I get a real chuckle out of people who say you can’t use the iPad to show off your portfolio because it doesn’t run Flash. P L E A S E! Apple will ship the iPad with a wonderful photo viewer and you can bet your last piece of pizza that there will be LOTS of photo slide players, etc., written for the iPad by third-party developers. Showing pics on an iPhone has landed me more than two dozen jobs. I have no doubt that showing pics using the same OS on a larger, brighter screen will be just fine.

iPad as ultra-portable portfolio. Awesome.

Whatever market share number you peg the Mac at — 2 percent, 5 percent, or anywhere in between — you must keep in mind that it (that is, the Mac user base) is not comprised of a random sample of just any 2-5 percent of computer users in general. It’s a very specific self-selecting segment of the market: people who care about their computers, and who are willing to pay more for something better.

This is, sadly, something that few of my colleagues have ever grasped, but that, as they say, is another story.

In the course of locating that quote, I happened upon this nugget, just two paragraphs above the foregoing:

But Boot Camp is inordinately appealing to the higher end of the market, the enthusiasts. Your typical civilian (i.e. non-enthusiast) has no need — or at least sees no need — for dual booting. They use email, they use a web browser, they want something useful to happen when they plug a digital camera into their USB port. Whichever OS comes on their computer is good enough for this.

Email, web, photos. Is it just me or does it seem like there’s a certain very recently introduced tablet device that would more than meet those needs? Sure, the iPad does a lot more than just email, web, and photos, but this puts me in mind of something I guess I haven’t yet considered: there is undoubtedly a significant number of computer users out there who could legitimately consider replacing their home computer — or at least a second home computer — with an iPad! A minority to be sure, but likely a significant minority; I’ll bet the number is higher than you or I would initially imagine.

Understandably, I think of the iPad in terms of my own computer use, and which need(s) of mine it would satisfy (such as the “need to have one” — what? — oh yes, this is a legitimate need). Of course, as a career* software engineer the notion of anything replacing one of my computers — other than a “better, stronger, faster” computer — is foreign to me. But that’s certainly not the case for everyone.

In fact, add user accounts and the ability to sync an iPhone/iPod Touch to the iPad, and an iPad could easily replace my wife’s computer (which is also, conveniently, our kids’ computer, thus the need for user accounts).

Call me an Apple fanboy if you must (and that’s fine, I make my living as a “Senior Windows Developer” so it’s not going to phase me one bit), but I just have to have an Apple iPad.

Personally, as someone who’s been waiting a long time to see the AppleTV become something more than just my iTunes library on my TV, I’d like to see Apple take the AppleTV in the direction of the iPhone/iPod Touch (and what is rumored to be the case for the “tablet-thingy”). Specifically, open it up for development. Create an AppleTV “app store” and boom, the AppleTV becomes “the” device to have connected to your HDTV!

Once you let Netflix, Blockbuster, Hulu, Boxee, etc. (whoever) create apps that allow their content to play on the AppleTV, then there’s no need for any other box in the living room! Well, any other “set top” box*.

Just an idea, but if Apple wants to transform the AppleTV from “hobby” to another viable “must have” consumer electronics device, then it really seems like they are going to have to make it so that it will (or at least can) play anybody’s content.

I probably can’t justify $600 for a netbook. Which is why the RAT [Rumored Apple Tablet] will be as unlike a netbook as you can possibly imagine. A netbook is a device that you haul out to do a little writing, or check some email, or goof around on some blogs.

The perception of the RAT will be that it’s a conduit that pipes the digital world down to wherever you happen to be. The iPod Touch is “a device that plays music and video files.” The RAT will be “access to music and video.” The Kindle is “an ebook reader.” The RAT will be “the ability to find and read any written material anywhere in the world.”

A netbook is “a stripped-down Windows XP subnotebook.” A RAT will be “a way for all of my projects and documents, and communication with my social world, to follow me wherever I go.”

If Apple does announce a new product this month, and if it is a “tablet”, then you can rest assured that it will be quite unique and very, very special.

Like all Apple products, The Tablet will do less than we expect but the things it does do, it will do insanely well. It will offer a fraction of the functionality of a MacBook — but that fraction will be way more fun. The same Asperger-y critics who dismissed the iPhone will focus on all that The Tablet doesn’t do and declare that this time, Apple really has fucked up but good. The rest of us will get in line to buy one.

