What went wrong?

True, I rarely write about stick & ball sports (I do write about NASCAR once in a while), but after the Patriots blew up their season last night I thought I should twist it around a little more before officially going into "anyone but the bleeping Jets" mode for the rest of the no-longer-interesting to me playoffs.

The game started really well, forcing the Jets into a 3 and out on the first possession. The Pats then started moving the ball easily, making mostly short passes to running backs and the tight ends and very quickly getting down the field. Even when Brady made his first pick in over 3 months, it didn't seem like a killer - the resulting defensive stand was outstanding and the field goal miss gave the ball back in good shape.

But the ensuing drive for a field goal wasn't quite as sharp as the opener, and now 2 dominant drives that resulted in a pick and only 3 points total had left the game tight early. The Patriots had been winning with early offensive execution that forced the other team into mistakes. That was the last offense we saw from the Pats until late in the third quarter.

The other killer play in the first half was the failed fake punt. Even if Chung had handled the snap fine, coverage looked like it might have gotten him anyway. A poor play call at a bad time. That resulted in what turned out to be the back-breaking score.

The way the Patriots blew up the Jets in December was to get ahead enough of them that Mark Sanchez was forced to take chances that he's not really experienced or talented enough to succeed with. He's not a terrible QB, but spotting them a lead gives the Jets a chance to cover up his weaknesses easily.

The sequence that clinched it was after the Patriots drew to 14-11 late. The defense had settled in well after the Jets got a lead and was playing effectively. But they immediately allowed the Jets to score to turn it back into a 2-score game. That took the momentum back and pretty much ended the game.

There's a lot of soul-searching that has to take place in Foxboro this winter. Right now, the Pats are losers of their last 3 postseason games and even though none of us expected a 14-2 dominant regular season, getting smoked in the divisional round by a team that we trashed a month prior (especially the Jets) is not the way to go out. The young secondary is a strength, the linebacking corps is solid, but the defensive line is thin and the Patriots' offense now has a 3-game track record of failing to show up in big playoff games. Not good. This may be a good year to use those stockpiled draft picks.

And one FOOTnote: Sitting Welker for the first series. Really bad move. Might have even contributed to the INT Brady threw. Yes, the Pats are all about discipline and marching orders, but if you can't even get out a few under-the-text gags without being punished that's just stupid. Deal with that in-house without sitting your key receiver.

Hearing that Welker was sitting was the first moment I started to have fear about this game. Winning the game is more important than maintaining the Patriot Way.

Oh - it's on, baby!

Verizon now has an iPhone. Hot rumor today is that Sprint will get their own in February. LTE has been slow enough rolling out to make it worth Apple's time and effort to build a CDMA version of the iPhone. So here's what I see this meaning over the remainder of 2011:

1 - I no longer think that the iPhone 5 will be an LTE device. AT&T doesn't have anything live yet, and Verizon is really just pushing it for data at this time. Sprint is currently tied to WiMax for 4G. Plus the LTE chipsets are still very early-stage.

2 - iPhone 5 will likely be a unified device with a combined GSM/CDMA chipset. I also suspect that VoRA (Voice over Revision A) support will be built in to it, as Verizon has said that that is slated for rollout beginning this spring. Maybe it's supported by the chipset in the current iPhone 4/CDMA, but we won't know until it gets torn down.

3 - Google is scared about US Android numbers. They announced the removal of H.264 support from Chrome yesterday and that is the first shoe to drop. Google controls YouTube, the single most popular video site on the web. YouTube has been experimenting with direct H.264 encoding (I prefer it - far better performance and lower CPU usage), and Flash has been taking hits. Well, now Flash will be the only supported way to handle H.264 on Chrome with Google favoring their WebM codec for HTML5 video.

The two vendors now backing H.264 the strongest? Apple and Microsoft. Look for Google to pull H.264 support from Android in favor of their codec, and they'll try to turn YouTube into a site that only uses Flash or WebM in the hopes of killing it for iOS users. The Hail Mary pass they're throwing here is to try and convince users that Android and Chrome are the ways to get YouTube.

Personally, I think that'll just open up an opportunity for a good YouTube competitor to take over - much as Facebook defeated MySpace.

