Great news from all around for Apple: analysts have raised their target share price to more than $50 above the current price and rate it a strong buy; Apple is on the eve of the release of their biggest-hit product ever, the iPhone 3G, which is raising massive interest around the world–in Spain and the UK there are already 300,000 pre-orders, two weeks before the actual release. Apple has increased its orders for production up to 15 million units from ten million units, and plans to hit it’s sales goal which observers once called fantastically optimistic but have now changed to saying Apple will probably sell even more. A new report says that Apple should make more profit from each new iPhone than they have ever made before. And the App Store promises to be just as much a hit, generating billions as a brand-new source of income for Apple. In other news, Apple sells its five billionth music track at the iTunes Store, and its line of personal computers continues to hit record sales marks (dominating the high-end market) and continues it’s skyrocketing trend in market share, while OS rival Microsoft wallows in mediocrity as its creator, Bill Gates, retires. Overall, every bit of news out there is highly positive for Apple.

The market’s reaction: Apple stock plummets $9.13, 5.15% of its total value.

Why? Frakking speculators.

From All about the iPhone in Japan:

This is just a rumour at this point, but on a keitai mailing list that I subscribe to, another member indicated that a relative working at a DoCoMo shop had heard the following news today:

> She was informed today by management that DoCoMo signed with Apple to
> provide the iPhone. Her initial impression was that it would be
> offered in the fall before the Christmas rush. BUT also felt there
> was too much secrecy and that perhaps DoCoMo is fighting to offer it
> on or near the July release as well.

Hopefully this will be substantiated by an announcement from DoCoMo before July 11.
If Softbank and DoCoMo both offer the iPhone in Japan, the customer is the winner (more competitive pricing).

– End of rumour alert.

A few hours ago, SoftBank released their official pricing schedule for the iPhone in Japan. Despite doing two checks on the sites this morning and early afternoon, as well as stopping by both of their east-side Ikebukuro shops while out shopping this afternoon, I just found out about it from Roy leaving a comment. Talk about your watched pot.

Anyway, the news seems to be good. First, the pricing of the phones: ¥69,120 ($640) for the 8GB model, and ¥80,640 ($750) for the 16GB model. Before you gag, those are pre-discounted prices. After discounts (subsidies) applied with a 2-year contract, the costs are ¥23,040 ($215) and ¥34,560 ($320)–which, by the way, are just a few hundred yen off from my blind prediction twelve days ago–not bad! I guessed based on roughly a 10% higher price than in the U.S., which was not too amazing a guess since this is normal for Apple products in Japan.

But the bigger news that was welcomed today concerned the price of the data plan. A “leaked” memo (now apparently shown up as fake) had the data plan being ¥6800 yen plus ¥1800 for email, for a total of ¥8600 for the month, not counting the monthly installment for the phone itself and the ¥980 “White Plan” account. That would have totaled a staggering ¥10,540–nearly $100 a month.

According to the official press release, it’ll be ¥980 for the White Plan, another ¥315 for the S-Basic service (which appears to cover all email, not just SoftBank’s internal email), and ¥5985 ($55) for the unlimited data plan, for a total of ¥7280 ($68), not counting the ¥960 or ¥1440 for the monthly installments for the iPhones themselves.

More/edits after dinner, Sachi just set the table!

The blog “iPhone in Japan” released these images today:

· · ·

These images are reduced; right-click on each one and select “Open image in new tab.” I can’t imagine that this is a fake; I would only have to find out if it weren’t already released to the public instead of being “leaked” material.

Basically, it’s an informational pamphlet for SoftBank staff to explain the iPhone to customers. I don’t know if this means they’ll be getting in display models, though I can check that out. I’ll drop by the Ikebukuro store on my way in to work and see if they have these sheets and/or display phones.

There’s not too much to glean from it. It shows that SoftBank will have Visual Voicemail–that was not a guarantee, some countries’ carriers don’t support it, or so I’d heard. Nice to know we’ll be getting it. But other than that, it just seems like a straightforward informational blurb with information gathered from Apple and other sources.

It is funny, though, that on page three they show an illustration of the iPhone to show how one uses it–and the iPhone shown is a pre-3G model.

The reason for the title of this article is to demonstrate how a rather impressive (or pathetic depending on your point of view) statistic, namely that I’ve blogged every day for almost the past 5 years, can be made to sound negative. I do this to demonstrate how the news article titled “Survey: 91% of Japanese Will Not Buy ‘iPhone’” is similarly misleading. Here’s how they present the data:

According to a survey by iSHARE, 91.0% of Japanese mobile phone users are not planning to purchase Apple Inc’s “iPhone” mobile phone.

This research was conducted in the wake of the announcement by SoftBank Mobile Corp that it will release the iPhone in Japan (See related article). Targeting Internet users aged primarily 20 to 49, iSHARE asked questions about their intention to purchase an iPhone, as well as other questions and received 402 responses over the Internet.

