Friday, June 3, 2011

TheAppleBlog — Apple and iOS News, Tips and Reviews (10 сообщений)

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  • Getting Ready for WWDC 2011

    There’s nothing quite like attending Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco at the Moscone Center. To gather with five thousand like-minded individuals at a conference devoted to a subject you’re passionate about, and to hear first-hand about new tech from the engineers that built it is amazing. Here’s what lucky attendees should do to make the most of next week.

    Prepare Your OS X and iOS Devices. Ensure that you’re running the latest versions of all your operating systems and apps. If you’re planning on upgrading to OS X Lion (which may arrive as early as next week), you may want to make a clone of your current OS in advance.

    Beyond your own array of travel software, there are two iOS apps you’ll want to install. Apple’s own WWDC 2011 conference schedule app, and the WWDC 2011 Party List app. That way you’ll have both business and pleasure covered.

    Plan on Visiting the Apple Company Store in Cupertino. There’s only one place in the world to get officially licensed Apple swag, at the Apple Company Store in Cupertino. Sometimes there are bus tours that will take you there, but you may just have to split cab fare, get a one day rental or take the Caltrain down to 1 Infinite Loop.  On Sunday June 5, the store will be open exclusively for WWDC attendees from 12-5 PM PDT.

    Pay Attention to Wi-Fi Usage and Battery Life. Last year at WWDC, my iPhone battery was the first to go, followed by my MacBook, and finally my iPad.  There are plenty of power outlets all over the place, and I kept my Mac plugged in most of the time.  I kept a pair of JustMobile Gum Pro chargers on hand throughout the conference. Wi-Fi access was fine, but don’t discount the Ethernet ports in the main dining hall. The raw speed they provide is great, especially when downloading something as large as the latest release of Xcode.

    Get Up Extra Early for the Keynote. Every year, people start lining up for the keynote presentation earlier.  Last year I met with the individual who has been first in line several years running; he may be in line now, in fact. But to ensure a seat in the main lecture hall, think about arriving at Moscone West by 3 AM PDT this year.  If you get there after 7 AM, you may end up in one of the overflow rooms, and be forced to watch the keynote on a large projection screen.

    Focus on the Labs, Not the Lectures. The lectures are great, but the labs are even better. Since the conference sold out so quickly this year, it’s very likely that the lectures will be made available to registered Apple developers again this year. So access to Apple’s engineering staff in the Labs is a far more valuable experience than attending a lecture. Last year I spent two hours in one lab alone going over all the intricate details of how to use the various instruments in Xcode.

    Take Notes on the Mac, Not the iPad. Resist the urge use your iPad when taking notes and make sure to use SubEthaEdit on the Mac instead.  This is a collaborative note taking editor that has become popular at events like WWDC, and enables individuals to share note-taking duties. In fact, you can even monitor notes being taken in another lecture while you sit attend a different one.

    Got any other tips for WWDC attendees?

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  • What We Want in iOS 5, and What We'll Likely Get

    WWDC 2011 is just around the corner, and that means we won’t have to wait long before we see what Apple’s latest major update for its mobile operating system has in store. iOS 5 is sure to pack a few powerful surprises, but here’s a list of things we can expect, as well as things we’d like to see.

    Good Bets

    I’m not a betting man, but if I were, I’d put money on just a scant few changes for iOS 5. It’s not that I don’t think iOS 5 will bring big changes; in fact, it should be one of the most significant updates for Apple’s mobile OS since its introduction, due to increased competition from Android and the possibility we won’t see any new iPhone hardware Monday. But Apple has done a good job of keeping a tight lid on any details about iOS 5, so there’s precious little to base predictions on.

