The original idea was for this blog to be about photography. Now it turns out that there is much more to comment on in technology and finance than on photography. So I have decided to separate the topics in different blogs.

For now on I will adopt the following rules:
- my comments about photography, and only photography will go to the good old blog on Mindworks Creation website.
- my posts about finance and investing will go to the newly opened blog at Barestock.
Barestock covers my activities related to trading and investing in technology companies. The website and the blog can tell you more if you want to know what it is about. But trading is a real time captivity so a lot of things happen on twitter nowadays. To stay in touch you can follow me at @barestock.
- my posts concerning iOS development will go to the newly created blog at SilverWillowSoftware.
The blog is here and the website still need improvement.

That way things will be much more logically organized and you should get posts only about the topics that you are interested in. Please check the appropriate blog and follow me on twitter if you want more real time comments.

So it works that way:

Photography – http:www.mindworkscreation.com – @MindworksCrea

Trading/Investing – http://www.barestock.com – @barestock

iOS development – http://www.silverwillowsoftware.com – @SilverWillowCo or @lcavalie

I don’t have the camera, I did not used it but there are several hands-on videos all over the web. I also saw the report from the usual suspects who have received pre-production samples. Of course you can expect from them to be all excited about the camera and to try to convince us of how awesome it is.
Anyway, even if you take the buzz with a cautious grain of salt, the specs of the product are still here and I still have the feeling that we have a shift that remind me of the D3.

Let’s go back to the end of 2007. Canon is the king. You hear reports of photographers switching from Nikon to Canon to take advantage of the more advanced video capabilities. Than at the beginning of 2008 the Nikon D3 appears and it did not took long for several photographers to come back to Nikon to take advantage of the low light and overall picture quality of the new product. The D3 was the star of the beijing olympics, I would not be surprised if we see the same thing ahead of the London Olympics.

What will be the next step?

There is really nothing groundbreaking in the new product but Nikon apparently is catching up on the video quality and on the overall usability and convenience of the camera. It is certainly leveling the playing field.
At the same time, with the C300, it looks like Canon is more interested in addressing the needs of filmmakers in Hollywood than casual photographers. Are they really going after the right market? Not too sure. In the meantime we can reasonably expect to see the new technology from the D4 to appear in more affordable consumer cameras in a recent future.

In the last 12 years we saw the digital technology take over the traditional film, than over the last 5 years we saw a fusion of the tools available for photographer and film makers. The D4 looks like everything you can dream of if you shoot or film sports, nature and portraits.
But the D4 is also a very specialized tool, it looks to me as some sort of specialized computer with an advanced optic system. It’s a device built to capture and process light digitally. It is probably more sophisticated than a computer in a way but with a very specific user interface.

The question that remains unclear to me is how this technology is going to filter down to the consumer market. Are we going to see a downplayed version of the D4 or are we going to see portable computers getting a better optical component and invading the market of point and shoot cameras. By ‘portable computers’ here I mean devices like an iPhone. The iPhone 4S already has a pretty descent lens system but the software is where it really shines, the low quality of the optics is compensated by great software.

Now can you imagine a device with a ‘camera’ level optic (as opposed to ‘cellphone level’) and the software and the overall user interface and power of an iPhone, a camera on which you could install apps for specific creative features. Wouldn’t that be a killer product, wouldn’t you prefer that over a point and shoot? Are we heading toward generic portable computers upgraded to be cameras or toward ultra specialized devices like the D4 downgraded to be affordable by consumers?

I also must notice that if the D4 is better on many aspects it is still a camer

To summarize what people have been able to find out so far.

Carrier IQ is a private company who provide some services to the cellphones carriers. For years, the carriers have installed this software on your cellphone supposedly to be able to analyze the quality of the network and improve their services.

After analyzing what the software does exactly it has been recently revealed that it logs pretty much everything you do, your location, the numbers you dial (the carriers already know that anyway), the text messages you send or receive, the websites you visit.
This happens at the lowest level of your phone OS so it can even log your encrypted web connections before they get encrypted, so it keeps track of your passwords for example before they get encrypted.
To make things worse, those data are stored on your phone and sent to the servers at Carrier IQ and made available to the cellphone carriers. You are not aware that this process is happening, you cannot opt out of it, you are not asked for your approval for it to happen and you cannot even shutdown the software or prevent it from starting when you turn on your cellphone.

The cellphones manufacturers are all pretty much explaining that they have nothing to do with that, they give the devices they produce to the carriers who install whatever they want on it and sell them to the unsuspecting customer (that would be you!)

The carriers have pretty much admitted using Carrier IQ but explain that this is a necessary process to improve the quality of their network. Sure, ATT need to know when I log into a website with my username and password and need to keep track of those unencrypted information, it is vital to the optimization of their network. Or you can be the judge of that.

As for Carrier IQ they have been pretty quiet so far but today they received a letter from Senator Franken and it looks like they will have a lot of embarrassing questions to answer.

The story is still developing and could turn into an outright scandal, maybe even a lawsuit as it is not clear if all this is really legal.
We will see how it turns out.

Now, next time I hear somebody explain to me that we have too much government, too much rules, that those rules are bad for the business, they are hurting the economy, they are preventing companies from creating jobs, I think I will use that example. This Carrier IQ story is what happens when you let big companies do whatever they want without putting any regulation on them. It is simply not acceptable.
Sure Carrier IQ is a private company that will soon be in trouble and may simply collapse as a consequence but I still believe the world will be a better place without them. Sure some people will lose their jobs but the problem is that those jobs should not have been created to start with. Not everything is acceptable just to be able to make some profit.

