It’s a sad day for what are arguably some of the most influential people in the peer-to-peer file sharing industry. The BBC reported on the story with this:

Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Carl Lundstrom and Peter Sunde were found guilty of breaking copyright law and were sentenced to a year in jail. They were also ordered to pay $4.5m (~£3m) in damages.

Despite the bad news, it’s the sign of a true hero to give a response like this (Peter Sunde):

“It’s so bizarre that we were convicted at all and it’s even more bizarre that we were [convicted] as a team. The court said we were organised. I can’t get Gottfrid out of bed in the morning. If you’re going to convict us, convict us of disorganised crime.

We can’t pay and we wouldn’t pay. Even if I had the money I would rather burn everything I owned, and I wouldn’t even give them the ashes.”

Legends of our times. Not that we endorse what they are responsible for.

We wish them the best of the luck in the future, once they’re out.

The other day, I went back to this piece by Richard Sprague (Senior Marketing Director at Microsoft) from January 2007.

The whole article can be summed up by:

“So please mark this post and come back in two years to see the results of my prediction: I predict [Apple] will not sell anywhere near the 10M [iPhones] Jobs predicts for 2008.”

This is referring back to the original announcement of the iPhone, and the time when Jobs, being asked by numerous reporters, publicly clarified that Apple aimed to sell around 10 million iPhones by the end of 2008.

On Tuesday of this week, Apple held their quarterly earnings call. The results for the last quarter were stunning, there’s no denying it. Apple sold more iPhones than RIM sold Blackberries. Apple is now the THIRD largest phone retailer in the world, in terms of revenues. And Apple has only been making ONE phone, in the market for just 15 months.

Jobs gave this comment, showing their uncertainty (like everyone else) about the future of the World economy:

“Now, both of these things, beating RIM in units and becoming the third largest mobile supplier in revenues are amazing feats but part of this was the result of expanding into over 50 countries and there’s no guarantee that sustained sales will equal initial sales. And who knows what the future results will be, given the worldwide economic slowdown but we actually outsold RIM last quarter and ranked as the third largest mobile phone supplier in revenues. Not bad for being in the market for only 15 months.”

Referring back to Sprague’s article, he posted again the other day asking people why they thought the iPhone performed so differently to his predictions.

The problem is that he didn’t see the iPhone as the versatile device it is. He compared it to existing phones. Whereas the iPhone is not really a phone, it’s everything you could possibly want in one device. And it’s all of these things combined beautifully.

There are numerous reasons for its success, but to name a few:

The existing massive consumer base of iPod owners already have a major part of the iPhone equation on their computer: iTunes. No other phone company has anything near the power of iTunes (the software) or the content and quality (the iTunes Store). The ability for Apple to reach its already happy customer base of iPod owners through iTunes, and the email lists that the majority of them have joined is a greater advantage than many realise. Everyone I know knows of the iPhone and what it can do. They have the expectation of it being a well built, well designed device like their existing iPods. We can conclude that one of the strongest selling points of the iPhone is that it has been released after the iPod – it must be better.

The iPhone ad campaign is aired worldwide to huge audiences. The ads show off a beautiful product with a beautiful interface that performs tasks that normally seem mundane, easily and with flair. These ads are also localised to each country so show that Apple has genuinely considered the needs of each nation (even if all it has done is hired a native speaking commentator and shown a national newspaper as the news site in Safari.)

The price of the iPhone (the original iPhone) was exactly the same concept used for the original iPod. Price it high to gain artificial scarcity – the select “elite” have an extremely attractive device that is difficult to obtain for the rest of the population. Bring out a newer, better iPhone several months after at a (still relatively expensive) but cheaper price point and the customers flood in. The iPhone is still expensive, and it is still a product owned by the minority, but as Apple revises the iPhone again, and inevitably releases a second device to the line, the customer base will grow and grow.

We haven’t even begun to spoke about the number of big names building high quality iPhone apps – EA Games, SEGA, Google, Facebook, the list goes on. The press’s addiction to Apple fuels the hype given to their products. Whatever Apple does – or doesn’t – do gets reported, (the shares usually respond, too) but it means Apple’s name is seen by consumers every day. Apple is a household name unlike any other phone company around (other than Blackberry). You don’t see Sony Ericsson’s latest set of handsets on the 3rd page of The Times very often.

Other than starving the stock pre iPhone 3G launch, the last 15 months have been constant growth for the iPhone. As we enter very unpredictable times, who knows how many iPhones Apple will sell this quarter? All we tell is that Apple has historically sold double the number of iPods in the 4th compared to the 3rd quarter every year. If Apple does this with the iPhone, which is a stretch, Apple will have sold around 20 million in the same time frame they intended to sell just 10 million.

It’s no surprise the iPhone is (so far) a success, but the future is very uncertain.

Read the Top 100 Requests on Dear Adobe and see if you agree.

Adobe has a lot of work to do to please their customers. This is a site that has been set up for us poor developers, designers, animators, and general creatives to vent our anger at Adobe – the company, the products, and their pricing. If Adobe ignores this site, and sees it as a small number of angered individuals determined to destroy Adobe’s reputation they will be much mistaken. This site has comments from some of the most loyal users of Adobe products, from the people that genuinely care about their business, and these are also the most vocal – they are the core users that matter most to Adobe.

They are telling Adobe, directly, and in crystal clear English, exactly what is wrong with their current business. They’re even telling them how to put it right.

Dear Adobe, Ignore this site at your peril.

Still exchanging business cards on a daily basis? Surely there’s a better way in this modern age of web communications. There is, in fact there are many better ways than exchanging small pieces of card, but the latest (and possibly greatest) development in this area is a new service called Hello My Name is e.

