Apple Using Special New Screws So You Can't Open Your iPhone

from the screw-you dept

One of the interesting questions we've been looking at for years is whether or not a business is an enabler or a gatekeeper. Being in the gatekeeper business can work for a period of time, but it's often difficult to sustain. Apple is an interesting company in that it certainly has elements of both, enabling in some areas, but being a very strict gatekeeper in other areas. As if to reinforce this point, Apple is apparently changing the screws on iPhones to make them much harder to open. Apparently, it's come up with a "pentalobe" design: Not only that, but if you bring in your iPhone for repairs, Apple will replace the old screws with these new pentalobe screws to keep you from... well... screwing around. The whole thing seems really incredibly pointless. First of all, those who really want to open the phones will figure out ways to do so. I would guess that it won't take long for tools that work on such screws to hit the market. All this really does is frustrate iPhone owners by making life difficult for them. What possible good does it serve to have a non-standard screw system?

Filed Under: gatekeepers, iphones, screws, tinkering
Companies: apple

Taking The Long View: App Developer Happy That Piracy Doubled His Sales

from the look-at-the-bottom-line dept

As pretty much everyone knows, focus and perspective make all the difference in how you view anything from politics to family, and in business too. Many times in discussions on the true impact of piracy, the comments are flooded with what seems to be two firmly entrenched sides. You have those that suggest that the focus should be on whether or not infringement is wrong. On the other side, you have those that want to look at the overall impact of what is occurring.

Now, I won't stake out a position on the validity of either argument, but one of the things I hear quite often from those making the moral argument is that it's important to consider the wishes of the creator when thinking about this stuff. I happen to agree. But I also happen to think that an important change that is occurring is that creators are beginning to push away from the easy reaction of getting upset at piracy and beginning to look at the vastly more important bottom line of their business.

Take, for example, a recent blog post by Daniel Amitay on the recent relative success of his Punch 'Em -- Fight People Through Your Camera iPhone app. He had noticed that his sales had increased around the end of December and he had the same thought when preparing to write about that you're all having right now:

"This post was going to be about Christmas and how it was responsible for the (relatively) long term increase in my app sales."

But then he noticed something strange.  He found that the timing with folks receiving new phones or devices for Christmas didn't really match up with the sales.  Also, even after what you would expect to be the Christmas rush, the increase in sales maintained.  He supplied the graph below:

Note that, whatever the timing, as piracy of his app increased, so did sales, although certainly not to correlating scale. But who cares? He got more sales! As Daniel himself notes:

"It's pretty obvious why developers get upset about piracy: uh, it's stealing. Aside from that, I'm pretty straightforward about the fact that decisions should be profit-driven. Throughout Punch 'Em!'s paid lifetime, I couldn't raise its sales count in the long term. So if thousands of users end up pirating my app, but hundreds buy it as a result of hearing about it from their pirate buddies, why should I cry?"

Forgive Daniel for conflating infringement with stealing because, as I said, I understand the natural reaction to get upset at piracy. His conclusion is far more important: it's the bottom line that matters. And that brings me back to the premise I posed at the beginning of this piece, that focus and perspective make all the difference. The bottom line is that two things happened at the same time for Daniel's iPhone app. Infringement increased nearly 40x and sales increased by more than 2x. He could easily have focused on the infringers and the fact that clearly his sales should have gone up more than 40x (even if that's not strictly a factual way of looking at it). Instead, he focused on the fact that his sales doubled, and now he's happy. And he even tried to go the DRM route and found out why that path didn't work:

"Interesting thing, I had code in previous versions which did just this. It checked (through various means) if the IPA had been cracked, displayed a message asking that they purchase the app, and exited. My conversion rate was 0%. Beyond the conversion rate issue, my app was pirated very little--after all, my app quit almost immediately, so why share it at all?"

As Nina Paley said recently, sharing increases value. Focus on the value awarded by sharing and you'll find that "piracy" can make you happy (and money!). Isn't that bottom line the most important thing on which a business can focus?

