Publishers have been struggling for years. Now local newspapers, magazines and even the New York Times, that Grey Lady, are being treated like old ladies by Apple, stealing their pocketbooks while they’re trying to stay on a fixed income.

This week, Apple announced what the publishing industry has been clamoring for,subscriptions, in exchange for a whopping 30% cut. Clearly, paid subscriptions are a part of the future of all online media, whether tied to a print version or not. That’s what The Daily is all about and even AOL might one day go down that path (Tim Armstrong admitted as much on CNN). It’s part of the shift to the Subscription Economy that’s happening across not just media, but software, cloud computing, communications, consumer services, entertainment, you name it. In just the past year, as one example, my company, Zuora, has signed over $1 billion in contracted subscription revenue.

But something very dangerous is happening. Apple is now calling the shots for the entire publishing industry’s digital strategy. Think about that for a minute. While Apple is prescient and makes great products, it’s hardly a publishing expert. Yet, Apple is setting up new rules that could bring the publishing industry to its knees. As if it weren’t already in that position.

It’s not that Apple can’t save publishers—which I don’t think it will with these financial terms. It’s that its model completely ignores the realities of the publishing business:

• The App Store and iTunes only offers one subscription pricing model. Will a single model work for the San Jose Mercury News, the Wichita Eagle and Runners World? The reality is that it’s likely going to be very different for different titles and subscribers.
• Apple has no way to bundle physical and digital goods. Do you want to give up home delivery forever? Or would you still like to get a Sunday paper every week or monthly glossy magazine along with your digital version? I bet most consumers would like some combination of both.
• With the Apple model, there’s not enough adequate ad revenue from tablet editions of magazines and newspapers. In particular, eliminating the Sunday delivery also means that local papers lose a huge advertising vehicle.
• Consumers won’t stand for one subscription through one device. People want to consume their news on whatever device they have at hand—whether it’s a Blackberry, an iPad or an Android phone. Amazon is showing us all the way with their “Kindle reader everywhere” strategy (with syncing bookmarks to boot), and Google has set a strong standard in its deal with Time Inc around Sports Illustrated subscriptions. Publishers also know that content ubiquity requires platform independence.
• As last week’s article from John Squires, former EVP for Time Inc, so rightly points out, access to customer data is truly the lifeblood of the publisher’s business model. In the Apple world, Apple is the one controlling this data.

To quote Steve Jobs himself, “A functioning media is vital to a functioning democracy.” I agree, and I think there’s a better way to use the genius of the iPad and other devices that enables publishers to control more of their destiny—and benefits everyone financially.

So what’s a publisher to do?

Take Matters Into Your Own Hands: Don’t be tempted by that juicy red apple called the iPad. You need to build your own online subscription commerce strategy, one that allows for lots of different ways to package up your content and sell it.

Not Your Father’s Subscriptions: The industry continues to see “subscriptions” in terms that are far too simplistic. Yes, consumers will never agree to switch to a full “subscription only” paywall, so you need to have flexible billing that can slice, dice and package content by the month, the article, by home delivery days, by online, and the list goes on.

Make It Easy: Provide customers single click convenience while providing a PCI-compliantpayment and billing process. You need to be able to bundle, cross-sell and rapidly deploy promotions to capture more readers than you ever could through a call center.

And as for Apple? Can you redeem yourself?

Customers with Benefits: If you want that 30% cut you have to let the publishers own the subscriber relationship. Share that data and you both win. Simply giving subscribers “the option” won’t cut it.

Freedom of Choice: You know consumers want both print and digital. This isn’t music. There’s no love lost for the CD. Most consumers want to keep home delivery, and publishers want to be free to work across platforms and devices. “Control” and “closed” are completely counter to the anti-Big Brother brand.

Help Them Help You: Selling publications is not the same as marketing the latest Black Eyed Peas song. Newspapers and magazine titles will get lost in the iTunes model. Just being part of the App Store isn’t enough. You need to deliver more merchandise value for a 30% cut.

The bottom line? The Subscription Economy is here, and Apple should be applauded for offering content via subscription. Unfortunately its model just scratches the surface. In the end, publishers should think twice before taking a bite of the Apple. This current plan will do more to hurt publishers then to help them make the shift to the online world.

(from techcrunch)

Sparrow is in beta (v6) and it is free. It works with Google and Google apps, and the advantages that has over Mac Mail is that you can archive and see labels, pretty much like you see it in the web, with conversations, etc….

It is beautiful, nicely design and it works fine. Every day there are more Google mail users using mac, and this is the perfect client for them.

I am one of those. I use mail from mac with 3 accounts (all google apps: norai.net, tokao.com and torres.cc).

I also have Outlook 2011 for work (ifrc.org) which is great for exchange and having corporate LDAP and Pushed calendar and email.

