Peculiar Perspective on iMessage vs SMS
drdrang on iMessage, a new feature of iOS 5:
Here’s the thing. I already have an unlimited texting plan from AT&T that covers everyone in my family. I don’t, however, have an unlimited data plan, so this looks like something that will eat away at my monthly data allotment while giving me virtually nothing in return.
That sure is an interesting perspective on iMessage compared to SMS texting. I find it hard to believe that even 10000 texts a month will have a significant impact on a monthly data plan. This is just a misguided rant against a feature the author misunderstands.
In the end, after an update to his essay, the author does seem to realize that maybe he is in the minority:
My point—possibly not as clear as it would have been had I not written this post late on a Saturday after a couple of Harp Lagers—was not so much that iMessage would add a huge load to my family’s data usage, but that whatever increase in 3G use it creates would come with virtually no benefit to us. Your mileage, as they say, may vary, and I’m not suggesting iMessage is a mistake.
Brilliant! (via Shit That Siri Says)
The Clock icon — “The hands of the clock are pointing at both the number 10 and the number 12. Actually, the second hand is also pointing at the number 12. Add those numbers up — 12 + 12 + 10 — and you get the number 34. This is very telling … Steve Jobs’ birth mother Joanne Simpson was remarried to George Simpson when she was 34 years old, which proves that the government is covering up everything that happened at Area 51 in 1966. But I digress. There’s a progression there. 3 … 4 … 5! Yes! The iPhone 5 will be announced!
The secret numerology behind the iPhone event invitation by Steven Sande at TUAW.
The entire article is filled with similar gimmicky, yet potentially valid, predictions. I get the feeling the article is supposed to be somewhat tongue-in-cheek - at least I hope so - but I am not so sure I agree with the assertions.
Based on how I translate what is seen in this invitation, I get the impression we may only be seeing a moderately upgraded iPhone 4 released. Hopefully I am wrong.
Apple paved the way but Microsoft will get there first with Windows 8. A tablet that can be as fluid and user friendly as the iPad but as capable as a Windows laptop. A tablet that can boot in under 10 seconds and fire up a full-scale version of Adobe Dreamweaver a few moments later. A tablet that can be slipped into a dock to instantly become a fully capable touch-enabled laptop computer. This is Microsoft’s vision with Windows 8, and this is what it will deliver.
Sorry Apple, Windows 8 ushers in the post-post-PC era by Zach Epstein at BGR.
This is pure comedy. If you read any technology news today, you owe it to yourself to read this laughable piece at the normally respectable BGR.
That Epstein believes a product which still requires an entire year of development is going to dethrone the wildly popular iPad shows how utterly insane this linkbait article is. Windows 8 was only demoed at BUILD. Compare that to the first time the iPad was unveiled; it was a finished product available to consumers a month later.
I have great respect for Microsoft and what they are attempting to do with Windows 8. Unifying the desktop and mobile experience is admirable. The Metro UI is completely unique and seems to be the right way to tackle this task. Just count me in as a skeptic that this tactic will be successful, whereby successful is defined as taking a sizable portion of the tablet market, at this stage in the game.
Somehow, in the early 1990s Apple bred a mobile technology killer robot. Cyborg.
No, wait… android. Andy Rubin.
Andyroid.
We’re through the looking glass here, people. It was staring us right in the face the whole time. All the pieces are starting to fall into place.
OK, so Apple makes this Andyroid and, through the mismanagement endemic to the company at the time, it’s released into the wild. Years later, the Andyroid is caught by Microsoft, which reprogrammed and re-released it into the wild—but deliberately. It then gets hired by Google and acts as a Manchurian candidate within the company to funnel millions of dollars to Microsoft for doing jack squat.
Ingenious. The Macalope tips his antlers toward Redmond.
Well, OK, maybe that’s not what happened. But it pretty much worked out that way anyway.
I’m writing this on my laptop (a MacBook Air), but I really just want to be browsing the web on my iPad right now. So I’m ending this post to go do that. Within the next five years, I bet most of you reading this will also have this desire — even if you think you won’t.