Filed Under: apps, piracy, sales

Woman Threatening To Sue Mall Because Mall Video Captured Her Text-And-Walking Into A Fountain

from the rethink-your-targets dept

Mr. LemurBoy was the first of a whole bunch of you to send in this story of a woman who was trying to walk and text in the mall where she works... and paid so little attention to what was going on around her that she fell face first into a big fountain. As with all such things like that, it's difficult not to at least chuckle a bit when you see that kind of thing, and, indeed the mall security folks found it funny enough to put the clip online, where it went viral. And even though the woman was fine and even though it's impossible to identify her in the video, she's now come forward and is threatening to sue the security guards for both releasing the video and not coming to help her fast enough. I can't see her having much success with any such lawsuit. She was the one who did the embarrassing thing, and it was done in public, where lots of people could have seen/filmed it. And it's not clear what legal statute she's relying on where security has a requirement to help her after her own mistake. But, even more amazing is that she complains about how embarrassed she was about the whole thing... but doesn't seem to realize that no one knew who she was before. By coming forward, she's now identified who she is so that people will know. Wouldn't that be even more embarrassing?

Filed Under: mall, texting

Smartphones: Indispensable Tool For The Modern Busker

from the technology-changing-things dept

We've written recently how things like the modern smartphone maybe starting to change the movie business (though, still in very early stages), but it's impacting certain other areas as well. Musician Onyx Ashanti, who last year told us about his experiments with "pay what you want" and connecting with fans as a busker/street performer, writes in to let us know of his recent blog post concerning how the smartphone has become an indispensable tool for the modern busker:

For myself and my busking exploits, the iphone is now indespensible. I use mine as a wireless midi controller using an app called TouchOSC. When I arrive in a new city, looking for locations to busk, I make use of a gps enabled map app called MotionX GPS which allows me to download maps of an area before departing home, then drop map points of interest either from research at home, or from recommendations of people I meet in said city. It allows me to arrive in a new place and bike around, finding interesting locations as I go. When I find one that is viable based on the criteria to be covered in the next chapter, I drop a map point and location notes onto the map. This allows me to do recon on many areas of a new place, quickly and efficiently then when I am ready to play, I can focus on playing rather than pitch recon. If one potential pitch is occupied or in some way, undesirable, I can look at my map and go to the next closest potential pitch,without having to go into "recon" mode, which saves a lot of valuable time.

He later discusses how it helps as a tool to turn busking performances into venue gigs as well:

One of my favorite functions of such devices is as a portable press kit. I love busking as much as I love playing shows in venues. Many times people who book such venues, will see me on the street and hire me to play. But sometimes I happen upon a place or person and strike up a conversation and said person wants to see what I do. So, I whip out my trusted iphone, which i have preloaded with different types of videos. Some more "jazz" oriented for cafes and jazzier places, some more "dance oriented" for clubs and bars, and some live "street oriented" vids for farmers markets and street fairs. A picture may say 1000 words but a video says it all. The video quality on the iphone is extremely high and the volume is adequate. Very useful and powerful.

Of course, he also discusses how it's helpful in connecting with fans, both via social networks and in creating various flashmobs. It also is useful in selling merchandise:

Selling merchandise? With a smartphone you can accept different forms of payment in different currencies. It is now easier than ever to accept credit cards with systems like square and/or you can use paypal, which has grown far beyond a simple method of making payments on E-bay.

There's a lot more in there as well, so go read the full post. I think it's quite fascinating how the various tools out there are changing different professions that you didn't think would be impacted by such technology, and this seems to be yet another example.

Filed Under: busking, music industry, onyx ashanti, smartphones

New Study Shows As More People Talk While Driving, Accidents Are Dropping

from the counterintuitive dept

For a long time, we've questioned the conventional wisdom when it comes to laws banning mobile phone use in cars. It's not that we didn't think it was dangerous, but the bans themselves seemed not just too targeted, but likely to have unintended consequences. For example, last year, we noted a study showing that states that banned texting while driving saw an increase in accidents, likely because people kept on texting, they just did it by keeping the phone lower down to "hide it," taking their eyes further off the road.