    New Notifications. Apple will probably change the way notifications work and appear on iOS. I argued a while ago that Apple’s notification system was perfectly adequate for most users in its existing form, but as competition grows in the mobile space, they’re starting to look decidedly old-fashioned. Apple will change how they work, but what changes are in store remain up in the air. Look for a central notification history screen, at the very least, so they aren’t lost to the ether once dismissed as they are now. iOS app Boxcar provides a pretty good example of how better native notifications could work.

    iCloud Integration. Apple is unveiling a suite of cloud services bundled under the iCloud trademark. It stands to reason we’ll see iCloud hooks built-in to iOS itself, and an iOS-style icon spied on a banner at the WWDC venue seems to reinforce that assumption. iCloud integration in iOS 5 could be what those early rumors of Photo Stream and Media Stream features are all about, and will likely handle syncing up your digital life via email, contacts and calendars as well. Look out for some surprising additional x-factor features, too, since Apple has to make a big splash with iCloud to make it a runaway success.

    AirDrop. This is an announced OS X Lion feature that lets Mac users automatically and easily share files with other AirDrop-enabled computers nearby, without setup. So far, Apple hasn’t said anything about AirDrop coming to iOS devices, but easy wireless file sharing between devices is something iOS users have been looking for in third-party apps like Bump for a long time. Apple has a golden opportunity to increase cross-platform integration by bringing it to mobile.

    Interesting Possibilities

    These are things that have popped up on the radar, but either because they’re somewhat extreme, or because there isn’t much backing them up, they remain little more than exciting teases at this point.

    Twitter Integration. As per my article earlier today, the Twitter-iOS integration rumor is gaining traction in some influential circles, and for good reason: OS-level Twitter support would make direct social media interaction on the iPhone much more of a reality, and could give Apple a leg up on the competition. Such a close partnership would be a big step for Apple, however, which tends to shy away from such arrangements, so we’ll have to wait and see just how close they’re willing to get.

    Widgets. Along with new notifications, rumors have been circulating that widgets will get introduced in iOS 5. These would provide live, updating information directly on the home screen, and go way beyond the badge notifications iOS currently offers. Android already has widgets, and Apple’s own native Calendar app icon updates automatically as the day changes. Apple should and likely will provide live updating content to the home screen, but don’t expect its approach to resemble Android’s.

    Spaces. Home screen management on iOS devices got a lot easier with the introduction of Folders and the ability to reshuffle your icons and screens in iTunes, but it could be easier still. An iOS version of Spaces, which Apple has already patented, would do a great deal to make managing your iOS “desktop” easier still. Even just the ability to quickly rearrange the scrolling order of home screens would be a big usability boost.

    Far-Fetched, but Awesome

    I would love these to be true, but there’s little or no indication that they are, unfortunately.

    Facebook Integration. While Twitter integration is being talked about by some fairly reliable sources, Facebook integration isn’t. Apple has had a rocky relationship with Facebook in the past, thanks to trouble with Ping at launch. But Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg did meet for dinner once, and who knows what they discussed there?

    Live Lock Screen. Apple’s iOS lock screen doesn’t do much beyond telling you the date and time, and in the opinion of many users, that’s a waste. If Apple added a better notification system to the lock screen, or provided a way for third-party apps to display live updating information from RSS or Twitter source, for instance, it would be a lot more useful. Even if Apple just let you display the current weather on the lock screen, it would be a huge improvement.

    What do you want from iOS 5? Feel free to point out anything I’ve missed here, or your own suggestions for what features would really make Apple’s next platform revision also its most ground-breaking yet.

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  • iOS 5 Twitter Integration Could Be a Shortcut to Social for Apple

    What would Apple have to gain from system-wide Twitter integration? Think about how many steps it would take out of your daily app usage experience if you could sign in once, and then use Twitter-based sharing and discovery tools in every app that hooked into them without having to login again. It would also make your personal device a social one without the need of intermediary software. A lot of rumors circulating this week point to that being a real possibility for iOS 5.

    Robert Scoble, blogger and tech evangelist, tweeted Friday that “Apple is building Twitter in deeply into iOS5″ and that we’d see what he was talking about next week at the WWDC 2011 keynote on Monday. Scoble seems incredibly confident about his source, who he cites as “someone who built the Twitter integration into iOS5.”


    Robert Scoble
    Next week will be a huge week for those of us who have lived on Twitter for last few years. Apple is building Twitter in deeply into iOS5.

