Tag: Mobile News

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Blog Mobile News

Mobile links for 15 February, 2010

Video comparing graphic performance on Google Nexus vs. iPhone 3Gs. This video shows a scene with about 11,000 polygons running on both phones. The higher resolution of the Nexus screen ends up seriously compromising graphics performance. More pixels, more work, and the Nexus doesn’t have the hardware power to compensate, hence about 1/2 the frame rate of the iPhone.

The big news for today, of course is the announcement of Windows Phone Series 7. Microsoft has re-designed their phone OS from the ground up, and the result is a very clean-looking interface which departs from most of the other mobile OS offerings. Engadget has some demo video. Games on this device will interface with Xbox live, which is a big departure, and the whole interface seems to share a lot of DNA with the Zune, with that mimimalist typography. The demos are on a touchscreen device with 3 buttons (home, back, and search), powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor.

Many questions arise about the platform, such as whether it supports a wide range of handset hardware, how apps work on it, development details, etc., and whether Microsoft is planning to get into the handset hardware business like Google has with the Nexus, essentially competing with its OEM customers. Also, what support is there for the wide range of Windows CE and other handheld devices currently used in industry for POP, inventory management, etc. ? Still, this product introduction shows that Microsoft is determined to stay in the game.

On the iPhone front, Macworld saw the introduction of some new platforms for quickly generating applications, including Yapper, a WYSIWYG editor that garnered Best of Show. Yapper lets you build an app around RSS feeds with no coding, and supports iPhone, Android, and iPad, with content caching, location capabilities, push notification support, and support for monetization and analytics. Very promising approach. Others include iSites, and appOmator, as well as TapLynx, which has been around for a while.

The iPad is definitely stimulating new developer interest, according to Flurry Analytics. This article includes a graph comparing new starts of iPhone apps against Android projects.

Disney’s CEO, Bob Iger, is excited about the iPad.

When the heck are WWDC 2010 tickets going on sale? Last year sold out in record time, and the current drought of technical information on the iPad suggests that this year is going to be a mad rush. Articles like this suggest that Apple has booked the Moscone Center from June 28-July2, but there has been no word from Apple since this leak, and they may well need a bigger venue this time around.

This timeframe would place the keynote exactly 3 years from the release of the original iPhone, which has some people speculating that Apple will drop the exclusive with AT&T, but the introduction of some groundbreaking new data plans for the iPad suggests that Apple is likely to be extending the deal.

Android is still looming over the horizon. A report from Comscore shows that Android market share has about doubled in the last quarter, at the expense of Palm, Windows Mobile, and to a lesser extent, Blackberry. iPhone share is still growing, but the introduction of multiple new Android handsets is building momentum for Google. Developers, however, are not seeing a bonanza from the Android market, some are scaling back their development. Gameloft in particular says they are getting 400 times the revenue from iPhone that they are from Android. Gameloft’s revenue from iPhone games was about $24.5 million for 2009, and accounted for 22% of the company’s total revenue in the last quarter. Developers are generally complaining that price points on Android are lower, and that Google is not promoting its store nearly as well. Discoverability of Android apps is considerably weaker than for iPhone apps, as Android’s marketplace is generally only directly accessible over the handset. Android has not spawned a large ecosystem of third-party app and game review sites, and doesn’t have a desktop equivalent to iTunes, which provides most of the merchandising and visibility for iPhone apps. Even though Android is very likely to overtake Palm in the next quarter, Google’s inability to generate excitement around its app store will keep developers from committing to the platform.

Gartner issued a report last month that attributed 99.4% of mobile app sales in 2009 to the iPhone. Their methodology may or may not be sound, but if true this is a dramatic shift away from the old model of app and game sales through the carrier. The market for mobile apps is likely to reach nearly $7 billion this year. Garner is predicting that Apple’s share of this revenue may be about $4.5 billion, 70 percent of which will be going to developers.

Consumer Reports announced Friday that iPhone users consume 5 times the data of Blackberry users, and nearly twice that of other smartphones. This disparity explains why iPhones are bringing AT&T’s networks to their knees, but it also suggests that ease-of-use is very important to getting people to actually use their data services.

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iOS development iPhone Mobile News

On the eve of the Apple event…

It’s the night before the Big Announcement, or for many no doubt the Big Disappointment when it turns out not to meet everyone’s fanciful expectations.   I fully expect that the hype has gotten so big that whatever is announced will cause a drop in Apple’s stock price.   It is the way of things.

I’m pretty sure the device won’t:

  1. Be made of gold
  2. Have an OLED screen
  3. Run Windows 7  (though I wouldn’t bet against it entirely)
  4. Run on AT&T exclusively.  Apple has made it clear they aren’t completely pleased with them as a partner.
  5. Be called iSlate.   I’m expecting iPad, myself, but it could just be called iPod Tablet or something like that.

Other than those things, all bets are off.

