When I wake up early several mornings in a row, my body clock becomes used to it and I wake up at the same time for a while thereafter, until something (like my usual tendency to stay up way late) interrupts it. So I woke up early enough this morning that the hyper-early takkubin (Japan’s FedEx) didn’t wake me up. I knew the MBP was coming sometime soon as Apple sent an email to that effect last night, but didn’t expect it quite so fast after notification. But Japanese express mail is like that–almost always next-day delivery.

Setting up the computer just seems to be getting easier and easier. No problem getting on the WiFi network. The printer was recognized and driver auto-installed in seconds. My iTunes account gave the computer basic registration info, and logging into my Mobile Me account got most of my important data; my calendar, address book, browser bookmarks, and other stuff got synced, and all my email accounts are subscribed to. All that in just the first fifteen minutes or so. Apple knows how to make it painless. Most of the rest of my data I transferred almost as easily, hooking up my new MBP to my old Powerbook via an 800-to-400 Firewire cable. And it’s nice to have 250 GB (well, 230 GB in fact) available on a laptop.

Now, the screen. It is a mirror. Not a full-blown one, but a mirror nonetheless. If I want to check my appearance before a Skype call, all I have to do is turn the brightness on the monitor down all the way, and I can see myself perfectly, albeit a bit darkly.

So, is it a deal-killer? Not quite, but it is worse than I had gathered from looking at display units. The reflection is muted by two factors: first, there is a different focal point for the screen and what is reflected in it; if the reflection is far enough away, just focusing on the screen contents helps filter the reflections out (closer reflections can be more distracting). And second, the full brightness of the LCD screen washes out most non-bright reflections. Additionally, I think that your mind will, over time, learn to disregard the reflections–I found myself not noticing them after a while.

Facing away from the windows; the new MBP’s screen is quite notably brighter.

Facing toward the windows; the MBP actually seems brighter still, but more washed-out–and note the reflections.

In the right place, and at full power, and with practice, the reflections won’t bug you at all. That said, there are situations where those conditions can be nullified. For example, when you unplug the MBP from the power cable, the screen immediately darkens, and the reflections pop out at you. For this reason, you should probably switch the dimming feature off in your Energy Saver preference pane, and just take the hit on battery life.

Outside, the screen is barely usable–but it does outperform my old Powerbook’s screen. Let’s face it, laptops rarely have screens that are usable in direct sunlight; even in the shade, you stand to suffer from some setback with any screen, and you just have to work around it. As it happens, I almost never use my laptop outdoors, so it makes little difference to me in any case.

As for performance, this thing rocks. Maybe it’s just because it’s a brand-new Mac, but everything ran incredibly fast–especially web pages, which seemed to load lightning-fast. It could be the faster CPU (the 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo is faster than my iMac’s 2.16 GHz chip), the 1 GHz+ Frontside Bus, or the 4 GB of DDR3 RAM; the 7200 rpm HDD probably doesn’t hurt, either. We’ll see how performance does over time.

The trackpad: I love it. It’s huge. I was already addicted to the 2-finger swipe for scrolling–I find myself trying to use the gesture on every other computer I encounter and realizing with annoyance that it doesn’t work. I never scroll using the scroll bar anymore. The new gestures are at least as useful, if not more so. The three-fingered swipe for “next” and “previous” is more universal than I thought–it works with browser windows and Finder windows, not just your photo albums. It essentially is a way to active the history arrows in any app that recognizes the gesture. The four-fingered up- and down-swipes for Exposé I know I will use a lot–but I have to re-train myself, as I am too used to using the F-keys I assigned for the task. I still don’t use the trackpad for zooming in and out as much as I should be. And I had forgotten that swiping four fingers left or right activates application switching.

In fact, I have gone a step further and have activated, after a long time avoiding it, the trackpad touch-click. Not because I don’t like the click-anywhere trackpad feature–I found myself using it without even thinking–but I have come to really like not having to apply as much pressure. And a two-fingered tap for a pop-up menu is just too hard for me to pass on, now that I am aware of it again. I tried this out before and didn’t like it, but I think that Apple has improved the software over time, and it’s now a lot better at interpreting your intentions.