    Scoble claims to have known about Twitter integration in iOS “for months now,” and though he responded to multiple requests for details with only the repeated statement that we’ll learn more on Monday, he does claim that it will go “a lot deeper than just photos,” referring to a recent rumor about system-wide photo-posting capabilities in iOS 5. It also won’t be just the addition of simple “send to Twitter buttons” for links and other content, he said in another tweet.

    As with any unconfirmed rumors, take this one with a grain of salt. It’s also worth considering that reports circulated back in April that Apple had planned Facebook integration in iOS 4, but pulled it at the last second, so the company does seem to be thinking about how to bake social media into the OS. Social is also a weak point for Apple, which has yet to pull off any networking features of its own (Ping, for example). It’s a weak spot for Google , too, and shoring up that strength with an outside partner might be a good strategy if Apple wants to beat Google on that front.

    Note also that on Tuesday, John Gruber, who has a great track record when it comes to predicting Apple products and features, said in response to a TechCrunch story describing iOS 5 Twitter photo sharing that it was “[s]o close to the bigger story, but yet so far. Imagine what else the system could provide if your Twitter account was a system-level service.” Imagine indeed. What do you think Twitter integration would or wouldn’t bring to the platform?

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  • iA Writer for Mac: Minimalism at Its Finest

    iA Writer for iPad has been popular as a distraction-free writing app, and I’ve been looking forward to the Mac version. Now that it’s finally here, read on to find out whether it’s worth your money or not.

    Writer is distraction-free in the truest sense of the term; it doesn’t even have a preferences window. You can’t change the font size, the font, or really anything else. The app is completely unapologetic about this, too; you either like it, or you don’t. But even though it doesn’t come with a lot of features, the ones it does have are well-implemented.

    Writer showing Focus Mode and Auto Markdown

    Most of the features from the iPad app are present in the Mac version, such as Focus Mode, which dims out everything except the current sentence, and Reading Time, which provides an estimate of how long it would take someone to read through what you’ve written. One of the new features that isn’t in the iPad version is Auto Markdown, which automatically formats text written in Markdown, in effect making it somewhat of a semantic text editor. This is a boon for web writers, as Markdown makes it easy to convert text to valid HTML.

    Writer’s interface is one of my favorite things about it. The title bar is black and fades in and out, like QuickTime X’s. The scrollbar also fades in and out, like on iOS or Lion. In effect, all you see once you start typing is your text, and I love that. However, since this is a 1.0 release, there is some interface weirdness. For one, the dot that appears in the close button to let you know there are unsaved changes is always there, even right after you save, which kind of defeats the purpose. Another thing is that the title bar is black in focused windows, but in unfocused windows, it has the default “slate” appearance.

    iA Writer is available in the Mac App Store for an introductory price of $18, which is 10 percent off. Honestly, I don’t know how I feel about the price. You don’t get many features, and you can’t even change the font size. Plus, the iPad version is $5 and offers almost all of the same things. But I have to say, writing with Writer is a pleasure. Something about making that funky cyan-colored cursor move across the screen makes me happy, and that’s worth the $18 to me. Whether it’s worth it to you depends on how much you trust yourself to focus.

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  • Clearleap Takes Cable TV iPad Apps Into the Cloud

    Duluth, Ga.-based IPTV startup Clearleap has worked hard over the past few years to deliver online video offerings into traditional cable video-on-demand systems, as well as making traditional VOD offerings available online and on IP-connected set-top boxes. Now it’s taking IP-based delivery of cable content one step further by unveiling a new feature that will let cable operators quickly and easily deploy iPad apps.

    The iPad functionality is an extension of Clearleap’s existing Stream On Demand solution, which enables traditional pay TV providers to introduce TV Everywhere-type online video services to their subscribers. In addition to PC streaming, Clearleap has also announced partnerships with Pace to add IP capabilities to its hybrid set-top boxes, Roku to bring cable VOD services to its broadband streaming devices, and RCDb, which will enable customers to stream online video services through traditional Blu-ray players.

