iPad Name Causing All Sorts Of Negative Press For Apple

Maybe Apple should have picked another name for the iPad?

Let’s start with computer maker Fujitsu who is prepping a lawsuit over Apple’s use of the iPad name:

“It’s our understanding that the name is ours,” Masahiro Yamane, director of Fujitsu’s public relations division, said Thursday. He said Fujitsu was aware of Apple’s plans to sell the iPad tablet and that the company was consulting lawyers over next steps.

Charming. If this sounds vaguely familiar, it should. Cisco sued Apple for using the name iPhone, but later settled out of court which cleared the way for Apple to use it. Perhaps the same thing will happen here? We shall see.

Also, it’s clear that nobody at Apple watches Mad TV as the name iPad was used in a spoof:

Not only that, for a significant portion of yesterday, the word iTampon was one of the top trending topics according to CNN:

“With “iTampon” quickly emerging as a trending Twitter topic, it’s probably safe to say that many women found themselves cringing as they asked, ‘Do any women work at Apple?’ ” wrote Annie Colbert on the blog “Holy Kaw!”

That iSlate name looks better and better as time goes on.

Apple Releases The iPad…. Fanbois Praise Steve Jobs And Joyfully Weep [UPDATED]

The iHype is over. (Or not judging from the Globe And Mail, Toronto Star, and CNN) Introducing the iPad (anybody betting on iSlate as being the name that Apple chose just lost some cash). Here’s what has been announced from a hardware perspective:

• .5 inches thin, 1.5 pounds — 9.7 inch IPS display with full capacitive multitouch
• It’s running a 1GHz Apple “A4″ chip likely developed by P.A. Semiconductor which is owned by Apple
• 10-hour battery life, one month standby time
• 16, 32, and 64GB storage is available
• 30-pin Dock connector
• Speaker and Microphone
• 802.11N, Bluetooth 2.1 EDR and 3G wireless in some models.

Here’s some news for iPhone/iPod Touch developers, the iPad can run iPhone apps either pixel-for-pixel in a window, or pixel-doubled fullscreen. That means that when this thing hits The Temple Of Steve Jobs Apple Stores, you’ll be able to download apps to it right away. Of course a new software development kit that is being released today will help developers tweak their apps to fully exploit the iPad.

The built-in apps look like Mac apps rather than iPhone apps.  You get iPhoto and iTunes that look like touch-oriented versions of their Mac counterparts. Safari is included too, but still no Flash support. WTF Apple? But the big news is that there is a new app called “iBooks” which is an e-book reader. Not only is it an e-book reader, it has it’s own store called the “iBook Store.” Deals have apparently been signed with Harper Collins, Penguin, Macmillan, Simon & Shuster, Hatchett for their book content. More are apparently on the way. Books apparently use the ePub format which is an open standard that might mean that any e-books that you have might be viewable on the iPad. I should also mention that the New York Times has already come out with a iPad specific application. I expect other print media types (newspapers and magazines) to come out with apps that exploit their content.

For those who want to get a bit of work done, there’s a new version of iWork that fully exploits the capabilities of the iPad. Plus they’ve designed a user interface that makes it easy to use. For example, if you’re using Numbers (the iWork spreadsheet app), there’s a keyboard that is Numbers specific. I have to admit that it looks pretty good and it was a nice touch for Apple to add this to the mix.

As for the 3G wireless, Apple has struck a deal with AT&T to have a 250MB data plan at $14.99 a month and a unlimited plan for $29.95 a month. Both plans are no contract with the ability to cancel at any time. Apple hopes to have international partners signed up by June or July, so don’t hold your breath for an iPad with 3G if you’re not in the US. Oh, by the way, this uses the Micro SIM standard. What? You’ve never hard of the Micro SIM standard? Neither have I.

So how much is this going to cost you? The WiFi only versions are (in USD) $499 for 16 GB, $599 for 32 GB, $699 for 64 GB. If you want the 3G + WiFi version, it will cost you $629 for 16 GB, $729 for 32GB, $829 for 64GB. Accessories include a a dock as well as a dock with a keyboard. A case is also available. The iPad is shipping in 60 days for the WiFi only versions and 90 days for the 3G + WiFi versions.

So, does the iPad live up to the iHype that went on for iEver? Please leave an iComment below with your iThoughts.

UPDATE: The QuickTime stream of this event is online.

Rogers And Fido Have News

I have some news from Rogers today. First, Rogers has the BlackBerry Curve 8520 in white available for $49.95 on a three year plan. So if white is your thing, check it out.

The second piece of news comes from Fido. I’ll let my “best friends at Rogers” tell you the news:

Fido has launched the CityFido PrePaid option in nine Canadian cities: Toronto, London, Ottawa/Gatineau, Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver and Victoria.

For $45, Fido customers will get 1,000 in-zone anytime local minutes, unlimited incoming/outgoing SMS messages, call display, voicemail and call waiting.

Out of zone rates and Long Distance will be billed at $0.40 a minute.

