Author: TheAppleBlog.com

This is the fifth in a series of 7 posts in the 7 days prior to Apple’s January 27 media event in which I explore various possibilities for an Apple Tablet and other potential announcements.

Three years ago, my wife and I bought an iMac for her parents. They live over 10 hours away by car, and we wanted them to see more of our daughter as she grew up than they could in person. The iMac proved to be the perfect solution, with its built-in webcam and the included easy-to-use iChat software for video conferencing. Weekly “I chats” with Lolo and Lola (her grandparents are Filipino) have become the norm in our household. Of course, built-in webcams have been features on iMacs and Mac laptops for several years now and have likely been among several key reasons that Mac marketshare has risen steadily over the same period.

As speculation about the second-generation iPhone reached a fever pitch, many hoped or predicted that it would include a front-facing camera in addition to the one on the back, allowing video conferencing from a mobile device. Not only did the iPhone 3G not have such a feature, neither did its successor, the iPhone 3GS. It did, however, feature a video camera. With iPhone apps from Ustream and Qik, its now possible to stream live video from your iPhone to the web. But because the camera is on the back, you have to turn the phone around to shoot video of yourself. Getting yourself in frame would be a challenge, and the apps don’t allow two-way video anyway.

If Apple sticks to its short history for iPhone introductions, we’ll welcome the newest in June or July of this year. Many people will likely once again hope for or predict a front-facing camera and mobile videoconferencing. But the Apple event on the 27th and the tablet everyone is expecting is in my mind a better opportunity and more likely scenario for Apple to reinvent video chatting via a touch-based, portable device.

iChat on the iSlate?

There are several factors that influence decisions over which features make it into shipping products. Cost, of course, can be a major determinant, but so are impact on sales, the tradeoffs of including it, and the relative value of the feature for its users, among others. A rear-facing camera is a rather obvious but essential feature of the iPhone. Phones have been able to take pictures and videos for years; without a camera, the iPhone wouldn’t be nearly as useful or successful. The iPhone is already an expensive device, and adding a second, front-facing camera may add too much cost. A second camera might also mean undesirable tradeoffs: if you position it near the earpiece, what happens to the proximity sensor, and can you fit it in the existing form factor anyway? A dual-lens camera that faces both directions may fit, but would likely increase cost and might decrease reliability. But a front-facing camera has several things going for it, including creating differentiation in the marketplace and enabling a really cool feature likely to stimulate sales.

The iSlate, iPad, Canvas, or whatever the Apple tablet is to be called, may have answers for all of the issues that likely prevent a front-facing camera in the iPhone. The device will almost certainly cost more than the iPhone to produce, driven primarily by a larger screen and form factor. Higher costs could provide ample margin even when including a second camera. There probably won’t be an earpiece, which also eliminates the need for a proximity sensor, at least in this location, so there is room for the front-facing camera even if the tablet is essentially a large iPhone in terms of hardware design. Imagine simply replacing the earpiece with the camera and mics atop a MacBook display, and voi la, instant video conferencing.

It’s quite possible, however, that a front-facing camera on a tablet computer from Apple won’t actually add to its cost. If you really think about it, the rear-facing camera may not even be necessary. How easy would it be to hold what is expected to be a roughly 10″ widescreen iPhone and still touch the display or home button to snap a photo? Could you hold it steady? Because if not, all your pictures will be blurry. Plus, if the primary purpose of the tablet’s design is as a digital media device for the home, your likely to have your iPhones or digital cameras handy for taking pictures. A single camera above the display doesn’t add cost or design complexity if the rear-facing camera is eliminated.

A touch-based iChat experience has tremendous potential value. In our household, video conferencing via our MacBooks is far from an ideal experience. We don’t have dedicated office space and have struggled to find a good location in our house. Our 3-year old has a tendency to play with the keyboard and trackpad. And on occasion, we have carried the laptop around the house to show off new artwork or furniture, or to follow our daughter while she gives her grandparents a tour of the house. Intuitively, all of these issues might be addressed by a tablet with iChat. We could more comfortably be anywhere in the house while chatting, there wouldn’t be any keys to entice young fingers in a full-screen chat, and it might be easier to become a roving reporter with a slate-style form factor as opposed to the clamshell design of laptops.

Still, a host of issues arise, so iChat on the iSlate is not a slam dunk. For example, one would naturally expect the tablet to display apps and content in both landscape and portrait mode. Where do you put the camera so that if you rotate the tablet, your hand doesn’t cover it up? If you put it top center of the long edge and choose to use it in portrait mode, you can only hold it on one side. In this case, will it support both left and right-handed users, allowing the short edge to be both up or down? The content on the iPhone display doesn’t currently rotate 360 degrees; the contents rotate for the top and both sides, but not the bottom. Additionally, would Apple open the feature’s APIs to third-party developers so that services like Skype can also work on the device, or will they pull a “Google Voice” and disallow these programs?

What We’ll Actually See

I do think the Apple tablet will include a front-facing webcam and touch-based iChat software for a variety of reasons. I think that while Apple will primarily position the tablet as a digital media device, it will also position it as a new home appliance. iChat will fit perfectly in this paradigm. I think it has a certain wow factor that is well within Apple’s grasp; they’ve already implemented the solution in myriad devices, but it will seem like a brand new experience on the tablet with a new touch interface. The camera will indeed be top center when it is held in landscape mode, just imagine a MacBook Air with the display ripped off. The software will still not rotate 360 degrees, because despite a minimalist hardware design, the iPhone and soon-to-be-announced tablet benefit from having a top and a bottom. It will be possible to easily hold and balance the tablet with one hand just below and on the same side as the camera, when necessary.

This is the fourth in a series of 7 posts in the 7 days prior to Apple’s January 27 media event in which I explore various possibilities for an Apple Tablet and other potential announcements.

If the Wall Street Journal is correct, Apple’s event on January 27 will be about its “mobile products,” and not just the tablet. The current lineup includes iPods, iPhones, and MacBooks, and just about everyone expects the iSlate, iPad or Canvas to be the new addition. Its Airport line of Wi-fi routers enables wireless access to the net, and Apple has mobile software products offered under the MobileMe brand, and iWork.com. It’s building a large data center in North Carolina, presumably to handle more intensive cloud computing needs, and Apple is expected to move into cloud-based media storage in part based on its recent purchase of LaLa.

In total, Apple has an impressive array of mobile products, so there is potentially much to discuss. And while the focus of attention leading up to the event is on the potential tablet, I expect a broader discussion of Apple’s mobile products in general, and how they work together in particular.