I know I will.

If you’re thinking The Tablet is just a big iPhone, or just Apple’s take on the e-reader, or just a media player, or just anything, I say you’re thinking too small — the equivalent of thinking that the iPhone was going to be just a click wheel iPod that made phone calls. I think The Tablet is nothing short of Apple’s reconception of personal computing.

Awesome.

Like many others, I’ve been having serious performance issues with Firefox since upgrading to Mac OS X 10.6 “Snow Leopard”. Obviously, I’m not going to downgrade my OS just to use Firefox(!), but, this is getting very, very old. Doesn’t matter what I’m trying to do or what website I’m visiting, every 15-20 seconds–literally–I get the spinning beach ball for 3-5 seconds. This goes on and on and on until I just throw in the towel and close down Firefox, which usually happens some 2-3 minutes in.

It’s not the end of the world, as I’ve always done most of my browsing in Safari, but I’ve hit a point where I really need to verify some layout in Firefox as well. So, here we are 3 months after the release of Snow Leopard, and there still doesn’t seem to be any acknowledgement from Mozilla. This strikes me as a little odd, but it got me thinking: it’s not odd at all if the problem isn’t Firefox itself. So, after what seemed like hours of scrolling through my list of plugins, or rather “extensions”, disabling everything, I was able to restart Firefox and–wouldn’t you know it?–it is even faster than I remember! So, after the tedious process of enabling my extensions one at a time (and restarting Firefox each time), I’ve determined to my satisfaction that the problem in my case was… wait for it… the FoxyTunes add-on.

Now of course this is only anecdotal evidence and I’m not trying to point fingers here. Nor am I trying to disparage FoxyTunes–I love the FoxyTunes add-on; it’s invaluable to me at work on my Windows PC. Of course, because I’ve only ever used it as a means of controlling iTunes, I really just don’t need it on my Mac since I’ve got keyboard buttons that do the same things. So, all things considered, I’m a happy camper.

Microsoft is no longer ignoring Apple’s market share gains and successful “Get a Mac” ad campaign. But the crux of these ads from Apple is that Macs are better; Microsoft’s response is a message that everyone already knows — that Windows PCs are cheaper.

In recent weeks, the Senate Commerce Committee has been holding hearings about handset exclusivity. That’s when a phone maker (like Apple) offers a particular model (like the iPhone) to a carrier (like AT&T) exclusively for a period of time (like five years).

Come to think about it, that example — the iPhone — is pretty much the only one anybody cares about. These aren’t handset-exclusivity hearings; they’re “Why can’t we have the iPhone on Verizon?” hearings.

As always, I’m just so glad that we’ve obviously solved all the SERIOUS problems facing our nation.  Why else would the senate be wasting time with this nonsense?  And maybe nonsense is a bit too strong a word, but you’ve got to admit that cellphone exclusivity has to be, or at the very least should be, so far down the list of important issues currently facing our nation that only the most technology-centric blogs would devote ANY time it, no?

[via TL]

My original iPhone has now become an “enhanced” iPod Touch for my son, but it’s not only still kicking it’s still going strong.  Love my iPhones!

SAN FRANCISCO — Apple said Monday that Steven P. Jobs, its co-founder and chief executive, had returned to work following a five-month medical leave during which he had a liver transplant.

“Steve is back to work,” said Steve Dowling, an Apple spokesman. “He is currently at Apple a few days a week and working from home the remaining days.”

Crap!  While I was assuming that I wouldn’t be able to activate my new iPhone until Friday even if it was delivered on Thursday, I was hoping to be able to wake up early Friday to get it activated and be able to bring it to work with me… oh well!

Saul Hansell, writing in the New York Times Bits Blog, gets it:

What’s most interesting is how iPhone users are willing to spend money in ways that Web users are not.

I’ve criticized Apple from time to time for not having a coherent approach to delivering free content with advertising. But in some ways, the development of a market for paid content is a bigger and less expected achievement.

Why has this happened? Apple has created an environment that makes buying digital goods easy and common. With an infrastructure that supports one-click purchases of songs and videos, it was easy to add applications in the same paradigm. Paying for software, especially games, is not new to Apple customers. So when you see the iPhone manual or the Frommer’s Paris guidebook, it feels natural to click. (And of course, your credit card is already on file with Apple.)

