Another day, another bonkers comment by RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis. In a Guardian article, it’s stated that he told reporters:

publishers want to be in control of their destiny, their business, their content. I don’t think they are willing to be hijacked in the way the music industry was before.

This is of course at once a barbed attack at Apple and sucking up to Adobe, whose software can be used to develop apps for the PlayBook, which, at the last count, supported approximately 53 billion SDKs, including “shit created for the VIC-20”.

But let’s back up a bit: Apple “hijacked in the way the music industry was before”. Presumably, Lazaridis is critical in what Apple did to become so dominant in music industry sales. And, presumably, that’s bad for the industry and consumers, right? After all, Apple:

• Created a system that enabled users to buy with ease, convincing some people to part with cash rather than downloading illegally;
• Fought hard for DRM-free audio, and eventually won that particular war, killing dead the ridiculous lock-in digital music files once had;
• Enforced price-points that kept music purchases affordable, but still left room for artists to profit;
• Made it easier for people to cherry-pick single tracks rather than be forced to buy an entire album for a few good bits;
• Ensured that the music industry carried on making money.

THOSE CUPERTINO BASTARDS! How dare they make digital music popular and become dominant by offering a user-friendly solution, also raising the profile of online music in general, to the benefit of the competition and the entire industry as a whole!

Man, sometimes I wish someone would hijack Lazaridis’s mouth. At least then something that makes sense might come out of it.

Nearly a year ago, I opined on TechRadar that Apple declares that the mouse is dead. As soon as I saw Apple’s Magic Trackpad, it was clear to me that while Apple had popularised the mouse, it now believed the time had come to bin it:

iOS has taught Apple that the general public responds extremely well to gesture-based computing, and while Apple trackpads still force a level of abstraction that a touchscreen device does not (controlling something by touching in one place while seeing it elsewhere, rather than direct interaction with content), they nonetheless enable users access to intuitive multitouch gestures that are becoming increasingly commonplace.

It’s unlikely that we’ll suddenly see iOS apps appearing on an iMac anytime soon, or a fully touch-based Mac (hello, RSI!); but what we will see is Apple increasingly working multitouch lessons learned on iOS into Mac OS X, and consumers happily moving between Mac OS X and iOS without a second thought.

And although Magic Trackpad is a standalone accessory today, don’t be surprised if it’s suddenly bundled with new desktop Macs in 2011, consigning the suddenly limited-in-scope Magic Mouse and other Apple mice to history.

Although I was bang-on about Mac OS X (what with all the gestural stuff being added to Lion), I apparently got my timing wrong regarding the trackpad, given that it’s not yet bundled with new desktop Macs; but it’s nonetheless interesting to see Apple’s BTO page today for the new iMacs.

The trackpad hasn’t yet usurped the mouse, nor is it even the default option, but it is now a straight switch, with no premium price. To that end, I think I was simply a year out—next year, Apple will swap the default, so you’ll get a trackpad in the box, but a BTO option of a mouse. And not long after that, an Apple-branded mouse will cease to be an option at all.

Hat-tip to Craig A. Hunter, who posted the following image to his blog.

Sadly for RIM, when Amateur Hour was over, all they had to show for it was the PlayBook! *

OHO!

* which should not be compared to a ham

Apple has issued a Q&A on location data. Looks like Alex Levinson was largely right, and that Marco Arment (who I concurred with), who said the data retention was a bug, was also right.

The major take-homes, if you don’t want to read through Apple’s piece:

• Apple’s not tracking you, you paranoid crazy person.
• Apple’s in fact ‘crowdsourcing’ a database of Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers, to make your iOS devices more rapidly and accurately calculate their locations when they need to.
• The data doesn’t include your actual location itself, but may include locations up to 100 miles from your device. (This may be a minor problem if your property is, say, a small country, but otherwise you can stop panicking now.)
• A software update due in a few weeks will reduce the cache from a year’s worth of data to a week’s worth, delete the cache entirely if you turn off location services, and cease to back-up the cache.

Compared to the Sony PSN disaster (where even credit card details “may” have been stolen), the Apple story’s looking rather damp-squibbish now. What will be interesting is to see how Apple’s rivals in the smartphone space respond, seeing as some of them also track and retain location and other data.

The Loop reports:

The white iPhone 4 has been promised by Apple for almost a year — today it officially arrived.

It’s like the iPhone 4, but in white! And it’s, apparently, “beautiful”!

The white iPhone 4 has finally arrived and it’s beautiful. We appreciate everyone who has waited patiently while we’ve worked to get every detail right

said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, neglecting to mention why the hell a colour variation has taken almost a year to get to market.

And, man, with the iPhone 5 not showing up and being delayed until September or later, we needed something to distract everyone in the meantime. MWAHAHAHAHA

he didn’t go on to say, under his breath, while he thought no-one was listening.