Sprint CEO Dan Hesse has made it clear that his company needs the iPhone. He recently stated that the number one reason Sprint subscribers switch to another carrier is to gain access to the iPhone. One of the persistent rumors surrounding the launch of the iPhone 5 (or 4S, or whatever it/they are going to be called) is that Sprint would finally be given access to the iPhone.

It seems they are. In a big, big way.

The Wall Street Journal broke the news earlier that Sprint is spending $20 billion on iPhones over the next couple of years, which buys around 30 million phones. Upping the ante, Boy Genius Report is saying that this is an exclusive deal with Sprint for the iPhone 5, and that AT&T and Verizon are locked out until early 2012.

I’m calling shenanigans on that. No way in hell is Apple going back to exclusive relationships with any carrier. They don’t need to. Sprint is desperate for the iPhone (so is T-Mobile, but that’s another story). Considering how many iPhones Apple sells, 30 million of them over a couple of years really isn’t that many. Certainly we don’t need any ridiculous explanation about exclusivity to explain this purchase.

Ah, the smell of iPhone rumors in the morning.

Tomorrow all will be revealed.

I don’t go crazy over Facebook. It’s a cool place to post pictures and catch up with what a lot of people are doing in a convenient, simple interface, but it also has a lot of crap I can’t stand. The messaging system is just about the worst ever, and don’t even get me started on the games. I have a lot of respect for what Facebook is and does, but I don’t love it.

This, however, is pretty cool. Facebook is about to roll out Timeline, a way of organizing the history of your entire life. Some might find this kind of scary, but I see it as the almost inevitable evolution of where Facebook has to go.

Check out the video preview below to get an idea of how it works.

It’s amusing to watch the collective jeans-creaming of certain segments of the tech press over the unveiling of Windows 8 on tablets. You can read some of these reviews here, here, here, here, and here. (Google for more; there are tons.)

Let me state this right up front: I’m impressed by a lot of what I’m seeing with Windows 8 on a tablet. The press reactions are amusing not because I don’t like the Metro interface. I applaud Microsoft for coming up with something unique and about as different from Apple’s iOS UI as you can get. I played with a Windows Phone 7 a while back and thought it was a fun and interesting design. I had absolutely no desire to buy the phone, mind you — I’m quite happy with my iPhone 4. But I still liked it better than any Android phone I’ve used.

I find it amusing because of these kinds of quotes:

“Watch out, Apple: Windows 8 could trump the iPad.”

“Hello, Windows 8? This is iPad. You win.”

“But if Windows 8 is nearly as good as the demos look, Microsoft could very well win the mobile wars.”

“Apple would love a post-PC era, of course, since personal computers no longer represent the bulk of the company’s revenue, but Microsoft is showing us that there is a better way. And that better way, as it turns out, is a PC.”

So this thing’s a year at least from coming out, but the war/race/pick-your-metaphor is already over? Please. Hyperbole, thy name is Zach Epstein.

While I do like the interface in general, Microsoft is going to face a lot of trouble in the tablet space. Here’s a quote from Paul Thurott that’s indicative of the headwind Microsoft is facing (thought Thurott didn’t mean it this way): “If you’re a Windows Phone user, you already ‘get’ Windows 8; it works, looks, and feels almost exactly like your smart phone.”

See the problem? “It’s just like Windows Phone,” but no one is buying Windows Phone. It’s been losing market share every day since it’s been on sale. Consumers, by and large, have resoundingly rejected it. So why would they want what seems to the be same thing (yes, I know the tablet/desktop OS is more robust, but to an average end user it will look identical) on a tablet? There’s already a built-in negative bias in the public’s perception of this product.

Maybe it won’t make a difference in the tablet and desktop space. Maybe Windows Phone 7 will finally gain some traction when Nokia starts to ship WP7 products. But maybe not. Maybe Windows 8 will simply be an upgrade path for desktop and laptop users but fail in the tablet marketplace (and “fail” can be defined a lot of ways, but let’s say “not live up to expectations,” or “not outsell the iPad”).

John Gruber makes an interesting point about Microsoft’s strategy of unveiling this now, more than a year before it will actually go on sale to end users. He contrasts this with Apple’s obsession with secrecy and not showing off anything or allowing demos until the product is ready to ship.

Think about how different Apple’s and Microsoft’s approaches are. Apple unveiled the iPad to the public only when it was a completely finished product, two months before it hit stores. The demo units we in the press had access to that day were exactly like the mass-produced iPads that shipped to customers two months later. Can you imagine Apple doing with the iPad what Microsoft is doing with Windows 8? Say, showing a prototype iPad at WWDC in June 2009, running on MacBook Pro-caliber Intel hardware? Letting the public and the press play with the OS in half-finished alpha state on prototype hardware? Impossible even to imagine.

