This is my “Steve Jobs has resigned” post. It’s a little different.

Here’s the deal. This post was written on 8/24 at 9:08pm PST and will be posted at 1pm PST tomorrow. Right after the stock market closes. I will not edit the content in any way. The reason I’m doing this is to make a prediction.

I predict Apple will do better than the overall stock market tomorrow.

I make that prediction for one reason: I trust Steve Jobs.

The drama lovers want to make this about his health but I really don’t see it. At the beginning of the year I theorized Jobs’ absence was part of a strategy to install his chosen successor and I think this is the pay off to that strategy. The strategy was built on proving Tim Cook was the right man for the job and that he was entirely capable of running Apple. I think this strategy was executed so well that the stock market, a notoriously jumpy community, will not punish Apple at all for Steve Jobs stepping down.

As for Steve Jobs himself I’d only say I’m happy for him.

Again I don’t think this is about health. If he was seriously ill he wouldn’t still be the chairman of the board. The chairman still has to appear in public quite a bit. Bill Gates continued to give speeches on behalf of Microsoft even after stepping down as CEO. I could see Jobs doing the same. Even if he doesn’t there are still public appearances. Think about how many times you’ve seen Al Gore at an Apple event and you start to see what I mean. So Jobs will be around.

But the truth is people get older and their priorities shift.

I’ll give you one example of what I mean by this. I have no doubt Jobs has fun during his various presentations. But it’s also a lot of hard work. It’s a “show” in the same way a theatrical production is which means you have rehearsals, choreography, mic checks, lighting checks, and so on. It isn’t a “jump on stage and speak from the heart” sort of thing.

A 56 year old worth $9 billion dollars is eventually going to come to a point where he doesn’t think it is worth it to go through all that several times a year.

And that at least has a pleasant pay off. Think about things like negotiating contracts with record executives. Or going through financial audits. Or dealing with the press after a scandal. These are all things a CEO has to do and all things that aren’t really worth Jobs’ time anymore.

Then there’s Tim Cook.

You can’t expect a world class talent to stand in your shadow forever. Eventually they’ll want to run their own show. That creates a problem for someone like Steve Jobs. Does he hang around longer and risk losing his best choice for successor. Or does he step down knowing the company will be in good hands. I think we got the answer to that question yesterday.

That’s my final point.

The company is in good hands. Not just Cook but Schiller, Forstall, and all the rest. It’s a world class team and I have no doubt they’ll continue to produce world class products.

Good God this is dumb…

Netflix's current pricing model allows unlimited downloads for $7.99 per month. Netflix saves, with every download, approximately 40 cents that would otherwise be paid to the U.S. Postal Service. If the average customer downloads 10 movies and TV shows a month, Netflix will save $4 a month for each of its 23 million customers.

Obviously these massive transmissions over the Internet are not really free. Someone is paying for them. That "someone" is the millions of broadband subscribers, whether or not they are Netflix customers.

How is that fair?

…

The reality is that Netflix and similar services want a free ride on the networks built with more than $250 billion in design, engineering, manufacturing, construction and maintenance -- a system that now provides broadband services to 95 percent of American households.

Let me establish a few things first…

1.  What the authors think is fair doesn’t really matter to me.  In fact I’d wager it matters very little to anyone. 

2.  What matters is the agreement I have with my ISP.  I trust my ISP has made a deal with me that allows them to make a profit.  If they haven’t that’s their own fault. 

Having said that I pay Verizon for a 25 Mbps (bits not bytes) connection.  That means I’m entitled to run 3.1 Megabytes over that connection per second.  A quick look in my iTunes folder tells me an hour of HD content is about 2 Gigabytes.  So if I’m streaming that content I am, on average, consuming 555 Kilobytes per second. 

As a Netflix user I’m consuming 4.4 Mbps (bits not bytes) of a 25 Mbps connection (or around 18% of my capacity).  Also note I’m not streaming video or even using the Internet 24 hours a day.  U.S. Households average about 5 hours of TV per day.  If I were to watch 5 hours per day on Netflix my average bandwidth consumption would be 10 Gigabytes where as the capacity I’d be entitled to would be 267 Gigabytes (Meaning I use 3.7% of the capacity I’m entitled to)

So how exactly am I costing other Internet users for my massive transmissions? 

More to the point people who get very cheap connections (Verizon offers 1 Mbps for $24 a month) are bandwidth locked so they CAN’T stream HD Video.  So anyone streaming HD video is more than pulling their weight. 

Netflix isn’t getting “a free ride on the networks built with more than $250 billion”.  I am in fact paying their fare and the fare of 3 other people about their same size. 

