I’m warning the tech press now, next year’s iPhone will look exactly like the iPhone 5.

You’ve seen the pattern already with the 3G/3GS and 4/4S. But why does Apple do this?

I think the reason is simple: because it’s necessary.

Think about it. Every time a new “thing” is released, people lament that their current “thing” is now “out-of-date”. Of course, it’s not, but that is what people feel. And you should never argue with people about their feelings!

So what is a way to continue to introduce new things while still allowing people to feel that their current thing remains useful and current? By not changing the outward design often.

Look at how this works with the automobile industry. Automobile makers introduce new models of cars every year, but most years the differences from the prior year are minimal. Maybe there is slightly better gas mileage or more horsepower or some other minor tweak. The overall design of the car only changes every few years. A Honda Accord might go for 4 years before it is redesigned substantially. Luxury cars such as BWM or Audi might go even longer. Why?

One, it takes a long time and a lot of money to develop a new car. In order to recoup these costs, it has to be sold for a longer period of time. It’s not practical (or even possible) to introduce radical changes every year. Two, people spend a lot of money on cars. They don’t want to perceive their investment as out-of-date just a short time after purchase. That makes for an unhappy customer. Three, most people don’t pay cash for a car, they pay for it over a longer term such as 5 years for a loan and 3 years for a lease. Few people can afford to get a new car every year.

Did you notice the exact parallels with technology gadgets such as the iPhone? People rarely pay full price for the iPhone, preferring to sign a contract with a carrier. These are nearly all 2 years. An iPhone is a substantial expense, both upfront and monthly, so people don’t want to see their iPhone become obsolete after just a short while. And lastly, I’m pretty sure Apple spends a lot of time and money developing each iPhone model.

So not only are drastic changes each year unwanted by customers (and will probably make them unhappy), they are also impractical for the manufacturer.

Of course, I am generalizing. There will be customers that get a new phone every year just as there are those who get a new car every year. But that is not the majority of customers.

The important thing to take home from all this is that you can safely bet that the iPhone that Apple releases next year will look exactly like the iPhone 5.

But the event had one really big surprise, which has not received much discussion: The iPod announcement. New iPods were not really a surprise, but the announcement of them alongside the iPhone was a huge surprise. Why did they do that? People in the know seemed to think there would be a separate music event in October to announce these alongside a new iPad so that nothing took the spotlight away from the iPhone, Apple’s biggest cash cow. Also consider that the new iPods do not ship until October. Coincidence?

I have no inside information, but here is what I think: The “mini” iPad, if it even exists at all, is not going to be ready in time for the holidays. So at the last minute, Apple decided to announce the new iPods together with the iPhone since the iPods by themselves are not enough to warrant a new event, a new event which if announced would almost certainly lead to speculation that a new iPad would be coming. Imagine if they sent out invitations to an event in October and did not announce a new iPad, but only announced the iPods. Apple would be ripped to shreds by the tech press.

I’ll say it simply. If Apple was planning to announce a mini iPad, they would surely have saved the iPod announcements for that event. Instead, for one reason or another, they are not shipping a new iPad and so they had to announce these iPods now, earlier than they had originally planned (based on their ship dates).

Lastly, also consider the price of the new iPod touch. At $300 it is the exact price that would make the most sense for a smaller iPad. $200 matches the Google Nexus and Amazon Kindle Fire, but Apple doesn’t need to match their prices. $400 is the same price as the iPad 2. It would be hard to market a smaller iPad at the same price as the larger iPad 2: “Same as the iPad 2. Only smaller. Except the price.”

Apple doesn’t often have product lines like this sharing the same starting price because it confuses people. Having an iPod touch and an iPad mini both starting at $300 does not seem to match how they do things.

I could be completely wrong about all of this, of course. And I hope I am. I personally know a lot of people that want a smaller iPad; many of them have gotten tired of waiting and have picked up the Google Nexus instead.

Also, use coupon code WWDC2012 to save 75% off anything in the LogicalVue Store, including Storm, SQLite Migrator and UltraUpdater:

Save $$$ in the LogicalVue Store!

I love music.  Every since I got my first Radio Shack transistor radio (see page 140) back in the early 80′s, I’ve loved listening to music.  These days I mostly use a combination of iTunes and Rdio for all my music.  I’ve collected a variety of speakers that I use to listen to my tunes, most recently the Logitech Wireless Boombox
, Jawbone Jambox, Bose SoundLink
and Jawbone Big Jambox
.