But here’s the thing: I don’t think Microsoft has a choice. Even if it wanted to do an Apple-style hold-it-until-it’s-going-to-ship strategy, they simply can’t afford to wait. They are already at the bottom of the heap in the tablet space, with absolutely nothing of significance in the market. They have to drum up excitement now, otherwise the tech press, not to mention their shareholders, will beat them into the dirt for not having a competitive offering. Microsoft simply doesn’t have a choice. It has to show something, even if it’s half-baked and running on ridiculous laptop-spec hardware.

Gruber even points this out when he says, “Windows 8 developers are certainly going to be much more prepared for these tablets than iOS developers were for the iPad, for one thing. From what I can tell on Twitter, Windows developers and writers are delighted by this early access.” And right there is the why of this unveiling.

Here are some things I want to know about Windows 8 tablets:

How many flavors will this come in? Will there be x86 versions (with fans! Fans!), along with Atom and/or ARM processors? Just how much will these things cost? Will they be able to come in anywhere near the price of an iPad? How will the Metro UI translate back to desktop systems with a mouse and keyboard?

I’m interested to see where this goes. I’m an unabashed Apple fan, but I’m certainly not scared by this, or think it’s going to “trump” the iPad or “win” the mobile wars. Remember, these won’t hit the shelves until closer to the end of 2012. By then we’ll have an iPad 3 and the Internet will be awash in hot and juicy rumors about the iPad 4.

I think competition is a good thing. There’s room for more than one tablet, but right now the pressure is on everyone other than Apple to make something, anything, that engages the public. Otherwise it’s going to be the iPod all over again, with a market that Apple completely owns for a decade or more.

The problem is that these pundits are comparing a future Windows tablet with an existing, shipping iPad. There could be 50 to 70 million iPads in the wild before the first Windows 8 tablet ships. That’s a steep hill to climb. I can certainly see Windows 8 tablets being used in the enterprise space for companies with baked-in Windows environments, but it’s far, far too early to make any calls on how well this will do against Apple in the consumer space. Just ask Samsung, or Motorola, or HP, or RIM, or any other tablet maker who’s claimed to have an “iPad killer” just around the corner. Maybe it’s better to keep your mouth shut and let your finished, complete product speak for itself.

So true!

(If you’re not reading xkcd all of the time, well … okay, there is no “well.” You need to read this! All. The. Time.)

As I’ve said previously, I really enjoy reading books on my iPad. The iPad is about the size of a hardcover book without all of a hardcover’s unwieldiness, like figuring out how to prop it open if you’re reading while eating, etc. I not only don’t mind the backlit LCD for reading, I prefer it. I’ve tried a Kindle and simply don’t like e-ink. I don’t think it replicates a printed page well at all, and the page turning is simply a fiasco compared to the iPad’s elegant (some would say gimmicky) solution.

However, the iPad is not very good if you want to lend a book to someone else. There is no borrowing feature like there is on the Barnes & Noble Nook. So there are times when I know I’ll want others to read a book that I still buy a hardcover or paperback.

Case in point, I just bought the latest Sookie Stackhouse novel, Dead Reckoning. I picked up the hardback so my wife could read it when I’m done since we both enjoy the series. Mind you, this was after reading several thousand pages of novels on the iPad. It’s the first “physical” book I’ve read in a while.

Imagine my chagrin when I found my finger moving to touch a word I didn’t recognize. You see, in the iPad (and other ereader devices) you can choose a word you don’t understand and have a dictionary definition appear. I use the feature all the time. I read some of Mike Carey’s Felix Castor novels on the iPad and there’s a lot of British slang and terminology I didn’t understand — the inline dictionary cleared up any confusion. And it’s a hell of a lot easier than keeping a physical dictionary at your side to look up strange words (a habit I used to have that’s largely fallen by the wayside).

When I realized what I was trying to do with the Sookie book, I got annoyed, knowing that an easy dictionary lookup wasn’t possible.

Sure, the iPad sucks for outdoor reading (forget about it at a beach or pool). A physical book or magazine or an e-ink reader cleans up in that scenario. But more and more I’m finding I prefer ebook reading to the “real” thing. When I first got the iPad I thought ebook reading would be a supplement to my “regular” reading of books. But that’s not turning out to be the case.

I was in high school when the shuttle was launched for the first time. One of my teachers rolled a television into our classroom so we could watch, and I remember fighting really hard to hold back tears of awe and wonder at what I was watching unfold — the beginning of a new age of space exploration.

That age is coming to an end. The coming flight of the Shuttle Endeavor is the penultimate flight of this aging fleet of space trucks.