I

It is damn sexy. I am a one laptop man, but I would even consider the new 11 inches as my next only laptop… wow

• iOS 4.1 now and iO4 4.2 by November (free updates) also for iPad (so multitasking by November). It will include wireless printing from iPhones, iPods touch and iPads, and AirPlay, to stream your music videos and photos over wifi.
• New iPod touch: very flat, with retina display and HD video recording (2 cameras). Like an iPhone 4 (with facetime) but without the phone and very light and slim.
• New iPod Nano, running iOS… just a squared screen, small but awesome.
• New iPod Shuffle (back to the origins).
• New Apple TV. 1/4 of the size of the current one for $99. Running sort of iOS but no app store. No internal storage. A4 chip and connected to Netflix, YouTube, Flickr and mobileMe. You can buy  rent HD movies for $4.99 and shows for $0.99. Amazon has already responded with the same prices but for buying the stuff instead of renting it.
• iTunes 10. New logo (with no CD in it) and Ping, a sort of social thing for music. I don’t know if they want to kill MySpace… You can update you iTunes to 10 if you have jailbroken iPhone. No problem.

Hello all Apple fanciers, you may get something new and interesting for your portable devices! Each sticker here features a perfect combination with the same element- apple, therefore you’ll find all them perfectly suit your iPod and iPhone. Yups, it’s time to pay more attention to the back of your “Apple”!

Selling Price: $3.90-$13.90

Buy it here

(from inewidea)

As you know recently Apple bought Lala, an online music service like pandora, last.fm and meny others.

Also Apple has been building mega big data center in North Carolina (see aerial photos/video).

The rumour now that Lala is down, is that Apple will lauch something simliar to Spotify. Very interesting.

Apple has a long relationship with Adobe. In fact, we met Adobe’s founders when they were in their proverbial garage. Apple was their first big customer, adopting their Postscript language for our new Laserwriter printer. Apple invested in Adobe and owned around 20% of the company for many years. The two companies worked closely together to pioneer desktop publishing and there were many good times. Since that golden era, the companies have grown apart. Apple went through its near death experience, and Adobe was drawn to the corporate market with their Acrobat products. Today the two companies still work together to serve their joint creative customers – Mac users buy around half of Adobe’s Creative Suite products – but beyond that there are few joint interests.

I wanted to jot down some of our thoughts on Adobe’s Flash products so that customers and critics may better understand why we do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads. Adobe has characterized our decision as being primarily business driven – they say we want to protect our App Store – but in reality it is based on technology issues. Adobe claims that we are a closed system, and that Flash is open, but in fact the opposite is true. Let me explain.

First, there’s “Open”.

Adobe’s Flash products are 100% proprietary. They are only available from Adobe, and Adobe has sole authority as to their future enhancement, pricing, etc. While Adobe’s Flash products are widely available, this does not mean they are open, since they are controlled entirely by Adobe and available only from Adobe. By almost any definition, Flash is a closed system.

Apple has many proprietary products too. Though the operating system for the iPhone, iPod and iPad is proprietary, we strongly believe that all standards pertaining to the web should be open. Rather than use Flash, Apple has adopted HTML5, CSS and JavaScript – all open standards. Apple’s mobile devices all ship with high performance, low power implementations of these open standards. HTML5, the new web standard that has been adopted by Apple, Google and many others, lets web developers create advanced graphics, typography, animations and transitions without relying on third party browser plug-ins (like Flash). HTML5 is completely open and controlled by a standards committee, of which Apple is a member.

Apple even creates open standards for the web. For example, Apple began with a small open source project and created WebKit, a complete open-source HTML5 rendering engine that is the heart of the Safari web browser used in all our products. WebKit has been widely adopted. Google uses it for Android’s browser, Palm uses it, Nokia uses it, and RIM (Blackberry) has announced they will use it too. Almost every smartphone web browser other than Microsoft’s uses WebKit. By making its WebKit technology open, Apple has set the standard for mobile web browsers.

Second, there’s the “full web”.

Adobe has repeatedly said that Apple mobile devices cannot access “the full web” because 75% of video on the web is in Flash. What they don’t say is that almost all this video is also available in a more modern format, H.264, and viewable on iPhones, iPods and iPads. YouTube, with an estimated 40% of the web’s video, shines in an app bundled on all Apple mobile devices, with the iPad offering perhaps the best YouTube discovery and viewing experience ever. Add to this video from Vimeo, Netflix, Facebook, ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, ESPN, NPR, Time, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated, People, National Geographic, and many, many others. iPhone, iPod and iPad users aren’t missing much video.

Another Adobe claim is that Apple devices cannot play Flash games. This is true. Fortunately, there are over 50,000 games and entertainment titles on the App Store, and many of them are free. There are more games and entertainment titles available for iPhone, iPod and iPad than for any other platform in the world.

Third, there’s reliability, security and performance.

Symantec recently highlighted Flash for having one of the worst security records in 2009. We also know first hand that Flash is the number one reason Macs crash. We have been working with Adobe to fix these problems, but they have persisted for several years now. We don’t want to reduce the reliability and security of our iPhones, iPods and iPads by adding Flash.

In addition, Flash has not performed well on mobile devices. We have routinely asked Adobe to show us Flash performing well on a mobile device, any mobile device, for a few years now. We have never seen it. Adobe publicly said that Flash would ship on a smartphone in early 2009, then the second half of 2009, then the first half of 2010, and now they say the second half of 2010. We think it will eventually ship, but we’re glad we didn’t hold our breath. Who knows how it will perform?

