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— Jason Snell, via Twitter (via nikf)When iPhone was announced, the big question was when or if it would support Flash. With the iPad the debate is if Flash is irrelevant.
Google Android Personal Thoughts∞
Boy Genius has a scathing critique of Android—Android as a platform, mind you, not just any one device.
His main complaint is that Android has no “emotion”, which is to say it’s difficult for the user to connect with their device on a level deeper than they would with, say, a hammer. Google thinks of Android as a tool, and as a result it feels clinical and systematic.
The problem with Google is that they are an engineering company through and through. Doug Bowman (of Stopdesign fame) gave a good account of some of the obstacles designers face there.
Yes, it’s true that a team at Google couldn’t decide between two blues, so they’re testing 41 shades between each blue to see which one performs better. I had a recent debate over whether a border should be 3, 4 or 5 pixels wide, and was asked to prove my case.
Google approaches everything as an engineering problem, even when they absolutely shouldn’t. Yes, you’re creating a sophisticated piece of technology, but designing what the user sees is an art, not a science. The engineering ends where form takes precedence over functionality: the interface.
And the interface is arguably the most important part of any system. Pack Android with as much awesome functionality as you want—the thing people will judge it on is its interface. Apple understands this, which is why Apple does not release anything—ANYTHING—unless they can design it well. That is why it took two years for Apple to release copy-and-paste on the iPhone, and that is why people develop a connection with their iPhone that they never will with their Android phone.
As so often happens, John Gruber put it best:
Apple is a design company with engineers; Google is an engineering company with designers.
Palm CEO: “I’ve Never Used an iPhone”∞
I call bullshit. First of all, to have never used one of your biggest competitor’s products doesn’t strike me as a particularly smart decision if you’re trying to make something better. Second of all, he worked at Apple from the time they acquired NeXT until 2006, which includes at least a year that Apple was working on the iPhone. He was also one of the leads working on the iPod.
The thing about this that feels most wrong to me, though, is that so much of webOS’s interface is clearly heavily inspired by the iPhone. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing—if Apple designs an interface well (and they do often) then it’s better for everyone if competitors take a page out of their book. But there is no way you can look at, for example, the interface for editing videos on webOS and tell me that they developed that without ever seeing an iPhone.
(via antondominique)
Giving Credit Where Credit Is Due∞
iPhone developer Jake Behrens’s experience submitting an app to the App Store:
Apple called my client and said two things were holding it up, one was using an outdated version of Three20 that made private API calls and the other was some marketing speak that they wanted altered for clarification.
My first instinct is to be skeptical, because I have never heard of Apple calling a developer to tell them anything was wrong with their app—let alone WHAT was wrong—LET ALONE discuss the issues in any detail at all. But if it’s true, it would be good for Apple, good for developers, and good for consumers.
Let’s hope Apple has started to do things this way.
The Droid Battery Cover Problem∞
John Gruber:
Funny, I’ve never heard of any problems with the iPhone battery cover falling off.
Zing!
iPhone Owners Demand To See Apple Source Code∞
The crux of the issue is that the iPhone is exclusively available for AT&T, and that the 1.1.1 update bricked the phones of users who unlocked them to use on other carriers.
First, I want to say something about the fact that this is an antitrust lawsuit:
The lawsuit, which was filed in October 2007, accuses Apple and AT&T of violating antitrust laws, including the Sherman Act, by agreeing to a multi-year deal that locks U.S. iPhone owners into using the mobile carrier.
In order to buy any subsidized phone (like the iPhone) in the U.S., you have to agree to a multi-year contract in which you are locked into using a mobile carrier. Many of those phones are also exclusive to a single carrier. Why is it monopolistic when Apple does it?
That said, the specific complaint is that Apple specifically tried to hurt the users of jailbroken phones with the 1.1.1 update, as opposed to the update coincidentally happening to brick the phones of jailbroken users. Given Apple’s track record of updates coincidentally
breaking compatibility with competing products or hacks, Apple’s legal team has its work cut out for it if they want to try to argue that it was a coincidence.