The survey had been conducted from June 5 to 6, 2008, before pricing for an iPhone handset was announced. Of carriers that the respondents were subscribing to, NTT DoCoMo accounted for 39.8%, followed by au at 26.9%, SoftBank Mobile at 22.9% and the other carriers including Emobile and Willcom at 6.5%.

Asked if they have a plan to purchase an iPhone, 36 respondents (8.9%) said “I am planning to purchase one.” Nearly half of these 36 respondents were SoftBank Mobile users, iSHARE said.

They then make a big deal about how most respondents see a non-removable battery as an issue, though they don’t say if that’s a deal-breaker. But the real misdirection is in the distinct impression they give of most Japanese not wanting to get an iPhone.

If the report is true, that means the iPhone is set to capture almost 10% of the Japanese cell phone market right off the bat–in a country where the iPhone is probably still a largely unknown product. Since half the users are already SoftBank clients, that means 4.5% of Japanese cell phone users would jump to SoftBank from other carriers, increasing SoftBank’s market share from 23% to 27 or 28% within a short span of time. Word of mouth and people seeing others using the iPhone would only increase sales.

That’s hardly negative news.

However, I somehow doubt the veracity of the study; I don’t think the iPhone will sell to millions of Japanese cell phone users right away (though that would be cool). The study doesn’t seem very scientific, had a fairly small sample size, was not universal (it ignored teenagers and those 50 and over), and took place only a day after SoftBank announced they would sell the iPhone, at a time when no pricing plans or tech specs–or even official word that such a device even existed–were available.

Update: I should have guessed: most of the media coverage which picked up on the useless iSHARE survey is blindly picking up on the negative headline, running with the “most Japanese couldn’t care less about the iPhone” angle. Ignoring the fact that 1% market penetration would be seen as a success, ignoring the fact that the survey was taken days before the iPhone 3G was even announced, ignoring the fact that the survey itself was unscientific–in short, the survey was useless, but even if you thought it held meaning, then the meaning was in fact great news for Apple.

Morons. But at least one reporter understood what the basic numbers would mean, even if he didn’t understand the concept of “20- to 49-year-olds.”

A couple of pretty bad pieces of news reportedly just leaked out about the iPhone in Japan: it could cost as much as ¥10,800 ($99) per month for the full plan–not counting many of the calls dialed. A 300-minute plan costs an additional $75. Presumably you could still get 40-yen-per-minute calls without the extra plan.

What Japan Thinks published a supposedly leaked pricing plan. According to the document, the 8GB phone costs ¥61,920 ($575), but is discounted (only when certain plans are bought?–it’s unclear) down to ¥19,200 ($180) over a 2-year period, or about ¥800 ($7.50) per month. That’s just for the phone; reasonable.

Then you are able to sign up for the “White Plan,”“ for ¥980 ($9.10) a month, which gives you unlimited free calls to family members, unlimited free calls to SoftBank clients until 9pm, and all other calls are ¥42 ($.39) per minute. I could live with that–I only make about a half dozen phone calls a month to people other than Sachi, and some of them might be SoftBank users. Under this plan, my phone bill might be only a few hundred yen (a few dollars) a month.

But then there’s data–they really sock you for the data plans. For email–Mobile Me and Yahoo only (I don’t use Yahoo, nor will I)–you get unlimited mail for ¥1800 ($17) per month. I would sign up for Mobile Me, and all other email I could forward to my Mobile Me account. But still, $17 just for email.

Then comes the data plan: ¥6800 ($63) for the unlimited data plan. Ouch. I mean, ouch. Maybe that’s a standard fee in Japan, I don’t know–all I know is that I don’t think I could possibly justify that. Fortunately, the iPhone switches to WiFi automatically whenever a network is detected. I have WiFi at home, and I have my old Airport Express base station, which I could easily set up at work. That would cover my data usage most of the time; I would then, presumably, just use only as much data as I absolutely had to, at what I think is ¥76 ($.70) per minute. It would have to be commando raid stuff. But this would normally be how I use my phone–mostly at home and in the office. I don’t think I could justify $63 a month for the odd impulse browsing while I was walking around town. Pricey.

In short, SoftBank’s data plan would break my bank, so I’d have to simply give up on that one. That is, of course, presuming the memo is for real. I have the distinct feeling that SoftBank is intentionally leaking this to gauge reaction. Hopefully there will be widespread dissatisfaction and they will lower the actual offered rates. But, like I said, I have no idea what data plans usually are in Japan, so this might actually be more or less standard. I’m just used to my basic ¥2000/mo call plan with minutes at ¥10 per; keitai rates have always seemed pricey to me. But if I want the iPhone, I may have to get used to them, and/or certain limitations.

