I’ve been writing about the iPod speaker market for some time… well, I’ve spent a good bit of time testing and using them as well.

Easily the best portable iPod speakerdock has been the iH27 from iHome.  It’s a great portable speaker, runs on batteries, and has an alarm clock built in so you can wake up in the morning to your tunes.  Great for long business trips where I can’t count on the hotel having a decent stereo, and I can’t live without my music.

So this is why I am glad to see the iP27 hitting the market… if only overseas for now.  The iP27 is the “Works with iPhone” version of the iH27 (note: the iP27 doesn’t seem to be branded “iHome2go” anymore).  This means that my (soon to be acquired) iPhone can sit on the dock without annoying buzzing disturbing my sheep-counting at night, and the iPhone can still effectively receive phone calls without being disturbed by the surrounding speaker enclosure.

iHome, no doubt, had to jump through engineering hoops to get this design certified for iPhone.  It’s obvious from how few models are out today that come with the certification.

Can’t wait to snag one of these and make it a permanent fixture in my luggage.

While many early adopter types (like me) have been fiddling with Airtunes, and looking for ways to turn your iPhone or iPod Touch into a remote control for whole home audio, clearly the engineers at Apple have been doing the same, and building the native functionality into the iPhone OS 2.0 and the latest version of iTunes.The iTune remote page over at Apple pretty much explains it all. No longer will we need Signal.

Remote features include:

• Basic security for connecting iTunes and Apple TV libraries
• iPod controls user interface you are already used to when playing back content form a given library
• Intuitive search-as-you-type.  Very cool.  Type “r-o” get any content that contains such letter-sequence grouped as songs, artists, albums, etc.
• Multi-room destination control.  Remote allows you to control what rooms the audio plays back through if you are using Airtunes devices.
• Adjustable buffer size.  Allows you to adjust whether you want a short or long buffer enabling less  or more interference robustness and throughput reliability.

All good stuff.  Can’t wait to get my hands on it.  I specifically want to answer the following questions:

• How does it deal with multiple remotes in the same house?
• How well does the remote provide instant and clear state feedback on the current system configuration?
• How does a single remote deal with setting up a multi-source topology?
• How does it deal with contention for a single receiver, i.e. what happens if you try to send audio to the same room from two different libraries using two different remotes?
• How well in practice does the interference robustness perform?
• How annoying does the delay introduced by the buffer really become over time?

No matter the result, I am sure Apple will delight many with a feature no one was really expecting.

Many folks are familiar with Apple Airport Express and Airtunes. It provides the ability to send iTunes audio from a PC/Mac to speakers that are connected to the Airport Express (which has both a Toslink and a line-level output). I’ve been playing with the latest variant. With Airport Express w/ wireless N, they’ve added the ability to support simultaneous receivers receiving the same content. What I call a point-to-multi-point topology.

I’ve also been playing with Rogue Amoeba’s Airfoil which lets me not just play iTunes music, but ANY music from any app on my Mac, or wait for it… a Windows PC. I also have been using Airfoil Speakers which lets me turn any PC, Linux box, or Mac in my house, to an Airtunes receiver. A little tray app runs on that PC, and makes it look like a Airport Express, for example.

I’ve heard Airfoil lets your send music to Apple TV as well, though I haven’t been able to test that. I assume it’s as robust as the others have been… and with that little bit of foreshadowing…

It really works well! I love it actually. About my setup:

Audio source:

1. My Macbook Pro running all manner of audio… iTunes, Pandora, Slacker, whatever…

Receivers:

1. My iMac running Airfoil Speakers
2. Airport Express-1 hooked up to Bose SoundDock Portable
3. Airport Express-2 hooked up to Bose Companion 5s.

