I don’t think this little ditty has top=notch meme high-fidelity, but I would put even money on it showing up on ytmnd in a few weeks.

[via Daring Fireball]

The thing that surprises me the most is that Apple called it an iPhone. I mean, iMac, iPod, I get it. But there’s also a MacBook. And really this little iPhone is just a PocketMac, right? (Though that would be a cliche name at best) Still, with a great partnership with Google why in the world would you want 3rd party BLOATware eating up your precious mobile computer platform’s processing power and memory? You want all that 4 and 8 GB of memory for photos and movies, NOT over-the-top feature-creeped word processors. Google will make all of those boring kinds of programs available through Safari. Think about it, this device runs most Web 2.0 apps right out of the box, in color, with its gorgeous zooming interface. Name another “smart” phone that can do that. Last I checked you couldn’t use flickr on a Crackberry or a Treo. And yet, a portable camera phone that can connect directly to Flickr is going to make A LOT of flickrfolks’ days. Make no mistake, the iPhone is an end run around old school software developers and is a play for web developers. And as far as complaints that it won’t be a good business tool—I’m really not so sure that’s the point. This strikes me as a gadget for the digirati more than meeting monkeys.

Just a note as well, handwriting recognition software called “Inkwell” is built in to the Mac OS X operating system. I’ve used it with a Wacom tablet and it’s ok—not great. They could make improvements to it though, and if their claim that the iPhone is running Mac OS X is true then it’s got Inkwell, too. In fact, Steve Jobs was so in love with the multi-touch interface, it makes me wonder if we won’t see MacBooks without keyboards this year. Anyone who’s really worried about having to type on the screen is either going to be satiated when they actually try an iPhone or is going to have a ton of options from 3rd party peripheral makers—like a virtual keyboard.

The first forms of government and rule began essentially with sharecropping. Farmers did not own the land but rather farmed on it for some landlord who maintained control through force. This was extended into what Alvin Toffler would call the second wave of civilization in which the property owned was extended by the capital necessary to engage in manufacturing. Here again, the laborers did not own the capital and while they did not pay “tithes” Karl Marx argued rather well that the difference between wages and the capital owner’s profits were pretty much tithes.

So here we are in the throes of the third wave of civilization, what has alternately been called the information age or communication age or the computer age and one of the day’s most significant debates is whether ideas can be considered property. To some extent the copyright debate was never really about that. It was about your ability to reproduce someone else’s framing of an idea. The idea was free. I could write about the idea and as long as you didn’t use exactly my words you could write about the idea too.

Gradually the debate is shifting, however, towards the concept of actual intellectual property–that the idea belongs to someone. The mere introduction of the phrase “intellectual property” into the common lexicon has illustrated the true change in the debate. The patenting of software is an important example of this. The debate in the media about music and movie distribution is another facet of the debate.

[Sidebar rant]

Frankly it’s something that really grinds me about CEO pay in the United States. If you listen to a lot of these financial barons (note the similarity in the terminology with regard to a baron with a fife and a financial baron with resources) they seem to think that they have a right to the enormous wealth they’ve gained. I don’t mean they argue that they’ve earned it. They argue that they have a right to it. As I’ve already stated, all property is theft. They have no right to it and the belief that they do helps them to completely igonore the fact that they built their company on the backs of laborers. (This, incidentally is one of the only reasons I’ve ever had to like Microsoft. But in general, the tech sector really has turned over more profits to employees.)

[end rant]

It’s also interesting to note that there is a rising creative class in the US. In Richard Flordia’s book The Rising Creative Class he talks about a large number of Americans that are beginning to make their living off of their ideas. From the jacket: “The author estimates that this group has 38 million members, constitutes more than 30 percent of the U.S. workforce, and profoundly influences work and lifestyle issues.” So if there is a new class of workers coming up in society, wouldn’t it make sense that a new property debate would emerge?

The truth is, throughout history, the owners of property have held sway and control over those who did not and the current debate about intellectual property is crucial because it will ultimately determine who has control over the domain of your mind. None of us should underestimate the desires of some to attain that level of control. We have territorial instincts that are balanced only by our ability to maintain resources for survival. Remove limitations on that balance through the use of technology and some humans will exemplify the maximum of their instinctive greed (and greed and greed).

Technorati tags: intellectual property, creative class, economics, copyright, anti-corporate

All you have to do is look at Microsoft’s track record. Netscape introduces javascript. People start using it. Microsoft “sort of” implements it and introduces ActiveX. The same thing happened with the DOM and CSS originally. Microsoft implemented it differently than other browsers and brought most DHTML developement to a stop. To me, the only clear-cut difference between DHTML and AJAX is the XML element, allowing pages to be updated dynamically without a refresh. Are we all so sure that Microsoft won’t try to break this?

Most developers will answer that, “If they do that, there will be an uproar among developers.” Yeah, so? That’s exactly what developers originally did in regard to web standards. It didn’t (IMHO) change a thing really. Developers have to recognize that Microsoft’s IE is the undisputed browser king. No ajax application seems to be changing that fact and increasing some other browser’s market share. And if someone like Google becomes enough of a threat (perhaps by introducing a Google-flavored version of Firefox) it is not beyond Microsoft to change some aspect of the DOM (embrace and extend anyone?) that allows their Ajax apps to work fine but breaks everyone else’s.

I think Microsoft would have to do something far more drastic to break Flash. And as many people have begun to recognize, Flash is really just a different implementation of the same principles that Ajax is trying to establish. No, it’s not open source, but Macromedia has done nothing to create any paranoia about that. (Of course, Adobe is another story.)

Furthermore, as Alexander Kirk points out on his blog, all of this talk about development within the browser ignores what can be done out of the browser. Consider iTunes or Apple’s Widgets. Sure we can build applications within the browser but we can also development applications that are just as readily plugged into the web and provide more robust, faster interfaces. You COULD do the iTunes music store as an AJAX application, but given how it’s built-in to the jukebox portion of iTunes, why would you?

All in all I wish Ajax the best. I will certainly endeavor to use the simpler aspects of it to create more responsive forms and the like, but for the heavy lifting I’ll stick with Flash. I don’t want to rain on anyone’s parade here, I just feel that history has taught that a healthy dose of skepticism towards Microsoft’s actions in the community has never hurt.

Update [8:45pm Eastern]: William Blaze has an even lower opinion of the Web 2.0/Ajax crowd than I do.

Technorati Tags: ajax, usability, dhtml, microsoft, web 2.0

Personalization on this level is the true threat to the Nike’s and Mircosoft’s of the world. Microsoft? Yes. The open source movement and its myriad of projects and haxt0r names is what is giving Microsoft a run for its money. Nike has had the brains to let anyone do this sort of thing to their products. They damn near had me snared until I saw the $100 price tag. Sorry. I don’t pay $100 for shoes. Those kinds of prices are a direct result of corporatism and a lack of competition. Besides it doesn’t take a lot of research to find out that it will literally cost Nike about $10 to make those shoes. That kind of markup is for suckers. I’d much rather make my own shoes and not be a billboard for Nike. But then, if I were to don a pair of black spot shoes from adbusters, wouldn’t I just be a different type of billboard? That’s the point that adbuster is missing. You can’t fight fire with fire in this case. The corps have you outgunned.

You seem to be in a firefight with Muslim extremists! Would you like to:

• Hit the dirt?
• Blow away Mohammed?
• Ask George Bush why 1317 days after 9/11, Osama bin Laden still hasn’t been captured, even though we’ve given the Iraqis “The Gift of Democracy”?
• Surrender your essential liberties for a little temporary security?