It all goes back to Steve Jobs’ original theory regarding music and music downloads: people will gladly pay to download content legally, if the price is reasonable and it’s easy to do.

First and foremost, please understand that you should trust neither the Apple/iTunes brand nor the retailer selling the gift card.  Save your receipt! For, while the iTunes Gift Card system could have been created with safeguards to protect the consumer, it has not been. The problem lies in the fact that when you purchase an iTunes Gift Card it is worthless until the retailer transmits information to the iTunes Store indicating that the card has been properly purchased. This, apparently, is the point at which the retailer becomes liable to Apple for the cost of the gift card.

Understandably, Apple needs to verify that the card in question has been properly purchased and that they will be paid by the retailer. And don’t get me wrong, this is the case for any company issuing gift cards. I mean, if a shipment of gift cards was lost or stolen, the company issuing the cards doesn’t want someone to be able to make purchases with stolen cards: that’s easy to understand. The difference, however, is that most companies sell their gift cards only in their own stores, so the consumer can take comfort in the knowledge that the company’s own computer system has verified that the card is valid and that the card has been properly activated at the time of sale. When you purchase a Best Buy gift card, for instance, you can leave the store with a very high level of comfort that the person to whom you give the gift will have no trouble using it to pay for a purchase at Best Buy.

The problem with iTunes Gift Cards–at least with those purchased from third party retailers–is that the consumer cannot leave the third party retailer’s store with the same high level of comfort, for the consumer–who has already paid the third party retailer–is still at the mercy of the third party retailer to accurately report the sale to Apple. This problem is one that is readily apparent upon reflection, but probably isn’t readily apparent to most consumers at the time of purchase.

The solution, of course, is to save your receipt. But this very requirement removes most of the convenience factors in giving a gift card in the first place! If I have to save the receipt, then it’s not as good as cash, is it? But that’s exactly why people buy gift cards. Apple’s own web site refers to iTunes Gift Cards thustly:

Gift Cards.
Take the guess work out of gift-giving.
Give music, movies, and more with iTunes Gift Cards.

iTunes Gift Cards
Prepaid iTunes Gift Cards are available from the Apple Online Store, Apple Retail Stores, and thousands of other U.S. retailers in denominations of $15, $25, and $50. They’re good toward any purchase on the iTunes Store.

Now, I know that Apple isn’t in the business of advertising problems with their products or resellers, but the iTunes Gift Card didn’t exactly remove “the guess work” for me. In fact, if I have to save the receipt, isn’t that the same as explicitly telling me that there is, in fact, substantial “guess work” involved! And, in fact, the last two $25 iTunes Gift Cards that I purchased at one of the “thousands of other U.S. retailers” weren’t “good toward any purchase on the iTunes Store.”

Consequently, the last two iTunes Gift Cards that I purchased are the last iTunes Gift Cards that I will purchase, from any store.

My wife purchased two $25 iTunes Gift Cards for our kids, a couple days before Christmas. She was at the grocery store and it was an impulse buy–a last minute addition to the “stocking stuffers”. The next day, I plugged the receipt into Quicken, as is my practice, and shredded the receipt–I didn’t know she had purchased the iTunes Gift Cards, and truthfully, probably wouldn’t have saved the receipt if I had. Who saves a receipt from a grocery store? And yes, we save receipts when we buy the kids gifts, until the gift has been opened and we know it won’t need to be exchanged or returned, but a gift card is as good as cash, right? Certainly Apple wouldn’t put their name on a product or system that didn’t work well, MobileMe notwithstanding. Nor did the third party retailer mention, as they often do, that we should save the receipt in case of a problem with the gift cards.

Well, you may be thinking that Xmas was some time ago, and you’re right. The fact of the matter is that my son’s birthday is the week after Xmas and he received as a gift from a friend, another iTunes Gift Card that activated without problem via the iTunes Store. He happened to use that gift card first when making music purchases over the last weeks.

So, this past week we get around to redeeming the gift card that my wife had purchased and iTunes tells me this:

The Gift Certificate or Prepaid Card code you entered has not been activated. Please return to the original point of purchase for assistance.

Now, that’s odd, so I thought I’d better go ahead and check my daughters gift card: same message.

