Like every other publication with a digital mouth, the BBC reports that Mark Papermaster has left Apple. He was largely responsible for various aspects of the iPhone 4 and so, of course, everyone’s now speculating that Jobs fired him for the antenna disaster (you know, the one where the iPhone 4 actually has a superior signal to the 3GS, unless you hold it in a very specific way, whereupon reception can sometimes drop somewhat—DISASTER!).

The reason I cite the BBC report is because it’s typical of the copy-and-paste reporting on subjects such as this. The assumption is Papermaster was canned due to iPhone 4 issues; the report calls the iPhone 4 “troubled” (the biggest ‘trouble’ with the device is that Apple can’t make the damn things fast enough, so finding one available to buy isn’t easy); it notes Consumer Reports saying it won’t recommend the iPhone 4, but omits the publication’s hypocrisy on recommending other devices with the exact same ‘issue’.

The WSJ, naturally, digs a little deeper, claiming that the departure was “driven by a broader cultural incompatibility” and that Papermaster had “lost the confidence of Mr. Jobs months ago and hasn’t been part of the decision-making process for some time”. It also claims it was Jobs, not Papermaster, who made the final decision to press ahead with the external antenna, even once Apple was aware of the ‘risks’ associated with that design.

Regardless of the truth behind Papermaster’s exit, anyone not clamouring to write iPhone 4 link-bait can and probably should make the following predictions regarding where things go from here:

1. The Papermaster story will continue to bubble around the tech and mainstream press, in cut-and-paste fashion;
2. The press will continue to refer to the iPhone 4 like some kind of poo on a shoe, repeatedly rattling on about all its problems and how this could spell disaster for Apple;
3. The general public won’t care and the iPhone 4 will continue to fly off the shelves (real and virtual) as fast as Apple can make them.

Clearly I’m a bit of a traditionalist, because I always think it’s a great idea when publications hire people to write for them because they have knowledge of what they’re writing about, or because they can research things properly, rather than because they can write an entire sentence without USING ALL-CAPS LIKE SOME KIND OF CRAZY PERSON.

So, well done, The Observer, for unleashing Richard Rogers on a bizarre anti-Apple piece Apple’s self-inflicted bruises take the shine off its untouchable brand. Among various slices of fried bullshit, Rogers unleashes this little gem: “… there is growing resistance to the ‘closed shop’ nature of its products, the ‘Mac monopoly’ that means users must buy their music through iTunes.”

This comes as a massive shock to me, being a writer for various Mac, iOS and tech publications. I was under the impression that iPods of all kinds have always supported MP3, and that with modern music stores largely eschewing proprietary DRM, you can pretty much buy music from anywhere. Clearly, the albums I’ve bought from Amazon and Play that are now sitting on my “closed shop” iPhone (Rogers’s term, not mine) are figments of my imagination.

Ian Betteridge asks if a paper would run “BMWs are highly-rated cars, but you have to purchase all your tyres through BMW,” and concludes: “But you wouldn’t actually get the chance to write that in a motoring section, because motoring is a ‘specialist’ bit, while technology, apparently, is thought of by The Observer as ‘something which we can get any freelancer capable of stringing two words together without making the sub-editors grumble to do’.”

I think it’s great that technology is becoming more usable and mainstream. I think it’s great that pretty much anyone can pick up an iPhone and use it, without first spending hours perusing manuals. What isn’t great is when editors of national newspapers then extrapolate such trends and decide that, hey, we’re only writing about Apple stuff, and everyone knows about that, right? Especially when the ‘playwright, poet and freelance journalist’ hired clearly can’t be bothered to do research beyond looking at other dumbass websites spreading disinformation.

Amazon’s released a new Kindle. The low-end model costs just £109, and, of course, is backed by the gargantuan-yet-still-growing Kindle store. It’s going to kick some serious bottom.

Nigel Whitfield today asks: How much is Kindle? A year of eBooks from Waterstones. Astonishingly, in the face of some massive competition from the USA, British chain Waterstones is now charging more for a few dozen ebooks that Whitfield bought over the past year than when he originally bought them. The net result: it would be cheaper to buy a Kindle and all the books than to just buy the books from Waterstones.

