Brand Recognition - not a 'smartphone,' but an 'iPhone?'

“No, I don’t work on a laptop at home,” someone recently said to me. “I work on my MacBook.”

Not sure if this frightens or impresses me...

A Verizon Reality Check

by Marco - YES. Everyone keeps bitching about how much they hate AT&T and want to have the iPhone on Verizon, but Verizon sucks just as hard, only in different ways. I lost count of the number of calls that never rang through and don't even show up as missed calls when sitting in full-reception places within my first month of service. I want the iPhone on Verizon because my family is on VZW and I can't afford ATT on my own, but I would switch to ATT in a second if it was cheaper because I know it will be no worse really. (SPrint and T-Mobile don't even count as cellular carriers - they don't even have service 1 mile from UMass campus - they only exist as real cellular carriers for people in super-dense cities or people trying to pretend that there's competition in the us cell market.)(And Verizon DSL still owes me $104!!!)

"Does it have a removable battery?"

"yes, involuntarily" - Marco on misguided attempts to compete based on "checklists of features"

someone should make an app for that...

Applegeeks Lite

the god-tablet...err 'iPad'... P0ST 0F D00M!!

Since I've been rather busy the last few weeks with all this life stuff, I never did get around to posting my thoughts about the iPad before or after it's official christening, so here's a summary of my thoughts - err, links to posts I generally like:

the buildup to the 11th tablet direct from god:
---Gruber's excellent critique of the godTablet's true conceptual predecessor, the Newton

T3H HYP3!!!!1!!!:
---"Don't you have any inside sources you can contact?" (PvP comic)

the MaxiPad:
---the price is fucking amazing
---hey, the name isn't any worse than iTouch, I mean the "iPod Touch"...
---yes, it is just "an overgrown iTouch," but that's exactly the point, that's precisely what I (we?) have been wanting for years ---sure, it's not a netbook, but I have no interest in one of those anyway, and if I want something more advanced there's always the Axiotron Modbook. It is the perfect device for the bus or taking notes in class (with a bluetooth keyboard)
---I cannot wait till I have the money decide I can live without food for a month and buy one - the 3G plan is EXACTLY what I have been wanting for years and can probably replace my current hack for getting cellular data fro $30/mo (well, okay, cheaper would be nice - $30 is just about the upper limit I can afford a month...)(not having to jailbreak to use it as a mobile wifi modem would be nice would make this a way better product)
---that whole flash kerfuffle: sure, flash 'would be nice,' and I really wish they used a flashblock type setup where you leave flash off by default but click an item to enable flash as needed, but I can live without probably and if this hastens Flash's demise then so much the better (disclosure: I FUCKING HATE FLASH)
---the DRM/app lock-in/gulag: yes, it sucks, they need to give users the option to use non-approved apps without having to endure the jailbreak arms-race, but it is a sacrifice I will gladly make for this kind of quality design (until someone comes along and makes something better - sadly I doubt this will happen anytime in the next decade or two)

the real importance/significance and why it actually matters:
---well, for one thing we need to actually need to make computers work for normal users and the backlash is really "future shock" [via Marco] - the significance is really in the long run, in this new category of consumer electronics appliances
---Alan Kay's take:

When the Mac first came out, Newsweek asked me what I [thought] of it. I said: Well, it’s the first personal computer worth criticizing. So at the end of the presentation, Steve came up to me and said: Is the iPhone worth criticizing? And I said: Make the screen five inches by eight inches, and you’ll rule the world.

[via Daring Fireball]

the aftermath:
---CARS does a remarkable foreshadowing post (technically this was posted beforehand, but it works so well...)

Touch Screen Accuracy Varies Widely

And clearly some smartphones cheap out more than others... [via TUAW]

clever app to lock your mac based on iphone proximity

it detects when the bluetooth from your iphone or ipod touch is nearby to lock/unlock the computer

design critique of the iPhone

low learnability but high play factor

comparing the virtual keyboard on the iPhone and Android HTC Magic

useability - it's all in the details [via Daring Fireball]

Push Notifications not working for non-AT&T iPhones

This SUCKS...

iPhone Unboxing Video Parody

so. spot. on.

[via KungFuGrippe]

Craig Hockenberry of Iconfactory (Twitterific, etc) on UI design and the iPhone

The particularly interesting bit that UI & us pulls out is how little the mouse and keyboard has actually changed compared to computing power. The iPhone is a completely new user interface paradigm that forces developers to completely retrain themselves. (Interestingly, I prefer Tweetie over Twitterific on the iPhone.)

The Palm Pre and Smart Phone Platforms

I am quite excited by the Palm Pre - largely because I'm hoping it will prove a worthy competitor to apple.  I don't mean this from an Apple fanboy perspective (well, not mostly).  What I want to see is an alternative smart phone operating system design model.  

The iPhone uses a variant on the Mac philosophy of integrated OS and hardware with fairly locked down apps but a healthy hacker community.  This model emphasizes design and build quality and tends to deliver an unparalleled user experience.  The iPhone was the first all-in-one that didn't suck, it is still very young and has much room for improvement, but it is miles ahead of the alternatives.  The single biggest asset for the iPhone platform is the developer SDK - the Apple developers have the single best coding language around with Cocoa and a remarkable set of provided tools that greatly speed up the process and improve the overall quality of the app ecosystem.  And that's before you count the amazing indie mac developer community.  

Android has a lot of potential, but it seems to be progressing too slowly - as is typical for Linux, it's closest comparison in the computer world.  There is not enough developer support or good SDK, it is really only suitable for the hobbyist hackers - in a decade or so it may catch up... barely.  The best bet for Android is if Google really puts more resources behind it and gets some quality designers working on the thing, but even then it will always be a cool, very versatile open source platform that delivers a mediocre user experience at best and shitty design.  

Blackberry is great for email, and just email.  It is a dedicated device with a very clear design focus, as all good dedicated devices are, but it is not even close to being a real all-in one.  The others - windows mobile and um, symbian? and whoever else - well, they're all in the just plain sucking category.  In about 5 or 10 years one of them will come along and pull a windows 95 - do a 'good enough' copy of the iPhone OS without a platform-tie-in.  It will gain reasonable market share, but always offer a suckier user experience and ripped-off designs that prove that their 'designers' don't have even a basic grasp of what good UI design is but it will look 'close enough' for the cheap-ass morons that don't value design or build quality.  

The Pre though, it offers a whole new design paradigm - probably closest in nature to the webapps that are the latest fad in Web 2.0.  It is built using all web standards - Java, html, and all that jazz.  This means that it integrates extremely well with the existing net services - it will pull in your facebook friend's contact info into it's equivalent of the contact book for example.  Really, it is a whole new paradigm beyond the windowed OS experience with it's cards concept - very very fascinating UI idea that has a ton of potential power.  The fact that it is all built essentially as webpages makes the barrier to entry for designers extremely low - I could do it - but also poses a very severe limit on the power and flexibility.  There is no way you can create the sort of rich apps that you get from the Mac or iPhone Cocoa environment - and apps are what makes or breaks any computing platform.  I see huge potential for Pre to be a great low-power device - akin to a netbook maybe in utility, ideal as a personal organizer and such, but distinctly limited in power, versatility, and design polish.  The biggest unknown right now, is how well designed the Pre OS will be - they have a lot of talent, so they could really pull it off - I certainly hope so.  That whole Sprint-exclusive to start dealio is a huge setback though - Sprint might as well not exist for all the coverage they provide and they have worse customer service than even AT&T remarkably.