Ryan P. Manning

This was quite a weekend for Apple. They sold over 500,000 units this weekend alone. well above initial projections

Shoppers bought as many as 500,000 units over the weekend, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster said, more than twice his projection of 200,000. J.P. Morgan Securities Inc
(Read More)

And according to CNBC:

Apple outpaced analyst estimates selling more than 500,000 iPhones at Apple and AT&T stores in the first weekend it was available, according to some projections, although about 2% of AT&T customers were dissatisfied with their iPhones due to delays in wireless network activation. (Read More)

Another interesting view point is how other Handset Providers are being affected.

About 35% of the iPhone buyers were former Motorola users, 13% each were former Palm and Nokia users, and only 6% “came from the BlackBerry world” of Research in Motion, according to Piper Jaffray’s research, Goldman said.

The Wait is Over!

The Apple iPhone is just hours away from changing the way we view our mobile lives.

A quick note from History….Since 2000 Apple has been redefining itself and their products have been increasingly adopted and penetrating new markets….successfully.

See for yourself
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-gycgz7O4U

The biggest challenge the iPhone will have is its platform…According to Apple Inc. “As of April 2007, the IPod had sold over 100 million units worldwide.[1] This makes the IPod the best-selling digital audio player series in history.

Here is my humble opinion:
Apple did that with no additional help. Now with Carrier support of ATT, ATT is using the product as a market differentiator. Apple can and will…if successful, increase its resellers to not just computer stores but cell phone stores as well. This will ultimately increase sales potential. And more than likely increase units sold.

Just today the Wall Street Journal posted its first review of the iPhone. Here are some select quote from that Article….

The iPhone’s most controversial feature, the omission of a physical keyboard in favor of a virtual keyboard on the screen, turned out in our tests to be a nonissue, despite our deep initial skepticism. After five days of use, Walt — who did most of the testing for this review — was able to type on it as quickly and accurately as he could on the Palm Treo he has used for years. This was partly because of smart software that corrects typing errors on the fly.

But the iPhone has a major drawback: the cellphone network it uses. It only works with AT&T (formerly Cingular), won’t come in models that use Verizon or Sprint and can’t use the digital cards (called SIM cards) that would allow it to run on T-Mobile’s network. So, the phone can be a poor choice unless you are in areas where AT&T’s coverage is good. It does work overseas, but only via an AT&T roaming plan.

Like the iPod, but unlike most cellphones, the iPhone lacks a removable battery. So you can’t carry a spare. But its battery life is excellent. In our tests, it got seven hours and 18 minutes of continuous talk time, while the Wi-Fi was on and email was constantly being fetched in the background. That’s close to Apple’s claim of a maximum of eight hours, and far exceeds the talk time claims of other smart phones, which usually top out at five and a half hours

OK not-for-nuthin, but incase you are having iPhone envy (as I have been having), Here is a comprehensive tour (20 Min video) of the iPhone.
http://www.apple.com/iPhone/usingiPhone/guidedtour.html

I am still contemplating the expense….man it is tempting.

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[Sources]
1. http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2007/04/09ipod.html

So many of us know that a major advantage to developing in Adobe’s new beta software Apollo is the aggrigation of technologies. But one thing that is essential to any Apollo Developer is the ability for Script Bridging.

In My opinion the Biggest advantage to Apollo is its native ability to bring web applications technologies together. Building true hybrid applications. Apps that can talk to one another on the same page. Let’s say you have a Flash widget on your page or in your application and you want it to talk to an AJAX component. This could be done in the past but at quite lengthy scripting techniques.

Apollo enables developers to seamlessly talk to one another vie Script Bridging. Script Bridging enables JavaScript Functions to be called from ActionScript and Vice Versa.

This is just on more reason why I believe Apollo will be an application development tool worth having in your development “Arsenal”. This technology agnostic development platform truly offers us a fresh way of thinking how to build Rich Internet Applications.

See Christian Cantrells Video from Apollo camp on Using html and Script Bridging in Apollo Applications.

What would you do if you were Peter Levinsohn, President of Fox Interactive Media, ..… well how about offer $250 million dollars to one of your partners and buy them out?

“Photobucket is one of the largest online photograph destinations in the U.S. In March, 14.2 million unique visitors went to the site, according to Nielsen/NetRatings. That is nearly double the number of unique visitors to Kodak.com in the same month.” (Kang, 2007)

Myspace is interested in the acquisition because it would deepen the relationship with its customers and improve the online experience their users are looking for.

“An acquisition of the site would be important to MySpace because most of the photos that appear on MySpace pages are hosted on Photobucket.”

“Some of Photobucket’s revenue comes from advertising on its site, which users visit to upload images or view their photo albums. Photobucket also offers premium packages that give users more storage space.”

I am excited to hear Levinsohn talk about building strategies about enhancing the user experience. We are not just talking about building snazzy sites. We are talking about engagement. And that engagement drives revenue for many different business models. Engagement can drive advertising revenue like in Google’s case or it can drive sales as in the case of NetFlix.

Recently I asked a few friends oif they liked NetFlix or Blockbuster Better. That all said NetFlix had a stronger more engaging UI. It was easier to navigate and maintain and edit your Movie que. These factors led many of my friends to sign up and stay with the movie rental company and in effect increase their membership revenues in part because of a more engaging User Interface.

I am excited to see more companies put engagements into their business strategy and not just in their design goals.

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SOURCES:
Kang, Stephanie - WallStreet Journal Online.
Copyright © 2007. Date Accessed: May 8th 2007.
“http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117858081611095085.html?mod=technology_main_whats_news”

My Good Friend, Chuck Freedman, has asked me to co-Author a book entitled “Professional Adobe Apollo”. This is a great opportunity that I am extremely proud of and excited to be a part of. We have been writing the book now for several months.

Wrox’s Professional Apollo will be the core guide for building Apollo applications. The authors for this book have been carefully selected to represent each key aspect of existing web development and translate those languages, architectures and frameworks into successful strategies for desktop application development with Apollo.

I have always wanted to try something like this and with his leadership we are having quite a time writing the book. Apollo promises to be a great application development tool in the future. This is the Fist Book announced by Wrox, about Apollo and we are really thrilled to be apart of it.

I will be posting from time to time about tips and tricks with Apollo as it relates to HTML, JavaScript and Ajax being used in Apollo.

If you are interested the Book is available for Pre-Release Purchase on Amazon.com. (Click Here)