Unlike Apple’s back-and-forth with Palm about the Pre syncing with iTunes, I think Apple is in the wrong here. If I pay Apple for an iPhone, I expect to be able to do whatever I want with it—whether do what Apple wants and use it with AT&T or jailbreak it so I can use it with T-Mobile is my decision and mine alone. Apple is trying to tell users what they can and cannot do with something that they paid money for, and that is clearly not right.
Furthermore, unless I’m mistaken, the DMCA allows users to jailbreak a device or bypass any sort of protection or encryption for the purpose of using it with another network. If that is the case, Apple is violating users’ legal rights as well.
However, there’s really no way to prove it without getting access to the source code. To the plaintiffs, I say: good luck getting it from Apple, of all companies.
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— Chris Parrish, Warning: Love Hurts…Sometimes the ones you love reject you. If you are an iPhone developer this is probably a concept with which you are already intimately familiar.
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— John Gruber, Jim Dalrymple on the iPhone PlatformYou know who thinks the iPhone 3GS stinks? Steve Jobs. No one is working harder on an “iPhone 3GS killer” than Apple.
Palm’s Next Steps#
With the Pre out a bit less than six months and the Pixi coming out tomorrow (well, today) I think it’s time to speculate about where the might be going. Or at least, where I think they should be going.
Palm, clearly, is at a significant mind share disadvantage. The iPhone, Blackberrys and Android phones are at the forefront of everyone’s minds. My brother, upon showing his Pre around his high school, has been asked (multiple times!) “is that the myTouch?” I’ve talked to people who want to get the Droid but have no idea what the Pre is.
The solution to this problem: advertising. Palm desperately needs to get the word out about the Pre and the Pixi. There need to be billboards, ads on the subway, and constant TV ads—and not the shitty ones with that creepy chick talking about jugglers. They need to make sure that people can’t go five minutes without hearing about the Pre or the Pixi in some way. This would also be good for Sprint, which has been absolutely hemhorraging subscribers.
Palm also needs to get webOS in better shape, NOW. The highest priority things to add are video recording and OpenGL ES. A good Facebook app would also be really nice—other than the browser, that’s probably the app that people most use as the baseline for comparing phones. In Robert Scoble’s review of the Droid, he describes the Facebook app as much worse than the iPhone’s. He says:
Most people will see this and say Droid sucks. Just this one app will affect millions of people’s decisions as to whether or not the phone is a real product. If I were Google I’d make sure that Facebook had BY FAR the best app on Android and if they weren’t willing to play ball with you I’d build my own and put my best engineers on it.
He’s absolutely correct, and Palm needs to be taking this very seriously as well. And while they’re at it (although this isn’t nearly as urgent) they need to make the Google Maps app stop sucking. It’s way too slow.
Speaking of apps, Palm needs to get the App Catalog out of beta and officially open, stat. I know they’re working on this, but it needs to happen faster. They also need to make sure that they treat developers well. They’re already doing better than Apple by supporting the homebrew community rather than trying to undermine them, but they need to treat actual developers well too. There’s already been one App Catalog horror story; we don’t need any others. Palm needs to make it easy for developers to get their apps into the catalog, and ABSOLUTELY UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES REJECT APPS FOR STUPID REASONS.
The final, and least obvious thing Palm needs to do is directly go after the iPhone, and not in the stupid way they’re going about it now (the whole iTunes sync debacle). They already have two webOS phones: the Pre and the Pixi, the Pixi being a slightly worse version of the Pre. Both of them, however, go after RIM more than they do Apple. Palm needs to jump on the bandwagon and release a phone with no physical keyboard—a phone with the form factor of the Pixi but the function of an iPhone.
First of all, that would round out a nice trio of webOS phones, three just being a nice number. It would also allow Palm to cater to the (decidedly large) group of people who prefer a virtual keyboard to a physical one. And an extra nice screen on a webOS device would be, well, extra nice.
Mostly, though, it would allow Palm to beat Apple in their own market. If they could release a phone that directly compares to the iPhone, but better—and I do truly believe that they could do it—Palm could seriously establish themselves as a serious contender in people’s minds.
Ultimately, all the problems with webOS and Palm’s lineup of phones notwithstanding, that is still their biggest obstacle.
Jason Snell's iPhone Book Rejected From App Store For Having The Word “iPhone” In The Title∞
Apple. APPLE. This is ridiculous.