So a little about Apple Airtunes, which is Apple’s proprietary protocol for sending compressed audio over WLAN (AoW). This is all reverse guesstimated based on what little I know about wireless audio…First of all, I call it AoW… I hesitate to call Airtunes “wireless audio”, because it only appears that “audio” is being sent wirelessly… what is actually being sent are chopped up AAC (correction via mats) Apple Lossless “data” files with a whole bunch of QoS goop wrapped around it. Strictly speaking, Airtunes relies on a non-linear, asynchronous packet-based transmission scheme, TCP-IP over WLAN. What Apple has created is an extremely broad time-window for synchronizing audio data, creating isochronous behavior using asynchronous foundations and lots of software… that’s why you need devices running Apple smarts on either end. Airtunes basically estimates a total time buffer need based on network utilization and bandwidth requirements… creates a time-stamp on the source material… encodes both the stamp and the buffer-time in the data stream… Marker “A”… then it takes the audio data… compresses it on the host side, then essentially transmits the compressed file plus meta information… performs the network transmission, decoding… audio decompression, and again recovering the time stamps and synchronizing them to the device clock and then upon reaching the target time marker extrapolated from the buffer-time… begins rendering the audio at… marker “Z”. Or something close to that… I think…

All-in, what Apple does are three important things:

1. Prevents audio dropouts due to periods of reduced network throughput… i.e. it behaves as a buffer. This is important since the WLAN network is a shared network and throughput for audio is not guaranteed.
2. It makes sure all the nodes are playing music in sync to one another, and without time-varying node-to-node drift… This is important in whole-home audio scenarios to reduce echos and unnatural artifacts.
3. To the extent A-to-Z can remain fixed over a playback period… Airtunes also can avoid any audio discontinuities during playback. If the buffer was well-estimated at the beginning of a transmission, then you won’t have to resize the buffer and suffer a “skip”. One advantage of Airtunes is it can be content aware on the source side, and know when there are silent periods and take those times to reset buffers if need be. Not sure they do this or not.

The result. Fairly rock-solid performance for up to 3 nodes spread across a 80 ft radius space.

Pros

• Apple has been giving much of this functionality for free to those who already buy up Apples stuff. The “converted” are very close to having this stuff working for them.
• Apple software rocks. So this stuff really isn’t THAT hard to set up. A little easier than say setting up a WiFi network. A bit harder than hooking up a TiVo. By PC standards… not bad.
• Sound quality and link performance are generally great. For that party mode performance, it works pretty well.

Cons

• Compared to setting up piece of CE equipment, it involves much too much PC time. Installing software, control panels, SSIDs, etc… Advnaced PC user know-how is a must. Even by Mac standards.
• Poor marketing… did you even know this was possible…???? Today???? Like all things, Apple likes to Trojan horse features… then once they get them shaken out by geeks like me, they rationalize them in to shiny new products and services that Stevie J can launch… MobileMe anyone???
• Delay Delay Delay. Buffering and buffer management is the magic to Airtunes… but oh how clumsy it is when you want to adjust volume, or change track… User have to check their audible feedback expectations. Usability nightmare. And what was strange was the more I use this system… the more I notice the delay time…. and of course the more it annoys the shit out of me.
• Cost!!! If you aren’t a Apple hardware dork yet. Be prepared to dump $99 for each Airport Express. Add to that the cost of the speaker system you need to connect to it. Rogue Amoeba software is a great convenience, but it ain’t free… not bad though to be honest. Airfoil is about $25 per seat. Airfoil Speaker is free… but the computer it runs on is not!

Overall Grades:

B+ for Apple - for giving us a platform

C for Airtunes - for working ok, but using WLAN… a terrible, terrible transport.

A for Rogue Amoeba - for exploiting a platform to the fullest and making nice software that just works.

Over on Micro Everything, Mats picked up on an recent WSJ article about Apple’s wireless audio potentialities. I too have given this plenty of thought… no big surprise… but I just can’t keep quiet about my random toughts anymore… there are many things I find pretty intriguing about Apple’s approach to this wireless audio distribution, but the aspect I want to talk about foremost is how sneaky and un-Apple they’ve been in rolling it out.Wireless audio by Apple has been leaking into the Apple platform, reaching the more adventuresome consumers via a series of Trojan Horse tactics…