The keyboard is as good as I recall from trying out the display model at stores last week. I find myself making a lot fewer errors, primarily, I think, because the keys are spaced; most other keyboards have the keys adjacent, which leads to all kinds of mis-strikes. There is also a nice, soft, responsive feel to the keys. If you’re thinking of buying a laptop, try out this keyboard.

I have yet to try out a lot of stuff–for instance, connecting to television sets (Apple says it won’t work, but I at least want to try) and external monitors, using the Superdrive, trying out the higher-performance graphics chip, testing WiFi vs. the old Powerbook, and so on. Heck, I’ve only had my hands on the thing for a few hours now, and most of that has been transferring files.

More later.

Stumble it!

Just reported:

Apple Inc. is hiring the dean of Yale University’s business school to start a project that it calls Apple University.

No details on what it is yet, but I’d like to know when they start hiring faculty….

Stumble it!

So I went to Akihabara today, after visiting some electronic stores in Ikebukuro, to see what I could find out about my alternatives for buying a new Macbook Pro. This was the first time I saw the units in person, and, as expected, the monitors were glossier than ever. I never really liked the glossy displays used up until now, but this one was even more reflective. The upside was that it protects the LCD screen better–the glass used makes it hard to disturb the picture by poking it–and the new LED backlighting makes the display a lot brighter than even the previous bright monitors, partially canceling out the glare issue. It’s not good, but not quite as bad as I’d feared.

The trackpad, on the other hand, is great. Very sensitive, very smooth, very large. I never liked having it in touch-tap mode before, but on all the units I played with it was active–and it worked a lot better than I remembered. I could get pop-up menus just by laying two fingers on the trackpad, very natural. And the click-anywhere feature is very nice, meaning you don’t have to aim and reach for the button location. Finally, the new gestures–three-fingered swipes to go to the next image/page, four-fingered brushes up and down to activate Exposé–felt easy to remember and execute. I would definitely miss having this new trackpad.

In fact, I also was pleasantly surprised by the keyboard; when I tried it out, it was smooth and effortless; I have problems with some keyboards, but I loved this one.

The Firewire port issue is not so bad; I even bought an 800-400 FW cable from a cable shop in Akihabara whether or not I wound up buying the new Macbook, figuring it could be used in my old Powerbook anyway.

The TV-out thing still burns, but there is a solution for me. I use my computer at work mostly in a lab, and can hook up via a VGA splitter box that’s in the lab under the teacher’s computer station. I’ll need to lug around a VGA cable, a long one in case I need to set my computer at a distance, but I found a fairly lightweight 5m cable at the same shop I got the FW cable from. For other situations, I can use the new LCD projector the school got if I really need to use a display in any other room. I won’t like not being able to plug into any TV I like, but I should be able to live with it.

All that, plus Apple claims that battery life is better–five hours, they say, but we all know that computer makers always pad that spec quite a bit. Still, the battery looks pretty easy to swap out, and now the HDD can be swapped out as well.

Nevertheless, I was still attracted by the thought of saving a bunch of money on a previous-model Macbook Pro priced down. However, that didn’t work out like I’d hoped. Despite being out of date and in clearance-sale mode, the old MacBook Pro still has a set price–everyone sells it for ¥184,800 ($1819), which is not all that great a savings off the Apple Store education price of ¥218,800 ($2153). Yeah, it’s lower, but not by as much as I’d hoped. Plus, swapping out the 2GB of RAM for my desired 4GB was more expensive than the Apple Store charges for the built-to-order model.

But here’s the kicker, which I didn’t think about earlier: the previous-version Macbook Pros on sale in stores now only come with the Japanese keyboard. And I really dislike that keyboard, a lot. I’d much rather deal with a reflective screen than a Japanese keyboard.

I played around with the idea of buying a refurbished 17-inch Macbook Pro with a U.S. keyboard currently selling on the Apple Store Japan site; it sells for the same base price as the new 15“ Macbook Pros at education prices. But they won’t swap out the RAM for the usual prices, and that would hike the cost higher–pus, although I’d love the huge screen, I don’t think I would be able to fit it in my backpack, and it might be heavier than I would like to schlep everywhere.