Big companies have proven over and over again that they cannot be trusted, that they are unable to keep a reasonable behavior, that if you let them loose and free to do whatever they want it will end up with that kind of situation. That was the case for the Finance industry, it got us into years of recession and ended up hurting millions of people while making a few executives even more rich. Now we have a pretty good evidence that it’s the same all over again with the cellphone carriers.

So, who’s next? How much more evidences do we need?

Below is the post as I originally wrote it.

There was no iPhone 5 announced yesterday, so this morning the world is disappointed, Apple stock is down more than the day after Steve Jobs resigned as CEO, Samsung and the koreans have hope again at conquering the world. At least the good thing for them is that they won’t have to copy a new device again, the iPhone 4S looks just like the iPhone 4. So is this really a problem?


Let’s analyze what happened. Apple had to release a new product to replace the old but still popular iPhone 4, this product was supposed to:
- have a new faster processor comparable to the one in the iPad 2
- have a better camera
- run on iOS 5 and have a new voice recognition feature
- run on the faster 3.5G network (when your carrier actually support that)
- have a single model that works for all carriers and on all kind of networks

The new iPhone 4S delivers all that but still people wanted more and maybe in a unrealistic way.

The major other expectations were:
- make it thinner. Unfortunately we know this is not possible because of the camera. A descent quality camera requires a descent lens and some sort of focusing and this prevents the phone from being thinner, that’s physics, not much anybody can do about it nowadays.
- get rid of the glass back. I can understand that because it certainly makes the phone a little more fragile, but it also helps a lot the reception. Antennas don’t like to be hidden behind an aluminum back. That’s why there are those ugly black plastic areas on the back of the iPad 2 for example. An Apple don’t like plastic much.
- make the screen bigger. This is certainly possible but that would mean a bigger phone. Apple has picked a form factor from the beginning and is sticking to it and there are some good reasons to do so. Among various advantages, you can use a 3.5 inches phone one handed, this would not be possible with a 4 inch phone. Unfortunately people often get the impression that bigger is better, so a phone with a bigger screen must be better. That’s not necessarily the case but people don’t realize it.
- LTE. Or 4G, this is the next evolution of the wireless networks. Eventually it will get there but there are currently 2 major problems with it. First it’s not widely available. Second every 4G chip requires much more power to operate and therefore would mean a reduced battery life. Apple puts a lot of emphasis on battery life, they don’t want to sell a phone who is out of battery after 3 or 4 hours. So until there are more advanced components there will probably not be a 4G iPhone.

So now the real question is: what is missing in this iPhone 4S?

As far as I can tell nobody came up with much except that there should be iPhone 5 written on it. All the points I listed above are expectations for sure but they are not reasonable expectations.

On paper this phone looks like a great product, it comes with a very significant software update, the new Siri voice recognition intelligent assistant looks awesome, so where exactly is the problem.

I think part of the problem again lay in the secrecy that Apple maintain on everything, it helps develop all sort of rumors and unrealistic expectations. On one side it gives Apple a constant buzz in the press, on the other end when the most crazy rumors prove to be just that (crazy rumors) it leads to some disappointment.

But does it really matter?

No, I very much doubt that outside of a very small population this matters in any way.
The iPhone 4S is a product for a mass market (albeit a sophisticated product) and masses don’t care if there is 5 or 4S written on it.

Now there are some real questions that I have not seen mentioned anywhere. I don’t really have the answer but sometime just asking the question already opens perspectives.

- Why cannot we get Siri outside of the iPhone 4S. The power available on the iPhone $ may be too limited but it is certainly not the case for the iPad 2?
Would that be a way for Apple to make this phone more attractive? Looks like it.
- What happened to the integration of payment systems in the phone. There were speculations a few months ago about the integration of Near Field Communication features. That would let people replace a credit card payment by waving their phones at a new kind of terminals.
There is no sign of that either. Maybe the world is not ready for it. To get this to work you need a phone that is compatible with it and you also need terminals in every stores capable of reading the information coming from the phone. That means replacing all those devices on which you swipe your card at the supermarket. All of them, every where and that’s a lot of devices!

“We are not impressed with Kindle Fire. In our view, [it] is a stepping stone, at best, into the tablet market. We think that for any vendor to wrestle momentum from Apple, a fully-loaded offering is a must, and here, Kindle Fire falls short for now.”

So, thank you Mr Moskowitz to let us know that we can still safely buy Apple stock and Apple’s lunch won’t be eaten by Amazon once their new tablet is released. I really appreciate that insight. Now maybe what you missed here is that Amazon is not entering the tablet market, Amazon will offer a device that will allow its customers to consume the content they have for sale. Books, magazines, TV shows and movies. They don’t care about the tablet itself. Amazon is a retailer not a computer manufacturer. They want to leverage their advantage as a retailer, they cannot care less about the hardware.
That’s a significantly different purpose and obviously it has been entirely misunderstood.