Worse news still: only the 8GB model will be released on July 11; the 16GB model–which I have been waiting all this time for–won’t come out for another 2-3 weeks after that. Yargh. However, Sachi and I both planned to go SoftBank upon the iPhone release, and she’s going there less for the iPhone than simply because we can be on the same plan. So maybe she would be willing to let me steal hog monopolize borrow her phone for the first few weeks–a substantial thing for me, much less so for her.

Of course, (a) the memo could be fake, and/or (b) I could be reading the plans wrong. Is the data plan–apparently specially created for the iPhone–a flat rate, or does it build up with use? If it builds up to a ceiling of ¥6800, then what’s the floor, how many free minutes, and how much do you pay per packet/minute within the plan? And what about GPS? Is GPS counted as data? Or is that free?

Anyone who knows more than I do (i.e., anyone in Japan with a keitai) please set me straight….

A Japan Telecom blog reports that the iPhone will cost ¥20,000 ~ ¥30,000 here in Japan with it’s released in four weeks’ time, but no official price has been announced. This was supposedly said by Masayoshi Son, head of SoftBank–but the blog cites no source, gives no exact quotes, and the news does not appear anywhere else. The entry says:

Softbank Mobile Corp. CEO Masoyoshi SON said on June 13 that an iPhone handset itself will effectively cost ¥20,000-¥30,000 when its user selects the installment and discount plan.

The cost in the U.S. is $199 (about ¥21,000) for the 8GB model or $299 (about ¥32,000) for the 16GB model.

The company will unveil the program(s) for the basic monthly fee by the end of this month.

Take that for what it’s worth. Even if accurate, the “installment and discount plan” could make the pricing anywhere from cheap to prohibitively expensive. Best-case scenario: SoftBank will offer the price as a subsidy with their cheap “White Plan” (about $10/mo. basic charge, some calls free) and a reasonable data plan add-on. That’s wishful thinking, however; they might demand a more expensive contract and the data plan that tops out at ¥10,000 per month.

So now we know little more than we did a few minutes ago. Isn’t this fun?

The SoftBank store I pass on the way to work had iPhone posters up today, announcing the July 11 release date–and pretty much nothing else. You can go inside and put in a reservation for a phone, but I have a feeling that is mostly for SoftBank to (a) gauge interest in the new product, and (b) get new phone numbers and email addresses for their mailing lists. You give your name, mobile number, email address, and what model you want.

But the guy behind the counter will not promise a thing–not even that the application will reserve an early purchase for you. That’s the hope, he’ll tell you, but there’s no guarantee. No price yet, but the guy seemed to think that it was unlikely that the iPhone would be subsidized, and thought that a 50,000 yen (about $500) price was more likely than not. He wouldn’t even say if the usual member plans would apply to the iPhone. It seems that they are trained to say that nothing is certain, assume the worst, and maybe people could be pleasantly surprised later on.

News reports say that the price point will be the same in Japan as it is overseas; this source says they will start at ¥20,000 yen, this one says that “prices in Japan have yet to be decided but they will be comparable to those overseas, according to sources close to the matter.” If this is true, then I’m getting the 16GB model and Sachi will probably get the 8GB one. But I doubt it’ll be ¥20,000; hardware almost never costs less in Japan than in the U.S. In fact, Apple hardware in Japan usually has a 5~15% surcharge over U.S. prices. $199 is ¥21,450 now, so I suspect that ¥23,500 (8GB) and ¥35,000 (16GB) is not too much to expect at the low end.

Th guy at the Softbank store did say that about seventy people had signed the forms for an iPhone at that location since they put the posters up that morning.

Well, here’s a hoot: I just called the SoftBank support line, and it seems I knew more about it than the operator did–she told me that the iPhone would be available “later this year,” and insisted that their web page had no press release. Even after I walked her through the process for reloading the web page, she claimed that she still did not see the updated press release. I had to read off the URL for the specific press release, and only then did she see it.

Talk about keeping it super-secret!

I can only guess that they didn’t anticipate immediate calls. I made my call only about ten minutes after they opened for the day–but still, I am very surprised that they were not already getting lots of calls on this.

Update: only a few minutes later, the gal at SoftBank called back. She was very nice, but she didn’t have any details beyond the press release (and not even that until I told her about it!). No pricing or anything else yet. Next call: the Apple Store. Not yet, though, as I have to get ready and go to work. And not that I expect them to have any more info on pricing….

I guess you didn’t want my business after all, DoCoMo–and you may very well lose my wife’s business, too. She mentioned a while back that she wanted to be on the same service as me.

But the big news is the release date; despite what the people at the SoftBank store told me last week, the iPhone will be released in Japan on July 11, much sooner than I expected–exactly the same time as everywhere else, in fact. No information on pricing, but you can bet that I’ll be calling SoftBank soon about that.

Disappointments: it’s still only 8GB and 16GB, and the camera is still only 2 megapixels. What’s with that, Apple? Leaving room for an upgrade a few months later in case sales sag?

