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Dining Out With Your iPhone for Valentine's Day
If you haven’t looked at your iCal recently, we’re less than a week away from Valentine’s Day and if you haven’t made your dining plans yet, time’s running out. Pull out your iPhone and let’s look at apps that will help you with your culinary plans.

Zagat is one of the best known sources for finding the best restaurant for any special night. Zagat's printed guide is what your parents or grandparent’s used before they had the internet and initially I was skeptical of an iPhone app based on such an outdated and analog approach. However, I’m glad I took a look. ZAGAT TO GO ($9.99) is perfect for finding a great place to eat. Restaurants are ranked on a 0-30 scale based on food, decor and service. Each entry includes key data about the restaurant such as price, location and features, and when applicable, the website and a link to OpenTable to make a reservation. In select metro markets such as New York, Paris and San Francisco, the app walks you through a series of questions to find the perfect restaurant based on scenarios such as (using a type of date as an example) first date, “dating,” anniversary or break-up. One downside of Zagat is that there are very few entries for smaller cities.

For information junkies looking for crowd-sourced reviews, the Yelp (Free) app is the market leader. Yelp is especially good in smaller and medium-sized cities where apps like Zagat's do not have much of a presence. In big cities, Yelp's information can be simply overwhelming. One of San Francisco’s famous restaurants, The Slanted Door, had over 2000 detailed reviews. Light reading anyone? In my hometown market of Kansas City, with reviews numbering in two to three digit range, the app was much more useful. Since it’s free, you’ve got nothing to lose here.

Alternatively, UrbanSpoon (Free)and Google Places (Free) aggregate information from multiple sources in order to help you make a balanced choice about where to dine. They give you a general score and then allow you to drill down to detailed reviews from other restaurant sites and even local food blogs. Google Places is location based, as the name suggests. It’s best for “what’s nearby” rather than as an advanced research tool to find the ideal place to eat. UrbanSpoon has location based options, but also allows you to browse places not nearby as well as adding additional search criteria such as type of food, vegetarian, gluten-free, and so on.

If you want more specialized selections then even UrbanSpoon provides, there are diet-specific dining apps such VegOut ($2.99 — vegan and vegetarian), Kosher ($4.99 — Kosher dining) and CeliacFeed (Free — gluten-free). Not only will you pick a great place to eat, but you'll get bonus points for considering your Valentine’s specific dining requirements!

Whichever app you use, it’s time to start your research now as restaurants fill up quickly for Valentine’s Day. Of course, these apps work great year-round, so there's never a bad time to take that special someone out to eat with your iPhone! If you find Valentine's Day dinners too overwhelming, my personal tip is go to lunch instead of dinner. Slipping out of your busy day to spend time with the person you care about is very rewarding — and reservations are much easier to get.
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iPad 2 Said to Now Be In Production; Here's Why I Believe It
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Apple has begun production on the iPad 2, according to “people familiar with the matter.” The next-generation tablet from Apple will be thinner and lighter, with a faster processor, more memory and a better graphics processor, according to the source.

Keeping track of iPad rumors is tough, but there are a few sources that are almost always worth paying attention to. One of those is the Journal, where Apple has been known to intentionally leak advance product information in the past. In fact, immediately preceding the announcement of the first iPad, the WSJ ran an article confirming the device’s existence and promising a January announcement and March release (this ended up falling in early April, but late March could’ve been the original target). Following that announcement, former Apple marketing manager John Martellaro wrote about how such articles were often examples of “controlled leaks” employed by Apple to intentionally bolster interest in its upcoming products. Martellaro said that Apple will contact “trusted friend[s]” at major news outlets. The WSJ article announcing the original iPad’s existence was co-written by Yukari Iwatani Kane, as was the one published today discussing the iPad 2.

This definitely feels like an intentional leak, since it’s light on details, busts some of the loftier expectations floating around (no high-res display or Sprint/T-Mobile compatibility) and mainly re-treads established anticipated features (front-facing camera for FaceTime). It also doesn’t mention any specific dates or timeline for release, but if Apple is beginning production now, a March or April release is most likely, which is in keeping with a one-year update cycle and existing rumors.