The hardware of the tablet is likely to be much like an enlarged iPhone or iPod touch. The software will be specifically designed, however, for the larger screen, form factor, and intended purpose of consuming media. Like the iPhone and Apple TV, the tablet will likely be positioned as a satellite to a Mac that operates as a hub. It will have enough room to store movies, music, photos, and multimedia so it will be useful even when not connected to a network, but will also seamlessly connect to local networks and the Internet for streaming media from other devices or the cloud.

iTunes Sharing and Home Sharing…Not So Much

The current state of sharing content among Apple devices on a home network is a bit jumbled. With iTunes, you can share your library, allowing other devices to stream your content. But Apple recently enabled a new feature called Home Sharing, which allows multiple Macs to share content by making duplicate copies of media and apps. With iTunes sharing, devices must be on the same local network at the same time. With Home Sharing, each device has its own copy of the file, so they can be anywhere. But Home Sharing requires different devices to log into the iTunes Store with the same account, and family accounts are not supported (or at least it didn’t work for us). In our experience, Home Sharing, still in its infancy, is unreliable. Neither iTunes nor iPhoto are very good at enabling multiple users to access the same libraries.

This is where I expect to see a great deal of emphasis for Apple’s mobile products, including the tablet. Apple needs to rethink how users share devices and content in a household with a fresh approach that has the elegance and simplicity of many of their products. Sharing should simply be sharing, with various levels of sharing available based on permissions and proximity, as opposed to two different features with different names, different requirements and different levels of reliability. Apple already has the technology to enable seamless sharing of content among devices and users via these existing sharing features, Remote Access, and Screen Sharing, among other features.

Seamless, Intelligent Sharing, Rethought From the Ground Up

I see Apple taking several major steps away from its personal computer foundation and toward consumer electronics, following a trend that first appeared with the introduction of the iPod in 2001. It will be possible to buy a new Apple TV as a true media center, and iPhones, iPods, and tablets in particular as the Apple TV’s display. Content will “live” on the Apple TV, but can be consumed by any device on the network. Media will be able to be copied to the devices for use when not connected to the local network. All members of an Apple Family account will have permissions to access all media associated with the account. Users will have the option to store duplicate copies of their media on the cloud and access them from anywhere in the world.

Virtually all of this is possible today, but the experience is convoluted. The introduction of the tablet is the seminal event that gives Apple the opportunity to completely rethink how media and apps are used and shared among users and devices.

This is the third in a series of 7 posts in the 7 days prior to Apple’s January 27 media event in which I explore various possibilities for an Apple Tablet and other potential announcements.

Perhaps one of the most exciting aspects of a new Apple tablet many expect to be introduced next week–whether called the iSlate, iPad, or something else–is a new publication wrapper that will allow publishers to create varied, compelling multimedia experiences for their content.

By wrapper, I mean a format for a publisher’s core content so that it can be displayed on the device alongside whatever additional digital content the publisher chooses to include. Apple already has two such wrappers. The first, iTunes Extras, is designed to allow movie studios to create DVD-like experiences for movies downloaded from iTunes to display in iTunes or on an Apple TV. iTunes LP allows bands and music labels to publish albums with related content like bonus tracks, videos, liner notes, lyrics, photos, and more.

iTunes Extras and LP Technologies

iTunes Extras and iTunes LP are effectively one and the same from a technological standpoint. They are a collection of now-common technologies like HTML, CSS, JavaScript and XML, used along with a set of standards and parameters for publishing WebKit friendly multimedia interfaces. The only real difference is that one is associated with filmed entertainment, the other with audio content (one file extension is different, and one file’s aspect ratio is different… that’s about it).

The solution is quite simple and rather elegant. In many ways, these wrappers are nothing more than little mini websites that run inside of iTunes and Apple TV, whose user interfaces are WebKit browsers just like Safari, Mobile Safari, Chrome and Android. But to the end user, they appear to be custom little applications full of interesting and engaging content. An entire bundle of files–or package–that can include several directories, subdirectories and files–appears instead to be a single file and is downloaded and managed by end users as such. This is exactly how most applications and many file types work on the Mac today. The key difference between the iTunes wrappers and Mac application bundles is the types of contained filed in their respective packages. The iTunes wrappers are mostly standard web technologies, whereas the Mac apps contain more native code objects which are not as common and familiar.

The true beauty of the iTunes Extra and LP formats is that publishers essentially only have to know web programming to create a great experience. Because they most likely already have a lot of assets for their websites, they can simply reuse those assets for iTunes. In fact, its possible to write code that identifies the device the content is to be displayed on and render it appropriate for the device, just as you can optimize websites for different browsers. Because these wrappers are based on common standards and familiar technologies, they are incredibly easy and inexpensive to create. Likewise in using the iTunes Store for distribution.

Getting Written Word Content Onto the Tablet

Because of their openness and portability, the iTunes Extras and LP content should very easily translate to Apple’s new tablet computer expected to be announced on the 27th. In fact, the tablet might very easily already support existing Extras and LP packages by rendering the Apple TV version. Some design tweaks might be necessary to optimize the experience for touch input, but everything else should essentially “just work.” Every indication is that Apple is working hard to support a wide variety of traditional written word formats with the tablet, including books, magazines and newspapers. Expectations are that the iSlate will support reading long-form content, which typically means black text on a white background with little distraction. Both Extras and LP are more akin to DVD and multimedia CD-ROM experiences, and neither lends themselves to lengthy reading sessions.

But simply putting books on screen likely falls far short of Apple’s ambitions. Colorful, graphics-intensive magazine spreads will probably be part of the Apple tablet experience, as will newspapers with charts and graphs like those from the Wall Street Journal and USA Today, or video content like that featured regularly on The New York Times website. Fiction, non-fiction, and textbooks will likely be supplemented with multimedia content and features to engage with other readers, peer groups, or even authors. In short, Apple is likely attempting to completely reinvent what today we think of as books, newspapers and magazines.

The Extras and LP format aren’t likely robust enough to fulfill this grand vision. But they serve as an excellent foundation, and as with movie studios and music labels, publishers can quickly and cost-effectively migrate their content to the device.

Predictions for a New Content Wrapper

When Apple introduces the world to its new tablet on the 27th, and more broadly speaks to consuming digital content, I expect them to announce not a new publication wrapper, but a new Content Wrapper instead. I expect them to do away with the distinctions between Extras and LP, and launch a new, single version of the solution that also supports books, newspapers, and magazines. This publishing engine will be to Apple’s products what WordPress is to web publishers: an open, core publishing engine based on simplicity and standards that can efficiently support a wide array of content and easily be extended through a form of plugin architecture. Plugins will support all sorts of functionality, from news feeds from sources like Lexis-Nexis, reader discussion forums, and educational solutions like Blackboard, McGraw-Hill Connect, and Prazas Live.