    By deploying most of the necessary technology from the cloud, Clearleap enables customers to turn up new online services and update them with additional features without having to iterate on multiple devices. According to CTO John Carlucci, Clearleap hopes to add support for additional devices like connected TVs soon.

    With flexible APIs, those customers can also now create and release full-featured iPad apps. Just as it does on other devices, Clearleap will continue to manage all the provisioning, billing, authentication and security for iPad apps using its platform, enabling developers from pay TV providers to focus on building the user experience. Those developers can also use Clearleap’s APIs to add enhanced personalization, search and discovery features across multiple devices.

    While massive pay TV providers like Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Dish Network have the resources to build their own TV Everywhere experiences and extend them to devices like connected TVs and tablets like the iPad, not all operators are so lucky. As a result, Tier 2 and Tier 3 operators are turning to outsourced solutions in an effort to compete with the bigger operators.

    Check out Clearleap VP of BizDev Peter Ansel speaking at NewTeeVee Live 2010 below:


    Watch this video for free on TheAppleBlog — Apple and iOS News, Tips and Reviews

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  • Tips and Tricks: iPhoto

    Welcome to another instalment of Tips and Tricks, the series of articles aiming to teach you something you didn't know about your Apple products. Let’s continue by looking at iPhoto, and some ways of speeding up your workflow.

    Quickly Change the Thumbnail for Events and Faces

    When you first open either the Events view or the Faces view, you are presented with a series of thumbnails, called the Key Photo, for each event or person. You can change which photo is the Key Photo by viewing the Event or the photo series for a person, right-clicking the photo you want to use and choosing Make Key Photo. There is also a quicker way; without clicking, move your mouse over the current thumbnail in the Events or Faces view. As you move around, you’ll see all the photos in the event. When you see the one you want to use as the Key Photo, just hit the spacebar. When you move your mouse away, you’ll see that photo has been set as the Key Photo.

    Rotate a Photo in the Opposite Direction

    In the Edit view, there is a button which rotates a photo and does so in a counterclockwise direction by default. There is a setting in iPhoto’s preferences to make the icon rotate a photo clockwise instead, but you can also swap the direction on the fly. To temporarily switch the direction of the rotation, hold the Option key before you click Rotate. The icon of the button will change to let you know what’s happening, and your photo will be rotated the opposite way.

    Unmount a Connected Device

    Since iPhoto can import photos directly from a device, there is a list in the iPhoto sidebar of all the devices you have connected. It’s possible to unmount these devices from within iPhoto, rather than ejecting them from the Finder. To do so, right-click the device’s name and choose Unmount. This has the same effect as unmounting from Finder. You can also drag the device’s name to the Trash item in the Recent list of iPhoto’s sidebar. As you drag the name, the Trash icon will change into an eject symbol with the label Unmount. Just drop the device’s name onto the Unmount item and it’ll be ejected for you.

    Confirm or Reject Multiple Faces Matches at Once

    Often, iPhoto will recognize faces in newly imported photos and ask you to confirm that it guessed the identify of those faces correctly. When you open the ‘Confirm Faces’ view, it can get tedious clicking each one in turn. If there are a lot of photos which are all correct (or all incorrect), you can, instead of clicking the photos individually, drag a selection over all of them. This will mark all the photos you selected as confirmed, and if you do the same again, they’ll all be marked as rejected.

    Assign Keywords Without Typing

    Keywords are iPhoto’s equivalent to tags, and are useful when searching for specific photos in your library. Normally to add keywords, you select one or more photos, then type the keywords into the Keywords section of the Info panel. However, it’s possible to add keywords using just the mouse and keyboard shortcuts. Under the Window menu is an option to Manage My Keywords. If you choose this option, a window will open with a list of all the keywords you have used in your library. If you now select some photos, you can then click on a keyword in this list to add it to the photos without typing.