Fourth, there’s battery life.

To achieve long battery life when playing video, mobile devices must decode the video in hardware; decoding it in software uses too much power. Many of the chips used in modern mobile devices contain a decoder called H.264 – an industry standard that is used in every Blu-ray DVD player and has been adopted by Apple, Google (YouTube), Vimeo, Netflix and many other companies.

Although Flash has recently added support for H.264, the video on almost all Flash websites currently requires an older generation decoder that is not implemented in mobile chips and must be run in software. The difference is striking: on an iPhone, for example, H.264 videos play for up to 10 hours, while videos decoded in software play for less than 5 hours before the battery is fully drained.

When websites re-encode their videos using H.264, they can offer them without using Flash at all. They play perfectly in browsers like Apple’s Safari and Google’s Chrome without any plugins whatsoever, and look great on iPhones, iPods and iPads.

Fifth, there’s Touch.

Flash was designed for PCs using mice, not for touch screens using fingers. For example, many Flash websites rely on “rollovers”, which pop up menus or other elements when the mouse arrow hovers over a specific spot. Apple’s revolutionary multi-touch interface doesn’t use a mouse, and there is no concept of a rollover. Most Flash websites will need to be rewritten to support touch-based devices. If developers need to rewrite their Flash websites, why not use modern technologies like HTML5, CSS and JavaScript?

Even if iPhones, iPods and iPads ran Flash, it would not solve the problem that most Flash websites need to be rewritten to support touch-based devices.

Sixth, the most important reason.

Besides the fact that Flash is closed and proprietary, has major technical drawbacks, and doesn’t support touch based devices, there is an even more important reason we do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads. We have discussed the downsides of using Flash to play video and interactive content from websites, but Adobe also wants developers to adopt Flash to create apps that run on our mobile devices.

We know from painful experience that letting a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in sub-standard apps and hinders the enhancement and progress of the platform. If developers grow dependent on third party development libraries and tools, they can only take advantage of platform enhancements if and when the third party chooses to adopt the new features. We cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available to our developers.

This becomes even worse if the third party is supplying a cross platform development tool. The third party may not adopt enhancements from one platform unless they are available on all of their supported platforms. Hence developers only have access to the lowest common denominator set of features. Again, we cannot accept an outcome where developers are blocked from using our innovations and enhancements because they are not available on our competitor’s platforms.

Flash is a cross platform development tool. It is not Adobe’s goal to help developers write the best iPhone, iPod and iPad apps. It is their goal to help developers write cross platform apps. And Adobe has been painfully slow to adopt enhancements to Apple’s platforms. For example, although Mac OS X has been shipping for almost 10 years now, Adobe just adopted it fully (Cocoa) two weeks ago when they shipped CS5. Adobe was the last major third party developer to fully adopt Mac OS X.

Our motivation is simple – we want to provide the most advanced and innovative platform to our developers, and we want them to stand directly on the shoulders of this platform and create the best apps the world has ever seen. We want to continually enhance the platform so developers can create even more amazing, powerful, fun and useful applications. Everyone wins – we sell more devices because we have the best apps, developers reach a wider and wider audience and customer base, and users are continually delighted by the best and broadest selection of apps on any platform.

Conclusions.

Flash was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short.

The avalanche of media outlets offering their content for Apple’s mobile devices demonstrates that Flash is no longer necessary to watch video or consume any kind of web content. And the 200,000 apps on Apple’s App Store proves that Flash isn’t necessary for tens of thousands of developers to create graphically rich applications, including games.

New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.

Steve Jobs
April, 2010

(from apple)

Here it is folks, the Apple iPad. The screen is gorgeous, tilting is responsive, and the thing is insanely thin and light. Still, if you’ve used the iPhone before — and you can see the two devices side-by-side here — there’s not a lot of surprises here so far. Here are some initial thoughts on the device:

It’s not light. It feels pretty weighty in your hand.

The screen is stunning, and it’s 1024 x 768. Feels just like a huge iPhone in your hands.

The speed of the CPU is something to be marveled at. It is blazingly fast from what we can tell. Webpages loaded up super fast, and scrolling was without a hiccup. Moving into and out of apps was a breeze. Everything flew.

There’s no multitasking at all. It’s a real disappointment. All this power and very little you can do with it at once. No multitasking means no streaming Pandora when you’re working in Pages… you can figure it out. It’s a real setback for this device.

The ebook implementation is about as close as you can get to reading without a stack of bound paper in your hand. The visual stuff really helps flesh out the experience. It may be just for show, but it counts here.

Once we learnt that, I was working at Shelter Centre where I was the Web Communications Chief, I asked for leave without pay, so we could have a dream trip around the world February and March. They accepted. The new Drupal website was up and running now it was just a question of fine tuning it.

We bought a round the world ticket with roundtheworldflights.com very nice people (thanks Jarvis) and very good price.
We did Geneva, London, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Tahiti, Auckland, Christchurch, Hong Kong, London, Geneva. All flexible. In Tahiti we bought internal flights to Moorea, Bora Bora and Huahine (see photos at http://norai.net)

Well we blogged every day in our TDM (tour du monde), so you can see our adventures, skydiving, and 9000 km driving in New Zealand.