4 - Google now needs to hit a tablet home run. CES showed us all the new Android 3 tablets, but Apple just sucked most of the handset oxygen out of Vegas with the Verizon iPhone, and within a couple of weeks they'll do iPad 2 as well. The beta of iOS 4.3 dropped today, and you can safely predict that'll ship with the new iPads within 4-8 weeks. Android is likely to be relegated to the extreme low end of the market. The brilliant analyst Horace Dediu at Asymco has it pegged. Android exerts pressure downward at the cheap non-smartphone handsets. They move volume. But those aren't the users buying apps and media outside of ringtones. The iOS users (which also includes iPod Touch owners - nothing is shipping from an Android vendor yet that is comparable) are buying apps and that locks them into the platform. Apple makes a ton of money that way and has people upgrading constantly.

Apps = lock-in. Remember that.

In a market where iPhone is on one carrier, Android is great on all the other ones because it's the best the users can get if they're not on that carrier. If they can get an iPhone instead, they likely will.

Yep, it's on! And it only took 2 weeks of 2011 to get the party going.

Adios to another year - it didn't suck as bad as the last one

The good: My business recovered and even kinda improved. Health has been good for all three of us. I was able to get my act together and lose over 30 pounds through hard exercise and eating less. We're done with expensive home renovation projects for a while to come.

The bad: A lot of health issues in our extended families. Particularly my wife's. Between that and work, we didn't get to take a single vacation as a family this year. My wife went to her folks when her father was injured and wound up missing the annual Martha's Vineyard trip. I was busy enough to skip the Cape May trip. We did an overnight in Plymouth at the beginning of December - that was it. In other words, from a family perspective, 2010 was the Year Of Everybody But Us. I hope to fix that next year.

I have a lot of great long-term clients that we've been fortunate enough to retain. Towards the end of the year, I picked up one that was a total douchebag, but we're out of that toxic technical relationship (FYI, Mac menus are NOT the same as Windows, you tool), and what's left is good. We've even got an opportunity to expand the database/CRM business that we're taking.

In the rest of things - looks like people in hell may be about to get their sweaters on, because there just may be a CDMA iPhone about to happen. I still won't be convinced until the day it announces, but two things changed this year that have made it no longer a pipe dream: first, there is now an emerging VoRA (Voice over Rev. A EVDO) standard that would allow an iPhone to do simultaneous voice/data like they can in the current model, and second, the LTE rollout is just beginning now and will be continuing over a longer timeframe than I believed likely at first. So the existing CDMA infrastructure in the US, at least, still has another 2-3 years of life in it at least, and since 2 years is a typical cell contract that all works now.

iPad 2 is also rapidly approaching - just as other manufacturers start releasing their responses to iPad 1. In other words, I don't see anything that will cost Apple the market lead in tablets other than a whole lot of pre-announced vapor and some 7" devices that are aiming for what I believe is just a niche.

Our last voyage of the year was a trip to New Jersey to see my wife's family. We left on Christmas Day, and arrived mid-afternoon just before the big blizzard rolled in. We were snowed in at the Seaview Resort (in Galloway, NJ) for over 2 days. Same thing happened to us in 1993, when we visited for a March wedding and got stuck in the Blizzard of '93. The difference: 17 years ago there was no Internet everywhere to monitor news and weather. No HDTV to watch weather and news (along with football). And we didn't have a child with us to entertain.

So 17 years ago we responded to the storm with a lot of time in the pool and the (now removed) hot tubs, and a _lot_ more drinking. This time was OK, though.

I kinda understand cultists' thinking

Back in August the Twelve Tribes had their ship "Peacemaker" moored in Salem. They offered free tours (indeed, it's a magnificent ship) and used the ship as an opportunity to quietly proselytize their somewhat offbeat Messianic Christianity. We visited Peacemaker on a Saturday - being a Messianic group they follow mainly Jewish customs and accordingly avoid commerce and most activities outside the home on Saturdays.

