Archive for the ‘Mobile’ Category

Jobs admits MobileMe not up to Apple's standards

by Daniel Langendorf

August 4th, 2008 | Posted in Mobile | CommentsNo Comments

It seemed like a lot to take on at the time — the introduction of MobileMe, the opening of the AppStore, the release of the iPhone 2.0 software, and the availability of the second-generation iPhone itself.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs admitted as much in an internal email sent to Apple employees Monday evening, according to Ars Technica. Jobs said MobileMe, the replacement for Apple’s ho-hum .Mac service, was launched too early and “not up to Apple’s standards.” Jobs said Apple should have introduced MobileMe slowly instead of launching it “as a monolithic service.”

“It was a mistake to launch MobileMe at the same time as iPhone 3G, iPhone 2.0 software and the App Store,” Jobs said. “We all had more than enough to do, and MobileMe could have been delayed without consequence.”

Absolutely.

The moment MobileMe hit the ether on the evening of July 9 there were problems that still linger, in various forms, today. It took longer to flip the on switch than Apple intended. Once MobileMe was “up and running”, the 2 million subscribers to the former .Mac service found themselves with intermittent email, syncing problems (so much for “Exchange for the rest of us”), disappearing calendar events and contacts, screwed up account information, and loads of frustration.

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Review: HTC Touch Diamond

by Steve O'Hear

August 4th, 2008 | Posted in Mobile | Comments11 Comments

It’s hard not to look at HTC’s new flagship smartphone, the Touch Diamond, through iPhone-tinted glasses. Featuring a touch screen interface that’s been designed, on the surface at least, to be operated using a finger rather than a stylus, like Cupertino’s own crown jewel, the Touch Diamond is marketed as a device that makes accessing the Web on the go just as easy as making a phone call. It’s also HTC’s latest attempt to put a consumer face on the business oriented Windows Mobile operating system. No mean feat in itself.

Read on to find out if the HTC Touch Diamond truly sparkles or if it’s just an expensive piece of “bling” (Ed. enough puns already).

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HTC on schedule to deliver Android-powered phone in 4Q

by Daniel Langendorf

August 1st, 2008 | Posted in Mobile | Comments1 Comment

Overheard at a Verizon wireless store today:

Kid: “This phone sucks.”

Dad: “I know. But there’s not much I can do about it.”

Kid: “Why?”

Dad: “Your contract isn’t up until March and I don’t want to pay $300 for a new one.”

Kid: “Your phone is eligible for an upgrade. Let me use yours.”

Dad: “I don’t want to buy any new phone right now. There’s going to be a lot of phones coming out in the next six months and I want to see them first. All the phones here are lame duck technology.”

Kid: “Oh. Well, this phone still sucks.”

At least some relief is on the horizon for dad. High Tech Computer (HTC), a Taiwan-based maker of Microsoft Windows Mobile cell phones, announced it is on schedule to deliver by 4Q 2008 its first phones based on Google’s open source mobile operating system, Android [via DigiTimes and IntoMobile]. No other details were provided.

HTC has long been rumored to be making their HTC Dream smartphone available on the Android platform later this year, making HTC the first manufacturer to deliver an actual working model and not a prototype with promise.

It is expected that an Android-powered Google phone — along with the introduction in July of the Apple iPhone 3G — will completely shake up the U.S. cell phone/smart phone market with its touch screen and haptic feedback, a full QWERTY keypad (that slides or swivels for easy typing and texting), and Internet access, among other features.

It’s enough for dad to hold off buying a new phone for the kid.

Roundup: Apple still hasn't cleaned up its MobileMess

by Daniel Langendorf

July 25th, 2008 | Posted in Comms, Mobile, Other | Comments1 Comment

Not only has it been a rough two weeks since the disastrous introduction of MobileMe July 10-11, it’s been a miserable last three days for Apple and its “Exchange for the rest of us” product.

First, up, the Wall Street Journal

Well-known personal technology columnist Walt Mossberg, a big fan of Apple products and services about 99.99 percent of the time, said in his first complete review of MobileMe on Wednesday:

“Unfortunately, after a week of intense testing of the service, I can’t recommend it, at least not in its current state. It’s a great idea, but, as of now, MobileMe has too many flaws to keep its promises.”

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Q&A: Nicolas Gramlich of anddev.org talks Android, Google's developer relations, and more

by Steve O'Hear

July 24th, 2008 | Posted in Mobile | Comments3 Comments

Talking down Google’s Android mobile operating system has become pretty easy of late: An incomplete and buggy SDK, favoritism towards select developers, a general lack of transparency, and valid concerns that the platform could become fragmented and that Google has ceded too much control to carriers.

Yet, for the most part, the initial excitement and optimism over the long term potential of Android remains. Not least for 21 year-old Nicolas Gramlich, a computer science student at the University of Applied Sciences Mannheim in Germany, and founder of anddev.org, an online community for Android developers. “Android’s main attraction is its simplicity”, says Gramlich, which enables the rapid development of “feature-rich applications”.

See also: Interview: zintin CEO talks iPhone, Android and mobile future

“One can create an application that uses Google Maps, get the current GPS-position or read out the accelerometer within 10 lines”. The integration with Google Maps is especially tight, he says, something that doesn’t currently exist on other mobile platforms. And Gramlich should know. His first Android effort is a free navigation app called AndNav!.