There we conceived Kai. Our Christmas present for 2009.

Once back in Geneva Nuria started her job, and I was called by my former employer (the ITC) where I worked nearly for 5 years as a consultant and they asked me to join them, so I finished the site at Shelter Centre and joined ITC in July, where I have been an Advisor in Export Strategy and Competitiveness up to present, traveling extensively to Africa (Liberia, Kenya, Sierra Leone, Rwanda…).

When kai was born, 23 days ago, we also got our new car. We said bye to the 1989 red Golf GTI and said Hi to the new Fiat 500.

Now I can go to work in the car rather than in my Ducati. It is pretty cold and rains often. I’m very happy with my new little car too. Pack of technology by default (bluetooth for mobile, reads mp3 from USB key, vocal commands, … etc…)

So as you see, even if for most of the world it has been a bad year, not for us.

My brother lost his job. Nuria’s brother’s too. The economy is in pretty bad shape, but 2009 has been a very good year for us.

Now it is coming to an end. In less than 6 hours in fact. It is also the end of a decennium.

What happened this decennium technologically speaking?

This decennium has been a huge change in technology. Internet has changed the world. We carry our computers in our phones, specially since the iPhone came out. Internet is fast web2.0 has brought us video and ajax. The web experience has reached unthinkable limits. Google has become bigger than General Motors and one of the most profitable companies in the world… and it is in internet… who could have imagine something like that 10 years ago! They are even on the phone industry!

Information is now at the tip of the hands. Mobile phones have spread like mushrooms and have given Africa a huge step towards development and poverty reduction.

Now the big media companies (CBS, CNN and so) are not that big. Internet has provided real time news and information has been democratized with tools such as twitter or Facebook. We know what it is going on firt by social media tools than from BBC or CNN. We are the writers and we control the content with tools such as digg or delicious. Now we have millions of people feeding the news. It is a user generated era, even companies have started to learn that they should have API’s or be open source (google). Look at the contribution in kind done to the iphone platform! nearly 100.000 apps!

The hardware has progressed a lot too. My iPhone 3GS has 32Mb. Solid state memory has increased at huge steps too. Who could think 10 years ago that a mobile phone could have 32Gb or/and a 8Mp camera? 10 years ago we had 3Mp with a terrible screen. Now cameras like canon 5d mark II provide video at a HD quality with the plus of professional lenses.

What else have we seen… the web… the web has gone from a showroom to a two-way collaborative tool making our live more efficient. We buy all via internet now. I bought not only my car via internet but most of the stuff I own. And I have been doing that for a while already. My 42 LCD TV I bought in ebay in 2003. In my house, the shower with sauna, the massage chair, all the kitchen appliances and most of the stuff I bought via internet.

Last that I can think of for this last decade, having kai and Nuria sleeping on my right, is that finally the LHC (at CERN) is working! I am proud as I worked for 3 years in the conception phase of the LHC 10 years ago. To see it now running is great, specially when I contributed to it.

What can we expect in the next 10 years?

Obviously the hardware will continue to explode. Hard disk, processors, screen technology (LED or something new, ebook readers, tablets), internet speed and connectivity (wimax, 4g)… that will make information easier to access and to share. Now a smartphone has GPS, accelerometers and a lot of sensors. I foresee a step towards this sort of uses: location, using the camera of the phone to take a photo from anything and have image recognition, reviews, who is there, where is cheaper, banking, payments… all!!. Search engines will go one step further and they will have other ways to search than text, photos videos, voice… everything indexable. With my phone I will be able to see where my friends are, what they are drinking, etc… reviews are important. I use internet to review and read reviews of what I buy, the hotels I go (tripadvisor), google, tell me where, etc… so location, location, location.

But not everything are flowers… I think that because Internet is going to be so big, Internet Governance is going to be a big issue. Now the US controls ICANN and a lot of other stuff. Internet Governance is going to be a difficult topic. Also Internet as a human right. ISP (internet providers) will try to get the maximum out of it, by capping, limiting connectivity, filtering content (like in China) and so. If this is the case, Internet could be in danger. It should be a 100% open platform. No restrictions. I hope governments intervene to avoid this sort of issues that we are already starting to see in the US with ISPs. Access to Internet should be unlimited and unrestricted. Government should be careful also not doing like in Finland where they are going to filter content at ISP level… a biiiiig mistake.

Privacy is also going to be an issue, but I guess we will be living in public. There is no problem for me, but privacy should be seriously managed. Specially when companies are outsourcing for instance email to google apps, or google docs and calendars…

Cloud computing will be big, and I don’t know if computers will trend to be more like terminals and run all the programs in the cloud. I do use google docs a lot I must say. Online photo services, backups, etc… I can’t wait to see how it progresses. The combination of cloud computing and terminals with strong browsers with offline technology could be a way. If you think about it, why not log in at any computer/terminal and have your files programs and so? Well this could be achieved with good connectivity and good cloud computing. But again, if this is where we go, we will start to see issues of compatibility and standards. Exporting things from a cloud to a computer or to another cloud… it should be standardized.