This new content wrapper will also have some features specific to the tablet. For example, if you are reading a book in portrait mode, perhaps it will work much like the Amazon Kindle, Sony Reader, and Barnes and Noble Nook. Rotate it into landscape mode, however, and the book may take up half the screen, with multimedia widgets on the other half. In either view, the text itself will support gestures for accessing the dictionary or adding audio, video or text annotations. And the wrapper will support many iTunes App features, like notifications, and importantly, in-app purchases.

The growth of the iTunes App Store will pale in comparison to the explosion in titles that will appear in Apple’s new content format. There are a tremendous amount of publishers thirsting for a solution, and the Apple tablet will deliver.

While the recession has battered many U.S. software companies, Red Hat — which has staked its future on open-source Linux software, virtualization and cloud computing — has flourished. The company has a number of secrets behind its success, some of them unique.

Throughout the recession, Red Hat delivered quarter after quarter of profit and revenue growth, including in the most recent three-month period; it has also built up $1 billion in cash and attracted large companies such as The Gap to standardize on its Linux-based enterprise platform. And the stock market has rewarded Red Hat steadily, as seen below:

So how has Red Hat consistently done so well during such punishing times? CEO Jim Whitehurst, the former Delta Airlines chief who joined the Raleigh, N.C.-based company in January of 2008, has kept it focused on a number of offbeat strategies, the most significant of which include:

Open Source Tackles the Cost Crunch. IT departments have had their budgets shaved to razor-thin levels, but Red Hat’s open-source enterprise Linux, middleware, virtualization and other solutions strip out many up-front costs from companies that want to transition to its platforms.

Red Hat Sells Support — Well. Instead of the traditional strategy of selling expensive proprietary software licenses, as practiced by the Microsofts and Oracles of the world, Red Hat gets the vast majority of its revenues from selling support contracts. In the third quarter of last year, support subscriptions accounted for $164 million of its $194 million in revenue, up 21 percent year-over-year. All 25 of the company’s largest support subscribers renewed subscriptions, even despite a higher price tag.

In the meantime, several startups have been following Red Hat’s lead (GigaOM Pro, subscription required), among them:

• Cloudera, which sells subscription support for the open-source Hadoop platform, for querying large data sets.
• Acquia, which sells subscription support for the increasingly popular open-source Drupal content management system (CMS). (Many newspapers and publishers are deploying Drupal for online publishing.)
• Eucalyptus Systems, which provides support, training and services for the open-source Eucalyptus cloud computing platform. Eucalyptus is aiming to serve companies that want to customize private and public cloud offerings.

Other Income. IBMer and open-source software pundit Savio Rodrigues published a highly interesting report last year on Red Hat, titled “Is Red Hat a Software Firm or Financial Institution?“  In it, he noted that for two years running, nearly 50 percent of Red Hat’s income before taxes was classified in financial reports as “Other Income.” In other words, a substantial portion of Red Hat’s earnings comes from outside its core software-and-support business.

Upon closer inspection, Rodrigues determined that Red Hat generates the lion’s share of the “Other Income” from conservative fixed-income investments and some equity investments. He also provided a data set showing how Red Hat’s “Other Income” compares to that of other large U.S. software companies, a portion of which is shown below. Oddly, the fact that steady profits on fixed-income investments have kept Red Hat’s overall results consistent throughout the recession is rarely cited in analysis of its quarterly reports:

Linux On the Desktop? Fuggeddaboudit. Linux, which is at the core of Red Hat’s software strategy, has never been a huge success on the desktop, and especially not on the business desktop. Red Hat officials have shrewdly maintained that desktop Linux is not a core focus for the company, but that virtualization and the facilitation of desktop and cloud operating systems applications are.

While Red Hat has remained remarkably consistent and profitable, a rosy future isn’t guaranteed. It is frequently cited as an acquisition target, with VMware and Oracle noted as possible buyers, but its stock market success has caused it to trade at a very high multiple. As noted above, it also depends heavily on successful investments, returns for which may or may not stay consistent. And there are those who question whether heavy enterprise dependency on Linux makes long-term sense.

Yet so far the company’s unusual business approaches have made it a success. So while many in the open source community have noted that Oracle’s acquisition of Sun Microsystems, which was approved by European regulators yesterday, will leave Novell and Red Hat as the only independent, public U.S. software companies focused primarily on open source left standing, Red Hat has proven that open source doesn’t mean closed business opportunities.

Top image courtesy of Red Hat Press.

Sony Ericsson, Motorola and Lenovo are moving ahead with plans to roll out Android-based phones and services to China despite Google’s decision to postpone the launch of Samsung’s GT-i6500U and Motorola’s XT701 through China Unicom. Without Google’s support, though, the new handsets will have limited appeal.

Motorola said today it will launch an Android app store for Chinese users next month that will offer titles from multiple providers including Baidu, China’s top search engine. Motorola has already launched Android handsets with China Telecom and China Mobile, and its app store could serve as a replacement if the Android Market is barred from the country. Meanwhile, Sony Ericsson said this week it has no plans to delay the Chinese launch of the Xperia X10, an Android handset set for release this spring. And Lenovo has said it still plans to bring its LePhone to market in China this May before rolling it out to the rest of the world.

But thanks to the ongoing rift between Google and Beijing, the phones that will hit the Chinese market won’t feature apps such as Gmail and Google Maps, which have helped fuel Android’s success. Such an absence will further splinter Android as manufacturers and carriers create separate versions of the platform, ones that are acceptable to the Chinese government. More importantly, though, it removes a key selling point for Android phones. Whether Chinese consumers will buy Google-less Android phones is anybody’s guess, but the escalating conflict could hurt the efforts of Sony Ericsson, Motorola and Lenovo in the world’s largest mobile market.

Image courtesy Flickr user hunxue-er.

As we reported this morning, after a waiting period that drew strong criticism for its obstruction of the deal, the European Commission approved Oracle’s $7.4 billion acquisition of Sun Microsystems. It only took a few hours for an internal memo to go out from Jonathan Schwartz, Sun’s CEO, announcing that he is resigning. discussing the impact that change in control will have on Sun, including the exit of some employees. Go Oracle! he told Sun employees. There’s more to the story, though.

