After a Microsoft executive stating that Windows Phone had a feature similar to Siri for about a year now got the attention of many. That same executive believe that Siri is just another “Good marketing campaign” from Apple but let’s take a look.
I’m studying for the GMAT and looking at this particular news, a basic math concept comes to mind…
A negative number multiplied by a negative number will result in a negative number.
Do the math!
In a memo to Nokia’s employee, Stephen Elop, new CEO of Nokia sent a clear message. There are a few interesting bits. First, he said:
“This means we’re going to have to decide how we either build, catalyse or join an ecosystem.”
I wonder if Apple would let Nokia run the iOS and if Nokia would be interested. I doubt it since they are suing each other but it could be a good thing for both companies. I know Apple does not really need Nokia right now but if we look at how the market is evolving. Apple could get a nice boost in the future by partnering with Nokia. Android is now on Samsung, HTC, Motorola and al. And Microsoft is now back at work with Microsoft Phone 7 (still needs to prove itself though)
Secondly, he said: “Apple owns the high-end range” Nothing to add on this one…
Third,
Symbian is proving to be an increasingly difficult environment in which to develop to meet the continuously expanding consumer requirements, leading to slowness in product development and also creating a disadvantage when we seek to take advantage of new hardware platforms.
Interestingly, I never liked Symbian and I thought it was weird when Nokia decided to invest efforts in the platform. The iPhone was my third cellphone and it is the only one that I thought, “That’s it!” Before that I was always frustrated by some hardware or software stupidities that made my “mobility experience” painful. (Can’t backup my cellphone data, can’t transfer data to my new phone, can’t share contacts, can’t store more contacts, etc.)
You can read the full memo here
From his website DaringFireball.net, John cites the differences between the Verizon iPhone and AT&T. One element captured my attention and it is about tethering. Hopefully, it will come to Canada soon as well. Click to read the full entry
The Wi-Fi Hotspot
The Verizon iPhone, at this moment, also has one unique feature: Wi-Fi hotspot tethering. My unit is running iOS version 4.2.6, and I believe that is the version Apple intends to ship to customers on February 10. All other iPhones around the world are currently on iOS 4.2.1.
When next Apple rolls out an iOS update, all iPhones will get this feature. It will be up to individual carriers whether they support it, just as with the iPhone’s existing USB/Bluetooth tethering feature.
But when will that be? I asked, and Apple declined to answer. My hunch is that we got our answer today, at, of all places, the announcement event for The Daily. The Daily requires a subscription — either $1 per week, or $40 per year. They’re using a new in-app subscription payment system from Apple for this — but these in-app subscription APIs aren’t in iOS 4.2. So The Daily launched today, free for a limited time. They announced at the event that this initial free two-week period was brought to us by: Verizon.
So my guess is that a deal was worked out like this:
The Verizon iPhone debuts with worldwide exclusive access to the Wi-Fi hotspot tethering feature. This way, all the reviews for the Verizon iPhone will mention a very cool feature that the AT&T iPhone doesn’t have. But what it really is is a feature that the AT&T iPhone doesn’t have yet. But it won’t play that way in the review summaries.
Verizon sponsors a two-week free period for The Daily.
At some point in the next two weeks or so, Apple holds an announcement regarding in-app subscription APIs (and, I suspect, given this week’s news regarding in-app payments for third-party bookstores, other in-app purchasing changes). At this point, Apple releases a new version of iOS with support for in-app subscription purchasing and the Wi-Fi hotspot feature. I wouldn’t even be surprised if Apple releases that iOS update prior to February 10, the date the iPhone 4 is slated to arrive in Verizon customers’ hands.
That’s all truly just a guess on my part though. I could be wrong. For one thing, The Daily is an iPad-only app, and tethering is an iPhone-only feature. But I suspect that Apple now prefers to keep the iOS versions in sync between iPhone and iPad — and surely, there will be subscription payment apps that work on both devices.
As for how the hotspot feature works, it’s just great.
