Just the fact that it has been given a “-gate” moniker shows that the publicity regarding the alleged antenna flaw with the new iPhone 4 has reached widespread proportions. Already this week has been hot and heavy with iPhone 4 antenna-related news and today seems especially heavy.

It all started on Monday with Consumer Reports stating they can’t recommend the iPhone 4, even though it is their highest rated smartphone, because their testing shows there is a reception problem. This started off a renewed wave of interest in the story and the next few days were full of articles and bloggings giving opinions, suggested fixes, speculation on the possible problem, as well as conspiracy theories. On Tuesday Consumer Reports stated that they believed Apple should fix the problem for free, which then triggered outcries for Apple to recall the iPhone 4. There were even bookies giving odds on the probability of Apple actually doing a recall.

Today’s news is that an Apple engineer warned of a possible problem with the antenna early in the design phase. As well, reports are that current shipments of the iPhone are delayed possibly due to Apple deploying a manufacturing fix for the problem. Other reports are that iOS 4.01 may be released today, containing the signal strength indicator fix that Apple has promised. Finally, Apple has called a press conference for 10AM Pacific Time Friday morning. This of course, is just sending the press into a frenzy as they try to guess what might be talked about at this press conference.

As much as has been made of this problem, based on my reading I believe that there may actually be a problem – but at the same time it is likely being blown out of proportion.

Firstly, while there are many reports of the problem, there seem to be just as many people who are not reporting any problems. Of course, with the sheer volume of iPhones sold, even a small percentage of problematic phones could be a very large number. So the question is how many iPhones are actually affected? It will be interesting to find out the answer, if we ever do.

Consumer Reports’ testing seems to prove there is a significant signal loss, which they believe could cause dropped calls, if the phone is held in a certain way. Consumer Reports tested 3 different iPhones, which they claim they bought all in New York City, albeit at different stores. Of course, if those 3 phones were made in the same factory, then it could be that they found a flaw coming from a manufacturing flaw in a particular factory. It will be interesting to hear how Apple responds to Consumer Reports’ claims.

Finally, even with all the bad publicity, Apple is still selling the phones like hotcakes. Apple’s stock has taken a small hit, but many analysts are claiming that this is simply an opportunity for investors to get in on Apple stock while the price is down. There is the saying that “there is no bad publicity” and as long as Apple deals with the situation correctly, perhaps that saying will hold true this time as well.

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In case you didn’t know – which really it appears most people didn’t know or cared – Microsoft killed their Kin phones after 6 weeks of shipping. And no that’s not a typo, it was in fact only 6 WEEKS after releasing the Kin that they cancelled these phones. Rumors abound that they only sold 500 Kin phones. Again, that’s not a typo – only five HUNDRED phones sold. At first that rumor seemed fantasy. But for Microsoft to kill this product so quickly makes that rumor seem credible. Wow. In today’s hot and heavy world of smartphones, this is a failure of unprecedented proportions. And the fallout may spread far and wide beyond the walls of the Kin team at Microsoft, as this article points out.

It seems that some of the leadership team responsible for the Kin debacle was either already on the Microsoft Windows Mobile team (recently renamed “Windows Phone”) or has been moved to that team now that the Kin team has been disbanded. Microsoft’s mobile strategy will live or die based on how well their completely redesigned Windows Phone 7 Series (yes, that’s a mouthful) does in the marketplace. Already they are behind the 8-ball as Microsoft has floundered under the iPhone assault and is now losing ground to Google Android devices. To make matters worse, the rumored release dates for Windows Phone 7 devices are in the fall or winter of this year. Because Windows Phone 7 is basically a “reboot” on Microsoft’s mobile devices, it is truly as if they are entering the smartphone market from scratch. This obviously has given Apple and Google a long headstart. If Microsoft fumbles Windows Phone 7 at all, this could completely kill their mobile business. And if they have no mobile business, one must start to seriously question if Microsoft has much of a future at all.

If it seems unplausible that a giant like Microsoft could fall, one only needs to look at history and see how giants like IBM fell before them. The disaster that was the Kin, similar to the disaster that was Vista, may be another symptom of a company that is in a state of complete disfunction. Again, history has shown that all great “empires” fall from within. This anonymous comment on the above linked article from an apparent Microsoft employee really sums it up well:

My morale has never been lower.

A billion dollars wasted on Kin, 500 phones sold and a huge amount of ground lost in the mobile space. Everything I hear about Windows Phone is negative. Leadership is shrugging its shoulders like this disaster is no big deal.

Enterprise Agreement renewals continue to trend downward, and at an alarming rate. Even major DoD deals can’t be landed. We position Microsoft for selling solutions and compensate the field for moving product. The disconnect is frustrating.

Windows 7 is a solid product, that we are marketing ineffectively. Office 2010 has launched with a quiet whimper. The CMG is as dysfunctional as a Cold War era gulag, and I can’t see any value from Mitch Matthews leadership.

