For those who fully understood what was being collected and the details of it, there isn’t much new to see. Of note:

7. When I turn off Location Services, why does my iPhone sometimes continue updating its Wi-Fi and cell tower data from Apple’s crowd-sourced database?
It shouldn’t. This is a bug, which we plan to fix shortly (see Software Update section below).

and…

8. What other location data is Apple collecting from the iPhone besides crowd-sourced Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data?
Apple is now collecting anonymous traffic data to build a crowd-sourced traffic database with the goal of providing iPhone users an improved traffic service in the next couple of years.

So, Apple is gathering traffic data to build a database, which will ultimately power a service of some sort to provide traffic data. Couple this with Apple’s purchases in the map and geolocation services, and you have data that suggests Apple going to replace Google as the maps provider for iOS with their own maps data. Additionally, the traffic data suggests that Apple could be building it’s own turn by turn navigation system.

There’s a healthy amount of turn by turn navigaiton apps on the App Store, so I’m not certain that Apple offering this is a good idea. Still, many Android buyers cite the free turn by turn, high quality navigation system that Android builds in for free as a reason for their purchase. Apple might see this as a defensive addition to block Android’s appeal.

The very first slogan used to advertise the original iPod, back in 2001, was “1,000 songs in your pocket.” A coming slogan for the iPhone could well be “the only thing in your pocket.”

I’ve been thinking recently about all the stuff I used to carry around that the iPhone has made obsolete for me. Watch. GPS. iPod. Portable gaming device. Consumer grade digital camera. Phone. Put simply, the iPhone is the ultimate swiss army knife.

While I was playing with one of the two display units, a Best Buy salesman was answering a woman’s questions (badly) about the iPad 2. “How many books can it hold?”. “How much music?”. “Can I get by with the 16GB version?”. The salesman was obviously trying to steer her towards the 32GB version. I interjected and asked her how many movies, music and books she had in her iTunes library. She answered that she had no movies, a few albums, and a couple of eBooks. I explained to her that the 16GB would probably be enough for her. She was sold. Unfortunately, Best Buy, like every other retailer, doesn’t have any stock of the iPad 2 at the moment, and doesn’t know when they will receive any. The salesman made a feable attempt to recommend the Motorola XOOM, but the woman was more interested in getting the original iPad.

I walked over to the Motorola XOOM display to see what the fuss was about. Unfortunatley, the unit was non functional. It was rigged up to work, but either the battery had died, or it wasn’t plugged up correctly. Either way, I found it a little ironic.

Remember in the 90′s when Best Buy carried Macs, and they were usually in a sad state of display? Most of the time they were turned off, and relegated to some row where no one would ever go. It was clear back then that Best Buy had little interest in trying to sell them.

This is the same impression I got about the XOOM. How bad is the XOOM that the sales geeks don’t even bother to have a working display unit? How sad is it that even though the iPad 2 is near impossible to get ahold of, it and the original iPad is still beating the XOOM?

I don’t know how long Apple will have a near lock on the tablet industry, but I don’t see Android eating Apple’s lunch anyime soon. HP has a shot with webOS tablets, if they execute properly on experience, ecosystem, and price. But that is really what the challenge is for someone getting in to the tablet space: You have to have all three bases covered if you want to compete seriously with Apple.

Price is difficult enough, since Apple buys components in quantities larger than most others, and gets the better discounts. Experience is something Google has just started taking seriously, yet with Honeycomb, the consensus is that it still is a disappointing experience. Ecosystem (apps and accessories) is the toughest nut to crack, mainly because you can’t will thousands of developers to create apps for your device. All you can do is create compelling tools, a vibrant sales channel and large user base, and hope that the developers bring their A game to write apps for your device.

I don’t belive Apple will have the tablet market to themself forever, but I don’t see anybody shipping anything this year that has all three legs (experience, ecosystem, price) of the formula.

Apple is in capable hands during his absence. I’m sure Steve’s editorial control over products/services is still in effect, even during his absence.

Here’s hoping that absence is brief and temporary.

Get well Steve.