No problem, or so I thought, this must happen all the time. I had my wife return to the grocery store with the two iTunes Gift Cards and explain the situation to the Customer Service clerk. The clerk asked for her receipt and so she explained that it had been shredded several weeks earlier after I had entered it into Quicken, whereupon she was told that without a receipt the store had no way of knowing that the card had been purchased there. Which is when I realized that the third party retailer doesn’t pay Apple until the retailer sells the card, at which point the card should have been “activated” (by the retailer sending information to iTunes).

So, I contacted Apple and was told, understandably, that they have no way of identifying the card as having been sold to me by the third party retailer and suggesting that I have the retailer reprint a receipt. Well, it’s a grocery store: they tell me that they can’t reprint receipts. So, we’re screwed. And no, it’s not possible to go buy two other iTunes Gift Cards from the grocery store and then “return” these two as not being activated.

We’re screwed out of $50 and, for that matter, so is Apple.

Now, in all fairness, I don’t know that this same situation would be true if the iTunes Gift Cards had been purchased in an Apple Store or online in the iTunes store. I just don’t know. We’ve only purchased about four iTunes Gift Cards ever, having given them a couple times as gifts to friends of our kids for birthdays.

But this I do know: I won’t be buying any more iTunes Gift Cards. There is just too much “guess work” involved. And the one thing of which I’m convinced, is that this situation occurs far more often than either Apple or the third party retailer are willing to admit.

Personally, I’m still bummed that they didn’t announce a 32gb iPhone…  I guess I’ll have to wait until summer to upgrade my 8gb iPhone… oh well!

I just love this:

There has been some question as to whether Clinton or Bush used Macs. Clinton sent a grand total of 2 emails while in the White House – which was two more than Bush. They both used PCs.

Not only will Barack Obama be the first US President who isn’t a thousand years older than me, but he’ll also be the first who embraces — at least while in office — some of the technologies by which I make a living and provide for my family. Cool.

Apple Inc. is donating $100,000 to fight Proposition 8, which seeks to end same-sex marriage in California by amending the Constitution to define marriage as between a man and a woman.

“Apple was among the first California companies to offer equal rights and benefits to our employees’ same-sex partners, and we strongly believe that a person’s fundamental rights – including the right to marry – should not be affected by their sexual orientation,” the company said Friday in a statement on its Web site.

Way to go, Apple! Here’s an radical idea: let’s all support freedom!

Makes me proud to be a Mac guy.

“Apple should pull the plug on the iPhone… What Apple risks here is its reputation as a hot company that can do no wrong. If it’s smart it will call the iPhone a ‘reference design’ and pass it to some suckers to build with someone else’s marketing budget. Then it can wash its hands of any marketplace failures… Otherwise I’d advise people to cover their eyes. You are not going to like what you’ll see.” – John C. Dvorak, Bloated Gas Bag, March 28, 2007

“I’m more convinced than ever that, after an initial frenzy of publicity and sales to early adopters, iPhone sales will be unspectacular… iPhone may well become Apple’s next Newton.” – David Haskin, Computerworld, February 26, 2007

“I can’t believe the hype being given to iPhone… I just have to wonder who will want one of these things (other than the religious faithful)… So please mark this post and come back in two years to see the results of my prediction: I predict they will not sell anywhere near the 10M Jobs predicts for 2008.” – Richard Sprague, Microsoft Senior Marketing Director, January 18, 2007

“The iPhone is nothing more than a luxury bauble that will appeal to a few gadget freaks. In terms of its impact on the industry, the iPhone is less relevant… Apple is unlikely to make much of an impact on this market… Apple will sell a few to its fans, but the iPhone won’t make a long-term mark on the industry.” – Matthew Lynn, Bloomberg, January 15, 2007

…people love showing off their iPhones.

Yeah, what is up with that?! My god, people! Get a phone you’re embarrassed of! Tuck it away in the closet! Bury it in a mason jar under your porch!

NEVER SPEAK OF IT AGAIN.

Well said.

Now the iPhone, the tech symbol of the “in” crowd, is on the verge of crossing the line into AIG-like excess and arrogance.

Hey, everyone! We’re getting a bailout and a taxpayer-funded trip to a spa! Whoo-hoo!

Ok, these are the two big things I hear from haters — the “in” crowd comment and the “show off” comment. Always makes me feel like I’m talking to one of my children, although at 11 years old, they don’t really use the “show off” phrase any more. They are really just two sides of the same coin. Let’s be clear, what people are complaining about when they make these wild accusations, is that they don’t love their device as much as iPhone users love their device, but they wish they did. It’s that simple.