I have no faith in our senior leadership (Ballmer, Turner, Ozzie, Brummel), but I don’t see any apparently leader that could step in and make the hard choices and forge a new, urgently needed direction, unless Bill Gates returns. Even then, I don’t know if the company can be steered off of the painful path it is now headed on.

The stock price is going in the wrong direction and poorly positioned if we move into a double dip recession. Our leadership team also shrugs this off as if it isn’t a major issue.

I remember Steve Ballmer promising to all at a company meeting four or five years ago, in response to an e-mail from an employee that complained about the stock price. The employee wrote to Ballmer that because of the languishing stock value he/she could not build an addition to their home. Steve B boomed that in two years he/she would be able to build a new home, never mind an addition, with where the stock price was going, and the crowd roared with thunderous applause. Where is the increased equity? What other company on the planet would have a flat lined stock price for a decade despite solid growth and not have the shareholders and board calling for the leadership heads on a platter?

Haven’t seen a promo in 3 years, got an E/110 last year and hear nothing but excuses (well promos are thin, budgets are tight). I don’t think anyone on my team has gotten a promo in two or three years.

Our budgets have been cut to the point that we can even support our commitments. When I follow the dollars I feel very insecure about my role and future. I’ve seen the overall organization get increasingly dysfunctional with each passing year.

The review process is completely broken. Calibration and compensation has already happened before employees even writes one word on how they felt they performed. How can I have any faith in the review process, where I’m told I have a voice, that peer feedback has impact, when none of it is even considered by the leadership team as they horse trade for compensation. It is a favoritism system that is riddled with inequity. I have seen incompetence rewarded and success punished. The process does a tremendous job of angering employees, who then quit and go to work for competitors with the single purpose of proving Microsoft wrong. Either that or they go to work as a vendor and get a 2X to 3X pay increase in the process.

I love Microsoft. Microsoft has clothed and fed my family, directly or indirectly for almost twenty years. I owe so much to this company. I come in, I give 110%, but I see no direction, I see no recognition, I see no future, I see no leadership.

Microsoft has become its own worst enemy, the leadership team is ineffective, and there is a huge need for house cleaning from the 64 to 68 level. I wish Bill Gates would come back. I wish a lot of bad decisions were never made. I feel that there is no way to change the negative course we are on, and Microsoft is incurably on a path to be only a shell of the company it once was.

Layoffs? Mercy killings comes more to mind.

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An article on Forbes.com states that if Apple starts selling the iPhone on Verizon, it could damage the momentum Google has built up for the Android devices.

I’ve said in the past (here and here) that even just a rumor that an iPhone would be available on a particular network could be enough to damage or short-circuit any momentum competing smartphones generate. Obviously, if the iPhone were to be released on a particular network, it would likely dominate that carrier’s smartphone sales while pent-up demand was filled. But the real proof in the pudding would be head-to-head sales after the initial sales surge. Given the power of Apple’s marketing machine right now, it would be hard to predict any outcome other than Apple coming out on top.

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Apple … “I’d shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders.” – Michael Dell, October 6, 1997

“Apple is already dead.” – Microsoft CTO Nathan Myhrvold, June 6, 1997

May 26, 2010: Apple passes Microsoft to become the most valuable technology company in the United States – something completely unfathomable ten to fifteen years ago. The New York Times has called it “the end of an era and the beginning of the next one“.

Now to be fair, the valuations are calculated by Wall Street “market capitalization”, which can be considered a fairly arbitrary measure. Regardless, the symbolism of this event can not be missed: it is yet another sign that we are in a transition in the technology world. The “old world” of technology marked by companies such as Dell and Microsoft, is giving way to the new world of technology led by Apple. If you aren’t already preparing yourself for the new world of technology, let this be a wake up call!

Just for fun, let’s take a look at the market capitalization of the companies involved in the quotes above:

• Dell : $26 Billion
• Microsoft: $219 Billion
• Apple: $222 Billion

In fact, Apple could purchase Dell outright with just the cash reserves it has on hand today – and still have about $20 billion left over!

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Nobody wants anti-virus software. It is an unfortunate necessary evil for Windows users. To that end, anti-virus software should be as transparent to the user as possible. It should simply do its job with a minimum of interruptions to the user and have as little impact to the computer’s performance as possible. It should NEVER cause problems – because that is exactly what anti-virus software is trying to prevent!

Introducing problems is the ultimate failure of anti-virus software but unfortunately it happens all too often. I’m not surprised. The very nature of anti-virus software is to place itself deep in the guts of the operating system and monitor every bit of data passing through it. Additionally, besides dealing with extraordinarily complex software, anti-virus developers are in a race to stay ahead of malware authors. Speed kills, especially when dealing with complex systems, and anti-virus programmers are moving at breakneck speed.

The recent, well-publicized, colossal blunder on the part of McAfee that rendered many users’ computers inoperable is a testament to this fact. It is entirely feasible that for many, McAfee’s software caused more pain and suffering than any virus or spyware would have! It is also a testament that the malware issue on Windows operating systems continues to escalate. As mentioned before, the desire to stop dealing with malware is one of the top reasons users are switching away from Windows. Situations like this only shine a much brighter light on the already glaring problem.