In his memo, Schwartz, a very highly regarded person in the open source community, who once had a widely followed blog that he eventually posted to less and less, noted the fact that Europe’s approval of the Oracle acquisition took nine months — a long time. Schwartz has, partly because of the rules surrounding proposed acquisitions, been very silent during that time. In today’s internal memo, he refers to the impact that “change in control” has upon any acquisition and describes how broadly it will affect all Sun employees:

“I’ve also led, and been a part of many, many acquisitions at Sun, both large and small. From those experiences, I’ve learned one very clear lesson–the single most important driver of a successful acquisition are the people involved–and how committed they are to the new owner’s mission. And the most effective mechanism I’ve seen for driving that commitment begins with a simple, but emotionally difficult step. Upon change in control, every employee needs to emotionally resign from Sun.”

Schwartz goes on to acknowledge that “some” employees will have places at Oracle, but clearly he doesn’t see himself as having one. what about his own future there? While Schwartz goes to lengths in the memo to express support for Larry Ellison, the fact is that Ellison is well-known as a difficult person to work with. Most of all, though, the quoted text above points to a disheartened person — a person whose heart is not in what he might be asked to do under Oracle.

During his tenure as CEO of Sun, Schwartz was best known as the pony-tailed lover of all things open source, quixotically dressed on stage in pinstripe suits. I’m betting he has serious doubts about Oracle’s intent to advance Sun’s open source efforts.

For example, why should Oracle drive the MySQL database division forward — after it had grown nicely — when it’s competition for Oracle’s own expensive, proprietary databases? Even Monty Widenius, co-founder of MySQL, has been asking that question. Many people in the open source community see Oracle’s acquisition of MySQL, and the long waiting period that Europe required to approve the deal (while many MySQL customers bailed) as sealing MySQL’s doom.

For that matter, why should Oracle care about overseeing the OpenOffice suite of open-source productivity applications? That’s just competing with Microsoft in a game that doesn’t go far. And we don’t even have to get into GlassFish and the countless other open-source software efforts at Sun that Oracle has little financial interest in supporting.

Schwartz’s decision to leave probably has a lot do with open source efforts that he cares about that are unlikely to flourish, and a lot do with money. admonition to employees to “emotionally resign from Sun” is a signal that the upcoming change in control at the company will run deep, and probably affect the company’s many open source efforts. That includes There is money that Oracle can save by extinguishing projects such as MySQL, or letting them languish. It may include There may be money that Oracle can reap through staff cuts and possibly cutting Sun’s hardware business. Schwartz’s decision Any future decision Schwartz makes regarding staying may also have to do with substantial money he’ll get as a result of his equity in Sun in any exit.

Sun’s positioning as an open source leader started to become sketchier last April when Oracle proposed the company’s acquisition. Today, we’re seeing the endgame of that pursuit from a huge player in proprietary software, and the beginning of the financial fallout to come. Money changes everything.

Image courtesy of TechShowNetworks on Flickr.

Microsoft will introduce its long-rumored “Pink” handset to market sometime in the next two months, according to a research note released this week by Jefferies & Co. And we may see it come to market alongside dual versions of Windows Mobile that separately target business users and consumers.

The investment firm said Microsoft is working with multiple manufacturers to create a “Zune-like” handset under its own brand. The phone would debut at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next month or at CTIA in Las Vegas in March, Jefferies predicts, and Microsoft could release versions of Windows Mobile 7 as the device comes to market. That would be huge news for Microsoft in light of recent reports indicating that the newest version of Microsoft’s mobile OS might not see the light of day until next year.

The prediction comes amid a flurry of rumors regarding WinMo 7, many of which are centered around the operating system’s focus on entertainment and social networking. Jefferies expects the OS to feature premium services including a Zune video store and music offerings, and reports indicate WinMo 7 will support Xbox Live. The latest rumors indicate Microsoft will launch two flavors of Windows Mobile, targeting its traditional core business users with one version and younger consumers with another.

Regardless of when WinMo 7 comes to market, the dual-OS scenario would be Microsoft’s best play to get back in the smartphone race. Windows Mobile has increasingly been relegated to a business niche while Apple’s iPhone and other consumer-friendly gadgets find broad audiences. But a complete shift toward entertainment would risk losing the enterprise segment that represents Microsoft’s core wireless market. Targeting consumers as it continues to serve the business segment would be a big step toward regaining Microsoft’s relevance in mobile.

In-post image courtesy Microsoft.

This is the second in a series of 7 posts in the 7 days prior to Apple’s January 27 media event in which I explore various possibilities for an Apple Tablet and other potential announcements.

If you are returning from some sort of Internet exile, you might just be hearing that Apple is expected to announce a new tablet computer at an event in Cupertino on January 27. All we know for certain is that they are holding an event to showcase their “latest creation.” But there is an incredible amount of rumor and speculation about the company and the device that it is hard to ignore. I, for one, am obsessed, so I’m devoting an entire week to examining the possibilities.

Among the many questions about an Apple tablet are what software it will run, and what the user experience will be like. Before we dive into the specifics of what a tablet might offer, lets consider some history and the current state of Apple device operating systems.

History of the Apple OS

Apple first introduced Mac OS X in 2001 (though a server version was released earlier) after modifying the NeXT Computer operating system it had purchased in early 1999. Later in 2001, Apple introduced the iPod, which ran a different operating system powered in part by software from a company called Pixo, whose team included several former Apple Newton engineers. The Apple TV, running a device-specific variant of Mac OS X, shipped in March 2007, and the iPhone–also running a device-specific variant of Mac OS X–went on sale in June of the same year. Apple has released updates for all operating systems through software update and new devices, and major new versions of Mac OS X via box purchases. Major iPhone software updates are roughly on an annual release cycle, while major Mac OS X updates were once released on a similar schedule, but that has slowed in recent years.

Apple’s Snow Leopard version of Mac OS X was released in August 2009, and was touted by Apple as a performance update with few new features. My installations of Snow Leopard saved on average about 20GB of hard drive space, and seemed to make my computers run faster. But while these changes were great for my Macs, most desktop and laptop computers had plenty of memory and storage to run Mac OS X before Snow Leopard was introduced. The same improvements, however, would make a huge difference for devices like the iPhone and Apple TV, where memory and storage are more constrained and precious, and fixed for a particular model.

