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Apple drops price of iPhone by $200, gives cookies to the losers September 7, 2007

Posted by Ryan in : , , , , , , , , ; 3 comments

I heard about this yesterday when Apple announced their new line of iPods, including a device that does almost everything the iPhone does except make calls, dubbed “iPod Touch”. Today, Steve Jobs wrote an open letter to everyone who’s already bought an iPhone that says “tough crap, I’ll give you $100 gift card, go away, you bother me.” Obviously, the tech bloggers have something to say about this.

Here’s my response to Jeremy Harrington’s Thoughts on iPhone Price Drop:

My personal opinion is that they lowered the price of the iPhone so they would sell FEWER Touch units… if they are the same price, but one makes calls and the other is a portable hard drive, which one is of more value to you? I bought a Sony Mylo a few weeks before the original iPhone announcement because it makes Skype calls, and it came with a free year of T-Mobile HotSpot… as far as I know, yesterday’s announcements didn’t mention anything about free access at Starbuck’s. For that reason alone, the Mylo was worth it and continues to be a superior device, because I can make VOIP calls with it. I’m sure the next rev of Mylo will have touch and lots of the things that make the iPhone so great right now. I waited on iPhone, and now I’ll wait for a touch/wifi device with a camera (does Touch have that?) that can make VOIP calls, and there will be another giveaway like a free year of wifi because they’ll have to keep up with Apple.

Granted, there are a lot of benefits with buying an iProduct. The synching, the media, the iTunes store, the podcasts… still, I will call attention to my post of a few days past about Miro and Songbird. If you don’t like to, how you say, “pay for media”, you’ll like that Miro and Songbird can do everything iTunes can with the same ease of use and the same download price… free. On top of that, you’ll know that if you want a new feature, you can send a message to the guys and girls that design the software and be heard.

Jeremy said it pretty well:

Apple has become a consumer product business, and the exemplary customer satisfaction they tout in their marketing and interviews took a hit yesterday. If they keep this up they will be a big consumer electronics business like they wish to be, the kind everyone hates.

I hope this doesn’t happen, but it looks like the way things are going.

Miro is stepping it up September 5, 2007

Posted by Ryan in : , , , , , , , , , , , , ; 1 comment so far

Miro player (formerly Democracy) is an internet TV application that works on a subscribe and download model. Some would call it a podcatcher. Others would say it’s ready to leave the other podcatchers in the dust.

Why would I say such things about a project that’s been around for so long? Because they changed their name and branding? Because they’re doing some nice user-friendly screencasts? Because of bittorrent support? No. Well, maybe bittorrent. But that’s not what I mean. Check this list of recent updates:
From the Miro Blog:

# OPML import and export allows lists of channels to be shared.
# The Windows Options panel has been reorganized into pretty tabs.
# Miro will return to the last place visited in the Miro Guide when you click away and return.
# If you add an alternate channel guide, Miro will display the name and icon for that site.
# Single file downloads are now supported.
# Mefeedia, Yahoo! and Yahoo! Video are added as search engines.
# Veoh has been temporarily removed due to compatibility problems.

OPML import and export allows lists of channels to be shared. Also, notice where it says an alternate channel guide… I’m not sure what that’s all about, but it sounds cool.

Why is OPML cool? Well, OPML is a way of describing a list, or a list of lists. Feeds are lists. I can make a list of all the feeds I’m watching (we are talking video here) and then share it with a friend. Or anyone who reads my blog. Or my pownce friends. Or people using the Share my OPML site, or even people on the NetVibes Ecosystem. How cool is that? You can’t do that in iTunes. Can’t.

Alternate Channel Guide? The CG is the screen that loads when you first start up Miro (Democracy). Here’s what the Miro blog has to say about new channel guides:

Use the Channels -> Add Channel Guide menu to add the likes of blip.tv, mefeedia and even digg. You can browse for videos and feeds. With the blip.tv subscribe button, you can add a channel directly into Miro.

You can’t do that in iTunes. I give iTunes a lot of credit for being the best (easiest to use) podcatcher out there, but combining Miro and a great audio browser like Songbird, you can duplicate and outgrow all the features of iTunes (especially since Songbird has a pluggable interface like Firefox) without having to use a proprietary system like iTunes, because these two systems are open-source. Now you can get your music and video from anywhere, even iTunes in the case of Songbird, and enjoy it alongside the best content streamed from around the web.