And although the BlackBerry has led the way, Steve Jobs just dealt a decisive blow that will not only force RIM to capitulate, but could see the end of the BlackBerry line altogether.

Um, say what? That sounds like the delusions of an Apple fanboy to the extreme. Let’s think this through logically.

First of all, there are a lot of companies that have made significant investment in BlackBerry technology, having purchased hundreds (if not thousands) of devices, lines of service for all of those devices, BES licensing, and all of the infrastructure that goes with all of that. If there is one truism about large corporations, it’s that they don’t take to change well. Switching from a BlackBerry to iPhone platform means huge changes to be made, and that also means a very large expenditure of money would have to be laid out for new devices, new lines of service, cancellation fees for existing lines of service, etc. If your existing platform isn’t broken, how do you go about proposing to the folks who sign the checks that you want to lay out hundreds of thousands of dollars for this new technology? It’s a hard sell, especially in today’s economy.

Secondly, while Apple is proposing their new ability to have applications on the iPhone, the delivery mechanism won’t work for most business. While there is over-the-air downloading via the new App store for personal apps and games and the like, enterprise level apps can only be installed via iTunes. Did anyone bother to tell Apple that iTunes is probably application non grata #1 for most corporate IT departments? This isn’t like the BES, which has the ability to push apps wirelessly from within the environment, or the packaging of apps in a binary format that both BlackBerry and Windows Mobile environments use?

Lastly, and this is probably more of a personal gripe, the on screen typing thing for the iPhone seems useless to me to do more than real quick SMS messaging or entering a URL, etc. Once you start working with a BlackBerry keyboard, you realize it’s not that hard to thumb out an essay on the BlackBerry keyboard. Hell, I can even putter away quite quickly on my Pearl’s compressed keyboard using SureType. How in the hell are people who are relying on one of these devices to do super heavy email loads going to last with that touch screen keyboard? I think not.

Thirdly, while they’re not on the same level with the user experience, give RIM credit for trying to beef up consumer level features on the BlackBerry. Any recent BB can play music now, and the forthcoming BlackBerry Bold is really amping up multimedia features and ease of use. No, it won’t kill the iPhone, but it’s a convincing piece of equipment anyway.

All in all, the iPhone remains a top notch consumer device. It does what it does extremely well. I won’t switch to it because of the carrier that’s involved, but that’s just my thing. When you put it all together, though, I don’t think we’re looking at a BlackBerry killer. Not in the least bit at all.

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When even a Beltway wonk like Tim Russert can see things this clearly, it’s time to hang ‘em up and put ‘em out to pasture because the writing is on the wall and it’s so big that it can’t be ignored.

PS:

Technorati Tags: barack obama, hillary clinton, tim russert

My point is that I would love to see ESPN start up a similar blog for baseball. Right now, they have “blogs” from several of their correspondents that read more like daily dispatches from around the league than real blogs. I do like some of them. Rob Neyer has some decent dispatches that look at what newspaper writers around the league have to say about what’s happening in baseball which are insightful, but it lacks the real dedication that a permanent blogger can add to the mix because all the baseball guys are either TV analysists or columnists for the website in addition and you can tell in the quality of their work that this is the place where the put most of their concentration. It would make a great addition to the world of ESPN to see a baseball blog that’s as in depth and insightful as their excellent NBA and NFL blogs.

Technorati Tags: baseball, blogs, espn, hashmarks, truehoop

Let’s look at a few bits of analysis from around the tubes. First, this interesting theory from Kos:

It’s my theory that no endorsement matters except those that deliver a machine. Senators have no machine, so they’re pretty worthless (like Bob Casey). Mayors and machine-state governors, like Nutter and Rendell, matter. Gavin Newsom in San Francisco, who has no machine, didn’t matter, but Antonio Villaraigosa in Los Angeles, who has one of the biggest machines in the planet, delivered strong for Clinton. Obama won Connecticut in large part thanks to New Haven’s mayor John Destefano’s efforts. In Pennsylvania, Clinton had the state’s machine working on her behalf, and it clearly helped cut Obama’s margins in the Philly metro area.