What amuses me in the aftermath of Amazon announcement is how every other manufacturer of 7 inch tablets is lowering the price. Yesterday the RIM playbook went from $499 to $299 and the same thing is happening today to HTC Flyer tablet.
Still there is very little hope for them to have a significant market share anytime soon because… they lack any significant content. Why would you buy a HTC tablet and have no movies or books to read on it. When you buy your Amazon tablet everything is here available for you.

When journalists were reviewing the various tablets that have been introduced this year their conclusion was always the same – there are no reasons to buy this tablet instead of an iPad. Now Amazon join the party and the same question still apply – if you want a $500 device there are no reasons to buy anything else than an iPad, if you want a $300 device there are no reasons to buy anything else than the Amazon Fire.
And there is room in the market for a $500 device AND for a $300 device.

Have a look at it if you have a minute ad see what happens when you scroll down.
There has been a lot of discussions around lately about the web not evolving fast enough in comparison to programming languages, well maybe it’s too slow but when I see what can be done with modern web technologies I’m still impressed. I remember the good old days when Netscape did not even supported https and it had to be provided by external modules.

Let’s look at what happened since the iPad was released. About every hardware maker has tried to enter the tablet market and none has been successful. Those companies are so pissed that they could not invent something like the iPad that spent all their time and energy trying to copy what Apple achieved.
Sometime the copy is so shameless that it brings a lawsuit, like it is the case with Samsung. Often they try to find a few differentiation factors with smaller screens or with devices that supposedly play Flash content (provided that you go to the few sites that are actually compatible and your battery can survive long enough).

Overall all those desperate competitors tried to copy the features of the iPad, none of them tried to replicate the eco-system and that’s why they all failed. Well, the task was not easy.
First they don’t have a real good Operating System. Android for tablet was a joke until very recently and it’s still barely at the level of a version 1 (while apple will soon introduce iOS version 5), Microsoft is not interested in providing anything until Windows 8 is available a year from now, and HP tried to create WebOS and gave up just a few weeks after releasing their first tablet.
Second, none of those companies have any content to sell, they have virtually no apps for their tablets and no eco-system to support them.
We witnessed the end result over the last few weeks, first HP and now RIM have dumped their tablets by 50% or more which is their way to admit failure.

While many competitors are falling, Amazon came up with 3 new products and a completely different approach and I do think it is brilliant and they will be successful where everybody else failed.
Amazon did not introduced a competitor to the iPad but an extension to their existing eco-system. Amazon has plenty of content available, they have been building it for years. They are already selling tons of content to millions of customers, just like Apple does with iTunes. But from now on they will also sell a device that will give access to that content. And that’s the main reason why they will be successful where everybody else can only fail.

Content is more important than hardware features. The technical specs are not what matters and of course computer manufacturers who try to niter that business cannot understand that.

And apparently most of the news media did not understood that either. Yesterday I read some articles with titles as stupid as ‘Amazon Fires $199, 7-Inch Tablet At Apple’. The author (TechCrunch) would like us to believe that amazon will sell for $200 what Apple offers for $500, which of course will lead to the quick demise of the iPad. Coming from AOL this kind of sensational title is not really surprising of course but I still wonder why a large part of the press try to demonstrate to the public that they have no clue of what they are talking about and feel really proud about it.
Writing that kind of title is like trying to convince the public that the new Ford Focus will seriously compromise the sale of the latest Porsche because of course both cars are completely comparable, after all they are cars, aren’t they?

Of course lots of things have been written and will be analyzed over the next few days. I clearly anticipate that Amazon new product will create another tablet market, not in direct competition with the iPad but more a complement to it. And that’s a great turn of event.

An interesting side effect of Amazon entering the tablet market could be a shift in the balance of power among companies in the online entertainment content delivery business. When iTunes took the dominant position in the music retail business the majors were not very happy to have to deal with a dominant player, so they tried to avoid being in the same situation when it comes to selling movies and TV shows. Therefore they gave everybody a really tough time, pretty much refusing to make a lot of content available for streaming or download through services like iTunes or Netflix (the streaming business, not the DVD in the mail business)
The studios prefer not sell their content rather than having to deal with a dominant player. With Amazon new devices becoming popular, a lot of people will be able to watch movies or TV Shows or read newspapers and magazines, the risk of having one player dominating the market will slowly disappear in favor of a more balanced competition. It may soon be in the studios best interest to have their content available through streaming on various platforms because this may slowly become a major way people will consume entertainment.
The pressure on Apple and Netflix should lower while they are not the only players on the business and therefore are else likely to dominate it. That could be a great benefit for all of us.

The net amount of the public debt of a country is meaningless.

What matters is the debt as percentage of GDP! Quick reminder the GDP (Gross Domestic Pro) roughly measure the size of the economy of a country. There are various way to measure the GDP and economists have been arguing about it for many years. And easy way to comprehend it is to consider that everything produced in a country is meant to be sold and is eventually sold and the GDP measure the amount of money spent by a country to buy ‘things’ and there for the value of what is produced or the size of that economy.
So if you have a big economy the amount of your debt can also become pretty large without necessarily being detrimental. In addition if this debt is directed toward productive investment that will eventually contribute to the growth of your economy than it means that you are in the perfect virtuous cycle of capitalism. You borrow to produce more to get more income, eventually.
It is commonly agreed that a country is in good health if the debt stays below 80% of the GDP. In 2010, 16 countries were above that limit out of 128.