But the I wonder… when I bought my fiat 500, I printed out the price I was getting in internet and went to my local Fiat dealer. The salesman was furious. He said he could not compete with that. They have cost of personnel, stocks, training, etc… while the guy in internet buys bulk and gets incredible prices… so it made me think. There is no point in having shops or car dealers. They are simply not competitive with internet. So where is the business? Well, services I guess. Garage to repair. Warehouse to collect parts. Advise… but not in selling goods. I told the guy in Fiat that his business model was condemned to die.

There is another ethical question you could ask yourself. If you could buy cheaper 98% of people would buy cheaper. What about paying extra if it manufactured at home, or uses organic stuff, or is environmentally better? It is a difficult question. Specially for our generation. I hope next generation will think differently. Developed countries can not live from services alone, and the rest is more expensive than to do it abroad. So what to do? Free trade has given a lot of opportunities to developing countries, but we have seen with Doha failure that one size does not fit all. What about free movement of people? Goods and people are not strangers. If I am a farmer in France and all farming goes to … China (just a stupid example), then what happens to the french farmer? Should he go to China? Move to something else? Should we cluster activities wherever they are more productive? I don’t know. That would not be sustainable for the environment. Look at Indonesia, they have destroyed the forest to put palm oil plantations. It is so sad. Al fauna is dead and most of the country is monocorp…. but this is where we are going! Look at the farmers in the US. Maybe it should be studied where the environmental impact is lower and do it there.

If you go to Africa you will see how developed countries have destroyed. We imposed the capitalism there. The richer continent in earth is the poorest. Before people there did not have to work. If they were hungry they would take it from the trees. No effort. Simple and happy life….

The end of it is that we can not avoid to spread wealth with this model, meaning that developed countries will have to lower their living standards, otherwise I don’t see how this is sustainable. Closing borders? Big mistake… Anyway that is whole new story.

Happy new year!!!

Features

The new version also now automatically saves posts and restores them if the network connection is lost during the publishing process.

Just like the first version, WordPress for iPhone 2 is an open-source program.

It’s important to note that this new version will not appear as an update to the old version. Instead, users will have to install a new app, which can run side-by-side with the older version.

The new version, of course, still offers the same basic feature set as the earlier version. These include support for multiple blogs, photo uploads and post previews, as well as full support for tags, categories and password protected posts.

Blogging on the iPhone

There can be little doubt that the iPhone – or any mobile phone for that matter – isn’t the ideal platform for writing long, thoughtful blog posts. Maybe that’s why WordPress for iPhone 2 puts more emphasis on comment moderation than the first version.

For a quick blog post on the road, though, the app is perfectly adequate, especially if you just want to upload a few pictures. It’s not as easy to use as the more specialized PicPosterous or Pixelpipe but WordPress for iPhone 2 is a far more flexible application and WordPress has a different user in mind for this app.

Again, remember that it is not an update. It is free but you should search for wordpress 2.

There is this great iMac of more than 27″ for $1700 (less than the 30″ monitor…) a beautifully design multi-touch mouse and my favourite… a mac mini server!

I has no CD/DVD and runs Mac Snow Leopard Server. I could consider it as it has my basic requirement of two hard disk in raid. Then you could attach a drobo and voila, the perfect solution…

I tried everything, from going to the settings of mobileme in my mac and reseting it, to delete everything on my mac in order to have mobileme overwritting…. nothing worked. I got a message saying that there was an inconsistency.

Finally I came up with a solution.

I do keep backups of the contacts of my macbook. The problem was that the ones in the iPhone/mobileme were updated and those in the mac were not.

The solution was:

1.- Export vcards from the mobileme site.
2.- Import them into the mac (here I lost all the profile photos and groups…)
3.- At this stage mac and mobile me and iphone was syncronizing again. Good.
4.- Import the latest backup to my address book in the mac. That overwrites the  everything. No big deal, in the back up, even if it was not updated I had all the photos and groups.
5.- Import the vcards but, do not merge them though. You will be prompted with what to do and you have to select to duplicate contacts, so you will end up with two different entries for each person (plus those unique sure).
6.- Now you go to the address book and click on find duplicates, then merge them.

There you are. Now you have all your contacts, plus the new ones, and you have recover the groups and photos.

The fact that I mention this company here is because traditionally this has been a pretty top end set of products which were accessible only to those with a lot of money.

If you’re looking to do home automation, you’ll spend at least $10,000. Savant’s system is called Protege. It’s a box with a Mac Mini that will control a mid size home for $5,000, and you can control everything from your iPhone or iPod Touch.

I also got a look at the TrueImage Control, which is a visual system to control your lights, TV, etc from a touch panel.

First of all, you’ll be delighted to know that the $29 Snow Leopard upgrade installs on Tiger Macs after all, despite Apple’s insistence that it’s strictly for Leopard people. Although Apple said Tiger users should either upgrade to Leopard before moving to Snow Leopard or migrate directly, using the $169 Mac Box Set (containing Snow Leopard, iLife ‘09, and iWork ‘09), WSJ and Wired have discovered that a Tiger system can be upgraded directly to Snow Leopard via a standalone installer provided on the $29 upgrade disc, resulting in a $140 saving over the Mac Box Set.