But as for talking while driving, we've all heard the stories about studies saying that drivers who talk while driving are as bad, if not worse, than drunk drivers. However, some new empirical research is calling that into question. johnjac points us to some new research that showed as more people used phones while driving, the number of accidents actually went down. Of course, this is just a (negative) correlation, and there are obviously lots of confounding factors, so I wouldn't (as the link above does) claim that driving while yakking makes the roads safer.

However, another part of the study does dig into this even more. It got access to mobile phone data, which allowed them to separate out those who were driving (based on changing towers often), and compared the number of phone calls just before 9pm and just after 9pm, when many mobile phone operators had call fees drop. They found that the number of calls jumped, but studying the data of car accidents right before and right after 9pm, they found no evidence of an increase.

The economists who did the study suggested a few possible explanations:

People who start talking while driving become more cautious. People who act like jackholes behind the wheel with a cellphone will act the same without one. And although cellphones clearly distract some drivers, they may also help other drivers stay alert.

Frankly, there may be some other explanations as well -- starting with the fact that at 9pm, there isn't likely to be that much traffic on the roads. I wonder what a similar study would show closer to rush hour (if there were such a natural experiment where there might be a sudden jump in calls). If the roads are less congested, then the "danger" is probably much lower. Also, just because a phone is moving, it doesn't mean the person holding it is driving -- they could be passengers. So I'm not exactly ready to agree that this report really says what the authors claim, but it certainly is an interesting study to look at.

Filed Under: correlation, talking while driving

Famed Korean Director Shoots Movie With Just iPhones

from the getting-closer... dept

Just last month, we wondered how long it would be until a feature-length film was shot solely on a smartphone. We're not quite there yet, but Ross Pruden points us to the news that famed South Korean director Park Chan-wook, who did the movie Oldboy, has shot a new film entirely with iPhones. Of course, I'm not sure it really qualifies as a "full-length" film, since it's only half an hour. But we're getting there. I would imagine it won't be long until we get a real feature-length film filmed entirely with smartphones. While it still may feel gimmicky at this point, think of just how empowering that can be to filmmakers. In the past, just the idea of making a film represented too huge a hurdle for most people. But these days, a huge percentage of people now carry one of the key tools in their pockets every single day. That's a tremendously disruptive technological shift.

Filed Under: iphones, movies, park chan-wook, south korea

Don't Make An App That Shows You 'Drinking' Liquid From Your Phone, Or One Company Might Sue You

from the drink-up dept

A few years back, we wrote about how indie iPhone app developer Hottrix had sued beer giant Coors for making a competing beer app. Hottrix, of course, makes various gimmicky apps that make your iPhone look like it is full of some sort of liquid that "drains out" as you tilt the device to make it look like you're "drinking" from the phone. They're pretty silly, but some people have liked them and were actually willing to give Hottrix money for them. One of Hottrix's apps was iBeer. Coors created their own beer drinking app, called iPint, and offered it for free. That's when Hottrix sued. I can't find any information on what happened to that lawsuit. After it was filed nothing much seems to have happened. Perhaps it was settled out of court?

Either way, Hottrix seems to have learned a simple lesson: if some big company makes any sort of "drinking app," be sure to sue. The latest target is chocolate giant Hershey, which made a chocolate milk drinking app which wasn't even a "clone" of Hottrix's app. After Hottrix threatened to sue, Hershey sued first for declaratory judgment and Hottrix counter-sued. Hershey reasonably asked the court to dump Hottrix's lawsuit, but the court has refused. I'm having trouble understanding why. It is true that Hershey had first reached out to Hottrix about having it make a similar app for Hershey, but even after Hershey went to another developer instead, it's hard to see what is "protectable" under copyright that Hershey copied here. As has been pointed out over and over again, copyright doesn't protect the idea, just the expression, and this appears to be an entirely different expression, even if it is based on the same idea.