You can find additional details, including CityFido zones here. Just click on the first option “The CityFido Prepaid plan”

My sense is that this is a defensive move to entrench themselves against providers such as Wind Mobile. Perhaps we’re starting to see some competition in the Canadian wireless market?

I sense that we’ll see more announcements like this in the near future. Stay tuned.

Mac Anti Virus Vendor Critical Of Mac Security…. Fanbois Despair

I’ve been on pointing out for sometime now that Apple’s supposed superior security has holes in it. Now anti virus vendor Intego has joined the fray by coming out with a report titled “The Year In Mac Security” [WARNING: PDF]. It’s worth a read if you’re a Mac user, but let me hit the highlights for you:

• iPhones that haven’t been jailbroken fare pretty well. And I’ve said before that jailbreaking your iPhone is a bad idea. This report just proves it.
• Apple is criticized for ‘time to fix’ known vulnerabilities. That’s something that I’ve said previously on numerous occasions.
• The biggest risk to Macs are Trojan horses that arrive on your Mac via pirated software.

So if you don’t jailbreak your iPhone, or download pirated software, you have less to worry about. Now if Apple would only crank up the speed at which it fixes vulnerabilities, the world would be a perfect place.

So I Get A Call From A Customer Today….

…. as I do work for his law firm on an ongoing basis. He was calling on behalf of his mother who got a letter from Rogers who provides her with Internet access. Specifically, the Ultra Lite Internet service as she is a senior citizen on a fixed income and doesn’t need a lot of speed to send e-mails and occasionally surf the Internet. The letter basically says that effective March 1, 2010:

• The monthly fee for Ultra Lite is going from $25.99 to $27.99
• The bandwidth cap drops from 60GB to 2GB
• The overage charge for exceeding the above bandwidth cap is $5/GB, with a maximum overage of $50 a month

Now new Ultra Lite customers have been getting a 2GB a month cap for something like a year now, but existing customers were grandfathered. That’s now coming to an end. In a nutshell, Rogers is now going to charge this senior citizen $2 a month more which in itself isn’t great. But price increases never are great and that’s life. The big thing is that they’re going to cut her bandwidth cap by 95%. In short, she gets less for more.

Needless to say, her son was pissed. Why? What he told me was “Rogers is trying to force people on the Ultra Lite tier to move up to the Lite or Express tiers which just happen to have special offers at the moment. Coincidence? I don’t think so. They’re also counting on the fact excessive surfing will cause users of Ultra Lite to go over their caps so that they’re charged the $5 per gigabyte penalty. That tells me that Rogers doesn’t have their customer’s interests in mind, and I don’t think my mother should have to deal with a company like that.”

He then asked me what other options were available in terms of Internet Access. I gave him my standard speech of what DSL providers exist, of which I usually mention two. Teksavvy and Acanac. After getting his mother on the phone, she decided on Teksavvy as she was able to get 5 Mbps downsream/800k upstream service for $29.95 a month, plus the cost of a modem (which can easily be found on Craigslist, assuming that you don’t buy it from the provider). Now she is subject to a 200 gigabyte cap every month, but that’s a significant increase from the 2 gigabytes that Rogers will be offering on March 1st. He found a modem on Craigslist and made arrangements with Teksavvy to get Internet access on her phone line later next week. Once the service is live, I’ll go over and set everything up. His mother has a GMail address, there’s no e-mail to switch, so this should be rather straightforward. Once they have a comfort level with Teksavvy, they will cancel Rogers Ultra Lite Internet.

What’s my view on this issue? I guess it’s similar to what I said about the news that Rogers was increasing their Internet overage fees. Bandwidth isn’t free and ISPs have to account for the different types of users that exist. Sometimes the way that ISPs decide to deal with this issue ticks users off. But I think that Rogers decision to cut the bandwidth cap on their existing Ultra Light customers was likely not the best decision. Counting this customer and the three customers I mentioned in the post about Rogers increasing their overage fees, plus other customer contacts I’ve received on both topics, I am up to 13 customers who aren’t happy with Rogers and are exploring other options for Internet access. To me, that’s not a small number. I should note that ticked off Ultra Lite customers are also showing up in places like DSL Reports and Digital Home Canada. But I’m guessing that ticked off Ultra Lite users are also showing up in the Rogers call center.

I think that Rogers has an opportunity right now to become the “anti-Bell” as many Canadians feel that both Bell and Rogers are evil and they don’t care about their customers. As a result they simply pick the one that is less evil. Rogers has been trying to change that perception of being evil by getting in front of issues by responding to blogs like mine and on Twitter. Heck, they even gave me a one month trial of Rogers Home Phone for me to review which is something that they’ve never done before for anybody. God forbid that Bell Canada would ever do anything like that. But the goodwill created by strategies like those can evaporate with moves like this.

Rogers really needs to rethink this, and fast. Otherwise they may find that this move did more harm than good.