That will even work in a place like here in NJ, where the state government is one big giant machine, and we already know Jon Corzine is cuckoo for Hillary. I’m on his email list and he’s put out several emails in support of Hillary.

Then, we have the reality of the numbers, as explained by Charlie Cook:

But today, she is 133 delegates behind Obama, 1,728 to 1,595, according to NBC News. At this point last week, she trailed by 136 delegates. Since then Clinton has scored a net gain of 10 delegates in Pennsylvania, according to NBC, but has lost a few more superdelegates, so she has made little headway.

Let’s not forget that her projections of primary vote include Michigan and Florida, the two races that don’t count because they broke the DNC’s primary rules. Besides, it’s not about the votes that matters. It’s all about the delegates stupid! More from Cook:

But you can’t change how the game is played once it has begun. The Democrats have decided that the nominee will be determined by the number of delegates won, not by the popular vote, and that primaries held in direct violation of party rules (in this case, Florida’s and Michigan’s) don’t count. End of discussion.

So now that we have that down pat, let’s reexamine her victory. First off, she was projected to win the state by more than 20 points. She won it by 9. She netted 10 delegates from the victory, but hasn’t dented Obama’s lead. She’s not favored to win in North Carolina’s primary on May 6th, and Indiana is a tossup that can easily go Obama’s way if he campaigns strongly there. If she loses both of those, what then?

The most important thing is that this prolonged primary is souring a lot of people and is letting John McCain sit pretty and keep building his positive poll numbers. So yes, Clinton won PA, but at what cost to herself and the party in general? Sounds a lot like a Pyhrric victory to me.

Technorati Tags: hillary clinton, pennsylvania primary, pyhrric victory

So I log into my Flickr account today and I see this, and the first thing I think was that LOL Speak may have finally jumped the shark once and for all…

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Honestly, I don’t know what would ever motivate anyone to dress themselves up as a super hero with a giant Wiimote on the front of themselves, but then again, what the hell do I know?

The best part? The Wiimote on the chest actually fucking works. That just raises the hilarity level up by a factor of 100 at least.

(h/t Engadget)

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The fact remains that the fact that who moves on is based on the voters has really highlighted the mixed success of the show. Kelly Clarkson is the only winner to really “make it” after her time on the show. Could anyone have imagined she would turn into a worldwide pop superstar? Maybe only she did, but it happened. The other success stories from Idol have all come from people like Chris Daughtry who were voted off the show by fickle fans only to have been memorable enough to launch their own careers.

At the end of the day, people who get so involved with the singers on this show need to sit back and remember the reality of what this show is. It can be a launch pad to a career if a singer plays it right. Beyond that, though, it’s a popularity contest; a spectacle left up to the will of voters who seem to love generic blonde country wannabes and those who they feel the judges have come down way too hard on. Nothing more and nothing less.

Technorati Tags: american idol, jasmine trias, michael johns

The other thing to remember about the primaries so far is that black people have supported Obama by huge margins no matter where he’s been, and it’s been the white vote that’s split hard across class lines. The question is, with both candidates having policy platforms that are virtually identical, are lower class white people sticking behind Hillary solely because she is white?

I’m sure the answer to this question is far more complex, but you have to wonder sometimes…

Technorati Tags: barack obama, hillary clinton, race

I’ve decided to focus the first MMM installment on Gnarls Barkley’s The Odd Couple, the successor to 2006’s St. Elsewhere. The album’s first single, Run, is a fun and catchy tune with an even catchier video (with a fun Justin Timberlake cameo and the possibility of inducing an epeletic seizure). Sadly, it’s the only really great song on the album. Whereas St. Elsewhere shined with a number of memorable cuts, The Odd Couple flounders in places as Danger Mouse and Cee-Lo try some new musical terrain. The album feels a bit more down-tempo, and I think that might be where it flounders.

I won’t call it a sophomore slump, because the album was enjoyable overall, but it’s definately not St. Elsewhere 2.0.

Technorati Tags: gnarls barkley, st. elsewhere, the odd couple

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