I’m hoping the device has:

  1. Front-facing camera, and a mobile implementation of iChat.
  2. Some form of iPhone OS — tablet PCs have been around for years, but a touch device has to work differently from a mouse device.  Gestures and touch, not mouseover and click and drag.    I’d hope there are a few new UI constructs that use the real estate better, but the current iPhone OS really has a lot of elements that will absolutely *sing* on the new device.
  3. No carrier tie-in.  I’ll gladly forgo a carrier subsidy for a device that can be used with any carrier or even just wi-fi for now.  The ideal would be for the device to accept some sort of wireless card in an SD card form factor, using the case as an antenna.   Then, let the carriers compete to offer deals on the cards and plans.
  4. Really good reading software.
  5. Don’t make me sign up for a new developer program,  sandwich this device into the current iPhone program.
  6. Inexpensive.
  7. Color calibration — don’t make a device that screams to be used by artists and photographers, then fail to put color management in it.  I still don’t know if there is any color management on the iPhone.
  8. An implementation of Apple TV on it.
  9. Support for Bluetooth peripherals, like a portable keyboard.

No matter what the device is, however, if it indeed is meant to be a game-changer for magazines, newspapers, and textbooks,  this release has got to be accompanied by a major retooling of iTunes.  iTunes has had so many types of content and commerce grafted onto it, it needs to be overhauled with a classification scheme that lets the individual consumer browse content efficiently,  do well-targeted searches,  bookmark or compare products, and support additional business models like subscriptions, gifting,  etc.    Don’t staple e-books and magazines onto the current thing, it’s gotten downright Byzantine.

Let’s see what it does, and hope that people judge it by what it does rather than what it doesn’t.  This type of device is still the product of a lot of engineering compromises.  People don’t seem to understand the hurdles that were overcome to bring the iPhone to market — the iPhone is a far more powerful computing device under the hood than its accessible exterior would suggest.   I expect the new device to be no less.   I do have to say that I still haven’t used cut-and-paste on my iPhone, even after Apple did put a very nice implementation in place.  They generally have some sound thinking behind their feature priorities, based on what will serve the majority of users best.  This sometimes leaves out your pet feature, but more often then not these features are worked around in an elegant way.

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iOS development iPhone Mobile News

iPad, iTablet, iSlate: whichever it is, expect videoconferencing.

Fresh new rumor about the upcoming Apple tablet,   this one from one of Apple’s telecom partners in France.

Basically, they are saying that the tablet will have a camera on the screen side, so that it can be used for videoconferencing, and that Apple will include a videoconferencing app for live streaming.

This is definitely credible — Apple has supported videoconferencing out of the box for years in Mac OS. Their video chat feature in iChat maintains a relatively high frame rate over AIM, much better frame rates and video quality than the video chat on Yahoo IM, for example. This feature runs very nicely on even the older Power PC laptops, it ran great on my old 1.33 GHz Powerbook G4 over a WiFi connection. The only question is how well it would run on the slower mobile networks, though the current version of iChat does have the ability of adjusting the video for lower bandwidth. A more refined version of this would detect the bandwidth available and throttle back image quality and frame rate as needed.

This does suggest that the tablet will definitely have WiFi connectivity and that it should have a beefier graphics system than the iPhone 3GS, though it wouldn’t need something as powerful as the graphics on current Macbooks.

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Mobile News

Mobile blogging

Testing the wordpress 2 iPhone app with the blog. This is pretty handy, though frankly typing on a mobile keyboard is not my favorite thing.

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Comics iPhone Weaselfloss

Watchmensch now available for iPhone

WatchmenschCover-198x300Richard Johnston and Simon Rohrmuller’s Watchmen parody comic is now available in full color on the iPhone App Store.  

This standalone version of the comic uses our reader software, which we’re calling the Weasel Reader at present. The reader is relatively intuitive, you tap on the right third of the screen to move forward, left to move backward, and in the center to expose other controls. The nice thing about doing the comic as a standalone app is that it’s fairly easy to find on the App Store. The downside is that anyone buying a lot of comics would end up filling up their icon real estate pretty quickly.

Watchmensch is also currently available in black and white on the Panel Fly comics app.  I’ve colored the interior pages on the color version (which will also be available on ComiXology shortly).

Download Watchmensch on the iTunes App Store.

Categories
iPhone Mobile News

Motorola Droid: is someone finally getting it right?

Verizon’s upcoming Motorola Droid phone has gotten a lot of buzz, and the usual chorus of “this is going to be an iPhone killer” has started.   The phone has a very compelling feature set, but people should keep a few things in mind:

  1. Verizon has been trying to release ‘iPhone killer’ phones since the iPhone was first announced.  They’ve released a number of LG touchscreen phones, each with a different incomprehensible interface, and tied to Verizon’s on-deck store.
  2. One of the more compelling things about the iPhone is its build quality — the touchscreen feels really responsive, and the phone feels solid in your hand.  So many of the phones that are trying to compete with it still feel plastic-y and cheap.
  3. It’s the user interface and ease of use that makes the iPhone a first-class device, and such a game-changer.   Also, as frustrating as it is, Apple’s trajectory to today’s App Store has done a lot to ensure the consistancy of that user experience.    A wide-open store of apps and the ability to customize away some very thoughtful UI decisions would have diluted the strength of the product.
  4. Every mobile device is a set of compromises. So, what’s the Droid compromising on?  That big screen suggests battery life will be the biggest compromise.

I can’t wait to actually get my hands on a Droid phone and see what Motorola has done.  They’ve made a large investment in Android, hiring dozens of programmers, so here’s hoping that their gamble is going to pay off in a flurry of good phones.