JADCR - Just Another DODOCase Review

If you're a devoted follower of iPad accessories, there's been a lot of attention directed at the DODOCase that you're probably aware of. The case itself consists of a bamboo tray that the iPad sits in, and is married to a black hardcover book cover, wrapped in faux leather. The iPad is held in the tray by rubber pads on the corners that make the device sit in the tray in a very snug manner.

The cover is held closed by a black elastic that makes the entire case look like a resemble a Moleskine notebook. The case has a solid feel that and there are no noticeable blemishes or indications of the case being a mass-produced accessory.

Now, I've never owned a Moleskine notebook but I know of the high quality of the world-renowned notebooks. The Moleskines have a reputation of being artisan's notebook with attention to quality that precedes the notebooks themselves. The folks that manufacture the DODOCase, though unaffiliated with Moleskine, have produced a product that would probably do the folks at Moleskine proud.

If you don't know the DODOCase story, the production process of the case utilizes traditional book-binding techniques to produce the case exterior. DODOCase hired a San Francisco-based book binder to oversee the cover production process and each cover is hand-pressed and glued. There are even videos posted by DODOCase that show how the cover is produced. While I won't re-tell the story of how the company came to be, and the craftsmanship that goes into each case, it's part of the lore that draws customers to the case, and is one of the main reasons that has resulted in $1 million in revenue for the company since the case was available in April. It's a great success story that is part-marketing savvy, part fortuitous timing, and the benefactor of some glowing reviews by social media celebrities and internet stars, such as Kevin Rose.

When I initially read up about the DODOCase, the wait times for the case were in the 3-week range. That, in itself, was probably a good indicator of how good the case was. The long wait time wasn't due to a long production process, but due to the overnight success of the case, and DODOCase not quite prepared for the onslaught of orders. As the days ticked by, DODOCase updated its followers on a daily basis via Facebook and Twitter which orders had been shipped. And as each day went by, the production time decreased, and I only ended up waiting about a week for my order to be shipped.

When I opened the package, I was somewhat concerned that there was no interior packaging inside of the box that the case was shipped in. While the fit of the box to the case was pretty close, it didn't snuggly fit the box so there was some space for the case to shift inside the box.

I inspected the case, and it was a thing of beauty. It had quality all written all over it. The seams inside the book cover were clean with no peeling or lift. The cover itself had a bit of a warp to it as it was sitting in the Texas heat for a few hours. I carefully curled the cover opposite the warp for just under a minute and that cured the warping.

The inside material is a deep red, laminate paper-based material that has a nice finish, and the bookplate is a nice touch. While the bookplate doesn't have the uniqueness as the initial, hand-signed batch of 1,000 cases, the inclusion of the bookplate adds to the human-ness of the case. This isn't a mass-produced case assembled by faceless machines overseas. These are made in the U.S.A., hand-produced, hand-assembled.

The bamboo tray had a smooth finish, especially around the rounded corners where the tray was cut away except for some roughness on the side closest to the spine of the book, and I was concerned about the roughness of certain parts of the bamboo and it possibly being susceptible to cracking. Some customers had reported that their DODOCase trays had broken apart, though it's unknown what usage or handling may have occurred to cause the damage to the tray. I ended up applying a coat of clear nail polish in areas of the bamboo laminate strips where the bamboo grain was exposed.

The rubber tabs glued into each corner of the tray do a very good job of keeping the iPad in place. Even when the case is held face-down, the iPad didn't budge from the tray. There were some reports from customers that the tabs were coming apart from the tray or had lost their ability to keep the iPad snug. Again, I'm not sure if the customers were continuously placing and removing the device from the DODOCase.

On the DODOCase website, there are various videos that show off the uses and flexibility of the book cover as well as the production process. There is one video that shows case as a stand in both a vertical and horizontal manner, not unlike how the Apple iPad case can be used. While I have used the case in that manner, I noticed rough seams appear on the outside of the cover joints along the spine of the case. I'm not sure if the seams were there before but I plan on monitoring any additional wear in that area of the case as time goes on.