If on the contrary you borrow a large sum of money to organize let’s say some olympic Games’ that will not generate any subsequent income…than it’s not so good.

So let’s look at some numbers (those may vary slightly depending on the source and the way calculations are conducted. The IMF and OECD for example use slightly different approaches that lead to variations in the numbers).

National debt as percentage of GDP (2010).

There are a few interesting things to notice in those numbers. Japan is the country in the world with the biggest debt compared to GDP. That means it would take the income of all the people during more than 2 years to pay back the debt. It’s hard to imagine. and we are talking about a large GDP around 5 trillions. In comparison Greece looks like a small player with 144% and a GDP of only 300 billions.
So things have to be considered relatively. The Greek crisis is significant and 144% of the GPD is a high level of debt but it’s nothing compared to Japan. But nobody has ever mentionned a debt crisis in Japan. Why? Mostly because the Japanese debt is perceived as related to productive investment while the Greek debt is perceived differently.
The Japanese work all day while the Greeks are lazy and just leaving on money borrowed through debt. Or at least that’s how we see it.

The US debt is not that bad after all

$14.6 trillions is a number so hight that we cannot even imagine what it is. It is beyond what everybody is dealing with on a daily basis. So yes, it is a lot of money and a relatively high level of debt and it will take a long time to pay it back and it puts a heavy burden on the budget.
But the country is not about to declare bankruptcy. A bad trajectory need to be altered but it’s not the end of the world yet.

Let’s look at the Federal budget.

The total for FY 2012 is $3.7 trillions (a little less than the Japanese total GDP). Like every budget it is composed of 2 categories of spendings, Mandatory programs and Discretionary programs.

Mandatory programs are the one that are dictated by law and cannot be changed. It includes such things as Social Security, Medicare and Military Retirement program. Things that it is not imaginable to default on. This is part of the ‘Social Contract’ between the state and the citizens.
It is 57% of the total budget and nobody can do anything about it.

Discretionary programs are the one that the President and Congress can decide on. The biggest share goes to the military that gets half of the discretionary spendings or about 20% of the total budget (which by every standard is a very high number, not seen anywhere).
5% of the budget is used internationally to help other countries and for diplomatic offices.
5% of the budget is needed to pay back the interest on the debt. And the rest is used for various discretionary programs.

But those numbers are going to change by 2021 it will take 15% of the budget to pay the interests of the debt and it will become the 4th larger budget item.
By 2021 the discretionary spending will have to be reduces from 40% to 26% to make room for other mandatory spending, in the future there will be less flexibility in how the budget is built.

How did the level of the debt evolved over time?

A common conception in US politics (remember US politics is all about statements, not at all about facts) is that Democrats are all about spending money and big government (big government = big budget) when Republicans claim to be about balancing the budget and reducing the Government.

Well – facts show a very different picture. Here is a chart of the Debt as percentage of GDP by Presidents since 1940.

It shows that until 1981 the debt was pretty much under control. After spiking during WWII the long period of economic growth that followed brought the level of the debt to it’s all time low around 37%. Things started to change with Reagan and went up. Clinton limited the spike but it went out of control again when the TARP program was adopted, followed by various Stimulus program to help the economy get out of the financial crisis.
It’s easy for the Republicans to blame the spending on the Democrats but the truth is that the increase in the debt level only happened when Republicans were in office. The current big spike came as a response to the financial crisis of 2008 it was decided while Bush was in office (the TARP program also called the big financial bailout) and continued with various stimulus programs on which both parties agreed because they were necessary to stimulate the economy.

Overall since 1981 the debt went from 37% to 95% of GDP in 30 years. For 30 years the country has been borrowing money. Today out of every dollar spent 40 cents are borrowed.
The real problem is not the level of the debt but rather why are we borrowing that money for.

In 2012 the US will spend close to $900 billions for the Military, that is about two times the total debt of Greece. You know, that same debt which has been worrying us so much and that is out of control.

So let’s keep things in perspective.

(In a future note I will examine what happened during those last 30 years and why the debt when up so significantly).

So what happened that could explain the lost of more than 2 1/2 million units?

Some analysts asked that question during today’s conference call announcing Apple’s second quarter results – The transition between iPad 1 and iPad 2 – This is the big reason given by Apple executives.
Ok a transition from one product to its replacement is not easy. The sales of the (soon to be) old product clearly slow down. I was the first to say that I did not bought an iPad for Christmas because I knew the replacement was coming. It’s also Apple’s best interest to clear the inventory as much as possible before the introduction of the new product.

I don’t buy it.

And I don’t buy it for a few reasons.
- Even after being officially discontinued the iPad 1 is selling like hot cakes. At least the little bit of inventory that is left of it. Apple clearly has no problem clearing up the inventory.
- Even if the demand slows down before a new product introduction, the bump in demand following the introduction more than make up for the lost sales. And nobody can deny that there has been a huge demand for the iPad 2.
- I cannot believe either that Apple was not able to anticipate that the demand for the iPad 2 would be huge. If they cannot forecast a trend like that they have some reasons to be worried. They may have been surprised by the reception of the original iPad, but that was a year ago.

So where are the 2.5 millions missing iPads?

The demand is there no doubts about that, the transition is not a valid excuse. The more I think about it, the only reason I can come up with is that some problem happened with the production. Apple just cannot make enough of those things.