With a simplified way to shop for, pay for, and manage apps on their Mac, users are the clear winners here. Apple, along with several other developers, offered up some apps at considerable discounts. Aperture 3 for $80 (a product that still is offered in Apple retail for $199) is a steal. Pixelmator for $29 (a limited time offer, nearly half off the retail price of $59) is another great bargain.

In Aperture’s case, it remains to be seen what your $80 download gets you. I’m sure it will get you whatever updates are left in the 3.x line of releases, but with Aperture 3.1 the current version, I wouldn’t expect much more than bugfixes before Aperture 4 hits the scene. And when Aperture 4 is released, I doubt Apple will be giving Aperture 3 users who purchased from the Mac App Store free updates. But even if Apple retains the $80 price point, the Mac App Store is still a better deal than the retail boxed route. Aperture upgrades are currently $99. So even if you own Aperture 3 now (non Mac App Store purchase), if Aperture 4 is released at the same price point, it’s still a better price than Apple’s previous upgrade pricing. This is a huge win for customers.

Additionally, being able to purchase individual apps from the iLife and iWork suite gives customers more choice, and doesn’t tie and app they may want or need to an app they may have no intention of ever using.

Games

Gaming on the Mac has always been it’s achilles heel, especially when compared against the gaming ecosystem available to PCs. On iOS, gaming has been a huge strength. Now, imagine you are a game developer with an iOS game that does great business. You now have the option of taking that codebase and reporposing it for a Mac app. Think about the benefits of this: You can target 3 different platforms with extremely large installed bases, all while using the same developer platform and tools. Sure, each platform (iPhone/iPod touch, iPad, and the Mac) is different and may dictate that the game be modified to be a better citizen on that platform, but in a world where maximizing your invested time in a product can mean the difference between success or failure, I see this as a huge win for iOS game developers.

We already have 3 popular iOS games – Angry Birds, the Incident and Chopper 2 available with Mac versions. On launch day, the Games category was one of the most populated. I fully expect game and their resurgence on the Mac to be the big story of 2011.

Back up your data.

If you routinely use a computer, the chances are that you have files on it that if lost, would cause emotional or financial chaos in your life. Most people never think about a back up strategy until it’s too late. Trust me – if you have photos, movies or music on your computer, losing them forever would be devastating.

Backing up your data used to be a chore. Now there are several methods and mediums that can make backups painless.

Time Machine

Included with every installation of Mac OS X since Leopard (10.5). Time Machine is a “set it and forget it” type of backup, the kind that most people will benefit from. Buy an external hard drive, plug it in to you Mac, and you will be asked if you would like to use this drive as a Time Machine backup. Answer in the affirmative, and over the course of the next couple of hours, your Mac will backup your hard drive to the external volume. As new files are created/changed, those changes are written to the Time Machine backup automatically. Time Machine will keep as many revisions of files as it has room to, giving you the ability to go back to a file to a point in time easily, and retrieve the prior version and restore it.

Pros: Easy to setup and maintain. Intuitive interface for restoring single files.
Cons: Restoring the entire volume can take some time. Lack of configuration options make Time Machine a “take it or leave” solution.

Bootable Backups

Time Machine is great, but if your Mac’s hard drive crashes, you would have to replace that drive with a new drive, and then restore your back up from Time Machine to the new drive. This could put you out of commission for days, depending upon how big your Time Machine backup is and how fast your can replace the drive that failed.

If being without your Mac for any period of time means lost money or productivity, you probably want a bootable backup instead of (or in addition to) a Time Machine backup.

Using a tool like Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper!, you attach an external volume to your Mac, fire up the software, and in no time, you are creating a perfect duplicate of your current hard drive that is bootable. Now, if your primary hard drive fails, you can boot from this backup and keep on working, or install a new blank drive and clone the new drive from your bootable backup, and be up and running in a fraction of the time it would take you to restore from Time Machine.

Pros: Fastest backup/restore option.
Cons: Doesn’t save multiple versions of files like Time Machine does.

Offsite Backup

Both of the above options, either separately or together, will provide a solid insurance policy for most computer users. However, there is one scenario under which both backups would be useless.

