// bmak's blog

Ubuntu for Phones, and the Convergence of Computing

2013-01-02T22:49:00.000+02:00

January 2nd, 2013

Few hours ago, Ubuntu for phones was unveiled by Canonical in a move that is anything but surprising, at least for those following Tech news closely. In a 21-minutes long video, Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Canonical and ex-CEO, gives a fairly extensive look at the new OS (as debatable as the term "new OS" is), with a focus on new User Interface paradigms mostly reminiscent of Nokia's pioneering Meego swipe gestures.

Ubuntu on phones won't ship properly until 2014 (although it could run on Android devices present today), but that is not why I am writing this. Nor am I overly excited about the promised new interface, as much merit as some of its ideas have. Instead, what piqued my interest in all of this is the convergence of your whole computing experience: It doesn't matter what device you're using, be it a phone, a tablet, or a laptop, the experience is the same and, most importantly, all of those devices should work seamlessly together, so that when transitioning from one to the other, your workflow (or fun-flow, really :P) doesn't get interrupted.

It doesn't matter anymore when this is going to happen, what does matter is that it is going to happen.

If the idea sounds familiar, that's because that's what Windows 8 promised, or at least that's what I thought it did, and was a bit disappointed by it. What Canonical is doing here is confirming my initial view (and really, the view of many others) that that's where future computing is headed. It doesn't matter anymore when this is going to happen, what does matter is that it is going to happen.

The race for ultimate convergence has already started, and betting on Microsoft, Apple, or Canonical to reach the finish line first couldn't be less certain. I excluded Google mainly because it lacks a solid desktop OS offering, although I'm still not sure whether I'm rooting for Android or "Ubuntu for phones" as the open OS of choice (take it as you like). However, all of these companies are sure to take notice of Canonical's new computing proposition, and that, my friends, makes all the difference.

4G LTE Soon in Lebanon (Update)

2012-11-01T12:55:00.000+02:00

November 1st, 2012

Annahar reported today that Telecom Minister Nicolas Sehnaoui will be unveiling plans to roll-out LTE, aka 4G technology, in Lebanon on today's episode of "Talk of the Town" on MTV. The plan, according to Annahar, will start with a testing phase starting the 16th of the current month on both operators (Touch and Alfa), with consumer availability on April 23rd, 2013.

Don't miss the scoop I will be revealing to @monaabouhamze this Thursday on "Talk of the Town"
— Nicolas Sehnaoui (@NicolaSehnaoui) October 31, 2012

The 4G network should allow for theoretical speeds of up to 100 Mbps, with practical real-world speeds in the 30 Mbps range. By contrast, current HSPA technology allows for speeds up to around 8 Mbps. The upgrade is following work on improving the long-stagnating infrastructure in Lebanon, by installing fiber-optics cables to connect the different stations, and should give a great boost to the economy by encouraging new investments. Of course, you need to have an LTE equipped phone to take advantage of the new speeds.

Update: Alfa Telecom confirmation on twitter (find the official press release in the sources below):

The wait is almost over!Alfa is the first to test 4G- LTE in Lebanon with over 20 LTE test sites in #Beirut #Alfa4G
— Alfa Telecom (@AlfaTelecom) November 1, 2012

source: Annahar, Alfa

Haave You Met Windows 8?

2012-10-17T18:50:00.000+03:00

October 17th, 2012

Haave You Met X is a new feature on this blog, introducing new tech for the uninitiated.

If you ever used a computer, you're 90%* likely to have encountered Windows, give or take. Now, or in a week's time to be exact, on October 26th, Microsoft is set to release the next version of its operating system: Windows 8.

Windows 8 improves on the already great Windows 7, with a lighter, faster build, so that it could run with no trouble on fairly old systems. But more importantly, Windows 8 brings with it the early winds of a shift in computing paradigms, also known as tiles. Whenever you turn on your Windows 8 PC, you'll be met with a new Start screen, with flat rectangular icons that allow you to launch new full screen apps that you can get from the Windows Store. Alternatively, you could click on the Desktop tile to go to your familiar, well, desktop.

