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After a decidedly lacklustre CES show last week, Apple has the stage to itself to dominate the headlines at its MacWorld conference, which kicks off tomorrow, US time.
Perhaps because of the lack of a single show-stopper from the rest of the industry, interest in MacWorld this year is intense, with a flood of news stories already speculating what may be unveiled - a sub-notebook with a touch screen and a 3G iPhone seem to be favourites.
As we wait for the Steve Jobs keynote to make everything clear, it's worth reading this interesting Wired piece by Fred Vogelstein, which looks behind the scenes at the development of the gadget that dominated MacWorld last year - the iPhone.
From the unsourced accounts in the story, the device's development was fraught with problems: "Engineers, frazzled from all-night coding sessions, quit, only to rejoin days later after catching up on their sleep. A product manager slammed the door to her office so hard that the handle bent and locked her in; it took colleagues more than an hour and some well-placed whacks with an aluminum bat to free her," writes Vogelstein.
And there's an interesting insight into the economics of the iPhone: "The company nets an estimated US$80 for every US$399 iPhone it sells, and that's not counting the US$240 it makes from every two-year AT&T contract an iPhone customer signs. Meanwhile, about 40 per cent of iPhone buyers are new to AT&T's rolls, and the iPhone has tripled the carrier's volume of data traffic in cities like New York and San Francisco."
Not bad at all. As Wired suggests, the iPhone model threatens to take the power away from the mobile operators, turning them into "dumb pipes".
Still whatever happens, the mobile operators still have a crucial role to play in delivering connectivity and that will always be a lucrative business - just look at mobile data roaming pricing.
Telecom's new data zones
As it did last year with its voice roaming plans, Telecom has moved to standardise its mobile data roaming into a handful of zones that divide up the world.
The pricing is comparable to what Vodafone charges for mobile data roaming. Using mobile data in Australia on Telstra's network will cost $8 a megabyte.
The fishhook there is that when Telstra switches off its CDMA network, scheduled for January 28, a good deal of devices suitable to mobile data won't be able to work in Australia any more.
You'll have to equip yourself with a Worldmode phone for voice and data roaming to Australia.
Elsewhere, Telecom customers can roam on GSM data networks for typically $20 - $30 per megabyte. Canada, the USA and the United Kingdom cost $12 per megabyte.
At that price you'll be able to "stay on top of your emails, send large files and browse the internet" as Telecom claims, but the large file transfers will burn a big hole in your wallet.
People roaming using the new Worldmode Blackberries for data roaming overseas will typically be notching up data charges in 10kb chunks each time a simple email comes in or is sent.
That's not too bad - for any other type of web surfing or file transfers you're looking at some of the most expensive internet access around - even more expensive that hotel fibre links. The new zones take effect from January 28.
Intel's laptop u-turn
There has been plenty of analysis in the US media about chip maker Intel's departure from the One Laptop Per Child initiative and speculation as to whether this spells the end of the non-profit organisation.
The ABC has an interesting interview with an OLPC executive here.
It seems Intel infuriated the organisation by attempting to sell its own low-cost, Intel-based Classmate PC to the same customers the XO Computer was being pitched to.
That demonstrated a decided lack of faith in the whole project on Intel's part and suggests they were only in the OLPC fold as it was politically correct to be there.
Having said that, I've seen the Classmate PC and it's not a bad little device.
It's probably more suitable for students in urban areas to use, whereas the XO is better suited to students in developing countries.
There would seem to be a compelling case for both type of devices to be available.
Is OLPC dead? The big contracts haven't eventuated, but the concept - getting low-cost computers to children - if not the device, will survive.
Stephen Tindall is even introducing the XO computer to the community in Otara, showing how wide the influence of Nicholas Negroponte's scheme has spread.