That elephant in the room continues to get larger. Pretty soon it may crowd everyone out.

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Profits from netbook sales are lower than expected. So much so that HP and Dell are significantly reducing their investment in the “10-inch” market. HP reportedly is even considering getting out of the 10-inch business completely. Is this really a surprise when netbooks live in a cut-throat, race-to-the-bottom, low-cost market? People like to point out when certain products cost more than bottom-of-the-barrel options, but they rarely realize that certain markets can’t support themselves at razor-thin profit margins. To quote the article:

Most of the second-tier and white-box netbook vendors have already quit the market after first-tier players started cutting their netbook prices in the second half of 2009 to compete for market share.

What is also interesting is that this news comes right on the eve of the 9.7-inch iPad launch. Could HP and Dell be conceding the 10-inch market to Apple? And if they do, will the 11 or 12-inch markets matter anymore?

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I wrote an “experimental” article back in August where I claimed Apple was going to release the iPhone on Sprint. Of course, this was just a hoax, but I wanted to gauge reaction when people thought they could get an iPhone on Sprint. However, the point of the article was that I thought Apple could “nuke” the landscape of smartphones on a wireless carrier if they simply floated the rumor that the iPhone would be coming to that network “in the near future”. I figured that there were (and still are) many people who really wanted an iPhone but didn’t want to or couldn’t leave their carrier. If these people were given a glimmer of hope that they could soon get an iPhone, they would put off purchasing another smartphone in anticipation of getting an iPhone. Obviously, that kind of thinking could be devastating to the sales of other smartphones trying to gain a foothold in the market.

Recently, there have been a lot of articles being written suggesting that Apple is going to release the iPhone later this year on a multitude of carriers. As I’ve written previously, I highly doubt that Apple is going to release the iPhone for any carriers that are not using the same technology as AT&T’s current network (GSM/GPRS) or their future 4G network (LTE). It simply doesn’t seem to make sense for Apple to devote significant resources to creating an iPhone for network technologies that are soon to be out of use. So the flurry of articles recently written make me wonder if Apple is “dropping the bomb” and trying to derail the momentum of other smartphones.

It seems to make sense. While the various Google phones are not really selling all that well as compared to the iPhone, they have gained a fair amount of “mindshare”, meaning that they are starting to be acknowledged by people as a relevant competitor in the marketplace. However a carefully calculated strike could significantly slow down their momentum. Perhaps Apple feels that this is the time to put the squeeze on their competitors. Perhaps it has something to do with the timing of the iPad. Perhaps it means nothing and Apple is not intentionally doing anything. Or perhaps the articles are correct and we will in fact see the iPhone on other networks this year. But I doubt that last sentence.

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With all the talk about the iPad and the iPhone, it is easy to forget another technology device that shook up the established markets just a few short years ago. An article I recently read reminded me of this fact. The Wii, rather than catering to the traditional “gamer”, created a device that would appeal to the mainstream. Similar to the way so-called experts downplayed the iPhone and are downplaying the iPad, many gamers chided the Wii’s relatively weaker graphic capabilities and simplified controllers. Of course, their viewpoints were narrowly focused and didn’t take into account that the Wii would redefine the gaming market. The rules of the Old World don’t apply in the New World. The following quote from the article, “Is casual gaming destroying the traditional gaming market?”, sums this up:

The big videogame console makers and developers catered to performance-oriented customers who demanded more and better and who were repeat buyers. Then in 2006, Nintendo’s inexpensive Wii console came along, emphasizing accessible game play over elaborate scripts and point harvesting. So far, Nintendo has sold 28 million units of the Wii in the U.S., while Microsoft (MSFT) has sold just 19.4 million Xbox 360s and Sony (SNE) 11.7 million Playstation 3s—despite both launching before the Wii.

The parallels between the Wii and the iPhone (and it seems with the iPad) are almost eerie. New World technology shakes up the Old World markets and most of the people who are experts in the Old World seem completely caught off guard.

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I just read an article that nicely sums up why, regardless of what the technocratic elite believe, the iPad will be a huge hit with mainstream users. It’s the KISS theory – Keep it Simple Stupid. It doesn’t matter how powerful a tech device is – if it is not simple, people won’t be able to harness that power. The iPhone changed the world not just because how powerful it was, but because it was the first smartphone that an average person could pick up and understand how to use almost immediately.

Hey, I get it. The fact that non-technical users are being empowered to use technology with little need for assistance is very threatening to many of those who make a living from or pride themselves on their technology knowledge. To those I say: “Welcome to the New World. Adapt and Survive.”

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Microsoft, really!? A security hole in Windows XP allows malicious hackers a way to compromise a computer when a user simply presses the F1 key. I mean, really – who was in charge of quality assurance at Microsoft? Dennis Nedry? Really? Really!

Look for this to become chain e-mail hoax material for the next 20 years – really.

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