So it came back to the new Macbook Pros, with the screen problems. I was mollified by seeing it in person, the glare not being entirely as bad as I’d expected–but still bad–and the brightness overcoming that some. Using it as-is, I would definitely have to position it right to avoid having parts of the screen blocked out. In my current office situation, there’s a large window behind me, and that would be a deal-killer; however, in a week, we redesign the office layout, and I’ll have a wall behind me. Classrooms are similarly not a problem, as I’ll always have my back to a whiteboard and a wall. At home, it won’t be a problem, and I don’t use my laptop outdoors much.

One more possible solution: matte screen films. Just like the ones that take the glare off the iPhone, there are films for monitors as well. Having seen some displayed a stores, I can see it’s a bit of a risk: on some monitors, the film produces a gritty, grimy appearance in bright areas that are otherwise perfectly smooth and bright without the film; on other monitors, it’s perfectly acceptable. Finding a store where they could show me different brands was a chore, and at the best one, the floor guy seemed not to have a clue as to which films on display were which. So I might have to buy one or two before I find one that works–not too cheap, at about ¥1500 a pop or so. I’ll also have to buy a 17” film and cut it down to match the Macbook Pro’s screen size. I’m still not even sure I’ll wind up keeping it–I’ll use the Macbook for a week or two and see if I can live with the reflectiveness as-is.

So, in a few minutes I’ll put in my order–with options for 4GB of RAM and a 7200 RPM HDD, not to mention the U.S. keyboard. I’ll also get a video adaptor, probably Mini DisplayPort-to-VGA; Apple claims that you can’t add on other adaptors to that one, such as a VGA-to-DVI. They even claimed that a Mini DisplayPort-to-DVI cannot accept a DVI-to-HDMI adaptor hooked on.

But I have a sneaking suspicion that Apple just says all of this stuff to avoid being responsible for wiggy connectors. No one on the Apple discussions site claims to have tried this. I’m buying, of course, on the presumption that the adaptors won’t work… but I will still try all of them anyway.

Update: OK, the order is placed. They say 1-2 weeks shipping time (grouse), but it often comes on the early end of the estimate, if past experience is a guide here. I got the 4 GB of RAM, 7200 rpm hard drive, the Mini DisplayPort-to-VGA adaptor–and the U.S. keyboard as well. I even went in for the Mobile Me subscription, priced down to $60 with the Macbook Pro purchase. Naturally, you can bet that I’ll blog on it when it comes.

Stumble it!

While the prospect of the new Macbook Pro is overall very positive, there are a few significant down points. One of those is the glass screen–I see no real advantage here, and the reflectivity is a major down point. I never liked the glossy screens before, and these computers seem to be more reflective than ever. Had it been made glass so one could get touch-screen functionality, that I could understand. But without that, it’s a drag on the computer’s appeal.

Another down point is the lack of a 400 Mbps Firewire port. I mean, really? I have to buy pricey adaptors and new cables to use a bunch of equipment I own? Now, Apple does mercilessly phase out stuff which is no longer hip–they were among the first, if not the first, to ditch the floppy disc, for example–and I do understand that USB is winning the game. But it’s still a pain.

But one legacy ditch Apple executed with this model is one that makes zero sense to me: no more out-to-TV. Seriously. You can still use VGA and DVI, but if you have an old-fashioned TV set and need to go out to it, you are out of luck with the new Macbook line. No more cables going to composite RCA or S-Video. Kaput.

That’s a huge deal for me, as this is going to have to be a work computer, and we have no HDTVs at my work–all are old NTSC boxes. The new Mac would not be able to use those, at all. I would be limited to a single VGA input box I have set up in the lab, and our LCD projector, which can take VGA in. But that also means I am on a short leash, as long VGA cables are not an easy schlep.

What the hell, Apple?

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My reaction: meh.

Yeah, “meh.” I was really expecting something better. The new form factor looks nice. Not incredibly cool, but nice. The black border around the screen is maybe the nicest touch, for me at least. The glass trackpad? I’ll have to try it and see. Probably it’ll be pretty good. But this is not the innovative upgrade I was expecting. No Blu-Ray. More Multi-touch, but no LCD trackpad or touch screen. Nothing that knocks my socks off, to be sure. Nice, but not great.

