Tech week in review: The disappointing Stevenote

Apple's CEO unleashes a stinker of an iPhone applications plan, while AT&T agrees to spy on you for Hollywood.

Published June 16, 2007 11:00AM (EDT)

A disappointing Stevenote. On Monday, Apple's CEO Steve Jobs took the stage at the company's annual developer conference in San Francisco. Jobs announced a Windows version of the Safari Web browser, which even many Macheads don't like (soon after, security researchers found it was vulnerable to many exploits).

Jobs also offered what he called a "sweet solution" for developers to create programs for the iPhone. The one catch: The apps have to run in Safari, cutting out much innovation (and competition, e.g. Skype). The quote of the week on this, from Mac-blog Daring Fireball: "If all you have to offer is a shit sandwich, just say it. Don't tell us how lucky we are and that it's going to taste delicious."

Ma Bell is keeping you in line. The L.A. Times reported that AT&T, the nation's largest Internet provider, has decided to sidle up to Hollywood and the recording industry, and is now looking for ways to stem piracy on its network. This can lead nowhere good: When AT&T starts examining all the packets that travel over the Internet, Hollywood won't be the only big brother to worry about.

Google won't save searches forever. Under pressure from European privacy regulators, the search engine announced a new plan to anonymize search data after 18 months. Other search engines still won't say how long they'll save your queries.

One more thing... We got new iPhone launch details. Boy Genius Report says all AT&T stores will close around 4:30 p.m. on June 29. They'll reopen at 6 p.m. -- local time zone -- to allow the marauding hordes to finally buy the shiny thing.


By Farhad Manjoo

Farhad Manjoo is a Salon staff writer and the author of True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society.

MORE FROM Farhad Manjoo


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