Since both backup scenarios above essentially dictate that your backup drive is kept close to the machine you are backing up, what would happen if your dwelling was involved in a fire, or a flood? Your data would be destroyed along with most of the other possessions.

That’s where offsite backups come in to place. For less than $60/year, you can backup your data over the internet to an offsite service provider. These solutions work in the background, and can set up a schedule where the transfer of files happens at a time of your choosing.

Players in this field include Carbonite, Mozy and Backblaze. All promise unlimited backup. Where they differ is in cost and restoration options. Because these backups are performed offsite, if your computer goes down, you will not have immediate access to your data. Imagine you have backed up 500GB of data. Restoring 500GB of backup over the internet is going to take some time. Luckily, most of these services offer the option of having a USB hard drive sent to your with your data. This additional service comes with a price, and still means that retrieving your data will take 3-4 days.

If your data totals less than 100GB, another option is DropBox. DropBox offers 2GB of free data backup and syncing, with plans offering 50GB ($9.99/month) and 100GB ($19.99/month) available as well.

Pros: Set it and forget it. Unlimited amount of data. Inexpensive.
Cons: Backing up/restoring over the internet is slow (even with fast connections). In my test, over a very fast Comcast cable connection, 600GB took over 3 weeks to back up. If you have a metered internet connection, your backups will eat away at your available bandwidth.

Conclusion

Any of these solutions is better than not backing up at all. All three offer a way to get your data back in the event of data loss. If your data is irreplaceable, I’d suggest using all three methods. If you aren’t concerned about restoring your data in a timely fashion and don’t have a metered data plan from your internet provider, an offsite backup solution will do the job. If your computer is your livelihood, using a cloning tool like SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy Cloner will have you back up and running in the least possible amount of time.

Personally, I use all three. My computer is my most essential tool for my job, and my data is irreplaceable. With all three backup solutions, I keep all the bases covered in case of any type of catastrophe.

Recommendations:

Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex 2 TB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive (currently $120)

Backblaze – Unlimited offsite backup ($50/year)

Carbon Copy Cloner – free download, donations encouraged.

SuperDuper! – free trial, $28

“We are blown away to report over $20 billion in revenue and over $4 billion in after-tax earnings—both all-time records for Apple,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “iPhone sales of 14.1 million were up 91 percent year-over-year, handily beating the 12.1 million phones RIM sold in their most recent quarter. We still have a few surprises left for the remainder of this calendar year.”

Conventional logic has the Verizon iPhone appearing in January. Could this teaser mean it’s coming this year?

That helps Apple in another way, too. Because users of iPads and iPhones are tapped into Apple’s iTunes store, where the company rents and sells movies and television shows, you could easily consider Apple a cable company as well. If you look at it that way, its base of 200 million customers makes it five times larger than Comcast Corp., the largest cable company in the United States.

Wow. I doubt Apple’s iTunes customers have the same average monthly recurring charges (MRC) as Comcast’s customers, but it is still a staggering number.

This is Apple’s ace in the hole for future growth. It’s also a competitive advantage that I don’t think will be trumped anytime soon by their competition in the mobile space.

Being a longtime Mac user also means that I’m a longtime Adobe user. When I used my first Mac in 1992, the software I used was mostly Adobe (with the exception of Freehand and MacDraw). Illustrator and Photoshop have been part of my toolbox for nearly 18 years.

I’ve owned Adobe products for nearly as long as I’ve owned Apple products. Even when I couldn’t really afford them (and while many in my age bracket were just pirating them), I’ve purchased Adobe’s software. I started with Adobe Photoshop 3, and purchased every upgrade through 7. I bought Adobe Illustrator 5 in 1995 and owned every version through CS3 (AI 13).

The last Adobe purchase I made was for Creative Suite 3 in 2007. I upgraded from my copy of Macromedia Studio MX 2004, which was the least expensive upgrade option available to me. Ironic, isn’t it? To get the best upgrade price to CS3, I had to use my license for a non Adobe product (Macromedia Studio MX 2004) over my license for Adobe Photoshop. Go figure.

