I stumbled across this video on YouTube this evening, and after seeing the title I thought ‘oh this might be good for a laugh’. This video looks to have been shot at the time Apple launched the iPhone back in 2007.
In the clip Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer, literally laughs off the threat of the new Apple device stating that there is no way they feel threatened by “the most expensive mobile phone on the marketplace”, now at the time this may have been a real thought for those guys at Microsoft, Apple had never been in the Mobile phone market before what signs were there to say they would be successful?
Well…weren’t Microsoft in for a suprise! I think that Microsoft were under the misbelieve that because they developed Windows Mobile they were somehow the market leaders and that nobody was going to knock them off their perch. I’m almost certain that Steve Ballmer wouldn’t be the one laughing now! Steve Jobs and the team at Apple would be sitting pretty now with their ‘revolutionary’ product. Even though the iPhone was seemingly expensive at the time the 1st Gen still sold like hotcakes, only to be severely outdone by the 3G, and again by the 3GS!!!
Its so apparent when we see behaviour like this from CEO’s and managers that they just do not understand the real threats that their companies and products are exposed to, even if you are the market leader it doesn’t mean you’re invincible. Businesses operating in these times need to be constantly evaluating what their competition are doing and attempting to stay a step ahead. I feel pretty confident in saying that I really don’t think Windows Mobile has a leg to stand on, and without knowing the real figures – I would hazard a guess that there is probably as many if not more iPhones out there as compared to Windows Mobile.
It is so comical to watch things like this and think how embarrassing it must be for the company to look back on. It’s this shallow minded perception of the marketplace that Microsoft exists in that makes me think that one day when they least suspect it they will be knocked out of the number one spot by a competitor in the market!!
This scary news was discovered recently by a software developer, as the story is noted on the PreThinking states that the most recently released phone from Palm (the Palm Pre) was found to be sending somewhat critical information back to Palm. As we move into an environment where more and more of our mobile devices are becoming smarter we are generally aware that these devices may be more susceptible to nasties like viruses and malicious activity. Little do we expect that we will be spied on by the manufacturer of the product we are using.
The palm device has been gathering data such as GPS information from throughout the day, apps being used, time the apps are used for and what apps are actually on the device. This information has been sent back from the device to Palm over the mobile internet capabilities of the phone.
For a lot of the time this information may already be known by the phone company as they could presumably figure out your location based on what mobile towers your phone is using, but the negative thing about the whole situation is that the actual manufacturer of your device knows all of this information as well. Information like where you live, places you regularly visit, where you work thats scary stuff considering the manufacturers of other items you use don’t have access to this – imagine your fridge telling its maker where it lives!?!?
On the plus side, there have been no reports of any activity like this on smart-phones such as the iPhone, Blackberry or Google phones here in Australia. So for the time being we can rest assured that our info is still safe as the new Palm device isn’t available here yet.
All consumers of tech products should be quietly thanking all of the smart ‘geeks’ out there who notice things like this, they are the ones with the knowledge to notice these activities and make it known to the wider community. Lets hope they keep up the good work – for our sake
Macworld.com.au today reported that an update to the Facbook app for the iPhone has been submitted to Apple. I was wondering how much longer it would be until an update was to be done as there have been quite a number of changes and upgrades to facebook since the last update to the iPhone app.
The update is set to give a number of new features unique to the 3.0 software update, the most notable is the capability for 3GS users to shoot and upload videos directly to your facebook account. There’s added functionality giving you the ability to create photo albums, it will save text that you are typing incase you’re interrupted by a text or phone call. The update also refreshes the design of the app to better reflect the recent changes in facebook’s overall design. It would also seem that there have been upgrades to the overall stability of the app, the developer was quoted to say “Everything that used to scroll slowly now scrolls like butter.”
Overall even though it’s just an update I’m looking forward to the update as it is one of my most frequently used apps on my iPhone.
I was reading the news story from the link above and it got me thinking. The article basically refers back to a case where a teenager had his girlfriends iPhone, it apprantly started hissing and then shattered, flying shards of glass around with one getting into his eye. The Child is said to be taking action against apple for this ‘faulty’ product.
In Apple’s usual manner when there is a story on exploding or overheating iPods, they have refused to comment or take any action on the issue. In my opinion I know that if there was a problem with the product Apple would probably be quick to replace all affected models, they have done his in the past with other products like laptops and iPods. Although from a public relations and reputation management point of view I believe that by Apple refusing to make any statements they are treading a very thin line which could impact on customers trust in the company and it’s products.
Rather than taking the path that Apple’s lawyers dictate each and every time I feel it would benefit the company in the long run to actually come out and say something in situations like these, something to reassure every iPod, iPhone and Mac owner out there that the products they are using on a day to day basis have been tested thoroughly, and that the situations where something is happening, are an anomaly and a small percentage of all items out there on the market. By taking this path rather than the path determined by the lawyers it would put them in a better position to recover if there ever was a situation where a batch of iPhones were faulty.
Apple you need to understand that while you may be sitting pretty now – if you continue down a path where you fail to recognize and rectify issues, these issues will one day snowball into a crisis and one that could impact how you proceed in the marketplace.
But then again, Apple never have been the conventional thinking computer company, have they?