Snow Leopard lacks Windows’ awkward activation process. In fact, it doesn’t even come with a serial number.

If you’re planning to upgrade household Macs, go with Family Pack versions of Snow Leopard and Mac Box Set, $49 and $229, respectively. Lucky customers who bought a qualifying Mac or Xserve from Apple or an Apple Authorized Reseller between June 8, 2009 and the end of the program on December 26 can get Snow Leopard through the Up-to-Date program for only $9.95 (free shipping) plus applicable sales tax.

The $499 server version comes with unlimited client licenses, making up for the hardware price difference compared with Windows-based servers sold on a per seat basis.

Some apps don’t play nice with Snow Leopard

The compatibility of your third-party Tiger or Leopard apps is the first thing that needs to be assessed prior to upgrading. Apple re-wrote 90 percent of the 1,000 projects in OS X, a major brain transplant guaranteed to cause problems with a portion of apps and drivers (just ask early Vista adopters).

Despite Apple’s official stance, you can upgrade a Tiger system to Snow Leopard via the $29 upgrade disc.

Some of the popular apps that either don’t run at all or cause issues in Snow Leopard include Elgato EyeTV 3.0.0 to 3.1.0, Parallels Desktop 3.0, McAfee VirusScan 8.6, Norton NAV 11.0, some versions of AT&T Laptop Connect Card, Adobe Director MX 2004, Adobe Photoshop Elements, CuteFTP, DiskWarrior 4.1, FruitMenu, TiVo Desktop 1.94, Tinker Tool 3.94, WindowShadeX 4.3, and Google Gears browser extension, to name a few. In addition, Apple’s AirPort Admin Utility for Graphite and Snow Base Stations 4.2.5, Aperture 2.1.1, and Keynote 2.0.2 all exhibit issues in Snow Leopard.

In case you’re wondering, Microsoft Messenger, QuarkXPress, and Microsoft Office 2008 run without glitches. Apple may have also killed the support for legacy Palm devices via Palm OS HotSync conduit in Snow Leopard’s iSync 3.1.0, but there are ways around it in AppleInsider’s handy guide.

When it comes to Adobe’s productivity software, the company confirmed in its Creative Suite FAQ that CS4 is compatible with Snow Leopard and that the Photoshop team “found no significant problems” with Photoshop CS3.

However, you’ll need Acrobat 9.1 or later to produce PDF files in Snow Leopard outside the built-in system-wide PDF exporter. Older Macromedia and Adobe apps may experience a variety of installation, stability, and reliability issues and they won’t be updated for Snow Leopard, Adobe said. Users of a 2.5-year-old CS3 should know that the suite isn’t supported when running on Snow Leopard because Adobe hasn’t done the level of testing that true certification demands, a move that some dubbed a forced $699.99 CS4 upgrade.

Subtle tweaks, under-the-hood refinements, and speed gains are worth $29, the media say.

Due to aforementioned incompatibilities, you’ll need to identify which apps have issues by consulting a collaborative project at snowleopard.wikidot.com, basically a collection of independent compatibility tests posted by ordinary users checking Mac apps against the gold master build of Snow Leopard (version 10A432). The three-category list names tested apps that run with no issues, those that have some issues, and programs that don’t run at all.

Don’t forget to check out incompatible apps listed in Apple’s support document and see if your printer or scanner model is officially supported in Snow Leopard.

If too many of your apps are incompatible, postpone upgrading until vendors post Snow Leopard-specific updates. In fact, everyone but early adopters should postpone upgrading until the first major Snow Leopard update (10.6.1) arrives, ironing out bugs and smoothing out rough edges. If you’re anything like us, though, you’ll upgrade in an instant.

Here’s a sum up of key steps needed to ensure as painless installation as humanly possible:

1. Identify incompatible apps and drivers on your system by checking the wiki page and Apple’s support documents (here, here, and here)
2. Install the latest app updates via vendors’ sites or in-app update mechanisms (i.e. for Adobe software).
3. Decide between performing a clean install or upgrading an existing Tiger or Leopard OS, think about custom installation options, start the installer.

You can perform a clean Snow Leopard install (with or without Tiger/Leopard in place) using the $29 upgrade disc, but make sure you back up your documents, apps, and settings first. Since your boot drive will be completely wiped out, you’ll need to re-install all your apps later. If you’re upgrading a pre-existing Tiger or Leopard OS, the installer will scan existing apps for issues, moving known incompatible items into an “Incompatible Software” folder.

A standalone installer on the $29 upgrade disc also lets you perform a clean install, even if you don’t have pre-existing Leopard or Tiger on your system.

Scanner and printer drivers

A revamped Snow Leopard installer is a smooth sail: You basically mark a couple of check boxes and treat yourself with a coffee while the installer copies the files to your hard drive first, resulting in up to 45 percent faster installation than in Leopard. The installer doesn’t require an annoying immediate reboot and it’ll even start over if a power outage interrupts, without losing any data.