Excellent and poignant write-up by MG on the iPad as the PC of the future.
It got a bit overshadowed by the Galaxy Note and Galaxy Tab 7.7 earlier today, but Samsung also quietly introduced a new basic handheld / PMP at IFA: the Galaxy S WiFi 3.6. As you can probably surmise, it’s a slightly smaller version of the Galaxy S WiFi 4.0 (also known as the Galaxy Player in the US), with it boasting a 3.6-inch HVGA display, Android 2.3, a 1GHz OMAP processor, 8GB or 16GB of storage, a microSD card slot, GPS, a mic for VoIP calls, and dual cameras (2 megapixels ‘round back and VGA on the front).
Samsung announces Galaxy S WiFi 3.6 handheld.
It is about time someone is offering a product designed to compete directly against the iPod Touch. I do not really understand why its taken so long for consumer electronics manufacturers to offer this type of device considering how wildly successful the iPod Touch has been. Maybe they just do not understand the market they are in.
The Galaxy S WiFi is a small Android device, not a tablet and not a phone, just like the iPod Touch. I am more inclined to purchase this type of Android device than a full-fledged tablet simply because Honeycomb is not where it needs to be yet. Maybe Ice Cream Sandwich will change all that.
An inexpensive Android handheld is a lot more attractive at this point than a 7” or 10” tablet.
It will be interesting to see how this product sells. I sure hope it works out well because the iPod Touch could use a little friendly competition.
Mark Gurman of 9 to 5 Mac writes about a new iOS 5 earthquake warning feature available to Japanese iPhone users:
Following the devestating earthquake in Japan earlier this year, Apple has added a new early earthquake warning notification option to iOS 5. iOS 5 users in Japan can turn on early earthquake notifications at the very bottom of the iOS 5 Notification Center settings pane.
I have been using the iOS 5 betas since they were released and have yet to see this toggle appear in the notifications configuration section of iOS. It is possible the feature has been introduced in iOS 5 beta 6, which I have yet to install.
A better theory is that Softbank is toying with the idea of offering this feature, not Apple and not automatically included in iOS 5. I imagine this setting is being displayed similar to the provisioning configuration Softbank uses to “hide” the wifi personal hotspot option that was introduced in iOS 4.3. This feature is unavailable on Softbank here in Japan because their network is not prepared to handle the increased traffic offered by this feature.
Standard keitai’s have had the earthquake warning system available as an option for quite some time now. My son’s keitai regularly screams at us when an earthquake is imminent. That Softbank - or Apple - is just now considering introducing such a feature should be telling about the importance of being prepared for the next big one.
Those of us in Japan are living in constant fear of the next big earthquake. It is about time the iPhone has such an important feature “built-in.” (via Steve Nagata)
One of the accessories you can buy for a TouchPad is the Touchstone Charging Dock, which wirelessly charges the TouchPad when it’s set in the cradle. It’s a cool and solid bit of hardware, but the software integration makes it even cooler. Once the TouchPad realizes it’s docked, it immediately launches into “Exhibition Mode.” Any developer can write apps that work in this mode, which passively projects information—clock, photos, calendar, Twitter stream, you name it—onto the device’s screen while it’s docked. Once you remove the TouchPad from the dock, the apps vanish. And if you have one Charging Dock at work and another at home, the device knows they’re different and can be configured to run different Exhibition apps in either place.
Hands on with the HP TouchPad by Jason Snell.
This HP TouchPad feature is one of the most intriguing I have read about. The idea that, while docked, the device can display widgets based on which dock the TouchPad is resting in is quite clever.
Overall, the TouchPad has me very intrigued. WebOS looks like a nicely crafted UI and the basics of the tablet sound decent. Given some time and polish, the TouchPad may be a worthy competitor to the iPad and Android tablets.
If any company has the wherewithal I believe it to be HP. They control the entire user experience, from hardware to software, just like Apple. This is the exact opposite of every Android tablet maker.
