We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We’ve decided to do something about it. We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours.

It’s a little odd that Apple decided to sue HTC instead of Google or Palm. I didn’t expect Apple to sue anyone but if you were to ask me two weeks ago who they would sue first, HTC certainly wouldn’t be on the top of my list. But, it’s clear from the above statement that Apple (specifically Steve Jobs) is not at all happy with HTC.

John Gruber wrote a fantastic piece regarding the lawsuit. I especially love this part:

I can think of only a few optimistic angles for this suit. One is that perhaps it’s a by-product of the suit Apple is engaged in against (and initiated by) Nokia. Apple’s counter-suit against Nokia involves some of the same patents at play here, and perhaps Apple’s lawyers have concluded that they need to enforce them against someone like HTC in order to use them in their counter-suit against Nokia. Or, perhaps one or more of the truly technical patents Apple has cited against HTC are genuine instances of intellectual property theft, the specific nature of which is unclear from the opaque language of the patent filings, and the rest of the cited patent violations were tacked on as part of a legal strategy along the lines of “If you’re going to punch them, punch them as hard as you can”. I.e. that they’ve filed suit as widely as they can, but have specific narrow violations in mind.

I’ve always seen Apple as the kind of company that would prefer to beat their competition in the market rather than in the courts. I hope that this is just a byproduct of Apple’s litigation with Nokia instead of Apple attempting to completely remove phones like the Nexus One from the market.

I admit that myself and many others often hold Apple up to a higher standard and therefore expect them to always do the right thing. But, I don’t think that this lawsuit is foolish simply because of my love of Apple products, instead I believe it’s foolish because it causes feelings of distrust and ill will from their best customers.

Valve has announced that they will be releasing Steam for Mac in April. Left 4 Dead 2, Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike, Portal, and the Half-Life series will be available at launch.

Along with the announcement of Mac versions of the above games, they’ve also announced Steam Play, which will allow customers who purchase any or all of the above games for Windows or Mac to play on the other platform for no extra charge. So for example, if you’ve purchased Half-Life 2 for Windows you’ll be able to download and play it on your Mac at no charge. Mac and Windows players will also be able to play online multi-player with each other, sharing servers, lobbies, etc.

Valve says that Portal 2 will be the first simultaneous release for Mac and Windows and will be released this holiday season.

Josh Weier, Portal 2 Project Lead:

Checking in code produces a PC build and Mac build at the same time, automatically, so the two platforms are perfectly in lock-step. We’re always playing a native version on the Mac right alongside the PC. This makes it very easy for us and for anyone using Source to do game development for the Mac.

I’m very excited for the release but even more excited about the future of Mac gaming. The ability for developers to check in code that produces PC and Mac builds automatically is a big deal.

Image credit to Joystiq.

But, speaking about why the apps are missing, Gruber simply explains that they just aren’t going to be there. Apple did have internal versions of the apps but scrapped them before announcement. I guess Steve Jobs just wasn’t happy with scaled up versions of the apps.

After looking at the list of missing applications again (Stocks, Weather, Voice Memos, Clock, Calculator, and Compass), the only app that I’ll actually miss is Calculator. The only other application in that list that I actually use is Clock and because I always have my iPhone close at hand I don’t think there will be much use for it on the iPad.

Whether Apple adds these apps in future firmware upgrades remains to be seen, but I don’t expect many people to miss them all that much.

Ziegler reveals that there are internal discussions at Microsoft about whether support for Windows Phone 7 Series will go beyond Windows.

I bought my first Mac in September 2006, it was a MacBook. One of the biggest reasons I purchased a Mac was because of my experience with my iPod. I received an iPod for Christmas the previous year and absolutely loved how simple and easy the iPod itself and iTunes was to use. Everything fit together seamlessly and I was incredibly curious to see how well the rest of Apple’s products worked. Needless to say, I was pleased.

If Microsoft wants to win back Windows users from the Mac, the best thing they could do is to announce support for Windows Phone 7 Series and the Zune HD on the Mac. I’ll openly admit that if the Zune desktop software was available for the Mac I would download and try it with an open mind.

Some phones could be missing features of Android 2.1 (live wallpapers), but they will all have an Android 2.1 firmware. Now let me cut to the bad news. Select Android phones will require a wipe when they are upgraded to Android 2.1. I actually only know of phones that will require a wipe, so it could include all of them (minus the Droid which is already on Android 2.0.1).

There are a lot of things that I love about the iPhone platform but let me mention a few of them.

• Nearly every time I sync my iPhone or iPod touch with iTunes it gets backed up. So even if a firmware upgrade wipes my device, I can always get my data back.
• I’ve been able to update every single iPhone OS device I have, including my first generation iPhone and third generation iPod touch, to the latest version of iPhone OS.
• I have no doubt in my mind that when the next firmware update is released, I’ll be able to upgrade all of them.

Just the idea that the device your using might not be able to update is totally wild. Might I point out that Android is open source, being unsure about device updates shouldn’t happen when the code is free, and yet it does.

Leslie writes:

due to an issue that “centers on fine tuning the touch sensitivity of the capacitive screen,” according to the manufacturer, it’s now expected to be sent March 25. Preorder customers will get a free JooJoo accessory to compensate for the delay, Fusion Garage added.

The JooJoo tablet was supposed to ship at the end of last month but now won’t ship to customers until the end of this month. It’s a good thing that those that pre-ordered are going to get a freebie but how does Fusion Garage expect to make this device a success when the only thing it had going for it over the iPad was a much earlier ship date? At this point the ship dates are so close together that no one in their right mind would order the JooJoo tablet to recieve it less than two weeks before the iPad is released.

I’m willing to bet that anyone who hasn’t ordered a JooJoo already and were seriously considering it will end up with an iPad instead.