    If you have a keyword you use a lot, you can also assign it a keyboard shortcut. In the Manage My Keywords window, click Edit Keywords. You can now select a word from the list and click Shortcut. You can’t use shortcut modifiers such as Command or Option, but you can use single letters or short sequences of characters. Now you can apply this keyword to photos by selecting them and typing the shortcut. You don’t even need to have the Info panel open.

    I hope you've learned something new, and as always, leave your own additional tips in the comments!

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  • Apple Execs: Tablets Will Eclipse PCs, iOS Stronger Than Ever

    Apple executives expressed supreme confidence in the future of iOS during a meeting with Goldman Sachs analyst Bill Shope, according to Business Insider. And Apple COO Tim Cook thinks the iPad is on track for even more impressive success as the tablet market moves to eclipse PC sales.

    Tim Cook was joined by Apple SVP of Retail Ron Johnson and CFO Peter Oppenheimer during the meeting with Shope. Of course, they remained mum on the details of future Apple products (including iOS 5, which is due for at least a preview Monday at WWDC 2011), but they were vocal about iOS and Android as a general subject.

    Shope came away from the meeting with the iOS-Android battle framed by the Apple execs as a showdown between integrated and fragmented platforms. It’s a line Apple has used before, but Apple expanded on its position, noting “that an open and free OS like Android was bound to enjoy a rapid expansion in its overall installed base near-term, but over time, the perils of platform fragmentation would weaken the value of this installed base and the overall platform ecosystem.” Basically, Shope is saying Android’s hardware agnostic approach will give it lots of users fast, but those users ultimately won’t add to the strength of the platform as much as iOS users do. Apple seems to be stalling its market share decline recently relative to Google, in app downloads and in handset use, so the negative effects of that fragmentation may already be taking hold.

    I found it much more interesting that Cook believes tablet sales will eclipse PC sales, though he did say that it would happen only gradually “over the next several years,” something that seems inconceivable given the current reach of the PC. But Business Insider previously reported that consumer PC growth is set to be negative for the first time in quite a while, Gartner shows that PC growth is slowing amid a shift to mobile devices, and iPad sales are on track to increase 72 percent year-over-year for the June quarter, according to Shope’s estimates. Microsoft seems to also see tremendous potential in the tablet market, since the Windows 8 operating system it just started previewing also sports a fancy tablet mode.

    In terms of use, it does seem like a lot of users are using their tablets as computer replacements already, and the iPad is leading that charge. It is very possible that one day, the iPad could be the standard computing device for most users and households, but I’d say it will be years before we see a tipping point. What do you think? Is the tablet the next PC?

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  • Can Apple Make the Cloud Work for Consumers?

    Apple is getting ready to pull back the curtains on iCloud, a cloud services suite that will replace or augment MobileMe. We'll get a look at iCloud next Monday at the WWDC 2011 keynote, but what does Apple have to do to make iCloud a success? I talked to enStratus Co-Founder and CTO George Reese, who has ample practical experience building and managing public and private clouds for his company's clients.

    Reese is a fan of Apple's products and software, but he isn't impressed with Apple's track record when it comes to the cloud specifically. "Historically," Reese told me in a phone interview, "Apple has gotten the cloud wrong time and time again," because the company views "the Mac as the center of your device-driven life." Even though they are more independent than they once were, the iPod, iPhone and iPad are all still essentially satellite devices that depend on the Mac in a few key ways.

    In order to make a cloud computing experience work really well, the cloud has to be the center of the universe, according to Reese, and this isn't the case with MobileMe. As an illustrative example, consider Bookmark syncing through MobileMe. I'm a MobileMe user myself, and I sync bookmarks across my Apple hardware so that if I find an interesting link on my iPhone that doesn't read well on the small screen, I can bookmark it and check it out on my Mac. Unfortunately, something went wrong with bookmark syncing a while ago, and now my Mac computers regularly ask me to replace the information with that found on the computer. If I do, I'll lose my iPhone bookmarks, and I can't treat those as the master copy, because MobileMe requires that I use one of my Macs as the primary source. The Mac is "home," so to speak, and everything else, including the cloud, is "away."

