Incremental Blogger

It’s interesting to see Tim O’Reilly and Joe Wilcox join in the chorus signaling to Microsoft that it needs some major changes in the mobile space.

My recommendation continues to be to stop, rethink, and redo. The Windows Mobile team is on a legacy track. The future is more geared around “browsing,” content creation, and connectivity. A device that can’t keep do these well out of the box isn’t going to hack it.

These two posts also point out the value of the generic browser in small PCs and devices. Yep. If there wasn’t already enough pressure on the IE team, this surely indicates there should be more. Actually, my suggestion is that Microsoft start from scratch here and show how Google Chrome really should have been written. Sorry, I don’t think Google hit the sweet spot. I think they blew a great opportunity to make a browser that could manage most of want user would want to do with a small device today. As I blogged the other day, the iPhone proves that a slimmed down browser isn’t the solution. Again, it’s time to stop, rethink, and redo.

It’s time to face reality: Microsoft needs to stop what it’s doing and clone the iPhone.

After using the iPhone over the last year, I’ve come to realize that the iPhone and its browser (and now its 3rd party apps) are consuming more and more of my time. It’s even eating into my notebook/Tablet PC browse time. The iPhone model is winning.

Of course, I’m not really suggesting to clone the iPhone exactly. I’m just saying, that like with the original Mac, we’ve seen the future and what Microsoft has so far is not it. Time to bite the bullet and copy. They’re right; you’re wrong.

Here are some thoughts along these lines:

Dump IE. Don’t port it. We’re talking rewrite time. Safari is more appropriate although not ideal with its touch navigation and attempt at smart zooming. In addition, out of the box there ought to be live video, Flash, and Silverlight in the browser. These are musts.

There has to be live video support. Period. The built-in camera has to be top notch too. Done right, this isn’t going to be just a phone, it’s going to be the owner’s most used camera for most. Think simple. Don’t go overboard.

On the plus side:

Microsoft knows touch with all of its experiences with the Tablet PCs and UMPCs. It’s time to leverage this on a better, thinner iPhone like device.

I’m convinced Microsoft can make a better iPhone in part because it won’t try to do all on its own. There has to be an open and vibrant developer community, which is something Microsoft knows how to do much, much better than Apple.

Another huge advantage that Microsoft would have with an iPhone clone is that Microsoft can leverage its huge community base to give much better and richer feedback to minimize nasty bugs–which have plagued every iteration of the iPhone. Microsoft can do better here.

One bit of advice I’d give to Microsoft is to take every opportunity to improve the ease of use of the iPhone. For instance, if there’s public or known WIFI and poor cell phone coverage, the phone should transparently switch coverage. Dropped calls–especially when at home where you’re most likely to have WIFI–shouldn’t exist. Not on a good phone anyway. Whatever you add, it should be about improving ease of use, not simply blowing people away with coolness.

If Microsoft wants to differentiate more; one place to do so is with the built in apps. I’m not talking about scientific calculators here. I’m talking live weather radars, better traffic monitoring, flight tracking, and more. Make it a phone that people will use to make their lives better.

Oh, I’m sure Microsoft will also toss in a bunch of IT stuff too, but be cautious here. Don’t make things complicated for everyone else.

That’s it. Time to just do it.

I like the direction Stefan is taking over at the Media Computing Group in building a MultiTouch.framework in Cocoa for OS X.

As one of its features, you can use the multi-touch on an iPhone to control multiple touchpoints on a Mac. I’ve wondered about doing something similar to drive touch points on a Vista machine. It should work though the eventing would need to be specialized.

Check out the YouTube video below if you want to be inspired.

Along these lines, I’ve also thought about leveraging the accelerometer on the iPhone in a similar fashion to control apps on a Tablet PC, notebook, or desktop. Makes a lot of sense.

Lora says it’s time to update ShareKMC

If you’re interested in iPhone development, by all means check out the live feeds from iPhoneDevCamp today (Saturday August 2nd):

https://admin.adobe.acrobat.com/_a295153/iphonedevcamp/?launcher=false

As I blogged the other day, I think the iPhone is the platform to develop on right now. I think it trumps all others. If a developer isn’t looking at the iPhone and how their product or service is best expressed on it, I think they’re not doing all that they should. That’s just me take.

