The Onion nails it with Apple 'Friend Bar'

I was trying to find a preview of the Onion's new "future news" premium video content, and I didn't have much luck. I was fortunate enough to be on the site as something hilarious was posted: the latest skewering of the Apple Store experience comes in the shape of the 'Friend Bar'. The Onion nailed it!

New Apple Friend Bar Gives Customers Someone To Talk At About Mac Products 

Behind the iPhone's big weekend

Apple has announced they have sold 1.7 million units of the iPhone 4 over the weekend. Oh, and that didn't include Sunday sales. Remember, it took 80 days for the iPad to get to sales of three million, and reports indicate the iPhone 3GS had sales of just about one million in the same amount of time it has taken the iPhone 4 to reach the 1.7million mark.

What's going on here? Many sites have attributed the increase to iPhone upgraders: first and second-generation iPhone owners making the upgrade. My observations indicate something bigger is at work here, and it has happened before.

When the iPod launched, it had modest success at first. Sure Apple fans thought it was a great design, but the price point and Mac-only compatibility kept growth in check. By the the time the third-generation iPod rolled around, people who had never purchased an Apple product before were lining up. What happened, from what I could tell working the front lines of an Apple Store in those days, was the iPod crossed over from the world of early adopters, and into the hands of everyday consumers.

In the lead up to the iPhone 4 release, I noticed many of my less tech-savvy friends were talking about the phone on facebook, twitter etc. People I thought would never buy an iPhone, heck some who had never bought an iPod, were looking forward to this launch. Why now? Why is this the iPhone to make the leap to a more mainstream audience? When the iPhone originally launched, it was a smart phone. Not only that, it was one of the "smartest" smart phones: many of the features, like internet and email on the go, seemed like needless luxuries to a large portion of phone-buying consumers. Fast forward to 2010, and many more phones offer a mobile internet experience. Sure on the surface this means more competition for Apple, but for the average consumer, it helps to sell these features as a standard part of a phone today. And if you're going to get a "standard" phone, you might as well get the one your friends have been talking about over the last few years.

iPhone sales were by no means slow over the last few years, but it looks like iPhone 4 has reached a tipping point. Let's hope AT&T is ready for the onslaught of new smartphone customers.

Retro Tech Tuesday: Apple Lisa Ad with Kevin Costner

Before Kevin Costner danced with wolves, he was playing a workaholic, dog-loving, bicycling tech master in this Apple Lisa ad. I've got to wonder if it wasn't just the price of the Lisa, but also this ad's implication that you'd have to work all night if you bought one. Both Costner and Apple went on to do okay:

Ballmer at Keynote? One Possible Explanation

image: Crunchgear.com(It was fun while it lasted: Via Twitter, Microsoft says Ballmer will not be on stage at WWDC. Oh well, enjoy the speculation regradless:)

A rather strange rumor is making the rounds today. According to Global Equities Research, and reported by Boy Genius Report, Steve Ballmer will be in attendance at Steve Jobs' WWDC Keynote. They go so far as to say seven minutes have been blocked out for Ballmer to make an on-stage appearance. While Gizmodo is guessing  this is to promote the iPhone app development abilities of Microsoft Visual Studio 2010, we're thinking there's something else going on here.

Could this be the rumored swap of bing for google as the default search engine on the iPhone? Heck maybe on the Mac itself. A partnership could even extend to maps for mobile devices.

Or let's take a stroll over to the world of crazy speculation: With J. Allard and Robbie Bach both leaving Microsoft, perhaps their decisions were partially influenced by some sort of impending gaming announcement between Apple and Microsoft. We throw that crazy one out there, just because in comparison the bing prediction looks pretty plausible.

Is Apple Becoming The New AOL?

With the iPhone OS 4.0 event, Apple added some great user features like multitasking and folder organization for apps. And perhaps the most important non-user feature (maybe even an anti-user feature) is Apple's iAds system. Apple will be providing engaging (obtrusive?) ads at the OS level, and splitting the revenue with the app developers.

Here we are with a mobile ecosystem of over 185,000 apps, and now an integrated ad system to go with it. Probably half of the iPhone apps are specialized version of content otherwise available online: wikipedia, netflix, ABC, etc. Most sites present their information in a better layout in an iPhone-specific app. While Safari will probably stay on the iPhone, at some point, if Apple eliminated the browser, would you still be able to get to all the information you want on the iPhone? (Note: we are working on our own iPhone app.)

Apple, with the help of developers, is creating what amounts to an internet replacement: a secondary, walled garden of Apple-approved information. From the everything old is new again department, this all seems like AOL all over again: a corporate-approved, sanitized world of information, serving as a subset of the entire internet.

Sure many apps use the iPhone in novel ways, but do the app store offerings replace the internet for you on the go?