Here are my thoughts on these four speakers.  I’ve ranked them in six categories with sound quality (subjective, I know) being the most important.

I used Rdio to play music to the speakers using Bluetooth from both my iPhone 4 and iPad 2.

The Logitech Wireless Boombox

This speaker is based on the design of the Logitech i715 speaker, which has been out for a couple years.  It’s pretty much the same except for the iPod dock having been replaced with Bluetooth and the removal of the previously included case and remote.

The Logitech is the largest of the speakers I looked at.  It is the widest by quite a bit and also the bulkiest.  It is has an odd shape to it that makes it awkward to hold.  It also will not stand on its own until the built-in pop-out stand is extended, which makes it take up even more space.

Unlike the other speakers I looked at, the Logitech performs very differently when running on battery as compared to when it is plugged in.  When plugged in, the Logitech is probably the best sounding speaker out of all of these, with great bass and crystal clear mids and highs (this is the only speaker with dedicated tweeters).  When on battery, it’s performance is dramatically reduced.  Most of the excellent bass goes away, leaving a rather tinny sound.  Still, the speaker gets impressively loud when running on battery.

The Logitech is the only speaker with an easily replaceable battery.  But it’s a small battery.  Even with the reduced performance (most likely to improve battery life), the Logitech gets the worse battery life, about 4 hours or so.  It can only be charged using its proprietary charger, which is rather large and does not having folding prongs for travel.

I was able to pick up the Logitech on sale at Best Buy for only $100, easily the least expensive of all the speakers I looked at.  It retails for $150.

Total (out of 30): 19 (63%)

Generally, the Logitech Wireless Boombox is a decent sounding, but ugly speaker with poor battery life.  I don’t think it makes a very good portable speaker at all, but if you want to keep it plugged in on a shelf, it will sound great and is a terrific bargain.

The Jawbone Jambox

The Jambox is the complete opposite of the Logitech in almost every way.  First, it is tiny.  At about the size of a whiteboard eraser, it is easily the smallest of all these speakers.  You might think that because it is so small, it won’t sound very good.  That’s not so!  It sounds absolutely fabulous, with clear highs and decent bass.  It gets even better when you enable the Live Audio feature.

Of course, being so small it does suffer in one area: volume.  The Jambox is so small that it cannot pump out much volume.  Even at maximum volume, it is much quieter than the others.  And Live Audio makes it even quieter.  So this speaker is of no use in noisy environments.

The Jambox has several extra features as well.  It is available in a variety of styles and colors.  I purchased the “blue wave” model, which is a fun color.  In addition, the Jambox can function as a speaker phone and it performs decently at that.  Lastly, the Jambox is a so-called “smart” speaker.  It can be upgraded using the MyTalk section of the Jawbone web site.  You can customize sound settings (Live Audio and Sound Clarity) and change the voices and sounds that it makes.  The sounds are fun to play with, but are ultimately annoying because they are so much louder than the music.  But Live Audio is awesome.  It turns the Jambox from a cool little speaker, to a “where on earth is that sound coming from” speaker!  Unfortunately, Live Audio only works when you have the speaker right in front of you and within three feet or so (and it lowers the maximum volume even further).

The Jambox gets really good battery life.  I rarely have to charge it, although I use it a lot.  And it is easily charged using USB from your computer or with the included USB charger.

Unlike the others speakers here, the Jambox also includes a “case”, but it is really more of a wrap.  It does completely cover the Jambox, so it may be good for packing and traveling, but I hardly use it because it is so difficult to put it on and take it off.

I was able to pick this up on sale for $150 at Amazon.  It retails for $200.

Total: 29 (83%)

I really like the Jambox.  Its small size means I can take it anywhere.  I wish there was a way to silence the beeps it makes when changing the volume.  I’m holding out hope for a software update.  The low volume means it can’t be used in certain situations.  For example, it’s not really loud enough to use in the bathroom with the shower and fan on.  And if you use it outside, you won’t be able to hear it if you get too far away.

The Bose SoundLink

I have been considering the SoundLink since it first came out late last year.  I have other Bose products that I like a lot (including the Companion 20, which I love), so I decided to give the SoundLink a try recently.