I will buy it, however. I have an aging 3.5-year-old G4 PowerBook, which has long been outclassed–even though it still stands up surprisingly well. I’ll even keep it, for its pre-Intel functionality, as kind of a bridge unit, a backup, something that can run a lot of the software I still would like to access once in a while (I might even downgrade the OS to something more Classic-friendly).

The new MacBook Pro (gotta have a 15-incher) will be a major upgrade for me. The ability to run Windows will be useful for my job. The 2.4 GHz dual-core low-end model will be quite sufficient, many times faster than what I’m used to, and the NVIDIA chipset will not be bad either. I’ll enjoy having a webcam on my portable, and the WiFi may even not suck like my current PowerBook’s does. I also like the fact that Apple is shaking me down a lot less than before on RAM–a 2GB upgrade to 4GB for $150 is not bad, and is even reasonable. I’ll take that, along with the 7200 RPM 250 GB drive that far outclasses the 80 GB drive I now suffer with.

Sure, it’s a big upgrade from my early-2005 model. Just not the barn-burner of a new release I was hoping for. So I’ll take it, but, you know, meh.

Update: While the “Apple tax” is imaginary, the “Living in Japan tax” is not. Even at the Education store, I will still have to pay about $300 more for the Macbook Pro here in Japan than it costs in America. True, half of that difference comes from sales tax which you can avoid in the U.S. by buying out-of-state, but it’s still a difference. And $300 is not quite worth it to put my family in the U.S. to the trouble of re-shipping a U.S.-bought machine here. Between the shipping costs and the import duty they’d slap me with the price difference would kind of disappear anyway. But it still sucks that you pay a premium for living closer to where the machines are actually produced. And ordering in Japan won’t save me time, either–getting the U.S. keyboard is a special order and usually adds a week to delivery time.

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A Microsoft executive expounds:

…we’re also looking at the different things that you can get with Windows, and understanding what is really involved with what we call the “Apple tax.”

There really is a tax around there for people that are evaluating their choices going into this holiday season and going forward. There’s a choice tax that we talked about, which is, hey, you want to buy a machine that’s other than black, white, or silver, and if you want to get it in multiple different configurations or price points, you’re going to be paying a tax if you go the Apple way.

There’s going to be an application tax, which is if you want choice around applications, or if you want the same type of application experience on your Mac versus Windows, you’re going to be purchasing a lot of software. And even at that you’re not going to get the same experience. You’re not going to get things like Microsoft Outlook, you’re not going to get the games that you’re used to playing. There’s a technology tax–Apple still doesn’t have HDMI, doesn’t have Blu-ray offerings, doesn’t have e-SATA external disk drives that work at twice the speed of FireWire. And so you’ve got all of these things that are truly taxes.

You’ve also got an upgrade tax. The only machine, as far as I know, within the Apple lineup that’s actually upgradeable is the Mac Pro, the $2,800 version, which is (more expensive than) just about any PC configuration that you get from any one of our manufacturers.

Ah, where to start.

The primary fallacy in this entire rant is to take two platforms, list the faults of one and not the other, and call those faults a “tax,” as if there are no faults on the other side. The faults listed are lack of variety, limited number of applications, limited technologies, and limited expandability. All valid points to a degree, though several if not all have just as valid counterpoints, all of which you could have read here previously. With Windows systems–and the exec is talking about Windows plus PCs built for Windows, so we can take that as a group–there are just as many if not more faults. Lack of originality and style, being behind a few years in many of the more key capabilities, a horrendous resource-hogging OS, compatibility problems due to mismatched hardware and software, vulnerability to massive onslaughts of malware… I could go on and on (that’s not an impotent boast, if you read this blog then you know I can because I have). What we are left with is the question of which set of “taxes” are more onerous. You can guess which answer I would suggest.

Then there’s the fallacy of presuming customer desire. The exec talks about people wanting choices like a myriad of colors–as if color were the only element of style (that explains quite a bit)–and volumes of configurations. Apple tried to have a multitude of configurations once, and it almost killed them. They discovered that you should concentrate on a smaller number of configurations, but make sure that you get them right. There are a multitude of digital music players out there, but Apple has the lion’s share of the market, something it won because it made its product right (not the way Microsoft clawed to the top). People like cool gear, not just more colors. Apple has the cooler gear.