1. The Airport Express. It started here with a simple point-to-point wireless audio feature called Airtunes about 4 years ago. The two primary limitation… it only allowed point-to-point links and the source point had to be iTunes running on a computer. Well now that has changed…
2. The 2nd generation Airport Express with Wireless-N has also seen the quiet launch or point-to-multi-point airtunes. Now you can play your iTunes to more than one Airport Express endpoint at any time.
3. Because Airtunes is a custom audio payload protocol that uses WLAN network as its network transport, any WLAN enabled device with the necessary protocol software running on top of it can be a potential source or receiver of Airtunes content… such as
   1. Another PC - as receiver as well
   2. Apple TV - source or receiver
   3. iPod Touch - as source via WiFi
   4. iPhone - as source via WiFi
   5. iPhones and iPods are also perfect platforms to have your sweet touch screen remote controls… (a la http://www.alloysoft.com/) with all kinds of opportunities for third party skins, features, meta content exploits, etc… and not to mention the hardware only gets cooler and cooler every year, so consumers will constantly be getting more and more GUI capabilities.

The “predictable” wireless speakers would perhaps be very slick looking speakers with Airport express electronics built in.All in all I say, what a platform!!!?? Compare this to Microsoft… who have had so many false starts here, with big splash promises that just never measured up when put to the early adopter stress tests… but they have their Xbox I suppose… as if!As for Apple, I just can’t wait for the APIs to mature and for the community of nifty software developers to catch on and build out a great set of exeriences…But mine isn’t all glowing… being who Apple is, I see two potential impediments to world domination in this space…

1. How much will Apple bind the experience to iTunes and protected AAC contents?  If it’s more open - platform and library agnostic… you have the makings of something really interesting.
2. Another caveat is that I don’t know of any high throughput WLAN in urban environments anymore. I am not sure WLAN networks will give the kind of QoS needed to maintain robust synchronized multi-point wireless audio instances… I’ve all but given up on WiFi in NY. Too crowded… too many APs fighting it out… tough problems, no doubt.

Apple’s under the radar approach is a nice way to hedge against exposing the system infrastructure risks… and in the meantime, they can quietly build out the user-level application functionality in a nice way… it may be that to truly realize their vision, they’ll need new dedicated wireless audio transports to work this out… for reals… time will tell.

Apple.  Please help fix this problem.  It is causing issues on many USB headset devices.  Unfortunately it has been raised as an issue on some of our wireless headset products, basically users complaining about robotic voice, or scratchy voice, or even muffled voice quality.  In doing some research, it is clear that this is a problem with other USB-Audio devices as well.  All signs are that it points to some emergent issue with 10.5.2 Leopard and so far, Macbook Pros.  We’ll see if the fix is identified and resolved.  Right now it is a nuisance for Skypers, podcaster, etc.

• ZDnet: The Apple Core
• Logitech support forums
• Shinywhitebox

I get how hard this thing was to build. I worked in the PC business long enough to know what all has to be integrated into very tight spaces, and the thermal engineers I am sure are still sweating bullets… But really…

…all that effort and all we get is thin??? Come on! Who cares about thin?! I want battery life and versatility. I’ll take another 0.25″ thickness if it buys me some mAhrs. But I’ll give you a mulligan on this one… a do over… form over function tradeoff… I get it.

But no wired Ethernet port? That is seriously weak. WLAN sucks in urban apartment living, and particularly when accessing corporate VPNs. Oh, but wait, there’s a cool usb dongle I can use that gives me ethernet, and sucks up my only USB port… Strike one.

Mini-DVI??? Lame. Yet another dongle I need to take with me. Strike two.

MacBook Air should be called MacBook Dongle. By my fair estimate, I will need the Mini-DVI-to-VGA dongle, the USB-to-Ethernet dongle, a USB HUB to get more than one port, and a spare battery… oh wait, non-removable battery… Strike three, you’re out.

Apple, please give me a MacBook Pro with:

• 13″ WSXGA+ with LED backlight
• 12 hour battery life
• Gigabit Ethernet port
• Optical drive (don’t get too cute, Remote Disk… really Apple??!?)

The Air makes some sense to Apple corporate from a status perspective, but as a notebook computer user, who likes nice design, but ultimately require utlity to boot, I am only willing to sacrifice so much for Geek Couture. Plus who needs all the distractions at Starbucks from people coming over asking about my computer. My Vaio TX triggers enough of that already. And in 6 months, when everyone and their mother has one of these things, or a Taiwan PC wannabe, then it won’t be the aesthetic appeal I’ll be thinking about… it’ll be all those damn dongles.