I really like the design of the SoundLink.  It is has a slick magnetic cover that covers the front speaker grill and serves as a stand when opened.  You really have to use the cover as the stand; although it will stand without it, it’s not completely stable.  The SoundLink just exudes quality and I think it is quite pleasing to look at with what is easily the most sophisticated design.  Although it is the tallest of the speakers, it is at the same time quite narrow making it very easy to carry.

The SoundLink has been praised everywhere for its wonderful sound, so I had high expectations going in.  But I did not care for its sound.  I found it to be very bass-heavy and boomy with the mids and highs extremely suppressed.  This had the effect of making me feel the speaker was always muffled in some way.  Tweaking the positioning helped improve the sound a bit because if it is too close to a wall (or anything else) the bass becomes far too pronounced.  And what bass it is!  It just doesn’t seem possible that something this small can pump out this much bass.  The SoundLink can get quite loud and it seems like it tends to sound better the louder it gets.  It’s almost as if the mids and highs come in more at higher volumes, balancing the lows.  If you use the SoundLink outside and crank it up, you’ll find the bass to be less overpowering and the overall sound to be better.  But that’s not how I listen to music.

The battery life for the SoundLink is reasonable.  I probably got about 6 hours or so at normal to low volumes before the red battery indicator came on.  The SoundLink can only be charged using its proprietary charger, but at least the plug folds making it easier to pack.  Bose also offers a car charger and a variety of alternate covers (colors and leather) that you can purchase.

I like that the SoundLink has a big mute button on it.  Sometimes you just need to silence things quickly.

I was able to find the SoundLink on sale at Best Buy for $270, so far the only time I’ve seen it on sale since it came out last October.

I really wanted to like the SoundLink.  I prefer its design with the flip cover over all the other designs.  I find it strikes a nice balance in size between the tiny Jambox and the large Logitech.  I can’t say the SoundLink sounds horrible, but it is not up to my standards for Bose and it certainly doesn’t sound good enough for its $300 price.  Unless you are a bass junkie!

Big Jambox

The Big Jambox is the newest of these speakers, having only just come out in May 2012.  It really is a “big” Jambox as it’s almost the size of 4 Jamboxes.  And it looks just like a bigger Jambox, since Jawbone kept the same rectangular shape, for better or for worse, with buttons on the top and ports on the right.

Out of all these speakers, I like the sound of the Big Jambox the best.  It has an excellent amount of bass, although perhaps not quite as much as the SoundLink.  But it also doesn’t muffle the mids or highs.  All the sound is there and it all sounds great.  The Big Jambox can get very loud, at least as loud as the SoundLink and Logitech.

I like the changes that were made over the Jambox.  There are more controls on the top, including a Play/Pause button and buttons to skip and rewind tracks.  The volume controls also don’t beep as loudly as they do on the Jambox (they are more a little chirp rather than a loud beep).  Another nice touch is the “Jawbone” faceplate on the front.  It’s actually easy to confuse the front and back on the “little” Jambox; the faceplate makes it clear where the front is.  I also really like that I can have two devices connected to the Big Jambox at one time.  This allows me to easily switch between my iPad and iPhone without having to deal with turning Bluetooth on or off.

Battery life for the Big Jambox is incredible.  I’m at over 10 hours and it’s still going strong.  And that’s with the original charge it had out of the box.  I haven’t even unpacked the charger yet!  Unfortunately, it does use a proprietary charger, but you can also charge it using a micro-USB cable that is hooked up to a larger USB charger such as the one that charges the iPad (although it is quite slower).  This will make traveling much easier.

The Big Jambox has the same extras as the Jambox.  You can get it in (fewer) colors such as graphite (black), white or red (alas, no blue).  And it is also a “smart speaker”, so you can take advantage of MyTalk to change its settings.  Live Audio on the Big Jambox has a wider listening area, but it seems to lower vocals more than it does on the Jambox.  Nevertheless, it still sounds great and is a nice “bonus” feature.  Lastly, it is also a speakerphone, a feature I don’t think I will use a lot, but I’m sure will be handy from time to time.

I paid $300 for the Big Jambox at Best Buy.  It is still new and I’ve not seen it discounted anywhere.

I’m impressed.  Jawbone took the successful design of the Jambox and improved on it in nearly every way.  I wish it were slimmer and included a case (and was available in blue), but I don’t have much else to complain about.

