The Fine Print

I wonder whose doors are going to be kicked in this time…

Sujeet — Wed, 12 May 2010 23:19:12 +0000

Another “lost” “next iPhone” has apparently been photographed and dissected..in Vietnam. Is that outside the jurisdiction of the San Mateo County judge who served the warrant on Jason Chen? And is that outside the jurisdiction of the California REACT team?

If Apple doesn’t pursue this with the same vengeance diligence as they did the previous case, I wonder how it’s going to look from a legal perspective.

From Redwood City to Vietnam, everyone has the next iPhone

Your move, Apple.

Sticking to your beach body diet with Groupon

Sujeet — Tue, 11 May 2010 13:45:41 +0000

Groupon’s latest appears to be a good deal for those around Mountain View, looking for a quick & healthy lunch fix under $5.

What’s on, Groupon?

Sujeet — Thu, 06 May 2010 19:07:07 +0000

For your viewing pleasure, a “re-post” of the Groupon deal of the day from the Groupon iPhone App. Yes, I’ll be doing this as often as new deals arrive. Why? Because the Groupon website uses geolocation to give you a few options; and those may not be the best for your location – given that ISPs do interesting things with their connection routes.

If you’re wondering about the “Fresh fare prepared daily” and its relevance to the “In-Home cleaning” deal, that’s because Groupon’s iPhone app often retains artifacts of the previous deal it displayed. A small, amusing price to pay for the deals involved.

This keeps getting curiouser & curiouser…

Sujeet — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 03:49:07 +0000

Apple is on the steering committee of the Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team, which is funded by Vehicle Licensing Fund taxes. This team raided Jason Chen’s house and seized all his computers. A few questions immediately come to mind:

Without his computers, could Jason Chen suffer from lost wages?
If Apple is on the steering committee of a ‘law-enforcement team’ that did this, can the actions of that team be truly considered as unbiased & fair?
Why are my Vehicle Licensing Fund taxes paying to recover “lost / stolen” software / goods of a commercial, non-government entity? If someone hacked into the DMV / IRS / a public school in California – I’m all for having the REACT go after the suspects, but going after someone who publishes a blog about technology…

This close after the iPad launch, does Apple need to attract the kind of publicity that shows it in any kind of “our way or the highway” light?

More importantly, is all this killing the buzz for the next iPhone?

I get it, I get it – the whole “We’ll bring the Wrath of God down on you if you do this to us..” thing. Good luck with that, Apple.

The next Apple iPhone: The saga continues

Sujeet — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 21:04:29 +0000

I just read about the police raid and seizure of computers from the house of the Gizmodo editor (Jason Chen), who wrote the story about ‘the next iPhone’ – from start to finish. While I struggle to consider the alternative that a judge in San Mateo County (home of Redwood City – and the bar where it all began) could find just cause to sign a warrant allowing the police to do so, I think this takes us a few pages down the ‘What Not To Do When You Lose An Unreleased Product‘ handbook.

Apple is headquartered in Cupertino. Cupertino is a city in Santa Clara County. The bar where “the next iPhone” was found is in Redwood City. Redwood City is in San Mateo County. Should it have been returned by whomsoever found it, to the owner of that bar? Probably so, yes.

So..why did a judge in San Mateo County sign a warrant for a raid-and-seizure at Jason Chen’s house? Did Jason Chen commit a “felony” with that device – as is indicated by the warrant?

: Search Warrant from Gizmodo

The Wikipedia gives an overview of a “felony” as the following:

“Crimes commonly considered to be felonies include, but are not limited to: aggravated assault and/or battery, arson, burglary, illegal drug use/sales, grand theft, robbery, murder, rape, and vandalism on federal property. Broadly, felonies can be categorized as either violent or non-violent (property and drug) offenses.”

As I understand it, Jason Chen did not steal the device, assault anyone with it, set fire to it or to anything else with it, murder anyone with it or anything else that may seem to fit the ‘felony’ bill.