One thing that’s conspicuously absent from the WSJ’s description of the iPad 2 is a rear-facing camera. Maybe Apple is of the opinion that it isn’t much use on a 10-inch tablet. What do you think? Would a single, front-facing camera on the iPad 2 disappoint?

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Google Translate Comes to the iPhone with Text-to-Speech
Google today released an official iOS version of its Google Translate app. The application is a free download, and lets you translate more than 50 languages through text-based input, or up to 15 by speaking into your device. The app can also read translated sentences aloud using a synthesized voice in 23 different languages.

The app features a minimalist interface with the same barebones design I’ve come to expect from official Google apps, and it works particularly well with Translate, since you’ll probably be using it most quickly while trying to communicate in unfamiliar surroundings. Developers clearly had this scenario in mind when the designed the app’s translated text box, which displays the phrase in a fairly large font. You can even tap an icon to expand the translated phrase to take up the full screen in landscape mode, making it perfect for showing to others.

Google Translate also provides the ability to star favorite or frequently used phrases for quick access, and a dictionary component that will show alternate phrasings that convey the meaning of your phrase more accurately, despite not being exact translations. The synthesized voice actually pronounces things pretty well, at least in English and French, the only two languages I can understand, and it recognized even my mumble-speak in both languages with little difficulty, though my rusty French resulted in the occasional strange guess on the part of the software.

In short, while it can’t translate text via photo like Word Lens, it does a great job with basic conversation and informational communication, and would’ve been great to have when I lived in Japan. This is a must-download for tourists and friendly strangers alike.

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How the Mac App Store Can Become Truly Transformative
One of the sleeper features of the Mac App Store was Apple's new approach to "suite" products. Instead of forcing users to upgrade the entire iLife suite, applications are available as individual purchases. Is this a taste of things to come in OS X 10.7? Could this approach even make it possible to upgrade Lion via the App store? I hope so. Here’s why.

While the DVD for Snow Leopard has a full suite of potential drivers, developer apps, and localizations, the average Mac users needs very little of that. For the first time, Apple decided not to install a standard set of print drivers in Leopard, but install only those for printers directly connected to the Mac at the time of install. If you change to a different printer, Snow Leopard will offer to download the latest driver. Similarly, Rosetta is not installed by default, but can be installed on demand upon running an application that requires it. Nice! Ironically, Windows has had that driver on demand install function for some time.

In fact, Windows 7 takes it one step further by allowing you to install some of its features and applications on demand. You can even upgrade to different versions of Windows 7 directly from within the operating system. While these are just different flavors of Windows 7, they do add many features and utilities.

Now that the App Store will be included on every new Mac, I’d love to see the day where I can install and add features on demand via the App Store directly from Apple. As many of us move to faster yet smaller SSD drives, space again becomes an issue. Even if space isn’t an issue, I want to be empowered as a user to install exactly what I want on my Mac and not have Apple’s entire suite pushed upon me. I’m one of those who reformats their Mac the minute they take it home so that way I decide exactly what is and isn’t on the machine.

For example, Garageband is a great program for some people. For me, it’s a waste of space. I don’t need it, nor do I ever expect to. Instead of installing it on my Mac and forcing me to remove it along with all the support files taking up space on my disk, give me the option to install it via the App Store. The same holds true for programs that have commercial or shareware equivalents. If I’m a Microsoft Office 2011 user than why waste the space and cause confusion with Apple Mail, Address Book and iCal? Sure, allow me to install it from the App Store if I so choose, but give me the option. Do I really need twenty languages installed when I only speak U.S. English?

Moreover, by using the App Store to unbundle applications from the OS, system updates won’t be the behemoths they’ve become. Instead, use the App Store structure to update non-core OS items, saving us all time and empowering us to update only what we want.

If the OS is stripped to its core and doesn’t include the localizations, drivers, and extras included on the typical upgrade DVD, Lion, could in theory, be an “in place” upgrade available from the App Store, also making it convenient to reinstall when you have a problem. Whether users would have burn a DVD, run it off a RAM disk, or a USB stick — I’ll leave that to the engineers. Resellers would hate this approach, but it would help Apple’s environmental reputation and eliminate useless production, packaging and transportation costs.