First, it’s a lot easier to turn on than it was before. Previously, you needed to open Settings, then go to General → Network → Internet Tethering. Now it’s right at the top of the first level in Settings, with a new name: “Personal Hotspot”.
Turn it on, and you get a Wi-Fi hotspot. The name of the network is the name of your iPhone, as specified when you sync it with iTunes on your computer. It’s password protected by default, and Apple even auto-suggests good passwords like “closed53soaps” — two words, all-lowercase, separated by two digits.
When a client connects, you get a pulsing blue status bar, just as with the existing tethering feature. But now, the status bar includes a count of the connected clients. In the same way that you can tap the green pulsing status bar to return to the Phone app during a call, you can tap the blue pulsing status bar to return to the Personal Hotspot settings.
I used the hotspot feature from my Mac and iPad for much of my work so far this week. It works perfectly, and speed is about as good as one could hope for. The iPhone’s battery meter dropped about 5 percent for every 20 minutes of web surfing while used as a hotspot.
Apple has made the iPhone pretty aggressive about ceasing to broadcast the hotspot when there are no clients connected. So if you turn the hotspot feature on and leave it on, but no clients actually connect, there doesn’t seem to be any effect on battery life that I could see. The same thing happens about a minute or so after the last remaining client disconnects.
However, after the iPhone stops broadcasting the hotspot network, when you then attempt to reconnect, you need to go back to the Hotspot Tethering screen in Settings to get it to “wake up” and start actively broadcasting the network again. You don’t need to change any settings on the screen, because you left the toggle set to “On” — you just need to open the Personal Hotspot settings screen to wake it up. Put another way, it seems to me that if you’re going to use this feature regularly, you can leave the toggle switch set to “On”, and your battery life won’t suffer when the hotspot isn’t actually being used. But when you do need to use it, you need to open the Personal Hotspot settings screen each time.
If you don’t like this sort of “extend the battery life at all costs” behavior, you probably don’t like the iPhone anyway.
The hotspot feature works so well that I can’t really see paying for a 3G iPad again. I’d rather have a Wi-Fi-only iPad and my iPhone’s hotspot, when needed, than pay $15 a month for a 3G data service that only works on the iPad itself. It’s not quite as convenient as having 3G built right in to the iPad, but I just don’t use 3G on the iPad all that much. The other big thing is that with iPhone tethering, my MacBook can get online too — one $20 monthly tethering fee, and all my portable computers have 3G access. (Worked great at SFO Sunday morning.)
Skype on Android and BlackBerry is exclusive to Verizon.
I totally agree with this statement from John Gruber
It is a good example of how Android is open, though. In many ways, its openness is from the perspective of the carriers. The carriers can (and do) take Android and modify the default UI appearance. They add new un-deletable system apps. And they can make exclusive deals like this one with Skype.
Like my father would say: “Power to the user”
Technologies should serve the population, not big corporation.
I would say the same about Apple and AT&T exclusivity deal. These deals should be prohibited by the FCC because users can’t use newer and better technologies if they don’t switch carriers. Sometimes it is impossible to switch (because of service area) and imagine this, as a customer, if I’m not happy with the service, I would expect that I can choose my provider. Because as a customer my only weapon againts these big corporation is my “monthly vote” but when there are no options, companies tend to let customer service get behind and get lazy.
Competition is good, competition is required.
When I installed the iOS 4 on my iPhone 3G it was actually faster than previous versions. After a while though, it became unresponsive just like in this video. The title mention that it is a parody but I don’t think it is really funny when you experience it. I would have preferred Apple to just tell me that I can’t upgrade to iOS 4 because now I know all the features that I would be missing and I don’t want to downgrade either. That’s not cool. Fortunately, the iPhone 4 is coming July 30. I wanted to get a new one before experiencing that but nevertheless now I can’t pass this to my wife.
As a Mac fan, I am a bit disappointed, it looks gorgeous but there are some caveats here. Don’t get me wrong, I would love to buy this thing but I don’t need it now. I also just watched the video and it looks amazing and some of the apps are astonishing on the iPad. Here is my list of pros and cons.