Yeah, I’m on Team Jason for this one.

Blippy: Doing exactly what they say they do?

Sujeet — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 17:25:12 +0000

Heard about Blippy? It is a social network that claims to “see what your friends are buying.”

The Blippy front page

Turns out that they delivered on their promise just a tad too well. A Google search result, shown via the sanitized screenshot below – indicates that Blippy is showing full credit / debit card numbers, alongwith the user’s name and zipcode.

Full credit / debit card numbers on tap via Blippy

After all the time I just spent sanitizing the Google search results screenshot posted above, I’m hoping Blippy got the message.

As for Bradd Dantuma from Wyoming & Nate Marshall from Ohio – I’d suggest that they make a few calls to their payment card companies & place a security freeze on their credit file.

Oh, and Blippy – if you do process any payment card transactions, I’m guessing you’re not PCI-compliant.

Update: Within a few moments of going up, this post seems to have attracted attention from the aforementioned Bradd Dantuma of Wyoming (in the comments below). Bradd says he has called Blippy, so I’m assuming the right wheels are in motion now with regards to the safety of his payment card exposed by Blippy.

The saga of the iPhone product leak: What would you have done?

Sujeet — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 01:29:15 +0000

By now, you’ve probably heard about the Apple’s new iPhone, how it was lost, and found, and bought, and dissected, and returned.

Here’s the part that bothered me – even if our birthday boy Gray Powell had snuck the phone out the Apple test vault to show off during his birthday party, did Apple do the right thing by having its Senior Vice President & General Counsel ask for it, in writing, from a popular blog who claimed to have “the next iPhone”?

I think not. If Apple didn’t make a claim, then it would have been a rumor on the Internet. Even after the dissection indicated the Apple A5 processor underneath, there would be skeptics on the Internet who would have thought it to be a test device in the hands of a flunkie – and that Apple security would have never, ever let even unauthorized air touch the real next iPhone. This rumor would have run its course on the Internet as all viral rumors in social media do. It would have been a huge bloom on Twitter and all other social media that we have, and the pictures would be picked up and redistributed till everyone got tired of waiting for a confirmation from Cupertino.

Now, here’s the tricky part: The act of responding to a rumor, and the manner in which such a response is delivered – is often the double whammy that can work very well, or can rebound really well.

If Apple had responded with something like: “Yes, we lost a test device through unfortunate human error; and while we did not intend to show the world the directions we were considering towards the next iPhone – we welcome your feedback as we always have” – it would have done two good things: humanized Apple as a company made of real people who are capable of human errors; and a company that didn’t preach “our way or the highway” but actually listened to their users and acted upon feedback.

However, Apple chose to have a senior vice president respond with a request to return the device. It doesn’t take much to know that a blog will publish everything that it receives in such cases – because “breaking stories” bring eyeballs, and eyeballs bring advertisers..yada yada yada.

A senior person sending a succinct request can only add fuel to the fire to something that attracts so any fireflies. Instead, if Apple had one of it’s “Device Retrieval staff” or “MobileMe” staff write that letter – the impact may have been a lot less from the speculative perspective. It would have kept people guessing – and that, at the end of the day, is what social media delivers on best when it comes to future product offerings.

It’s like a leaked movie versus a promo clip that almost gives away the entire story. The latter is almost as good as the former, especially the way they’re done nowadays. Yet, if the producer / actors didn’t make a public statement attesting, in any way, to the veracity of the leaked movie – then Joe Surfer would have still paid to see the same movie in the multiplex because it was unclear if the leaked movie was a “final cut” or “one cut before the final cut”.

For what it’s worth – the front-facing camera is a long-overdue “enhancement”, which, like most Apple products – brings the iPhone only up to par with several other smartphones on the market that have had the same feature for quite a while now. The rest of the tweaks sound good on paper as well, but I didn’t spot a huge shift ahead, like, say, multitasking in the new iPhone OS 4.0

What would you have done? Exactly what Apple did? Or something different? Sound off in the comments.