It is now a misnomer to refer to the operating system as “Mac OS X,” which is really just the version that runs on the Macintosh line of computers. “OS X,” however, runs on Macs as well as iPhones and Apple TVs. So all of Apple’s current devices, except non-touch iPods (and maybe those!), run OS X: Mac OS X, iPhone OS X, and Apple TV OS X (iSlate OS X?). Of course there are differences, most obviously in user interface and input method: keyboard and mouse for the Mac, touch for the iPhone, and remote control for Apple TV. Apple excels at creating user interfaces that are appropriate for these different input methods and other parameters such as viewing distance. One of the great things about OS X is its modularity: variants can rather easily be optimized for their target devices.

Its hard to imagine a scenario in which the Apple tablet won’t run OS X. But which OS X? The same version used in desktop and laptops, or the one used for iPhones? After all, won’t the tablet simply be a big iPod touch? Or will it be another operating system altogether?

Tablet OS X

The iPhone OS has a touch interface, as the tablet most certainly will, and is thus the most likely of the existing operating systems to be used in the new device. But iPhone apps–those built by Apple and third-party developers–are specifically designed to run on the iPhone’s 480×320 pixel resolution. Ideally, app developers won’t have to create 2 versions of their apps: one for the iPhone and one for the tablet. Which means other, more low-level changes to the iPhone OS would be required. Apps will need a form of UI intelligence to recognize which device it is being displayed on, then render a version appropriate for that device.

The tablet could run iPhone apps inside smaller windows, turning current iPhone apps into something like Dashboard widgets, but this doesn’t strike me as very elegant–or very Apple-like. Indeed, there is some evidence that a small group of select app developers has been asked to create versions of their apps for a larger resolution display, but we don’t know if these are new, single versions that work on both screen sizes, or if they are new, secondary versions of the apps that run only on the larger screen.

The team working on the Apple tablet likely began creating the user experience for the new device with a blank sheet of paper. Simply trying to scale the iPhone interface would be too limiting, and wouldn’t result in the optimum user experience. Yet there is a clear business need to support the app development community and leverage to tremendous success of the iTunes App Store. There just aren’t any easy answers to this problem.

Ultimately, I expect Apple to create a third operating system (after Mac and iPhone, not including Apple TV or iPod since they don’t support app development) for the new tablet. It will be based on OS X, but will have an entirely new user interface that is optimized for the screen size and purpose of the device. Apple’s developer tools will also be updated to include support for the new tablet, including a Mac-based emulator, allowing developers to use XCode, Interface Builder and other tools to support all of Apple’s product lines. The iPhone OS will be updated to support new app parameters so that apps can be easily updated to run on both devices. Perhaps on the 27th but likely later, the Apple TV will get a similar update to support the iTunes App Store.

Related GigaOM Pro Research: Rumored Apple Tablet: Opportunities Too Big to Ignore

The worldwide smartphone battle is a lesson in geography, according to figures released this morning by AdMob (PDF), which shows that Apple’s iPhone dominates in the Western world while Nokia’s Symbian operating system outpaces the rest of the field in Africa and Asia. But the iPhone operating system is picking up steam in some of those emerging markets, too.

Symbian devices accounted for 69 percent of smartphone ad requests in Asia through AdMob’s network in the fourth quarter of 2009, down substantially from its share in the third quarter. Meanwhile, the iPhone nearly doubled its share of traffic from Asia quarter-over-quarter. And while Symbian maintained a dominant share among users in Africa, its lead was erased in Eastern Europe for the first time as the iPhone generated 51 percent of AdMob’s smartphone activity.

The iPhone OS also accounted for an overwhelming majority of smartphone requests in Western Europe as Symbian activity fell to a mere 10 percent, and Apple gadgets maintained a substantial lead in North America. In the meantime, Android is beginning to emerge as a force, generating more than one-fourth of AdMob’s smartphone activity in North America and 8 percent in Western Europe. Android is beginning to find an audience in Eastern Europe, too, primarily at Symbian’s expense.

Nokia’s strong traction in emerging markets is nothing new, of course, and the company has opted not to focus on North America with its ambitious Ovi service. While that may be a sound strategy, it will require the company to ramp up Symbian traffic on the mobile web and maintain the leads it’s built in the African and Asian markets that have become its focus. If AdMob’s figures are any indication, that simply isn’t happening.

Image courtesy Flickr user Jeffrey Simms Photography.

European Commissioner for Competition Neelie Kroes

After nearly a year of deliberation and widespread criticism, the European Commission has finally officially approved Oracle’s proposed acquisition of Sun Microsystems for $7.4 billion. Sun’s time in no-man’s-land saw it lose many customers and raised questions about key products and divisions that it has. The question now is, what has this cost the company?

“I am now satisfied that competition and innovation will be preserved on all the markets concerned. Oracle’s acquisition of Sun has the potential to revitalize important assets and create new and innovative products,” said Neelie Kroes, the European antitrust commissioner, in a statement. Kroes was key to the opposition of the proposed acquisition, and the fact that she is satisfied that “competition and innovation will be preserved” comes only a few months short of a year after the EC began deliberating over the deal in April of 2009.

During the long wait that Sun and its customers had to endure, one of the big questions everyone asked was what would come of the company’s MySQL open-source database and the division surrounding it, which had been growing. After the U.S. Department of Justice quickly approved the merger, speculation started to arise that Oracle might kill MySQL due to the competition it represents for Oracle’s proprietary databases. Oracle officials have repeatedly denied that, implying instead that MySQL can become an on-ramp for new users of its databases, but Monty Widenius, MySQL’s co-founder, kept up a long campaign to block the acquisition. There is still no doubt that the European Commission’s long deliberation over the Oracle deal has cost MySQL momentum.

There are questions lingering about other aspects of Sun’s business as well. Since the proposed deal was announced, it’s been unclear what Oracle might do with Sun’s hardware business and cloud computing initiatives. One analyst recently suggested that Oracle would slash half of Sun’s workforce, which would almost certainly involve big cuts in its hardware business. Sun officials have vehemently denied that, and have in fact campaigned for the acquisition to go through.

Sun Microsystems has been one of just three big public U.S. companies (the other two being Novell and Red Hat) almost entirely focused on open source, and one of the biggest blows to the company from its long time in limbo is the slowdown in momentum of its open source efforts, particularly with MySQL. IBM has been one of the big beneficiaries of the European Commission’s long decision-making process, as reports have come in that customers from Sun’s server business and other divisions have drifted to it. Some have even suggested that IBM may have played a role in the EC’s long decision-making process.

MySQL has been good for both competition and the rise of open source, so it will be interesting to see if Oracle’s pledge to preserve its momentum sticks. Sun’s open-source virtualization and open cloud computing initiatives have also represented healthy competition for the VMwares and IBMs of the world.