The case might still turn out in Hershey's favor, but the judge is claiming that a full trial is necessary, as Hottrix has sufficiently pled its case, though I'm still trying to figure out how that's possible. As you read the details of the case, you realize that Hershey's app is actually quite different than Hottrix's. Yes, both involve the basic idea of drinking, but Hershey's app has different features. You don't "drink" out of the corner of the app, but out of a "straw" that you add to the app. The Hershey's app includes (not surprisingly) the ability to add chocolate syrup to the milk -- which Hottrix's app does not have. The court argues that because Hershey had obviously seen the original app, and that its own app is similar enough that this issue needs to go to trial. However, given the fact that it's difficult to see what's protectable, this seems like a huge waste of court resources. Hopefully the court realizes this eventually, but it seems like a waste of time to have to go through a full trial to make the obvious point that Hottrix doesn't deserve a total monopoly on "drinking" apps.

Filed Under: apps, copyright, drinking
Companies: hershey, hottrix

T-Mobile UK Decides Mobile Broadband Shouldn't Actually Be Used For Mobile Broadband

from the save-that-for-home dept

If you have T-Mobile in the UK you may be disappointed to know that the company has suddenly decided that you should be perfectly happy to use little more than just 500 MB per month -- a paltry amount. It's not quite a cap at 500 MB -- you'll still be able to do some basic surfing, but apparently, once you've used up your 500 MB, you'll no longer be able to do anything beyond browsing static websites or checking email. No streaming, downloading, gaming, etc. Many users previously had caps that were around 3GB, so this is a pretty big drop. Apparently, T-Mobile has decided it gets to tell you what you can and cannot use the account for:

"Browsing means looking at websites and checking email, but not watching videos, downloading files or playing games. We've got a fair use policy but ours means that you'll always be able to browse the internet, it's only when you go over the fair use amount that you won't be able to download, stream and watch video clips."

Basically, this is T-Mobile UK announcing to the world that it doesn't have the bandwidth to actually give people what they want, and it hasn't invested in the necessary upgrades to offer a reasonable service. Or, a simpler way of explaining it, is that this is T-Mobile UK telling users in the UK who actually want to use mobile broadband to find another provider.

Filed Under: broadband, caps, mobile, uk
Companies: t-mobile

Another Court Says It's Okay For Police To Search Your Mobile Phone Without A Warrant

from the stretching-the-law dept

Three years ago we discussed the legality of police being able to search your mobile phone without a warrant after any arrest (such as, say, following a traffic violation). Allowing such searches without a warrant didn't make much sense to us, but there were some strong feelings in the other direction as well. Two years ago, we noted that the courts still seemed divided on the issue, and now there's another ruling as well. The California State Supreme Court has ruled that searching the contents of your mobile phone without a warrant is fine.

The judges' argument is based on the idea that current case law allows police to seize and examine anything they find on you -- such as your clothing or a cigarette package. Even if you accept that this is reasonable, to extend that to the contents of a mobile phone seems to be going too far. Similar to our concerns about border patrol being able to snoop through your laptop, accessing the contents of your mobile phone involves access to all sorts of private information. The issue is that the caselaw that the court used to make this ruling was based on stuff you actually chose to carry with you specifically. But, these days, with a smartphone that has access to the internet, and is basically a mini-computer, it's not like you specifically select which emails/browsing history/etc. to "take with you" when you go out. So assuming those things are fair game makes little sense. Indeed, a couple of judges on the panel dissented, noting how mobile phones were quite different.

With so many courts split on this issue, it seems like only a matter of time until the federal Supreme Court decides to weigh in on this issue as well. Hopefully, the justices can understand the differences between searching stuff found on you, and being able to freely access a portal to all sorts of private info.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, california, mobile phones, privacy, searches