Pajama Entrepreneur

A study reveals that close to one third of iPhones sold by Apple in the US have been unlocked to work on other carriers’ networks. That’s one million iPhones! Apple will lose $500 million in 2008 in revenues because it gets no revenue share from these phones. One wonders how much money Apple would make by selling the iPhone unlocked to begin with. How many people did not want to buy the iPhone because of it is locked?

Like a lot of Mac fans, I spent the early evening (in Amsterdam) following the keynote of Steve Jobs live from Macworld in San Francisco. For the past few weeks, rumors have been flying around about what Steve would announce today: a new tablet? WiMAX in laptops?

So when he announced a beautiful ultra-thin laptop called the MacBook Air, I thought, I must have one. But I already have a 15″ Mac Book Pro, so I guess I’ll have to pass. The MacBook Air comes with all the goodies — 802.11n, 80 GB hard drive, Intel Core 2 Duo processor, full-sized keyboard and glossy display. What it does not come with is . . . an optical drive (CD/DVD) which is one of the reasons why it’s so light and thin. Another major innovation is the trackpad that allows users to control the size of the screen, to scroll, etc. using the same finger movements that one uses on the iPhone’s screen. Go to the Apple website to see the demo.

Steve Jobs also announced the following at the keynote:

• movie rentals via iTunes store
• upgrades to iPhone software, for example, the iPhone can now tell your location on a map (thanks to Skyhook Wireless’s Wi-Fi triangulation service and Google Maps)
• major upgrade to iPod Touch (but for an extra $20 for current users): mail, Google maps, weather, stocks and notes
• Time Capsule: new wireless router using 802.11n which also has a built-in hard drive so that all the computers in the home or office can be backed up easily
• Apple TV 2: new version of Apple TV

Watch Steve Jobs keynote by going to the Apple site.

Macworld begins on Monday, 14 January 2008. That means for the past few weeks, people have been speculating and spreading rumors: a new 13″ ultra-light Mac Book, an iPhone-like tablet and WiMAX in Mac Books. Since the demise of Think Secret, everyone’s favorite Mac rumor site, the rumor mill has never been the same. If you are dying to find out what Apple may be up to, you’ll have to go to www.macrumors.com.

Here’s a little tip I’d like to share with you. If you live in a city and use Wi-Fi at home, you will probably encounter interference from a lot of neighbors’ Wi-Fi networks. The intereference can have a significant effect on the performance of your network, slowing down the speeds at which you send files around (internally among various devices in your house or office), or download/upload files on the Internet.

If you upgrade your Wi-Fi access point to one that uses 802.11n and upgrade your computer and other devices to ones that have 802.11n (or at least get an 802.11n adapter card for older devices), then set your new 802.11n base station to use the 5GHz frequency, you will find that your network’s performance will improve because there’s very little interference on that frequency. Most people do not have 802.11n yet.

My setup: I bought an Apple Airport Extreme base station (with 802.11n) two weeks ago. The Mac Book Pro that I bought last June already has 802.11n built in, so all I had to do was to set the base station to send and receive at 5GHz. The network is now very fast because there’s no interference from my neighbors who are all using 2.4 GHz.

Glenn Fleishman, who wrote the book Take Control of your 802.11n Airport Extreme Network, says he is still waiting for inexpensive 802.11n adapters for the older devices (laptops, etc.) in his house so he can have all of them use 5GHz. I’m waiting, too.

Stats: iPhone has 0.09 percent of Web usage — yes, that’s a lot: In this post Valleywag points out that iPhone users tend to use the Web more than non-iPhone users. Excerpt:

Windows CE, which encompasses every Windows Mobile device shipped, holds a 0.06 percent share; Danger Research’s Sidekick product family holds a tiny 0.02 percent share; and the Symbian S60 smartphone platform, favored by Nokia, has 0.01 percent.

My take is that it has everything to do with the user interface and how easy it is to visit sites, check maps, look for information online. A lot of phones are clunky (terrible design) with the typical phone dialing pads or have ugly, impossibly small screens. Who would want to browse a website on that?

Farhad Manjoo, Salon’s tech columnist, did quite a bit of research and showed that Macs are indeed cheaper than PCs. Moreover, their eBay resale value is higher:

Even for computers, brand matters. This week I compared prices of several machines from Dell, Gateway and other PC vendors against Apple’s lineup of Macs. In most cases comparable Macs sold for within $100 more than the PCs. But the Apples had something extra: that logo, the design, the history . . .

I switched to the Mac in 2002 and I don’t understand why people still use Windows PCs.

In the past few weeks, I have attended two conferences, Mobile 2.0 in San Francisco and Nokia’s Mobile Mashup in Palo Alto, on the supposedly new world of mobile Internet, a paradise where everyone can use these incredible applications on their mobile phones AND access the Internet in all its glory. Unfortunately we’re stuck with a basic reality: expensive data plans and the attendant roaming charges when you go abroad. Until I can get a cheap, flat-rate, all-you-can-eat worldwide monthly data service plan, I am not going to use these applications. Of course, I already use Google maps, search and visit a variety of websites on my mobile phone using Wi-Fi when I can find it. But Wi-Fi is not yet everywhere and it’s still sometimes a hassle to use: login screens that make you type in long characters (on a cell phone this is very unpleasant), having to pay every time you log on to a different network. Until we have cheap flat rate plans and no roaming charges, I’m afraid it’s a waste of time to develop these apps and attend these events.

UPDATE: SFR, the French operator, launched their version of “unlimited” mobile 3G Internet access. Click here to see the press release and here to see the article with video clip on Journal du Net. Several problems with this:

• There are 3 different tariffs (39, 49 and 69 EUR) with various services, like mobile TV associated with them. I find it confusing.
• You have to sign up for 12 to 24 months. What if you just want access when you are in France occasionally?
• Works only with certain phones.

If this is the mobile operator’s way to encourage mobile Internet use, good luck.