All in all, the construction and craftsmanship put into this case is worthy of the $59.95 price tag. There are other companies that produce cases that resemble the characteristics of a Moleskine book, one of them also utilizes bamboo for the tray, while the other uses birch to construct the tray, but none have had the social media exposure that DODOCase has had.

This case exudes style, street cred, high-craftsmanship, and even a bit of creativity, and is definitely worth the week-long wait. Since I had ordered my DODOCase, the company has expanded beyond it's sole color option of a red interior and is available in 11 different colors. I've found the case is ultimately as valuable as the device itself to where I've taken extra care in preserving the exterior and the tray of the case.

The Hype of the Headline

I came across an article on the Washington Post website that had a headline that caught my eye. It read, "Apple's iPad security breach reveals vulnerability of mobile devices".

In it, it talks about the many vulnerability problems that are inherent within mobile devices and the history of security incidents with the Mobile Safari app and other security issues with iPhone OS.

This article is all over the place, making up a headline with lies (what else would you call a statement that wasn't true), just to use the word iPad to get eyeballs.

Let's start with what's wrong:

1. The Headline - The Apple iPad security itself was not breached. Plain and simple the issue had to do with page on AT&T's website that was of poor technical design that allowed information to be exposed without verification of the authenticity of the user. There was no form of security on the page where the user had to verify they were an iPad 3G user or if their e-mail address was in AT&T's database of users. The issue wouldn't be a problem for iPad users who did not own the 3G version. If the issue was the iPad OS or the iPad itself, why did AT&T have to fix their website? While the author of the article did state that the flaw was not in the iPad, but in AT&T's website, the headline is wrong and leads the reader to the wrong conclusion. I'll bring this point up again several times.



2. Use of wireless security experts - As mentioned above, the incident had nothing to do with wireless security. It has to do with website application security. Whoever wrote this application on AT&T's website allowed the data to be exposed. Wireless or not, this information is in AT&T's databases, and this web application allowed it to be exposed.



3. Point the fingers in the right direction - In the article, Apple is faulted for not keeping this PII secure. Um, Apple wasn't storing it. AT&T was storing it. How is that Apple's fault? It's articles like this that place blame where it does not belong, and makes it Apple's problem for data that wasn't secured by a wireless provider? I would love the author, who has no visible qualifications in the technology world, other than being a technology reporter on the financial staff of the Washington Post, explain to me how this makes sense.



4. Talk about the right subject matter - Mobile security flaws? Again, not relevant in this incident. No data was intercepted during the transmission between mobile device to AT&T. No exploit was used on the device itself to expose this flaw on AT&T's website. So how is mobile security relevant in this incident?



5. Cyber threat? Really? - How is this a cyber threat? Is it a cyber threat because the names exposed were of high authority? I've seen exploits that did much worse but they were not cyber threats investigated by the FBI. Okay, this is actually part of the story, and is relevant...somewhat. But the FBI deeming this a cyber threat is hyperbole.



6. iPhone OS security history - Again, how is this relevant? The story shouldn't be about Apple. The story should be about how AT&T didn't secure its web application. Apple is being dragged into this as a bystander because it generates eyeballs to the story and the website.



7. Giving Goatse too much credit - Goatse is a white-hat "security group", but credible security groups do not reveal this information to media without notifying the offending party, which they didn't do. The author fails to mention that Escher Auernheimer of Goatse Security failed to disclose this information to AT&T nor Apple before revealing it to the media. How does a "professional" organization act in such a manner? Simply put, they get paid to keep their mouths shut. They have paying clients, and they probably keep their security flaws close to the chest, but since neither AT&T nor Apple are paying clients of Goatse, that just simply means they feel like they have no moral or ethical obligation to keep this information private. Since they're not much more than hired guns, what is to prevent them from being hired by an AT&T or Apple competitor to analyze AT&T's website for flaws as a means of generating bad PR for either company. The only way they're "security experts" is if they have credibility, and by the unprofessional way they handled this incident, they have no credibility with me. This is not an AT&T cover-up...no one committed a felony, other than possibly Goatse.

This article is entertainment, because I'm left laughing at it's in accuracies.

Some Perspective

We have heard all the developers whine about this. Let's get some perspective on this antirust broo-haha...according to former U.S. Labor Secretary, Robert Reich.

