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Mobile News user experience UX

More details on Windows Phone 7

Details are trickling out about Windows Phone 7 series. No multitasking supports for apps, apps have to be installed through the Marketplace, and native applications are not permitted – everything has to be done through either XNA Game Studio or Silverlight. There will be some sort of option similar to Apple’s enterprise and ad hoc distribution. And, of course, the app certification process is going to be fast and transparent.

All said, this doesn’t sound like a big departure from the policies and engineering decisions that have gotten Apple so much criticism. It does appear, though, that they will be much better equipped than Android to avoid hardware fragmentation — they are requiring fairly specific hardware features, such as a common button set and graphics acceleration. They can provide hardware manufacturers with specific benchmarks in XNA and Silverlight to ensure that the phone meets performance expectations.

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iPhone Mobile News

Mobile links for 15 Mar 2010

Blackberry user loyalty very much in question. Two in five Blackberry users are thinking about switching when their contracts come up, and not just to iPhone — Android is also poised to take away users. About 90 percent of Android and iPhone users say they plan to stay put.

Is anyone really surprised about this? Microsoft is going to only allow apps for Windows Phone 7 Series to be offered through their app store, and is going to have an approval process. They claim theirs won’t be as arcane as Apple’s, however. While some developers are crying foul, the success of Apple’s store has underscored the importance of having some sort of gatekeeper for apps, and making sure that apps are of sufficient quality and utility. Hopefully they will also do a better job than Android at promoting their marketplace.

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iOS development iPhone Mobile News

Mobile links for March 11, 2010

On Android, Myspace is the number one social networking app. Seems that the facebook client on Android doesn’t measure up to the slickness of their Blackberry and iPhone versions.

Apparently 80 million Farmville users is not enough.Facebook games head Gareth Davis thinks that the ‘Mario’ of social gaming is still out there waiting to be discovered.

Uh-oh. More App Store approval drama. Really, though, there’s a lot of shovelware on the App Store, and asking developers to at least tryisn’t so heinous. Templated apps aren’t all bad, but if you are going to just hook up some RSS feeds, why not just use Dashcode to make a web app and avoid Apple’s approval process entirely?

The wi-fi only iPad may be a back door to drive sales of MiFi devices at Verizon and Sprint. So far prices aren’t so hot, compared to AT&T’s new no-contract plan; even though the wi-fi iPad is $130 cheaper, these plans more than make up the difference, and all require contracts.

You’re doing it wrong. I can see AT&T hedging their bets by offering an Android phone, but removing Google search and locking the phone down pretty much misses the point, doesn’t it? Even Verizon got this one right by letting their Android phones be.

We know Android is going to be significant, but when? Android’s growth is still building, doubling over the last quarter. Is it inevitable, or will there be a ceiling, as fragmentation and carrier interference (see above) take the luster off of the open-source OS?

Categories
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.

Categories
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.

Categories
iOS development iPhone Web Design Web development

WPtouch is an awesome way to get your blog on the iPhone

Since I’ve been studying how to optimize web pages for the iPhone, I decided to quit procrastinating and finally install WPTouch, a WordPress plug-in that generates a very iPhone-friendly version of your WordPress Site.IMG_0108

WPTouch provides some very elegant UI attributes, including a search panel that slides in, Google Adwords for Mobile support, and the whole presentation is very configurable. Also, you have a switch that will let you go to and from the standard browser layout, so you aren’t stuck with the theme. WP Touch is considered a theme, but is installed as a WordPress plug-in, since it has to inject some code into your pages in order to do the theme-swapping.

Mike-icon-snapshot
Obey the foot. See how happy it will make him?

So, you may be asking, “how do you get one of those neat-o icons that you can put on your iPhone home screen to jump directly to the web site?”
This blog post has a great tutorial of how to set up your icon app if you are using the plug-in. Normally in a static web site, you just create a 57×57 pixel PNG file and name it icon.png, and link to it in your HTML header:


Oddly enough, the apple-touch-icon link is not part of standard wordpress themes in general. I guess that’s not so weird considering the themes are designed for desktop rather than mobile, but it is annoying that the iPhone plug-in can do this but the standard view of the site can’t be saved with your custom icon to the iPhone home page.

I’m looking forward to seeing how this mobile page looks on other devices, apparently the user agent sniffing done by the plug-in can also supply the page for Blackberry, Android, and others.