So what’s next? Charlie Stross has a nice write-up on the recent successes of the SpaceX team, and what that means to the future of space flight.

Enjoy the photo below, courtesy of Astronomy Picture of the Day.

A thing of beauty. Courtesy of Astronomy Picture of the Day.

Click on the photo for a larger version.

My Flipboard cover page

My Flipboard cover page

If you have an iPad and don’t have Flipboard, stop whatever you’re doing and get it right now. It’s one of the best ways to showcase exactly how the larger screen of an iPad makes it fundamentally different from an iPhone, and what can be done with a cleverly designed interface.

Just load Facebook on it and tell me this isn’t the way Facebook is supposed to be. It’s so superior to the original Facebook UI it’s almost shameful. Flipboard takes Facebook, Twitter, and whatever other websites or social feeds you want, and transforms the mode of interaction into a magazine-style flipping interface. It’s one of those things you have to experience to get, but once you do … wow.

Flipboard is [insert whatever the latest buzzword is for awesomely spectacularly cool].

Flipboard’s CEO, Mike McCue, recently sat down with Business Insider to talk about his company and the current state of tablets:

We are focused on the iPad. We have so much work to do just on the product for the iPad. We don’t have time to think about any other platform, let alone another tablet. That’s been our model, to continually enhance the product we have on the iPad. We’re going to continue to do that for a while until we feel like another platform makes sense. Then we’ll have to look and see what other platform has the critical mass and volume and capability supporting what we want to do.

He doesn’t see Android tablets catching up to the iPad anytime soon. Considering the lackluster sales of the Motorola Xoom — technically the best competition the iPad’s had so far — it’s pretty easy to come down on his side of the fence.

Read the full interview here.

Maybe, maybe not.

Stephen Elop, recent president of Microsoft’s Business Division who in September became CEO of Nokia, claimed on Sunday that he “is not a Trojan Horse,” sent by Microsoft to take over Nokia and steer the ailing company into Microsoft’s waiting arms so that MS would have a pre-built outlet for its own flagging Windows Phone 7 OS product.

The entire management team and board of Nokia were engaged throughout the decision process and they were in agreement with the decision to go with Windows Phone, he said.

The more interesting bit of information to come out of this interview session was the fact that Nokia had apparently created a bidding war between Microsoft and Google, with Microsoft winning.

He referred to a slide that Nokia displayed last week that showed marketing and other investments flowing from Microsoft to Nokia as part of the deal. While speculation has had that number in the millions or tens of millions, it’s more than that, he said. “In fact the value transferred to Nokia is measured in Bs not Ms,” he said.

So Microsoft is apparently paying “billions” to Nokia for them to use WP7 as their smartphone OS. It will be interesting to see in future financials if Microsoft will actually ever make money on WP7, or whether it will be a giant money hole like so many of their other ventures have been over the past decade.

It could also be that Elop exaggerated the amount of money Microsoft was paying them in an effort to shore up the punishment the market inflicted on Nokia stock after the announcement. Time will tell.

Nokia abandons it’s in-house operating system, Symbian, in favor of Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7, basically swapping out the smartphone OS with the world’s biggest market share for one with the smallest.

Almost no one thinks this is a good idea. Nokia’s immediate stock slide shows that the market doesn’t think this is a good idea either.

From Tomi Ahonen’s (former Nokia executive) Communities Dominate Brand site:

I think this is a disastrous decision for Nokia, and a brillaint win for Microsoft (congratulations!). Nokia has now sold its future, and is destined to the role of box-mover in slim margin business like Dell in personal computers giving Microsoft the huge reach it wanted to replicate its massively profitable OS strategy it did in PCs but had been unable to do in mobile phones. The obvious winner is Samsung, they now inherit the title of biggest handset maker who also makes their own OS (congrats to Samsung, they must be cheering loudly).

And another succinct comment:

I said on this blog a few days ago, that a change away from MeeGo and Symbian would be a decision by a psycopath, and I said it in jest because I could not see it happening. I am certain this move by Nokia will be seen as one of the classic biggest blunders in technology history (for Nokia) and definitely one of the all-time greatest heists and triumphs by Microsoft.

Microsoft is definitely the big winner here. They’ve bought the market share they needed to keep WP7 viable, at least for a few years. The interesting thing will be to see how many current Nokia “dumb” phone owners migrate to Nokia smartphones with WP7, or move to something else, like iOS, Android, WebOS, or RIM.

I personally can’t think of any recent merger/partnership that so heavily favored one organization over the other. I’m stunned that Nokia’s board allowed this, and I’m really wondering if Stephen Elop (the new CEO of Nokia who was hired away from Microsoft) was installed at Nokia in part to make this happen.