Apple Announces iWork for iPhone and iPod Touch

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Apple PR:> Apple today announced that its groundbreaking iWork productivity apps, Keynote, Pages and Numbers, are now available for iPhone and iPod touch, as well as iPad. If you already own any of the iWork apps, Pages, Keynote, or Numbers, then you'll get the iPhone versions for free, as Apple has made these universal apps. Also why announce this today, one week ahead of WWDC, when they could be included in the keynote? The keynote has more important things to cover. This is small fry.

Federal Government Loosens Its Grip on the Blackberry

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Michael S. Rosenwald, reporting for The Washington Post:

Kundra, the U.S. top information officer, said, “The line between work and home in terms of technology is beginning to blur.” Asked what he typically hears from workers about government- or corporate-provided technology, Kundra said, “It’s not a question of whether they don’t like it. They despise it.” Kundra’s answer to the issue of people using unauthorized devices is simple: Give them what they want. Like many federal workers, he carries two devices — a BlackBerry (for work stuff) and an iPhone (for personal stuff). And like many people, Kundra says he wants to be a “one-device guy.” He recently began pondering a radical idea with federal agencies: Let workers use whatever mobile device they want, apply strict security settings, and have the government pay a stipend for service. Two basic points 1. If this happens, expect to see graphs of RIM's decline accelerate greatly. 2. IT Managers across the corporate world will fight this tooth and nail for years to come. Think of this in terms of the mentality that led those same people to make employees still use IE 6, Windows XP, etc. They like supporting Blackberry because it makes their lives easier. They've been doing it for years. They're used to it. The way the Blackberry server works from their end gives them a level of control over the devices that they wouldn't otherwise have. They also don't want to have to learn to support iPhones/Androids/etc. Cudos to the government for doing this.

Apple Secures Deals With All Four Labels For iCloud

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Yukari Iwatani Kane and Ethan Smith writing for the Wall Street Journal:

Apple Inc. has reached terms with major recorded-music companies to allow it to launch a digital locker service that would be more robust than those currently offered by Google Inc. and Amazon.com Inc., according to people familiar with the matter. According to these people, deals with three labels have been completed, and the fourth, with Vivendi SA's Universal Music Group, is likely to be signed this week. Apple has signed deals with Warner Music Group Corp., Sony Corp.'s Sony Music Entertainment and EMI Group Ltd. Being out ahead of Amazon and Google to sign all four major labels is huge for Apple. This will allow Apple's music locker to be an 'active' one rather than a passive one. The current way Amazon and Google's services work is you must manually upload music to their services in order for you to stream it later. These deals could conceivably allow Apple to scan a list of all your music in iTunes, and simply make all of that music available on iCloud without you having to manually upload your music. This will make it much more painless to adopt. I'm sure these contracts will allow Apple to do other things as well that Amazon and Google aren't able to do legally.

Apple Announces WWDC 2011 Keynote

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Apple:

Apple CEO Steve Jobs and a team of Apple executives will kick off the company’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) with a keynote address on Monday, June 6 at 10:00 a.m. At the keynote, Apple will unveil its next generation software - Lion, the eighth major release of Mac OS X; iOS 5, the next version of Apple’s advanced mobile operating system which powers the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch; and iCloud, Apple’s upcoming cloud services offering. It is certainly out of the ordinary for Apple to pre-announce exactly what the keynote will be about. As John Gruber says, it is probably due to Apple making sure there are no expectations that there will be any hardware. Gruber is usually correct on these things.

Amazon’s $23,698,655.93 Book About Flies

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I saw the news about the crazy price for this book come across one of the websites I visit and/or Twitter the other day. Today, I ran across an explanation of what was happening in this instance. Michael Eisen writes:

Amazingly, when I reloaded the page the next day, both priced had gone UP! Each was now nearly $2.8 million. And whereas previously the prices were $400,000 apart, they were now within $5,000 of each other. Now I was intrigued, and I started to follow the page incessantly. By the end of the day the higher priced copy had gone up again. This time to $3,536,675.57. And now a pattern was emerging.

The Science of Why We Don't Believe Science

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John Gruber linked to an article this morning that I found very interesting, "The Science of Why We Don't Believe Science." John summarizes:> Chris Mooney on why cold hard facts and scientific evidence seldom change the minds of those who already hold a strong opinion. (E.g., climate-change deniers on the right, vaccines-cause-autism believers on the left.) Fascinating but utterly depressing.

Paul Ryan's Multiple Unicorns

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Paul Krugman, writing about GOP Congressman Paul Ryan's proposed budget plan:

Notice the marked area at the bottom: Ryan is assuming that everything aside from health and SS can be squeezed from 12 percent of GDP now to 3 1/2 percent of GDP. That’s bigger than the assumed cut in health care spending relative to baseline; it accounts for all of the projected deficit reduction, since the alleged health savings are all used to finance tax cuts. And how is this supposed to be accomplished? Not explained. This isn’t a serious proposal; it’s a strange combination of cruelty and insanely wishful thinking.