Tag: Apple

iPhone+Safari+Web 2.0+Google=Mobile Widget

I was reading Zec’s blog and his latest post is titled “Google widgets on iPhone?” and you know what? I totally agree! He must have been reading my mind because in the last couple of days I have been thinking just that.

Apple announced that you can develop Web 2.0 apps for the iPhone.
Google has had Widgets for a while and recently launched Gears.

This sounds to me like a perfect match. You can’t really develop applications (yet), which is a shame, but at least you can develop tiny web 2.0 apps and Widgets and maybe with Google Gears you can add some off-line browsing. I can imaging getting online, using your favorite social network or whatever, get offline (in the subway, on an airplane, in a cave or in a dungeon), start up the Gears Mobile Widget, read your inbox, write some new messages or something like that, get back online, upload the updates.
The iPhone connectivity is certainly meant for a fulltime online usage, as much as broaband is today and personally I can’t wait for that day, but until the day you will have a REAL flat (that is also cheap enough), you can’t think of that. Once we have it, we’ll have the (i)phone always connected and the offline periods will be only limited. I just wonder how long will the battery would last, if you’re always online. Not very long, I guess. Where is a new battery technology? UMTS is certainly not sucking battery that GPRS and EDGE, so this is an issue!

Anyway, Google Gadgets, Gears and iPhone sound like a perfect match. Google and Apple and getting nearer every day. When are they going to share code between the WebKit and Mozilla (and maybe have full support for Safari in the many Google sites such as Blogger)?

Font comparison and thinking about it

A nice post from Joel Spolsky about the different approaches in font rendering between Microsoft and Apple. I like very much the second part in which he talks about the general behaviour of liking something you’re used to and that people generally don’t think about the differences between things, but that one is the one they are used to and the other is just “different”.

Font smoothing, anti-aliasing, and sub-pixel rendering

e-mails organized in threads

I remember when Opera initially launched the concept in its e-mail client that you did not really need folders to organize your e-mail, but that it was sufficient to group them.
Fairly recently Google reviewed the same concept and defined the labels and a very similar way of organizing your e-mails. Google certainly added a very powerful search engine, but the original concept is very much the same.

Being a Mac user, I have been using Apple’s Mail for a few years now. Mail.app has a standard a hybrid approach to e-mails, the standard folders are available, but since Spotlight became part of the OS, users are also able to create filters and organize e-mails in “dynamic folders“.

I have never been a fan of Opera’s approach and the same applies to Google’s approach and Apple’s dynamic folders.
I really like the threaded view, though. Both GMail and Mail.app offer this feature.
For my normal inbox and for a few folders I use the standard view with e-mails sorted by date descending.
For mailing lists I just love the threaded view. Here are two screenshots of the same mailing list:

And here is another screenshot of the same mailing list with a standard view:

When you read and contribute to a mailing list with a fair amount of traffic and different topics discussed, maybe with a lot of replies to the same topic, the threaded view lets you have e-mails organized very well and lets you follow a full thread even if other e-mails were sent for other threads in the same timeline.

While both Google’s and Apple’s e-mail clients are not exactly perfect when grouping e-mails, it still is very helpful and works smoothly in most cases. I have been using this feature for a couple of years now and liked it. I realized how I’m not used to it when last week I read my e-mails using a web client and found myself lost in the e-mails, losing track and having a hard time identifying the context as I was moving through the list of my e-mails, but were actually about different topics.
Going back to check old threads is also very easy when using this feature as you immediately get all the e-mails together.

iPhone “unique” motion sensor

There have been many posts about the iPhone announced by Apple. Some are saying that it’s the beginning of a revolution, some are saying that it is very stylish, but will not resist falling on the floor or getting hit. Some others are saying that Jobs is a great entertainer and made the iPhone look like something new while it is not.

My own opinion, being one of the few millions that saw the presentation, but never had a chance to hold the phone and use it for real, is that it will actually be a device for a niche market. It will most likely fall in the same space as PDA‘s and smartphones and not be really a mass-market device.
That’s also how the iPod was born. A device for music enthusiasts. The mass-market was reached with a lot of good commercial, good design and a bit of luck. It became mass-market when everyone thought it was cool to have it no matter how big and heavy it was compared to the tiny flash-based devices.
The iPhone will be the same in the beginning, with the exception that Apple is in a very good position right now. The future will tell us if it can be a real revolution.

It is obvious that the 2 year contract with Cingular, the delayed distribution for Europe and the high price will actually keep it away from the hands of many of us.