Not disappointed: no video camera on the front. Sure, it would have been fun, but far from necessary. The features of MobileMe look a lot more appealing. I’ll probably be finally breaking down and getting that.

Well, that’s what I’m reduced to. I’ve done it before, posting my reactions to others’ reactions. But since Apple stopped streaming video of their keynotes, this is the only game in town. Why they don’t stream, I don’t know–if they were worried about selling out, they shouldn’t have–it sold out. One would think that baseball rules apply–blackouts lifted in the case of sellout crowds. But apparently not. Maybe Apple just figured they didn’t need to.

So instead, the Mac blogs have taken over the load, doing live blogging via WiFi (cellular connections?) from the event–and their pages are heavily trafficked. MacRumors, Engadget, Gizmondo, and many others. iPhone Alley is streaming audio–but it sounds like the adults on a Peanuts TV special. But just this moment, it just got a whole lot better. Jobs’ voice is very clear… although he’s mostly just talking about how well things are going.

Al Gore is there…

Jobs presented some enterprise stuff, Exchange, businesses and so forth saying “we can use the iPhone” in so many different ways. Push email/contacts/calendar, etc. Now they’re talking about how great the SDK (software developer’s kit, which allows developers to create software for the iPhone) is. We could probably go on for a while with only stuff that people already know or that only developers would be interested in.

It’s easy to build apps for the iPhone… blah blah blah. Okay, I know it’s important for developers. But it’s 2:30 am here in Japan–get to the good stuff!

Some app demos being shown. A $10 game called Super Monkey Ball with 100 levels… eBay auctions… Loopt, keeping track of friends with iPhones with location-aware software–seeing photos they’ve taken, setting up lunch meetings–free software… TypePad! Photo-blogging over the iPhone, also free! (I’m getting that–erm, unless it’s not WordPress-compatible… I’m sure that WordPress will have something compatible)… Associated Press, all kinds of ways to access news… Pangea games (okay, enough demos, thank you)… “Band,” software that allows you to play musical instruments virtually on the iPhone, recording your musical doodling… Medical anatomical learning…

I really like the fact that several of these apps will be free; I was under the impression that everything would cost something. This could really be good.

As usual, Apple stock is doing weird stuff–down $10 despite seeing a lot of good stuff. Maybe they’re going down until they see something really tasty. However, one thing the endless demos do is show you the breadth and depth of all the apps available, and if you look at it carefully, you can see the potential of all this.

Okay, finally the developers have finished. So what next? One feature request asked for: alerts for an app that isn’t even running. A better system than Windows mobile: Push Notification for all apps, not just Enterprise. IP connection from server allows the background software to run remotely, saving the battery life of your phone. Really, a lot of great tools here. Apple stick has just regained $5, so it’s only $5 down.

New features: contact search–about time. iWork and MS Office document viewing support. Scientific Calculator by turning the phone sideways… parental controls… Many languages, including two forms of entry for Japanese! And Chinese. Drawing kanji with your fingers… switching between languages on the fly. Forget the plastic keys!

Another thing: Ad hoc distribution: certify up to 100 iPhones, run and sync all those iPhones.

Mobile Me!! “Exchange for the rest of us.” Apple’s own service with Push services. Hmm… worth the $99 price after all? So all messages, changes automatically updated on all linked devices, over cell networks. Web 2.0 apps: on me.com, rich email environment, as expected in rumors, like having Mac apps on the web. Mail, iCal, etc. Also file browsing–like having your Mac on the web. 20GB per account, 60-day free trial. Mobile Me replaces dot-mac.

Now about the iPhone: already a success, 80% using 10 or more features! 6 millions iPhones until they ran out 6 weeks ago. 3G iPhone! Enterprise Support. 3rd party app support, more countries–“believe me, they’re in use in more countries!” The iPhone more affordable: taking it to the next level: iPhone 3G, this is what it looks like: flush headphone jack, much better audio.

3G speeds approaching WiFi… great battery life: standby time 300 hours: up to 5 hours talk time; 5-6 hours of high-speed browsing time; browsing 24 hours, video 7 hours.

GPS built-in! Can do tracking…

No mention of video conferencing or a front-facing camera.

Playing the song “It’s a small world,” listing all the countries. Now in 6 countries, goal of 12 countries, stretch goal of 25 countries, total of 70 countries… and before Japan came up on the map, I accidentally quit my browser. That’s what comes from staying up until 3:45 am….

Okay, Japan is on the list. And I’ve restarted my browser.

And the keynote is over. No front-facing video-conferencing, no various-sized iPhones… but I don’t think that anyone is disappointed. The Apple store is still offline, but should be back up soon. But at almost 4:00 am, I won’t be able to stay up long enough. Not everything that all the rumors predicted–no look at Snow Leopard yet, no tablet Macs–but certainly good enough. The only question is, will Wall Street think so?

The Apple Store Japan is back online and they have the iPhone–but I can’t find the release date, and am too tired at this point to do so.

