Readers of this blog and/or my book know that I am pro regulation as a way of getting the best out of technological progress. One topic I have covered repeatedly over the years is the need to get past the app store lock-in. The European Digital Markets Act was supposed to accomplish this but Apple gave a middle finger by figuring out a way to comply with the letter of the law while going against its spirit. We have gone down a path for many years now where regulation has become ever more comp...

In the last few days Apple suspended the enterprise certificates for first Facebook and then Google, rendering internal iOS apps instantly useless. Apple did so in response to revelations that both companies had used the enterprise certificates to distribute VPN apps to teenagers in order to better understand phone usage. This is apparently in violation of the enterprise certificate license. Some people have cheered Apple’s actions as not only justified but appropriate sanctions on Facebook a...

I have for some time pointed out the negative impact on innovation of the appstore duopoly. Things are getting worse though. With the latest releases of iOS and Android the ability of third party developers to create great experiences are being further curtailed in the name of privacy and battery life. That might be OK if Apple and Google didn’t have their own apps that compete for usage such as maps or transportation, but they do. Apple and Google are using the same playbook that Microsoft a...

Seems that roughly every 4 years I consider which laptop to buy and use. In 2008 I switched from a Panasonic CF-W2 to a Macbook Air. At the time I was on my second Panasonic and I had been using each for roughly 4 years. The CF-W2s were lightweight, rugged and chock full of features. In 2012 I considered switching from my Macbook Air but instead bought a replacement one. That was four years ago and I have now been on a Macbook for 8 years. My current Macbook Air is showing signs of aging. The...

Confidence in the US Congress is near an all time low according to a Gallup poll on “Confidence in Institutions.” People have stopped trusting government. And government has done a lot to deserve it. Politicians have taken huge sums of money from special interests and partisan divides have deadlocked government on important issues. Add to that the secret surveillance of the population by the NSA and other agencies as revealed by Edward Snowden. At the same time income inequality in the US has...

There is a ton of confusion out there about Apple’s refusal to comply with a court order. The most level headed account I have been able to find is by the Register and I highly recommend reading it. The question I am more interested in is the following: what *should* the security design be for unlocking personal devices such as smartphones, but also say smart cars, fitness trackers, etc. I would posit that each device should ship with an *individual* key that is created by the manufacturer sp...

I have been meaning to write this post ever since I read about Tim Cook’s speech on how Apple protects its customers’ privacy. Since then there have been posts arguing that Google’s (and others’) approach has merits because it allows for creating a better customer experience and also because it supports free services that are accessible by more people. But neither convenience nor price is the most important tradeoff here. Instead it is the limitations on general purpose computing that Apple i...

It is well worth reading the arstechnica piece on the Apple ebook price collusion verdict in full. This is the perfect case study of what happens in markets where some participants have too much power. It is fascinating to see how at first Amazon was using its then 90% market share in the ebook market to drive prices down (all the while paying wholesale rates to publishers). Then Apple got together with the handful or publishers that control most of the books to come up with a different (and ...

It’s only two months ago that I posted that these are Apple’s glory years and that it is likely too soon to bet against Apple’s stock. As it turns out I was wrong. When I wrote, the stock was at $650/share and now it is at $550/share, which is down 15% (and it is down over 20% from the top of about $700/share). One of the big drivers here is a decline in customer satisfaction and loyalty. I believe a lot of that is driven by software. A bunch of people I know have folders on their iPhones lab...

It seems as if Microsoft can’t catch a break any more. On the day that all the Surface reviews come out, Apple hogs the news with the iPad Mini launch. Then again, given that the reviews for the Surface are decidedly mixed, maybe not such a bad thing after all. It doesn’t sound like the Surface will set the world on fire yet and Microsoft badly needs something that will. Apple on the other hand has launched something that for the first time could turn out to be a hardware misstep (I have writ...