You might find this change weird, and maybe unwelcome; not so when you see the big picture. Microsoft wants to integrate all your digital devices so they could all work seamlessly together: your PC laptop, tablet, Xbox, and your phone. You would be working on one, or watching a video or listening to music, and you could switch to the other without your workflow interrupted; well at least, that's the dream. But a big part of this dream is getting fulfilled with windows 8 on computers and tablets (haave you met the Surface?), and its little brother Windows Phone 8 on phones.

Windows Phone 8 will be revealed few days after Windows 8, on the 29th. While many of its new features are still kept under wrap, the shared kernel (the bridge between the hardware and software, to quote Wikipedia) would allow for very interesting features. One particular feature I'd like to see, that Microsoft would be amiss not to implement, is telephony services on the pc. You get an sms on your phone, and it instantly pops-up on your PC screen without the need to pick up the phone. Or you could even answer a call directly on your laptop, with the voice routed through your mobile device. Apple has done something similar with iOS and OS X on the Mac, but that is limited to the iMessages app. Whether Microsoft does that remains to be seen, sooner rather than later, but one thing's for sure: the bar is set high. Hopefully Microsoft will deliver.

Note: If you own a copy of Windows XP, Vista, or 7, you can upgrade to Windows 8 Pro for as little as 40$ starting October 26th and until the end of this year.

* At the time of this writing. The stats are estimates.

Thoughts: The Dark Knight Rises (Spoiler-free!)

2012-08-17T15:04:00.000+03:00

August 17th, 2012

I went to see The Dark Knight Rises with a couple of friends yesterday (I won't start a rant about how the most awaited, biggest blockbuster movie of the year started showing one month ago internationally, while the [insert preferred curse here] [optional second curse word goes here] theaters in Lebanon for whatever "very logical reason in their mind" made us wait so long, meanwhile avoiding half of the internet in fear of stumbling over spoilers.. /rant).

Back to the movie itself.. We went to Concorde, and bought the last five tickets which had us sit a meter and a half before the screen (we could see the perforations in the screen fabric, and a mosquito apparently suffering from myopia); it gave quite a unique perspective to the movie :P Our choice (or lack thereof) of seats also had us suffer at times some audio loss due to its "Surround" nature, which would give optimal quality at the center of the theater (or else there was a problem with the whole theater's audio and no one noticed :P).

Now I will say this: I went with the expectations of watching an amazing movie, what I got was a 100 times awesomer! 165 minutes of pure pleasure, and I would've stayed for even more. The sound effects (at least those coming from the front channel :P), the visuals, the gadgets (oh how I love the gadgets), not to speak of the narrative itself (I promised spoiler-free, and I'll hold that promise) were unmatched, or only by a few. You might read somewhere that the movie was disappointing, or that it doesn't hold against The Dark Knight, and that would be wrong, and that would be stupid, and that would be blasphemous! Blasphemy I say! And those who wrote that are stupid.

The extended 165 minutes run-time was really a bonus, and I wish more movies would go that route as much of a bet as that might look to be (I'm looking at you, Harry Potter series!). And for the equivalent of 2 normal movies, and a movie as awesome as The Dark Knight Rises, I really believe 10000 L.L. to be a real steal. I will definitely go watch that movie again.

Finally, I just can't not mention how much respect I hold for Christopher Nolan, for the masterpieces he keeps getting out of that brilliant mind of his. Christopher Nolan, a tip of the hat to you.

What Is Open Source And Why You Should Care

2012-01-17T21:30:00.000+02:00

January 17th, 2012

My Ubuntu 11.10 Desktop

What is Open Source?

Open Source is when a product (software, creative content..) is available for the masses to freely modify and/or redistribute, under the same minimum conditions on which it was obtained (i.e. when you redistribute an open sourced software for example, those you are giving it to must enjoy at the very least the same rights you had in modifying and redistributing it). What is meant by freely however is freedom, and not necessarily cost-less.