I saw happy, quiet people there, trying to live a life of example - both to inspire others and to try and recruit. And you know what? I may be a staunch atheist (actually, I'm probably more of an agnostic in that I do believe there isn't anything that could be described as "god" but on the other hand I can't possibly be sure of it and I don't really care that much whether I'm right or not) but I can see the appeal of a life like the Tribes lead. I wouldn't call them a cult (the headline is more linkbait), but a community of passionate believers who have willingly subsumed their whole lives to their ideals. I think they're somewhat misguided (to be polite) but I wouldn't try and steer them off their lonely path.

It's almost as hard to be passionate believers like they are as it is to be a non-believer entirely. Belief in a Supreme Being is easy. Humans are hard-wired for it due to their innate xenophobia - we are generally intelligent creatures who tend to form small communities that are bound together by race, language, or religious beliefs and fear/hate those who fall outside our community boundaries. Sure, Salem isn't going to declare war on Beverly or Marblehead anytime soon (partly because we all also identify as members of the larger "America" group), but there's still a healthy Them vibe you can see any time the Witches play the Panthers in football, for instance), but it's still Us and Them.

Which is why belief is the easy way out. It's easy to be born a Catholic, grow up in the traditions, remain one as an adult, marry another Catholic, have a church wedding, and bring up your kids as Catholics. By that measure, it's easy to be almost any kind of Protestant. In this country, it's even relatively easy to be a Jew or a Muslim - though most American mainstream Christians have a unhealthy streak of xenophobia about them - or part of any other relatively mainstream religious tradition.

What's hard is to believe something life-altering like the Tribes do - or to publicly believe nothing like I do. Because then you make yourself part of the Other. In a way, though, it's easier in their shoes, since they are surrounded by a community that reinforces their beliefs and function as an island within society. Their God provides their minds with a safety net that keeps their thoughts from going too far off the reservation. Most religious people, too, have that safety net that lets them transgress and then ask forgiveness, lets them justify wrongdoing, and lets them behave badly and then go to church to wipe the slate clean for another week.

Those of us without religion, though, have it tougher. We just have our consciences to keep us on the right path - no promise of an Eternal Reward for goodness or Eternal Damnation for badness. We just need to Do Right for the sake of Doing Right.

Which is far more difficult to pull off - Conscience is a much tougher taskmaster than God, because Conscience doesn't wipe the slate clean.

Yep, it may be tough at times to be a Twelve Tribes member. But the simplicity and mutual reinforcement of their life and faith makes it appealing. It's a lot tougher to just live a life free of it all. Since then, this Halloween the preachers returned to Salem, yelling at passers-by on bullhorns about the lake of fire and Americans' sin. I don't think they won any converts last month, but I can tell you this much: if they were, in fact, right about the non-believers going to hell, I'd line up for that if heaven were a place I'd have to share with them.

Makes one look forward to simple oblivion.

Why this is a lost season for the Sox

At the beginning of the year, the term "bridge year" was the buzzword. But looking at the payroll, it seemed like the usual instead. Well, the bridge mainly refers to the lack of homegrown talent coming up this year (or that was expected to make it up in a year or so - this is part of the problem). Remember, the Yankees just went through their own bridge a couple of seasons ago, and look where they wound up. Some more minor league experience and some free agency turnover and all will probably be OK again.

Anyhow, here's why they're toast:

- Way too many injuries to stay afloat. The starting lineup has missed the bulk of the season. Both catchers broke bones. Pedroia's been out over 6 weeks, Ellsbury has only played about 10 games (and just went back on the DL), Youk is lost for the season, Cameron probably should have had surgery in April because now he's lost as well, and Josh Beckett's missed almost 3 months and has been spotty since he came back.

- The Yankees and Rays are just having too many things go their way - and there's only one wildcard spot.

- Too many career minor-leaguers on the big roster.

- Jonathan Papelbon is not a dominant closer anymore. He's just not. He's still effective most of the time, but he's not consistent enough. Most closers aren't Mariano Rivera or Trevor Hoffman. We've gotten 3 dominant seasons out of Pap as a closer, and 2 decent ones. He'll be gone as a free agent at the end of next year, so prepare to have Daniel Bard as your closer next season and Papelbon will be traded.

The reasons they still have a (faint) shot:

- They have quite a few games left against the Rays and Yankees. Win those head-to-head matchups and you make up a lot of ground quickly.