Yeah, Apple is the evil empire...and Goldman Sachs does.....what? What type of innovation does Goldman Sachs bring to the table? Outside of a monetary fashion for their shareholders, how are they making people's lives better? I understand capitalism, and capitalism is not about doing the right thing or morals...it's about accumulating capital. The only bearers of the moral limits are the CEOs and they seem to be okay with the idea of living off of the misfortunes of others.

So let's go back to Apple. They're restricting apps to THEIR OWN PLATFORM based on the quality of apps and code created by 3rd party cross-compilers. THEIR PLATFORM. I'll say it again...IT'S THEIR PLATFORM. If people don't like the way they do business, it's a free market with many alternatives.

Quit whining Adobe. As if you had nothing to do with all these antitrust investigation rumors.

1 *MILLION* iPads...and callin' someone out for their (lack of) clairvoyance...

I just wanted to further highlight that Apple sold 1,000,000 iPads in the first 28 days of its availability. 1 million. Can you imagine selling a million of anything in a month? At that price point?

Also, I'd like to call out Bill Snyder and his article back in January about the iPad.

Bill should stick to writing because he would suck ass as a clairvoyant.

Move on, nothing to see here - More Apple-Adobe rantage

There's been a lot of talk around the intertubes around Apple and antitrust investigation. You can either view Steve Jobs' open letter/rant as the cause of some reports of antitrust scrutiny, or as their side of the story should there be an investigation.

People talk about a monopoly. From the nascent tablet platform, Apple definitely has a monopoly, but mainly because there are no competitive devices in the market. From a smartphone perspective, depending on what metric you choose to believe, Apple, Blackberry, and Android have some type of stranglehold on the marketplace. And even if a monopoly existed, monopolies are not illegal. Abusing the power of a monopoly is, depending on the action.

Apple and Adobe do not compete in this space. The only tools that are they compete on are their photo imaging tools (iPhoto vs. Photoshop Elements, Aperture vs. Lightroom)...one could make the argument that Adobe's Flash designer tools compete with Apple's XCode IDE, not much of a stretch if Adobe were to make that argument.

This is not about Apple using their dominance in the mobile device platform and their decision to not support Flash to purposely do damage to a competitor. If any of the rumors are true, the Feds would be looking at the iPhone SDK developer agreement that forbids the use of code translators, which would include cross-compilers. Flash is not the issue...it's coincidental that we're talking about the Flash platform but we are talking about the same two combatants in that discussion.

Here's where I see a problem with all this antitrust talk. I feel it's much too early to decide if Apple has a monopoly. Monopolies build over time, not overnight. The iPhone was released 3 years ago and only began to make it's dent in the mobile phone arena within the last year and a half. There are plenty of options and technologies in this space. In fact, with Adobe's decision to focus on bringing Flash to the Android, I would find it difficult to believe that Adobe was at all damaged. Can you say CS5 Update 1 to support Android app generation? Frankly, if what some reports suggest is true, Android can take and keep the extra code bloat that will ultimately result. Why would Apple stake it's name on apps that do not perform well on it's platform? Do you know who would take the heat? Not Adobe...not the developers...but Apple.

Apple *could* have worked with Adobe to iron out the code bloat issues, but given Adobe's track record with developer responsiveness on previous incarnations of Photoshop for Mac, and the poor performance of Flash on OS X, I don't think Apple was holding out much hope for any improvements. On top of that, such assistance could be viewed as Apple endorsing Adobe's cross-platform software. There is no feature advantage for Apple's iPhone OS platform if a tool allowed the developer to compile an app for multiple platforms. Is it wrong for Apple to look out for the consumer and for providing the best possible experience? Would we be talking at all about antitrust if Adobe was not involved and if the Apple still included this provision in the SDK license? Why does Adobe allow it's cross-compiler to produce a 3.6 MB app, when the same app can be 800 kb when using the native XCode tools? To me, it's as though Adobe doesn't care about the crap that they put out. Some of the stuff that's out there in thrill ColdFusion product is still sloppy. Why is it that they still cannot develop a decent IDE that isn't wrapped around one of the worst development environments? It's as though they have no concept of what a polished product should look like or behave.

