Post-Jobs Apple is in serious trouble

Say what you will about Steve Jobs, but the man was a visionary. Somehow, despite all his detractors and against huge odds, he was able to transform Apple from a computer company into a media conglomerate. Make no mistake, Apple has been out of the hardware business for a long time now as most of their revenue is driven by purchases from iTunes and the App Store. Apple's hardware is now only a reason for people to consume content provided by Apple's online stores.

However, Apple under Tim Cook seems to be digging itself into serious trouble. The first, and in my opinion the worst, faux-pas is their continuing lawsuits against Samsung globally. Public reaction to this continuing legal morass has ranged from tepid to outright ridicule and has done more to drive consumers to Samsung products than any other single factor I can think of. From a public relations standpoint, Apple accusing Samsung of being unoriginal copycats, have highlighted the fact that Apple is itself even more guilty of this than their competitor.

Consider that four product generations have now passed from the iPhone 4 to the just announced iPhone 5S without much in the way of originality or change. Except for the slightly larger 4" screen on the iPhone 5 series, each successive generational product has been largely incremental and rather forgettable. With each successive generation, consumers are complaining about the lack of product leadership that marked Apple under Steve Jobs, but Apple seems to be out to lunch. Where is the surprise, the flash, the excitement of past product launches?

The industrial design for the iPhone seems permanently stuck in neutral as Apple's preference is to play it safe rather than go for something startlingly fresh or new. And despite the larger 4" screen on the 5/5S, the 5-inch plus large screen market pioneered by Samsung has largely passed Apple by. Even in Asia where consumers have much smaller hands, everyone appears to prefer the larger screen Samsung (and Android smartphones in general) over Apple's offerings. Big screens are in, but Apple seems oblivious or grudgingly resistant to this market trend.

The second mistake has probably impacted Apple from an operational standpoint. Samsung isn't just a competitor to Apple in the marketplace, they are also a huge semiconductor manufacturer and vendor of strategic components and services. Samsung provides foundry services, and manufactures DRAM, FLASH, advanced displays (AMOLED anyone?), and all the other various bits and pieces that go into smartphones and tablets.

All of Apple's CPUs prior to the A6 were manufactured for Apple by Samsung Semiconductor. A large portion of the DDR DRAM and FLASH memory were also provided by Samsung since Samsung is the world's largest supplier of memory products with 50% global market share. Apple is still the single largest consumer of mobile memory and FLASH products in the world.

While I don't know the extent of the impact this has had to Apple's sourcing and logistics, I can safely say the impact isn't zero. If Samsung really wanted to put the kibosh on Apple, they could refuse to sell DRAM or FLASH to them, or raise the price as there is not enough supply in the world to satisfy Apple from the balance of remaining suppliers. Smart move on Apple's part? I think not.

And finally, yesterday Apple announced the new iPhone 5S and 5C. The 5C was rumored to be a potential Trojan horse for Apple to win back lost market share by adding a "low cost" model to their product lineup. However, pricing revealed that off contract the 5C is almost as expensive as the "regular" iPhones. Who would want to pay for something that expensive made out of plastic? Apple completely missed the boat and squandered a strategic opportunity to address their shrinking market share in the face of Android's assault.

And that's not all. The 5S comes in three colors now and none of them are the classic black or white which has become the trademark colors for all iPhones. Would it have hurt Apple to add three new colors in addition to the classic black and white?

When Jobs passed away, Tim Cook assured us all that Steve Jobs' influence in future product designs would continue to be felt for some time to come. However, given what's been going on lately at Apple, it's hard to say if Tim Cook is going strictly by Jobs' playbook or has actually been second guessing his work. What we do know is that Apple doesn't look as surefooted as when Jobs was at the helm.

I've used iPhones for many years and also have an iPad and iPod Touch. But lately, I've found myself less and less enchanted by the prospect of spending a premium amount of money for virtually the same thing as I already have. For my money, my next smartphone will probably be an Android device.