Results

The Big Jambox came in first with 30 points.  Second is the Jambox.  The SoundLink was next with a score of 26, followed by the Wireless Boombox with 20.

Before I tested these, I really expected the SoundLink would win.  It was pretty close, but the Big Jambox just sounds so much better to me that it outweighed the design and portability advantages of the SoundLink.  I am also surprised the Jambox rated so high, but it really is a great speaker.  For portability it can’t be beat and it does sound amazingly good at the volumes it can handle.

I’ve since returned the Bose SoundLink to Best Buy.  I’d love to see Bose offer a tweak to the sound so that the mids and highs are not so muffled at normal listening volumes.  I think this is possible since there is a USB “service” port on the SoundLink, presumably for firmware updates that could do this sort of thing.  But they haven’t done anything yet about the sound in the 8+ months it’s been out (and the firmware on the one I tested was up to date).  If I hear they have updated the firmware and altered the sound, I may have to re-evaluate.  But given the praise it gets and its popularity, I suspect I’m in the minority when it comes to its sound quality.

I’ll be selling the Logitech Wireless Boombox on eBay.  I have no need for it now and I hardly ever used it even before.  It was too big to bother lugging around for the poor sound quality it has on battery.

I’m keeping both the Jambox and Big Jambox.  Great job, Jawbone!

But after four years, it’s time for another change.

Starting on February 1, 2012, I will be joining Real Software, the makers of Real Studio, as their Developer Evangelist. As the Developer Evangelist, I will be responsible for many things that relate to educating prospective and existing customers about the best ways to get the most out of Real Studio. Some of my specific responsibilities include:

• Documentation
• Tutorial and Training videos
• Webinars and Webcasts
• Podcasts
• Example Projects, Tutorials and Reference Applications
• Blogging
• Social web coverage

I am incredibly excited to be joining the Real Software team, who are a great bunch of folks. I first discovered Real Studio (RealBasic) back in 2001 after I had recently switched to Mac OS X. I was impressed with its object-oriented capabilities, database support and general approachability.

I’ve been a software developer for a long time (almost 20 years) and I’ve used many development environments in my career, including Advanced Revelation, PowerBuilder, Visual Studio, Eclipse, Visual Basic and others I’m sure I’m forgetting. Real Studio is easily my favorite; it is powerful, yet simple to use and downright fun.

I’d like to add, that even with this big change, LogicalVue Software will still be around. The apps that are in the Mac App Store (all made with Real Studio, I’m proud to say) will remain available and will continue to get updates, as will the software available here at LogicalVue.com and at RBDevZone.com.

I will even continue with Real Studio consulting, although only with my existing clients. I will not be taking on any new clients for the foreseeable future.

After all, in order to be the best Developer Evangelist I can be, I also need to remain a user of Real Studio.

To my fellow Real Studio developers: I would love to hear about how you use Real Studio. Consulting? Internal products? For fun? Something else? Tell me what you like, what you don’t like, what could be better. Tell me how I can help enable you to make better use of Real Studio. Tell me how you got started in programming. Whatever you want to say, I’d love to hear from you!

Send me a note at my new email address: paul@realsoftware.com

Steve Jobs only got 56 years on this earth, but boy did he make use of his time. Anyone would be lucky to have just one of his successes.

Every computer in use today is based on the original vision of the Macintosh.

Every Mac in use today uses the operating system created by Steve Jobs’ team at Next.

The music industry was changed, for the better, by Steve’s vision of the iPod and iTunes.

Every phone is now based on the original iPhone concept. Every tablet is based on the iPad.

And I haven’t even mentioned the joy that Pixar brought into people’s lives with their stellar animated films.

When you look back at all the things that Steve Jobs did, it is easy to think that they are all obvious now. But they were certainly not obvious at the time; each of them was a tremendous risk. Companies were making computers before the Mac, music players before the iPod, phones before the iPhone and tablets before the iPad. But no one innovated. It was always Apple, led by Steve, that took the first step into the future and created products that people could love.

He definitely changed the world and is already missed.

I wonder, what was he thinking of next?

R.I.P.