Cons:
Pros:
Missing:
MadTV – Say no more!
Je ne sais pas si c’est une bonne nouvelle ou une nouvelle façon pour les compagnies de Télécom de faire des millions sur le dos de leur clients, mais les trois plus gros fournisseurs du Canada se donnent la main cette semaine afin d’annoncer un partenariat appellé Zoompass. Ce nouveau service qui permettra de faire des échanges monétaires entre usagers directement de leur cellulaire.
La société créé par ces trois géants se nomment EnStream LP. Apparemment, l’abonnement sera gratuit, mais des frais de 0.50$ seront chargés à chaque utilisation. Bien que nouveau sur le continent nord-américain, cette technologie est déjà utilisée à grande échelle dans le monde entier et le concept est loin d’être nouveau.
Selon le magazine IT World Canada :
Zoompass users will be able to send, request and receive money via their smart phones or using a branded MasterCard chip-and-PIN credit card. The service, which also allows users to send and receive money from their personal bank accounts, is available as an application on iPhone, BlackBerry and Java-based devices, with other mobile users able to access their accounts online via mobile browsing.
Voilà encore d’autres frais à l’horizon de notre compagnie de télécom et de nos banques… Ce sera comme les ATM du coin. Quoi de plus réjouissant dans ces moments de récession? Nos compagnies “préférés” qui s’en mettront encore plus dans les poches.
Le Palm Pre sortira en magasin le 6 juin prochain et on peut déjà lire des articles très intéressant qui lui rende hommage.
Voici le vidéo de démarrage du Pre lorsque vous l’ouvrez pour la première fois.
Palm media sync is a feature of webOS that synchronizes seamlessly with iTunes, giving you a simple and easy way to transfer DRM-free music, photos and videos to your Palm Pre.(2) Simply connect Pre to your PC or Mac via the USB cable, select “media sync” on the phone, and iTunes will launch on your computer desktop. You can then choose which DRM-free media files to transfer.
Source: Palm
There’s no question that what Palm has done is clever. With the exception of DRM-encrypted music and video, it provides Pre owners with the regular iTunes media syncing experience — which is to say the best media syncing experience.
In terms of legal risk, this move almost makes me think that Palm is trying to provoke Apple into filing a lawsuit. The danger for Palm in such a suit is with all of the former Apple engineers now working for Palm. (There are many.) Did they use inside knowledge of the iPod/iTunes USB interface to implement the WebOS “media sync” feature? Palm’s not stupid — or at least Jon Rubinstein is not — so I would wager that Palm was careful to “clean-room” reverse-engineer the protocol. But if Apple sues, Palm would be forced to prove this in court, and in the meantime, they could be faced with the public perception that they’ve stolen Apple’s IP.
I know Palm is now the underdog, and I’m rooting for the Pre to be a success. Competition is good for the industry. But this move strikes me as more desperate than scrappy.
Source: Daring Fireball
We all know that iTunes is well established and used by hundreds of millions of users. No surprise than to see Palm sync with it. It would not be surprising also to see Apple fight back and block the Palm from syncing at all in the next release (which went out last night). Yes, it will be a game of cat-and-mouse for a while but then, Apple can sue Palm for IP infringement in the meantime. Palm is known to be in such difficulties that the Pre might be their only hope to survive. Also, Palm’s stock increased by 357% since last January. Personnally, I think it is a tour de force considering the bad economy. They played well with marketing and the geek community.
Apple might also use this as an opportunity to diversify. Apple should ask for licence fees. OK, they want to get market shares with the iPhone, so they shouldn’t do that now but what if? Apple was once seen as a monopoly because of iTunes, and it is still considered this way. The iPhone might create the same monopoly in a few years from now. After 2 years, they grabbed 13% of the market bypassing Microsoft and getting very close to RIM.In a few years, they might need competitors like Palm to blurry the monopoly image a bit.
That’s why I don’t think Apple will sue Palm right away. They might just ask for some fees or exchange it with other Palm’s IP.
We will see soon enough. I’ll keep an eye open on this one.