> Citing an “AT&T insider,” *Gizmodo* on Tuesday said that an allegedly faulty [server software update](http://gizmodo.com/5564262/apple-iphone-4-order-security-breach-exposes-private-information) may have caused the problems that users faced in attempting to preorder iPhone 4. Customers throughout the day were frustrated as online orders failed to [confirm eligibility](http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/06/15/apples_online_phone_order_systems_struggle_with_iphone_4_demand.html) for existing AT&T customers. Hmm. Funny that this “rumor” comes from a source at Gizmodo. Can’t imagine they’d have a reason to make this one up out of thin air, can you? After all, why would Gizmodo want to hurt Apple’s iPhone 4 launch?

> So is seeing believing? This is where it gets sticky. Wired’s Brian X. Chen, who was also present at the Apple event and [saw the device for himself afterward](http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/06/gallery-hands-on-iphone-4/5/), wrote a piece with the surprisingly definitive headline, [“iPhone 4’s ‘Retina’ Display Claims are False Marketing.”](http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/06/iphone-4-retina/) The story’s lead sentence: “The iPhone 4’s screen may be the best mobile display yet, but its resolution does not exceed the human retina, as Steve Jobs claims.” > > Wired’s confident claims that Steve Jobs was fibbing were apparently the result of a single source: a physicist named Raymond Soneira, the president of [DisplayMate Technologies](http://displaymate.com/). According to Chen, Soneira has studied displays for 20 years. Soneira told Chen: “[The iPhone 4’s screen] is reasonably close to being a perfect display, but Steve pushed it a little too far.” > > Soneira objected to Jobs using pixels as a measurement of eye resolution in the first place, because eyes use something called angular resolution, while a flat display uses linear resolution. After working the numbers, Soneira concluded that a genuine “retina display” would need 477 pixels per inch to look perfect from a foot away. > > Piling on was PCWorld, which ran its own [interview with Soneira](http://www.pcworld.com/article/198402/does_the_iPhone_4_really_have_a_retina_display_updated.html). He told them that unless you held the iPhone 4 at least 18 inches away, it couldn’t achieve retina quality. He added further that the iPhone “actually needs a resolution significantly higher than the retina in order to deliver an image that appears perfect to the retina.” > > But just as the Internet makes it possible for news organizations to call corporate CEOs liars based on the opinion of a single physicist, it also makes it possible for other experts in the field of optics to come out of the woodwork to question the statements of a single physicist. > > First up was Phil Plait, author of the popular Bad Astronomy blog and a scientist who knows a thing or two about optics and resolution based on the work he did calibrating a camera on the Hubble Space Telescope. Plait [deconstructed Soneira’s entire argument](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/06/10/resolving-the-iphone-resolution/) and explained just what people mean when they’re talking about resolution. > > In the end, Plait’s verdict was that while Soneira is correct that a person with perfect vision would be able to detect pixels on the iPhone 4’s display held 12 inches from their eyes, a person with average eyesight (20/20, let’s say) would not be able to detect those pixels. Plait concluded that both Jobs and Soneira spoke accurately, and suggested that Wired is the party at real fault for blowing the story out of proportion and writing a misleading headline. “Jobs wasn’t falsely advertising the iPhone’s capabilities at all,” Plait concluded. My take on this: Seriously, who cares? Marketing always exaggerates a bit about every single product on earth. If you believe what you hear in commercials, I feel sorry for you.

The point is that it’s a really, really good screen. Once people see it, I think it will be obvious that no one is touching the quality of the experience on a phone at this point.

I think what Jobs said about the new camera sums it up for me: “A lot of people talk about megapixels. What we do is ask, ‘How do we take better pictures?'”

That’s what separates Apple from other companies in this game. They didn’t adopt AMOLED, even though on a spreadsheet that looked like a better screen technology. They went with a much higher res IPS screen instead. Because that provided the better screen viewing experience. Better color integrity. Better viewing angle. Much better readability, particularly outside.

They do what’s actually better, rather than what everyone else claims is better. And thus, they drive truly better technologies forward, rather than pushing crap out to the masses.

Back when Apple was in its decline, pushing superior technology forward was much more difficult. Firewire lost to USB; ADC lost to DVI. Several years of Microsoft dominance actually slowed down the world’s progress, because there was no real competition in the market.

Nowadays, with the popularity of iOS devices, and some real life in the mobile market, the tables have turned. We’re starting to see a new renaissance in technology.

My prediction: for the rest of this year, we’ll be seeing new devices with IPS LED screens, rather than AMOLED screens. Not just because Apple did it, but because side-by-side comparisons are going to demonstrate that Apple is right about this choice, and the market will be forced to agree.

> Google’s strategy includes creating tools that help developers embed videos and make ads more interactive, similar to what Apple’s iAd can do. Google also wants to sell more ads tied to a user’s location and deliver coupons for nearby deals, said Steib, Google’s director of emerging platforms. That’s all well and good, but if none of Google’s ads end up on iOS devices and in App Store apps, that’s a huge chunk of the market that Google can’t touch.

Make no mistake about it; Apple is aiming right for Google’s heart with a silver dagger with iAd. And keep in mind, Apple made no move whatsoever to do this until Google turned its sights towards Apple’s bread and butter. Google started the war. But Apple has many more weapons and the better field position.