    Apple has made smart hires recently, bringing on staff with "good, cloudy experience and expertise," according to Reese, but no matter whom you hire, Reese says, it's hard to get away from what's in your DNA as a company. Apple's Mac-centric approach seems to be one key element of its corporate DNA.

    A change in DNA is what Apple has to accomplish to make cloud computing work, says Reese. But big changes are something Apple is particularly good at. Reese cites the example of the iPod touch as a classic example. The iPod touch is a product that obviously threatened to eat into Apple's existing successful iPod business, but Apple saw that it provided greater future potential down the road, by bringing more customers into the iOS fold. The MacBook Air is another good example, since with its new $999 starting price point, it could easily sway buyers away from the strong-selling MacBook, but the Air is a product designed with the future in mind, thanks to solid state storage and the dropped optical drive.

    But in this case, Apple would have to shift the center of its universe away from the Mac and to the cloud, which is arguably a bigger and more daunting change than any other it has made so far, despite declarations that it is now a "mobile device company," and more recently that we are living in the "post-PC" era (subscription required).

    That's not all it has to do, either. Reese says Apple also "has to reinvent what it is to be cloud." It can't just replicate Google's success with Google Apps, or provide its own similar take on existing models. Apple has to "redefine the space of consumer cloud," as it has done with previous products (the iPhone for mobile, and the iPod for media players, for example). And if Apple can do that, "they'll be wildly successful," Reese asserts.

    This won't be a surprise to Apple, according to Reese. It's the same challenge it faced when it entered the mobile market with the iPhone, he points out, but this time around, the challengers it is facing are more nimble and less entrenched. Netflix, Amazon and Google are smart enough to be able to match what Apple does quickly, says Reese, whereas iPhone competitors were slow to realize and respond to the shift in landscape.

    "One thing I've learned is never to bet against Apple," Reese says, "But if I were to, this is where I'd bet against them." Despite that, he's really open to the possibility that Apple will succeed in making iCloud something consumers will get excited about. The prospect of a truly seamless computing experience across Apple devices is indeed a very sexy one. He and I are hoping Apple does for cloud computing Monday what it has already done for mobile devices and personal computing in the past. What do you think about Apple's chances when it comes to achieving that goal?

    For those really interested in the expertise required to build out real computing clouds, check out our Structure 2011 conference this month in San Francisco.

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  • What We Know About iCloud, and What We Don't

    Late Wednesday evening, the registration for the iCloud.com domain switched on to reveal that Apple is indeed in possession of the address as originally reported by GigaOM. Apple also began registering the iCloud trademark in Europe on Wednesday, signalling it’s all systems go ahead of the iCloud product unveiling at WWDC next week.

    The prospective iCloud service has managed to steal a lot of the spotlight away from iOS 5 and Mac OS X Lion, the other two products being shown off by Apple at WWDC. That may be because we know less about iCloud than we do the other two, or because all things cloud seem to be capturing the tech media’s attention lately. Whatever the reason, the past few days have seen a bevy of reports describing what a shipping iCloud could potentially look like.

    Everything That’s Fit to Stream

    In addition to music streaming — a feature widely reported on as music licensing negotiations are said to have reached a successful conclusion – Cnet also reports Apple is also in talks with film studios to allow for cloud movie storage and streaming, too. Presumably, this service would be similar to the one being discussed for music, but there’s a barrier according to Cnet’s sources: the so-called HBO blackout, which allows HBO exclusive broadcast rights of films from three of the top six movie studios when it’s actively airing their content.

    Apple could still negotiate deals with the other three in time for launch, but even if the reports are accurate, don’t count on seeing movies and TV show streaming and storage announced this time around.

    A Data Center That Means Business

    Apple’s North Carolina Data Center is a serious beast. According to Envisioneering Group  Analyst Richard Doherty in an interview with USA Today , it “may be the most powerful data center ever, outside of government,” and “will be able to handle millions of streams per minute without any network hiccups.”