Before the results were out I was wondering what kind of numbers we would see. Not a single analyst prediction was lower than 6 millions, still, there was a few hints at a problem.
- no numbers were announced after the launch week-end. None at all (as a matter of fact the tsunami in Japan happened right after and the world attention was elsewhere).
- nothing was done during the launch to deliver the products quickly like that was the case for the original iPad. Actually the rate of delivery appeared to be very slow from the beginning. No pre-order. No reservation. Delay that jumped to 4-5 weeks almost right away. It looked like Apple knew from the beginning that product availability would be low.
- Apple launched the iPad 2 in several countries like if there was no constraint on demand but the launch was clearly with a very limited number of unit. Can we really call that a launch when there are actually no products for sale. Well at least it allows the company to say that the product was actually launched.

During today’s conference call Tim Cook gave a few interesting additional information:
- the Japan crisis is not affecting Apple, has not and won’t as far as they can forecast. So there has not been a production disruption due to Japan.
- he also insisted several times that the production of the iPad was reaching a level that would allow Apple to deliver more products to consumers. To me, putting so much emphasis on future availability is the closest we will get to an acknowledgement of a past problem.

Why do I write about all that?

When a company doubles its revenues and profits, nobody cares about 2.5 millions lost iPads, the rest of the business makes up for the lost sales. For a company with a normal growth rate, those lost iPads would have been a really big problem.

This week came as another example to me on how the US news media have totally lost their original purpose and usefulness.

So why do I say that? This week a country has seen some dramatic and violent events. I’m talking about Tunisia. I won’t come back and recount all that happened but let’s just say that the people have been very unhappy lately. The government has been accused of corruption. There has been a lot of demonstration, fights between the police and the demonstrators. The usual typical turn of event during a popular revolution. All this resulted in the embattled president Ben Ali leaving the country and an upcoming period of uncertainty.

Did you heard about it in the news? Did you see any video footage of those events. if you did that probably means that you get your news from a foreign source because the US news media have pretty much totally ignored the topic until yesterday.

Actually friday the president of Tunisia was leaving the country and hundreds of people were killed int he streets, at the same time NSNBC was reporting on Marta’s Stewart dog who split open her lip and on a guy arrested for drunk driving a donkey in Texas! Two events that are really fundamental to report to the world.

Ok Tunisia is not a big country and those events are pretty much the same as what we see in any popular revolt. But it’s a prefect example of what we got on the news media and what we don’t get.
Let face the facts, the news media don’t report news anymore they are just here for entertainment. There are no journalists anymore there are ‘news anchors’ (fascinating name if you think about it, before news anchor we had only boat anchor, dumb pieces of metal).
They are not reporting anymore, they are hunting for sensational or shocking events. They are not investigating, they are repeating what they are served by news agency, government agencies or big corporations.

News media used to be important when they were actually dealing with news and not purely entertainment, now they are more like some sort of circus.

People who wanted to follow the real news, what was happening in Tunisia or elsewhere were better of using… twitter!
Facebook is very widely used in the young population of Tunisia and lots of people were reporting the unrest in Tunisia through Twitter. Most of the european medias (starting with BBC) heard about it this way. To the extend that some commenters now talk about a ‘Twitter revolution’ as the network was widely used to coordinate the unrest and the demonstrations against the government.

On a parallel not, many people consider too that Wikileak is the factor that started this revolution. among the documents leaked recently is a report from the US embassy in Tunis about the political situation and the widespread corruption. This report confirmed (follow this link if you are interested in reading it)what many people thought already and is considered to have triggered the first events that eventually led to the collapse of the government.
Honestly, I’m very fine with a corrupt government falling because of some document leaked by Wikileak. But should not that be the role of the news media?

The news media in the US have left a big empty hole in investigative journalism and even news reporting. Alternative medias and new organizations are taking over this task and I’m glad they do because it’s fundamental for a healthy democracy.

(you have to make your browser window large enough and reload the page a few times as he appears on different images in different more or less goofy scenes)

That tells everything. Violence is deeply engraved in some mentalities and it won’t change anytime soon. It is just a total lack of responsible attitude and when it comes from people who aspire at leading the country it is more than scary.
Since yesterday the image has been removed but I doubt the mentality will change.

Clearly the best way to fight against violence is to fight with a gun in your hands. Isn’t it?

I put Apple, Verizon, AT&T and the S&P 500 on a chart (the index is just to have some sort of reference) for a one year period.
It is right below.

You might find it hard to read, so here is the stock performance in rough numbers:
- Apple +60%
- Verizon +20%
- AT&T +5%
- S&P 500 +10%

In the meantime, AT&T captured a significantly higher number of new customers compared to Verizon, an analysts agree that it was the main motivation for Verizon to compromise with Apple on the terms of the iPhone agreement. But that was not enough to boost the stock performance.
I think this is interesting because it shows that an exclusivity is not enough to save your stock performance.
AT&T PR is not enough. It is well known now despite what they claim that their network is terrible. Probably the worse network of all iPhones carriers in the world. Why that? Because when they got the new customers brought to them by the iPhone they cashed out on them instead of investing in increasing their network capacity.
Eventually it turned so bad that they had to do something but that was too little too late.
Are customers going to leave AT&T on february 10th when the Verizon iPhone becomes available? Some will walk away immediately but it will be a slow process, because of the 2 years contract (all iPhones 4 customers are locked in a contract with at least a year to go) and because of the family plan (if you switch one phone to Verizon you have to switch the entire family).
Still the anticipation is already reflected in the stock prices of both companies and the spread will just keep getting wider.