Similarly, the exec talks about expandability. But honestly, how many PC owners actually do that kind of thing? I would guess that more than 90% of computer owners don’t expand anything, not even RAM (which most people should). At best, this is one of those things people buy a product for and then don’t use, like most of the features on a cell phone. More often than Windows boxes, Apple tends to identify what most people will really use. A fingerprint scanner looks cool at first, but honestly, do you really need it? After a while, it just becomes this useless thing on your machine that you never use. Most of this appeal is to the geekier high-end users, not the majority of users.

Then there are the plain false claims, like the Mac Pro for $2800 being more expensive than “just about any PC configuration that you get from any one of our manufacturers.” A former student just asked me a question about this the other day so I looked into it. On the PC Connection site, I looked for dual-quad-core Xeon processor desktops at 2.8 GHz or better–what the Mac Pro has–and you have to go to the 8th lowest-priced system before you find something that’s not a Mac Pro (and it has slower CPUs and smaller hard drives, for $240 more than the lowest-priced Mac Pro). Whenever I hear of these special deals for PCs, they usually require multiple mail-in rebates and tie-on deals, and are the exception rather than the rule.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the Mac is not by any means perfect. It has its faults and weaknesses. There are many people for whom a Windows or Linux system is far more ideal.

But please, claims like this from Microsoft are just pathetically wrong.

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The rumors have been out for some time now. They started a month ago with reports of something called a “brick,” which everyone thought was a small box, maybe a replacement for the Apple TV. But recently, the general rumor community started to coalesce around the idea that “brick” referred to carving a laptop case out of a brick of metal, describing a new manufacturing process for Apple’s new line of MacBooks and MacBook Pros.

The rumors seemed to solidify when photos were leaked showing images of the purported MacBook cases, indeed carved from a single piece, with no seams.

Just this afternoon, I warned a student not to buy a Mac laptop too soon, as Apple is scheduled to release new ones in the next month or two–reportedly very soon, but potentially as late as January. I speculated that in part due to this new manufacturing process that could save money, and perhaps in part because the recent economic crisis and stock drop, laptops costing significantly less were a good possibility.

Just tonight, the rumor was released that 12 separate Apple laptop models (there are currently 8 models) are to be released soon, with prices ranging from $800 to $3100–significant since the current low price is $1100.

Still, there were doubts, as the rumors all said that the new laptops would be released October 14th, and here it is October 9 and no announcement of an Apple event. Obligingly, Apple released this announcement just an hour or so ago:

Notably: the date and time for the event is October 14th in San Francisco at 10AM PST.

So, the rumors seem true. If so, then by this time next week we’ll be seeing a whole new line of Apple laptops. The question is, what will there be beyond the cases? Just that? A slightly different form factor but otherwise just a speed bump? Unlikely–Apple releases speed bumps casually, not with big events. Could the casing alone be worth an event? Possibly. More likely the price drop will be the prominent focus.

Some rumors, however, tell of an LCD trackpad. From there, your imagination can run wild.

My current laptop is now about three and a half years old One of the oldest pre-Intel laptops. Already time to buy a new one. No matter what the news, I am almost certainly going to buy one. If it has more than just a new case and a low price, that will be a spiffy bonus. The only question will be, which one?

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The headline blares from Electronista: “Average Mac Price Now 2X Windows PCs.”

According to data collected by the NPD group, the average Windows notebook goes for $700, while the average Apple laptop costs above $1,500, dropping a mere $59 in the last two years. And that’s nothing compared to desktop computers.

The average Mac desktop sells for about $1,000 more than the average PC desktop, which sells for a mere $550.

Oy. Here we go again. First, I was unable to find the “NPD” study data (everybody quotes them, nobody links to them, and the study is not up on their site), so I was unable to find out how the study was weighted–did they weight prices by each single available model, or by the number of each model sold, or what?

That aside, the study is horribly flawed based on one basic point: Apple does not sell dirt-cheap, bare-bones systems. They just don’t make a computer which sports a Celeron or Sempron CPU and cut corners in a lot of places. They start at the mid-range level. As I tell my students, if you want a really cheap computer, go with a Windows PC. But that does not mean that Macs and PCs of the same quality have a 2-to-1 price ratio. They’re averaging prices of cheapo units to mid-level units–not very honest or accurate. That does not take value into consideration at all.