The Mac App Store is transformative, and Apple should allow it be even more so by allowing the user to install, on demand, exactly what they want on their Mac — including an OS upgrade.

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Apple Loses Ground to Android, but the App Store Still Dominates
New information from comScore shows Android extending its lead over Apple’s iPhone during the three month period ending in December 2010. Google’s mobile OS is now within close striking distance of Research In Motion (RIM), the U.S. smartphone market leader. Yet despite its growing presence, Android is still having a much tougher time selling apps to consumers than Apple.

Android now accounts for 28.7 percent of the U.S. smartphone market, up 7.3 points from the previous three month period, which ended in September of 2010. Apple saw only a 0.7 point gain, jumping from 24.3 to 25.0 percent during the same period. Both companies edged closer to BlackBerry maker RIM, which dropped 5.7 percentage points from 37.3 to 31.6 percent.

Google’s OS also recently overtook Nokia to become the top smartphone platform worldwide, according to research firm Canalys. But Android’s global reach only tells half the story. The other half is revealed in another new study, detailing global mobile broadband traffic. Network firm Allot Communications released its report on smartphone internet usage Tuesday, collecting information from upwards of 210 million subscribers. The report revealed that Apple’s App Store accounted for 89 percent of mobile software marketplace traffic during 2010, while the Android Market only accounted for 9 percent. The Android Market’s growth over the course of the year was 177 percent, compared to the App Store’s 54 percent, but that’s still a very wide margin.

Apple’s App Store success is a better measure of how iOS is doing than simple market share alone. Market share is important to companies insofar as it represents a way to attract developers to create applications for their platform, which in turn will attract customers who’ll then buy those applications and feel invested (or locked) in to that OS (for more on this, check out the excellent and more detailed explanation at DiogeneX). Google, despite its mobile market share victories, knows it has a problem when it comes to attracting developers, and when it comes to selling paid apps, which is the key to generating lock-in (and by extension, platform loyalty). That’s why the Android-maker recently unveiled a number of significant changes to the Android Market.

Because the App Store has done so well, so quickly, iOS is far less likely to succumb to an erosion of its user base down the road. People have hundreds of dollars invested in the platform already, and if Allot’s figures are accurate, that’s much more than the average Android user, since iOS users are already more likely to spend on apps than Android ones, and they also spend more time browsing the store. That could be why so many Android (and BlackBerry) users seemed ready and willing to switch to iOS when the iPhone 4 came to Verizon.

Android is cheap, and available on a myriad of devices and carriers. Apple’s iOS device pricing is more or less fixed, fairly expensive and it really comes on only two distinct models of smartphone. And depending on your location, it might not be available on your preferred network. So yes, Android’s growth was bound to explode, but that doesn’t erase or run counter to Apple’s steady progress. Once again, Apple is making the long-term play, and the App Store is the key to that gambit, not worldwide platform adoption.

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Is the Gemalto SIM Actually for a Dual-Mode iPhone 5?
The Verizon iPhone 4 got the tear-down treatment today, revealing a Qualcomm Gobi chip that is both GSM and CDMA compatible. Since the Verizon iPhone doesn’t have a SIM card slot, it can’t be used on GSM networks, but there’s talk the upcoming iPhone 5 could use the same chip and offer true dual-mode functionality. And the updated smartphone might not even need a smartphone to accomplish this.

The answer may lie in a tweet which is related to the news we broke last year regarding an embedded SIM solution from Gemalto, a company that currently makes SIM and micro SIM cards.

@Lessien

@KevinCTofel @drizzled Crazy speculation but what about those rumors of Gemalto SIM from last summer?

February 7, 2011 1:30 pm via webRetweetReply

What if Apple wasn’t trying to bypass the carriers with the specially-designed hardware SIM, which would be built-in to the iPhone and be programmable to work with the carrier of a customer’s choosing? What if, instead, Apple is planning on doing away with the SIM card tray and multiple versions for the next iPhone, instead introducing one model that can work on both CDMA and GSM networks out of the box?