With this being said, I see that Robert Scoble today is shaming those in the VC community, large companies and the like, for not taking the iPhone more seriously. Right now.

That’s OK, Robert. The fact that the established players are more cautious with something new like the iPhone is exactly why it opens up opportunities for others. So I don’t see this as a bad thing. It’s just the nature of changing markets.

I will add a key point that many industry people need to start paying attention to: I find more and more of my browsing migrating to the iPhone. Even with the display being too small, I find I check more things and read more content more often on the iPhone than I have with any other small device. Not only that, but the browsing time has eaten into my browsing time on my notebook or desktop. This is a point I’d pound into any VCs head that isn’t too sure about the iPhone as a different platform. The iPhone is not simply canabilizing other phone sales, it’s eating into desktop consumption. With better apps on the iPhone I only see this trend getting bigger.

One other key point I think industry players need to pay attention to here is how security is being expressed on phone like devices vs desktop OS devices. Put simply, security is going to kill the user experience in traditional OSes if they’re not careful. Here’s the thing. I can pick up my iPhone, wake it up with a click, slide the unlock gadget, and then without any further logging in, get access to the web, check the news, weather data, stock prices, etc, etc, etc. To get to other content or install an app, I might need to sign in. But generally, there are good things I can do just by turning the device on. Yes, I can set my desktop to do the same, but because of security reasons I don’t. It’s not that everything I have on my system needs to be locked down, it’s just that that’s the model desktop OSes have. I think the iPhone shows that either the desktop players are going to have to tweak their security models, or their market share is going to get eaten more and more by easier to use non-big-OS devices. I think part of the reason that more and more of my browsing is migrating to the iPhone is in part because of this.

For all my praise for the iPhone there are some things I think Apple and AT&T have terribly missed:

* WIFI-based calling. I don’t care what AT&T says, there are many dead or poor cell coverage areas–and when these spots are in a home with great WIFI, there’s absolutely no reason that the phone shouldn’t auto switch to VOIP. To do otherwise creates a poor experience. The iPhone is wrong not to support this natively and transparently. A great phone wood.
* The phone–actually mainly the apps, such as Safari–crash way too much. A great iPhone would not do this, at least not as much.
* Not only is the iPhone missing great travel apps as Robert points out (why can’t I track a flight easily?), there’s still not a great weather radar app, and I’m sure I could list a half a dozen other must have apps that the iPhone really should have. If these apps existed I bet, the iPhone would become mainstream faster than any competitor could come up with a great clone.
* The iPhone’s battery life is going to be an issue for quite a while it appears. Clever charging scenarios are going to be the workaround. These don’t exist yet.
* Free iPhone apps are good, but of course people need to make a living. However, what price should iPhone apps be? I’m thinking in the 99 cent range. Why? Because they actually are quite temporal. Developers need to get comfortable with 10x less expensive apps on the iPhone and potentially 100x more market size for their programs.

Those Apple Tablet rumors keep churning and churning. Today ABC News sums up what’s going on in the Mac Tablet rumor space. There’s nothing new here though. Just idle speculation and the repetition of rumors.

Like many, I’ve had some supposedly second and third-hand sources tell me an Apple touchish-tabletish device is in the works. But that’s only a couple people spread out over more than one year of time. In other words, Apple may be working on something, but who knows if it’s going to be released as a product.

My guess–and this is only a guess based on no tips or anything–is that Apple will make a larger iPhone-slash-iPod touch-ish like device and this may or may not be what people are hearing about.

Maybe Apple has something more revolutionary in the works, maybe something more Tablet PC like. However, I doubt it. It wouldn’t fit into Apple’s product line. I’d love to see one and I’d buy one in an instant, but I just don’t see it happening yet. Apple would need to dramatically improve its handwriting, gesture, and shape recognition. That wouldn’t be that hard to do, but I just don’t see it happening. Now maybe, just maybe, the education market is so compelling to Apple that they’re going to rethink their engineering efforts and build a notebook with integrated handwriting support. Maybe.