Snow Leopard reclaims about 6GB of space on your drive (less than half the space needed for Leopard) by installing only a subset of the most popular drivers, including those for printers and scanners that you had connected to your Mac in the past, as well as drivers for connected devices found on your network and hooked up to your Mac at install time.

Bear in mind there’s no point in manually selecting driver packs as this will increase Snow Leopard’s space footprint unnecessarily: A new Snow Leopard feature automatically retrieves the latest drivers off the Internet, via the Software Update tool, anytime a new printer or scanner is discovered locally or on a network. In fact, some device models have software available through Software Update only. Even if your Mac is offline, you should still uncheck driver packs because you can always install them from the install disc later, whenever needed.

Rosetta

If you don’t run PowerPC-only apps, you won’t need Rosetta, a software emulator that enabled PowerPC apps to run on Intel Macs. The installer deselects Rosetta by default but you may check it if you run legacy PowerPC apps on your Intel Mac. You can check whether an app is PowerPC-only in the Kind field of the Get Info window invoked by hitting the Command + I combo on an app. Even if you don’t install Rosetta, the Software Update will offer to download and install Rosetta the moment you try running a PowerPC app.

Snow Leopard will retain a QuickTime Pro copy if it finds a Pro license on your system.

QuickTime X and QuickTime 7 Pro

The installer will automatically keep QuickTime 7 if you install Snow Leopard on a Mac with a registration key for Quicktime 7 Pro, moving it to the /Applications/Utilities folder.

You can also add the classic QuickTime 7 player yourself later, by downloading it from Apple’s QuickTime site. In either case, the installer copies the new QuickTime X player by default. Representing a radical departure from the steel-themed QuickTime 7 player, Snow Leopard’s QuickTime X features a borderless playback by fading out movie controls and the window’s title bar during video playback.

It also packs in a YouTube publishing feature, in addition to video trimming, screen recording, iTunes exporting, etc. Those who have a QuickTime 7 Pro registration key will find out that the player boasts a greater number of export options than QuickTime X – good thing both can co-exist on your system.

Handy Snow Leopard resources

• Snow Leopard page – Everything you need to know about Apple’s new cat, right from the source, including a detailed list of changes.
• Server Snow Leopard page – Details and full system requirements for Snow Leopard Server.
• Snow Leopard press release – Official information about the terms, pricing, and key features.
• Snow Leopard specs – Snow Leopard requires an Intel Mac and at least 1GB of RAM. Check the link for full system requirements.
• OS X Up-To-Date program – Check to see if you’re eligible for a $9.95 Snow Leopard upgrade.
• Snow Leopard compatibility wiki – A collaborative project collecting results of independent tests pitting Mac apps against Snow Leopard. The page may be slow or inaccessible due to high traffic.
• Incompatible software -  Apple’s list of incompatible apps is divided in two sections: The first contains apps that might cause issues but you’re free to run them, while the other lists programs restricted from opening after upgrading to Snow Leopard.
• Printer and scanner compatibility list- Apple’s list of Snow Leopard software provided for printers and scanners that can be installed using the install disc or the Software Update tool (some models have software available through Software Update only). Apple updates this list as device vendors release Snow Leopard-compatible drivers.
• Gamma 2.2 settings – Snow Leopard defaults to a gamma value of 2.2, rather than a 1.8 gamma setting used in previous OS X versions. This support document is of particular interest to graphic and video professionals.
• Battery menu changes – Info about an improved battery menu bar for portable Macs providing information about the condition of the battery, the amount of time remaining on the current charge, the current active power source, and any current charge status details.
• Wake on Demand – The Wake on Demand feature in Snow Leopard lets you access shared items on an asleep Mac via an AirPort Base Station or Time Capsule with firmware 7.4.2 or later installed, even remotely across the Internet. Apple notes this could be useful to offer full time support for iTunes Sharing, Printer Sharing, Back to My Mac, and more. More at MacWorld.
• BootCamp 3.0 changes – The software which enables a dual-boot OS X and Windows installation on Intel Macs now has the ability to read Mac volumes in Windows, in addition to an improved tap-to-click support, a command line version of the Startup Disk Control Panel, and the support for advanced features on Apple Cinema displays.
• Adobe apps compatibility – The official blog entry with an up-to-date information about the compatibility of Adobe’ products on Snow Leopard.
• Adobe Creative Suite FAQ: Check for the CS4 compatibility with Snow Leopard.
• Photoshop CS3 compatibility – Adobe’s Photoshop team has tested Photoshop CS3 on Snow Leopard and “found no significant problems.”
• Syncing legacy Palm OS devices – AppleInsider’s handy guide to third-party solutions that let users of Palm OS devices sync their Palm Desktop information via Snow Leopard’s Sync Services.
• Lifehacker’s guide to a clean Snow Leopard install.
• MacRumors’ Snow Leopard support forum – A community-based support for Snow Leopard hosted at the popular Apple rumors site.