But first, why does SQLVue not support this obviously useful feature? Well, the reason SQLVue does not support this yet is because SQLite itself does not support it. Unlike most databases, the ALTER TABLE command in SQLite is a bit restrictive. It only allows you to add new columns and to rename a table. You cannot use ALTER TABLE to change an existing column in any way.

There is a workaround, of course, but it is very manual. Let’s look at an example.

CREATE TABLE Contact (ID INTEGER PRIMARY KEY, Name TEXT, Address TEXT, ZIP TEXT);

Now let’s assume we want to change the ZIP column name to ZipCode and the type to INTEGER.

1. Create an all-new table that matches your original table, but with the changed columns. We’ll call it ContactCopy:

   CREATE TABLE ContactCopy (ID INTEGER PRIMARY KEY, Name TEXT, Address TEXT, ZipCode INTEGER)

2. Now we can copy the original data to the new table:

   INSERT INTO ContactCopy (ID, Name, Address, ZipCode) SELECT ID, Name, Address, ZIP FROM Contact;

3. Review the data in ContactCopy to make sure it looks correct.
4. Rename the original table:

   ALTER TABLE Contact RENAME TO ContactOrig;

5. Rename the new table:

   ALTER TABLE ContactCopy RENAME TO Contact;

6. If all looks good, you can also delete the original table:

   DROP TABLE ContactOrig;

As you can see this is pretty tedious. A future version of SQLVue will automate all this for you.

App Store Link

New features include:

New features for SQLVue 4.1 include:
* All-new table designer: create and alter tables without using SQL
* Easily create Views from SQL statements
* Export database table structure as SQL commands to include in your apps
* Ensure the quality of your SQLite databases with the Database Integrity Check and Index Analyzer
* Create sample databases using the Chinook database, populated with significant sample data
* And much more!

Earlier this year, I replaced my 3-year old MacBook Pro with a Mac Pro and a MacBook Air. I seriously considered getting a 27″ iMac i7 and did not seriously consider getting another MacBook Pro. I’ll try to explain why.

More for Less

First, I want to stress that getting refurbished equipment is the way to go. With Apple refurbished hardware, you can save hundreds of dollars on equipment that is otherwise indistinguishable from new stuff. And you still get a 1-year warrant and are AppleCare eligible, if you’re into extended warranties.

And sometimes, I get a better configuration than what I ordered. My MacBook Pro came with a 7200rpm drive instead of the 5400rpm. And an iMac that I ordered in 2006 came with an upgraded video card and a larger hard drive.

iMac

While researching, new equipment, I first knew that any new Mac would have to have an SSD. I had been using a simple ExpressCard SSD in my MacBook Pro and even though it was slower than a real SSD, it made the MBP much faster. I could not go back.

Looking at the iMac, only the 27″ model could be fitted with an SSD. If you went the built-to-order route, Apple would let you add an SSD as a replacement for the HD or you could opt to add the SSD as a second drive. SSDs are not large enough for them to be the only drive on my primary Mac, so only the second drive configuration was an option. Unfortunately, Apple wanted a lot of money for this ($700, I believe, although it is less now). Another option was to instead go through the OWC iMac SSD Turnkey upgrade and have them stuff an SSD in there. This also was not cheap, but it did offer a faster SSD.

It was also important to me to have four cores and I also really wanted the benefit hyperthreading offered by the Core i7. I don’t do a lot of serious multithreaded work, but I do run a lot of different apps at the same time and I wanted it to be as future-proof as possible. The more cores, the better!

In the end, an iMac i7 with an SSD upgrade was coming in around $3,000 or so (including a RAM upgrade from OWC). Unfortunately, refurbished machines in this configuration were rarely available.

Mac Pro

I quickly tossed aside the MacBook Pro because there were no quad-core models (remember, this was in late 2010, before Sandy Bridge).

I also looked at getting a Mac Pro. I had a PowerMac G4 back in the day and I got almost 4 years out of it due to its expandability. I was considering a refurbished 2.8Ghz Xeon (2009 model, 3GB RAM, 640GB HD, GT120 graphics) when MacMall put up a special closeout deal at the end of 2010 for new 2009 model 2.93 Mac Pros. This is the single CPU model, but also came with a 1TB drive, 6GB of RAM, the upgraded ATI graphics card and a 2nd optical drive (all improvements on the 2.8). And it was only $2149! This was less than Apple was charging for a refurbished 2.8 and $700 less than they were charging for a refurbished 2.93!

