST (London) time).
When you import them into your calendar, they will magically transmogrify into your local time zone (or whatever time zone you choose to have your calendar set for).

If you’re on Android, can I once again recommend FotMob for all your World Cup and further football enjoyment? It’s getting better and better and better.

Happy footballing!

RIM, you’re dead to me now

Reblogging this post from Jim Kerstetter, a senior executive editor at CNET News on the recent Blackberry problems.

I can’t believe you did this, RIM.

I’ve stuck up for you for years.
When the iPhone came out, I said, “Looks great, but what kind of security does it have?”
When Google and its posse of handset makers started selling quite lovely smart phones, I said, “OK, sure, but what about network reliability?”
And when Microsoft came out with its new Windows Phone stuff, I said, OK, I didn’t really say anything at all.

I’ve endured taunting by my wife, as she caressed her precious iPhone. I’ve tried to explain to my daughter when she asked why my phone doesn’t have cool games like her mother’s phone, that my BlackBerry is a work tool, you see, and I have no time for such things. I’ve even endured the giggles of coworkers who can’t believe I’m such a fuddy duddy, sticking with you. “For God’s sakes,” they say, “embrace the future.” And when things got rough with the other families, I even sent you to Vegas to learn the casino business.

But this gaffe, this is too much. I woke up yesterday and did the first thing I always do: I went to my BlackBerry to check my e-mail. This simple act is, mind you, very important to me. Has a big story broken overnight? Is there a crisis I need to deal with? I’m sure I’m not the only person who does this every morning.

And you know what I saw? That’s right, nada, nothing since about 5:30 PT (I’m sure other people experienced slightly different outages). I waited. I saw your apologies on Twitter and on your site. And on TV. I appreciated that you care. Really, I did. I’d have appreciated it a lot more if you didn’t go down for more than a half a day, of course.
Here’s the thing about BlackBerry users: We’re people who, at least when it comes to our phones, appreciate function over form. We’ve stuck with our little, not terribly stylish bricks because they worked. They didn’t drop calls at bad moments. The e-mail came in and was easy to access. The point was simplicity, lack of worry. It just worked.

Can I really say that now?

Last night, before I went to bed, I saw my e-mail reappearing on my phone and hoped, really hoped, that even more new e-mails would be there in the morning. They were. Thank you for that. And I’m sure a few million government employees, along with President Obama (I think), were happy to walk into the office this morning a little better informed about what their day was going to bring.
But this may have put me over the edge. You broke my heart, RIM. You made me look all kinds of foolish. Saturday morning, I’ll be looking for a new phone. I won’t be visiting the BlackBerry section.

(Emphasis by me)

Just the right amount of humour and personality in there to make us understand that this has affected him personally, rather than it being just another tirade over the server problems which took the BB network down for a couple of days earlier this week.

But Jim hits the nail on the head with his observations on Blackberry users. It’s function over form. The function? Well, it’s BBM (for the young guys), it’s the “free” internet for the older ones. The form? Well, it’s non-existant:

A lack of new products, a lack of innovation, a particularly pathetic tablet offering, a lack of decent apps and some strong competition from Android and Apple that RIM seem to have no answer to and it really looks like they could be headed the same way as Nokia.

As Jim says:

The point was simplicity, lack of worry. It just worked.

Now that one advantage has been lost as well.

And when you add in the disrespectful lack of information given to their customers during the crash, the cross-platform loveliness of Whatsapp (iMessage – yeah, whatever) and the ever-decreasing costs of data, it’s suddenly looking very ropey for RIM.

So, BB users: Are you happy to stick with BB? If so, why?
Or are you, like Jim, ready to move on? Now or at the end of your contract?

Port Pourri

Much excitement Chez 6000 today as I discovered a new website. And yes, it’s suitably nerdy, so you’re going to love it too.

Right, so you know when you are passing the harbour in Cape Town or looking down at it from the Mountain? [Joburg readers will have to try to imagine the scene, it’s like looking down at a pool of acid drainage from a mine dump, but with ships and a higher pH]
Anyway, you know when you do that and you see all the ships and you wonder about what they’re doing there and where they’ve been?
Well now you can find out, thanks to MarineTraffic.com. And what’s more, you can see which ships are on the move and where they are going.

Some green ships and a red ship off Agulhas this evening.

And should you wish to impress your friends with your impressive knowledge of all things nautical, all you have to do is click on a boat and you get all sorts of “interesting” info about the vessel in question:

Which is all well and good, but which does require you and your friends to have a sea view from your office. Or to have your laptop on the beach. And that’s not ever so helpful.

If only there was an app for your phone so you could have the information to hand, wherever you were.

And of course, there is: for Android (QR code below), for iPhone and not for BB.

Perhaps it sounds rather dull, but it’s actually quite addictive. Soon you’ll be tracking tankers, cargo ships, German Navy vessels and mysterious “Unspecified Craft” around our shores. And because it’s free, you can try it risk-free and simply delete it for a full refund if you’re not completely satisfied.

You’re welcome.