Month: October 2007

Piper Jaffrey says AT&T pays Apple $432 for each iPhone

October 25, 2007 / / 0 Comments

Silicon Alley Insider reports on a Piper Jaffrey research note estimating that Apple gets an $18 monthly fee from AT&T for each iPhone on its network. That works out to $432 per phone over the length of a two-year contract. Even I can do the math on that: Almost $500 million for the roughly 1.1 million iPhones Apple’s already sold that are still on AT&T’s network (excluding those that have been unlocked or bricked.)

No wonder Apple is so intent on not allowing users to unlock their iPhones for use on other networks — at these numbers, those 250,000 “missing” iPhones represent over $100 million in lost revenue over the next two years.

Pardon our appearance

October 25, 2007 / / 0 Comments

I’ll try to limit site news, but I felt the need to make a quick note about the look of the site: I know it’s awful. I’ll be working on the design over the next few weeks, but I didn’t want to hold up the content.

Please bear with me — it’ll get better.

Mossberg: Leopard evolutionary, not revolutionary

October 25, 2007 / / 0 Comments

Writing for the Wall Street Journal, Walt Mossberg favorably compares Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard to Microsoft’s Vista operating system. For current Mac users, however, he says the upgrade isn’t a “must have,” calling it evolutionary rather than revolutionary. From what I’ve seen of the Leopard’s features (and I’ve only seen what’s publicly available), I can’t disagree, and I also can’t speak to what the “under-the-hood” features might mean for the future. It seems to me, though, that there’s a lot of anticipation over this release — even more than for Tiger.

Or you could just ask them

October 24, 2007 / / 8 Comments

In an uncharacteristic departure from his usually excellent reporting, Macworld’s Dan Frakes makes one of those bone-headed journalism mistakes that drive me crazy, and that epitomizes the problems with the Mac web.

In an Editor’s Notes blog posting entitled “Has Time Machine’s AirPort Disk use been grounded?,” Dan notes the fact that Apple has removed references to using hard drives connected to its AirPort Extreme Base Station from its online descriptions of Leopard’s new Time Machine application. Running through a list of what might cause Apple to remove AirPort support, Dan ends the post with this: “On Friday, we’ll at least know if the feature has been removed from Mac OS X 10.5.0.”

Why Friday? What’s wrong with right now? Why speculate when you can just shoot off a note to Apple and ask them? If they give an answer, stop speculating. If they say “no comment,” report it.

Journalists don’t wonder, they find out. They don’t speculate, they investigate. If online journalists want to be taken seriously (and they should want to), they need to start acting like journalists — even in blog posts.

And before you ask: Yes, I did contact Apple. The answer is no — Time Machine will not ship with support for AirPort Extreme.

You can stop wondering now.

After 10 years, a RandomMaccess reboot

October 24, 2007 / / 3 Comments

Those who have only recently started following all things Mac will be forgiven for having no idea who the heck I am, but hopefully there are still some of you out there with fond memories of RandomMaccess. 

Ever since my career path took a decidedly non-Macintosh-centric path, I’ve had little time for maintaining a full-service Mac news site. I still think I have a few worthwhile things to say, though. So, encouraged by bloggers like the excellent John Gruber of Daring Fireball and the surprisingly fun exchanges of observations on Twitter, I’m re-launching RandomMaccess as a blog. The difference is mostly in scope: I won’t feel the need to report on the day’s news as much as comment on it; the last thing the Mac web needs is another site regurgitating press releases and aggregating headlines. But I do think there’s room for critical commentary and analysis. (And of course, the occasional snarky remark.)

I hope you’ll stop by often. I have a feeling this is going to be a lot of fun.