Apple was Right, and Other Updates

It turns out that Apple's iPhone 4 advertising was right. I thought It Changes Everything. Again. was pure ostentatious marketing fluff. I was duped by the "higher resolution than the human retina" line for a little while. I figured this line was just pure easy proof that Apple had finally managed to jump the shark. At it turns out, it is the literal truth. They are trying to change the way people hold their phones. Yes. If you hold it in the wrong place, you loose everything. If you hold it in the right place, you are at the mercy of ATT. As they said in Sneakers, "Now you won't know who to trust." When your phone call is dropped, it must be your fault, because you were holding it. You know, your handheld device. It is so pretty, it should not be touched.

On a more positive note, as some of you may remember, my Kindle II used to be a little photo sensitive. For those who would like to see pictures of the issue: Blurry Kindle in the Sun. I am happy to report that after dropping my Kindle out of my hands and onto concrete, Amazon replaced it for free. YAY customer service! The new replacement does not have this issue. I can now change pages in the car or in the sun and the image is still clear. I have read elsewhere that the Amazon has been replacing Kindles for this issue alone. I really respect that and love it when a company stands behind their products.

Where Vehicles Are now...

Not sure what happened to this post, but it appears to have not been published. Publishing now.

The Army has been making use of little nearly indistructable spy vehicles called Throwbots. I like the idea of smaller vehicles taking the place of people in risky situations. I don't like the idea of never quite knowing if your conversations are private. I think there might be such a thing as too good in this case. These guys were used initially to help explore the rubble of the world trade center. This is a great use of the technology. I think helping to find mines and clear them, as well as scouting in hazardous situations are also great uses.

In unrelated news, I had a lot of fun with a simple iPhone holder that I heard about. You can create a holder for your iPhone using a business card. Today, I read a blog entry about creating an iPhone holder from an airplane barf bag. Now you can still have a holder, even if you forget your business cards. Ahhh....innovation at its finest.

Does Microsoft Have Another Monopoly?

I was just playing around with a mobile platform. It contained a nice little OS. The OS came with the vendor's browser pre-installed in a premier location. The OS is a bit restricted, you can only legally install applications that have been through a vetting process by the OS vendor. The OS vendor will not allow a browser to be added and sold.

This feels worse than the old days. Back when Microsoft was claiming that IE was a required component and could not be removed. This is the equivalent of saying that IE is a required component and not only can it not be removed, no other browsers are ever allowed to be installed.

Now, if I recall correctly, MSFT is still being pummeled for that move. Now on to the potentially obvious. I am not talking about a new MSFT monopoly in this post. The Vendor is Apple and the device is the iPhone. They reject applications that compete with built in applications including ones provided by the same vendor. Google's Voice application which does shocking things like make SMS messages free and forward phone calls. I figure since the SMS messages have a nice little space carved out in the control packets for the cell phone's signal, making them free actually makes a lot of sense. That does not stop me from paying somethink like $35/month for SMS messages that I barely use.

Given that the platform is completely flexible, and the browser is just another component, what is the reason for not allowing for substitutions? Applications that I right can be made to handle links automatically. Apple could reassign http:// to another application. I found myself thinking about this today when I went to find the web browser and could not. I was looking for FireFox and I blew right past that Safari icon.

Do you think they are going to have to pay for this? In today's economy, you have to out innovate for your business, not restrict. Exclusive deals with exclusive contracts and exclusive content are no longer the rage.

Jacob

What would you like at your Fingertips?

Happy Lunar New Year!

I would like to start out this Lunar New Year with a simple question. What would you like at your fingertips? I have pondered this question for a while. I have come up with all kinds of visions of things I would like, and submitted comments and suggestions to vendors and the world. A couple of days ago, I realized, I can actually make a lot of it happen. Today's cell phones are a little bit better than the older ones used to be.

I have started to follow the Beginning iPhone Programming Tips posted by TimesToCome. Learning a new language seems like a relatively high price to pay. That being said, I remember lots of really cool things that I would have loved to have handy earlier. There were lots of things that I kept close, checked often, and worried about more often.

Now, I am planning on implementing some of those. I would also be happy to have any suggestions. What kinds of information are you looking for? What kinds of information do you check often? What would you like your phone (iPhone at first) to do? How long do you think it will take me to have my first application?

Jacob