iPhone Dash Mount Test!! (Laziest Vlog Series Ever 7-31-10)

I try out a new iPhone dash mount! But I think I need the bendy one, not the straight one. Doh! Plus, I speak of warhammer figurines being a nerd and some other stuff.

May The Angry Birds Be With You. [VIDEO]

This past weekend Rovio teased us with a glimpse of something that looked to be a Star Wars related Angry Bird. Today they announced Angry Birds Star Wars, a brand new addition to the game franchise featuring the birds as characters from the beloved masterpiece that is Star Wars. The pigs who recently got their own game, Bad Piggies, will be cast as Storm Troopers and Darth Vader. Angry Birds Star Wars arrives November 8 on most platforms including iOS and Android devices as well as PCs and Macs.

Rovio, which has partnered with LucasFilm on the game, will and make use of the epic Star Wars soundtrack as well as set the game in various locations from the sci-fi saga like Tatooine, Hoth and the Death Star.

"This is the best Angry Birds game we've ever done," Peter Vesterbacka, CMO of Rovio Entertainment, said in a statement. "It's the best parts of Angry Birds with all new cutting-edge gameplay set in a galaxy far, far away. As a big Star Wars fan myself, I'm really excited about this new universe. The Force is definitely strong with this one."

This will play out in one of two ways, Angry Birds Star Wars will either be awesome and bring together two beloved geeky phenomenas or it will be so gimmicky that it will only further tarnish the Star Wars brand. As a lifelong Star Wars fan I will be powerless against it even though my Angry Birds addiction has been in a steady state of decline. I’m also for promoting and exposing younger geeks to the Star Wars universe by any means possible.

Hit the break for the teasing teaser!

With Angry Birds Star Wars there will also be a plethora of merchandise arriving as well. Starting in October the combined forces of the two franchises will see the release of such swag as plushies and Halloween costumes.

Stay tuned to DHTG for more about Angry Birds Star Wars and by all means we’d love to hear your opinions on this unlikely geeky merger.

Foxconn denies plant strike report; Apple shares down with many U.S. stocks

“U.S. stocks declined on Monday after the World Bank cut growth forecasts for East Asia, highlighting concerns about the global economic climate and corporate profits on the cusp of the quarterly earnings season,” Chuck Mikolajczak reports for Reuters. “The World Bank reduced its growth forecasts for the East Asia and Pacific region and said there was a risk the slowdown in China could worsen and last longer than many analysts have forecast.”

Mikolajczak reports, “According to Thomson Reuters data through Friday, 91 companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 have issued negative outlooks versus 21 positive preannouncements, for a ratio of 4.3, the weakest showing since the third quarter of 2001.”

“Apple Inc shares shed 1 percent to $646.19 and was the biggest drag on both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 indexes after China Labor Watch, a rights advocate group, said that a Foxconn plant in China that makes Apple’s iPhone was crippled by a strike,” Mikolajczak reports. “Foxconn, a Taiwanese company, denied the report.”

Read more in the full article here.

Barriers to entry

App.net (ADN), an alternative to Twitter that seeks to better balance the needs of the platform owners with developers and users, saw substantial growth in the last couple of weeks. This is partly due to the arrival of popular clients -- for end users the interface is the app, after all, and familiarity is a huge feature. In addition to attracting attention, these clients reduced the learning curve and the stress level often associated with platform change. APN also lowered the cost of their service. Initially APN cost $50 a year for a non-developer account, which was a substantial barrier to entry for anyone but the geekiest of geek users (#227, at your service). While $50 is less than some people spend on fancy caffeinated beverages each month, it still feels like a big up-front expense for something that may or may not provide a significant return. APN dropped the yearly price to $36, but what's more, they introduced a new $5 monthly option. $5 a month is actually $60 a year, which is more expensive than it was previously, but far more people will be willing to give APN a chance at $5 than $50, as any substantial period of time beyond a few days blurs towards the amorphous. It's a lower up-front cost, and hence, lower up-front risk.

It's objection handling at the product level, and it's smart business. It's something Apple has been doing going on a decade, and something they're doing especially well with iOS devices right now.

With the iPhone 3G in 2008, Apple dropped the price of the iPhone to $199 on contract. Sure, when you included the typical U.S. 2-year contract, the actual price difference wasn't extreme, but the up-front cost is what mattered. That's why, when the iPhone 3GS was introduced, Apple kept the iPhone 3G around and dropped it to $99, and it's why when the iPhone 4S was introduced, Apple kept the iPhone 3GS around and eventually dropped it to $0 on contract. At "free", the barrier of entry was essentially nothing, and the potential for up-selling to a non-free alternative was tremendous.