For my part — and I can only speak from my own personal experience — I have noticed two things, with respect to the haters: (1) they tend to be almost exclusively Blackberry users; and (2) they all own iPods. Take that observation for what it’s worth.

Chief Administrative Office (CAO), which oversees the communications systems for the House, has begun testing a small number of iPhones within its ranks to see if they are compatible with the working needs of lawmakers and staff.

Oh, and big brother iPhone outsold the RIM/Blackberry last quarter. Apple, who has surpassed it’s goal of selling 10 million iPhones in 2008, is now the third largest — by revenue — mobile phone supplier, after Nokia and Samsung.

Apple doesn’t make computers that people have to buy. They make computers that people want to buy.

– John Gruber, Daring Fireball, Listen to Tim Cook

It’s astonishing how many people still don’t get this basic truism.

“In 16 years of reviews, I’ve never had anything like the amount of email I’m getting from life-long Windows users who are thinking about switching.”

– Walt Mossberg, The Wall Street Journal

Come on, everybody join in!  “Happy birthday to you…”

Well, the bad news is that I’ve finished re-listening to every second of every show.  The good news is that if you don’t have every show to listen to, the fine folks at PennFans.net created a new iTunes Podcast feed of the shows they have and they have damn near all of them.

As Penn said to close his last show, “It frightens me, the awful truth of how sweet life can be”, quoting, of course, Bob Dylan’s “Up to Me”.

Me?  No problems to speak of.  But then, I’m not one to overreact, too much.  I mean, yeah, there was a period of about two hours when I couldn’t reach the iTunes servers, but hey, with half the planet either trying to upgrade or activate at the same time, what do you expect?  I had problems downloading Firefox 3 a few weeks ago, too…

Still, it seems like something that Apple should’ve been able to better anticipate.  God, I guess Apple really does suck.  And, a company that sucks can’t possible make a superior product.  Well, I’m willing to admit that there may just be a flaw in that “logic.”

Microsoft made its bed by over-promising for six years and then delivering an OS that forced a lot of uncomfortable decisions. Marketing isn’t going to clean this mess up. The horny one really isn’t sure what is, frankly, but the “Get a Mac” ads aren’t responsible for businesses choosing to stick with XP. Microsoft is.

Check out the new ad!

How’s that for “breaking news?”

I predict:

* That I’ll be totally ecstatic and awed during the Keynote Address,

Yep. Nailed that one. I was riveted–in fact, I was giggly happy–during the whole Keynote. So, I’ll count that as one correct prediction.

* That I’ll be following along with no fewer than four (4) browser tabs tuned to my favorite of the various liveblogging sites,

Yes and no. I did follow along to four (4) of my favorite liveblogging sites: MacRumorsLive, MacObserver Live Coverage, Engadget and Gizmodo. However, the MacObserver feed stopped automatically refreshing for me only a few minutes in, and nothing I tried could get updates from their site. So, I gave up on them and went with only the other three (3). I’ll count this one as half-right and half-wrong.

So far, I’m at 1.5 out of 2, so that’s not terrible… The results of the other two predictions won’t be in until at least tomorrow morning…

So, it’s time for my never-annual predictions. So, without further ado, let my grab my crystal ball… and, I predict:

• That I’ll be totally ecstatic and awed during the Keynote Address,
• That I’ll be following along with no fewer than four (4) browser tabs tuned to my favorite of the various liveblogging sites,
• That I’ll watch the Keynote Address tonight at home and be even more ecstatic and awed than I was following along with the livebloggers,
• That when the Keynote Address is available for download as a podcast, I’ll watch it yet again.

Well, those are my predictions concerning the WWDC08 Keynote Address. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens to know how accurate my predictions are this time around.

As Wilson writes, it boggles the mind that Sprint is hanging a $100 million dollar advertising campaign on two features — GPS and EVDO networking — that the iPhone is widely-rumored to be picking up in its next-generation hardware. Worse, side-by-side, even in commercials commissioned by Sprint, the Instinct looks like crap next to an iPhone — the screen is way smaller and way less bright.

What’s clear is that Sprint is run by MBA-trained executives who see everything as a general “business” problem. In their minds, the same things apply to selling phones as toothpaste. How about this idea: Take $100 million and use it to design a better phone?

Apt, as always.