The second flaw is the lack of attention to details, if not outright fabrications:

…a Dell Inspiron 518 tower nearing the $700 mark features two more processor cores, three times as much memory, and twice the hard drive space of an $1,199 entry-level iMac despite both coming with near-equivalent LCDs.

If you check out Dell’s web site, the Inspiron mentioned starts at $724, for the bare-bones version. No monitor, no WiFi, no antivirus, no webcam. Add these little details and the price jumps to $1173, slightly more than the $700 suggested. Then there’s the issue of “two more processor cores, three times as much memory, and twice the hard drive space.” They’re right about the cores (more on that below), but the basic Inspiron 518 has a 320 GB HDD and 2 GB of memory; the iMac has a 250 GB HDD and 1 GB of memory. So, not quite. Upgrade the Mac to match the HDD and RAM, and it’s $1349, less than %15 more expensive, not 50%. Wait for the next iMac release and all of those discrepancies will likely disappear–or the Mac might actually wind up being cheaper.

In fact, that brings up another dishonesty in the comparison: the article uses a brand-new, just-released Windows PC taking advantage of the latest CPU releases and component price decreases, and compares it to a Mac which has not been upgraded in a while. The next iMac will very likely have quad-core CPUs, and will follow the trend in other Mac lines to have 2GB RAM minimum, not to mention a 320 GB or better HDD.

Also not to mention that with a Mac, your machine will likely break down less, and tech support will be far better. Installs and maintenance will take far less of your time (what is that worth?), and you won’t have to fret about keeping malware away or keeping your antivirus up to date. Plus, the Inspiron is a big, fat box, while the iMac has an attractively slim footprint. Not to mention that the Mac runs a far superior OS. In the end, even at the current price differences, the Mac is still probably a better value. Especially in notebooks, which is why Macs are selling like hotcakes in that category.

So if you see one of the stories saying how Macs are prohibitively expensive, remind them that these overblown, biased hit pieces are a common occurrence and should just be ignored.

Stumble it!

Apple has a huge hit in the iPhone 3G, which is selling out worldwide. The App Store is just as big a hit. iPod sales are still up, so no cannibalization by the iPhone. And Macs are selling like hotcakes, with Apple market share shooting up, sales and profits bigger than ever before, beating expectations. And Apple has “several new products” that will be released in the next few months, including some ultra-cool new gadget that’s still hush-hush.

So how does the market react? Apple’s stock tumbles 11%, down $17 per share after hours.

Why? Because Apple said it’s current quarter might not be as good as expected. Which is what Apple says pretty much every quarter, and every time they do better than expected.

Maybe it’s just the shaky market in general making speculators nervous, but I swear that these guys are economic hypochondriacs–if they got news that their heart is in great condition, their blood pressure excellent, their respiratory and digestive systems A-OK, and the doc gives them a life expectancy of 110… but the doc mentions that they should cut down on fatty foods, just to be safe, they’d burst a blood vessel panicking.

Stumble it!

This afternoon, I got the call I’d been waiting for: SoftBank called to arrange an appointment to pick up our phones. After some procedural stuff, we arranged for a meeting time of 4:00 pm on Friday, just four hours after the release time for the store. I would have made it earlier, but earlier this semester, before the iPhone for Japan had been announced, I had happened to schedule a special workshop class for the 11th at 1:00 pm. So 4:00 it is.

Getting the appointment is a nice relief: it means I won’t have to wait in the long lines at the store. Officially, you’re not supposed to get appointments; Apple and/or SoftBank demand that you come to the store and wait in lines, probably as a marketing display to show off the item’s popularity. But a few SoftBank stores, apparently fully independently, made promises on the first day or two to take reservations–that’s when I dropped by, and got on the list. Although I heard one report of a store canceling its reservations, I heard of at least one other that did not, and when I asked a few weeks ago, the store I signed up at said that although they stopped taking reservations, they would not cancel the one’s they’d made. True to their word, they are honoring the arrangements they promised a month ago. That puts me at a great advantage over the people who have been spending days in line–but I think those people would wait in line like that just to be able to (a) get the iPhone a few hours earlier, and (b) claim to their friends that they were among the first to get the devices.

