CapMac iPhone SIG

Evidently the largest hurdle to iPhone tethering may be AT&T. Yesterday, Medhat Amer, CIO of Mobily, Saudi Arabi’s iPhone carrier , made an announcement:

“Good news for iPhone fans in Saudi Arabia. Was just told that tethering is coming in February!” Mr. Amer said on Twitter.

Tethering is a feature that lets your mobile phone share its wireless data connection with your computer. Apple introduced tethering support in iPhone OS 3.0, but many cell service providers failed to support the feature –– most notably AT&T – who for 18 months has promised that tethering was coming ’soon’.

Maybe AT&T would be more responsive if their customers carried swords, in a country where you can lose body parts for telling lies….

If the past sixteen months have taught us anything – it’s that marketing hype and fuzzy thinking can’t heal our national economy.  It will take ideas, innovation, and cash to get things back on track. One powerhouse behind our recovery may surprise you.

Last week, Silicon Insider posted this interesting graph putting into perspective exactly how large Apple is, compared with the other big three tech companies out there. And it’s all about cash.

Essentially, Apple is the second most cash rich company out there, with a little under $39.8 billion in cash and short and long term securities in reserve. Microsoft’s technically ahead of them – but it’s a comparatively small lead of a paltry $0.6 billion dollars… and while Apple’s cash reserves continue to rise, Microsoft’s have leveled off over the last half year.

Then comes Google, with only $24.6 billion in cash and investments, and finally Intel, with $18.9 billion on hand.

All of these companies have major assets, but Apple is clearly positioned to become more cash rich than Microsoft in the coming months. We’re on the brink of a huge transition in the tech landscape: the day that Apple is bigger than Microsoft.

Don’t get the wrong idea – CASH IS NOT KING.  Cash is only the reward for great work.  Where other tech giants went wrong – is they made cash their most pressing goal.  They cut corners, R&D, out-sourced, turned out crappy products – and eventually suffered the slings and arrows of the marketplace. [insert Zune joke here]

Steve Jobs’ vision from Day One was to build insanely-great products that change people’s lives, and have that acceptance create the profits to fuel operations, research, and eventually, rewards.  Apple knows that the American dream is about creativity, and fiscal and social responsibility.

And as we watch more and more companies succumb to the economics of greed – isn’t it refreshing to see a good one succeed?

With national healthcare and economic recovery now assured, and peaceful wind-down of international tensions – Obama’s minions have now turned their attentions to the next national calamity – communications infrastructure.

Already, Obama admistration officials are warning that the launch of the Apple iPad, coming next quarter, could bring communications to a standstill as new users swarm wireless networks.

“Apple’s iPad announcement has set off a new round of reports of networks overburdened by a data flow they were not built to handle,” said Phil Bellaria, director of scenario planning for the federal government’s Omnibus Broadband Initiative.

“With the iPad pointing to even greater demand for mobile broadband on the horizon, we must ensure that network congestion doesn’t choke off a service that consumers clearly find so appealing or frustrate mobile broadband’s ability to keep us competitive in the global broadband economy,” wrote Bellaria.

Bellaria likened the iPad’s debut  to AOL’s decision in 1996 to offer unlimited Internet access to its users via dial-up modems.

“For months, users had trouble connecting and, once they did connect, experienced frequent service outages. The FCC even held hearings on the problem,” said Bellaria. The iPad features 802.11 Wi-Fi connectivity, as well as 3G cellular connections.

Bellaria said the potential for network slowdowns triggered by iPad-mania demonstrates the need for updated wireless infrastructure and regulatory policies.

“Reaching an always-on wireless broadband future means that the spectrum can no longer remain attached solely to uses deemed valuable decades ago,” he said. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 provides millions of dollars in funding for wireless network upgrades.

Where were these same bureaucrats as our broadband speeds slid to 29th rank in the world?  We’re behind Korea, Latvia, Romania, Lithuania, Sweden, the Netherlands, and even Bulgaria [our speeds are half as fast as theirs]. We do outrank Haiti – but their mobile service is still much more reliable than ours.

AT&T can’t withstand drizzle, God help them in an earthquake.

It’s about time we had an enlightened and informed national communications policy NOT dictated by corporate thieves or clueless federal bureaucrats.

Don’t we deserve better broadband than Bulgaria?

Better safe than sorry. There’s no better way to sum up why you should take the time to update your iPhone and iPod Touch with the latest iPhone OS 3.1.3 software released yesterday.

The update fixes flaws that could lead to arbitrary code execution or application crashes when playing maliciously crafted mp4 files, viewing maliciously crafted TIFF images, and accessing maliciously crafted FTP servers. The update also fixes a USB-related issue that could grant unauthorized access to data on locked iPhones. Also included is a fix for an issue where Mail could send unwanted data in certain situations when HTML 5 media elements load.

According to Apple, the update also improved battery level accuracy on the iPhone 3GS, fixed a problem where third party apps might not launch.

iPhone OS 3.1.3 is available to iPhone and iPod touch users that have already installed iPhone OS 3.1.2. The update is free and can be installed through iTunes when your iPhone or iPod touch is connected to your computer.

The update can take 30 minutes to complete and requires patience during several restarts as your device updates firmwear. Once begun — never interrupt the update process.  We’ll have additional information at our February iPhone meetup.