Anyway, even ABCNews.rumor.com isn’t enough for you, there’s always Jason O’Grady over at The Apple Core or MacRumors to keep the rumor mill primed.

Isn’t this fun?

One thing is predictably true here though: If Apple releases a Tablet–that’s even slightly close to the approach Microsoft has taken–the Tablet market will finally take off like we’ve all figured it would. There’s no doubt in my mind that Apple would release a quality product–whatever it does–and the arguments over whether a Tablet makes sense will all be over. Then it will turn into one of who has a Tablet that better matches your needs. For the sake of the overall Tablet market, I hope this is what happens.

By the way, same thing can be said for the MID market too, which at this time is owned by the iPhone.

The number of people predicting a forthcoming Apple Tablet keeps growing.

Dave Winer thinks we’ll see one soon too as the next generation of Apple systems make their way to market:

In the next round you’ll see one with two or three USB ports and a removable battery as well as a tablet version. Both will run the iPhone software at least as an option. The tablet might run it as its only option.

Dave also sees the Apple Air notebook as a harbinger of thin things to come. I think he’s correct on this. Wha t Apple has going for it in its designs is not just a little bit of metal or well placed plastic or fancy graphics. Apple’s key design wins have recently been its thinness. It scored well here with the iPhone in comparison to other Internet browsing devices. It scored well here with the Air and even the MacBook Pro for that matter.

If Apple can bring together thin mobile devices with relatively low cost, then Apple’s going to continue to take market share.

My prediction a year or so back was that we’d see 30% market share of Apple devices. Forget about the PC as a single system sitting on a desk. What it’s really about now is a combination of connected devices. Signs continue to look like it’s going to happen. I imagine in the next year or so we’ll see analysts talking not just about PC market share, but connected device market share. What will matter is if the device can get to the cloud. If so, it counts in the pile. And if Apple can bring together its OSes even more across its devices (phones, iPods, PCs), then Apple’s going to wind up with a significant market share even in the OS category compared to other “PC” manufacturers.

In this game, Microsoft may want to rethink its strategy of “hiding” the OS in its game consoles or Zunes or even consolidating better the notion of an OS in its phones and the OS in small notebooks. The lines are blurring. Fact is, 10 million here and a 100 million there of competing devices that belong to the same OS family and its going to raise some competitive feathers.

Now one could argue that the OS can be hidden just fine, particularly the smaller the device gets. However, as the iPhone has shown it’s still about the developer, developer, developer. Do you think we’d see the same amount of interest in the iPhone today without all the developer efforts–official or not–around the iPhone? Nope.

Let’s face it, the OEM community has failed to deliver a knock out mobile Internet device. Microsoft didn’t deliver with the UMPC and its sleek Haiku concept. Even Apple has been unable to deliver a larger version of the iPhone–the iTablet that many have dreamed of. And come to think of it, Intel is poised to seed this market with its MID initiative and from what I’ve seen so far I’m skeptical they’ll hit the sweet spot too–despite its fortunate timing.

But no one, no one, has delivered what quite a few people are looking for: An inexpensive, portable, Internet-tuned device that’s large enough to use on the web and light enough to want to keep using.

Of all the devices I’ve owned over the years, the iPhone is the closest, but frankly its display is too small.

So what’s a person to do? How about try designing your own? That’s exactly what Michael Arrington and the folks over at TechCrunchIt have in mind.

Michael writes:

I’m tired of waiting - I want a dead simple and dirt cheap touch screen web tablet to surf the web. Nothing fancy like the Dell latitude XT, which costs $2,500. Just a Macbook Air-thin touch screen machine that runs Firefox and possibly Skype on top of a Linux kernel. It doesn’t exist today, and as far as we can tell no one is creating one. So let’s design it, build a few and then open source the specs so anyone can create them.