Peter Misek made waves early this week when he said that the iPad was delayed due to hardware issues. However, Peter Misek is the same analyst that said that Apple was going to reveal an iPhone for Verizon’s network at their January event. Obviously he was full of it with that prediction and I would guess he was with this one as well.

The iPad was said to be shipping 60 days after the announcement on January 27 but John Gruber has been told by a source of his that the delay was because the software just wasn’t going to be ready in time.

John Gruber regarding the delay:

My sources suggest that Misek is wrong. It was the software, not the hardware, that took a week or two longer to finish than they’d hoped. Nothing extraordinary or unusual, just the usual hard-to-predict timing of turning software that’s almost ready to ship into software that’s ready to ship. In the grand history of major OS release date slips, one week is pretty tame.

I completely agree.

But, this is about the time in the conversation where people mention that the iPad won’t be available outside the U.S. until the end of April. Apple did originally plan to ship the iPad internationally on day one but I believe that this delay didn’t have anything to do with manufacturing delays per se but instead because of higher than expected demand in the U.S.

I do think that Apple expected a high interest in the announcement but I don’t think they expected quite as many people to acutally plan on purchasing it. According to an RBC/ChangeWave survey (reported on by All Things Digital) the iPad is in higher demand than the iPhone was before its launch. I think Apple was caught a little off guard by these numbers, and therefore didn’t have the manufacturing capacity at a point where shipping it in and outside of the U.S. simultaneously was feasible. I’m sure they could have done it if they expected this type of demand, but the decision would have had to have been made weeks (or maybe even months) ago.

From the Job description:

The Core Platform team within Apple’s Core OS organization is looking for a talented and inspired manager to lead a team focused on bring-up of iPhone OS on new platforms.

My first guess would be an iPod nano-like device using a modified version of iPhone OS. I’m obviously pulling that out of thin air but I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple wanted to simplify development of their mobile devices by running the same OS on all of them.

Hulu and its owners, three of the big broadcast TV networks, want to bring some version of the Web video service to Apple’s device. But the most likely scenario is one in which access to Hulu on the iPad comes as part of a subscription package, multiple people familiar with the company tell me.

The problem is that if Hulu decides to define the iPad as a mobile device they would need to be granted the rights to display content on mobile devices. This is doable, but it’s the same kind of ridiculous red tape that forced Boxee to remove Hulu from their app and it’s the same kind of red tape that will put TV networks in the same position the music industry is in.

I have no doubt that a paid subscriptions service could work well for Hulu. But (even though it will never happen), I really wish Hulu would use HTML5 for their web site and publish videos in H.264 using the video tag.

Today, we’re excited to announce that Google has acquired Picnik, one of the first sites to bring photo editing to the cloud. Using Picnik, you can crop, do touch-ups and add cool effects to your photos, all without leaving your web browser.

This should come as no surprise to anyone. Picasa Web Albums has fallen behind in terms of features when compared to other photo sharing sites. This was just an easy way for Google to get Picasa on par with the competition. Unfortunately for Google, I don’t think this is going to be enough to convince people to make the switch.

The category never appeared in the App Store but this is a clear sign that Apple is attempting to calm complaints and most likely re-accept some of the applications that it removed in last months purge.

I wouldn’t mind seeing an Explicit section in the App Store. But, I would hope that applications in that section would be hidden from search and the top charts until the user turns the explicit section on in iTune’s settings.

If you’ve wondered why there haven’t been many Gears releases or posts on the Gears blog lately, it’s because we’ve shifted our effort towards bringing all of the Gears capabilities into web standards like HTML5. […] We will not be investing resources in active development of new features. Likewise, there are some platforms that would require a significant engineering effort to support due to large architectural changes.

Gears will not be supported in Safari for Snow Leopard or later, and they currently plan to support Firefox and Internet Explorer moving forward.

I was really excited about Google Gears when it was first announced back in 2007. But, it’s a different world now, HTML5 is the future and I’m glad the folks at Google are smart enough to admit it. I don’t expect Gears to stick around for too much longer.

It must be terribly unsettling (to say the least) that a developer can have an application in the App Store for nearly a year and a half only to wake up to an email informing them that it has been removed.

We’re not just talking about people developing applications in their spare time and making a little extra money while continuing to have day jobs, at this stage in the game there are more and more developers making a full-time income from the App Store. This isn’t just Apple pulling the plug on these developer’s applications, this is Apple completely removing their entire income and their ability to pay their bills.

If I was a developer with an application in the App Store, regardless of it’s subject matter, I would be incredibly concerned with the way Apple treats the developers that have made the App Store as successful as it is.

John Gruber puts it best:

What developers see is that the App Store is a shaky foundation upon which to build a business. One day you’re prospering, the next day your app is gone. There are awesome iPhone OS apps that aren’t being built because developers don’t trust Apple not to yank the carpet out from underneath them.

Motoko Rich writes the following for the New York Times:

according to at least three people with knowledge of the discussions, who spoke anonymously because of the confidentiality of the talks, Apple inserted provisions requiring publishers to discount e-book prices on best sellers — so that $12.99-to-$14.99 range was merely a ceiling; prices for some titles could be lower, even as low as Amazon’s $9.99.

What this means is that if a book is released to the iBookstore at $14.99, if that book hits one of the best-seller lists it would be discounted to $12.99 or less.

In landscape orientation, anything between 4:3 and 2.39:1 feels natural to humans. Now switch to portrait – 16:9 feels pretty weird. […] Every aspect ratio is a compromise. If a device is ever to be used in portrait mode – and my guess is that people will use the iPad in this book-like mode most of the time – that compromise must result in something closer to 4:3.

Neven has published an image of what the iPad would look like in 16:9. I can’t imagine Apple designing anything that looks this silly.