Barriers of entry aren't always cost-based either. Windows Phone faces entirely different barriers to entry. First, carriers have to sell iPhone because it's what people want to buy. Carriers want to sell Android because it's what they can do anything they want with. Windows Phone lacks both consumer demand and carrier friendliness. It also has terrible branding. Microsoft's obsession with the "Windows-everywhere" concept has prevented them from presenting their next-generation mobile offerings with anything but old generation trappings. Microsoft is attempting to change the former, the demand, by marketing themselves as a middle ground to consumers, a better experience than Android that doesn't come from Apple. They're also making exclusivity deals with carriers, and offering themselves as a way to hedge against the dominance of either Apple or Google. When it comes to the latter, the branding, they remain oblivious, so partners like Nokia are trying to promote their own brands, like Lumia, above Windows Phone (which likely doesn't make Microsoft happy). Unfortunately, neither Microsoft nor their partners have been able to lower either barrier enough to gain momentum and establish themselves as a serious player in the space. At least not yet.

Microsoft faced somewhat similar barriers to entry when they tried, for a decade, to popularize the idea of Tablet PCs. They didn't face competition from better positioned rivals, but they faced the same obsession with Windows everywhere that created a horrible user experience, and they lacked any clear consumer story or go-to-market strategy, crippling them from the start.

When Apple introduced the iPad, they removed the PC software barrier by using mobile software, namely iOS, and they made an attempt to position it for consumers between the smartphone and the laptop, targeting very specific use cases. That led to Apple achieving huge success and establishing a profitable market. However, the iPad still presented two significant barriers of entry all its own. Firstly, at 9.7-inches it's just too big and two heavy for some users, and second, starting at $500 is still too expensive for others.

Amazon tried to take advantage of this apparent opening with the Kindle Fire, which they initially made smaller at 7-inch and sold cheaply, at $200, hoping content would generate revenue lost to lower (read: almost no) hardware margins. Amazon has since followed the original Kindle Fire up with two new, HD versions, one at the same 7-inch size and the other at a larger, almost 9-inch size. Both are still cheap, and both are still meant to be subsidized by content sales. But by removing one barrier, Amazon has created another. Their business model won't allow them to sell the Kindle Fire in markets that don't also support content sales. While Apple's iTunes has a large international footprint, Amazon's store absolutely does not. In addition, Apple's hardware-centric model allows them to seed markets with product where no iTunes Store yet exists. Amazon literally can't afford to do that, severely limiting their addressable market and hamstringing them from the get go.

Google tried something similar with the Nexus 7, although seemingly without the desire to recoup the costs of cheap hardware with content sales. That allowed them to sell into countries Amazon couldn't. However, Google's lack of international content offerings still hurt them in terms of the overall value proposition of their platform. Likewise, their lack of real tablet-class software, and the continued uneven usability of the Android operating system hurt them in terms of the overall experience of their platform. Even people who want an Apple alternative aren't always willing to put up with those two compromises in order to have it.

Apple faces a much easier path to lowering the barriers to entry for the iPad. They just have to make it smaller and lighter, and sell it for less. They've demonstrated time and again that they have both the design and engineering skills to accomplish this, and they've shown with the iPod mini (vs. the original iPod) and the iPad itself (vs. the Mac) that they're willing to cannibalize their own higher end sales if it means they push mass-market adoption of their platforms and prevent competitors from beating them too it.

A smaller, lighter, cheaper iPad mini, sold in almost 100 countries, backed by the content of the iTunes Store, and enveloped by the user experience of iOS solves the barrier to entry problems of the 9.7-inch iPad in a way no competitor can currently match.

Just like the iPod touch removed the "I don't want a phone or contract" barriers, and succeeding generations of iOS have removed the "I need apps and multitasking" barriers, and the iPhone 5 removed the "I need a bigger screen and LTE phone" barriers, Apple has so far resisted the temptation to mistake their product for their business, and, in highly strategic ways, has kept chipping away at the barriers to entry for their products.

If there's a story to the last 5, if not 10 years of Apple, that's it -- removing barriers to entry by making products better and more accessible so they're ultimately more appealing to more people. And the next 5, if not 10, probably won't be much different.

Top iPad Apps to Teach Kids About Government and US History

While the iPad is never going to become a perfect substitute for irreplaceable teachers like U.S. History Teacher Mr. Murphy, who opened every year’s class with the same lecture — “Farmers are debtors, my dear children…” — it can make educating kids about exactly what government is and how it works more fun.

Parents and teachers can both set the stage for learning with Mc-Graw Hill’s American History Timeline. For just $0.99 students can have a wealth of information about US Government and History at their fingertips. The app also includes edu-games that reinforce what a child has learned.

Explore the foundations of the US with Early Jamestown, an interactive textbook that cover’s the New World’s first European settlement. Some developer needs to make an app that covers Native American history in North America. When looking for an iPad app on Native Americans as a compliment to Early Jamestown, I found only Native American Pictures and History, which is iPhone-only.

Share primary source materials with your children by exploring iPad-specific versions of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and Federalist Papers. These historic documents, which form the cornerstone of our democracy, are available for free on the iPad.

Introduce kids to Presidential history with American Presidents for iPad. Not only is American Presidents graphic, with a pleasing modern feel, but it includes brief histories of important events in Presidential history, a timeline, and even covers the Supreme Court. Parents and teachers will find this app is a good value at just $3.99.