As I opined back in the day, Apple is building on the point-of-sale potential of the Apple TV by offering more direct tie-in to the iTune store as well as offer more Apple TV focused content. Makes good sense of course. Further monetizing a socket they won last year.

Overall, I like the service offering enhancements announced today. It gives you an interesting pivot on the future of TV.

The Apple TV has lots of potential… as does the Xbox… as does the cable set-top box… etc. The battle for the living room lives on.

They all have interesting plays down the road as far as wireless audio is concerned as well.

Dell, my old employer launched the Dell XPS One.  Not bad.  It’s like a iMac, except add some decent speakers and a phatty Windows Media Center remote.  I’m tempted to pick one of these up, since pretty much the only Dell stuff I’ve been buying in recent history are their desktop monitors.  In fact, I use a 24 inch widescreen LCD monitor from Dell with my Mac mini.

Which brings me to the point of this post.  What has Apple done since the iMac that has been innovative for the desktop?  The Mac mini was close, but small form factor PCs were around then as well.  Even though Apple’s was probably the coolest.  The iMac was refreshed earlier this year, but it was merely cosmetic.  And now it’s been around so long, and successfully so, that the Dell, the maker of what’s mainstream, has adapted the innovative PC-in-a-Panel architecture and slapped their “cool-guy brand” on it.

Come on Apple.  You’ve been quiet.   Been too busy developing phones, touch-screens iPods, and switching your PC lineup to Intel?  Where is a new notebook to lust after?  Where is a new architecture to disrupt what we think is normal?  This is what consumers expect from you, whether you like it or not.  There are rumors of a tablet.  Or for a ultra-mobile notebook.

Give me a good reason to figure out clever ways to have an “accident” with my current notebook, so I can get a new ride.

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Has anyone seen any mention of at&t exclusive on the iPhone beyond the current iPhone model?

If you read the official press releases that announced the exclusive arrangement, no where at all does it mention a multi-model lock-up. Only a multi-year agreement… From Apple:

MACWORLD SAN FRANCISCO—January 9, 2007—Apple® and Cingular announced that Cingular, the largest wireless carrier in the US, will be Apple’s exclusive US carrier partner for Apple’s revolutionary iPhone unveiled today. As part of this multi-year partnership, Apple and Cingular are working together to provide innovative new features to mobile phone users, such as iPhone’s pioneering and unique Visual Voicemail, a first on any mobile phone in the world.

“Apple chose Cingular because they are the best and most popular carrier in the US,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We are thrilled to be offering our revolutionary new iPhone exclusively with Cingular, and look forward to working together with them to create some wonderful new features for our customers.”

“By partnering with Apple, we are continuing our commitment to raising the bar for customers,” said Stan Sigman, Cingular’s president and CEO. “We think the iPhone is one of the most innovative devices ever created, and we look forward to letting our customers be the first in the world to experience the future of mobile phones.”

From at&t:

Apple has chosen AT&T, the best and most popular carrier in the US with over 62 million subscribers, to be Apple’s exclusive carrier partner for iPhone in the United States.

With this multi-year exclusive partnership, iPhone will only be available with wireless service from AT&T. Working together ensures seamless integration between network and device.

Am I missing something? All the statements seem limited in scope, if not broad in impact.

I am not sure I need to mention the significance of this… but if true, anyone who bemoans the at&t “feature” of the iPhone may be relieved if future models — like say an HSDPA or EV-DO, true 3G version is announced next year… or a iPhone mini… or a iPhone Pro with corporate email and mechanical keyboard — are available on their current carriers.

A May 21st USA Today article reported (seemingly confirmed, but not definitively so) that Apple was barred from developing a CDMA-version of the iPhone. The article was interpreted as speculation by a number of blogs, which triggered a bunch of unintelligent fan-boy vs Apple-hater discussions, instead of any meaty confirmation.

I simply cannot believe Apple was shortsighted enough to grant at&t such a long runway. Five years in the mobile phone industry is an eternity. USA Today asserted:

Apple is barred for that time from developing a version of the iPhone for CDMA wireless networks.

What they refer to as a “version of the iPhone” is certainly way too loose language to suit Apple legal I’ve got to imagine.