- David Ortiz got back enough of his stroke that he can demolish righthanders again. Good lefties can tie him up, which wasn't the case a few years ago. He may be worth another season or two as a DH, but not at the pay he's slotted for next year. I expect a renegotiation instead of free agency or his option year being picked up.

- Mike Lowell's done his job with class and dignity, they way he has his whole career. And he's filling in admirably for Youk.

- Adrian Beltre may be a one-year rental, but other than his habit of running into outfielders he's been a force for good.

- JD Drew is having a typical season. You barely know he's there, but he's got 16 homers to date, 22 doubles, and is playing solid defense. Also, no time on the DL though he's missed a few games.

- Pitching. Beckett and Dice-K may have been spending time on the DL (and inconsistent when they're back up), and Lackey may be pitching like a number 3 starter (though he's been mainly better the last month or so), but Jon Lester and Clay Buchholz have turned into studs on the roster. Absolute studs. And there's some talent on the young arms, with Josh Bard as the closer of the future.

In other words, I think this team for this year is as good as it's going to get - but I wouldn't be shocked to see them make a run. I expect a lot of roster turnover for 2011, and we'll see what we get for that season. I think next year will see the departures of (at least) Beltre, Wakefield, Okajima, and Varitek to free agency or retirement. I think Ellsbury and Papelbon are both traded away. Thus is the fun of baseball.

Just to reiterate about iPhone 4 and reception

I have not personally had any issues using the iPhone 4 for calls. I also haven't been able to kill phone calls through the left-corner "Grip of Death".

That said, I also haven't gone nuts trying to replicate it, either. I have tried a few times, and if I hold it just so, I can make the displayed bars drop a little. However, why I'm not having problems of my own:

- I use the Apple bumper on it. Bought it the first day before there were any reports of issues. I like the look of it and it protects the phone pretty well. Could be a little tighter, though.

- I typically only hold the phone in my hand to place calls, check voicemail, and use Internet apps. For calling, I pretty much keep it in my pocket - I almost always use a headset (and in the car that's an absolute). So I'm not likely to see a grip-related issue in my daily use.

- AT&T coverage is pretty good on most of the North Shore and has been for the last couple of years. We still have a few dead spots (Manchester, Beverly Farms, the beach in Marblehead), but overall signal is pretty good here. Te antenna issue mainly kicks in when you are in a marginal signal area. That's why the Apple letter on the iPhone 4 last week (annotated brilliantly by Gruber at DF) wasn't a total weasel. They do have a point.

- There were some spots on my old iPhone 3GS that were pretty much guaranteed call-drop zones. Going by Beverly Airport southbound on Route 97 was always a dropped call. Heading down the bypass road into downtown Salem would drop calls as I neared the train station. Driving through the northern part of Rowley on Route 1. Those spots do not drop with the iPhone 4 so far, period. I don't use the phone any differently in the car now than I did before - same handsfree, same mounting bracket (the iPhone in the bumper fits a little looser than the 3GS did in the Griffin Reveal - and by the way, the Griffin Reveal for the iPhone 4 is pure crap). It just works better.

- If Apple announces some kind of repair program or recall, will I participate? Heck yeah. I have a really good phone, and I'm not really having any issues with it - but if Apple makes a change to improve it I'm all aboard.

iPhone 4 - the review

Yes, I got one. On launch day. Fortunately, I have sufficient connections that I was able to avoid a lengthy wait, but it was still a launch day spectacular.

First of all, let me address the biggest question: Yes, there is a potential antenna issue. Here's, as far as I can determine thorough my non-scientific test methodology, the exact circumstances that will reproduce the issue for you:

- You need to be in an area with less than full-power service.
- You should be left-handed.
- Big hands are also a factor.
- The iPhone needs to be held by the bottom edges.
- You should be somewhat sweaty.
- Squeeze the iPhone with a very firm grip.
- Do not use a case or bumper on the phone.