The iPhone Autocorrect Fail - and How You can Fix it

This is the first in a series of blogposts in which I will cover neat hacks and tweaks to fix annoying things on the iPhone and in iOS. I won't get into how to jailbreak your iPhone as that wheel has been invented and re-invented all over the web. If you wish to find out more you can use Google and do a search for iPhone jailbreak. Other good resources on the web include Redmond Pie and Official Redsn0w site.

As you've probably surmised, iPhone jailbreaking is a subject very near and dear to my heart. I'm of the opinion that when I buy something, I own it outright, and if I want to make modifications to it - and possibly break it, then it's my right to do so. But from a more practical standpoint, we make modifications to our things in order to improve them or make them work how we like. While I think that Apple does a good job with the iPhone and iOS in general, there are still a lot of niggling little things that I don't think they got right. By jailbreaking the iPhone, you gain the ability to make changes and fix those major and minor annoyances.

The first major annoyance on the iPhone is probably the autocorrect function. When it works, it's wonderful, but when it doesn't it can lead to massive fails of biblical proportions. I'm not the only one who thinks so. In fact, there is a whole website dedicated to this phenomenon located right here: Damn You Auto Correct!. Or you can check out a YouTube video that shows some real LOL moments.

Hysterically Funny Autocorrect Fails - Unless it happened to you

Ok, seriously now, the problem with the iPhone's autocorrect function is that it is literally too smart or too stupid for it's own good, depending on how you look at it. By default, iOS happily makes edits and inserts corrections as you type. In the first instance, when you mistype a word, iOS will suggest what it guesses to be the correct word. Keep in mind words that you previously used that were not in the dictionary by default will get added to the dictionary. Lesson learned - what goes in will eventually come back out; which explains some of the laugh out loud substitutions shown in the video above.

Hitting the spacebar inserts the word iOS assumes is correct, which makes it entirely all too easy to get words you didn't type substituted in for you (see the point about lesson learned in the previous paragraph). To override this behavior, you have to manually press the "x" on the balloon popup. Given the small size of the onscreen keyboard, you find yourself either constantly struggling to delete incorrect subtitutions or pressing that tiny, little "x". And you really do have to press the "x" because if you accidentally press the suggested word, it replaces your original. It's really very, very annoying.

In the second instance, even if you correctly typed something, iOS will still make a suggestion from words already in the dictionary. A good example of this is the word "ill". iOS will very happily suggest "I'll" in its place. Try typing "He fell ill" and then hit the spacebar on your iPhone and see what you get. Of course, the alternative would be to turn off the autocorrect feature altogether. Enter ManualCorrect Pro.

ManualCorrect Pro is a Cydia Tweak that you can install to alter the default autocorrect behavior on your iPhone. This tweak is not available on the iTunes Appstore, so you must jailbreak your iPhone to use it.

In essence, the tweak reverses the behavior of the iPhone's autocorrect function. Instead of automatically inserting words for you when you hit the spacebar, autocorrect will now suggest a replacment  - but you must manually tap the suggested word in order for the autocorrection replacement to be made. If you hit the spacebar and ignore the suggestion, the word will just go away. This solves the first issue with iOS autocorrection.

The tweak also allows you to build up your own list of manual corrections, in effect adding new corrections into the built-in dictionary. One useful way of using this fuction would be to build up a list of shortcuts for longer words you might often use. In the Manual Corrections section, you enter a word pair. The first word is the trigger and the second is the substitution. Typing the trigger would force the normal autocorrect function with the substitution you previously entered - and by pressing the spacebar, the full word is substituted for you saving you lots of time typing.

Conversely, you are also able to supress built-in dictionary behaviors. The Ignore Corrections section can be used along with case checking to fix the second problem mentioned above. By entering "ill" in the Ignore Corrections section and setting it to be case sensitive, when you use the lowercase "ill" the built-in autocorrection will be supressed. But if you type "Ill" using a capital "I" then the built-in autocorrection will take over and suggest the contracted form of "I'll".

ManualCorrect Pro is a powerful tweak that not only corrects the horrible way in which iOS handles autocorrection, but also allows you to add some intelligence back into how corrections are handled on your iPhone while you type. As long as you're willing to put a little work into adding in the right Manual Correction and Ignore Correction rules, you will get a faster, more enjoyable - and most importantly -  more accurate typing experience on your iPhone.