Steve Jobs, raised more than a few eyebrows at an employee-only Town Hall meeting at Apple’s Cupertino campus after last week’s iPad announcement. Taking employee questions in a freewheeling forum, Jobs minced no words in his assessment of several of Apple’s technology partners:

On Google – We did not enter the search business, Jobs said. They entered the phone business. Make no mistake they want to kill the iPhone. We won’t let them, he says. Someone else asks something on a different topic, but there’s no getting Jobs off this rant. I want to go back to that other question first and say one more thing, he says. This don’t be evil mantra: “It’s bullshit.” The audience hooted and roared.

About Adobe – They are lazy, Jobs says. They have all this potential to do interesting things but they just refuse to do it. They don’t do anything with the approaches that Apple is taking, like Carbon. Apple does not support Flash because it is so buggy, he says. Whenever a Mac crashes more often than not it’s because of Flash. No one will be using Flash, he says. The world is moving to HTML5.

Peanut-butter and jelly, Ham and eggs, iPod and iTunes, iPad and digital media.  It’s that simple.

Let’s face it – paper is a burden – to our planet, and our own personal environments.  It’s hard to organize and file, and although books and magazines are a great comfort medium – they are often expensive, heavy, place-centric, and notoriously hard to keep current and market efficiently.

What Jobs did today was the first tiny step toward the vision of empowering new generations, for whom loads of heavy books have less appeal, and perhaps, even less relevance.

Every blogger worth his salt is blathering about features, battery life, connectivity, and delivery dates.  Instead of that – I just wanted to step back and get in touch with my roots: hot-type newspapers, radio, magazines, photography, and computers – and have a deep think about what all this means.

I think I get it – certainly not as Jobs does – but well enough to see that the iPad might well usher in a whole new paradigm for traditional media, a world in which we cherish and respect [and pay for] the content – not curse the loss of outmoded channels of delivery.

With that said – full iPad details can be found at  www.apple.com/ipad.

And yes – the topic of our next iPhone Meetup will be iPad.

Earlier today, Apple released earnings for their first fiscal quarter in 2010 – posting revenue of $15.68 billion and a net profit of $3.38 billion. iPhone sales for the quarter doubled, and company-wide margins topped 40.9%

By way of comparison, during the same quarter a year-ago, Apple posted revenue of $11.88 billion and a net quarterly profit of $2.26 billion. In other words, Apple’s profits soared by nearly 50% on strong sales of 3.36 million Macs and 8.7 million iPhones. The iPhone figure in particular represents a staggering 100% increase from sales figures in the same quarter a year-ago. For the quarter, Apple posted earnings of $3.67 a share.

“If you annualize our quarterly revenue, it’s surprising that Apple is now a $50+ billion company,” Apple CEO Steve Jobs noted in a press release. “The new products we are planning to release this year are very strong, starting this week with a major new product that we’re really excited about.”

Expectations are high for the Apple Media Event scheduled for Wednesday in San Francisco.  One thing for sure after this afternoon’s stunning financials – Apple has a solid plan – and do they deliver!

Apple’s stock [AAPL] has more than doubled in the past year.

Disclosure: This writer owns as much Apple stock as he can afford, and although many might classify me as an Apple fan-boy: the gloves come off with you play with my retirement.

I’m sure the Dell CEO regrets his famous advice to Apple, offered before a crowd of several thousand IT executives at the ITxpo97 in Orlando: “What would I do? I’d shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders,” Michael Dell boomed with characteristic confidence.

Ah, what a difference a decade makes – Apple’s market cap at the market’s close last Friday [graphic above] was almost 6-times Dell’s – and Apple’s is totally debt-free.

With Apple announcing 1Q2010 Financials at 4:00 p.m. CST Monday – the wisdom of the Job’s led revival will be evident.  Apple’s special event in San Francisco on Wednesday will deliver a second, crushing blow for many in the industry.

Dell’s genius was, at least for a while, pleasing Wall Street and selling stock.

Meanwhile Apple developed technology, software, hardware, retail stores, services, and legions of loyal consumers worldwide. Dell devolved into excuses, cost cutbacks, outsourcing, and plant closings.

Dell’s decline into oblivion is now, even to many market pundits – unavoidable.  Apple’s success, while not assured – at least has a plan.

Et tu, Michael.

We all know the frustrations – and dangers of Austin traffic. Now, thanks to the folks at INRIX Traffic! [iTunes link, FREE] — an amazing app that helps you plan your travel to avoid traffic in real-time, we’ve learned just how bad it is –– We have the fourth worst traffic in the country.

Using statistics generated by Traffic! app users as they travel, and compiled by INRIX on their servers – we can now understand just how bad things are:

• Weekly hours of bottleneck congestion: 460
• Worst bottleneck: Northbound, Riverside Dr
• Length of worst bottleneck: .92 mi
• Weekly hours of congestion on worst bottleneck: 47
• Speed of worst bottleneck when congested: 16.2 mph

Special thanks to CapMac’s Craig K. Gowens for the tip, and ruining my day…  :-)

Please join us for iPhone Meetup this Thursday, January 21st, from 7:00 – 9:00 pm
at BB Rover’s Cafe & Pub – 12101 Jollyville Road; Austin, TX 78759

Topic: Those Amazing IMAK Apps – Meet the developers

Drawing for free door prizes for all who attend – everyone welcome.

Please join us at Meetup to stay in touch  – http://www.meetup.com/iphonesig

Hope to see you at BB Rover’s this Thursday — and bring your iPhone or iPod Touch.
We have some great door prizes this month, so bring your friends — everyone’s welcome.

Map: http://tinyurl.com/39lfsn