100 Intérêts

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:

1. 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.

2. Verizon sponsors a two-week free period for The Daily.

3. 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.)

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:

1. The name - Let’s starts the jokes… iPad Thai!
2. iPad Keyboard dock - I already own an Apple Bluetooth Kb… sucks to buy another crap. Apparently, it works with Bluetooth KB devices
3. No camera – What? I want to use Skype on this “screamer”, as Steve Jobs said.
4. Optional 3G – Yep, Nooo way would I pay a $130 premium and another $30 when I already have a device with a data plan.

Pros:

1. No Flash – I’m happy my iPhone is Flash-free
2. Bezel – Because we need to hold you somehow
3. No multitasking – Because we don’t really multi- tasks anyway. (But we need notifications, though)

Missing:

1. Notifications – Nobody is mentioning this anywhere… so I don’t know

MadTV – Say no more!

Un de mes objectifs pour 2009? Faire une application pour le iPhone. En tant qu’ancien programmeur, je me suis dit que ça ne devait pas être sorcier d’apprendre l’Objective C et surtout le CocoaTouch. Pour me mettre à la tâche, j’ai découvert ce livre qui est très bien fait. Les exemples sont intéressant à faire et à suivre et surtout, c’est écrit pour les novices connaisseurs comme moi.

Beginning Iphone Development

Pour lire le résumé qui m’a convaincu, suivez le guide:

http://books.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/01/19/1451236

As Steve Jobs was explaining earlier. The iPhone is currently working with GSM network only because 3G chip are using too much power and drain the battery quickly.

Today, Broadcom announced a new chip combining all technologies which consumes less battery power since there are less chip in the phone! I was expecting this since Steve announce publicly why not using a 3G chip.

Go see the details at Electronista or the complete press release on Broadcom‘s website

This will open the market in Canada. As of now, the only carrier working with GSM was Rogers but with a 3G phone, Apple could sell their handheld with any carrier in Canada and Asia next year and broaden their contracts in Europe. The only problem right now is the current chip provider for the iPhone but I guess they will soon offer something to compete with Broadcom.

Certains croient qu’Apple ne fait jamais la sortie de nouveaux produits un Lundi, d’autres croient qu’Apple ne sortirait pas un produit sans un événement spécial.

Moi, je dis que les deux sont vrai et faux à la fois. Une sortie de produit un Lundi est plutôt rare, mais Apple a déjà fait ça. Ils ont sorti des nouveaux iPods, 19 juillet 2004. Apple a également fait un événement « Showtime » pour annoncer l’intégration des films de Disney dans leur répertoire.

Que pouvons-nous conclure? Le iPod a été lancé en 2001, donc la révision de 2004 n’était pas une grosse affaire en soi. Puis, l’événement Showtime a perdu de son mordant parce que toutes les tribunes avaient annoncé l’ajout de film à iTunes depuis 1 semaine sinon plus. Apple a un peu perdu la face parce qu’elle n’avait rien d’excitant ou de secret à révéler. Bref, tout le monde était déçu!

La situation actuelle est un peu semblable. Tout le monde parle du iPhone depuis des mois. Les analystes financiers l’ont inclus dans leur prévision de 2007 pour les actions d’Apple. Alors, pourquoi faire un gros événement sur quelque chose que tout le monde attend depuis longtemps?

Finalement, annoncer un nouveau produit avant Noël, sans le vendre pour la période des Fêtes, est-ce que ça fait du sens, surtout de la part d’Apple? Personnellement, je trouve que ça va faire jaser dans ma famille, donc ça fait beaucoup de sens!