Jump to 2010. To upgrade to Creative Suite 5 Web Premium from the Creative Suite 3 Web Premium is a whopping $799. I understand that covers upgrades for 9 applications, but really I only want upgrades for the core set. I don’t use Flash anymore, so I have no need to upgrade to the latest versions. I don’t use Contribute, so I don’t care about that either. I haven’t used Dreamweaver in years, so I don’t really want that either.

Really, all I want is Photoshop, Fireworks and Illustrator. You would think that I’d be able to upgrade just those applications.

You’d be wrong.

Adobe will not let you upgrade from a suite to an individual product. This essentially leaves me with no affordable upgrade path for my Adobe products.

So, with this new reality, I’m forced to re-evaluate my Adobe needs. Do I need Fireworks? No. The number of people who send me Fireworks files are zero. I used Fireworks as a quick prototyping tool. But to be honest, the Mac version has been buggy/crashy, and long standing bugs have yet to be addressed. In short, Fireworks was a want, not a need. So, it’s removed from the equation.

Then there is Illustrator. I do receive Adobe Illustrator files from time to time from people. Thankfully, most of them are on versions even older than CS3 (what does that tell you?), so I can probably make due with CS3 for a bit longer. So, it’s removed from the equation.

Which brings us to Photoshop. More than any other application, Photoshop has been the cornerstone of my career for as long as I can remember. When I was a print designer, to when I moved over to web design, Photoshop has been the tool that was almost always open on my computer.

Lately, that has changed a bit.

Mac OS X native image editors like Acorn and Pixelmator have come a long way in the last 2 years. Pixelmator, especially, has added some great features that I use daily, like Slices and Web Export. In basic image editing usage, Pixelmator:

1. Opens quicker.
2. Is easier to navigate.
3. Integrates better with standard Apple technologies (media bin, Aperture library)

Not to mention that Pixelmator’s developers aren’t behind some great big wall. You can email them directly. You will receive a response. You can log bugs with them. And amazingly – the bugs even get fixed!

A company the size of Adobe’s should have world class customer service. Instead, Adobe has some of the worst customer experiences in the software field. Hell, just ordering their products is an ordeal in figuring out which version you are eligible for an upgrade to, and what price you’ll pay.

Adobe has gone from a company that I want to give my money to, to a company that I will delay giving money to as long as I can.

At some point in the future, I will probably need to purchase Photoshop CS5 or it’s successor. But until I absolutely need to, I will hobble along with Photoshop CS3, and continue to use Pixelmator for every task it’s suited for. That currently stands at about 80% of what I used to use Photoshop for. If Pixelmator were to add vector tools and improve their text editing tool, that would probably reach 95%. At that point, I have little need for a bloated, aging dinosaur of an application like Photoshop.

Part of me is saddened by this. Adobe has become that friend that I used to hang out with on a daily basis, to a friend that I only call on when I absolutely, positively need something that only they can provide. And they are currently working themselves out of that position as well.

The only solace I find is in the new friend, who doesn’t do everything I need of him yet, but does enough that I think less and less of the old friend every time I use it.

Highlights:

• Hogan (the “finder” of the protoype) was turned in by his roommate.
• Hogan’s roommate tried to talk him out of selling the iPhone to Gizmodo, by arguing that it’s sale would ruin the career of Gray Powell (the engineer that lost it). Hogan’s response was “Sucks for him”.
• Hogan states that he was originally offered $10,000 for the phone from Jason Chen.
• Part of the sale to Gizmodo called for Hogan to be given a bonus in July if the prototype turned out to the real deal.

One of the more particularly juicy parts of this document is the email exchange between Brian Lam and Steve Jobs. Lam tries to justify to Steve why they are going to publish the story about the phone, knowing that it will hurt sales for Apple. Lam tries to negotiate a response from Apple where they would acknowledge it was a prototype, but not a production unit. You can almost smell the shit coming out of Lams mouth in this email.

Reading this affidavit, you can’t help but come away with very bad impressions of Lam, Chen, and Hogan. Three really douchey people.