Snow Leopard hits the headlines

• WSJ’s Walt Mossberg says Snow Leopard “isn’t a big breakthrough for average users, and, even at $29, it isn’t a typical Apple lust-provoking product.”
• NYT’s David Pogue thinks that even for Leopard-running users “paying the $30 for Snow Leopard is a no-brainer,” citing “the leap forward in speed polish.”
• CNET’s Jason Parker recommends upgrading “for all the new features and Microsoft Exchange,” noting that the publication’s tests indicate that Snow Leopard is “slightly slower than the older version of Leopard in more intensive application processes.”
• Chicago-Sun Times’ Andy Ihnatko dubbed Snow Leopard an “impressive and important update that will revitalize your existing Mac.”
• USA Today’s Edward C. Baig is convinced that “Snow Leopard should delight Mac fans, especially those who use Exchange at work,” adding that Snow Leopard “adds bite, especially for business.”
• AP’s Peter Svensson notes that Snow Leopard’s benefits will be most apparent down the road, while Windows 7 promises more of an immediate payoff.”
• Macworld’s Jason Snell says “it’s a collection of feature tweaks and upgrades, as well as under-the-hood modifications that might not pay off for users immediately,” adding that the low upgrade price makes it worthwile for “all but the most casual, low-impact Mac users.”
• Engadget points out that “the sheer amount of little tweaks and added functionality more than justifies skipping that last round of drinks at the bar,” speculating that “Exchange support alone has made the sale for a lot of people.”
• Gizmodo cited “modest changes” and non-existent performance gains in non-optimized third-party apps as key reasons for holding off on Snow Leopard “for at least awhile.”
• Wired singled out six things to know about Snow Leopard, concluding that it “won’t deliver any radical interface changes to blow you away, but the $30 price is more than fair for the number of performance improvements Snow Leopard delivers.”
• PC Magazine compared Snow Leopard to Windows 7, finding the former “more coherent and consistent, and smoother and faster in most operations,” adding that Microsoft’s OS ups Apple’s with the Device Stage, Libraries, and PlayTo media streaming.
• Geek’s list of some of the more prominent features in Snow Leopard (here and here).

(from geek.com)

There really isn’t much to say here beyond what are being reported as the facts. Apparently, Apple CEO Steve Jobs had a liver transplant two months ago, the Wall Street Journal reports tonight. When you read that, it’s pretty shocking — but not that surprising.

After Apple initially tried to pass off Jobs’ gaunt physique as a minor ailment, Jobs himself came out in January and announced that the undisclosed illness he was suffering from would require him to take aleave of absence from the company. He has been on that leave ever since. But the good news in the WSJ report is that Jobs is in fact feeling well enough now to return to work as scheduled at the end of this month — which is just days away.

But here’s an interesting nugget from the story:

When he does return, Mr. Jobs may be encouraged by his physicians to initially “work part-time for a month or two,” a person familiar with the thinking at Apple said. That may lead Tim Cook, Apple’s chief operating officer, to take “a more encompassing role,” this person said. The person added that Mr. Cook may be appointed to Apple’s board in the not-too-distant future.

That seems to suggest that the transition is well underway for Cook to eventually lead Apple. Thatshouldn’t be a surprise, Cook has done a masterful job in Jobs’ absence, pretty much doubling the value of the company’s stock during that time. Jobs has long been thought to be perhaps more important to his company than any single figure is to their’s. But his time away has seemingly proven otherwise. Of course, there was already likely a multi-year pipeline for products when Jobs left.

The business angle is the important one here. Some have alleged that Jobs and Apple have held news of Jobs’ health too closely for a publicly traded company. But Apple’s board of directors, which includes Google CEO Eric Schmidt and former Vice President Al Gore, apparently were getting updates on the situation. Here’s what the WSJ had to say on that:

At least some Apple directors were aware of the CEO’s surgery. As part of an agreement with Mr. Jobs in place before he went on leave, some board members have been briefed weekly on the CEO’s condition by his physician.

We’d be remiss if we didn’t note that the timing of this story appears favorable for Apple. This news breaks late on a Friday, after Apple has just held a successful launch of a very high profile new product, the iPhone 3G S, that sent the stock soaring today. Obviously, the market won’t be open again until Monday.

In 2004, it was disclosed that Jobs had suffered from pancreatic cancer, which was cured. But, a side effect of that cancer is likely the thing that lead to this liver transplant, many doctors familiar with such things have stated.

While little is known about the actual operation, the belief is that it was done in Tennessee, because first and foremost, the waiting list of a liver there is much lower than the rest of the country. From the WSJ:

The specifics of Mr. Jobs’s surgery couldn’t be established, but according to the United Network for Organ Sharing, which manages the transplant network in the U.S., there are no residency requirements for transplants. Having the procedure done in Tennessee makes sense because its list of patients waiting for transplants is shorter than in many other states. According to data provided by UNOS, in 2006, the median number of days from joining the liver waiting list to transplant was 306 nationally. In Tennessee, it was 48 days.

It’s good to hear that Jobs has apparently recovered well from the very serious procedure, and we look forward to him returning to work, when he’s ready.

iPhone 3.0 with copy paste but not multitasking. Much faster and exchange support and … Tom Tom!!

Finally new iPhone 3GS. Twice as fast, 3MPx camera with video and video editing. Integrated compass and better battery life. 3G up to 7.2Mbps, voice control… pretty cool.