Since I already owned a 23″ Cinema display, I didn’t really need the 27″ display in the iMac. The Mac Pro also was faster than the iMac, more expandable and cheaper. So my decision was made and I became the proud owner of my first Mac Pro. I also immediately ordered a 120GB SSD from OWC to use as the boot drive.

I then also ordered a refurbished 11″ MacBook Air ($850) from Apple. Since this is only used when I need to go mobile (which is not all that often), I don’t find myself limited by the 2GB RAM or the 64GB of storage.

So instead of paying $3,000 for just an iMac, I instead paid $3,200 for both a Mac Pro and a MacBook Air.

For the extra $200, I have two computers, better expandability, better portability and better performance!

And to top it off, I was able to turn around and sell my 3-year old MacBook Pro (which cost me $1700 refurbished) for $1050 on Craigslist. It’s important to keep in mind the high resale value of most Macs when thinking about upgrading.

I really like having two separate Macs. Even though I had a MacBook Pro before, I really hated going mobile with it. Since it was always connected to a ton of things on my desktop, unhooking and ejecting it all was annoying, especially if I had a bunch of stuff open. And the battery life was pretty bad (2 hours or so). With the Air I get 6 hours with no trouble.

So now I can just grab the Air and go. It’s light, small and reasonably quick. With Dropbox, everything that I need stays automatically synced between the two Macs.

I did add a couple other gadgets as well. Switching from a laptop to a desktop meant that I no longer had built-in battery backup. So I also purchased an APC battery backup ($80), but I would have needed this for an iMac as well.

I already had a 17″ LCD to use as a 2nd monitor with the Mac Pro, but I decided to upgrade to a 21.5″ HD LCD. These things are dirt cheap (I paid only $120 for an AOC; the 17″ LCD cost me $800 in 2002!)

Thoughts on the Mac Pro

This is my first Mac Pro and was quite shocked at how big and heavy it is. It was a piece of cake to set up, the hardest thing being lifting it out of the box!

The first thing I did after setting it up was to remove the 2nd optical drive and install the OWC SSD in its place. I then moved all my external hard drives into the Mac Pro and repartitioned and set up software RAID 0 to improve performance. Backups are done using Dropbox, MobileMe and Time Machine.

I remain impressed with how quiet the Mac Pro is. Even when all cores are running while ripping a DVD image with Handbrake, you can barely hear it. The fans on my old MacBook Pro would be deafening, spinning at 6,000 rpm when using Handbrake! Most of the time, iStat Menus barely shows the cores being used at all; this thing has plenty of reserve power for me.

I haven’t had a need to upgrade the RAM yet. So far, 6GB is enough for development and running VMware Fusion. I may toss a 4GB DIMM in there at some point to get it up to 10GB and I can eventually take it to 32GB with 8GB DIMMs, but those are still a bit pricey.

Sandy Bridge

Of course, since I upgraded, Apple has released the Sandy Bridge MacBook Pros and iMacs. Theses new models are fast, with CPU speed equivalent to the Mac Pro in many cases. The new top of the line iMac with i7, SSD and upgraded RAM will still be about $3,000 (and currently has a 4-6 week wait), although I think it might benchmark faster than my Mac Pro. But after just a few months with my Mac Pro, I’m happy with the choice. And to be honest, little of the work I do is CPU-bound. SSDs have a bigger effect on compile times than CPU speed increases. With a Mac Pro, it will be much easier to take advantage of upcoming SSD improvements, something that I could not do with an iMac (at least until external Thunderbolt SSD cases appear, but external hard drives are a hassle).

Considering the the Mac Pros were updated only last summer and their low volume, I think Apple will wait until the Xeon Sandy Bridge chips are available in early 2012 before we see any Mac Pro upgrades.

This is very exciting!

And as of right now, SQLVue is #93 in the “Top Paid” list of all apps in the Mac App Store (it’s #87 in the “Top Grossing” list).

Obviously, I’m quite pleased with this and am eager to see what the actual sales numbers will be. I’ll know tomorrow when iTunes Connect gets updated with today’s sales.

I’m already working on the first update to SQLVue and also hope to release a “lite” version for the App Store. It’s also possible I may also create a Windows version (which won’t be that difficult since I use Real Studio). If only there was also a Windows App Store to simplify distribution!