This status is guaranteed by what is known as a license, or a form of public contract that states the terms under which you may use the product. The mostly used software licenses for example are the GNU General Public License, under which are Android and Linux, The Apache License, and content licenses include the Creative Commons Attribution in its most liberal forms, like the one under which Wikipedia is licensed, since more restrictive forms of it also exist.

How is Open Source important?

Whether in software or content, open sourcing was the main drive in the great leap in computers technology and information availability in general that the world has seen in the past three decades. Linux for example, an open-source Operating System (that's like Windows on PCs), powers electronics from calculators, to washing machines, to full-blown servers, and of course normal computers. Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Fedora and other variations (called distros) are available to download and install -and tweak -for free (for instance I replaced Windows XP with Linux Mint on my old Pentium IV/256MB RAM desktop to bring it back to life, and have Ubuntu alongside Windows 7 on my laptop). This big availability allows for a concerted development of people all around the world, whereby each contribution constitutes a building block to which others might add. In an ideal world, each person would be paying back for what he's getting by contributing in his own way to the global community, or even civilization.

Why exactly am I wasting your time with this?

It is very important to push for openness especially in software, after all, the huge improvements seen in the World Wide Web today are in fact due to the open standards made by the W3C to HTML and the unbelievable possibilities it now presents to web developers. And although the former example might not exactly apply in this case, the effect of open-source software on our lives is undeniably enormous, whether in Linux as I mentioned above, or even Android, which is proving by the day to be the most popular mobile Operating System. Aside from the ideological talk, there's now consumer-oriented (free xD) open-source software that is available out there, and that is getting increasingly easy for the none-techy persons (yay you! :P) to use that you should be aware of (e.g. the latest versions of Ubuntu).

Finally, I'd like to draw your attention to the big SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) debate that is happening in the U.S., and that is threatening the basic structure of the Internet as we know it, and would encourage you to know more about it, especially with the planned blackout of Wikipedia and Reddit (among others) tomorrow in protest of it.

Blogging 101, And Why I Chose Blogger over WordPress

2012-01-08T06:11:00.000+02:00

January 8th, 2012

My WordPress blog (hyperbole alert :P)

My blog’s been running for three months now, but the idea of blogging had been actually luring me since early in the summer. Naturally, I set up to find the blogging platform that’d suit me better, and the choice was between Blogger and WordPress. Wanting to try both, I signed up with an account for each and started experimenting with the design of what was still at the time a nascent, immature idea. Also at the time, Blogger was still in its stagnant neglected form, and it wasn’t until later in the summer that Google finally gave it an overhaul and made it the great platform that it is today. Before giving my reasons for favoring Blogger (you could already tell, right? :P) though, I’ll start with a simple tip about managing a blog (regardless of where it’s hosted).

I usually behave on the internet like those Google bots (aka crawlers), and whenever I stumble upon an interesting blog, I make sure to read many posts/articles, and to check who writes it (If you have a blog that I happened to find, I’m the one responsible for those 30 something hits in 10 mins :P And you’re welcome :D ).

One thing I found on many blogs, and an embarrassing thing it is, is pages (for example the “About Me” page) that still showed “Lorem ipsum” text (standard text that has no meaning that you insert just to see how your content would look like in a certain design, a placeholder) instead of any actual info. Now I admit that some of these pages weren’t meant to be seen (I just change the url to blogname.com/about; you’d be surprised with what you could find), but I actually visited a blog where an “About” link was prominently displayed on the homepage, and once I clicked on it I got to a page full of Ipsums. So if you're a blogger, you would want to be careful when importing a template, and take the time to check that no unwanted pages are published, even if no links are displayed.

With that out of the way, I listed below what made me go with Blogger, and some WordPress pros for the sake of fairness.