The results? Well here they are in a nutshell:

• Mac OS X 10.5 “Leopard” is faster than Vista (startup, shutdown, app launching, benchmarking)
• The Mac computers ran Vista (via Apple’s Boot Camp) faster than the PCs
• The Macs outperformed the PCs in all categories, except for video card performance in the laptop category
• And, perhaps most importantly, THE MACS DIDN’T COST ANY MORE THAN THE PCs!!! In the desktop category the Mac actually cost significantly less than the PC (see below)

And now, the requisite juicy quotes from the article:

Our computers were closely matched, but in the interest of full disclosure, we’ll spit out the caveats: The Gateway One PC had a processor that runs 400 MHz slower than its iMac competitor (not a heck of a difference in this age of dual-core chips), but it also had two extra gigabytes of DDR2 memory. In the laptop category, our Asus M51 had a 2.2 GHz processor, compared to 2.4 GHz for our MacBook. But the Asus had a larger screen, a more sophisticated graphics card and an extra gig of RAM.

All that extra RAM may seem to give an advantage to the PCs. Vista, however, is a noted memory hog, so throwing more RAM into PC computers is probably less of a perform­ance booster for manufacturers than it is a new baseline hardware specification.

The Verdict: Apple
Mac: In both the laptop and desktop showdowns, Apple’s computers were the winners. Oddly, the big difference didn’t come in our user ratings, where we expected the famously friendly Mac interface to shine. Our respondents liked the look and feel of both operating systems but had a slight preference toward OS X. In our speed trials, however, Leopard OS trounced Vista in all-important tasks such as boot-up, shutdown and program-launch times. We even tested Vista on the Macs using Apple’s platform-switching Boot Camp software—and found that both Apple computers ran Vista faster than our PCs did.

PC: Simply put, Vista proved to be a more sluggish operating system than Leopard. Our PCs installed some software faster, but in general they were slower in our time trials. Plus, both PCs showed weaker performance on third-party benchmarks than the Macs. Our biggest surprise, however, was that PCs were not the relative bargains we expected them to be. The Asus M51sr costs the same as a MacBook, while the Gateway One actually costs $300 more than an iMac. That means for the price of the Gateway you could buy an iMac, boost its hard drive to match the Gateway’s, purchase a copy of Vista to boot—and still save $100.
[emphasis added]

[via MacOSKen]

This week, The Macalope takes one to task.

First of all, let’s examine where things stand. No security researcher I spoke with could think of an instance of a Mac running Mac OS X that had been exploited in the wild. Not as part of a contest, or as part of a show-stopping demonstration, but through a malicious attack aimed at pwning a Mac. Few were even sure that any viruses or worms existed for the Mac; there was a Trojan horse type of exploit in the wild last year, but it was delivered through a porn site, and it required users to take several steps to infect themselves.

[emphasis added]

[via The Mac Observer]

Apple said Thursday consumer surveys conducted by market research firm The NPD Group show iTunes’ music sales surpassed those of the discount retailing giant in January and February.

ITunes has sold more than 4 billion tracks since its launch in 2003, thanks in part to the popularity of its line of iPod portable music players.

The survey excludes wireless transactions.

[via The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)]

Sprint Nextel Corp. on Tuesday said it is betting heavily on a touch-screen phone that appears to be the closest thing the U.S. market has seen to Apple Inc.’s vaunted iPhone.

The Samsung Instinct will be available in June for a yet undetermined price, Sprint announced at CTIA Wireless, a cell-phone industry trade show in Las Vegas. Executives hinted that the price would be substantially lower than the $399 for the cheapest iPhone.

The Instinct will have a few features the iPhone lacks. For one, it will be the first consumer phone in the U.S. to use EV-DO Rev. A, the fastest cellular broadband technology available on the Sprint and Verizon Wireless networks.

The Instinct won’t be able to take input from more than one finger at a time: The iPhone’s characteristic “pinch to zoom out, spread to zoom in” feature won’t work. Sprint compensates for this by using the phone’s motion sensor. In a demonstration of a prototype, tilting the phone while holding a button made a Web page scroll.

Good for Sprint! They deserve to have a phone that in TV commercials will look like it’s nearly as good as the iPhone, just like Verizon has with their LG Voyager! Of course, to put this in mathematical terms, it sound to me like the Instinct will be to the 3G iPhone (also rumored to be out around June) as the Zune (or maybe the Zen) is to the iPod…