I’ll be back tomorrow morning for a quick comment.

Yesterday, my boss wanted to know what his cell phone number was. It’s not forgetfulness–many of us don’t know that because we never call our cell phones or even give the number out very often. I’ve had my cell phone for more than eight years, and I still don’t know my own number. But the problem my boss had was, he had no idea how to get the number from his own cell phone. So he handed the phone to me, the usual go-to guy for tech issues at my workplace, so I could figure it out. Now, on my own phone, I know how to do this–press Function and then Zero–but someone else had to show me–it was not marked in any menu, nor was it self-evident. It was more like an easter egg, in fact. And when my boss handed me his cell phone, I wasn’t able to figure it out myself. Now, the self-number is a no-brainer as far as features go–almost everybody has to access this from time to time. It should be self-evident, or at least not too hard to figure out. But I couldn’t find it. I went through all the obvious feature-access buttons and cruised the menus (most in English, though the phone sometimes jarringly switched to Japanese), tried sub-menu after sub-menu, checking all the logical suspects. After three minutes or so, I had to hand the phone back in defeat; I could not figure it out.

My own phone is not too dissimilar; it also has lots of features that I wouldn’t mind accessing from time to time. However, most of them are so buried in user-unfriendly toolbars and menus that it would be simply far too much work to figure out. Multiple menus with features too similar to each other to figure out why they have different menus, some features buried in seemingly unassociated menus, bad icon choices for many of the menus in the first place. To use any feature, I would have to dig out my manual (Japanese only except for a brief user’s guide in English, so I have to go into Japanese for any non-basic task) and teach myself how to use it.

The problem here is, unless you use a feature every few weeks–and many phone features you would not use so often–you can easily forget how to do it. Plus, if the task you want to do should only take a few moments, but learning how to do it takes up a solid fifteen minutes, then it starts becoming too much trouble to look it up. If your phone has too many features, then you won’t access many of them often enough to learn how to access them.

A new Wired article makes some good points about this, explaining how massive feature creep has overloaded Japanese phones:

Indeed, Japanese handsets have become prime examples of feature creep gone mad. In many cases, phones in Japan are far too complex for users to master.

“There are tons of buttons, and different combinations or lengths of time yield different results,’” says Koh Aoki, an engineer who lives in Tokyo.

Experimenting with different key combinations in search of new features is “good for killing time during a long commute,” Aoki says, “but it’s definitely not elegant.”

Japan has long been famous for its advanced cellphones with sci-fi features like location tracking, mobile credit card payment and live TV. These handsets have been the envy of consumers in the United States, where cell technology has trailed an estimated five years or more. But while many phones would do Captain Kirk proud, most of the features are hard to use or not used at all.

Now, remember that the primary argument saying why the iPhone will fail in Japan is that it will be a yawner next to most Japanese cell phones, which have for some time featured much of what the iPhone offers, and often much more. While the feature sets in Japan have indeed been rich for a long time, that’s not what makes the iPhone special.

What makes the iPhone special is that it is easy to use. I don’t even have an iPhone, and only used one for a few minutes while helping my sister get used to hers last December, but I am fairly certain that I could have found my boss’ number without any trouble had it been an iPhone. Just go to the contacts, I’m pretty sure it’ll be there. Or else go to the settings, it should be there, too. I just expect these things from an Apple product. (Can anyone with an iPhone confirm that you can get your number either of these ways?)

Japanese cell phones are not like this. I tried using some of those feature-rich ones a few times when I passed a cell phone shop and had some time to look. It was painfully hard. I had a tough time understanding what the heck to do even when I got the salesperson to switch the phone to English (it took them a minute or two to figure even that out themselves). After ten minutes with a nice-looking phone, I decided that I did not want to use the damned thing, as attractive as all its touted features were. Not to mention that some of the “great” features are in fact dogs:

“When I show this to visitors from the U.S, they’re amazed,” Hayashi says. “They think there’s no way anybody would want an iPhone in Japan. But that’s only because I’m setting it up for them so that they can see the cool features.”

In actuality, Hayashi says, the P905i is fatally flawed. The motion sensors are painfully slow, and the novelty of using them is quickly replaced with frustration. And while being able to watch TV anywhere is a spectacular idea, there’s no signal in the subways, and even above ground, the sound cuts out every few seconds.

“There’s nothing more annoying than choppy TV noises,” Hayashi says.

Long story short: Japanese phones have far too steep a learning curve, making most features unusable, and many of the features people would use are not as great as they seem.

That’s where the iPhone does its magic. You can do things with it. The list of features may not be as long, but they are good features, and you can use more of them, more easily. The list of usable features on an iPhone beats out the other phones. The web browsing is huge. Email is good, and the keyboard allows for much easier typing. Visual voice mail is a no-brainer. Google Maps with the search features tied in is huge (I know Sachi and I will use that a lot). The GPS almost certain to be included soon will make it even more attractive (I will use that so much when on my scooter). And you can easily forget that this is an iPod, with hi-res (for a handheld device) video, and the iPhone will probably get video telephony with the new models. Then there will be the app store, allowing for huge expandability. And odds are that most Japanese will be able to figure out more of these features, faster and with less reliance on manuals. Certainly, my boss would have never asked me for help that time if he’d had an iPhone.