If you do all these things, you will assuredly see a noticeable signal loss. Repeatable, too. However, break any one and your odds go way down of reproducing the issue, and if you use a case, bumper, or even a little bit of Scotch tape at the bottom gap, your odds drop to 0% of causing it. So it is real, there is a potential loss of signal, and it's incredibly easy to mitigate. I always use a case for my phone so it's a non-issue for me.

Now that that's settled, on about the phone. There are a handful of bullet points I'll make. First of all is the speed. Everything's faster on the iPhone 4 - from photo display and scrolling, to webpage rendering, to application launching and switching. Having had iOS 4 running for several weeks on my old iPhone 3Gs before this, I can say that the extra processing horsepower of the A4 plus the extra 256MB of RAM in the iPhone 4 make a significant performance difference. At the same time cellular performance is improved, particularly on network uploads (sending emails is now pretty much instant with the faster uplink) and I also have been able to hold calls through several spots that were formerly dead on the prior iPhones. Big improvement.

The next major feature is the build quality of the device. The iPhone 3 series felt solid in the hand and pretty comfortable to hold. The iPhone 4 feels like a brick - but lighter than the older one at the same time. I mean it's solid. It feels like I could drive nails with it. Remarkable.

As for the screen, it's as good as advertised. Possibly the single biggest improvement in the iPhone overall, and one of the biggest advances so far in any mobile phone I've used. To look at the "Retina Display" and compare it to the iPhone from last year is silly. To compare it to an older phone like a Treo isn't even fair. Type looks like paper. Photos look like film. It's that good.

The last major addition to the new phone is the camera. I haven't used the much-balyhooed FaceTime yet, but I've taken pictures with the new rear camera. The quality is comparable to a last-generation point&shoot camera - which sounds poor until you remember that digital cameras have been pretty darned good for a number of years now. 5MP, with a fast shutter speed and good dynamic range. I was able to take some photos at a grownups party last weekend during the evening in low light that I might not have gotten with my far smarter Canon G9. Video quality is good - roughly on par with low-end HD cameras like the Flip.

In short, the iPhone 4 on paper isn't a major change for the series, but in practice it improves in a lot of places (performance, build, and screen) and it's almost barely recognizable to people who still have an original iPhone. In 3.5 years since the original announcement they've come a real long ways. Unless you're a really big sweaty-palmed lefty with a hatred of cases the new iPhone 4 is full of Win.

One WWDC addition

Oh yeah - Safari 5. Book it. All the goodies in the Webkit nightlies, wrapped up in a pretty bow.

More seriously, there won't be a MacOS release this year, so it's good timing for a standalone Safari release (after all, browsers are the computing experience to a lot of users). Plus Chrome is right now pretty much the canonical WebKit-based browser and has a lot of mind share. WebKit is Apple's baby, and there's no way that'll be allowed to stand. Apple is happy to see WebKit adopted by so many vendors (less chance of IE being required by websites that way and it also helps kill ActiveX), but there's a pride of origin there and Apple also wants to be the "reference implementation" of WebKit.

Hence Safari 5.

For more details, the usual rumor sites have a listing of what's expected to be included in the Safari 5 feature set.

My WWDC prediction post

As you Apple fanbois know, WWDC is this coming week, and it's the only major public conference/event left that El Jobso performs a Stevenote at. No more Apple Expo, no more MacWorld, and all the other appearances he makes are special press events - like the iPad announcement and the OS 4.0 announcement. Real Stevenotes are rare. Apple is focusing tightly on the iPhone OS at this year's WWDC - no major MacOS stuff on tap, and no IT track, either. But, as usual, speculation runs wild. Here's my call on what we're going to see announced for new products and/or goodies:

- iPhone HD/iPhone 4: 100% certain. We know what it looks like, we know most of the technical details, and we know it has a front-facing camera. We can assume it has a variant of the iPad's CPU, and likely has a little more battery life. What we don't know is how much RAM it has and how much storage. I predict either 256MB or (more likely) 512MB, and it will have 32 and 64GB variants. Maybe a 16GB version (or they keep the 3GS and move it downmarket like they did last year with the 3G). It'll be in white and black, and is an incremental improvement with a new form factor after 2 years of the previous version.

- iPhone OS 4.0: Yep, it'll be shipping. I suspect GM is available at WWDC with the handful of surprise features that they were withholding from the betas and just playing with internally. Ship date will be approximately 2 days before the iPhone is available to minimize the hit on activation servers.

