Starting the middle of last year, I thought it would be great to have a competitor to the iphone that would make it easy to create web based applications that can fully exploit the capabilities of a smartphone. I therefore started rooting for Palm as soon as they showed the Pre at CES at the beginning of this year. Well, the Pre is arriving tomorrow and the reviews by Mossberg, Pogue, Engadget et al suggest that it could actually be a contender. Of course there are some issues, such as the me...

Starting the middle of last year, I thought it would be great to have a competitor to the iphone that would make it easy to create web based applications that can fully exploit the capabilities of a smartphone. I therefore started rooting for Palm as soon as they showed the Pre at CES at the beginning of this year. Well, the Pre is arriving tomorrow and the reviews by Mossberg, Pogue, Engadget et al suggest that it could actually be a contender. Of course there are some issues, such as the me...

The likelihood of my switching to an iPhone is rising rapidly. Earlier this year I switched from a Pearl to an 8900 (both on T-Mobile). At first, I was very happy with the 8900, especially the wifi calling capability that T-Mobile offers is super handy as I have no cell coverage in my house. Also, tethering my laptop was easy and I use it frequently. But the browser is simply atrocious. I am not keeping track precisely, but it feels like at least 20% and possibly 30% of links that I click on ...

The likelihood of my switching to an iPhone is rising rapidly. Earlier this year I switched from a Pearl to an 8900 (both on T-Mobile). At first, I was very happy with the 8900, especially the wifi calling capability that T-Mobile offers is super handy as I have no cell coverage in my house. Also, tethering my laptop was easy and I use it frequently. But the browser is simply atrocious. I am not keeping track precisely, but it feels like at least 20% and possibly 30% of links that I click on ...

I am a huge fan of getting stuff out and then improving it over time. Sure, people complained about the lack of cut & paste, but it sure would have been a huge mistake to delay selling the iPhone over that. With OS3, all the really big omissions will be taken care of: Cut & paste, search, landscape keyboard & MMS (personally I use the first two heavily on my Blackberry and found the keys on the vertical keyboard way too small on the iPhone for fast typing). But that is not the big news. The b...

I am a huge fan of getting stuff out and then improving it over time. Sure, people complained about the lack of cut & paste, but it sure would have been a huge mistake to delay selling the iPhone over that. With OS3, all the really big omissions will be taken care of: Cut & paste, search, landscape keyboard & MMS (personally I use the first two heavily on my Blackberry and found the keys on the vertical keyboard way too small on the iPhone for fast typing). But that is not the big news. The b...

There are quite a few studies that have come out recently showing that multitasking is bad for performance in humans. For instance, driving your car while talking on your cell phone significantly increases your accident risk. In machines, however, we have come to love multitasking because it enables better CPU utilization. Much discussion has therefore revolved around the iPhone not having multitasking, whereas Android supports it. For starters that simplistic characterization is of course wr...

There are quite a few studies that have come out recently showing that multitasking is bad for performance in humans. For instance, driving your car while talking on your cell phone significantly increases your accident risk. In machines, however, we have come to love multitasking because it enables better CPU utilization. Much discussion has therefore revolved around the iPhone not having multitasking, whereas Android supports it. For starters that simplistic characterization is of course wr...

I love how the iPhone has been driving innovation through competition. A while ago I also pointed out what I believe to be the biggest Achilles heel of the iPhone and how that might provide an opening to beat the iPhone. Well the first contender for the role of Paris has shown up and it is Palm. Palm? Yes, Palm unveiled the Palm Pre at CES. The Pre does exactly what I suggested, which is to use the standard Javascript, HTML, CSS model to program the entire device. Apparently the apps that com...

I love how the iPhone has been driving innovation through competition. A while ago I also pointed out what I believe to be the biggest Achilles heel of the iPhone and how that might provide an opening to beat the iPhone. Well the first contender for the role of Paris has shown up and it is Palm. Palm? Yes, Palm unveiled the Palm Pre at CES. The Pre does exactly what I suggested, which is to use the standard Javascript, HTML, CSS model to program the entire device. Apparently the apps that com...

I have played around with the iPhone SDK and Apple has done an amazing job. For starters, the documentation is impressive in both quantity and quality, including a series of introductory videos (quite the contrast with the scarcity of API documentation when the Facebook API first became available). The SDK provides access to most but not all of the nifty features of the iPhone, including the camera, accelerometer and of course the gestures on the touch screen (dock access and bluetooth are no...

I have played around with the iPhone SDK and Apple has done an amazing job. For starters, the documentation is impressive in both quantity and quality, including a series of introductory videos (quite the contrast with the scarcity of API documentation when the Facebook API first became available). The SDK provides access to most but not all of the nifty features of the iPhone, including the camera, accelerometer and of course the gestures on the touch screen (dock access and bluetooth are no...

The post on the USV blog about the challenge of creating native mobile apps (meaning ones that can on exist on the mobile platform) has created a lively discussion with by now over 60 comments. A good chunk of that discussion was about the relative merits of just sticking with the mobile browser versus developing apps. For instance, Fred observes:I’m a big fan of the mobile browser too but it does seem like the prevailing delivery package today is the mobile app, not the browser.That and a co...

The post on the USV blog about the challenge of creating native mobile apps (meaning ones that can on exist on the mobile platform) has created a lively discussion with by now over 60 comments. A good chunk of that discussion was about the relative merits of just sticking with the mobile browser versus developing apps. For instance, Fred observes:I’m a big fan of the mobile browser too but it does seem like the prevailing delivery package today is the mobile app, not the browser.That and a co...

Just trying out a slightly attention grabbing headline. Of course Google didn’t do anything directly for the Palm Pre, but while I was out on vacation last week (and not blogging), Google did release a significant upgrade to the mobile version of gmail for the iPhone. What makes it significant is that it makes use of the iPhone browser’s local database capabilities (via Javascript) to provide not only a more responsive UI, but also offline access to email. All of that is delivered strictly as...

Just trying out a slightly attention grabbing headline. Of course Google didn’t do anything directly for the Palm Pre, but while I was out on vacation last week (and not blogging), Google did release a significant upgrade to the mobile version of gmail for the iPhone. What makes it significant is that it makes use of the iPhone browser’s local database capabilities (via Javascript) to provide not only a more responsive UI, but also offline access to email. All of that is delivered strictly as...