That’s a big part of why I really want an iPhone myself. Before the iPhone was announced eighteen months ago, all I really wanted was a cell phone that could sync calendar and address book info with my Mac–I would have switched to another phone instantly had I found it (especially if it were bluetooth-ready). The iPhone delivers a great deal more than that. So despite living in the Nation of Advanced Cell Phones, I will wait for however long it takes to get an iPhone. And as soon as Japanese users–conditioned to simply take the standard Japanese fare without question–begin to see and hear about what the iPhone can do, it will take off.

It might take a year or two, but it will eventually trend that way. I seem to recall that when the iPod was introduced in Japan, people similarly predicted it would have trouble catching on because the Japanese market was already saturated with and dominated by advanced, domestic-produced music players. But today, when I walk around town, I see most people using iPods. The success was not immediate, as I suspect the iPhone’s will not be. But the iPhone should succeed despite the naysayers’ reasons, in just the same way as the iPod did before.

Unfortunately, we may need to wait a little longer: I dropped by the SoftBank store a few days ago, and the clerks there said they had no more info that was in the terse press release–but that they doubted the iPhone would be released soon. They have already released their summer line of phones, and new phones require setting up with the service. The clerk said a Fall release was the soonest he expected it, and it might even have to wait until the winter line comes out.

The details are as skimpy as they get, but SoftBank today announced on their web site that they’ve signed a deal with Apple:

SOFTBANK MOBILE Corp. today announced it has signed an agreement with Apple® to bring the iPhone™ to Japan later this year.

The Japanese version of the announcement says “in this year,” not “later this year,” but since both the English and Japanese come from SoftBank, I presume that they mean the same thing. “Later” is kind of fuzzy, though–are we talking August or December? It definitely doesn’t sound like July, though.

Also unclear is… well, everything else. Whether SoftBank is to be the exclusive carrier, for example. It would be a bit strange if it weren’t–as far as I am aware, Japanese cell phones are almost always (if not always) tied to specific carriers.

I was also on the verge of posting recently that Docomo seemed less and less likely to release the iPhone for a few different reasons; one being that they will be selling the Prada Touch phone by LG, considered an iPhone competitor; also, they just released a big line of new 3G cell phones, equipped with large screens, video streaming, GPS–the works. Doubtful they’d release such a big line of phones like that so close to announcing the iPhone.

Nevertheless, people are still talking about how the SoftBank iPhone contract might be a way of pressuring Docomo or something; for some reason, I doubt this a bit. I drive by a SoftBank store every day on my commute to work; maybe I’ll stop by today and ask some questions.

Meanwhile, just a few days before Jobs is expected to spill all the beans about the new 3G iPhone at the WWDC, rumors fly–ranging from minimalist reports that the new phone will be thicker and have no other upgrades aside from the 3G ability, all the way to hopeful, soaring rumors that the new phone will be slimmer, have a longer battery life, and will feature GPS, video conferencing and more. What many seem in agreement about is that the new form factor will have rounder edges, and the phone will come in at least white and black varieties (though more colors have been rumored).

In other Mac news: Apple’s “.Mac” service is going to get rebranded and maybe overhauled, it seems; Apple seems to have bough the names “Me.com” and “MobileMe,” and the new service will probably fold iPhone connectivity into the package, along with unknown feature changes. Among the rumors: online versions of Mac apps like Address Book and iCal in a new system that offers “push” syncing.

Also out today is news that Jobs will introduce OS X version 10.6 at the WWDC this week, an OS to be released next January–which is really early in terms of OS releases for Apple, just 14 months after Leopard. However, the release will be unusual: as it’s name–“Snow Leopard”–suggests, it will not be a full-featured upgrade. Instead, it will be “heavily focused on performance and nailing down speed and stability,” and will be made for Intel Macs only.

So, presumably, no tablet Macs with Multi-Touch which can talk in soothing tones while mixing drinks for you. But who knows.

One other thing–Sachi heard the SoftBank story on the news last night–and didn’t tell me. We’ve got to have a serious talk about this kind of thing.

If you’re in the mood for sleaze, check out a political ad run by a Republican candidate (and incumbent) for Congress. Basically, it attacks the Democratic candidate’s “San Francisco values,” demonstrating that by having three slutty-looking swingers partying it up, bumping and grinding. I’ve lived in San Francisco and grew up in the area, and this doesn’t come any closer to representing the values of the area than a seedy strip club in Missouri represents theirs. But apparently, this passes for kosher in conservative Missouri politics.