Here’s the basic idea: The machine is as thin as possible, runs low end hardware and has a single button for powering it on and off, headphone jacks, a built in camera for video, low end speakers, and a microphone. It will have Wifi, maybe one USB port, a built in battery, half a Gigabyte of RAM, a 4-Gigabyte solid state hard drive. Data input is primarily through an iPhone-like touch screen keyboard. It runs on linux and Firefox. It would be great to have it be built entirely on open source hardware, but including Skype for VOIP and video calls may be a nice touch, too.

As I’ve blogged for awhile, I’m all for an idea like this and frankly since no one has been able to put it together I agree it’s time to look elsewhere. Is the community the right place? We’ll see. Even if a good reference design is all that comes out of this effort, I’m all for it. We need something.

It sure looks like I’m not alone in this. Since the first post earlier this afternoon there are upwards of 700 comments sprinkled about on serveral posts about this idea. Yep. People are interested.

I think there are lots of existing players here to blame as to why we haven’t seen something like this. Some of this is due to the sluggish momentum of the large players. For instance, Microsoft has been unable to deliver an OS that makes sense for devices like this. Intel hasn’t delivered on the performance/cost side for low-cost mobile devices. And the OEMS. Don’t get me started. Even on the sales side we’ve seen the Best Buyification of notebooks to the point that they’re all pretty much alike. Even Apple can’t keep up–particularly with all of the calls for a larger iPhone-like Tablet.

Will an open project like this succeed? Who knows. Cost is going to be the biggest challenge I imagine. Even if TechCrunch were to get commitments from say 5,000 people online to buy a first gen device, I doubt any of the manufacturers will give the price breaks they need to reach the $200 price most of us want. Why should they? In no time flat it would make all the over priced UMPCs and similar devices look, well, over priced.

I’m game though. Sounds like a fun project to try. Sorry Intel. Sorry Apple. We’re tired of waiting.

Wouldn’t it be funny though if Apple announced something like this in the days to come? Yep. When something is achievable for one, it’s achievable for all.

As a developer I’ll put it simply: If I were at any company working on any product, I’d place developing a well-tuned iPhone app or service at the top of my list–above any other skunkworks projects. Yes, any company. Any product. Even if I worked at a competing company and used a competing platform, I’d dedicate every extra minute to better understand the iPhone and its platform. Top to bottom. I guarantee that whatever I was doing up to that point was off target. Whatever tradeoffs I’d once accepted about what’s feasible in the marketplace I’d need to step back and reassess them.

Like the Macintosh before it. The iPhone is a game changer.

Don’t get me wrong. There are several things about the iPhone I don’t think are right. The original Mac wasn’t ideal either. Those aren’t that important here. The real key is how the iPhone’s mobility, connectivity, and interactivity play together to form a device that ages all others.

Am I saying this because I have an iPhone app up my sleeve? No. I’m not there yet. But I know I should be.

Robert Scoble:

Today I visited two iPhone developers to see how things went. First we visited Evernote, which makes a great note-taking app. This is the most useful app I’ve loaded on my iPhone so far (which has more than 30 apps loaded on it). Really killer thing? Take a picture of something with text in it. Say a sign, or a business card. Or a newspaper ad. Or a bill you received. Save it. Then, search for something on that bill. Wow. It turned all the text in the picture into something you could search for. This is the coolest thing.

Uhm, who said Vista SKUs are a mess? Read some of these partial details on how AT&T and Apple are going to handle iPhone 3G sales.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is par for the course. Carriers are a not-so-consumer friendly group.

Today’s announcement by Qik that they will be supporting the iPhone trumps everything I heard from WWDC.

This is fantastic. No idea if this is WiFi only or if it supports 3G well too. A download will be available next week so jailbreaking is going to be required–at least for now.

I’m very curious to see how the chat works. Can’t wait to give it a try on my iPhone. I guess I now have reason enough to jailbreak my iPhone.

The very unfortunate thing here is that the video is going to suck the battery life out of the iPhone and unlike let’s say the Nokia N95 (which supports Qik), there’s no way to change the battery on the fly. I’m guessing we could run from a portable, external battery pack powering the iPhone via the USB/power connector.

FlixWagon, a competing service, interestingly announced today that it too will be supporting live broadcasting from the iPhone. Cool.