Based on Stacey’s original description of the Gemalto SIM, this makes a lot of sense. It would still allow users to sign up for and keep contracts with carriers at the time of initial purchase, but when travelling or roaming, a user could simply download an app or configuration setting to swap out carriers as required. Of course, it may mean that iPhones wouldn’t be as easy to lock to a specific carrier as they have been, but in markets outside the U.S., Apple has been selling iPhones unlocked off-contract since the introduction of the iPhone 4 anyway. Now that it’s opened up competition in the U.S., it might have enough leverage to make this happen.

A dual-mode iPhone 5 would also decrease Apple’s supply chain costs in the long run, and make the phone usable in a number of previously unreached international markets, too. CDMA isn’t nearly as popular as GSM internationally, but there are markets where it on fairly equal footing with GSM. Apple would be gain significantly from selling a phone in these markets with network interoperability.

Finally, it’s worth considering that Apple’s design preferences tend towards fewer and fewer outward protrusions and ports on the device’s surface. Steve Jobs and Jonny Ive would jump at the chance to make the iPhone’s minimalist lines even cleaner. And by removing the SIM slot, Apple could have more design room to fit additional components or utilize extra space for a larger battery.

If Apple wants to make a splash with the next iPhone with under the hood changes, this is definitely one that would do it.

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The Future of Mac Might Leave Many Americans Behind

Short a port for most Americans

Rumors of boxed software leaving Apple Stores and Apple’s push of the Mac App Store shows the company doesn’t think we need to install software via optical media anymore. There’s even a rumor that Apple may be ditching optical drives in the next MacBook Pro refresh and moving to a disc-less model that allows for thinner casings and larger batteries.

There’s also the fact that not a single Mac or iOS device ships with a dial-up modem port and a growing number of Apple devices include Wi-Fi (not Ethernet) as the only connectivity option. If you don’t have a wireless router, you’re just not going to be able get online (without third-party peripherals).

Yet, two-thirds of Americans are not using actual broadband internet service. In fact, the FCC states that 31 percent of Americans who have access to broadband won’t adopt it due to lack of need or a general fear of technology. Pew Internet Research found that over half of Americans don’t think broadband is worth it. This discovery stands out:

The report also finds that the 21 percent of American adults who are not online have little interest in going online: about half (48 percent) don't find online content relevant to their lives, and six out of ten non-users would need assistant using computer or the Internet. Only about one in ten expressed any interest in starting to use the Internet.

Apple is often at the cutting edge of tech trends, but that means there is a market of users who want Apple devices in their lives but can’t have them because they’re not on a broadband internet connection. I was on a part time dial-up connection (capped by the hour) until 2005 when I moved to an area that had broadband, and my life as a Mac owner included a weekly visit to the library to do software updates and upload photos. The average consumer will probably just opt for a Windows device with built-in dial-up connectivity instead of making the trek.

Readers may note that the Mac’s price range means that most users willing to spend $999+ for a laptop likely already have broadband access. Some, however, especially older consumers, just don’t need broadband access, but would love to be able to take advantage of Apple’s reputation for quality and excellent design.

Apple devices don’t show your connection speed or bother you much about router connection problems. That’s because Apple makes an assumption that if you’re using its devices, you have a connection that can handle it. But, for Americans (and those in international emerging markets) without broadband, the Apple experience won’t be nearly the same as for those who do have it. While Apple is eliminating optical drives on their Macs, removing boxed software from retail stores and assuming we buy all our music via iTunes, a large number of people are going to be left out of this party, wondering why their purchase of iLife ’11 is taking 5 days to complete.

Is Apple missing the boat by ignoring these customers, or is the fact that some are getting left behind just a necessary part of Apple’s forward-looking product design roadmap?

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Verizon's Day One Sales May Have Exceeded 500K
Early speculation was that Verizon’s day one pre-order sales were somewhere in the order of 100,000 devices, but JPMorgan analyst Phil Cusick (via The Street) thinks the real figure could be more than five times larger, with over 500,000 sold. Verizon broke its previous record in only two hours, which was held by the Motorola Droid which saw 100,000 total sales in a single day on Nov. 6, 2009.