Want to learn more about current US Government? There are a number of iPad apps that cover the United States Congress. Most users will find the free MyCongress for iPad by ObjectiveApps will fill most educational needs. For more thorough information consider Congress+ and its even pricier cousin CongressPro by Cohen Reasearch Group, which retail for $4.99 and $29.99 respectively.

Think 30 bucks is too much to spend on an app about congress? Then don’t buy it. It is, as they say, a free country. One of the great things kids will learn as they study US Government is that even when it comes to making mundane decisions like buying an iPad app, as we have the freedom to choose which options are best for us.

Photo of Continental Congressman Edward Biddle with his iPad courtesy of Flickr user Mike Licht.

'iPad Mini' Launch Supplies Reportedly Challenged by Component Yield Issues

In the lead-up to major Apple product launches, there are almost inevitably reports of production problems that result in the company having lower stocks on hand than it initially hoped for, sometimes leading to extended shortages as the company's supply chain works to catch up to demand. The iPhone 5 was no different, with yield issues on the new in-cell displays used in the device reportedly being the bottleneck that has limited availability.


With The Wall Street Journal now reporting that mass production of the "iPad mini" has begun, reports are once again suggesting that Apple's launch supplies may be on the low side due to issues with several components.


One such report comes from Topeka Capital Markets analyst Brian White, who is currently in Taiwan meeting with a number of contacts in the component supply chains for Apple and other companies. White's contacts believe that yield issues with several iPad mini components have been "frustrating", with supplies of the device likely to be constrained for the first month of availability heading into the holiday shopping season.

Similar to the iPhone 5, we sensed that suppliers have found the specs around Apple's (AAPL-$671.45: Buy) 7.85-inch "iPad Mini" to be a challenge and yields have been frustrating. In our view, this is the reason the iPad Mini" is 4-6 weeks behind our original launch expectation that we discussed in June. Despite continued yield challenges, the supply chain feels the much anticipated iPad Mini is on track to reach acceptable volume levels for a launch over the next month. That said, we believe that supply constraints will initially hold back the full sales potential during the first month or so of the launch.

White believes that Apple may sell 5-7 million iPad minis through the end of the quarter, somewhat below more optimistic estimates from other analysts that have put the number closer to 10 million. As with the iPhone 5, product availability for the iPad mini may actually be the limiting factor for early sales, making it difficult to assess true consumer demand.

Claimed black iPad mini rear shell
A pair of reports from Digitimes tell a similar story, with one article claiming that AU Optronics' production of the iPad mini display panels has been below expectations with just 400,000 panels shipped in the third quarter compared to a goal of two million for the manufacturer.

Apple is expected to ship 9-10 million units of the new tablet in the fourth quarter, but it remains to be seen whether AUO and LG Display - the other panel supplier for iPad Mini - can meet the target, the sources said.


A goal of five million panels for iPad Mini was set for the third quarter but later had to drop to one million due to low yield rates, with LG Display and AUO comprising 60% and AUO 40%, the sources said.

The second report from Digitimes indicates that chassis makers are also struggling with yield issues.

Along with the latest market rumors indicating that Apple is likely to unveil the much speculated iPad mini on October 17, sources in Apple's supply chain in Taiwan are also indicating that shipments of the iPad mini tablets are not smooth at the moment due to low yield rates at chassis makers.


Case makers Foxconn Electronics, Catcher Technology and Ri-Teng Computer Accessory are responsible for production of the iPad mini chassis, the sources indicated. Ri-Teng is an associate company of Pegatron.

The report claims that the iPad mini will be available in two body colors, native aluminum and black-anodized aluminum as seen with the iPhone 5, with the black version experiencing greater production issues due to the scratching vulnerability of the anodized chassis.

Why we’ll never stop talking about Steve Jobs

“There will be scores of stories about Steve Jobs published today. That may seem tiresome and overwhelming, if not totally unnecessary. Perhaps you are sick of hearing about him or never really liked Apple products and don't get what all the fuss is about. Or maybe you just think that for all this genius, he was a horrible human being,” Mat Honan writes for Wired. “Me too. I feel you. But we're both living in his shadow and will for the rest of our days. So settle in, because all of us are going to be talking about Steve Jobs for decades to come.”

“Jobs has joined the pantheon of greats who advanced science and industry and society itself - a modern-day Tesla but appreciated in his own lifetime,” Honan writes. “He's our Thomas Edison or Henry Ford, one of those rarefied individuals who had not only a vision but the will and force of personality to execute it through America's greatest cultural triumph: the public corporation.”

Honan writes, “Steve Jobs didn't simply shake up industries; he fundamentally traumatized them. He started with computing, then movies, then music and finally telecom. Even if you find him morally repugnant or prefer his competitors' products, you would have to be a fool to argue against his influence and stature.”

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: Relax with the “horrible human being” and “morally repugnant” crap, okay? We’re not talking about a murderous dictator here. Get some perspective.

Steve, at times, belittled those who failed to live up to his expectations. Tough shit. Deal with it. Do a better job next time. Life isn’t nursery school. You don’t get a blue ribbon and a cookie just for showing up, bozo.