Here's my hope of what will come out of this: the DOJ or FTC will investigate this, tell Apple they overstepped their bounds, and force Apple and Adobe to come up with a set of tools that doesn't compile a bloated app.

I'm not holding my breath.

2 Birds with 1 iPad

Today was a big day in the tablet realm.

Steve Jobs and Shantanu Narayen, the respective CEOs of Apple and Adobe, had a pissing match where they took each other to task on their respective platforms and business models. An analysis of Jobs' open letter and Narayen's rebuttal can be found here.

Then came news that Microsoft had killed its Courier project before it even gave birth to it, with people whispering that it was vaporware, or given the benefit of the doubt, a concept video.

Now lastly, it's RUMORED that HP has killed off the impending Slate product. HP's purchase of Palm raises the possibility that the Slate could end up running on Palm's webOS, or maybe even on the Android platform, rather than deal with the dissatisfaction of Windows 7 running on it. The article also indicates that HP may even pass on the Intel platform, stealing a page from Apple in both respects.

If true, I would give HP a thumbs-up for both moves by thinking out of the Wintel box. Mobile devices require batteries that can last at least a whole day, if not longer, under more use than a wireless phone, but less use than a laptop. Intel processors have not shown to be power-efficient enough for mobile devices, nor has Windows 7 shown to be able to manage power for those same devices. Not saying that there's something wrong with Windows 7 nor Intel, but we are getting into the realm of consumer electronic devices. Hardware and software have to be one with each other and not act as independent units, and long battery life is an expectation, not a bonus.

What better OS to put on a mobile device than an OS designed to be on a device with lower power consumption requirements and a native touch interface? Well, short of iPhone OS, webOS is a great pickup for HP.

Apple vs. Adobe - The Tale of the Tape, Round 2.

Today another salvo was fired between Apple and Adobe, this time between the CEOs.

Steve Jobs posted an open letter on the Apple website that explained in his own words the reasons for Apple not supporting Flash on their iPhone OS and the change to the developers agreement for iPhone SDK app development.

Jobs listed stability and it's effect on battery life, the "closed" nature of Flash, the need for Flash in today's web, security, lack of a widespread mobile version of Flash and its ongoing delays, it's performance on mobile devices, and the user experience on touch screens.

This was a lead-in to discussing why Apple had decided to restrict the use of cross-compilers to develop iPhone OS apps. Jobs talked about the overall user experience, performance, developers being held hostage by delayeed implementation of new SDK features by cross-compilers.

This letter set of a firestorm of activity and postings on Twitter, Facebook, and every tech blog you can imagine and can't imagine. All of us in the tech world were willing spectators to this saga.

Later in the day, Adobe's CEO, Shantanu Narayen, responded in an interview to almost each of Jobs' claims. Basically it was the expect rebuttal that everyone was expecting, but beyond that, they somewhat respectfully agreed to disagree.

So I'd like to go over each of Steve Jobs' claims, and then Naraven's rebuttal on each, and my own take.

1. "Adobe’s Flash products are 100% proprietary." - Jobs
"Flash is an open specification" - Narayen

Flash may be an open specification, but Jobs' claim is true as there is no other plug-in available to play Flash files. Adobe has a literal monopoly on playing SWF files in-browser. You can't play SWF without the Flash Player plug-in. To me, that means the Player is proprietary. HTML5 is an open standard, and there are a multitude of applications that can render HTML files and are HTML5-compliant. To say that Flash is an "open" platform is mincing words and only half-true.

2. "Adobe has repeatedly said that Apple mobile devices cannot access “the full web” because 75% of video on the web is in Flash...Another Adobe claim is that Apple devices cannot play Flash games." - Jobs
No rebuttal or comment from Naraven.

This criticism of Flash and Adobe's claim that the iPhone OS devices and users of these devices are not experiencing "the full web", is a bit arrogant. While the Flash Player has widespread adoption, it's still proprietary. Users are locked-in without choice. This is the reasoning behind HTML5 and it's lack of reliance on rendering H.264 video without the aid of a plug-in. Why should I be tied to a plug-in to watch video?