There again, it remains to be seen how valuable Oracle really thinks Sun’s underlying open-source assets are, and how committed it is to being in the hardware business. Even OpenOffice, the widely used open-source competitor to Microsoft Office, stands to be heavily influenced by Oracle’s oversight of it, as will Java, which is driven forward through open processes but will be heavily influnced by Oracle’s oversight of it. (Oracle’s Larry Ellison has referred to Java as its most important software acquisition ever.) As the EC finally delivers a decision, most of the open source community has strong criticism for the amount of time it took to reach one.

The real irony there is that the EC cited openness and open source in particular as what it was trying to protect in heavily scrutinizing the deal. That just does not compute.

This is the first in a series of 7 posts in the 7 days prior to Apple’s January 27 media event in which I explore various possibilities for an Apple Tablet and other potential announcements.

The world is expecting Apple to announce a new tablet, or slate, style computer on January 27. Most predictions peg the device as essentially an iPod touch with a 10″ screen. But simply scaling Mac OS X Mobile to a larger screen size isn’t likely, as the operating system that currently powers iPhone and iPod touch models is optimized for their specific screens. The question arises, then, as to how users will input text into the Apple tablet.

The iPhone keyboard works well for several reasons. The device is small enough that you can type with just one hand while holding the phone with the same hand. The keys are surprisingly large, even in portrait mode, and Apple technology makes keys invisibly larger based on likely letter combinations. Auto-correction works well enough that the easiest way to become a fast typist on the iPhone is to suspend your disbelief that you’ll make mistakes, and just keep typing.

The same keyboard on a larger screen, whether still small or scaled up, wouldn’t work nearly as well. The biggest problem would be holding the tablet and typing at the same time. If the form factor is anything like most suspect it will be, the weight and balance of the tablet would make such input impossible, requiring users to instead hold it with one hand and hunt-and-peck to type with the other.

Current Lines of Thought

Perhaps the most obvious solution would be to split the onscreen keyboard and push it to the edges, allowing users to hold the device and type with their thumbs. A similar approach was used with a number of ultra-mobile PCs (UMPCs), such as the Samsung Q1. This doesn’t strike me as particularly elegant or particularly Apple, but it could work, and might be the easiest solution technically.

Another option is an altogether different keyboard interface purposefully designed for five-finger typing with one hand. Users could hold the device in one hand, and quickly type with all fingers of the other. Combined with advanced multi-touch gestures for text input and overall control, this method is reminiscent of Microsoft Surface and Minority Report.

Unlike the iPhone and iPod touch, Apple could also allow the tablet to work with hardware keyboards, either via Bluetooth or USB connections. The current Apple wireless keyboard would make a perfect companion for times when touch input isn’t sufficient, with the touchscreen display eliminating the need to also have a mouse. Using a traditional keyboard also strikes me as very inelegant and un-Apple, but may be needed to drive mass adoption.

A Hardware Solution

However, a hardware keyboard designed specifically for the tablet and doubles as a dock might fit the bill. Given Apple’s apparent cloud ambitions (building a data center in North Carolina, purchasing LaLa, etc.) and cost concerns, the tablet is likely to have a small amount of onboard storage compared to laptops. Chances are that Apple will view the tablet as a cloud computing device, or one of several satellites orbiting around a full Mac serving as the digital media hub. Like the iPhone or iPod touch, the tablet may only hold a portion of your songs, movies, pictures and other media, meaning it will need to connect for syncing. A dock for syncing that doubles as a keyboard, with Jon Ives’ design panache, would be an excellent way to meet core needs while also extending the functionality of the device.

Given all of these options, I’m expecting three things: a variant of the software user interface that further limits users need to input text even more than the iPhone already does; an advanced multi-touch user interface that is optimized for five-finger input; and the option to use a keyboard–possibly a new keyboard that doubles as a dock–when necessary. The next-generation multi-touch capabilities that Apple has patented and developed are likely too advanced for many of today’s computer users. I expect the tablet multi-touch user interface to follow a similar path of increasing complexity and capability over several years as the trackpad and Magic Mouse have.

Related GigaOM Pro Research: Rumored Apple Tablet: Opportunities Too Big to Ignore

Ifbyphone, a Chicago-area startup that offers cloud-based telephony services, has announced the acquisition of Cloudvox, part of the company’s move to build on its open-source software business. Financial details were not disclosed. Sometimes described as “Asterisk in the cloud,” Cloudvox, which launched last fall, offers web developers a way to control phone calls from the web or a software app without the need for added infrastructure.

The move gives Ifbyphone a scalable back end for its voice applications that’s accessible via an open API. Cloudvox offers “phone building blocks” that provide basic telephony functions such as making and receiving calls and presenting interactive voice response menus as well as performing more advanced tasks. Ifbyphone, which automates traditional and Internet phone calls through pre-built apps, plans to use the acquisition to enable businesses to leverage their existing Asterisk apps and bring them to scale through Ifbyphone’s infrastructure.

Ifbyphone aims to help developers create the kinds of mobile apps that will serve as differentiators in telephony as voice marches toward its all-IP future. A handful of landline operators have adopted that strategy, as witnessed by the recent acquisitions of Ribbit by BT and Jajah by O2/Telefonica. As Ifbyphone CEO Irv Shapiro told me:

I think we are facing a dramatic paradigm change in the world of telephony. Whether you’re a business or an individual you now have a choice about what causes your phone to ring, and that choice ranges from traditional phone companies to Skype. Because there’s so much choice on transport, the price of transport is racing toward zero. When you have a price of zero, you can’t make up (declining margins) with volume.

As we move increasingly toward VoIP, then, a key question to answer will be which of the entrenched players — from landline operators to cable companies to mobile carriers — are best equipped to handle the transition. And that will depend largely on which of the VoIP startups they join forces with.

Ever since the tragic earthquake struck Haiti last week, people the world over have been generously donating towards the much-needed aid effort. Thankfully, due to several unique and innovative schemes, it has never been easier to make a pledge. One such upcoming program is the Indie+Relief fundraiser, which aims to raise money for the vital relief fund through the sale of certain Mac and iPhone software.

Tomorrow, Jan. 20, Indie+Relief will be taking all of the sale proceedings from a range of applications and be giving them to select charities. The impressive list of applications on offer include the likes of image editor Acorn, MarketCircle’s Billings, cataloging software Delicious Library 2, web statistics manager Ego, FTP client Flow, newsreader Instapaper Pro, to-do list Things, Twitter client Twitterific and many, many more.