Pretty good example from AT&T of how to screw-up a winning proposition.
Pretty good lesson given by the customers to a provider. If you sell crap (the network) even with a nice wrapping (the phone) eventually it kicks back at you.

This photo was taken at the Tea Party political rally. When you have people gathering with that kind of signs the results are the events from last week-end.

Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, an Arizona Democrat, and at least 17 others were shot Saturday morning when a gunman opened fire outside a supermarket where Ms. Giffords was meeting with constituents.

Call that a coincidence, Sarah Palin’s political action committee placed ads which put a gunshot target over Giffords (the site has been taken down yesterday). Her opponent in last year’s election held a campaign event at a gun range, to “get on target” to “remove Gabrielle Giffords from office”.

So, What is Gabrielle Giffords crime?
She is one of 20 representatives who dared to vote for the healthcare reform last year. And that obviously is not acceptable in the eyes of Sarah Palin, the GOP and a bunch of right wing extremists with a very unique sense of what democracy means.

Out of those 20 ‘targets’, 18 (the lucky ones) lost their seat in the November election, Gabrielle Giffords was one of the two remaining in office. So obviously a bullet had to do what a ballot could not and this is exactly what happened.

Of course this is the country that pretend to promote democracy around the world and wonder why its image is down the toilet. Those are the people who will give you lessons about their constitution even if they stopped reading it after the second amendment.

Oh sorry. I forgot a detail – killing your opponent when you loose an election is democracy, so sorry for my mistake.

To bring some rational to what I mean lets’s go back to the recent events and try to pain a view of the big picture.

Anybody who want to build a personal computer need 2 things: some software (an operating system) and some hardware (mainly a processor and a few things around it). For the last 20 years Microsoft has been providing the software and Intel has been providing the hardware. And this has been the case for 95% or so of all the personal computers built so far. It’s not a monopoly but it’s pretty close to it. Linux has been an alternative on the software side but mostly for geeks. And a few hardware alternative existed without encountering much success (mostly provided by IBM and Motorola). Apple is the only one who managed to survive with it’s own solution and have a significant market share. First they used a different hardware solution (PowerPC) but eventually switched to Intel’s architecture, while always keeping their own software solution.

So over the last 30 years the computer industry has been made of various companies providing the very same products. Acer, Asus, Sony, Dell, MSI, HP, Compaq, etc have all been offering pretty much the same thing. Same hardware and same software. The only way they had to differentiate themselves is through branding, advertising, company image and of course product design and price.
Sadly in that process they thought that it was smart to also add a crappy layer of software on top of Microsoft Windows, to be able to pretend that the ‘HP Solution center’ or the ‘Toshiba Assistant’ was changing your entire user experience. Ultimately it was just another useless layer that burdened an already weak and buggy operating system.

This phenomenon is commonly called the commoditization. It happened in the computer industry and in many others domains. For example Gas company have a tough time explaining to you that you gas is better if you buy it at an Exxon gas station than at a BP one. Even customers with a pretty low IQ can understand that they are buying gas and nothing else but gas. It goes in your car, you need a refill when it’s empty and that’s it!
Players in the gas distribution business worked on creating a differentiation with everything around the gas distribution – having a nice store, good coffee, free refill of your drink, etc. In the computer manufacturing business the battle turned to price of course, than design and to the crapware that you preinstall on the computers.

And the industry has been going on like that for decades… until last week.

Two major events happened last week:

- About every PC manufacturer announced that they are or will be offering new products that don’t run Windows as an operating system and don’t run with Intel processors on the hardware side.

- Microsoft announced that the next version of Windows will be offered for intel processors but also for anther kind of micro processor.

Those two events were simply unthinkable 2 years ago and that’s whe can safely say that they mark the end of an era. The end of the first era of the personal computer industry.

Now, don’t panic. No need to rush to the store to buy the last remaining PC. They will still be around for a long time, maybe forever. But now you can buy something else, you have new devices that are used in a different way to answer different needs.
Those devices are smaller, more portable, more energy efficient, more convenient, more personal. They have been called the very personal computers, smartphones, tablet computer. Actually nobody came up yet with a generic term that encompass everything they are.

Even if they may be tough to classify those devices need hardware and software in a way very similar to PCs.

So you would think that after leading the computer industry for 30 years, Microsoft will provide the software and Intel will provide the hardware. Wouldn’t that be logical?
After all, when you are leading an industry and one change happens in 20 years it’s not a big deal to anticipate. That would sound rational, except that it’s not happening.

So what is the problem?

For intel the problem is simple – x86. They have one architecture inherited from the good old processor 8086 they created for the original PC (remember the big ugly one created by IBM in 1983). It has evolved a little but not much, now it is smaller and more powerful than before but it has one major issue, it is power hungry and it produce a lot of heat. So when you put it into a laptop it’s ok but when you want to make a small tablet computer or a smartphone with it, it simply does not work.
Intel has been trying to convince the computers manufacturers that things will get better and that they will find a solution soon (the Atom line of processors). This has been ongoing for about 2 years but everybody eventually realized that it’s not going to happen anytime soon and they started to consider alternatives.
So what kind of hardware do you need for those devices? It is called SOC (System on Chip) and it’s basically a microprocessor and some specialized peripheral chips (for example to decode videos) all integrated in one package. Those SOC are based on an architecture provided by ARM a british company. ARM does not make them but provide a blue print that can be customized to specific needs. It gives 10 or 12 hours of battery life and a very portable device the size of a phone.