I reflected on how people would react if, say, a Massachusetts liberal were to put out an ad representing rural/heartland values by showing gun-toting redneck hicks drinking beer and picking their noses in front of a pickup truck with a Confederate flag on the side. Such a politician would instantly be excoriated, blasted out of the water as an “elitist.”

What it comes down to is the fact that not just ads showing such “San Francisco” values, but pretty much all criticisms of the same sort–attacking either urban/coastal or liberal values as “elitist”–this is in fact the true “elitism.” The same people who claim that liberals are prancing around thinking they are better than everyone else are themselves the ones with the superiority complex; they think that their values are better than those of others. The values I remember from the San Francisco area were pretty much respectful of a wide variety of views and beliefs; it is an accepting, big-tent culture, with “tolerance” being a major theme. I don’t see much tolerance or acceptance among the brand of people who complain about “San Francisco values.”

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A new study:

In the “first nationally representative survey of teachers concerning the teaching of evolution,” the authors show that one in eight high school biology teachers present creationism as a scientifically valid alternative to Darwinian evolution. While this number does not reflect public demand–38% of Americans would prefer that creationism to be taught instead of evolution–it does represent a disconnect between legal rulings, scientific consensus, and classroom education.

Before you think that one in eight is not bad, or even, “what’s wrong with introducing creationism alongside evolution,” consider that this is similar to one in eight Medical School teachers telling their students to consider prayer as a scientifically valid alternative to antibiotics. And then consider whether or not you’d want to be treated at the hospital staffed by graduates of those classes.

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Finally! Rumors of the iPhone coming out in Japan. The carrier: NTT DoCoMo, as I predicted. Apparently, all the attention crashed the Apple Insider web site, which I could not access as of this time. However, the rumors only say that Apple is “close to signing deals” with the Japanese and Korean carriers, and has no specifics about when the iPhone will be available–and Japan is rather infamous for getting stuff late.

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Uh oh. Conservatives are starting to talk about “character” again. I guess, after eight years, they must miss being able to use the word in public when referring to their candidate for president.

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From Virginia:

A federal appeals court panel in Richmond, Va., on Tuesday struck down a Virginia law that made it a crime for doctors to perform what the law called “partial birth infanticide.”

Good. “Partial birth abortion,” a political (not medical) term in this case escalated to “infanticide,” is nothing more than a manufactured straw man intended to stand in for abortion in general. The idea is to vilify the entire practice by choosing the least-commonly practiced (less than one-fifth of one percent of all abortions) but most-easily vilified form of abortion, and making a campaign of it, completely ignoring the medicine or the ethics involved in the process.

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Ewww. An off-duty Japanese railway worker was arrested for forcibly kissing a woman on a train right here in Ikebukuro. Reportedly, he was so drunk that he doesn’t remember what happened, which only makes the image worse. Imagine that guy sticking his tongue down your throat–or your wife’s. From the article:

His employer was apologetic about the incident. “We’re sorry about the case. We’ll improve our guidance of employees,” said a spokesman for Seibu Railway.

Yeah. Be sure to give those employee seminars about not to get completely smashed and sexually assault women. That oughta do it. I mean, such “guidance” is stupid: any employee who doesn’t know better shouldn’t be working there in the first place.

No word in the article about whether or not the guy would be fired.

The music labels are at it again, this time with all-new but oh-so-familiar dizzying heights of greed. This time: Apple wants to add the ability to purchase downloadable music over the iPhone via a 3G broadband connection. The stupid part: the music labels want to charge more for that.

You got it: download a song via iTunes on your computer, you pay one price; download the same song on your iPhone, you pay a premium.

Why? Because they can. At least with ringtones, there’s a premise, albeit a phony one, for charging extra: the music is used in a significantly different way. Your phone rings, it uses the song–and if I understand things right, you can set a different song depending on who calls. It’s still highway robbery, as the spiffy part is in the software modification to link caller ID to change the sound file used to designate a ring, not in the actual music file itself, which you might already own anyway. But the music labels demand the money, so you pay more, even though it’s only a partial use of the song–and even though Apple charges an extra 99 cents for the ringtone, that is actually a low price: ringtones can cost a few bucks on other services.

But for downloading a song over your phone you pay extra? That’s beyond greedy, it’s flat-out indescribable. There is not even a phony premise for charging more for songs you download over a telephone connection, none. The only thing I can think of is that you might get the sudden urge to hear a song so badly that you can’t wait to get to a computer. And when was the last time that happened?

No wonder Apple is fighting it: the premium would reduce the feature to a seldom-used luxury, as most people would see it for what it is: a rip-off. A few people would use it, paying the extra money to look or feel cool, but it would probably fall off rapidly once they realized that others were laughing at them.