3. " Flash has not performed well on mobile devices." - Jobs
No rebuttal or comment from Naraven.

The truth is that Adobe has a version of Flash Player Lite running on several mobile device manufacturers but none are actually listed on Adobe's website. The Player is licensed to OEM but that's about it. There is no comparison between Flash Lite and Flash Regular, but I would imagine Lite has a subset of the features that the Regular version has...and based on the name of the product, it's a slimmed down version of the real thing.

Jobs claims the Apple has asked Adobe time and time again to show them "Flash performing well on mobile devices", but were rebuffed each time.

While the topic was not broached during the interview with Naraven, they've only announced recently that they plan to ship Flash on Android devices this year, so we'll see how well it actually performs.

Jobs also highlighted that Symantec indicated that Flash had one of the worst security records for 2009, and to expose a new platform to security issues outside of its control would not be a smart move. Job's also indicated that "Flash is the number one reason Macs crash." Narayen indicated if Adobe crashes Apple, that actually has something "to do with the Apple operating system."

I find that response again to be arrogant. I'll also say that performance of Flash is somewhat unstable and in the past has been prone to memory leaks. Our development team developed Flex apps that used the Flash Player to render rich internet applications. We found that Flash and Flex had problems with large datasets and would routinely hang the browser. Now this was several years ago, and Adobe has since changed the product model. Flash was originally built as a multimedia player, but it has evolved into a video player, application renderer, among other things. On top of this, there is still the need to support Flash applications/media that were compiled using legacy tools. I truly believe that Flash itself is unstable when pushed to the extremes of its abilities, and sometimes you don't have to push that hard. You just have to leave it running long enough. To say that it's the fault of the operating system without proving it is completely arrogant and flippant. The Flash Player has to be compiled to run on each operating system it needs to run on. Isn't it completely more likely that Adobe doesn't care? Their track record with keeping up with Apple isn't great. Adobe, while maintaining that they're focused on multiple platforms, has shown its favoritism to Windows, because that's where the money was at. Mac OS X has been out for 10 years, and only with the last release of Photoshop has it finally taken advantage of the Cocoa development framework...2 weeks ago.

Let me digress a bit. Narayen's claim that Adobe has an open culture is only partly true. Adobe is really of two cultures. One that of the old Adobe that released Photoshop and focused on Windows and abandoned and delayed Mac releases...and the other that came with it when it acquired Macromedia, primarily for it's Flash Player. Macromedia has always been more open. Adobe Labs was actually born from Macromedia Labs. Adobe had no such concept prior to its purchase of Adobe. Macromedia was into server products like JRun, ColdFusion, web development tools like Dreamweaver, that focused on the web and its openness. Adobe had PageMill, and after that GoLive. And that's about it. They did have ImageReady as part of Photoshop, but they were just following Macromedia's Fireworks software at that point. So Adobe is only open to a certain extent. It depends on what products you're talking about.

4. "H.264 videos play for up to 10 hours, while videos decoded in software [Flash] play for less than 5 hours before the battery is fully drained." - Jobs
Mr. Narayen calls accusations about Flash draining battery power "patently false." Speaking about Mr. Jobs's letter in general, he says that "for every one of these accusations made there is proprietary lock-in" that prevents Adobe from innovating.

I would have to say that each is speaking the truth. The reason why Flash Player is requiring more battery power (despite Narayen refuting the claim as "patently false"), is that H.264 is rendered in software. Safari and Chrome browser can render the video without performing the decoding in software as Apple has hooks into the hardware to allow the hardware to performing the decoding. This is the "proprietary lock-in" that Narayen is referencing. Before these two CEOs exchanged words, Apple opened up the OS APIs to allow hooks that allow the hardware to do the H.264 decoding. Adobe has recently released a beta of the Flash Player for OS X that take advantage of the hardware acceleration and some reviewers have indicated improvements in video playback through the Flash Player. Note that Adobe's description of the beta release that the software "enables supported Macs running the current version of OS X to deliver smooth, flicker-free HD video with substantially decreased power consumption." So Jobs' claim that Flash Player draining batteries is true as well as indicated by Adobe.