The project started only a few days ago and has been made possible due to a joint collaboration between developers Garret Murray and Second Gear. Since they announced the project, a whole host of other developers from the Mac and iPhone community have gotten involved, with the Indie+Relief site now listing over 130 applications. Developers partaking in the fundraising all had the opportunity to select any charity of their choice, all of which will benefit the Haiti aid process. Popular charities include The Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders and UNICEF.

If you are in the market to buy any of the listed applications, then be sure to take the plunge this coming Wednesday, as all of the proceeds will go to Haitian aid organizations. And if you’re not, be sure to check out Indie+Relief anyway as you may just find something new!

Google this morning postponed the launch of two Android handsets in China in a clear indication that the company’s rift with Beijing threatens its booming mobile business. Meanwhile, the Nexus One has seen lackluster sales amid widespread complaints of technical glitches. So with Android’s future in China uncertain, and problems mounting with Google’s decision to build and sell the ideal Android phone — the Nexus One –  is it too early to wonder whether Google will pull the plug on its flagship phone?

Google indefinitely pushed back the launch of two handsets slated to debut tomorrow from China Unicom, dramatically upping the ante in its high-profile showdown with the Chinese government. As Om noted last week, China accounts for more 638 million wireless users, and handset sales are expected to grow by 21 percent this year alone. And the market could be especially ripe for Android given its support by some key players in the region: members of Google’s Open Handset Alliance include operators China Mobile and China Telecom as well as Huawei and ZTE.

While a governmental crackdown could lead to versions of the open-source OS that are far less integrated with Google’s mobile apps, the escalating conflict means that Google will be unable to control the evolution of Android in China. And it surely closes the door on any potential Chinese sales of the Nexus One — throwing yet another roadblock at the struggling handset.

Google appears to have overreached in launching its own branded handset. The search giant was clearly unprepared to deal with the customer service issues that inevitably arise in the retailing business, and splashy headlines of customer backlash are tarnishing its highly respected brand.

The company has obviously overestimated demand for an “official” Google phone, selling just 20,000 handsets in the first week it was out, and its strategy of competing against its handset and carrier partners has limited upside and risks losing the widespread support that has fueled Android’s growth. It may be unfair to predict doom for a handset that came to market just two weeks ago, but it’s becoming clear that taking on the role of mobile retailer was a mistake for Google. It’s too early to predict that Google will kill the Nexus One, but it’s not too early to wonder whether it should.

Microsoft, with a nod toward privacy protection, has announced that it will limit the amount of time that it stores IP addresses of web searchers using the Bing search engine to six months, down from 18. Peter Cullen, the company’s chief privacy strategist, announced the move in a blog post.

According to Cullen’s post, increased pressure from the European Union, which has been squaring off with Microsoft lately, may be behind the decision. The EU has specifically called for search engine providers to limit retention of personal data to six months or under:

“This change is the result of a number of factors including a continuing evaluation of our business needs, the current competitive landscape and our ongoing dialogue with privacy advocates, consumer groups, and regulators – including the Article 29 Working Party, the group of 27 European national data protection regulators charged with providing advice to the European Commission and other EU institutions on data protection.”

Cullen also supplied the following slide, which claims that Microsoft will de-identify personal information immediately when Bing is used, but will store the user’s IP address for six months:

Microsoft’s shift in policy follows similar moves from both Yahoo and Google. Yahoo announced over a year ago that it would delete most personal data on users of its site after three months. Google partially deletes IP addresses after nine months by deleting the last characters and numbers in the addresses, as noted on FutureOfPrivacy.org.

Official word yesterday that there is indeed an Apple event on the 27th didn’t generate the frenetic response typically associated with such news, probably because the blogosphere, twitterverse and mainstream media have all been going gaga over it for weeks.

The Wall Street Journal correctly pegged the event date and location, and also said the company would discuss its “mobile products” at the event. Assuming WSJ got that last bit right as well, the event promises much more than a new Apple tablet product introduction.

Beginning tomorrow, January 20, I’ll publish seven daily posts about my expectations for Apple’s event. The last of these will be published on the 26th, and on the 27th, we will all learn whether my expectations were on target or off the mark. Stay tuned for seven posts in seven days about what we’ll hear on the 27th. Lucky 7, or craps? We’ll know soon enough.

Related GigaOM Pro Research: Rumored Apple Tablet: Opportunities Too Big to Ignore

I’m a writer for a blog that focuses on Apple and its products, including Macs, iPods and iPhones. So I have a duty and an obligation to write one or more posts about the highly anticipated, much discussed, and completely unknown Apple Tablet device expected to be announced on January 27. But based on the last few years, I have a bit of a unique perspective on the tablet, why Apple might create one, and why you might want to buy one if it does.

Almost four years ago — about 9-10 months before the iPhone was first announced in January 2007 — I decided to give up a rather successful user experience consulting practice to follow a dream. I created a company to build and monetize a product of my own making, rather than continue to provide services to others. After some extensive research, a small team I had assembled helped me develop the product concept and strategy. Essentially, we were going to create what we called the “iTunes of apps,” an online ecosystem of applications that you could easily discover and download to all your digital devices. We determined we needed to build a tablet computer as proof of concept and get hardware manufacturers and content companies on board.

We envisioned a product that looked something like the Notion Ink reported recently, and focused on creating “the first room-to-room mobile Internet device” on the market. Our plan was to focus on lifestyle applications that made daily life easier, including video recipes, home/baby/security monitoring, instructional videos for DIY home improvement projects, and a wide array of similar content. The miBook has since been launched with similar ambitions, but focuses exclusively on “how to” type of content, rather than a full ecosystem of diverse apps serving many purposes. Litl is giving something similar a whirl, but it has a keyboard and limited capability touchscreen so it can’t really be called a tablet. HP’s DreamScreen is a digital picture frame that, while hardwired, is also attempting to address similar needs. Alas, we weren’t able to raise the significant capital required to launch such an animal, in part because no one on our team had a hardware background. We’ve since moved on to creating our own software and advising others in the user experience and mobile space.