But going back to what is nearer to my experience (which is not marketing or sales), while cleaning up my inbox I noticed a newsletter from Nokia promoting the newly released SDK to access the motion sensor API’s of the 5500 Sport.
It doesn’t look so much different from Apple’s system with the advantage of being on the market today and with an SDK ready to use. Visit the Forum Nokia to know more, there’s a page for it, of course: Nokia 5500 Sport.

What if Google entered the Music downloads biz?

I found a very interesting article on Blog Maverick. The blog, in case you did not know, is maintained by Mark Cuban, the owner of the basketball team and a number of companies related to internet (read more on Wikipedia at the link above).

The post is entitled Googlenomics , Itunes and Zune and describes a few reasons why Google might enter the Music downloads business, how much it would cost and what it could bring to them.

It makes some sense, but I don’t think it’s going to happen, or at least not as it is described. I can hardly believe that the music labels would be happy to give away the music for free. The first billion songs for free is A LOT and would cost them A LOT (Mark says about 575M USD). That would mean a really low price per song and the music labels are already fighting with Apple to raise the 99c per song.

While Google and Apple are friends, I doubt the service would be compatible with the iPod and Google and Microsoft are not so much friends, so I hardly think it’ll be compatible with Zune. What’s left? Something that maybe is not in Mark Cuban’s article, you home-media-center. An all-in-one tiny computer (as big as your VCR) that connects to internet, lets you watch TV shows, listen to music and read news online. Wouldn’t that make more sense for Google?

3 music store

While browsing on 3’s site in UK I noticed a nice banner that invites the visitors to enter a new online shop.

3MusicStore is now open and already has 500,000 titles. What is so interesting? Is that the site sells everything for 99p, about 1.4 Euro. It’s a little bit higher than services such as iTunes, that sells songs for 99 eurocent (and 79p in UK), but 3MusicStore adds something. Something that seems very interesting to me. All songs purchased on the site can be downloaded both on the mobile phone AND on the PC. This service clearly opens the gates to MP3 phones such as the latest Sony Ericsson devices (W810i, W850i, W950i, etc).

So how is this different from iTunes? Well, I have it on my phone, I can be on the move, hear a song I like on the radio, open the site on my phone and buy it.
Later I will go home and also download it on my PC.

This is certainly a big hit in the iTunes+iPod concept that Apple has. Sony Ericsson is certainly scoring a point here.
I wonder if the iPhone will turn into reality and if Apple will sign a deal with 3. Wouldn’t it be a perfect couple?

On the other side, Italy shows that while we are ahead on the TV matters, we’re behind about music. 3 in Italy offers a service that only shares the name, 3MusicStore, unfortunately songs cost 2.5 Euro each and videoclips cost 3 Euro each. Dual-download (phone and PC) is not available. There are selected songs that cost only 1 Euro, but it’s a limited offer for a limited time (this week there are 8 songs from Jamiroquai). Hopefully the Italian site will soon follow the UK path!

processor produces electricity

via AppleInsider (but not exactly an Apple-centric news): “Eneco chief executive Lew Brown delivered a sales pitch to potential investors about a new ‘solid state energy conversion/generation chip’ under development that will convert heat directly into electricity, according to the Green Business News.“

According to the article, companies like Apple and Dell are interested, but are still wondering what to do with it.

Anyway it’s an interesting research.

Microsoft first to bat with direct-to-television movie downloads

Via AppleInsider: “The Redmond, Wash.-based software giant said it plans to offer over 1,000 hours of content by the end of the year“.
And then “Microsoft’s Xbox live will only offer film downloads for rent. Customers will have a window period of two weeks from the time they first purchase films to they expire. However, once a customer begins watching a flick, they’ll have only 24 hours to finish.“

I bet this is for US residents only.

This is also supposed to be the plan of Sony and the PS3.

Buying games online or renting them online can be very powerful. You’re home, bored, turn your Xbox on, pick a game and buy it within 2-3 clicks. Super!

I bet this will work with Movies too.

Apple’s iTV

Interesting article from Roughly Drafted about Apple’s iTV and specifically about the fact that strangely enough Apple has pre-announced a product that will be available in 4 to 6 months from now.

I agree with the idea that 802.11n is probably needed for the iTV to be successful, but I also think that it’s another way to let the majors know that Apple is serious about video downloads. It’s another way to say “Hey, you should join iTMS, because we’re going to broadcast your movies directly on TV, so call us if you want to be there”.