What’s the real story here? I’m just asking.

Fundamentally, this blog post is driven by my feelings as a consumer in a free market. I want buyers to have choice. In particular, I hate lock-ups of hardware and specific mobile networks - this coupling has not benefited consumers in any measurable way, yet somehow the mobile phone market is under the illusion that the network really matters. The crazy network infrastructure economics - and resultant shareholder pressures on network operators has distorted the consumer experience in a bad way. The product and service offerings are a strange supply-side amalgam based little on the demand-side realities of end-user experiences.

No need for me to get too wound up. It doesn’t even affect me today. I am not anxious to ditch my BlackBerry, and I am certainly not willing to deal with at&t customer service anytime soon. The Verizon angle doesn’t phase me… I am not a CDMA customer today, in fact I am a T-Mobile customer, but perhaps what is most relevant is that I am an ex-at&t customer, and I am not going back anytime soon.

Good coverage on RIM today. In the wake of the iPhone launch hype, it is good to see folks showing some love to BlackBerry. While iPhone has buzzed the consumer consciousness regarding smartphones, BlackBerry for the better part of the last 5 years has been the only company genuinely delivering on the promise of smartphones. It’s breakthrough integration with corporate email servers, and the multiple generations of tweaking their user interface has made the BlackBerry one of the most successful portable devices, ever.

IPhone mania is great and all, and I admit it’s pretty awe inspiring. The fact that Apple pulled off such a hype campaign is a testament to their past successes in delivering great end-user experiences. But, their track record of making great connections with consumers’ emotions also sets a very high bar for themselves. Which is to say that the iPhone, however pretty, better darn well deliver a killer user experience, or it will be nothing short of a letdown.  People seem to ignore the fact that Apple is not alone in this space. It’s also not yet obvious how the iPhone’s innovations will create any sustainable advantage in the smartphone market.  What are the apps that people truly believe Apple has revolutionized?  Here are my early judgements on the iPhone’s wannabe killer apps.

Web Browsing? Still too small of a screen, and not much better than on other smartphones. EDGE isn’t gonna knock anyone’s socks off. No Flash. Verdict: While it looks prettier than other phone browsers, is web-lite ever a killer experience?

Email? Lack of corporate email integration is an issue. Soft keyboard is an annoyance. I suspect future iPhone models will have hard qwerty keys in the future — their corporate HCI guys won’t put up with software gee-whiz for long. Verdict: Not even close to killer. Lose the touchscreen keyboard, support exchange server, then we’ll talk.

Maps? Hardly a killer app that justifies a smartphone. BlackBerry, LG, and Samsung are already ahead in terms of GPS integration, and so far, no location-based services have been implemented or deemed vital… And again, what can Apple deliver uniquely that Google/BlackBerry/MS can’t? Verdict: Not killer… not yet at least.  Let’s see more here.

Integrated iPod? I just don’t buy it. My iPod is still a better device, right? I find it hard to believe that Apple thinks they can leverage their iPod platform to make a smartphone indespensible. These functions have not shown to benefit from any coupling in the past, and it isn’t apparent why they should be combined going forward. Verdict: Not killer.

My opinions… time will tell.  But I don’t think a bunch of “pretty neato” features cobbled together make a homerun device.  There has to be something that the iPhone does better than any other device.  Early reports do not signal this has happened.

Apple has educated a whole new swath of the market in a big way. So the iPhone is goodness for the whole smartphone market, enlarging the pie, not just taking a bigger a slice.

I had the feeling this was so, and recent articles confirm that RIM-themselves are thankful. Competition breeds innovation, and RIM, let’s face it, is plenty poised to give Apple a run. They have a robust pipeline, reasonable costs, a loyal user-base (Stats say that less than 6% of iPhone buyers were previously BlackBerry users), and a focus on the enterprise user, which is where multi-purpose devices today deliver immense value.

RIM is moving forward from a position of strength, an affordable, capable platform with a bona fide killer app, and a relatively loyal captive market. Apple moves forward on reputation and software usability street-cred, which loyalists will love.  But can it alone revolutionize the segment and lead to market domination?

Whispers of RIMM shares headed to $300 don’t seem that far fetched.