Cusick’s estimates for Verizon’s iPhone sales are based on the fact that the provider and Apple continued to take orders for another 15 hours after the record set by Motorola’s Android-powered device was broken, and on the pace of sales he’s established from that information. The Verizon iPhone should easily continue to outpace the Motorola Droid’s performance once it officially goes on sale beginning 3 A.M. this Wednesday, Feb. 10., putting it on track to becoming the best-selling handset ever offered on Verizon’s network.

500,000 pre-order sales would put the Verizon iPhone 4 nearly on pace with the original GSM version of Apple’s latest smartphone, which sold 600,000 during its initial pre-order run with AT&T back in June of 2010. Recall that all of Verizon’s orders to date have been limited to existing customers, and it becomes evident that once it opens up sales to new customers, the Verizon iPhone 4 could easily catch up to and surpass the launch-time performance of its AT&T predecessor, despite the hardware having already been on the market for eight months at this point. Android’s market share may be growing, but there’s no single Android device that has that kind of power with consumers.

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Shareholders Should Be Satisfied With Apple Succession Plan
Investors are demanding a succession plan from Apple following Steve Jobs’ most recent medical leave, which began Jan. 17. Most recently, the call for disclosure got louder thanks to support from shareholder advisory group Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS).

The ISS’ statement, included on a proposal to be voted on at Apple’s general company meeting on Feb. 23, reads as follows:

ISS believes that shareholders would benefit by having a report on the company’s succession plans disclosed annually. Such a report would enable shareholders to judge the board on its readiness and willingness to meet the demands of succession planning based on the circumstances at that time.

It sounds like a fair and reasonable request, but that’s what it’s clearly carefully designed to sound like. If you look at what shareholders are really asking for, stripped of well-chosen wording, it becomes much less easy to swallow, for Apple’s corporate management, and hopefully, for Apple shareholders, too.

Basically, by revealing its plans for succession in firm detail, Apple is endangering the amazing depth of bench it currently enjoys. We reported on that depth in a piece last month detailing the current succession picture at Apple. It’s easy to see why the company would like to keep its plan for who’s in line for the top spot under wraps. Keeping that caliber of talent from looking toward greener pastures is no easy task, and the promise of one day reaching the top spot is one of the few things that can prevent ambitious eyes from wandering. Take that away and you could see the players furthest down on the chart taking flight. Not to mention it basically advertises top talent to competitors, making head hunting easier.

HR concerns aside, a public plan of succession at a major corporation is hardly standard practice. As reported by Digital Daily’s John Paczkowski this morning, only 35 percent of companies even have a succession plan at all, let alone a public one, and Apple is among them. Steve Jobs may carry more weight than the CEOs of other companies, but that’s no reason to go demanding a peek behind the curtain.

A 2010 survey on CEO succession planning conducted by the Stanford Graduate School of Business found that generally speaking, medium and large cap companies spend very little time on succession planning. On average, boards of directors spend about two hours a year on plans for CEO succession, and only 50 percent even have a document detailing what they’d be looking for in a successor. Sixty-five percent of firms haven’t even asked their internal candidates whether they want the job or not, and only 54 percent are doing any grooming of succession candidates. Simply put, succession planning isn’t generally a priority at most companies.

Apple’s shareholders are clearly more nervous than those of most other companies about what will happen to the company once current CEO Jobs is gone, but they shouldn’t be. More than any other company it its space, Apple has demonstrated its ability to succeed in the short-term while always planning for the long haul. The iPod, the iPhone, the iPad and the App Store are all prime examples of Apple anticipating the curve and taking advantage in a way that left its competitors scrambling to catch up. A much more specific and fresh example is Apple’s stance regarding e-books and in-app subscriptions. In both cases, it created a perfect honey trap for content providers, initially offering free platform access while quietly laying the groundwork for staking a claim on publisher and distributor profits down the road. It’s the kind of five-steps-ahead thinking that no one else in the consumer electronics space can compete with, and it’s an integral part of Apple’s culture, so there’s no way it applies only to products and not to internal management processes.

