> Even with the refresh, Jobs isn’t convinced the new version will be a mainstream hit, says the person familiar with Apple’s plans,” Burrows wrote. “Most consumers aren’t ready to cut the cord on their cable company, or put up with the tech-nastics required to stream content from the iTunes collection on their PC to their living room big-screen TV. This story in Bloomberg has all the trademarks of an Apple leak to the press to temper expectations.

The mistake people keep making when analyzing the merging of traditional home entertainment with computers is in thinking that this is a technology problem that somehow Apple, Google, Netflix, etc. haven’t been able to solve. That’s ridiculous. Apple could design a perfect TV/Movie experience in its sleep.

And it’s not, as the quote above suggests, that people aren’t ready to “cut the cord on the cable company”. Most people I know would jump at the chance to stop paying for crappy cable service. I already have.

The problem is the content. Cable operators have tremendous influence over the content owners, and they want no part of this revolution. They want to charge people $100 a month for cable indefinitely. They have absolutely no interest in releasing their stranglehold on your favorite TV shows. Not to Apple. Not to Google. Not to anyone.

It’s about money.

It’s very similar to the situation we have now with the Energy business. All the money is in Oil, and all the players have a vested interest in selling oil until the very last drop is gone. So solar, wind, nuclear, hydro stand little chance of getting anywhere fast.

My good friend at Webomatica mentioned in his blog this week that his television viewing experience since he dropped cable is fraught with confusion, technical issues, etc. But notice that his suggested solution is right on the money: It’s not that any one of his different devices doesn’t work well; it’s that he needs four different devices and services just to get all the content he wants. He doesn’t want cable back: he wants one box that does everything without being a slave to cable.

People are ready for this revolution. They just don’t have adequate resources to make it happen. And neither does any one tech company. This will take years of chipping away at the wall.

Change will happen; the TV revolution will happen. Just not in early September, no matter what Apple announces. It will be another step forward, as the original Apple TV was a step forward, the Roku Box was a step forward, the Tivo was a step forward, etc. But Jobs is right; Apple has no more power than any other tech company to crack this nut.

> 7) 24-hour return rate – I have read multiple stories that the 24 hour return rate hurts sales.  In a way, it does but it’s not bad.  On average I get a 5% return rate a day.  However, I would rather have the ability for users to test applications and then decide whether to keep them or not.  One of the reasons why iPhone apps may generate more is because of users buying stupid apps and having no way to refund them.  This is a reason why fart apps do so well on iOS and not on Android.  Most of them will be refunded.  Apple does not dare to implement such a feature for the iPhone knowing for sure this will hurt app sales.  They try to protect revenue stream for developers and not for users.  As a developer, you won’t care, but it’s bad business to always try to trick users into buying apps. Very interesting article from an Android developer. I keep complaining that we never hear from Android developers about their success stories selling apps. This guy has obviously done fairly well, though it appears that he is on the extreme high-end of success for this platform. Way above the norm. And yet he’s making nowhere near what a successful iPhone developer would make.

Still, I was convinced that NO ONE was making money as an Android developer, and that’s obviously not true.

His thoughts in the quoted passage above about the 24-hour return rate are off the mark, I believe. I don’t think anyone tries to trick users into buying fart apps on iOS. It’s pretty obvious from the previews and the reviews whether or not an app is any good. And Apple does a fairly good job of rejecting apps that claim to be something they are not. Sure, there are apps I’ve downloaded that I end up not using much, but with a $.99 price point for most of those, it’s hard to get worked up about it. I don’t think a 24-hour return period would make that much of a difference to most users. Meanwhile, Google’s lack of concern for the revenue stream of developers is a serious issue that continues to keep most serious programmers away from this platform.

I’m sure this developer would argue that his success is a clear sign that Android is going to be a viable platform for developers for years to come, and that it’s only going to get better. But from what I’ve been reading lately, it appears that Google is poised to kick Android developers to the curb in favor of a web-only Chrome platform as soon as it can possibly get away with it. So I’d say the development ecosystem for Android is pretty far from a good investment of a developer’s time.

> “As long as it’s a good-enough product, they should have a > fighting chance,” said Kumar. That’s a bold endorsement if I ever heard one. As long as you make something that’s just good enough not to suck, RIM, you’ll do fine.

When is the tech world going to learn that the era of Microsoft is over? Being just good enough isn’t going to cut it in a market dominated by an Apple product.

We don’t live in a Mac vs. PC world anymore. It’s iPod vs. every other MP3 player. You have to design great products to compete.

And I seriously hope that’s an internal code name for the product, not the actual shipping name. Blackpad? That’s even worse than iPad.

> How bad is mobile Flash? When I went to ABC.com and tried to play a clip, I waited five minutes while the player said “loading.” During that time, it was nearly impossible to scroll around the page or tap objects on it. Eventually, I scrolled up to see a message that was previously obstructed and said  ”Sorry. An error occurred while attempting to load the video. Please try again later.” It gets worse… I’m going to let this one speak for itself. If you’re still holding out hope that Flash is going to survive in the long term, or that it will ever be a successful part of any mobile platform, go ahead and read the article linked above.

> Perhaps the higher click-through rate and longer periods of interactions from users reported by Nissan are a testament to the Apple creative process. Without Apple stirring the creative pot, it’s possible that there would be more companies engaged and that the number of iAd campaigns would be higher, but it’s also possible that they might be less effective as well. > > Judging by what iAds has accomplished thus far, it seems that the advertising platform could actually be a tremendous success for both Apple and the companies that choose to advertise through it. If Apple can get out of its own way, and find a way to streamline the creative ad development process, it may even be able to go head-to-head with Google and AdMob and take a significant slice of the lucrative mobile advertising pie. The number of articles this week about the success or failure of iAds is astounding. None of these articles can come to any solid conclusion, of course, because IT’S WAY TOO EARLY TO CALL.

Seriously, iAds have been in the wild for what, two months? Less than that. I haven’t even seen an iAd in any app myself, and I’m a certified iOS junkie. But that doesn’t stop people from speculating whether or not the program is a success.

I love how Tony Bradley (quoted above) suggests that Apple needs to “get out of its own way” and generate these extremely complicated, artistic, and therefore TEN TIMES MORE EFFECTIVE ads more quickly. Sure thing.

Remember the ultimate rule of design: There’s fast, there’s cheap, and there’s high quality. Pick two. You can’t have all three, no matter how hard you try.

I’m sure in time Apple will hire a big enough team to keep up with demand for new iAds. And I’m sure clients will soon see the benefits of waiting a little longer for something that pays their patience back tenfold.

But the program is being rolled out slowly for a reason. How many successes is Apple going to have before people understand the basic strategy behind everything it does?

I’m not saying that iAds is a guaranteed success. I’m just saying let’s give it until maybe January before we close the book on it.