Blogger Pros:

If you’re comfortable with HTML and CSS, you’ll definitely wanna go with Blogger since it allows you to shape your blog to your heart’s will, and unlike WordPress, that’d be for free (a free WordPress account would allow you very limited customizations, and you’d be restricted in functionality with the pre-existing widgets, though there’s admittedly plenty of them).
Google has been working lately on integrating all of its services together, and this will likely continue in the future. Few examples are linking your blog with your Google+ profile (and you get to see your image next to your posts in search results :P), and the Google apps services (most importantly Gmail for your blog) you get if you opt for your own domain.
Blogger is also cheaper in general (in cost, not quality) than WordPress, for example registering your own domain (yourblogname.com instead of yourblogname.blogspot.com) with Blogger costs $10/yr, while it costs around $19 with WordPress.
Even if you’re afraid of getting your hands dirty with HTML, there’s a flood (literally) of free templates available online, or you could simply set your blog to display Blogger’s new stylish “Dynamic Views”.

WordPress Pros:

Your blog will admittedly simply work out of the box, so if you’re ok with the limited templates (or don’t mind shedding some money), you’ll be churning out posts in no time :P
WordPress’ “Freshly Pressed” service is highly acclaimed, it selects material (provided they’re interesting enough) and displays them on WordPress.com’s front page, giving your blog great exposure (new hits could reach thousands in a very short time).

Why I Am Most Definitely Not A Fandroid

2011-12-01T01:00:00.001+02:00

November 30th, 2011

My fair-and-square bet-won Droid :P

Today, I was called a fandroid! *gasp* Well, not that exact word, but close. For the uninitiated among you, Android is a mobile operating system owned by Google, and is running on a wide variety of Samsung and HTC phones, along with toys branded by LG and Sony-Ericson. But, if you don't already know what Android is, this post is probably not for you :)

I'll start with a disclaimer: my next phone is most likely gonna be a Galaxy Nexus [Prime]. That said, I really and sincerely believe this is the first Android smartphone worthy of my money. Some may Boo me for not considering the Galaxy SII, but I really, sincerely believe that it was a total iPhone 4/4S rip-off design-wise, and a miserable one for that matter.

Now a few things that trouble me concerning Android:

· Laggy, laggy, and laggy.. did I mention Laggy? The lag most certainly doesn't show on high-end super-powered devices, but God help you if you ever come near one of those mid-range phones. The fact that it needs so much power to run is a point of concern, especially when compared with iOS and Windows Phone, both of which are more than happy to fly on lower specs. Admittedly though, that might well change with Android 4.0 "ICS" now supporting hardware acceleration.

· Roulette-like updates, meaning you're not guaranteed when and if your device gets updated to newer versions, otherwise known as the "F" word (Fragmentation! Seriously, what were you thinking? ) for the Androidophobics out there. That also may not matter much though as long as your device works fine, except for a few features added occasionally.

Not proof enough? I really like the fluidity of iOS on my iPad 2 (I doubt I could stand iOS on a phone though), and the superior build quality of Apple products in general, and am really envious of that iPhone 4S camera. Also, I love the looks and functionality of Windows Phone, and only the lack of proper hardware (yeah, money too :P) stands between me and getting one (Nokia's Lumia 800 is great, but I'm sure a much better handset is on the way). Basically, I love (and hate) all those tech giants, Microsoft included, and am only looking for what's indeed a great product.

Final point: BlackBerry's suck!

Review: One Week Using 3G (MTC Touch Lebanon) (Updated)

2011-11-08T15:59:00.000+02:00

November 8th, 2011

Image source: mtctouch.com.lb

I've hopped on 3G the day it became available (for mtc touch prepaid), so here's the lay-down of how it went after one week of use.

During the first 24 hours of subscribing, I really had my doubts. I couldn't get the signal locked in for more than mere seconds, after which my Nokia 5800 XM (spare the jokes) would display 3G instead of 3.5G (indicative of HSPA+, otherwise branded as 3.9G by mtc), then directly jump back to EDGE which, to add insult to injury, would simply go on-hold and refuse to connect me to the world wide web. Indoors, 3G signal was as real as a unicorn.. (though one could always hope :P). Starting the second day though, things changed.