For Microsoft the problem is Windows. They have gotten into some sort of dogma – Windows everywhere. They dream about a world where Windows is the answer and the solution to every problem. Unfortunately neither the strategy nor its failure is new.
Windows is an operating system that was designed for computer, i.e machines with a keyboard and a mouse. When the user starts to interact with the device in a different way it gets messy.
For more than a decade now Microsoft has been trying to hammer a solution into markets that are simply rejecting it.
They tried to put Windows in our living rooms with Windows XP Media Center Edition or into tablet computers with Windows XP Tablet PC Edition. Than came the ultra portable devices with Windows Ultra-mobile platform, than Windows CE, and eventually Windows Mobile for smartphones.
Than, last year in an unusual move, all of a sudden Microsoft told its customers to wait – Windows Mobile is not good enough but they will do better. If everybody can just wait for a year Microsoft will come up with the solution to all our problems – Windows Phone 7.
This solution has been out for about 2 months now, it’s not a huge commercial success but it’s a descent product, maybe up to what the competition was doing 2 years ago.
Last week in another surprising move Microsoft announced to the world that they found the ultimate solution – Windows will run on SOC and not only on Intel. And with that order will be restored to the world… in 2 or 3 years. And that is supposed to be the Microsoft answer to the iPad?!?

So now I really wonder if they really have a clue on what they are doing.

The company just came up with a new product Windows Phone 7 which is supposed to be appropriate for smartphones and tablet computers and the CEO tell the world that he does not believe in that because but he will have something better, the real Windows… in 2 or 3 years.
That is certainly the best way to inspire confidence in the new product and attract developers to the platform, if you already know that the CEO does not believe in it.

Microsoft came up with this “Windows Everywhere” dogma 12 years ago. Since they tried over and over again to push the product in every possible niche and they have consistently failed. But still after 12 years of failure, this is all they can come up with.
Ironically, 12 years ago Windows was not running only on Intel processors, you could run it on x86, PowerPC, MIPS, and even the DEC Alpha chipsets.

Windows is simply not the right product to run on tablet computers and smartphones, Microsoft should be the first to see that and do something about it. Now it’s pretty clear that it’s not going to happen.
Oh well, computers manufacturers will just turn to another provider and Microsoft will keep on with his dogma even if nobody is listening anymore.

In a sense what happened is relatively simple – 2 companies ruling an industry with a quasi monopoly for 30 years unable to realize that their market is changing and who keep trying to sell the same products over and over to clients who want something different.

More later on the alternatives and the strategy of the various competitors.

If you have to remember just one number why not this one – Smartphone Apps download 2009: 300 millions, 2010: 5 billions. That’s what I call Growth! (and maybe also the reason why I have a few apps in the iTunes Store).
Such a change is hard to imagine so they take this very good example – If the world population had experienced the same growth it would have jumped from 7 billions in 2009 to 112 billions. There would be 72 millions people living in Atlanta, which presumably would be good for the real estate market but very bad for traffic!

Here is the video (hopefully suitable for all sort of devices).

Quite an interesting experience. Most of it was shoot with the Nikon 200-400-f/4 lens and I’m very happy with the result I got from that lens. Very sharp. With the high iso of the Nikon D3 it’s possible to shoot perfectly focused pictures at a reasonable shutter speed (1/60th most of the time) with no noise.

“Me too, I’m Catherine Deneuve” is an imaginative and grotesque family drama that asks the audience to explore, along side the characters, the potent relationship between self-definition and self-determination. The piece has been performed in major cities around the world, and it 2006 it received the Molière award for “Best Private Theatre Production.”

The play was followed by a discussion between the public and French director Valery Warnotte.

You can find more about the play and the performers on the Trap Door Theater website.

The photos can be seen in this slideshow. As an experiment I also embed it below. Viewers on a computer equipped with flash should see the normal slideshow (with a rather basic look, the nice customization will come later, sorry), viewers on a mobile device (android or iOS) get an HTML5 version. Please click on the ‘view gallery’ to start the slideshow.

This was the last part of the France-Atlanta 2010 events (see below for more details on this).

Focused on innovation and organized under the High Auspices of the Ambassador of France to the United States, the Governor of Georgia and the Mayor of Atlanta, this project includes a series of high-quality events in the scientific, economic, artistic and humanitarian domains.

The opening ceremony took place on Monday November 29th at the World of Coke. It will continue during the week until December 12, 2010, and will include a series of workshops on diverse topics such as “Rethinking ground transportation and logistics” or “Haiti 2020″, as well as modern exhibits and performances like the jazz concert with Baptiste Trotignon.

The program is available on France-Atlanta 2010 web site.

Those photos were taken during the opening ceremony on behalf of the French Consulate in Atlanta.

Despite a gloomy weather, a large crowd attended the opening ceremony.

The World of Coke had already been decorated for the Holiday season.

Pascal Le Deunff Consul General de France in Atlanta and Dr. G.P. “Bud” Peterson President of Georgia Tech before the opening ceremony.

