ian andrew bell

“Information wants to be free..” or so said Marshall McLuhan. Steve Jobs should heed this as a warning, rather than just using McLuhan’s image as a marketing shill as Apple did during its “Think Different” campaign.

Apple’s customers, embracing the simplicity of its products, want to move their music and movies around (particularly ones they actually pay for) unfettered by DRM: Apple says no. With its market clout, Apple has the opportunity to take a stand against the music insultry and the movie biz. It has consciously chosen not to.

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Tonight at Vancouver’s Launch Party event, Lypp’s Erik Lagerway will be talking about their new service and API.  Earlier today I talked about MaxRoam and its game-changing technique to defeat mobile roaming and long-distance costs.  Both companies are founded by friends of mine, which represents an interesting conflict of interest for yours truly. 

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Cubic launched its service, MaxRoam, at TechCrunch40 last week. The crux of their offering is that you can take a secondary phone with you when you travel, forward your existing number to it, and roam wherever you are at local calling rates. David Pogue wrote it up this week over at iht.com. All you need to get it started is a SIM from their web site, or one of their rather dubious dual-mode phones, manufactured by (no, this is not a typo) Pirelli.

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As Liz Gannes reports, iPhone mania persists in NYC, with folks lining up at 3AM clutching fistfuls of twenties to buy iPhones five at a time — for export to Europe. This despite the fact that Apple has been throwing cold water on the whole iPhone unlocking marketplace by warning people that a future firmware update could render liberated iPhones to shiny plastic/alloy bricks.

But why? When you’re looking for answers, as they say, follow the money. The NYTimes (now mercifully free for you to read) reports on their blog that Apple, with their recent price cut, is effectively taking a loss on each iPhone and making it up on the fees paid to them via the Wireless Carriers. Well, duh. This should be no surprise to folks Read More

Last week the Canadian Dollar reached parity with the US dollar. In fact, it’s been within 5% of the value of the US greenback for about 3 months now. Today, it’s actually worth more than $1 USD.

Which brings to mind the obvious question for any self-respecting Canadian Apple Fan-Boi: How has this impacted the cost of a 15″ MacBook Pro on the Apple Canada web site?

The answer will disappoint you: Read More

There’s a hole you could drive a truck through in U.S. economic development  and immigration policy, which represents a substantial competitive advantage for Canada in furthering its own economic development and the growth of its knowledge-based industries.  We are presently in a unique position to exploit that gap in understanding to our own long-term benefit, and give rise to a substantial economic shift benefiting the Canadian technology industry (among others).

Case in point:  Recently, Microsoft announced they would build a research and development centre in Vancouver, and in turn use that operation to recruit and nurture smart people from around the world who were being prevented from entering the US due to immigration hassles.  Microsoft said it as plainly as they needed to:  they had effectively tapped out the supply of smart software people trickling out of U.S. universities, and thanks to increasing costs and constrains imposed by the U.S. INS,  it was just too difficult to fill that void with educated foreigners ; both  which circumstances put U.S. -based tech companies at a pretty significant disadvantage. Read More

As Om reported yesterday, Palm killed the FOLEO.  Great!  It was a still-born project from the start, as I pointed out (among a long list of others) in May when it launched at D3.  Fundamentally it speaks to the ability of companies to be overrun by rock star engineers, many of whom are guilty of overthinking products or designing for markets which do not (yet) exist.   The cancellation of the project, though it cost Palm over $10M (according to the Associated Press) and a lot of credibility, shows that there are cooler heads prevailing in management who are not caught up in the cult of Jeff Hawkins.

This hatchet job might be the handiwork of Bono’s Elevation Partners, which recently took a stake in Palm, and more specifically Jon Rubinstein, a former Apple executive who ran its iPod division before joining Palm as Executive Chairman as a part of that private equity investment. Read More

If you don’t know what it’s like to hand dial your computer’s connection to the outside world, you probably missed out on some of the early lessons that have steered some of the internet’s most successful people.  Or so says James Hong.  I was reading his post while ruminating on my own past history as a 604 BBS’er during my formative years, and I find it refreshing (and unique) to find someone else reflecting on that time in much the same way as I do.  I frequently regale crowds with occasionally exaggerated tales of my exploits banging away at my Commodore 64 in the basement of my parents’ house in Burnaby.

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Obviously I think that Simpler is Better. From Barcamp, I saw a video from Lee Lefever on social bookmarking, explained simply. They edit their movies using Final Cut Express, shoot in their small apartment on the floor, and focus on quality of instruction vs. glossy production. Insodoing, they’ve developed a style and a dialog with their viewers that is appealing and keeps the focus on the lesson. Read More

Back in the ’90s, when I actually logged some time at a campus Apple reseller, the Apple supply chain was ridiculously poor, due to its unpredictability and the occasional ridiculous lack of availability of basic accessories. Often our academic customers would spend their hard-earned grant money on complete Apple systems only to receive them 3-4 months later; or they would receive CPUs without monitors or keyboards (or vise - versa).  This more often than not left us playing russian roulette with the Apple ordering system and them steaming at having disappointing out-of-box experiences.

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