    Apple clearly wants to make sure that when it unveils the future of consumer cloud technology, it’s more than able to meet demand and scale rapidly.

    MobileMe Upgraded

    Apple will most likely use the iCloud brand to take over the duties of its current cloud syncing and storage offering, MobileMe. That means it should provide email, notes, calendar and bookmarks syncing, along with the Find My iPhone and Find My iPad services. There have also been reports that a Find My Mac service could make its way into OS X Lion, but the service might fall under the iCloud suite of offerings, too. It would allow Mac owners to register their device, so that they can later be tracked easily via a web-based interface, and be locked or wiped remotely to prevent unauthorized use.

    Free or Fee?

    The MobileMe service iCloud will reportedly replace costs users $99 per year, but AppleInsider reports that some of iCloud’s services will be offered free to users who upgrade to OS X Lion, the next generation of Apple’s desktop operating system. But other features, such as music streaming, will cost extra based on the fees associated with Apple’s licensing agreements with content providers, reports say. One early report pegged Apple’s streaming music fees at around $20 per year, but little else has been forthcoming on the subject since.

    People who want to use iCloud services without upgrading to Lion will reportedly have to pay the $99 annual fee currently associated with MobileMe.

    We won’t have to wait long before we see what Apple has in store for iCloud, but in my opinion, it’s the unknown variables that make it the product to watch for during Monday’s keynote. Can Apple do for consumer streaming what it has done for PCs and mobile devices? Let us know what you think in the comments.

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  • Apple Could Copy Twitter But It Won't, and Here's Why

    Blogger and entrepreneur Anil Dash mused Wednesday in a blog post that Apple could make Twitter, or at least a roughly similar service that provides real-time cross-platform messaging. He points out some barriers standing in the way of Apple achieving such a goal, but a bigger one comes to mind: Apple likely isn’t interested in making something even remotely like Twitter.

    Unlike Google, Apple hasn’t expressed much interest in competing in the social media arena with the likes of Facebook and Twitter. It has stuck its toe in the water with services like the Ping social music network built into iTunes, and the Game Center achievement tracker and leaderboard that ships with iOS, but these efforts have largely been met with lukewarm response from both the media and users.

    Not to mention that Ping and Game Center represent very specific approaches to social media that share little in common with the likes of Twitter. Namely, both are designed to fuel sales, and do little else besides. In other words, Ping and Game Center are marketing efforts first, and social tools second. Twitter, on the other hand, is a social network in search of a successful and sustainable business model. Apple isn’t interested in creating something first, and then finding a way to make it profitable later. Consider that Jobs took the idea of the mouse from the Xerox PARC research collective and remade it based on the concept of turning it into something that would sell and make money.

    With that in mind, isn’t it then conceivable that Apple could take the idea of Twitter or real-time messaging and make it a profitable asset? Possibly, but probably not. Dash describes a team within Apple building a messaging service complete with “first-rate native clients on every important platform.” Apple, unfortunately, has never been interested in any platform other than its own. Even when it does branch out, as with iTunes, the ultimate goal is to drive sales of its own iOS or iPod devices. Plus, as most Windows users will tell you, the iTunes experience on that platform is far from “first-rate.”

    In fact, the very virtues that make Twitter a valuable asset to users are traits which Apple has shown a reluctance to embrace: Twitter is web-based, which Ping (and even probably the iTunes store) should be but isn’t; Twitter, while not necessarily “open,” is still a lot more open than Apple tends to be, and Dash’s request for a lightweight API for developers to build web apps wouldn’t fly with Apple’s walled garden approach.

    In the end, it adds to a paradox, in that if Apple were to make Twitter, it would probably look a lot like Ping (i.e., inextricably tied to Apple product and baldly promotional in nature), which means it would lose a lot of its value to users, which means it wouldn’t be Twitter. And ultimately, Apple knows where its core strengths lie, and which is in providing the tools that others depend upon to build networks, and not in building them itself.

    Can Apple make a Twitter? It is technically capable of doing so, yes. But the company’s institutional culture make the chances of it ever doing so very slim indeed.

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