[Found via TechCrunch]

Those Apple Tablet rumors just won’t go away. Yesterday AppleInsider revives talk of a larger iPhone multi-touch device:

“Intel has been in the running to assert its Atom processors at heart of a larger iPhone-like Multi-Touch internet tablet that’s also under development at the Cupertino-based electronics maker, and was at one time believed to have sealed the deal.”

Well, if this device is based on an Atom processor, then it’s obvious why we haven’t seen anything from Apple yet: The MID-focused Atom processor isn’t shipping. So far Intel is only shipping or soon to be shipping in quantity the Diamondville version of the Atom processor, which is targetted to inexpensive notebooks rather than mobile Internet devices. The other version of the Atom processor/chipset which we believe is more geared towards MIDs and the like isn’t shipping yet and even at Computex no one seems to be saying when the Atom-based MIDs will be available.

Intel’s Sean Maloney suggests that with MIDs “there’s much more experimental design,” which is I guess part of an excuse why MIDs are taking longer to hit the shelf–like any Apple MID itself. Interestingly, Maloney continues, “By the end of this year, you will have seen a whole bunch of new MIDs coming out and we’ll see which ones are hits.” So whereas MIDs were originally thought to be on slate for a June launch, it sounds like things are still not ready.

It could be because of the designs themselves or maybe it’s because of Intel’s lagging supply of the Atom processors used in these devices. It makes sense that if there are no chips and Apple is going to use these chips in a forthcoming Tablet-like device, that Apple can’t release anything yet either. Or maybe in deference to Apple as it continues to work out its design issues, maybe Intel is holding back until Apple is ready. That would be odd, but I guess it wouldn’t be impossible to imagine. If true, then that would make Steve Jobs’ recent comments on the next version of OS X (which presumably would be the big brother to an embedded version running in a touch Tablet) a misdirection in that he says, “We’re going to hit the pause button on new features” and work on parallelism and “foundational issues”. It doesn’t take much to imagine that an Apple Tablet is going to need new features tuned to it. So if the Apple Tablet uses an embedded version of the OS, and the OS is on pause for adding new features, then my guess is the Apple Tablet is on pause too in terms of software. Then again, maybe the embedded OS has branched off from Snow Leopard. That would be odd, especially if handwriting recognition improvements are involved in any way–and those are currently aging and in the existing OS. So if they’re fixed for an iPhone and Tablet, they’d be put in the main OS X too. This is all conjecture. Complete guessing. Who knows.

Anyway, if Apple is going to use the Atom family in a Tablet/PDC/iPhone+, then we’re talking at least about later this summer for a launch–if there is a launch. It’s making sense why we didn’t see anything at the WWDC. Then again, maybe we didn’t see anything at WWDC and we won’t see anything later this summer or year, because the Apple Tablet is still an R&D effort and nothing more. Ah, the rumors.

People are realizing that the price drop for the new iPhone 3G isn’t quite a price drop when you factor in the price increase which AT&T is adding to the mix. MG Siegler over at VentureBeat says don’t worry. The price drop which is a price increase is a good thing, because most people won’t know the difference. Yeah, right. A good thing would be a lower price period. And believe me, people will know about it, just like they pretty much all heard about the launch of the iPhone itself. Word will spread. I do think, though, that most people will go along with the price higher or not.

I would add that I’m dissappointed that there wasn’t native video support for recording with the camera, for broadcasting live over the Internet (Qik style), or for viewing Flash videos in the browser. This is an even bigger deal than before considering the 3G radio. This is what 3G is good at.

If Apple was to provide these features along with the 3G radio I’d be sold. But they aren’t. So I’m on the fence as to whether I want to upgrade my iPhone or wait for another device that fits my needs better. Hmmm. So many choices.

Engadget posts about the new version of the Moo Cow Piano for the iPhone.

Engadget says, “…not too shabby — showing a piano, and what do you know, it’s better than the multi-touch piano they showed at D with Windows 7. They played a riff from Lennon’s “Imagine.”"

Update: iPhone 2.0 supports handwriting reco for Chinese and Japanese languages. No mention of support for English. This was rumored before.