What is E?

There’s no better description of the service than on their own site:

“E is a service that integrates all your existing social services into an E•ID, which you can share with anyone in the real world. To exchange E•ID’s, you just need an internet-enabled mobile phone like an iPhone or Blackberry. When you exchange your E•ID’s, E makes sure your contacts get added to your other social services like Netlog, Twitter, Last.fm, Soocial, automatically.”

So, essentially, you sign up for E, get an E•ID (a simple 5 digit code), and when you meet someone you want to get to know better, you exchange E•IDs by typing each other’s into your web enabled phones.

Very simple, very convenient. At this point, you may be thinking – WAIT! I can already do this with existing services such as Dropcard. The cool thing about E is that it automatically adds the contact’s details to all available services, so will instantly be following them on Twitter, and checking how compatible their music taste is with Last.fm.

E Connector

There is also a hardware component, to make things even easier, called E Connector.

“Connector is a device designed specifically for the E service. Connector allows you to add somebody to E, and all integrated services, in one simple gesture: Press two Connectors together and you’ve exchanged E•ID’s. It’s that simple.”

Very Apple-esque in it’s simplicity (and design). Nonetheless, I like it, and if enough people start joining the service, this could really take off. However, that is the crux of this concept – unless it gains mainstream appeal, they are going to struggle to survive.

I really hope this concept does well – it would be great to see it develop with more services (Facebook, are you listening?) and gain mainstream use. If I were working at E right now, though, I would be worried. What if Apple were to simply put this feature into a firmware update for the iPhone? Same with Blackberry. Touch two iPhones together, exchange vCards, add to all services on there. Sure there wouldn’t be this level of cross compatibility, but if it ended up in the iPhone, it could turn out that other companies would follow to support the standard that Apple would set.

All together, it looks like a great service. I’ve signed up for the beta and can’t wait to try it out.

Both developers and consumers on the iPhone App Store will be glad to hear some good news coming out of Cupertino today: you can’t review an app until you’ve purchased it.

This is great, especially for apps that have a high price tag (or even any price tag) as the reviews section would often become filled with users complaining and giving low ratings for the app due to its price without ever having used the app whatsoever.

This is a small step, but it’s good to see Apple adjusting to the way the app store is used.

Now, all you need to do now Apple is to help out those poor developers that spend months working on apps simply to be turned down at the last hurdle because it competes with your own plans.

So the financial markets are in an epic turmoil, and everyone’s cutting back. Office equipment is an area where many firms could really make a saving. Here’s a complete solution:

Credit: Unknown, if anyone knows the original source, please leave a comment below!

Quite a useful update to the UI of the iPhone Capacity meter in iTunes. Before, Apps showed up as “Other”.

Also, in case you hadn’t heard, the iPhone 2.1 Update is out, which promises to fix all those annoying little (and large) bugs that have been driving us crazy for a while.

Being in London, this year we haven’t been lucky enough to attend the Apple World Wide Developer Conference at Moscone West in San Francisco. We’ll be following Twitter along with the rest of the world’s Apple fans, but just in case Twitter goes down (not that that’s ever happened before… oh wait) we’ll be keeping you posted on developments throughout the day.

Follow WWDC in style, updated every 30 seconds: http://wwdc.twistori.com/#apple

Updates

Apple homepage and iPhone pages updated.

Apple Store already back online

iPhone 3G Specs from online Apple Store:

Same camera 2MegaPixels – ouch.
Same screen.
GPS – wooooo.
3G – wooooo.
Price – woooooo from $199 for 8GB.

Read the rest of this entry →

I’ll be honest, I hadn’t heard of this guy until today, but I thought it would be important to share just how (for want of a better word) STUPID he appears in this video.

When asked on what Apple needs to do to really improve its chances in the corporate sector, Mr Krakow suggested that Apple should “Bite the bullet, and either get Blackberry or Windows Mobile on the iPhone”

His reasons for Apple doing so were very vague, and mainly focused on people “being happy” with what they currently have. How can an industry ever evolve if they’re always happy with what they have?

Gary’s comments on “moving to the Apple system” made him sound as if he really didn’t have a clue about what he was talking about. Also, on a side note, you don’t tend to hear people in the industry calling anything a system these days – it’s more “platforms” and “devices”. His comments were as if Apple hadn’t got ANY plans to bring out a whole host of enterprise features in the coming weeks.

All I can say is, it’s hard to believe this isn’t a joke.

Inquisitor, the brilliant little search plugin for Safari has been purchased by web giant Yahoo!

In a move that has surprised many, Yahoo! has seemingly made a smart decision here. The Inquisitor plugin is used by a large number of Apple users to get instant search results from the built in search field that Safari comes with. The search field defaults to Google when Safari is first downloaded, enabling both Google and Apple to earn through search advertising from a high number of searches. So Yahoo! will ensure Inquisitor’s default search is through them to increase their slice of the multi-billion dollar search advertising market. Thankfully, the default search engine is still changeable via the newly designed preference pane.

Yahoo! purchasing this plugin is not just a sign of good business sense. It is a very clear example of the importance of interface design. Interface = Brand. The interface of Inquisitor is beautiful, and has developed throughout its life. Being a user of Inquisitor from the beginning, it has been great to see it develop into a thoroughly useful, efficient, and beautiful tool.

Let’s hope the buyout from Yahoo! will keep Inquisitor at its prime for years to come.

On a side note, David Watanabe has not joined the ranks of Yahoo!, he’s still focused on creating his own awesome software.