One catch: they said they didn’t have black 16 GB iPhones. I’ll ask again the day we get them, but they seemed to be saying that the black ones were either immediately unavailable or were already spoken for–but they had white ones. Frankly, the color isn’t quite that important to me, and does have the distinguishing characteristic of denoting a less common model/color, but if I had a choice, I’d go for the black one. Still, there is one other advantage: Sachi will have the black 8 GB model, and this will make it easier to tell the phones apart.

Sachi, by the way, is claiming no great interest in the iPhone, but will get one just to stay on the same plan. Still, when I showed her the Apple video in Japanese demoing the phone, she was very interested in some features, especially the map feature. Nevertheless, I’m pretty certain that if I were not getting one, even knowing the features, she would probably stick with what she’s got.

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I guess I should have expected it, seeing as how so many Japanese people line up for days waiting for the next iteration of the latest gaming system, but I was still a bit surprised when I heard that lines have started to form in front of the Omote-Sando and Shibuya branches of SoftBank four days in advance of the release of the iPhone. I mean, in New York, people started lining up a week before, and it’s just a version upgrade to them, so I guess this is not a big thing. Still, it’s nice to see if not popular interest yet, then at least intense fanboy interest.

Some of the people near the front of the line are doing a streaming video live blog from their position in line. They do stuff like interview people and generally gab. For the first hour or so of broadcast this morning, all they did was show this guy’s crotch, so I didn’t really hang around for long.

But since then, whenever I checked back, they were doing something or other a bit more interesting to say the least. It looks like they’re showing the interviews with all the media people who are doing stories about them.

Sorry, but even for a strident Mac fan like me, these people are nuts.

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There’s a story hitting the news wires: the Mac has hit an all-time high of 7.95% market share, more than ever before, with the impression being of an immediate upward trend for Apple. Last year at about this time, some clueless tech writer at Computerworld wrote that the Mac OS was flailing while Vista showed robust growth, using the exact same source of stats that the new story uses (Net Applications’ tracking data). I wrote a blog post explaining in detail why this guy was full of it. Both stories–the one that was negative about Macs last year and the one which is positive about Macs this year–are wrong, and for similar reasons.

Yes, a new all-time high about Mac use is nice to hear, but not impressive to me right now. The reason: it’s not Mac season yet. I have noticed a pattern over the past three years–here’s the data over that period of time:

The areas filled in with green show sustained growth. See a pattern? Every year, starting in September, there is a sustained growth burst that continues until January. Between February and August, there are minor fluctuations, but the market share generally remains static.

The growth spurts are dramatic–less than 1% growth in terms of total market share in late ‘05 (but that was bigger in terms of percentage of growth over the existing brand market share), 2% in late ‘06, and close to 1.5% in late ‘07. But right now we’re in the lull period.

Not to mention that the larger rise took place in May, not June (which was only a slight uptick from May), which was not really reported on. And if you look back, for some reason, there has always been a peak around April or May, so this is not a surprise. The safe bet is that the number will fall again in July and/or August, but then take off again in September, as always–probably representing back-to-school sales which create the growth spurt which lasts into Christmas sales, dying out soon afterwards.

Now, I’ll be surprised if the numbers continue to grow before September; that would be unusual, and could signal a bigger-than-usual surge in the latter third of the year. But right now, it’s not clear how big that surge will be. Yes, the iPhone 3G is making waves, but the original iPhone was making even bigger waves a year ago. While the current spurt trend–only two data points long–shows a slowing increase (2% to 1.5%), that’s less a trend than it is just a couple of data points. The surge this year could be anywhere from a 1% increase up to about 9%, or a 2% increase again up to 10%.

The only thing I’m pretty sure of is that there will be a surge–that’s the safe bet. And if you take a look at Apple stock, you’ll see a similar trend: a general pattern of big increases in the latter half of the year, with slower growth, decreases, and/or volatility in the first half.

That graph is less clear-cut, but you’ll notice that the biggest increases, especially when you discount the drop-and-recover beginning of 2008, always fall in the second half of the year, peaking over the new year, and then dropping or at least slowing. But since 2003, there’s never been a value drop between June and December.

Those seem pretty clearly to be the golden months for Apple.

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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.

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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.

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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 8GB 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!

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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.

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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.”

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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….

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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?

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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.

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