The fastest my phone could reach was 2.46Mbps which is pretty good for a 3 years old phone, though I doubt you could reach more than 4Mbps on one of the newer smartphones, and that's if you're lucky. That's not to say the speed is bad, this is exactly what's expected from the 21Mbps HSPA+ the carriers deployed (also comparable, as far as I know, to speeds reached by the same technology in European countries and the U.S.). Later deployment of the 42Mbps HSPA+ could make things even better, and select LTE (4G) coverage (I believe in Beirut, provided you have an LTE-capable phone which aren't cheap and have horrible battery lives) makes me think we're on the right track.

Speed, however, wasn't consistent, and I found myself rarely reaching that maximum speed, and more often than not on speeds lower than 700kbps. This said, I can proudly (shamefully ?) claim that the connection was better than my so primitive 128kbps ADSL connection provided by a shitty ISP (*cough* Ogero *cough*), that is yet to be upgraded to 1Mbps. Tethering to my iPad (that's transforming my phone into a WiFi-hotspot or router and using my 3G connection to devices connected to it) was a truly satisfying experience (I can now die peacefully :P), though it went through my megabytes like a mad beast, and I knew better than to keep doing that.

(Update 31/03/2012: If you're here because you googled "mtc 3g tethering" (you're not alone :P), I can't help you much. If you have an Android, Windows Phone or iPhone (smartphone in general) you should be able to do that from the OS (or there could be apps for that), but in short what works for other carriers works for mtc so you should simply google "tethering [your phone's type]". Tethering is free (for now at least) and the APN is "mtc". If you rock a Nokia (Symbian) last I checked there's a paid app on Ovi store, but otherwise you're out of luck. Hope that helped, and feel free to ask about anything else in the comments section (: )

A major problem though seems to be battery life, which is being drained like hell. Normally, my phone would still have full bars at the end of the day, whereas with 3G I'm returning home during the evening with only two bars left (and I'm usually paranoid, which means whenever the bars count drops to half I seriously stop using my phone). I know LTE drains battery like that because the standards aren't finalized, but this should not be the case of HSPA+. I may be wrong on this point, but hopefully it's just an optimization problem from the part of the carriers that would be fixed soon. (Update 31/03/2012: Apparently this was because 3G coverage was limited at the time, and the phone had to continuously switch 2G/3G modes. This is no longer the case, but if you're still having that problem try selecting 3G mode only (Or HSPA, or UMTS) from your phone's settings, though you would be more prone to lose signal that way.)

Finally, one thing I had the chance to try was Ovi Maps, Nokia's native maps client, and to quote Kevin Shields: "IT LOOKS AAWWEEESOOOOME!". Seriously though, I fired it up on the way to Beirut at Monteverde, and it showed the tiniest details and road turns, even when I was only on EDGE (no 3G coverage), and all the way down it only used 130KBs (I had the map of Lebanon pre-downloaded).

Disqus and Outbrain

2011-10-16T23:20:00.000+03:00

October 16th, 2011

Outbrain and Disqus

OK I'm not sure how much blogging about my blog qualifies as, well, blogging, but here it goes. You might start noticing some suggested links appearing under the posts. These are powered by an interesting recommendation engine I found recently, called Outbrain.

First to make things clear, whatever links you might see on the blog are not exactly my own recommendations, but rather those of the algorithm used, so don't blame me if some weird recommended post appears there :P. The best I can do is the occasional "zipping out" of a link I happen not to like, though through observation I found out that the same recommendations don't necessarily appear twice in the same place.