In a short Q&A with last100, Gramlich discussed the slow progress Google appears to be making in updating the Android SDK, the company’s relationship with the developer community, competition from iPhone, and more. Read the transcript, edited for space and clarity, after the jump.

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Interview: Eventful attracts new users through iPhone app, not just Web site

by Daniel Langendorf

July 22nd, 2008 | Posted in Mobile | CommentsNo Comments

This is the power of the iPhone.

In less than two weeks, Brian Dear, the founder of the event discovery Web site Eventful, has seen “a whole new wave of users coming in” — so much so that he predicts that “in the very long term, everybody will be going mobile and the Web will be secondary.”

These new users, of which I am one, are not all coming to Eventful through its popular Web site, which helps more than six million people discover, share, and create events from concerts to dog shows. They’re signing up for Eventful because of the iPhone.

“This is what happens when you offer mobile,” Dear said in a discussion with last100.

By the end of last week, Apple had not provided Dear with specific numbers on Eventful downloads, although the app has consistently ranked among the favorites downloaded by users. In many respects, the number doesn’t matter. The decision to keep developing Eventful for the iPhone has already been made.

“Absolutely we are going to evolve it,” Dear said.

Of all the programs I’ve downloaded and fiddled with, Eventful is one I use nearly everyday. And it’s a far-from-perfect app, as many people point out in App Store ratings. Even so, Eventful demonstrates the power and promise of the iPhone platform because it integrates digital technology into my lifestyle in a fun and productive manner.

Dear, who lives in San Diego, spoke with last100 about developing the application for the iPhone, the challenges he and his team faced, the shortcomings of the Eventful app, and future plans.

“It was by far the most fun software development project I’ve done in years,” Dear said.

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TechCrunch interested in developing own web tablet — with your help

by Daniel Langendorf

July 21st, 2008 | Posted in Mobile, Other | CommentsNo Comments

last100 editor Steve O’Hear has been a big advocate of the so-called ultra-portable Netbook computer from Day One. Now we see others are just as interested.

TechCrunch today announced interest in building its own Web tablet using open source everything. As TechCruch founder Michael Arrington wrote, the basic idea is the “machine is as thin as possible, runs low end hardware and has a single button for powering it on and off, headphone jacks, a built in camera for video, low end speakers, and a microphone.”

The specs continue: It will have Wi-Fi, maybe a USB port, a built-in battery, a half a gig of RAM, a 4 GB solid state hard drive. Its primary method of input is an iPhone-like touchscreen, it runs on the Linux operating system, and it uses Firefox as its browser.

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Don't buy a Netbook pleads PC industry

by Steve O'Hear

July 21st, 2008 | Posted in Mobile, Other | Comments18 Comments

It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of the Netbook, an emerging new product category of low-cost and ultra-portable notebooks. But it seems many in the PC industry aren’t.

Initially targeted at the education market or those wanting a third machine, Netbooks are resonating with a much broader market — and not just because of their lower price point compared to more traditional and higher specced sub-notebooks. Despite years of industry propaganda, consumers are wising up to the fact that they don’t have to step on to the processor upgrade treadmill. Instead, in an age where more and more of our applications and data resides in the cloud (on remote servers, rather than stored locally), a machine with Internet connectivity and one that is powerful enough to run a modern web browser – that’s a Netbook by the way – is often all that we need.

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Remaining the good neighbor: Google improves Google.com for iPhone and iPod Touch users

by Daniel Langendorf

July 18th, 2008 | Posted in Mobile | CommentsNo Comments

Take a look at the picture to the right. Is this a preview of what Google apps will look like on the upcoming Android-powered, non-Google Gphones? All the Google apps nestled together in a nice, tidy bundle?

Of course this is the iPhone interface, but change out the icons at the bottom and with Google.com, Gmail, Calendar, Reader, Docs, News, Notebook, Photos (Picasa), Google Talk, Maps, and YouTube already set up, this could be what the so-called Gphone might look like, no matter if it’s manufactured by Samsung, Motorola, LG, HTC, or Sony Ericsson.

As if not to completely disappear in the onslaught of iPhone 3G, MobileMe, App Store, and software update 2.0 news of the past week, Google snuck in its brand twice — once for the Google Mobile App (available for free at the App Store) and, more importantly for the Google faithful, significant improvements to Google.com for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

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RWW Live: iPhonemania

by Steve O'Hear

July 15th, 2008 | Posted in Mobile, Other | CommentsNo Comments

Yesterday, we recorded the latest episode of RWW Live, a new regular bi-weekly feature on Sean Ammirati’s ReadWriteTalk podcast show. The idea is to get together a number of writers from the ReadWriteWeb blog network (that includes last100!) for a live discussion on recent events in the technology world.

In episode 4, devoted almost entirely to the iPhone, I was joined by ReadWriteTalk host Sean Ammirati, ReadWriteWeb editor and founder Richard MacManus, ReadWriteWeb writers Bernard Lunn and Marshall Kirkpatrick.

You can listen to the podcast below (recorded using the TalkShoe platform) or subscribe here.

As Richard, over at ReadWriteWeb, notes:

We’re still experimenting with the format, but we’re hoping to get the RWW community involved as much as possible in future episodes – for example by doing a live post at the same time, twittering the chat URL, and so on. We’d love to hear any ideas you have on making this an interactive, read/write experience. Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

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