Apple can’t kill Google with this, but it sure can make life very difficult for the search giant. Google’s entire future will now depend on Android’s success. Whereas before, all Android had to do was kill off Microsoft, now it has to kill off Apple, too.

Let’s face it; Google has gotten lazy over the past few years, or at least lost its focus, when it comes to desktop ads, anyway. AdWords was a great idea once, but where has the innovation been in recent years on the user-experience side? Jobs isn’t wrong. Web ads suck. This is a huge opportunity for Apple.

Now that Apple is in the Ad business, I also see it branching iAd out way beyond just mobile phones and iPads. The one thing that has stopped the iTunes video business from taking off more is the lack of a free ad-supported model for TV shows. Imagine if Apple, after six months of successful advertising on the iOS platform, delivered an AppleTV product, based on iOS, that could play iAds within TV shows. Not just commercials, but fully interactive experiences. Imagine if it went to NBC, CBS, etc. with stats on how much more effective iAds are compared to static commercials. Just getting stats on exactly how effective the ads are, down to how long people watch, which buttons they click, etc. would be invaluable, I would think.

Maybe then more content would make its way into iTunes, and more people would start using AppleTV as an alternative to Cable TV or Satellite. Pay a modest fee for a subscription with iAds, or pay a higher price per download for individual shows with no ads. There’s massive growth potential there.

Or how about an iAd-supported mobileMe collection of web services? Keep a $99, no ad version for those of us who want to pay, but also have a free version with iAds embedded. Remember, all iAds are built on standards, so there’s no reason they couldn’t easily be ported to desktop browsers.

Is it any mystery, then, why both a new AppleTV and a free MobileMe have been rumored lately?

This is the pattern with Apple. Find a market you are not currently in, but where you feel there’s a lot of potential because the competition sucks. Make a product that’s better than anyone else’s by a long shot. Improve the product through innovation on a regular basis, keeping the competition behind you, or scrambling to keep up. Grow market share over time.

iPod, iPhone, iPad, iAd.

> As such, U.S. regulators have “[taken an interest in Apple’s actions](http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e7ae5066-7408-11df-87f5-00144feabdc0.html?referrer_id=yahoofinance&ft_ref=appleinsider&segid=03058),” according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke to the *Financial Times*, though it’s reportedly unclear as of yet whether the investigation will be handled by the Federal Trade Commission or passed off to the Department of Justice. > > Word of the probe comes less than a month after antitrust regulators concluded a similar investigation into whether Google was unjustly muscling its way into an overly-dominate position in the mobile ad space with its recent [$750 million acquisition AdMob](http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/11/11/google_to_have_larger_iphone_ad_presence_with_admob_acquisition.html). Somewhat ironically, Apple’s announcement shortly thereafter that it would launch its own iAd service [helped the search giant’s case](http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/05/21/ftc_approves_google_admob_deal_cites_competition_from_apples_iad.html), serving as evidence that substantial competition in the mobile space lay on the horizon. The key words here are “taken an interest.” Translation: They want you to think they care, but this will lead to absolutely nothing.

You can’t be guilty of anti-trust violations if you don’t have a monopoly. The iPhone is clearly not a monopoly, as Apple is not only not the only vendor of mobile devices, it isn’t even the LEADING vendor of mobile devices. AdMob is perfectly free to advertise on Android, RIM, Microsoft, etc. If the public sees Apple’s blocking of AdMob in iOS as an issue, the public will stop buying Apple’s devices.

Having said that, I’m not exactly sure that blocking AdMob is good policy for Apple. If iAd is as good as it looks like it is, developers will choose it over AdMob, anyway, and Google will still lose access to 100 million devices, and thus a giant portion of its future revenue stream.

I think blocking AdMob is perfectly legal, and within Apple’s right, ethically, in other words. I just don’t think it’s necessary. Google is going to lose this fight either way. Might as well not take the PR hit.

> The one thing you can immediately influence is whether your users are able to easily read your articles. If they are not, then perhaps Safari Reader is not the problem, but merely a symptom of your *actual* problem. > > If people don’t feel the need to use Safari Reader anymore, everybody wins. Don’t fight Safari Reader. Instead, make it obsolete. I absolutely agree. I talked about this a while ago, when Ars Technica went on a rant about ad blockers. If users are finding ways around your revenue stream, you need to rethink how you finance your site.

I’ve been an avid user of Instapaper now for quite a while, so I doubt I’ll be using Safari Reader a lot. My workflow goes from GoogleReader (via the web app on my Mac or Reeder on the iPhone) and Twitter for iPhone, to Instapaper. I basically never see the original site any article is published on anymore. No ads. No “surfing” to find content. I choose from headlines that interest me in my Google Reader feed, or links that look interesting from the people I follow on Twitter. I send them all to Instapaper to read later. I read everything as if it were a page of a book. Clean, black text on a white background. No distractions. The Instapaper apps for the iPhone and iPad are world class. The web-based version works perfectly on the Mac or PC.

As long as I’m diligent about finding good RSS feed sources to add to Google Reader, and I continue to follow interesting people on Twitter, I always have tons of great content to read. More than I can handle, usually.

I do think Safari Reader will eventually be obsolete. Instapaper, however, or some service like it, is destined to be the way people access information in the future, as far as I’m concerned. Forget going out to a thousand places to get content. Let the content come to you.

I’ll say it again; the ad-based web is not going to last forever. Figure out some other way to monetize your content.