Transparency in the corporate world is generally spoken of as a good thing, but in Apple’s case, that might not be the case. With perfect transparency, there’s no way Apple would’ve achieved the level of success it has today. The cult of secrecy surrounding the company’s product plans is one of the primary reasons media outlets like this one even exist, and why an Apple press event commands the attention it does, while one from Asus or HP barely raises an eyebrow. If shareholders are happy with the company’s performance, they shouldn’t go messing with the formula that enabled its success in the first place.

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More iPad 2 Rumors: Carbon Fiber, 7-inch, Stylus Support
The surest sign that an iPad 2 launch is near is that the rumor mill surrounding the as-yet unannounced device is in overdrive. Over the weekend, at least five rumors surfaced about Apple’s next iPad, including a possible new size, support for a stylus, and a more specific release timeline.

The “Tweener” Won’t Die

Apple is on record as saying that the 7-inch form factor for tablets is a bad idea, since it falls in the middle of the 10-inch and 4-inch or so sweet spots established by the iPad and smartphone devices. But a source talking to iLounge revealed that an iPad component maker has been asked by Apple to develop a part for a 7-inch iPad model. While that’s enough to suggest Apple might not have put the smaller form factor to rest just yet, I don’t think it’ll result in a shipping 7-inch iPad 2. But, depending on how the market develops in 2011, a diminutive iPad 3 definitely isn’t outside of the realm of possibility.

Carbon Fiber Body

No, I’m not talking about an upgraded street racer. The latest scuttlebutt, which echoes earlier rumors, is that iPad 2 will have a carbon fiber case, reducing weight and improving flexibility. Though maybe not quite as good looking as aluminum, this would be a welcome change for users like me who aren’t particularly tied to using cases and who have been known, on occasion, to drop or ding their beautiful Apple hardware. Again according to iLounge’s source, Apple is already testing out carbon fiber cases with the iPad 2, but they might not make it to market, since aluminum versions are also being tested.

Stylus Support

As many will know, the iPad currently does support a very special kind of stylus. I use a Pogo Sketch, but there are a wide variety available for use with capacitive touchscreens which use a soft, electrically conducive material about the width of a pencil to emulate a finger. It’s not a perfect solution, in the way a Wacom tablet with pressure sensitivity is, but it does the job. Patently Apple found a patent for a pen stylus with a greater degree of accuracy designed specifically for iPad-style screens. The stylus described in the patent uses a built-in accelerometer and other sensors to make it pressure sensitive, and enable motion-generated contextual commands. The patent was originally filed in 2008, however, so while iPad 2 is a convenient target for deployment of such at a tech at the moment, it’s something Apple has had in its pocket for a while now.

RFID/NFC Accessories

We’ve already seen rumors of NFC-capable iPad 2 and iPhone 5 devices, and now iLounge is reporting that those might communicate with NFC-equipped accessories. This would allow connection to happen between devices and the iPad 2 without the need for Bluetooth to be active or pairing to occur. Another possible application described by iLounge would let the iPad 2 automatically enter power-save mode when put inside a case equipped with an RFID tag telling it to do so. If the iPad 2 does get NFC (which isn’t a stretch), these kinds of accessories will no doubt surface, too.

Announcement and Release Date

According to Japanese blog Marcotakara, the iPad 2 will be announced at a event later this month that will be “relatively small” according to its sources. This likely means that it’ll be held on-campus at Apple HQ in Cupertino, but it will probably still be its own dedicated event, unlike what earlier rumors had suggested. And while the announcement is rumored for February, Marcotakara suggests March as the actual release month of the iPad 2. The blog isn’t the only one throwing around possible release dates, however. Unlikely source Elton John has been talking to various media outlets about getting an iPad 2 in April for the purposes of video chatting with his son. He also referred to it as a “Skype iPad,” which suggests that maybe he isn’t the best authority to consult regarding something like the iPad 2.

Right before the official unveil is both my favorite and least favorite time in the Apple product life cycle, since there’s so much speculation circulating to build anticipation, but you also run the risk of getting your hopes up for features that will never ship. What do you guys think? Is all the hype surrounding new products an advantage or disadvantage of being an Apple fan?

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