Microsoft Knew About IE Hole For Months….WTF?

Just when I thought I could praise Microsoft for being quick to fix a flaw that existed in IE that allowed Chinese hackers to hack Google among others, I find out that Microsoft had known about this flaw for months:

The software giant had intended to release a patch for the flaw in February — more than four months after learning about it, but had to speed up that plan and role it out this week in the wake of news that Google and others had been hacked through the flaw, the world’s largest software maker acknowledged Thursday.

Well that’s craptastic.

I think this supports the view that some people in the computer security community have that as soon as a flaw is found, the vendor should fix it. If that doesn’t happen in a reasonable amount of time, then the flaw should be publicized with a workaround to protect users. That way the vendor is forced to fix it ASAP. Given what happened in this case, it may be the only way to deal with situations like this to go going forward.

The Rogers Quick Start Guide: I Just Got It And….. [UPDATED]

I don’t hate it, but I’m not in love with it either. Why? Here are my reasons why I don’t like the Quick Start Guide:

• It’s in a 4:3 format. Why not an option for 16:9 for those with widescreens? It would look better.
• I tried going to “What’s On” followed by “TV Mix.” Pressing kids got me a screen with six kids channels on it. The other two (News and Sports) got me a screen saying that I was “Not Authorized” and I had to order them. Perhaps I’m on the wrong cable package or something? It would also be nice if I could build my own display of six channels being displayed on the screen at once.
• Some of the scrolling is slow. Not good from a user experience standpoint. The funny thing is that if you press the Guide button twice, you get to the old channel guide and the scrolling is way faster in that.
• The games that are part of the Quick Start Guide don’t do much for me personally. Rogers might want to replace the games with something else more useful.
• It would be nice to be able to tailor the guide to display the stuff you want to see (like your favorite channels for example).
• If you click “Self Service” and “Need Help?” you get the ability to reboot the Rogers Terminal. There’s no other help other than a technical support number. I think Rogers really missed an opportunity to deflect technical support calls by not doing more with this feature (such as providing access to their knowledge base).
• Give the user the ability to turn the Quick Start Guide off if they desire. That’s not a bad thing as it gives users the ability to control their television experience.

Here’s what I like about it:

• The ability to reboot the box via the remote control is a feature that might come in handy.
• The ability to display the weather forecast in a couple of clicks is handy.

I think at the end of the day Rogers had the right idea, but the implementation wasn’t that great. Hopefully they listen to all the negative feedback in places like Twitter and on this blog and improve this feature so that users actually like it instead of loathe it.

UPDATE: It turns out that the reason why I can’t see anything on the other two TV Mix channels is that I am on the wrong package. You need the VIP Package to see the news and sports TV Mix. It might be of value to not have those TV Mix options displayed if you don’t subscribe to the VIP Package.

Patch To Plug Internet Explorer Hole Is Out Now….. Get It ASAP

Microsoft has begun to roll out the emergency patch that plugs that rather nasty Internet Explorer hole that has been linked to the recent Google hack via Windows Update and Microsoft Update. This security bulletin has all the details that you need to know.  I’m in the midst of installing this update now and I did notice that on my Windows 7 Ultimate VM it flipped the taskbar to the top of the screen after the update. Hmmm… Weird. If anybody else notices anything like that, please leave a comment.

Given the nature of this hole in IE, you should get this patch as soon as you can.

Firefox 3.6 Is Out…. Get Your Copy Now [UPDATED]

Apparently the rumors were true. Firefox 3.6 is out and you can download it from here. The Mozilla blog has all the details of what’s new in this version of Firefox, but here’s the highlights:

• Personas: Personalize the look of your Firefox by selecting new themes called Personas in a single click and without a restart
• Plugin Updater: To keep you safe from potential security vulnerabilities, Firefox will now detect out of date plugins
• Stability improvements: Firefox 3.6 significantly decreased crashes caused by third party software – all without sacrificing our extensibility in any way
• Form Complete: When filling out an online form, Firefox suggests information for fields based on your common answers in similar field
• Performance: Improved JavaScript performance, overall browser responsiveness, and startup time
• Open Video and Audio: With the world’s best implementation of HTML 5 audio and video support, now video can be displayed full screen and supports poster frames

All of this sounds really cool. I’m downloading it now and will be test driving it shortly. As soon as I have some feedback, I’ll post it here.

UPDATE: Firefox 3.6 seems a lot faster. I can’t comment on anything else yet. But the speed increase is well worth it.

Firefox 3.6 To Hit The Streets Tomorrow?

If the Google hack that was helped along by Internet Explorer has you a bit spooked, then you may have an alternative. According to the MozillaWiki, Firefox 3.6 is due to be released tomorrow. Here’s some proof:

One thing to keep in mind is that Firefox 3.6 has been plagued with delays, so it wouldn’t be a shock to see the ship date slip. But on the other hand, it could mean that it’s finally ready and we’ll actually get our hands on it.

Tune in tomorrow to see which it is.