5. "Flash was designed for PCs using mice, not for touch screens using fingers." - Jobs
Not discussed during Narayen interview.

This is true. Jobs indicated that all Flash apps would have to be re-written to accommodate touch interfaces since any hover or rollover effects have no equivalent for touch screens. I myself ran into this problem the other day while using the iPad with Facebook. Facebook renders a semi-scaled down version of the site (no chat available), but any hover effects didn't work as expected. Faceboook allows you to hide or delete postings from your main FB homepage, but those options only show up when you hover over a certain part of the posting. I had to guess where that hover point was and tap to make it appear. Luckily it worked, but it's obviously that websites will have to rethink their UIs to accommodate touch interfaces, especially given the intention of every PC manufacturer out there to produce a tablet of their own. The iPad is only uncovering these problems now.

The last point Steve Jobs made in his letter was basically the rationale behind prohibiting cross-compilers. His claim was that it affected performance, predictability, and it affected the developers' ability to take advantage of new features until the cross-compiler had implemented them in their own software.

Narayen's response was that Apple was making it "cumbersome" for developers who want to develop once and release for multiple platforms. "It doesn't benefit Apple." This is true. Why should Apple care? Apple is only doing what's best for Apple. Adobe is doing what's best for Adobe. To say that Adobe is only looking out for developers is partially true. It's looking out for the business model that it chose to adopt. Apple would rather have exclusivity than just be another platform that gets the same application that are available on other platforms. No, Apple isn't interested in helping developers make more money by releasing the same app for different platforms. Sorry. To Jobs' point, it's not going to be the same user experience for each platform or device. Apple's iPhone OS devices have multi-touch features. While it's only a matter of time before almost all smartphones or tablets have this ability, how do developers port an app to a platform that doesn't support it? Like Nokia? Or Flash? Is that really in the best interest of the developer?

Finally, both Jobs and Narayen indicated in each of their statements that each company has different business models.

Apple is a computer maker on both the hardware and OS side. They make software for those computers. They build and release software for other platforms (iTunes, Safari and Quicktime for Windows). They design and produce consumer electronics (iPhone, iPad, and all models of iPod). They're only interested in their own ecosystem. That's their business model. As a producer of consumer electronics, they have to be worried about what ends up in their devices.

Adobe is primarily a software developer, for both standalone applications and server applications. Their software runs on multiple platforms, even more so with their server platforms. ColdFusion runs on everything from Windows to Mac OS X to Linux and AIX and Websphere. Their Flash Player runs on Windows, Linux, and of course, OS X, and every browser out available.

With the success that Apple has with it's iPhone OS-based devices, they have the upper hand to decide what ends up on their platform. If the iPhone was struggling, we would probably not be having this fight. Apple is arrogant to make this change, but it's not in their interest to do so. Very few companies are in the position of Apple where they make both the hardware and software. Microsoft did it with the XBox and the Zune, but again, those are consumer electronic devices. Apple has no interest in helping Adobe.

Call it a pissing match, or call it payback, but when Apple was struggling in the early and mid-90's, Adobe essentially abandoned the platform and focused on Windows for Photoshop and Creative Suite. So yes, as much as Jobs is not saying it's not personal, it is personal.

To say that Adobe is struggling wouldn't be true. I would say it's strong. Strong enough to continue to maintain a Labs group. Much of its competition for Photoshop and Illustrator has either been acquired or they went away and are no longer as relevant. PaintShop Pro? Gimp? They're out there, but everyone always flocks back to Photoshop.

The problem with Adobe is that they've pretty much hit the threshold with Photoshop and innovating for it. The application has gone through mainly interface changes that have pissed off a lot of users since CS through CS4. That's not about innovation, it's about running out of ideas.

Adobe firmly believes that the multi-platform approach will win out, as it has seen Microsoft eat it's web development lunch with .NET. For other reasons that I won't get into, there's a reason why Microsoft won out, but it has nothing to do with the approach. Adobe thinks they can take Flash as the platform, but to say that Flash is a platform is a misnomer. It's a plug-in. Adobe would be wise to not bet it's future on it. Remember RealPlayer?