The second thing you might notice is the "Paid Distribution" tag on the links. And as much as I'd like that, I'm not really making money out of these links. Rather Outbrain gives you the option to allow these sponsored recommendations on your blog, and donate the proceeds to charity. In my case, I've chosen to donate whatever revenue to the International Red Cross, simply because among the limited choice given, that was the only organization whose reach extends to here in Lebanon. It was either that or the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (as if! :P). So now the next time you visit my blog, you can actually feel good about yourself doing so! :D :P

The other thing I started using here a bit earlier and wanna talk about is Disqus (pronounced discuss, clever no? :P), which is a comment platform. It allows you to easily add comments using either your Facebook or Google accounts (or even Disqus itself). I made that decision after some complained about Blogger's native comments system (OK it was just one friend, happy?), though I do think that Disqus provides more functionality. The only downside for now is with the blog's mobile version, where Disqus won't work due to Blogger dropping widget functionality there; Otherwise, Disqus is clearly the better option.

With that out of the way, stay tuned for more posts soon.

Patronus of Dreams or Why My Brain Says It's Alright

2011-10-07T21:13:00.000+03:00

October 7th, 2011

This is a post I wrote mid-July for the blog back when it was still in its infancy, hope you like it :)

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

As the final Harry Potter movie got released, and a journey of emotional growth I shared with its characters had to reach its close, it was only natural for me to hang to those last threads connecting me with my childhood, and seek in my desperation the ghostly trails of an evading innocence in online forums and fan sites I never cared to visit before.

What really caught my attention, however, were whole threads and discussions about "puzzles" found by fans in the books, often related to inconsistencies or open questions left unanswered (not the least of them and my personal favorite is that locked chamber in the aptly named "Department of Mysteries"), and endless debates about the endless possibilities that would make them plausible. One such "puzzle", as I learned, was known as "the wand order" in the graveyard scene in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire after the "Priori Incantatem" charm, which was later corrected in revised editions. Now to try to cite all of these "puzzles" or inconsistencies, whatever you may wish to call them, would require me having a Time-Turner the stock of which, as far as the official story goes and for all intents and purposes (and as my cousin keeps telling me to my dismay), was entirely destroyed. Update: The team at "How It Should Have Ended" had another saying.

The purpose of this post is not to discuss fans' loyalty that makes them (understandably) so hardly try to rationalize the irrational, but more importantly, in my opinion at least, it is to state that, over the span of ten years, I have failed to detect a single error by myself. For some it's witty to notice these errors that evaded the author's attention, and thus, by contrast, may consider me.. ermm.. "unwittyful". I have another saying.

In his famous theory on dreams, Freud explains how the mind often integrates (in distorted forms) both external and internal stimuli into the sleeper's dreams to prevent him from waking up; this phenomenon is known as the "Guardian of Sleep". It is because of how important sleeping is that needs (for example thirst or hunger) are disguised and pseudo-fulfilled by let's say a big "virtual" pepperoni pizza slice! :P. By analogy, I've come to the conclusion that it is this same importance, this passion that I have, this savoring of the words laid before my eyes in an unmatched feast, that made those "puzzles" of even less importance, and made my brain overlook and not notice them. For as annoying as those "errors" may seem, it is of utmost injustice to oneself to let them overshadow the genius that was interwoven and entwined with every sentence, every word of this masterpiece.

It is this same importance, this passion that I have, this savoring of the words laid before my eyes in an unmatched feast, that made me appreciate, for once, the "grace of ignorance" bestowed upon me.

Inauguratio

2011-10-07T20:59:00.000+03:00

October 7th, 2011

As customs go with every launching of a new project, one has to give an eloquent speech as to what it means for him to have reached where he presently has, what sacrifices he may have made, and the prospects and hopes that his new journey may hold. It also goes without saying the necessity of including such grandiose and sophisticated (and awesome :P) words as paramount, behold, pledge and behemoth, words that I must resist the temptation of using in my posts, for they tend to suck me in a vicious cycle that usually instigates me to write full paragraphs of complicated syntax, and that more often than not turn out to be of utmost crap.. or should I say paltriness?