I am absolutely rooting for HP. If for no other reason than to see iOS and iOS devices with strong competition.
Funnel
See what’s happening in the world in an instance! Funnel is an intuitive interface for Google News, that helps you filter out the most important news items for you to read. Filtering is done based on the number of related articles found for each headline. The bigger the headline, the more important the news.
Funnel is not currently available in the US App Store but is expected to be at some point in the near future.
Android vs. iPhone. Does this mean Android is better than iOS?
Oh well. I figured, at this point, I should try to get an actual app loaded on to the simulator. So I head back to the docs to learn how. First up, I have to put the simulator into development mode, which makes total sense because of those times when you don’t want to use the simulator for development. For instance, sometimes you’re obviously gonna want to load up the simulator on your laptop and use it like a Playbook, right? RIM? Bueller? But before I can do that, you tell me that I need to set a password, which is obviously very important, because if someone steals my laptop, that last thing I would want them to do is be able to put my Playbook simulator into development mode without my permission. Good thinking RIM! Next, I need to get the IP address of the simulator, because it’s running in a VM, and as far as my OS is concerned it’s an entirely separate device. Good design RIM! Making things easy and integrated (like Apple and Google have) only encourages those “artsy” types to try to develop software, which clearly should be left only to unix loving neck beards (I use that term endearingly).
The iPad is an intensely personal device. In its design intent it is, truly, much more like a “big iPhone” than a “small laptop”. The iPad isn’t something you pass around. It’s not really designed to be a “resource” that many people take advantage of. It’s designed to be owned, configured to your taste, invested in and curated.
How the iPad Wants to be Used (via) is the very problem with iOS in its current form. Although I love the idea of the iPad, the fact that iOS is not designed to be passed around seems, to me anyhow, to be problematic. All consumer operating systems should, at the very least, offer a basic multi-user capability to facilitate passing the iPad around to family members.
I expect Apple desires families to purchase one iPad per family member so they can sell a lot of devices. This is what separates the iPad from desktop and laptop computers; since iOS does not support multi-user capabilities the device will inherently end up selling more units than a similarly featured computer.
Unfortunately, expecting a multiple sales per household solution is not pragmatic. Although the iPad is a low cost computing device, it is impractical to expect families to purchase multiple devices, especially in the age of the $200 netbook.
I have a lot more to write on this topic so I’ll save the rest for later. At this juncture, I will end with this: if there is one problem with the iPad, its the fact that iOS is designed to be single-user. Maybe at some point in the future this will change, but for now would-by iPad consumers need to be aware of this one striking drawback.
Android is hardly the only mobile security offender. Apple tends to ship patches for terrible bugs very late. For example, iOS 4.2 (shipped in early December 2010) contains fixes for remotely exploitable flaws such as this FreeType bug that were several months old at the time of patch release. To ship important patches so late is below the standard set by Microsoft and Ubuntu, who are usually (though not always) much more timely. (For example, Ubuntu shipped a patch for CVE-2010-2805 in mid-August, more than three months before Apple.)
Don’t Sacrifice Security on Mobile Devices is an article by the EFF discussing the state of security patches for mobile operating systems.
Fundamentally I do not have an issue with the idea of promoting quicker patching of major bugs on mobile operating systems like Android, iOS and Windows Phone 7. However, the above quote displays a complete disregard for the point the EFF is attempting to make.
As a general rule, Microsoft has not been any quicker to patch Windows Phone 7 nor does Ubuntu have a mobile device version of their operating system. Merely because they happened to do so in this one instance does not mean they are performing any better than Android handset manufacturers or Apple. In the case of the former, this issue is far more complicated as the carriers have a much higher degree of control over what patches are pushed to handsets.
Bottom line: this issue is far more complicated than the EFF would have one initially believe.
Rather than merely sharing my iPhone 4 home screen I thought I would share all five screen of iPhone application goodness installed on my little handheld. I just completed rearranging my apps, moving a folder off the home screen cause I despise how fugly they are. Once Apple sexifies the folder icons I will reconsider.
What do your iPhone screens look like?