(For the record the authors work for an organization which is backed by the Cable companies and this is a pretty obvious attempt to justify throttling other video services in favor of those services the cable companies provide)

Larry Dignan of ZDNet has a piece that gets to the heart of the webOS debate.  Basically HP has two choices with Palm’s webOS since they’ve decided not to make webOS devices anymore: Sell the Intellectual Property to someone looking for Patent Protection or License the OS.  He doesn’t see much future in licensing the OS.  To quote his post…

The math doesn’t quite work. HP lost $332 million on corporate investments. That loss basically equates to the Palm unit.

But if HP were to pursue a licensing model it would have to get $5 per device and sell more than 60 million units to break even at the cash burn.

I agree it doesn’t make much sense to HP.  But the point I’d make is it makes even less sense for another hardware manufacturer to make webOS devices. 

HP isn’t going to jump right into licensing.  If they were the only sane thing to do would have been to announce it at today’s conference call and they didn’t.  So even if HP goes the licensing route they’re probably going to debate it internally for  6 months or so.

Now assume HP finds a company that is willing and able to produce a licensed device right away.  It would take that company at least a year to get that device to market (and that would be if they rushed).

So best case scenario it will be 18 months before another webOS device makes it onto store shelves. 

Then we have to look at developers.  webOS developers have been screwed over TWICE in LESS than a YEAR.   Once when Palm almost went out of business and now with HP abandoning webOS.  Larger developers have already bailed (see: Amazon and Adobe who both bailed before their Apps were even finished).  Small developers can’t afford to devote resources to yet another webOS device that may never materialize. 

So having said all that a Palm licensee would have to be a company that…

1.  Is willing to devote considerable resources to a platform that most people think is dead

2.  Is willing to bet Android, Windows and Blackberry’s OS won’t significantly improve by the time they get to market

3.  Is willing to risk their reputation by rushing a device to market (ask Motorola how well that worked out with the Xoom)

4.  Is willing to either (a) accept their platform won’t have developers or (b) pay developers to write programs for the device

No company is ever going to be willing to do all that. 

And don’t look to HTC or Samsung.  Both already have customers committed to the Android platform and both have their own user shells already.  So what lure does webOS really hold for them?  If HTC covers webOS in SenseUI then what advantage does webOS really give them?  Even if Google went crazy and started favoring Motorola for Android updates it would still be easier for HTC or Samsung to fork Android than it would be to start all over with webOS.  Even if they desperately wanted a hedge bet it makes more sense to go with Microsoft (who by necessity is committed to Windows Phone 7 in a way HP could never be). 

So in conclusion webOS is dead.   Undeservedly dead but dead none the less.  Accept it and move on. 

I don’t consider this blog pseudonymous.  My info is in the about page and anyone who e-mails me gets a response using my full name so I’m not really trying to hide anything as much as I’m following the example set by my favorite childhood blog/website (tomshardware  where Tom Pabst always posted simply as “Tom”).

At the same time I  understand why some people choose to be anonymous on the web and I support them in that choice.  Which is more than can be said for Google…

Google responded tonight to the widespread criticism of its controversial Real Names Policy. Some artists, abuse survivors, political activists in repressive countries and their advocates have argued vehemently against Google's requirement that Plus accounts be registered under real names. You could call it a "go by what you are known as in real life (don't worry Lady Gaga)" policy, too.

Tonight the Google Plus team responded to the extensive public conversation. Its decision? Instead of immediately suspending accounts that seem to violate the policy, and then letting users appeal, now Google will send warnings that users have 4 days to comply with the policy before they are suspended. In other words: the policy stays, the enforcement of it will just be slowed down.

Here’s Google’s own video response…

I’ve said this before and it’s even truer here: The Tech Field is dominated by people who, whether they intend to be or not, are elitists.  

People from Upper Middle Class backgrounds or higher who have never had to worry about losing a job.  To most of these people the worst thing that could happen to them economically is having to move in with their parents.  As such they don’t grasp the pressures everyone else has to deal with.  They believe the only reason to use a pseudonym is obstinacy. 

But Lower Middle Class and Poor people have to be cautious about the world.  They can’t go on social networks and say whatever they want because they have jobs they could lose and losing that job could mean ending up on the street.  Pseudonyms allow those people to participate on the web without having to live every day in fear of a co-worker stumbling onto their profile and disagreeing with something they said. 

You can’t claim this doesn’t happen.  The President of Harvard was forced to resign because he suggested, as one of many hypotheses as to why women are under represented in math and science departments, that women might have a lower aptitude than men in the aggregate.    Note he didn’t endorse this hypothesis as something he believes in and he presented scientific research he thought MIGHT support it.  So all he really did was make the audience aware of the claim and as a result he was forced to resign from Harvard AND lost his chance to be Secretary of the Treasury for the Obama administration.

Given that can you really expect an office clerk barely scrapping by at $14 an hour to speak freely on the Internet under his or her real name?  Of course not. 

It’s ludicrous to even suggest.  So whether Google is doing it on purpose or not the end result of their policy is elitism.  Keep the poor down while the rich get to bask in the glow of new technology.