For us, the effort was all about the user experience. At the time — and even since with the iPhone, full-screen Blackberries, and Android phones — there was a gap in the user experience between the Nokia N series and similar mobile devices, and full-fledged computers. Something incredibly fun and easy to use, with a screen big enough to be viewed across the room (for watching video recipes, sharing photos with the family, or just watching video content of any type). Of course, the iPhone and iPod touch have addressed much of this need, except the bigger screen. Viewing distance and sharing aren’t the only limitations of the mobile screen for content perhaps best consumed in a tablet style device. iPhone video, for example, takes over the screen, eliminating ability to view related text content or even publish opinions about the content you’re viewing to your social networks. There’s not really a good digital equivalent of reading magazines with imaginative typography, color spreads, and other graphic elements. And I have yet to see a compelling digital textbook that not only includes the original text, but also companion videos and graphics, news feeds on related topics, and updates from and conversation with the author.

That’s the sum total of what I know about the Apple Tablet. That there is a market for one, that many companies are trying hard to tap the market, and that there is a lot of content which would best be showcased on such a device. But what I don’t know is likely far more interesting. So without any inside knowledge, here is my not-so-idle speculation about what it might or could include:

• Keyboard Dock: Perhaps the best use of a tablet would be a replacement for the consumer-oriented, entry-level white MacBook. But to successfully replace a laptop, the Apple tablet might just need a physical keyboard. What better way to integrate one than to simply make it a recharging dock?
• Third OS: My sense is there will be a new operating system for the tablet that bridges the gap between the small size, single-function nature of the iPhone OS and the larger platform, keyboard-driven, multitasking capabilities of Snow Leopard. It might be nice if the OS automatically sensed that the tablet was in the dock, and morphed slightly for keyboard optimized input.
• Publication Wrapper: A new multimedia format will join iTunes LP, allowing publishers of primarily text-based content to release multimedia versions of their book, magazine, or newspaper content that dramatically changes how we consume a lot of content in the home.
• Apple TV & iTunes Integration: The new tablet will basically become the wireless display to the Apple TV, and Apple will offer a ground-up rethinking about how content is shared among devices on a local network.
• Front-mounted Web Cam: Crowding around a MacBook to have a video chat with the grandparents isn’t a terrible experience, but it isn’t ideal. A touch-based iChat application would be far more compelling and fun.
• Home Controls: Expect Apple to position the tablet, an updated Apple TV, new and easier sharing of content among devices, apps like Remote, and integration with other systems as a way to make home controls a mass market.

Personally, I enjoy all the rumors and speculation that some have grown weary of. I’m hoping that none of us are completely right, and that Apple will surprise us all with something that we never realized we couldn’t do without.

A few months back, my wife went on a girls’ weekend trip from East Coast to West, gone for a total of five days. I survived my first long stretch with our three year old daughter alone, but it wasn’t easy. At 43, I came to parenthood late in life, and I have to admit being a father is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. During my wife’s much-needed and deserved vacation, I perhaps relied a bit too heavily on the TV for entertainment and babysitting. But the TV gave me the few minutes throughout each day that I needed to get things done or just take a minute to myself.

When my wife returned, we settled back into our routine, consisting of 1-2 days per week when we eat dinner out as a family. These events can also be challenging, as our daughter is one of those kids who just cannot sit still for anything. She seems well connected to her surroundings and engages with us and others, but she is perpetual motion personified. So imagine my surprise when the littlest tornado actually sat in her chair for an entire meal!

My wife’s new secret weapon was a series of iPhone apps created especially for toddlers that one of her California girlfriends had recommended. The most popular with our daughter is Letter Tracer, which works as the name suggests. So my daughter was occupied by learning to write her letters. The device and screen provided the engagement that pen and paper hadn’t, and she delighted at being able to successfully trace all the letters of the alphabet, smiling and exclaiming “Look Daddy, I did it!” each time she completed a new tracing. My daughter was having a blast learning how to write her letters, and her parents were enjoying not just her growth but a nice restaurant experience as well.

As 2009 wound to a close, I engaged in my typical year-end organization efforts, scouring boxes and folders to discard what I didn’t need and properly file what I wanted to keep. When I found my original iPhone (16GB Edge; no 3, no G), my first thought was to sell it on eBay. I had great success selling an iPhone 3G on eBay, after all, getting $350 for one that had been exposed to moisture but was working perfectly. Then it hit me: why not load it up with iPhone apps for toddlers like Letter Tracer, put it in a heavy duty case with a screen protector, and make us into a three-iPhone family? Better, why not rip all the discs we use on a portable DVD player during long family trips, making it even easier to travel? My schedule didn’t allow me to finish configuring “her” iPhone before our trip to New Jersey for Christmas, but I was able to unveil it shortly after we returned, which turned out to be a good thing as I was home with our sick daughter the week between Christmas and New Year’s.

My three year old daughter now has her own iPhone, though without service so it is effectively an iPod touch. And how did I create a monster, you might ask? Easy. Her first words upon waking from sleep are “Where’s my iPhone?” Her reaction to her parents call to come to the dinner table, head upstairs for a bath or get ready for bed is to clutch her iPhone and cry. Even though I loaded her iPhone with some of her favorite apps from her mom’s phone (by re-downloading to our black Macbook, as I couldn’t get iTunes Home Sharing to work with my wife’s Macbook Air), she only really uses it to watch a small handful of videos that I ripped or downloaded. And she uses it constantly: sitting in a chair, laying on the floor, walking from room-to-room… head down, focused on the iPhone screen, it can be a challenge to get her to disengage with the device and engage with us.

So how can this be a good thing, or at least not bad? For one, I long ago read “Everything Bad is Good for You” by Steven Berlin Johnson, and take solace that her use of the iPhone at this early stage is at least teaching her some valuable skills, including human-computer interaction (for example, she is still mastering the art of touching a video then touching again on the appropriate icon to pause or play it). The videos I loaded are generally good quality educational content, so there are learning moments in them. And her ability to use the iPhone or not has quickly become the “carrot” and “stick” motivation we’ve long needed: she responds to our threats to take it away or promise to let her use it as with nothing that came before it.

As the novelty of watching videos begins to wear off, I expect our daughter to explore all of the possibilities that her iPhone offers. We’re already using the built-in clock to learn to tell time, Camera to take pictures, and Weather to see if it will snow today. I can imagine using apps like Best Camera to learn more about art and photography, or Vocabulearn Tagalog to learn her mom’s families native language (which I need to do before we go to the Philippines in a year or two). In the meantime, she’s already started to use some of the toddler apps I installed, like Kid Art, Voice Toddler Cards, and the Curious George Coloring Book.

The real challenge will be to help our daughter use her iPhone as an educational device, and avoid the trap of becoming too immersed to the detriment of social, motor, and other skills development. The real question is whether I’m a bad dad for giving a three year old an iPhone. What do you think?

Image courtesy of Flickr user jessica.garro