The group of exchange students from France currently studying at Georgia Tech.

Pascal Le Deunff Consul General de France in Atlanta delivers his address during the opening ceremony for France-Atlanta 2010.

Pascal Le Deunff Consul General de France in Atlanta shake hands with Dr. G.P. “Bud” Peterson President of Georgia Tech before the opening ceremony and Atlanta Mayor Kassim Reed.

Dr. G.P. “Bud” Peterson President of Georgia Tech during the opening ceremony for France-Atlanta 2010.

Demonstration of a robot playing music developed at Georgia Tech during the opening ceremony for France-Atlanta 2010.

Kassim Reed, Mayor of Atlanta welcomes the attendance during the opening ceremony for France-Atlanta 2010.

Several officials from the Lorraine region, the city of Metz and the city of Toulouse attended the opening ceremony for France-Atlanta 2010.

Pascal Le Deunff Consul General de France in Atlanta and Dr. G.P. “Bud” Peterson President of Georgia Tech officially declare the opening of France-Atlanta 2010 at the World of Coke in Atlanta on November 29th 2010.

Kassim Reed, Mayor of Atlanta talking with several officials from France during the opening ceremony for France-Atlanta 2010.

Here is the video.

This video contains ads so it does not play on iOS devices in HTML5 (current YouTube limitation), you can watch it directly by following this link.

Now I wonder – where is Sarah Palin: It Gets Better video?

Just asking!

Yesterday event raised some expectations. As it was centered on ‘Mobile’ people expected at least a Facebook iPad native app or maybe the elusive Facebook phone. We got none of those. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg even gratified us with a pretty stupid answer when he was asked about the iPad app by saying that “The iPad isn’t mobile”.

He must have been smoking something quite heavy in the morning and apparently realized it was a stupid comment and eventually sort of corrected the statement by explaining that the tablets market isn’t going to be about the iPad alone — we’re going to soon see numerous additional devices running on Android and possibly other platforms. And given Facebook’s limited resources, it doesn’t really make sense to hone in on a single platform.

Sorry but I call that bullshit for several reasons:
- most of Facebook iPhone app code is public domain and available as a framework (I use some of it in my apps). And that frame work support a lot of what is required for a native iPad app. And some iPad apps have been built using it and are available in the store.
It would not take Facebook a lot of effort to have a few developers come up with something. A single guy worked on the original iPhone app, so Facebook does not have the resources! Bullshit.

- how can you say that a device that is the size and weight of the iPad, can connect through 3G network, comes alive in a second, is not mobile?
Ok it’s less mobile than an iPhone. the iPhone is easier to use when you are on the road, but in every other situation, at home or at the offcie the iPad is easier to use because of its size.

What Zuckerberg did not say and has been speculated by several commenters is that Facebook is likely to come up with a version of their web site specifically designed for tablets. That would have the significant advantage of addressing the needs of every user on every tablet at once and with a similar feature set.

And that brings me to a comment on my own experience with iPhone and iPad development.
When I first go my hands on an iPhone I noticed how good the web browser is. It is still the best web experience you can get on a device of that size, especially because of the zooming and pitching (which Apple got patented recently and others will start to have to pay for implementing).But…. as good as it can be, it is still not enough. If you take a regular web site, like the New York Times and look at it on an iPhone, it’s not very easy and convenient. Now take the native iPhone app made by the New York Times and you will have a much nicer experience. In 995 of the cases the iPhone app is better. Some people tried to work around that problem by developing specific versions of their web sites scaled down for smartphones, that’s certainly an improvement over the ‘regular’ web site but it’s still far less attractive and useable than a native app.
Now comes the iPad. My first reaction was to believe that the same thing would be true. That a native app would be better. than I start considering what can be done with my web site that would make it better on the iPad and I realized that the size of the iPad screen is not much smaller than the size of a browser window on most of the computers. The huge difference in usability that we see with the iPhone is not true for the iPad. Ok the New York Times iPad app is still better than navigating the web site. And this comment is really relevant if you compare a web site with a native app developed for the purpose of displaying the same content as the web site. If your app goes being just displaying content it’s a different matter.
So, in my case, I got rid of flash on my web site installed an HTML5 viewer for my photos galleries and I have something that work on all tablets and is easier to maintain than a native app.
I realized that I did not really needed a native iPad app for my web site, so when Facebook goes the same route I tend to believe that it is not such a bad idea. It would be nice if instead of serving us some bullshit they would just tell us the real reason and their real motivation.

Yesterday event was interesting anyway because Facebook released a new feature called “Deals’ and I think it’s pretty smart thing to do and it will make them even more relevant.
You won’t find the deals on the web site, you have to go to your Facebook phone app (Android or iPhone, and they are basically an extension to ‘Places’. But I do believe that the idea is great. Businesses who have a ‘deal’ to offer to the public can create them and once you spot an interesting one you can share it with your friends and let them know. This thing can get viral and spread out very quickly. And for businesses it’s a very efficient way to reach a target audience. Facebook does not make any money on deals (at least for now) but it certainly make the site more relevant. My only concern is that if you are allergic to ‘Places’ for privacy reasons (a lot of people are) you will never get to see that feature, so maybe Facebook will have to make it more visible eventually. It is also a stone thrown into Google’s yard. After the amazing and surprising success of Groupon, social shopping is really taking off, this new feature should help it even more.