- Minor CPU announcements: I'd say about 75% likely. If there are any, it'll probably just be for the Mac Pro and/or Xserve at WWDC. Mac mini updates will be soon thereafter.

- Additional hardware announcements: 25% chance at best. I know folks keep talking about 27" Cinema Displays but that's really a minor thing and not Stevenote-worthy. I think a likelier thing would be a 30" Cinema Display that's been modernized to add an iSight, mini DisplayPort, and a MagSafe connector. But that won't be at WWDC either.

- iPhone OS 4.1: 90% chance. This is a given - they've already preannounced it as coming in the fall for both iPad and iPhone. Now they'll tell us what other bells and whistles are there besides Unity. My prediction: basic printing support and AFP server access. Outside chance of SMB server access.

- Improvements to MobileMe/cloud services in MacOS and iPhone OS: Yep, that's coming. I'm expecting that MobileMe basic (device sync and a few goodies) will be free, and serious storage will be an added cost like the whole service is now. I also think iWork.com gets rolled into it somehow.

- MacOS 10.6.4: Probably this week for release, but not an announcement. It will support a couple of the new things announced Monday.

- MacOS 10.7: 50% chance at best. I think they won't heavily discuss it but may mention it by name and show off something whizzy. But I think next years' WWDC will be all about 10.7 with iPhone bringing up the rear.

Why I don't hate AT&T like so many do

I sent this to Gruber at DF this morning, but I thought it was worthy of converting to a blog post as well. Hence the tone. But otherwise the points here are very useful, and also put into perspective just how much wireless voice and data costs nowadays (thank goodness it's cheaper!)

I own an IT company with 5 employees. Right now, just to take my own requirements, here's what I have today (not counting texting, which should be almost free everywhere but isn't):

- iPhone unlimited voice plan = $70 (they cut that price from $100 a few months back, remember?)
- iPhone data plan = $30
- Verizon data plan with a USB stick and a spare router in my bag = $60 (which I rarely use but I keep as an insurance policy in case I need to work on the road)
- iPad 200MB plan - $15

So right now I'm spending $175 on voice and data, just for what I carry in my bag. I just barely bumped into the limit on the iPad, and I only used 245MB of data on my iPhone in the heaviest month out of the last six. I only use a few hundred MB on Verizon at most per month. Under the new plans, here's what I'll do now:

- iPhone unlimited voice plan = $70
- iPhone 2GB data plan = $25
- Tethering for iPhone = $20
- iPad 250MB plan = $15

So that'll reduce my bill to $130, saving me $45 per month for starters. Plus I can ditch about a pound's worth of gear from my backpack (the Zoom mobile router, charger, and the USB stick), and I get an extra 50MB buffer for my iPad. Even if I need to go to the 2GB plan for my iPad, it's still a net savings of $35. This is so much a no-brainer that it's silly.

Now add to that my wife's iPhone which she mostly uses for email, Facebook updates, and checking weather. Putting her on the $15 data plan is an easy call - she doesn't even come close to consuming that much data outside the house. That saves me another $15 in our personal life.

And changing the plans for my iPhone-using employees? Again, a no-brainer. They haven't bought iPads yet, but I'll still save plenty of money on their accounts as well. All in all, this should save me a couple of thousand dollars per year. Would I like it if AT&T had made the "DataPro" plan 3GB instead of 2GB? Yep, it would be a little closer to what you supposedly get from Verizon and their 5GB cap, but on the other hand it's cheaper. I'm unlikely to blow past 2GB but I'm certain to not go past 3GB. Do I think tethering should be free or at most $10 additional, given how relatively rarely I'll use it? Yep.

But am I happy to have a big monolithic consumer-unfriendly phone company change their rule and plans in such a way that I'll save a lot of money every month? Hell yes I am. Not to mention that a few months ago that unlimited voice plan cost me $100 per month, not the $70 it costs me now. Altogether between just my plans and my wife's, as of next week I'll be saving $120 per month over what I was paying for the same services last fall.

And why again am I supposed to hate AT&T?