I know that the idea in economics is to charge what the market will bear, but there is a more fundamental principle, one might even call it a moral one: you charge for services rendered. If you do not extra work, you are not paid for it. Yes, I know, not the real world, but the moral pricing principle has an effect on what people perceive. Like charging more for bottled tap water than you pay for gasoline, or paying more for a black MacBook than a white MacBook, you’re paying more for an idea than for actual resources or effort. In some cases, it works, but even when it does, people who see through it recognize the dishonesty. Downloading music over a cell phone costs the record companies not one fraction of a penny more than it does over a computer connection. They just see the opportunity to charge more, figure people are stupid enough to do it, so there it is. Economics in action.

Me? Don’t ever count on me using that service. And though I wouldn’t mind using certain ringtones, I’m not going to do it if I have to pay more; instead, I’ll jailbreak the phone and use the music I already own in any damned way I please. As far as I’m concerned, premiums for ringtones and cell phone downloads are a sucker tax. Some people say that lottery tickets are a tax on stupidity, but at least with lottery tickets, you’re buying the ability to add a bit of excitement to your fantasies of wealth; with cell phone music premiums, you’re just a sucker.

The evidence is beginning to mount for a Japan release of the iPhone. In addition to recent news that NTT DoCoMo, the main contender for the iPhone contract for Japan, is launching a make-over aimed at recapturing the mobile market at the exact same time the 3G iPhone is universally expected to come out, there is now news that the iPhone 2.0 firmware update includes Japanese-language input capability (images of interface at link). While not a lock for the July release in Japan, it certainly adds to the now-strong impression that this will be so.

Interesting. With my G4 PowerBook, not only had the battery been going bad, but WiFi had also been extremely weak. I had thought the latter was a problem with my WiFi base station and its firmware/software. But after Apple replaced the battery, WiFi reception went way up. I didn’t know they were connected like that.

Remember the recent “Pwn to Own” competition, where it was claimed that Windows security was so much better than Mac security, because the Mac was cracked nearly instantly on day 2, but the Windows machine lasted until day 3?

Well, people are learning the hard way that these competitions don’t necessarily reflect real life:

Hundreds of Thousands of Microsoft Web Servers Hacked

Hundreds of thousands of Web sites – including several at the United Nations and in the U.K. government — have been hacked recently and seeded with code that tries to exploit security flaws in Microsoft Windows to install malicious software on visitors’ machines.

Could it possibly be that this Windows flaw was not used at the competition because it was worth a lot more in the real world than it was in a hacker’s competition? Um, duh. Were such hacks not so valuable on the black market, the Windows machines at the competition probably would have been hacked immediately. That doesn’t mean that Windows is more secure–precisely the opposite, in fact. Mac hacks are relatively valueless enough that hackers would rather use them to get a free laptop. Windows hacks are valuable enough to sell to people who want to do serious harm.

So far, Mac security woes remain almost completely on the hypothetical level: reported vulnerabilities, proof-of-concept malware, and hack-purely-for-show demonstrations, which are almost the only examples used to claim that Mac security ain’t so great. The only other examples are social-engineering trojans which depend on tricking humans into circumventing the OS security, and even those number at two, possibly three.

Windows security, on the other hand, comes up short in the real world: tens of thousands of pieces of malware, worldwide virus and worm threats, attacks causing disruption and a great deal of time and money spent on containment and repair, and countless attacks on personal machines. Just this last week, my boss told me that his browser became completely useless because every time he tried to go to a web site, porn and other spam links were substituted; his security software (kept up-to-date) somehow missed it in screening and could not repair it, and so now he’s going to have to reinstall the entire OS and all his software. Many of my students who use Windows have reported similar problems, and I have had several friends over the past few years tell me about malware wiping out their Windows systems.

I know tons of people who own Macs, and despite none of them running any security software, none have ever reported any such problems.

So, when you read those editorials about how Windows actually has “better” security than Macs, understand that such reports do not always do not in any way reflect real-world situations. Maybe this will change at some point in the future, but sure as hell not yet.

Apple reports their quarterly performance today after the markets close. They’re supposed to outperform expectations (after their stock “adjusted downwards” 40% after forecasting a poor quarter earlier this year). But Steve at Marketing Apple has an interesting observation to make:

if Apple had underperformed it would announce its earnings on a Friday (to let the market cool down over the weekend.) If it had over-performed, it would announce on a Thursday (to allow the market to run up the stock price.) So what does announcing on a Wednesday tell us?

As I said, Hmmm. Cautiously optimistic.

But still, this news is rather interesting:

NTT Docomo says the logo will go into regular use from July 1st. It is being introduced as part of a broader overhaul of strategy which the company hopes will help it regain momentum in the mobile market. If you want to read the new mission statement, it is here (Japanese).

Hmm… A new logo and a push to “regain momentum in the mobile market”… which just happens to take place at almost exactly the time Apple is expected to release the new 3G iPhone and version 2 of the iPhone software, namely after the June WWDC conference in mid-June.

Like I said, maybe I’m reaching, but nevertheless coincidences like this should raise red flags.