In the print market, I had—and indeed have—big problems with Amazon. Its margins are so low that no-one else can compete. Small publishers have been driven out of business by Amazon only buying a few books at a time (sent by the publisher to the online giant) and then selling them at a ridiculous discount, leaving mere pennies per copy in profit for the publisher.

This is bad.

However, in the world of digital, it beggars belief that every British chain isn’t doing what the supermarkets do and at least comparing costs. It’ll be interesting to see how the likes of Play fares if it seriously enters the ebooks market, since that company at least has the gumption to mess about with its audio download pricing structure. Everyone else: take note. In the internet world, people have little loyalty to companies—they care about price. In the digital media world, this happens even more so, and sellers have fewer excuses regarding competing on pricing.

Plenty of sites, including iLounge, are reporting (based, as usual, on no confirmed facts whatsoever) that 2011 will see an iPad mini. Frankly, I think this is bullshit, and if it does come to pass, something is badly wrong at Apple. Here’s why:

An iPad mini already exists: it’s called the iPod touch

If you want everything that’s great about the iPad but in a smaller form factor, buy an iPod touch. It really is that simple.

Complicating product lines confuses consumers

Right now, people are all “I want an iPad”. All they need to do is decide if they want 3G and then pick a storage size. Add screen sizes to the mix and you magnify existing ‘worry’ on purchase—adding “What if I buy the wrong screen?” to “What if I need 3G in the future?” and “What if I need more storage?”—and this could ultimately cost sales. People dislike making a bad and costly mistake; many will instead hang on to their money.

Complicating product lines is expensive

Apple’s pretty cunning when it comes to materials. Off-cuts from MacBook Pros become Apple keyboards, for example. With mobile goods, Apple has shared components between the iPhone and iPod touch. Importantly, though, it’s of late had fewer units to deal with than during the bad times of the mid-1990s. Fewer units means less design work, more focus, lower tooling costs, and simpler marketing. Throw more types of iPad into the mix and costs go up everywhere.

Complicating product lines is what everyone else does

Part of the success of the iPhone is down to the lack of options. Elsewhere, product lines are fragmented and individual units from a manufacturer find it harder to stand out. More iPads would dilute iPad as a brand, and it’ll just make everyone bitch about the fact there isn’t a 12-inch one, one with a USB port, or one made of unicorns. Sticking with one main design and saying “This is the iPad—deal with it” is a better direction.

Developers will go nuts

Developers already have to cater for the iPhone, the iPhone with Retina Display and the iPad. Adding another screen resolution would probably cause many of them to lose it entirely and march on Cupertino armed with sharpened iPod shuffles, aiming to put some really nasty scratches down the side of Steve Jobs’s car.

There’s just no need

How many people are sitting there with an iPad going: “You know? I really wish this thing was very slightly smaller?” Seriously. The iPad’s form factor is fine. The screen is big enough to differentiate it from the iPod touch, and it enables apps to become more advanced than those found on other iOS devices. The unit’s perhaps a little heavy, but a 7-inch iPad wouldn’t be much lighter. It would, however, have less room for a battery, meaning its most important feature—long battery life—would lag substantially behind the existing model.

So I’m calling bullshit on this rumour, and if I’m wrong within the next year, I’m going to wear my ‘concerned face’ about the direction Apple’s heading in. Apple’s ethos is keeping it simple, and we don’t need an iPad mini.

Since I first bought an iPhone 3G and started downloading games for it, I’ve been of the opinion that iOS is the greatest gaming platform I’ve experienced. Having grown up during the 1980s, videogaming for me is at its most exciting when it’s about fun and novelty. Due to low barriers to entry for developers and low-risk for consumers (through iOS games costing way less than those for other platforms), iOS utterly succeeds in providing a gaming environment totally at odds with the mundane, pedestrian, focus-grouped-to-death output that plagues most other platforms.

Apple makes it hard to love sometimes, though. It’s too easy to lose (or be forced to lose) game progress, and Apple’s now decided to drop Game Center support from the second-generation iPod touch and iPhone 3G. I think that decision beggars belief, and it could have grave consequences for developer uptake and iOS grabbing more marketshare at the expense of Nintendo and Sony.

More on this in my TechRadar piece Game Center for iOS bombshell shows Apple still doesn’t get gaming.