On Apple: Notes Worth Noting!

Today, I found several notes worth noting. The first concerns the iTune store, which is dropping and updating seven games. These include iQuiz, Lost, Mahjong, Musika, Royal Solitaire, Vortex and an updated version of Mini Golf. By the way, it's worth noting, that both Vortex and iQuiz now come pre-installed on all new iPod Nanos and Classics.

An even more important note concerns Firewire and this one could be a big! Macworld has noted that Symwave has demonstrated that it's FirePHY-1600 can double the transfer rates of existing Firewire devices to a whopping 1.6 gigabite per second! Wow, now that is what I call fast; imagine downloading 1,000 4-megapixel photos in a mere five seconds flat! This would be especially great for making backups of one drive to another. Symwave is seeding samples to manufactures now and will demonstrate their FirePhy-1600 at a 1394 event in Shenzhen, China sometime later this week. I'm looking forward to learning more on this one.

In another note, it seems that the iPhone has achieved an incredible mind share among the citizens of the great nation of China. Macworld has also noted, in a recent post, that an incredible 68% of that country's huge population already knows of the iPhone, and that a further 88 % of iPod owners there indicated that they would like to have an iPhone. This, naturally, has spawned a robust black market in iPhones in a country that manufactures them, but oddly enough, does not officially sell them there as yet. Also, a steady stream of rip off iPhone's from rogue manufactures are flourishing because of the device's huge popularity. Some of these rip offs are really good - so good, in fact, that they are almost indistinguishable from the real thing. This could be a golden opportunity for Apple if they can only officially start selling them.

Regarding the new game offerings from the iTune store, well, as welcome as they are, they are only a drop in the bucket of what we can expect to see added in the near future, all in thanks to the iPhone's SDK. Not only is the iPod/iPhone about to be swamped with a virtual deluge of games, but I think many of these games, as already demonstrated, will be of a much higher quality than the any of the games now offered. Trust me, as far as gaming goes, we haven't seen anything yet..

On doubling the transfer rate of Firewire, it goes without saying, you can never argue with the fact that faster is always better when it comes to transferring digital content. The idea of being able to back up huge files quickly, on the fly, is something that we can all cheer about. No matter how fast technology brings something to market, before we know it, it soon seems to bog down and slows to a crawl. When it comes to more speed - I say bring it on baby! Why, it seems just like yesterday that I was enthralled by the huge speed increases that was offered by the floppy disk over that of the cassette tape method! Boy, am I getting old, or what?

Mind share is something that companies pay big bucks to achieve, and so it goes without saying that the iPhone gaining an impressive 68%, in such a short time, of the mind share of the huge Chinese market, is nothing short of mind blowing and bodes well for the iPhone in China, when or if it goes officially on sale there. But then again, the iPhone itself is an impressive and incredible piece of technology that has already, since it's unveiling, completely change the course of the entire mobile industry.

It seems like a daily thing to note that yet another company is coming out with an iPhone knock off that they hope, in turn, will knock the iPhone from off of it's lofty perch. So far, they have all come up short, but they have, none-the-less, come out with some pretty cool stuff, all inspired directly by the iPhone. However, if Apple does what Apple does best - innovates - then they, the competition, may never be quite cool enough to topple the iPhone from it's perch, now will they.


And that's my 2 cents 4 this Tuesday, April 8, 2008.

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