Update: This post was obviously supposed to be the first to be published along with the blog launch. However, with the news of Apple's new iPhone 4S announcement, I had to publish a pre-launch post covering it. The post can be found Here.

Now with all seriousness, this blog will start off by being a general, personal one relaying my thoughts on the many things we encounter in life, though I have in my mind plans to later spin off the tech related parts into a dedicated blog of their own, depending on my time and on how much of a success this blog would turn out to be. It will therefore focus more on my opinions (educated as they are :P) on news and not on bringing these news; other sites and blogs are already doing the latter perfectly. The issues discussed will vary from the "light" ones to hopefully others that are of more seriousness and are more thought provocative or maybe even controversial.

As this is my first serious attempt at blogging, it is a no-brainer that it will take me some time to find a tone of my own to use, especially that talking to a screen is not the same as talking to human beings, and might actually turn one mad in the process :P. ~~You should be expecting at least one new post per week, but I will definitely try my best to deliver more.~~

I'll cut the blabber short, and hopefully you'll enjoy this ride as much as I will. (Oh and don't shy out from checking my "About" page)

Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak!
Also, deranged! :P

P.S. The title is not missing an "n", rather I used what I believe to be the Latin version of the word.. Just because..

Why Apple Went With the “4S”

2011-10-05T00:54:00.000+03:00

October 5th, 2011

Image source: Apple.com

Apple announced earlier the new iPhone 4S, an iPhone 4 in design, but with beefed up specs including the new A5 double-core CPU chip already found in the iPad 2, a new 8 MP shooter capable of 1080p full HD, and last but definitely not least, “Siri”.

Siri is the “humble personal assistant” as “she” identifies herself, capable of voice-to-text and text-to-voice (and generally voice command), along with more complex tasks such as scheduling meetings and taking care of your correspondence, all by simple verbal request.

But this new iPhone, with a feature as awesome as it could be, was met with a not so unanimous reception. In fact, many found that what Apple did by keeping the same design of its previous model, rather than revolutionizing it, was quite disappointing, especially after almost 6 months of rumors that never calmed, and kept suggesting a thinner, wider (4 inch screen) form factor along with some other minor cosmetic changes. Such hype was clearly not met by what Apple delivered in that respect, which brings the question: How come all of these rumors, so strong as they were, didn’t make it to the final product, especially with a 3 months delay over the usual announcement period, namely the WWDC event in June? And where the hell was that “one more thing”? This very last question has the answer.

Earlier during the summer, Steve Jobs, co-founder and then CEO of Apple, stepped down from his position, assuming instead the role of Chairman and President. His second-in-command and previously acting CEO for three short periods, Tim Cook, took his place. Cook had the legacy of Jobs to carry, and that is no small weight. To maintain the post-Jobs Apple, and particularly its soaring shares, Cook had to prove he was able to deliver just as Jobs did. People had expectations.

Now that is a dilemma, for no matter how good of a design the new iPhone was going to be, it would be compared to that dictated-by-Jobs-up-to-the-tiniest-detail of the iPhone 4; it was a lose-lose situation. Instead, it was wiser to use that same design Jobs conceived, and rather innovate at the software level, to prove that Cook is indeed worthy of being a CEO of Apple, and an heir to Jobs. Siri made that possible.

Now, it is safe to assume that starting with the next iPhone, and with other products (Macs) set to be announced/upgraded in the meantime, Cook, having “fixed his feet to the ground” and being less and less pressed to prove his capabilities, could start deviating from the “Jobs vision” and instead implement his own, which would be translated in a new design, both on the software and hardware levels. How far this deviation would be remains to be seen, especially that Jobs was involved in some long-term projects too, and thus his footprint would still be present to a reasonable extent.

October is not done yet with surprises, especially that Android “Ice-Cream Sandwich”, Google’s next Nexus phone and Nokia’s new Widows Phone “Mango” handsets are on the verge of being announced. One thing I know for sure though: Siri, I wanna marry you!